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Deep in the country and well away from neighbouring towns, there is a boarding school called Brookrose. Brookrose is a quiet school, not particularly well-known or prestigious, that can be attended by invitation only. Their standards for students are a little different than most schools; neither grades, money nor sports prowess will get you in. Only children showing unnatural abilities, termed 'psychic children' by hysterical gossip rags and believed to be a myth by everyone else, are allowed to attend.

Students are told that they are going to Brookrose to learn how to control their powers, but in reality, they are being sent away to hide them from the 'normal' people who think that psychic powers don't exist; the reality of these children and their abilities would potentially disrupt society as they know it. In order to keep them there for as long as possible, the school goes from middle school all the way to the college level. The 'classes' the children take actually hinder rather than help their powers. The true goal of the school is to re-educate them until they are capable of living as normal humans, not that the children in question know that.

When the kids graduate Brookrose College, they are separated into two groups. Those who have had their powers hindered to the point that they are basically normal are allowed to return to society after having two procedures done: a highly experimental drug is given to them to cloud their memories of their childhood and school years, and they are surgically sterilized. They're returned to the 'real world' with a flickering and uncertain memory, and no possibility of ever creating more children like them.

Those who have managed to hang onto their powers? They're taken to the 'nurse's office' and they're quietly euthanized. It's claimed to be a necessary sacrifice for the good of all.

The surviving graduates don't remember what has happened to them. No one outside would believe such a tale. The children of Brookrose have only themselves, one another, and their extraordinary abilities to rely on if they want to get out unbroken and alive.

The students come from all over the country, to a one invited by the school—coincidentally, they are usually invited shortly after they have lost control of their abilities somehow and are feeling awful, separate, wrong. Looking for any way to learn to control this unknown ability they have, the students have come to Brookrose hoping for salvation, but they will find no such thing here.

Psychic children are powerful, and the students of Brookrose are no exception. Aside even from their abilities, all are unusually strong in some way—mentally, emotionally, physically. They must be in order to cope with the extraordinary changes that they have been through. The Brookrose children are not human as society knows human, and for that, they have suffered. For that, they have grown strong.

For that, they will be punished yet again.

As of yet, the children do not know why they've truly been brought to Brookrose. If they ever discover the truth, their choices will be simple.

Accept.

Fight.

Or flee.

Philip Kearnsey X Twenty-eight X Matter disintegration X Fine Arts/Language

Natalia Devries X Thirty-two X Nullification X Vice-Principal

Nils Jensen X Forty X Power Mimicry X Sciences/Swedish

Diana Melbourne X Thirty-four X Memory erasion X Primary Nurse





Celia Rasan X Twelve X Medium X Grade seven

Elsa Smythesson X Fourteen X Cryokinesis X Grade nine

Kayle Collins X Sixteen X Pyrokinesis X Grade ten

Antoine Martin X Seventeen X Teleportation X Grade eleven

Azariah Soule X Seventeen X Healing X Grade eleven

Sierra Rasan X Twenty-one X Death Sense X College Senior

Superpower Wiki for any new characters we need

School grounds here.

Victoria sat across from Robert, fine dark brows furrowed in thought. For once, she wasn’t smiling, and her face looked almost naked without the ever-present flash of white teeth against her warm brown skin. She knew what to expect, of course, and although she was scared she wasn’t too scared. It was only September, only a preliminary test. What was the worst that could—?

The door to the main testing room swung open and the boy who’d been called in first—Colin? Caleb? He wasn’t in her classes, so Victoria wasn’t quite sure—stumbled out. Sweat was beaded on his forehead and he was shaking like a leaf…but there was no evidence of power, none of the feeling that an uncontrolled burst of someone’s abilities would have left. Victoria’s dorm-adviser instincts came to the fore and she got up to offer him a hand.

He cringed away.

…All right. Maybe the worst that could happen could be that bad.

She took a deep breath and smiled weakly at Robert. They were always called in by alphabetical order, so he’d go before her. Automatically, she went to sit with him and his new friend as Colin-Caleb ran out the door. “Nervous?” she asked.

~

Elsa frowned down at her biology paper, writing with careful concentration. Her handwriting was immaculate, her pencils lined up neatly beside her textbook. It might have only been the first day, but Elsa was perpetually focused on doing well, and neatness and order were her watchwords.

The work was simple—classification of systems, some basic taxonomy. It was nothing she hadn’t seen a dozen times last year. So as she worked, she allowed her mind to wander a little. There was lots of time and she would be done within acceptable parameters. First her thoughts tried to jump to her parents’ letter, but she sternly shifted away from that. No. She wouldn’t think about that right now. Not in class. Instead, she looked around to see what her classmates were doing.

There weren’t enough students or teachers for each grade to have a separate science class, so they were often split between grades. Elsa, with the other ninth-grade students, sat on the left side of the class. On the right…

Most of the tenth-grade students were focused on their work. A couple were passing notes under the table—Elsa supposed they thought they were sneaky. Mr. Jensen would snap at them any minute now. And then there was one leaning back in his chair, gazing casually out the window as though he didn’t have a care in the world.

