The hardest thing about keeping this new secret, Jenn quickly discovered, was keeping it. Now that she was learning to control her abilities better, it was becoming difficult not to just use them whenever. Like when she finally learned to whistle, Jenn wanted to keep doing it, if only to prove she could.
More than that, she was so much more aware of it now. Jenn's senses were tuned to the hum of electricity all around her. She felt the flow of currents as they passed between herself and her surroundings. It was exhilarating. She wanted to revel in it, delighted by any excuse to go over to Dev's for practice.
The wait that first day had been excruciating. Not only was it a double lecture day, but she and Dev had taken a detour to the bio labs after classes. There, he'd taken a small biopsy from her in order to prepare a cell culture - a fact the dull pain in Jenn's lower back refused to let her forget. He'd said something about wanting to study her cells in vitro, but Jenn had a hard time following him when he used words like 'cytology' and 'agglutination'.
It seemed like forever before they made it to Dev's workshop. Apparently prepping a cell culture was a lot of work, and as interested as Jenn was in the results, she was getting antsy. Her QuantMech II homework was nowhere near as interesting as what she was about to do anyway.
The first week was probably the most exciting. Each day was filled with new discoveries, new uses of her powers.
First, Jenn tried teaching herself to throw lightning. Again, the way she had the first time. She'd more or less mastered turning electronics on and off, but this was a big step up. If she wanted her lightning to arc any significant distance, she had to build up a much greater charge. That was the problem with air working as an insulator. Thirty-thousand volts to bridge the gap of just one centimeter, her mind unhelpfully supplied.
With every fiber in her body burning and the hum in her ears at a deafening volume, sometimes she felt like she couldn't contain it all. That it could all just rush out of her in an instant and into the nearest target. Sometimes it did. The increase in voltage made it so much more difficult to control.
...And that much more dangerous. It only took one close call for the pair to build Dev a personal Faraday cage. Jenn was still apologizing by the time they were done welding, despite Dev's assurances he was fine.
Regardless, they decided to switch gears for a bit. There was plenty to explore. Jenn was working towards degrees in both electrical engineering and particle physics, after all - she was fascinated by electromagnetism. Her mind spun with all kinds of ideas as to what she could do.
"What if I tried to move metal?" Jenn asked that weekend. Dev had been hard at work dropping chemicals onto a slide, but he looked off elsewhere as he considered the question. She continued, "I mean, one of the easiest ways to transmit electrical energy through air is by converting it to magnetism. Plus, running a current through a magnet can increase its strength. If I held a current strong enough, I could turn myself into a walking electromagnet. You know, theoretically."
"Theoretically," Dev shrugged in agreement. He turned back to his work, but not before calling over his shoulder, "Let me know how that goes."
At first, it didn't. The most frustrating thing was, the more Jenn tried, the more she knew she could do it. Her target, an old wrench, sat unmoving on the table. Taunting her. She could feel it pushing back, even though she was an arm's length away. It felt like trying to move a car. Sometimes, Jenn could even lean into the resistance.
Then, one day, everything gave at once. The whole table slid backwards and Jenn fell with it. She stumbled a step in surprise, regaining her balance quickly.
From his spot in front of his microscope, Dev glanced up. "Need something?" He asked, pulling out an earbud.
The table had hardly moved - not enough for Dev to notice at a glance - so Jenn just waved him off. She was too busy glancing between her hands and the table to talk. So that's what it was, she realized. Her target hadn't been narrow enough.
After that, it almost became easy. She could push things away by the end of the night, and pull them back shortly afterwards. At their next meeting, Jenn finally had enough control to suspend hand tools in the air in front of her. Dev was just as fascinated by this development as he'd been with the lightbulb two weeks ago. Jenn couldn't help but feel proud.
"You think I could use the same principle on myself to, you know, fly?" Jenn asked, the wrench spinning slowly between her hands. "Theoretically, of course."
"Theoretically," Dev echoed.
That was quickly becoming a catchphrase of sorts. Most of the time, it was something too dangerous to try. Jenn once suggested creating an actual bolt of lightning - "If I build up enough of a charge between myself and a storm cloud" - only for the pair to laugh it off. "Theoretically."
There were so many possibilities. Jenn was too busy learning new applications for her powers to entertain the implications of having them.
Dev, however, wasn't. While Jenn tried her hand at bending metal into knots or sparking electricity between her fingers, Dev was hard at work staring into a microscope. One time, Jenn asked what he was up to. His explanation started with the word "cytotoxicity", which also happened to be the moment Jenn remembered how weak her bio background was. She hoped the results were easier for her to make heads of than the procedures. Jenn trusted he would let her in on any interesting findings. Turns out, she didn't have to wait long.
"Your cells are fascinating!" Dev whispered. Or, well, tried to. His excitement bled through his words, turning it into a muted yell.
Jenn's first reaction was one of embarrassment. It quickly turned to panic as she looked around. Class had yet to start, but it was about to. She wasn't particularly anxious to let Alicia Dunhill in on her little secret, much less the rest of her classmates. After a thorough survey of the room, Jenn turned back to her friend with a warning glare.
