Light shines through the window, illuminating dust floating around the room. The bed I am sleeping in smells like onions. The rest of the room is empty, aside from stone walls with cracks spreading throughout the west side. I get up and notice I am wearing a strange suit, white for the most part but with padded sections colored light blue. It feels heavier than it should but it is flexible and comfortable. I look out the window and see dunes. Sand dunes as far as the human eye can see, but luckily, I am not human.

Then I notice a speaker on the ceiling.

“The prisoner is awake, I repeat, the prisoner is awake.”

The words ring through the room, giving me insight on the truth of this building. It is a prison. I take another look out the window and see barbed wire fencing slowly rising from the sand. I take a few steps back and sprint towards the window.

The stone bars give in easily and I fly through the desert air. I crash-land into the dunes, rolling down towards the fence when I finally slow down. The barbed wire screeches to a stop after reaching the full height, blocking off the guards from me. I take a closer look at myself, even though I know it is not the right time. I am surrounded by a purple aura, something I haven’t noticed before, and then I hear gunfire. Android guards ran out near the fence, but the bullets were frozen in the air ahead of me. Instinctively, I slowly move my hand in front of me, balled into a fist.

“You will stop. Surrender now!” An android screeched in my direction.

I extend my fingers and in a flash, all of the bullets suspended in the air in front of me burst forward, imbedding themselves within the circuitry of the android guards. I turn around and start running up the dune, and when I get to the top I jump forward, flying one hundred, two hundred, three hundred feet before I come crashing to the ground. I lunge forward once more and in the distance I can hear the sounds of music, live auctions, and vendors. I land and run towards the sound.

“Halt! Passport!” the guard at the entrance of a city demanded.

When I look at him nervously he calls on more guards and I am forced to retreat back. I’ll have to find another way in. I scan the walls surrounding the desert city of Scanshem. As soon as I am out of the guards’ view I sprint all around the walls, noticing everything. A crack big enough for a cat to fit in on the North side, a river going into the South wall, cows outside the North-West wall, and herders tending the cows.

“Afternoon,” mutters one of the herders, looking at my white uniform suspiciously. “When did you escape?” he asks after a while.

“What?”

“Your uniform… Only prisoners wear those clothes,”

“Oh,”

“Come with me. I’ll give you new clothes as long as I can have the uniform. It’ll fetch me enough money for dinner for a week,”

Reluctantly I follow him, and then I catch up and walk beside him when I realize I do not have another choice. He walks around sand dunes, not thinking at all before each turn. He must have taken this route many times before.

“Here,” he says. “Stand back!” He reaches into the sand and a mechanical roar finds its way out from under the dune. Sand begins to move and then it all spills downward, revealing a spiral staircase. One by one, lights in the staircase begin to spark and flicker until every light turns off. “Not again…” he muttered

He walks into the passage and motions for me to follow. I hesitate once more, and follow him. The trapdoor screeches shut, but the staircase is still lit by a purple glow. I forgot completely about the purple aura from outside the jail cell.

He sees the light coming off of my skin. “How are you doing that?” He asks in disbelief. I shrug, not knowing what else to do. He stares at me for a moment longer and then starts down the stairs.

Half an hour later we have gone through a complex tunnel system and we have finally emerged on the other side of the city walls and inside a small house, or home, at least. We are standing in a small sandstone box about fifteen feet wide and fifteen feet tall. There are no windows, but there is a small open hatch in the top of the roof with a fire burning directly underneath it. A clumsy wooden door is in one of the corners. There is a small bed, a dresser, a pile of clothes, and a tub all in the one room.

“It isn’t much, but the person who lived here before me thought it was pretty important,” he says, gesturing towards the trapdoor on the floor leading outside of the city. “Take these,” he tells me as he throws a turban and a robe toward me. “If you want to satay hidden it will be best if you keep these on at all times.”

I finish changing and give him the prison suit, but my aura is brighter than ever, and the man is staring at me in shock. “What?” I ask.

“Your eyes… they are bright purple. You may want to put the jail suit back on,” He replies.

I hear sirens wail in the distance and android guards from the jail begin to sprint through the street. There is no way I can escape this now. I turn around and the man is gone, the trapdoor is closed and it is covered with a thin layer of sand.

Suddenly a guard crashes through the door and sees me, then my eyes. “You are the prisoner. You are the refugee. SSSSSSSCREEEEEEEEEEEEE!” A piercing screech comes from the guard and the sirens stop. I thrust my hand forward and the guard flies back out of the door, crashing into the house across the street. Frightened bystanders look through the door at me and see me in the turban, the purple aura, and the violet eyes.

