Chương 5: Girl at the cellar door

I watched the world stop. It was the second time I'd used my power in the rain, but man, it hit just the same. I strolled out into the garden, leaving the warm light of my house behind and venturing into the darkening night, surrounded by small beads of water suspended in the air. They splashed against my face, smearing against me, displaced by my own momentum. They wet my hair, then rolled down my skin like they normally would for as long as they touched me. Then, when they finally let go of me, they froze again.

Behind me, I was leaving a corridor of displaced water like a tunnel of empty air, the drops all collected by my presence and redistributed at the edges of a volume of space that bore my silhouette, like I had been extruded through a machine. The world was silent, eerie, still. For a moment, the beauty of the light, the rain, the split-second that could turn into an eternity, made me stop in awe. Then it was over and the rain was pelting down on me.

"Shit," I cursed and ran towards the shed. I almost burst through the rickety door, displacing dust and tools inside, making things clank and fall. I fumbled for the light, pulling the thin, fraying nylon cord my grandpa had used to replace the original mechanism after it had rotted away. It was an old incandescent bulb and its heat was pleasant as it slowly warmed the interior of the cramped space, but at the same time it also revealed the mess I'd made with my carelessness. You know what?

I'd been procrastinating shed-work for far too long. So, I spent more than half an hour tidying the place up, occasionally warming my hands close to the glowing filament in the small glass bulb dangling by the ceiling, or coughing up a storm from all the wood dust I was displacing. The wood mites had really gone to town with all the old logs stored in here, but it was also a guarantee that the wood was as dry as it could be. It was going to burn so well.

Once I was decently satisfied with my progress, knowing that there were no more teetering mounds of tools or mountains of random junk that could fall on me at any moment, I finished gathering the wood. I wondered idly if the shed wasn't another project of my grandpa's, because the place felt far too big while standing inside, and I was having a hard time reconciling it with the very much unassuming shed-like look it had when looked at from outside. If I didn't know better, I'd think my grandpa had been a Supe.

Of course he wasn't. Eight billion we had been right at the Onset, and not one awakened unless in the 18-25 age bracket. No exceptions. Alright. It was time to go back inside the house, enough procrastinating. My time-freeze wasn't back up, although it was close. But it would be of little use if I had to carry a heavy-ass canvas log carrier. I'd make it ten paces maybe, and then time would resume on me and I'd get soaked anyway. Better to just get it over with.

I ran, got soaked (as predicted) and kicked the door in quick succession. Thank past-me for leaving the front door slightly open or I'd have had to let go of the wood, fumble with the key with freezing, shaking hands, and then heft the wood again. This way, instead, I could simply barrel through. And then I saw her. She was standing there, spooked like a cat by my sudden intrusion in my own home, staring at me while holding my house key.

She had been next to the cellar's door, trying to get it to open and cursing up a storm when I caught her in the act. It must have been less than a second, but I felt some horrible, terrible power brush against me. It crawled up my body, stinging and tingling, like when your arms fall asleep on you and you can't do anything to wake them back up and when you do, they turn to liquid fire. It was that, but more visceral. A leeching of strength and life flowing out from me, pressure pushing against my body.

She was panicking, but so was I. Her hands and wide eyes blazed violet, and in that split-second my brain realized that the sensation I was feeling was coming from her. It was an attack. I activated the time-freeze, which had just come back online. The whole bag of wood froze halfway between where I had been holding it before I dropped it, and the floor.

The wood inside was only just beginning to separate into discrete parts, the logs all going their slightly different way so that when the whole thing hit the ground, they'd scatter and make a mess. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The sensation of wrongness eased, going from a blaring alarm to an echo, like phantom pain. But I had no brain capacity to process that, because I was too busy staring at her. She was gorgeous, and clearly not human.

The best way I could describe her was… an elf, or a fae. Her beauty was enough to cut through my panic like a knife through butter. I knew mutants existed, and were getting more common, but she was a goddess. Long, platinum-white hair with a petite body and scant clothing, pointed ears that jutted out from the sides of her head, hiding behind her silken locks. Violet eyes like gemstones, dark tan skin and lips that were full and drew me in like the promise of sweet, forbidden ambrosia.

