I hung tightly onto the railing in the subway. Blue lights reflected onto my skin as the train traveled quickly down the tunnel. Around me were mumbles of everyday conversation. Normally, I would be nosy and listen in on the talk. Now, I was much too tired after working until early this morning to bother paying attention to the mindless chatter.

Of course, this exhaustion also made it harder to hold myself back. I tried to shut them out, tried to keep them from penetrating my mind. I let my eyes drift closed as I leaned onto the subway railing. A small nap seemed to be my only sanctuary as the voices slowly wiggled their way into my head.

I can’t believe I’m still talking to this guy. Does he really think I’m desperate enough to actually be into him?

I let my half lidded eyes drift to where the noise was coming from; a nearby man and woman. The man obviously out of his league. Still, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him as he continued to talk to her with a smile on his face.

Geez, he’s talking about his family again. When will he just give up? I asked him for directions not his life story. I swear the next time I hear him mention his dead grandma I’m going to kill myself.

I scowled a bit at the woman. Sure, the man was barking up the wrong tree but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be the least bit courteous and tell him she’s not interested. No need to say such things about the man.

I paused for a moment. This woman wasn’t saying bad things about him. She was thinking them. I shook my head, moving it away from the woman and the man. I blocked out the voices and laid my upper body onto the railing. While clutching my bag close to me, I tried to lull myself into sleep.

The subway car rumbled as it turned a slight bend on the tracks. I bumped into someone slightly and my eyes snapped open. I turned my head around to apologize when I saw the figure and froze. It was a man, from the physique I knew it had to be a man. He was taller than me by around an inch. Of course, that is not what caught my eye. This man was wearing a black cloak that covered his eyes. The only thing I saw was the bottom half of his face.

The way he was dressed was something I had only seen on holovision, or holographic television as it was advertised. The cloak he was wearing was what I had seen the political leaders wearing whenever they would give the morning wake up call to the metropolis. The call came every morning at five o’clock and the call consisted of the same greeting each and every day.

Good morning Exo Planet Exotians. The time is currently five o’ clock. Report to your stations and may you be blessed by the protectors of the Tree of Life.

It was always ominously spoken, as if to invoke fear into the people. Indeed, the message was to strike fear of the just hand of the “protectors” into the people. Of course, I have never seen one of these so-called legends but the stories told about them are morbid enough to make even the most tough of men shiver from terror.

So, this man was a mystery to me. I had never heard of political leaders strolling around in public nevertheless seen them. So then was this a coincidence? Or did it happen so often to the point where no one needed to talk about it?

I scanned the rest of the subway car and found no one else paying any attention to the man in the least. I turned my attention back to him and bowed, “I’m sorry.” I would ignore this since it seemed as though it truly did happen often. I turned back around, finding myself too alert to attempt to go back to sleep. Still, I closed my eyes, figuring I’d let them rest for a little while longer until my stop came.

It seems as though there will be some unaccounted for casualties today.

My heart skipped a beat at the voice that had entered my head. I opened my eyes, wondering if that was something I heard someone say or if someone had thought that. I turned and scanned the crowd on the subway car.

The explosion should happen before the stop, though this car should only get the backlash of it.

My eyes twitched as I realized where the voice was coming from, from right in front of me. The voice was coming from the cloaked man.

An explosion? Before the next stop too?

I reached out and grabbed his arm. He immediately looked down at me, his arm stiffening from our contact. “What do you mean by explosion?” I asked him, bewildered. Now was not the time to worry about my secret talent getting out. I could only see a shadow of his face from under the hood of his cloak.

That’s when I felt my body jerk to the left. A loud noise invaded my eardrums and blended with the screams of those around me. I held onto what was nearest me for dear life. It would have been the railing I was leaning on earlier, however, my hand which was on the cloaked man’s arm tightened as soon as I felt the jerk. I pulled myself to him and clung to his body for dear life as the subway car continued to rumble and skid on the walls of the tunnel.

I was able to open my eyes only for a moment to see fire engulfing the sides of the car. People screamed as they were tossed across the subway car from the impact. Various windows shattered, causing a slew of glass to rain down upon everyone inside the car. Somehow, I managed to stay firmly rooted in my spot. The man I clung to held his ground and though the shaking of the car still affected me, I was not sent flying like a projectile.

My eyes drifted to the woman I had seen talking to the man only just earlier. She went falling back and her head hit the steel floor of the subway car, I heard a distinct cracking sound. I quickly shut my eyes tightly again and buried my face into the man’s shoulder, caring less about what he might say afterward and more about my safety.

