Panacea

I raised my head from my desk as I listened to my maths teacher prattle about the Pythagorean theorem. But I was too tired to concentrate on his explanation. I had only slept 2 hours yesterday and it was troubling me.

A month ago I could have slept for 3 hours at the bare minimum but now I found it more and more difficult to stay asleep. It was happening more frequently, I would wake up after an hour or two of sleep and find myself walking to the hospital. Just yesterday I had come home at five in the morning after healing patients.

I had been a licensed medical practitioner for 2 years already and was considered the best doctor in the US, if not the world. It may have seemed like I was boasting to the unaware but I had my reputation for a reason. I had the power to heal any disease, injury or medical condition as long as I had sufficient biomass and the issue wasn’t in the brain.

Everyone in the world knew the name Panacea. I had seen patients from all over the world, be it from Britain, China or Egypt. My healing services were in large demand and my mother Carol was more than happy to leave me in the hospital to tend to those in need.

It was common knowledge that my power allowed me to treat and heal the most life-threatening injury in a matter of minutes. But the truth was my power was so much more. I had Biokinesis, the ability to shape biology, to change and morph life. It’s only limitation was that it didn’t work on me.

Most would have been happy having such a powerful ability. My power could be used for good. I could theoretically solve world hunger by creating artificial food sources, creating creatures that’s sole purpose was to heal the injured. I could even make artificial soldiers that would fight endbringers instead of the Protectorate.

But the good was overshadowed by the bad. I had the potential to be the most dangerous person on the planet. I could engineer many plagues and diseases in a matter of seconds that would end all life on earth with the exception of the Endbriners and Scion.

I could also turn normal men into powerful parahumans with little to no difficulty. I could create an army of super-soldiers with little to no problem. It was in my capabilities to turn the weakest creature on the planet into one of the strongest. And that wasn’t the most dangerous part, sure I could end all life on the planet, but that paled in comparison to my power’s most deadly ability.

Mind control. With a single touch I could change a person’s thoughts and mind however I wanted. I could turn the kindest most selfless man in the world into the worst murderer in history.

The idea of death was a scary thought. But what was scarier was the loss of control. I knew that almost everyone would choose death rather than lose control of their body, of their mind, of their life. You just had to look at Heartbreaker’s victims.

Back when Heartbreaker was still experimenting with his powers, the PRT managed to rescue some of his victims. What they found was that the victims would commit suicide after realising that they wouldn’t be able to return to Heartbreaker. When one of his would-be victims discovered that she wouldn’t be able to escape she shot herself in the head. Another example was the Simurgh victims.

Anyone who was a Simurgh bomb would lose all control of their life as their thoughts were radically altered and changed subconsciously without them knowing about it. They would then destroy a monumental event or invention that would create a better world.

The best example was Sphere, a tinker who specialised in terraforming landscapes. He was working on creating a plan to colonise the moon. The Simurgh turned him into the Slaughterhouse 9 member Mannequin, one of the worst parahumans alive.

I didn’t want this god-like power. I had never wanted it. All I ever wanted was to be a normal girl. A normal girl with loving supportive parents and the best sister in the world. Not exactly a grand wish.

Instead, I had received a mother that hated me without ever telling me why. A dad who was so depressed that he couldn’t see that his family was falling apart. And worst of all, a sister who was so amazing that I couldn’t help but fall in love with her.

Two years ago before I got my powers the situation wasn’t as bad. Mom didn’t hate me as much, Dad wasn’t in such a bad place and I hadn’t fallen in love with Vicky. But afterwards, it down spiralled. I was told to sacrifice all of my time to go heal in a hospital, Mom had started looking at me like I was the worst person on the planet and Dad had sunk deeper into depression and I couldn’t save him.

And worst of all Vicky had gotten a boyfriend. Dean, who was a perfect match for Vicky. It would have been easy to hate him, he was born incredibly rich. He had it all, status, money and confidence. But he wasn’t some entitled asshole, instead, he was an incredibly nice and caring guy, who looked after his friends. He was also the hero Gallant, a ward who was an empath and could shoot emotional blasts.

I felt so angry and guilty at myself for hating him. For being jealous of his relationship with Vicky.

Mom was an influential person, not only was she the hero Brandish, she was also a leading lawyer. But she was too busy with her day job and taking care of Dad to be a hero as well. Before Dad fell into depression, he would patrol the city with Mom as the hero Flashbang. Now the only person to patrol the streets barring Aunt Sarah was Vicky, known as Glory Girl.

Vicky was the only one out of us who wanted to be a hero. She had wanted to be a hero ever since we were little. Probably as a result of Mom’s stories. It hadn’t changed when we had grown up, even after her trigger.

A trigger is meant to be the worst day of your life. When you go through an extremely traumatic event that causes you to want to die, you receive superpowers. Her trigger was pathetic. Vicky triggered because she failed to score a basket at a big basketball game.

I had triggered after Vicky had gotten hurt fighting a new gang called Chorus. She had just received her powers a few weeks prior. She was still figuring out the chinks in her power.

Vicky was a grab bag cape. Grab bag capes usually had up to three powers that were connected in some way. Usually, there was one strong power and the rest were auxiliary or weaker powers. Vicky’s main power was her forcefield.