She made all other girls I'd been with feel like they were never even real. Even panicked, there was something quick and clever in her face, like a sharp, fox-like cast to it. Then my eyes locked onto the key in her hands, my key. And I realized I had wasted more than half the time-freeze duration gawking at what was, by all means, not only a home intruder but someone who was clearly trying to kill me. I could still feel the phantom pain of her power on me. Anger blazed. What the fuck?

It didn't matter how gorgeous she was, how dare this girl intrude into my home and attack me? I acted on instinct then, knowing before I even touched her what I was about to do. The moment time unfroze, I'd be feeling the brunt of her attack again, and a few seconds of exposure had already left me feeling sick and queasy. No. I was going to stop her. I crossed the distance in a hurry, sprinting in a mad, impulsive panic and cursing my power for being so limited.

Sure, it was a fun trick, but I felt so slow and I could feel the last two seconds of activation flow down the drain and make me wonder if I was going to reach her in time. But I reached her. Right at the last moment, I grabbed her arm just as time resumed its motion. Her eyes barely had time to go wide with fear and renewed panic, and I felt whatever attack she was landing on me redouble. I couldn't let it, and so I unleashed my swarm of nanites, my second power, Gus's legacy, on her. Consume.

A split-second, nothing really. It felt like no time at all, as if my first power had activated again but this time without me in it. I knew it had not, of course. The swarm was just that fast. One moment she was attacking me, the next moment she was not. She'd been rendered totally powerless in less than a blink of an eye, and I could already feel the swarm begin to work on the power it had just devoured. She jerked, pushing me away weakly, and I was too dumbfounded to offer any resistance.

She also let go of the key, which wiggled free of the lock and fell to the ground while I recoiled and tried to find my footing. Behind me, the wood scattered all across the floor and made me jump, followed by an angry hiss and meow as my cat came out of hiding just to bolt towards the staircase, where he disappeared in search of safety on the higher floors. For a moment, the girl and I both watched him disappear, time feeling like it had stopped for everyone save us two.

Then I looked at her again, and my anger rose again.

"You!" I screamed, outraged. My swarm was done consuming, beginning deconstruction. But the girl, despite opening her mouth, did not speak. She froze, turning to where a mirror propped against the sofa had been uncovered when the protective tarp fell to the side, and stared. Outside, the deafening sound of rain told me that time was flowing like normal, even though it felt like it had never really unfrozen. I knew why, in the back of my mind. The girl in front of me had changed.

I hadn't realized it in the heat of the moment, and it took her staring at her own reflection to make me realize that she was no longer an ethereal elf-fae. She was just a normal girl now. Same clothes, different person inside. She was looking at me now, trying to reach for something that wasn't there. I could tell she was trying to use her powers and failing from the look of surprise on her face. It turned to disbelief.

She stared at her reflection again, eyes growing misty, then at me, and fell to her knees, bawling her eyes out. What the fuck was happening? I knew I had just sucked away her superpower, somehow reverted her mutation, not to mention that I caught her in the act of burglarizing my own home with a very suspicious set of coincidences that ranged from her knowledge of the key to her having gone straight to the door to the cellar. But my brain sort of short-circuited. I expected her to fight. To curse me.

To try and get away. To be evil and an enemy. I wasn't ready to see her on her knees and crying like a scared little girl. It made me want to just hold and tell her that everything was going to be alright. When she looked up, I realized that she was still gorgeous, if only in a plainer sort of way. Chestnut-brown wavy hair, warm brown eyes dotted with tears that streaked down her soft cheeks, olive skin. She was no longer the stunning elfin beauty of before, but a girl who could be my neighbor for all I knew.

Her tears had stopped, but she didn't wipe her face, letting the wet trail sparkle in the light. As she looked at herself one more time, her smile returned, just a hint of it, showing me that it was without a doubt the same foxy face as earlier, just changed. But then her hand went to her ears, no longer pointed and long, and a complex emotion replaced that beautiful, fragile smile, a realization that carried a heavy burden. Relief, and something else.

"I…" She looked at me.

"I'm normal? The drain… it's gone! D-did you take it away? H-how?"