SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST | original

two

PHOENIX, ARIZONA

2 Y E A R S L A T E R

TALA HAD JUST done something monumentally stupid.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. So stupid that she knew she only had minutes left. So stupid that college wasn't an option anymore, it was just gone. So stupid that the entire life she'd had before her had just disappeared; now all that faced her was conscription.

Conscription was just the polite term for 'vicious detainment of powered individuals'. It was usually an unnecessarily violent affair that was sometimes broadcast on TV, involving physical violence, threats or blackmail, or all of the above. There were even instances on the news of kids as young as six being held at gunpoint and men and women being kicked half to death because they refused to be treated like criminals. Tala would quite possibly be one of them, as she adamantly refused to go quietly. There was no point in denying, the only thing she was going to do was take the soldiers down with her, as many as she could.

God, was this how Fionn had felt?

She thought she'd be safer in Phoenix. Jerome was such a small town, the same one she'd lived in for two thirds of her life, and news travelled so quickly that if someone even suspected she had a power, it would all be over for her, especially since the whole town had placed her and her father under a judgemental microscope since her mother was deported. The only reason they moved there was because her parents wanted to protect her and Fionn from the aerosol, to keep them out of the danger zone where they might not be reached. It was supposed to activate a dormant gene people had taken to calling the Anomaly Gene, and when their mother tested them while they were still living in Virginia, both she and her brother had the gene. The initial reason for moving away was to save their lives, but when the aerosol spread to the atmosphere over Jerome, it became a matter of concealing them from the government. For the worst thing that could possibly happen had happened; they survived. And now her family's lives were a mess: Fionn had been conscripted; her mother had been deported; her father was under constant watch by the military and she was about to go down swinging.

Like she said, she thought Phoenix would be safer for her. Big cities were easier to hide in, one and a half million people to use as a shield. But then again, crime rates were a lot higher in the city. Some idiot had pulled a gun on her just outside her college campus. What the hell was she supposed to do? Let him shoot her? At that moment, she was kind of wishing she had.

The door to her dorm room rattled on its hinges, quivering under the force of soldiers trying to batter it down.

"Shit, shit," Tala muttered looking around her room for some kind of escape. The window was too small to get through, even if she broke the glass, and it was two floors up anyway. The door was obviously blocked, and she didn't think she could break through the neighbouring wall before they got in. Panic clouded her head, and hands shaking a little, Tala unlocked her phone and typed in a short, sharp message to her parents (screw the charges for overseas texting): they know, will find Fionn, love you.

Throwing the cell she wouldn't see again aside, she watched as the door began to buckle. It creaked once more and on the next blow, the hinges broke, sending splintering wood flying as it fell. White smoke and black figures poured in, not wasting any seconds. Neither did Tala.

Before the smoke touched her, an invisible wave forced through their ranks, toppling even the largest of the men, probably over twice her weight. Pounding blood in her ears, heart beating to a powerful rhythm, it's connection with the innate power under her skin taking over. She couldn't let them take her, couldn't do it, wouldn't be conscripted, wouldn't have her damn life ripped away from her like so many other innocent people. Fifteen million were dead in the USA alone, and ten more were blamed for being survivors of this chemical in the air around them, those who instead of dying horrible, painful deaths, had gained powers beyond comprehension. She wouldn't be used as cannon fodder for her country's personal super-powered army.

"Close in!" someone ordered over the pounding heartbeat, voice muffled by the masks over their mouths. Tala didn't move, focusing inward and finding that beat in her chest that was the foundation of everything she could do. Then the advancing soldiers, each of them shouting instructions at her ("get on the ground" or "stand down" followed by "we will use force"), all found themselves blasted back against each other in the small space, those in the doorway once again battered backwards.

"You destroyed my family!" Tala screamed, pushing them back over and over again, that unbearable energy she was never allowed to wield taking over each sense one by one. Choking on the smoke, lungs burning, eyes streaming, the concussive explosions continued to rattle the window, the walls, the ceiling. The screaming was no longer just coming from the men and woman she had felled in her rage, but from students in fear of her, or perhaps even what they perceived to be an earthquake going on beneath their feet.

Everything was beginning to get blurry, she realised, even as adrenaline pumped energy into her body and kept her lungs from shutting down. No one could touch her, but that was not their tactic; they were going to wait her out, wait for her body to fail. No, no, no no no. Rage still burned hot in her chest, fuelling the power, the endurance, but it couldn't stop the black edges drowning her vision moment by moment. She couldn't breathe, could barely think...

All of a sudden, Tala's knees gave way and whiteness descended on her vision, head about to explode until black—