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VI. The Newcomers

Chapter Six
Jade

The newcomers started arriving this morning at dawn. Zy sent fifteen ships along with his parents and the Dora Milaje to carry the enhanced coming to live here, and every single one of them is filled to the brim. The former king and queen look exhausted as they exit one of the ships and embrace their son, who is standing in front of all of us, waiting to greet his new subjects. Livy is right next to him, with the other kids a few feet behind. Everyone is here to help the newcomers adjust to their new lives here in Wakanda, even Alex and Khari are on our left, who have offered for some of them to live in Jabariland. Zy was grateful for this offer, they'll need more housing. Naomi said that one hundred and twenty people were coming here, and those are just the ones who were let out of jail, or at least the ones who need housing. Some still have families and some refused to move despite having nowhere else to go. And what about the F.E.P members who still need housing? Or any other enhanced person who needs it? Zy offered a safe haven for anyone whose enhanced, but with that safe haven comes housing and supplies that Wakanda needs to account for.

Zy steps forward as Naomi, Johnathon, and Matthew step off the ship, each of them bowing their heads to the young king. Zy's smile is radiant as he greets them, even more so as the new arrivals step off the ships. Most of them are in utter awe of Wakanda's beauty, staring at the buildings and the technical marvels around them, while some look indifferent, impatient to get to their new homes. Zy begins sectioning them into groups of ten, then assigning one of us to lead this group to their houses. We each have lists of the houses Zy has set aside for the enhanced, they're spread all around Wakanda and Jabariland. The group in given are mostly young, the oldest probably twenty five or twenty six. The youngest, a Brazilian boy with a hardened face and distrustful eyes, looks no older than Jo.

An image floods into my in my mind of this boy in jail for the powers he was forced to have. I wonder if his parents have powers too, if they were apart of the project and passed their powers onto him. We're they at the Old Forge base when we were trying to rescue Naomi, Johnathon, and Matthew? How many of these one hundred and twenty people were being tortured while we ran our bakery and went site seeing in Denmark?

I clear my throat and try to focus on the task at hand. I realize I've been staring at this group for some time, they're giving me skeptical looks. I lead them towards the lake, where half of the houses are, trying my best to avoid conversation with any of them. I'm not the best at talking with people I don't know, even less people who were tortured and incarcerated because I failed them. I try to look preoccupied with my list to fend off any unwanted attention, but one of the children, probably sixteen or seventeen, a white girl with bleach blonde hair and green eyes, walks up to me and asks:

"You're Combustion Woman, aren't you?"

I nod. "Yes."

"I heard stories about you. I heard you were my age when you were given your powers, and you were held in jail for them too."

I nod again, my voice quieter, smaller. "I was, by HYDRA."

"Was it hard?" She asks, her voice timid, as quiet as mine. "To come back to the world after being in prison for so long?"

"How long were you in prison?" I ask, my voice above a whisper.

"My parents were apart of the project everyone's been taking about on tv, they could create ice just like I can. They didn't show any signs of powers for months though, so they were let go and sworn not to talk about what happened to them. My dad used to be a fisherman up in Maine, one day he used his powers on the job and someone got scared and reported him. He and my mother were both taken prisoner, me along with them."