"It's not as impressive as being super strong, but it's right for you. Your name is Rose. What a coincidence! Do you think your name has affected your ability?"
"Actually, I think they gave it to me on purpose, one of the doctor said that when I was a baby I grew a plant, I guess they wouldn't call me anything but Rose."
Rosie replied with a lady's pawn.
"Ah!" Ben touched the wound on his face, which was starting to bleed.
"Shouldn't you bandage that? Shall I call a doctor?"
The boy wandered his gaze towards the box of doctors who were watching them as if they were a play or circus animals and shook his head in pain and moved knight C3 which was answered by pawn E5. The children played chess all afternoon and didn't bring up the subject of skill and hitting again, although next week the roles were reversed.
The military base that had become the children's home covered a large tract of land hidden in a deep, lush forest nestled in the bosom of tall mountains that made shadows as imposing as the very sounds of bombs. The sun's rays were not welcome every day, only when the sky was clear and so delicious that the doctors ordered them to come up for air. The children had their own section that served both for fun on the swings and for physical examinations. Ben was most often out for exams involving push-ups, weights, and mountain climbs, and, now, Rosie's exams adopted the same methodology. She had found it strange to be in the courtyard surrounded by doctors and soldiers. Normally, she spent her time sitting on the swing waiting for them to be returned to the room or discreetly watching Ben approach the barbed-wire fence and salute the marching soldiers by adopting his posture: shoulders back, back straight, feet together, and he held his hand with fingers pressed to his temple and stayed that way until they disappeared into the distance. Many of them would return his salute and call him "Soldier Boy". But things were different, she was not alone with Ben getting bored, they were demanding her to show the strength of a superhuman.
"Very good girl," Dr. Stein adjusted his glasses, "Let's start by measuring your pain threshold. From one to ten, ten being the strongest, what number would you put on the Alpha compound injections?"
Rosie didn't need to think long.
"A ten," she replied.
"It says here that the boy rated it a seven," he read from his notebook. "The boy is having difficulty getting the needle into his skin, it's getting harder and harder for us to get it through. Has the girl been having this difficulty?" He shook his head at Dr. Fisher, who was in charge of giving the injections.
"it's still easy."
"Very well," he passed the notebook to one of the doctors he had as pupils, almost throwing it at him. "Soldier, you may proceed to give her a hit. A soft one."
The soldier stepped forward, that's what Rosie saw, his military boots approaching, and followed the strict orders bluntly. He gave her a barehanded slap on her cheek. To everyone's surprise, the girl had barely flinched and the reaction they drew was a response to fear rather than pain. The fear the girl felt was toward them, toward all the men on the other side of the fence who had huddled to the fence like vines looking for the perfect spot of sunshine, and toward all the men who were locked in there with her. The doctors and the soldiers. At that moment she wished she had Ben's ability to be able to withstand the stares of them all and, since that was impossible, she wished Ben was there because, at least, there would be another child she could identify with since, women were few and far between and they were never in the thick of the fighting and girls, Rosie didn't know another girl.
#02. superpowers
Start from the beginning
