Conniveo

Chapter II: Flit

"Kana, if you don't answer me, I'm coming in."

I was in a panic state. My mother couldn't come in and see this young boy. I had no idea where he came from, but there could have been several explanations for his appearance here. Maybe he was a new type Acceleron who was experimenting with his abilities. I held up my hand and focused on the closet. It clicked and opened up. I breathed a sigh of relief. I had no idea where I had left the key and it had taken me months to practice triggering the exact needed electrical circuits to open it. I grabbed the boy and pushed him to the closet, stuffing him in between my clothes. He was still staring at me like a child seeing an extracorporeal coalescence for the first time. I looked down at myself and realized I wasn't wearing any clothes. I blushed a bit as I closed the closet door over him. I wasn't ashamed of my body and I loved sleeping in the nude: the main reason my room door was locked, so no one would walk in and accuse me of being 'undignified'.

"I'm coming!" I screamed as I opened the side compartment and pulled on a gray loshamier. I unlocked my room door and my mother walked in.

"Kana, are you alright? What's going on? I heard noises."

"I'm sorry. I stumbled in my attempt to leave the bed quickly and I had to tend to the injury I thought I had before I could unlock the door."

"Injury? Where? Let me see!" She grabbed my arm and looked for a wound.

"There was none," I said in a cool voice "Merely the sensation of one. I am far from harm."

She gave me a look of relief and left it at that. I looked nervously at the closet, hoping the boy would not attempt to come out by whatever means he used to come in here, and my mother frowned at me slightly.

"You must prepare yourself at once. Aris is here and he would not be kept waiting."

"Right away, mother."

She left, thankfully without checking anything else. I breathed a sigh of relief. I thought about my current situation, the arranged marriage I was supposed to have with Aris. I was a pex manipulator, which put me in the inferior half of our race. The superior half constituted of the Psychokines and the Endokines, while we were considered greater than the Blands, those born without any abilities. Pex manipulators were thought the best of the inferior, which made us the better choosing for superiors - mainly the Endokines - when it came to sourcing for a mate. In essence, it was my duty, if not destiny, to be joined with one of them in order to push forward our species. Psychokines saw no need for companionship, and when they did, it was almost always with another of their type. This made them the greatest of the elite, and they were rarely seen by we the commoners, save on public events where they looked down upon us from their elevated seats. I had already been screened for genetic abnormalities which would not be desirable for the next generation, and the prospective suitor, Aris, had already met me to let me know what he would expect of our union.

I ran my fingers through my hair and hissed. I couldn't understand how pex manipulation was any less impressive of an ability. Well, compared to the Endokines, we were still limited in physical abilities, and it took months, if not years of practice to familiarize yourself with commanding pexes. Also, pexes could be removed from a field, as they so often did in certain environments, while Endokine abilities were practically impossible to remove. A disgruntled Pexian scientist - we wonder how he even got to that ranking - had attempted to kidnap and reprogram an Acceleron, but the Acceleron's aggressive behavior made it futile and everyone was alerted within minutes. Some recent scientific publication by one of our leading researchers blamed a high pex density for the man's erratic behaviour, leading many to conclude that we pex manipulators were potentially dangerous and prone to psychotic outbursts on account of our different neural pathways - the same neural pathways which had been established as the source of a higher intellect than the Blands and had made us the preferred mating choices for over five hundred years. Hence the new pex clearance filters. It made us essentially the same as the Blands, save for the difference in intellect. I felt the Endokines were only trying to protect themselves. They could not understand our power.