Cardinal

Chapter 9

5 years ago...

I drive my black sedan through the wet roads on the way to the academy.  Something unnerved me on my way to school. Sicily rarely scared me. She's made me into a social pariah and I could honestly care less. It must be something else...

The academy was hidden from non-gifted and other gifted people alike by some force-field. Technically, a gifted person couldn't hold defensive abilities 24/7 but a gifted who was a genius and could alter metallic elements could invent something as such. 

Trees start to become denser and roads wetter and rougher- the tell-tale signal that my turn is coming up. There's a private road to the right that will take you to the actual academy grounds. The road is rocky and not paved to deter any wanderers and to give more of a semblance of privacy for the gifted. I finally pass through the force field with a familiar tingle in my body. There's a device in my car that lets me pass through the field. However, the grounds are guarded by more gifted people as a secondary measure. They are also armed with guns for heaven's sake. Like that's going to stop any evil gifted from coming in here if they really wanted to. 

It is possible that a gifted will not develop gifts and turn out to be non-gifted. However, with the unit formed with the cardinal-links, it's rare to have children who are non-gifted. 

The academy wasn't structured the way that most non-gifted schools were. Gifts usually develop when you hit puberty and until then, you're expected to learn the different aspects of our community and how to function as a PERFECT member. If someone excelled in a certain subject, they would be expected to follow that path regardless of what their actual gift was. Most of the people that had the gift of the Mind, elemental gifts, or physical gifts worked for the magistrate and other higher-power families as mercenaries making loads of money. 

There are some hormonal or genetic variabilities in our genes that affect other people, elements around us in some incomprehensible way which gives us our "gifts." However, there's no real equation of when one's gifts develop and how far they advance. The academy was a sure way of socializing everyone in the area in hope of finding units and building a strong population that would ultimately benefit our society in the future. However, with so many links and cardinals scattered around the globe doing god knows what, units were rare. 

Strength in numbers. This unit aspect of the gifted society may have been some war-time Darwinism thing where multiple partners ensured multiple offsprings or so what the academy had taught us. 

I arrived just in time to park my car when the guards let me on the grounds. I hear the screech of the overhead speaker, warning us to get to our designated classes. 

I excelled in keeping to myself and leaving everyone alone. I keep quiet here in the academy. Sicily had it out for me since we were 10 or 11 years old. We were best of friends when we were younger but all of that changed when her mother suddenly became jealous of my mother's unit. 

My mother was no ordinary cardinal. She had the ability to persuade or rather to influence. She couldn't necessarily tell people what to do outright but she could suggest ideas that would influence actions. Mostly, she was used as a memory specialist...a mind tamperer if you will. She was an important part of the magistrate's security forces through her gift of the Mind. However, her ability has always made her an outcast, making my family an outcast in town. My dads' unique gifts also didn't help our social status in town. My biological father, Peter, one of my mother's links, had the unique ability of premonition-or predicting the future as some people may say. He is a very calculated man, but gentle in his love for our family. He was also part of the elite security force that comprised my mom's unit. My other two dads, Isaac and Lincoln, had an elemental and a physical gift respectively. Dad Isaac could manipulate earthly elements including metal and Dad Lincoln is the gifted version of the Hulk, with his inhuman strength. They're one of the most powerful units in our population with having two gifts of the Mind and an elemental in the unit.