“The offer still stands, you know. There’s a place on The Enhanced Beings Collective for you, approved by The Secretary. And we have the green light to develop a training program and a formal Collective identity.”

“Formal Collective identity?”

“Yeah, the name the media and public would know you by, basically,” Brad clarified, simplifying the term.

“I don’t know Brad,” Ariadna sighed. “I don’t think I want to be known by people. For what I did. For what I can do.”

The pair stood overlooking the lake in Ariadna’s home town of Fort Prirough. A small flock of ducks took off as an ice cream truck arrived with it’s music playing.

“Do you want an ice cream?” he offered Ariadna.

“No thanks. Too cold for me.”

“You’re still fretting about what happened? Look, how old were you back then? Six?”

“Five and a half.”

“Ok, so five and a half then.”

“Yeah.”

“So you were a kid, is the point I was making. No one is going to judge you now on what happened then.”

“I’m sure the families still do.”

San Quicillo, Puerto Rico. 2011.

Lunch time and recess were Ariadna’s least favourite time of the school day. The isolation. The teasing.

The noise.

The little girl hadn’t been at school long and was struggling to adjust to the routines and social interactions required to fit in.

Sadly, her classmates and some of the children who were slightly older than her had already picked up on her differences and used lunch breaks as an opportunity to gang up on her.

“Look, it’s the silent weirdo!” taunted a tall, skinny girl as Ariadna walked between the tables in the lunch hall. She was looking for an empty table to eat by herself.

“Don’t sit here, freak!” called out an older looking boy as Ariadna walked past the end of his table.

Keeping her head down from the extremely unwanted attention, she missed a chunky girl with pig tails cut in front of her, tripping her over and sending her sprawled out on the floor. Her lunch tray went flying in the air and the rice, garbanzo beans, pork and corn went flying and landed on the back of her head.

The lunch hall erupted into laughter as everyone stopped to stare. Children at the tables started banging their cutlery on the table chanting ‘los anormal!’

Freak.

Ariadna lay there, stunned. Humiliated.

A strange feeling that she had felt a few times before when things got a bit much, started to build up again, but this time it built and built and continued to intensify like nothing before.

Ariadna tried to get up, but the feeling was more than five and a half year old Ariadna could cope with and she slumped back down.

The banging, the chanting and the laughing continued.

The build up in her head became unbearable.

“Ariadna?” a soft spoken teacher asked, coming to her aide.

Ariadna looked up at her, then blacked out.

“Ariadna?” a male voice said, snapping her out of her daze. She looked up at him. A firefighter.

On a ladder.

She was outside.

Ariadna started to panic. Why was she outside? On a roof? On a roof over looking the playground?

She looked down and around at the roof many times to get a measure for how high she was, but she stopped abruptly when she caught sight of the blood trail to the right of her, starting at the edge of the roof all the way to where she was sat.

In horror, she looked down at herself and her hands. Blood. More blood.

She was covered in it.

Her clothes were soaked in sticky crimson mess that she had no idea where it came from.

“Ariadna, you need to come with me. Nice and easy,” the firefighter said.

The little girl edged towards him, scooching on her bottom, not daring to stand up. When she was close enough, the firefighter reached out with both hands to take her off and to safety.

Present day.

“And you have no recollection of any of it? Or how you got onto the roof?” Brad asked.

“No. I only know what I was told. I killed twenty two in that lunch hall that day. One teacher and twenty one children. I had gone ballistic, apparently. My rampage lasted no more than four minutes.”

Brad’s eyebrows raised in sympathy. “And so you lived with your aunt right?”

“Yes, my mother feared I was possessed by the Devil and didn’t want me anymore,” she said matter of fact.

“Did you like Emswall? You lived there with her until 2021, right? Until you were fifteen?”

“You know all of this. It’s in my file.”

“I know, but your past is still holding you back. Hopefully getting it out, knowing that it doesn’t need to hold you back might help you see you could do good with your enhancements, and not fear them.” Brad looked over the water again and nodded his head in the direction of the ice cream truck. “I really want one now. You sure you’ve not changed your mind?”

“I’m sure.”

Once Brad had brought his cone from the man, he re-joined Ariadna at a bench. “Shall we walk around again?” Ariadna nodded and they began walking the edge of the lake.

“Lucas was a good person, wasn’t he?” she said suddenly, breaking the silence.

Brad tucked his stomach in, not expecting the conversation to turn onto this. “Yeah. He was. He looked after you, right?”

“Yes. When things went wrong again in Emswall,” she admitted.

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Emswall, Oregon. 2021.

