After a good dose of silence where Mae and I absorb everything we just heard, Grandpa claps his hands.
“Enough of the somber mood,” he says, putting a smile on to brighten the atmosphere. “I didn’t mean to tell you two this story to depress you. I told it to impart on you the importance of what you have around your necks. You have a power that can be used for good or evil. I trust that you will both use it for good, and not against each other. For any reason.” He looks at Mae, and I wonder how much he can read in her attitude towards me since arriving in the field.
Mae blushes and gets to her feet.
“You don’t have to worry about that,” she says. “We’re partners, and more importantly we’re friends.” Her eyes soften towards me and I suddenly feel self conscious with all the attention.
I get to my feet and agree.
“Mae’s right. We’re a team, and it’s going to stay that way. After all, what good is Fallout without his trusty sidekick?”
Mae scoffs and gives me a shove. I spin around, laughing.
“I think it’s time you teach us some Aberrant techniques,” says Mae, bringing her hands up in a pulse-blast pose. “Because I need to kick some Fallout butt for all the sidekick jokes.”
“Alright,” Grandpa laughs, flipping his journal open. “Let’s get started.”
15
The First Vision
Mae hurries across the field.
I laugh as I try to keep up. She’s a little eager, and I don’t want to let her down by beating her to a pulp. To be realistic, she’s the inexperienced one. I can fly loops around her, but she still has a long way to go just to keep herself steady in the air.
She stops, turns around to face me, and stretches her arms down towards the ground.
“So,” she says, a smile on her face. “Teach me how to fly. I just want to know how to fly.”
Grandpa chuckles.
“Take it easy,” he says as he scratches the back of his neck. “There’s no need to rush. You need to get a good grasp on the basics first.”
Mae just shakes her head.
“I already know all that,” she says. “Shaun taught me that on the beach. He must’ve told you about it?”
Grandpa holds out his hands in a shrug.
“I suppose he did,” he says. “Show me what you know anyway.”
I let Mae take the lead. She shows Grandpa everything that we did on the beach, and even manages to lift herself off the ground again - losing her balance and falling back down to the grass. Grandpa and I rush towards her to catch her fall.
“Woah, woah! Careful!” says Grandpa.
Mae, true to her dedication, just shakes the dirt off her knees and continues on.
“I wasn’t that high up. I’m fine. I just need to learn how to balance myself.”
I shake my head with a laugh.
“So passionate,” I say, and this makes Mae grin.
“Of course I’m passionate!” she shoots back at me. “How many people can fly in the world? Without an air plane?”
I shrug.
“Not very many,” I reply. “You’re doing well, but you need to work on your hand motions.”
I step up and show her how it’s done, hovering two feet off the ground.
Mae, determined as ever, manages to copy me nearly to the letter, except she only hovers about three inches off the ground and even then, only for about thirty seconds. Her landings are getting better, though, and she gracefully touches down this time to catch her breath.
Grandpa claps.
“Excellent work!” he says. “You’ll be flying around like Shaun in no time. I think with a solid week of practice you will be well on your way.”
Mae grunts. There’s sweat rolling down her forehead and neck both from the heat and the exertion that using Aberrant powers puts on all your muscles.
“How can I practice during the week?” she asks with irony in her voice. “There’s barely any place in Boston that you can go without running into someone. We are trying to keep our real identities a secret, right?”
Grandpa brings a hand to his lips.
“Well, even with a superhero costume you will stick out like a sore thumb in the city, that’s for sure. I’d think you can practice in your room if the ceilings are high enough. Maybe even a basement, as long as you can lock the door behind you. I doubt that your powers are so strong right now that you would do any damage to the floor.”
“What about pulse blasts?” I ask, taking charge now.
Grandpa lets out a belly laugh.
“I’d say pulse blasts could do a great deal of damage if you don’t know what you’re doing!” he says.
