--

I stared at the ground far below me for a moment longer, then turned to enter the building's top floor.

I was in the air, spinning with previously-mastered trajectory towards the rooftop door when my cell phone rang. I tucked my body, rotated forward, and met the ground with my feet to answer.

"Hey!" I said in my most cheery tone. "You've reached Midnight on this absolutely beautiful Saturday night. Can I help you?"

"Chris." James's voice.

"Yes, hi."

"Belinda wants to take you off the assignment."

"What?"

"She just thinks you're unsafe."

"I can literally jump from a sewer and onto a plane. I think I'm good."

"Sit this one out, Chris. You can help others."

"I'm helping others by letting someone evil run loose? I'm sick of these people, James. It's disgusting. Something or someone is going to stop them; it may as well be me."

--[This book (its updated version) can be saved for free on tinyurl.com/TheOverwoodsBook]--

--

The Overwoods

--I--

I wasn't planning to stay more than half an hour.

"Kaylee!" I had to get her attention- she had the configuration files, and I had homework.

Okay, maybe not homework.

A man and his golden retriever ran past as I made my decision. I spotted a rock the size of my shoe, made sure the dog and its owner were far enough away, and aimed at the window. There wasn't any glass to break.

"Well," I whispered. "You made me."

"Made you what?" The voice was in front of me, as well as behind me, to my left and right and center.

I put the rock down. "Made me waste my time," I said, but not out loud, and not hushed. "If you're going to read my mind then at least do it faster next time."

"Do you have the money?"

"Yes."

"Come upstairs."

"No."

I waited for about a minute, then the front door opened. Kaylee stepped out and walked towards me. I almost flinched.

She spoke physically this time. "I'm not gonna bite you, you know." She looked around. There was just a touch of nervousness in her usually bright voice when she spoke again. "My brother might."

"I'm literally gay."

"That's the problem," she said. "He likes you."

"Ew."

"I really think you'd make a great brother-in-law!" She had this kind of lilted Southern US accent- something that was nowadays very common here. "Don't you?"

I said nothing.

"Bonfires, Thanksgiving festivals, Christmases around a fireplace, you, me, Caleb, and the family? It'll be so wonderful!"

"I don't have a family."

At that she looked me dead in the eye, her eyebrows furrowed in... in I don't know. Hate? Suspicion? Anger? Annoyance? Whatever. At the time I didn't care what she felt or what she thought; I didn't have the time to.

"Well, you have me," she said. "You'll understand that one day."

I looked around us, from the empty houses, to the ruins of a school across the street. "Is there a reason we had to meet here?"

"It was safest," she replied.

"I have the money," I said. I was running out of time. "If you can give me the flash drive, I'll be on my way."

Kaylee Ann Davenport was the youngest of the Davenports; like me, she was 17, and we both were born on March 20th. Caleb was her older brother. Their parents- Henry and Scott Davenport, owned a security agency.

I took the money out of my wallet. "Thirteen hundred." I counted the crumpled paper bills. "If I remember correctly?"

For a moment, she didn't speak. And then what she said was: "Keep it."

"Keep it?" I almost laughed. I've been played with before; it was never fun. "Look, I can't really even be here right now. Let's be done with this, and go. Please."

"Danny, you don't have to pay us." She took something from the pocket of her shirt. It was small, a metallic red. The flash drive. "Caleb talked to Dad, Dad talked to people, and they were able to get the files without having to do anything special, anything with money involved."

She handed the flash drive to me and for a moment all I could do was stare at it.

I was 17, a self-taught gymnast who wasn't good enough to compete anywhere. I had no family. In a filthy and dangerous world; in a place now known as the Overwoods- once the most populated area in a place they called the Philippines eons ago, but now completely destroyed and reduced to less than half its original size, gathering typhoons and blizzards and dust since the fallout from Experiment Overwood (and also now the only island in the whole continent)- which as far as I've seen isn't the best place to be. Though I wouldn't know really; I've never been any place else.

Either there was something in my eyes or my vision was going a bit blurry. The sun was setting; the sky was purple and red, and the water in my eyes was making it all smear together.

"Which of your dads is the Dad that Caleb spoke with?" I said.

"Henry."

"Oh," I said. I felt stunned, speechless. It must not have had anything to do with me. I wasn't important enough.

Kaylee looked at me again, and without her lips moving, she said, "'Ew,' right?"

I cleared my throat. Though it wasn't necessary- I didn't speak again when I turned and walked away.

The Davenports were telepaths, rich, powerful. Truly I felt lucky, to have anything to do with them at all. They had done quite a bit for me, and I was grateful, I still am. But it wasn't me I was thinking about.

--

I was covered in snow when I arrived at Vicinity Four. I once read in a book from my school library that there used to never be snow here.

I checked my watch. 9 o'clock, PM.

It took me a while to make absolutely sure no one was around, then I pushed past a glass door and walked into an old, abandoned strip mall. No lights were on, but that I was used to. I was shaking when I removed my jacket.

I allowed my eyes to adjust to the dimness and kept walking. "To West Wing Extension," read a sign on my left, a sign wrecked by vandalism.

I'm told that ages and ages ago, nobody had any special abilities, there were no wars, all people were equal, and society was a safe place; society was a community, one you wanted to be part of. People lived harmoniously and respected each other regardless of where they all were from or what they looked like.

I like thinking to myself that those of us who remain can make that happen again, that I can help make that happen, from my own sphere of influence.

Whatever that is.

Maybe I just think that because it keeps me sane.

I made my way quickly through a dark, empty walkway and started up a flight of stairs by the emergency exit.

I'm a telepath, but not like most- both in the sense that I don't live in the rich part of the Overwoods (here they call them the Suburbs), and also the sense that it isn't my only superpower. I grew up with Malcolm, a man who works in the mines where they get those little Vystir crystals and who also works in the Port, where they carry stuff to and from the boats I've never been on.

"EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY," read the sign on the door I was about to walk through. "ALARM WILL RING IF OPENED."

I pushed the heavy door open and went through. As always, there was no such alarm.

I'm told it's lucky we have Vystir in the mines, and that the Union of Stars would have blown us off the map completely and without hesitation if we didn't have any. Vystir is used by people in the faraway Union of Stars for their experiments, done mostly on people, usually masses of people. It's part of the reason some of us have superpowers, or combinations of them. Part of the reason there were still dead bodies you couldn't touch.

It's also why I was there where I was. Malcolm had been in an incident where things went wrong in the mines. It gave him what they called Vystir poisoning- not very uncommon anymore, but unpredictable. You never know what it's going to do to who.

I started running through the hallway and then burst through a second door.

"James!" I yelled at the top of my voice without thinking. There was little to soften the shout. No curtains, no carpet. Just tables and chairs, all black, most of which looked like they probably belonged in a museum. The room was lit only by screens and feeble neon lights, which glowed gold and formed a large rectangle on the ceiling. I was now at the Webwork- a colossal room of old computers that some smart people revived for whatever reason. Here they did... well, I didn't actually know what they did. I didn't want to know. I was only in the Webwork because that's where I had to be. There was smoke in the unmoving air, because of people smoking cigarettes and who knows what else. The mix of smells was unfamiliar to me. "James, are you in here?!"

Half a dozen people stared at me, from their desks, in a state of apparent vexation; another half were making their way towards me. They were men who wore dark clothing like me, but tattered, and where the sleeves ended the tattoos began.

I wished I had a knife. Or a gun. Or something. But even if I did, I wouldn't really have hurt someone else; I would've just used it to kill myself first if someone else was going to do it and make it too painful.