Chapter 2: Rebirth

I am terrified. I didn’t fall asleep last night until 4:30 in the morning and I had a very unsettling dream. Who is this Rhodes guy? How did he know? I don’t k now what else to do but actually just follow everything he said and show up ten minutes early. It is 9:30 now and I have to be at the Healy Office Complex in twenty minutes. At least the rioting has stopped. It kept me awake last night until…4:30am.

I don’t know how to dress. I guess I will just wear black pants and a nice black shirt? I mean, what is this, an interview or an internment? I have no idea. I don’t want to take public transportation because I might get killed in an impromptu riot, but I don’t want to walk alone. What if Rhodes is watching? What if they’re going to send someone after me? I am scared and somehow excited, as well. This is the weirdest feeling I have ever felt. I would call a cab, but no cabs will come down to this neighborhood after last night’s riot. I will walk. At least, if I get caught up in an uprising, I have a chance of making it out alive. Who knows what will happen with this…Templar business?

I am standing outside the Healy Office Complex at it is 9:47am. Do I go in? I have to. He said I would. He knows I will. What? I don’t even know what else to do. I’m going, my feet are taking me there and I feel disconnected. Breathing heavy.

I’m not sure if I should knock or just walk into office 8B. I decide to just walk in. I am surprised by their lack of seating. All I can see is a man sitting behind a standard reception desk. He looks up at me and I notice that he is the guy from the videocall last night, Dr. Rhodes, or whatever. I take a few hesitant steps toward him and he stands up. I can see that he is slightly overweight and a little bit taller than I am. He is wearing a gray suit. I find it fitting that it matches his graying hair color almost perfectly. He stands up as I walk in.

“Good morning, Miss Wells. You will notice that the time is 9:50am,” he says with a grin as he extends his hand to shake mine.

“So it is,” I reply as I take hold of his hand to shake it.

I recognize the smell of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant before I even open my eyes. This smells like a hospital. I open my eyes and close them immediately again. They haven’t adjusted to the light yet. A second later, they are open again and I look around and notice that I am in a hospital room. I see a small stool across from my with my clothes neatly piled on top of it. I am wearing one of those hospital gowns. I look left, an IV, right, some kind of monitor. Leads are coming off of me like nobody’s business. Was I in an accident? What happened? I remember going to the Healy Office Compl…RHODES! What the hell did that fat man do to me?!

This is a single room. The door is closed. The windows are shut, there seems to be a room just outside the door…this looks like an isolation room to me. I should know, I’ve seen enough of them in my younger years. Allergies, asthma and whatnot. Lots of birthdays in the hospital. Like this one.

I am looking around for a call button or something to alert a nurse when I hear the door open and three people walk in. They are wearing what appear to be…HazMat suits? I immediately fear that there’s been a nuclear holocaust like in my reoccurring nightmare, but I try to calm myself down, think that there’s no way. I can feel my heartbeat start to race and hear the monitor respond accordingly. I sit up and anxiously wait for one of the masked men to speak.

“Hello, my dear,” I hear the figure to the far right speak. I know this voice. It’s that Rhodes guy again.

“What happened?!” I scream out. None of them say anything for a second or two and then Rhodes removes his protective mask and sits on the end of my bed.

“I hope you don’t mind me having a seat, my dear, but I’ve been on my feet for the last twenty four hours, you understand.” Twenty four hours? How long have I been out?

“I’m sorry for all of the medical equipment and all, but we had to keep you under sedation and observation for 24 hours until we saw how your body would react to the activation,” he says as he pats my foot a little. I don’t even know what to think at this point.

“Activation?” I say, “of what?”

