Once upon a time, two gifted teenagers in a place called Vendelle set out to figure out what was wrong with their world, and ended up getting rid of an age-old curse on their land.

Over two centuries later, the land that once was Vendelle became a metropolitan area. In an attempt to prevent an uprising that would devastate the people and their way of life, the government eradicated color, leaving a population of mostly colorblind people and dull cities with seemingly no life to them. However, there were a few families who remembered what color was like, and found a way to bypass the colorblindness of their children. Unfortunately, those who so much as mentioned the word 'color' were labeled as risks to society and heretics, either shunned from society or arrested. 

The workaround for color had a surprising side effect. The special lenses they used also allowed the wearers to see colors of people. Those who had no aura of color were hopeless cases, but those who did have an aura, no matter how faint, could be introduced to a world of 'heresy' that would change their lives forever. In each city there was a colony of these color-seeing rebels, hidden in the abandoned warehouses and sectors of their city, introducing only those who could be trusted with vision to their number, and most playing some kind of role to helping their community.

In the capital of former Vendelle, a surprising addition to one of these rebel colonies makes their leader realize that the time has come to make a decision: either stay in hiding forever, or fight back for the good of everyone.

The night was cold, and there was a light breeze instead of the usual harsh winds of the season. It was pleasant, without a doubt, to not have to hold your jacket to your body in fear of losing it, but there was something eerie about how calm the air was that sent a chill down a certain boy's spine as he watched the city from a rooftop. The streetlights would have sent a warm yellow glow over the roads, but instead it was just a light grey ambiance. People walked along the sidewalks, chattering or carrying grocery bags to prepare for the upcoming holiday season.

It made the boy sad to know that almost all of those people down below had only ever seen the world in greyscale and they weren't bother at all by it. He, however, refused to go ignoring the possibilities. He pulled a pair of goggles that lay atop his brown hair and put them over his eyes. His eyes had already adjusted to the lenses years before, so the change was almost instant.

The shades of grey of the buildings and streets would not change, because that was the way they were made. However, he looked down at the people and saw that some of their clothes actually bore vibrant greens and blues, while their skin tones all varied much more than the widely accepted spectrum of light and dark skinned. The street lamps shone a homely yellow glow, and the chimneys of some buildings were made of red bricks. The shopping bags were part of an eco-friendly effort, and were made of brown paper. 

However, more than just the colors of things that were not painted grey, the boy saw colors around people themselves. He could not see many people with the unmistakable aura of color around them at the moment, but when he looked down at his own hands, the boy saw a cloud of maroon. Off in the distance, he saw a shining yellow. It belonged to a little girl, who looked about ten years old from his vantage point. It made him smile to see someone so young with such a strong vibrance, but seeing as her parents did not have an aura around them, he knew that in the years to come, it would be quenched.

The boy turned around to face the stairwell he had come from, and saw an intricate painting of a sunset over a river in a forest, painted on canvas and left next to the door to give the area some color. The painting was made and left there by a girl known to him as Artemis. He and Artemis were acquaintances in middle school, but he had since then forgotten her real name and did not care too much what it was. He remembered that she was artistic, and when he saw her for the first time in years while wearing his goggles and saw the magenta aura surrounding her, he knew that he had to show her the community's secret. Artemis liked to leave her paintings and drawings here and there to remind people that there was beauty in the life they led.

The boy was not a boy anymore, having passed that state emotionally when he decided to become a rebel. The government assumed decades before he was born that the eradication of color and color vision would protect their way of life. People who spoke of color and used the workaround to bypass the forced colorblindness were labeled as risks and heretics. His family was one of those that remembered color and passed the workaround through generations to bless their children with the joy they once had. 

Rebel. He liked that term, more so than he liked being called a heretic. Color vision was not heresy, as far as he was concerned. It was something beautiful, but as every rose had its thorns, living with color meant living in hiding. It wasn't the easiest life to lead, and many times he found himself wishing he never knew about color, on the days when the going would get extremely tough. He never stopped, though. He considered himself a leader of the rebels and they thought the same of him. He felt responsible for them and did everything short of killing himself to make sure they were safe. He went out in public, despite his status as an outlaw, and left false trails for the police to find. He made sure he was the face of the rebellion in the government's eyes, so that those who wanted to live with color but still go about their lives could do so safely, knowing that whenever police stormed their schools or offices, they weren't the targets.

