“Do you think he’s in the gym” Ashley questioned.

She chewed her bottom lift as she checked her watch for what must’ve been for the umpteenth time. We were resting in the commons since class just finished up. It has been hours and he was gone longer than even the first day here.

“You checked the gym twenty minutes ago” I sighed as I changed the channel on the television once again. But apparently, the torture continued even after our time in the control rooms since the only thing on was baseball and weird cartoon about a monkey tramping around town with a man in a spectacular suit. You had to either watch the soul-sucking, mind-numbing, idiotic channel that is irrelevant to anyone my age or a cartoon.

“Well he has to be somewhere, you can’t just go on and disappear from a high-security lab in the middle of a desert.” She responded as she twirled her hair with her finger.

“Well it’s quite possible he could’ve manifested the ability to teleport out to a different location and they don’t know where he is. He could’ve also suffered a fatal injury an-” Jayden jumped in from my left with an array of information that was not helping the situation at hand.

“Oh…” She mumbled visibly upset.

I may not have the most information on how the inner mechanisms of the female brain works but even I knew that was the wrong thing to say in this situation. So naturally, like the critical thinker I am, I came up with a solution.

“Or maybe he just took a nap… In a place other than his bed. And hasn’t woken up yet… For five hours.” I said with a voice that I felt was reassured as I shot Jayden a look who just shrugged absentmindedly.

“Why don’t we go over to the sparring room and check out the rest of the guys who have powers” I offered hopefully.

After a few silent seconds where only the screeching of the monkey from the television could be heard until finally, she spoke up.

“Okay, I wanted to see the others anyways”

Jayden and I followed her out leaving the commons room. During today’s eventful torturing they added some interesting tools to injure me with. Along with the now standard thrown elbows and fists, they added what I think was a baton with a wicked hook on its end. And it hurt. A lot. When we find Chase again I’m going to have to ask him how his sessions are going.

I was brought back from my stupor when we arrived at the elevators.

“From that point onwards I was the one to talk to if you had a beaver problem,” Jayden said.

I had this feeling like I was missing some key points of this conversation.

“You do seem to have a damn problem with beavers,” Ashley said with a chuckle.

“They do inspire a ferocity in me that has traumatized many a child,” Said Jayden solemnly not aware of Ashley’s ironic word choice.

We entered the elevator and reached the sparring rooms. The sparring rooms were meant for some friendly jousting between either individual with abilities or regular people. But as we walked in what we saw told a slightly different story.

In reality, the sparring rooms were split into two large facilities, one for the ones who knew what they were doing and didn’t need assistance and the rest. The rest was more or less the rest of the people with powers and the ones who wanted to see whats what.

We walked over to the rest of us who were crowding around a large man who I recognized was the same as I saw Ashley’s abilities for the first time. Thankfully it seemed like whatever was happening it was starting soon.

“Sparring is a highly effective tool to begin to understand your ability, while some of you may think it is an unnecessary risk to fight other students with your powers but I assure you this hasn’t resulted in too many deaths in the past,” The man said.

Slight chuckles rang through the group that died quickly as we couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not.

“Those of you that are Supers please step forward” he commanded.

I glanced at Ashley who shrugged and walked forward with several others and lined up to his left facing us. In total there were three boys and four girls, I noticed Arnold and thankfully Marc who didn’t even glance in my direction. If that was intentional or if he even knew who I was I didn’t know.

“Those of you who don’t want to fight you can step back into the group and watch if you want.” He said again now looking at the seven lined up next to him.

The guys stood stoically in their stance while two of the girls hesitated. They glanced at each other before quickly stepping away from the rest. If the man was disappointed in any way he didn’t show it as he went forward.

“We split the girls and boys into different training regimes, the boys will train amongst themselves and the girls will train under a different regime together as well until we feel you are adequate enough at fighting so you don’t accidentally fatally injure your partners on accident. Anyone is free to watch of course but please be mindful of yourself and respect their training. Anyone who wants regular training can, of course, do so but will be separate if and when you get your own powers.” He said with a huff.

I was never an athletic person but it’s never too late to start. Even if all I got out of this Program was traumatic experiences It would benefit me in the future if I ever got into a fight and needed to defend myself from whatever evils the world will through at my very cushiony body.

Everyone than dispersed around me either to talk with their friends, leave, or talk to the large man. I walked over to Ashley and the girl next to her who was talking animatedly. As I approached It took a few seconds for me to be noticed and introduced to the girl. She was shorter than me with dirty blond hair and freckles that frolicked over her cheeks and nose.

“This is Ana, Ana meet Julian,” Ashley said introducing me to her.

I took out my hand and she shook it vigorously.

“So what can you do?” I asked Ana.

Normally you wouldn’t really ask someone if they were a Super but in this case, everyone here kinda wanted to talk about it since they achieved what for most of us was a dream come true.

“You sure it’s okay,” She asked me widening her eyes at me like a puppy begging for food would. To be Frank, I thought it was kinda cute, but I couldn’t let my face betray this so I responded with a simple “Sure”.

“Okay” She scrunched up her face, her freckles crinkled together for a few seconds before a dazzling array of colors shown from her hands into the air between us. Imagine the brightest rainbow you’ve ever seen. Now picture it all around you, each color burning with intensity. A shining red, the dark smooth purple, the overly happy and optimistic yellow.

“You can make… rainbows?” I asked her while staring in awe at the show like everyone else in the room.

“Well, yeah! Right now they don’t do much except being really pretty. But I’ve been learning about weaving the colors together or making one shine brighter than the rest!” She giggled as she twirled her fingers in the air, the colors bending to her will.

The rainbow twisted together, each and every color of each and every shade colliding into a serpent of brilliance slithering in and about of everyone into finally dimming out of existence. I blinked a couple of times the shadow of brightness still burned into my pupils. Looking around the world seemed darker, not as full of life as before the show.

“Hue are pretty cool,” Ashley said all the while keeping in giggles from escaping.

Ana blushed, embarrassed by the attention and maybe partly because of what an excellent color pun was made. All thoughts of Chase has been packed into the corners of my mind as we headed over to the man (whose name was still undetermined) to talk about our training.