Chapter 1

Most people run for recreation or exercise, but I run to help keep my psionic powers under control. No, I’m not a psychic. I don’t tell people their fortunes. I have powers that those tricksters and charlatans cannot touch, and my powers will trigger on their own if I don’t keep them under control. Hence the running. For me, it works like meditation. And while I’m not exactly focusing on connecting with the universe, it’s not far from it. I focus on the rhythm of my body, my pace, my breathing, and my direction. It allows me to stretch more than my physical muscles and I perceive more than just the ache in my limbs, the slight burn in my lungs, or the pulse in my head. I notice the way the dirt crumbles under my shoes, the various scents in the air, and the rustling of tree limbs in the wind.

When I discovered what running did for me, I wanted to find a good place to run. I started at school. The University of Texas at Arlington has two gyms on campus, both of which offer treadmills. For whatever reason though, they didn’t work for me. It could have been the fact that I was more focused on staying on the treadmill than on my body. The school has a football field, complete with a quarter-mile track. However, the field is only open when either the marching band is practicing or some other class needs the field. Neither is during any time I’m free to run. Finally, I sought a park or other place to run near campus. I felt lucky when I found Veteran’s Park about three blocks south of my apartment complex.

The park has a mile-long circular trail meant for horses. It’s rough with the occasional pothole, a few roots standing out of the ground, and various-sized rocks littered along the edges of the trail. However, few people can afford to keep horses in the city, which frees up the trail most times. I find it invigorating and it helps with my particular problem because I have to focus on more than just running.

Normally, I get up early to run. Early enough to get back to my apartment, shower, and get to campus before my day’s first class. Today, however, I took my last final exam for the semester and decided to enjoy an afternoon run. The chill winter air felt good to my lungs, as opposed to the warmer humid air of late summer and fall. The crunch of dirt and rocks under my feet felt oddly satisfying. And the rhythm of my body was hampered only by the occasional sight of a woman running along the trail about fifty yards ahead of me. She wore a light gray hoodie, and a pair of skin-tight biker’s shorts with brightly colored stripes following her curves. She had wonderfully toned legs and a fantastic gait, but the most distracting detail was her bouncing blonde ponytail. I remembered following a ponytail like that while running at the end of the previous summer.

Rachel Hendrickson ran with me last summer. She was a fellow college student working on her degree in American Literature, and she might have been running with me today if an insane woman named Jacquelyn LaSalle hadn’t almost killed her. Jacquelyn wasn’t only insane, she was also Powerborne. She didn’t have Psionic powers like me. Instead, she possessed the ability to pass through solid objects or people. Worse was the side effect of her power. If she passed through a person, it caused them pain and hit her like a drug. The more pain she caused, the greater the high. If she killed with it, the high was that much more intense. And if she used it on another Powerborne. Well, you get the picture.

Ironically, Jacquelyn had killed another Powerborne earlier that same day by pulling his heart out of his chest and leaving it on a nearby counter at the hospital. Later, she tried to kill me because I had led the police to her as a murderer. I had yet to learn how to stop her and she took her time going after my heart in front of the police and Rachel. Rachel tackled me, to pull me from her grip, and Jacquelyn turned on her. I finally realized that I could touch Jacquelyn with my Telekinesis, or my TK, even when she was in her intangible form. It allowed me to force her to change back so the police could administer a drug that would suppress her power. Then I turned my attention to Rachel and used my TK to make her heart beat properly until something could be done. We raced to the hospital and the doctors were able to use the heart from earlier to replace her natural heart.

Rachel ended up moving to Houston because it would take time not only to recover from surgery but from the emotional trauma as well. I was able to visit the first time, but then she made excuses about having me there. At first, I thought she might have been embarrassed for not recovering as quickly as she believed she should, but then our email and text exchanges took on different tones and I started to worry about how the heart she adopted affected her. I knew the source of that heart. It had been the core of a very dark person.

The woman ahead of me passed through a copse of trees along the trail, disappearing from view. At the same time, something else pulled me out of my thoughts and replaced my guilt. I had the sudden urge to either stand and fight or run away. I was in danger. I knew it. Something was going to happen.

I slowed to a stop and looked around. Something felt wrong. I’d had feelings like that before, but nothing ever came of it. Was it thoughts of Jacquelyn making me feel that way? She was the only person I was ever truly scared of, but she was long gone. She didn’t have her power anymore which meant she couldn’t escape and come after me. So, why did I feel like I was in danger?

A man stepped out from behind a large Oak tree. He wore dark clothes and a long black coat. His blonde hair was bright in the gloom of the clouds, and his wry smile was a bit disarming, but not enough. He was up to something and considering the way he stared at me, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what he had in mind.

“Hello, Ral,” he said. There was no hint of an accent. “Do you mind if I call you Ral? It is what the news broadcasts called you, right?”

I didn’t respond to him. He had seen me in the news and knew my name. Why did he come looking for me though?

