Elli could only stare at her hand, cooling from the loss of his warmth. Part of her wanted to grab his hand again. That was until she looked up and saw what he was doing. The hand that had just held hers now pointed towards Trevor, and his fingers splayed out as he concentrated.

Before she could ask what he was doing, the chair Trevor sat in jerked forward, and both furniture and occupant catapulted toward the ceiling. Elli shrieked, throwing herself back against the couch and towards the living room door. As she reached the door jam, her body seized, and she collapsed to the floor. Her arms and legs snapped together. She struggled to regain control of her limbs, but they stubbornly would not budge. It was as if her arms were glued to her side, and someone had bound her ankles together tightly. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t work her jaw, and before she realized it, she was yanked from the floor to float a few inches, her body returning to a vertical stance.

“Sorry.” Samuel grinned. “I’m not used to it, so the motions are a bit jerky.”

Her eyes darted to Trevor, still sitting in the chair that floated about a foot off the ground.

‘Yes, Elli.’ She realized his voice wasn’t a whisper, but being directly thought in her mind. ‘You are gifted. I can read minds and play with memories, Samuel can mimic anyone’s gift, and you have a strong telekinetic ability.’

She couldn’t physically react to his transmitted thoughts, so she tried thinking back at him.

‘This is insane! Let me go!’

‘Of course, Sam is just flexing his copy of your telekinesis. It will fade in a few minutes, by then I hope to have convinced you to help us.’

‘What is it you want from me, exactly?’

It was hard to deny what was happening, but she couldn’t quite process the idea that she was responsible for the invisible vice she was stuck in. Samuel had copied it from her. That was crazy.

‘I want you to come with us, to Quantum. I want you on our side, and help us rescue our friend Reach—but most importantly, I want you safe and as far away from the dark sector as we can get you.’

‘And do I have a choice in the matter, or are you just going to make me do what you want?’

He was silent for a moment, his blue eyes unreadable.

‘Unlike Dark Sector, we’re a volunteer group. But Elli, if you choose to stay here, you won’t be free for long. They will come for you, and they will take you, and you’ll never see your grandmother or the outside world again.’

‘You make it sound like the only real choice I have is which prison I’d rather go to.’

His warm honey laugh filled her mind. ‘Quantum is not a prison, Elli. Come with us; I promise once you see what we’ve built, what we can become—you’ll want to be part of it. Help us save Reach, and if you still feel like you do now, we’ll find a safe location you and your grandmother can move to, and we’ll stay out of your hair.’

She managed to narrow her eyes at him. This experience was testing the limits to which she felt she could trust Trevor. At this point she’d been lied to for the entirety of his known existence, relived forgotten memories through another guy’s brain, and now stood immobile in her own home while he was trying to convince her to go on a crusade with him and Samuel-- two people who she wanted to be as far from as humanly possible after the last hour’s worth of insanity.

‘I must be crazy.’

‘Is that a yes?’

‘If he lets me go.’ She flicked her eyes over to Samuel. ‘And I mean lets me go right now. Then, I will help you out. I promise nothing beyond that because I can’t even process how weird this all is.’

The invisible force binding her limbs faded, and Elli found she could take a deep breath. She relished the warm air rushing into her lungs, the sensation of control returning as she flexed her fingers. Even as joy surged at being released, panic fought its way into her stomach, churning the acid and burning her throat.

Some rational piece of her brain had realized what had just happened and was trying desperately to find a logical explanation to disprove it as the rest of her being screamed in abject horror.

Trevor and Samuel weren’t human.

Not only that, but they claimed she wasn’t, either. Her whole adult life was a lie. One big, fat lie.

Elli slowly turned to her grandmother, her expression open with the turmoil going on inside, the only resounding sense she could concentrate on was betrayal. Her wide eyes searched her grandmother’s hard gaze.

Finally, her grandmother glanced away. “How was I supposed to tell you Elli? How could I. There are things we, all of us would rather stay buried.”

Elli’s brain wrapped around those words, pulling her from perpetual shock, and she found herself struggling to contain tears that threatening to fall as her heart clenched in pain. From the ashes of this revelation, maybe her grandmother could be honest with her for once and not shut down.

