Roaming through life, unchanging, uninspired, the days passed with no more weight than the other. It was true that people were not the same from one moment to the next. Each new experience merged with their self, changing them in ways even the most introspective could not fathom. But there needed to be new experiences to process. The only way to tell the self was static was to not remember yesterday.

She sat in contemplation. The water pooled up to her knees, its surface allowed to tighten with tension from her stillness. The walls echoed with memory. Once she let go of herself, she had begun to hear them. Memories of the past, memories that were just beginning to happen. She did not try to assert control; one did not learn that way. In the echoes she saw parts of herself fuse and fly through the night sky before taking a dive into a nest of questionable people. They were armed with machine guns and malicious intent. She took them on for no other reason than pleasure. Then she returned home and salvaged a handful of hours of sleep.

It all made sense.

She almost let anger sway her concentration. The moment her focus slipped her own heartbeat would overwhelm the echoes. She needed to see and understand without feeling. And the past would return to her.

Lyssa was born to Jack Unas and Mary Hedon in auspicious fall of 2013. She remembered their faces peering down on her. They were young, happy, and different than how she saw them in her later memories. People changed. Should she blame circumstance or their person for who they became? Her father made a bad investment. Her mother took to addictions. She had done so because Jack had turned cold, neglectful, but that was because he had felt like a failure for what he had spent. That was the nuance of investing. To a beginner, it was a gamble. To an expert, it was a calculation. A seasoned veteran, however, knew it was a gamble all along. No finance mainframe or dog of Wall Street could have predicted the coming of the hurricane. Was she supposed to be angry at the weather? Or her foremost role model for risking their lives on chance?

She wanted to be angry. The impetus was surely there. She had repressed it for so long. It wasn’t until she found herself stuck in a building with a pyrokinetic that some part her floodgate snapped. But that was only a month ago. She remembered the meteors and she remembered the fire. The days in between she had spent frozen, as if waiting for the next disaster to finally stir something. Realizing that was all it took for the thaw to begin, painfully, one extremity at a time.

--

The Magpie reduced its speed and had taken up a circling formation, giving Lyssa about a mile of berth. She directed a ring of her energy in front of her, folding a funnel of space before her eyes. She read the side of its enlarged hull, taking note of the M.A.G.E blue logo.

“What are they doing?” She asked out loud.

“I can’t penetrate the hull of that thing,” Bil reported. “I’m not sure if it’s gift hybrid technology or another telepath, although I can’t feel the presence of one.”

“Whatever happens, I doubt our Primum will get to go to school as normal afterward.”

“Just as well. It’s not like she’s putting much effort into it. She’s just moving forward, in no particular direction, with no true ambition.”

“I know,” Lyssa said with a tone of disappointment. She switched to more practical topics. “How much does M.A.G.E know?”

“That fool let their Director into our head. He was too strong, too experienced for me. He knows almost everything about us.”

“Almost?”

“Our mind is… layered to say the least. I managed to hide some things, specifically where this gift came from. The Director thinks it simply awoke when that car struck us. I replaced some of our memories with the dreams we had.”

“No one knows what grandfather accomplished?”

“No.”

Lyssa withheld the smile that almost came to her lips. It could be interpreted as sad. The true grave of science was not discredit, but to never have been. The last few years of grandfather’s career had been his most fruitful. Forbidden fruit that no one can ever taste. Biophysicists have spent decades attempting what he had perfected. Her body was a science better left forgotten, though to fade away was not what he would have wanted for her.

Now she was being encircled like carrion below a vulture. Like vinegar to a fly. If she was naïve, she would hope that M.A.G.E would let her continue being a student. The reality was they had never simply let her be anything. They must have had a clue ever since the entrance practicum as to what she could do. After witnessing her fight, and seeing her manifest so many gifts, there was no way they did not know how valuable she was. All Verruck did in her morbid curiosity was shatter that illusion prematurely. And now the cat was out of the bag.

“Trouble.”

Bil interrupted her thinking. Two presences were closing in, on route to rendezvous with the Magpie. Lyssa pulled Bil close and melded their personalities together. She could not read the newcomers. It must be psychic protection gear. Very high grade if it could keep her out. Though she could get a general sense of their mood. They did not seem keen on fighting.

One had branched away to join the Magpie’s circling. The other was slowing down on approach. They were close enough to see. Lyssa recognized the uniform. The hero stopped within earshot, but maintained his distance. He was tall, built thin, and had a decent enough face—the lower, visible half, at least—behind a goggled cowl.

“Heyo, nascent hero,” he said with bombast typical to the job.

“You’re Ace Pilot,” Lyssa said. The hero had visited the campus once or twice since the beginning of the year, often immediately swarmed by young women. Lyssa never saw the appeal.

“That’s what it says on my chest,” he said.

“Don’t recognize you without your phone out.”

“I’ve been there,” he said, chuckling. “You feel backed into a corner. You’ve done something wrong, and you know punishment is coming. Here’s what they told me. They want to know what happened.”

“Really?” Lyssa said sardonically.

“Yes!”

“One of their professors… forced one of my abilities out. Verruck. I didn’t appreciate it very much.”

“A gift you kept hidden. Hiding gifts would usually lead to suspension, and then expulsion if it happened again. But they’re telling me you’re a great student. Good grades-”

“I’m getting 70s.”

“-great results on the practical stuff. If you could just land we could talk about it…”

“I’m fine up here.”

“Why do you feel so threatened by us?” Ace Pilot asked. It sounded genuine.

Lyssa raised a brow.

“Do you really not know? Have you not seen me on TV?”

“Personally, I don’t find you all that impressive. Jack of all trades, master of none and all that.”

“But the implications of what I can do.”

“Lyssa—if I could call you that—you need to get over yourself. I mean that in the best way possible. What do you think M.A.G.E does other than employ talent to protect the people?”

“I don’t know.” That was the truth. No one knew what any of the hero institutions did other than sell media and maintain the peace. Any third rate telepath could feel the squirming mass of thoughts at the heart of the city. Ill intentions were as plentiful as innocuous ones. Heroes were necessary.

“We have no other intention but to forge new and better protectors. I am told your abilities have extraordinary potential, but why would that mean we want to control you? No A-lister would be where they are if they did not have complete autonomy. Do you think we corral Giantsbane? Or Victory?”

“I think you can’t,” Lyssa said.

“Well, I’m just a friendly face they bring in to talk to gifted who awaken in a bad way. It happens more often than you think. Some kids accidentally- well, it doesn’t matter. Anyways, someone would like to speak to you.”

“The Director?”

“No. Don’t worry, he’s a much nicer guy than Mr. Whitworth. You’ll like him. He’s waiting onboard the Magpie.” Ace Pilot turned and saluted. “I hope I see you flying alongside me one day, kid. And, do try to loosen up.”

And then he was off in a shockwave of air, accelerating to speeds Lyssa could only hope to reach. Lyssa looked towards the sleek, black jet in the distance, waiting for her patiently.