Chapter 3

"Mother!"

Diane Derras had certainly seen better days. She did not appear to be conscious, and a large red stain covered the right arm of her shirt. The youthful litter bearers, who were Elaine's neighbors, and had probably never been in a medical emergency before in their lives, seemed to be in something of a daze. They quickly took in Elaine's hospital outfit, and, not seeming to realize how shocked she was; they turned to her for instructions. The litter itself was one among several hundred like it, issued to each household when the automobile became a thing of the past.

Elaine's heart was racing, but she managed to master her worry and point them to a room. At least they were managing a smooth gait. The last thing Elaine's mother needed was to be bounced around. Elaine reached out and softly touched her mother's stained sleeve in a soothing manner, feeling the dampness of blood freshly spilled, then ran a short distance down the corridor, to one of the physicians on call. Luckily, it was a fairly slow night, and one of them was able to accompany her back immediately.

The physician took quick stock of the situation, and dismissed the litter bearers with his thanks. He then beckoned Elaine in, and closed the curtain that separated the small room from the rest of the area. Carefully, he peeled back Diane's sleeve, exposing a deep puncture wound on her upper arm. His eyes went wide.

"Someone, get me some bandages, quickly! This woman's life is at stake!"

The doctor then turned back towards Elaine's mother, and was thus unaware of what transpired next.

Elaine's mind, in the manner of those who are under great pressure, shifted gears entirely, and the bandages became the sole focus of her concentration. She was just about to go get them, when they suddenly appeared in her hand. Elaine's head jerked back to her mother's prone form, but Diane Derras was still very obviously unconscious.

The combined shocks of the afternoon were too much. Mutely, Elaine handed the bandages to the physician, and then, knowing that there was nothing more that she could do, she slumped against the wall and wept.

A gentle touch brought Elaine back to reality. She didn't know how much time had passed, but it was unlikely to have been terribly long. The hand that had awakened her belonged to the physician.

"Young lady," he said, not unkindly, "I presume by your reaction that this woman is your mother?"

"Y-yes," Elaine was unable to keep the trembling out of her voice.

"I've got some good news for you, then. She's going to be just fine. We're going to keep her here overnight, but she'll probably be able to come home tomorrow. We aren't certain what happened, but fortunately, we were able to mend the damage."

"Tha-nk you."

"I'd advise you go on home now. If you have any siblings, they're probably pretty worried right now."

The thought of Lex and how he must surely be feeling spurred Elaine to her feet. She thanked the doctor again, and quickly left. She would never be able to remember the walk home that night, but her feet brought her quickly to her house, with no guidance necessary from her occupied mind.

Her door was open, and Lex was standing in the doorway. Spying her, he rushed out, words tumbling over themselves with such rapidity that she was unable to understand him. She waited until he ran out of breath, then placed her hand gently on his shoulder, and looked down into his eyes, trying to put on her calmest face. This seemed to do the trick, and Lex calmed down, himself.

"'Laine, you're ok. I was worried about you. Where's mom?"

"She suffered a minor injury today, Lex. She's going to be fine, but she has to spend the night at the hospital," Elaine's control over her voice was iron-hard, and she managed to sound calm, though the effort was highly draining. She had decided it would be best for his nerves if she downplayed the severity of the problem. Her mother would recover, after all, so why upset him more than he already was?

"Can we go see her?"

"I think it would be best if we allowed her to rest for the evening. I understand that you're concerned, but she really will be okay. She wouldn't thank us for ignoring ourselves, though, so we'd best get some dinner."

Elaine's attempt to change the subject appeared to have worked, thankfully, as Lexes face went from worry to disgust, his mind having been set at ease about his mother's injury. Lex sometimes had a tendency to devote his entire mind to one subject and ignore everything else.

"Dumplings. Ugh."

"Better bored than hungry."

