Chapter Five: Potential and Skipping town

Chapter Five of The Galmbers

On the first day of Meta skills testing, subjects are required to wear clothes that wouldn’t in any way interfere with powers, whatever they be, and thus, Ace found himself wearing a pair of black and white trousers and a T-shirt, nothing more, as did everyone else, Ace had convinced Melvin Hale to let him stand and walk around, it was hard, and it hurt, but he felt that being a telepath in a wheelchair was warrant for a lawsuit from Marvel, already Penny and Ben had made Professor-X comments. Ace sat in a chair in the centre of a sterile white room with padded walls, Hal sat opposite him holding a deck of playing cards “alright Ace, these cards are perfect for telepaths, they’re easy to move with telekinesis and you can easily identify specific cards, for that reason, our first test today will be mind reading, I’ll pick a card or number of cards and hold them in my head, with increasing lack of thought to make it harder for you to read me”. Hale explained the test and Ace nodded as Hale shuffled the deck and picked out a card “what card is this?” Hale looked at the card and Ace closed his eyes, “king… of, diamonds?” he asked Hale nodded “good, alright and the next two cards” Hale picked out two cards after placing the king at the back, “ace of fours, I mean hearts! Ace of hearts and four of… clubs” he said. “Brilliant, and the next card, this time I won’t focus on it at all” Hale picked out a card and took a short glance at it before looking away, Ace concentrated on Hale, he closed his eyes and imagined seeing through his eyes, he saw the wall, “Damnit, I can see what you see, but not what you’ve seen” he said. Hale hummed “yes, reading a memory is allot harder, try focussing on my mind, not what I’m thinking of but imagine my mind was a vast library, pick out the book that had the card I just looked at in” he said. Ace nodded and closed his eyes again, he extended his consciousness and found Hale's, whom shivered “are you In my mind now?” he asked, Ace was too busy concentrating, so he just hummed a yes, he envisioned entering Hale’s mind as a large open library, however he found himself in a forest of huge filing cabinets. “Do you by any chance have a lot of filing cabinets?” Ace asked, Hale rubbed the back of his neck “eh, yeah, why do you ask?” “It’s like a forest in here, you’d think a filing cabinet would be arranged alphabetically but it’s all chronological in… oh!” Ace retracted his mind when he found Hale's personal memories “I’m sorry!” Ace gripped his head as it throbbed.

“No! you should retract from another’s mind too fast, it could cause severe brain damage” Hale said, Ace nodded “I saw one of your memories, it was you driving a car, you were… happy, it was raining too” he said, Hale sat back “astonishing, that memory was over ten years ago now, amazing work Ace, why did you ask about filing cabinets though?” he asked. Ace sighed as he rolled his shoulders “instead of a library, I found myself in a field of tall filing cabinets, with all the memories in chronological order” he explained, “incredible, you must perceive my mind by my favourite way of organisation, I’m going to bring in an assistant if that’s alright with you, I want you to enter their mind too and tell me what you see” Hale got up “this is amazing! I’ve never seen a telepath develop this quickly” Hale left the room and returned after a minute with one of the guards “alright James, this is Ace, Ace, James has agreed to let you enter his mind, but first I’m going to have him try and block you out, to see how well you can get past his defences”. “Alright” Ace nodded, James sat in the seat opposite Ace and he closed his eyes “ok, Ace, if you get in, I want you to find a specific memory, James, is there anything in particular you want us to see?” Hale asked, James nodded “December 25^th 1996” he said, Hale nodded “alright, did you get that Ace?” he asked, Ace nodded and closed his eyes too, he did the same with as with Hale, only this time, he encountered a wall of pure thought, it was an image of a guitar, Ace’s mind snapped inwards and he fell off the chair “ah, s**t! The hell was that?” Ace struggled up; Hale helped him back into the chair. “Ah, that’s MI5 standard mental defensive training, you can shield yourself from mental attacks by picturing an image or thought in your mind and letting it be the only thing, like saying a word over and over again until it’s like a crowd screaming in your mind, James has standard training which can resist most mental probing, however, I think if you tried hard enough you could break it, but once you do, you have to be careful not to hurt him” Hale patted Ace’s shoulder “now try again”. Ace hummed as he prepared a mental wave, he pictured a brick wall and sent the imagine with his mental probing, James jerked and the barrier came down easily, Ace smiled and took care to lessen the force, he found himself in a hotel, with lots and lots of doors “I’m In a fancy hotel, there are doors, labelled with dates” Hale licked his lips “incredible, your mind must be accessing its full potential to help visualise and make sense of the information in James’s mind, can you find December 25^th 1996?” he asked.

