Castalia's Assassins

November 21, 2068 – Champotón, Mexico

 

It has been three days since Castalia’s funeral, and the city was still filled with a cacophony of festive music and song and children’s shrieks.  Melosa leaned against the railing of her hotel room balcony, watching the slowly flowing deluge of tourists and residents below.  Carnival booths and food stands spilled out onto the streets and further impeded traffic, but nobody seemed to mind too much.  After all, it wasn’t every lifetime that her hometown would have the opportunity to celebrate a life so fulfilled.

Or was it?

Melosa pulled away from the scene and returned to her room.  She sat down at the desk, eyes falling on the only item that lay on its surface.  She ran her fingers over the dark screen of the tablet before turning it on.  The screen blipped to life with a cheerful chirp and displayed a series of icons.  She tapped on one of the icons and the screen refreshed to show the simulated cover or a digital book.  Tapping twice on the upper right hand corner of the tablet screen, the pages of the book flipped to page 3.  The text and accompanying photos from the front page of The New York Times greeted her.  Melosa picked up the tablet and began reading aloud.  “February 19th,  2019.  Twin sisters Analeigh and Castalia Rios rise to the international stage as the world’s first confirmed psychics.  Neighbors from their hometown of Champotón, Mexico have described the young girls’ powers as unworldly, rivaling even those of Mother Nature.”

A smile played on Melosa’s lips as she looked up at the ceiling.  She remembered the specific incident alluded to in the article.  It was the summer of 2018 and a category four hurricane stirred in the Gulf of Mexico.  The mayor had ordered the city to evacuate but the sisters had run to the shore instead, raised their hands into the sky, and pushed the storm back out into sea where it immediately dispersed.  The only witnesses at the time were their mother screaming for them to come back and a tourist with a video camera, recording the whole thing.  Melosa had watched that video clip multiple times after the tourist uploaded it to the internet, finding it hard to believe even though she knew it to be true.

She flipped through the next few pages, each containing an old news article from various periodicals around the world, and read them aloud to the empty hotel room.  In April of 2019, The Times reported a sudden increase worldwide of people proclaiming to be psychics.  Some were quacks hoping for a moment of fame, but an overwhelming majority turned out to be actual psychics.  However, none were remotely comparable to the Rios sisters.  There were plenty of spiritual explanations running the gamut of religions, but scientists could only offer hypotheses as to what was happening.

In early 2022 at the age of eight, the sisters had their first tour with their mother in tow.  Their publicist had arranged the tour in response to growing interests by paranormal enthusiasts and passionate skeptics alike.  Initially they met with celebrities and talk show hosts, their public appearances amounting to little more than performances to quench the masses’ thirst for entertainment.  As time progressed however, the public’s delight at parlor tricks had quickly turned into desperate calls for assistance.

 “Nineteenth of July, 2023.  Following a series of thunderstorms that left the eastern coast of India under water, the Indian government has requested Analeigh and Castalia Rios to assist rescuers.  New storms are brewing in the distance and time is running out for trapped survivors…

“Twentieth of October, 2024.  Seismologists have recorded an 9.2 magnitude earthquake 200 kilometers from the Philippines.  The Filipino government has requested local psychics to aid in evacuations and pre-emptive measures against a tsunami.  Analeigh and Castalia Rios are scheduled to arrive...