publications. I believe that any detail about human history, if salacious or powerful enough to cause harm, can be found with the right kind of determination. I found a list of names, and scoured each for signs: did she have a boy or a girl? What had she done with her earnings from Hargreeves? Had she had other children? Where was she now? Two of the women could have lined up with my birth: Allison and I were the only female babies "found" by Hargreeves. It was easy to narrow down once I found pictures of them both: the woman with my hair, and my nose, lived in a small town off the Southern coast of Russia. At least, according to what I could find. I convinced Hargreeves that we needed to take the team there to train, after extensively researching the area's high mountains and secluded trails. It was perfect, and miraculously, he agreed! Thinking back, I wonder if he knew exactly what I was up to and wanted to help. We stayed for five days, and as the others sweated and trained, I kept records, and occasionally went off on my own. For any of the academy members to question Hargreeves' strict schedule or participate in non-approved "free" time would have been unacceptable. But as for me, I wasn't on the schedule in the first place. We spent enough time in Russia for me to track my birth mother down. I took buses, spoke what broken Russian I could to locals, and finally came to the house where I had been told she would be. We spent enough time in Russia for me to learn that the mother I had spent years searching for had died. The family of hers, and I guess of mine, who greeted me there invited me in. They seemed harmless and even kind. But I couldn't stay. Whether my mother knew I wasn't special or not, I realized I didn't want to know. I didn't want to hate a dead person any longer. Now I knew she was gone, it seemed pointless anyway. I've found that focussing on the past can only hurt me further. It's not worth spending any more of my time on the people who have all but forgotten me. I haven't gotten a call

from Allison in years, Diego's out fighting crime, Klaus has been partying himself into a stupor ever since we left the house, and Five is gone. Luther's the only one of us who stayed. I envied him for so many years growing up: Number One, the group's true leader. But now I pity him. Luther could have been anything: he could have had the fame Allison did. He could have gone wild like Klaus. He could have taken to the streets and fought against evil himself like Diego... but he stayed to become Hargreeves' pet. In the end, there was nothing really connecting the seven of us. We weren't related. We were nothing alike. We were just seven strangers living under the same roof: destined to be alone, starved for attention, damaged by our upbringing, and haunted by what might have been. We all wanted to be loved by a man incapable of giving love. Our father never missed an opportunity to remind me that I was ordinary - a hard thing for a little girl to hear. But lately I've started to wonder - what's so bad about being ordinary? From the second we're born we're told to reach for the stars. To accomplish great things. But there is a value in life lived quietly. Going about our days, little by little. Finding contentment in small victories - a promotion, a friend, a beautiful day. Sometimes, the simple things are extraordinary.

so-called rumours about Allison and Luther, no pun intended, I can't say for sure. I'd like to think that what they have transcends words - when we were kids, it was just obnoxious. They spoke in code, swapped whispers. They were part of a world in which we weren't allowed. But as we got older I realised it wasn't some fantasy world they were playing in. Their minds were off somewhere else together. They shared looks and gestures that were meaningless to the rest of us... save maybe Klaus, who can be oddly perceptive when you least expect him to. But as for a romantic relationship between the two of them, that's none of my business. Frankly, I don't want to know. Adopted or not, if it were two of your siblings, would you want to picture that? Their secret conversations were the first sign of what was to come: watching the two of them so happy together, and acutely knowing I could never belong would become an intimate feeling in my life. Soon, they were together on missions. They were training all afternoon. And they were playing games I couldn't learn the rules to. It was all too obvious that there was a club for children with superpowers, and ordinary children like me were decidedly barred. I would say it was Dad who implemented all of this. He caused my alienation through procedures, through harsh rules that we all followed for fear of the alternative. And to an extent, that's all true. I can't forgive what he did to me - but sometimes I wonder where Dad's actions ended and my siblings' began. When you consider what a mind, especially a young mind, will absorb and harness when put into dire situations, it's not at all difficult to believe that my siblings learned cruelty from Dad until they eventually made it their own. It wasn't just the rules keeping me out of top-secret meetings anymore. It just made sense that I should sit at the end of the table, so Diego could help Five's technique, or so Allison could paint Klaus' fingernails. I became accustomed to sulking and watching them from afar - most of my morning oatmeal went uneaten and but thoroughly picked at.

Meals became the one time of day we were all forced to be together - and I met them with equal parts anticipation and dread. Would today be the day I engaged Allison? Could I stand up to Diego's taunts? Maybe I'd show Five the musical piece I'd been working on for weeks. Though prone to arrogance and outbursts, even more than the average preteen, Five was my sole confidante in the years before he disappeared. It almost seemed fitting that of all the siblings to leave us, it would be him who I fully trusted, and who fully trusted me. Five was almost always one step ahead of Dad's manipulations, and he didn't play into the games of favourites like my other siblings. Five always told me that ego was man's most unattractive weakness - he thought himself above competing for fatherly love and prizes. Even then he was beyond his years. I think about Five often, and where he is now. The others say he's dead, caught in a terrible accident, or shredded up in the time space continuum. But I know Five, and I know he was too smart for that. Reckless, maybe, but he's brilliant. I wouldn't be surprised if he were living it up in the seventies now... but hippie hash wasn't really his style. For all I know he's gone to the future and never looked back. If he has, and he's happy, then I am happy for him. I'm sure none of us can say we never had a moment where we wished we could escape. Not just run away, but also go somewhere where Dad couldn't track us down and pull us back into his web. Surprisingly, I only ran away once. Despite everything, it took so much for me to believe I could belong anywhere else but the home in which I was abused. Shortly after Five dissappeared, I took his lead. It was about time I saw what's out there. But I knew nothing other than what I had been taught about myself and my life: I was simply not special. But I asked myself on that day: What if I was special, to somebody else? The rest of the world was ordinary. Maybe the real world was where I belonged all along.

One morning, I left the Academy - my bag stuffed to the gills with clothes, snacks, and mementos I couldn't leave behind. I think I even brought a dream catcher, for fear of nightmares from home following me wherever I went. I only made it to a bus stop, and I sat there all day long - and strangely, for the first time in my life, it hit me that I was completely alone. I had thought I was alone my entire life, but this was something new and entirely different. I was afraid of what I didn't know, and would choose Dad's torment any day over the endless dark that stretched down our street. Buses came, but I waved the kind drivers away. That night, I walked back through the front doors, and no one knew I had ever left in the first place. I wonder how long it would have taken them to realize - the extra girl they never needed was absent. Would it have made a difference? To this day, I'm not sure. The next time I left that house was when we all did. After what happened to Ben. Our everyday existence was full of evidence that Dad had stepped into treating us like experiments. Not as children, but like animals. And what happened to Ben was the last straw that finally shattered the illusion for the others. I regret that though I knew all along what they realised that day, I didn't have the spine to leave on my own. It wasn't until Allison took off for Hollywood and Diego cursed out the old man for good that I realized we were, ultimately, a broken family.