Know It All - Part 2

“Thanks to that little scene we’re about 10 minutes behind. It’s lucky that classes haven’t ended yet. I just hope the door is still open…”

I didn’t know what she was talking about and I didn’t bother asking her. I just let her pull me along. I knew at that point that she was the only person that could help me understand anything at all. There was also still that feeling that I knew that she had no intention of hurting me that kept me calm.

Only when we reached it did I know what door she was talking about. At the front of the school near the principal’s office, there was a man. He had his hand extended and there was a door floating in midair. The chatter in my mind started again, but my eyes were only focused on the door. The problem was that the chatter wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t think of anything and I couldn’t stand it. I tried to look at Jade but my eyes wouldn’t move. They were glued to the door.

“I know hun, it’s alright. All three of us are going through the same thing. Just keep your eyes open. I’m gonna count to three and when I say three, you jump right through that door, got it? No hesitation or else you’ll throw everything off more than you already have.”

I nodded. We got closer to the door and she started counting.

“1”

I got ready. My legs were tense and I was trying to think of how I was going to reach up to the door. I realized that the jump was higher than I initially thought. I could probably do it, but there was the possibility that I would fall.

“2”

My mind was racing. The chattering would not stop and I needed to find a way to assure my getting up to the door. That’s when my mind quieted down. I didn’t know how or why, but immediately, my eyes were closed. I saw my legs. Every muscle. I saw the air around me. Every single molecule. I saw the air molecules around me condense beneath my feet and lift me up. And that’s exactly what happened. I was raised up a little bit, but I knew it was enough.

“3!”

I jumped. Off of that cloud of air molecules and right through the door which led to who knows where. As soon as my feet left the cloud, the noise went back to the original volume.

Beyond the door was pure blackness. After making it through the doorway, I started falling. There was nothing underneath me. Nothing to hold on to. Or so I thought. I felt Jade grab my right hand and the man I didn’t know grab my left. Immediately, I stopped falling. I was suspended, holding onto their hands. I looked up but I couldn’t see anything.

“I need you to listen to me and to listen to me carefully.”

The man was talking. He was very calm. Jade was anxious. I don’t know how I knew that or how I knew who was holding what hand, but it was an unquestionable fact.

“Close your eyes. I need you to look around and see everything around you. Describe to me how Jade and I are standing, so I can make sure you know what you’re doing.”

Mindlessly, I closed my eyes. I felt everything around me. Jade was crouching and the man was standing. There was no floor or any actual surface to stand on. I focused harder and saw that they were actually standing on something live. They were the same things that were flying around in the air. I could see the oxygen around me. I saw which muscles in the arms and legs of Jade and the man were tensed.

“You’re standing with one hand in your pocket and your legs are bent. Jade is crouching, one hand on mine and the other supporting her body weight behind her.”

I could see it so clearly. I didn’t understand how or why.

“Alright, good. Now, remember the contact Jade put in for you? I need you to take them out.”

The first thought I had was that my hands were unavailable. Immediately, the man began to speak again.

“Do you remember how Jade put them in? You need to do the same thing. This is going to be difficult because you’re going to have to open your eyes. You have to do this yourself because Jade and I are focused on staying afloat. Also, if we do it, it will hurt a lot more than if you do it yourself.”

I gulped.

I opened my eyes and tried to imagine the contacts in my eyes. I remembered how they looked and tried to imagine them coming out, but it wouldn’t work. The man was silent. I tried closing my eyes again and I looked around. I saw the contacts this time. I carefully opened one of my eyes. In my closed eye, I saw the contact floating out. When it was far out enough, I dropped it. I did the same thing on the other eye. Immediately, the noise took over. My eyes were open and darting, absorbing as much information as I could. When the man started speaking, it stopped.

“Ok, good. I know it’s difficult to deal with the noise, but you’ll learn to control that. For now, just deal with it. Now, see those little black things floating around? They’re called pices. You need to do exactly what we did. Pour all of your attention into condensing them beneath your feet and stand on them.”

I closed my eyes and tried to do as he was told. It was difficult to keep my eyes closed because they wanted to fly open and absorb every other piece of information possible. But I kept them closed. I saw the little flying monsters. Every part of them that could move, every part of their biology. I saw them come together under my feet as I shifted my focus from one to the next. The only problem was that once I would shift my focus from one to the next, the one that I had already gotten under my feet would fly away.

“You can’t completely shift your focus between individual pices. You need to think of them as a group. Bring them together and keep them together. You move them as one unit, not as individuals.”

I tried again. I widened my focus and saw all of the pices around me. I saw then condense until they looked like a black cloud. I saw the black mass float down beneath my feet. I felt their movement as I began to shift my weight onto them. Jade and the man slowly let my hands go. I saw the cloud moving up to match them.

“Good. You’re a natural. Alright, now just follow us.”

