Crossed Off: Leaf on the Wind (Part XI)

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Eight hours into the trip, they were near Chicago, and Starla woke up confused. She tried working things out in her head, but was having trouble making the necessary connections of logic. “We...um, so.”

“Yes?” Alec asked.

“Why are we trying to leave again?”

“Because you can walk again, and we have no medical way to explain that to others.”

“But we can trust Marissa.”

“We can, but not her parents. They don’t know about your ability, remember?”

“Right, right,” Starla remembered, and thought this over for the next ten minutes or so. “My parents don’t know about me either.”

He exhaled deeply. “I know that. I knew we had to leave, but I don’t know where we’re going.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “But you’ve been driving too long. Pull over and get some sleep. I’ll drive for a little bit.”

“That’s too risky.”

“You said that I wouldn’t go back to the way I was as long as I stayed in my body.”

“I may have jumped the gun one that one,” Alec admitted.

Can I join the party? Jackson, one of Starla’s psychic confidants, asked of her through a connection. He was the only one of her friends who was somehow capable to sending his consciousness to her without her prompting. They thought maybe he had the same ability, but he was unable to replicate the phenomenon with anyone else. Alec called this some kind of statistic; that one in eight people were possibly capable of such a thing, but just had no way to attempting it. Starla just called it a happy accident.

She yawned before responding since her brain was tired and muddled. What party?

Everyone is introducing you to people with special abilities. Only Cam and I are left, Jackson replied.

She laughed out loud, then began to translate the conversation to Alec. “Who do you have for me?”

A whole group, Jackson said with excitement. The rest of them are out on a mission, but one of them had some business back here in England.

“A mission? They work for the government too?”

No. They formed their own organization. Apparently one of them turned evil...or was always evil? I’m not entirely sure. But he can fly.

“The evil guy?”

No, the one I met.

“Starla,” Alec jumped in. “I don’t know that you should be talking to him like that. You could relapse.

“My brain is still in my body,” Starla argued. “His is the one that’s moved. I should be fine.”

“You should be fine,” Alec began, “but there was also no real reason for your recovery. We don’t know what’s happening. We have to be careful.”

“I still need to talk to my friends, dad,” she spat.

“Your funeral,” was all he said.

And then it happened. She lost feeling in her toes, and then her feet, and then all the way up her legs. But then it continued. Her stomach felt stiff, and her heart was beating slower than normal. She shook her neck out of instinct, but the feeling there was lost too. Before she had the chance to say something out loud, she stopped being able to speak a word. She was fully locked in.

Alec began screaming at her in slow motion. She couldn’t react, and she couldn’t respond. He pulled over and tried to examine her, but there was nothing he could do. She thought she heard him say something about hospital, but the words were too hard to make out, and she was drifting away.

She felt herself floating in the air. No, not floating. Flying. The winds rushed under her chest and through her legs. But they weren’t hers. She was in the body of someone else. The name was Arnett. Gus Arnett. He was smiling and soaring along the White Cliffs of Dover. They felt familiar and comforting, just like Cumberland Island. She smiled along with him, and they did not speak to each other. They just kept flying. She didn’t know how she had formed a psychic connection with someone she knew of, but had not met, but it was a gift. After all this time of being unable to control her own body, this was more than a step up. She was a leaf on the wind. No one could catch her. No one could stop her. She could die happy, for she had experienced this.

After her flight session was over, she moved across the world to see her friends one last time. Tristan and Kathleen were having a meeting with Denton, Magnus Shapiro, and Ling in Kansas City. Sendoa was at orientation for his new job at the cloner’s factory in Brazil, Indiana. Marissa was back in Winnipeg, trying to get ahold of Alec to ask him where he and Starla were. Karam and his husband were on their way from Egypt to Finland, hoping to track down the three people with special abilities that Starla had met. Yenifer and Chantal were in some kind of Confederacy quarantine together, hopeful that they would get out soon, but fearful that they might never be let free. Jackson was watching Gus fly back to the ground. Cam was tutoring Quang, one of her students in Vietnam, but it looked more like she was learning from him.

