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“Again!” Captain Wilson shouted from the sidelines. We stood amid an ordnance testing ground, which struck me as odd. But I suppose it made sense considering we didn’t know the full extent of my power - and considering the power of the singularity the day before.
I swiped sweat from my forehead and grunted. I’d lifted this crate over a dozen times already, and it was harder than I thought. I could do it one more time, couldn’t I?
I stuck out my arm, hand spread, and concentrated. Then for the fifteenth time I envisioned the white anti-graviton energy stretching out from the center of my palm toward the crate. It obeyed my command and snaked out of my hand. It wrapped around my target and, to my eyes, the crate appeared surrounded by a white mist. Now the hard part: tightening the anti-graviton lasso and lifting the crate. Condense, I ordered in my mind, and the mist shrank until it formed a cube matching the shape of the crate more precisely. Lift, I thought and envisioned the cube of anti-gravitons rising into the air. They obeyed and the crate lifted once again into the air. I heaved a sigh of relief.
“Good,” Captain Wilson said, tapping away at his data pad.
Beside him, my Uncle Jason watched, small smile on his face. He was watching scientific history being made. “How high can you lift it?” he asked.
I shrugged, still maintaining the connection. “I can find out.” I turned my attention back to the floating crate and tried to direct it to go higher. It floated higher for another five seconds or so, then stopped and I felt an intense strain on my mind. “Can’t...extend,” I gasped. I released my hold on the lasso and the energy dissipated. The crate fell back to earth and shattered.
“Can you explain what you saw,” my uncle asked.
“It’s like a rope extending from my hand to the crate, then spreading out and surrounding it.”
He nodded with understanding. “Ah, so it appears to work similarly mechanics-wise to the magic mages possess. Once you’ve encompassed the crate, try cutting the rope, as you described it, but maintaining your concentration on the anti-graviton blanket, as it were.”
I frowned. “But once I cut the rope, won’t that destroy the energy flow? Or interrupt it?”
“It shouldn’t. If my theory is correct, your brain is visualizing a rope as a visual aid to know where to summon the anti-gravitons to surround the crate. When you cut the rope, but maintain your concentration, the anti-gravitons will continue to exist in our world. You don’t need the rope to summon anti-gravitons.”
“If you’re correct,” I pointed out.
He gestured. “By all means, proceed.”
I cleared my throat. “Can I have a bite to eat and a drink first?”
He smiled. “Of course, where are our manners? Let us take a fifteen-minute break and then resume.” He turned, as if remembering his manners. “If that is all right with you, Captain.”
The captain looked displeased, but nodded. “Fifteen minutes. This is important training and we have no time to waste.” He’d only said that a dozen times since I started earlier that morning. He stomped off toward the sole building at the top of the ridge behind us.
“Do you think I’ll ever get the hang of this?” I asked as I sat down on a bench and pulled sandwiches, some fruit and a couple bottles of water from a bag. My “uncle” Terrence had gone on a food run for me, so that I could avoid military rations as long as possible. Then again, I was planning to become a Ranger, so I’d have to get used to rations. Still, I wasn’t a ranger yet.
“It’s only been a few hours, Rachel,” he said as he sat next to me. He didn’t eat, even when I offered him a sandwich, but he did take the bottle of water I offered. “Remember the analogy about learning to ride a bike? You won’t learn to master your powers overnight.”
“Tell that to Captain Wilson,” I said gloomily.
“He is a rather intense man, I agree. But he’s just trying to do his job. This is boot camp, after all. He’s in that hurry up and train mindset.”
“Yeah, I suppose.” I sighed. They’d laugh if I said not having Julianna on the sidelines bothered me. No sooner had she woken up this morning than they’d sent her back to the base camp to resume training. She hadn’t suffered any physical damage, and she didn’t have any special powers after the disaster, so there wasn’t any reason to either hold her in the hospital or bring her here to practice a new power. But it still bothered me to be relatively alone.
Fifteen minutes later, on the dot, we were back at it. The afternoon flew by as I continued to lift crates and other objects, metal, wood, plastic and more, into the air or practiced moving it with my mind. I wasn’t moving the objects so much as directing the anti-graviton cubes surrounding the objects where to go. And it wasn’t always cubes - the anti-graviton shroud could form-fit around anything.
“I want you to try to fly,” Captain Wilson barked.
