Prologue

Once, a world was created that was sworn to live up to expectations, a world where compassionate and gentle people would live. This vision, however forgot the possibility that expectations wouldn't be met, but instead murder would be born, murder and greed and selfishness. The people who abided by gods rules would start to loose faith as the extent of selfishness would eventually diminish any hope of a better world. Humans began to get greedy, pollution was born and would eventually guide the world into chaos. It was then another angle for a better world was approached, but instead of a seven day creation, it was drafted in seven hours. A world where people who had small but great gifts lived, and where extravagant and outrageous minds were created. Yet how could a place which housed such brilliance live without problems and fear...and evil. Wonderland, a project abandoned by the gods and a world which threatened the original creation of solace. A place which knew about Earth, but where Earth didn't know about them.

It takes only one person to start a war, then one person escalates into hundreds which then escalates into thousands and eventually the opposing side has to fight or surrender. Surrendering is never an option. In Wonderland this one person was Madeleine Hatt, an ageing woman forever disguised as her 15 year old self. Her body suspended in time by a time keeper who punished her for her grave sin. A lone good man among a world of tarnished souls.

A test of normality

Jini's body was painted in a sheet of cold damp sweat. Tearing her cheek away from her own sticky moisture on the pillow, she shot up, her eyes darting around the room like the paranoid woman she was afraid she was becoming. For an entire week the same continuous dream had engulfed her at night time, she never remembered what the dream entailed but she always remembered the colours. Bright colours blurring into one continuous form surrounding her and making her doubt what was real. Shaking her head at her own stupidity she swung around in her bed, feet hesitating above the ground and her mind working to recall in which places the floor of her room creaked, she figured it out quickly, and it was glad to see that the 17 years she had spent in the room hadn't gone to waste.

Careful as to where she put her feet, Jini stood from the bed exhaling a sigh of relief at the silence. Each step she took her was accompanied by a screwed up expression and once she reached the stairs, she shook her shoulders like an Olympic athlete, or some over exaggerating boxer . Again, with each step she took downstairs the same strange expression matched it. It was when she reached the bottom stair she released the breath she didn't realise she had been holding and began to casually stroll to the kitchen, knowing it was impossible for her parents to hear her now. Yet it didn't stop her breath catching in her throat every time she heard and unwelcome noise.

Jini had grown up in the stereotypical 'normal' family, the family that brought you a pie if you were a new neighbour, and the family who was at every sports day, cheering, but not too, loud. Jini had considered adoption and other ways to explain the fact of how she knew she didn't belong with her family. No matter how much love she had for them their was always that insistent nagging at the back of her mind telling her she didn't belong their.

Settling into the couch, she propped up her feet on the coffee table only then noticing she was missing a sock. She cleverly shielded the sound of opening her can of soda by housing it under one of the sofa cushions. Admiring her own stealth she smiled aimlessl., She liked to sit by herself at times, think things over and envision her own future in her mind. It was 3:35am and Jini couldn't see herself going to sleep any time soon, so she carefully unbolted the back door, opening and closing it with such speed and gentleness that any thief would have been proud of. She stepped onto the bare wood of the porch and couldn't control the reaction of her sock less foot when it touched the porches floor, like bare skin touching hot metal. She found the garden swing almost immediately, not even the darkness affecting her. She out her feet up onto the swing and settled into a laying down position, head in her left hand looking out on her side, and into the night.

Her violent purple hair, extreme it may have been but suited her very well none the less, was tangling around her neck from the light breeze and the her eyes, a vivid almost luminous green were almost entirely enclosed by her increaslingly heavy eyelids. Her flannel pyjama pants bounced off of her thigh creating a light sensation on her legs that she seemed to find relaxing. Her bare arms, bare, due to the loose tank top she was wearing, rose with goose bumps and when the soft hand of a stranger enclosed around her mouth, Jini barely stifled a scream as she felt all her senses go numb and her body been spun out of control. But this wasn't just a sensation, Jini was being spun somewhere out of control and then all of a sudden without a doubt, she knew she wasn't on her porch swing any more.

6+1

Cojack didn't even notice when his fingers started to tap aimlessly, a trait that developed when he became nervous, and Cojack? Oh, he was nervous all right, The 6 of them had been together for the best part of 5 years, that was when it had first began. Every time they found another one, they had to go through the same story, Cojack had spent 5 years of his life watching the faces of people being told their life was a façade. Explaining what they really were, not who they were. The last time he had to do this routine was with Janie, the 24 year old woman and aspiring film director he had come to acknowledge as family, this had been 2 years ago. After this, all 6 of them spent the following 2 years tracking down the last member of 'The Seven' a name they themselves had opted for. Searching for the last piece of the puzzle and the last dangerously destined soul like themselves.