Starla’s body remained under observation in a hospital in Chicago for a few days before being moved closer to her parents. After some renovations, her family had successfully built a tiny little medical facility in her old bedroom. It was fully equipped with everything she would need to live as comfortably as possible. But still, she ended up spending the next several months sharing Cam’s body with her as she went about her life. It was just too painful for her to remain in her own immovable body. She had been rendered completely paralyzed, and didn’t even have control over her eyes. But one day, she felt an unusual sensation, and returned to her body to have a look. She found herself in the middle of being murdered.

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Microstory 150: Gus Arnett

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Freeman Sesto and Gus Arnett grew up in the same foster home, and for a while, were unsure whether they were brothers or not. They were left on the steps of a well-known foster mother at the same time. Whoever left them there tied toe tags, like the kind found in morgues, with only their names. Because of their abilities, it was conceivable that they were biologically related, but after some genetic testing at Bellevue, they finally received a definite answer that they were not. Though this, of course, did not change the fact that they were, and always would be, brothers. Freeman could manipulate the temperature to freezing levels, while Gus could manipulate the wind, even to the point of allowing him to fly. As children, they believed their abilities to be rather normal, and were not aware that they were doing anything strange. One day, their older foster sister caught them playing with draft and snow in the attic. She took them under her wing and taught them the ways of the comic book superhero. As the three of them grew up, they also grew apart, and spent a number of years on their own paths. Freeman spent some time in Antarctica, but Gus never strayed too far from England. Once they were older and wiser, however, the brothers met back up with each other. They ended up encountering two other pairs of anomalies. The six of them formed a group that predated Bellevue by years, and served as a test experiment that led to an understanding of how the later organization should be run. Even though Diane Ghoti was the one contacted to join up as one of the first recruits of Bellevue, Cosmo Drexler went in her stead. While he was busy stateside, she led the remaining team members on a crusade to find the one who betrayed them, against Gus’ wishes to abandon that mission in favor of pursuing the support of others. Their decision to overrule his plan began a series of events that ultimately led to his and Freeman’s untimely deaths.

Microstory 149: Solange Attar

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When you really get down to it, Solange Attar and her sister, Monique had wildly different abilities. Sure, both of theirs could be related to animals, but not inherently so. Monique could control the pheromones of animals and people, and use these to place a target in a form of hypnosis. Though she was strong, she was limited, and controlling her target’s actions would have been a reach. Solange, on the other hand, could mimic the sound of anything that she had heard at least once. This included, but was not limited to, human voices, animal calls, and machine sounds. Knowing no other way of using her ability, she decided to become a performer. Her fame spread around Paris, then across all of France, and then throughout the entirety of Europe. She would not only mimic sounds in her act. Her vocal cords also gave her what was considered to be the most beautiful singing voice in the world. People traveled from miles and miles away to hear the lovely and amazing voice of Solange Attar. One night, she was seeking some alone time on the Eiffel Tower when a man appeared out of nowhere. He had no memory of who he was, or where he was from, but he somehow had the ability to teleport himself and anything equal to, or lower than, his own mass. The family took him in and gave him the name of Gaston since it meant stranger. Solange and Gaston formed a close bond, and eventually fell in love. They conceived a daughter, Zoey, who developed physically at an astonishing and dangerous rate. They sought help from Bellevue, and collectively became four of the last six anomalies to be discovered by the organization besides the low number of Generation Twos yet to be born.