“No!” I shake my head, returning the laugh. “I mean, can we work on those now? I just barely squeaked by when The Drone attacked. If I happen to come up against another villain, I need to be able to fight back. Running away won’t always be an option.”
“You’re right,” says Grandpa and he flips through his journal, coming to another page of notes and diagrams. “I don’t have first-hand experience with pulse blasts, but here is everything your father told me about them. It’s all about the tension in your hand muscles. The stronger the tension, the greater power the blast has. Here…”
He shows me a bunch of sketches of different hand motions. I learn to couple these motions - fingers spread wide, knuckles tensed, while thrusting my wrist out in front of me - with intensely focused internal energy. I don’t really know how it all works, but somehow my mind is connected to these powers. The Vestige gets hot against my chest and then I feel the energy running like a ball of electricity down my arm. Then the energy forms into a ball against my palm with my fingers caging it in. Once it’s big enough, I launch the ball of energy across the field, singeing the tops of the grass blades, and gasp when the energy erupts against a gnarled tree. Leaves and bits of wood go splintering all over the place and I turn to see Mae’s eyes as wide as silver dollars and Grandpa clapping.
“Excellent!” he says. “You’re really getting the hang of it.”
Mae tries to do pulse blasts, but it doesn’t seem like they are one of her powers. Instead she practices hovering for a while until I get tired of shooting off pulse blasts and decide to compete with her for who can hover the longest without wavering.
Of course, I win every time. It’s a cheap trick, but Mae is nowhere near as skilled at flying as I am. It all comes down to the amount of time I’ve had to develop my skills.
She lands hard on the ground, sweat pouring off her forehead and neck. Her eyes dart to me with a look of frustration and she wipes her hair from her face.
“This isn’t exactly fair,” says Mae.
“What do you mean?” asks Grandpa, crossing his arms with an amused smile.
Mae sets her hands on her waist.
“It’s obvious that Shaun has the unfair advantage as long as he’s holding the main body of the Vestige. His powers will always be stronger as long as he has that.”
“Hey - don’t use that as an excuse!” I say. “You’re discounting all the practice that I’ve done to hone my skills.”
“Please,” Mae laughs. “You could barely fly a month ago. Or do you not remember nearly crash landing in that park in Boston?”
I cringe a little, giving Grandpa a sheepish look. I never told him that story, and I didn’t intend to. Still, she’s undermining how I’ve developed my flying skills and I cross my arms.
“We all start somewhere,” I mutter. “You just need to keep working your way up.”
“No way,” says Mae, thrusting her hand out at me. “Hand over the Vestige and we’ll see who’s the better flier.”
I wrap my hand around the Vestige protectively and back away, not able to suppress my grin.
“Oh no,” I say. “You’re not taking this from me. I’ve already had it taken once, and I don’t plan on having that happen again. You’ve got the shard, and that just has to be good enough. Sidekick.”
Mae scoffs and
lunges at me as if we’re playing some sort of superpowered flag football. I am barely able to keep my balance as she attacks with her hands, swiping at the medallion with full force.
“Come on!” she laughs. “Just for a few minutes. I promise I won’t blast you too much if I happen to develop pulse abilities.”
“I already said no!” I fight back. “The Vestige stays with me!”
Grandpa is also sharing our amusement, but he seems to be a little more leery of accidents, so he calls over to us.
“Alright, you two. Break it up. We don’t want anyone getting hurt.”
“Tell that to Mae!” I say as her hand comes up to my face, pushing my head back to reveal the chain that holds the Vestige to my neck. “She’s the one who started this!”
“It wouldn’t be so bad if you’d just let - me - try - it!” Mae continues to swipe at me, and I find my grasp on the medallion slipping. She wraps her fingers around my fist, slowly prying open one finger at a time. I’m such a weakling against her nails that there’s no contest as she yanks the Vestige from my neck and jumps away with a laugh.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Grandpa chuckling. At least he’s amused, I think. His heroic grandson is beaten by an Aberrant-in-training.
