Chapter 1
If I hear the word essentially one more time I’m going to riot. It’s my English teacher’s favourite word, and she had used it three times in the past sentence. Three times. That word is ruined for me now. And it’s a good word too. My teacher stood at the front of the room, the first day of class, lecturing after saying she didn’t want to lecture on our first day back. She was going to briefly tell us what books we’d be reading this year, and what our theme is. Every year we get a theme, last year’s was a dystopian world. We read a few books, but the main one was Brave New World. That book freaked me out a little, and I’m secretly a superhero.
About 100 years ago, an anomaly was discovered in some humans. An anomaly that gave us powers. Some could heal, some could manipulate gravity, some could even teleport. It was chaos. That’s when we discovered that some people had some really terrible powers. Able to spread sickness and disease with a single touch. Things went badly. We went into what we now call the Second Dark Age. Until the remaining governments put some laws in place. Laws that dictate that nobody is allowed to use their powers outside of their homes, nobody. Not even the Queen.
We rebuilt after that. People were scared so they followed the rules. Until about fifteen years ago. Some villains came out of hiding, using their powers for bad. Heathen, he could change people’s faith with a single thought. He usually went after spiritual leaders, and convinced them to condemn what they believe in. Mime, you never heard her coming, and then you’d never be able to talk or move again. She turned people into living statues, and they stayed that way either until she grew bored or they died of dehydration or starvation. Peculiar, she slowly turned people insane with a single kiss, anywhere. It would start out small, then you’d become more and more peculiar, until you turned insane. They was no cure. And the worst one of them all, Genocide. He could kill hundreds to thousands of people by way of disease, or natural disasters.
We didn’t know there was a person behind the large groups of bodies, not until we realized their connection and Genocide announced himself. They all went to the same church, had the same shade of hair, were the same ethnicity, or had the same name. We don’t know how to stop him. The only consolation we have is it takes him extremely long to work up a genocide. It requires more power than you can imagine. It should take more power than you can imagine, these are people’s lives we’re talking about. You shouldn’t be able to just snap your fingers and be done with it.
Ms. Varone snapped me out of my thoughts. “Nessa,” she was looking right at me. I hate that look. “Anything you’d care to add to the conversation?” She leaned her weight onto one leg, still looking at me. Uh oh, I thought. Better think of something quick. She isn’t your biggest fan, not after the debacle last year.
“I was just wondering what this year’s theme is, and how it relates to out culminating task,” I responded smoothly, hoping she hadn’t covered that when I’d been distracted by my thoughts.
“Excellent question,” she said, looking around the class. “This year’s theme is loss. Loss in family, in friends, in religion, loss in whatever. We’ll be reading The Heart and the Bottle, Norwegian Wood, and Book of Mutter.” We all groaned, they sounded like extremely emotional books and no sane seventeen year old would want to read a nonfiction book about loss.
Soon the bell rings, and I pick up my bag and head for History. One of my more interesting courses. This teacher is one of my favourites. He gets so excited about what he’s talking about he starts jumping around. It helps that his projects are very easy and fun too. His class is a breeze, and he has a Powerpoint to go over what we’ll be reviewing this year. The bell rings again, this time sooner than I thought, and I headed off for lunch. My friends and I always sit outside the library, our large group driving everyone further down the hall because of how loud we could get.
There were sixteen of us in total, but we all had our own mini groups. The Bio Buds: Jay, Quinn, Maria, Kiki and Miele. The Writer Worshippers: me, Roan, Kieran, and Tommy. The Engineer Squad: Penny, Elizabeth, Jake and Noel. And the Gym Gang: Dani, Oscar and Luca. Most of us have been friends since high school started, and some of us even before then. We had our middle school groups, me, Penny, Roan, Dani and Jake coming from St. Peter’s, Jay, Quinn, Kieran, Tommy, Elizabeth and Noel coming from Wellington Junior High, and Maria, Kiki, Miele, Oscar and Luca coming from Manuel Public School.
We had a large group of friends, maybe the largest in the school that regularly hung out. The Bio Buds and the Engineer Squad had a lot of classes together, taking the sciences and maths. The Writer Worshippers took all the available English courses, and the Gym Gang of course took all the phys ed and health courses. There was some overlap, here and there, but those were mostly the small groups. We’d all meet at lunch, and sometimes The BBs and ES would go into the library together, comparing notes and working on assignments. I can tell you the WWs brain’s melted almost every lunch whenever someone asked how our works in progress are going. Mine certainly did.
