There was another school of thought.

To date, no person, man or woman, human or demi-human, had been born with a jitter without it having some sort of drawback. Worse yet, there was no consistency to them, seemingly requiring the strangest of prerequisites in a best-case scenario, and being downright crippling in the worst. It was not unusual for those born with jitters to curse the very power they were ‘blessed with’.

Ren was one such person.

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The world was a fog when Ren came to. Shadow encroached around the corners of his vision, painting the world in a strange replay of silhouettes and images.

“What. Where am I?” Ren mumbled.

“Finally awake, are you?” The voice chuckled, and the snap of latex followed. Doctor Scales, it sounded like. “Make sure to thank your friend.”

Thank my friend?

As the thought crossed his mind, he winced. His head pounded, his arm felt like it’d been thrown into a meat grinder, and… something soft was touching his other arm.

“Ren?” the voice cooed. Ren shut his eyes.

“Is that you, Olivier?” Ren breathed.

“That’s right,” she said. Ren snapped up into a sitting position at Olivier’s soft touch, hitting the light above him.

“Ah, fuck!” Ren hissed. The lamp swayed back, and Olivier stopped it as it came back to hit him.

Tightening her grip around his bicep, Olivier forced him back down. “Ah-ah-ah,” she warned, putting one hand on top of his chest. “Careful now. Lay back.”

Thin fingers with black-painted nails gently pushed on him. As he drew a deep breath, his eyes wandered from the short plaid skirt, to the old beige sweater and button-up shirt. A series of gold diamond-shaped piercings hung from the bottom of her long—as in like the elves of fantasy stories—left ear, her hair a striking mix of gray, black, and red tied into a ponytail.

Olivier smiled, and the scar around her lip moved with her. Her blood-red eyes were enough to convince any man—Ren especially—to calm down.

“We were really worried about you,” another woman said as she moved to stand behind Olivier. “What the hell were you thinkin’?”

June, Ren’s sister. “I guess I wasn’t,” Ren chuckled. A sharp pain shot up from where his arm had been taken off, causing him to bang the elbow of his good arm against the metal gurney he now lay upon. With some struggle, Ren slowly moved his new forearm in front of him, noting the change in color from the rest of his skin. A line of intricate stitches had been made where his skin connected with the new appendage. “Ugly.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” someone snapped from Ren’s right. As he’d expected, it was Doctor Scales. He wore the white lab coat typical of a man in his position. What wasn’t typical was the helmet he wore that bore the resemblance of a dragon. How he did his work like that, Ren had no idea. He didn’t care so much, but it was hard to get a read on him sometimes. The man was washing his hands in the sink. “Be grateful you’re still alive.”

“Thanks, Rudy.” A smile tugged at the corner of Ren’s mouth as Doctor Scales hesitated briefly. Ren knew it got under the man’s skin, but that made it that much easier to understand what was going on in his head. There was something about it that felt real, felt genuine. “For real, man. Thanks. This shit hurts bad, though.”

Scales ripped a paper towel from a dispenser, drying his hands as he approached. “Medicine has that effect. It’s a wonder you’re not used to it by now.” Pulling out a small flashlight from his coat pocket, he gripped Ren by the chin and turned his face toward him. “Don’t blink.” The doctor clicked a button at the end of the cylinder and a light came on. He pointed it directly at Ren’s left eye, then his right, clicking it off and pocketing it afterward. “Well, you seem fine enough. You’ll want to rest, though. You lost a lot of blood. Your body needs time to recover, so make sure you eat something as soon as you can.”

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“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Ren said, waving his good hand and rolling his eyes. “I’ll think about it.”

Olivier sighed. “Come on, Ren, be reasonable.”

Ren tilted his head to the left, catching her gaze. “Uhh, well, um. Yeah, I… yeah, I suppose I could do that. Gotta, uh, take care of myself, right?”

Olivier smiled warmly.

“Oh, brother,” June whispered just loud enough that Ren could hear.

“Heard what happened, bro.” A behemoth of a man came up to June’s side next. Even beneath his jacket you could tell the man was not to be messed with. Tanned skin rested beneath a head of dyed blonde hair, his natural brown buzzed on the sides, ruffled from sweat. A relieved smile tilted his goatee to one side, his caramel eyes digging daggers into Ren. This was Maxis—Ren’s best friend. “Gotta say, man, that was pretty stupid, even for you.”