“Ariadna? There’s someone here to see you,” Aunt Martina announced softly. “He’ll be here in a moment, he just wanted me to give you a moment first.”

Ariadna looked through her secure hospital room interior windows at the armed officers on guard outside and then at her aunt.

“Who is it?”

“They’ve sent someone from The Enhanced Beings Collective. Network.”

Ariadna turned her head away, but the movement caused her to flinch in pain.

“He just wants to help. Just talk to him, ok?” Aunt Martina’s attention turned to movement in the corridor outside as Network appeared at the door.

He knocked twice out of courtesy and came in. “I hope it’s a good time,” he said. “Ariadna, I’m Network from The Enhanced Beings Collective. We’re part of the US Government. Are you aware of us?”

“Yes.”

“Ok, that’s a good start. I’m just here about what happened this evening. Are you ok?”

“I have burns on my hands but apart from that…” she trailed off.

“Do you remember how you got them?”

“I was told, but I don’t remember any of it happening.”

“Can you tell me what you do remember? Maybe anything from before?”

Ariadna sighed. She was hurt and she didn’t want to answer questions but Aunt Martina told her to talk to him so she did. “We were watching a rerun of episode twenty, season four of E.R. on telly in our ninth storey apartment when a black 2019 Chevrolet Silverado screeched to a stop on the street. There was a lot of shouting and then a woman screamed. I looked out of the window and about twenty members of the Emerald Ringers were surrounding a couple in their car.” She paused to lick her dry lips. "Suddenly out of the blue, these fireworks started going off, fired towards the car and the people. There were bright flashes of light and really loud noises. And then… Then it went black and I came to, down on the street. Covered in blood.”

Network didn’t respond for a moment. “Do you know what the result of your blackout was?”

“All twenty of the gang members were killed weren’t they? But my aunt hasn’t told me.”

“Well, not everyone died. Some survived. You spared some. But that now makes you a target with the Emerald Ringers so we are going to relocate you to Fort Prirough in Pennsylvania. Once you’ve settled, we would like to get back in touch with you. We think with age your blackouts are becoming less… lethal. We’d like to work with you, Ariadna, and develop strategies to help you maybe harness your enhancements.”

Ariadna looked at him.

“I know it’s a lot to think about right now, so don’t give me an answer now. But does that sound ok? The main thing is we get you out of here.”

“Conejito, we’ll think about it, right? They can help,” Aunt Martina said, leaning towards Adriadna’s bed.

“I kill people and I have no control over it.”

“But they can help you with that. Remember, he thinks you’re killing less. That could be a really good thing.”

“And you’re only killing people who deserve it,” mumbled Network.

“My teacher didn’t deserve it,” she bluntly reminded him, much to his embarrassment.

“No, that’s right. Of course not,” he stuttered, blushing.

“When do we move, Network?” asked Aunt Martina.

“As soon as Ariadna is discharged. You can’t go back home, I’m afraid.” Martina put her head in her hands, clearly distressed by the reality of the situation. “I’m really sorry.”

“No, it’s alright. I appreciate what you are doing for us. We both do.”

“There’s only so much more The Collective can do though, if you Ariadna, refuse to let us to help you.”

“To test on me?” she asked defiantly.

“No... it’s to help you to understand what you can do. We kinda have an interest in you being able to do so, of course, more so to prevent more people coming to harm. You want that, don’t you? Otherwise, you end up being put on a very different kind of list,” he warned.

Ariadna turned her face away from Network, not answering, and signalling she was done.

“There’s a team that will be waiting until Ariadna is discharged,” he explained to Aunt Martina. “And they’ll take you to your new residence in Fort Prirough.”

“Thank you, Network.”

“Please, you can call me Lucas. And it’s ok. We will be in touch in the future.”

Aunt Martina smiled in acknowledgment and he left the room.

Present day.

“So for another nine years, we lived here. My aunt helping to manage and control my black out rages without The Enhanced Beings Collective.”

“And until the gas station robbery and New York, you were doing well?” asked Brad.

“Yeah. Although New York was your doing.”

Brad ignored that last bit. “Lucas wasn’t wrong though. Your blackouts aren’t as deadly and you only seem to act out of justice for those wronged, or against those who have done something wrong. The children who bullied you, those in the gang who ambushed the couple in Emswall. The robbers and in a way, even the attendant who shot at them. In New York you knew to attack at the blimps… You do good things Ariadna. You can go on to do good things with The Enhanced Beings Collective.”

Ariadna stared through Brad, not really saying anything.

“It’s why we actually want to call you Justicia.”

Ariadna looked away, back out over the lake.

For the first time since knowing her, Brad could have sworn he saw a flicker of the faintest smile on her face.