The safety of the community was his number one priority.

With a fleeting glance to the city he could once walk in freely, the boy walked into the stairwell to make his way back down. He left his goggles on; this was color territory, and there was proof of it everywhere. The heavy steps he made in his boots echoed throughout the stairwell.
"Theo!" someone shouted up, referring to him by his alias. Everyone in the community had chosen an alias. His was Theo, and the artistic girl he had met in middle school had chosen Artemis. This voice, however, belonged to Jace, his best friend from childhood. "Komm schnell!"

The urgency in Jace's voice sent worry through Theo's veins. He broke into a run, circling down the concrete steps as fast as he could. His mind was suddenly filled with all sorts of scenarios, each worse than the previous ones. Someone could've gotten hurt, or maybe there was a body found. The worst case scenario was that they had been infiltrated, but he didn't want to even consider the possibility of that.

"Was ist los?" Theo shouted down, almost tripping on a step and falling on his face. When there was no response, he became even more worried. "Jace, answer me!"
Theo was met with silence and a blond boy's back when he reached the bottom of the steps. He wasn't moving at all. Theo stepped forward and gingerly placed his hand on the blond's shoulder. "Jace."
Jace jumped a little and whirled around to face Theo. It took him a moment to register who was standing in front of him, but when he did he started speaking and wouldn't stop. Theo couldn't keep up, and shoved his index finger roughly into the boy's face. Jace stopped talking immediately, but his sea blue eyes were wide with worry.

"What happened?" Theo asked softly, taking his hand off Jace's face. Jace put his hands on Theo's shoulders, squeezing them reassuringly, but neither was sure why.

"We can't find Kara anywhere. Hep says she kept talking about exploring. He thinks she went to the outskirts and got lost," Jace explained slowly, but his mind was whirring.

Theo's heart dropped. Kara was Artemis's little sister, and she was only ten years old. Kara was naive and thought she could take on the world by herself. If she had gone into the outskirts, there was a high chance she would get lost somewhere, and a lower chance that she would run into a wild animal and get hurt. Theo knew all the possibilities. He had faced them all at least once before, but he was a young adult and she was a child. Theo knew his territory like the back of his hand and all she knew was the hub, where everyone stayed. He had to act quickly.

Theo stormed out of the building, which was just outside of the hub. He strode like a man on a mission. He knew what he had to do and who he needed to do it. "Someone get me Osiris, Arin and Strider!" he barked, and multiple faces of different ages and ethnicities looked up at him from doorways and windows. "We need a search party!"

✖️✖️✖️

The next morning, while Theo was escorting a terrified Kara back to the hub and her worried sister, class was in session in one of the city's private high schools, on the other side of the city. It was an English and Literature class for juniors. Though it was still early in the year, many of the students were dissatisfied with the class already, the rest were either bored or writing down notes. The seats were arranged in rows of six tables, and while they had enough space to do almost anything on or under their tables, a popular way to spend class was to stare listlessly out of the large windows on one side of the classroom. The park next to the tall school building wasn't much of a view, but the students agreed that anything was more interesting than a boring lesson. 

They were studying relatively recent works--a fact that boggled the few of them who cared enough to notice. If they were learning about literature, why were the classics off-limits to them? They would listen to the teacher drone on about Paca Ramone or Myrtle Minstrel, authors of critically acclaimed books such as Into the Night and Clingstone, but never was there mention of Theodore Inkcrest or Maxwell Terrence, authors that were well known to their grandparents and great grandparents. Tired of this, a student confidently raised her hand, hoping to voice what those few of them thought. 
"Do you have a question, Alessia?" the red-haired teacher asked, somewhat bored. She felt she deserved to be paid more when she had to teach children who were always wanting something more than the curriculum. She grabbed for a black pen by force of habit, preparing to write a slip.

