Nobody tells you just how loud the sound of silence is. Life is full of surprises, but this was one I certainly wasn't expecting.
My entire life, I was raised by a woman who showed me the truth about the world. How dangerous it is, how horrible people can be, how stupid trust was. I grew up with her, and my sister. It was us against the world.
I was told things a young girl such as myself shouldn't know. I worried about adult problems as a ten-year-old girl. That the hero isn't always good, and that the villain is almost always just misunderstood.
'Be the villain, not the hero' is what my mother always told me and my sister, because you'll always be the villain in someone's story, but in reality you'll just be you. Perception is fickle. But one thing stays the same; the villain always has a reason.
My life was not one of a normal child, it was one of hard love and tough training. It was a struggle of fight it, or accept it, fear it, or control it.
From the age of seven, I was trained by multiple professional trainers to understand and adapt my senses and skills into combat situations. At eleven, I was handling experienced assault rifles, hitting targets with my eyes closed. At thirteen, I'd mastered my unusual abilities to the max, able to control and defend using them alone. And my entire life has been a long lesson of how to control my emotions.
I never played with dolls, I played with weapons. I didn't play with kids at the park, I played with my sister with knives. I never made Lego structures, I gained the skill to correctly load a gun.
But I wouldn't change any of it. The world I live in, the world I've been introduced into is not one to take lightly. There's no peace, no tranquility. It's pure danger, all the time.
My mother— well, my adoptive mother, known famously as The Handler, is a high ranking and major influencer of the Temps Commission, an organisation dedicated to managing the space-time continuum. The main job of the Commission is to ensure that all events that are meant to happen, happen.
To do this, there are a range of agents who are responsible for travelling through time to eliminate anyone that pose a threat to the space-time continuum. Tasks are given to agents through pneumatic tubes, which will have a short and sweet message telling them what they have to do, and by what time.
Me and my sister, Lila, are two of those agents. Except we're different. Special , as our mother says. See, me and Lila are not our mother's actual children. We were adopted by her when she found us in unfortunate circumstances.
She found me after an incident which she calls 'L'ombre incident' meaning, the shadow incident. Which we do not speak of. In short story, I was left alone after a horrific scene took place, and Lila found me, and took me back with her, where I was adopted by The Handler.
The woman became our mother, both of us quite young when she met us. Lila was four when The Handler found her, scared in the corner after the murder of her parents. And I was barely six when they found me. So for the majority of our lives, she's been a main motherly figure to us both. Teaching us, training us.
But we weren't ordinary children, and The Handler discovered that very quickly. Lila and I have abilities . Those outside of the usual human species, abilities that would be considered supernatural or divine to some, monstrous to others.
Lila, with the last name of Pitts, was one of whom was born on the 1st of October 1989 to a mother who had not been pregnant moments before. She possesses the ability to mimic the powers of others, though she can only mimic one at a time and only after touching the individual.
I, with the full name of Philippa Evans, was also one of those born on October 1st 1989, my mother too having not been pregnant when the day had began. I have the ability of which The Handler calls 'divine', the manipulation and control of life, time and mind.
Only difference between us both? I stopped aging when I turned sixteen. Lila grew up, and continues to grow? Me? I'm sixteen, have been for fourteen years. Mother says it's probably due to my ability of controlling life, my soul not being the same as most, and so due to that, my aging is restricted. I'm considered a ghost in some scenarios.
I know many fear me, for they fear the power I hold, the ability to control their entire being. But mother and Lila have always made me feel special and incredible . With my abilities, I'm able to control life, in the sense of having the power to heal, and revive, as well as the ability to end the life of whomever my victim is. I can also manipulate time and space however I please, fast forwarding time, travelling through time zones, slowing time, and stopping it all entirely. Finally, I'm able to control the mind; place thoughts into the individuals head, make them do things, control them to do what I want, communicate through their mind.
When I was younger, the fear of my own power was engraved into my mind. The fear of death, and getting lost within the darkness consumed me to the point where I refused to use them. I begged mother to teach me hand-on-hand combat rather than train my abilities. But my mother simply said, 'you can't run from the shadows, but you can invite them to dance'. And I did exactly that. Now I dance with the shadows, I lead the dance.
I'm known in the Commission as 'The girl who disappears', for my most common act is to disappear using loops within time and space, or teleporting from one space to another in a matter of seconds. It's not uncommon for me to just appear in a room, so much so, that long-term workers no longer get spooked when I suddenly appear beside them.
I'm my mother's daughter, I have her strength and power in my veins. Both my biological mother, and The Handler's. Both of their power lives through me, lives in me. I wear a smile like a loaded gun, I control the shadows, I've destroyed armies, I've won battles, I protect what is close to me.
Family. Duty. Honour.
That is who I am. Who I always have been, who I always will be. I will fight for my family, no matter whether it's wrong or right. Lila and The Handler will always come first.
Little did I know... one day, a day that would be very soon, I'd pick him .