Saif

Not everyone could manifest, but how would one distinguish a potential subject? Some genetic sequences had higher probability, some less and some genes completely made it impossible. Saif had conducted studies, but the results were muddled. At times the potential to manifest appeared to be inherited from parent to child, but not always. The unpredictability irritated him. How would he go about choosing his targets? Avoid everyone with the negative sequences and search solely for the positive ones. With the amount of genes in the human body and subsequences this was too specific. Any given human would always have some negative bits. He could not constrain his search to only ideal subjects. Additionally, he could only control a limited amount of minds. A challenging optimization problem.

Saif rode Jacob’s mind again, looking into a fresh manifestee by the name of Amanda. The door slid closed behind them. Empty. Weird. He felt her presence, but the room was clearly empty. He jumped mind.

Darkness and silence. The seeds and vines controlled her mind. He yanked a handful of thoughts and sifted through them. They had an evident pattern; sadness lined every thought the woman had constructed. But not because of her current situation instead from her upbringing and the hardships of being an adult. This isolation made her feel content. Had she materialized into a gas? Jacob’s mind was close to hers, almost within an arm’s reach. But where? Saif injected a sequence of commands and dove back to Jacob.

Amanda stepped into the room by rematerializing from the opposing wall. A solid object stepping out from a different solid object and neither were damaged. She phazed through materials! He stared in awe. The sadness riddled in her had made it compelling to hide inside the wall. What would happen if her body went solid inside an object? Only one way to find out. Saif suppressed all of Jacob’s feeling below the elbow of his right arm. Jacob raised this arm towards her and she grabbed onto it. Fingers sunk into the flesh and merged with it. It looked like her forearm was attached directly to his arm. Even the different sets of skins flowed into each other! On Saif’s command her hand rematerialized inside Jacob’s arm. Below the elbow the arm severed and fell to the floor like dead meat. Two sets of matter could not take up the same space at the same time. Blood pumped out of the stump, Jacob stared and panted. Saif felt how the General’s consciousness slipped slowly away. The stump’s cutoff point had to be sealed before Jacob bled to death. Jacob’s survival presented more benefits than his death, Saif decided to save him. A medkit. The door closed behind them as they left Amanda alone. He checked that the vines around her mind would not allow her to walk out the cell, but inside the walls was fair game. She could do quite the harm to the other subjects if she was allowed. How would her phazing interact with the vines? A hurdle for another time. Save Jacob.

A medkit! Attached outside the room, by the door. With trembling hands Jacob cracked open the kit’s seal. A spray canister made from aluminum. Jacob grabbed the canister and applied its content directly to the bloody end of the stump. A sense of relief spread through the General. Saif let Jacob breathe and wind down, knowing he would live yet another day.

Amanda’s power was remarkable and would make a great addition to the army. The duration of her phazing and the amount of movements available to her would determine the damage she could cause. She could potentially cripple entire starships on her own and phaze her way through crowds of enemies. What a manifestation! He pulled back from Jacob’s mind and leaned back on the cushion in his room, a smile widening on his face. What a day.

What proactive measures could he put in place to prevent her thoughts from phazing through the vines?