Perennial

Chapter 2 -- Elle Webster

As things turn out, exposing yourself as super-human will turn your situation from something you can get out of with an easy bail and into something a little bit more like one of those finger traps. Easy to get into, not so easy to get out of. See, once the Department of Super-Human Affairs has their hands on a super-human, they don't let go.

Yeah. Even before we got to the police station, DSHA had already been called. They were already waiting to collect me by the time we arrived. Not even 24 hours later, here I am, locked up in the Midas Rehabilitation Center for Rogue Super-Humans. (Which is really just a fancy way of saying I went straight to a special kind of prison.)

Upon my arrival, (after my brief nap on the way there) they ran me through a registration (a painful process, given how much I hate cooperating but had to force myself to cooperate anyway) where they asked me for my name and date of birth and all sorts of other personal information. (Needless to say, I ended up lying. A lot.) Then there were the tests that they put me through after that. Some of them were just the ordinary kind of physicals that a normal person might have at an ordinary doctor's appointment. Others are... less ordinary. See, they already knew about the chlorokinesis, but they also wanted to check to see if I'm hiding any other powers besides that one.

They called in a telepath to do that. She introduced herself to me with a real name, but I immediately decided to forget it and call her Dr. Science instead. (Just a small rebellion to make sure everyone knows how unhappy I am about my current situation.)

Sadly, Dr. Science didn't react at all to this. She just got down to business as if she were a professional or something.

She crawled through my head and determined that yes, I'm hiding something. Thankfully, the secret she latched onto was my barely-there telepathy and not anything more... important. (She doesn't know about my family or the Overlords or the Paradis Underground or even my telekinesis. It's all safe. They're all safe, at least for now.)

For what little good my telepathy is to me (I'm ridiculously weak at it) at least it offers a good smokescreen. Telepaths can usually sense other telepaths, and it's a rare enough power that it will hopefully distract her (and everyone else) from seeing anything else that's there. (Maybe it doesn't matter if they know all my powers or not, but I'd rather them not know any more about me than is absolutely necessary.)

The biggest relief comes when the registration process is over and the testing ends. From here on out it's just "rehabilitation" and "therapy".

I try to think about things optimistically.

If there's one thing I appreciate about being in prison, it's that I now have a lot of time on my (irresponsible) hands. I like to use it to catch up on much needed sleep and to think over everything that's ever gone wrong in my life ever and how I could have possibly averted it. I think about a few other things too, but mostly about my family, and if DSHA has found out anything about them yet. Hopefully not.

Nobody's been able to catch my father for almost thirty years, and my mother's side of the family has never been in DSHA custody. I'm the first. (A dubious honor.) My older brother excels at flying under the radar, and my cousins... well, Tante Virginie would set the world on fire before she let someone take her sons. She's weirdly protective like that.

The only break I have from these kinds of thoughts comes when Midas' people are either a) performing additional tests, or b) when I try to sit by myself at lunch only to be consistently joined by a weird curly-haired girl less than a minute later. It's hard to decide which is more painful.

Actually, no. She isn't painful to be around, she's just... an abnormality. Unlike everyone else in the lunchroom, she doesn't seem to find my glares and stares off-putting. If anything, I'd almost think she finds them inviting.