A scowl briefly darkened her pretty face. Ugh. Of course Kayle would be in her biology class. Of course he would be in a class that she would normally enjoy. She devoutly hoped that this would not be the case for all her courses this semester. Was she in all split classes? She couldn’t remember. She’d have to check her schedule.

Was he done his worksheet already? But she wasn’t done hers yet. That simply wouldn’t do.

She’d have to work faster.

Before he could see her, she turned back to her work and glared down at it fiercely. She’d be done before he noticed she wasn’t, or else he'd rub it in her face next time they talked.

Victoria did her best to keep the smile on her face as Robert admitted his nerves. That wasn’t really what she wanted to hear. Robert was the more stoic one of the two dorm advisers—if he was nervous, even without having had issues in months, maybe she ought to be more nervous. When his name was called, she saw him flinch; it was subtle, but they’d known one another a long time. She wanted to tell him he’d be okay, that their monstrosities wouldn’t defeat them when they’d spent so long stopping them. That they were going to win, that they had to win. Instead of saying any of that, though, she just nodded and said, “Luck,” as he started walking away. He’d be fine, she told herself. They’d all be fine. They always (sometimes) were.

But then Sierra turned to her with that whispery voice and the terror set somewhere behind her eyes, and Victoria felt her own nerves smooth out as they always did when she had a task. Sitting down in the spot Robert had vacated, she patted Sierra’s shoulder. “Yeah. He’s right, though. We’ve all been through this loads of times. We’ll be okay.” Sierra was about her age, and though Victoria didn’t always remember exactly when someone had come to join them at the school, she knew Sierra must have been here long enough that the common-sense reassurance would be right. “Don’t psych yourself out too much. It’s only September, you know?”

The preliminaries. The worst tests would be in April, or even in June for those whose April testing hovered on the brink of unacceptable. These were just the beginning. Of course, it was Victoria’s senior year, so they would probably be more strict than they had been before, but she was pretty sure her abomination was nearly gone from inside of her. She hadn’t had outbursts in…well, years, really, if you didn’t count that one minor incident (she didn’t, but Ms. Devries probably did). Soon she would graduate and be free of the tests, as long as nothing too untoward occurred. Realizing she was getting lost in her own thoughts, she finished, “Yeah. It’ll be fine.”

Everything would be fine.

~

Elsa was almost as uncomfortable as the girls Mr. Jensen was scolding as he read the note out. She looked away, staring intensely down at her worksheet instead, but she could feel warmth rising to her cheeks. How could anyone write something like that to another person? Wouldn’t the humiliation just set them on fire? Mr. Phil was much too old for those girls, and as nice as he was, he was a teacher. (Granted, she did not actually know how old Mr. Phil was, but if he was a teacher, that automatically made him ‘old’ in her fourteen-year-old eyes.) Generally, she was fond of Mr. Jensen, but she wished he wouldn’t read out notes like that.

As she stared down intensely at her notes, she heard a slight crackle under her fingertips, and all the blood that had been in her cheeks drained away.

She didn’t dare risk a look for a moment, but when she eventually peeked, she saw a hint of frost on the pencil that she’d been gripping when the secondhand embarrassment had swamped her. Mr. Jensen was still looking at the note, so she hastily shoved it into her desk and grabbed another. Breathing slow and deep to try and calm her nerves the way her mother had once taught her, she focused on her worksheet. Nothing else. It was almost finished, so she focused on her breathing and the words until the tight cool feeling in her hands went away again.

When she looked up, Kayle’s eyes were on her. She narrowed her own at him in response, but a dreadful sick feeling swept over her—had he seen? Would he tell?

~

Kayle was bored enough that the reading of the note was more amusing for him than anything, but he didn’t really care about the romantic interests of some girls he barely knew. Idly, he scanned the room and noticed the hint of frosty glitter on Elsa’s decidedly not-glittery plain yellow pencil as she shoved it into the desk; lifting an eyebrow, he wondered just what had set her off.

Mr. Jensen was starting to look up and if Elsa didn’t get her s**t together soon, he was going to notice the sudden downturn of the temperature in the room. That meant Kayle was going to have even less time with his own mentor, since students having breakouts meant they got more time with their mentors until they got themselves under control again. As much as he liked Mr. Phil, he knew that Mr. Jensen was specially trained for Kayle’s type of magic. So he kicked his chair back further, ensuring he got Mr. Jensen’s attention, and thought, She’ll owe me for this one.

Sure enough, Mr. Jensen turned to him instead of looking across the room at Elsa. Kayle gave him an insouciant grin, with just a bit of cockiness at the corners. “But what if I have, Mr. Jensen?” Normally he was a bit less sassy than this, at least in class. But if he could spin this out just a bit longer, his precious practical lessons would be safe.