Microstory 148: Hector Cubit

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Hector Cubit started out as a prison guard for the court marshalls. When there is a prison break, a marshall in the fugitive department will choose a guard to accompany him or her on the investigation. Hector was that one when Straton Giles was unlawfully released from, though not technically broken out of, prison. Leads dried up rather quickly, but Hector was still recommended to transfer over to the fugitive department. He served with honor, and caught a number of high-value criminals for the marshalls, but he gave it all up to go back home. His hometown never quite approved of him leaving to pursue his dreams, but after his breakup with Donna Belmonte, he felt like they needed to put some distance between each other. After years, however, the wounds had healed, and the town needed him. The sheriff was getting too old and it was time for him to retire. They couldn’t trust anyone else to protect Donna’s secret that she could donate an endless supply of her own organs, and Hector was the only one with any law enforcement experience. He returned and accepted the position, keeping Donna and everyone else safe from the prying eyes of the outside world. He discovered something interesting from his new job. The organization that took his first fugitive out of prison ended up in his town, looking for Donna. He was very protective of her, but surrendered to her wishes to join the movement. He joined along with her, with some conditions. It was he who suggested that Bellevue come out of the shadows and announce itself to the world. They were worried about backlash, but he assured them that the only way to earn the trust of the people was to start early, before too many bad things had happened behind closed doors. And he was right. The world quickly accepted and relied on them. Hector continued to protect anyone who needed his help, eventually becoming the first agent of the new Bellevue. He even died once.

Microstory 147: Emmanuelle Langlais

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As the sister of Andrew, Emmanuelle Langlais could heal people of their diseases, but only by taking the disease into herself. In order to be rid of it completely, she would then have to transfer it over to her brother. When they joined Bellevue, Emmanuelle suggested that they start a foundation that would heal people on the regular, in an official capacity. But before this happened, they were healing anyone they could get their hands on. They would often sneak into the long-term care units of hospitals at night and heal one, maybe two at a time. But they could not safely do this alone, because they would need a way to cover their tracks. A patrolman, sympathetic to their cause, provided backup. She would monitor security cameras and guards, making sure that there was no evidence that they were involved. Unfortunately, Emmanuelle grew too enthusiastic about their calling. She started to heal more people at one time than she should have, forcing her brother and the patrolman to go along with it. Word was spreading too quickly that something was happening in the area hospitals. A Domestic Affairs Service agent caught wind of the rumors, and opened an investigation, quickly discovering the siblings’ operation. He was prepared to send them up the chain of command, but Emmanuelle was able to convince him otherwise. Instead of reporting his findings to his supervisor, he agreed to add his expertise to the patrolman’s protection. He helped them garner special permission from the government to drop out of tertiary school at only 15 years old, months before reaching the age of majority. And so they continued their secret crusade of healing, but this time with far greater latitude, until being discovered by Bellevue. As Emmanuelle and Andrew were forming their healing foundation, the DAS agent and patrolman partnered up to become two of the first agents of the new Bellevue.

Microstory 146: Arthur Layshen

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Arthur Layshen was born with multiple abilities that could be used in conjunction with each other, but which were not inherently connected. His ability to create extremely detailed paintings by summoning paint remotely was the result of coming from the same family as Hugh Normanson. They, in fact, knew of each other prior to Bellevue’s founding, but this did not explain Arthur’s primary ability. It was thought that Valary Sela’s heightened vision could explain it. Hell, even a Cambrio Yates connection sounded plausible. But they both turned out to be unrelated. Bree Nolan had the ability to recognize genetic relatives, and informed them that he was actually related to Peyton Resin, which made sense in hindsight since she could see without eyes. Until Reactivation, Arthur could not see without eyes, but he did have a literal photographic memory. His eyes were physiologically different than that of most people. Each time a normal person focuses on an object within their field of view, they lose focus on other objects, but not Arthur. He was capable of seeing everything in his sights with equal clarity, including anything in his peripheral vision, and of retaining the images of everything he’s ever seen indefinitely. He was a very early member of Bellevue, and was instrumental in laying the foundation for its membership so that later leadership would have something to stand on. And though he died before seeing his goals reached, his legacy lived on for many decades.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 16, 2040

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Breakfast of 2040 was sent to them by machines. They did not encounter a human until Dave returned once more to retrieve them. “I know I told you that my boss would see you this year, but there is a more pressing matter for you to attend to, and introductions are postponed until 2041.”

“What could we possibly have to attend to?”

“It’s your aunt. She’s dying.” He unlocked the door and began walking down the hall, obviously expecting them to follow him.