He wasn’t the least bit impressed. While he didn’t mean any harm, he was still very blunt. Jade drifted to my side.

“Don’t worry about him, he’s always like that.”

I could tell that she was trying to make me feel better, even though I wasn’t upset. Was I the only one who could feel their emotions? I didn’t want to think about it, so I just responded to her.

“It’s alright. I don’t really care that much. He did help me, after all.”

She nodded. I could feel her relief. I decided that now would probably be the best time to ask. “So who are you guys? Why am I here? And why am I not terrified out of my mind?”

She smiled at me.

“It’s going to take some time to answer all of your questions, but I’ll start with the introductions. That’s man over there is Kase. He’s just like me. We are from a group of people who have some very peculiar abilities. Our job is to go around and find people like you who also have abilities that aren’t necessarily active yet. It was especially important that we find you today because according to our psychic, either we found you today or you wreck your entire house tonight in an explosion.”

I could do nothing but blink. I was trying to understand what she was saying, but it wasn’t making much sense. I just let her continue.

“There are two ways that a person with abilities could awaken their abilities. Either, it’s forcefully triggered by sending electrical shocks through the body that enable a major panic response, or you get thrown into such an overwhelming situation that your abilities will activate to either save you or the people around you. Now, in the latter situation, your abilities would usually go berserk because you can’t control them. In the first situation, we trigger your abilities a little bit at a time. So currently, you are only operating at about 20% of you full potential. The abilities that I activated are the ones that can’t directly cause any physical harm to anyone. Another reason you’re such a special case is that you have more than one ability. From what I’ve seen so far, empathy, 'know it all,' and telekinesis are some of them. What I mean by 'know it all' is that when you walk into a room, the first thing you do is start memorizing everything in the room. That’s what that noise is. Your mind is forcing you to look around and memorize every part of everything so that you can maybe use it if you find yourself in trouble. With some training, you’ll learn to control your thoughts and turn the volume down to a minimum. All of us have that ability. Empathy is a rare one. They usually jump between teams depending on what kinds of missions the teams are going on. Over the course of the next month, we are going to be spending time on getting you up to 100% power. You will be training every day and awakening new abilities whenever you master the ones that are already active.”

So many questions. I didn’t even know where to start.

“What about my family? Won’t it be weird for me not to go home?”

She didn’t skip a beat.

“They already know you have abilities. Darling, we have people at our camp with the ability to detect the presence of others like us. You’ve been on the list since you were born. We’ve been keeping tabs on you, but couldn’t bring you in until you were at least 18 or if we had no other choice. Your parents and siblings have all been told this was going to happen.”

The only reason I believed her was because I could feel she was telling the truth.

“Ok, I guess. How many people do you have with special abilities now?”

I saw her eyes roll back into her head.

“237 people.”

That had to be an ability.

“Wow. How were you able to think of that exact number?”

I wanted to ask her about her abilities but I didn’t want to be too direct about it. She didn’t hesitate.

“My main ability is called computer. I know, weird name. Basically, I can remember anything and everything. I can also change the world around me into pixels in my mind and alter the reality. For example, what you saw me do with my cut when you bit me, the only reason you were able to see what was happening was because of your know it all ability. To other people, the entire cut was erased from existence. Just like a copy and paste button. Computer goes a little bit farther than that, but it’ll take too long to describe its full extent. You’ll see it when you start training.”

I could feel her pride as she talked about her ability. It was impressive, and kind of intimidating. With a name as broad as “computer” there had to be so many things she could do.

“Do you have other abilities?”

I knew that by building up her pride, I could get on her good side. I needed to make her into my friend.

“I also have the ability of telepathy. I can send telepathic messages to large groups of people or to individuals. It’s kind of limited though because I can only actually receive responses from other people with telepathy. There is usually one telepath per team, because it makes everything easier.”

I was getting excited. I really wanted to get to where we were going. I was also unnerved that there was no fear in my mind.

“That’s awesome. Where are we heading now, exactly?”

I had to ask. The curiosity was burning.

“We are taking you to the people in charge of our camp to get you assigned to a team and to figure out a training schedule for you.”

I was thrilled. I was surprised to feel a sudden shift in the emotion of the man. It went from nothing to nervous all at once.

“Everything alright, Kase?”

I knew the answer I was going to receive, but I asked anyways.

“Yes. Just thinking.”

No emotion in his words, but his nervousness didn’t go away. It was constant and heavy. Maybe there’s something about the people in charge…

Before I could dwell on that for too long, Jade perked up.

“We’re here!”

I followed her gaze and saw another door. This time, past the door was all white. Kase’s nervousness was getting heavier. Jade spoke.

“Alright, I’ll go in first, then April, and then Kase. Sound good?”

I nodded as I got behind her.

“Alrighty, 3,2,1, Jump!”

I jumped into the blinding light. The experience was much better than the deafening blackness.