The Fire In My Eyes (23 page)

“Well?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I want to tell you. But I don't know if I can.”

“Why not? Are you going to hide things from me? I know that's hypocritical, but I decided that I wasn't going to hide things from you anymore. I want you to feel the same way. I want you to trust me.”

I looked down at the ground. Puddles rippled with the incessant downpour. “Can I really trust you? You won't tell anyone?” I asked.

She leaned over, putting her face in my field of vision. “Promise.”

I took a deep breath. Damn Shade. Damn Ripley. I'd prove them wrong. Not everyone would be afraid. I stood up and took a few steps away, then turned to face her. She watched me, head tilted slightly as she waited. I tapped into my power. Heat rose in my face as my power surged and rapidly stabilized. I held my hands out in front of me and concentrated on the rain.

My previous use of telekinesis was to move simple, solid things. Changing how raindrops moved was more challenging. Even though each one was tiny, there were thousands to deal with. Instead of whirling them around or gathering them to one point like I had originally planned, I just pushed them all away. I pushed too hard.

Every raindrop within five feet of me abruptly moved. Puddles at my feet splashed away, splattering Nikki with cold water. She shied away, but her expression was more than enough for me. Eyes wide. Skin pale. I had guessed wrong. It was all over. I'd have to tell Shade. All my worst nightmares were coming true. What had I done?

My loss of confidence shook me. My power surged out of control. My temples throbbed with pain and wind swirled, pulling all the rain around me into a translucent whirling wall of liquid. I was suddenly at the center of a miniature waterspout and I could barely breathe for all the water howling around me. I dropped to my knees and choked. My power surged again and my skull felt as if it was about to shatter. The green glow intensified with my power, the glow from my eyes scattering through the water. While the power would burn out, what if I managed to drown myself first?

I could barely see Nikki through the wall of water. Her figure was blurry, distorted by the water wall, but I could see her stand up. I could see lighter colors lift from her sides, her hands rising and reaching toward me. She came closer and I could barely make out her mouth moving, a dark gap in the pale oval of her face. Anything she said was lost to the violent storm surrounding me. Lightning flashed, sending blue-white highlights through the green glow of the wall for a single beautiful moment.

When the lightning cleared, the green glow was twice as bright. Through the wall, I could see two more spots of green. Her hands burst through the wall of water, pressed together and carving a gap in the spray, and then she yanked her hands apart. The whirling wall of water exploded in a spray of green, dissolving back into individual drops of water, each one glowing for just a second before hitting the ground.

My surprise doubled as Nikki stepped toward me, her eyes glowing green. She leaned down and pressed two fingers to my temples and I felt a strange pulse in my head. The agonizing headache vanished. I seized control of my power and cut the flow off as quickly as I could.

Nikki fell to her knees and before I could react, she threw her arms around my neck and hugged me hard enough to make my neck creak. “I knew it,” she whispered in my ear. “I knew it! It makes sense! It makes so much sense!”

“What?” She had psionic powers. She knew how to use them. What part of this made sense?

She stopped squeezing the life out of me and withdrew, keeping her hands on my shoulders. I could feel her leaning on me. “You idiot. I should have known. We were both in that class, but you never told me until now! Why did you hide it from me?”

My mouth dropped open and I slapped my forehead. “I can't believe it,” I said. “That's so obvious. How did I miss it? I really am an idiot.”

She laughed and then sat back, leaning on her hands. “I thought you had figured it out long before now. I hinted at it so many times when we had dinner together. I thought that maybe he had seeded the class with people who weren't psions, just to make sure we didn't assume anything. I hoped that you were, but my mentor wouldn't tell me anything. She just told me that I'd learn what I needed to know when I needed to know it.”

It did make sense. I couldn't believe I had missed all the signs. “So you were assuming that I wasn't like you, right?”

She nodded. “I didn't know if we could even be friends if you knew what I could do. It'd be an unequal relationship. I didn't want to put you through that.”

