Later, through the infinite dark came again the pulsing, steady and even. With all her might she clutched for it determined not to let it slip away again. She caught it in her awareness gaining hold on the solidness of its presence in her mind.
There was a rush of sensation as she sped downward faster and faster, gaining speed until she felt certain that she would be stretched like a noodle (noodle, what a strange concept) in this void. Soon her consciousness was stretched to its limit yet faster she sped. It felt like her mind was ripping apart.
It stopped as quickly as it began. She felt around her with her mind and discovered she was no longer in the eternal emptiness. The sudden presence of limitations was frightening and she began to panic. She probed into this wall that had formed around her and found a spot that was weaker than the surroundings. She pushed at it determined to get out.
Instantly long unused senses awoke; first came the tactile. She could feel, not in the way of her endless sense of falling, but with actual nerves and touch. Needles and pinpricks spread over skin she hadn't realized she had. Sensory overload threatened to throw her back into oblivion but she maintained hold, fearing the dark more than this new almost painful sensation. Arms, legs, face, back, hands, toes, everywhere there was feeling. However, movement was still lost to her.
Her brain had almost finished sorting the sensations of touch to their according appendages, when sound exploded through her ears thundering and ringing in her head. Air currents were swishing over her, the beating of a heart that synchronized with her own she felt in her chest. The beating of her heart was similar to the pulsing that had enticed her from the void matching frequency, rhythm, and intensity. Steady breathing filled her ears as her chest expanded and relaxed, aided by a pump over her mouth and nose.
There was a beeping sound near her, short and spaced, lining up with her own heartbeat. The pump covering her mouth and nose smelled clean and sterile. Pins and needles had all but left, and she could tell that she was in a hard bed covered by a thin sheet. Her ears heard only the beeps of the machines and what was probably an air vent humming.
On the backs of her hands, and in the crooks of her elbows, pinpricks of feeling remained after all the others had faded from over her body. There was a pressure on her forehead at each temple and in the center. She wished to turn her head or open her eyes, she could not, her neck was still made of steel cords and her eyelids covered in cement.
She remained where she was listening, feeling, wondering about her surroundings. She came to the conclusion that she had to be in a hospital, laying under thin sheets and hooked to machines while her mind had fallen through the oblivion.
But why? she thought. Why would she be in a hospital?
The minutes passed slowly by and still nothing changed. The steady beeping of her heart rate continued undisturbed, along with the breathing mechanism over her nose and mouth. In. Beep. Out. Beep. In. Beep. Out. Beep.
After seeming hours of this ostinato monotony, muffled footsteps sounded from a distance getting closer. Without thinking, she kept as still as possible appearing asleep. Footsteps came closer and paused as a door swished opened and closed. No longer muffled, she knew the owner of the footsteps had entered her room.
Sounding from her left side the steps crossed below her and came up her right side. Rustling of cloth now accompanied the steps. A male voice stood muttering something about, “no change,” beside her and a scratching sound was made. A doctor taking note of her vitals she concluded. There was more rustling and steps as the doctor turned and walked away. The door opened and closed again and footsteps left down a hallway.
Once again she made the effort to move and found that she could, with more effort than she thought was necessary. Lying still she gathered her strength and opened her eyes. Nothing changed.
Confused, she fought the lethargy of her limbs and brought a hand to her face ignoring the pull of the needles in her hands and arms. Her eyes were open but no sight came to them. She was blind.
Fighting panic, she told herself that she would ask the doctor when he came back.
NO! The uncontrolled thought surged through her keeping her from making a sound. Whoever it was that kept her here was not to be trusted. She needed to get out.
First she had to remove the intravenous needles from her skin that were feeding her unknown liquids. She brought her hands together and carefully slipped the needles free of the skin on the back of each hand. Reaching up she slid the tube out of her left elbow and felt blood trickle out with it. Immediately she put pressure on the puncture sight and stemmed the bleeding, she waited a few moments for the blood to start clotting. Repeating this process on her other arm she was soon free of the attachments and had only to pull the pads off of her temples.
This proved more difficult than expected when the first pad came off very reluctantly and painfully. There was a short point in the center of the pad that had embedded itself in her skin. Again blood leaked from the punctured spot on her skin before she could stop it. Taking more caution with the other the bleeding wasn't as bad.
Wary of other attachments she began searching the surface of her body and discovered that beneath the thin hospital sheets she was naked. Carefully pulling off more of the sensor pads from her chest, ribs, and a larger pad from her stomach - that were undoubtedly monitoring her heart-rate and other vital systems - she started to get off the bed. The machines around her had changed from their constant beeping to an unending tone.
Self-conscious about her nudity, as she swung her feet onto the cold floor, she kept the sheet wrapped around her like a toga. She felt her way along the bed to a wall and followed it to a door. Listening close to the door she heard nothing. She continued her way along the wall ensuring there was only one entrance. And one exit.
Footsteps sounded outside in the hallway, undoubtedly drawn by the flat-lining of the machines, she stumbled to the bed she had been in. She had barely reached it when the door opened, she froze where she was.
There was a short gasp, a moment of pause, then, "You're awake," came the surprised response of a higher male voice.
