Elza Grey - passive twin

Tamzin Grey - more aggressive twin

    One is the more aggressive form of a power, like Tamzin can control people’s minds, and Elza can hear them or something like that.
    Maybe they can communicate with the other one through dreams or something, or Elza can hear Tamzin when Tamzin’s asleep.
    Possible that Tamzin’s a boy? Interesting.
    Possible that Elza is super strong.
    One person in two bodies, each body has a different power, this person has to juggle both bodies. This character can’t just pick one body/power over the other because he/she would die.
    
   



Leo Bryker - strategic, leadership. manipulation by touch? When he freaks out, and loses control the hands of death or something like that come out and kill things…strings of life. So him being in jail and having the inhibitor medicine is really relaxing for him, and when they get out, he tries to find some of the inhibitor so he can continue. He doesn’t really want his powers. When he gets better in control he can control what happens with the hands, and control whether they kill things or just knock unconscious.
    With the strings, he can like examine the strings of a life and find stuff out about people
    Bad in crowds, more people to focus on not killing
    Leo killed his parents


Trevor LaPier - ginger, nervous, anxious, tall skinny, can go through walls and solid objects, phase out, claustrophobic, maybe super speed.

Grace Johnson -
    Enhances other’s powers. Enhances objects she picks up. Immunity, which is why the drugs aren’t working on her. Can’t be poisoned.
    Maybe can also lessen powers?
    Kind of a Grace/Leo thing.
    Another possible reason why she isn’t in the cell,

Lily Santana - abrasive, hot headed, does what she wants, curvy, Mexican. Shape-shifter, but can’t change her mass. Can look like a different person.

Kieran - manipulation by touch? Possible telepath. Illusionist.

Matthew DeMarco - gross, weird. Shadows, invisibility, super creeper, uber-camouflage.
    Leo kills him on accident

Sam Watts - pyrokinetic, fire bender, smart, resourceful
    Chemically knowledgeable so that they try to find Leo’s inhibitor formula so Sam can make more.


Leo kills Matt on accident and the others know they need to stick together, and Sam tells them that if they can find Leo’s inhibitor’s formula he can make more and keep them safe.
 

    “Elza and Tamzin Grey. Leo Bryker. Trevor LaPier. Grace Johnson. Lily, Kieran, Matthew. This list goes on, Ford.”
    “Sir, please. At least we’ve subdued and quarantined them.”
    “Do we know what’s causing it?”
    “…No, sir.”
    “Then who knows how many more may be…sprouting up.”
    “Yes, sir.”
   