They had all had time to figure out and adjust to their 'gifts', each of them born with a unique ability they all knew how hard it was when they were first told. How hard it was to learn how to control themselves and how to deal with the new part of them they hadn't known existed. Cojack had found his ability hard to comprehend with, he was alone when he discovered his talent and it was still extremely hard to adjust.

Now? now was the time. After 5 years and being faced with his impossible task of being the one to bring 'The seven' together, Cojack somehow knew that he wasn't one of the two destined to survive. He was just the one who had to bring them together, even though he knew this he still embraced his inevitable destiny.

They had arrived at Caveria Lane four hours earlier, contemplating how they would get the last of them, into the RV, to them, and in such a quiet neighbourhood, an enormous RV wasn't going to be unnoticed so they decided to return at nightfall. Carl didn't like the suburbia setting that they had to infiltrate. Carl Blackmoore was 15 when Cojack found him. He was the first fledging Cojack had told and taught, he discovered Carl a year after he himself found out about his ability and the destiny of all seven of them.

Carl was an orphan, living in a down town orphanage that only seemed to house misfits and infants, Carl was neither a misfit or an infant and this was why he hated such perfect idyllic neighbourhoods such as Caveria Lane. It was one of those places that depended on upstanding members of the community, neighbourhood watch and kids with plaits and tasselled bicycles. Whereas Carl's neighbourhood, well that was the place that housed the convicts, the place where you were afraid to walk the street after 7pm and the place that Carl was happy to discover he didn't belong in.

Cojack had developed a father son like relationship with Carl, he had watched the young misguided boy flower into a mature young adult. They had learnt to play on each others strengths and were both aware of each others weaknesses. They were both, the ones who found the other 4, together. They were all a close family, but Carl was the one who meant the most to Cojack. Carl was also the one who fascinated him the most, his ability was extreme none the less, it was a simple but extraordinary gift that Carl had developed to become his own. Carl could Fly, or whereas he liked to call it 'skid', this involved him diving off top of buildings and skidding the pavement a few centimetres above it. He had even started using wheels on the heels on the bottom of his shoes to heighten the challenge. He was the one they used to watch over their fledglings before they came up with a plan on how to take them. Yet with the new one, they knew nothing. They only had a month before the destinies they had tried to distance themselves from, would start to unravel. A month before the world would be under threat and only a month for Cojack to tell the rest of the seven about Wonderland.

Janie stirred lightly, Her tangled blonde hair was falling over her face and her head was falling heavily from the back of the front seat. She was sat in the passenger seat of the RV, and the others were scattered at the living part of the huge vehicle. Carl had took to sitting on the roof of the RV well hovering actually. Cojack was sat on the kitchen counter, Karen, the third fledgling, was sat with her feet up at the compact dining booth. Barney, was clicking his tongue earning a few glares from the others. Barney, who's actual name was James, was a teleporter. He possessed the ability to move anywhere and everywhere at the blink of an eye. He was the fourth, and the one they had used from the moment they had found him to transport the fledgling they sought to the others, so they could be informed. Morgan was sat at the drivers seat, her feet propped on the driving wheel, glancing back agitatedly every few moments as if to say 'Get your ass into gear Cojie'

Morgan was the fifth, the quickest learner, and when he met her, a young 30 year old woman destined for more than a possible death sentence. She had an ability she despised and it was probably due to this that she learnt how to control it so quickly. Morgan could create illusions, brilliant vivid illusions that could fool anyone into believing they were anything from sat in their perfect paradise to being tortured in their worst nightmares. She could create an illusion to transform any surrounding into whatever she wished and any object appear to be their opposite the only thing she couldn't change was her appearance, which she had first assumed would be an obvious trait to her gift. Her hair was the colour of charcoal and contrasted against her pale complexion, it was pulled into a loose ponytail and she had dark brown eyes that could be transformed into the most threatening glare Cojack had ever been on the receiving end of and he had received a lot of threatening glares in his 42 years of life.

The whole RV seemed to shake as they all jumped when the alarm clock on Cojack's wrist started to buzz. Barney assumed his position and Morgan grasped the space on her body where her heart lay as Carl flew open the skylight of the van, suspended in the air with his legs crossed upside down.

“Show time Folk's” Carl beamed , then Barney disappeared. In a few moments, the last piece of the puzzle would need to be fitted in it's correct place, if not, then Cojack would not know where to go.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 25.07.2009

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