Microstory 153: Vivian Polzin

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Like Molly Bloom, Vivian Polzin’s ability was not able to present itself until a very particular set of circumstances arose. She grew up with her father in St. Petersburg, Russia, but things were growing dangerous in that part of the world. Fearing these dangers, Vivian’s mother demanded that she move in with her in Stockholm, Sweden instead. And so she packed her things, and set off on a submarine, along with a number of other refugees. Somewhere near the boundary of the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic sea, the submarine began to suffer from a cataclysm. Water flooded in, and the deeper they sank, the higher the pressure, and the faster they sank. There was no way for anyone to survive, except for Vivian. She was transforming as fast as the dangers were coming upon them. Parts of her body became engorged and compressed in order to prevent gas bubbles from forming. Her lungs collapsed to halt gas exchange that would otherwise cause a buildup of nitrogen, and she created stores of oxygen in her blood and muscles so that she would no longer need to breathe. But Vivian was still stuck under the twisted metal of the former submarine, unable to escape. She would soon run out of oxygen, so her body transformed again. Before her reserves had been completely exhausted, she developed two sets of gills on her neck. She remained trapped there alone for days until she developed the ability to summon a group mermen. No, seriously. They freed her from her tomb, and contacted Adam Nicks who brought her into Bellevue, but she never had the chance to find a responsibility. Following an accident involving Fiona Mill, she would quickly find herself in the solitude of intergalactic space, and stayed there for years. When she was finally found, she was proven to have done what she does best: survive.

Microstory 152: Drummond Breckenridge

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There was only one survivor of an extremely famous plane crash. It was famous for having crashed on The Day of No Death, and also because a second plane fell at the exact same spot a year later, for a somewhat related reason. It was Drummond Breckenridge’s ability that kept him alive. Just before the plane started falling, he noticed that every single other passenger fell asleep all at once. He had assumed this to be the cause of the crash, but chose to tell no one of his suspicions. Drummond’s body has an enhanced survival extinct, capable of neutralizing a threat in four separate ways. He was always known to have a silver tongue, and could convince anyone of just about anything reasonably believable, but there were three defense mechanisms that he did not yet know about. While the plane was tumbling from the sky, a protective shell formed around his entire body, freezing him in place until the danger had passed. This cocoon is virtually impenetrable, and will only reopen once it has completed its job. Fortunately, it reopened before medical responders had arrived on the scene of the crash. Drummond discovered his third defense at a moment when he was overwhelmed by the media. They were hounding him, and trying to figure out why he and he alone survived, and why on that day. His body reacted and sent him nearly a kilometer away at superspeed. He could never run as fast as Luka Drake, but no other human could match his land speed. The final defense was the absolute most dangerous one. The government department that had been protecting the mutants on an island uncovered evidence of Drummond’s ability, and attempted to read him into the situation. He felt too vulnerable and trapped to respond using his first three defenses. There was no talking his way out of this one. If he formed his cocoon, they would just be able to wait him out. There were too many agents for him to run from. His body reacted with its only choice: fight. Drummond transformed mentally, but not physically, into a wild beast. He tore through the team one by one, killing most of them, and injuring what was left only because he wasn’t in control enough to realize that they were still alive. He eventually recovered, and a smaller team went in using a different tactic. They urged him to control his abilities, especially the violent one. His flight response kicked in after the conversation, however, and the government never caught up with him. He made his way to Bellevue before they revealed themselves to the world, despite not being contacted by them. But it was a dark time for them, and he immediately felt just as alone as he had for the last several months. It was not until later that he found his place as a physical education teacher.

