I could feel the people in the small room next to mine, they thought was hidden behind the one way mirror, and the other 258 people in the building. Opening my eyes and looking around my room I notice what feels like they were once two chairs and a television, but are now floating blobs of matter in the middle of the room. I glance around the rest of the room; there’s a small window on my right and from what I can see it looks as if I’m in the middle of a desert.
I turn my attention back to the sterile white room; looking toward the mirror the blob of matter flies through the air and smacks into the mirror with what should have been a loud thud but was fairly soundless given the mirror itself stretched inward to take the force of the matter that had been flung at it. Curiosity has me in her cruel grip so in my mind I imagine the ball of matter flying around the room like a bouncy ball thrown down a never ending hallway. Just as I imagined it, it began and didn’t stop until I commanded it to stop.
I tilt my head slightly to the left, now this is truly strange. I close my eyes and imagine them back the way they should be; opening my eyes I marvel at the fact they are back to their original forms. Slowly I get out of bed testing the limits of my strength and yet after being in a coma for a month I wasn’t finding any.
Walking over to the mirror I look at my reflection. It isn’t how I remember it, the memories though fuzzy, come flooding back. My eyes were brown looking at them now in front of me they look almost like a circuit board, a bright blue-grey color. The more I think about my old appearance the clearer it becomes and suddenly those bright blue circuit boards light up and the pigments of color begin to fall apart, shifting around and around until I have glowing brown circuit boards for irises. Stranger still, so I change them back to blue, I had always hated my unremarkable trademark brown eyes anyway. My hair was the same flaming red it had always been though it was very short, so like my eyes I just imagine how I wanted it to be and suddenly I had my long curly hair again.
“Do you think she knows we’re watching her?” a man’s voice sounds in my head.
“It is likely she knows we are here, I mean look at her she is the perfect specimen.” Another voice answered him, a woman this time.
“She may be powerful but can she control it?” the man asks.
Before the woman can respond the glass dissolves away. They stare at me in shock for a few moments. The woman recovers first, “0047 stand down.”
0047? My head tilts to the side as my eyes focus on the clipboard she’s holding. It jumps from her hands into mine. My eyes pass quickly over it. I open my mouth to speak but a pounding noise starts in my head. I glance up at the woman, whom I gather to be Dr. Lastner, “Calm down Doctor, it isn’t good for your blood pressure to be so high.” The pounding slows until finally stopping, “Isn’t that better? There isn’t any reason to be alarmed.” I turn my attention back to my chart. Apparently they moved me into this room in the empty wing of the facility because once I had stopped dying, odd things began happening. Things like other patients levitating, me levitating, and beds, chairs, and other objects becoming blobs of matter. They had run a series of tests on everyone in the building and determined it was my brain causing all the issues. My chart also states I may be the most powerful test subject they’ve ever had.
“0047-”
My head snaps up causing her to falter, “My name is not 0047, Doctor, it’s Gavenia, Gavenia Fleming, I would ask you to call me that rather than treating me like a prisoner or a lab rat.”
Her companion’s face contorts in confusion, “How do you remember your name? Typically it takes weeks for patients to begin to remember and even then they can’t fully remember until months after. What else do you remember, zer-” my eyes narrow, “My apologies, Gavenia?”
I shrug my shoulders, “Everything?”
His face lights up at my statement, “Wait until the board sees her Doctor Lastner. They are going to be so excited to see someone so powerful.”
Doctor Lastner’s eyes narrow as she looks me over, “She’ll need to train before we can allow someone of her strength near the board, Doctor Hamilton.”
“Well of course but she should fly through the training based on what she can already do. She is going to show them that this was worth it.” Doctor Hamilton replied.
“We’ll see. She’ll need a special training program to fit her ability since her’s is so powerful she needs to learn to control it.”
Doctor Hamilton starts nodding his head. “Right. I’ll start developing a training program right away.”
He starts heading for the door when I clear my throat he pauses and looks in my direction. “You guys realise I’m not a prized thoroughbred to be paraded around in front of your sponsors. Did you ever think that maybe this isn’t what I wanted to do?”
Doctor Lastner starts laughing, “This is what you have been signed up to do. Your parents signed the paperwork turning you over to us. And since you are still a minor you don’t really have a say in the matter.” And with that they left the room.
When I turned seventeen I was presented to the board, having completed the training in record time, just as Doctor Hamilton had predicted. The board was made up of a Five Star General, a Five Star Admiral, the Vice President, the Defense Secretary, and the Secretary of State. Hamilton had gone over and over with me what was expected of me, because he didn’t want me to make them look bad in front of the board. I was to fight hand-to-hand against four highly trained opponents then I was to demonstrate what my chip allowed me to do.
The hand-to-hand part was easy because the more I had trained to use my chip the easier it was to anticipate what people were going to do next not only in their movement but everything from when they would blink to what they were going to say. When my last opponent had tapped out signaling the end of the fight I glanced at the clock on the wall and smiled when I saw that it had taken me less than two minutes which was my best time yet. Now on to my favorite part, showing off my abilities, I’m not allowed to use my abilities outside of practicing in the training room, so this should be fun. I look at the board, who seem impressed, well except for the Vice President. “Would you get on with it girl?!”
I could feel Hamilton cringe when the rather large old man opened his mouth. If he knew anything about how we worked he would know that my glowing eyes meant I was getting on with it. His chair hit the floor with a thud while the others fell silently. The corners of my mouth lifted slightly at the way his eyes bulged in shock. Time to show this asshole what for, I thought to myself. I could feel Hamilton screaming for me not to do what I was about to do. I only smiled wider as I pulled up parts of the flooring and moulded the molecules into a chair. I sit down and cross my legs. My eyes fall on the red faced Vice President, his heart rate is elevated and he suffers from hypertension and cardiovascular disease, I should probably take this easy, for his sake.
But I should have done a lot of things in life so I decide on easing them into the more powerful things I can do. Parlor tricks first, I drop the temperature of the room to freezing and I can feel Hamilton breathe a sigh of relief because he thinks I’m not going to show out and embarrass them. Just as I lowered the temperature I bring it up demonstrating my ability to change the speed of the molecules in the air.
The board whisper amongst themselves for a little while, I wait until they are finished to move onto the buckets of water that were put in the room at my request. I command the water from the buckets, pulling the two globs together I freeze them in the shape of Mt Rushmore but instead of the heads of the former presidents I did four different, unflattering, facial expressions of the Vice President. Turning it so the board could see it I earn the laughter of the General and Admiral, the other three, however, seem less impressed. Hamilton hits himself so hard in the head with his palm that I almost feel it. And just as quickly as I made the ice sculpture I make it turn into steam and force it out the air vents. My eyes lock with the Vice President’s narrowed eyes and just as he’s about to speak, I stop him, sit him back down in his chair and calm his heart rate. “Vice President or not I won’t allow you to speak to me like that again, understand?”
He nods, but his face pinches together in anger. And with that I decide to end with my best trick, the reason I’m not allowed to use my abilities outside of the training facility, the teleportation of matter.
Author: Kailan Counahan 