If I Die Young

45. Lightning

The next day I was able to get Iden, Elyse, and Aurelia into the training room, seeing as how the younger kids were going to be a little harder to get in here, we knew we'd have to basically take daily shifts every week and change who'd be joining us every day. We'd be training with Sergei until either he deemed us ready or he got transferred to another facility, preferably to the one in Pennsylvania.

I sat back and watched Elyse as she fired a gun, her aim sub-par and for obvious reasons. Sergei seemed to be lost in thought but finally he took the gun from her hands gently and seemed to be analyzing her from an agents standpoint. She looked over to Iden who nodded encouragingly at her.

"You said you can see auras, right?" He asked, and she nodded, "does that include sensing their energy and using it?"

"What do you mean?" She questioned, unsure.

"Often people who can see auras are able to sense the energies and gather them in a sense, using it like a weapon. You can siphon from your own or from someone else's, but either way you should be able to use it like a physical weapon."

"I'd never thought of that before," Elyse pondered aloud, searching the room for something until her eyes landed on the targets. She seemed to focus on her hands for a new moments before something started to spark and gather, something like pure light and energy. My jaw dropped as I watched her whole hands become engulfed in the substance, a light in her eyes that I'm sure wouldn't have been there otherwise. I looked back at Iden to see him staring at his girlfriend with wide, enamored eyes. All the love in the world he had for that girl was out in the open, bright and shining, just like her aura.

We watched as she attempted to control the masses, shaping them into spheres the size of basketballs, something she was intimately familiar with. I assumed she must've been trying to launch them like projectiles but something must've went haywire because she suddenly jerked, all the glow evaporating and leaving her looking a little wobbly. Sergei and I both rushed forward to help as she practically collapsed, her whole body shaking with raw power.

"Is she okay?" Iden rushed over, crouching beside her on the padded floor and taking her face in his hands in an attempt to look at her. She gave him a thumbs up before closing her eyes and resting against the wall.

"She used a lot of her own energy doing that, so she'll probably need a few minutes to gather it back up," Sergei sighed, reaching out and placing a hand on Elyse's head of coily hair, "you don't have to try again today, it's going to be hard, and we have plenty of time."

I couldn't help but watch him and take into account each of his movements: Sergei never aimed to kill with us or pushed us too hard, taking the time to be sure we weren't afraid but being stern with us all the same. I don't know why it felt so strange to me to see someone who was supposed to be hunting us down and containing us act so...human. He must've seen me staring and straightened up, shuffling his shoulders before tugging on his jacket and smiling.

"You look like you have a question," he chuckled, a warm note in his eyes that made them seem like glittering forests instead of sharp emeralds.

"Why are you so willing to help us?" I asked plainly, "Agnes, what's so important about her? Why would you go out of your way to go after her?"

He seemed to deflate a little after that, his peppy, educated manner chipping just the slightest as pain entered his eyes. I almost felt bad for asking but it was something I needed to know, just to finally put any of my doubts to rest; he didn't seem like he wanted to hide it either.

"Years ago, when I was a starting agent fresh from camp at eighteen, there were a few of us," he began his tale, "Hal, Marshall, Kaage, Kelvin, Theresa, Mackenzie, and me. We were all apart of the same unit and Marshall was my partner. Tough, old, and good with a gun. We bickered and fought like two peas in a pod and we went everywhere together."