The Gifted

by C. C. Lynch

  What I felt was homesick. That type of homesick you feel even when you are home. Like you know you belong someplace else, someplace you have yet to go to.

  She was lost. It was the first time I had understood my mother on a level deeper than the stressful tension that built up around dinner time or the angry growls for me to clean my room. In that moment, she was so human to me. She did not represent anything stressful, punitive, or authoritative; she was painfully average.

  I shook my head of the connection and looked to Al. My voice was hushed and I nodded, “you were right, the ‘alignment’ did help.”

  Al put his hand out, almost as an offering. “Want to try it with that Jeremiah fellow?”

  “No,” I half-snickered and shook my head. I did not want to feel what he did or empathize with him on any level. “Maybe I will try again later. I think I need a break.”

  * * *

  “You remember,” Lacey’s voice snapped me from my trance.

  My finger was still on the wall from where I had been tracing those imaginary lines that somehow brought me solace.

  I stared at her and tried to decipher the expression that was on her face. It was a mix of irritation and impatience. “The way into the control room.” She crossed her arms and nodded towards my hand. She tapped her foot impatiently and shook her head. “You still know the symbols to get in. How?”

  “What?” I sat up and looked at the wall then back to Lacey. “What do you mean? What control room?” Her demeanor was unnerving.

  She tossed her lavender hair to the side. “Well if you don’t remember, then obviously your mind is fighting to.”

  Steph followed Lacey into the room, her big doe eyes showed complete surprise. “I can’t believe you joined a sorority! I always kind of thought you would be a sit in the back of the room and stay quiet type of girl, but good for you!” Steph tousled her hair and looked behind her. “That Scottish guy is super cute.”

  I jumped up from the bed and walked towards Lacey and Steph. My mind was unable to comprehend what was happening. “Steph, what are you talking about?”

  “Oh, I showed her around the sorority house.” Lacey’s eyes narrowed, her stance nothing but catty. “I think she and Luka might have a thing for each other.” She wiggled her eyebrows, but her eyes were cold.

  “Her mind…” I began, rage boiling inside my chest. “You had no right, Lacey.”

  “Oh, stop it.” Lacey remained calm and inhaled superiorly, “just count to three. Right, Abrielle? Just count to three and let it go.”

  My mouth hung slack and I tried to decipher what was happening. Was she the reason I was missing memories? Had she been part of Replyx the entire time? And why wipe Steph’s memories?

  My chin quivered with anger while I tried to figure out what to say. “What are you, a mole or something? Are you with Replyx?”

  “Oh, don’t be so dramatic.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m not with Replyx. It took way too long to figure out how to erase my existence there. No pay, lousy benefits, and absolutely no gratitude for the work you put in,” she sighed. “Anyway, when I found out there was a replicator looking to get the hell outta Dodge I knew I had my chance and I’m not looking to go back.” She turned to Steph and gave her a repulsed look, “and having a normy here, well,” she shrugged with disdain, “you’re welcome. Now she can go back home and forget all about this place.”

  Lacey took Steph’s memories. She stole them, replaced them, she violated my best friend’s mind. Whatever else she did was second in importance to the vile act she made towards Steph.

  She leaned on her hip and shook her head in disbelief. “I did you a favor!”

  Anger surged. I balled my fists and shouted for Vlaine at the top of my lungs.

  Al burst his way into the room and held his hand up towards Lacey. Frost crystallized from her feet up to her head followed by thicker layers until, after about ten seconds, a solid sheet of ice covered her body and kept her frozen, quite literally, in place.

  Al’s tan hand lowered to his side once he was certain Lacey would not be moving any time soon. “You’re a lot of things,” his deep brown eyes met mine, “but perceptive hasn’t found its way on that list.” He tucked a strand of jet black hair behind his ear and nodded at me. “I think this calls for a meeting.”

  Vlaine came running into the room and his eyes floated from the solid sheet of ice covering Lacey to Steph, and then to me.

  Shane, tight on Vlaine’s heels burst into the room. “They have my sister.”