Instinct took over and instantly she was flying toward the voice and collided with the solid body of the man. Air rushed out of the lungs of this intruder as she knocked him to the floor. The sheet lay forgotten between the bedside and the struggle as she wrestled with the man, an inner force guiding her movements. Finally her hand swept down like a blade and hit the man at the joining of his neck and shoulder. A whimper of pain followed and then he was still. Checking to see that his breathing was shallow, she rolled him out of his lab coat and wrapped it about herself, then felt around him and took his belt and fastened around her waist for to cover her nudity.
Leaving him on the floor of the room, she went to the open door and snuck into the hallway beyond. There was a distant sound of people in one direction. She went the other way feeling along the wall.
She never encountered anyone else, and all the doors were locked. The hallway twisted and turned at irregular intervals, often at acute angles. It seemed like she was in a cave with smooth walls, tiled floors, and every once in a while the hum of ventilation units.
Slowly a perception grew in her mind; she could see the layout of the hallway without her eyes. The wall she followed had no decorations or adornments at all, while the ceiling sat above her, revealed to her by this new perception, approximately eight feet above the tiled floor she walked on. The other side of the hall seemed to be lost in a haze that she had trouble seeing at times but other times, was very clear. She guessed that this was because of branching hallways, but she wasn’t in the mind for exploring.
Eventually the hallway came to an end at double doors made of concrete. The doors were four feet wide each and almost eight feet tall. Caution quickly took over as she reached for the handles. Slowly she turned one to find it locked. The same was true for the other.
Staying calm she assured herself that there was no need to worry. She would get out of this building and figure out what was wrong with her eyes. The girl felt her way a few feet back from the door and settled down onto the floor. Her eyes were open, she could feel them open with her hands, yet her sight was lost to her. The strange perception of her surroundings was getting stronger; she started to see muted colors in the shapes and textures. She had an awareness of the wall across from her and the doors off to the side but none of the information came from her eyes.
She continued to sit and let her perception grow until it had expanded far beyond sight should have, and she could see back down the hallway and its strange angles. They made no sense whatsoever. In her mind she followed the hall back the way she had come and realized that the width expanded and contracted at irregular intervals; first being narrow enough that she could reach both sides with outstretched arms and then becoming so wide a truck could have driven through it without any danger of hitting either wall.
Whoever built this place must have been blinder than me.
She continued to sit and ponder the strange hallway until the edges of her perception tingled with the approach of a cluster of people. They were coming from the same way she had, and seemed to be searching for something. Or someone.
Immediately she got up and rushed back over to the doubled-doors and proceeded to examine the lock mechanism with her expanded perception. It was smooth and flush with the rest of the door, so that even if she ran her finger over it she would not have been able to locate the lock. There was also no keyhole or number pad or even a hint of a code pad.
Yet the people were getting closer.
Focusing her perception on the lock she tried to see into the mechanism, and as she did there was a very audible click. The door was opening with a heavy grinding as the door settled open an inch on the hinges.
Down the hall the group of people stopped briefly before continuing with greater speed towards her. A sense of danger rose within her and she knew that she didn't want to have a run-in with them. Using all her weight and the strength in her arms she pulled the door and it swung open slowly grating on the floor as it did.
This thing must be nearly a foot thick. Pulling harder she opened the heavy door wide enough that she could slip through the crack.
Now I need to close the door and... the door had no handle on the other side. Not even a lock or push-bar. Crud. She took the moment to explore the room on this side of the door and 'saw' that the room was very large, but it was filled with desks of papers and all sorts of machinery and giant glass tubes.
The people were a mere fifty yards from the other side of the door.
Senses of danger punched her in the stomach and tied her insides in a knot. Interrupted from her examination of the room she faced again the fear that welled up inside her at the approach of so many people. She counted at least a dozen people that were after her. She could hear their boots pounding towards her. One of them shouted something, but she couldn’t understand the words.
In a flash of pure action without thought, she pulled with her mind and the door slammed shut with a loud thud, much to her own surprise.
With the danger safely behind the solid door, her world suddenly became extremely quiet, she turned her perception again to the room to examine it. Closest to her was a desk full of papers and electronics. Even though she had started to be able to see muted color, she wasn’t able to see anything on the papers. The electronics seemed to be parts for something but she had no way of knowing what they would have gone to. Further around the room were more desks. She couldn’t perceive any windows with her mind-sight, as she began to call it.
The center of the room held a dark shadow surrounding what was probably a glass tube. The shadow reminded her of the darkness she had woken from not too long ago.  The tube was probably at least a yard in diameter and seemed to be filled with a liquid of some kind, but it was hard to tell because of the shadow emanating from the tube.
Once again her curiosity getting the better of her and she walked toward the tube and focused her mind-sight onto the tube to try and get past the shadow. The shadow thickened at the spot she was trying to focus on, as though it was protecting whatever was inside of it.
Trying harder she visualized digging through the shadow to get at what was inside.
It was a brief struggle as the darkness gave way to her efforts, and the interior of the tube was open to her. It was indeed filled with liquid, but there was something else as well.
There was a man inside the tube.
She started to wonder why a man would be inside a tube filled with liquid, without any life support apparatus connected to him. He was also cloaked in a cloud of darkness that reminded her of the endless void she had spent so long in.
The answer was somewhere beyond her reach when the enormous door she came in through clicked. She spun around to face the door as it swung open with the sound of grinding concrete as six men pushed it open.
Armed guards flooded the room. pounding boots on the tile floor, weapons drawn and pointed at her. Their bodies were completely covered in dark colored padded armor and smooth glossy black helmets shaped like bowls hid their heads completely. There were at least three dozen of these guards, all with rifles aimed directly at her. They lined three walls of the room in front and on both sides of her.
