Chapter 1: Novus
DYLAN
I was in a daze as I stood by the kitchen. Fire was dancing everywhere, and I could barely breathe properly. But strangely enough, I wasn’t affected by the fire. I didn’t burn to death. I was so confused yet one thing’s for sure… I started this fire.
It was a tiring afternoon from school when I found the dishes still piled up on the sink at home. I got mad at my older brother who had nothing to do all day but play video games. We started raising our voices and throwing things. It wasn’t even supposed to be a big deal but the strain from both studying and doing part time jobs all while he sat idly by at home just made me lose it. The next thing I knew, he was screaming in pain.
The smell of burnt flesh reached my nose and I was so numb to move. Moments later, my brother became still on my feet. I could barely recognize him. That’s where my body decided to move as I puked my meal from lunch. I thought I was going crazy. I wanted to wake up, assuming all of it was a dream. But dreams should not hurt that way. Dreams should not feel this realistic.
I didn’t realize that I passed out until I woke up in a room painted with white. There were ten other people in the room, all wearing white pajamas and red shirts. Realizing I was wearing the same thing, I started to get worried as to what was going on. Where am I? What is this place?
“I see you’re awake. Here, I saved this for you because you were sound asleep when they brought us food.” A girl approached me and handed me a paper bag of two sandwiches. I felt my stomach growl and immediately took the food. I felt like I hadn’t eaten for days. “I’m Anna, by the way.”
“Dylan… I uh… Thank you.” I mumbled, still nowhere near sober to fully understand the situation we were in.
“You’re welcome. I hope you’re not allergic to egg sandwiches. I did not get to choose; everyone was just so hungry they could eat a horse. I had to fight my way to get it for you, you know. Oh, I’m not trying to make you feel bad or anything. I just—”, I could barely hear what Anna was saying next. It almost seemed like I was suddenly confined in my own world, muffling all the outside noises.
As if a trigger, memories started to resurface. The smell of burnt flesh reached my nose again from memory and I could clearly see my brother’s body on the floor, unrecognizable. I bit my lip to keep myself from barfing. My vision blurred as tears came running down my cheeks. It wasn’t a dream. I killed my brother.
“Hey! Did I not get you enough sandwiches?” My heavy breathing overpowered Anna’s voice. I could not make out what she was saying nor what was happening around me. All I could think about was my brother.
“I got to go home. Let me out here. Let me out!” I started banging at the door but the people outside wearing full white lab gowns just ignored me. Well, I could not say the same for those who were with me inside the room. Before I knew it, a hand made its way to my collar and threw me against the floor with a thud. That woke me up from my panic attack.
“Shut up! We’ve already tried. No one is going out of here. Not you, not anyone! We’re all in the same boat so don’t act like you’re so special!” The guy who snapped me out of my wits said in annoyance. “Stop making things worse for all of us.”
No one dared to speak. Not even Anna who refused to meet my gaze. “I… I’m sorry.”
The guy just went back to his post and sat cross-legged on the floor. Anna helped me up from my sorry state, holding the sandwich that I dropped. “That’s Jasper. You do understand where he’s coming from, right?”
I did. It was indeed wrong of me to suddenly give in to my emotions. However, I could not shake my confusion about what happened. How did I come to manipulate fire? Are they all the same as me? Where are we, exactly?
SIERRA
The first thought that came to my mind when I woke up in a white painted room was that 'I must have gone mad'. I could replay everything that happened like a film in my head which gave me the right to be here.
A number of people were confined with me in the room, and we were all wearing the same clothes— gray shirt and white pajamas. I wondered then if it was really safe for these people to be in the same space as me. I'm dangerous.
Suddenly, the door opened for three people, bringing us food. Some tried to fight their way out, but these men had guns. Guns. I just hoped that they were merely tranquilizers because what sick mental institution would use a gun to settle down their patients? Then again, that trick kind of worked. It did settle everyone down.
“One paper bag per person. Got it?” one of them said.
“Why are we here? Please, I just want to know. Are my parents alright? Do they know that I’m here? When are we—,” a girl that was about my age mustered up the courage to ask. I could see her hands were shaking but she was trying to hold herself together.
“No questions. You will stay here until further notice,” and they left. Just like that. I didn’t even get the chance to ask them if I could change rooms. Technically I could use every object in this space as a weapon… especially the paper that they used to hold the sandwich. I just hope that I can keep my cool and not hurt any of these people.
A girl nudged me awake after what seemed like forever. I might have fallen asleep after forcing myself to eat earlier. “I’m sorry but they just called all of us out. They said that we’re about to know the truth as to why we’re here.”
