Traveling from northern Canada to the Falkland Isles, a British territory in southern South America, would take a long time for anyone.

Yet every freaking time, I forgot just how long twelve-thousand kilometers is.

Nine hours, that’s how long it took me to get there, traveling at 300 darn meters a second(one mile every 10 seconds).

But hey, at least the books and pizza were good.

I stopped at Chicago two hours in, buying myself a pizza for the road there. I also finished reading the two books I was interested in, so I stopped by a bookstore and wildlife center for the full set of The Lord of the Rings(because I had been procrastinating on reading it) and a local wildlife book for some national park in Mexico.

I crossed the whole of the Americas while reading, and by the time I was done, I was pissed at Parkarka for making me go all the way to her house. I went through Canada, the United States, the Caribbean Sea, Brazil, Mexico, and some other countries in Midamerica, then across the Scotia Sea, and finally, I made it to her house, in a city so small I would have called it a village.

When I finally got there, I crashed into her lawn and fell flat in the grass.

“Psychi? What’re you doing on the ground like that?” a British voice called.

I looked up at the source of the voice with an exhausted expression. “Stewing over how you made me fly across half the planet to get here.”

Parkarka looked like a princess and held herself like the daughter of a chief. Her dress was long and handsewn with many colors and patterns, and her shirt was of similar make, though quite frilly and pink. Her skin was also a little darker than the island’s other residents of mostly British origin(or she was just tan, I couldn’t tell). She was about my age, but unlike me, she chose not to float much...

And man, she made me look like an ugly dog. I wondered if she wore makeup at all. I, admittedly, didn’t often put on that sort of thing.

She stood on the porch and waved off my complaints. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic! I’m sure you had plenty to keep you entertained, judging by your cute little basket. Meet anyone new?”

“Uhh, some pizza dude, I guess. And a Mexican Ranger. I’m not good with Spanish, though, so it was a bit awkward,” as conversations tended to be when you were me.

I stood with difficulty, unused to gravity, and stretched. When I finally shook off my dizziness from standing too quick, Parkarka was looking at me with mild annoyance.

“Uhh, my lawn?”

I looked down and realized the grass below me had been decimated. “Oh, sorry! I tend to release psychic energy when I’m dizzy. I’m really sorry about that.”

“I know, but could you be a dear and put back the dirt?”

“Sorry, I can do that,” I said, shuffling the dirt and grass back.

“So, want to come in for tea?”

“Tea? Could we just get going?”

“Well, since you’ve come this far, it’d be a waste to leave without staying to brew some tea.”

“But I kinda just want to-”

“Come on, come on, let’s get you inside.”

“But-”

“Anyone tell you you look tired?” she asked, walking into her home like I’d agreed.

So, you know when I said I couldn’t read my own mind? Yeah, I can’t read other psychics’ minds either...so maybe I was being a little dramatic.

Look, it seemed poetic in the moment!

I walked in and sat down at her dining table in her kitchen while Parkarka brewed water in a vintage kettle.

Parkarka was a collector of sorts. She had paintings strung about, and most of her appliances were either old, cute, or high-tech, with no in-between. There were plenty of trinkets from across the world on shelves and counters: a ceramic teapot, cups of various sizes and materials, old furniture, sculptures of animals, carvings, signs...

If she thought it looked cool, she took it home.

Which wasn’t to say that Parkarka didn’t have taste because she definitely did. Much of it, I knew, was far more expensive than the look let on, and the colors and placements were all competent.

Every time I saw her house, I couldn’t help but feel like my own wasn’t good enough.

“So...what’s the occasion?” She asked, leaning back on her counter as the tea brewed.

“Uhh, not much. Sorry for calling you up like this.”

She waved off my apology. “No, no, it’s always a pleasure. You’re the most normal psychic like me I can talk with.” She chuckled. “Jana and Kalai only know how to make a mess, unlike you.”

