As the Crow Flies

Chapter 3

The acceptance of real life superpowers existing has slowly settled in me as my days in the medical unit went by. I've been here three days now, sharing a room with the mysterious blue eyed young man, and have seen the same episode play over again several times. He wakes up from the sedatives and has the appearance of losing control of his powers and doctors hurry to put him back under. Sometimes he sleeps for a whole day, sometimes for minutes, but they always put him right back to sleep. Are all Malums like this? Can none of them control their powers? Maybe humanity really is in danger. My thoughts went back to my childhood. Nothing strange had ever happened that I could remember, not since the accident anyway.

I had trouble remembering from before I was seven. My parents had told me there was a terrible accident and I'd gotten hurt, that's why I couldn't remember anything from before. I didn't know much about what happened, just that it was bad and we had had to move afterwards. I now wondered if it wasn't some sort of accident. Maybe I had done something like what is happening here. Maybe if I really was a Malum, I'd lost control over my powers and done something horrible and we left to cover up the secret. But if that was the case, why couldn't I remember, and why had nothing happened since? I was caught in these thoughts as I heard the man's machines start beeping differently than they had before.

Usually when his machines went off, it was with loud alarms and the Code 1 being voiced over the loudspeaker. This wasn't the case this time, something was different. No loudspeaker came on and no doctors came rushing through the door. I looked over and saw him stirring, waking. I held my breath, waiting for his pained yell, but it never came. As I watched, his eyes slowly opened, and blinked a few times in reaction to the bright lights. He looked around slowly, examining the room, looking at his machines and monitors, then me.

His eyes settled on me watching him, and my heart stopped. Was I to be his next target? Would I be thrown from my bed without him touching me? The silence was heavy as my heart pounded in anticipation for what was going to happen.

"What are you in for?" His voice broke the deafening quiet and startled me. I'd never heard him speak and I wasn't sure how to respond.

"Are you deaf or mute?" He asked, speaking slowly as though I had to read his lips. He hadn't said it rudely, just curiously. I shook my head no in response as I couldn't seem to find my voice.

"Are you a Malum?" I eventually got out.

He scoffed at the word Malum. "Don't use that word. It's an insult, a slur." He said sternly. I flushed, embarrassed.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know." I stammered.

He looked over at me with a stern look that quickly softened as he noticed my expression.

"You didn't know? What are you? Human?" He asked.

I shrugged. "They captured me three days ago and insist I have special abilities that are hidden. I don't know what they want from me and I'd never heard of anyone having powers or whatever."

A look of understanding crossed over his face. "So they think you're the cure, right?" The word cure was said with disdain and I was unsure how to respond.

"That's what Miss Freilin has been saying."

At the mention of Miss Freilin, his gaze grew hard and cold. "She is a traitor." He spit his words out as if they were rancid food. "She is one of us and she teamed up with the Custos to gain power." He was no longer looking at me and instead at the door, as if waiting for her to come in at any moment.

"What is her power?" I asked sheepishly. I wanted to know why I'd experienced such horrid pain before.

"She can manipulate your cells. As in your whole body's cells. She works with the Custos as a DNA reader to establish each person's power and its strength when they come in. It's a painful process, which I feel you may have had the unlucky chance to endure based on your question." He eyed me carefully.

"I was so unlucky. She felt I was keeping my power secret and I experienced a horrible burning pain-"

He lifted his hand to stop me. "I know what it's like. I get it once a week as part of my examination." He revealed.

I remembered we were in the medical unit and also remembered what I'd seen him do. "You're telekinetic or something, right?"

He shrugged like I had earlier. "If that's what you wanna call it. It's never felt like manipulating the object as much as creating a force to push it away from me." He stated honestly. "They brought me here six months ago after my parents turned me in. They saw me move a car out of the way of an incoming truck and called the FBI, the FBI watched a video that had been taken and I landed here." He revealed.

"I thought you couldn't control your powers. I thought that's why they kept you here and sedated." I stated, revealing my ignorance to his situation.

He gave an angry look at me "You thought I was an example of the reason they have this place? That I was a danger to humanity?" He mocked them in his last sentence and I felt my cheeks flush red again at the realization of the insinuated reasoning.

"N-no." I stuttered out. "You just...you threw doctors all over the place."

"Wouldn't you throw your captors around if you had the chance?" He rhetorically asked.

He wasn't wrong. If I had his powers, I'd use them at every opportunity to escape this place.

"Why aren't you trying to escape now?" I asked.

"The last sedative they gave me was their newest experiment. It can stunt your powers for a few hours, but wears off. They are looking for a permanent solution, which is where you come in." He stared at me for an uncomfortably long moment.

"I think they're wrong about me. I don't belong here. There's nothing special about me."

His gaze softened in understanding of my confused frustration. "If that were true, they wouldn't even know who you were. They would've never gone looking for you. Something has to have happened before that put you on their radar."

My mind wandered back to the accident. Something happened when I was younger. That had to be it, right?

Before our conversation could go any further, two doctors came through the door.

"Ah, you two have gotten to know each other I see." Said a male doctor with a long grey beard dangling below his face mask.

