Chapter 3

When Jaelyn got home, she experimented a little bit with her powers. She was a scientist, so that was natural to her. Find out something new, learn how it works by experimenting.

She started out simple with trying to turn a strip of plastic into metal. She closed her eyes, concentrated and flowed her thoughts and emotions into turning it into something else. Anything else. She thought about how startled she was about everything going on. She thought about how confused, angry, sad and shocked she was. Eventually, the plastic felt like a different texture. She opened her eyes and looked at the strip in her hand.

It wasn't metal, it was rock, but it was a start. If I concentrate on specific emotions, maybe I can control it a little more, she thought.
So, Jaelyn got another strip of plastic and tried again. She focussed on her anger only this time. Soon, she felt the plastic become hard and warm. She opened her eyes and looked in her hand. There was a warm piece of metal where the plastic strip used to be.

She thought she figured it out. Anger is hard and hot tempered. It makes perfect sense that anger would turn plastic or, as she assumed, any material into metal or something similar.

Suddenly, her head started pounding again. Okay, maybe it's time to stop for the day, she thought.

Once she cleaned up and wrote a little bit about her results, Jaelyn got some dinner and went to bed, hoping that her head would feel better in the morning.
When she woke up, her head felt better, so she got ready to go to work. She was really happy she felt better, because she was in the middle of a chain of experiments and was excited to get back to them. There was so much work to be done after the incident.

Once she got to Mercury Labs, Jaelyn's phone rang. It was Daniel. She answered it and said, "Hey Daniel. What do you need?"
"Hi, Jaelyn," he replied. "I just wanted to call to tell you to be careful today. I'm pretty sure that that Aspen guy will attack you again, and I don't want you or anyone else in that building to get hurt again. Just please be careful."

Jaelyn was a little surprised by his call, but she understood why he was concerned. She was thinking about the same thing, too. "Of course, Daniel," she responded. "I'm just as worried about myself as you all are, believe me. But I'm not going to let something like this ruin my life. I have an amazing life, and I'm not going to let anything get in the way. I'll be careful, I promise. You stay safe, too, okay?"

"Yeah, of course," Daniel replied, more relieved. "See you at Jitters after work? It is Thursday."

Jaelyn forgot that it was Thursday. Every Thursday, she, Daniel, and Bianca all went to the local coffee shop, Jitters, after they got off of work. They usually just hung out and talked about their day at work, but she had a feeling that tonight would be a little different.

"Yeah, of course," she said. "See you tonight."

"See you tonight."

After she hung up, Jaelyn walked into Mercury Labs expecting everything to be almost normal. Obviously it wouldn't completely normal, but she figured it couldn't be all that bad. She was wrong.

When she got inside the enormous building, everyone was hurrying about, but that was normal. However, when she got to the floor her office was on, there was caution tape everywhere, especially the area where her office and lab were. There were police officers everywhere.

Wait, she thought. Police officers? Maybe Bianca or those guys, Barry and Joe, are here.

She looked around and, sure enough, both of them were there along with the man that she thought was Joe. Bianca was talking to some of the employees, trying to see what she could get out of them, Barry was taking a look around, even though he knew what happened, and Joe was doing pretty much everything else.

Jaelyn climbed under the police tape, walked over to Bianca as she was finishing up an interview with an employee and said, "I just got here. It's almost completely chaos. Have you seen or heard anything we can use?"

Bianca turned to her and said, "Oh, hey! No, I haven't gotten any information or evidence or anything to help us figure out how to stop Aspen."

"Well, that's unfortunate," Jaelyn replied. Barry and Joe noticed that Jaelyn was there and walked over. She was about to ask if they found anything, but Joe spoke first.

"In case you were going to ask," he said, "Neither of us have found anything either."

"Darn," Jaelyn said. "Well, I need to clean up my office and work. Maybe tonight we can focus on this more. I mean, obviously, you guys at the CCPD will work on this more, but I really don't want to do this right now. Bianca, after we go get coffee, we'll go to S.T.A.R. Labs. Sound like a plan?"

Everyone nodded their heads, so she said goodbye and went to her office. It was a total wreck. There were reports and spare papers scattered everywhere. Not to mention all the chemicals and materials.

Jaelyn sighed and said, "This is going to be a long day."