Endgame (Book 3)

Chapter 20

She began to pace a small area in the grass with her arms behind her back, her hands clasped together.

"In your time in the pod, you mastered every superpower in your arsenal almost immediately," Ashley said. "And when you came here, you were so used to them that your instinctive knowledge carried on with you. But flight, however easy it may seem, cannot be controlled by instinct. Rather, it is tamed by the mind and sheer willpower."

She stopped in front of me for a moment. "If you don't have either of those, I cannot and will not help you."

So there was a possibility I wouldn't be able to control this power. No biggie.

She waited for me to wig out and push this for later, but I wanted it too badly to turn back.

She kept moving. "Flight is like a muscle. It is powerful, it is necessary, and it can also be torn. If you push yourself too hard, you will hurt your physical body. Internal bleeding will immediately happen, and you will most certainly not exist on this planet as a living soul. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said.

"Good. Therefore, the first thing I want you to do before we start is planks."

I whined. "Not this again."

"Do you want it, or not?" she threatened me.

I sighed. "I want it," I said.

I reluctantly got on the ground and she began to count. Up, not down.

I resisted the urge to complain. She was helping me, after all. But if she went past two minutes, we would have a problem.

Guess what she did? She went past two minutes.

Thankfully, she stopped at fifteen seconds past two minutes, which I grudgingly said nothing about.

"I thought you said we were done with the physical stuff," I said.

"Yeah, but planks are a prerequisite for flight. Flying is like doing lots of crunches in the air. You'll feel it in your abs once you get far enough."

"It's amazing that you know so much for someone with no powers," I wondered aloud.

"Not really. I have photographic memory." Ashley tapped her temple with her index finger. "And I have access to MARAD's complete metahuman files. It's got interviews, descriptions, and battle tips of most of the metahuman population prior to date. Chances are, I can help you with anything superpower related."

She noticed the shocked expression on my face.

"What? You didn't really think the only superhumans were the ones we had here? What do you think all those missions were for?"

"I had no idea," I breathed out. How the world kept the metahuman population out of the public eye for so long was the million-dollar question.

"Yeah, well, time to get back to it," she said with a clap.

She waited until I was standing up to give me my next instructions.

"When you fly, your powers are controlled by your thoughts or your hand motions," she explained.

"Thoughts," I interrupted her, thinking back to how I couldn't get to Sage fast enough trying to fly, and windmilling my arms to no effect.