Super Powereds: Year 1 (3 page)

2.

Vince froze in place, staring at the room’s owner and wondering how to explain the mix-up. It wasn’t his fault after all, but this still wasn’t the first impression he wanted to make on his new dorm mate. Vince groped around his head, looking for words to break the silence. Luckily, the boy in the door did it for him.

“Dude, that is some rocking hair,” he said.

“Um, thank you,” Vince replied softly. “I’m sorry I’m in your room. The door opened and I didn’t know...” Vince just trailed off, the look of confusion on the boy’s face making him more unsure with each passing second.

“You’re not in my room, neighbor; you’re in your room. I’m in two,” the boy told him. “I heard you trying to buzz into mine and realized someone else was here, so I came to say hi.”

“But this can’t be my room,” Vince said, trying to explain. “It already has sheets and clothes and everything.”

“Yeah, my guess is that’s because they thought you needed those things,” the boy with sunglasses explained. “The doors are keyed to us; they only open for the right person. If this room opened for you, then it’s because it’s your room. Did you even read the letter they gave you?”

“Letter?” Vince asked with a sense of dread. He did remember a slip of paper that had fallen out of his pack when the taxi had dropped him off, but he had just dismissed it as an old food wrapper or something.

“I’ll get mine,” said the boy. “Hang on a sec... Um, what’s your name?”

“Vince,” said Vince.

“Nice. You can call me Nick,” he said as he stepped out of the room. He came back mere moments later, holding a white piece of paper with fold lines across it.

“Here we go,” Nick said. “‘Rooms have been set up for each attending member by the program. These will be stocked for members as deemed necessary, and are keyed to each attendee’s individual fingerprints. Communal areas are open to all, but will be under the jurisdiction of your administrators. You are expected to be in the central common room promptly at seven PM on move-in day to meet with your administrators and go over dorm rules’.”

“Huh,” said Vince. “Lucky you held onto that, or I wouldn’t have even known about the meeting, let alone about my room.” Vince plunked down on his bed, shedding his pack at long last.

“Good choice of words,” Nick commented, pulling out the chair from Vince’s desk and helping himself to a seat.

“What do you mean?” Vince asked.

“Eh, it’s nothing. Just... well, you said lucky,” Nick said.

“And... What about it?” Vince kept prodding.

Instead of answering, Nick pulled a set of dice from his jeans. He closed his eyes, an act only visible despite sunglasses due to the over-exaggerated scrunching of his face, and breathed deeply for a moment, then tossed them on to the desk.

“Double sixes,” Vince observed.

Nick nodded. He then took the dice, closed his eyes once more, and a deep breath later threw them on the table again.

“Double sixes. Again,” Vince said. “So you use trick dice?”

“Try them,” Nick replied. He scooped up the dice and offered them to Vince. Vince got off the bed, took the dice from Nick’s hand, and examined them. They had six different numbers on each side and felt as though they were weighted normally. Still, Vince wasn’t sure enough in his tactile perception to trust merely holding them for an answer. He threw the dice on the desk for himself.

“Three and five,” Vince said. “So you know how to spin them?”

“Do it again,” Nick told him. This time he closed his eyes and didn’t exhale until Vince’s throw hit the table.

“Double ones,” Vince noted. “So?”

“Again,” Nick instructed him.

Vince repeated his own throws three more times; each time, Nick closed his eyes and Vince wound up with double ones. After the third time, Vince let the dice rest on the table, then went back to his bed and sat on the edge.

“Are you telekinetic? Is that how you control the landing?” Vince asked.

Nick shook his head. “I can’t move things with my mind, at least not on purpose. My power is luck. It can be good or it can be bad, but if it’s luck then I’ve got some say over it.”

“Luck? How does that work? Not to insult, I just tend to think of luck as more of an abstract concept than a viable ability,” Vince said.

“No insult taken,” Nick assured him. “I don’t really know how it works. The docs tried to explain, something about quantum probabilities and minute alterations in the fabric of reality, but at the end of the day all I know how to say is that it’s luck. And mine is a lot better since I got it under control.”

