Elli’s eyes fluttered open, the popcorn ceiling bathed in warm yellow lamp light a welcome sight.

She felt the roughness of the cushions beneath her; reality seeped into her bones as if she as slept too long and the world around her was more foreign than the dream she had left behind. She shifted, turning her head to see her grandmother fretting her hands in the high back chair, Trevor staring at her intensely from the recliner, his blue eyes hazed with an emotion she couldn’t pinpoint. A gruff clearing of the throat drew her eyes upward, where a cold glass of water hung over the edge of the couch, suspended in nimble fingers that a moment ago had felt like her own.

She blinked, reaching for the glass as dream and reality aligned, crashing around her in a crescendo of awareness that it hadn’t been just a dream—it was someone else’s memories she had lived, memories that mirrored her own fuzzy recollection of that night, which was becoming quickly crystal clear.

She tensed and glanced back at Samuel, her eyes narrowing.

“Hey.” He sounded almost embarrassed. “Remember me, now?”

“Your name’s not Robert.”

He rubbed his beard. “No.”

She glanced back at Trevor, her thoughts racing. “Why?”

The glass felt fragile in her hands as her anger bubbled. “Why?”

“Elli…” Trevor’s voice sounded strained, tired. “Please, try to understand, most of the time when we erase someone, we don’t go back again.”

She was mortified to find her hands trembling. “I’ve known you for three years…. You’ve been my teacher all this time… were you just spying on me? Why? I haven’t seen that guy again.”

Another realization dawned on her. “You…. You made me dream that. You took away my memories.”

A slightly more faded thought of Trevor from that night, a memory of him pressing his fingers to her temples, surfaced in her mind.

“What—“ she balked. “What are you people?”

She spun to face Samuel and instantly regretted it, as the same awkwardness from that night surfaced. Dear God, she’d gotten drunk and kissed a complete stranger, and he’d actually—

“To answer your first question,” Trevor’s voice cut through her humiliation, nd she sat straight, looking only at him because glancing in any other direction would make her lose her shit. She could concentrate on him, though.

“We are ‘gifted’, or as some may classify us: mutants, superhumans, freaks…. We prefer thinking of our inhuman abilities as gifts, though. Sam and I, as well as a few others, got together a few years back and formed a group known as Quantum.”

She shakily took a sip of the water, the cool liquid piercing through her mental haze as she tried to understand what he was telling her.

“Quantum?”

“Yes, you see Elli, we mostly prefer to keep our existence secret, as most humans who find out about it either want to exterminate or capture us, including a certain dark sector of the government. Their mission has been to catch us for experimentation and ultimately, they will eradicate a perceived threat.”

She sucked in a breath.

“This group sends out sweepers from time to time, the same way we seek out gifted, though our objectives are completely opposite. Quantum seeks to shelter and help our kind grow, they will capture any gifted they find, and we never see them again—“

“—unless they become sweepers, like the guy that night,” Samuel interjected.

“Cain.” Elli breathed the name, foreign to her in the waking world when it had meant so much when she was Samuel.

Trevor flinched. “Yes. He was after you, that night Elli, and we had to stop him…. But after that, I’m afraid though they couldn’t confirm your status, you’ve been under both organizations’ watch lists.”

“My… status?”

Trevor shot a glance to her grandmother, and Elli followed his gaze. Her grandmother was sitting very straight, her fretting hands still in her lap as she kept her eyes downward.

“Grandma?”

“You have to understand my darling, after the last world war, there was a lot of radiation left in the world. Things changed rapidly, and all the nations were scrambling to understand the implications of the destruction our former generation had caused. Initially, programs like Trevor are describing were crude, and then developed into a well-supervised examination of mutant existence. The goal was not to harm but to observe and learn all we could about this phenomenon…. And we had to keep it classified, of course.”

“Humans are no longer the top of the food chain, wouldn’t want that getting out.” Samuel snorted.

“Grandma…. You knew about all of this?”

“At one time.” Her grandmother sighed. “I was in charge of it. I was the lead Scientist in the REACT program, a classified group of super humans raised in a controlled environment. By the time I took over, Trevor and Samuel were already teenagers.”

“We were raised in that secret base.” Trevor’s eyes hardened. “Ripped from our families as soon as we exhibited ‘symptoms’, hidden from the world like a dirty little secret.”