    Elza paced around her cell. Tamzin slept in hers. Leo could see the twins from his own cell, that’s how he knew what time it was. Lily bit her fingernails, spitting them onto the floor. Trevor hunched in a corner and muttered to himself, panicked and anxious. They didn’t know where Grace had been taken, but they knew she’d have special quarters. Trevor imagined chains, sedation. Matt took a shit, and Kieran, laying in the next cell, rolled his eyes and pinched his nose.
    Tamzin, in her sleep, extended her arm so her hand flopped through the bars of her cell and into view of most of the others. Elza saw it, reclined on her cot, reached out and held her sister’s hand. A light shined from between the twins’ palms, and in a moment, Elza’s light snoring could be heard as Tamzin let go of her sister’s hand and stretched her long, thin limbs.
    Trevor shivered, weirded out yet again by the eerie twins’ routine.
    Leo, who watched their exchange, clocked the third day he’d been there. He wondered where Grace was, what they were doing to her.
    The door at the end of the hallway made the buzzing, unlocking noise. It slid open and the hushed steps of the night nurse could be heard by the prisoners far away enough from the door not to be able to see her.
    “Arms please, children,” she said flatly. Elza’s was still hanging out. The nurse went to her first, since she was closest, and, with a syringe from her tray, injected a clear liquid into the sleeping girl’s elbow-crease. Tamzin, in the adjacent cell, silently extended her arm through the bars again and got her dose. She was still pretty upset that in this place, as soon as she woke up they dosed her back to sleep again. She’d been conscious for roughly twenty minutes the whole time she and her sister had been there.
    The nurse went to Lily, Matt, Kieran, all on the same side of the corridor. Everyone complied.
    When the nurse got to Trevor’s cell on the other side of the hall, she tapped her foot impatiently, but he stayed curled around himself in the corner, shivering and ignoring his summons. She sighed huffily, then with the walkie-talkie pinned to her shoulder, asked for “Blake, Duffy. Need ya’ll again this evening.” And then went to the next cell, Leo’s.
    As she finished injecting Leo, putting a new bandage on his elbow and as his eyelids started to droop, the door buzzed again and two orderlies filed in.
    “Trevor again?” one said. The nurse nodded.
    The orderly that hadn’t spoken grabbed the zip-card on his belt, pulled it out, slid it in Trevor’s lock and then let go of it, letting it’s string snap it back into place. The door hissed open and Trevor started trembling harder.
    “Trevor, are we going to have to do this every morning and night?” the nurse asked. Trevor shook.
    The orderlies went for him, slowly approaching with their feet spread cautiously apart. Trevor was skinny and didn’t look dangerous. But he was starting to shake unusually fast.
    “We need to get this done now, gentlemen,” the nurse said. “His morning cocktail is clearly wearing off.” One of them nodded, and they leaned forward towards him at the same time, reaching for his skinny, freckled arms. But as they reached him, instead of touching clammy teenage flesh, they passed through, like the shaking, blurring boy wasn’t there.
    “Dammit,” the one on the left growled, reaching for the stick hanging from his belt. He pulled it out, flicked a switch and a quiet buzzing emanated from the spherical silver tip.
    Trevor started to cry.
    The orderly reached forward with the electric prod, slowly, because he wasn’t sure when the tip would hit the now completely blurred figure.
    As soon as it did touch him though, Trevor immediately stopped vibrating and collapsed with a couple gentle twitches onto the floor. The orderlies picked him up, laid him on the cot and the nurse came forward with her quick injection.
    Lily, who was very close to being overcome with sleep but fought it more fiercely than the others and so remained awake, watched the orderlies and the nurse step out of Trevor’s cell. The nurse smoothed her nervously rumpled hair and scrubs. They exited.
    Lily focused on Trevor’s sleeping form, trying to stay awake as long as she could. His red hair looked nervously disheveled, even in sleep. At the moment he was sprawled over his too-short cot, but Lily knew from waking up before him that morning that sometime in the night, once he regained control of his body, he would curl up in a tight ball, hugging his bony knees to his chest. Lily had never met anyone as stressed out as she’d seen Trevor be in the day and a half he’d been there. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, but she’d heard his voice as he talked quietly to himself, shaking, clutching his hair, wringing his long, thin hands.