Microstory 151: Dores Roach

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Dores Roach was secretly a Generation Two anomaly. And by Generation Two, I mean that she was the latest in a long line of anomalies. The ability she presented went back for centuries. For everyone else, only a certain number of people with anomaly blood presented an ability, and only after the Keystone activated them. But for some reason, one child per generation—maybe two—in Dores’ family line was born as a healer. It forever remained unknown why the ancient rogue scientists were only truly successful with this one experiment, but it came in handy through the years. Dores first learned of the family legacy when she suffered a deep gash in her arm while she was trying to roll down the driveway on a skateboard by sitting on it. Her mother heard her crying, and came out to help. She smiled kindly and blew on the wound to make it feel better, which was a common psychological trick for children, but was actually true in this case. This first act of healing was the primer that allowed Dores to, from then on, heal herself and others of any physical injury. Their family had up until that point, remained in the shadows, healing others only when they felt that their secret would not go beyond those they had helped. But Dores was strong, and bold. When she was around 12 years old, she recruited her older best friend who had a knack for driving over the speed limit. They purchased a police scanner, and sped to accidents and crime scenes, quickly healing the injured, and sneaking away before being discovered. They wore masks so that they could not be identified, but that did not stop the rumors from spreading, just like they had with Emmanuelle and Andrew. It was growing difficult as they experienced too many close calls where the official first responders arrived on the scene too quickly. And so they changed tactics. They read in a man who worked at emergency dispatch. He would secretly redirect the appropriate emergency calls straight to Dores and her partner, and never report these cases through the proper channels. They did this together for years, until Bellevue found them, and finally found an explanation for why it was possible for Dores’ breath to contain healing properties.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 17, 2041

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Yet another memorial service for a loved one. But this time Mateo was actually able to be there for the burial. Within a matter of hours in 2040, Daria’s body was fully prepared. Every salmon that Mateo had encountered was there, along with those he did not know, and those he did not know had any reason to be there. Guard Number One and Guard Number Two stood by the three other Reaver security guards from that night when they escaped his facility. Reaver was standing between them, though he looked much older, and beaten down. The five of them must work for Dave’s boss now. Mateo’s father, Mario hovered over his beloved sister’s casket. Aura, Samsonite, and Theo were drawn in by and with the special graveyard as it magically appeared where the building’s courtyard was located in real space. They barely said a word to Mateo and Leona, and made no attempt to make them return home. The spacefaring door-walkers, Vearden and Saga walked in from a closet and gravitated towards The Delegator and Dr. Sarka. Daria’s daughter, Danica was nowhere to be seen. She really wasn’t allowed to leave The Constant, was she? But that girl he saw down there with her after the great escape was present, now leaning up against Daria's nurse. He would have to find out who they were at some other time.

He and Leona spent the last hour or so of their day mostly alone in the graveyard-courtyard mashup. Mateo stared into space as the figure of a man filled in the grave from behind the shadows. He wasn’t finished with his job when midnight came to send them to 2041, but as it did, the scene hardly changed. The graveyard was still there, but time had passed from its perspective; at least long enough that grass had grown over Daria’s grave. And on top of that grass was Danica. He looked around, and found them to no longer be within the confines of the facility, but in the middle of nowhere Kansas.

“Oh, hello,” she said to them. “Can you believe it? They let me out.” She looked over to the small chapel that acted as the secret entrance to her permanent underground home. So even though she had been let out, she was still within ten yards of her prison. “They haven’t let me out for thousands of years. There’s a hint to how long I’ve lived. I guess the death of your mother warrants a few hours of vacation topside.”

They walked over and sat on the ground next to her. Mateo rested his head on her shoulder. “How much time did you two have together?”

“Cumulatively? Maybe a few years.” Then she reiterated, “maybe.”

“I’m sorry.”

She let out a single laugh. “I’ve seen a lot of death. And I’ve seen some of them come back, like your mother.” She turned to Leona, “and your brother.”

“Does it happen often? Will Daria come back?”

“It doesn’t, and she won’t. I can always tell. They’re done with her.”

Mateo and Leona each placed a hand on their own lips, as a reflex. “Dry mouth.”

“They’re teleporting you back. That’s hilarious.”