I’m about to tell Mae that she needs to give me back the Vestige when her laughter is cut short. Instead of playfulness, a sharp gasp escapes her lips and her jaw drops. I go to walk towards her, worried that maybe she cut herself on the sharp edge of the medallion, when Mae squeezes her eyes shut as if in pain and then throws her head back.
Grandpa and I step back, watching.
I glance at him as if to say, “What’s going on?” But, he just shakes his head and we watch the events.
A circle of wind swirls around Mae’s feet, like she’s in the middle of a mini cyclone. At once she lifts off the ground, her toes just barely millimeters from the grass, and her head straightens up. It looks like she’s going to say something, but no words come out. Instead her eyes open and I am blinded by flashes of light that replace her normal eyes. I crouch to the ground, afraid that Mae might have some sort of rogue laser vision. Being chopped to bits was not on my agenda for today!
I close my hands over my head and wait for the pain. Yet, no pain comes. There are no lasers when I look up. Mae’s eyes are only glowing faintly now, pure white.
Then, with a small clicking sound, the light is extinguished and Mae collapses back to the ground with the rustling of grass and scattering of dirt.
I stand back up and rush over to her crumpled body. Her eyes are closed and she looks as if she’s passed out.
“Mae!” I cry, crouching beside her. I nudge her with both hands, grabbing onto her shoulder, which is incredibly warm. “Mae, are you alright? Can you hear me?”
Grandpa joins me, lowering himself slowly beside Mae’s other side.
Mae is still passed out, but as I lean down to put my ear by her mouth I can hear her breathing. I straighten back up and tap her on the side of the cheek.
“Mae, wake up!”
A few more taps and finally Mae’s eyes slide halfway open and she lets out a groan. She sounds like she just ran a marathon and then took a short nap.
“Are you alright, sweetheart?” asks Grandpa and he helps Mae to sit up, keeping a hand on her back. She’s still groggy and she rubs the back of her head.
“What just happened?” she asks.
“You look like you were just possessed,” I say. “One minute you were laughing, the next you were floating into the air and your eyes glowed. Do you think that was something like Storm?” I glance at Grandpa.
He shrugs.
“I think the one who has that answer is Mae,” he says. “Do you remember anything after you grabbed the Vestige?”
Mae squints her eyes and finishes rubbing her head, then places her hands in her lap, opening them to reveal the Vestige. She was clutching it so tightly that a small star-shaped imprint is pressed into her flesh.
She hands me the Vestige and I string it back around my neck.
“I remember the laughing,” she says. “Then...I’m not really sure. I feel like I was teleported. It was a vision…”
I sit back, covering myself.
“It wasn’t X-ray vision, was it?” I ask, and this gets a smile out of Mae, though it still looks as if she’s suffering from a headache.
“Keep your clothes on,” she says. “It wasn’t anything like that.” She swallows and takes a breath before continuing on. “I don’t know what it was, but when I touched the Vestige, suddenly it was as if I was transported to some sort of dark cave. It was hazy, but there was a shaft of light coming from up above.”
I press my lips together. A shaft of light? That would make sense since Mae tilted her head back. It was almost as if she were looking at things through a virtual reality headset.
“A cave…” I mutter.
“That’s right,” Mae replies. “That’s strange, isn’t it?”
I look to Grandpa, but can’t read his expression.
“Does any of this make sense to you, Grandpa?” I ask. “Is there anything in your journal about possession?”
He presses his tongue to the inside of his lip as he thinks for a moment, then answers, “I’m not one hundred percent sure. As far as the power goes, you must be developing some sort of supervision - the kind that gives you flashes of images whenever you touch something. It could be related to specific objects, or even memories. There’s no real way to tell for sure until you experience it a bit more.”
Mae tries to get up, but she’s still recovering from her fall and all the energy that was drained from her during the vision. She reaches out to me.