“Joke’s on them.” Samuel slid onto the couch next to her, “Because soon, everyone’s going to know about Quantum.”

“Huh?” Elli was still struggling to wrap her head around the thought that her grandmother’s military days was actually a cover-up for some weird sci-fi conspiracy scenario.

“They took Reach.” Trevor leaned back into the recliner. “She is a high-class gifted with the ability to sense others from great distances. If they can duplicate or control her power, then the people Cain work for will be able to find all of us. Before that happens, we intend to rescue her and blow this wide open. We’ve hidden for too long.”

“Trevor…” her grandmother frowned.

“I know it’s not the best plan,” Samuel shrugged. “But it’s all we have. We need to extinguish smoke before there’s fire.”

“Exposing yourselves is just as dangerous.” Her grandmother shook her head.

“Perhaps the public will be on our side, at least we have to try, or we’ll lose before quantum even really takes off.” Trevor clasped his hands together. “Anyway, our main priority is Reach right now. We can’t let them use her.”

“I don’t get any of this.” Elli moaned, lifting the glass to polish off the water. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“We need your help.” Trevor smiled.

Elli choked. “W-What?! ME?”

Samuel leaned toward her on the couch. “We know now you’re gifted, we just don’t know what you can do, yet.”

“H-How?” her mouth went dry. “I could just be a normal girl, right?”

In the dream-memory, even Samuel had doubted there was anything special about her. How could they be sure now?

“It’s true that the manifestation of abilities can skip a generation or sibling.” Her grandmother offered.

Elli’s eyes met her grandmother’s turquoise ones as the older woman gave a small, sad smile. “The rest of that night is still clouded, isn’t it?”

Elli blinked. “There was more than just…. Um, what I saw at the club?”

Elli glanced around the room suspiciously. “What else happened you don’t want me to know?”

Trevor leaned forward in the chair, claiming her gaze. “We didn’t get you home that night without incident, Cain did catch up to us—and you stopped him, Elli.”

The empty glass in her hand felt like it grew 10 times heavier. “What?”

“You stopped him with your gift.” Samuel clarified. “I’m afraid those memories were pretty damaged, and we didn’t want to scare you too bad with my version of events.”

“Basically, we were attacked when I was attempting to clear your memory, and your gift manifested to stop Cain from killing Samuel.”

Samuel coughed, uncomfortable. “It wasn’t that bad.”

Trevor shot him a dark look.

“I…. I don’t believe it.” Elli shook her head. “I’m normal! I don’t have some weird trick! I can’t read minds, or…”

She glared at Samuel. “Whatever it is you do, I don’t even want to know—but you’re mistaken, I can’t do anything!”

“I bet you five bucks you’re wrong.” Samuel’s quietly challenged.

Elli stared at him. It was such an absurd statement. Everything about this was absurd. Was this some new age scam they’d ensnared her grandmother into?

“Five bucks.” He inched closer to her, and she found herself pressing her back into the couch arm in an attempt to scoot away from his intimidating presence as he offered her his hand, palm up.

“N-No way.” She cringed. “I don’t want your money, and I don’t want in your head again; just leave! Please leave, both of you!”

Samuel only continued to sit there with his offered hand, the silence stretching over the tension of the room like a tightrope extending over a ravine.

“If I take your hand, will you leave us alone?” Elli couldn’t force her voice above a whisper.

“We’ll leave this house.” Samuel semi-agreed.

“Immediately.” Trevor supplied, his soft tone encouraging.

She glanced one more time to her grandmother, whose eyes shined with unshed tears.

“Grandma…”

“I’m sorry I never told you about any of this Elli.”

A strange calm fell over her at her grandmother’s reaction. She was terrified, but it all felt so surreal, she just moved her hand to rest on Samuel’s again. She had no idea what to expect. After a moment, she blinked, nothing had happened. After another moment, she glanced up to meet the cold gray of Samuel’s piercing eyes. She felt pinned under the intensity of that gaze, vulnerable and torn open for him to examine everything that made her tick. She began to tremble again.

His warm, rough fingers enclosed around her hand. “It’s all right, String Bean. I won’t hurt you.”

“W-What are you doing?” she could feel a kind of tingle run up through her arm. It was only as unpleasant as her hand falling asleep.

“Already done.” He gave her a sideways grin and released her hand.