gravity.

⑊ n i n e ⑊

The power of flight is a great privilege. Harper is privileged to control gravity, and I am privileged to know her. We are privileged to be safe, and privileged to have won over evil forces.

A few days after our little excursion, armed forces arrived tto spontaneously "inspect" Mr. Wright's fortress and they unanimously declared it "unfit" for further experiments.

Harper and I celebrated by getting ice cream and taking a nice long walk. It was nice to have some peace and feel some security, although we were still a bit nervous.

Harper had gotten so much better from training nearly constantly that by this time she was very highly skilled. Although she still had to work to perfect a lot of individual skills she had mastered a lot of things and could perform them in a pinch.

I finished my last week of school and was free for the summer, but knew I needed to get a summer job. Finn had begun to train me on the side, and surprised me by saying that AAA wanted to hire me as an agent.

I was going to start that Monday, and my excitement was palpable. Harper too was to be trained in hand to hand combat as well as just using her ability.

"You never know what could happen, so it's better to just be prepared for anything," Finn had said when he recorded it, and so she agreed.

Her father was happy at the speed at which she was learning, and that she was safe. AAA had monitors on me and her at all times, so we felt a lot more safe then before, which was a relief.

It was late Saturday night and I was talking to Finn on my porch. Harper had gone reluctantly home, but we had church tomorrow and had to be ready.

"I want to know more about your mind reading," I said as the thoughts struck me. Things has been in such a flurry lately I hadn't had time to ask him, but I was very curious.

"Well," he paused and turned to give me a serious stare. "The truth is - like I told Harper - I don't have my ability anymore."

"What?" I was stunned. Finn had shown much skill in whatever he did, and seemed to know what everyone was thinking and feeling all the time. I just couldn't process that he didn't actually have an ability.

Finn turned his head slightly in thought, his eyes taking on far away and misty depths. "I was taken by another agency similar to the one we just dismantled. They forced me to use and use and us my ability until I collapsed. I was in a fever for a while, then a coma. They didn't think I was going to survive, but when I did finally wake up I was completely normal.

"They threw me out, no longer needing me and when I returned home my home was in a broken situation that I wanted no part of. It was cowardly, really, to leave my sister to struggle alone, but by then I had been through so much I needed to heal. Joseph Schemanske took me in to AAA at that time after I told him my story one day our of desperation and helped me rebuild my life.