New Markets - 02 (16 page)

“Holy crap, boots with blood on them.”

“What?”  I leaned over and looked at my boots.  Sure enough, some of my blood must have spilled on them from the target practice the first kidnapper used me for.

That got everyone’s attention; they all stared at my boots.  Kell was kind enough to point out various bloodstains.

I sighed.  “Yes, those are blood stains.”

Kell asked, “Is it, umm, that time?”

I rolled my eyes.  “Seriously?  Did you just ask that?  I’m going to kick your ass.  No, that’s blood from some, ah, wounds.”

Trevin asked, “Your wounds?”

I looked up and thought about the two fights, “Yes.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from Megan.  She asked, “Are you all right?”

I nodded, “I’m fine.”

Trevin slid his hand down my back again and said, “Wow, I’m amazed at how much you work out.  Even your back muscles feel strong.”

Carey said, “Stop pawing at her, Trevin.  It’s not cool.”

I said, “It’s okay.  He’s slowly making a point, and just making a game of it.”

He was debating how to get me to show my costume underneath the shirt, and just wished that I’d just stand up and show it.  He was too close to me, and the visual too strong.  I blinked a few times, but couldn’t think of anything but the visual in his giant mindview.  Then I found myself grabbing the bottom of my shirt, sliding it up over my head and dropping it on the floor.

It was like I came out of some kind of fugue as I shook my head and regained control of myself.  I took a few deep breaths.  I looked harshly at him and said, “Not cool, making me do that.”

Megan said, “Huh?  What just happened?”

Trevin asked, “What?  I didn’t make her do that, I was thinking about her doing it, but I didn’t make … wait a second.  Did you just do what I wanted you to do?”

My eyes got big. 
Oh, shit.
  He was the group’s master problem solver, often beating the rest of us in half the time it took us.

He envisioned me standing up and slowly sliding off the long skirt.  I tried to resist, but either I was too weak willed, or he too strong willed, or perhaps I really did want to reveal my costume to the team.  Whichever, I did his bidding, and the skirt slumped to the floor.  I stood there for the most part in my costume, excluding the gloves, mask and belt.  He thought of me sitting back down and I followed his direction.  My eyes felt half open.  It was hard to think on my own.

He finally stopped thinking about me doing anything and my mind cleared up.  I blinked a few times and took a deep breath.  It felt like my mind was coming out of a fog.

He sat there looking at me and grinned.  “Hmm.  Now that is interesting.”

His mind was racing with the possible causes.  Some form of telepathy, or perhaps a true weakness power caused by proximity or touch. 
Damn you and your smarts, Trevin!

Carey asked harshly, “What … the …
hell
… just … happened?”

Trevin replied, “Those aren’t underclothes, as much as they look sexy.”  He rifled through his pack, quickly pulled out the supers magazine from his backpack and threw it on the table in the center of us all.  It was paper-clipped open to two pages with pictures of me.  They were the ones Darian had snapped at the hospital on Sunday.

He continued, “Hello, Psystar.”

Wow, um, that went fast.
  My mouth opened and closed a few times before I could speak.  Finally I said, “Yeah … hi.”

Megan’s eyes were huge as she looked from the magazine up at me.  “You … you’re a super now?”

I nodded.  She slapped herself on the forehead and said, “How the heck did I miss that?”

Carey’s voice went high pitched, “You’re okay with that?”  Her thoughts were incredulous that I had become a super, and actually went public.

I ran my left hand through my hair, and then realized it was something Trevin had wanted me to do.  I pursed my lips as I glanced at him to my left.  On one hand I wasn’t sure I wanted him doing things to me, on the other I kind of enjoyed the lack of control.

He realized that I knew he caused that, and that I didn’t say anything about it.  I blushed and looked over at Kell on my right.

Megan mentally berated herself for not seeing the signs yesterday, and felt hurt that I wouldn’t share the news with her.

I looked at her.  It was a breach of her privacy, but I didn’t want her upset about it.  “Megan, I’m really sorry about yesterday.  I was trying to decide to stay secret or not.  If Professor Gently wasn’t working on some special classes to do some testing on a live super, I would have stayed hidden.  I still don’t want others knowing about this, okay guys?  Please?”  I looked around at the bunch of them.

They all nodded, although Carey was feeling pretty hostile toward me.  I’d known for some time that her goal in the genetics program was to work on a ‘cure’ for being a super, but hadn’t realized she held a deep hatred for them.

Kell said, “This.  Is. 
Awesome. 
So, you can fly?  Assuming the pictures are correct….”  He pointed at the magazine to emphasize his point.

“Yes.”  I nodded.

“How fast?”

“I don’t know for sure yet.  I can pass Mach 1, I know that much.”

“Holy crap!  How do you breathe?”

I shrugged.  “There’s some kind of field around me when I fly, it protects from rushing air and lets me carry objects and people easier.”

“You can carry others with you?”

“Yeah.”

Everyone in the area glanced around at each other.  Barring Carey, they all thought about asking to be flown, but none wanted to come out and say it.