Elaine then proceeded to the kitchen and got out enough dumplings for the both of them. She seasoned the dumplings with a touch of fresh rosemary, which helped counteract the blandness. She spent the next few hours keeping herself and Lex occupied, until it was time for him to go to bed. His mind had obviously returned to his mother, and his agitation became all the more apparent when he did not protest, as he fairly frequently did, that he was really too old to need so early a bedtime.

Elaine retired to her own room shortly after that, but she did not immediately go to sleep. She was troubled by more than just her mother's condition. While she supposed it might be possible that her mother could have invoked her Gift on a subconscious level, that event seemed rather unlikely. The alternative, however, was somewhat frightening.

Elaine looked around her room. Books littered the shelves, and the surfaces of most of her furniture. Her bed was unmade, mostly because Elaine had never seen any point in making her bed. No one else would see it in here, and she would only unmake it each night at any rate.

Finally, she found it. She had been looking for a small wooden figurine. It was intricately carved, and really very pretty, but she felt it was the most expendable of her possessions, should something go wrong. Elaine concentrated on the figurine, picturing it vanishing, only to appear in her hand. Her mental image was soon played out in the physical world, with one slight exception, which she really should have thought of, but had not. A small pop accompanied the vanishing and reappearing figurine, as air rushed in to fill the void it had left, and rushed out, away from the space it now occupied in her hand. It did not occupy that space for very long, however, as the pop startled Elaine and she dropped it. Luckily, her floor was thickly carpeted, and the piece came to no harm.

This... was incredible. Elaine's mimicry was powerful, but the ability to mimic Gift? The very idea made her shudder. She decided she had better find out more about this new aspect of her Gift, and quickly. She also decided she had best keep it fairly tightly under wraps until she knew more about her situation. This power, if it was as versatile as she began to expect, was easily strong enough that, had the American government still existed, she would have shortly found herself either in the Gift Corps or tagged with a tracking device.

This would not wait. Elaine had to find out the limits of her new power, and she needed another Gift to mimic. Searching through her memory for an appropriate Gift, she decided to attempt to mimic Mr. James. A few of her belongings were showing some sign of wear, and a bit of repair couldn't hurt them. She went to her closet and picked out one of her favorite, if less useful outfits; an emerald green dress that she had worn to fancy occasions a few years ago. Aside from being too small, there was a hole, which she had not yet taken the time to mend. Laying the dress on the bed, Elaine pictured it in its perfect form, willing the material to close, and the hole to vanish.

Nothing happened. Elaine tried other approaches, but still achieved no result. It became rather quickly apparent that her mimicry, though it was extended, had some sort of limits to it. Damn. She was not overly concerned with how restricting her limits were, since no matter how she looked at it, she had just received the equivalent of a second Gift, but she needed to know what circumstances had enabled her to acquire it in the first place. Briefly, Elaine considered the options. Trauma had been a part of it, certainly, so she reasoned that a strong emotion was probably necessary. The other major part had been that the trauma involved her mother. Maybe it only came when she was fearful for the life of a blood relative? That didn't make a lot of sense, but none of this did. She had an appointment with Mr. Conner after school tomorrow. Maybe she should ask him... if she could get him to promise to keep quiet about it, at least.

Elaine wearily decided that her day had been long enough. She turned out the light, crawled into bed, and lay there awake for a long time before her mind finally quieted enough for her to sleep.

It was a spectacular morning. Saric awoke, as usual, to the first rays of the morning sun. His unshuttered window looked out on a softly green-gold lawn of half-wild grasses, surrounded by old pines, oaks and aspens. Dimly, Saric could make out the stream that softly trickled through the woods below. Most amazing, though, was the sky. It was September, and the sky was a blue so deep, one could almost drown in it. The front yard housed man-enhanced beauty in the form of hedges and flowerbeds, but in the back, nature was allowed to take its course. Most people had fled the countryside when the world had been so dramatically changed, but Saric and his family valued beauty and serenity, and relied upon the turbulent river and steep cliffs that surrounded the town of Arrowhead to keep them safe.