They didn’t have to go very far before reaching Daria’s private hospital room. It was spacious and well-furnished; with the perfect amount of light, a pleasant smell, and calming and quiet music playing. They spared no expense making her as comfortable as possible. Daria was 72 by this year. Mateo had first met her 21 years ago from her perspective. She looked her age, but still the same as before. Though both of his adoptive parents had died following his time jumps, and many other things about the world had changed, seeing his aunt lying in her deathbed really showed him what he was missing, and how fast time was passing. She was a salmon unlike any other. She only teleported, and never traveled through time, so she aged along with her contemporaries. Why she wasn’t chosen to be immortal, or if she would be reincarnated later, were questions that he could not answer at this time.

She looked frail and tired, but she smiled widely when the two of them came into the room. Dave left to do whatever. Dr. Sarka was checking Daria’s vitals while some faceless nurse fiddled with her IV bag. “Mateo,” Daria whispered before gently closing her eyes and exhaling.

“Oh my God,” Leona said.

“Is she gone?”

Sarka placed the instrument he was holding up to her neck and then removed it. “No,” he answered. “She’s very tired, and has been falling asleep quite easily these days.”

“Isn’t there something you can do?” Mateo pressed. “Aren’t you from the future? Do people even die in the future? Give her some sort of magic pill.”

Sarka walked over and sorted through his medical bag before presenting it to them. “I never put anything in here,” he explained. “And I don’t take anything out. My supplies are endless, but limited. I always have everything I need to help my patients...according to the decisions made by the powers that be. If I were given certain medications, yes, I could help her. I could prolong her life, and I could probably restore some vitality. But they don’t want me to.”

Mateo was distraught, but had no response.

“I’m sorry,” Sarka said.

“Thank you, doctor.” Leona was less emotional, and better able to vocalize her appreciation.

Sarka and the nurse left so that Mateo and Leona could sit at Daria’s bedside as she slept. After a couple of hours, she woke up. Somehow innately aware that they were still there, she began to speak immediately, even before seeing them. “You two have become quite the adorable couple.”

He jumped up and took her hand. “Are you feeling okay? Do you need anything?”

“I’m fine,” she replied. “Little bit of dry mouth but it hurts to swallow, so no water for now.”

He was angry. “Are you serious? They’re going to make you teleport now? When you’re like this?”

She struggled through a laugh since that probably hurt her throat as well. “No, I haven’t done that in years. I retired from that life at age 65. That security guard I pulled out of the sky was my final mission.” She seemed content at this, and looked down towards her memories. “I’m glad it was him. He’s gone on to do something important.”

“I...” he tried to say. “I wish there was something I could do. I mean with all this goddamn technology, you’re too young. Aren’t people living well past a hundred by now?”

She nodded. “They are. But mine was a stressful and challenging life. I didn’t have much time to rest. I was always on the go. Heart disease is still the number one killer the world over.”

“This is their fault. They killed you. If you had been allowed to live a normal life, you would have been safe. We all would have.”

He expected her to disagree with him; to describe to him his limits of perspective, but she didn’t. “This is true. I can’t call them evil, because I feel like I’ve done a lot of good. But this whole situation makes you wonder, in the grand scheme of things, does it really matter? Every time I save a life, does someone else pay the price? Do things balance themselves out in the end, regardless of how you manipulate time? Are they helping the world, or are they just sort of...shuffling it around?”

“All good questions.” He became determined. “I’ll ask them.”

She laughed again, but this time it didn’t look too painful. “Of this I am certain.” She paused for a second or two to rest her eyelids. Her breathing grew deeper, but more difficult. “I’m going to die today. This very day.”

“You don’t know that,” Mateo insisted. “You could get better. You could live for weeks for all we know.”

“No, I know” she claimed. “It’s my birthday. I am 72 years old. That’s a nice number. And it’s your day, meaning it’s the last birthday of mine that you could possibly experience with me. Be careful of your birthday, my lovely nephew. These people, for as little as we know of them, we know one undeniable fact.” She became more dramatic and louder. And looked disgusted. “They are completely obsessed with irony. I hate to travel, and not just for the little inconveniences normal people go through with planes and luggage. I always wanted to lay down roots and stay put. That’s just my personality. So what do they do? Toss me around like a ragdoll. You were the happiest little boy I’ve met. You wouldn’t have noticed this, but I had people keeping an eye on you as you grew up since we weren’t allowed to meet until later. Your life, despite having lost your birth mother, could not have been better. But they took it away from you. They took you away from your mother when she was just feeling better, and they took you away from the rest of your family when you were finally getting over it.”

