I was microwaving ramen when I accidentally erased my roommate from existence. One moment Jade was complaining about her dating life, the next – static where a person used to be. That's how I, Raylyn Weaver, discovered I was a Parallaxer.

They say trauma triggers the change. For me, it wasn't the big stuff – not my parents' divorce or getting laid off. It was the quiet breakdown in my kitchen at 2 AM, listening to Jade's familiar rant about Tinder while drowning in student debt and existential dread. The mundane finally cracked me.

"Just breathe," Dr. Martinez had always told me during therapy. "Anxiety can't actually hurt you."

Turns out she was wrong.

The first week was hell. I kept displacement-jumping whenever I got nervous – appearing on rooftops, in subway tunnels, once in the middle of a board meeting at Goldman Sachs. Each jump left reality a little more fractured, like cracks spreading through glass.

That's how Ryan found me, huddled behind a dumpster after accidentally teleporting a pizza delivery guy to Times Square (turns out the pizza guy has displacement powers as well.)

Ryan looked more like an accountant than a powered individual, with his wire-rim glasses and cardigan. But when he moved, space bent around him like light through water.

"The government calls it 'spatial manipulation anxiety disorder,'" he explained, helping me up. "I call it being cosmically screwed."

Ryan explained BACR or the Bureau of Anomalous Containment and Research. Telling me stories of them kidnapping Parallaxers and using them for them for secret projects. He said he could help me figure out my powers and how to protect myself.

Ryan ran a support group for what he called "displacement cases" – Parallaxers whose powers manifested through mental health issues. We met in an abandoned warehouse in Queens, sharing stories and practicing control. That's where I met Danny, a former EMT who could create pocket dimensions when his PTSD flared up, and Rachel, whose depression could literally drain the light from rooms.

For three months, things almost felt normal. I learned to control my jumps, started carrying anxiety meds in a lead-lined container (turns out they work better when they haven't been accidentally teleported to different dimensions), and even managed to hold down a remote job. Ryan would show us developing technology designed to help Parallaxers control their abilities.

Then I discovered the truth about Ryan.

It started with little things – the way he'd tense up when we discussed government containment facilities, how he always seemed to know when new displacement cases would manifest. Rachel noticed it too. "Have you ever wondered," she whispered during one session, "why we never see the people who 'lose control' again?"

I followed him one night after group. He displacement-jumped across the city, and I matched him, jump for jump, my anxiety actually helping for once. He led me to a sleek building in Manhattan, where I watched him meet with men in suits. Through the window, I saw monitors displaying familiar faces – group members who had "moved away." Next to those were cages containing “missing” parallaxers.

"Impressive tracking," Ryan said behind me. I hadn't heard him teleport. "Most people can't follow my jumps."

"You're working for them," I said. "The task force."

"I'm helping people, Raylyn. Some Parallaxers can't be rehabilitated. They're dangers to themselves and others. I identify the unstable ones before they cause major incidents."

"Do you think I’m dangerous?"

His silence was answer enough.

"The thing about anxiety," I said, feeling the familiar tingle of an incoming jump, "is that it makes you prepare for every scenario." I triggered the displacement beacon in my pocket – tech "borrowed" from one of Ryan's private sessions.

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The air crackled as two dozen displacement cases materialized around us – every person I'd secretly warned over the past week. Danny, Rachel, even Pizza Guy (whose name was Steve, and who had gotten surprisingly good at dimensional portals).

"The problems with betryal," Rachel said, darkness pooling around her feet, "is that it tends to trigger people's symptoms."

What followed was pure chaos. Ryan tried to jump away, but Danny's pocket dimensions kept him contained. Government agents poured from the building, armed with power dampeners. I saw Steve sending them to random dimensions with carefully tossed pizza dough. Rachel's darkness provided cover as we freed the contained Parallaxers.

In the end, it came down to Ryan and me, floating in a bubble of displaced space above Manhattan.

"You don't understand what you've done," he said. "Some powers need to be contained."

"No," I replied, feeling strangely calm. "What you never understood is that our anxiety isn't the problem – it's how we've been taught to see it. We're not broken. We're just different."

Ryan lunged at me and grabbed me. We wrestle as we began teleporting around the city. Into people’s homes, the subway, a Wal-mart. People looking on in awe as we phased in and out of existence.

Ryan was far stronger and more in tuned with his powers than I was. I knew I wasn’t going to defeat him but I could give myself and the team sometime to escape.

