At precisely 12:46, Maria experiences her vision. It also happens to be the middle of history class when the fourteen-year-old stiffens in her seat and her eyes flood completely white.
Pete, her fellow psychic immediately rushes to her side upon seeing this just as she starts screaming, tears rolling down her cheeks as she stares blankly into space.
“What now?” the teacher snaps from the front before turning and seeing Maria.
“Sorry sir,” Pete replies as the rest of the class look over curiously before dismissing it as nothing unusual, “Maria’s new here. She can’t control it very well.”
“Well, as long as it doesn’t happen again. Take her to the nurse’s office would you?” pleads the teacher, keen to carry on his lesson.
Responding that he would, Pete gently leads the now whimpering Maria out of the classroom and out of the building, towards the medical block. Ignoring the nippy air, Pete leans in gently shakes Maria as they make their way across the quad.
“Hey Maria, you okay?”
Maria just shakes in response as she shivers and crouches down, hugging her knees to her chest. Her eyes are still wide open and completely white.
“S-so cold… a-and dark… Argh, t-t-he v-voices. S-so loud. N-no stop! P-please…”
With a sigh Pete sees Maria’s in no condition to move on her own and promptly bends down and picks the diminutive girl up, who tries to burrow into his chest, sniffling.
“Shhh… come on now Maria,” Pete softly coos as he carries her the rest of the way to the Medical Block.
As he enters the nurse on duty looks up with a frown, “No, I’m not signing any sl…” Seeing Pete standing in the doorway with Maria in his arms her frown slips off to be replaced by one of worry.
“Tch. Not again. I thought she was getting a hold on this,” she motions for Pete to follow her into the neighbouring room.
“She is. I just think this one is really bad, she’s never reacted so strongly before.” Pete replies as he enters the examination room and gently lowers Maria to the bed.
“Poor thing, it must be so hard for her,” the nurse fusses as she shoos Pete away from the bed and starts checking Maria’s vitals and arranging the bedding, “Every time someone starts causing problems this happens.”
She is, of course, referring to Maria’s power, named ‘God Seeker’. It allows her to enter a trance like state to locate and spy on, to some extent, individuals whose powers exceed a certain power level. However, should an individual with powers strong enough also happen to be on the verge of causing a large scale disaster, the trance state is forced upon her. Similar to an alarm.
“I’ll just go call the manager quickly Angela,” Pete calls, pulling out his phone and raising it to his ear.
“Yeah, hi…”
“Maria’s got something… I know it’s not during training hours… Yeah, it’s forced…”
A long pause follows as Pete intently listens to the voice over the phone.
“No… She’s still under… Yeah bring the normal team. Don’t forget the globe either… No, this is the worse I’ve seen her. I’m guessing it’s pretty bad…”
“Right… See you here then.” Hanging up Pete turns and returns to the room to find Maria chatting away to Angela seated next to her.
Relief floods through Pete as he rushes over. “Hey, how you doing?”
Maria looks up with a slight shudder, taking Pete aback slightly with her haunted look. “It was horrible,” she whispers in a small voice. “So horrible…”
“Don’t work yourself up now, okay?” Pete attempts to comfort her, “the manager is on her way now. Everything’s fine.” Angela meets Pete’s gaze and nods once before leaving the room as Pete turns back to Maria.
She just nods listlessly, staring off into space as an awkward silence descends over the room. Desperately trying to think of something to say, Pete takes a deep breath and opens his mouth when the door is flung open with a crash.
“Yo, Pete, Maria. I hear you’ve got something good for me?” a loud voice rings through the room, making Pete jump as he turns to see Katie. AKA ‘The Manager’. Standing at a short five foot five, with deep brown hair curling down her back and dressed in the school uniform, she would make her presence known by her loud entrances and incessant chatter.
Filing in behind her come the rest of the extraction team; the twin psychics, Callum and Connor Bridges, AKA Scanner and Tracker. Identical twins with a passion for pranks and of average height, they are responsible for finding clues about the targets in the minds of others and using these clues to find them, respectively.
Shortly behind comes a hulking beefcake of a young man, easily over six feet tall: Dave Hughes, AKA ‘Rock’. Aptly named considering he is unable to take damage from external sources. Bullets just bounce off and knives get very blunt. Hiding in his shadow is Ashley Hughes, his younger sister who is even smaller than Maria, barely thirteen years old, AKA ‘Ash’. Her job is to act as ‘limpet’ for the team; trailing the target if they make a break as she dissolves into a cloud of smoke and watches from the shadows.
