For the next month, I stayed in the upper corner of my room. I came down to receive and eat my meals and when Dimitri came to do his assessments. Unless I was in a mingling session, I talked to no one, not even Dimitri. I sat in my contemplative corner and pondered the mysteries of my life. Well one specific mystery: Dimitri. And that's what he was, a mystery, one that I desperately wanted to find answers to.
The mingling sessions have become much more interesting, to say the very least. Eddie's abilities were being put to the test more and more, and Mason was fighting a losing battle with his rage. Christian, being the cause of the previous two statements, shocking, I know, was developing a short fuse. The stress of "downsizing" the compound was getting to him, and I probably wasn't helping by egging him on, but I couldn't help myself.
The White Coats had been getting rid of the Projects that failed to perform requires tasks on command to make room for more "dangerous" Projects. Those project that couldn't control their abilities were automatically sent away. Christian was very gifted with fire and I doubt he has ever failed one of the performance test. But they were getting rid of the Projects weren't that much of a threat. Of course, there was a hierarchy.
The Guardians label the Projects by letters in order of perceived threat. As you probably know, I was Project X, the biggest threat here. Mason was Project L; Eddie was Project C; Christian was Project P. If there is a Project Y or Project Z, I've never met them. There are only a few of us left, mostly those of us that came later in the alphabet and those whose powers were extremely strong, like Eddie.
Oh, and there were a few new Projects: Mia – Project D; Jill – Project K; and Lissa – Project G. None of them were dangerous, really, but all were powerful in their individual abilities.
Mia is pathokinetic, like Eddie. I remember a little bit of her from my time in the outside world. We bonded over our uniqueness and she was one of my few female friends. There aren't too many female Spiriteds. She found me shortly after the Jesse Incident. She'd seen me around school but didn't know what I could do. When word was starting to go around that I was some freak, Mia approached me with her secret and for a short time we sought comfort in each other. Relying on the other to assure us that nothing bad was going to happen to either of us. She started running shortly after I did, but she lasted longer than me.
She is short, blonde, with big blue doll-like eyes. It is kind of creepy if you ask me, but she was nice enough to me and everyone else, a little bossy, but nice. Surprisingly, Mason took to her like a duck to water. He was still as possessive as ever, but remained calm the entire time. Maybe a personal pathokinetic is exactly what Mason needs, or maybe it was just Mia. I know Eddie was there before her, but Eddie never managed to keep Mason this calm all the time.
Days after Mia showed up, word came through of a new Project that we met at the next session: Jill. She was shy. Coming in that first day to the large common room, her eyes were wide with fright and her arms wrapped tightly around herself. She is sixteen, the same age that I was when I first got here. I knew what she was going through. It took a lot of coaxing for her to share her ability. She is an atmokinetic. She pretty much controls the weather. It doesn't seem like much considering we're inside all the time and don't get to see the sun or sky, but when you want a thunderstorm or a warm gentle breeze, Jill is your girl. She seems to be warming up to us, Eddie especially.
After the first couple days being in the compound, Jill felt her emotions shifting dramatically every time she was around Eddie. Once she noticed it, she proceeded to accuse Eddie of manipulating her emotions and tried to hit Eddie with lightning. When he hid behind me, Mia rushed over and took responsibility for the change in emotions, claiming that she already felt the shift and just enhanced it. It didn't take much apologizing on Jill's part to have Eddie forgive her, but Mia had to do a little more groveling.
I was grateful to have Mia and Jill here now, though I hate that they, too, are locked up. It is tiresome to be the only female at The Academy and I appreciated both of them, but I was more grateful for Lissa.
Lissa was quickly becoming my best friend. She arrived on a day where Christian's threats to turn me to ash were swiftly switching to intentions. I was agitated with Dimitri and confused about the new power I possessed, but I'll come back to that in a sec.
Christian was poised and ready to attack, three balls of fire in each hand, almost like he was juggling one-handed, just waiting for his command. Suddenly, the room turned very cold and Christian's fire turned to balls of ice. He yelped as he dropped the balls in both surprise and pain, I turned to see a tall, thin blonde girl standing near the entrance, her jade green eyes fixed on Christian in an attempted glare. She seemed mad, but her angelic face didn't seem to possess the muscles to really look angry.