“Give me something else,” she says. “Anything.”
I reach into my pocket for my cell phone and hand it to her. Mae grasps it firmly and closes her eyes. We all wait with baited breath, but after thirty seconds Mae slouches her shoulders and gives the phone back to me.
“Nothing happened,” she says.
“That’s normal,” Grandpa explains. “Don’t you remember Shaun needing to try levitating more than a dozen times over the course of a few days in order to grasp the ability?”
“Yes, but he was also able to conjure the ability, even if it was only a very weak form of it. What if I can’t conjure this supervision ability on command?”
“You might not be able to,” Grandpa says, a look of compassion on his face. “It could be that the ability needs time to appear on its own - not unlike other pre-pubescent changes. Think of a deepening voice during puberty.”
“Ew, Grandpa!” I say. “Do you have to keep relating becoming an Aberrant with going through puberty?”
Grandpa laughs.
“What? You don’t want to go back and relive those years?”
“Only if Dad is there,” I say with a slight chuckle. “You can keep the changing voices and hair sprouting everywhere for yourself.”
“And the knicks from the razor,” Mae teases.
I get to my feet and help her up. The three of us assemble back near the large boulder and Grandpa decides that we’ve had enough practice for the day. There will be plenty of other weekends to meet up again, and it’s high time for lunch. Just the mention of food makes my stomach growl. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until now.
We head back to the house where Grandma has a delicious lunch of chicken salad sandwiches ready for us.
16
Responsibilities
Lunch is a pretty informal affair. There is lots of talk between the four of us. Where Grandpa is interested mostly with the Aberrant side of things, Grandma is more concerned with our daily lives. She asks us about how our home lives are, mainly if our parents are doing alright. My answer is pretty brief since Mom’s attitude changes daily depending on her mood, but Mae tells long stories about how her father got promoted at the packaging company he works at, and Grandma comments that her mother must be so proud.
Of course, with the subje
ct of work, all eyes turn to me as Grandpa starts asking about my own job prospects. It’s no mystery that I was unsatisfied with my retail job. I was only doing it to keep Mom from calling me lazy - and I wanted extra spending money since all my inheritance from Dad is basically locked up in a savings account that I can’t touch until I’m eighteen.
“I forgot to ask you,” asks Grandpa. “Did your interview with the publisher go alright?”
I set down what remains of my sandwich and wipe my mouth on a napkin before replying.
“It went well, actually,” I say, keeping my grandparents in suspense. “They offered me a three-book deal.”
The sounds of excitement were worth keeping the secret until now.
“That’s wonderful!” says Grandma with a huge smile. She leans over and kisses me on the cheek. “Your father would be so happy to hear that.”
Grandpa pats me on the shoulder, smiling as well. “I knew they couldn’t say no to you.”
Across the table, Mae gives me a knowing smirk. I can tell she’s pleased, mainly because of the credit card that I’m allowed to use for research trips.
“Let’s not get too excited,” I clarify. “I haven’t signed the official paperwork yet - but I did sign a deal for my proposal. Mr. Crichton wants a full beat-by-beat breakdown of the first book with accompanying sketches and concept art.”
“Does that mean you’re doing the drawings as well?” asks Grandpa.
I set my hands down on the table, looking away self-consciously.
“No,” I reply. “I was assigned an artist.”
Grandpa sits back. “Well, that’s good, isn’t it? That means less stress for you since you can focus on the writing.”
“True,” I say. “But, that still leaves me with a babysitter. It’s obvious they didn’t want me to be completely on my own. I’m supposed to collaborate with this guy on everything. He seems alright.”
“What’s his name?” asks Grandpa. “Anyone I’d recognize?”
“Austin Spencer.”
Grandpa shrugs. “It’s not ringing any bells. But, you’ve seen his work, right? Do you approve?”
The Aberrant Series (Book 2): Super Vision Page 8