New York City, 2003

I woke to stiff muscles from sleeping in a chair in the hospital room belonging to the girl I considered a sister. She had remained asleep through the night, the monitoring equipment beeping at a constant pace. The clock on the wall showed it had been about sixteen hours since she had exited her surgery. From what I could read on the displays nothing was amiss, she simply was sleeping deeply. Even in my previous life anesthesia was tricky, people react to chemicals in odd ways at times, but after a head injury and then needing to be drugged so that they could fix the broken bones of the skull made me a bit more paranoid than I usually would be. The door to the room was slightly cracked and I could see Jennifer pacing outside of the room on her cell phone.

I gazed at the form of my little sister, for all her attitude she seemed so small at the moment. Her arms were one giant bruise, and the top half of her head was a giant mess of bandages that would put a mummy to shame. She wasn’t having any trouble breathing though, so they didn’t have her on extra oxygen.

I stood and stretched, my muscles complaining about the sleeping conditions. Mentally I was rehearsing my arguments to remain at the hospital with Rhiannon instead of going to school. Which meant that when Jen leaned in and motioned me to join her outside the room I was unprepared for her question, “Can you skip school today and stay with her?”

I frankly gaped at Jen; she took mothering to a whole new level at times which made it odd that she was willing to leave. I stammered out, “Of course, but what are you going to do?”

She cursed under her breath for a couple seconds before she said, “I need to go speak to one of my colleagues about taking the case for AEGIS. He doesn’t like being on retainer, and I don’t want to discuss the reasons on the phone.”

“So why isn’t Agent Jameson going to speak to him in person?” I asked.

“Because he wouldn’t let them in the front door without a good reason. He’s what they classify as an adept, which to some of those agents means a warlock waiting to happen,” she answered.

I gave her a look that clearly meant I needed context and she said, “Some of the agent’s in that organization believe that anyone with magical talents needs to be monitored or controlled. They also have full jurisdiction on any case that involves a magical victim or suspect. I’ve had to defend a few people that were in the wrong place at the wrong time, yet had a Talent, so were considered the prime suspect even though their Talent didn’t apply to the crime.”

I considered that for a moment and asked, “What, like someone who could speak to animals being arrested by them for burning someone?”

She nodded, “Something like that. Cole is decent enough, and actually prefers going with the evidence. The problem is that there isn’t enough scientific evidence to say what an adept can do with their powers, and no way to actually judge what a person can or can’t do.”

I replied, “And until someone figures out how to classify Talent’s they won’t be able to, let alone have a way of determining the Talent unless the person shows what they can do. If it’s a criminal that may cause more problems.”

“Right, but they are still held to the law of the country they are operating in at the time, so here even criminals get their day in court. So now I have to convince an adept to accept being on retainer for the organization that polices them,” she said.

I pointed out, “Tell him exactly that. Let him know that because it’s still compartmentalized that they need lawyers that they know will actually follow the law and defend the ones who are charged with a crime. Make sure he knows that his defendants have magic too. Maybe between you a record of Talent’s can be started. Maybe work on getting known Talents listed in a registry even if they don’t have names attached to them.”

“What if I put your Talent in that list?” she asked.

I shrugged, “Fine by me. It isn’t that impressive.”

I knew I was lying out of my teeth with that statement. Shifting wasn’t impressive on it’s own, but my connection to the Talent was abnormal. Any Talent that tied into manipulation of time was a dangerous talent. The others I had met in my last life that could shift only did it with special training as their actual gift was different. It was considered the catch all term to movement based abilities that weren’t otherwise classified like Teleportation and Hyper-Speed. I spoke up, “Having a classification for the types of Talents isn’t inherently bad, it means the research oriented people can stick them in a box and be less afraid of the dark.”

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She smiled a little before saying, “Sometimes I wonder if you're more mature than other kids, or if kids look at things differently.”

“Can’t it be both?” I asked with a grin.

That got a laugh out of her before she continued, “I’ll call the school and get you excused for today and tomorrow, just in case. Sean should be home tonight at the latest.”