Alessia, the girl who raised her hand, adjusted her glasses. She was nearsighted, but that didn't bother her unless someone decided to steal her glasses. It was a price she had to pay for speaking her mind. She was also of Italian descent, but if you asked her or anyone where or what things like Italy or Germany were, nobody would have been able to answer. "Yes, Mrs. Granger. Since we are learning literature, why has there been no mention of the classics in the curriculum for this and the next semester? Are we not going to read anything past 100 years ago? My mother tells me that the classics are very well written and some have philosophical meanings that we could really use in our studies." 

The teacher's demeanour suddenly seemed threatened. The entire class watched in silence as the teacher began to write something down and looked back up at Alessia, who immediately noticed something was wrong, averted her eyes and held her hands together nervously.

Alessia had not been there longer than two months, but she immediately noticed that things in the capital were much more strict than they were in the smaller town she had come from, just a two hour drive away. There, she could ask these questions and the teacher would answer calmly and tell her that they did not have complete control over which books were to be read that year. When this teacher started writing things down, the entire class went silent and wide-eyed. She was, without a doubt, in some kind of serious trouble.

"You should've kept your mouth shut," the student sitting behind her whispered. When Alessia turned around to face him, the boy was looking down at his notebook, as if he had said nothing.

Only a few more moments passed before the teacher stood up and straightened her uniform. The lecture was resumed as if nothing had interrupted it and everything seemed fine, but the students were all tense and Alessia's hands were trembling in fear of what was to come. The thought that maybe she was bringing her mother down with her crossed her mind, and she felt as if a cold hand had gripped her heart. What have I done? she thought.

The bell rang, but there was no rush to get out of the classroom. Everyone seemed to move in slow motion. The students packed their bags and woefully glanced at Alessia. None of them actually knew what was going to happen to her, but they had a feeling they wouldn't see her again. The teacher listed off their assignments for homework, then excused herself and quickly walked out of the room with a light grey slip of paper in her hand. Some of her classmates shuddered at the sight. Grey slips were not notices for an hour of after-school detention in their school. Grey slips could change your life dramatically and were to be feared. As they all expected, Alessia's full name was called on the speaker and she was to go to the principal's office. Two students left the classroom, stopping to pat her on the shoulder. Grey slips were a declaration of a student as a heretic, the only kind of notice that could get the government involved in the school's business.

Then it was the entire high school's brunch break. For twenty minutes the students ate and discussed recent events in the large cafeteria in the center of the school's second floor. Alessia's fate was not a topic, however, so the real reason she had been called to the office was not made common knowledge. Everyone assumed she was getting a pep talk from the principal, who was known to be very kind with his students, especially transfers from other towns. The following class for the majority of the students with Alessia was History. The thought of what was going to happen to her was still dancing around their minds, so for the first ten to fifteen minutes of class, they were not productive at all. However, the teacher managed to get the students to listen and open their textbooks. Unlike the Literature classroom, this one had maps on the wall and on the teacher's desk was a line of picture frames containing photos of him and his children. This teacher was a very enthusiastic person when it came to answering questions about history and geography, being a teacher of both. He had little to no hair on his head but despite the intimidating look he bore with a bald head and stern eyes, his students generally described him as the nicest teacher on campus. However, he would do as his job required him to do, with no exceptions.

In that class, there was another curious soul. That boy's name was Vincente, known to everyone as Vin or Vince. He, like his cousin Alessia, looked like most of the boys in the school with dark hair and eyes. Average in every sense of the word, Vin was just an innocent boy who didn't know any better. Everyone generally liked him for his upbeat personality and his eagerness whenever asked for help with an assignment. The boy was destined to be a teacher himself some day, but that was only if he made it out of class.

The teacher began his lesson on a very important civil war that happened just two centuries before. This war was obviously something the teacher liked talking about, from the way he paced around the class and spoke with his entire body. Every now and then he would add little tidbits of extra information that he specified would not be on the test; they were fun facts that he had learned over the years and knew would entertain most, if not all, of the students. This war, he said, was important because it decided whether or not their home would stay in the eternal medieval style of the previous three centuries or advance not only architecturally, but also socially and technologically. Halfway through the 90 minute class, the teacher allowed a 5 to 10 minute break for the students to relax. Vin decided that he should ask about something that had been on his mind since the day before. He raised his hand. Maybe if he had been in his cousin's English & Literature class, he wouldn't have made the same mistake. 