Christian whipped around, prepared to release his fury on the new comer only to stop short and stare, jaw unhinged in surprise. Lissa's face slowly lost any trace of anger and was replaced by slight embarrassment as Christian continued to stare, completely transfixed. Smirking at the interesting development, I stepped forward.
"Hi. I'm Rose and this hothead is Christian." I gave my most friendly smile to Lissa and she returned hers with enthusiasm. "Hey, Sparky, don't you know it's rude to stare?" I whispered in Christian's ear as I hooked my index finger under his jaw to close his mouth. Shaking his head as he broke his stare, he stepped toward Lissa, hand outstretched.
"Hello, I'm Christian." Lissa shook his hand but rolled her eyes at the reintroduction.
"It's a pleasure to meet you Christian, Rose. I'm Lissa, a cyrokinetic." That explains the whole cold and ice thing. The remaining Projects stepped forward to introduce themselves but soon the mingling session was over. Lissa and I were already bonding, chatting away like the two teenagers we were – are.
The last two sessions were spent chatting animatedly with each other while Christian sat off to the side staring at Lissa and glaring at me. Lissa might have been a cyrokinetic, but she acted more like my own personal pathokinetic. Only Lissa had the ability to make me happier in this horrible dungeon where we all lived. She was sweet and light-hearted. She never once complained about being locked up in The Academy with us. She claimed that it was better than being alone.
Her family had just recently died in a car crash, that's when her ability chose to make itself known. And it wasn't like she could hide the fact that she could turn things to ice in Florida. She had gone to her boyfriend, well ex-boyfriend, Aaron, for help and a place to hide, but he turned her over to the government as soon as they came knocking.
We talked about anything and everything. I told her my life story, from the time I first discovered my powers to right before she walked in to this very room. I even used telepathy to tell her about all of my abilities, at least the ones I could put a name to. I started becoming more and more excited as the day of a mingling session rolled around. Dimitri started to notice but didn't say anything.
That's the only thing I didn't talk to Lissa about: Dimitri. I was still trying to figure him out. I know she could probably help me figure him out, but I didn't want to start the conversation without a few theories. There was just something about him that made my body react in a way it hadn't previously, but I couldn't put my finger on it. And he wasn't helping matters by completely avoiding me.
After that first confusing visit a month ago, Dimitri came in every other day to take my vitals and collect my blood. The next week it became every three days. The weeks following it became a rare occasion I got to see Dimitri, they had different White Coats come in to collect their data, never the same one. I think they drew straws every morning…
I missed his laugh, his smile, his greeting, not the greeting that he uses now when I see him, but his original one that he had been using the past two years: "Good morning, Beautiful."
I started thinking back to all of my previous encounters with Dimitri, trying to find anything unusual that I had missed, but nothing had changed. Nothing about him had changed. Sure, his hair became longer and he'd cut it every couple of months and his muscles have become more pronounced, probably from working out more, but fundamentally he was the same Dimitri.
It must have been me, some new ability, the purpose of which was unknown to me and didn't seem to have a simple answer. To be fair, I've been changing pretty much every week. Two days after Jill got here, I created storm clouds in my room – on accident, of course. Just last week, I finally acquired Eddie's, and Mia's, ability. I'm hoping for Lissa's or Christian's next. Either would be useful when going toe-to-toe with Christian. Lissa had to save me a few times since she got here.
Not speaking to anyone, other than Lissa, I do as any White Coat commands me to do. I've become compliant, coming down from my corner when told, never making a fuss. Stuck inside my memories, I spend my hours thinking. Thinking about him. Thinking about what went wrong in the encounter, what was different, what was the same?
Why did my heart go haywire? What was the buzzing?
The Buzz.
I don't know what else to call it because that's exactly what it was: a buzz. The power, if it was actually a power and not just in my head, didn't really seem to do anything useful, just send a pleasant buzzing sensation through my entire being.
Since that day, I've only felt the buzzing a few other times. I feel the buzzing when he touches me, obviously, but it doesn't happen with any of the other White Coats. That was the weird thing, the buzzing didn't happen at random times or when touching random people.
The only other times I've felt the buzzing is when I touch other Projects.