“Who are you?” the man asked.
“I’m… I’m Mary Anne, and this is Zac.”
“From the shipwreck, I suppose.”
“Yes… are there any other survivors?”
“Many,” he cocked his head. “But I suspect you took a little detour on the way here. You’ve been to Oceana?”
“Yes! Yes, we have! But how… oh!” she gasped as she realised that this man must be a mutant too.
“We don’t normally have visitors here,” he stated, not seeming to notice her sudden fear. “However, I think in this case we can make an exception. After all, it’s not like you will be staying long.”
“Okay,” Mary Anne replied meekly. “Th… thank you.”
It was only now that she realised just how cold and wet she was. Strangely though, Zac seemed to be perfectly dry. At any rate, she and Zac followed the man, Mary Anne all the time hoping they weren’t getting into a bigger mess.
The next thing Mary Anne knew they were heading straight towards a large… well, rock formation? In the dark she wasn’t at all certain. But instead of banging into it, they walked into a hallway. With straight walls, not a rough, round tunnel as she had supposed. They hadn’t walked too far before they reached a large room with many tables. Mary Anne guessed it was a kind of cafeteria. There were only a couple of people around, but they actually looked human, unlike Oceana, where, with every turn of the head, she saw strange half human, half animal creatures.
“Who have you got there?” a female voice with a definite authority to it bellowed.
“People from the shipwreck. They paid a visit to Oceana.”
The speaker sniffed as she walked over. Everyone in the room was scantily clad and this woman was no exception.
“Oceana huh?” she said, eyeing Zac. “Yes, I can believe that. I suppose you’re a water mutant of some kind?”
“Triggered actually,” he replied wearily. “And Water is one of my powers.”
“And you girl?”
“I… I…”
Mary Anne didn’t know what to say. They had just escaped from one lot of mutants out to kill her because she was human, would these ones do the same?
“Speak up girl. Quit stammering.”
“She’s human,” Zac informed her. “And if you have a freaking problem with that then too bad.”
The woman stared. Then she laughed.
“Human! Well, well, that sure explains a few things. Come, come, we’ll get you dried off, girl, and arrange some rooms for you to sleep the night. And you needn’t fear being killed while you sleep. We have better things to do with our time.”
The next few minutes seemed like a blur as they were shown to a couple of rooms. Mary Anne dried herself and then snuggled under the bed cover, warm and cozy.
**********
In the morning Zac and Mary Anne were woken up at daybreak, and taken down to the cafeteria. There was a huge change from the night before! There were people everywhere, eating and drinking breakfast. And every one of them looked human.
“Good morning,” said the man who had found them. “Come have a seat and eat with us. I’m Hunter.”
“I’m Zac, and this is Mary Anne. What is this place?”
“The Order of the Stone.”
“What’s that?” asked Mary Anne.
“We knew you’d ask that,” Hunter smiled. “All of us here are mutants, although you wouldn’t know it to look at us. You see, we all have inner powers.”
“Inner powers?”
“There are two types of powers,” Zac explained. “We call them level one and level two, but others call them inner and outer, major and minor, and thirty gadzillion other variations. Basically inner powers would be things like umm, Speed, Attraction, Strength, Invulnerability…”
“So on and so forth,” Hunter grinned. “We only have inner powers here, which, in the mind of some mutants, put us barely above humans, and some times not even worthy of that, as inner powers don’t tend to mutate very much. This Order was created to hone the skills of mutants such as us.”
“Cool.”
“You cannot, of course, stay here, but we will arrange for you to get to Midpoint Island.”
“Thanks very much,” Mary Anne said.
“They… they wouldn’t try to… hurt Mary Anne would they?” Zac asked. “I feel so frustrated I have to ask. I never realised mutants could be so bigoted against humans.”
Hunter nodded.
“Understandable, yes,” and paused considering Zac’s words. “I cannot say at this point. I will have to confer with the others, but rest assured we will do our best to make sure none hurt you, my dear girl.”