Wraith

Dark Stirrings Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Olive sat in a lecture paying no attention to the professor as she doodled on a spare page in her notebook. She doubted it mattered. Word had sped around campus that morning that the missing girls had been taken by an Abuser who had done terrible things to them before a User arrived to rescue them. The Abuser had escaped and there was a general warning to stay inside and in groups as much as possible in case he struck again. With all the student body buzzing with the news, she suspected that no one was listening to any of the professors.

She let out a soft sigh and discreetly rubbed her eyes. She had stayed up long enough to hear Volcano's opinion on the Abuser's talent, but then had fallen asleep. Her Dad hadn't said anything about their night-time visitor that morning, but he had seemed more tired than usual and Olive wished fervently that the Captain hadn't got him involved. Still, his expertise had been useful. Sonics, magnetics or some kind of gravitational pulse, she repeated to herself. Those boys when the last two girls were taken said something about being flattened. That doesn't sound like sonics or magnetics to me – unless they were wearing a bunch of metal. She frowned. But maybe they don't need to have been. The roof last night wasn't made of metal but the Abuser got through it alright and Dad still said that it could be magnetics. How does that work?

She doodled a large question mark on her page and started filling it with smaller ones. And where has this Abuser come from? Is he from Megalopolis and has just managed to stay under the radar until now? She shuddered at the memory of the rows of dead girls in the mine. He'd certainly been there longer than girls have been going missing here, but I don't remember anything smelling rotten – just loads of blood. So maybe those others hadn't been dead for very long. She wished that she hadn't had that thought. If she had been using her senses and talents fully over the last few weeks, would she have been able to find and capture the Abuser long ago? Were all those dead girls her fault?

It can't be helped, she decided firmly at last. I'll just have to keep an ear out for any sign of him from now on. I might even be able to hear him now! If I can keep him from doing that to any more girls, I'll feel better – and I might be able to catch him in the process. She cautiously extended her sense of hearing to scan the city once more, but that is when she came across the next problem. I have no idea what the Abuser sounds like, she realized. Reluctantly she relaxed a bit and set herself to maintaining a listening watch. I guess I'll have to wait and see if he takes anyone else. But this time if I hear screams I need to get there, wherever it is, a lot faster. Still dissatisfied with her plan, she frowned and started to draw a maze around her question marks. There's got to be a better way than waiting for another victim. But try as she might she couldn't think of anything.

Over the next few days Olive took to wearing as much of Wraith's costume underneath her normal clothes as she could get away with. As it got colder with the approach of winter no one thought it odd that she was suddenly wearing long sleeves and trousers; and Olive herself was glad it was cold since the extra layer would have made her uncomfortably warm in the summer. The parts of the costume that she couldn't wear without them showing, she tried to keep handy in her bag – and she became paranoid about leaving it anywhere or letting people look inside. She felt the effort was worth it however. The costume helped her to be more aware of her talents and abilities, and she was determined that she would never again be late to the rescue if someone needed it. Not that I'm going to keep doing this long-term, she added to herself when she realized that her attitude to being a User seemed to be changing. When this Abuser is caught, I'll go back to being Olive all the time and live a Normal life, rather than this half-and-half stuff.

It was at about that time that some of the Abuser prisons reached capacity and, unable to do anything else, the local government opted to release some of their minor offenders. Hank the Mystery Hunk was one of those freed from Warbeck Penitentiary. Olive was so caught up in the search for the mysterious Abuser that she didn't really grasp that her brother was at liberty until she came home one day to find her father sitting in the front room and looking thirty years older than he had that morning. She dropped everything to rush over to him.