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Darkness....an absence of light, an all penetrating black through which Bee's eyes had determined no detail, no hint, no answers as to what might be revealed to her when she stepped into its all enfolding embrace. If it had been just the lack of light then perhaps the prospect of walking through that open door would not have been quite so daunting – she had never been one to fear the dark – but the word Darkness has other meanings and those secondary meanings were just as prevalent in that open doorway as the lack of light had been. It was mysterious that doorway...mysterious and sullen and vaguely threatening though she hadn't been able to pinpoint the exact cause of the threat – it was possible that it had been Bee's own mind which had created and attached such malevolent feelings towards the door that had been her end.

Perhaps the door was just a door – or such was the thought she had used to convince herself to step through it. Door's were useful things, they lead from one place to another, helped you get where you were going, but perhaps more importantly provided a small bit of protection. Doors kept the dark things from following you – or so we all grew up to believe, how often when you were a child had you escaped the darkness of a falling night by dashing within a doorway to the safety of your brightly lit house? It had seemed almost a perversion to do the action in reverse, to leave the brightly lit bar of purgatory and step through that open doorway and into the all encompassing darkness beyond it. But she'd done it anyways, she'd been willing to walk into the darkness, and face the unknown because nestled deep within that obscurity was everything that she had known before.

Bee spent only a few moments in the darkness, wondering if she had made the right decision before it all came crashing back and the darkness evaporated with the knowledge of her past life.




Everything had started out well enough it seemed, she had been just another kid in another family living in the suburbs of a larger city, like thousands of other children all over the world. She was just the same as everyone else – or so she had thought. It hadn't taken very long for her to realize that this wasn't exactly true, as she grew older and her tales of 'moving shadows' and hidden creatures were not so easily chalked up to an over active imagination things began to change. When her friends started to give her strange sideways looks and eventually distanced themselves altogether, that’s when she knew she was different. Different and strange and ...wrong.

It was better she realized to hide these thoughts, to keep those times when she noticed something off or different or shadowy lurking in the darkness to herself. To pretend she didn't notice them, to let her parents think that she had simply outgrown this particular sense of whimsy. It was easier to pretend when she kept away from the places these oddities liked to gather and so over time she gained a reputation as somewhat of a coward – she didn't like the dark,she didn't like Halloween, she didn't like horror movies or scary rides and she certainly didn't like to go out in the night. It put a real damper on the whole being a teenager thing – but being a coward was certainly better then being thought a freak right?

It had seemed so at first, sure she got teased and she was far from being considered one of the 'cool' kids in her class but she was accepted to some degree – managed to keep a few of the more understanding friends around. People it seemed could forgive you for being scared, even if they made fun of you for it – but they couldn't as easily put aside the fact that you thought you saw monsters in the dark. That was the realm of toddlers.

However what she hadn't expected was the way being thought a coward would affect her personally, she had grown to dislike people for the most part, she disliked the way they labeled her, she resented the way she had to hide her true thoughts and feelings from them and soothed herself with the knowledge that if they saw what she saw, sensed what she sensed then they would likely prove to be the true cowards and flee from the hidden threats. She told herself that she was in fact braver then all of them – and it was this thought she now understood to have been her downfall in life.

Only now as she replayed these returning memories and thoughts could she pinpoint that thought – that moment as the one which had set her upon the path that had culminated with her walking through the doorway in purgatory. It had all started out innocently enough – small acts to prove to herself that she wasn't a coward, private things daringly done to enhance her own sense of self worth. She couldn't be a coward if she wasn't afraid to crawl out her bedroom window and onto the roof...she couldn't be a coward if she broke into one of the newer but not yet sold houses on the street and she definitely couldn't be a coward if she stole a pack of gum from the corner store right under the cashiers nose.

It was the beginning of the end for her – and it was so very clear now as she watched the rest of her life unfold, and like a train wreak she couldn't look away even though she knew what was coming next. Her small acts of misguided 'bravery' had gotten larger..more dangerous..more daring. There was always another chance to take, another ledge to walk and soon she wasn't sure if the various acts and crimes she committed were being done so much to prove to herself that she wasn't a coward...or because she had grown somewhat addicted to the adrenaline they caused. Her thefts were brilliant and scary and every time she pulled one off she looked into the face of that strange shadowed energy that only she could sense...and she laughed. She wasn't afraid, but everyone else would be and that made her..better.

Of course such revelations were kept deep within her own mind, even as a near adult she was far to afraid of being labeled a freak to chance letting slip any hint of her differences, despite thinking herself better then all the others, she oddly enough still desired to be accepted by them. It was a strange conundrum, but one she got pretty good at ignoring. By day she was the meek coward everyone thought her to be..but by night? By nigh she was her true self..brave and daring and superior.

It was after one of her nightly jaunts that the man first appeared, she'd been mentally congratulating herself for another job well done and turned down one of those shadowy alleys her daytime self was always so frightened to enter when he was suddenly in front of her. She'd drawn up short in surprise and afraid that he was either a cop or the owner of the house she'd just robbed had turned to flee. She hadn't gotten very far when his words had stopped her 'I know what you sense' He'd called after her 'I can tell you what they are'.

And so it had begun...the stranger never told her his name and he always seemed to know where to find her, returning again and again to share more information – odd tales and tiny tidbits that both scared her and justified the way she'd felt her entire life. Suddenly her jobs simply became a means to an end – no longer did she head out simply for the thrill of the theft or for an attempt to prove that she wasn't afraid of the lurking shadows – but so that she might run into the stranger and hear more. Learning that humans were little better then cattle was a frightening thing but at the same time...hadn't she felt it to be true time and time again? She wasn't a freak for sensing these things – she was simply smarter then the rest who refused to see and notice what was right in front of their faces.

And the man had not let her down when on his next visit he had confirmed what she had always known – that she was different...better...then the rest. She could be a Hunter and she could laugh in the face of the shadows while others would flee in terror. So be it then, she'd signed without hesitation and landed herself upon the island as Beta Three...or Bee according to her team mates.