Magnetized
Logan Mitchell
The AFO facility wasn't up to the standards I was used to, and Adamas told me to refrain as much as I could from updating things. But my hands felt like they were covered in poison oak, the itch to transform this technology was about to eat me alive. It was like an addiction, and this was an open bar to an alcoholic.
But not matter how strong the pull was, I held myself back. This operation was a once in a lifetime opportunity. It was undoubtedly the only thing I would do in this life to appease my father. Even more so, it was probably the only thing that will have deemed my existence useful.
I was ashamed that I was unable to help construct any of the buildings that would be used for this operation. And when the others were finished, well after they were dismissed from their posts, it was my job to integrate and assemble every piece, wire, and circuit that Adamas Steele had requested. Most of the equipment he had assigned for me to construct where things he had simply thought up on his own. And for an old man, he had plenty of new tricks. I don't believe anyone else on the team knew about this.
Agent Rain called for a meeting with the six of us at five that evening, declaring that she would retrieve us from the atrium of the vast headquarters, and from there, we would tour the space.
So that's where we all stood now. In the long, gargantuan hallway that lead to four separate sectors. Everywhere you looked was a different color of stained glass. Reflections strewn every which way, and it felt like there was seven additional you's following your physical body.
Agent Rain had yet to appear, even though it was now almost a quarter past five. Rose had taken it upon herself to lean against the one black wall, while she conversed with The Key. Eddison Cognitor, who had been my stand in professor many times before during school was walking the hall with the other boy, whose name I was having a hard time remembering. They peeked into the glass interior of the divided sectors, trying to see anything inside. I'm sure they had no luck.
That left me alone with the foreigner from the Badlands.
I wasn't scared of her because she was from the most vile place in our entire multiverse. I wasn't scared of her because she was a powerful Luster, maybe more well versed than the other two Lusters across from us.
I was scared of her because she was beautiful. The image of perfection. The definition of sex.
If this were any other ordinary day in my life, someone like her wouldn't even look my way; I would be invisible to her.
But somehow we were drawn together.
"Where were you earlier when the others were putting up the houses?" she asks my worst fear. Of anything this girl knew about me, she chose the thing I was most self-conscious about.
"Uh just setting up some new stuff that Leader Steele asked me to work on," I say, embarrassed.
"New stuff?" she inquires.
"Just some technology," I shrug.
She then asks me about it further. And she listens intently as I go on about what it's like to be a technopath, and the discrimination that comes with it.
"I know what it's like to feel a little bit on the outside," she simpers at me. "I'm not from here obviously. I feel very at home back in my realm. But here I feel almost useless. I can't do anything the others can do. All I am is a Jumper."
We've been pulled together, because we're alike. I know how she feels because we're the same.
I've just made her giggle after telling her about my first failed robot when I was six as Hayden Rain makes her appearance.
