Let me work. Stop interfering.

“I’m not!” Lyssa said. She stood on the pedestal on the highest staircase of the antechamber, overlooking the view beyond the borders of the mansion. She was her own spectator, watching someone fight with her body in the first person. There was no feeling of disorientation quite like it.

“I’m just confused,” Lyssa said. “When did you- I learn to do this?”

When does a bird learn to fly?

“When the mother throws it off the nest.”

You know when I get a chance to talk to myself like this, it’s very enlightening.

“Watch out!”

The mech’s metal fist closed in. Mercurial activated her gift, pulling away at speeds that should shatter the sonic barrier. But the only sound it made was a quiet thump, an atmospheric heartbeat.

Behind her pedestal, a lecture hall assembled brick by brick. Blackboards slid into a trapezoidal formation. Chalk scratched itself on the board, making anatomical diagrams with no one to draw them. Professor Verruck’s voice echoed from recent long term memory.

“A simple gift, superspeed. Most speedsters are subsonic and rely on extreme musculature to run that quickly. Some generate dynamic fields hovering above their skin, allowing them to slip through the air. Some produce vector fields in their very cells, exceeding the physical limits of how fast a bipedal animal can run the old fashioned way.”

“Is that what this is?” Lyssa asked.

Glad I paid attention in class. If you don’t know, I wouldn’t. All I know is I move fast in short distance bursts. And quietly. I call it Twitchwalk.

“I named it after what those kids called me?”

The view had changed. Her body had been left inside a set piece for an abandoned building. Mercurial descended from reality, landing next to Lyssa.

“I’m tired,” she said. “Your turn. Try not to use this gift too much. The stress isn’t good for our heart.”

Lyssa’s eyes opened. Rays of artificial light shone through the empty windows, casting long shadows from the concrete pillars in the building. Motes of dust scattered like fireflies in the paths of the beams. All was silent; she was alone in a brief island of tranquility. Her chest hurt. She had to take a minute just to sit against the wall, breathing in and out, letting the passing seconds nurse what felt like an immense heartburn, except across every muscle in her body.

Virtually all speedsters were characterized by high stamina. Whatever this gift was, it called on a different resource. Or maybe it was her own poor physical shape.

Another earthquake trembled the foundations of her shelter. She crawled to a window and dared to look out the edge. Tobias’s mech looked ravaged. Its joints shot sparks. It stumbled. But most of its weaponry were clearly intact. An aperture had opened in its chest, revealing what resembled a massive speaker. The air warbled from its every beat, followed by a delayed vibration fanning outward from the point of impact.

A bright flash made her avert her eyes. Several gifts at once combined. Ice, fire, explosions, and thrown matter slammed into the mech. Tobias retaliated, sweeping the area with the sonar cannon. Tiny humanoid figures could be seen being tossed into the air from the blast.

“I can’t,” Lyssa muttered. “I’ve done everything I could.”

Whatever that was. It felt like a cheat, letting another part of herself do what she couldn’t. She knew it was unsustainable. Being fast for a couple minutes would not help her, let alone the real victims she would be called on to protect. She watched the students continue the fight without her. The mech lumbered, its movements sluggish, its armor bruised. More attacks were landing. Layers of armor were being sheared off.

Then the final blow came, a white hot beam of fire that made it past the weakened armor in the chest. Jets of flame entered and spat out of the machine’s every weakness. The machine’s steps stuttered like a pause in play, then it finally fell onto its back. A horn blared. The exercise had concluded.

Medical teams flooded the urban biome. Lyssa waited in place for her turn. A group of paramedics in white hazard suits eventually shuffled out of the stairs onto the floor where she was at. When they found her, they put away the tracker and began asking her questions. Are you alright? Was anything broken? And so on. She answered them, told them she was fine, but they forced her onto a stretcher anyway. She was carried out of the gym, through minutes of fluorescent tubes passing overhead and into one of M.A.G.E’s medical facilities underground.

“I really am fine,” she muttered. Just tired. Her whole body felt numb.

They put her into a tubular room, alone. Mechanical ribs rotated around her, shining beams of light along her body.

“What is this?” She had never seen such equipment before in a hospital. “What are you doing?”

“Calm down, young lady,” a voice spoke directly in her head.

“Director?”

“These scanners are perfectly safe. They’re beyond cutting edge. You’ve nothing to worry about.”

There’s no one else here.

“Why am I the only one sent here?”

There was a pause. Lyssa could tell he was thinking. She felt his thoughts move. It was the darkness within her, the self with the telepathic gift, granting her a tiny amount of insight. That was all it dared to do. A psychic saw the world differently, more truthfully. The Director looked like a normal man in reality. In the psychic realm he eclipsed her, his mindself was a giant withdrawn out of respect for the privacy of those around him. If he bothered to look in her head, he might discover Bildungsroman lurking. Lyssa realized the Director may be the only reason that self stayed so quiet.

“Gifted like you are rare,” Whitworth answered. “Ones with multiple, distinct abilities I mean. Some of history’s greatest heroes were multi-gifted. But they were also complicated.”

“I don’t consent to this.”

“Unfortunately, I didn’t ask. Multi-gifted are dangerous. Ever hear of Sickle Rust? He was a man with six gifts we found in Siberia in the eighties. We found him in a crater lined with diamond spikes, with humanoid bunches of brambles and vines impaled on them. His house was the only thing intact. The walls had been studded with human eyes with living vascularity embedded in the stone.”

“I don’t have six gifts. And I’m not crazy.”

“No. And you seem all there. We still have to make a copy of your genetic structure.”

“Why?”

“We do this to all graduates. Usually on acceptance for multi-gifted. You seem to have lied in your application to this school.”

“I didn’t know! I-”

“We will discuss this later. You are in no danger. You got this week’s credit, by the way. Tobias was very impressed.”

And then he stepped away. Lyssa felt his psychic presence leave the observation room. The procedure was finished within minutes. They let her change out of her FASE suit and back into normal clothes, then let her out of the facility with a lollipop.

--

“We’ve uncovered a group in Akmola, Kazakhstan. Might be related to that psyfire manipulator Victory eviscerated in Kunduz.”

“Good work, Sokolov.”

“How long before the CIA reaches a decision? I don’t know how long we can stay undercover here.”

“I don’t have the power to rush them. Just lay low.”

“Sure thing, boss.” There was a sound of resignation, followed by a Russian expletive. Then the line was cut.

A nurse entered Whitworth’s office the moment the call was finished.

“Sir?” She handed him a tablet.

Whitworth looked through the results with a deepened gaze.

“Hm… yes. What am I looking at?”

“We don’t know,” she said. “The subject’s DNA is folded in ways we can’t unravel. We’re not even sure if DNA is the right term for it.”

“What about the gifts? Can they be quantified?”

“We need more time. Usually gifts are powered by quinary proteins. The subject has senary ones as well. We don’t even know what they’re for. Doctor Terelich said they were theoretical until now.”

“Alright. Keep at it then.” Whitworth began to turn away, but the nurse had not left.

“We can’t make meaningful progress on this,” she said.

“What are you lacking?”

“Computational resources. The M.A.G.E mainframe isn’t powerful enough to brute force the subject’s cellular functions. Maybe if we called in Rainman…”

“She’s retired,” Whitworth said, “and doesn’t want to be found. Let it go for now. I’ve arranged something that may be able to help in the future.”

The nurse left him alone. He had another meeting in five. Whitworth massaged his temple, more reflex than a valid way to dispel his fatigue. There were too many things to do, and too few trustworthy assistants.