I tried to avoid the rest of the super psychics, knowing that they had their own agendas. Parkarka, on the other hand, did everything she could to save people. Under most circumstances, she acted as a neutral party, mediating conflicts between psychics and governments to maintain peace. In recent years, she had become a prominent figure, despite only being 21.

And here I was...

“How do you do it?” I blurted out.

“Hmm?” She plucked a strand of her hair off and began fiddling with it. “Do what?”

“You know...how do you stand those people?”

Parkarka gained a more thoughtful expression. “The other super psychics are...difficult. But for the most part, they’re real people I believe can be reasoned with. Yes, some might deign to control countries, but in the end, it isn’t their power that makes them so influential. It’s the confidence that comes with it.”

“Confidence? More like arrogance!”

She nodded her head with a slight smirk. “Perhaps, but most of them act the way they do for a reason. Whatever their reasons might be, the confidence in their beliefs, ethics, and ideals is what drives them, and I respect that.”

I sighed, accepting what she said. “Do you have any close friends?”

“Does my family count?” she asked with a chuckle to her expense.

“No.”

“In which case,” Parkarka began, “Yes, I do.”

“Ever lost them?”

She looked at me discerningly. “Yes, I have. He didn’t like being around me because he felt ‘threatened’.”

“Threatened, like, physically?” I asked, confused.

“I couldn’t say. He stormed off after scolding me for getting into a fight, then texted me never to get near him again because ‘I feel threatened whenever I’m around you’ and that was that.” She snorted in vitriol. “Ch! So much for being a healer if nobody feels safe near you...” She cleared her throat, trying to remain composed. “Well, was that what you wanted to hear?”

“I guess so,” I said in response.

The kettle began ringing, so Parkarka poured the tea into their cups. “Anyhow, I’ll fly you to that neat place I mentioned. Here’s your tea.”

Two hours later, we were flying over a rainforest beneath conjoined psychic barriers.

Until then, we had been talking about this and that, books we had read, new movies, and reluctantly some political stuff. We had ended up talking about the other psychics and got sidetracked after discussing a recent scuffle Parkarka had with another psychic.

“You know, Psychi, you might just be the strongest super psychic,” Parkarka said, her voice carrying through the static air of our barrier.

I blinked a few times, surprised. “You really think so? Could I beat...him?”

Her expression grew dark when I mentioned the accursed boy. “No...I...I doubt it.”

Maybe it was still too soon, but I needed to know.

“Anyway, if you really wanted to beat me, you probably could.”

“I don’t know about that, Parkarka,” I said, “You’ve got way more experience than me.

“Sure, but you’ve got way more potential.”

“Hmm...” I wasn’t convinced. It seemed strange to think I was the best at anything, let alone without trying.

“In fact, why can’t we have a friendly match sometime, mano-a-mano?”

I shrugged, giving in. The truth was, I did have experience with fighting super psychics. A hot-headed cryokinetic had challenged me to duels on about fifteen different occasions in the past year. She seemed dead-set on beating me, even if it took a toll on her body.

“So, what have you been up to?” I asked after a period of silence.

“Up to? Hmm...before you texted me, I was overseeing the parliament as they discussed some more drama with Scotland,” she said nonchalantly.

“Really? Do you do that often?”

Parkarka sent me an unbelieving expression. “I’m well-known for mediating parliament on occasion, you know that, right?.”

“Sorry, I really didn’t!”

She sighed, shaking her head. “I need to update you on foreign affairs.”

“Oh, a parrot, go left!” I said, pulling us away from a terrified bird.

“Thanks!”

“Not a problem.”

“Anyway, I guess you fly around the world a whole bunch. That’s gotta be super time-consuming,” I said.

Parkarka looked at me sideways. “Hardly. I fly through space, so it only takes me an hour or two to get just about anywhere.”

“Huh?! You can do that?”

“Yeah, of course I can.”

“How do you stay safe up there?!” I asked, perplexed.

“Well, I condense ozone and other gasses to make an umbrella against the solar wind, and after a few more precautions, I use the lack of air resistance to fly around earth, accelerating almost indefinitely. Eventually, I top out at a point where I’m making my way across the planet in just hours.”