But aren’t we here because we’re all crazy? Freaks, even? I wanted to ask that but stopped myself. Instead, I let her help me up and fell in line like everybody else. As we were being guided out of our room, a lot more groups of people were also being brought out of their own, wearing the same outfits but with different colored shirts. Gray, red, blue, yellow, green, purple… we were categorized by color.
We entered a huge dome, with chairs all lined up according to color. Once we were all seated, they dimmed the lights, save for the ones on stage. I traveled my eyes to find more people in full white lab gowns, cradling a gun, stationed all around us and treating us as if we were prisoners that would try to escape at every chance we might have.
“You must all be hungry for answers as to why we brought you here. But rest assured, we will answer everything here tonight.” The only person not wearing a mask stepped on stage with a toothy grin that rather creeped me out. “I am Professor Valar and I run this institution along with my fellow scientists who are rather shy to face all of you right now so here I am. We are Voluntas.”
Professor Valar stepped aside for the projector which showed a short introduction video about this institution. It said that Voluntas was established by scientists dedicated to studying the utmost capabilities of the human brain— and their previous studies led them to dig into psychic abilities next. Wait, psychic abilities? Is that what it was?
“Everyone can be a psychic. But not everyone can just harness their psychic abilities— much less overnight... until now. You are technically artificially made psychics, so in this institution, we will call you novus,” the professor started again.
“The mind is a very powerful thing, yeah? If your mind gets the best of you and you fail to control your abilities, you can bring a calamity beyond anyone’s imagination. We wouldn’t want that now, would we? That said, you all will stay here until we bring your psychic abilities into a dormant state once and for all,” he gave that toothy grin again.
The dome erupted with murmurings. Even I could not understand what the so-called scientist was talking about. Psychic ability? Are we suddenly in some sort of a sci-fi movie? But I knew in my heart that it was the only possible explanation for the incident that led me here.
For our final practicum, we were supposed to present a dish that would satisfy our head chef. Once we passed this obstacle, graduation should already be within reach. I was so confident with my dish that I spent years perfecting. This dish would definitely—
“Miss Sierra Cruz! Are you trying to kill me? Did you use sea water in this poor excuse of a dish?” Blood drained out of my face when our head chef coughed out my dish. I immediately tried tasting it for the first time and indeed… It was salty. I had an almost perfect portion control so I could not understand what I did wrong. I knew for a fact that it was not my fault. Irene, my classmate who hated my guts, must have done it while my back was on my casserole. It had to be her.
I confirmed my theory when I heard them outside of the bathroom stalls talking about tampering my dish. I had to muffle my sobs to hear them clearly. But then rage took over me and once I came to my senses, I was already standing in the middle of the kitchen, knives scattered on the floor flooded with blood.
“Do any of you remember coming across an independent channel on the night of November 1st with an illegal broadcast of a psychic performing some sort of hypnosis?” Professor Valar’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts. “That sort of hypnosis made it possible for you to harness your psychic abilities and after that… I presume you lost to your anger or sadness or to some sort of strong emotion and for the first time, your abilities manifested which resulted in… accidents.”
It wasn’t an accident. At that moment, I knew I wanted to get rid of them. It still made me a murderer. I subconsciously used my telekinetic ability to manipulate the knives that took the life of my classmates. I was still at fault. I didn’t deserve anyone’s forgiveness.
My guilt was eating me away that I had no idea what happened next.
GIL
I was still trying to process all the new information when a girl from the line of the grays started screaming. We were lined up next to them, giving us the front seat view while the girl was having a panic attack. I was about to rise from my seat to get to her, but one of the agents beat me to it. They injected some kind of blue liquid into her, and she immediately lost consciousness… which was followed by the sound of chairs falling to the floor. Chairs that we didn’t realize were floating in midair. I made a mental note of the new information I got from observing.
First of all, we were psychics— or rather, novus, as they prefer to call it. They must have watched that illegal broadcast, too, and figured out what would happen, so they gathered all of us from tracking all of the events where our psychic abilities accidentally manifested. But none of us knew where they brought us or how. That would be mystery number one.
For some reason, we were separated by colors which I figured must be related to our respective abilities: gray for telekinesis, red for pyrokinesis, purple for gyrokinesis, blue for cryokinesis, yellow for electrokinesis, and so on. Indeed, these abilities could be dangerous when abused. It could win a war in one fell swoop. Mystery number two would then be the motive of these people… the real motive of Voluntas for confining us here. I would not trust them until I proved that they meant no harm. After all, there was still the possibility that Voluntas themselves released that illegal broadcast to use us in ways we could not fathom.