    Lily had always had a thing for tall, fucked-up boys, and that thought was the last she had as she drifted off under the weight of her dose.
    Elza, who had fallen to sleep even without the medicine, woke first, her hand gently gravitating to her sister’s. After their palm-to-palm light faded, Elza stood, stretched. She saw that the others were still asleep, at least judging by Leo, Trevor and Sam’s cells, which were the only ones she could see into, even pressing her face against the cold bars of her cell.
    Instead of resuming yesterday’s pacing, Elza began a series of yogic stretches. Warm-ups, standing postures, and then trickier ones until she ended up in a handstand against the wall.
    Leo woke up and saw Elza’s slim, upside-down body in the cell across from him. He hadn’t yet had the chance to see the other twin awake for more than a few minutes, but if she were as strange as Elza was…
    “Elza,” he hissed across the hall.
    She turned her head, her straight, reddish-brown hair sweeping the floor. Then one short leg lowered down to the floor and she gracefully reversed herself and glided to the bars.
    “Yes?” Her pale fingers wrapped around the bars. She stared eerily at him.
    “What do you think’s happened to Grace?” Leo scooted towards his own bars.
    Elza shrugged, her bird shoulders nearly touching her ears. “Most likely, she is under heavy sedation and being studied so that they can compile a more…competent inhibitor cocktail for her.” Elza’s voice was soft, unobtrusive. Leo had heard Tamzin talk once or twice, and hers’ was a much more aggressive, growling voice, although that may have been due to the fact that she’d been forced to sleep almost constantly since the twins’ arrival.
    “…Studied,” was the word that hit Leo hardest, reminded him why they were all locked up in this place. Grace was the first to be taken away, but she certainly couldn’t be the last. She had been the first because the night before last, the injection must not have worked on her. Lily was the only one able to stay awake long enough to see anything, and all she’d seen was Grace standing, somehow, in spite of the injection, at the bars of her cell, clutching them with angry white knuckles. By the time the others awoke in the morning, she’d been gone, and the cell next to Trevor was empty.
    Leo hadn’t seen Grace, because he’d gotten there after she had, and his cell was close to the door, but Lily had described her to all of the inmates who hadn’t seen her themselves. She said Grace had long, absurdly long, black hair and that it was wild. She said Grace was pale, and that her skin was accentuated by her dark hair. She was short, but thin, like a pixie. Even though she was so short, not even five feet tall, there was something about her, Lily said. She seemed…abnormally powerful, even by this groups’ standards. Lily hadn’t been able to figure out why.
    The others awoke one by one, Matt with a loud fart announcing his consciousness.
    “Matt,” Kieran growled, waking up himself.
    “Dude, listen,” Matt mumbled, rubbing his face. “I can’t fucking help it, alright? Jesus.”
    “Cool it, guys,” said Leo.
    “Who the fuck put you in charge?” Lily piped up.
    “Nobody, that’s who,” grumbled Matt.
    “And he can see the girls,” said Kieran. “Insult to injury.”
    “Don’t make me come over there, you little ass-sucker,” snarled Lily.
    “Ha! I fucking dare you, princess,” spat Kieran.
    Soon all but Tamzin, Elza and Trevor were shouting at each other, either instigating or trying, and failing, to calm things down. Lily had her left arm reaching into Matt’s cell, and he was staying far away from her small, tan, angry hand. Kieran leaned against his bars, spitting profanities at everyone but the twins.
    Then the door buzzed open and they all went quiet but Lily, who‘s speech.
    “I’m gonna bust those bars of yours open and shove ‘em up your ass til you can taste the prison floor, you hijo de puta,” she snarled, still reaching into Matt’s cage even though she was yelling at Kieran. “I’m gonna bust that smart mouth of yours open and feed it to you. You gonna wish you never kissed your momma’s fat, slut mouth.”
    The nurse was appalled, and marched straight to Lily’s cell, smartly smacking her reaching, clawing arm. “Stop that!” she said shrilly. “I think we’ll need to add a bit of sedative to your daytime mix.”
    “No, ma’am,” Lily growled. She extended her arm and bared her sharp teeth in a grimacing smile. The nurse gave her her injection and moved on to the other silent inmates. Lily paced the floor of her small cell, popping her knuckles and waving her angry arms.
    “Good morning, Elza,” the nurse said.
    “Morning,” Elza said shyly.
