She Trains

Yakima Firing Center

Yakima, WA

May 20, 1986

Twelve stood alone in the desert, knee-high scrub all around her. It was the second day of her latest round of training, and it wasn't going well.

Papa had arranged a special set of tests away from the city with a simple mission. Try as she might, she just could not seem to get this scenario right and it was destroying her to disappoint Papa like this. She could hear the missile coming long before she could see it. As it crested the ridge before her, she reached out with her thoughts and grabbed hold of it; this part was easy enough. As the chemical thrusters fought against her grip, she carefully guided the projectile down to the ground in the designated spot. So far so good; she had managed this on only her second attempt yesterday. The hard part was still to come. As the propellant ran low, the thrust began to dissipate and her tension grew. "Here it comes," she thought. Reaching out, she visualized clamping giant hands around the warhead and forming a tight ball around its deadly charge. The moment of truth was almost at hand. Could she do it this time, she wondered? She braced for what was to come, as the warhead discharged in a roaring ball of destructive fire. She held on with all her strength.

The mission was simple enough. All she had to do was grab an armed warhead out of the air as it passed over head, guide it down to the ground and hold the detonation in containment. If there was a crater left behind, she failed. If the ground, or the brush, got scorched, she failed. If she did everything right, and managed to contain the blast, Papa would radio to the men at the far end of the range and have them prepare to launch a larger warhead.

It was hard work, draining every ounce of strength she could muster, but she also knew it was very important; Papa had said so. The Russians had bombs bigger than anything she could even imagine and someday she might be called on to take one of them down safely. So onward she trained, trying her very hardest to to contain the blasts Papa's men sent her way.

In the brief seconds the blast was raging, Twelve held on with all her strength. Maybe this would be it. Maybe this time she would be able to contain it. At the last moment, her grip faltered and a raging inferno issued forth where moments before it had been nothing more than a harmless ball of flame above the ground. Rocks and dirt ripped forth from the ground and flew out in every direction as the blast tore away at the landscape around it. Completely drained, she fell to her knees, blood pouring from her nose and ears.

After a brief moment of recovery, she chanced a look over her shoulder at the ridge behind her. Standing outside the command trailer, she could distinctly pick out Papa, watching the scene unfold. Even though he was almost a quarter of a mile away, she could see the look on his face and the way he was standing. She had failed him again. The disappointment carried across the distance like electricity and it drained her even further as she saw him turn to look out across the desert behind him. She was failing Papa. It hurt so badly to disappoint him. She could feel the tears welling behind her eyes and forced the feeling back down. Tears were not for right now; tears were for later when she was alone. Papa said tears were a weakness so she had not let him see them for many years now; they were for private time. As she often did these days, when she started to doubt her strength and all she was capable of, she thought of her sister, Eleven. She would remind herself there is no way that Eleven could do the things she was attempting. Papa had told her all about the things her sister could do. Sure, she could make little things happen like crushing a can or making a pen float, but never anything big. No, her sister was scared and weak. She spent her days hiding in her tank of water, sending her mind out into someplace Papa called The Void, and snuck around just listening to people and their whispered secrets. No, Eleven could never do the things that she did. Papa said so.

Standing outside the command trailer, Dr. Brenner stared in disappointment at the scene before him. Once again, she had failed to contain the blast. They were nearing the end of the second day of testing, and she had yet to contain a blast stronger than a few sticks of dynamite.

"Hell, a reinforced concrete bunker could have contained that last one better than she did," he thought, shaking his head in disgust.

Hoping to hide his disappointment from her, he turned away to look out across the barren landscape that stretched away toward the horizon. As seemed to be happening more and more these days, his thoughts turned to his other little girl, Eleven.

"Could she have contained that blast?" he found himself asking for the third time today. He was pretty sure she could have, and that made Twelve's continual failure even more painful.

In their early years, Twelve had been so much more powerful than her sister, and Brenner had fallen into the false belief that the disparity would continue. She had been fiercely loyal, never questioning his every request and eager to please her Papa. For his part, he had fed into that desire, showering her with constant praise, and that had fueled her progress for years. Now, though, she seemed to have struck a plateau that no amount praise could help her to rise above.

Eleven, on the other hand, had been a quiet and subdued girl growing up. Her strengths had taken him much longer to recognize due to their subtle nature. But remarkably, she had later shown growing abilities in more than one branch of psychokinesis; a feat Twelve had never been able to match. The real problem had been Eleven's gentle nature. It took a tremendous provocation to unleash her full potential. She had outright refused to kill an innocent cat, a defiance Twelve never even considered in her eagerness to please her Papa. Only minutes later, though, when faced with the prospect of confinement in the dark room, she had faced no difficulty in bodily hurling one man into the wall and snapping another's neck. In a moment of utter terror, she had managed to rip a hole in the very fabric of reality. Worst of all, when it came to protecting those she truly cared about, a group that did not include her Papa anymore, she had taken out multiple, highly-trained assailants in a single, painful blow.

He knew deep down that if one of her friends were out there in the desert, threatened by the blast of an incoming missile, Eleven would face no difficulty both containing the blast and for added effect, directing the full force of the explosion back at the launch site.

"Hell, stick that Wheeler boy out there and she could probably hold in a Hiroshima blast," he thought, bringing a rare laugh to his lips as he turned back to observe Twelve as she prepared for the next volley to be sent her way.

From her vantage point on the range, Twelve hazarded another glance up at Papa and was delighted to see he was smiling again. She knew everything was going to be okay. He knew she would get the hang of this latest exercise. Papa was still proud of her.