Genesis of the Guardians. Kevin Qi

minimum usually allows it to.” Lucas said pointedly.

      I stopped kissing Riley’s hand. I mean, Riley took her hand off my mouth. “Okay, fine. But how did you know that I would hear that?”

      Lucas grinned. “I was hoping that you would ask me that. I pulled up some videos of you playing paintball, and noticed that you would almost always know when someone was about to shoot you. The interesting thing was that there was one situation that you were in, where a police car went right by the field, and the siren was quite loud. You seemed to be in distress, and then you were shot by someone in the back. A minute later, you told everyone that you were fine and had just gotten a headache. This didn’t happen again, at least, on the field. I hacked into the paintball place’s surveillance camera footage and saw that you would almost routinely take breaks. As the days went on, these breaks had more and more space in between. This wouldn’t be much of a discovery, except that when the police car was going by, you hadn’t taken a break in over two hours. And as I’ve already said, there’s no such thing as a coincidence.”

      “Hm.” I pursed my lips. “Okay. But let me be clear, you don’t tell this to anyone. I don’t want to be poked and prodded at in some lab, and I don’t want to be disqualified from participating in the paintball league either.”

      “Yep, no problem.” Riley smiled at me.

      I blushed and looked down.

      Lucas raised his eyebrows, and asked, “Are you able to do anything other than hear so well?”

      “Yeah. I can see like an eagle, and smell Riley’s godlike perfume from a thousand feet away.”

      Riley scoffed. “Boys.”

      If it was possible, I blushed more.

      “Cool.” Lucas grinned.

      Before they left, we decided on three things. First, we would be talking to Carol Cade next. She had apparently talked a man down from committing suicide. A power of persuasion, maybe? Secondly, we needed a place to be able to test and hone our abilities. Last, we needed to find out what happened to us fifteen years ago.

      Carol

      What happened to me? I know I said that I was feeling good, but I think reality just set in. I c̶o̶n̶v̶i̶n̶c̶e̶d̶ made a guy not kill himself, and as much as I would love to believe that it was because of my charm and persuasion, the instant I put my hands on the rail, he backed off. And when he hit the ground, he looked confused, like even he didn’t understand why he crawled back down. Also, what was that tingling feeling that I had felt when I touched the bars? Was it connected to my ability at all, or was it a coincidence?

      I did a quick search on the internet for that tingly feeling. There was no one who had described being electrocuted, or stung by a jellyfish, or anything, like what I had felt. Everything I read said that being electrocuted felt really painful, and so did being stung by a jellyfish. But the thing I felt was tingly, and didn’t feel bad at all. That being said, it wasn’t a great feeling either.

      This seems like a dead-end. It’s still summer, so I have most of my days to myself. Time for experiments? Tomorrow. I’m tired.