1001 Sins | ✔

and so it was written. . .

New Republic was the hub of crime and the extraordinaries — it was what they called people like me, people who had been blessed by the thunderstorm seven years ago, blessed because some of us decided to gather glory to themselves, using their powers to 'save the city'. I called it bullshit because there was nothing more self serving than a bunch of idiotic teenagers dabbling with crime and calling themselves superheroes.

They were the people you would see on TV, stopping a bank robbery and lingering just in time for the police and press to arrive and capture a stunning picture of them flying into the sky. They even had a clique name for their group — the Legion of Honour and it was no different from the girls at school who would sit at one table, wearing the latest designers and casually announce that they were better than you.

I hated everything about them, I hated everything about New Republic. I hated that the citizens glamorized our abilities and paraded us like freaks in a circus, they looked like us like we were magic, maybe we were, because only magic gave and doomed at the same time.

It was why I stayed far away from anything that had to do with the Legion, hiding my abilities and biding my time until I was eighteen and free to leave New Republic. Because I knew what happened to people like me, if my powers were ever discovered, then my future would be set without me having a saying in it, I would be drafted and sent off to the government facilities for Extraordinaries where they would hone my abilities and sharpen them into something they could use in war.

The thunderstorm that cursed me ten years ago, took everything precious to me and gave me something useless in comparison. My abilities were a curse and I refused to use it for anything other than personal gain, I would be damned if I let them turn me into a clown.

Hiding was harder than I thought, especially with what I did for a living, by day, suffering through a school that was obsessed with superhero culture and which one was the greatest, my evenings were filled with working painstakingly in an amusement park that was crumbling by itself. My nights were the most important hours, it had started as an accident, when I first discovered my powers, I had stolen a memory from a single touch, and soon I was taking memories from people like a pickpocket would steal money from wallets.

My touch was dangerous, my touch was power.

I could not only steal memories, but I could also sell them to people who wished for it. It was how I found myself working for Razor, the leader of New Republic's most dangerous gang. He too was an extraordinary blending in, he taught me to control my abilities, he taught me to use them for myself.

In a twisted sense, he was like an older brother figure, I, Xandra could count on him and he could count on me — until now, I was about to betray him.

You see, it didn't matter how many years you've known a viper, didn't matter how many years you've fed it, a viper would always remain a viper.

It was exactly what I was, my nature, my instincts. And those instincts were telling me that this was the time to run.

I had known for a long time Razor and his principles, he had never really been one to preach loyalty but I thought he had my back, until he struck first — equally a viper like me — and betrayed me by sending the hounds at my door.

What Razor didn't know was that my powers had grown from seeing and stealing memories to seeing thoughts. I knew of the government taskforce Razor had tipped off about my abilities, even before they had arrived at my doorsteps like hounds at the gate of hell. I knew too well of the debts Razor owed, what I didn't know was how far he was willing to go to pay those debts.

Never, ever underestimate a desperate man.

Now I was going to make him pay.

***