The Hidden Gift

by Ian Somers

  Weakened by the sudden surge, I staggered to the window and sat on the wide sill. I did not recognise the city I was gazing out at. I looked down on busy streets either side of a wide river that had two bridges spanning it. One was old fashioned, made of stone, and the other, which was a half mile downstream, was modern and metal and abstract. There were tall glass towers in the distance and ghosts of mountains beyond. I had no idea where I was, but it mattered not. Golding’s people would take me wherever I wanted to go once I was well enough to fight again.

  I watched the people on the streets hurrying along and I wished to be with them. I wanted nothing more than to be free of the clinic and to begin the pursuit of my enemies. I would start with Ross Bentley, the person who had murdered Ania. I had never met him but was very familiar with his reputation. Bentley was a thoughtless teenager who had been at the centre of the controversy surrounding The Million Dollar Gift contest. The Guild of the True had gone into turmoil when videos of Bentley using his power surfaced on the internet. He had come close to ruining all the decades of hiding the gifted from the outside world.

  Bentley was a troublesome teenager, but that did not mean he was to be underestimated. I had heard how Bentley fought Marianne Dolloway and survived – something no one else had ever managed. He was immensely powerful and would pose quite a challenge to me.

  ‘Not powerful enough,’ I said aloud.

  My voice … it was inhuman. It sounded like a fusion between an electro-larynx and a taser-gun. Some remnant of my old voice remained, but it was cloaked by the buzzing sound from my throat. Strangely, I found it amusing. Even more strange was my inability to control my amusement. My laughter was like a robotic hyena chattering.

  I pushed myself from the sill and slowly staggered to a mirror hanging on the other side of the room by the door. This was an even bigger shock than hearing my new voice.

  I had four deep scars on either side of my face. My eyebrows and eyelashes were no more. My face was deathly pale and darkness ringed my pale eyes. I opened my mouth to see two rows of shining metal teeth. I lifted my chin to get a better look at my neck, and saw it was wrapped in bandages and I pulled them down to see metal plates underneath. My appearance now matched my inner self: inhuman.

  I moved closer to the mirror to inspect my gleaming metal teeth when, over my shoulder, I spied a bundle of paper lying on the table. I had tried to levitate it to the bed before the operation, but failed – only managing to move an envelope that had been placed next to the stack of paper.

  I slowly made my way to the table. When I got closer I saw there was a new envelope lying on the tabletop and I took it in hand then returned to the bed and tore it open. There was a handwritten letter inside.

  The tone of the message was friendly, despite being from Paul Golding, a man I had seen as an enemy for so many years. It was intriguing to say the least.

  Hello Edward,

  I hope you don’t mind that I refer to you by your Christian name. I’ve watched you for so long that I feel as if I know you. I have spies all over the world and I have read so many reports on you over the years. When I learned that you had joined the Guild I had you earmarked as a potential threat to my organisation. Possibly even the greatest threat we would ever face. I am pleased that you have turned away from them, yet saddened by the manner in which they tried to capture you. The loss of a sister is a pain I know only too well. My sister, Sarah, was my only family and I had to endure a great loss when she was murdered. My thoughts are with you in this most difficult time. However, I am confident that you will overcome this tragedy. I am confident because I see in you a great determination.

  I am sure you will want revenge for what happened. You want to destroy the Guild for murdering Ania, and also for disfiguring you so cruelly. You also want revenge against those who murdered your parents and who set you on this dark path that has taken so long to escape. I speak of The Eastern Shadow.

  I have information on both groups that will help you find and kill their highest-ranking members. I offer this information to you freely. All I ask in return is that you follow my advice.

  I suggest you should attack the Guild first. They are your greatest and most dangerous enemy and must be annihilated before they realise that you are alive and that you have my support. After they are gone, you can then focus on the more elusive yet less resourceful members of The Eastern Shadow. When both groups are no more, you can continue to work alongside Golding Scientific if you wish. You will want for nothing for the rest of your days.

  I am prepared to offer you unlimited financial resources in your quest for vengeance. All departments of Golding Scientific are at your disposal and I hope you see that this will be a healthy relationship for you to engage in. We are your friends. I am your friend. I wish only to help you.

  I have helped you by rebuilding you physically but I am also prepared to aid you in improving the control you have over your gifts. On the table you will find some papers. It is part of the thesis written by Penelope Gordon in the 1980s. As you know, these writings are universally banned but I offer them to you as a gesture of goodwill. It will help you attain a power that you could have only dreamed about until now.

  You are about to become the most powerful man on earth, Edward. No one will ever hurt you again.

  Your friend,

  Paul Golding

  I had heard rumours of Penelope Gordon’s work, but I never believed I would ever actually read what was contained in this rare piece of writing. Cramer mentioned it a couple of times, when he was very drunk, and said that one of the techniques she invented for mageletons was astounding, but too hazardous to teach to others. One technique in particular was, in Cramer’s own words, ‘deadly enough to destroy entire nations in an instant. ‘

  I lifted my arm and the pages flew across the room into my hand. I looked upon the bold heading on the first page and grinned.