She fell asleep for a few minutes, but when she reawoke, she continued her speech as if it had never been interrupted. “You know what they say; people make plans, and God laughs.” She paused again, but this time for dramatic effect. “And the powers that be fuck up those plans even more.” She looked up towards the door, as if she knew who would be coming. “Horace,” she said with relief.

“Hello, Daria,” Horace Reaver said to her.

“You son of a bitch,” Mateo cried, stunned and unable to move. What was he doing there? How did he even get in the building? What were Dave and his boss keeping from them?

Reaver held up his hands in surrender. “Today is a holiday. I promise not to try to hurt you, and to not...” He trailed off as he looked to Leona. “I just want to say goodbye to my friend.”

Mateo looked at Daria. “You’re friends?”

She closed her eyes as a form of a nod. “We go way back. Before he was like this. Before he grew angry.”

“I’m sorry, Daria. But you know what I’ve been through.”

“I do, and I appreciate you being here. But you either stop tormenting my family, or you will pay. They’re stronger than you. I don’t care how powerful you become. They’re not alone.”

“That’s,” he spat, “my problem.” He closed his eyes like he was reciting the serenity prayer in his head. “It isn’t fair.”

“No, it’s not,” she agreed. “But you can’t go back that far. You either move forward, as a friend, or lose.”

“No. I have a plan. If I beat him.” He looked up to Mateo with rage. “If I end his life,” He screamed, “the way he ended mine, I’ll go back again! And I’ll set things back on track!”

“They won’t let you do it.”

A clan of security guards filed in and began to pull Reaver away. “You won’t even remember this. I’ll go back, and I’ll save your life, just like how you saved mine.” They took him around the corner, but he continued to yell, “I promise you, Daria! I have a way to end this once and for all. I can destroy the The Choosing Ones!”

Even though he seemed to be the enemy, Reaver’s claim that he could stop all of this was intriguing enough to perk Mateo’s interest. He jumped out of the room and ran down the hallway, trying to reach Reaver, but he was gone. The guards knew this place far better than he did, and had succeeded in spiriting him away.

He quickly returned to Daria’s room, but she was dead.

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Crossed Off: Foreshadowing (Part X)

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Death. Death reached out to a number of passengers on the plane from Somalia to Seychelles. After having to make a slight adjustment to their flight path due to some weather, alarm bells screamed at them and the fuselage began to tear apart. Starla saw several passengers being pulled into the sky and zipping out of view.  Yenifer was about to lose her grip of the nearby cargo net when Máire grabbed her hand. “I’ll protect you.” A bright orange-yellow light came out of her, overtook Yenifer, and pulled her in. Máire had merged Yenifer’s body with her own. Starla now watched from Máire’s perspective as she struggled throughout the remaining part of the plane, merging those who happened to be strapped into their seats when the crisis struck, and were also lucky enough to be against a wall that had not yet been torn off. Though Máire seemed to feel stronger each time she merged with someone, she eventually started to feel pain once she had saved only a dozen or so others. She had just saved everyone in the fuselage, and was about to head for the cockpit when Starla’s mind was again pulled away, just like it had when she first met Don.

She found herself on the ground, in the body of a stranger. He had his arms raised upwards where the plane was headed right for him, and was expending a great deal of energy in an effort to stop it. His face felt hot and his whole body was shaking. As he concentrated, the plane slowed its descent, but it wasn’t enough. He managed to redirect the plane far enough away to keep himself from being crushed under it, but this only got him so far. It still crashed down with enough power to tremble the ground and knock him to his back. He was not there for very long, for an unseen force lifted him into the air and sent him flying towards the wreckage. He concentrated once more, and was able to slow his movement, but he still collided with a wing and remained stuck there. He was distraught, but also relieved.

