Eden (27 page)

1

I couldn’t believe I had wound up in a detention center. Of all the rotten luck, I didn’t have time for this. I had a mission to complete, people were counting on me, or at least one was – my twin brother. He had been caught, too, but he didn’t wind up in a lousy detention center like me. He was a Class-A Abnorm, he wound up in a secret government installation where the scientists did Lord knows what to him, and I had to rescue him; a goal that I couldn’t achieve while cooling my heels in this cage.

Let me explain myself a little more: My name is Lindsay Anderson and I am nineteen years old. I have a twin brother, Will, and we had both lived a pretty normal life up until about three years ago. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few decades, you would know about the whole GMO mess. If you don’t, let me explain. Sometime in the early 80’s companies began messing around with the genetic make-up of certain foods, to make it cheaper and more plentiful. What these “Einsteins” didn’t take into account was the fact that if you alter the DNA of the food, you have the chance of altering the DNA of the person eating that food. It could have absolutely no effect at all on a person or one of two things could happen.

The GMOs could alter the person’s DNA in a negative way, resulting in physical deformities or birth defects; or they could alter a person’s DNA to unlock random, hidden powers inside the individual. These powers could be useful and beneficial, useless or even worse, dangerous. At first everyone was secretive about their powers; they understandably didn’t want to be seen as freaks. As a matter of fact it wasn’t until famous psychic-to-the-stars, Chris Parker, came forward in the late 80’s and admitted to the world that he actually had mind reading powers that people became aware that others had super powers, too. The movie stars that had their futures predicted by Mr. Parker were outraged that he was actually reading their minds and only telling them what they had wanted to hear and not foreseeing their futures, but that quickly passed as all of a sudden normal people came out of the woodwork that were able to fly, run at super speeds, bend steel with their bare hands, shoot lasers from their hands and eyes; it was pretty cool, but the governments of the world thought it was pretty dangerous, too.

They called people with powers Abnorms, they didn’t see these powers as gifts; they saw them as threats to their authority and so they tried to give them a negative spin; make it sound like a disease or something. I guess having people running around that could do miraculous things wasn’t so cool to them, so they began to track them down and capture them. It was difficult for them to track down Abnorms at first, but once they recruited some psi it became much easier.

Psi are people, like Chris Parker, with mind powers – esp, mind control, mind reading and the like. Combine that with the sensors that pretty much all public buildings are equipped with now and it is pretty much impossible to hide a power from the authorities once it manifests.

What are sensors? Think metal detectors only they detect powers rather than metal. All government buildings are equipped with one now and at this point almost all public businesses are to. I guess it is considered a security risk to have someone enter your store invisibly and steal everything or to grab a bunch of stuff and teleport out, so they began to install them as a theft deterrent. Unfortunately, once caught Abnorms with dangerous or useful powers were shipped off to some secret installation never to be seen again; ones with harmless or useless powers are given an ID identifying their power which they would, in turn, show to whatever security guard was on duty if they happened to set off a sensor. But if even a harmless Abnorm was found guilty of the littlest crime, they wind up here, in a detention center so that we couldn’t mingle with the normal people.

The worst part is that up until a few months ago, I had thought that I was perfectly normal. Even after they carted my twin brother away, they did all kinds of tests on me and gave me a clean bill of health, declaring me normal and powerless. Powerless, my ass.

What is my awesome power you are probably wondering? Well, wonder no more; my power is the ability to float! Isn’t that fantastic? In case you missed the sarcasm, no, it’s not. I can become weightless at will and float into the air, not as cool as flying, is it? It can be pretty dangerous, too. Think of a helium filled balloon, if you let it go, it just floats away; up and up until you can’t see it anymore. Yeah, that could happen to me if I am not careful; once I activate my power sometimes it is pretty hard to turn it off and it’s not like I can just go to some secret school where some bald-headed cripple will train me on how to become a super hero; we’re all pretty much on our own.

The worst thing about having a useless power is that it doesn’t command the respect that a real power does. If I hear one more officer refer to me as “air head” I think I’ll lose it. Not that I could do much in this holding cell they had us in, but at least it wasn’t solitary, there were other people locked in the room with me. Little did I know that I would soon come to regret our little communal living arrangement.

As soon as I heard the commotion outside our door, I knew that we were in big trouble, it sounded like a riot was going on. All of a sudden our door was thrown open and this boy was thrown in. I say boy even though he looked to be about my age, no real man would be carrying on like he was.

“You’ll hear from my lawyer,” he shouted to the guards, “That officer molested me! I’m going to be scarred for life! I can’t even walk straight anymore!”

The guards seemed to ignore him and they slammed the door shut again. The guy immediately ran up to the door and pressed his face against the small window that looked out into the corridor.

“Wait! What’s your name? You’re kind of cute; can I get your number? Maybe we can hook up once this is all sorted out.” I could hear the guards walking away, grumbling amongst themselves.

“Call me!” He screamed and turned around, noticing the rest of us for the first time.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asked casually as he took a seat on the nearby bench, his shaggy black hair falling into his eyes, “My name’s Kurt, I can drop dead.”

“I wish you would,” I mumbled to myself, ignoring him. He must have heard me because he gave me this sort of injured look, like I had hurt his feelings.

“What do you mean?” Abigail asked.

Abby was a little girl of around thirteen, she was kind of innocent.

“I mean, that’s my power,” Kurt explained, “I sort of spontaneously drop dead.”

“That’s a sucky power,” I said laughing, I couldn’t resist.

“Yeah, and you must have an awesome power,” he retaliated, waving his arms around, “that’s why you’re stuck in a lousy detention center.”