“Wait! Hold your fire! She’s standing too close to the other one!” shouted a high male voice. She recognized him as the same man who had come into her room when she first woke up. Now that her mind-sight had developed she looked at him. He wasn’t particularly tall or muscular, but it was obvious he could lift something if needed. She realized she had only taken him down with surprise on her side. His face had a pinched look as though he squinted a lot, emphasized by the square spectacles he wore. There were some bruises developing on his arms and neck from the earlier struggle.
“Come along, no need to be afraid.” He tried to sound soothing. “We merely want to ask you some questions,” he said.
When she didn’t respond or move he looked over at the nearest pair of guards and whispered, “Use the tranquilizer darts, but don’t damage anything.”
Her enhanced senses detected this and immediately sent her brain into survival mode.
First she waved her hand at an invisible fly, this sent all of the guards to her left slamming into the wall by an invisible hurricane force wind.
The guards with the dart guns fired at her, but the darts stopped midflight seven feet from her and dropped to the ground harmlessly. She turned her head to the guards on her right and made the swatting motion she had with the first group and they were sent flying into the wall as well.
Some of the guards forgot their hold-fire orders and shot one-handed at her. Bullets flew wildly, never coming close to her or the tube she stood in front of.
The high voiced man had a look of fear on his face, “Susan, don’t do this!”
“Susan?” the word came off of her tongue slowly. “My name is Susan?” The question brought a furious nod from the high voiced man. Memories from her past were leaking through a mental block. “My name is Susan and I am the most powerful person in the world,” she declared shattering the wall in her mind and releasing a flood of memories.
I am from New York City.
My parents died in a car crash when I was 17.
My life has always been riddled with strange things that could never be explained.
Until I met the man who told me I could be all-powerful.
The man who is in that tube.
She turned around and stared at the man in the tube. He could have been mistaken for a better-than-average American male with his tanned skin, dark hair, and muscular build. But he was more than that. His true strength lay in his mind and the psycho-kinetic abilities he wielded.
But she was stronger.
She turned once again to face the high voiced man, “Doctor Keines! I take leave of your hospital as I no longer require your treatment.” The air started to vibrate, papers on the desks scattered in a wind. Dr. Keines tried to run but the heavy door slammed shut.
“Don’t do this Susan, let me help you,” he almost sobbed. “You were so willing before the accident. You wanted to be cured of your abilities and we had a breakthrough to cure you. Then he broke into the labs and killed the other doctors and almost killed you too.” Keines gestured to the man in the tube.
“He saved me!” Susan screamed at the Keines and the wall shook. “I would have died from the treatment anyway; pumping chemicals into my body to see which would work to get rid of my abilities. Do you want to know what I realized before you treated me? It came to me that you were afraid of me and were planning to kill me after learning the best way of getting rid of others like me. Now,” she raised her arms out to her sides so that her palms were facing up, “I can ascend to a new existence, I will no longer be held prisoner in this place.”
“Please Susan, I beg of you.”
“Good bye doctor,” she said without feeling.
The air around her wavered and bent like a furnace, everything spun in a whirlwind around her. Paper and debris flew past Dr. Keines’ face as he stood watching the event unfold. She and the massive tube started to fade out from view of Dr. Keines and the black-helmeted guards. Finally everything inside the distorted bubble disappeared entirely with a loud thump.
The vacuum created by this pulled all the papers, stray bullets, and Dr. Keines glasses into a mass in the center of the room. The mass then released a concussive blow leaving ears ringing and teeth shaken.
Dr. Henry Keines got up from where the concussive blow had dropped him and rubbed his rattled joints. "She's developed teleportation now," he whispered angrily to himself dropping the helpless doctor act now that Susan remembered everything. He kicked over a nearby desk sending it skidding across the tile floor.
"Doctor Keines, do you want us to bring the PED in here?" asked a recovered guard.
"No, that won't be necessary. I have a pretty good idea of where she went," he turned to face the guard with a predatory grin. "After all, where would you want to go if you were in a strange place with no idea of what was going on?"

Across vectors of time and space Susan showed up in Central Park, New York City.
Along with massive amounts of ruined paper, deformed bullets, and ten feet of three foot wide glass tubing.
Another loud thump followed as air was displaced. An extremely observant passerby would have noticed that a woman had appeared in a flurry of confettied paper with a large glass tube containing a man. She wore nothing but a belted lab coat. A mildly observant passerby would have noticed an explosion of paper and the fact that a large glass tube was out of place in Central Park. Even a blind or deaf person would have at least noticed that something had happened by the sound and shockwave of molecules trying to occupy the same space.
But no one noticed. This was in the heart of Central Park where honest citizens rarely ventured. It was also nighttime for the city-that-never-sleeps, meaning that even fewer people were here than in the daytime.
Susan fell to her knees, drained from the exertion and from coming off the adrenaline high. She managed to crawl away from her own crash site to a nearby tree and promptly fell into her first natural sleep in a long time.
When she woke up the sun was two hours past the horizon. Roots from the tree next to her made her back ache as she slept. Stretching the paralysis from her muscles, she pushed herself off the wet grass and looked over at the glass tube with her mind-sight.
“I may be the most powerful being on the planet, but I don’t know how to use any of it,” she admitted out loud.