“That...sounds really difficult,” I said. “How can you even tell if you’re using ozone and not normal air?”

“I eye it.”

“How...can I learn how to do that?!”

“I could teach you, but I wouldn’t recommend taking space travel lightly. Space isn’t anything to trifle wi...Oh, there it is, the place I wanted to show you!” Parkarka said, pointing towards a small grove of strange trees.

We landed in the grove and started looking around in curiosity. “Anywho,” she said, quickly finishing what she was saying, “I can teach it to you sometime.”

“Please do!”

She walked, and I floated through the grove of trees, staying silent as we let ourselves be enveloped by the ambiance of the rainforest.

Eventually, I grounded myself, feeling the soft earth beneath my shoes. It sometimes felt relieving to feel like nothing more than a girl walking in a forest with her friend.

Parkarka jogged up to a monument of stones. There was one stone about twice my size and a ring of smaller ones surrounding it. She pointed at the large stone, where there was a simple carved picture depicting a man holding a wide-leafed, uprooted sapling to his chest. Some writing from a bygone era was carved above the depiction.

“What is this?” I asked as I noticed the sapling on the portrait was the same as the trees around us.

The ‘trees’ were very thin and large, just structurally sound enough to carry a plume of broad leaves at the top, outgrowing even the tallest native trees. The only plant(and fungal) life they didn’t drown out was the vines and mushrooms.

Parkarka shrugged. “Why do you think I’d know? I can’t exactly look into the past.”

She seemed to not realize I was more interested in learning the species of tree than the origins of the relic stones.

She set me up so well to surprise her! “Then don’t mind if I do,” I said, floating to the stone to press my forehead against it.

I felt someone else’s emotions as I touched the stone, and as I focused on those foreign emotions, my perception of reality faded:

Loyalty, reverence, appreciation. These plants represented the devotion and hard work of the tribesmen, planted to revere the deads’ deeds. A man with psychic powers from a land beyond knowledge had earned the respect of the tribe, saving them from certain death on too many occasions to count. When he died to protect them from an overwhelming threat, his body was buried, and his legacy was respected through the careful tending of a grove dedicated to him.

‘A guardian of All, whose spirit will forever protect the afterlife, awaiting our reunion.’

I smiled as I removed my head from the stone. “Aww, that’s so nice.”

Parkarka gave me a curious stare. “What was?”

“Oh, sorry, I guess I should explain,” I said, scratching my head. “Uhh, I have psychometry. I can read latent emotions and stories that have been imprinted on objects. Sorry if I didn’t mention that before.”

“Really? I didn’t know!” Parkarka said, happy. “What did you see?”

I began to explain what I had read through the tablet. By the time I was finished, Parkarka and I had found seats on nearby rocks. While we talked, I made some tea with plants I recognized, pyrokinetically brewing and sharing it with Parkarka.

“I wish I had a power like that,” she said, thoroughly enjoying my story about her historical find.

I waved her compliment off. “It’s a lot less useful than it sounds...I wish I just had the power to heal like you do.”

She averted her eyes, ensuing short, awkward pause. “It isn’t as amazing as it sounds...”

“Why wouldn’t it be? If I could do that...I would have saved a lot more people.”

I crossed my arms.

I could have saved them from me.

Suddenly, Parkarka locked eyes with me, her expression unusually stern. “You’re lucky, Psychi. You can choose to live your life the way you want to. I can’t...I refuse to let my talents go to waste. If I wished I were someone else, it would be you. Carefree.”

...

“Sorry,” I said, downcast. I clutched a fist, and a rock nearby the monument broke, causing me to flinch from my own phenomenon.

Parkarka’s eyes slowly moved to the rubble, to the monument, then back to me. She didn’t move her eyes for some time but eventually closed them and said, “In which case...what did you really want to talk to me about?” She asked, retaining her cool.

“S-sorry...” I meekly said, leaning over, making myself small. It took me a minute, but I let out the question. “Am I a bad person?”

