Sparks and a Girl (Rewritten to publish)

13. Learning about each other

Jeisa was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. She was in the walls. She was in the neighbour's garage. She was at the local TV network. She was at the powerplant that was the source of this energy. She was right here in the basement. She was powerful. It had never been like this before. It had always been all absolutes. All information rushing at and through her. No control over it. No say in what came through. Not anymore. She could choose her path. And when she pulled herself back, she had a clear destination in mind.

Gretel Chambers.

Gretel knew about technopath ability. She knew Jeisa's father enough to repeat his favourite phrase. She knew too much.

It was time Jeisa got to know more about her too.

Jeisa focussed this newfound energy on the three-storey doll house. She rushed through the cabling powering the house, searching for it – a computer network. Like at Franz' basement, the very act of pulling in the data destroyed it, so she only had one chance at this. As the energy pooled inside Jeisa's chest, falling lower, reaching her nexus, she didn't stop it. She let it run through her and loved every second of it! But there was only so much she could take in before it shattered her being and burnt her out.

She could already feel the pain of being overwhelmed.

Still, she held on.

Held on and sampled as much of the information as she could.

Gretel Chambers. Human genetics research assistant. Main assistant to Reginald Myste, Jeisa's father.

Jeisa dug deeper. Reached further.

The Technopath. Subject of cytoplasmic transfer. Three sets of DNA. A human with three biological parents. Stranger still, the Technopath had more than just human DNA. As a result, the subject harboured a triple helix. To add to everything, this wasn't the only triple helix human to have been lab-borne...

Jeisa forcefully disconnected herself from the network!

She was hanging by a thread.

And it was fraying with each passing second.

She was brimming with energy. Energy that was eating its way out of her. Killing her. She smiled and looked up. She'd give it a way out.

Everyone in the basement was staring at her. Jeisa knew what had their eyes bulging off their sockets. Silver strands streaking through her brown hair, glowing and flowing like molten metal, and silver flecks in her eyes swirling through the brown of her irises, as well as silvery electric arcs pulsing between her fingers.

Jeisa pushed more of the energy through her fingertips and melted the chain links her fingers brushed against. The chains poured off her, but she caught the links on the way down and broke a length off the chain. Gretel and the men were no longer the only ones armed. The acrid smell of burnt metal and electric smoke swirled around them in the tiny basement, turning it into a claustrophobic nightmarish space.

"You're not meant to be alive!" Gretel whispered. She turned to Cass then back to Jeisa. "I mean, you, Cass, are meant to be dead, but you, Jeisa, you shouldn't even exist. You never existed. Reginald told us the experiment failed! He assured us! No! No, no, no! You will be the death of everything! You will destroy this universe!"

"That's a little dramatic for a few sparks." Jeisa said with a smirk as she poured energy down the chain link she held, turning it into a glowing white arc of power.

One of the men had had enough. He shot at Jeisa. She whipped the chain link and shattered the bullet before it touched her. Seeing this, the other men pulled out their weapons and fired as well, probably figuring that more points of entry would allow for at least a few bullets to get through. They were wrong, of course, and Jeisa enjoyed showing them just how wrong they were.