"My gosh," the woman said. "Why did he want to kill you two so badly?"

  I stood trembling, subconsciously holding onto Harper, protectively shielding her from the blast that was no more. I shook my head to the woman. I felt that I couldn't even talk.

  "I'm Claire," she said walking over to me. She laid a hand on my back. "I'm sorry you had to go through that."

  I started to sob. Quiet, horrified sobs. I would never unsee what I had just seen.

  Harper and I sat there for what felt like twenty minutes before we could function again. When I felt my strength coming back to me, I looked up.

  "What just happened?" I said looking at the adults around me. It was the man that had first saved us that spoke up.

  "A Darkling, that's what we like to call a Dark Matter Manipulator who is a student of the Dark Lord. He had been keeping you guys hostage, taking you guys to Mars for some reason. We stepped in and rescued you," the man said quietly. "You can call me Bajer and that over there," he said pointing at the younger man. "his name is Leo."

  Leo smiled at us and waved.

  "A Darkling," I said, repeating the word to myself. It was all becoming so real, so fast, and I didn't really know how to react to it all.

  "Could you tell me exactly what happened?" Bajer said, putting his hand on my shoulder. "Every detail is important."

  I explained everything that I had witnessed to him, and Harper helped fill in the gap from time to time. After a lot of tears we finished our story.

  "Interesting," Claire murmured to herself. "I wonder why they would want a boy that was never going to go to the academy in the first place, so badly?"

  She looked at Bajer, completely ignoring me. Bajer shook his head.

  "This isn't the right place to talk about this. Not with the boy around," he said. I looked between the two of them, annoyed that they were talking about me like I wasn't there.

  "What do you mean I wouldn't have gone to the academy in the first place?" I said, butting into their conversation. Bajer sighed and looked me in the eyes.

  "Son," he said. "I'm going to be honest with you right now and tell you that you have almost no Dark Matter manipulation ability."

  Reality came crashing down. I was worthless. That was the truth.

  "Don't be discouraged," Bajer said. "You clearly are worth something if the Darklings are after you. For the record, Harper is very powerful and yet they were going to kill her on the spot. The Dark Lord wanted you alive for some reason, Wyatt."

  I didn't know whether to feel complimented or unsettled. Only the evil manipulators found use for me. Not the good guys.

  "What do they want with me?" I asked.

  "That's the question," Bajer said, sighing. "You guess it is as good as ours."

  "We get our own rooms!" I was standing in a commons area looking at three doors. One had Harper's name on it, one had my name on it, and said Michael. It looked like we were going to have a rando as a roommate.

  "I guess we do," Harper said, looking around curiously. It had been about a day since our tragic accident with the Darkling and we had been put aboard the main ship that was making its way to Titan.

  "I still can't believe that we'll be living on this thing for the next two weeks," I said.

  "Crazy isn't it?" Harper said. "The best part is that we get to be free of those stupid suits." I rolled my eyes. Harper had kept saying over and over about how happy she was to be rid of the skin tight suits we had to wear. I myself had wondered why in the world we had to wear them in the first place. Bajer had said something about how it was a way that Darklings grafted people. They could also kill you with the click of a button if you revolted but we were lucky. Austin hadn't had a chance to hook OUR suits up to the system. We were just in normal clothes now, thank goodness.

  "Well," I said. "Why don't we go check out our rooms?"

  I opened my door and Harper looked over my shoulder. It was just a bed with an adjoining bathroom. Harper opened her door. It was the same thing.

  "That's dull," Harper said.

  "What were you expecting? A mansion?" I snorted. Harper gave me the evil-eye.

  "You know what I've been wondering?" Harper asked, ignoring my comment. "Why aren't we floating around up here?"

  "Isn't it obvious?" I said. Harper shook her head.

  "Not everyone is a nerd like you."

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  "Good point," I laughed. "Basically, a weird property of Dark Matter is that if you have a lot of it, it generates its own gravitational force. Nobody really knows why it happens. It just does."

  Harper shook her head like she was amazed at how I knew that little tidbit of information.

  "You really know your stuff, huh?" I turned around to see a boy about our age leaning against the doorway. He was fidgeting with his hands in a hyper-active way.

  "I'm Michael," the boy said, extending his hand. I shook it. His hand was sweaty. "I'll be your roommate."

  Me and Harper exchanged a glance. He seemed like a nice kid. I watched him as he pulled something out of his pocket and started to tinker with it.

  "What's that?" I asked him. He held up whatever was in his hands. It just looked like a mess of wires and gears to me.

  "Oh, this is just something I've been working on. You'll see." he said. "Also, is it true that you had a run in with a Darkling?"

  I nodded my head at him.