  Fear enveloped my chest. “Who, where, and how do you know?” The switch from anger to fear made me lightheaded and my hands began to tremble.

  Shane’s eyelids were red and his face was painted with dread. “She sent me an email. It was really weird though, she mentioned getting an opportunity with a new company but she used our code word.” He began pacing the room, “we made it when we were kids and promised to only use it if we were really in trouble.”

  “Okay,” I rubbed my temples and sighed. “Vlaine and Al, can you deal with the Lacey and Steph situation please?” I turned to Shane, “let’s go figure out where your sister is.”

  After aligning my breath, clearing my mind, and focusing on finding Shane’s sister I could visualize a hazy image of a warehouse. The more I breathed into alignment, the quicker images started to form. Abandoned warehouse. Slade and a guy I did not recognize. Second floor overlooking the main one. Girl on the second floor. Can’t change forms.

  “Got it,” I nodded to Shane, let’s go get her.

  “Abbs,” Vlaine shouted, stopping me in my tracks. I turned to him and waited for him to continue. “Bring another person.”

  I nodded and ran out of the room with Shane. Ovolina was standing in the hallway with her arms crossed against her chest. Her pout was fierce. “I’m going with you to find Delilah.”

  Delilah. I kept seeing her in my mind. She looked just like Shane, just a very petite version with a freckled nose. She was slim with brown hair and had two different colored eyes. Suddenly I heard her scream in my mind. It was shrill, piercing, and ran through my body like I was being submerged in ice water.

  “Whatever, just grab my hand,” I shouted, putting my arms out.

  Shane and Ovolina grasped my arm and I instantly brought us right in front of the chair that Delilah was bound to. Slade and another menacing looking man were in the room staring at her, waiting. The moment we appeared, a sickening grin spread across Slade’s face.

  “We knew you would come.” It was a statement made without any doubt. Like he had seen this outcome and were just waiting for it so occur.

  “Go!” I screamed to Shane, Ovolina, and Delilah.

  Shane and Ovolina worked at the restraints while I formed a large sphere of fire in my palm. I did not want to throw it; I wanted Slade to attack first.

  The other man ran towards Shane, ready to attack. Ovolina raised her hand, her fingers clawed, and telekinetically threw him down to the first floor. He landed onto his back with a thud. He turned to his side, trying to catch his breath after getting the wind knocked out of him.

  Slade, as I anticipated, had prepared a large mass of fire for me. The instant he threw it my way I teleported next to Shane and grabbed onto them, ready to teleport out. As I did, Slade threw his weight against Ovolina and knocked her down to the floor.

  I heard the stomping first. Boots clashing against the warehouse steps rang throughout the building just before an eardrum-exploding, high-pitched siren sound filled my mind. I clasped my ears, covering them in hopes that it would help, but it made no difference. Whoever this other man was, his gift involved creating a noise that was so awful it could effectively paralyze its target.

  Vlaine. Vlaine could control other people’s gifts. It was something I had never tried before, but it was the only way I was going to escape.

  I did my best to ignore the horrible noise in my head. “Breathe,” I mumbled to myself, fighting the nausea taking hold and trying
to focus on what Al had taught me. Aligned and prepared, I entered the man’s mind, the part where he was using his ability. Like a switch, I turned it on himself and retracted from his mind quickly.

  I had created a distraction long enough to run downstairs with Ovolina, Delilah, and Shane. Delilah’s body crumpled quickly into a massive raven and she flew ahead. Shane followed suit, but in the form of a wolf.

  How cliché, I thought to myself. I grabbed Ovolina’s hand and ran after Shane and his sister. We burst through the door of the warehouse and ran on the broken pavement towards a nearby street.

  I thought for sure we were in the clear and I could teleport us back when an enormous ball of fire knocked Delilah out of the sky. She fell, transforming back into her human form and landed on her side, motionless.

  Shane, Ovolina, and I gathered at her side while Slade and his partner stalked over to us. Though they were at least one hundred feet away, their slow, steady pace caused me to freeze. Something in their expressions turned my blood cold.