Most of the anger had drained from her along with the all the adrenaline while she slept, leaving her to think more clearly and less about annihilating the world. Some of the anger returned as she thought of what had brought her to this current situation. The man in the tube was still locked in his comatose state, with darkness still clouding around his head.
I need to wake him somehow. He can teach me how to use my power and then I can protect myself. He had promised her shortly after they had first met that he could teach her how to keep herself safe from the danger of people who didn’t understand the power she wielded.
First, she needed to get some clothes. She couldn’t go wandering around wearing nothing but a now tattered and dirty lab coat; it would bring too much attention. She didn’t even know where she was. In the very heart of Central Park it is difficult to hear the city sounds with the trees forming a canopy over the carpet of grass.
Actually, the first thing I need to do is visit a bush, she thought urgently.
After her visit to a bush, Susan pulled the man out of what remained of the tube and rested him under a particularly dense group of trees. His unconscious body was surprisingly light for looking so fit.
With him safely in the shade, Susan began walking in a random direction. Her feet thumped softly on the moist grass, the sun warmed her shoulders and face. Her mind-sight picked out the squirrels and birds that rested in the trees and she watched them skitter around hunting for nuts or insects. She almost let herself forget that she was in danger, that she was on the run. Almost.
In the pit of her stomach a cold knot sat, reminding her that one wrong move might be her last.
Eventually Susan found a concrete path that led through the grass and trees. She followed it until the space between the trees no longer felt tight.
Strange, she thought, I haven’t seen any other people yet. The grass was manicured to tell her that she was in a park of some kind, but there were no other human beings on the path.
Gradually, as she walked on the path, she came to hear the city sounds. It took a few more minutes of listening and walking, then she knew where she was.
I’m back home in New York! This must be Central Park, she thought to herself.
New York was bustling with people all the time, even in Central Park. That made it even more confusing as to why there was no other people. A feeling of suspicion crept over her as she continued down the path.
It took a full thirty minutes to reach the end of the path. When she did she saw why there were no other people in the park. A ten foot high chain link fence had been put up along the edge of the park. The fence had inserts that blocked people from looking through into the park.
Thanks to her mind-sight she could see over the fence. On the other side of the fence the city life seemed to run as usual; the sidewalks crowded with people, cars packed on the streets like sardines in a can, even a street musician could be heard performing, a light jazz blending with the cacophony of other noises.
Susan only had a few seconds to take this all in before a police officer stepped through a gate in the fence and called out to her. “This area is under lockdown. What are you doing in here?” he questioned, his right hand lightly touching his holstered pistol.
“Please officer, I’m lost. I woke up back in the park and need to go home,” she decided it was probably safe to act innocent so as not to make herself appear a criminal for trespassing into a closed off area. Although she wondered why the biggest metropolitan park in the United States was in lockdown.
“Alright,” the hand drifted away from the weapon. “Come with me and we’ll figure this out.” Then he noticed what she was wearing, or rather lack thereof, and his face heated a little. “Miss, do you happen to have any clothes with you?”
“No sir, I’m afraid not,” she closed the now stained lab coat a little tighter around her. “I’m also a little visually impaired.”
“Alight then miss. Come this way and I will bring you down to the station and we can get this all sorted out.” The officer walked up to her, gently took her arm, and led her back toward the gate in the fence.
The ride to the police station was slow because of the backed up traffic of the lunchtime rush hour. Officer Jenson called in the situation over the radio, clearly mentioning Susan’s lack of clothing, hoping that someone would be prepared for her when they finally reached the station. In the hour and a half it took to reach the station Susan told Officer Jenson about how she had woken up in the park with no clue as to where she was or how she had gotten there. The officer asked her for her name and address and if there was anyone she could call to try and help her out.
“My name is Susan Torensen, I haven’t had a permanent address since I was eight years old,” she paused, “when my parents were killed in a car crash.” Susan turned her head to the window not seeing the people walking on the sidewalks, or the bright flashing advertisements that told her where to buy her clothing, insurance, and food. Thinking about that night eighteen years ago when her parents were murdered by a drunk after he had crashed into their car, Susan was quiet for a minute.
A sudden lurch of the car refocused her back to the third question. “As for somebody I can contact, I don’t know anyone close enough to me to try and help.” That wasn’t entirely true, but she doubted that the orphan house she spent her teen years in would have anything positive to say about her, or if they would still have any record of her.
“Then it sounds like you will have an interesting story to tell, Miss Torensen,” commented Officer Jensen.

When they finally reached the police station, a secretary rushed out with a brown paper bag and told Susan to get dressed in the car. The clothes consisted of an NYPD navy blue t-shirt and matching grey sweatpants, a set of underclothes with the tags still on them, and a pair of flowery flip flops. The shirt and sweats were baggy on her, evidently designed for a larger person, however, the flip flops were too small.
Getting out of the car Susan was escorted by the secretary and Officer Jensen inside and seated in a waiting room while her case was discussed back in a briefing room somewhere. She sat patiently hoping they wouldn’t ask her too many questions.
Twenty six minutes later, Officer Jensen came out, laid a hand on her arm, and asked her to follow him into the back of the station. They passed desks and cubicles with other officers filling out reports. The air smelled of coffee and an overused AC unit, there was a hint of other smells as they passed a door that said Evidence on it, but Susan guessed that she didn’t want to go in there.