Parkarka listened to me with a solemn expression. “Why would you be?”

“I...I’ve...” I felt at a loss for words, even though the next ones were why I had called Parkarka in the first place. “I...I have...” My throat felt dry. This was something others who knew me knew but...I hadn’t talked about it before, and...

Parkarka was a friend. And not just that, she was the greatest person I knew...no, I firmly believed nobody was better. Not just that, she was a fellow super psychic, someone who could and would hold me accountable if I made a mistake.

I gulped down my apprehension, then spit it out, looking at the ground. “I’ve killed people before.”

I couldn’t look up at her face, yet when she responded after a long period of silence, Parkarka sounded much more...accepting than I’d anticipated. “What do you mean?”

“I-I’ve accidentally...killed people...” The teacup Parkarka had brought with us shook in my hand. “And...I-I was angry. I wanted them dead, but...I-I didn’t...I didn’t want them dead! It was just my powers...my emotions. A-and I tried to save them, but...” I slowly placed the teacup atop my rock, not wanting to spill or pollute it with my rapidly forming tears. “I took them to a hospital, and everyone saw what had happened, but they never said a thing! If I were anyone else, I’d be in jail. But that can’t happen, and I wouldn’t let it happen.”

“So...why are you telling me this?” Her voice asked, calm.

I crossed my arms for stability. “I-I don’t know...my friend doesn’t want to be around me, my brother thinks I should go out and do stuff, and I- you’re the only person...”

“Who can understand, right? Who can tell you what’s right and wrong? Who can beat you to a pulp? The only person just like you?”

...

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. I looked at my hands, fidgeting restlessly in my lap.

I heard her feet shuffle as Parkarka stood and then looped her arms around me. “I understand, Psychi.”

I didn’t know how to feel. I wanted her to scold me, to say I was some cold-hearted menace, even though that made no sense. And...

When she consoled me and held me to her chest I realized:

The only person who resented me was myself.

I dried my tears on her shirt, too uncertain to say a word or make a decision.

Every option was wrong, each choice a wall blocking my leave. On all sides, they pressured me into a claustrophobic room, holding me back.

What a dramatic I am...

I wasn’t sure how long I had sat in her arms, but eventually, I regained my self-consciousness, my thoughts finally sorted.

Until then, I went to school to procrastinate. I said it was to improve myself, but I knew best how much of an excuse that was. In the end, I spent a long time doing a whole lot of nothing.

Finally ready to face that reality, I moved to eye-level with Parkarka and embraced her fully, squeezing tightly. “Thanks a lot. I’m sorry I put you through all this.”

She giggled. “Why do you say sorry so much? You know it makes you seem too nice.”

I giggled too. “Nice? I seem nice? I wasn’t aware.”

“Really? You just radiate ‘I just want to be nice’ vibes. Like a lill’ pupper.”

“Hope I didn’t scratch any of your furniture. And if you were wondering...” I let go and gave her the fullest smile I could. “It’s a Canadian thing; we’re just too nice.”

I saw streaks of dried tears on her face as she reciprocated my smile, patting me on the shoulder. “That’s why I just can’t get mad at you.”

We decided to meet at a location closer to our own locations next time, and since it would take a long time for me to get home, Parkarka offered for me to stay at her home. I ended up taking the offer and falling asleep in her home.

“I cannot risk keeping another one of you alive. Thus, I won’t. I don’t know if this is fair to you, but...”

A green circle, the size of the street block, encircled me, then a green light poured from its perimeter, encapsulating me faster than I could attempt to escape...

I clawed at my neck, a cold, metal object choking the life out of me.

A green world, where the sky and floor were a cartoonish shade of green. Sitting in front of me, a strangely dressed man sat in a wooden chair, a slinky in his hand...

Crack! A swipe of her hand too quick for me to register bent my hand just a little too far. My eyes widened, and I let out a scream of pain. My fury unstable, I released psychic energy enough to level the grove of trees beneath me...)