    “A new boy’s coming in today,” the nurse said nonchalantly. Elza shrugged, but Leo’s ears perked up. He asked the nurse questions while she did rounds.
    “What’s his name?”
    “Don’t know.”
    “When’s he being brought in?”
    “Probably in less than an hour. They’ve got to do all the paperwork and processing with him, you know. Not to mention get the inhibitors right. He’s been here nearly twelve hours already, but he’s a stubborn one.”
    “What’s he got?”
    “How should I know?”
    “How old is he?
    “Your age, I guess. You’re all nearly the same age.”
    “Really?”
    “Well, I mean, you’re all teenagers. None of you’s outside fifteen to eighteen, I’d guess.”
    By then she’d finished up the injections. She dropped the conversation and left without so much as a salutation, but Elza understood that the nurse probably didn’t look them in the eye, didn’t ask them questions because she didn’t want to get attached to a bunch of mutant freak teenagers who were probably just going to get experimented on until they died anyway.
    She had left, and Leo wanted to talk to the others, but he knew that the room must be bugged. But what difference would that make, letting the people who were keeping them there know what they thought about each other, and about this new arrival. Or about Grace’s continued absence.
    They’d each been taken out of the holding cell section more than once. Physical examinations, interviews, things like that was the consensus of what had occurred with each of them. But Grace had been gone for more than a day now. Leo had started, maybe three hours after she’d been removed, to feel anxious about her absence.
    Leo decided that talking about the new person wouldn’t make any damn difference.
    “What do you guys think?”
    “About what?” said Lily.
    “What do you mean ‘About what?’, el stupido,” quipped Kieran. “About the shitting information the nurse just told us.”
    “You shut your fat mouth, twat,” she snarled. Kieran scoffed. Lily abruptly, disconcertingly abruptly, switched her tone to a more polite one to ask, “What did she say, Leo? I wasn’t listening.”
    “There’s gonna be a new…prisoner,” he said tonelessly. He didn’t know what to feel about this boy’s arrival. Excited that something interesting was going to happen in these monotonous cells? Sympathetic that the new boy was going through what they’d all had to go through during processing: pokes, prods, stress tests, interviews, so many questions, blood drawn with no regard to discomfort with needles, medicinal testing, harsh de-licing and cleaning procedures. Curious about what this kid’s powers would be? Apprehensive of getting to know this person, just to have them possibly and most likely taken away, like Grace?
    Leo sat in the corner of the wall and the bars of his cell, looking down the hallway. He could see all the way to Kieran’s cell, but only as far into it as about two feet. If Kieran were sitting in the same place as Leo, only opposite, they’d be able to see each other.
    The door buzzed again.
    It was getting so that whenever that buzzing sound happened, everyone unconsciously turned their attention outward, and, when they didn’t actively decide to not look at who was coming into their little silver world, they all gravitated towards their bars.
    The two orderlies entered, with a young, downtrodden Asian teenager between them. He was dressed in the same indescribably boring uniform as they all were, and was followed by the day nurse. His dull black hair swung just above his shoulders, and as they shut him in his cell (and Leo noticed particularly that they did not put him in the vacant one left behind by Grace, but in another empty cell next to Trevor) Lily watched him open and close his hands repeatedly, closing them slowly and then flicking the fingers away from the palms quickly, making a “pfft” noise with his nails against his skin, like he was trying to flick water off them.
    The nurse talked quietly to the new boy, presumably telling him obvious things like how the toilet worked and that they would give him an extra blanket if he needed it, and that in roughly six hours time another nurse would be in with an injection for each inmate, and that it would contain a sedative to help him sleep.
    The nurse and orderlies shortly left, and all the inmates found themselves close to the bars of their cells, peering as far as they could.
    They all wondered, in their own ways, about how to greet this newcomer. For some reason it felt weird to just say hello.
    Lily started.
    “Hey,” she said, not quietly, to show him that they were allowed to communicate. “Hey, I’m Lily.” She could see directly into his cell, and saw him look forlornly up at her, so she waved through the bars. “What’s your name?”