Abruptly Officer Jensen stopped walking and stood in the middle of the hallway. He spun on his heel and went back the way they had come for fifteen feet. Then he opened a door on the left and escorted Susan inside.
“My, my, how the little girl grows up,” he said with a slight sneer after he shut the door. The words that came out of his mouth didn’t seem to fit with how he had acted earlier.
“Officer Jensen?” Susan asked.
“Come now, Susan. Surely you recognize your mentor,” a tight lipped grin turned the corners of his mouth. “This fool had no chance but to let me in.”
“Where are you? I thought you were in the park still asleep,” Susan said to her mentor through his newest puppet.
“Oh, I’m near enough, don’t worry. Besides, now that you’re all grown up you don’t need me by your side as much.” Her mentor made Jensen pace around the storage room they had stepped into.
“But sir, I need to know what to do about Dr. Keines. He won’t stop until he finds me. He did it once, he could do it again,” she said. She felt helpless while her mentor was probably somewhere safe, away from all the danger.
“My dear, if you don’t seem to fully realize where you are.” Jensen’s voice grew a little cold. “You are in the central station of the New York Police Department. Not even a juggernaut could get to you without someone noticing. How do you think a weasely little doctor is going to get to you?”
“You have a point, sir,” Susan nodded in agreement.
“Uh, Miss Torensen, what are we doing in here?” Officer Jensen asked no longer under control.
“I’m not sure, I was following you,” she answered.
“Come on, it’s not much further along,” Jensen said, still with a slightly confused look on his face.
Out in the hallway again, Officer Jensen finished leading Susan to a conference room with brown paneling on the walls and a heavy wooden rectangular table in the middle. He introduced her to the chief of police, Brunshun Lacedoni.
Chief Lacedoni did not look like a stereotypical chief of police. He lacked the handlebar mustache, balding head, and portly body shape to pull off a stereotype. Lacedoni was a man of fit build, cleanly shaven, and closed cropped black hair that made his head look like it had a shadow on it. He also despised donuts.
“Hello Miss… Toresen?” he greeted Susan.
“Torensen,” she corrected.
“Torensen,” he repeated committing the name to memory. His voice didn’t grind like gravel, instead it seemed smooth. “Have a seat Miss Torensen, we would just like to ask a few questions to get this report accurate.”
They all took seats around the table, Susan on one of the long sides, Chief Lacedoni directly across from her with Officer Jensen to her left on a short side of the table.
“As you have been made aware,” the chief began, “you were trespassing in a lockdown zone. Would you mind repeating why you were there?”
“As I told Officer Jensen, I have no memory of entering Central Park or what I had been doing before I arrived there. I am blind. I used to live in the Bronx with my parents before they were killed in a car crash. Since then I lived at the Bronx West Orphanage until I turned eighteen and then moved to my own apartment by Brush Park.” Susan was glad that so far everything she had said was true.
“Might I ask how and when you became blind?” Chief Lacedoni inquired politely.
This is where the story she had crafted while waiting at the front of the station started to come into play. “About a year ago, I was walking to the bus to head to work; I worked at a grocery store three miles from my apartment.” Still true. “On the way I was mugged by a gang of teens who thought they would be tough and hustle me for some drug money. Well I resisted and they started to beat me. When the police arrived my optic nerves had been damaged with no hope of fixing it.” Not true. She tilted her head toward the chief, “Sir, why is Central Park in lockdown?”
“The same reason that the papers and radio report; there was a chemical leak a few days ago from a tanker truck and we want to make sure that the park suffers no long term damage. Public safety is our top priority here at the New York Police Department, and potentially hazardous chemicals are a threat we could do without.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Susan muttered thoughtfully. How could a single spill quarantine the entire park? That didn’t make any sense to her, the park was huge. Sure a section should be quarantined, but not all of it.
She didn’t have any longer to dwell on the “what” and “why” of the park because shouts were erupting towards the front of the station. A few gunshots popped through the sterile air of the station.

“What the blazes!?” Chief Lacedoni shouted. He ran out of the room hand on his holster.
Officer Jensen rushed after his chief only to pause in the doorway, “Stay here and don’t bring any attention to yourself.” Then he was gone, running down the hall to join his superior officer.
Susan sat stone still, petrified that it might be Keines to get her. He could have been monitoring the police lines listening for someone of her description. But how? It had been less than twenty four hours since she escaped, and couldn’t imagine him hacking into every police department to find her.
Unless I’m not the only one he is looking for! The thought struck a chord of fear in her. She had tried all her life to help people, and here she was causing the damage.
Susan pulled herself together to explore with her mind-sight. The room she was in and the hallway connecting it had a fairly low ceiling. Carpet and hardwood met at seams in doorways. Plants grew sparsely; most were dying anyway. Her mind-sight picked out all the exits, mentally she highlighted them in yellow, there were only a few and only one was near enough to make it worth the dash.
Just in case it wasn’t Keines and his men, Susan looked towards the front of the station. Shocked, she found a warzone; tables were on their sides, chairs knocked haphazardly out of the way, people were lying on the ground bleeding, others were crouched behind the tables for cover. Officers of the law were firing from behind cover at the threat of soldiers in full body armor with encasing black helmets on their heads.
Keines’ men! They are here. What do I do, what do I do? She forced herself to think, to fight the stress driven adrenaline that was pumping through her system. I have to help them; if they die it’ll be all my fault.
