I wasn't born lucky. Most kids my age (twelve years old) would be playing outside, going to school, or talking to their friends. But not me. I sit in a cage, waiting for meals. And when I do get let out, it's to be attached to a machine. But we'll get to that later. For now, I'll start at the beginning.

My name is Wrive Tacking. Like I said, I'm twelve, although I'm a very unusual twelve year-old. I was brought to U.T.L. (Ultra Tech Labs) when I was nine. The three years I've been here seem like a lifetime. Ultra Tech Labs is run by a group of nerds, as we like to refer to them behind their backs. They don't seem to even have human emotions, and go about their work in a bored manner.

The actual Ultra Tech Labs building is a dark, large structure, and is long and wide but not very tall. It's surrounded by a large iron fence, meant to keep people in, not out. There's nothing anywhere near U.T.L. Just grass, rock, and then the sky. Us prisoners stay inside, in the large "Cell Room". There are maybe two dozen if us here currently, and enough cells to hold at least fifty. I guess it's a small mercy that we don't have to share cages. The Nerds aren't overly cruel, after all. We do get fed decently, and let out of our cages to use the restroom. Sometimes they even let us into the yard to get some exercise. The gate to freedom is very close, but no one makes a run for it. Noodles made a run for it, once. He never made it out the gate. We never saw Noodles, after that.

In case you're wondering, Noodles was the nickname of a prisoner here. We all get nicknames or titles of some sort. The Nerds don't really consider us human, I guess. We're just freaks to them, and don't deserve names. And I suppose that brings us to me.

I, like all the prisoners at U.T.L., have a power. A gift. An ability. Consider it a magical power. We all have powers here, but I'm yet to see two that are identical. My power allows me to throw shadowy energy out of my hands and body. I can shape the energy however I want, whether it's into spheres or beams or whips. That's why my nickname is "Necromancer", or "Nec", for short. Using my ability too much tires me out.

Along with my shadowy power, I have an ability that some other prisoners do have: the power to see and communicate with ghosts. I'm not all too sure about ghosts, despite my ability to talk with them. They're usually humanoid figures, maybe missing a limb or two. They're transparent and about as pale as you would expect of a ghost. Most of them don't really talk, but just moan and sometimes scream wordlessly. Maybe my ability just isn't strong enough for me to understand them. It does vary in individuals how well you can see and understand ghosts.

My ghost-seeing skills have actually gotten me a friend. His name is Allen. He's a decently young ghost, maybe in his twenties or thirties (you stop aging once you die). He's told me most if what I know about ghosts, even if that's not very much. My first conversation with Allen started when I had been here for five months, give or take. Some kid was walking around, and I got all excited.

"Hey, pssssssst. Let me out, too!" I had said. The kid looked behind him, like I wasn't talking to him.

"Me?" I heard it, but not through sound. Like a voice in my head, sort of.

"Why doesn't- wait, what?" I started to panic. His mouth hadn't moved! Neither had mine!

"Calm down, Wrive."

"How do you know my name?"

"Your power, child. It allows me to speak to you. It opens your eyes to the dead." I still didn't understand.

"But... but you're a boy. Like me." The boy shook his head.

"Can't you see a difference? Anything at all?" And then I could.

"You... you're all floaty! And... ghosty." He nodded.

"Now you see, child. My name is- no, was Allen. I died here thirty-one years ago."

"Are they gonna kill me too?" I held back tears.

"No, child. The people holding you here did not kill me." We talked more for a while, and I learned that Allen had been a kid with powers, just like me. But his power was more of a curse. Anyone he touched, while using his power, got hurt badly. Bones suddenly broke, diseases suddenly hit. To survive was a miracle. His parents touched him, doctors touched him, animals touched him. No one lived.

After the initial weirdness of having a ghost friend, and after we'd gotten to know each other, I started asking him about what life after death was like. He couldn't really describe it, and the only thing I really understood was that it was "different". He also told me that your body didn't rot or age if you became a ghost, and that his body was still buried around U.T.L. somewhere. I was simultaneously in awe and grossed out.

Allen was stubbornly silent about his life before he'd died, and refused to tell me about it. I guess I wouldn't want to remember mine, either, if I died somehow at Ultra Tech Labs.

Luckily, I'm not limited to a single, dead friend. I also talk to a five, almost six, year-old boy named Shawn. He doesn't remember too much before he got captured. He only knows the basics: normal kids go to school, normal kids don't have powers, normal kids aren't stuck in cages most of the time. Shawn was only brought here a little bit ago, and he's always cheerful and optimistic. He's a chubby little kid, with larger-than-life eyes and a big smile. He has short, dark brown hair. His ability allows him to lift objects with his mind.

And now, for those machines. We've never been told why we're hooked to a strange device and zapped painfully for a few minutes. But when the Nerds come to your cage and let you out, it's usually to be zapped in the "Torture Chamber". Now, I can't be unfair on this topic. The Nerds don't torture us too much. It's only for a few minutes at a time, and it really doesn't hurt very much, especially after you've done it a couple times. There's usually a few days between these sessions. The whole why part is weird. Everyone has their own theories: The Nerds just want to scare us, they're seeing who can survive the worst of it, they're taking our energy, and so on. I don't know what to think, other than it's annoyingly painful and the Nerds are jerks.

But you'd think that with all these powers, we would have escaped by now. And some of the older prisoners tell stories that years ago, the prisoners actually broke out and got free. But some were recaptured soon after. That's why we haven't escaped. We know that the Nerds don't care if they kill or injure us, and they'd do one of the two if we tried to escape. Plus, like I said before, there's nowhere to run to. And so, we stay, and we live, and we laugh, and we cry, and it doesn't make a difference what we do. The idea of freedom is just something we reflect on and wonder why life is the way it is.

And none of us consider the fact that, maybe, there's something out there. Some hope, some courage, and maybe things will turn around. But until then, we're here, and there's not a thing we can do about it.