Vince winced inwardly. “That must have been pretty terrible. Before.”

“It was and it wasn’t,” Nick said with a shrug. “At least my ability came in two flavors. You know I kissed a supermodel once? She was out with some friends and they played spin the bottle at the restaurant we were both at and, well... it pointed to me. Of course, then I went outside to find my car had caught fire, but hey, you got to take the good with the bad.”

“You’re upbeat about this,” Vince said.

“Sure I am,” Nick replied with a smile. “That’s all in the past. We’re not like that anymore. We’re the first people in history to go from being Powered to being Super. I still don’t understand what they did to us for those months and I don’t care. Far as I’m concerned, getting into that program was the best stroke of luck my ability ever gave me.”

“So, why the sunglasses?” Vince said to change the subject. He didn’t want to rain on Nick’s parade, but he been dealt too much disappointment in his life to just trust that his abilities were under control now and forever.

“If anyone in authority asks, it’s because using my power can give me headaches that leave me sensitive to light,” Nick explained. “But between you and me, I just think they make me look cool. What about your hair? Natural?”

“Unfortunately,” Vince replied. “One of those weird traits people with abilities sometimes get. The damn stuff basically drinks dye, too, so there’s no way for me to change its color.”

“You could shave it,” Nick pointed out.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Vince countered. “I tried that once. Some guys can pull off the bald look. I am not one of those guys. I’d rather be the weirdo with silver hair than the freakish man-baby.”

“An understandable choice,” Nick conceded. “Well, with you here that rounds out the boys’ side. I wonder if any girls have gotten here yet.”

“Wait, who’s our third roommate?” Vince asked. “I haven’t met anyone but you so far.”

“Our third got here early and went out to explore campus,” Nick told him. “You’ll see him tonight at the dorm meeting. He’s an... interesting fellow.”

“That doesn’t sounds good,” Vince said.

“No, but it doesn’t sound bad either,” Nick pointed out. “Come on, you just arrived and I’m famished. Let’s go hit up a dining hall for lunch.”

“Do you know where one is?” Vince asked.

“Not really,” Nick admitted. “But I bet we get lucky.”

3.

Alice saw a pair of boys walking away from the building as she was heading towards it. They took no notice of her, clearly absorbed in their own conversation and playing catch with a pair of dice. Her new roommates, no doubt. Fantastic. At least the one with the brown hair was cute, or would be if it he weren’t wearing those ridiculous sunglasses in the shade. The other one, though, who was he trying to impress with that hair? Silver and spiky, was he trying to flunk the secret identity challenge before the semester even started?

None of that was her concern, though. Daddy had been strangely unbending in denying her desire to dorm with the regular Supers, saying that she had to stay in the dorm set up for the “special cases” like herself. She didn’t really see why she needed to be in the reinforced building; her ability was only flying, and she had suffered no uncontrolled attacks for over two months now. It was insufferable that she would have to... well, suffer through the group accommodations with a bunch of all-too-recently Powereds. Alice didn’t want to find camaraderie in their shared former disability. She wanted to forget that part of her life had ever existed.

Still, no one could say that Alice Adair didn’t make the best of a bad situation. She had taken a guiding hand in the construction of their dormitory, creating an environment that was spacious, desirable, and above all else, elite.

She breezed through the hallway, disregarding the note that hung on the entrance. A quick thumb scan took her to the central common room. She surveyed the work of the decorators critically. Yes, it would do nicely. Now at least when the other students asked her why she was in this small dorm set off at the edge of campus she could humbly explain that it was only available to those of sufficient means to afford such luxury and privacy. It wasn’t her ideal situation, but it would work.

Alice moved briskly to the girls’ side, anxious to get through lest the last boy be lounging about, hoping to sneak a peek at what members of the fairer sex would be sharing his roof space. The girls’ side was identical to the boys’, save that there were only two rooms, numbered 4 and 5 respectively. While group bathrooms were fine for males, Alice had been quite insistent with Daddy that she have her own private bathroom. The fact that this meant her fellow female received one as well was a very distant afterthought.