I flailed around in midair, getting a grip on myself as I regained consciousness, confused.

I was surprised to find myself in Parkarka’s guest room, though I quickly remembered why.

Floating upright, I briefly reflected upon what I had experienced. A prophetic dream? Normal, for me, but this particular one was so strange...perhaps it was just a dream and nothing else.

I walked out of my room and followed the smell of breakfast to the kitchen. Parkarka was already making food for me. It was strange that she began making breakfast just as I woke up, but I dismissed it as a coincidence.

After flipping an egg telekinetically, she glanced at me. “Twelve is a little excessive to sleep till, but I’m sure you had a long day.”

“I sure did,” I yawned out. “Uhh, but there’s no need to make breakfast for m-”

“It’s already made.” She motioned to a plate with biscuits on it, then floated the egg to it, and then the plate to me.

I didn’t take it into hand. “You really shouldn’t h-”

“No, Psychi, I want you to eat,” Parkarka said, looking at me smugly from the corner of her eye. “Why don’t you be a dear and accept my insistence?”

I sighed and took the plate. “Fine. I’ll eat your...” I took a bite. “Your delicious and perfectly cooked meal,” I finished through my mouthful.

“Well, with that, I’ve finished my unfinished business. I’ll say bye to you here.”

“You’re just leaving me at your house?”

Parkarka shrugged. “I trust you enough, and I’ve memorized the names and faces of everyone in this whole country. Nobody would steal from me if you didn’t lock the door.”

“I’ll lock it anyway.”

“With what? You can’t-”

“Telekinesis.”

“Oh, how silly of me. I’m so used to doing it by key that I forgot I don’t need to use it.”

“Why would you use a key in the first place?”

“Because keys...are cool.”

Well, I couldn’t argue with that.

Finally, I flew home. Taking roughly the same route I had before, I had plenty of time to ponder what I had dreamt about.

Among my array of powers, I have prophetic dreams. They’re predictions of what would happen in the future. I only got them randomly, usually on important days.

I spent an hour or so of my flight back home wondering what the dreams had meant. Whenever I got bored of that, usually after dismissing them as normal dreams, I continued reading the second book of The Lord of the Rings and my herbology book.

Finally, I was flying above the snowy land of my hometown. The sun already setting after my many hours of flight.

I put my book back into my basket and looked around, searching for evidence anything had changed. It felt like I’d been away from home for quite a while, yet when I actually looked, I realized it had basically been a day.

The same peaceful, thinly populated town as al-

“There you are!”

CRASH!

Something hit me with enough force to send me tumbling a mile away, leaving a poor farmer’s dirt plowed through by my psychic barrier.

Before I could gather myself, a house-sized chunk of ice flew toward me. I soared to the side and deflected it as it crashed into the farmland, deflecting the brunt of the attack.

A girl clad in a tank top and shorts(in the middle of a Canadian winter) barreled towards me, flying at Mach speed, and punched me faster than my eye could see, her fist covered in a gauntlet of hyper-condensed ice. I blocked the blow, my barrier letting out an otherworldly moan heard for miles, like a collapsing bridge.

My psychic exertion caused me a headache, but I managed.

I retaliated by launching the ice chunk back at the girl. She tried to run from the attack, but I burst into a hypersonic dash and enlarged my psychic barrier, cutting her off.

Apparently, I was so fast that my fellow super psychic bonked into my barrier, then was carried a bit more than a mile north from the ice.

Say hi to Jana, the hyperaggressive cryo-kinetic super psychic who loves to pile-drive me but mostly loves to be pile-drived.

Before the ice could hit the ground, possibly killing someone or destroying their home, I ran and caught it midair with a thought, along with my basket, which hadn’t yet hit the ground after being put into freefall. I set it down as I approached. Jana was still reeling, holding her hurt nose and flipping around at 200rpm out of pain. Apparently, flying into my barrier had physically hurt her.