I opened by mouth to protest, but a sharp glance from my uncle stopped me. This is what I was here for. “I don’t know how I would do that,” I admitted.
The captain looked at my uncle. “Do you have any bright ideas, Doctor?” He had no idea Jason was my uncle, and we had to keep it that way.
My uncle mused on the problem for a long moment, then spoke deliberately. “You said back at the silo you started to glow with white energy after being exposed to the anti-gravitons, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And it arrested your downward motion, yes?”
“Yes.”
“It stands to reason if you can infuse or surround your body with the same anti-graviton energy you can render yourself weightless, allowing you to float.”
“But floating isn’t flying,” I remarked, pointing out what seemed obvious to me. “How would I direct myself where to go?”
He stroked his chin. “Yes, that does present a conundrum. Generally, magic cannot be used to lift oneself. For example, though I can summon a platform of solid air to lift you, I cannot so easily summon one for myself and ride it around like a magic carpet. Something about the proximity of the magic to the source of the magic causes an interference. I’ve yet to be able to fully explain why it is not possible other than to analogize it to generally being unable to lift oneself.”
I nodded thoughtfully. That analogy made sense. We couldn’t exactly lift ourselves. “So, it would be impossible for me to fly?”
“Well, let us first test the theory that you can levitate. It happened before, but it could have been due to the circumstances of the eruption of anti-gravitons.”
“Like a fluke?”
“Yes.” He gestured. “Proceed.”
I swallowed my irritation at my own uncle’s impatience and concentrated, imagining the white mist surrounding me rather than an inanimate object. I felt my feet leave the ground. I opened my eyes and held up my arm. It glowed with the same misty white light. “I think I did it.” I looked down. I floated a few inches off the ground. “I definitely did it.”
“Good, very good. Now try to imagine yourself floating or being pushed upward.”
“Okay.” I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the anti-graviton mist risen, much like it had when it surrounded the crate.
Nothing happened.
I tried harder, clenching my jaw and expecting to feel the wind through my hair as I whooshed into the sky. How I’d get down was something I’d figure out later. After a minute or two of standing there like that, I gave up and opened my eyes. “Nothing’s working.”
He stroked his chin. “Hmmm.” Then he snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! Anti-gravitons and gravitons. They’re like magnets - or they can be.” He held one hand up above his head. “Imagine this is a giant positively charged magnet.” He held his other hand down by his waist. “And imagine this is a smaller positively charged magnet. In magnetism, opposites generally attract.”
“Yes, I know that,” I said. I wasn’t an ignorant school child.
“Well, what if it’s similar with gravity? What if you generated a sufficiently dense gravitational anomaly in the direction you wish to go and then somehow bind yourself to it?”
“Bind myself how?”
“You described originally reaching out to the crates as throwing a rope or a lasso. Well, what if you connect your anti-graviton shell to said graviton bundle?” He brought his hands together and clapped. “The anti-particle and particle would seek to reunite, opposites attracting.”
I shrugged. It was worth a shot. We’d come this far, hadn’t we? Retaining the anti-gravity shell around me, I imagined a bundle of gravity a few hundred feet above me. I saw it, like a ball of pure black. No one else could see it, of course, as had been the case with all my powers. Then I lashed out with a line of white light and connected it to the ball. Instantly, my feet left the ground and I soared into the sky, though my brain tricked me into thinking I was falling. “Woohoo!” I shouted.
I reached the ball of condensed gravity and floated there. I tested dissolving the ball and I continued to float there. I didn’t need the ball to float, but I did need to bind myself in the direction I wanted to “fly.”
I tried again, this time binding myself to a ball a few miles away. Again, once I lashed myself to it, I hurtled in that direction, my body threatening to flip onto its side so that the soles of my feet faced the artificial gravity well I’d summoned. I arrived there and oriented myself “upright” again, feet facing toward the planet, then looked down. Now how to descend?
Releasing the anti-gravity field around myself, I plummeted toward the earth at a startling speed. This time I screamed in a mix of terror and excitement. How to stop? I had no illusions I would be in the hospital for weeks if I landed without cushioning.
Thinking fast, I re-summoned the anti-gravity field around me when I was a few feet from the ground. I halted immediately, stopping perhaps five feet above the ground. I released the field and fell gracefully to the ground. “Ta-da!” I said, throwing my arms up like a gymnast might after landing a perfect move. The anti-gravity field faded away.
