Chapter One

QUINN

Predicting the future sounds exciting until you wake up one day knowing what's going to happen. Take it from me - it's not exciting at all. Fucking visions. I wish I never had a single one.

When the egg hit me in the head, it broke immediately. I felt the sticky yolk run down into my black hair. I knew it was official.

I was an outcast.

As I crouched in the street with egg dripping down the side of my face, I was determined not to cry. My breathing was ragged, and my chest heaving with effort, but I would not show weakness in front of these bastards. The men who humiliated me would never get the satisfaction of knowing that they had broken me, no matter how torn up I felt inside.

I couldn't kneel forever. I stood up slowly, wiping the raw egg from my face. I wondered where they got the credits to afford real eggs.

Maybe the farmer down the road was a member of their cult, too. They called themselves a church, but everyone knew what it really was, even me and my dad.

We hadn't been in this town long. My hometown was the little community of Core Rock, a charming mining settlement. There were exactly two hundred sixteen inhabitants - actually, two hundred fifteen now that Abigail had gone away to school.

I lived a happy childhood there. My family consisted of my father, who was also my best friend. I did well in school, and my life was perfectly normal until I was fourteen.

That was when the visions started.

At first, I thought I was lucid dreaming until they began to happen during the day. I managed to hide everything until I had one at school. They thought I was having a seizure. My father had me tested for epilepsy, but the tests came back negative.

I almost wish I had been suffering from some unfortunate disease, but that wasn't my fate. As it turned out, I was a psychic and could see into the future.

It's a rare ability on Earth, but I have learned that aliens on other planets exhibit these powers all the time. Unfortunately for me, I didn't live on these other planets. My harassment by my fellow humans began almost immediately. Earthers, in general, have not caught up to other interstellar cultures in regards to peace, harmony, understanding, and tolerance.

At first, people started teasing me at school. It escalated quickly to bullying. I got beat up a couple times. "Why didn't you see that punch was coming, you freak!"

I couldn't control when I had the visions, or what I saw.

My father didn't know what to do. He went to the police, but they couldn't do anything. He tried to protect me by dropping me off and picking me up at school. Someone always found a way to get to me when there wasn't anyone else looking.

Things became complicated when I foresaw someone's death. A kid at school was planning to commit suicide, and I knew it was going to happen. I tried to do something about it. My plans didn't work, and he died. Despite my best intentions, I drew suspicion upon myself. An investigator suspected me, and they nearly charged me with murder.

That's when my dad and I decided to move. I started hiding my ability. I ignored the next death I saw in my visions. If I knew someone was going to be hurt, I watched movies until the early morning hours so I could fall asleep.

If I was exhausted, sometimes I could avoid the nightmares.

My father was distraught and tried to help me. We went to see everyone we could — doctors, healers, a shaman. Someone who claimed to be able to exorcise demons. Nothing worked. In fact, my visions became more intense and more accurate. As I got older, I wanted to change the future. I wanted to prevent bad things from occurring, especially the deaths that I saw. Every time I started, I remembered what happened in Core Rock and didn't do anything.

Now they had found me again in our new town. I didn't know how the Sons of the Heavenly Father kept tracking us down. News agencies have linked them to murders all over Earth, but they only target a specific minority - people who are different, like me. If the eggs were the best weapons they had, they'd find they would need to do a hell of a lot more than that to scare me away.

I pivoted on my right foot, turning in a circle. On a whim, I raised my hands like claws.

"Stand back," one man yelled.

I heard a few of them muttering. They all held up crossed index fingers. I heard the word 'witch' multiple times. If they wanted me to be a witch, I supposed I could play the part. I knew it was a bad idea, but something in me was so angry and so sick and tired of running away that I couldn't seem to stop myself.

I pushed my hands away from myself, palms facing away, and I screamed. As loud as I could, like a banshee.

I saw the crazy men's faces turn white. They stumbled backward as if they'd been knocked down by the simple act of me raising my hands. For a moment, as they ran away, I got a false sense of power. I felt like a witch. I could make the bad guys cower.

But I was just an ordinary girl.

I began walking as fast as I could back to the apartment I shared with my father. I knew young women should be out on their own to learn independence. But I wasn't a typical girl. My dad needed me and helped me with my visions. If I had an unexpected seizure, he was there to protect me. Since I couldn't work, he supported us. I avoided people and typically ventured out at dusk.

Today had been such a beautiful day I couldn't stay inside any longer. I went for a walk. The men found me, pelting me with eggs and calling me rude names. I was lucky they didn't beat me up, but I was still anxious.

"They knew that you have a gift? They said so?" my father said. His brown eyes looked calm, but I didn't need powers to know he was terrified. His hands were shaking.

