The Kanterran Chronicler, Paul II

    Paul was half asleep, watching a half-dead girl. And as his head began to roll, and his eyes flickered, someone else's opened. She made to get up, but stopped when she heard the ringing of the chains that held her arm down. Somebody snored. The guard looked young. Glasses, scruffy looking, hadn't been keeping himself clean. Recent though, like a layer of grime over someone more used to comfort. More importantly, he hadn't heard her move. Probably meant she wasn't a guest though, from the look of the bars on the room, the bindings on her arm. Smelled horrible. She couldn't remember being captured. She slowly made to move, readied herself for the sudden change in position, pictured herself on the other side of the room, standing beyond the steel bars. A sudden and sharp headache cut her off, nothing but sharp pain.  

    She stifled a cry. Oh. She still couldn't.  It had been sudden, the sickness had begun again, as bad as it had been when she first received her powers. The virus had nearly killed her the first time, but once she stopped feeling like she was dead she'd found herself able to move herself with a thought, appear wherever she could think. But then it had started again, another round of sudden illness, and it was worse for just how much she'd lost. Stuck on the ground. Like a clipped bird. But not trapped. She faked a cough. Snore. She faked a louder cough. Snore. She unleashed a stream of wheezing noises that would've made most medical professionals rush off to find the nearest iron lung. That one wasn't intentional. At least he was up and moving. 

    Ok, he wasn't a guard, he was a doctor, she thought, sizing up the stains on his shirt through eyes held almost shut. That or a pretty violent guard. He roused and made to check her, and it was just as he laid a hand on her shoulder that she twisted, and held his neck in chain. He choked while she whispered into his ear. "~Where's the key?~" He just looked at her in confusion. Alright, not Endlyrian. Ajaddi? "-The key. Give it to me.-" Still no signs of recognition.  Terran? "Where is the key?" The man lifted a finger, and pointed to a key rack. Outside the cell doors. She loosened the grip on his neck, and his face stopped turning blue. "Who are you?" He rasped out a response. "Prisoner. They get me to fix people up. They got me to nanny you for the last week. You've been asleep." She looked down at her arms. These weren't her clothes. "What. Have you done."  

    Paul was not ready for this. He'd barely been able to sleep, he'd been pressed for even more repair jobs, and now he was being choked by a patient. On reflection, he was pretty sure he counted as a real doctor now. At least the people he fixed called him a doctor. "Would you rather be sitting in your own sick? Did you even hear what I said? Are you feeling better?" Sparrow loosened her grip, he wasn't exactly hostile, just annoying. And if what he said was true. "Where are we?" Paul thought a moment. "Dockyards. If it’s a rough day you can hear the waves." Ok that was something. "What city?" Paul tried to slip underneath the chain, and she pulled it close to his neck again. "Leninport." He wheezed. Leninport, that was Kanterra? This far out? How did she even get this far off-the man had started gasping again. This time she let him go, he was as much of a prisoner as she was. Paul fell to a heap on the floor, clutching at his neck. 

    "That thing where you disappeared, how does it work?" She tried to think of just a few inches away, just a little jump. More pain. "It doesn't. What's it to you?" She watched as he stood up and pointed to the mark where the chain had left a mark. Paul touched a finger to it, and his neck was unblemished in seconds. Sparrow nodded, and hacked up her lungs again, waiting calmly until she could speak again. And choked up some more phlegm. "Any chance you can fix this?" The man looked almost excited. "My name is Paul. Have you met any other kinetics before?" It was Sparrows turn to look confused. "Oh um, I thought you might be having something like this, I'm pretty good at diagnosis. Kinetics. Normal people, except for something in the brain, I like to think it’s a couple of stray genes, might be able to tell one day. They get powers. Some strange stuff like you do when you disappear, but its mostly mind over matter sort of thing. The first ones were all pretty much just lifting spoons, bending forks, throwing knives at people. Lot of cutlery. All the "psychics"" Sparrow watched as he added quotation marks to that word. "...that had been talking about this for years called it telekinesis. But then people started throwing fire, that's pyrokinesis, or controlling lights or glass or water, so we started calling them kinetics. Although I think that’s a bad term for it myself, not very scientific, excludes the outliers like you." Terran was not her first language, and he was talking a mile a minute. It took her a mile to catch up after some furious nodding. "So um, what do you do, and can you fix me feeling like..." 

    Paul's grin doubled, and Sparrow braced herself. "Well, they know I can heal people but..." He thought twice, he'd kept this to himself for as long as he'd been held captive, but this was the first real conversation he'd had in weeks. "Haemokinesis. And Genetikinesis. It's really rare to have multiple abilities, but those that do are usually linked. So for example I could have had Hydrokinesis, and then Haemokinesis as a natural extension to than that would let me control blood as well as water." Sparrow just stared back. "That doesn't answer my..." He started up again. Her headache was getting worse. "Well Haemokinesis lets me control my own blood, so I could control my blood flow or clot faster, and I can use it on others too. Really good for helping with blood loss. I could do other stuff with it too but-" He shook the mental image out of his head. "The other one is Genetikinesis, so I can interpret DNA, and sometimes change it to do other things. Like letting it heal faster. But that’s another one that could get out of hand if I was to mess up." Another horrible thought had come to mind, and he started thinking back to cancer and diseases mutating and- He shouldn't have picked up a textbook. Paul knew he knew more about what he was doing but at the same time, he knew what he COULD do. 

    Sparrow was glad he'd wound down. "Any luck about this whole sick thing?" He seemed to ruminate for a little bit. "Not a chance. I think. I wanted to ask you. Because I don't think you're sick. Or at least it's not a disease, I think. I've been trying to see what's wrong with you since they brought you in all unconscious and that, and, nothing. Or at least this isn't a huge immune response to foreign bodies. I think. Possibly linked to your powers if you aren't just disappearing now. Better nonfunctional than half, I mean what if you just, appeared in a wall? Best case is going to have to be you stay the course and get better, short of me trying to help and maybe. Just. Making things worse. But I have to ask, has this happened before? What language where you speaking earlier? And if it's not a bother where are you from, I ask because they've not brought anyone who wasn't from Leninport before." 

    "It’s a long story, that’s language(s), and another long story." 

    He just shrugged. "We've got nothing else to do."