    The kid, he couldn’t be more than sixteen, shifted on his cot and said, “Sam.”
    “Sam what?” Lily asked, direct as always.
    “Sam Watts,” he said. Sam couldn’t help himself, he scooted closer to the bars and peered out at the people he hadn’t noticed were in the cells around him on his walk down the hall.
    In the cell directly across from him was a chubby, greasy-haired guy with slightly bent spectacles on his nose. When Sam looked at him, he said, “Matt,” gruffly.
    To the left of that was a guy with curly brown hair, and sharp blue eyes. He was also on the chubby side, and had eyebrows that looked like they were most comfortable in a negative position. He introduced himself as Kieran.
    To the right of Matt was the girl, Lily, who had first spoken. She was short, curvy, but not necessarily overweight, with curly hair that looked like it needed to be brushed.
    To her right was a cell with no peering face, only a slim, pale wrist hanging out in between two bars. This disconcerted Sam, and he worried someone was dead in the cell until Lily saw his expression and said, “That’s Tamzin. She’s asleep right now, that’s all.”
    A voice Sam couldn’t see the source of said, “She and Elza are never awake at the same time.”
    “Elza…?” Sam said quietly. A pale arm poked itself out of the last cell on that side of the hall, the one next to Tamzin’s and a quiet voice followed it.
    “That’s me.”
    “Then on your side of the hall is,” Lily said, pointing at the cell across from Elza’s, “Leo-”
    “Hey,” said the same voice that had talked about Elza and Tamzin’s sleep habits.
    “Then there’s an empty one,” Lily continued, “and that belongs to Grace but she’s not here right now. Then Trevor-”
    “Freak,” muttered Kieran.
    “Shove it, ass-licker!” Lily suddenly roared. “He’s not bothering you!”
    “No, but you sure as hell are.”
    “Guys, come on,” said Leo wearily.
    “Leo, he won’t fucking lay off.”
    “Kieran. Seriously. We’re all freaked out enough as it is. Enough with the bullying.”
    “Goddamnit,” Lily added.
    Sam pulled the blanket off the cot and wrapped it around himself, but remained seated.
    “Sam, you ok?” Lily asked, her tone shifting quickly.
    He nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He pulled the blanket tighter. “This is just really fucking weird.”
    “Right?” said Matt.
    “Sam, if you don’t mind my asking,” said Leo from down the hall, “what’s your power?”
    Sam hesitated. He didn’t know if there was a word for it. He wasn’t a comic book kind of person. He hadn’t even seen the X-Men movies, for God’s sake.
    “I, uh…I can make fire.”
    “Look at goddamn Prometheus over here,” Kieran jeered. “I can make fire, too.”
    Sam perked up. “Really?”
    “Yeah, genius, it’s called matches.” His laughter echoed on the metal floors and walls. Lily ground her teeth and looked over at Leo, who rolled his eyes.
    “Can you control it, too, Sam?” Leo continued.
    Sam nodded, but remembered not everyone could see him. “Yeah. I can make it and… I can make it do what I want.”
    Leo nodded to himself.
    “Would you like to know our powers?” he asked gently. “It helps to take your, and our, minds off of this bullshit.”
    “Sure,” Sam said quietly.
    “Lily, why don’t you start.”
    “You know, who ever made you the boss?” Kieran said, standing up and peering down the hall.
    Lily started to wind up, but Leo stopped her, saying, “I’m just making a suggestion, Kieran. Keeping things rolling. Lily doesn’t mind talking about hers.”
    “I’m a shape-shifter,” she said, doing her best to forget Kieran’s existence. “I can…become…whatever animal or person I want to be, but I’m always the same…size.”
    “Like, your mass doesn’t change?” Sam said, interested.
    “Yeah, exactly! You super smart or something, chico?”
    “I dunno. I guess. So you can be like a lion, but you’ll be a you-sized lion?”
    “Yeah, exactly. Actually, lion’s one of my favorites. How’d you know that? You psychic, too?”
    Sam laughed, surprising himself. “No, that’d be pretty cool though, huh?”
    “Damn right, but then you’d have to listen to Matt’s stupid ass all the time.”
    “Even listening to your illiterate thoughts is better than Matt’s farting, Lily,” was all Kieran had to say on the subject. “I’m a telepath, Sam. And an illusionist.”
    “Like, a super-power illusionist, or one of those weirdoes who thinks their magic?”
    “Well, first off, I’m a super-power illusionist, and second, who can say what’s magic and what isn’t anymore, kid.”
    Sam gave a short laugh. “You’re right.”
    [Switch Kieran’s dialogue and sarcastic personality to Matt before this, who will be killed off later.]
    “Thanks for fucking skipping me, asshole,” Matt interjected. “I-”
