Don’t care that much what random people think of me, she lied. Besides, I don’t spend all that much time online.
What, so you’re a real Swiss child of nature, are you? Yodeling, flowers in your hair?
LOL, Sarina typed. She was about to hit ENTER, but her curiosity got the better of her. So there’s a lot of stuff on me?
She chewed on a thumbnail as she waited for Jasper’s response. She wasn’t quite ready to find out firsthand what people were saying about her online.
Thirty seconds later, there was a ping. The phone video someone uploaded of your transition crashed the Youtube servers. Hundreds of millions of clicks within the first hour!
It was an impossible number. Hundreds of millions? Holy cow.
She rested her fingers on the keyboard, unsure of how to respond. That number sounded too large to fit into the reality she was used to. God, that’s embarrassing, she typed after a moment.
No it’s not! You look great in it.
An uncertain smile spread across her face. She wasn’t used to accepting compliments. Luckily, Jasper changed the subject before it got too awkward. That reminds me. Try listening to this.
The chat window promptly displayed a link for a downloadable audio file. He must have created one of his special tracks for her. From their previous discussions, she’d learned that Jasper’s speciality was his ability to create music which amplified other Evolved’s powers. Sarina hovered her mouse over a file named SarinaTrack14.mp3. Fourteen? she noted. That sounded like a lot.
Before she could give it more thought, another message came in. Just music, no lyrics, so it should be safe. But if something weird happens, better stop.
Sarina was about to type a flurry of questions when the ping sounded again. I gotta go. See you soon! He signed off with his signature emoticon, :DJ.
She wanted to point out they weren’t exactly going to see each other, but he was already gone. She was left frowning at the monitor, puzzled by his abrupt departure and lack of an explanation. They’d chatted for hours and hours over the past two days, and they’d only stopped when they had to.
Weird, she decided. Something must have come up.
Still curious about what sort of weird thing might happen to her if she listened to his track, Sarina clicked on the link he’d sent her. The file didn’t auto-activate, however. She clicked again, but still nothing happened. Ten or twelve clicks later, she gave up. Maybe whoever was monitoring her didn’t want her to open it. Or maybe she was just that bad at computers.
Sarina exhaled a frustrated puff of breath, unsure of what to do next. It was still too early to call her parents if she wanted to catch her dad and David at home. The homework her former teachers had left in her inbox didn’t appeal to her, either. Knowing she wouldn’t ever be allowed to return to school put a huge damper on her motivation.
She considered grabbing her phone with its stored playlist of favorite tracks, but she didn’t feel like going to the monitoring room to dance for the scientists’ cameras right now. Strangely, she didn’t feel like dancing at all. It used to take her to her happy place—a place previously only occupied by drugs—but now it came with too much pressure. Pressure to figure out how her power worked. Pressure to prove that she wasn’t useless after all.
Sarina decided that she might as well look over the research document that she’d drafted out of boredom the day before. She remembered she left too many questions about her transition unanswered, opened her Word file, and read the first line of text: Why couldn’t I get a power that actually works? Like flying. Or talking to birds.
Hmm, she mused. Still a good question. She skimmed the rest of the first page, hoping for new insights.
The Pulse happened on February 24, 2010. The entire world lost power for at least half an hour at 11:20 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Everyone lost about a minute of time which they can’t remember (although some lunatics claim they remember it, but no one believes them). There are many theories on why it happened, but no one knows for sure.
Sarina paused. The day the Pulse had happened, she’d been smoking weed and cutting school. She remembered the worldwide panic that had occurred after the power came back on, but not much else.
The next part was about transitions. She kept on reading.
Since the day the Pulse happened, random person transitions occurred every few days. Since November 2011, new transitions have become quite rare with only a few happening every month. It’s likely that not all transitions get reported, and China doesn’t reveal how many they have had there. Scientists estimate that there are never more than around 300 or so Evolved in the world.
There are many known power classifications. The number of Evolved in each category stays more or less the same over time. The categories are: Transmuters, Evokers, Technicians, Revokers, Empaths, Lightshapers, Darkshapers, Visionaries, and wild cards. There are also Guardians, but they are rare. Shanti is the only known Healer to date, so it’s unclear if that’s a power category onto itself. Some Evolved have hybrid powers. Paladin is a Revoker with super strength who creates barriers and dispels power effects. Wild card refers to the ones they can’t classify, like me.
Sarina wished she had more information in this section, but she didn’t. It looked like nobody online knew much about wild cards. She skimmed down to a topic which had a lot of online chatter these days.
Power surges began about a month ago. They were as random as transitions, but they only happened to people who had already Evolved. Sometimes the surge made their range increase or gave them new abilities, etc. The end result was they usually became much stronger, like Monsoon.
For the second time that morning, Sarina wished she could help those poor victims in South Africa. What was the point in transitioning if she couldn’t do anything useful with her supposed powers? Wishing that she could fly, or at least control birds or butterflies, she scrolled down to that part of her document.
