"Empty the register, and put the money in the bag."
The frightened clerk raised his hands as the masked man held him at gunpoint. It was late, so the store was mostly empty. An older woman stood a few feet from the register, browsing the magazines. A young man stood further back, and ice cream and a soda in his hands. He froze in his tracks as the robber drew his gun. The soda bottle slipped from his hand, hitting the floor with a thud and rolling away.
"Nobody moves," ordered the man with the gun. "Stay put and shaddup, and nobody gets hurt. You!"
The gunman gestured to the motionless clerk. "You're the exception. Move your butt!"
The clerk sprang haphazardly into action, opening the cash register and frantically stuffing bills and change into the cloth sack. The gunman would bark at him every few seconds to hurry up, waving his handgun menacingly. The old woman's lip trembled as she kept her eyes on the floor. The teenager was sitting down, face pale and hands over his ears.
Finally, the clerk held out the bag to the gunman, hands trembling.
"Take it, please," he begged. "Just take it and go."
The gunman yanked the bag from the clerk's grasp.
"Good job," replied the gunman.
The gun went off. It went off again. The gun went off several times, in fact, until it started clicking. The chamber was empty. The clerk's hands were up in front of his face. He was dead. At least, he thought he was. The gunman had shot him, hadn't he? No, he was alive. He lowered his hands. There wasn't a scratch on him.
The gunman was staring up above the register. The clerk followed his gaze. There, floating in the air, was the handgun, still clicking away. Then, it fell out of the air, hitting the floor with a clang.
There was a blur of movement. The masked gunman cried out. Someone was behind him, a man in a red hoodie. He held the gunman in a tight chokehold. The assailant moved backwards, trying to pull the gunman off balance. It worked. The gunman struggled, but the assailant constricted tighter. The gunman gasped for air, but none came. In moments, he passed out from oxygen deprivation, and the assailant laid him out on the floor.
"Call the police," he said as he checked for a pulse. "Is everyone alright?"
The older woman and the teenager were fine, but shaken. The clerk was in the same shape as he called the police. He told them about the man who had intervened. They told him to make sure the man stayed around for questioning. The clerk looked over his shoulder to tell him, but the man in the red hoodie was already gone.
"Incredible. Absolutely incredible."
Ellie Staple rewound the security tape she had acquired from the convenience store night clerk, analyzing the spectacle for the fourth time.
"What's so incredible about it?" asked the security officer in the driver's seat.
"His gift," she replied, looking at him as if he should have known. "Do you realize what we're looking at? This is the survivor of the Seattle Incident seven years ago. The one that got away."
The officer grunted. "Something tells me your usual spiel about mental illness won't work here."
Ellie remained silent, rewinding the security recording once more. Her mind returned to the Seattle Incident. Seven years before, the city of Seattle had been ravaged by an apocalyptic battle between two superhumans. Ellie was no stranger to superhumans or the destruction they left in their wake. These superhumans, however, were far more extraordinary than any she had ever encountered before.
They were telepaths. They could move objects with their minds, and according to the eyewitness reports, they used their powers creatively. They could fly by moving themselves through space. They could defend themselves with invisible walls. One of them had even ripped a man's teeth from his mouth with just a thought. Ellie shuddered. His name was Andrew Detmer. According to what Ellie had been able to dig up, his mother had died of an illness hours before, and his father was a drunkard. Andrew had gone on an anger-fueled rampage until the other telepath had put him down.
The other one had vanished after the battle's end, and efforts to track him down had been fruitless. Ellie had questioned almost one hundred civilians personally, hoping to pin down the survivor's identity. But something was getting in her way. After the incident, the people of Seattle began to forget about it. At first, little details slipped their minds: what day it had been, where they had been standing, why they were there. Then larger details began to fade. Soon, nobody in Seattle remembered the incident at all. City workers hauled the debris away, construction crews repaired the damage, and young Andrew's body was laid to rest. Business quickly went back to usual, and no one could recall that gods had battled one another across the city. Several times, Ellie wondered if the survivor had somehow caused this citywide memory wipe.
"Looks like I'll get the chance to ask you myself," said aloud, ejecting the tape and handing it to the officer. "Get this to headquarters and run facial recognition. I want to know who this guy is."
"Yes, Ma'am," replied the officer.
Ellie exited the black van and walked back to her own car. She fiddled with the keys in the ignition. Adrenaline was coursing through her body, and she set her forehead against the steering wheel. She took several deep breaths that ran from her nose to her belly.
The officer was right. Normally, protocol required that agents such as Ellie convince subjects that their powers weren't real, but were brought on by a mental disorder. This was the most humane method of disposing of superhumans. They could safely reenter society and their gifts would fade away in time. That was how powers usually worked. They worked because the subjects believed that they did.
The survivor of the Seattle Incident would not be so easily convinced. Ellie had asked herself the same question every time the incident had come back to the forefront of her memory: "How do you convince a man who can crush a car with his mind that his ability is imaginary?" There was a clear alternative, of course. But the Organization was already watching her like a hawk after the public deaths of the three subjects from the Raven Hill Incident.
Ellie sighed and turned the key. The engine rumbled to life, waiting for her to direct the vehicle's course. She put her hands firmly on the wheel and pulled out of the parking space. She would find a way. She only needed more time. But one way or another, the survivor of the Seattle Incident would be dealt with.