Rapscallion

I Get Dating Advice from an Eleven Year Old

My fingers and toes feel like they've been electrocuted and the tingling travels up my bones and into my heart, where it surges and thumps with newfound energy. "Are... are you sure? It wasn't just a nightmare or something?"

She scoffs. "I've had these powers for nearly two years, Gray. I can tell the difference."

And she leaves, black hair whipping out behind her. I remain as still as Washington, snow collecting on my head as I watch her stride back the way we came.

I stand there for what feels like a long time, frozen by my thoughts.

Another phase.

I still remember seeing the news on October 12, 2022, when the first person survived the Virus. People always say they can remember the exact place they were when 9/11 happened. I imagine this is similar.

I was twenty-two. I was in my dorm exercising some serious multi-tasking: physics homework with one hand, breakfast with the other, and one ear on the news.

Then I heard it.

"—there's been an... ah, interesting development on the horrific epidemic that's known as the Virus..."

I glanced up, recognizing the reporters voice: Jill Holbert, who may or may not have been the only reason I ever watched the news. Her skirt was, as usual, way too short for a reporter.

"I'm here outside Grace Hospital after hearing reports about a patient who has..." she trailed off, visibly swallowing, "...destroyed most of the left wing."

My spoon dropped with a clunk into my cereal bowl, splashing milk all over my neat equations. The camera panned up, revealing the hospital with flames licking up the sides and a corner completely blown off. What did the patient do, set off a bomb?

"We're not quite clear yet what has caused the destruction, although there are reports of an, ah, glowing blue man..."

Then I watched, on live tv, as said glowing form appeared twenty stories up in the wrecked hospital, barely visible in the smoke. The camera jerked, the cameraman breathing, "Oh my God."

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The glowing man is now known as Primus—the first of supers. I met him last summer and he's not nearly as magnificent as he seemed that first day. Just an asshat who can glow and occasionally cause small explosions. That particular explosion was so dramatic because he hit a gas line, which to his dismay, was leaked information after he tried to break into a jail and could produce only a small pop.

Now there are supers all over the world. Anyone with the compatible genes survives the Virus and woolah, a mutated human. Some are more super than others—sometimes the mutations are as small as transparent skin or an inability to see the color orange, others turn out more like me.

The first year was chaos—predictions of end times, the government grappling with vigilantes, whole groups breaking into hospitals and injecting themselves with the Virus in hopes to become "enlightened". We call them Crackies now, and groups are still reported every week, found seizing on the floor by hospital staff. Most of them die, but every once and awhile their wish is granted and a new super is born.

But now—another phase to the Virus? The first is pain, ripping through your body like all your nerves have caught fire.

Then your organs begin to fail, your hair falls out and your nails turn a sick yellow. Some never make it past the second phase.

The third is silence. The Virus is relatively immobile for weeks and eats slowly at your strength. It's the doctors last shot at saving you and they keep you in this phase for as long as possible. But it's expensive. Not everyone can afford to live.