I'd always known I was different. Mom told me I got it from my father. Not that I would have known. My father left Mom for some stripper he picked up in the red-light district. Or that's what she told me, anyway. I had a feeling it was because he saw that I was different and he didn't want me. Mom and I did just fine on our own.
Mom said I was "unique" and that I should be proud my "natural beauty". I was unique, I had to give her that, but I wouldn't call my uniqueness beautiful. Sure, my flowing, dark brown hair and large, brown doe eyes were pretty, but not beautiful. Of course, the boys that used to trail behind me told me otherwise. I didn't think I was beautiful. All I could see was this thing, this monster, that I was – am.
Intelligence is my only redeeming quality, in my opinion, and I could always see every side of any situation and almost immediately produce the correct answer. Mom said I was open-minded and a quick thinker. She used to tell me that I was perfect and made for a "greater purpose."
But that was before The Accident, before my life crumbled and my dreams turned to ashes at my feet.
When Mom was still alive and I was still a child, carefree and innocent.
Now, I'm just another Project, a possession, for the power-hungry government. Another budget cut that they don't know what to do with but are too scared to get rid of.
Sitting behind my foot-thick plexiglass walls, staring at a fixed point in front of me, I can still hear Dr. Whatshisface and Sir Whatever arguing about my "condition" and the "arrangement" of my future. They always spoke in terrible code in reference to me, believing that I was too ignorant to understand what they were talking about. They'd been discussing the topic for weeks now, not knowing how to handle me.
They feared me.
They had every right to be scared of me. I would be too if I didn't know I could control it.
"It" being me. "Me" being my powers.
Here, in this hellhole I call home, I am referred to as 'Project X'. Even my fake name sounds scary.
My real name is Rose. Well, Rosemarie, though only my mother called me Rosemarie. Rosemarie Hathaway. See, not so scary.
While awaiting the beginning of my very boring day, my mind drifted off to the land of possibility, to another world where I was free. A place where what made me unique didn't exist, and I was just a normal teenager doing normal teenager things.
When I stopped day-dreaming, my world was upside down. Literally. I was on the ceiling, just floating there.
'That's a new one.' I thought to myself.
Levitating. Check.
My list of "unique conditions" was already long, and it seemed to just keep growing. Sadly, I haven't turned invisible yet or been able to walk through walls, but it's just a matter of time.
Just think of every superhero, or super villain, with weird or cool abilities, take their special abilities, throw them into one 5'6", eighteen-year-old girl, and you get me. If knitting was a superpower, I had it somewhere. It was in my mind, I just had to get it out. Easier said than done. However, the discovery of new abilities was coming almost weekly, now.
They are easier to control now than when they first appeared when I was four and my vision stayed in the "zoomed in" mode for months. It took three months and hundreds of nose bleeds to lift a piece of lint off the tip of my shoe, but now I could lift tanks without breaking a sweat. It took four years and three dining room tables to perfectly cut a sheet of paper using just my eyes, but now I could be the best surgeon in the world. It took six years to accurately read minds, but now I was a walking polygraph machine.
However, it took fourteen years to fully understand the ruthlessness and the determination the government has in order to keep any "threat" out of civilian life, but now I see no way out.
To them, I was a threat, and I had to be kept safely away from the public.