"They called me a witch, Dad. That says it all, I think."

"We've worked so hard to escape from the Sons of the Heavenly Father. It's discouraging to know they've found us again. We may need to run."

"They're not going to stop. We know what they do to witches. We've seen it on the news." My father shuddered, probably remembering the images of charred remains in his mind. The Sons of the Heavenly Father were on a quest to burn anyone they accused of being a witch - all in the name of their savior, of course. History was repeating itself. They thought the ends justified the means. They believed their salvation was worth murdering innocent lives. I wondered what their god thought about that.

I felt the need to confess.

"I might have made it worse, Dad. I'm sorry."

He sighed, closing his eyes wearily. "What did you do, Quinn?"

"It's possible I lifted my hands and screamed like an animal," I said, apologetically, demonstrating my pose.

My father shook his head. "Oh, Quinn. If they didn't think you were a witch before, they'll know you are now."

"I know," I said sadly. "I know. We have to go right away, Dad. We can't bring anything." We hadn't accumulated much. It had only been six months since we moved here. I had a feeling it wouldn't be the last time.

I felt a sense of longing for home that was so strong it almost overpowered me for a moment. I didn't have a place to call home anymore. I could no longer go back to Core Rock. Not even for a visit. I didn't think my life wasn't in danger here, but I still felt afraid.

Dad said we had to wait until nightfall to leave. "We'll be less conspicuous if we leave in the evening," he said. "In the meantime, you should pack and rest. We may be up all night, Quinn."

"Okay, Dad," I said, going quietly to my room.

This vision was clearer than any I had ever experienced before. Every detail was vivid, even the smell of the snow. Who knew snow even had a smell? Not me. We didn't get snow where I lived on Earth.

The air was crystal clear. My breath came out of my mouth like smoke. The cold stung my cheeks as I walked through the forest.

Sometimes the visions I had felt like watching a movie. I was never in the movie. I was always an observer.

Until now.

This time, I was one of the people in the story, and I was playing myself.

I was walking alone through the snow. I needed to get away from something. The storm drove into my face at one moment and into my back the next. Huge trees whipped back and forth in the wind. Since I had arrived on this planet, I had never seen the trees moving like this. I had seen severe winds before, but they barely moved the branches. Now enormous tree trunks were swaying back and forth and groaning. I started to feel afraid. What if one of them fell on me?

I tripped suddenly. Not only my boot, but my entire foot was caught under a root. I hadn't seen it under the deep snow. I was stuck. I struggled, trying to free it, but it wouldn't come out. What was I going to do now?

Without warning, I heard a crack and a big tree began to fall on top of me. I stared up in fear, holding up my arms uselessly in a futile attempt to protect me. I was saved when the trunk caught on another tree and stopped falling.

A voice yelled my name behind me. I had never heard it before, but it seemed familiar.

"Quinn!" I turned to look and saw a man yelling and beckoning to me. I knew he was good looking, but somehow his face remained out of focus. I couldn't see his features. "Come on!"

He came up to me and pulled on my arm.

"My foot's stuck. Get out of here," I said, pushing at him, feeling afraid and desperate. "We don't both have to die."

The man smiled at me, then glanced up at the fallen trunk. It was beginning to creak. The tree could start falling again at any time.

He took my hands in his and leaned towards me. His eyes were full of emotion. "We do both have to die. I love you. And I can't live without you."

"What?" I said.

"I love you," he said again. This time, he leaned in and kissed me.

When the tree hit us, it was over so quickly I barely felt a thing.

When I emerged from a vision, I saw two worlds at the same time. The forest scene began to dissolve. Simultaneously, the ceiling of my bedroom came into focus. My father sat at the foot of my bed.

"Was it a bad one, Quinn?" he said. His voice sounded worried. "You were tossing and turning a fair bit."

I sat up, trying to remember everything. The images of the forest began to slip away like a dream.

"I don't know."

"Tell me, Quinn. You know you remember better when you tell someone."

My body felt shocked by grief, but I wasn't sure why.

"Quinn?" My dad put his hand on top of mine. "Are you all right?"

"No," I said. "I just watched myself get crushed with a man I'm going to love."

"What?"

"I was in my vision," I said, turning my eyes to him at last.

"You were in the vision?"

"Yes, it was a vision about me."

"Has that ever happened before?" he asked.

"Not that I can remember," I said.

"Hm." He looked troubled for a moment. Then he stood up. "Time to go, I think."

"Yes," I said, trying to calm down and come back to reality. Sometimes after a vision, it was difficult for me to return to real life. I stood up and grabbed my emergency bag. "I'm ready."

I followed my father down to the main floor and into the attached garage. We got in the car and drove away. We weren't coming back.