The Gifted [INDEFINITE HIATUS]

10 • Rel

I guess I should have known that my newfound freedom would only last so long.

Five days, to be specific.

Five days. I was expecting weeks or months with nothing coming up to bother me. And then the universe, with its sick sense of humor, waited until I felt like my problems wouldn't ever return before smacking me in the face with a mwahahaha, guess what's coming back to make your life crazy again?

It was just so incredibly impossible for me to be found again. I had gotten on that train with plans to disembark at the 25th Sector, but I'd realized that since I'd gotten on without a ticket, I might as well enjoy my free ride for as long as I can. Which, of course, is the reason I remained on that train for a day and a half, getting off at the very last stop--the 101st Sector, also known as the Sector that is literally on the other side of the continent from the Sector that I've never set foot out of since the day I was born.

I was surprised to find that the 101st Sector is nearly identical to home, if not poorer. Houses do seem smaller and shabbier, and there are more people here, though I'm not sure if that's just because I'm in a downtown area. And, god, this place is hotter than the depths of hell. I don't know how these people handle it.

But that's not the real issue.

I arrive in the 101st Sector early Monday morning. By Monday evening, I've flooded three bathrooms in three different restaurants. By Tuesday morning, I've flooded a hotel bathroom as well. By Wednesday, I've accidentally set off the sprinkler system in four stores and flooded an entire hotel room. By the time Thursday rolls around, I've stopped counting the disasters.

Needless to say, my abrupt relocation from the 13th Sector to 101st is not going as smoothly as I hoped.

Each incident sends me into panic mode. For so many years, I had it all under control. I practically forgot this... this power existed. I was determined to keep it hidden, not just because I was terrified that using it could somehow be connected back to the event that occurred back when I was five that led to me running away in the first place, though that memory, with that unfamiliar man stalking towards me with a predatory hunger in his eyes, was something I had buried deep within me as well. I was determined to keep this strange ability hidden not just for that reason, but also because I was scared of my own capabilities. I didn't know, and still don't know, how I'm capable of doing such things, what happened to me that made something like this possible, what's wrong with me that resulted in this unnatural ability and why there doesn't seem to be anyone else like me--and it's that fear of the unknown that shakes me up.

And now, it's as if that the encounter on Examination Day triggered something within me, flipping on a switch that had been turned off for nearly a decade. I'm sure that it's connected to that incident that started it all, because the time when it happened is when these powers first showed themselves, and the time when the memory finally resurfaced was when these powers returned again. Now I have to struggle to turn that switch back off, something that seems to be much harder than it was ten years ago, maybe because it--this strange ability that allows me to do such things--has been building up inside me for so much longer.

Sage was the one who helped me when I was five. He's still the only one who knows about what I can do. Surely, when he hears about what happened with the flooding of the parking garage back in 13th, when he and Asher wait for me to return from the Examination and I never do, he will put the pieces together.