  Emerging from a tree line nearby, Osiris and Jeremiah made their presence known.

  Osiris raised his hand to halt any movements we were going to make. “Stop,” he commanded smoothly, “we would just like to talk.”

  “She’s not breathing,” Shane panicked. “Abrielle,” he looked at me pleadingly, “get us out of here.”

  He grabbed ahold of my wrist and Ovolina followed suit. I put my hand onto Delilah and as I was about to teleport, Shane stiffened and fell to the ground. I turned to see Osiris with his hand up, pointed towards Shane.

  What had he just done? I hadn’t seen anything connect between the two and I did not know what kind of gift could have warranted that reaction.

  Ovolina felt his neck for a pulse then she looked at me with a ferocity I had never seen before. Her bottom lip quivered as she growled, “blast them.”

  I sucked a breath deep into my chest and threw my hands out towards them, blasting them with as much force as I could manage. Slade and the unknown assailant were thrown backwards and before I could feel the effects, I teleported Shane, Ovolina, Delilah, and myself back to Ernvlik Academy.

  “Aiden,” I screamed in the middle of the sitting room, “Aiden, I need you!”

  Aiden ran into the room and came to my side.

  “Neither of them have a pulse and I don’t know what happened to Shane.” I grabbed onto his hand, “you have to turn back time.”

  Aiden was looking at his hands, his hazel eyes looking from right to left. “Abrielle, I can’t.”

  “Yes, yes you can. Aiden, I need you to turn back time and save their lives.” My voice wheezed with panic.

  “Abrielle,” he shouted, “trust me. You have asked me about a hundred times now. I can’t go back far enough to save them.” He shook his head, his eyes filled with regret. “I can’t save them,” he said hopelessly.

  “Fine.” I pushed everyone aside and placed my hands onto Shane’s chest. “Get Vlaine or Draxe. I need to know what their dad did.”

  Placing my right hand over my left, I started pushing into Shane’s chest, giving him CPR. After thirty seconds, I sent a jolt of electricity into his body. He shook slightly, but still had no pulse.

  “Come on,” I screamed as I sent another shock through his body. “Al! Al, I need you.” I punched Shane in the chest, trying to restart his heart.

  Al had been behind me, for how long I was not sure. He placed his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t,” I pushed his hand away, “you need to save him. You have to know something we can do.”

  He looked at Delilah then to me. Al’s slow footsteps told me more than I wanted to acknowledge. When Draxe came into the room his face went pale.

  “The pure?” Draxe asked Al.

  Al’s lips went into a thin line and he gave a tight nod.

  Draxe’s eyes softened and he put his hand into Delilah’s. Ovolina had been trying to give CPR to her while I worked on Shane. She pushed Draxe away and leaned over Delilah’s body. “What the hell does the pure mean? What is that?”

  Al kneeled by the lifeless bodies on the floor. “It is the end.”

  Tears burned my eyes and my vision blurred. “What do you mean the end? Al, we can save them, right?”

  He shook his head, his eyebrows slumped in remorse. “I don’t think we can.”

  I moved to Delilah’s body and started chest compressions mixed with zaps of energy. “What the hell,” I breathed into her mouth, “is the point of being a replicator if we can’t save lives?”

  “The pure,” Vlaine put his hand on me gently, “is a poorly named ability.” He looked at Draxe and shrugged. Their look of acknowledgment said more than any words that would follow. It was an understanding between the two, a memory.

  Al’s voice was as gentle as any informative person could make their explanation. “It is like putting something into an autoclave from the inside out. It denatures proteins.” Al put his hand just a foot above Delilah’s body and swept over her, as if he was petting her from afar. “The practical use for the pure is to clean things, to purify them.” His hand waved a foot above Shane before he continued. “Imagine you are out in the wilderness and you have no fire, no way to cleanse your food or water. The pure could destroy any germs, bacteria, viruses, anything harmful.” His eyes grew hard as he gazed upon Draxe and Vlaine. “It is my understanding that the holder of this gift never used it for evil, only for good.”

