The wind was blustery and the night was cold, which is to say that it was a relatively nice evening in London tonight. Zachary Hughes was patrolling the park he had been assigned to that day, checking the knife safety bins' locks and generally just keeping an eye out for trouble. He said his pleasantries to passersby and kept a sharp ear out for anything that sounded amiss, enjoying the mild weather.
Hearing a shriek from the bushes, he rushed off of the path towards the source, only to see one of the less common birds burst out from the bushes ahead and run away from him, shrieking like a dying woman. As Zachary stumbled to a halt and calmed his nerves, he noticed a gleam on the ground nearby; a knife was just lying there in the park, just waiting to turn an unsuspecting civilian into a terrorist! Putting on his gloves, he apprehended the offending knife and safely transported it to the nearest safety bin and filed it appropriately.
After calling it in, and filling out the necessary reports, he checked his watch and headed for his precinct and turned in the paperwork, after which he clocked out and headed home. He had his nightly cup o' tea and went to bed, happy that his apartment was not so big as to require too much maintenance. Waking up to the sound of his robot vacuum, which was set to start when it was time for him to get up, he left his room and started a pot of water boiling on the stove before heading to the door to check for the post deliveries. After finishing his bowl of porridge and cup of tea, he finished his morning routine with a shower and getting dressed before heading out for another day of police work.
Now, he wasn't quite a full policeman, and only had a radio and a nightstick on his belt, but he was happy with his job, and felt that he helped to keep the peace. So when he heard an angry shout as he headed to the trolley he was going to take to work, he turned to the sound and rushed to see what was up, only to find a driver shouting at another car for some imagined slight. Glad he didn't need to do anything quite yet, he finished his walk to the trolley and got on. A few people greeted him politely, and a few gave him wary glances from the corner of their eyes, but nothing overly different than normal happened until he got off and went to open the door to his precinct.
And practically stabbed the nob with a knife that he had been holding! Where had that come from, and how long had he been holding it? Blanching and rushing to the side for the drop off box, he quickly disposed of the dangerous object in the safety bin and went inside to report the incident to his supervisor. After a frustrating and confusing conversation, he clocked in for the day and looked up what his patrol assignment was to be.
Today he was to patrol the streets in a eight block radius on foot, so he went out and headed to the area. As he walked, he kept an extra eye and ear out for anything amiss, as he was on the clock now, and stopped more than once to take a closer look at something that could lead to trouble. During his shift, he stopped a chef that was heading to work in normal clothes who had a knife in a locked box to make sure his papers were in order, sending him on his way with a smile and a wave afterwards. Guns had been illegal for a while and knives were only also banned for a year or so now, so one could never be too careful.
As he turned another corner, a car passing by leaned on its horn at some slight the driver thought had been done to them, startling Zachary badly, and causing him to clench his fists to keep them from trembling. Sighing as he got his heart rate back under control, he reached up to wipe his face, only to see yet another knife in his hand! Startled and quite confused, he reached for it with his other hand, and discovered he was holding a knife in each hand. This was quite unusual, and thoroughly discomfiting, and he went to the nearest safety bin to dispose of them. After dropping them off, he turned around and nearly ran headfirst into a civilian attempting to walk past him.
He caught her arm, and steadied her, and after making sure she was okay, sent her off on her way with a 'good day'. Reaching to the side to lean on the safety bin and collect himself, he heard a clink. With great trepidation, he looked down at his hand, and found yet another knife there. Beginning to think he was on a prank show of some kind, he dropped it into the bin and checked to make sure the other two he had just dropped off were in there still too. They were, and Zachary went on down the sidewalk to continue his patrol shift.
Similar incidences occurred throughout the day, and he found himself checking his hands for knives slipped into them while he wasn't watching many times that day. Thankfully he only found a knife there once when he checked randomly, but that didn't really make him feel any less nervous about it. With dandies running around in sparkly suits fighting emo kids in darker tones and claiming to be superheroes fighting supervillans, knives appearing randomly out of the woodwork for no apparent reason made him quite nervous. Random people gaining flashy strange abilities left and right was bad enough, but tossing evil knives into the mix was a recipe for disaster!