They rolled away from Danica so as to protect her. They wouldn’t want to give her a heart attack like he had with his father.

They ended up rolling onto the floor of a room they didn’t recognize, but it was obviously somewhere in the building they had stayed in for the last couple days. A woman was sitting at a table nearby. “Good morning.” She began to pour some water into two glasses, and then motioned for them to stand up and sit in the chairs. “Are you up for talking, or would you prefer a nap? You haven’t been to bed since last year morning.”

He took his chair. “I am Mateo. This is Leona. I’m sure you already know that.”

“But we do not know you,” Leona continued for him.

“My name is Ulinthra. I run this joint.”

“You’re Dave’s enigmatic boss?” Leona half-asked.

She chortled. “Indeed.”

Mateo took a huge gulp of water before leaning over and placing his elbows on the table with his eyes shut tight, like he was trying to solve global warming. “What is your pattern? What is Reaver’s pattern? And what is his god..damn problem?”

“It is not my place to discuss his...issue with you. I do not have all the facts because I wasn’t around that day. I can tell you that it happened in the future, and that it has something to do with Leona.”

“Me? He’s never mentioned me.”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you why, but you two knew each other in an alternate timeline. And whatever transpired then has him all riled up. I tried to work with him, but he wanted to go off on his own, so we hadn’t spoken in years.”

Mateo closed his eyes and stretched his neck upwards. “Alternate timelines again, dear God.”

“We are day repeaters, Mateo,” she said, but did not elaborate.

He bounced his head around. “Please. Do go on.”

“We live out a day, and then at the end of the day, at midnight, we go back and do it again.”

“Like Groundhog Day.” He looked over at Leona. “Now that reference I get.”

“Yes, it’s like that classic film, except that we don’t keep living the same day over and over again. We only experience the day twice, and then we move on to the next.”

“And what do you do with this ability?”

“We save lives.”

“We?”

“Reaver and I used to. We’d keep up to date on the news, gather as much information as possible, and then once the day repeated, we’d run around fixing problems. But he doesn’t do that anymore. Now he just uses it for his own gain, betting on sports competitions and the like. And his greater understanding of technology has held his company aloft.”

“Oh yes,” Mateo was furious. “I can see how you two are sooo different. You must pay rent on this building, what? Two hundred bucks a month? Hashtag-thestruggle.”

She was insulted. “I’ve accumulated wealth over time as a means to protect me and mine from Horace. If I had stayed in my one bedroom apartment, without a security contingency, then he would have killed me years ago.”

“Really? ‘cause it kind of feels like he spends all his energy trying to kill me.”

“What do you think he does for the rest of the year, Mister Matic?”

He breathed out and took some more water. “Fair enough. What do we do?”

“About what?”

“About Reaver?” Leona came back into the conversation. “How do we stop him?”

“Oh,” Ulinthra began. “Oh, you misunderstand. I’m here to give you advice on how to avoid him. We’re not going to stop him. There’s nothing we can do. I’ve tried for years. The Choosing Ones like him just where he is. Otherwise they would have interfered long ago. Instead, they keep us apart.”

“If they keep you apart then you lose your excuse for all this money.”

“Don’t be so reductive.”

“Don’t be so freaking unhelpful!” Leona yelled. “You drag us out to wherever the hell we are, keep us in a room—a nice room—but still, ya know, locked. And then you bring us here for a practically meaningless conversation while we were in the middle of talking to our cousin whose mother has just died! So if you’re not going to do anything, and you can’t help us do something, then please tell us where the door is!”

Ulinthra sighed, fed up. “Harrison.”

Harrison, now in humanoid form, walked up from a dark corner where they couldn’t see him before. “Madam?”

“Take these...nice people back stateside.”

Leona stood up and kicked her chair over behind her. “Thank you for your fucking hospitality!”

As they were following Harrison out of the room, Ulinthra replied in a sociopathic tone, “you’re welcome.”

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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.