  Vlaine began to take a defensive stance, but softened his body then sat next to me. “There was a woman that worked at the Think Tank, Catalina, and she had ‘the pure.’ She was extremely useful in the labs because she could purify anything.” Those deep blue eyes lowered to the floor, “the rumor is that the first time my father replicated it, he used it on her.”

  I did not want to acknowledge what they were telling me and I certainly did not want to talk about Osiris with Vlaine. “You’re saying that we can’t get them back? They’re gone? Shane and Delilah are gone?” A lump rose in my throat and tears that I did not know were even falling from my eyes dripped onto my hands that were still placed on the lifeless body. “No,” I shook my head and sent another jolt of electricity. “They can’t just be gone,” I yelled, “life doesn’t work like that.”

  “I’m sorry,” Vlaine rubbed my arm as consolation. He wrapped his fingers around mine, gently pulling my hands away.

  I shrugged him away and sat on my knees. “What is his weakness?” I demanded.

  Vlaine arched a brow in confusion. “Weakness?”

  I shifted my body to face Vlaine. “My empathic ability makes me feel whatever I do to other people. What is your father’s weakness?”

  He looked to Draxe, expecting his brother to have an answer. “I… I’m not sure.”

  Draxe was phlegmatic. “It fatigues him.” Draxe nodded, assuring that he was correct. “Replicating wears him out and telepathy is his greatest strength. It can overwhelm him, just like empathy can override all of your senses.”

  Nails dug into my hand from balled fists and I gritted my teeth. "I don’t care that he’s your father.” I shook my head, “he is never going to hurt another person ever again. I’m going to make sure of that.”

  5

  The words “the pure” would haunt me forever. I was raw. Nothing could take away the sting of seeing Shane and Delilah perish. It was not fair. It was not fair that those eyes would never look at us again, that we had to bear the burden of two lost souls, and that the world had not been able to find out what Shane and Delilah had to offer it.

  I was going to stop Replyx and I no longer cared about taking my time to heal everyone first.

  I stared at the board filled with ideas of how to stop Replyx. The words “control room” that Lacey had written the previous day taunted me. What had she meant that I remembered? What exactly was the control room?

  Lacey was still under ice and I did not have the emotional ability to listen to her explanation. Vlaine had explained everything to Steph, but I
still had to go in and fix everything that Lacey had taken from her. Al had never asked permission from Lacey to replicate her gift so he was unable to do it.

  “Teleport them to space” was what Shane had written before we had gone to get his sister. If I had seen him write it, I would have rolled my eyes and said something disparaging but now all I wanted to do was take that part of the board and save it forever. I wanted that piece of Shane to stay untouched and protected, as if it would somehow bring him back.

  Liz had written “bait ‘em and trap ‘em” in purple next to Draxe’s green and capitalized advice saying “blow it up.” Lena had drawn a picture of a cartoonish dachshund with its tongue sticking out and the words “mind blast weenie” scribbled next to it.

  “Okay,” I turned to Lena, “because I know that there is always a reason behind something you say or do, what is behind the ‘mind blast weenie’?”

  Lena’s eyes lit up with excitement. “It is the unexpected! There are animals trapped there, right? We let them go and I’ll tell them who to attack and how.” She tossed her long hair behind her shoulder. “I guarantee that no one at that facility is expecting an animal to attack them with a power projected onto them.”

  “Okay,” I snickered, “I definitely would not expect that. Maybe you have a point.”

  She nodded with an appreciative smile before whispering, “what are we going to do about the mind swabber?”

  A lump formed in my throat and I declared with indignation, “I’m going to see if Luka and Frankie have figured out how to make a cell and then she’s going in it.”

  She bit her lip and intertwined her fingers nervously. “Shouldn’t that be something we vote on or something?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded, “it should. So we can put her in the cell where she can’t mess with anyone’s minds, then deal with Replyx, and then vote on it.”