The most powerful Visionary is the Oracle, but no one really understands all of her prophecies. Everyone hopes she’s wrong about the coming of the Antithesis, the Anathema or contrary force to the Healer.
Sarina read over the rest of the research document she had put together, filling in any gaps wherever she could. No matter how she turned the facts around or tried to piece them together, she didn’t figure out anything new and relevant to her situation. There had never been any other case where a person had transitioned, but then had not been able to use their own powers.
Just my luck.
Rubbing her eyes, she picked up an empty mug from beside her monitor before padding across the cold parquet floor to the small bar fridge which had been hastily installed the day she had arrived. She took a carton of orange juice out, filling her cup to the brim only to empty it in less than a minute. Feeling refreshed from the sugar high, she headed back to the desk, ready to read through the many questions that she hadn’t yet been able to answer for herself. She scrolled down to the heading titled Unclear Stuff!
1. Why is this happening to me? Is there a pattern for why some people transition and others don’t? Is there any truth to what some people claim—that transitions aren’t random?
2. Why isn't my power working anymore? Maybe the power decided I’m not worthy of it?
3. When/if I get my power to work again, what can I do with it? Teleport things? Summon birds? It’s not like I can stop a bad guy just by dancing. Right?
Sarina paused, imagining interrupting a burglary and then dropping it like it was hot. The bad guys might stop what they were doing, but only because they were laughing so hard. They would think she was an idiot.
She reread her notes before continuing her Google search, typing in the question that was at the forefront of her mind: Do some Evolved have ineffective powers? She surfed around for the next hour or so, failing to discover anything except dead ends. There was so little concrete knowledge out there, and the information that was available was buried beneath heaps of rumors and conspiracy
theories. Sarina was tired of slogging through blogs and forums full of bickering. In the end, she was left feeling even less inspired than she had felt before. What she needed was someone to commiserate with, but it was still too early for her to call home.
If Jasper’s too busy to chat, then maybe I can find someone else to talk to.
Sarina opened her web browser and typed in the address of the public Evolved community forum where she had first encountered Jasper, although she had to admit he was a rarity. Most of the forum regulars were boring—heroes and rogues who sat around and twiddled their thumbs until their respective governments agreed to let them do something. Even now, more than two years after the Pulse, most crimes were still handled by the police.
She remembered reading some rumors about secret online societies that acted as virtual meeting places for villains and other shady figures, not that she wanted to befriend villains or anything. But if those communities existed, she imagined them to be the opposite of boring.
Once she signed in to the forum, Sarina discovered a new post by Paladin in response to a thread entitled More big threats? Unfortunately, the founder of the Covenant didn’t include anything juicy or informative in his reply, just a reminder for everyone that spreading rumors was bad and freaked people out. He closed with the affirmation that the Covenant was more than capable of handling the “big threats.”
Sarina scrolled up to see what had evoked Paladin’s prickly response. To her disappointment, the two preceding posts by Overdrive and Rune had been moved by the moderators and were no longer visible.
Well, that’s one way to squelch rumors, she thought.
She checked her private messages, and wasn’t surprised to find three from Overdrive, one of the newer American Wardens. She closed them without reading them. After the last dozen or so he’d sent her, she had a good idea of what they’d be about. And she definitely wasn’t looking to be his girlfriend.
Overdrive had sent his first message within minutes of her signing into this forum. At first she’d been excited by the prospect of connecting with someone else like her. But instead of sharing tidbits about their lives, communities, and daily routines, their exchanges had quickly derailed to something reminiscent of some guys at her high school. Truth be told, he made her uncomfortable. He’d even tried to get her to trade photos with him. She’d been glad when she’d been befriended by Jasper, who acted completely normal.
Sarina checked who else was signed into the forum. There was Overdrive, which was no surprise, but DJ wasn't there. No Mascot, either. Sarina was curious about the newest American transition, but, as far as she knew, Mascot hadn’t even signed up for the forum.
Aw, come on. Aren’t you bored, too?
It was frustrating to her how Overdrive had been stingy with the details. In one of his more normal messages, he’d inadvertently mentioned that the American hero team had tons of free time. The US government didn’t let them do any real hero work, either. Overdrive was quick to brag that they were all about to do some ‘really important hero work’, but of course he couldn’t share the details with outsiders. Yeah, right.
Sarina logged out of the forum, and turned away from her monitor. She was getting a headache from staring at the screen for so long. She reclined on her office chair, passing a glance over her new home. She hadn’t gotten around to decorating the basement with any of the little treasures her mom had packed into cardboard boxes and sent to her on her first full day here.
The naked gray walls insulted her sense of aesthetics. The only windows were tiny panes, no bigger than her palm, positioned high up near the ceiling. The bed, a simple military cot, had been pushed against a wall opposite the window panes. Her accommodation also included the standard dresser with a mirror, and a computer desk and chair, but that was it.