“Glad you asked, my dear,” he replies. He stands up and nods to the figure in the middle, who turns to me, removes a glove on his right hand, and grabs my hand. I am immediately seeing visions of my own birth, incubators, tubes, doctors, birthdays spent in hospitals, breathing aides, college, Dean, drums. I then see what looks like a DNA map and this image fades to a vision of me standing in a corridor with my head down and eyes closed. I feel a strange feeling start in the pit of my stomach and rise up through my chest. It is almost burning, I am afraid that I will choke. I start breathing faster and faster until the vision of me looks up and opens her eyes and clenches her hands into two fists and I feel my heart start racing so fast that I think I’m going to have a heart attack. I can hear the heart monitor beeping and racing along with my own heart and the burning in my chest is so hot that I think I’m actually dying. I can feel myself break out into a sweat and I close my eyes. I have a feeling that I am about to leave this world right here, but I feel the figure let go of my hand a second later, my heart rate is slowing back to normal and the burning in my chest is gone. I look down to notice that both of my hands are clenched into fists.

My eyes must be as wide as saucers when I look back at Rhodes, because he taps my foot again and tells me to relax. He looks to the figure standing next to who was holding my hand and says “Thank you, Shadowmind.”

Shadowmind? What the hell? What the hell is a Shadowmind? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?!

“You tried to kill me!” I scream at Rhodes and then whip my head around to look at this Shadowmind character and I pull myself back in the bed and sit up straighter than an arrow. I hug my knees close to my chest and feel my heart start beating faster again.

Rhodes stands up and puts his hands up to show that he will not touch me anymore.

“I did not try to kill you, my dear, nor did my friend here,” he informs me in a softer voice than he was using before. “Do you know what just happened?”

“If I knew what just happened, I probably wouldn’t be thinking you tried to kill me, would I?” I snap back and give him a dirty look. I look over at this Shadowmind creeper and he removes his protective mask as well. He doesn’t appear to be a bad guy and I notice that his eyes have two different colors in them. As I am noticing this, I realize that he is starting me directly in the eye and I suddenly feel calm and comfortable. He smiles and reaches out to shake my hand and I don’t know why, especially after the fact that I think he may have tried to kill me the last time he touched me, I shake his hand.

As I am shaking Shadowmind’s hand, I notice that he has a shaved head and some sort of tribal tattoos all over his scalp and face. And as I look closer, I notice that they are…fading away? He looks to be about 35 with…fading tattoos? What?

“Now that you’re feeling a bit better about the situation, I would like to explain to you what happened. The visions you saw, of your birth, hospitals, everything. Those were courtesy of my associate Shadowmind, who you have already become mildly acquainted with,” Rhodes says and the guy with the tattoos that have completely faded by this time nods his head and smiles.

“Shadowmind, as you may have suspected, has psionic capabilities. Do you know what they are?” Rhodes asks me. I look at him and roll my eyes a bit.

“Sure, I’ve played video games before,” I tell him and he cocks his head to the side and gives me a look a parent would give a child.

“Yes, well, life imitates art and art imitates life, my dear. That DNA sequence you saw was your own. I know you don’t know much about that kind of thing, but if you noticed, you would have seen a sequence that was slightly…odd,” Rhodes explains and I am afraid that Shadowmind or whatever will cause some textbooks to flash into my head and I’ll be scared out of my skull again. Rhodes sits down on the end of the bed again and continues.

“This discrepancy in your DNA was what caused all of your allergies and breathing problems. But it goes much deeper than that. Those were just side effects of this, ah, genetic mutation, if you will,” he says to me. I stop hugging my knees and look at him square in the face.

“Are you saying I’m a mutant? What am I, one of the X-Me…”

“Please, like I said before, life imitates art and art imitates life. Now, if we can move along without any further interruptions, I will explain everything to you.” I nod at him. This is getting good.

“Now, this mutation had effects on your body that remained inactive until yesterday. We activated your dormant gene so that we could see exactly what you are capable of,” he says to me.

“What do you mean what I’m ‘capable of?’”