It was eerily similar to what I had been thinking just a few minutes ago. “That's why you broke up with your boyfriend back home, right?”

Her gaze dropped to the ground. “Among other reasons.”

“So where do we go from here?” I asked.

She looked back up at me, then up at the sky. “Looks like the rain is slowing down.”

I looked up as well. The sky wasn't as dark as it had been and the downpour from earlier had moved on, leaving only a thin drizzle in its wake. “Well, I'm already soaked to the bone, so there's not much point in going inside now,” I said.

She laughed. “I guess the picnic didn't go off too well, then.”

“It was a lot of fun. The girls started a water war.” I told her about how they had ambushed us and how I had been the hero, stealing some balloons and letting us soak the girls back. She giggled all the way through up until I told her how the girls had been wearing swimsuits under their clothes.

She rolled her eyes and tugged at her tank top. “Sorry, I guess I'm just not as nice a sight as Kaitlyn is.”

The tank top was still soaked and clinging to her. I had been trying to avoid staring, but couldn't help myself when she drew attention to it. “Kaitlyn's a little too superficial,” I said. “I like the way you look.”

She glanced at me, then flushed. “Of course you do, when I look like this.”

“I thought that way long before I ever saw you like this,” I said.

Her face turned even redder. “Now you're just being a flirt.”

“You did tell me to be honest.”

“I did. Don't make me regret it,” she said. “So, how long have you known? About psionics, I mean.”

It took me a moment to shift my mind back to that topic. “Well, I've had weird things happening since the very day I got here. I never knew exactly what was going on till after we got back from Max's place.”

“Are you serious?” she asked. “Didn't you start training during the first trimester?”

I shook my head. “I turned Ripley down at first. They took a normal life away from me and didn't even give me a choice. It took a pretty nasty accident before I realized that I had to learn control of my power and that I had to take the one choice I was offered.”

“A nasty accident?” she asked.

I closed my eyes. I could see her broken body again, just as clearly as I had on Valentine's Day. Her closed eyes, sunken face, limp and injured and dying. I forced the image away and opened my eyes again. “I don't feel comfortable talking about it. Not yet,” I added as she looked like she was about to protest. She frowned, but nodded. “It was bad. Ripley had to cut my power off for a while, to make sure that I didn't lose control again. That didn't work out too well.”

“What happened?”

I gave her a brief description of the attack at Max's place. She listened to my description and chewed on her lower lip. “And that's what led you to finally accept the training offer?” she asked when I finished.

I nodded. “What about you?”

“I took it. Immediately,” she said. “I don't understand why you wouldn't jump at the opportunity. Alistair was harsh about what would happen if I didn't accept the offer, but he was only being honest. But really, Kevin, when you were given the opportunity to be different, to be able to do things that normal people could only dream about, why didn't you take it? I was nearly in tears. It felt like I finally had a reason to be here.”

I hung my head. She sounded so thrilled, it made me feel bad for being so stubborn about it. “I felt like an outsider for so many years during high school,” I said. “I came up here so I could have a new start. I wanted to have a normal life. I never even got the chance. They took that away from me.”

She leaned forward and touched my hand. “But don't you want to do something with your life? Don't you want to be something more than just a normal guy, like you said?”

I looked up at the sky. The rain had faded from a drizzle to just a shower while we spoke. The sun was coming out. “Everyone does. I just wanted to be able to do it myself.”

“And now you can,” she told me, squeezing my hand. “Look, Kevin! You have power now! You can use that power and do things that most people can't! I have this power and I plan to use it. Don't tell me that you don't feel the same way.”

Her words sent a chill up my spine, even as the sun broke through the clouds and shone brightly down on the two of us. Power corrupts, a voice whispered in the back of my mind. We held power that was unfathomable. What sort of person would she become due to the power? More importantly, what would I become?

She might have sensed my sudden tension, because she let go of my hand and then pushed herself to her feet. “Let's sit back down on the bench,” she said. “The ground's too wet for me.”

“The bench is wet too,” I pointed out.

