Happy Friday! Note, this story is NOT polished. I will be posting a scene or chapter weekly. Expect an urban fantasy world. Romance and mystery. And magic, of course. Enjoy!
PART 2
I managed to catch the blueline, leaving my blond tail behind, and caught my breath as we turned south toward the P-W Building. Forty-one prime stories of real estate in the heart of Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.
Yeah right. In the short amount of time I’d spent in the city, I’d been mugged twice and nearly stabbed by a working girl who’d thought I’d tried to steal one of her clients. Clumsy me had tripped into the guy, and it wasn’t my fault he’d latched onto me. How was I to know he had a thing for redheads?
I glanced at the strands covering my shoulders, pleased to see I’d stayed more blond today. Another strange quirk of mine—I had many. Besides being hunted for no good reason, my hair constantly changed color. Ranging from golden to deep red to auburn, my hair always looked some shade of fiery. Without the fire.
I’d been asked more than once if I had elemental blood. But no. I was your average mindmage, one with little magic. Or at least, that’s what I pretended to be. Because weak though I was, what I could do didn’t seem to have a classification. And what people couldn’t pigeonhole around here, they wanted to lock up for study. Or put down. Either way, they wanted the unknown taken away from their happy little world.
Back in 1767 when the Great Meteor Shower pelted three quarters of the planet with radioactive space rock, the Evolutionary Age began. Regular citizens started changing, evolving into people with different ties to the planet.
As time went on, scientists decided to call those changed people The Evolved. Evos. Some of the less enlightened called the evolved supernatural. Beasts. Freaks. Weirdos. And a lot of other name-calling that hadn’t helped anyone.
In today’s politically correct climate, regular humans, without any power, were called citizens. Anyone classified with a rating of 1 or higher on the power scale was labeled an evo. But like all things, there were different levels of acceptability when it came to weirdness.
“Chinatown, coming up.” The bus stopped. People got on. People got off. My blond follower would be waiting for me at work, no doubt. They had been tailing me, that I knew of, for the past three days—three days too many. I would have run before, but I’d wanted to be sure. Moving and setting up a new identity took time and money I frankly didn’t have. But after today, there could be no doubt.
To add to my burden of proof… I glanced around and spotted the blond’s companion. A nondescript man with forgettable features, he sat in the back, pretending not to be aware of me. I pretended right back, letting my gaze pass over him and returned to studying my lap.
Four more stops and I’d get off.
Across from me, a teenage girl with bright pink hair and nose piercings sat next to a man in a business suit that probably cost more than I made in a month.
She frowned at him, and I felt a wave of rose-light emanating from her. It’s what I think light would smell like if it carried a scent. I could neither see any light nor smell any roses, but darned if that’s not what evo power felt like to me. Energy from an evo varied in intensity and duration, but the not-scent of power remained the same.
“You should go home after work,” she murmured to the man. “She’s going to take everything if you’re not there. The dog too.” She paused, then scowled. “Oh, not cool. She’s going to take Brutus to a high-kill shelter. You really should go home early.”
The man blinked at her and after a moment said, “Appreciate the tip.” He handed her a few bills, which she tucked into her pocket before moving to the back and standing with a few others by the door. The man gazed out the window, no doubt thanking his good fortune that she’d taken a seat next him.
Ah, see. That weirdness citizens welcomed. Mages came in two types—mental and kinetic—and they could produce helpful results. A mindmage, classified clairvoyant, like the teenager, helped others with predictions. Telepaths read thoughts; clairaudients heard the future in sounds; finders, like me, found lost things. Mindmage abilities involved information gathering, a lucrative commodity out here in the east, and one the government kept a tight watch over, to ensure national security.
Kinemages could move things with their minds and had become a staple in the construction and shipping industries. They never seemed to exceed a level 3, and as such were considered dangerous but not overly threatening, not when law enforcement had found ways to counter their abilities.
Yet another acceptable weirdness among the citizens, because mages looked and acted human. Normal. Considering that before the Great Shower of 1767, there had been instances of psychic ability in mankind, though in much smaller numbers, people typically didn’t react strongly in the presence of a mage.
Then there were those who’d become more…other…once evolved. You rarely saw them in the big cities or east of the Designated Central Border, those with animal-like tendencies, the true monsters of the Earth, some of whom ate their fellow man. Those who controlled the weather, the elements. Those who dealt with arcane energy. Horrific creatures, one and all, in the minds of the common citizen, who wanted only to remember humanity the way it used to be.
You’d think I’d be one of the lucky ones. A mindmage, classified finder, level 2. Not very powerful, but if you lost your keys and thought hard about it, I could probably find them for you. That’s pretty much what I did all day at work. I answered phone calls, focused on the callers’ voices, and found what was missing. Nothing too strenuous, and nothing that should have turned me into a secret posterchild for the Unified East of America’s Most Wanted.
Look, I’ll admit my talents are weird. But I’d heard of a handful of others like me. Rare evos who can harness both a mage power and a shifting ability. The government isolates and studies them. They don’t hunt them down and kill them, at least, not to my knowledge. The smart ones, like me, don’t tell anyone we’re different. No one knew I could shapeshift, so again, why were people hunting me?
I had no answers. What could I do but run from danger? I’d learned early on the authorities were no help. Whoever wanted me had connections, power, money, and a need to take me alive. As I’d already experienced, whole or damaged seemed not to make a difference.
It was time I left, this time for good. I had come to face a hard truth I’d avoided for nearly a decade. I had to head west. And I had to go today.