I dug deep. Reached into the depths of my anxiety. Using all that I know and learned. I grabbed Ryan and teleported as far as I could imagine.

We appeared in the Himalayas, on top of a mountain peak. Ryan looked around in awe.

“How…how were were you able to do that?”

I honestly didn’t know the answer myself. I had never teleported outside the city before.

Ryan seemed angry now. As if he was jealous of what just happened.

“You know I could I have taken you in, right? I saved you. And this is what you do to me?”

He rushed towards me but not before I teleport away. Leaving Ryan alone on the cold mountain.

I managed to teleport back to the facility. I immediately began freeing the trapped Parallxers from their cages, teleporting to safety.

Within hours, every screen in Times Square was broadcasting our faces… everyone who was at the facility, Rachel, Danny…everyone. BACR was labeling us as "dangerous unstable elements."

Rachel found us a temporary haven in an abandoned subway station she'd modified with her darkness manipulation. As we gathered our rescued Parallaxers – seventeen scared, angry people with powers they barely understood – I realized we'd just declared war on the government's containment program.

"They'll never stop hunting us," Danny said, tending to a teenager we'd freed who could turn anxiety attacks into electromagnetic pulses. "BACR will be after us now."

"Then we don't stay still," I replied, watching reality fracture and heal around my fingers. "We keep moving, and we find others before they do."

That was six months ago. Now we're what the media calls the "Displacement Underground" – though Pizza Guy (Steve) keeps pushing for "The Para-normal Activity Squad." We're thirty-two strong, operating in constantly shifting cells across the country. Rachel's darkness powers have evolved; she can now create permanent shadows we use as safe houses. Danny's pocket dimensions have become our emergency exits and supply caches.

We developed a system for finding new Parallaxers before the government does. With the help of certain parallaxers, we are able to detect and find others who need our help.

Our latest rescue was a college student in Michigan who started reversing time whenever she had panic attacks about finals. We got to her just as the containment teams arrived. The fight that followed taught me that my powers were still evolving. Under pressure, I didn't just displace things anymore – I could swap locations of objects and people instantly, turning the agents' tactical formation into chaos.

But we've lost people too. Last month, Ryan led a strike team that caught one of our cells in Seattle. And two weeks ago, we discovered why the government wants to contain us so badly: some Parallaxers' powers don't just grow – they merge. During a close call in Chicago, Rachel's darkness and Danny's dimensional manipulation accidentally combined, creating what we now call "void spaces" – patches of reality that simply cease to exist.

The implications terrified us. If two Parallaxers could accidentally alter the fundamental nature of space-time, what could thirty-two do? What could thousands do? Maybe Ryan was right about the dangers. But his solution – containment, control, suppression – that was never going to work. You can't contain evolution.

We've started hearing whispers about other groups like ours. A collective in Europe calling themselves the "Reality Brigade." A loose network in Asia known as the "Harmony Chain." All Parallaxers, all running, all searching for answers.

Last week, during a supply run, I found my old anxiety journal. The list was still there: "Things That Are Real." I added some new entries: 4. The family we've built 5. The choice we keep making every day 6. The possibility that we're becoming something entirely new

My therapist used to say that anxiety was just our body's way of preparing for imagined futures. Now I wonder if she was almost right. Maybe our collective trauma was preparing us for a future no one could have imagined. A future we're still shaping.

Yesterday, we got word of three new manifestations in different cities. The government teams are already mobilizing. Rachel's preparing the shadow networks, Danny's mapping emergency dimensions, and Steve's ordered pizza for everyone (somehow, it always arrives wherever we are).

I should be terrified. By all rights, my anxiety should be through the roof. Instead, I feel something different: purpose. Every time we save someone new, we're not just building a resistance – we're building a community. A family of people who understand what it means to have your broken pieces become something powerful.

We'll keep running. Keep fighting. Keep rescuing others like us. And maybe, somewhere between the displaced spaces and pocket dimensions, between the darkness and the void, we'll find out what we're really becoming.

Because the final rule of being a Parallaxer still stands: there are no rules. Only choices. And we choose to face whatever's coming together.

"Ready?" Rachel asks, her darkness already pooling around our feet. Through the shadows, I can see the coordinates of our next rescue.

I take a deep breath, feeling the familiar fracture of reality around my fingers. "Ready."

Time to displace ourselves into another tomorrow.

The End... or rather, The Beginning