    “Can hide. Wow. What an amazing douching power, Matt,” Lily said very sarcastically.
    Matt ignored her and continued, “I can camouflage anywhere.”
    “Except here, fuckhead.”
    “Lily, will you just give it a rest?” Leo groaned from his cell.
    “Anywhere?” Sam asked. Lily could see that talking casually with them was really helping him calm down.
    “Yeah,” said Matt, “like, forests, airplane hangars, shopping malls. I don’t even have to be standing against a wall, I basically become invisible wherever I want.”
    “Basically?”
    “Yeah, I mean, if I move you can see it, but only just.”
    “Trevor?” Lily said gently after a moment. “Trevor, you want to tell Sam about your powers?”
    Trevor, who had uncurled himself during the conversation and had been listening, nodded. “Yeah, um…I…it’s hard to explain. I can make myself…go really fast. I can move fast, but also through walls and trees and that sort of thing. I’m pretty sure it’s my molecules vibrating very quickly.”
    “Molecular vibration? Are you sure? How can you tell?”
    “Well, I did a couple experiments with water and-”
    “Woah, woah poindexter. Let’s slow it down on the scientific mumbo jumbo here. You don’t want to freak the kid out.”
    “Actually,” Sam retorted rather sharply, “the kid can speak for himself and is a poindexter who is rather interested in what Trevor has to say, so please shut the hell up you fucking asshat.”
    A moment of silence pervaded the shocked hallway of teenage mutants.
    Then a group “OHHHHHHH” erupted from Lily, Leo, Kieran, even Trevor and Elza joined, albeit slightly more quietly.
    Matt sulked. Sam smiled and felt like part of the group. And he hadn’t felt like part of a group since…ever, come to think of it.
    “Nice one, kid!” Lily said.
    Leo smiled, sensing a strange, growing camaraderie within this group of imprisoned superpowers.
    Once the laughing died down, Sam asked, “What about you, Leo? You didn’t tell me what your power is.”
    Leo, unseen by Sam in his cell, became tense. “I’d…rather not talk about it, actually, if you don’t mind.”
    The mood changed very quickly. Leo didn’t want that. He wanted to keep that air of calm, kidding-around friendship.
    “The cell between Trevor and me, that’s Grace’s cell. She’s not here right now. They took her away because the medicine wasn’t working on her for more than a couple hours, so instead of overdosing her on it, we think they’re probably trying to just fix the cocktail. Her power is pretty awesome. She can like…enhance or reduce people’s powers.”
    “Reduce?” Sam asked. “Can she, like, take them away entirely?”
    Leo nodded and said, “Yeah, or very very very close to entirely. Enough so that for most of us, they wouldn’t be useful at all. Like, if she were to take Matt’s away as much as she could, he’d be able to be invisible enough that maybe you couldn’t see his arm hairs or something. Useless.”
    Matt scoffed, like his invisibility could somehow beat his suddenly not having invisibility.
    “How does she do it?” Sam asked. “Does she have to touch someone or…?”
    “No, she has an area of effect. She thinks she’ll eventually be able to have more than one…what are we? Mutants? More than one mutant in her AOE and be able to enhance one and reduce another.”
    Lily waved her hand. “Wait, wait. When did Grace tell us this? I don’t remember this. Is it because you’re cells are right next to each other? Did you two talk more in depth about this stuff?”
    “…No,” Leo said hesitantly. “Grace and I were with each other before we were brought here.”
    A moment, then Lily said, “Ohhhhh,” in a mildly suggestive way.
    “No, no, not like that,” he replied, but she thought she could detect a hint of wistfulness, like he wished it was like that. She glanced at Trevor. He was curled upright on his cot, with his head on his arms.
    Something was weird. At first she hadn’t noticed how fast he was breathing, how his shoulders were moving up and down in a weird rhythm, uneven and labored.
    “Trevor!” she said, standing up, grabbing the bars. “Trevor, are you ok?”
    The others were, of course, alerted.


   
   
   


Trevor has a breakdown, starts the fight between Lily and Matt. Leo realizes that since the staff didn’t respond to Trevoer’s breakdown, either they didn’t think it was significant or they don’t have cameras and bugs in the holding cell area like the kids had assumed.


    “Ma’am,” Leo said, since he figured Elza wouldn’t, or couldn’t. “Tamzin has been kept unconscious nearly the whole time they’ve been here. Would it be possible to let her stay awake tonight? Her sister is worried that she may be hurt if she doesn’t get to move around for more than a few minutes a day, and since we don’t know how long we’ll be kept here…”
    The nurse seemed to think about it.