Susan walked hurriedly out of the meeting room she was in and back down the hall she had walked with Officer Jensen. She passed the room that her mentor had spoken to her through Jensen. Went past the evidence locker with its strange smells. Through the narrow hallway towards the lobby of the station.
She stopped a few feet short of being in the line of sight of the lobby area where the firefight was taking place. Her mind-sight told her that most of the people on the ground were officers and a few other civilians.
Rage bubbled into her, heated her face and bit her to the core. These men and women were dying because of her. She couldn’t allow that to be happening!
Fists clenched, Susan ran into the room and punched the air in the direction of the black helmeted soldiers. A wave of supercharged air rippled and ripped into their ranks throwing them first into the wall, then through it as the brick and mortar gave way.
Soldiers changed targets from the police hiding behind cover to the woman standing in the open. Bullets flew toward her, stopped dead in their tracks, and then flew back to their origins with a vengeance. The body armor they wore kept the men safe from harm at first, but the returning bullets started to gain energy and punched through the reinforced Kevlar like paper.
One soldier braved the woman’s powers to charge her with a knife from behind. Without turning Susan sidestepped at the last second and elbowed the man in the gut knocking the wind from him. Grabbing the knife that had dropped to the floor, she fluidly plunged the knife into the joint of his shoulder where armor and helmet met. The man dropped instantly to the floor with a thump.
A small part of her mind cried out at the blood on her hands. This was not her, she wasn’t a killer. How could she kill a man without a second thought. This part was silenced by the raging fire of anger that had taken her over.
Several of the knifeman’s companions thought they would rush her and overpower her. They came in at different speeds from four directions, three held knives and one put his gun to his hip and switched to fully automatic. He opened fire on her and was rewarded with his own lead coming back to him at twice the speed.
This allowed the three men their chance to jump in as she focused her energy on deflecting the heavy stream of bullets. The first man received the same treatment as the initial knifeman, an elbow in the gut, the second was knocked to the ground from his running jump. The third never had a chance to come close as a Susan’s fists came together in front of her releasing a shock wave that threw him through the last standing flimsy wall and then into a brick wall with a sickening crack inside his helmet. The other two men she had taken down, who were closest to her, were obliterated by the kinetic force of the blast.
Amidst the popping of guns and moans of agony and terror, Susan heard a something clatter near her foot. Looking down she saw a small can with a hinge on one side. Grenade! She didn’t have a chance to through it away from herself before she was dazed by the flash grenade.
Spots flew before her eyes and her ears were ringing. Somehow she had ended up on the ground with every part of her body sore. Distantly she still heard a few of the guns being fired and someone shouting her name. She felt like she was hundreds of miles away looking through a dusty telescope.
Is this all worth it? She asked herself. Am I really that big of a deal that so many people have died because of me? My parents, my parents’ killer, Officer Jensen, Chief Lacedoni, these men who are attacking me, and all the bystanders. Were their deaths worth my life?
She was driven back to reality by a chunk of plaster falling next to her head pinning her hair to the floor. Her head was still ringing, but her vision was clear. Silence pressed down on the destroyed room, the only audible sound was a slow clapping.
“Well, well, well. Isn’t this a mess you’ve caused?” a sarcastic high pitched voice spoke. “Do you see now why I had you in a nice little bunker away from other people?” Doctor Keines came into view standing over her, a smug grin reaching his square spectacles. “You and your kind are a menace to society and the safety of the world.” The grin twisted into a scowl. “I will rid every last one of you from the face of the earth, either by cure or by death!”
Susan saw the weapon in his left hand, it was similar to one she had seen in a movie once. The villain used it to extract the hero’s blood and make clones of him. It had seemed a very painful process.
Keines reached over to the weapon and flip a switch on it. There was a snick and a needle popped out of the end.
“This won’t hurt a bit.” Keines started to kneel next to her.
Panic welled up inside her, but she was still dazed from the flash grenade and her hair was trapped under the chunk of plaster.
There was a crashing sound and Keines was thrown from her view by a dark shape. Susan craned her neck to see in the direction they had gone and saw her mentor grappling with Keines. The needle weapon was on the ground nearby.
With returning strength Susan moved the chunk of plaster and rolled onto her knees.
“Run darling,” her mentor shouted. “I’ll keep him.” The strain in his voice told her that it would be best to get moving.
Susan stood shakily and moved towards the nearest whole in the wall that she had created. The station was raised above the street to make room for a basement level of the station requiring Susan to drop several feet in order to reach the ground. Looking toward the front of the building she saw a large crowd gathered around a barricade with policemen and women trying to keep the people out of the way.

She was in a narrow alley on the side of the police station that ran the length of the block. Susan started running away from the crowd to put distance between her and the place where her mentor battled Doctor Keines to save her life.
The alley came out on a side street that was still filled with people, but these were not as concerned with what was happening in the police station. Susan slowed down to avoid attracting attention to herself. She didn’t want to be associated to the disaster zone around the corner.
Walking swiftly down the street, Susan passed many people. None of them seemed interested in her other than a brief glance in her direction, so she felt safe for now. Having traveled for nearly thirty blocks in one direction away from the police station, Susan stepped into a café to take a rest and get off the streets.
The Cornerstone café was located on a street corner in a fairly busy part of the city. The outside was a façade of Roman architecture to attract customers to the otherwise common corner café. The interior left the façade and took up a more modern appearance of white walls with impressionist art, shiny countertops and lights that hung from the ceiling.
