Amanda blinked at him. “What do you mean ‘so?’”
“I mean ‘so what?’ You think this is the first time you’ve been at risk of killing someone? You’re a nurse. The wrong injection and boom, dead patient. That never stopped you from working. You could run over three people on the way to the office. That never stopped you from driving. You did these things, despite the risks, because you knew they were necessary to living. Well, guess what? Controlling this thing of yours is now a necessity. It’s your new day job. So if you’re as strong as I think you are—and I think you are—you’ll stop worrying about the maybes and do your job.”
On August 13, Amanda successfully summoned the beast. The whiteness neatly emerged from her hands and only mildly spiked when a physicist approached her. The next day, she formed solid blocks around her arms, then just as quickly dispatched them. Contrary to Zack’s assumption, Amanda found her talent worked less like a muscle and more like a language. Each construct was a sentence, one she could make long or short, crude or elegant. The choice was hers, as long as she kept calm.
Two days later, she indulged Zack’s request for a demonstration by forming little shapes around the tips of her fingers. Cubes, spheres, pyramids, cylinders. She coated an arm in a sleek sheet of whiteness, an opera glove that moved perfectly with her wiggling fingers.
Zack leered in bright marvel. “Holy crap. That is . . . wow, you’re like Green Lantern without the green. I’m officially jealous.”
“I’d trade you if I could,” she told him. “I’d rather heal mice.”
“Come on. You have to like it a little now.”
She didn’t, but she hated it less. Though Amanda now wore her wedding ring on a cheap string necklace, she no longer worried about fatal outbursts. She’d acquired enough control to move forward, into the larger issues.
“I still don’t know what this stuff is,” she told Czerny, at the end of a long practice session.
He promised her the answer was coming. Dr. Quint was preparing a presentation that would soon explain many things.
The following week, Amanda dazzled her fellow Silvers with an eight-inch snowflake, beautifully complex and symmetrical. It balanced on the tip of her finger, slowly rotating like a store display. She took a satirical bow to the applause of her friends.
Though Hannah had joined in on the clapping, her cheer was half performance. She didn’t know the name of Amanda’s aberrant energy. She just knew that it was the same white death that had rained down on their world, toppling buildings and crushing bodies. Since the eve of her sister’s sleeping attack, Hannah had suffered a few nightmares of her own. In her cruel visions, Amanda didn’t just bring down the ceiling. She brought down the sky.
—
While the other Silvers wrestled with their formidable new talents, Mia Farisi became a growing enigma to the Pelletier physicists. Unlike her companions, who brazenly broke the laws of time and nature, the girl had yet to display a single hint of chronokinetic ability.
In truth, Mia had been struggling with her weirdness from the day she arrived. Her temporal quirk was too subtle for the cameras to register, too insane to share with others. She figured even Zack wouldn’t believe her when she showed him her precognitive paper scraps. He’d probably assume her mind had cracked into split personalities. She wasn’t ready to rule out the possibility herself.
On her third night in Terra Vista, Mia returned to her bed and found a tiny new roll of paper on her pillow. Unfurling it revealed a fresh missive, once again scribbled in her handwriting.
I know you’re freaking out right now. So was I. I know you’re skeptical about these notes. So was I. But trust me when I say that our power’s a blessing, not a curse. I’m loving it now. And I’m only six months older than you.
She continued to manage her problem in secret, receiving at least one new dispatch each night. The messages ranged from the obscure to the inane.
Took my first ride in a flying cab today. Holy @$#%!
Commemoration has to be worst holiday ever. Learn to dread October 5th.
If you see a small and creepy guy with a 55 on his hand, run. That’s Evan Rander. He’s bad news.
There are no words to describe what they did with New York. So beautiful, it brings me to tears.
On her fifth night, Mia finally saw a portal up close. A shimmering disc, as small as a button and as bright as a penlight, hovered a foot above her pillow. Its tiny surface rippled like a thimble of milk. Before Mia could get a closer look, the portal spit a new note and then shrank out of existence. She unrolled the paper.
Don’t trust Peter. He’s not who he says he is.
Ten minutes later, she was awoken by another tiny breach just inches above her face. A new piece of paper dropped onto her nose.