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During his lunch break, he confided in one of his fellow patrolmen about the spooky ninja knives, only for them to break out into boisterous laughter and tell him to contact HR if things continued happening to him without explanation. Taking the advice to heart, and deciding to be a bit less paranoid and enjoy his work like he normally did, Zachary went out to finish his shift. Feeling a tingle in his hand as he turn his second corner of his patrol, he looked down to find another knife, identical to the others, just sitting there in his fist that he didn't remember closing.
This was quite enough of that for him, so he dropped the knife off in a safety bin, and headed back to the precinct to have a lengthy talk with the HR department about the bizarre prank someone had been pulling on him all day. Except, before he got there, he was startled by a bike rider getting a little too close to him, and this time, his hand was in front of him when the knife appeared. And it did indeed just appear – right in his hand – and he seemed to close his hand onto it just as it appeared, almost like he was grabbing it out of the air. More than just frustrated, confused and annoyed now, Zachary began to be outright afraid.
When he got to the precinct a minute later, he dropped the knife off in the safety box, and went straight to HR to vent all his troubles from the day. Which kicked off an investigation, which then in turn lead to many more meetings, and even forced training getting control of this new ability. And as it turned out, he did have a new ability: summoning knives. One he would never have asked for, even if he did want to get powers or abilities. But, as it was a safety hazard to not even be able to control it, he had to go to boot camp with some recruits from the military that had also discovered new abilities.
In the process of getting control of his powers, he had to undergo some de-conditioning regarding knives. As it turns out, one cannot fully control the ability to summon a thing he is afraid of, and Zachary had to come to terms with a few realities he had thought were falsehoods. For instance, knives on their own, were neither evil or good, and could not corrupt innocent people. Additionally, nearly everything his government had said in the process of outlawing the ownership of knives was actually false, and mere propaganda.
This lead to another realization for Zachary, being that he needed to decide how to handle this new information. He also had another important decision to make, whether to migrate to America or not. You see, knives were still illegal, and while he could control when he summoned them after months of work, he could not stop himself from being able to summon them, and even being put in prison did not 'eliminate the danger to the citizens'. So until the sudden explosion of abilities awakening in people made unnecessary the laws that were in place, his very existence would be against the law in England.
So now he had to choose; be drafted into the special forces, a choice he did not really like the idea of, or leave the country and go to one where his ability was not illegal. Canada was out of the question, as they also outlawed knives, and America still had guns legal. So the answer was rather obvious as to what he had to do. He had to depart for America, and apply for citizenship. Thankfully his training at boot camp was going well, and he was starting to get the hang of his abilities, even being able to summon knives on purpose sometimes.
That is not to say that he was fully in control, and some of the others at the boot camp seemed to gain a great deal of joy out of startling him and watching him instinctively summon knives. One in particular had a strange ability that made him harder to notice when he used it creatively, and as Zachary was heading for the mess hall for dinner one night, Joe, the one in particular mentioned before, jumped out from his hiding place and startled Zachary so bad he summoned four knives! Two knives were poking out of each hand, and as Zachary stood there staring at his hands, Joe started laughing uproariously, before plucking two of them out of Zachary's hands before heading off towards the mess hall.
Upon catching up to Joe at the entrance, Zachary realized why Joe had picked that timing to startle him – they were having steaks. As they passed around knives that didn't exist before to the other guys in the tent, jokes were passed around as well, and Joe took great joy in describing Zachary's reaction earlier. They all laughed, and dug into their food, eating more easily than most of the country due to the sharp knives they had available to cut their steaks with.
The next day Zachary was meditating and focusing on his hands trying to summon knives when he was broken out of his focus by a friendly hello from the door to his quarters. Getting up from his mat on the floor, he answered the door and instinctively caught the apple thrown at him on the tip of a newly summoned knife. As he made his displeasure known to Joe, they went to a nearby table, his reading desk, to cut the apples Joe had brought.
After he finally got good enough control of his powers not to be startled into summoning them, he made his decision, and the camp directors helped him migrate to America. Britain and America still had a good relationship, and he was made a full citizen of The United States of America, and even enrolled in a police academy in the city he was sent to almost immediately. And as he finished his training up at a new police precinct, his records were updated, and his tale in this book came to an end.