  "Cool," he said. If only he knew.

  "Everyone, report to the commons," I heard a voice say over a loudspeaker somewhere. I looked at Michael.

  "That's just the intercom," he said cheerfully. "I can show you guys the way to commons if you want."

  Our little group started our walk to the commons. It took us a little while, but Michael talked quite a bit. I learned that he had been on this ship for about a week now, circling Earth to make sure that they had all the fledgling manipulators. I learned that some type of competition started today, and that Michael's dad was some type of engineer on Titan. At least that was what he told us. He seemed like he was lying when he told us about his dad and I could have sworn I saw a tear welling up in one of his eyes.

  I was just about to get bored of all the talking when we arrived at the commons.

  "Whoa," I said as I looked down at a large arena of some sort. Kids were sitting in stands around the arena looking eagerly into the pit below.

  Michael led the way forward. As we passed people I heard them whispering.

  "That's him," I heard. "That's the one that had the run in with the Darkling."

  I heard all sorts of other things like that. Apparently everyone thought that it was cool to have a run in with a Darkling.

  At last we made it to our seats.

  "This whole thing is cool, isn't it?" Michael said. "There are about three hundred kids on this ship that are going to be the next generation of students on Titan."

  I gobbled everything up. It was just like a giant school, albeit that it was in space and that it took place around an arena instead of a whiteboard.

  "Sick," Harper said. "There's a ranking system."

  I looked around. All the other students were watching something in the air, like they were watching a movie or something. I nudged Harper.

  "Are you seeing something?" I asked her.

  "Yes," she said. "Can you not see the movie?"

  I shook my head. Was I supposed to be seeing something?

  "That's weird," Harper said and then kept on ignoring me. Maybe ten minutes passed before all the kids came back to the present.

  "What'd you see?" I asked Harper. She explained something about a race to get a flag or something. There would be one person whose job was to capture the flag, while the other two people would be trying to protect the person in possession of the flag. The last team with the flag after five minutes would win the competition and gain points for their team.

  "Look," Harper pointed down to the arena. I watched as two teams squared up against each other. Something must have triggered them because they dashed at each other.

  "Did you hear that?" Harper said.

  "No."

  "Really? That was really loud."

  We kept watching the game. It was ruthless. The kids were tackling each other and beating each other up. Still, they did anything to hold onto the flag.

  At last the five minutes was up. Team 1 was victorious. We watched a couple more rounds and then started to get bored. Watching people get bashed around was only so entertaining for so long.

  "Oh!" Michael suddenly got excited. "I found it! We are team 300."

  I looked at him confused.

  "What?"

  "We are the very last team to compete today," Michael said, excited. "That gives us plenty of time to plan out what we're going to do while the others fight."

  Harper and I looked at each other. We clearly had an over achiever on our hands.

  For the rest of the time we talked strategy: I would be the person running around with the flag while Harper and Michael would be defending me.

  Match after match went by until at last Harper tugged at my shirt.

  "Let's go," she hissed into my ear. Clearly she was still hearing things that I couldn't hear.

  We climbed our way down into the arena to find ourselves face to face with the biggest guys I had ever seen in my life. They were each at least six foot and were jacked.

  "We're about to get creamed," Michael said, cowering as he tinkered with his wires. Something told me he wasn't the fighting type.

  Suddenly, the other guys started to move towards the flag. I bolted towards the flag and easily beat them to it. I ran as fast as I could, but the biggest guy was gaining on me.

  I looked and saw Harper kicking the one guy in the crotch, while Michael was still tinkering with the little bot in the corner.

  I kept running and Harper yelled at me that about two minutes had passed. Something grabbed my shoulder and I went down hard. The flag was ripped out of my hands.

  Darkness started to close around my eyes, but just as I was about to pass out I saw Harper getting ambushed from behind by one of the big guys.

  "NO!" I yelled. I saw a tiny shiny light on the ground. I didn't know why I did it, but I hit it with my hand and felt my body surge with power I had never felt before.

  I sprinted toward the guy that was attacking my friend and punched him in the face. He crumbled to the ground and didn't move. Thug number two fainted on the spot.

  Harper stared at me like I was a mad man.

  "What?" I said, extending a hand. I pulled her off the ground. Her eyes were still wide.

  "Why are you glowing?" she said. I looked down at my body and noticed that a strange light was shining from my body. I WAS glowing.

  I heard the buzzer, but this time it was aloud. I looked over to the flag floating in the air. The last thug was bent over clutching his pants.

  "We win!" I heard Michael shout. I started to celebrate but then I heard a voice over the speaker.

  "Get to your bunks," the voice said. "We are under attack. I repeat we are under attack."