Susan entered the café with a sigh of relief; she was off the street and out of sight. No one would come looking for her. Her mentor was risking his life to save her from Keines and his motives. She took a seat at a table and read the menu to calm herself down.
After a while something strange showed up near the limits of her mind-sight, a darkening blotch that seemed to avoid detection. It was moving closer to her location, walking down the street from the direction of the police station, yet no one else was reacting to it.
The blotch reached the door of the Cornerstone Café and entered.
The bell above the door rang as someone entered the café.
“Tampton! Welcome back,” came the greeting from behind the counter.
“Glad to be back, ran into some trouble on my last round.” The voice sounded familiar.
“Heard you ran into some trouble with that doctor guy,” the man behind the counter offered.
“Yeah, but we won’t have any trouble from him anymore; he’s dead.” The speaker had moved to the counter and was talking with a lower voice to the man behind. “Did lose the girl though, she would have been a big help to our cause.”
“That she would. What was her name again? Sadie or Lucy?”
“Susan. Susan Torensen.” The first voice answered.
Susan’s heart stopped. She recognized the first voice as that of her mentor’s now, but who was he talking to and more importantly why was she talking to this other man about her as though she was a prize? How was he putting up that blotch in her mind-sight? Susan carefully reached in to penetrate the block with her awareness, it was like swimming in sludge.
“Do you feel that?” asked her mentor. Funny that she had never really thought about his name up until now, just always thought of him as “Mentor,” or “Sir.”
“I don’t feel anything,” answered the man behind the counter.
“It is like someone is tickling at the edges of my mind.”
“Your mind is so god-darned blocked it would take a real powerful telepa- Do you think it’s her?” the man behind the counter leaned in close to Susan’s mentor, Tampton.
“If it is, she has gotten really good at hiding herself from me.” He spoke slowly, “Maybe I taught her too well before bringing her here.”
Susan pulled out of the dark cloud that surrounded the man she had once trusted her life to. Now she was starting to think that it was all a ruse. Instead she reached over to the other man, his mind was not blocked at all so she began fishing around for her name. She found her name connected to only a few memories, all second hand descriptions it looked like, but all of them were aimed at her joining something called the Telepath Recruitment of Adolescents Prerogative.¬
She could find nothing else useful so she was pulling out of this man’s mind, his name was Hem Van Savage, when she felt another presence focused on her.
“Say, Tampton, I think I know the feeling you were just talking about, and it’s sitting over at that table over there,” he said pointing in her direction.
I’m caught!
She was tired of this, tired of being hunted, of being used. She wanted to be free and left alone, not a pawn in someone’s game.
Her fist’s slammed down on the table causing the few other customers to look her way.
“Darling, there you are, I’ve been looking all over for you,” the darkness cleared enough for Susan to see him standing with his arms stretched out in a welcoming gesture.
Susan ground her fist into the table top. Her mentor stumbled as his chest started tightening up. He took a deep breath and continued on his way toward her.
“Now, now that wasn’t very nice; trying to strangle me before I could present my case. That anger of yours is acting up again,” Tampton chastised Susan.
At first surprised that didn’t work, Susan tried again to stop him, but he was ready this time and brushed it off like a fly.
Other customers were paying attention now, some had their phones out ready to call for help in case this started to get out of hand. One woman reached into her purse and prepped a can of Mace.
Since covert attacks weren’t working on him, and Susan never was good at them anyway, she switched to direct attacks. Susan punched the air directly in front of her and her mentor staggered slightly, then straightened and kept coming closer to her.
She put more will into her next punch with the same results.
“C’mon darling, that barely phased me,” he took another step forward. “What happened to all that fire you used on poor Cris Belf.”
“H-how do you know about that?” Susan demanded. Cris Belf was the man who had caused the death of her parents. He was a monster of a man who was able to change the shape of his body. His favorite shape was blades.
“I know more about you than you do about yourself.” Another step. “I know you could’ve taken on Keines yourself, but were too scared of yourself.” Step. “I know that you killed Cris Belf by accident.” Step “I also know you still have nightmares about what he did to your parents. No, that’s not right, they are nightmares about what you did to him.”
He was standing two feet away from her now, taunting her with his proximity and intimate knowledge of her past.
“What you refuse to admit is that you enjoyed what you did,” he whispered knowingly.
“NO!” Susan screamed. Everything not attached to the floor was pushed radially outward from her by the wave of energy.

Except Tampton Yogoh. He stayed right where he was, albeit fighting a windstorm.
“That’s more like it.” Tampton grinned evilly. “I was waiting for something like that to happen.”
Tampton flicked his chin up sending Susan flying away from him.
“Poor dear, I’ve been at this for a lot longer than you. I know all the tricks and blocks,” Tampton mocked.
Susan landed hard on a table, knocking it over. She staggered to her feet ready for the next attack. It still caught her off guard: she was struck bodily by a giant hand and thrown to the side into the woman who had the Mace in her purse. The woman sprayed the Mace at Tampton and it swerved around him on either side floating harmlessly in the air behind him as he continued to walk toward the pair.
Tampton let out a chuckle and brushed the woman aside with the wave of a hand. He stood over Susan with a smug look on his and mimed picking up a child’s doll as Susan followed suit. Holding her upright in this bound position Tampton grabbed her chin and stared into her eyes.