Sighing, Saric tore his eyes away from his window, and pulled them towards his closet. He decided to wear blue today, as he did more often than not. The color, he felt, was flattering, without being gaudy. The next part of his day was one of the reasons Saric was sometimes less than fond of mornings, beauty or no. Saric left his room and went down to breakfast.

As usual, breakfast consisted mainly of dumplings. They wouldn't be so bad, Saric reflected, if they weren't the main course of every meal. They really didn't taste unpleasant, or, for that matter, like much of anything, but seeing them three times a day, seven days a week, was enough to make him want to hurl them as far as his arm's strength would allow. His brother had at least tried for some humor in the breakfast this morning, sculpting the dough-like dumplings into letters, and arranging them to say very short, yet quite unflattering things about the dumplings, their creator, and his possible lineage.

His parents were already gone, having left early to get to their respective jobs. The lack of automobiles for everyday use might make travel time more of a burden, but Saric had to admit, the entire town looked healthier for their enforced exercise.

"Hey Djoser, did you hear about Fishman?" Saric asked, carefully maintaining a straight face.

"No. What's that nazi wannabe done this time?"

"Gotten a taste of his own medicine. He put me, and about forty other people, in detention. Kentaro got word of it to the superintendent, and not only did Roe suffer a public reprimand, not only were most of the detentions cancelled, Roe lost the right to punish. The only thing he can do now is send students to the principal," Saric's face was positively gleeful.

Djoser, on the other hand, did not appear overly enthusiastic. Worried was more like it.

"Saric, this sounds too good to be true, and, in my experience, that means it probably is. What's the catch? The superintendent acted extremely immaturely. Discreet pardons, and a word with Roe in private, would have accomplished pretty much the same thing, so why did he go out of his way to embarrass the man?"

"Aw, come on, Djoser, can't you see Mr. Wentworth just doesn't like Roe? I bet he'd even fire Roe if he could get any kind of replacement math teacher."

"Still, be very, very careful, Saric. If Mr. Wentworth was truly acting out of the good of his heart, he's horribly immature, and you do not want him as an enemy. In addition, regardless of his motive, he stripped Roe of most of his power, and publicly humiliated him. I don't know if you realize exactly what that means."

"No more tyrant in math class?"

"Exactly wrong, Saric. Roe is angry now, and if he can find any loopholes in Mr. Wentworth's limitations, you and your classmates are going to suffer for it."

"What can he do? The principal doesn't eat out of his hand, and there are no other punishments he can hit us with."

"Did you want a list? He can still make your life a living hell, Saric, so don't gloat. First, he can punish the entire class, without calling it punishment. If you thought he assigned a lot of homework before, prepare to start seeing at least double that. Secondly, his tests are likely to become the stuff of nightmares. Thirdly, his methods of teaching will, if possible, get worse. You should be extremely glad you're well ahead of your age group in math."

"What about the other students, though?"

"I imagine your class will be seeing a lot more F's than usual."

"That's hardly fair."

"You're still too young if you think life is fair, Saric. Look at the world around us. Look at all the suffering this apocalypse has brought. Look at all the uncounted masses who have died because some idiot wanted to make a more dangerous killing machine. If you can look at the world you live in, and still tell me life is fair, you aren't looking hard enough."

Saric fell silent.

"You want to work towards life being fair, that's a fine and noble goal. Maybe you can even make some progress. If you don't like what Roe is going to do to his students, help them out. Just be careful, and be discreet. The viper you corner is the most dangerous."

"Thanks for the warnings, Djoser. I don't know if things will be as bad as you say, but I'll be careful."

"And don't forget to use your Gift when you have to. You probably won't be able to do a lot with it, without making it obvious what you're doing, but maybe you can take some of the edge off."

With that, the two continued eating their breakfasts. Saric finished with a line of dumplings that had written out the possibility of a diseased warthog somewhere among Rando's more recent ancestors.

