Powers

Amelia had plenty of secrets. Some of them weren’t even that bad.

There was, for instance, that time when she had tried to put some baguettes that were supposed to go into the oven in the microwave, not having actually read the instructions, at the same time as she had been too exhausted to actually think about if anything she was doing made any sense at all.

The result had been closer to coal than to bread. No way she was ever going to tell anyone about that.

But if someone pointed a gun at her, and said they would pull the trigger if she didn’t tell them her deepest secrets… Well, this was probably still one of the secrets Amelia would tell them first. Would tell them in the hopes they would settle for enough things on that level, not bothering to push further.

Because there was one secret Amelia would absolutely not tell, regardless of if at gunpoint, dangling over a pit of lava, or about to be dropped from kilometres high in the sky.

On the surface, it was a simple thing.

A simple thing, but yet it kept occupying her mind every waking minute. Made itself known when she least wanted it to. Made her stay away from people, in fear of what they would do… what she would make them able to do.

And so she had moved to a tiny town, population of about two hundred. Stopped going outside except to go to the local store, about as small and limited in selection as the town itself, about once every week or so.

Just that alone took a great effort. The thing was, Amelia’s power. It barely did anything at all when she was on her own, but the problems started when she was near other people. Her ability was, simply put, to give other people abilities.

To let them fly through the skies, give them the strength to lift buildings. Let them put out even the greatest of fires, give them the speed to rescue millions of people from disaster.

If only that was all there was to it.

Out on her weekly shopping trip, there was only one thing that occupied Amelia’s mind.

Stay. Away. From. People.

It was as much a command to herself as it was to what lurked inside her mind. What was trying to make its way outside, seep into the old lady walking on the other side of the road, the dog that accompanied her. Into the boy she passed, the black cat that ran across the street.

She commanded it. Commanded it to stay away, not do what it so desperately always wanted to.

Amelia was even starting to let herself believe she was getting better at controlling it. Actually managing to rein it in, at least well enough not to ruin the place that had become her home.

A home which sadly was very lacking in common commodities… but the shopping trip, to summarise, basically went fine. Until she stepped out of the store carrying whatever she had managed to scrape together from its limited selection, everything was in fact just dandy. She let out a sigh of relief. It had gone fine this time too. Just had to go back home and that was another week in the bag.

But as Amelia already had learned so long ago, the real problems started after you thought you were safe, when you let yourself relax and start thinking about other things, confident you could actually do this.

It all started with a single young boy. This time, that was the trigger.

He walked across the street, as if he had all the time in the world. Perfectly blind to what was coming at him, the huge truck whose driver had never heard of the concept of a speed limit, or looking at the road.

Amelia did it instinctively.

Felt her mind reaching out, a part of it breaking off, splitting into its own small part which spiraled into the boy.

All she could do was watch, and remember.

Watch as the truck barrelled skywards, at least a dozen times the height of the tallest building in the village. How flames emerged from behind its hind wheel, quickly spread and engulfed the entire vehicle.

How the entire thing exploded, parts of it flying into the nearby lake, parts of it ruining some unlucky woman’s garden.

And the driver… well, she hadn’t seen them, but it was probably not too hard to guess what might have happened.

Again, and again, it kept happening, only on a smaller scale. A single person instead of thousands, but the way it happened was almost exactly the same. The exact reason Amelia had come here, rendered null and void in a single instant.

That was, sincerely, what Amelia had thought in that single, fateful, moment.

Not knowing that today would be the day fate finally smiled upon her. When she already had caused so much disaster that all that remained, that all fate wanted of her, was to do better.

The day things finally started working out.

Amelia had closed her eyes, shielding them from the light of the explosion. When she opened them again, what she saw before her was… A man. Sitting safely on the ground, enveloped in a shielding bubble. A bubble caused by Amelia’s own gift, passed on to the man, the exact same one who had driven the truck only moments earlier.

Who should have been dead, perished, yet by a miracle wasn’t.

Yet, at the same time as she rejoiced to an extent appropriate to the situation, a fear started growing within her.

In the past, Amelia had only ever been able to split off a single part of her mind, bestow her “gift” upon a single person, for better or worse.

In other words.

She had grown.

Even spending her time locked up in this tiny hole of a village, not using her powers a single time, she had grown stronger.

It went well this time, but what about next time? Or the time after that?

There was really only one conclusion that could be drawn from it all.

This, the entire life she had built for herself, could be starting to fall apart again… so, what now?

What did you do when even the best measure you could think of turned out not to be helping at all?