“Well, anyway, Ral, I was told you liked to run this trail, but you usually run early in the mornings. Did you change that routine due to some warning or because you’ve finished your first semester of college?”

Who was this guy? And why did he know so much about me?

He leaned back against a tree and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He lit one and took a deep drag. “Listen, I know it seems a little weird that I know what I know about you, but don’t fret too much. It’s just background information I needed to find you. Now that I have, I can deliver the message I was given for you.”

I frowned in confusion. He had a message for me? Then a thought, a memory, a name crossed my mind. I was sitting at a dining table with several other Powerborne. Jacquelyn LaSalle sat at the head of the table. We had been discussing my actions from earlier in the day that had ended up not only on YouTube but on the local news too.

It brought up only one question: “Are you the Gold Dragon?”

He coughed up smoke and laughed. “Me? The Gold Dragon?” He laughed more, almost falling over. Then he pulled his hand out of his coat pocket and tossed something at me.

I caught it but watched him make sure it wasn’t some form of ruse and then looked at the object. It was a coin of sorts. Instead of a person’s head printed on one side, it was a dragon’s head with a large fin. The other side of the coin held an elaborate design with the number 15 in the middle. I looked at him again. “What’s this mean?”

He studied me, all laughter gone. “You really don’t know, do you?” Then he took another drag from his cigarette. “It’s too bad. He might have been some help to you.”

My focus only intensified. I had my shield in mind, though I hadn’t activated it yet. I was about as ready as I could be for whatever he was about to say or do. “You said you had a message. What is it?”

“First, I’ll need that back,” he said holding out his hand.

“You still haven’t explained what it means,” I said.

He shook his head. “After today, it won’t matter. Now pass it over.”

I rubbed my finger over the subtle surface detail of the dragon’s head on the coin, and then I tossed it back to him. “You have a lot more to explain than just the coin,” I said. “You can start with the message.”

He took another drag off his cigarette as he looked at the coin. It was like he was making sure I hadn’t given him something else. He blew out the smoke and said, “The message is simple.” He looked at me and the expression on his face was very different. “You must die.”

I knew I heard him correctly, but before I could even think about how to respond, with my shield or another ability that would help, the world fell out from below me.

It was like I had been standing on a trap door all along and this guy did something to open the trap. I was falling, yet I wasn’t sinking into the ground. I was suddenly in the sky, several stories up, and hurtling toward the ground.

Though I was confused as to how I ended up so high, I understood what was happening and tried the first idea that occurred to me.

Now, while I had always used my TK to move things around me, this time, I used it to move me. I reached out for the closest, tallest tree and pulled. I was still falling, but the tree came at me, or I moved toward it. Several limbs slapped me, the bark and numerous leaves grated along my skin, and I finally caught a hold of a bough just long enough to slow my descent. I still hit the ground, but with much less force than I believed was originally intended.

For a second, I couldn’t catch my breath. I tried to sit up, but it seemed even my muscles refused to cooperate. I felt pain everywhere, but nothing felt broken. It was mostly scrapes, cuts, and bruises. Nothing a few days of taking it easy couldn’t handle – if I was allowed to take it easy. Then my breath caught, my muscles kicked in and I rolled over onto my hands and knees, coughing.

I heard someone clapping. It was the same man, clapping as he strolled toward me. He plucked his cigarette from his lips, blew out smoke, and said, “I’m impressed. Most people don’t survive that nasty little trick of mine. Usually, it leaves them broken ... or dead.” He stopped a few yards away. “I was told you couldn’t fly, but you came very close to it. At least for a second.” He flicked ashes off his cigarette while thinking aloud. “Now, how did you pull that off?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said a female voice.

I looked around. The same woman I had been following on the trail strode out of the trees. She threw me a glance but focused on the man. “Kill him already. I don’t want to stay any longer than necessary.”

I had remained relatively still while recovering. I wasn’t sure just how injured I was but knew I didn’t have any broken bones. Moving would be painful to my skin at best or could lead to other complications at worst. However, these two were talking about killing me as if deciding to buy something in a store. A surge of anger raced through me, and with that, my hold on my powers relaxed enough that their auras appeared around them.

Ever since I was twelve, I’ve been able to see auras. It was my first power and the one I know the best. One advantage it gives me is knowing someone’s true emotions, regardless of how well they can hide them.

The woman, whose aura was very dark turquoise, stopped a few paces away from the man. His aura was dirty tan. Both were close enough to rush me should I try to get up, and their auras told me they were both anxious, but neither would physically come at me. He had already tried to kill me once with a power I wasn’t entirely sure about yet, and if I didn’t act, she might use something else for which I wasn’t prepared.

Risking pain and possibly further injuries, I flung out my hand and used a Push to knock them both away from me.

The man flew back a few yards, fell into a heap, and groaned. The woman seemed to expect me to try something and flipped back, landing on her feet. She flung her hand at me in the process, and several small sharp pieces of metal hit the ground in front of me. They were shaped vaguely like arrowheads but designed for throwing rather than being the tip of a larger projectile.