Saric rushed through the rest of the morning ritual, less out of eagerness to face the day than of nerves. Djoser was probably worrying about nothing as far as Mr. Wentworth was concerned, but Saric could all too easily see Roe doing exactly everything Djoser had described him as doing. When it came to sadism, Roe was an artist to rival the Marquis for whom the word was named. In some ways, it would probably be better, if Saric arrived early. He hadn't thought about this aspect of Roe's chastisement, and he couldn't be sure any of his friends had, either. Better that they should be prepared for that.

The walk to school calmed Saric down a bit. Arrowhead had been hit hard by the power struggle following the apocalypse, but it remained nonetheless a beautiful town. This caused Saric to reflect briefly on the possible fates of other tows in the area. How had they been affected by the advent of Gifts? Saric's parents had adamantly refused to leave town after the mess started. Looking back, Saric saw their point.

Still, if the other cities were still standing, it was probably only a matter of time until some sort of contact was re-established. Considering how close Arrowhead had come to falling under a tyrant, Saric and the other residents of the town looked towards that day with something somewhat less than eager yearning. Arrowhead was protected to some degree by the surrounding terrain, and to some degree by its relative isolation, but everyone was aware that with the proper Gifts, neither of those two factors was significant.

Saric, however, refrained from excessive worry about the future. The present was challenge enough all by itself. Firmly, he told his imagination to switch subjects or go take a hike.

The school itself was in view now. This was Montana, so the hallways were roofed over, for the most part, but the school had expanded from its original construction, and the new classrooms were added as outbuildings. They obviously paid their groundskeeper fairly well, because there was a fresh, even beautiful look to the school itself. Hedges that, though they were carefully pruned, appeared pleasantly untamed surrounded it. The leaves on the oak trees were just starting to change, as autumn settled about the countryside.

Elaine had beaten him to the entrance, and the look of stress on her face prompted Saric into a jog to meet her.

Finally. Elaine had probably only been waiting for five minutes, but it had seemed more like five hours. Her feelings of relative peace of mind had vanished with the dawn, as a new bundle of worries set in. Thankfully, Saric was early. Even more thankfully, he appeared to sense her need to talk. As he approached, she made a slight motion asking him to follow her, then turned and walked around a corner of the building, and out of sight. There was an alcove nearby, with various items that were too large to steal and relatively impervious to the local weather stored for easy access. As soon as Saric was in sight, she ducked behind a large air conditioning unit. There didn't seem to be anyone about, but Elaine wanted to be as certain of privacy as she could be.

Saric joined her there shortly. He looked slightly baffled, but the main emotion on his face was concern.

"You'll pardon my saying it, Elaine, but you look like hell. What's wrong?"

"It might be a shorter tale if you'd asked what was right," Elaine said ruefully.

"That bad?"

"That turbulent. First, my mother is in the hospital."

"Oh, no! I'm so sorry to hear that. Is she going to be alright, and is there anything I can do?"

"She'll be OK. She accidentally stabbed herself with a knife, but nothing major was damaged. As for what you can do, just keep this quiet, please. I'll tell Dennis and Kentaro, but I'd rather it didn't get beyond that."

"Fine by me, but why the need for secrecy?"

"Firstly, I do not want to subject myself to bathing in sympathy from people I do not know, secondly, and more importantly, something... happened, at the hospital."

"Happened?"

"I... seem to have somehow acquired my mother's Gift."

Saric's eyes widened, and it was all he could do to keep from exclaiming with surprise.

"That's about how I felt, when I realized it. I don't know what happened, and I'm worried in so many ways. What if I somehow stole her Gift? She was unconscious when I left, so I can't tell if she still has it. Even if I didn't steal it, what if someone finds out? I don't know how they'll react. If I did, somehow, steal my mother's Gift, I'd become a pariah. I've never been popular. In fact, you, Kentaro and Dennis are my only real friends, and I only met you a few days ago, but I feel like I can trust you with this. And I don't want people to be afraid of me."

Saric considered her words carefully before replying. When he did, his voice was troubled, "Elaine, I think you need to see Mr. Conner about this. I'll do what I can to help you through this, but you and I are in way over our heads with something this big, and I don't know that Kentaro and Dennis can do much to help."