The last member of the team enters, tall, though not as tall as Dave, with black hair and glasses with a slim build, Allan Ivanovsk completes the team, AKA ‘Intel’. His job is the brains of the team, providing tactical advice to everyone as well as monitoring vitals and calling strategies.
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Huffing slightly Allan adjusts his glasses before dragging the large globe into the room, half his height and made of fine glass he drags it over to Maria’s bed as he complains in a thick eastern European accent, “I am not seeing why I have to do this. Why not Dave?”
“Shut it scarecrow,” snaps Katie as she turns to Maria. “So, what you got?”
Maria shudders again as she slowly leans over and plants her small finger over England on the globe next to her. “London, close to the river, but that’s it right now.”
“That’s it?” Katie exclaims, “You normally have more for me!” Calming herself she carries on in a lower voice when she sees Maria fiddling nervously at the outburst. “Any indication of powers?”
“N-no, I-they were… distracted,” mumbles Maria as she stares into the distance.
Pete glances at Katie to see her brows furrowing in thought. This is bad. The way Maria’s power works is she borrows the senses of the individual in question for a small period of time, as well as instilling in her brain the location of the individual. Essentially allowing her to experience whatever the rogue Unlocked is experiencing.
“How so?” queries Allan, currently surrounded by flickering screens of light as he begins his research on the area for any information.
Maria hugs herself while staring into the blanket. “He was cold, but didn’t feel it, he was hungry but didn’t react,” taking a shuddering breath she carries on, “He was walking down a street, kind of normal but there were shadows everywhere. People, faces. All looking at him and screaming. Over and over, reaching out to tear his flesh and break his bones. Screaming at him, ‘Why? Why did you do this?’ over and over and over…”
A thick silence falls over the room. The twins glance at one another and Ash draws closer to her brother. Maria only receives the visions about people who could cause serious harm to society and would do soon. To think that someone with such power would be haunted so is… alarming.
“This is serious Katie,” Pete warns, “you guys need to get moving.”
“Yeah,” Katie shakes her way out of her reverie. “Right, we…”
“Got something!” chimes Allan. Everyone turns to him expectantly as he continues, straightening his glasses, “In the past six months, in the London area, there have been a number of mysterious deaths in which the bodies are found without any cause of death. This has left police baffled, however, the only lead they have is a young, homeless man whom witness saw near all the scenes.”
Looking up, Allan surveys his audience to ensure he has their attention before continuing and moving to another screen, “This alone isn’t enough to warrant our attention, however, just two hours ago, this video was uploaded.”
Widening the screen with a gesture, Allan starts the video. It is blurry and mostly out of focus, but good enough to show a long figure in a long grey coat holding a bottle surrounded by a ring of teenagers in school uniform.
“Where’s the sound?” Katie asks, trying to squeeze as much information as possible from the video.
Allan just coughs apologetically, “The video was taken down almost immediately, this was the best I could find, I’m afraid.”
The video meanwhile, shows how one of the youths steps forward, before exchanging a few words with the guy in the coat. Things evidently don’t go well and the teenager pulls out a knife and waves it threateningly while saying a few more words. The boy then hesitates slightly before stabbing forward.
Ash buries her face in Dave’s back at the sight of the knife sticking out and Maria gasps.
What happened next was more shocking though, as Pete’s eyes widened at the sight of the guy in the coat calmly finishing his drink and throwing it aside, before pulling the knife out of his own chest.
Closing the screen, Allan looks at Katie, “Well?”
“We need to move. Now,” is her only answer.
As they began filing out to board the plane the extraction team always has on hold, Pete stiffens.
It won’t enough. They’re all going to die.
Dread floods his system. Just how powerful is this guy? To be able to kill the whole extraction team…
“Katie!” Pete scrambles up, “Wait!”
Turning, she raises an eyebrow, “What’s up. Something wrong?”
“Yeah. You don’t have enough.” Looking at her sceptical expression he presses on, “I just had a premonition. If you go with this team, you’ll die.”
“So what do we do?” Katie crosses her arms over her chest. She learnt long ago to trust Pete’s ability as it is never wrong in what it does say.
Pausing for a moment Pete decides, “Yanus. You need Yanus with you.”
Staring searchingly into Pete’s face, Katie nods once before breaking out her grin. “Don’t worry, we’ll get him on side! Ciao!”
With that she spins on her heel and striding out of the room in the direction of the lunch hall, loudly slams the door behind her.
“I just hope they’ll be alright,” Maria says softly behind Pete.
So do I. He thinks. So do I…