I stayed silent, eyeing him from my side of the room. He pulled his face mask down, revealing a disturbingly wide grin, his eyes glinting in a way that made me very afraid of him.

"Well, Gabriel, shall we begin?" The doctor asked my acquaintance. Gabriel. So that was his name, we'd been talking for about thirty minutes and I'd never gotten around to asking.

Gabriel maintained a stern, hateful expression as the two doctors approached either side of the bed. They began drawing blood and taking the same measurements they had done with me upon my arrival. They worked quickly, trying to beat the clock with the temporary inability for Gabriel to use his powers.

I kept my eyes on Gabriel's face. I hadn't realized before how attractive he was. A strong jawline, full, pink lips, his captivating eyes, and very smooth, clear, even toned tan skin were what I noticed. As he sat up and leaned back for them to listen to his heart, I saw he had a well defined, muscular chest. I stared for far too long and when I looked back at his face, I caught him smiling at me, an amused expression on his otherwise stern face. My heart quickened a little, and I felt my face grow warm. I was embarrassed that he'd caught me admiring him, and swiftly averted my eyes. I distracted myself pulling the little loose threads out of the hole in my leggings.

I'd never really been attracted to anyone in the past. My parents had kept me so isolated that I had never had the opportunity to date or develop feelings for someone. I was also so focused on surviving to my eighteenth birthday that trying to date in secret was a no-go for me. I'd never even had my first kiss, I realized as I thought through my teen years. There were many firsts I had yet to have.

As the doctors got close to finishing, Gabriel looked expectantly towards the door. As if on cue, Miss Freilin walked in. The doctors nodded their heads to her and left the room. Gabriel's eyes went dark at her appearance and I could feel the hate rolling off him in waves. She eyed him carefully, and then looked over at me.

"Any powers yet?" She asked me. I responded with a shake of my head and she shrugged her shoulders as if she hadn't cared about the answer either way. She turned her full attention to Gabriel and without saying a word, began her part of the examination. Once again, the room filled with his pain filled cries as the intensity of her power increased. Her eyes closed and the light from her fingertips became to bright to look at, not that I wanted to watch the torture unfolding before me. It seemed to last ages, hearing him thrash and scream as the same burning pain I had felt enveloped him, but in reality, after a minute or so, she was done. She sat in a nearby chair and wrote some notes, quickly commenting, "You're continuing to get stronger." It almost sounded like admiration in her voice, and I looked over to assess her. She looked at him with an emotionless expression , but her eyes held a flicker of regret. Did she really feel badly? I couldn't believe it. She was so heartless and cruel to have abandoned her kind for power, she couldn't possibly feel bad for putting others through pain. Yet her eyes remained soft, not blending with the stark, steely exterior she tried to put off. She looked over to meet my eyes, and any warmth in her cold eyes disappeared as she glared over at me. She stood abruptly, turning to leave, and as she exited the door, she said, "Elora, we will reassess you later this evening." Hey heart dropped. I was in no way looking forward to her assessment, my mind lingering on the feeling of my skin melting off from the last time.

Gabriel eyed me after she left, and I tried to ignore it, but my skin crawled as his gaze lingered on me. The silence became heavy, and neither of us dared to break it for a long moment.

He cleared his throat, saying quietly and matter of factly, "Now we know each other's names."

I looked up at him and he had this expression on his face that looked so innocent, I had to laugh. I burst aloud, unable to hold it back, and as a wave of concerned confusion flooded his face, I only laughed harder. As I continued to laugh, he started smirking and shaking his head. When I finally caught my breath, He was still smiling at me.

I threw my head back onto my pillow, the wave of laughter fading quickly, replaced with tight anxiety in my gut of what was to become of me...of us.

I rolled onto my side, gazing over at him. "What's going to happen to us?" I asked quietly.

His smile faded and his silence made me go cold. "I don't know." His voice was somber and all I wanted was to run over and hold him.

Strange, I'd never felt this way. I had this urge to comfort him and be by his side. I'd never felt this way towards another person, I was feeling things I'd only ached for when I read books or watched rom coms on Saturday nights back in my basement bedroom. I met his gaze and looked carefully, taking in his whole face, all his warm, handsome features, and I felt myself swimming in his lightning blue eyes. His gaze didn't waver and he stared back intensely.

I felt warmth run through my body, and my palms got hot. In fact they burned. I pulled from his gaze to look at my hands and they were bright red. I gasped as they began to become painful, almost glowing with electric light. The lights in the room began to flicker as my hands shook. Before my eyes, sparks flew between my fingertips. My heart pounded in my ears and I looked at Gabriel, frightened. He was looking at me with wide eyes. In a flash of bright light the room went dark as the bulbs exploded above our heads. My hands still glowed with tiny lightening strikes, but the warmth and light faded quickly.

Flood lights came on in the room and a Code 7 rang out in the hall, indicating an equipment malfunction. Armed guards came in the room and stood by as we waited for someone to come in to replace the lights. I was still staring at my hands and wondering what the hell happened.

Was that part of my power?