Tragic Youth

                                    

                                          
A few days before Christmas, 1945
                          
Jamie screamed as he was picked up by a tall man. "No! I want my mommy!"
                          
"Your mommy is gone," the man said in a thick Russian accent.
                          
Jamie's eyes widened when he saw his and his sister's nanny. She was sprawled on the floor with red liquid surrounding her. He may have recently turned three, but he knew red like that was bad.
                          
Stephanie, nicknamed Nia, was picked up and she started crying. 
                          
Jamie's eyes widened. "Don't hurt my sister!"
                          
"James, we are not going to hurt you or Stephanie. We are going to better you two," a bespectacled man said.
                          
"But Mommy says me and Nia are good like we are."
                          
"There is always room for improvement."
                          
"You're a stupid bad man."
                          
"You won't think so for long. Take them."
                          
Jamie and Nia were taken to a secluded base where they would grow up and be trained to do the unimaginable. 
                          
1952
                          
When Jamie reached the age of ten and Nia the age of seven, she was taken to a lab where she was injected with a blue liquid, as Jamie had already been injected with it. 
                          
Nia frowned. "What is that?"
                          
No one answered and she began crying as the needles pierced her skin. 
                          
When it was over, she was forced back into her small room and left alone. 
                          
She started sobbing. All she had known was a cruel, cold life. No one except Jamie seemed to love her. Though to her, it felt like he only loved her sometimes. Other times she thought she was a target in his eyes.
                          
First the scary men had experimented on her, and now they'd put a weird blue liquid in her body with large, scary needles. All she wanted was her mom and dad, but she had no idea who they were and assumed they were dead. Jamie sometimes told her stories about a man named Steve and a woman named Delia, but to her, they were just names. 
                          
She felt a strange tingling sensation and looked at her hand to see fire. Blue fire. But it wasn't burning her. It didn't hurt. Fire should hurt, right? So why didn't the fire in her hand hurt? 
                          
Nia grinned and the fire turned from a shade of blue to a light purple and her eyes widened. "Whoa! I'm Fire Girl! No, that's a stupid name."
                          
"How about Blitzfire?" a boy asked. 
                          
She turned to see Jamie and nodded. "Yeah!" She hugged him tightly. 
                          
Jamie smirked slightly. "I'm calling myself Deadnite 'cause it's cool. I better go before I get in trouble."
                          
"You like trouble."
                          
"I sure do." He shot her a cocky smirk before making his way back to his room. 
                          
Little did the two know that it would be another 61 years before they experienced the world again; but not as children, nor as adults; but as teenagers who never had a proper chance at a normal life.