As I got close, her powers were going haywire with pain, causing deadly icicles to spout from the air around her, flying in every direction as she muttered some angry gibberish in french that amounted to ‘I don’t like that stupid bitch’ or something like that.

Before I did anything, I waited for her to stop spitting out deadly projectiles, catching them before they could hit the ground.

Eventually, she regained enough focus to glare at me.

“Ok, seriously, what’s your problem?” I asked, searching for a quiet place to dump all the ice.

“My problem...” she said, pointing at me, “is that you agreed you’d fight me yesterday, and you flaked out!”

“I did no such thing!” I said back, indignant. “You didn’t give me the opportunity to turn you down, as always,” I said, remembering what she was talking about too late. She had mentioned something about it the last time we fought.

“And not just that,” she continued, ignoring my perfectly reasonable response, “I’m pissed you just won’t go down! What does it take to beat you!?”

Jana looked pretty strange since she was really muscular and dyed her hair white -probably just to be extra icy- but as I mentioned, she seemed not to mind the below-freezing temperatures, wearing basically nothing.

“I dunno,” I said, “mutual respect and cooperative discussion? What does it matter to you? Day after day, you ram into me, send me flying into some poor man’s yard, then try to beat the crap out of me. All you can make me use is 50% of my power. Just deal with it.”

“Where the hell are you getting that number from!?”

“I mean, you haven’t given me much worse than a migraine -if you want to drive me braindead, you’ll need a lot more power.”

“You’ve already driven me braindead five times!”

“Thanks for proving my point?” I said, not sure how to respond to her obliviousness.

Jana’s cheeks burnt red with unwarranted frustration as she yelled, then plunged towards me. I shielded myself with all the ice she’d made, which crumbled like drywall under her intense strikes, filled with so much kinetic energy that the ice sublimated into steam.

“Ok, seriously, why are you a cryo-kinetic if you’re so hotheaded?” I asked, chucking the remaining ice to some nearby woods so I could focus more on the fight she was picking.

She began madly punching me with her ice gauntlets once more, shooting a flurry of blows, which I blocked.

Now, I just want to preface this: I’m not a fighter.

And while I was aware that Jana probably had a dozen openings, I had no idea how to find them.

So, like the newbie to combat I was, I felt overwhelmed by her rage-fueled strikes. It didn’t help that holding my psychic barrier against her savage strikes used a certain amount of my brain power either, though that couldn’t be helped.

Panicking, I uprooted a tree and threw it at her from below, only for her to split it in two with a knife of ice, rendering the attack harmless. I regretted the choice as I had to drift it down to safety.

For a few more seconds, she hit me over and over...then, her punches got weak. She kept throwing punches, but they rapidly slowed. I watched as sweat pooled on her forehead, and she began to show signs of fatigue. Eventually, after a minute of relentless attacks, her expression grew vague and tired. With a blank expression, she began to descend.

I’d taken all of her psychic-enhanced strength straight-on, and all the damage I’d sustained was a hard migraine.

I remembered the reason why I didn’t improve after fighting her fifteen times, then. She was so weak that I won quite literally without trying.

Jana kept throwing punches with futility, in a fugue state from her mental exhaustion. She was considered a super psychic like me, yet she easily consumed all her mental strength. I guess raw biological ability couldn’t be underestimated.

I descended to her level, then reached out of my barrier to grab her before she lost her flight and plummeted to the ground. “Come on, Jana, just give it up alrea-”

My memory called back to me as I outstretched my arm. I almost instinctually pulled back to protect myself, but I didn’t see any way things could end like they had in the-

Somehow, she had enough concentration to swing her hand towards my arm at an intense speed in a pointless, last-ditch effort.

In an instant, her gauntlet collided with my unprotected arm, swatting it aside.

My arm bent a half-inch in the wrong direction, and I swore I could hear each part of my bone as it cracked from the inside. First the shell, then the marrow, splintering like wood in a half-second.

