The Experiment

Chapter I

"What do you mean, you ran out? Can't you order some more?" Katrina growled, pounding her fist on the counter.

"Sorry kid, but our next shipment is due to arrive in a month." The potbellied man shrugged, lazily puffing on a cigarette. "Blame the manufacturers, not me."

Katrina narrowed her eyes, searching for a telltale sign that he was lying, but found none. If she wanted her hoverboard fixed, she would need to find another store that had the parts in stock.

She stomped out the store and resisted the urge to slam the door as she got onto her hoverboard. A small click told her that her hoverboard had magnetically connected to the soles of her shoes, preventing her from falling off as she rose into the air.

The breeze ruffled her wavy brunette hair, causing a few unruly strands of hair to fall out of her ponytail. Katrina impatiently pushed them out of her vision, behind her ear.

The board moved forwards inconsistently as it rose, as if moving of its own accord. Her board sped forwards uncontrollably without notice, causing her to wave her arms wildly in an attempt to keep her balance. 

Katrina left behind a trail of cursing people in her wake as she tried to stop herself from colliding into anything. From an outsider's perspective, it would look like Katrina was an amateur at hoverboarding, despite the fact that Katrina had gotten her hoverboard license two years ago, when she was thirteen, the legal hoverboarding age limit in New York City.

When Katrina seemed to have gotten her board under control, it jerked to a stop. Katrina sighed, assuming that her board has, once again, decided to leave her twelve meters above the ground with no way of getting down. However, as she looked around her, she realized that everything had went into a standstill.

People were hovering in midair, exclaiming in surprise, and hovercars and nearby hovertrains screeched to a halt. Pedestrians found their feet glued to the floor, unable to move. Katrina could see some people, about a few blocks away from them, curiously glancing at them, wondering why they had stopped.

Surprised, Katrina saw the police flying around in the sky, pressing civilians' fingers to a fingerprint scanner. Could this be one of the times where the police identify everyone in an area to locate a criminal? Katrina had heard of this happening before, but had never seen one, much less been in one.

"We have reason to suspect that there is an illegal Deviant in this area and will be scanning the fingerprints of everyone in order to identify the Deviant," one of them said, a miniature microphone amplifying his voice, confirming Katrina's suspicions. "If you have any information about the Deviant's whereabouts, we encourage you to notify one of the police."

Deviants, like Katrina, were people born with a superpower. They were incredibly rare and had a variety of powers, from creating illusions, which was the power Katrina had, to sprouting wings at will, even to the power of death itself.

Katrina tensed up as the police started getting closer to her. There wasn't any way to escape; she was too high up to jump and the police has documented all the fingerprints of Deviants.

One thing Katrina could do was change the result of the fingerprint scan though. All she had to do is make the original result of the scan invisible and create an illusion of a fake result in its place.

As the police moved closer and closer, sweat dripped down her back and her teeth clenched together.

"Hand, please," a police said to her. Katrina obediently held out her right hand. The police grabbed it and placed her pointer finger onto the scanner. With a beep, the scanner displayed her information on the screen. Katrina shut her eyes in apprehension.