I gave her a quick hug before we said goodbye and I went back into the room. Pulling out one of the note pads Jen had given me I started working through possible arrays that could be beneficial in my everyday life.

About an hour of theory crafting went by when the beeping of the monitors changed slightly and I looked up to find my sister stirring in her bed. I set the pad down and rose to move towards the bed. As I moved her head snapped to focus on me, which was extremely odd due to me being fairly quiet and her being a reject for a horror film. She rasped out, “Michael?”

I moved over to her and said, “Heya squirt. Take it easy.”

I grabbed the nearby cup of water and helped her maneuver the straw so she could wet her lips before she spoke again, “Why do I feel something on my face, why is it so dark, and what happened? The last thing I remember was Georgia and Mary screaming.”

“You were in a car accident because of an explosion caused by an attempted robbery. You got hit in the head, granted with how thick it is I’m surprised there was any damage,” I said in a relieved tone.

She chuckled a bit before wincing, “Owey, my whole body hurts too much to laugh. Am I in the hospital?”

I patted her hand, “Yes, speaking of which let me let a nurse know that you are awake.”

I noticed as her eyes tracked me as I moved out of the room and notified one of the staff. A few minutes of medical professionals checking her over and we were once more alone, which let me address the elephant in the room, “Rhi, do you want to explain how you were able to follow the movements of the nurses in the room?”

She stiffened slightly before she looked at me and said, “I can still kinda see them, or at least see where something is. It’s hard to explain, but I can see or maybe feel where something is taking up space.”

I took her hand and said, “How would you describe it if you were writing it for a science report?”

She thought for a few minutes and said, “It’s like when you put something in water. It moves the water away from it so the shape is in the water, but there isn’t color or much definition. Like the flowers in the vase over there. I can feel the shape of them, down to the ridges in the leaves, but I couldn’t tell you if they were red or yellow.”

“So you can sense the displacement,” I said in consideration.

“I think that’s the right word, but I don’t understand how,” she said, sounding a little frightened.

I patted her hand again and said, “Don’t worry little sis. I’ll help you figure it out. In fact I’m going to step over next to the flowers and do something. I want you to tell me if you know what I’m doing.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice changing to a more curious tone.

I stepped over to the vase of tulips one of the nurses had placed in the room and as quietly as I could took a deep breath and blew it out as hard as I could manage. Rhi cocked her head and spoke up, “You are doing something with your mouth. I can see something being pushed away from it.”

I grinned as I now had a pretty good idea what my baby sister was experiencing. I took the seat next to her and held her hand again as I explained, “I think I know what you're sensing. I think you are literally sensing the movement of the air around you. You see objects with mass displacing the air, and could see me breathing.”

“Does that mean I’m magical like you?” she asked.

I gave her hand another gentle squeeze and said, “You were always magical squirt, now you’re just more so. I think your mom is going to have a field day with this though.”

“Do we have to tell her?” she asked meekly.

“It’s probably best if we do. She might ground me if I start teaching you how to make arrays when she wasn’t told why,” I said.

The smile that lit her face was almost blinding as she said, “Really, you mean like the light that you needed my help with?”

I laughed and said, “Yeah munchkin, don’t get too cocky though. If you can really feel the air around you then you can probably tell it what to do. Means you need to practice how to control it so you don’t cause an accident with it.”

It’s really hard to read expressions when you can only see the bottom half of a bruised face, but I could tell she was dreading the answer to the question she asked, “What do you mean?”

I grinned wide enough that she noticed it with her new senses as I said, “More homework.”

Her groan set me to a bout of laughter that was interrupted by the doctor stopping in to examine her. I backed off and pulled my phone out to send a text to Jennifer that she had woken up and seemed in good spirits. Her response informed me that she was grateful for the update and that Sean should be at the hospital within the hour. I guess he did drive through the night to get back to his little girl. I kept the smile on my face as I waited for the doctor to finish his check up.