“If I am what they’re saying… why didn’t I have any idea?” Elli wrung her hands, her thoughts racing, flitting from one piece of the puzzle to the next. “How have I been ‘normal’ all this time?”

“I’m sorry.” Her grandmother’s hand trembled as she retrieved a bottle from her pocket and set the incriminating vessel full of pills on the coffee table.

Elli’s breath caught as she stared at the liquid-filled capsules, the irrefutable proof laid bare.

“Occassionally,” Trevor’s soft voice pulled her gaze from the damning evidence, and she met his eyes, a soft shade of blue like sky that promised warm Spring days. “There are late bloomers, people whose gifts lie dormant until adulthood. Some surge of emotion or trauma may activate something in them that manifests.”

“They,” Elli could only imagine her grandmother meant the two men in the room, she couldn’t bring herself to look back to her guardian. “gave us these pills, after your birthday. I requested a way to suppress your gift so you could live your life, Elli.”

Elli gritted her teeth. “Were you ever going to tell me, grandma?”

“No.” the word fell hard, a hammer on Elli’s heart. “Not if I didn’t have to.”

Her grandmother sank into the recliner, and Elli stared at the points on her shoes peeking out beneath the length of her skirt.

“If it were up to me, you would have been able to live out the entirety of your life without ever knowing about any of this.” Her grandmother let out a long, tired sigh. “but that doesn’t matter, now.”

“Gentleman,” the older woman addressed the others in the room. “May we have a few moments? I’d like to talk to my granddaughter alone.”

Elli caught a glance that passed between the men, but they stood and exited the room.

Trevor paused at the door. “We’ll be in the foyer.”

Her grandmother nodded, and sat quietly with her head cradled in her hand until both men completely cleared the room.

“Grandma…” Elli started, but let the word die on her lips. She couldn’t think of what to say.

“You have to go with them.” It was a whisper, but it weighed on the air like a battle cray.

“What?” Elli’s heart slammed into her stomach. She just stood in place, staring at her grandmother.

“You….” Her grandmother lifted her head and looked at her, but quickly glanced away. “You weren’t the only one I’ve slipped the pills to. Ever since those military days I’ve been dodging people like the onesd those boys are avoiding. I’ve hidden your mother’s talents from them, but they found out about you. Now, you need to get somewhere safe. I can’t offer you that sense of security anymore.”

Her grandmother took a shaky breath. “I know we butt heads from time to time, but I want you to know I love you, and everything I’ve ever done has only been in your best interest. I’ve worked for the type of people coming after us, I know what they’re capable of.”

Elli was transfixed by her grandmother’s words, her mind a blank as emotions swirled in a dangerous pattern. She didn’t know whether she should cry, scream, or cling to the older woman for dear life.

“Things have grown darker since my days in the service,” her grandmother continued. “These people won’t take care of you if they catch you. They view you only as a threat. If they find you, they will imprison you, or worse…. I can’t bear that. I can’t bear to think of it, Elli. Please, go with Trevor and Samuel. Go with them tonight.”

Elli’s eyes dropped to the floor, and she shuffled her feet. As angry as she was about the pills, her grandmother’s words were tearing at her guts.

This was scary. Realizing that she hadn’t had a clue how the world actually worked make her feel small and insignificant. She wanted to lash out and scream, or cry and beg for someone to take it all away. Knowing there were people who could do things she thought impossible just a few hows ago terrified her out of her wits. Her own unknown depths paralyzed her with fear. Everything in the world, outside this familiar small space, felt like a monster waiting to devour her.

She blinked away the tears. This was probably the exactly feeling that had led her grandmother to such a decision.

“Grandma…” her voice came out cleared than she’d hoped, the thoughts jumbling around her head focusing on a single thing she needed the only family she had to hear.

“I’m furious about the secrecy. I hate that you know about all of this, and you couldn’t sit down and talk to me like I’ m an adult… when I get back from this Quantum thing, I expect you’ll tell me everything, okay?”

For the first time in what felt like forever, she looked into her grandmother’s face. The older woman’s eyes sparkled with unshed tears.

“Consider it a promise. I love you, Elli.”

“I love you too.” Elli jumped up, and her grandmother did the same, closing the gap to give each other the longest good-bye hug of their lives.