“Well, much like the story you’re familiar with through comic books and cinema, your genetic mutation causes you to have abilities that people without the mutation certainly do not have. My friend Shadowmind has a similar mutation. His allows him to exploit his psionic abilities. When he is doing so, you will notice what seem to be tattoos appearing along his scalp and face. This is a side effect of his active mutation. It only happens when he is manifesting his abilities. Otherwise, you can see that he appears completely normal, aside from the fact that I believe his goatee cannot compare to mine,” Rhodes says and chuckles a bit. Shadowmind rolls his eyes and walks over a chair and sits down. The figure that was standing in the middle starts pacing back and forth between the end of my bed and the door.

“So,” Rhodes continues, “your mutation allows you to have certain abilities. I have studied your medical file extensively, you see, and I have predicted that you are able to, ah, manipulate certain…elements in physics. This latent mutation is why I believe you felt drawn to physics your whole life. Is this making sense to you?”

“Yes, in a strange, comic book kind of way,” I reply to him. The pacing figure is making me nervous and I can see that Shadowmind is getting slightly irritated with the pacing as well.

“The feeling you felt when Shadowmind touched your hand, the burning in your chest, that is what you will most likely feel when you are actively exploiting your Gift.”

“You mean my mutation?” I ask.

“Yes, but the word ‘mutation’ has a very negative connotation. We prefer to consider you among the Gifted,” he adds. He then shoots a look to the pacing figure and shifts on the end of the bed a little.

“Darius, WILL YOU PLEASE take a seat?!” he yells at the pacing figure, who promptly stops and shrugs his shoulders. He removes his mask and I see that he is about my age, blonde-brown hair and about six feet tall.

“Sorry” he says with a smile and saunters over to a chair at the opposite side of the room.

“You’ll have to excuse my associate Darius. Introductions to new Gifted always make him a bit nervous,” he explains and nods in the direction of the pacer.

“You will come to find that Darius is quite the character,” I hear a voice say and realize that is Shadowmind speaking for the first time. I look at him and just say “okay.” He slouches in his chair and puts his hands behind his head and crosses his right leg across his left thigh.

“You will see, my dear, that you are quite special. Welcome to The Templar Agency,” Rhodes says to me and Darius claps a bit.

“What do we, um, do here?” I ask quietly.

“I am glad you asked. But before I can tell you, I must tell you that I will no longer be addressing you by your given name. You see, because of the nature of the work we do here, it is imperative that very few people here know your true identity. You may have noticed that I have referred to my psionic associate exclusively as Shadowmind. This is to prevent both you and Darius from knowing his true identity, in case either of you should be discovered and taken captive.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, TAKEN CAPTIVE?! What do you mean taken captive? By who?!” I scream out. Darius stands up and walks over to the edge of my bed.

“By the Brotherhood, obviously,” he says with a smirk. “Doesn’t every comic book have one?”

“Darius, please, we don’t want to scare the girl,” Rhodes says to him. Shadowmind looks up.

“I think it’s too late,” he says. Darius looks over and him with a look of fake surprise.

“He thinks it’s too late! He thinks! What a funny guy you are, Shadowmind! A real comedian. He thinks…”

“Darius, it would serve you well to shut up,” Shadowmind snaps back and shakes his head. “Remember that little dream you had as a kid to grow up and become a bal…”

“Hey!” Darius yells back, “I was a kid! Stop digging through my memories to find crap on me!”

“Now, now, children, can we stop this nonsense? We’re trying to introduce a new Gifted into the Agency and you two are fighting like you’re in the fifth grade,” Rhodes reprimands. “I apologize for them, they do this sometimes.”

“Typical men,” I say back and look back and forth between the both of them. They grin at me and say nothing.

“You will need to think of a Gifted name, okay? Because we certainly don’t want someone the likes of Darius knowing your true identity,” I hear Rhodes say and I immediately wonder why Darius doesn’t use a code name.

“Why is he called Darius and not something like ‘The Mouth’?” I ask. Shadowmind laughs.

“Because,” Darius says as he starts pacing again. He stops right at the end of my bed once more, probably for dramatic effect and says “They already found out who I am.”