I rolled up into a kneeling position and called on my shield. Made of some sort of unreal force and almost completely transparent, my shield is round, slightly concave, and big enough to cover me from my neck to my thighs. Think of the shields the Spartans used in the movie, “300”, only without the etched designs or the weight. I planted the bottom edge of my shield on the ground, leaned it back toward me, and ducked down as low behind it as I could manage. From their perspective, there was no way to get to me.

The woman seemed to feel the need to test my shield as three more of those metal shards stuck in it.

I looked up through the shield. The woman had more blades ready and the man was up on a knee looking at me like I had amused him.

“This one is full of tricks,” he said, as he pulled a handgun out of his coat.

I knew my shield could stand up to the gun. It had done so previously, against another handgun.

The man then flicked a finger, his aura flashed, and this large multi-colored rectangle appeared next to him. It was big enough for him to walk through if it had been a doorway. He then pointed his gun at the rectangle, aiming low. I was suddenly sure he wasn’t aiming at the ground and rolled to the side.

I heard his gun go off and heard him swear.

“You can’t dodge bullets,” he said.

“No,” I replied, “and you can’t use a gun without them either.”

Between classes and working in the file room for the Arlington Police Department, I also took classes with the APD. One of the classes was firearms training. I wasn’t the best shot, but I was the first to memorize how to disassemble and reassemble a semi-automatic pistol. In the case of the class, a Glock 17. Mr. Dirty Tan was holding a Glock.

I reached out with my TK and pressed the catch for the ammo clip. It ejected, just as I wanted, but I also knew there would be one bullet left in the barrel. I focused on pulling back the slide to eject that one.

“No!” he yelled, and quickly flicked his finger and aimed at the rectangle again.

I flipped my shield back over me. The shot went off and, just as quickly, I slammed my shield down in front of me again because Ms. Super-Dark-Turquois had drawn back to throw more darts at me.

Now that I knew his gun was empty, I yanked it out of his hand and threw it out into the trees. I wanted to tell them that they had failed and should leave before I lost control. However, the woman threw her blades - into the rectangle.

One blade caught me in my left shoulder. Another hit my left arm, and the last one must have missed me because it hit the inside of my shield and hung there just like the ones on the other side.

Crap! I thought he was the only one who could use that doorway portal thing.

Fine. Maybe I could too. I dropped my shield, caught all the darts from it with my TK, and flung all of them back into the space behind me. The darts came out of the rectangle next to them and caught the man in the cheek, and the woman in the shoulder. The others missed and landed in the grass.

Both of them were distracted by the attack and I took advantage to close the distance between us.

She threw more darts but missed. He seemed caught up in pain and anger over the dart sticking out of his face, but he looked up at me and pulled a sawed-off shotgun out of his coat to point at me.

I skidded to a halt with my shield in front of me. The shotgun went off and I was pushed back by the sheer force of the blast.

I looked down at my shield and noticed the buckshot caught in the unreal force. I only had enough time to think about sighing before I noticed the gun being leveled at my face.

I ducked and a second shot went off.

The woman kicked out under my shield, sweeping my feet out from under me.

I rolled on the ground and came up with my shield between me and them.

The man, however, was busy reloading the double barrel. “You are a right pain in the ass, aren’t you?”

I reached out with my TK, grabbed his shotgun, and yanked it out of his hands in the direction of the woman. She seemed to expect this and flipped back, away from me and the shotgun.

Frustrated and bleeding, the man’s face looked twisted. “Fuck this shit. Fuck you, Ral!” Then he flicked his fingers and I was falling again. Only this time it was like I was falling while not moving at all.

I could feel myself falling, but nothing around me seemed to be moving. I was still where I had been standing, visually, but there was the unmistakable sensation of falling, as if from a great height.

One thing weirded me out: there was no air passing me. It was so fast, I began having problems catching my breath.

“Yes, you are falling,” Mr. Dark Tan said. “I’ve placed my portals one above the other. You no more than leave one portal and enter the other, which is why your eyes tell you that you’re not moving. Yet, as a point of fact, you are. And, because air doesn’t pass between the portals, not to mention you’re spending most of your time in them, you should be experiencing issues breathing. It should be quite disorientating.”

I looked around for a tree, to pull myself out of this trap.

He laughed. “Oh, yes, please. Try to move. You’re falling faster than terminal speed. At this speed, when you hit the ground, you won’t bounce. You’ll ... splatter. And you’ll only fall faster and faster until I let you go.”

Terrified that I might not be able to prevent my death, I trembled with fear and anger. Fear of my own death and anger at this bastard and whoever sent him. I had to find a way out of this trap. Not only to give this guy the black eye he deserved but to find out why someone sent him to kill me in the first place.

So, I had to get out. I couldn’t assume I had too much more time, so my plan couldn’t be too complex. He dropped me like this before, but I was falling through the sky. I was able to get out of that by pulling myself to a tree, but if I tried it again now, I would only force my death to occur more quickly.