I went to talk to Greg, and thanked him.
“No need,” he said. “You're giving my place a lot of publicity. If you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. And I wasn’t lying to the interviewer: you are certainly extremely talented, and I will do everything that I can to see you trained and supplied. Speaking of, you should probably upgrade.” He brought out a shiny new paintball gun from under the counter, and placed it in front of me. “This is the beginning of a long friendship, my friend.” He smiled.
Riley
The boy who came and interrupted the journal entry is named Lucas. He told me, as soon as I had opened the door, that he knew what was going on with me. I almost shut the door in his face. I know that I had wanted to figure it out, but I didn’t exactly want someone else to talk to me about it. Certainly not a boy. But then, he told me something that stunned me. He had an ability as well.
He went on to tell me that his ability was being smart. That was when I shut the door in his face. But he kept on ringing the doorbell, so I let him in and sat him down. I let him talk, and he explained that my power was the ability to create magnetic fields at will. Basically, I can push and pull metal things. Then, he explained how he got his ability. It had a few similarities to what happened to me, but there were two glaring facts that started us in the face.
First, the time of both of our “accidents”. We weren’t able to tell exactly when it was, but still manage to narrow it down to between 7:40 and 7:45. But the thing that gave us goosebumps was the fact that we had not only been born on the same day, but
1: We had been born at the same hospital
and 2: Both of our mothers had died supposedly in birth
Lucas had brought a laptop, and he accessed the hospital records and found a list of the people born on the same day as us, in that hospital. Besides us, there were four other people whose mothers died in birth. All six of our births were logged in at 7:43. Considering that the chance for a woman to die in birth is less than 0.00085%, (Lucas did the math, not me) it would seem to be extremely unlikely for all this to be a coincidence. He pulled up the list of name of the other four people. Hunter Lane, Victoria Key, Maxwell Iwao, and Carol Cade.
With just a quick search through the internet, we found out that Hunter Lane is a rising paintball prodigy, and that Carol Cade had just recently talked a man down from suicide. This is getting interesting.
Hunter
Greg got me into a team. They had been looking for a replacement for their eldest, who was leaving because he had gotten into a good college, and wanted to put his time and energy into studying law there. The team had been discontinued for a while, after not being able to find a ringer. After they found me, they decided on a new name: Team Revolution.
I had just reached the door of my home, back from our very exciting first match when I noticed that the door was open. Deja Vu much? But grinning, I realized something. This time, I didn’t have to go inside to execute my reconnaissance. I closed my eyes and focused. Four heartbeats. Two were farther than the others. I recognized Beatrice and Robert’s voice, but couldn’t identify the other two. As far as I could tell, the other two weren't whispering, and given their conversation, they didn't seem to be there with malicious intent. Something smelled good, too. I couldn't identify it, but it definitely wasn't food.
Satisfied, I pushed the door open further and walked straight into the kitchen.
“Hey! Two of your friends are waiting for you in the living room, Hunter.” My dad said.
Beatrice leaned in close and whispered, “I haven't seen them before, but the girl is cute.” She winked.
What? I walked into the living room. That was when I met Lucas. I'd seen Riley around my high school before. She was a popular girl who never paid any attention to me. It seemed that Lucas was trying to explain something to her, and she was pretending to listen. She had her smartphone out and was texting her friends, while nodding periodically at Lucas’s statements.
I cleared my throat. “Hey.”
Riley looked up and smiled. “Hi, you’re Hunter Lane, right?”
Let me get this straight. Beatrice was wrong, okay? Riley wasn't cute at all, because she was hot. I looked her over in a few milliseconds. She had a slight tan, and had an athletic build. She had long, silky brown hair, with blonde highlights. Her smile made my heart melt, and her blue eyes were beautiful. I don’t know anything about makeup, but I’m confident that she had put it on perfectly. She didn’t have much perfume on, but she smelled like heaven.
“Uh, yes, who wants to know?” I stammered.
Lucas stood up and started to introduce Riley and himself. I cut him off, saying that I knew Riley. Lucas was short, and also had a slight tan. However, I didn’t see much muscle on him. It was possible that he was just outside a lot. A slight outline in his eye told me that he wore contacts. Someone who spent time in front of a computer and who was outside a lot? Interesting.
“I don’t mean to be that kind of guy,” I started, “but, um, what are you guys doing here? You told my parents that you were my friends, and I’ve never seen the two of you in my life.”
“Your adoptive parents.” Riley stated.
I raised my eyebrow. “That’s really none of your business.”
Riley shrugged. “It really kinda is.”
I looked at Lucas.
Lucas nodded. “Right. Let me explain. What I’m about to say is going to sound ridiculous. Please just let me finish talking before you say anything else.” He then explained that he had found me through the Brigham and Women’s hospital database, and that like me, both his and Riley’s mothers had died in labor. We had all been born on the same day, at the same time, at 7:43, along with three other babies. Those three other kids had also lost their mothers. Lucas told me about how, on our shared birthday, at around 7:43, exactly fifteen years after we were all born, he had gotten in incredibly painful headache. He had woken up later and discovered that he had photographic memory, and was able to absorb a large amount of information extremely fast. He had learned how to hack in a few minutes, and had made sense of Riley’s situation, who, by the way, happened to be the girl who the news reporters had been talking about when I was at Mass General.
“So basically, we want to know if you were experiencing anything weird too.” Lucas continued, “I found out that you had only started playing paintball nine days ago, on our birthdays, and you’re already going to competitive paintball matches with Team Revolution. And if I’ve learned anything over the past week, it’s that there’s no such thing as a coincidence.”
I swallowed, then slowly shook my head no. “No, nothing weird has been going on with me, and I don’t know who you two think you are, walking into my house like this. Leave now and I won’t call the police.”
“I thought you’d might say that. Let me show you one last thing before we leave, though.” Lucas turned around and reached into his bag. Click.
I haven’t watched too many cop shows, but I know the sound a gun makes when it’s being cocked. Before he could pull it out of his bag, I ran and ducked behind a couch. “Please, no!” I pleaded.
Riley started walking over. Frantically, I looked for a way to get out of the living room safely. Unfortunately, there would be no way out without giving Lucas a chance to shoot me. I had just opened my mouth to shout for Beatrice and Robert when Riley clamped her hand over my mouth.
“Hush,” She said. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
I think if Lucas had done that, I would’ve tried to bite his hand as hard as possible, but since it was Riley, I felt strangely safe. Her hand was over my lips, but that meant my lips were