Falling Worlds (COMPLETED)

TIME 04:

(saturday the 2nd)

Roman put the things away and sat down next to me. I stared at him, confused. He was here? How?! He was dead! I just saw his brains get bashed out. It was exactly the same as what had happened only minutes earlier. But how...?

"So..." he said. "Find anything out? Understand anything more?" I looked at him.

"I..." I started, but then stopped. "I would tell you," I said slowly, choosing my words carefully. "But you wouldn't believe a word I said." He looked at me strangely, but I seemed to sense a glimmer of hope in his eyes, like he was expecting me to say something.

"Y-you died," I managed to choke. He looked at me. But it wasn't a look of confusion, it seemed to be surprise and happiness.

"What do you mean?" he asked. He tried to look into my eyes, but I looked away. "What happened?" I swallowed hard and spoke. It looked like he understood.

"I don't know," I replied. "Something happened. It's like... I went back in time." He smiled and looked at me. He patted my head and messed up my hair. At first I thought he was kidding. I thought he was just messing around, not really believing me at all. I don't blame him. I sounded insane. But I was wrong.

"You did it," he said. "Nice work." With that, he stood up and left. I sat there, as confused as ever. "I need to call Sydney-" I didn't ask who Sydney was.
"Are you going to explain what's going on?" I called to him, getting up and following.

He didn't answer, but walked away beaming with excitement. That was Roman alright, alive and living.

"I have something to tell you," he said happily. I followed him cautiously to his room. He stopped and turned to me. "You have superpowers!" I stood there, not sure how to react.

"I think you're more mental than I am," I said slowly.

"They're not really superpowers," he said. "There's more like a series of genetic mutations in your DNA. Dad was a genetic engineer. He worked with DNA and stuff. He found a way to fix people to be born a certain way. This is incredible. It worked!" I was struck.

"So..." I said, not sure how to respond. "I can time travel."

"Much more than that!" he exclaimed, running into his room. He knelt down on the floor and pulled out a large metal bin from underneath his bed. It was filled with loose papers and binders full of writing. He picked it up and dropped it onto his bed.

"This was all of his work," he said. "He saved it all."

"You read all of this?" I asked, as I fingered through some of the binders, understanding none of it.

"Yep," he said. "Now it's your turn." I stared at the bin of paper, wondering how this was here yet he wasn't. Roman looked up and must have sensed something in my eyes.

"Is everything alright?" he asked, holding back his excitement to seem sympathetic. I nodded briskly.

"Yeah," I said, trying to change my tone of voice to seem as excited as he was. "So why did he do it? What was the purpose?" Roman went back to shuffling through the bin.

"He wanted to create people with superior genetic information," he said. "He figured he could save lots of people."

"Like superheros?" I asked. He shook his head.

"Nah, dad was never into superheroes. He was hoping that the people he engineered would just go out into different parts of the world and do jobs that best suited their super abilities. Like the smart ones would go into the fields of science and medicine. The strong ones would go into the military. Stuff like that. Normal jobs, but they would just be better than everyone else at it." I absorbed all of this information.

"So if I have time powers, what would I do?" I asked. Roman smiled.

"Whatever you wanted to," he said. "Your power could be applied in anything you wanted." I smiled at the thought of freedom to do whatever I wanted. But I wasn't going to waste it. I was going to do something with this power. I was going to help people.
"Why don't you have powers?" I blurted out, without thinking about the possibilities. Roman looked down.

"I was supposed to have them," he said. "But it didn't really go quite right the first time." He shrugged it off. "But it worked on you. Second time's the charm, right?" I looked down.

"Is there anyone else?" I asked. "I mean anyone else?" Roman inhaled deeply.

"There might be another one," he said. "We're not sure-"

"We?" I asked. "Who's we?"

"Sydney and I," he said. "She's a studying brain surgeon up at the college. We take a few classes together."

"So who else?" I asked. He shrugged.

"It's not important," he said. "You'll find out soon." I stood up and dusted his hands off.

"Well, start reading," he said, walking out of the room.