The Elite

One

Leon

The jet exploded in a massive fireball, sending flaming debris flying everywhere. I jumped left as a metal plate about the size of a door came hurtling towards me. Another piece hit the old wooden railcar to my left, and it went up in raging flames.

I quickly darted away from the massive inferno that was consuming the railcar, hoping to avoid getting burnt to a crisp, but stumbled on a bit of wood sticking up from the ground, and fell flat on my face.

Feeling exceedingly stupid, I rolled onto my back with a groan. It had been awhile since I acted like a fresh recruit, stumbling around the battlefield trying to figure out what in the world I was supposed to be doing. It made me feel extremely stupid.

Lying on my back gave me a new angle of my fiery surroundings — an angle that was eerily familiar, making my embarrassment turn to fear. It sent my heart into overdrive, beating as quickly as the beat to a fast-paced rock song.

Flames rose on both sides of me, towering above, and flickering dangerously. They blinded me, making it difficult to see what was coming at me.

Just like that day a few months ago.

"Leon! Look out!"

I could hear Aubrey's voice clearly, almost as if she were here, and not in my memory.

Something blacked out part of the flames' light, and I froze, thrown back with full force into the memory. If anyone asked, I would have said I was there, watching in slow-motion horror as the unidentified metal piece came flying at me.

It slammed into my body, one of its sharp extrusions stabbing me in the gut as the other spikes remained stuck in the ground. I was fully trapped, pinned, hurting, and unable to free myself.

The present returned as the piece of metal lodged itself into just my left shoulder. The pain it wrought was enough to remind me that I was living reality, and not my worst memory.

With a hiss, I sat up, looking at my damaged shoulder. It didn't look all that severe, and nothing at all like what my memory thought it should look like.

All of a sudden, someone appeared from the shadows in my peripheral vision. In the darkness and my still-lingering memory, I saw him as Black Hole, the man who ruined my life.

I stuck out my right hand at him, using my powers to project fear. Within a second, I stopped projecting, cursing my adrenaline-fueled response.

The person in front of me was very obviously not Black Hole. For one thing, he was much too young. In the flickering light of the surrounding fires, it was clear that his skin was the warm tan of a North African, whereas Black Hole's had been a deep umber, courtesy of his West African heritage. In addition, unlike Black Hole's shaved head, this boy had a full head of black hair.

"Um, sorry, Julian," I said, recognizing him. "I didn't mean to make you afraid."

"It's okay."

The kid — teenager, really — didn't seem affected by me mistaking him for what he was clearly not. The only odd thing about him was that his eyes looked red thanks to the firelight reflecting in them.

I dropped my hand, and stared down at the ground, half wishing I'd raised my left arm in my panic so that I'd have flinched from the pain from my shoulder wound and not given Julian any feelings of fear.

"I don't blame you," Julian told me kindly as he approached me. "I was trained by the same person as Black Hole, so my movements likely shared some similarity to the miscreant that destroyed your life."