This year, however, our group is halved. The only ones left are Jay, Quinn, Roan, Penny, Dani, Kiki, Kieran and Oscar. The others had graduated and gone to university, or were taking a gap year. Some here in the city and others at different universities. Our friend group seemed so small now. It was even quieter.
. . .
Despite knowing Dani and Penny for a good decade, my best friend’s name is Martha. She’s tall, and has the prettiest brown hair and green eyes. She also happens to be a superhero, and my partner of three years. She had air powers, she used to tickle me with the wind, tease my hair, caress my hands. She doesn’t do as often now, what with the villains making a sudden reappearance. She’s known by the rest of the world as Aella, meaning whirlwind. I suggested that name. When she joined the Agency, right at the beginning, she would walk around with a bubble of air protecting her, pushing people standing too close back and lifting up everybody’s hair. She’s gotten friendlier over the years, and she’s one of the few people I idolise. I want to be just like her when I’m older, except I won’t have her powers. They’re so cool.
After school I went home with Noah and Nellie, two other girls who live in the orphanage with me. I’m the oldest in the orphanage, at seventeen, with Noah at fifteen and Nellie at 13. There are thirteen of us total at the orphanage. Lucky number, I know. Not so lucky situations. Most of our parents had died, with no next of kin, or we had been abandoned at the doorstep. I wish I had been abandoned.
Memories of that night invaded my senses, making me shiver. I tried to push them back, but small glimpses of orange and black and the stars twinkling high above me. The smell of smoke invaded my lungs, and I bent over, coughing my heart out. Nell and Noah stopped beside me, pulling back my hair and rubbing my back. I felt something small and cylindrical brush my lips and I latched onto the straw, gulping down as much water as possible. I hated when I got attacks.
It took me a few minutes to calm down, and it was then I realised the smoke wasn’t coming from my imagination. There was a building on fire a few blocks away, the thick black smoke billowing out and up into the sky. I stared in horror for a few seconds before Noah pushed me a little.
“Nessa go!” she said. “They need Chameleon.”
I dropped my bag and sprinted off into an alleyway, looking back and forth for anyone before shifting. My legs got longer, my chest got flat and wings sprouted from my shoulder blades. My clothes shifted too, covering every inch of my face and body, with a cape unfurling and snapping behind me in the wind. I pushed off the ground, beating my wings, catching the air. I rose high above and shot off towards the fire, surveying the
scene.
Out of the corner of my eye I spotted movement, and looked to the left seeing a fire truck roaring down the street and an ambulance hot on its trail. Looking closer I noticed that Aella and Waya had hitched a ride on the top of the truck. Good, I thought, not wanting to go at it alone today. I dropped beside them on top of the truck, casually dropping a “Hey” as if we weren’t about to go charging into a burning building and I hadn’t just
dropped out of the sky.
“Okay,” Waya said, ever the strategist. “Chameleon, Aella, get the people out of the building. I’m going to conjure rain to help the firefighters. I’ll make you guys cold so you resist the heat for a little. Take these masks,” he passed them over. Waya also had a cool power. He had the Word of Command. It was a singular word that held power, like saying rain and then it starts raining. He couldn’t use more than one word, so he was also a walking thesaurus.
We nodded and Waya and Aella pressed their foreheads together for a moment. They did this every time we were on a mission. They were the cutest couple I had ever met, and I spent half my time teasing them for their cheesiness. What are friends for? Aella and I launched ourselves off the truck, heading straight for the burning apartment building. There were people streaming out of the front and side doors, and some using the fire escape on the side of the building. There were a few people leaning half out of their windows, gesturing towards my partner and I. I heard Waya say ”Rain,” behind us and the sky darkened, rain falling in heavy sheets. It beat heavily on my wings, dripping down the feathers and onto the ground.
The fire seemed to almost want to rage against the rain before It slowly got a bit smaller. The water helped with the smoke too, and people turned their faces upwards with their mouths open. Aella and I systematically dove towards the windows, pulling people out and dropping them next to the ambulance. The firefighters got the flames under control, and they were working on killing it completely. Aella stood on the ground with her legs planted, and created air bubbles around small parts of the fire, sucking the air out of it. The fires would go out, and stay out. Looking at the scene from high above, it was cool. I loved my job. It’s hard sometimes, really hard, but I wouldn’t trade it in for any other job in the world. The others at the Agency were my world, and I don’t know what I’d do without them.