Life in France was interesting. My mother was the Ambassador, so I never realized just how secure we were at all times. All I knew was that I didn’t live a life like other young girls. I never wanted for anything, I will say that. I was daddy’s little princess and mommy paid me all the attention I could ever want. No, I can’t say that I was neglected emotionally or materialistically. It wasn’t a bad life, just a different one. You see, wherever we were, I was always the outsider. They may not have the same stigmas that Americans can be notorious for, but I would catch people looking at me out of the corner of their eyes trying to figure it out.

My father was a native of Ireland and his brogue was as thick as you could imagine. I spent the first seven years of my life there and to this day carry a hint of that brogue with me. However, my mother is of mixed race. She was half American and the other half was a smattering of Chinese, Greek and Native American. I have the darker coloring myself, but with freckles across the bridge of my nose and that light Irish accent lilting upon my words.

So needless to say, I got odd looks wherever I went. But ya know, it never really mattered. I was loved, I was special and I was made to feel like the most important child in the world. And to my parents, I was. France and the US had an amicable relationship; my mother’s job was not intended to be high risk. France thrived. For so long it thrived in a glory that was nearly unparalleled. Whatever the world had to say about Jean Luc LeBeau and the notorious Esther Cotillard LeBeau, they did right by France. But as they say, all good things must come to an end.

I remember it now. Nobody knew what was going on, only that it was a literal hell on Earth. Fire descended upon us, alarms were triggered, everybody moved into action. As a high-ranking diplomat, there were certain auxiliary plans in place for my mother and her family. We were in the process of being moved to a heavily fortified underground bunker built with the intent of withstanding an aggressive alien invasion. But we never made it to the bunker. These creatures straight out of hell attacked the caravan of cars before we could reach our destination.

There was a shrieking sound as the metal of the vehicles twisted and turned. It sounded almost like human screaming and it’s a sound that still echoes in my ears to this very day. The rich and protected? It turns out they die just as easily as everybody else. My parents were burned to cinder right in front of my eyes. There’s a certain smell when skin burns. It sticks in your nostrils and burns itself into your memories. You never quite get rid of that smell; it stays with you forever, always on the precipice of your senses. It’s ready at a moment’s notice to bring back the rushing deluge of sensory input and memories from that terrible night.

To this day, I’m still not entirely sure how I managed to escape. There are parts of that night that will stay with me forever and other parts that I couldn’t remember if my life depended on it. What I do know is that the survival instinct in human beings is something that I will never take for granted again. There was a small group of like-minded individuals, men women and children alike who had all survived the attack and razing of France. Because let’s be honest, that is exactly what it was. People like to use pretty words to describe it; it is rarely called what it actually was. Genocide. A mass murder, the likes of which has never been seen in current ages.

There were seventeen of us ranging from ages four to fifty-seven. Nobody knew if there were any other survivors. Nobody knew if any help was coming. Hell, we didn’t know anything other than the fact that somehow, somehow we’d survive this. We had to, there was no other choice. Have you ever seen the show Lost? You know how they all try and survive on that godforsaken island, never knowing if help was coming or not? It was kind of like that. Only, we knew that there were heroes out there. And even people who were not so true blue who had the best interests of France in their heart. But how can you expect people to lay their lives on the line when the place that they are trying to enter is occupied by the most powerful creatures that this world has ever seen?

We waited for months. No…waiting implies that it was languid. We survived and eked out an existence for months. Wondering if our salvation would ever come, having to believe that there was some hope for us out there. An existence like that, it could drive a person mad. You either recreated yourself or you lost your sanity. I chose the former.

I was fifteen at the time of the attack. Fifteen and a good bit spoiled. I was soft. That all went away very quickly. There was no social status with this group, there was merely survival. By some grace of God, we were able to make our way to the bunker. Don’t ask me how I knew where it was, I myself choose to believe that it was God showing me the way. However, the bunker had been damaged by the upheaval. It wasn’t stable. So we scraped together what we could and we formed a shelter.

Do you know what the creatures known as Darklings are capable of? I do, I have firsthand knowledge of them. They’re nasty little buggers. Their brains aren’t developed past those of a six year old child, but they have a sadistic taste for blood and they’re stronger than a grown man. I encountered my first one about three days in. It would have killed me if it hadn’t been for Major Davis.

It was that night that I realized I was no longer the same girl from before. I was a survivor now. From that day forward I pushed myself as I’ve never pushed before. I forced myself into a strenuous workout routine in order to insure that my body was a well-oiled machine and performing to the best of its abilities. I practiced over and over with a lovingly handcrafted bow and arrow until I was able to aim it and prep the arrows with my eyes closed and in the dark. Hours daily were spent to the dedication of that skill and dear lord, did it pay off. After about a month’s worth of practice, I was now able to hit any target presented to me and my hand to hand skills were nothing to scoff at.