"Vin! You gotta go to the bathroom or ask me something?" the teacher exclaimed familiarly, pointing to the boy with a black pen he had been grading tests with. 

"Mr. Rivers, since you teach both history and geography I thought you might be able to help. The other day I heard my parents and my uncle talking about some place I'd never heard of, I think it was called Vendelle. Do you know anything about it?" Vin asked. Nobody paid any mind to Vin. He was a good kid, and he was always trying to broaden his horizons. 

Something ticked in Gerald Rivers's jaw, but he played it off as if it was nothing. Vincent was his favorite student, so he almost made an exception. But no, this was the workplace and favoritism would not get him anywhere. "Vendelle? Interesting name, but nope, can't say I've ever heard of it. Sorry, buddy,"  he replied, and that was when some students went quiet. They had never heard him ever call anyone 'buddy'. The six that noticed this exchanged nervous glances, but one dark-skinned girl in the back saw that even thought Gerald appeared to go back to grading his tests, he had tried to move a grey slip in front of him without alerting any students. That was the difference between Gerald Rivers and Lila Granger. Gerald tried to keep it as secret as possible, while Lila didn't see any difference in whether the students all knew what was coming or got to live with the benefit of the doubt for half an hour more. Thanks to this, Vincent got to spend the second half of his favorite class with no clue that he was going to be declared as a risk to society as soon as the bell rang.

However, the bell rang and the inevitable happened. Gerald Rivers rushed out of the classroom with a light grey rectangle of paper folded up in one of his pockets. Students took no notice and left the classroom, except for the one dark-skinned girl who had seen their teacher write the slip, who stayed back and leaned against the wall just outside the classroom door. She saw it all happen. Vin walked out of the classroom just as he was called to the principal's office on the speaker. She saw his face contort into an expression of confusion and she saw his shoulders tense as he strode in the direction of the principal's office. Nobody would see Vin at school the next day.

That was the day Therese Sanders saw two go down in one day.

Therese Sanders, more commonly known as Thea, was one of the few dark-skinned girls in her high school with passing grades. Due to age-old stereotypes about darker skinned people being irresponsible, uneducated and criminals, most of the dark-skinned girls slacked off. It was almost as if they set out to be everything light-skinned people expected them to be, and it made Thea furious. She used to get into arguments with those girls about how they were just proving everything people said about them right, but it eventually came to her that she wasn't changing anything. They would realize she was right when they became dropouts and couldn't support themselves. Thea didn't even want to ever get started on the boys, however. Some of them actually had charges of petty theft and one senior was on parole, as far as she knew. All in all, it was disgusting because it felt like they did it to fit into some kind of description that they're not even forced to accept.

Usually, Thea took her notes in each class and wrote down whatever her homework assignments were in a little notebook. However, on that day she had forgotten her  notebook and was too distracted by the two grey slips that had been given out to write her notes. It went without saying that that day was a disaster for her. After school, she went into the bathroom to freshen up before heading home, but couldn't bring herself to turn a blind eye when she saw a girl hunched in the corner and crying. Upon closer inspection she recognized the girls as one of Vin and Alessia's friends. The girl's black hair covered her face but her sobs were clearly audible. Thea wasn't sure how to approach the situation at hand. This had never happened before, not to her. Perfect, she thought. My brother's going to love hearing about this disaster of a day. 

"Hey, are you okay?" she asked, dropping her backpack on the tiled floor and kneeling next to the girl. "What's wrong?" 

The girl jumped and wide eyes stared up at her from underneath her black bangs. "How long have you been here?" the girl asked, drying her eyes with her sleeves. She sniffled and her nose was slightly darker, but it was unclear if it was because it was almost winter or due to all her crying.