The bathroom—which had incidentally been constructed for male soldiers—occupied a section of the abandoned barracks down the hallway, beside her impromptu dance chamber, tucked amid a bunch of other rooms she wasn’t supposed to use. Clearly, the Swiss government didn’t prioritize the comfort of their only would-be superheroine.
Sarina’s father and brother wouldn’t get home for another three hours, so she decided to pass the time by investigating Jasper’s music file. She googled her problem and found a step-by-step guide for how to install the media player she needed. A feeling of pride washed over her when she was finally able to open the link. She slid the headphones down over her ears so that none of the guards, who sometimes patrolled the hallway, would hear what she was doing. She clicked the play button and all at once her ears were filled with undulating flute sounds followed by warbling bird calls.
Huh? This was not her usual music. She checked the file name to see if she had she clicked on the wrong thing. No such luck. She frowned. For something cooked up by a professional musician with superpowers, the composition sounded unimpressive.
Then the sounds began to develop, picking up fragments of a pervasive electronic bass that, while a definite improvement over chickadees or whatever, just didn’t seem to fit. Still, there was something familiar about it. Something she couldn’t put her finger on.
Some part of her subconscious recognized it, though, and her body responded by sitting up straight. The music filled her up with a feeling of possibility. Of potential. Of presence. Her power had been triggered somehow. It was coming on, expanding inside her along with the bass. It pulsed beneath her skin and through her bloodstream, threatening to fill her with something darker than confidence.
I am here. It was a feeling rather than a thought.
When she realized what was about to happen, Sarina knew she had to stop. Jasper had told her that she should shouldn’t continue if anything weird started happening. Well, this was definitely weird. She peeled off the headphones, tossing them on the desk, and slid her office chair back for good measure. But its wheels barely budged. Sarina dropped her gaze to the floor, and was startled to notice that a colorful floral-print carpet now covered most of the dull parquet. When she looked back up, an array of bright colors teased the edges of her field of vision. She turned her gaze on those ugly gray walls, except they weren’t gray anymore. Twisting bands of electric blue and neon purple ran across their full width, arranged in artful, convoluted patterns.
“Whoa,” she said, not sure whom she was talking to.
Had she done all this? She must have. She couldn’t even fathom what might have happened if she had not stopped listening to the track when she did. But I wasn’t dancing, not even a little. Remembering how enormous her range had been during her transition, she snuck over to the door to peep into the hallway. Still dull and gray. So far, so good.
She took a deep breath before returning to the computer monitor to type an offline message for Jasper. Instead of the chat window she expected to see, the screen displayed a big black square which had not been there just moments before. As she watched, a few words of white block text appeared in the box, typed by invisible hands.
Sarina spent a few dumbfounded seconds by staring at the crude input console before her eyes processed the message on the screen. Hi, Dancer. You look bored. Wanna have some fun?
2.3 Dancer
Boltigen, Switzerland
Tuesday, the 5th of June, 2012
2:45 p.m.
Sarina blinked, willing the black window to disappear and her computer screen to return to normal. But when she dared another peek, nothing had changed. The line of white text continued to tease her with its cryptic English message. Hi, Dancer. You look bored. Wanna have some fun?
The cursor’s persistent blinking below the mysterious line of text demanded a response, but she had no idea what to say. Maybe this is some kind of test, she rationalized, thinking of the uniformed guards all around the compound and the curious scientists who were anxious to poke and prod her at every turn. If the white coats were testing her, she’d figure it out soon enough.
She was about to reach for her mouse when the on-screen cur
sor moved. As she watched, another line of text was transcribed into the black window. Don’t be scared. We just wanna talk.
We? Sarina stared at the screen, even more confused than she’d been after the first message. Her mind raced. Why were they typing in English? Until now, the government scientists had always communicated with her in German. Even more concerning, how did they know that she was bored?
Is someone watching me? Sarina glanced over her shoulder, confirming that she was still alone and that no one had snuck up behind her. She stood to take a closer look around her newly transformed room and search for any security cameras she might have missed, but she didn’t see any. All she discovered was a dead housefly on the edge of the desk, an unlikely culprit.
Unless it’s not really dead….
She shook her head. Now she was acting paranoid.
Sarina sat back in front of the computer, and laid her fingers across the keyboard. Even though she had no idea what to make of the messages, she decided that sending a response couldn’t make the situation any more surreal than it already was. Emboldened, she typed a few words into the chat box. But before she hit the ENTER key, she hesitated. She grabbed her mug and set it upside down on the edge of the desk, entombing the dead insect. Just to be sure.
When she returned her eyes to the screen, she saw that a smiley face emoticon had appeared beneath their last message. She frowned. The smiley face irritated her enough to send her message: Who are you, and how did you get in my computer?
She’d almost added that her Internet connection was under government surveillance. But if her mystery messagers were working for the government, they would already know that. If they weren’t, well, then they were doing something illegal, and deserved to get caught.
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