My uncle started clapping, while Captain Wilson wore a satisfied smirk.
“Well done, Rachel,” Uncle Jason said. “Though I would like to see you attempt landing more gracefully.”
“Yes. In a combat situation, stopping to float for even a moment could mean you’re an easy target for anti-air defenses,” Captain Wilson said.
An idea came to me, then. “What if I could bind myself to a moving ball of gravity?” I illustrated with my hands, making a fist represent the gravity ball and my other hand, unclenched, represent me. “I could follow the ball of gravity, maintaining a set distance from it, to allow it to drag me along.”
“Like a grappling hook,” my uncle mused. “Yes, that could work.”
“Try it,” Captain Wilson demanded. Did nothing please that man?
I nodded and complied, summoning a ball far above me and re-summoning my anti-gravity field, binding myself to it. I flew toward the ball, but this time I moved the ball higher. I continued to fly toward it. Then I moved it to the right and my flight path arced to follow the ball.
What if I needed to change direction in flight? What then? I thought about the problem as I moved the ball toward the ground. If I needed to make slow arcing turns a single ball would be fine, but if I needed to make a 180 turn, what if I released the first ball while simultaneously envisioning another ball behind me? In an instant, I flew backward, grunting at the jarring change and feeling an intense pressure. I turned as I flew toward the new ball. That would take some getting used to. To finish things off, I tossed the ball to the earth and flew down, settling more gracefully to the ground this time.
Even Captain Wilson clapped this time around.
“Better,” my uncle said. “And I’m impressed you were able to turn so rapidly. If a pilot tried that, the g-forces would rip him apart without inertial dampeners. Your power must give you built-in inertial dampening.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Very good,” he replied. “You’re like a pilot, only without need of an engine.”
“And bearing no weapons,” Captain Wilson noted. “Also, how is she going to do when faced with a combat scenario, like anti-aircraft fire?”
“All in good time, Captain,” my uncle assured him. “Let her keep practicing flight. There will be a time for tactical aerial fighting later.”
The captain grunted but did not argue.
***
I STUMBLED INTO THE barracks right after lights out. Hours of training left my body aching.
I passed empty bunks on the way to my own and my thoughts turned unwittingly to those recruits lost. Killed in action before they’d even graduated. Killed by an enemy they’d never had a chance to fire a shot against.
The loss of the sergeants hadn’t hit me as hard. I knew being tough or mean was their modus operandi but still, it was harder to mourn the loss of women who’d screamed at you for weeks on end.
I reached my bunk and whispered, “Julianna?”
A shape moved in the dark and I heard rustling sheets as Julianna practically leapt out of bed and scaled down the ladder of our bunk bed. “Rachel!” she said in an excited whisper. “You’re back!” She embraced me.
“Yeah, they let me sleep,” I said. “I wasn’t sure they were going to.” That was a lie, but still, it felt like we’d been training for days on end. Yet it had been just over twelve hours and they’d given me a break for lunch and dinner. There would be more training tomorrow, and the day after, and then a week later we would be graduating from basic training. “They cleaned the deceased bunks out quick,” I observed. It had been four days since the attack. I guess I could call it an attack considering saboteurs had been involved. Had I missed the funeral?
“They had a funeral for them yesterday,” Julianna said, answering my unspoken question. “That’s when they cleaned up their bunks.”
“Oh.” Now I felt bad for thinking the military wouldn’t give them proper burial.
“Things still haven’t been the same, though,” my friend continued. “Everyone’s been quiet, the remaining sergeants haven’t been screaming as much. And everyone, recruit and sergeant, is jumping at shadows. The night patrol has been doubled, from what I heard.”
“I guess word that it was sabotage spread pretty quick,” I said. So much for keeping that classified.
She shrugged. “You know how they say bad news travels faster than anything. Do you...do you want to talk?” She asked in an awkward tone, unused to expressing friendly sentiments. I guess my friend did still have a heart.
I shook my head, grateful for her asking. “No, I just want my bed and a decent night’s sleep. We have what, a week and two days till graduation? And I have two more days of this special training.” I doubted the sergeants would take it too easy on us, regardless of the circumstances. The shock of the attack would wear off and things would go back to normal. I hoped. Then where would I go after basic training? Which specialty would I choose?