It allowed her to withstand any damage no matter how strong the blow, as well as have super strength. She could throw cars like she was throwing tennis balls. Her other powers were flight and a passive aura that either caused people to adore her or fear her.

She had one weakness. Her forcefield would break after receiving a strong hit and reform after a few seconds. Back then she didn’t know about the weakness, she had thought that she was invincible.

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Chorus had attacked the mall I had been shopping in. They were a new gang without a lot of members and only one cape who could enhance his voice to the point that each shout would destroy a wall. Her name was Banshee and she was their leader.

As soon as I saw them entering the mall, I sent Vicky a text and in a minute or two she had recklessly charged in without notifying anybody. I had sent the text in hope that she would tell the rest of our family. But she hadn’t understood the message and had come rushing in. As soon as she crashed through the mall roof, the Chorus gangsters had raised their guns and opened.

One of them had a machine gun and hit her multiple times.that was the moment that we discovered that Vicky wasn’t invincible. She could be injured. When I watched her fall from her flight I triggered. I don’t remember what exactly happened but the gang members had all collapsed and I had healed Vicky.

It was only later when I was experimenting with my powers that I learnt that I had probably created a temporary virus that had paralysed the entire gang. The news had stated that the PRT had captured a new gang and they were off the streets.

After further experimentation, I had discovered that my power was villainous. If anyone knew what I could do I would be labelled as an S class threat. Just creating a creature with reproductive organs would cause the PRT to mark you down as an S class threat. It didn’t matter what your intentions were. It was known that all S class threats were incredibly powerful and incredibly dangerous.

The S class parahuman Nilbog had the power closest to mine. Before his powers were known he had killed and captured the inhabitants of his town before turning them into freakish monsters. Another S class villain who had powers similar to mine was Bonesaw. She was a wet tinker, a tinker that specialized in biology. She had created countless monsters and had ruined thousands of lives.

I knew that I would be killed the moment that I revealed the full extent of my power so I promised myself that I would not use it. When I first started healing people, I learnt that I could brainwash and mind control people to the highest degree so I decided that I would not touch brains, it was my sole rule. If I broke this rule I didn’t know if I could stop myself. I would become a villain, no, a monster worse than the 9.

A year after I had received my power I had entered puberty. I started to look at Vicky differently, from a sister to a love interest. In the beginning, I thought that the feelings would pass. After all, how could I be falling in love with my sister.

But over the next couple of months, I discovered that the crush that I was feeling towards Vicky wasn’t going away, it was increasing. At that point in time, I had started masturbating to her photos.

So when she started to get reckless and injure criminals, I had to help her. I wouldn’t let her go to prison over some gangster. So I would wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of my phone ringing. Vicky would beg me to come heal another criminal that she had accidentally injured.

And I would. I would stop whatever activity I was doing to rush to her aid. There were multiple times that I stopped healing a patient because Vicky called me. Just this month there had been seven cases. I wished that she would be more careful but that was just not who my sister was.

And I loved her for it, I loved her with all of her faults. I loved the fact that she was always worried about me, how she would support me. I loved her expressive eyes, her radiant smile, her confidence. While she wasn’t perfect she was my Vicky.

So when I brought up the fact that I healed a particularly interesting patient today in the morning she seemed surprised. Vicky said that I had stopped talking about the patients that I’ve healed. She hadn’t brought it up because she thought it was something personal.

I had healed so many that over time I had forgotten who I had healed. They all blended into one faceless being. The last patient I remembered before John was a small child that had stage four liver cancer. His parent’s had him flown into Brockton Bay after all other treatments had been used. He had only 2 months to live, I had healed him immediately and within 2 minutes he was healthy again. I think that was two weeks ago

However, John Thomson was different from others. He was a recent trigger, probably a day or two from what I sensed from his Corona Pollentia. He told me that he had Pyrokinesis. However, only his hands were immune to his power. Most Parahumans had a limitation to their power. It was unknown from where it came, just like I couldn’t heal myself he wasn’t immune to his own power.

He had an extremely powerful version of Pyrokinesis. I could tell that the damage he had received from his backfire had been immense. Compared to most burned patients the fire had spread incredibly quickly on his body. It had only been active for a few seconds before it had been doused.

To do that amount of damage the fire must have reached 5000 degrees celsius at the bare minimum though it could have been hotter. But one thing that I noticed when I went over our conversation, was that his burns weren’t created from a backfire from the palms but from an external source.

He had lied to me. This led me to think about what else he had lied about. I realised that he had lied about his accent. In the beginning, he had spoken in a thick Scottish accent, but later on, he had stopped using it. Instead, he had a faint British accent combined with another accent I wasn’t quite familiar with.

However, he didn’t lie to me about his desire to be a hero. To do justice and save people. I could feel his conviction, his desire to rid the world of evil. While he had lied about his powers, it was commonplace for most parahumans to do so. But what was weird was the fact that he lied about the way he received his injuries.

He had to be protecting someone, a family member or a friend. Or perhaps he was being blackmailed. I decided that I would find him and find out what happened.

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So because I am in quarantine I have a lot more time so I can write more.

This chapter is to show Panacea’s thought process and to see how John’s presence begins to affect her. I’m writing this story as a way to practice and wanted to try experimenting with different points of view.

So leave your thoughts in the comments to let me know if the chapter was good and just let me hear your thoughts.

Have a good day!

Dragonfang1917