“Whoa,”

“No way,”

“Impossible, the Majernials are extinct,”

I hear the people muttering in disbelief, and then the rhythmic sound of steel alloy hitting the Earth, like a thousand metal feet marching towards the house. Then I remember there are a thousand metal feet marching towards the house.

I sprint outside and down the road where a citizen stops me. “If you are a Majernial, why don’t you just fly?” He asks.

Then it all comes back to me. Running in the purple grass with other children, flying through the Indigo skies, climbing through turquoise trees and aquamarine jungles faster than all of the rest, excelling in psychic warrior camp, the war, oh the great war, the androids and the Majernials, fighting to the last survivor, quite literally. I am the last surviving Majernial.

I soar into the skies, the purple aura blazing around my body, brighter than ever before, my eyes glowing. I see the androids and slowly move my hand toward them. They see me now and aim their guns. Five hundred guns all pointed at me, and then they fire. The bullets fly toward me and then stop.

I look down at them, levitating in the air with thousands of bullets all around me. I begin to twirl my hand and all of the bullets spun around me, making a wall of metal pellets. I thrust my hand forward and the bullets begin to fly towards the army, then through the army, leaving nothing behind but scrap metal.

I fly in the direction of the jail and over the sand dunes and stop in front of the jail door. I send sand flying towards the door and crash it to the ground, creating small whirlwinds to fly through the jail and destroy the android guards. I walk through the jail, looking at the prisoners, observing them. Then I notice that there are no logos, no government flags, and no human officers. This jail is illegal, made to hold prisoners that someone collected, prizes of his journeys.

I make my way to the main room and at last I see a hint: “Grohleor Inc.” I close my eyes and another flashback takes over my consciousness. I am below the dark, smoke-filled skies hiding in the forests of my planet after the great battle when an enemy airship passes above me. I look up cautiously and see an insignia on the bottom of the ship. “Grohleor Inc.” it says. I open my eyes and no time has passed. I am still in the jail and I am in the middle of a hallway. I continue down the hallway until I find the right door. A series of tiny slits in the wall in the shape of a door, almost unnoticeable, but I see a light purple aura coming from the door.

I burst through and I see a cage and inside there are three figures. They are pure purple and blazing with an aura greater than my own. The flashbacks start again, this time more clear. The airship is still overhead, flying by, when I look down and see the same three figures. They are my family.

I open my eyes once again and see a power couplet coming from the cage, and my family looks very weak. I send a blast of purple energy towards the cage using both of my hands, a new power I had forgotten about until the most recent flashback, but instead of destroying the cage it only made an electronic buzzing noise and the lights in the room grew brighter.

The cage was a power extractor made specifically for the majernials. The cage was designed to make anything in it a living power plant. The only other option I can think of is to overload the system.

“Don’t!” One of the majernials says. “The extra power is fed back into us to prevent an overload!” She finishes.

“It’s the only option. Otherwise you will be stuck there forever,” I explain.

“Fine, but do not stop, no matter how much we beg,” another majernial answers.

“Okay,” I mutter. I stand still with my legs spread apart and both my hands forward. I let out a piercing roar and purple energy blasted through the room and into the cage. All three majernials scream out louder than anything I have ever heard, but my powers only get stronger.

At last the cage breaks, and my three family members ignite with the same purple aura that I have had since I woke up in the jail cell. We all run outside and two of the others jump into the air and disappear out of sight. The third looks at me carefully, says “Jump,” and then leaps into the air herself.

I jump as high as I can and I zoom through the air and into space, where I see trails of purple traveling far into space. I follow them, sending myself forward with the same energy that I used to destroy the cage. I continue to follow the trails until we reach a strange planet, filled with magenta crystals and pink grass. The trees have red leaves and turquoise trunks, and craters full of fire and ash.

I land in the same general area of the others and we send blasts of purple energy into the air. After seeing where we all were, we made our way to a central location. When we met each other we made our way to the forests, a place I easily recognized from my flashbacks. We hiked through the forests for hours until we came across a small village in the middle of a clearing. The village was abandoned, except for a few wild animals that have taken refuge in the huts previously occupied with the abundant majernial race. We looked through for huts that were almost unharmed and we began to repair the small holes and cracks in the structures. At last we were finished with a hut for each of us, and we began to search for food and other resources to live. It won’t be long before our old majernial lives are restored, along with the greatness of our race, but one thing is for sure. I will never again forget the day we were stolen from our home.