Um...what just happened? Starla asked, awkwardly.

“Mon dieu!” The man turned his head as much as he could and called out, “Un survivant! I can’t move to help! Are you okay? Is anyone else in there with you?”

I’m not in the plane, Starla explained. I’m in your head. I can possess you.

He paused for a time. “I do not believe that I am in a position to doubt such a possibilité.”

What happened here?

“This plane was not supposed to be here. I stay far from the flight paths. I’m very careful! Je ne sais pas why it was so close.”

We had to redirect for weather.

“So you were on l’avion?”

No, but my mind was at the time. Did you do this?

“I can’t help it. I can’t stop it. I either attract or repel magnetic objects, but I don’t always get to choose which one, and I never get to choose to not do it at all. Jamais!”

Oh my God. There were more than two dozen people on that plane!

“Désolé, I’m so sorry!” the man cried. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. We’re in the jungle. There is not supposed to be any metal!”

I had friends on that plane! They’re all dead! You killed them!

“I can’t believe this!”

“Hello?” the voice of Máire came from below, but they could not lift the man’s head high enough to see.

Starla took control of the man’s body. “Máire? Is that you?”

“Is that, uh...oh, wait. Starla?”

“Yes! How did you survive?”

“When I merge with other people, I become stronger, remember?”

“Yeah, but...I mean...it was a plane crash.”

“Well, I’ve felt better before, but I jumped out before it crashed, and the people I managed to save are all fine. We lost four refugees, two of my men, the pilot, and co-pilot. That is, unless the cockpit survived.” She directed her words elsewhere, “Meriden and Duvall, go check.” She returned to Starla. “What are you...I mean, what is this man doing lying down on the wing?”

“He’s magnetic. He pulled the plane out of the sky.

Pause.

“Máire?”

“Yeah, sorry, just—he did what?”

“Je ne le peux pas contrôler!” the man said for himself.

“Voilà pourquoi vous êtes coincé là.”

“Oui!” Then he switched to Standard C so that others could understand him, “the only time I don’t either attract or repel metal is when I’m asleep.”

Starla felt a sharp but rather mild sting in the man’s leg. “Did you just shoot me?” he asked in a hazy voice.

“Oui,” was the last thing she heard Máire say before losing the psychic connection.

Starla’s mind was sent back to Canada where her body had been sleeping next to Alec. Startled by the ordeal, she jumped out of bed and let out a tight scream.

Alec jumped as well, “what? What is it?” He reached over and turned on the light. “Are you okay?”

She rambled, and it felt like she was screaming, but she was subconsciously trying to remain rather quiet. “There was a plane crash! People died, Alec! And I was in the mind of the killer. Well, he wasn’t really the killer, but he killed people. Accidentally. You see, he can control magnets. Well, he can’t. That’s the problem. Apparently metal just sticks to his body...or it flies away from him. I don’t really understand how it works, but he pulled an entire plane from the sky, and it nearly crashed into him. And people died!”

“Starla.”

“What?” she hissed back at him.

“You’re standing.”

“What are you talking about? Of—” She stopped herself. He was right. She was standing on her own two legs, in her own body. She hadn’t been able to do that for months. “I’m standing. Holy shit!”

He smiled with shock. “You’re standing, Starla.”

She opened her mouth, wanting to cry out and alert the world of the development. She could stand. She could probably walk. She could probably even run! But she couldn’t. That was impossible, to everyone else, at least.

Alec was on the same wavelength. “You’re right. We can’t tell anyone. And we have to get the hell out of here. Now.”

Fortunately, the guest room was on the first floor of the house, and fairly separate from the rest of the bedrooms, otherwise someone would have heard her scream, and maybe even her rant. They quickly grabbed their belongings and haphazardly stuffed them into their bags. She took them out to the car while Alec was stuffing her now former wheelchair in the boot.

“Alec, is this temporary?”

“Starla, you know that I would never lie to you.”

She shook her head, indicating that she had no idea what he meant by that.

“No,” he clarified. “As long as you stay in your own body from here on out.”

“Promise.”

“Bullshit.”

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