“There are no secrets from me,” he chanted, his voice layered and echoing in her head.
A piercing pain between her eyebrows reached all the way back into her head made Susan scream. Memories passed in front of her eyes. Memories of her parents, memories of her school growing up, at school, in her parents’ antique store. Memories of being sent to live in the orphanages as a teenager, first meeting her mentor as she volunteered in a soup kitchen. Memories of Doctor Keines as she thought he was helping her and then finding out about his alternate motives and funding.
The pain increased with every passing memory, as though Tampton was tearing her brain apart looking for something. Susan screamed the whole time, until her voice gave out and she was gasping for breath. Darkness formed at the edges of her vision and she started to fade from the pain.
Then a spark was ignited in the darkness. Through the haze of the pain Susan saw a flaming figure approaching her. It came in the shape of a bird, majestic and powerful. It enveloped her in its fiery embrace and pushed the pain away.
Tampton realized what was happening and tried to draw his mind out of her’s. He hadn’t found what he was looking for: it had found him, and it wasn’t happy.
Susan was such a high powered telekinetic that she had a connection to the psionic entity that symbolized all psychic abilities. Telekinesis, telepathy, divination, empathy. It was drawn to her as a boat drawn to a lighthouse, and as her mind started to fade from the pain it was put through this entity came to her rescue.
Susan inhaled a deep breath and broke free of Tampton’s psychic restraints. She looked into his eyes and saw fear. A fear so terrible that it was afraid of itself and what he had summoned. In his mind she saw the greed and lust of power that had directed him for his whole life towards finding the entity. Some called it a god, others a collective of human consciousness.
Whatever it was, it was angry and it was powerful.
Susan lifted her arms and physically punched Tampton in the face. Behind the punch she put the power of the entity and smashed Tampton’s head like a watermelon.
Blood dripping from her fist Susan tore open the walls of the small café and marched into the street where a sea of shiny black helmets awaited her.
One man in front without a helmet put a megaphone to his mouth. “Please come along quietly and we will settle this without severe issues.”
The Susan-entity combination responded by lifting the asphalt underneath the man and throwing it clear back to Central Park, eight miles away. The hundreds of troops opened fire on her with specialty bullets designed specifically for psychic abilities. They were for emergency only.
The bullets ripped through Susan’s defenses and would have killed her had the entity not intervened by adding its near infinite power to Susan’s already great potential power. The result was a massive shockwave that shattered all of the glass within a six mile radius.
The empowered Susan-entity retaliated. Lightning flew from her fingertips into the nearest black helmeted soldier. The lightning jumped from soldier to soldier killing them. The heavy attacks now came as commanders and troop leaders signaled for rocket powered grenades and bazookas to join the attack.
RPGs made little effect on the Susan-entity or weakened her onslaught as she continued to throw lightning at her attackers. Dozens fell by the second, yet more seemed to fill their place the next. Soon she was floating above the ground tearing down the buildings around her in a flurry of concrete and debris.
The constant lightning was draining on Susan’s body so the entity altered its method of attack. It began to hurl chunks of the buildings around her into the sea of black helmets. Shards of glass were turned into projectiles of death. Dust and sand tore into fabric and Kevlar, getting into the nooks and crannies to eat at the flesh inside.
Soon the entire area was a war zone with over five hundred dead and more by the second. As Susan’s body wore down to the last of its strength the entity started to subside, losing the connection it had as Susan too began to die.
As Susan started to think on her own she saw what had happened because of her. Saw how many had died because of what she was. For the second time that day-- had this really all happened in one day?—she wonder if it was all worth it. That so many people should die because of what she was.
Her grief overwhelmed her and she sank to the ground. She ignored the pain as sobs wracked her body. Her mind played over and over the battle that she fought, witnessed every death again and again.
A solitary figure made its way across the battle field. By all powers of fortune, Tampton was still alive. His face misshapen, his step lurching, his life blood watering the destroyed pavement beneath him; but very much alive.
If Susan heard him close in on her she showed no sign of it, nor when he lifted a chunk of concrete to smash her head in. She only looked up to stare into his misshapen face so that he knew she wasn’t afraid of what he would do to her.
In that eternity of a moment with Tampton standing above her huddle form with arms raised for the killing blow, an idea of selfish ambition struck Susan. She did not want to live anymore, she wanted everything to end.
So she made it happen.
As the arms came down, the last of the entity’s residual power flooded Susan turning her into pure energy in a fraction of a second. Similar to how she had killed the man who murdered her parents, Susan turned herself into a nuclear bomb that ripped Tampton Yogoh apart.
Heat and radiation warped the demolished city street after the shockwave tore through the down town. Not a scrap of organic material was left unsterilized at ground zero.
Unlike the last time, Susan did not have enough strength or energy left to preserve herself in a comatose state. She eliminated all traces of herself on the physical plane and left a tear in the psychic plane that would have those sensitive to the psychic abilities terrified for years to come.
Tampton was gone.
The black helmeted soldiers were gone.
The city she had grown up in was mostly leveled.
Susan herself was gone, never to return.

Ten years later
The mentalist took off the helmet and sighed. The reconstruction project was still ongoing from the tragedy ten years earlier when a nuclear bomb had gone off in central New York City.
Or so the official story told.
The mentalist sighed again from the stress of reliving the memory of that poor woman and finally learning the truth.
Back to the Mansion to tell the Professor of what he had learned.