After what seemed like a lifetime, the subway car came to an uneasy stop. Flames still sprouted outside of the car and created a warmer than normal atmosphere within the car. I let my trembling hands fall from my support and took a step back, almost tripping over my own feet. My eyes downcast to the woman who fell and I gasped. Tears brimmed and threatened to fall from my eyes at the sight.

There was a pool of blood underneath her head and the cracking sound from earlier I now knew was her skull breaking open. Blood dripped from her lips and her eyes were staring up emotionlessly. Laying a few feet away from her, flung off of his feet, was the man she was talking to. His upper body was riddled with glass from the windows and there was a deep gash on his forehead. Near him was an elderly woman who I remember had shushed the man on multiple occasions earlier. Further down in the cart was a businessman and three other women, all so covered in blood I could not even remember what their faces looked like before despite seeing them just a few moments earlier.

The thick smell of iron filled my nostrils and I reached up for my mouth, coughing from the smell filling my lungs. No one’s thoughts filled my head now. All there was was silence. An unnerving silence that made me feel like screaming in order to fill it.

That’s when a voice did make it’s way into my head. The same voice from earlier.

The backlash was bigger than expected.

I looked up angrily, “You!” I screamed, “You did this!” I pointed a shaking finger to the seemingly unharmed cloaked man from earlier. Not only was he unharmed, so was I. Other than the slight dewiness of my skin from my own sweat, I was completely fine, in the same condition I got on the subway in.

One side of the man’s lips twitched upwards into a smirk though it was not playful but a rather painful gesture, “I did not do anything. In this case, I am an observer.” He took a step towards me, reaching out for me with one of his slender hands.

I backed up, almost tripping over the woman whose skull had been broken open. “Stay the hell away from me!” I yelled at him, the scent of blood much too strong for me to keep a hold of my sanity. All of this was just too crazy. Just an hour ago I had been working at my job at the bar and the next thing I know, I’m on a trained filled with dead people.

It seemed as though one of the fires on the side of the car found an extra fuel source because the flames erupted next to me. I screamed and bolted forward, towards the man again. In one swift motion, he grabbed me and yanked me towards him.

There was a rushing feeling, as though I was hit by a blast of air conditioning. My lungs felt relief almost immediately as I gasped for air. No longer was there the scent of blood hanging in the air. No longer was the air hot from the flames that had surrounded me.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself leaning onto the wall of my subway stop and the cloaked man by my side. There was a crowd of people in front of me. They all crowded around the subway station and looked further inward, where flames engulfed the tunnel. Some people were screaming. Others were yelling for someone to help. My eyes shook as my mind tried to comprehend what was going on. All of their voices blurred together into one as I blocked out all sound but one.

You can hear what I’m thinking?

My jaw fell open as I stared at the scene in front of me. I could not at the moment properly understand the meaning of the words I heard.

I asked you a question. You can hear what I’m thinking?

I snapped at the voice and turned towards it, “Why the hell does that matter right now?” I screamed as I shoved the cloaked man. “People died!”

His lips made that same smirk I saw earlier on the subway car, “So you can hear me.”

That’s when I realized what I had done just now. I mistook the voice for him talking but he had not said anything. It was his thoughts I had heard. My mouth tried to wiggle my way out of this mess though no sound came out of my throat. The result was a pitiful trembling of the lips.

“Interesting.” A genuinely satisfied expression graced the lower half of his face, the only part I could see, “An Exotian who can read minds.”

I backed away, not liking the feeling I was getting. I had to get away from here, and fast. Before I could flee, as though he was the one who could read minds, he grabbed my forearm.

“Now that I know what you can do, I can’t have you running off never to be seen again, now can I?” His voice came out as a husky whisper, frightening me. I was yanked forward again and slammed into the cloth that hung to his body.

The feeling of rush hit me again. This time, I was not in a place I recognized. The walls were tall, dark, and so filled with smoke it seemed as though the place had its own sky. There stood twelve pillars around me that were not solid at all. They had triangular shapes cut into them that had been made to look like windows with the rungs of a ladder going down them. A light shone from inside the pillars and I couldn’t help but be slightly mystified by the sight of all of them around this circular room.

The cloaked man in front of me stepped near me, making my wonder and curiosity disappear before being replaced with fear of the unknown. He lifted his hands and I flinched. However, his hands went to his hood and he pulled it back, revealing his face to me for the first time. His features struck me like a moving vehicle, or ironically, an explosion.

He raised his arms up, gesturing to the room around him, “I, Kai, a Guardian of the Tree of Life, welcome you to the Hall of the Guardians. Or rather, the Hall of the Protectors, as an Exotian would know it.”

A/N: Updating because I'm impatient and because I wanted to. So here it is, the first chapter of many. I'm certainly looking forward to it, are you?