There comes a point in time where you become resigned with your fate. You accept that this is the way things are and you begin to embrace it. Through no choice of my own, I became a warrior. I became a survivor. And I don’t regret a single second. I lost my home, my family and my innocence all in the same night. I grew up right quick and I like the person who I am today. I am strong and assured. But I am desperately lonely and would give up all of this strength and confidence just to be able to see my parents one last time.

Do you know what it feels like to lose hope, though? To truly believe that nobody is ever coming for you? To believe that you will spend the rest of your existence in this miserable place and to secretly hope that that existence did not last very long? I know all of those feelings. I would never term myself suicidal, but there comes a point in time where you simply stop caring. I reached that point one day and I did something stupid. I picked up my weapons and I left our encampment. I ventured off on my own, looking for trouble, any trouble. I found it…I found more than I’d ever bargained for.

I somehow managed to find my way into a nest of baby Darklings. They were young, but especially brutal and still very strong. My friend…Marie…she’d followed behind me. I knew she was there the whole time, but I didn’t say anything about it, she knew that I’d needed my space. She ran for help the second that she realized what I’d unearthed. Every able-bodied man and woman came rushing, all there within ten minutes. By that point, the nest had already been disrupted.

I rushed in by myself, using my arrows to stab and slice. I managed to take two down before I became overpowered. I was on the brink of having my skull bashed in when the cavalry arrived. But there were too many…we were overtaken. It was a bloodbath. Torn limbs, severed arteries, and crushed bones. It was Major Davis who ended the conflict…by detonating a grenade…while he held it. Have you ever seen somebody explode before? Their bones are turned into shrapnel; their flesh and blood become a red mist, almost like a rain. Only nothing like rain at all. The smell of death permeates the air. That red mist-like substance fell down upon us all, carpeting the ground, soaking our clothes, lying on the tips of eyelashes. It was a reminder of how utterly careless I had been.

He gave his life because of my folly and nobody ever looked at me the same way again. I liked to pretend to be this adult, to be a strong woman and in many aspects, I was. But in my heart, there were pieces of me that were still as rash as a child. And oh god did I feel like a child that night. I would have given anything just to curl up in the arms of my mom. I was a little girl and I had made a terrible mistake and I just wanted my mommy to tell me that it was okay. Was that so much to ask? I just…I wanted my mom.

What I found was something immensely different.

There was a woman standing before me. I swear to god that she was a ghost or an apparition of some sort. I reached out a hand to touch her and fully expected her to be incorporeal, yet there she was, as solid as I. She stood several inches shorter than me, barely taller than a child herself. But she was clearly an adult woman, the way she carried herself – with an undeniable authority – and the way she held her weapons, as if she was born with them in hand.

The perpetual blazing fires and ever-enveloping darkness cast an eerie glow on her complexion, her startlingly green eyes shining through with the oddest look in them. It was some mix of sadness, determination and happiness. I didn’t understand what was happening or who she was. I still didn’t fully believe that she was real. Not until she started speaking, that is.

She stated her name and I’m not gonna lie, I’d never heard of this lady before in my life. Then again, Cassidy Starks isn’t the most memorable of names. She wouldn’t say how she’d gotten into what was left of the country, but what she did say most certainly caught my attention. She was there to extract us.

Time flew by and blurred together. For a little while there, I think that I lost my grip on reality. I don’t think that I quite believed it was happening. For so long we had lived with the accepted reality that there was nobody coming for us, we had resigned ourselves to this fate. But now…well now we knew that to not be the case.

We were transported to the land known as Dark Utopia. There we found an amassed group of survivors of the France incident, all extracted by this same woman and her team, a group of women that I once heard addressed as the Femmes de L’Ombre. The refugees of France were given everything we would ever need in both the material sense of the word and the emotional one. There were many grief counseling sessions. Not a one of us came away from it without both physical and mental scars.

No day goes by that I don’t think about my life before this. No day goes by that I don’t close my eyes and see Major Davis’ face. No day goes by that I don’t unconsciously reach out for my mother or go and look for her to tell her something exciting. I survived France. I survived apocalyptic fire. I survived everything that this world deemed me strong enough to throw at me.

I’ve moved on from merely existing. Underneath the guiding hand of Cassidy and her team, I’ve begun thriving. I realized that there are uses for people like me. People who have seen the darkest. People who have somehow come out from it without suffering unrecoverable damage. I’ve come to realize that I’m one of the lucky ones. Sure, I see a nightmare come to life many nights when I close my eyes. Yes, I have my fair share of mental and physical scars. No, I don’t have my parents anymore. But you see, I was lucky enough to find myself throughout this. I’m still learning, I’m still growing, I still make mistakes. But I know that there’s a purpose for me now. I know that I can take anything this world throws at me.

My name is Alexandra Brennan. I am exceptional. I am discovering myself. I am scared, but I pull through. I am a survivor.