"Just got here. Are you alright? What happened?" Thea asked again, hoping to get an actual response. The girl was quiet, and in the meantime Thea sat down beside her and looked around the bathroom. Everything was grey and white tiling except for the stalls, which were just grey. 

"Alex and Vin got called to the principal's office... Are you in their classes? You know why, right? Everyone I asked just frowned at me or didn't know," the girl eventually mumbled to Thea, her eyes hoping for some closure.

Thea had a dilemma. This girl obviously cared about the two juniors, but was either in denial or completely innocent when it came to these matters. She could just frown and say she didn't know, but she might be the only one who knew for sure that Vin got a grey slip as well. People didn't pay attention to the speakers unless they expected something to happen. She could tell the girl the truth, but that would break her heart and she would cry more, then Thea would feel like she had to stay and comfort her. Regardless of which option she chose, she was going to end up feeling guilty.

"Alessia got a grey slip for questioning the Lit curriculum," Thea heard herself say before she could even decide. "Vin got a grey slip because he asked about something called Vendelle, but I might have been the only one who saw the slip." 

To Thea's surprise, the girl stopped crying. While she did frown, the crying ceased and she even seemed glad to know what had really happened. After a couple minutes of silence, the girl turned to Thea and smiled. "Thank you. It's not what I wanted to hear, but it's the truth, so thank you for that."

"You're welcome," Thea replied, and watched as the girl stood up and washed her face. Remembering that she too was sitting on the floor, she stood up and looked in the mirror to find any flyaways in her hair. Her dark curls were a pain to work with, but she managed to take care of them with help from her mother and brother. The other girl had left the bathroom already, and Thea checked her watch only to find that if she didn't leave right then, she wouldn't make it to the bus stop in time. She grabbed her back and slung it over her shoulder as she ran through the almost empty halls in her white sneakers.

"Why don't you dread your hair, Thea?" some light-skinned girls called out to her from the railing by the stairs at the front entrance, just as she ran through the front doors. "It would look much better than whatever that mess on your head is!" Checking her watch again, she saw she had five minutes to run around the block to the stop. That wasn't nearly enough time to come up with a witty comeback and get to the bus, so she ignored them and continued on. Turning the corner, she saw her bus stopping to pick up any passengers and broke into a sprint, just barely making it on the vehicle.
For the next half hour, Thea sat on a window seat and watched the city pass her by. She knew every turn of the road by heart by then, as she used the bus to get home most of the time. A man had sat down next to her at one of the stops and was reading a newspaper called The Informant. It was a popular newspaper that covered everything that people wanted to know about, while other newspapers were made by locals for specific neighborhood happenings and such and couldn't possibly have the coverage The Informant did. Nonetheless, it was typical practice to read two newspapers: your local neighborhood one to keep up to date with anything that might affect you locally, and The Informant to know what was affecting the entire city, or even the entire country. Thea normally didn't bother with newspapers, unless her father wanted to show her something. Whenever she wanted to know what was going on in the city, she watched the evening news. A headline on the front page of the newspaper caught Thea's eye. They were words she was seeing and hearing more and more as of late, yet they still surprised her.

MORE PEOPLE GONE MISSING, COULD THIS BE THE WORK OF HERETICS?

"Um, excuse me sir?" Thea said, gently tapping the man's shoulder. The man turned his head to face her and silently raised an eyebrow. "Could I read the page about the kidnappings?" He smiled, removed the page from his bundle of papers and handed it to her. She nodded and gave him a silent 'thank you'.

Last night, Zachariah Lemmings, 16, had somewhere to be. He wasn't acting strange and he didn't look like he was having second thoughts about anything. He was going to go bowling with his two best friends and his girlfriend, then come back home at midnight. However, according to his girlfriend, Alisha Brown, Zachariah never showed up to bowling. The next day, nobody saw him, and his parents filed a missing persons report as soon as they could.
More and more of these kidnappings are happening lately, yet there has been no obvious connection between the victims. All the missing individuals were of all ages, skin colors and heights. They don't have any specific common traits. These people are, as it seems, being taken at random. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and someone snatched them up.
The current suspects for these disappearings are the heretics, who have been causing general mayhem around the town. They spray paint walls and steal from stores, and all in all seem to have no goal other than ruining our way of life. 
Shown at the right is who the government believes is the leader of these troublemakers. He is considered a dangerous individual. He has never been caught, but sightings have been made all over town in all sorts of places, making it difficult estimate where they might be making their headquarters. If you see this man, it is advised to not approach or alert him, and to contact authorities immediately. 