“Eh, not the worst I’ve done,” Ren said. It was the truth, but it would definitely take one of the top three spots of dumbest things he’d done in his life.

“You’re right, but don’t do that again. I don’t want to be the one to arrange your funeral.”

“That’d be me,” June corrected. Dark bags sat beneath her anti-eyebrow piercings, her favorite black shirt tied underneath her bust. Her dark hair covered one side of her face as her sparkling green eyes constantly veered away from her brother. The golden hoop piercing tumbled with her lower lip. “I would be arranging your funeral, dumbass.”

“I said I was sorry,” shrugged Ren.

“Did you?”

“Didn’t I?” He thought for a moment. “Well, I’m apologizing now. Sorry.” Ren sat up slowly, taking care not to hit the light a second time. Now that he was thinking about it, the jitter mark that’d gotten him into the most trouble was gone, replaced by a lifeless-looking arm. “What the fuck, did you just give me some dead guy’s arm?” No response was given.

Scales sighed. “What did you think I was stitching to your body?”

Ren blinked. “Hmm. Well, whatever, I guess it works well enough.”

Ren thought for a time. The jitter mark which caused him to warp around—or blink, as he liked to refer to it—had been part of the arm he lost. Part of him hoped it would disappear with his arm’s departure. But the reality was, he knew better. Whether that jitter mark was visible or not, his abilities, good or bad, would remain uninhibited.

Jitters were exceptionally rare to see, and were doubly unusual when someone was born with two of them like Ren was. They showed up as small tattoos somewhere on the body at birth. Oftentimes, they were dull to look at, and were mistaken for birthmarks. Most manifested before the age of ten, and not all children were pleased to discover their power.

Jitters were oftentimes a double-edged sword for the wielder. While the mark often bestowed a unique power upon the person, there was always a drawback, a condition that sometimes made living a normal life difficult, if not impossible.

Even with such debilitating symptoms, most of those who lived in Kast Legari saw them as a gift, a blessing. Ren balked at the idea. He wasn’t any different from your average Joe as far as he was concerned. Matters weren’t helped by the fact that both of his Jitters were on the backs of his palms. At least, they were until now.

Ren sighed. “How did the little dork get me here?”

June turned around, sniffing and wiping away a tear from her eye.

“Sunny said she used your cell phone to warp you around,” Maxis explained. “Pretty damn smart for a kid, eh?”

Ren peeked through the gaps between his friends to see Sunny sleeping on the couch.

“I’ll have to make it up to her,” Ren said, smiling.

Ren had a faint idea of what had happened. He’d experienced it for as long as he could remember. Whenever his emotions would go unchecked, he’d sometimes ‘blink’ from one spot to another, warping instantaneously. It was never very far—about a few dozen feet at best—but the one consistent thing he’d discovered about it was that it tended to move him toward sources of light. Since the effects could occur while he was asleep, Ren imagined Sunny had used the phone’s light source to essentially guide his unconscious body through the woods.

Smart kid.

“Well. I need to get going before another imbecile like you walks in,” Scales said. As Ren was about to retort, the man continued. “By the way. If you can manage to get some samples from the Lurker you killed, I’ll pay you a pretty penny.”

“What? Like if I go now?”

“No. Don’t go now. Fetch them later. Or don’t. Either way, I’m leaving. I’ve got better things to do.” With that, Scales pushed the door open to another room and locked it behind him, closing the curtain.

“Damn, man,” Ren moaned, scratching the back of his neck.

As much as Ren liked doing the right thing for people, he quickly found out that he struggled to follow orders. Rather than be in a group of tight-lipped suits parading as heroes, he preferred to do things his own way. With border control and traditional law enforcement out of the picture, he worked with Scales to do what he could for the common person.

Unfortunately, he still had bills to pay. Deals with Dr. Rudolph Scales supplemented his need for cash and offered him a way to do what he wanted. A payment for a payment. That was the way of it. Bring in the samples and remains of Lurkers, and the doctor would pay him top dollar for it.

At least, so Scales claimed.