She shrugged and her eyes flickered with green light. Water slid off the bench and poured on the ground to the sides of it. “Not anymore,” she said.

I stood up and we both sat down on the dried bench. “Don't you feel strange using your power to do such trivial things?” I asked.

“Not at all,” she said. “You used your power to do a trivial thing like find me, didn't you? As long as we use it responsibly, I don't see why we should save it for special occasions. Besides, the more we use it, the easier it gets to use it. Your mentor should have taught you that, right?”

I nodded. “I've gotten into the habit of using it for silly things too, like picking up the soap or shampoo in the bathroom. Just a few simple things each day. It's a lot easier than it was.”

“So you do it too, so why complain? In fact, I was out here practicing when you found me. You've gotten to the basic metasensory training, right?” she asked.

“Just started it Friday,” I said.

“I was practicing my focus. I could feel your presence when you came around the corner. I'm surprised you didn't notice, but you probably haven't learned what psionic energy traces look like quite yet.” She stretched her arms up over her head. “This sun feels really nice. I wonder if I could dry my clothes out. Seems like a simple thing, but I don't want to set them on fire or anything. Though I bet you wouldn't mind if I burned my clothes off, right?”

She simply accepted psionics. I wondered if I could ever feel that comfortable about it. “I don't know if I'd bother,” I said.

“Why not? It's just water,” she said. “All I'd need to do is heat them up enough to make them dry. Can't be too hard.”

“Like you said, it's just water,” I reminded her. “Plus, what would happen if you walked inside completely dry after that rainstorm? What if someone noticed?”

She leaned back and rested her arms on top of the bench. “You're right. I wish we could just use our powers openly. I don't care what other people think. There are people who are smarter than me, faster than me, prettier than me, all sorts of normal people who are able to do things I can't just because I don't know how. Everyone has talents. Why do I have to hide mine?”

“People fear what they don't understand,” I said.

She glanced at me and sighed. “I know, I'm just whining. Don't take it so seriously.”

The sun vanished briefly behind a cloud, then came back out. I wondered if my friends were considering going right back to try the picnic again. The sky was clearing up and the storm was receding off toward the east. It was considerably warmer than it had been just ten minutes ago.

Nikki poked me in the side. I flinched away. “You look like you're bothered by something,” she said.

“Just thinking about everything I've learned,” I said. “Mostly about today.”

“What have you learned?” she asked.

“That the Establishment is hiding a lot of things from us,” I said.

She shrugged. “Big surprise. Did you see their database yet?”

I nodded. “Just a quick glance.” The program that Alistair had given me linked directly to the organization's databases. A quick look at what was available had shown many documents aimed at trainees, and much more that was unavailable at my access level. I hadn't browsed much more than the summaries, since Max and Drew had been popping in and out all weekend.

“You should read over everything in there as soon as you can,” she told me. “There's a lot of information for trainees that'll help you learn what's coming up. Did you know there's a branch of telekinesis focused on control over biology and physiology? It's called biokinesis. That's how they heal injuries so quickly. I've actually started to think about taking more courses in human physiology and anatomy so I can understand more about what my mentor is teaching me. She's really smart and she's great at explaining things.”

“I wish my trainer was that nice,” I said.

“Yours isn't?”

I laughed. “He can't stand me. Thinks I don't take any of this seriously, thinks I should never have been given a second chance, probably thinks I should never have been born. I'm dangerous, a loose cannon as far as he's concerned. His method of training is to tell me what he wants me to do and bitch at me until I figure out how to do it.”

“Doesn't sound like a healthy relationship,” she said.

“Relationship?”

“I can talk to my mentor about anything,” Nikki said. “Anything at all. She's like a big sister. I feel bad that you don't have someone like her teaching you. It can't be doing you any favors, with what you're learning.”

I agreed completely with her. Learning from Shade was adversarial and difficult. Still, it motivated me to beat his expectations. “He does push me.”

“Pushes you to what? What sort of things can you do?” she asked. “Any special abilities you've come up with yet? Anything to focus on?”