"Sorry, sorry," Dev muttered, looking plenty chagrined. He dropped his bag on the seat next to Jenn and sat down. The closer proximity made it easier to keep the conversation private. "They are fascinating, though."
"Well?" Jenn prompted. Whatever he found, it must've held him up that morning. Harry was just about ready to begin that morning's lecture and Dev never showed up to class later than she did.
Dev's look turned teasing. "We finally know how you're able to put away all those biscuits," he said, nodding to the half-finished bag of Viennese whirls next to her laptop. Jenn only continued to snack, frown deepening. "I've lost count of how many times I've had to split your cells by now. That's ridiculous."
The only thing Jenn could do was blink at him. Did Dev seriously think she knew what that meant, much less why it was so fascinating?
At the front of the room, Harry called class to order. Anyone who might've been listening in would now be more focused on class than their conversation. Jenn, meanwhile, hadn't even grabbed a pencil and Dev seemed to be similarly disinterested.
"When cultures get too crowded, they die. You have to keep splitting cultures if you want them to keep growing," Dev explained as Harry introduced the day's topic. "Human cells are notoriously slow, but yours-" he let out an astonished guffaw. "Even cancerous cells don't divide that quickly. Your metabolism is, quite literally, off the charts."
Okay, that did explain a few things. "But how does that relate to the...you know?" Jenn asked, miming what she hoped looked like throwing lightning.
"Well, that's a lot of what metabolism is. Generating energy in the form of body heat and electrical signals. Except with yours, everything has been focused on option two and turned up to eleven," Dev's eyebrows raised comically high. "Some of it is what you're absorbing from outside sources, obviously, but a lot of it's coming from you."
...Weird. Jenn wasn't exactly sure what to do with that information. The fact that she was different didn't surprise her. Not like electrokinesis was exactly common. It was the knowledge that there was a biological reason for it; the fact that she was different from every other person in the room on a cellular level.
"How?" Jenn muttered, struggling to keep up with Harry's lecture and process this revelation at the same time. "Is it some random mutation? Like, I dunno, not having wisdom teeth?"
"Your metabolism is only one piece of the puzzle. This isn't a single-nucleotide mutation, or even single-gene," Dev whispered back. "The amount of mutations it would take in a single generation to achieve randomly what your cells can do...it isn't even worth considering. On the other hand, I haven't ever heard of someone else with this, so I doubt this was something you inherited from your parents either."
"So what are you saying?" Jenn narrowed her brows. Her heartbeat was beginning to pick up.
Dev opened his notebook up to a dog-eared section near the back and beaconed Jenn to take a look. It was filled with Dev's familiar, sketchy handwriting. There were asterisks in every margin and entire sections were crossed out. Jenn couldn't make heads or tails of it, but Dev had clearly been hard at work on this.
"The way I see it, there are two possibilities," Dev told her. "Your, erm, extra abilities-" he shot a nervous glance at the classmates surrounding them, but everyone else was fully invested in Harry's lecture. "Are either the result of in vitro zygotic gene editing or viral gene therapy. Those are the only hypotheses I could come up with that could explain why every cell in your body displays these mutations."
"But...?" Jenn prompted. She could hear the implication clear in Dev's voice.
His hesitation only supported her guess. "But both of those methods are still highly experimental. There has yet to be a single case study that's proven successful, much less on the scale you're displaying."
"Hold on; case studies?" Jenn struggled to keep her voice as it threatened to break on her. "This kind of thing doesn't happen naturally?"
"Oh, Jenn," Dev sighed, as if he were just realizing the implications himself. All he could do was offer her an awkward pat on the wrist. "This is too specific to be anything other than...deliberate."
The ground fell out from under Jenn's feet. It must've - how else could she explain the sudden sensation of her stomach dropping through the floor? Jenn braced a hand on the table to fight off the oncoming wave of vertigo.
"And you're sure it couldn't have been an accident? Exposure to radiation or some kind of chemical?" Jenn knew she sounded desperate. After all, Dev had already answered her question. Too specific to be anything other than deliberate. He offered her an apologetic grimace.
A million new questions whirred through her mind. When did this happen? It had to be from the period of time locked away in the darkest corners of her memory. This didn't seem like something she'd otherwise forget.
Then there was the question of who was responsible. Chances were there was someone out there with access to knowledge that could revolutionize science and medicine, yet they were hiding it away.
But one question stood out above all the others; why? What purpose did this serve? Why did someone think to give another person power over lightning? Why her?
"What the hell?" Jenn cried.
A long moment passed before Jenn realized she'd said the last bit out loud. Then, in another mortifying moment, that she'd said it loud enough to grab the attention of everyone else in the class. Harry locked eyes with her and Jenn found herself wishing the floor really had swallowed her.
When Harry didn't continue the lecture, only continued staring as he waited for an explanation, Jenn was left floundering. "My, erm, laptop froze," she stammered. Then, quieter, "Sorry for the disruption."
Harry returned to the board and class went on as usual, but Jenn found she couldn't take a single note. She already missed the first fifteen minutes of the lecture, but there was no way she was catching up now. Not with so many other questions occupying her mind.
When did she become what she was now?
Who had the ability to manipulate the human genome to this extent?
Why was she given these powers?