  Mageletonia - Part 3

  The Wave of Destruction

  by Penelope Gordon - 1983

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Forbidden Words

  The door swung open before I could read past the heading and I slowly turned my head to see Walters entering the room with a tall and very muscular woman by her side. Walters smiled pleasantly as she always did. Her companion was apprehensive. There was only loathing in her eyes. She stood at the end of the bed with her arms folded and I looked her up and down, noticing a handgun in a waist holster, which was unclipped.

  ‘Hello, Edward,’ Walters said. ‘I hope you’re feeling well today.’

  ‘I feel fantastic, doctor,’ I said with my electric voice. ‘You could say I feel like a new man.’

  ‘I bet,’ she replied. I could see in her eyes a mixture of surprise and horror at the power of my new voice. ‘This is Aubrey Pearson,’ she continued. ‘She’s the head of security.’

  ‘Good day, Ms Pearson.’ I smiled and pointed at her waist. ‘There is no need for that in future.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ she frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The gun. Do you think you can harm me with bullets?’

  ‘As long as I don’t aim for your neck, yes.’

  ‘Very good,’ I could not contain my amusement and laughed loudly. ‘I like your sense of humour.’

  ‘How are you feeling, Edward?’ Walters asked softly. ‘Are you experiencing any prolonged pain? Dizziness?’

  ‘Neither.’

  ‘Good. I can’t believe you managed to get out of bed so soon.’

  ‘I don’t quite feel one hundred percent yet, but then I am not quite one hundred percent, am I?’ I tapped the metal plates where my throat used to be. ‘You did well, doctor. You did what said you would. I like people who follow through with their promises.’

  ‘It was touch and go for a while.’

  ‘That does not matter. I am here. I breathe.’ I sucked in a deep breath and the room was filled with a buzzing sound. ‘I live!’

  ‘Indeed you do.’ Her eyes met the
bound paper on the bed and she stepped away, a shade of fear ran across her face as if she knew what was contained in it. ‘I see you’re catching up on your reading.’

  ‘I am indeed. This,’ I pointed at the papers, ‘was an unexpected, but most welcome surprise.’

  ‘A present from the corporation,’ Pearson interjected. ‘One that should not be forgotten.’

  I turned and stared at her. I had excused her remark about my neck, but would not allow her to interrupt me.

  ‘Wait outside,’ I said. ‘You are making me feel uncomfortable and I do not want the room destroyed with your innards.’

  ‘I’ll have you know I’m in charge of looking after you,’ Pearson replied sharply. ‘One word from me and this little experiment is over.’

  ‘I am surprised that someone in your position would be so naïve, Ms Pearson. You do realise that I am much more important to Golding Scientific than you will ever be. And you should also realise that I can crush your heart without lifting a finger.’

  ‘I can look after myself—’

  I reached out with my psychokinesis and gripped her heart. Pearson hunched over and clawed at her chest. She tried to reach for her gun, but I used my powers to press her arms against her ribs. I gradually bent her fingers backward, almost to breaking point. I then used mageletonia to make her saliva pool in the back of her mouth, preventing her from drawing air into her lungs.

  I flashed my metal teeth at her and said, ‘Are we getting the picture?’

  Pearson nodded frantically and I released her from the invisible grip. She wasted no time in leaving Walters and I alone in the room. The doctor was terrified by the power I had, that was obvious and natural, but she seemed drawn to me for some reason. Perhaps she was the type of person who liked to take in stray animals, but I wanted to believe that she was attracted to me on some level. I did not care much about anything, but I was still a man and felt the need to be wanted. She would not talk openly, though. Not while Pearson was nearby. I looked across the room at a jug of water on the table and suddenly its contents floated up into the air then began to spread out and form a watery cocoon around both of us, which muffled our voices so that no one could hear what we were to say.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she whispered as she sat next to me on the bed. ‘How are you really feeling?’

  ‘We both know there is something very unusual coursing through my veins, doctor. Beneath the sedative is a narcotic that makes me violent and strengthens the emotions I am feeling.’

  ‘I expected this. It’s one of the drugs they’ve given you.’

  ‘You have used it before?’

  ‘A couple of times. It’s still at the experimental stage, like every thing we do here. It’s called Hyper-furens. Those who were injected with it become very aggressive and erratic.’

  ‘It is not wise to make a gifted person so aggressive.’

  ‘I know that. I told them not to use it.’

  ‘But they dismissed your opinion.’

  ‘They did.’

  ‘They want to make me as violent as possible. That way I will do more damage to their competitors.’

  ‘They’re only using you, Edward.’

  ‘They think they are using me, but the opposite is the truth. It is they who are being used. I will ally myself with Golding only for as long as it suits me.’

  ‘Don’t underestimate him.’

  ‘I know full well what he is capable of.’

  ‘The sedatives will wear off within a couple of days. After that, the Hyper-furens will overpower you. Edward, you may not be yourself from that point onward. The person you are will be drowned in an uncontrollable rage.’

  ‘I have a lot of experience in controlling rage.’

  ‘This is not like anything you will have ever experienced. No one can suppress it.’

  ‘Do I have any alternative?’

