Chapter 26

A giant rose petal fluttered down and touched my foot. There, protecting me from an inevitable defeat, was a giant thorny rose blocking Talon's muscular arm.

Talon seemed disappointed. "So, you finally decided to turn on me..." Anger came from his eyes. The response was Thorne's. "You promised you wouldn't hurt him, so I guess our deal is off..."

Talon's power subsided, and Thorne's rose wilted away. Talon lost all of his menacing energy. "I guess you can have this back then. If our deal is off, then the payment must be returned." He held out a lock of red hair tied in a pink bow, neatly kept.

"Why would I need that? Keep it or whatever. You crows like to keep pretty things."

Talon looked hurt by Thorne's words. "Then you two should leave... I don't want to hurt you, Thorne."

"You've already done enough damage," she said with a painful, angry face that looked like she had been betrayed. She reached out to me. "Steven, let's get out of here."

I know Thorne was working with Talon, so this feels like a trap, but her genuinely hurt face told another story. I took her hand, and a vine sprang out from below us and took us out of the warehouse.

Talon spoke to an empty room. "This was necessary. I'm so sorry, my dear rose."

"Why are you helping me?" Rebecca seemed a little flustered still from everything, and I even caught a glimpse of a tear falling down her cheek. "Steven, I came here to protect you. I know you don't really know who I am, but I never wanted to hurt you."

I spoke honestly with her. "Rebecca, I know it's you. What happened? Who is Talon? Why is everything getting so crazy lately?"

She hesitated for a moment but relented. "Alright, yes, it's me. Talon... is an old friend of mine. He is like us. He has powers too. Well, obviously. Steven, do you know where our powers come from?"

I hadn't put much thought into it until now, but Rebecca, Fran, and I were all people with powers... What was the common factor here?

"Do you remember that day with the bus crash?"

I nodded. "Of course, how could I forget?"

"That green goop we fell in... It was some radioactive byproduct of some top-secret government testing for mutating specimens... Birds, flowers, other things too, actually... Talon is a crow who escaped from that place."

"What does that have to do with us?"

She shot me a look like: Don't interrupt me, I'm still explaining. "The byproduct is what mutated us to gain powers. It's the same thing that Talon went through in that building." She took another pause. I stopped myself from asking another question, knowing that she wasn't done yet.

"That day we all manifested powers, except you. For some reason, your powers laid dormant for all these years, but ours turned into what we needed them to be at the time. Based on what we all have as our powers, I can make some assumptions. Fran's strength came from a desire to save you. Your healing came from your intense injuries that day. I was given the ability to control flowers because they brought me joy when I was sad or lonely. Talon's powers are driven by a need for overwhelming destruction."

I stopped her. "I had a strange dream. I saw you crying on your roof. You were surrounded by flowers, and then Talon came to you as a crow." I told her the rest of what happened.

"I guess you have another ability to peer into private conversations from the past... Sigh I saved Talon a couple of nights before we had that bus crash. It was raining, and he was lying down in a puddle, too weak to move. I nursed him back to health. It seems after the bus crash incident, he gained the ability to speak, and he approached me. He offered to grant me a wish. One of his powers is strengthened by his ability to fulfill a deal."

I recalled Fran's excitement at being powerless, the voice in the alley before I found her getting taken away to the hospital. "Rebecca... Did Fran make a deal with Talon?"

She looked at me with worried eyes. "Yes, and he was able to fulfill the agreement. I don't know exactly how he did it. At the time, I didn't care how he did things. I just wanted results. I should never have trusted him." Her anger seemed to spread all around her. I grabbed her hand to console her, and a white light shot up her arm. She looked slightly confused. "What did you just do!?" Her anger was gone, and she seemed bewildered, but then she got upset again. "I didn't ask you to take away my feelings!"

"Wait, I didn't mean to, I promise. I still don't even understand my own powers yet. I didn't know I could do that."

She calmed down quickly. "Fine. Steven, it seems your healing ability is able to unwind negative effects. For instance, brainwashing, resentment, pain, injuries. But you can even do that for other people. Our powers are fueled by desire, so I know you just wanted to help." That was good; she was very understanding.

"But that being said, you need to get a handle on when you release your powers. You can't just take away people's feelings like that, and it will probably exhaust you extremely quickly to heal every little thing." I remembered my fight with Talon and how much slower my healing had gotten after taking those heavy hits.

I decided to change the subject. "There is something else I need to ask you. I was there last night when you were on the roof with Talon... Anyways, I heard something that I needed to confirm." She stared at me, her eyes going wide, and fear appeared on her face.

"Do you like me?"

Rebecca's face became the same color as her hair.