On that thought, Alice realized her other roommate was sitting in one of the plush pink chairs Alice had picked out, watching the television on mute. It seemed to be a game show, and the girl was as silent as the screen, just watching and occasionally cocking her head to a different angle.

The girl was... wild seemed to be the word that popped into Alice’s head first. Not wild in the sense of tequila, poor decisions, and eventual therapy, but wild in the way of the jungle. Her hair looked as though no one had even entertained the idea of touching it for years, sticking up at all angles willy-nilly. The girl’s clothing was clean at least, though it had the look of something that had been worn for many years. Ironically, Alice’s jeans had the same appearance, though hers had achieved the look through corporate innovation and the fashion demands of the public. The most disconcerting thing about the girl, though, was her eyes. While Alice had always considered her own green eyes, especially when paired with her platinum blonde hair, to be rather stunning, they held no candle to the amber irises that encircled this girl’s pupils.

“Ahem,” Alice said in her best impersonation of a throat clearing. “Good afternoon, I take it that you are my dorm mate?”

The girl swiveled her head toward Alice in a motion that seemed more owl- or hawk-like than human. She blinked those round amber eyes twice, then gave an oddly-shaped grin.

“You snuck up on me,” that girl said.

“Oh, well, I do apologize,” Alice said formally. Just because this girl seemed so uncouth didn’t mean Alice could allow her own standards to lapse.

“Don’t,” said the girl. “I just keep forgetting people can do that now. It’s a pleasant surprise every time.”

“All right, then,” Alice said, shifting on her feet uncomfortably. She knew everyone staying here had an ability, but she had been unable to wheedle Daddy into telling her precisely what to expect. “My name is Alice. What do you go by?”

The girl blinked oddly once more, then cocked her head before answering. “I haven’t had any need to go by anything in a long time. My given name is Mary, though it might take a few tries to get my attention with it. As I said, out of practice.”

“I think Mary is a lovely name,” Alice said politely. In truth, she didn’t care one way or the other, but as she couldn’t very well go around all year referring to the girl as Freak Eyes, at least not out loud, Mary worked fine for her.

“I’ll do my best to remember its mine,” said the girl who was apparently Mary, turning her head back to the television and watching her show.

“Um, if you don’t mind me asking, why are you watching it on mute?” Alice inquired.

“I used to always watch television like this,” Mary replied without turning around. “I learned to read their lips; that way, if I wanted silence, all I had to do was shut my eyes. It was the only thing in my life on which I could actually turn the voices off, so I relished it. I guess old habits die hard.”

“Ah, well, I see,” Alice said quickly, eyeing room number four and edging her way towards it. “Well, I’ll leave you to that, then. See you tonight at the meeting.”

With those words, Alice jammed her thumb on her door scanner and popped it open. She slammed the door immediately after and rested against her wall. It was strange how uncomfortable that girl made her, how it felt like, despite being so disconnected, Mary was looking right through her with those bright amber eyes. Alice had grown up wealthy and aristocratic, and if there was one thing she could not stand, it was the sensation that someone knew what she was really thinking.

Outside Alice’s door, Mary sat in the chair, eyes still trained on her game show. “That girl is more perceptive than she thinks,” Mary whispered to a small stuffed bear that sat between her leg and the armrest of the chair.

4.

“See, I told you we’d get lucky,” Nick gloated as he munched on a thick hamburger.

“We didn’t get lucky,” Vince corrected. “We got lost. For half an hour. Until I went into a building and asked for directions.”

“And wasn’t it lucky I brought along a guy with no masculinity issues about asking for directions?” Nick pointed out.

“I think you’re stretching on this one,” Vince replied, picking at the basket of chicken fingers. Being a wanderer had given Vince a pretty ironclad stomach when it came to grease and taste, but he had also always had to subsist on whatever was available at the time. As a result, he had a small appetite and an equally small percentage of body fat. He reflected ruefully that if only he had some muscle on his wiry frame it would have been very pronounced.

“I might be,” Nick admitted. “But then again, you haven’t even told me what you can do; who knows if you’re fit to judge the skills of others?”