Evan, oblivious to Kylie’s internal struggle to maintain her composure and decorum, just kept sharing. He had bottled up these emotions for so long, once the cork popped, everything came gushing to the surface.
To her credit, the usually talkative girl stayed quietly attentive, listening and absorbing Evan’s words without interruption.
When he got to the part where he was trapped in the burning van, he tried to keep his tone steady, but couldn’t. The pain he felt that day had scarred more than his skin. It had traumatized him. His voice cracked more than once before he gave up and fell silent. His scarred hand itched with the memories as though a separate entity that got charged up at his thoughts. He began rubbing his palm on his jeans, a habit that had become obvious to Kylie the more time they spent together.
His eyes were watching, unblinking at the sliver of moonlight cutting the darkness and painting a bluish hue on the glass-riddled concrete floor.
2 Refracted Light
Minutes trickled by and Kylie waited as patiently as she could. Finally, she gave in to the need to fill the uncomfortable silence. “I’ve read about people being caught in a fire. They say it’s as though the flames are alive—breathing and reaching for them.”
“That’s exactly what it felt like.” Evan’s glassy stare watched her talk, feeling tentatively relieved that she seemed to understand the terror of fire to a burn survivor.
“Only, my burns could not have come at a worse time for me. See, I was undergoing my evolution, so my cellular makeup was already volatile. The fire changed me.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean I don’t know what my gift would have been, but because of the heat exposure and subsequent scarring, well—” Evan hesitated. He looked to the girl at his side and decided now was as good a time as any. He watched the moonlight begin to illuminate the left half of her beautiful face and knew what he had to do.
“Don’t be afraid, okay? I promise I won’t hurt you.”
“Okay,” Kylie breathed, lifting her chin courageously against Evan’s unknown.
Evan reached toward her face with his scarred left hand and captured the moonlight. There it sat, glowing blue and white in the palm of his hand, a pulsing ball of moonlight.
Kylie gasped in surprise, “Evan?”
“This is part of my gift, though I hate to call it that. See, not only were we changed into ‘more’ or ‘meta,’ but we were special. Meg, Alik and I each evolved and with our individual evolutions we developed specialized ‘gifts.’ This is one of mine.”
“You can capture moonlight in your hand?”
“Well, only temporarily. As far as I can tell, my scars capture the light like a prism allowing me to cast the rays. When I’m refracting sunlight, it’s even more powerful.”
“What happens when you refract the light?”
“Fire.”
“Fire?”
“Yes.” Evan felt like hanging his head in shame.
“Show me?”
Evan turned his torso away from Kylie, his left hand pulsing with the anxious moonlight desperate for escape, and threw the light across the hangar. Instantly, the dark room burst with white light before the energy wrapped itself around a pile of old cardboard boxes and ruptured into flames.
“Holy shit!” Kylie gasped.
“Yeah.” Evan pursed his lips together. He stood abruptly and walked toward the fire that gained momentum as it found other scraps on which to feed. He stood about fifteen feet from it when he opened his scarred hand and held it out to the fire. As fast as it had leaped from him, the fire flew back into his outstretched palm and disappeared at his touch.
“Whoa!”
“Which part?”
“You just made the fire disappear!”
“Well, yes, sort of. I absorbed it.”
“How did you do that?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“That’s amazing!”
“You think so?”
“You can absorb fire, Evan!”
“Oh, well, that’s not much. The scary part is the creation of fire.”
“What? You’re not focusing on the important part.”
“Kylie, I catch light and refract it so it can turn into a fireball I project at will. That seems pretty important.”
“Yes, of course, but you’re missing the other side of the coin. You can absorb fire? That’s a powerful gift!”
“I absorb the fire I make.”
“Have you ever tried absorbing fire you didn’t make?”
“No. This is all kinda new to me.” Evan frowned, confused at her excitement.
“Here, let’s try.” She started scrounging around inside the satchel that doubled as a purse. Moments later she found a lighter.
“Don’t tell me you smoke,” he watched her face intently wondering how he could have possibly missed the scent of a smoker on her.
“Of course not Evan,” Kylie gently scolded. “I keep a lighter on me just in case the Bunsen burners at the lab don’t light fast enough. It’s purely for scientific reasons.”
“Oh good, because you being a smoker would have quickly turned into the worst predicament we were dealing with at the moment.”