-Laura Linden

Thea looked at the picture. The person pictured was an attractive, slightly older looking man. His hair was dark, but lighter than Thea's, and his eyes were wide, as if he had been caught doing something. He was facing the side and his head was turned over his shoulder, but he was looking at the camera. There was a pair of goggles on his forehead, and they reminded Thea of some friends she had that liked steampunk. He was wearing a hoodie, and his hand was on the hood, as if he was about to put it on. There were fingerless gloves on his hands. Thea tried to remember his face. Contact authorities immediately, she thought.

✖✖✖

Thea lived in a two story house in the suburbs with her parents and her older brother. Her parents' room, the living room, kitchen, and guest bathroom were on the first floor, while hers and her brother Dante's rooms were on the second, along with a two bathrooms and her father's study. Whenever Thea got home, her father was usually in his study and her mother was either in the kitchen or watching TV. Her brother got back from his job at their uncle's cafe around 6 PM, two and a half hours after she usually got home from school. 

She called out to her mother, who was watching the news in the living room. Her mother, Roxanne, got up and greeted her by the front door with a warm smile on her face. "Welcome home, sweetheart. Did you have a good day at school?" she asked. Thea nodded, deciding to keep the information about the slips for if they asked at dinner. 

"School was fine, thanks. I'm just going to go upstairs and do my homework. Call me when dinner's ready," Thea replied, then rushed up the hardwood stairs to her room. Her mother quietly watched her go, then made her way into the kitchen. Her daughter was responsible and she knew that. The woman started a new task: cutting carrots and other vegetables. They were going to have a nice, homemade soup in their dinner that night, and she would be the reason.

Less than two hours later, the bell rang and Thea jumped out of her seat and rushed down the stairs to open the door. She happily wrapped her arms around the tall boy's neck, who didn't hesitate to pick her up and walk her to the living room, shutting the door behind him with his foot.

"Dante!" Thea exclaimed as her brother put her down on one of their plush couches and sat down next to her.

"Iced T!" Dante said back to her. He leaned over to the coffee table to grab the remote and changed the channel to cartoons. A grunt of disapproval was heard from the kitchen, indisputably originating from their mother. She liked to have the news channel playing while she was in the kitchen. The words went in one ear and out the other, but she preferred it to any other kind of background noise. But Dante and Thea, unfortunately, had control of the TV and would use any time with the remote they had to watch cartoons, be it alone or together.

Sounds of cartoon violence soon filled the room, accompanied by the sizzling of meat on a pan. The smell of cooking pork drew their father out of his study and brought him strutting into the kitchen, wrapping his arms gingerly around his wife's waist. The two had a silent exchange before he went into the living room to see what his children were up to.

"Aren't you two a little old for cartoons?" he asked, towering over the side of the couch.

"Love has no boundaries," Thea told him, not taking her eyes off of the TV screen. She and Dante recoiled simultaneously as the main character took a hit that could be fatal.

"C'mon Dean, you can do this," Dante mumbled under his breath.

"Utilize the power of the emeralds!" Thea snapped. "Damnit Dean, it's so obvious what his weakness is!"

Their father sighed. "Isabel, where did we go wrong with these two?" he asked their mother. She laughed heartily.

"We can only hope that it's a phase, dear," Isabel returned, and Dante reacted immediately.

"It's not phase, mom, it's a lifestyle!" he snapped, his eyes still glued to the TV screen. The main character was a seemingly ordinary man who discovered he was part of a prophecy including magical power emeralds. He was currently fighting henchmen of the antagonist, and they had him outnumbered. Thea and Dante watched as the protagonist finally decided to use his powers to fend off his enemies. The battle ended quickly, the episode following with it.

"Dinner's ready, kids. Your show's over," Isabel called warmly.