  ‘I will try to get some tablets for you, to counter the effect of this rage. But you must not tell anyone that I gave them to you. It could get me killed.’

  ‘No harm will come to you while I live.’ I almost reached out to her but drew back my hand. One small part of who I once was had remained but now was not the time to become infatuated with a woman, especially one who worked for Paul Golding. ‘Why do you want to help me, doctor?’

  ‘You’re alone. Nobody should be alone. Everyone needs a friend.’

  ‘I have survived without help for a long time.’

  ‘Surviving isn’t living.’

  ‘The option of having a life was taken from me long ago. I am not the type of friend you want.’

  ‘At least let me help you,’ Walters pleaded. ‘I will smuggle some tablets to you. Please take them. Help me to help you.’

  ‘I am tired,’ I said. The conversation had gotten too personal for my liking. I was not used to people genuinely wanting to know me. ‘I would like to be alone now.’

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Just don’t push yourself too hard, Edward. Your enemies will wait. As will your friends. Try to get some rest.’

  I was beginning to feel fatigued and as the evening sun faded I lay back in bed and threw the cotton sheet over my body. My strength had faded fast, but I kept my eyes open long enough to read the papers I had been given.

  ‘Mageletons have a powerful gift and are therefore coveted and feared by all those who are aware of their existence. They are coveted because they are feared. Those who wish to be feared seek out mageletons.’

  Albert Galmard, founder of the Guild of the True.

  Little has changed since Galmard’s time. Mageletons are still amongst the most prized of all the gifted, and the fear they cause has not diminished. There has always been a belief that mageletons are instinctively violent and therefore cannot be trusted. This is why most people fear to interact with them. The belief is not entirely true. But not entirely without basis either.

  I started out by trying to vindicate the mageletons that have lived throughout the centuries but the results of my research may only compound the distrust of them.

  In the two previous sections of this paper I have outlined how this gift can be used, both in everyday life and in combat. In this section, I will explain how far this gift can go and the immense threat it may pose if in the wrong hands. I have discovered a technique that could make a mageleton a threat to all humanity. For many months I have contemplated burying this report because I am unsure that this information should ever be shared. It could result in all mageletons being hunted down and murdered because of the potential risk they pose. It could also provide a malevolent mageleton with the knowledge to reach their full potential which could prove extremely perilous. The Guild has pressed me in recent months to complete the study so that it can be filed with the full investigations on all fifteen of the true gifts. I have decided on completing this paper, but will insist that only one copy exists and that it should be destroyed if the Guild deems this material to be unsafe.

  Most mageletons have varying degrees of control over water. The strongest of our kind, those with the purest form of the gift, can manipulate any type of liquid. It can be impressive and has many practical uses, but this control is limited.

  Even those with the pure gift can only control a certain amount of fluid at any given time. Most can only manipulate fifty gallons or so, or the equivalent of a bath tub of water. The strongest can control enough water to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. This amount of liquid can be dangerous if under the influence of a skilled mageleton, but it can be countered relatively easily by psychokinetics and electropsychs. What I set out to find was a variation of the gift that allows a person to control larger bodies of water. The variation that has never been reliably recorded, but rumours of its existence have persisted over the years.

  I refer to the story of Tobias Deval. He lived in the fourteenth century and was said to have the ability to lift rivers out their beds then manipulate the water in any manner he wished. Most considered it to be nothing more than a yar
n, but there is no smoke without fire and I spent three years trying to find any evidence that Deval and his unique power actually existed. It was 1968 that I found a story that appeared to match the old tale; it was an account from a French Military commander in the fourteenth century. He claimed to have witnessed an extraordinary event while on a tour of duty as a young officer. He said that he met a man named Tobias, who could raise rivers and move them across the land as if they were ‘giant watery snakes’.

  It was not definitive proof, but deep down I knew this was a genuine account, which meant the power to manipulate large bodies of water was possible. I immediately set out to achieve this power, but failed miserably. Then in 1973 I met George Watson, a teenager who had mageletonia and who was sent by the Guild to learn from me. We trained together for many months and in 1974 he began to aid me in my quest to replicate Deval’s power.

  In September 1975 we created something that was truly ground-breaking. We invented what has now become known as the Dual Wave Effect.

  I would never have discovered this without George Watson. I only have one gift, and it takes two specific gifts to create a dual wave effect, thus controlling large bodies of water such as lakes, rivers and even oceans.

  You must have both mageletonia and psychokinesis to be able to do this. Mageletonia is required to control the mass of water and to fuse it into one single object, but psychokinesis is required to move this object. And even then, most psychokinetics could not move such a large object, and so the laws of gravity must also be employed. The ability to control a large amount of liquid requires you to create a wave effect. You must allow gravity to do the hard work, while using your gifts to influence the course of the water.

  We first tested this technique in a swimming pool. George used his gifts to take control of the water then employed his psychokinesis to shift it slightly. When he relinquished his control, gravity seized the water and the natural reaction was for it flow back whence it came and it swept down to the opposite end of the pool. When this happened, George took control of the water once more and gave it a little nudge which started a see-saw wave effect. Eventually the water came right out of the pool and into the air. At that point he managed to make it float as if it were a solid object.