"Thank you for your support, Saric. It means a lot to me. But I'm too nervous to go to Mr. Conner. I scheduled an appointment with him, but if he found out that I was stealing other peoples Gifts, he'd be obligated to tell Sparkweaver, and Sparkweaver would be obligated to take steps. That means I would either be isolated or... eliminated."

"You're treading a slippery slope there, Elaine, but you're right, the potential consequences of letting the cat out of the bag could be very bad indeed. But that leaves us in a quandary. This is too important to just let it go, but too dangerous to experiment with. The only thing I can think of is that you should wait until your mother is recovered, and see what effect, if any, you've had on her Gift. We don't have enough information to act at this point, and the four of us will be meeting tomorrow at my house, anyway."

Elaine sighed, and then nodded, and the two made their way to class.

Saric was in something of a luxurious position later that morning. Since he already knew enough in math to be on a college level, he felt no particular need to do anything more than present a reasonable facsimile of paying attention. His eyes followed Roe even as his ears shut themselves to his monotonous droning. Since Saric had demonstrated his capacity in mathematics, Roe had been reluctant to call on him, preferring to lavish his attentions on those who were hopelessly lost by his monologues.

Far more important than algebraic busywork was the problem Elaine was facing. Saric had put on a brave face, but he privately admitted that the possibility that she was stealing Gifts, even accidentally, had him deeply disturbed. She was his friend, so he would not abandon her, any more than a mother would abandon her sick child for fear of catching the disease, but that did nothing to prevent him from worrying for his own skin.

Instead of dwelling on his fears, however, he pursued a logical set of limits that would explain why Elaine had obtained her mother's Gift. First, there was the place. Saric dismissed that out of hand, since Elaine had been working at the hospital for a reasonable amount of time, and anything of this caliber would have probably manifested earlier. Second, there was emotional state. Elaine would have been highly stressed, and more than a little afraid. That might be a contributing factor. Then there was the issue of whom she was stressed over. Saric felt that, while it was possible that the relationship between Elaine and her mother had something to do with this peculiar manifestation of Elaine's Gift, it wasn't terribly likely. It was too specific. There had to be something more general acting as a catalyst. Saric felt he was close to something, but the ringing of the bell cut him off before he could finish working his way through it. The homework assignment was, as expected, atrocious in volume, but it should be fairly easy to work through it.

Saric attempted to get his mind back on the track it had been on, but the jostling of his fellow students kept him distracted until he entered history, a subject in which he was not knowledgeable enough to tune out the instructor.

As Saric entered, he noticed Ms. Taggert was already writing notes on the blackboard. It looked like she had a fairly lengthy lecture planned today, and judging by the diagrams she was drawing, it was going to be a killer. She began her lecture almost before the class bell had finished ringing.

"Yesterday, I mentioned that we would get further into the problems occurring slightly after the apocalypse when-

"Genesis." Elaine interrupted, snapping out of an apparent daze.

"I beg your pardon, Elaine?"

"I'm sick of people acting like the advent of Gift was the end of the world. We have been given the key to the next step in human evolution, and all people talk about is the bad side of that! Yeah, we lost society as we know it, a lot of people died, our technology isn't working at its best, and to a large degree, we're in anarchy, but that will change. Given time, we will rebuild. And when we do, no one is going to look back on the day Gift was released upon us and call it an apocalypse. Bemoaning the price of progress is useless once that price has already been paid, so why do we not embrace that progress? In the advent of Genesis, humanity is being reborn from the ashes."

A moment of stunned silence greeted Elaine, followed by thunderous applause. When the applause died down, Saric laughed ruefully and remarked in a stage murmur that carried to every ear in the room, "And they call me charismatic!"