I screeched at the top of my lungs, the pain overwhelming my other senses for a split second. In that same second, I released a shockwave of raw telekinetic energy so strong it left a crater beneath me, uprooting nearby trees and sending them sprawling. I dropped like a rock, falling to the exposed dirt beneath me and only barely regaining control over my flight before I got hurt.

Searching as an outlet to relieve my pain, I pounded the ground with telekinetic force, drilling into it with explosions of raw energy over and over. Fear overwhelmed my pain as a thought boiled to the surface, a horrid possibility.

What had happened to Jana?

I had seen her eyes widen with shock just before she’d hit me, but was she conscious enough to guard against my explosion of wrath, or even gravity!?

My heart beating, pounding in terror at the possibility that the past had repeated, I discarded all thought of handling my pain and searched for Jana.

I saw an alcove of ice in the crater, its exposed faces chipped and battered by my attack but barely standing. I tumbled towards it and looked for her, my arm pulsing with heat and pain with each telekinetic surge of movement.

Looking behind the alcove, I saw Jana, with blood dribbling from her forehead, unconscious behind the ice. However, the alcove would melt before long. The alcove that protected her was hastily made and thus had been rendered structurally unsound by my attack. It was now rapidly crumbling, threatening to bury its creator underneath a tomb of ice.

I dragged her through the snow and to the side of a nearby road, which had taken serious damage from the fight above. I placed her beside a fence, then began treating my wound. If only I could heal us...

Since it was the first thing I thought of, I made a cast of ice, immobilizing my hand with my amateurish cryo-kinesis. The ice made my wound sting for a moment, and I squeaked like a mouse, but my arm eventually began to go number, the pain lessening.

While I racked my brain for how to treat a broken bone, something strange began to happen.

A green light in the shape of a circle with intricate patterns inside it, the size of the street block, surrounded me.

My immediate instinct, seeing what I had seen in my dream, was to run. But...was it a healing circle? Was I just seeing things? Who would have the psychic power to create it? Was it really a good idea to-

No! Angered by my own hesitation, I threw Jana out of the circle, then ran as far from whatever it was as I could before looking back at it from a few hundred meters away.

I watched it with cautious curiosity as the circle’s perimeter began to rise like a barrier of light and converged on the center in a cone. The whole cone then collapsed into the pinnacle, turned into just a single green sphere.

Then, the sphere chased me. Immediately, I tried to outrun the laser, bursting off at my top speed. When I looked back, I was stunned to see it had matched my speed, even though I was moving almost five times the speed of sound. In fact, it began to gain on me. I tried to outmaneuver it, but wherever I flew, it outpaced me, tracking me down and moving through objects as if they didn’t exist.

Maybe if I could use my telekinesis on it...no, it was light, and I couldn’t control light...

I kept thinking of ways to stop it, maneuvering through woods and between houses in vain, and yet...

Faced with the reality that nothing physical could stop the laser, I had to try, as futile and last-ditch as it was.

I hit the ground a full speed, sending enough snow flying into the air that it could be mistaken for an avalanche as I careened to a stop.

Meanwhile, I focused the whole of my mind on the beam, pushing against it with telekinesis, throwing everything I had into halting its momentum. Despite my doubts, my telekinesis contacted. The sheer force of the thing’s approach made my psychic power, which could halt hypersonic objects in a second or two, insubstantial.

I managed to slow it to crawl, though, planting my feet in the snow as I struggled. It kept going and going, creeping closer. Then, it hit my psychic barrier.

Like a chainsaw cutting steel, blue sparks of raw psychic energy sizzled about as it ground against the brunt of my psychic power, pushing me back and leaving my mind aching with a migraine strong enough to leave my consciousness in a state of raw concentration.

If I hadn’t been weakened, I may have defended against it. If I had run further away before it chased me, I may have stopped it earlier. If Jana were conscious, she could have helped defend me. If I had realized its weakness earlier, it would have been easy to put down.

If I hadn’t hesitated at every step of the way, I could have stopped it.

Inevitably, it cleaved through my psychic barrier, and its green light encircled me like a net. It enveloped me, and I lost consciousness, filled with regret.