I didn’t say anything, he was right, I couldn’t argue.

“So why did they arrest you?” Abby continued, “They usually leave you alone if you don’t have a dangerous power unless you break the law.”

“It’s actually a pretty funny story,” Kurt began, laughing to himself, “I was working my shift at the local Chuck E Cheese. I was a waiter, see, and I was bringing this cake to the room where some little brat’s parents were having his birthday party.”

He was soon overcome by a fit of laughter; we didn’t have any idea of what was so funny, so we just sat silently waiting for him to continue his story.

“Sorry about that,” he finally said, “anyway, I placed the cake right in front of him and then I dropped dead. My head landed right in his cake and the officers said that my face was turned and my dead eyes were staring right into the birthday boy’s. I even soiled myself.”

He began cracking up again. Kurt was laughing so hard that tears came to his eyes.

“Could you imagine the look on that kid’s face,” he managed to say between breathes, “I wish I would have been alive to see it.”

Slowly he brought himself under control and composed himself; tugging on his shirt and fixing the collar to his detention uniform.

“Anyway, I came back to life in the employee’s break room surrounded by a group of officers,” he said, “They didn’t find the situation funny at all. They think I traumatized the stupid runt.”

He turned to us raising his hands in exasperation.

“Can you believe that crap?” he challenged, “After giving this ungrateful little bastard a birthday memory that he’ll never forget, I get arrested, for, get this, disorderly conduct! I freaking dropped dead! What if I had a seizure, would they arrest me for lewd behavior?”

He looked around at us as if we too would share in his outrage, but like me, the others could care less. We had all gotten arrested on trumped up charges simply because we had powers, no matter how useless they were.

“You’re sick in the head,” I announced in disbelief.

“Whatever,” he brushed me off like my opinion didn’t matter to him.

“So let’s keep this circle jerk going,” the new kid continued, “What can you guys do and why did the establishment haul your sorry asses here?”

He immediately turned to me, like I was to be the first one to share. Well, I wasn’t in the mood for sharing with the group, especially with this loud mouthed moron.

“Her name is Lindsay and she can float,” I was shocked to hear Abby tell him.

“Float?” he laughed, “What, like a balloon?”

A look flashed across his face and I knew exactly what he was going to say next. I took a few steps closer to him, my hands balling into fists.

“Ha ha, that makes you an air…”

He never got to finish his statement. He quickly found himself on his ass holding his jaw.

“What the hell?” he yelled, “You have blonde hair, you can float away; it’s the perfect super hero name for you.”

“Yeah,” I challenged, “and you’re super hero name is going to be Toothless if you keep it up.”

“Whatever, Lindsay, old gal” he said, getting to his feet, “super powers and a fighting spirit; I’ll have to keep my eye on you.”

He began leeringly checking me out head to toe.

“Very nice,” he said with a sick grin on his face, “very nice indeed.”

If it had come from anyone else, I might have been flattered by his compliment. I had long blonde hair and blue eyes, I was of average height and weight and often told that I was very attractive, even though I was clothed in the powder blue jumpsuit of the detention center, but coming from this loser, his compliment sounded obscene.

I was about to lay into him again when Abby broke in.

“My name is Abigail, but you can call me Abby,” she said introducing herself.

“Well, aren’t you precious?” he said like she was a little child.

It’s true that she was the youngest among us, but that was no excuse to treat her like a baby.

“And what can you do, darling?” he continued in a patronizing tone that only I seem to detect.

“I can make flashes of light,” she announced with pride.

Raising her hand, Abby let loose with a brilliant flash of light that lasted about a second. He waited until the afterimage faded away from his eyes before he continued.

“Well, that’s pretty handy,” Kurt said without sarcasm this time.

“Thanks,” Abby gushed as if she needed his approval.

“So what’s up with the creepy dude in the corner,” he asked a little too loudly, motioning his head towards the only other person in the cell.

“That’s Leslie,” I told him reluctantly.

“Leslie?” he said approaching the figure in the corner, “and what a fine looking lass you are.”

“I’m not a girl, “Leslie replied quietly. Although looking at him, anyone could tell that Leslie wasn’t a girl; the bastard was just making fun of the point that his name could refer to a male or female.

“Of course you’re not,” Kurt agreed, “Why you’ve blossomed into a lovely young woman. Stand up and let daddy have a good look at you.”

I was ready to hit him again. I felt very protective of these two – Abby because she was the youngest and Leslie, even though he was around the same age as Kurt and me, was so quiet and shy.

“And I’m not creepy,” Leslie continued.

“Of course you’re not,” Kurt repeated, “it’s perfectly normal to sit huddled alone in the corner like a troll. So what can you do?”

“I can change the color of things,” Leslie mumbled.

“What was that?” Kurt asked leaning forward, his hand cupping his ear.

“I said that I can change the color of things,” Leslie repeated a little louder this time.

“That’s funny,” Kurt announced digging his finger into his ear, “it sounded like you said that you can change the color of things.”

“I did,” Leslie said quietly.

“That’s incredib…,” Kurt began, with false enthusiasm, “…ly lame!”

Leslie looked down at the floor in embarrassment as Kurt laughed hysterically. I’ve only met this guy five minutes ago and I found myself wishing that he would drop dead again.

“This is awesome,” Kurt continued, “with the unique combination of our powers it should be a cinch for us to break out.”

“Will you shut up?” I demanded.

“Hey, I’m just trying to get to know everyone,” he replied, “So you guys know how I wound up here, but what about you guys. How did you get caught?”