“All right, all right, it’s obvious you all want to ride along, I’ll do it.  Just not right now.”  They all grinned.  Kell made a fist, jabbed his right elbow backward and said “Yes!” quietly.

“How could I not?  You’re all my friends.  Okay, next question.”

Trevin said, “How strong are you?”

“Well, I’m not a brick….”  I looked around, each of these couch areas was secluded by stacks of books, so we had a fair amount of privacy.  I stood up and walked around behind the couch.  Then I tried lifting it with my left hand under the center back, and my right hand pulling back on the top back of the couch. 

It took some some strength to lift, but even with the weight of the two guys I was able to lift it to my head height.  The two guys must have weighed four hundred pounds, plus perhaps fifty to one hundred pounds for the couch.  I carefully placed it back where it was.

I said, “That took some effort, but wasn’t near my max.”  I walked around and sat down between them again.

Kell pointed at my bicep and asked, “Do you mind?”

I shrugged, “Go ahead.”

He gently put his hand around my bicep.  I was strong, and had much better definition in my arms, but I still wasn’t large by any means.  I was glad he couldn’t reach all the way around my biceps at least.  I flexed for him, and made a faux “grr” sound.

He got rather brave and ran his hand up and down my arm testing my musculature.  “Wow, I can’t believe how hard her muscles are.”

I raised my eyebrow at that.  “I’ve heard that from another person, yet I now know a mutant and a brick, and both of their muscles feel much harder than mine do to me.  The brick’s muscles feel like steel to me.  No movement at all even if I try to massage them.  Can you move mine?”

He worked at my muscles.  When I flexed hard he had a difficult time moving my muscles much, but when relaxed he had no problems pushing them back and forth.  I saw from his mindview that his eyes focused on my chest then.

I lifted his chin so I looked him in the eye and said, “No, those aren't hard, and no, you can’t touch them.”

“Damn.”

“Okay, next question.”

I noticed that Carey was mentally fuming as we discussed my changes.  I was getting a stark look at her true dislike for supers from her thoughts.  I could tell there was nothing I'd be able to do about it, so I tried to ignore her as best I could.  The waves of anger and hatred were hard to ignore at times.  Fortunately, my other friends were closer, and had positive emotions during the conversation.

Megan asked, “Do you have some kind of eyesight power due to the amethyst eyes?”

“No.  My hair, ah, fell out, and this golden hair grew out as it did so.  It was pretty scary thinking all my hair was falling out for a while.”

Trevin’s mind started thinking below the belt, and I said, “Don’t ask, I don’t know.”

He said, “You have some kind of mental power.”

“Yeah.  That wasn’t a question, though.”

“I know.  I deduced it.  Is it telepathy?  Mind reading?”

“Oh god.  Uh.  I don’t want everyone mad at me.  I have an always-on form of telepathy.  I hear everything people think as if they say it within, I dunno, thirty or forty feet.  Yes, I hear others in the library, and on the floors above and below us right now.”

“Interesting.”

Megan said, “Oh my god.  Is that why you collapsed in Bio yesterday?”

“Yeah.  Far too much chatter, I couldn’t think.  It goes further though.  Within about fifteen feet I get an image of what people are either thinking, or what they are seeing at the time as well as their words.”

Trevin said, “Image.  Is it always changing, so you see in effect a video?”

“Yep.  They spread out, so I see five right now.  These are more intense than the ‘hearing’ of thoughts.  I can hear through them if I focus, smell, etc.  I can also feel what people feel.  It, umm, that’s why I was distracted when Kell was getting all close and personal when I first sat down.”

Trevin said, “If you had to pick a movie to describe what these look like, which would you liken it to?”

“Hmm.  It’s actually more like standing in front of a TV store that has a lot of TVs up on display.  Every TV is a person’s mindview.  Add more people in close, add more TVs, and bigger the closer they get.”

“So can you enlarge them?  Shrink them?  Move them around?  Stack them up?”

“Yes, no, to a degree, and no.”

“If you can’t stack them, what happens if you get too many?”

“I can’t see on my own anymore.”

“You said you can move them around though?”

“Yes, but then the others shift around to the unused visible space.  The only way to see only a few is to pull them up to be very large, and they cover my visible space anyway then.”

Kell asked, “So when you denied me my test, you didn’t notice where I was looking?”

“No, I saw through your eyes where you were looking.  It’s, ah, far more accurate.”

“Sorry about that.  Doesn’t that bug you?”

I shrugged.  “I’m getting used to being stared at.  When people don’t think I’m aware, they tend to stare at me.  Since I can’t do anything about it, and they don’t appear to be doing it to be rude, I really don’t have the right to get on their case about it.  It’s in my control to wear thick, full body coverage clothing if I really wanted to, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.  Again, sorry about that.”

Odes spoke up, “I like the costume, but why go with something so revealing if you see everyone staring at you, it just promotes that?  I’d advise long boots with a low heel, pants, some kind of shirt, and a leatherish jacket – you know, like Silverlash wears for her costume.  She’s a pretty cool heroine.”