Ms. Taggert continued her lecture, but with a slight smile on her face. "As I was saying, today we'll be covering in more detail the events shortly following Genesis. Specifically, we will take an in depth look at the tracking devices. The government made a very large mistake when they let slip the information that they were tagging the exceptionally Gifted. A little judicious use of magnets by someone who knew what they were doing was all it took to disable the devices. The less intelligent Gifted individuals who had refused the government's offer opted for this path. The more intelligent ones found ways of removing the chip without deactivating it, usually with help from another Gifted person. Several formerly apathetic citizens had suddenly been given power, and a reason to dislike the government. The Gift Corps found itself increasingly busy as popular dissatisfaction continued to mount, while at the same time, it stopped gaining new members and even lost some to defection.

"As mass unrest continued to mount, the government responded the same way every government in human history has responded to popular unrest. Specifically, they started limiting freedoms and repressing the citizens in their care. A series of laws went into affect, beginning with the doubling of legal penalties for any crime involving Gift, proceeding through the requirement of a license to use Gift, then the adding of more and more restrictions on who could obtain a license, and finally, the outlawing of the use of Gift by all non-government employees. It was that last one that really brought down the government. The day after Gift was banned, riots broke out in nearly every major city. The Gift Corps, already pressed to the limit, was quickly overwhelmed by vastly superior numbers. General chaos followed in many cities, as rival gangs sprang up and began fighting for control of their surrounding areas.

"What followed is rather sketchy, as our city, presumably along with all the other cities in the country, was quickly losing its links to the outside world, but it is known that Washington was utterly destroyed by some kind of nuclear blast released by a former member of the Gift Corps, and that that member died not much later. Also, we know that America was not the first government to fall due to the rise of Gift, and we assume that all or most government on a large scale crumbled.

"Now that I've talked most of you to sleep, are there any questions?"

Dennis raised his hand.

"Yes, Dennis?"

"Did the President's Gift have anything to do with the government response to Gift?"

Ms. Taggert worked hard to suppress a smile, but was not entirely successful. "It wouldn't surprise me, since it certainly caused quite a scandal, but the President's Gift is not something generally mentioned in polite company."

Another student responded without bothering to raise his hand, "Since seventh graders are generally not considered to have mastered all the nuances of politeness yet," he said, his voice jokingly sarcastic, "could you see fit to explain it anyway?"

"I'm sorry, but I'll have to suggest you ask your classmates about it after class. All I will say on the matter is that the President fit the stereotype of a politician perfectly," Ms. Taggert said, softening her words with a smile.

There were still a few minutes left in class, but no further questions came up, so Ms. Taggert assigned a one page paper for the weekend, and then dismissed the class. Dennis was immediately surrounded in the hall by his curious classmates, and was about to launch into an explanation when the fight broke out.

"Touch me again, and you will regret it!" The voice was female, and apparently coming from just around the corner.

"Come on, Clair, I'm sorry! I know I made a mistake, but I never meant to hurt you."

"You're the one who is going to get hurt if you don't leave me the hell alone, Jack!"

A third voice joined in, "You heard my sister. Bug off, asshole!"

"What happened is between her and myself, Dan. Stay out of it," Jack replied with some heat, "Come on, Clair, one more chance, please!"

As flies to honey, the students who had just gotten out of history were drawn to the confrontation, and all witnessed what happened next.

"I warned you, asshole!" Dan yelled, and charged at the much smaller Jack, hands extended. Those who looked closely saw a strange shimmering around Dan's hands, as if the air around them had grown suddenly hot. Dan reached out and grabbed Jack by the wrist. Jack screamed.

And then Jack's Gift came into play. His eyes began to glow, and a sphere of water coalesced in front of his face. The sphere slammed into Dan with tremendous speed, knocking him back, and splashing all in the vicinity. Dan's nose appeared to have taken the brunt of the blast, and it was bleeding rather badly. Jack's wrist was burned where Dan had grabbed him.

Saric shook himself out of the daze he had fallen into, invoked his own Gift, and stepped into the fray.

"Enough, you two! Do you both want to be thrown out of school? Keep it up, and that's exactly what will happen! Now both of you, go to the nurse and get those injuries tended. Move!" Saric's tone would have made a drill sergeant envious, and Jack and Dan hastened to obey without even realizing they were taking orders from one of their peers.