Be Brave

Power

"She's waking up."

I felt my head being propped up on someone's lap. I opened my eyes, and look straight into Reagan's face. Hunter stood over her and peered down at me, Parker sat beside me, and Elliot was leaning on the wall a little further back. "What's going on?" I asked, sitting up and backing away from the people crowded around me. 

"You passed out a few minutes ago. You were in so much pain and I didn't know what to do and-" Reagan's eyes were filling up with tears.

"Hey, don't worry about me. You were just trying to help." I had only just met this girl and I felt the strongest urge to wrap my arms around her. So I did. She curled into me, grabbing fistfuls of my shirt. "Shhhhh." I tried to quiet her and I stroked her glossy hair. After a minute or so I pulled back and lifted up her chin so she would meet my eyes. "Can you tell me what happened?"

She nodded and brushed away her tears. "I was looking at your arm and it was bleeding pretty badly when you gasped. I thought I had hurt you so I pulled back a little bit, but you seemed dizzy because you couldn't sit up straight. I caught you and held you and you were clenching your fists so tight that you made your palms bleed. Then you blacked out. We were all worried about you but then-"

"But my palms aren't bleeding." And they weren't.

"That's the thing. As you slept, your wounds healed. Your shoulder is better too." Hunter chimed in.

I looked at my arm, and it really was healed. A small scar marked the place where I had been bleeding minutes before. What the crap?  Parker was looking at me with concern.

"Do you have something you want to tell us?" Elliot asked. His voice was deep and expecting, but not loud.

"I know as much as you guys do." I replied.

Elliot turned away from me and looked to the center of the room. "I wasn't asking you."

In the middle of the floor was another piece of paper. Hunter picked it up and read it. "Congratulations. You have witnessed your first example of your powers. All of you have them, and they are all different. You can not leave here until you have found all of yours out. You will receive no help or supplies except for what has already been provided in your rooms. You may roam around freely, but all that you currently have access to is this common room and your personal rooms. You may visit each other. You may help each other train, and in many cases will require the help of the others. Once you have all found your powers, a door will appear and you may leave. If one of you uses your powers against another, there will be consequences. If you find a way to leave before all of the powers are found out, there will be consequences. Good luck." He finished reading and stared at the paper. Parker was looking down at the floor, shaking his head. Reagan seemed in a daze and couldn't tear her eyes away from Hunter. Elliot had his eyes closed and was tapping the wall with his fingertips. I was ticked.

"What?! Who do they think they are? What do they think this is?" I stood up and paced. What was this?  

"Calm down, Jamie. It's going to be fine." Parker insisted while resting a hand on my arm.

Hunter crumpled up the paper and threw it on the ground. "Well, let's get started then. I say we explore all of our rooms to find clues."

Everyone nodded. "We can go to my room first," Reagan spoke up. We followed her out of the second closest door to my own. No one spoke. The walk to her room seemed a lot shorter than my own and this door had handles on both sides. "That's new," she said. She pulled open the door to reveal a room similar to mine, only hers had a small bird in a cage on the table. She walked over to the mirror and reapplied her eye makeup. "Well, this is it. Let's go to the next one?" It continued like this until we had visited all of the rooms but mine. As we walked down the hallway to my humble abode, I spotted a smear of blood from when I stabbed myself. As I glanced at it, hoping no one would see it, it disappeared. Maybe I'm imagining things. We came upon my room, and as I pulled the door open I found myself regretting the mess I had made. As they all walked in, Elliot raised his eyebrows and Hunter smirked. Parker just laughed out loud. I was glaring at them when Reagan spoke up. "Be brave?" she asked pointing at my mirror.

"I woke up with it tattooed on my side." I lifted my shirt to show them my ink.

"And what did you have against these bottles of nail polish?" Hunter asked with a scoff.

"Nothing. I'm just good at breaking stuff." I sneered at him, "Do you want to be next?" He raised his hands in fake defeat and smirked again.

Elliot spoke. "Let's go over the differences in our rooms."

"Right," said Parker. "We all have the basic necessities and shower and such,  but then most of us had something extra. Reagan had that bird, I have those plants, you had that lighter. But what about Hunter and Jamie?"

"If our powers have something to do with what's in our room, then maybe their powers come from something that everyone needs or has. Something we all use." Reagan said.

"Well, you guys said I healed myself, right?" I asked. "Then maybe all I need is other people. Maybe even just myself."

"Then what's my power, genius?" Hunter questioned.

Parker spoke up, "We'll have to see, won't we?"

The guys all walked back to the common room, but Reagan stayed with me. We talked for a long time about things, how neither of us could remember what our life was like before we woke up here. She went through my clothes and tried some things on. She even promised to share whatever she had with me since it seemed like I ruined a lot of my stuff. We didn't have a lot of similarities, but I found that I loved this girl. She seemed to be maybe 16, quiet and reserved, but very kind-hearted and loving. I think this must be what it's like to have a sister. "Can I ask you something?" I whisper while she rearranges my makeup.

"Of course, Jamie."

"How old do you think I am?"

She paused, turning around to look at me. "I'd say maybe 18 or 19. Why?"

"I just don't know anything about myself."

"You know what we could do? We can take what we already know about each other and create our own stories. Just like we did with our names. Like, I'd say you were maybe 18, and you probably had really nice parents. Maybe you were going off to college or maybe your first job. You could be from some city like Detroit or Pittsburgh. What about me?"

"Well," I started. "I think you're maybe 16. You probably worked at some animal shelter or something and had a very nice boyfriend. I bet you got really good grades and your parents loved you. Maybe you had a younger brother or something."

"Hunter looks maybe 17 or 18, don't you think?" I nod in agreement before Reagan finishes. "I think he was probably really smart but he had a reputation to uphold so he flunked all of his classes. Maybe he got into fights a lot. And I think Parker grew up in a small town with lots of family and friends. Being, what, 17, he probably had a lot of younger siblings. Elliot, though, I'm not so sure about."

"Yeah, he's kind of mysterious. I'd say he made killer robots or hacked into the CIA's database when he was like, 12." I say with a small laugh. "Though, he seems about as old as I am." Reagan just smiles at me and shakes her head.

"That paper said we were going to become like family. That we were the only ones who could ever truly be there for one another. How can we do that if we don't know anything about each other?"

I was quiet for a moment. "It's not about the past, Reagan. It's about the future. We are all we have and that has to be enough."

At this moment Parker comes in. "Knock, knock." he says with a pleasant smile. "We were trying to figure out Hunter's power, and we think we got it."

"What is it?" I wonder aloud.

"We'll have to see, won't we?"