“Give me a moment, it looks like that room might be on the next floor, everything down here is from 2009 onwards” Hale chuckled “fascinating” he mumbled, Ace was walking up a flight of stairs when the image of the guitar appeared again “ah! A…” Ace tried to retract his mind but couldn’t “I’m, ah!!” he clutched his head “James? What’s going on?” Hale shook the guard but he didn’t respond, Ace screamed as his mind was trapped in James’ like a vice, squeezing tighter and tighter, Ace focussed and sent a wave of white noise through the link, the image disappeared and he envisioned water flooding through the hotel, James jerked and fell off the chair as Ace’s eyes snapped open “he’s a traitor!” he roared. Hale looked to Ace as he stood up “I’m in his memories, he’s working for Doctor Toxin! No, wait… Doctor Toxin and another villain, one with a red cape and a black mask with patterns on it!” Ace winced as his link with James faltered and he slowly came back, leaving James unconscious on the floor, Hale escorted Ace to the infirmary with james and Jensen came within minutes “what happened?” he asked sternly. Ace was sat on a bed massaging his temples “we were running an experiment to see how far back Ace could pull memories and Agent Parry began using his mental resistance training against him, when Ace retaliated, he discovered that he had been working for Doctor Toxin and another villain” Hale explained, Jensen looked to Ace who nodded “he had a red cape and a black mask with patterns, I couldn’t get much else before I pulled myself out” he said, Jensen sighed. “I believe that may be the American villain Hazard Word, he’s a magician, we’ve had confirmed sightings of him in Carlisle in the past five days” Jensen ordered two guards to take James Parry to interrogation “you’ve done well, I didn’t expect you to be able to retrieve memories at all this early on, we’ve just finished running tests with the others” Jensen said taking a seat opposite Hale’s desk Hale was busy on his computer logging a report on the test and the incident “do you know if they have powers yet?” Ace asked walking over, the nurse treating him protested but he ignored her as he took a seat next to him.

“We know you’re sister has enhanced strength and remarkable reflexes, it appears she has developed a perfect aim, we had her throwing darts at one point and she got bull’s-eye every time even on moving targets, we also determined that your friend Mr Maywell has teleportation powers, potentially, our sensory equipment has detected Orion radiation, which is normally found in heroes and villains who can teleport, like The Void and Imposter” Jensen said Ace nodded “what about Isabelle?” he asked Jensen sighed “as far as we know she hasn’t been granted any new abilities, the only effects of Toxin’s experiment we know of is the change of her skin and eyes” he replied “ah, I see” Ace twiddled his thumbs. Jensen turned his chair to him “have you given any thought to the combat training?” he asked, Ace sighed “yes, but I’m not sure about it, everyone else seems so keep to take up arms against Toxin, I’m still wondering, would we be able to stay together? You know, work as a team, or will we be sent on separate missions?” he asked. Jensen nodded “I’ve been in touch with the prime minister, he’s been made aware of the situation, and we’re putting together a project between MI5 and 6 and the British military, we would have you working as a group, you can decide on a name and theme for your group In your free time, we’d be able to make any equipment you want and if your have a costume design in mind we can take you all to the national hero’s  outfitting building in central London, or you could simply be a team of Secret service agents or individual agents, it’s entirely your choice” he explained. Ace nodded “I’ll talk with the others about that, my real concern is how permanent it would be, what if I wanted to be a hero on my own after we take down Doctor Toxin, either together or individually” he rubbed his arm, Jensen stroked his chin “I don’t know, it depends on the circumstances, we can only tell you that should you agree to the project, it will mean committing yourself to a life of justice” he replied, Ace stood up shakily “I’m going to think about it, I’ll talk with the others and see what they think” he said before his aid came over and helped him walk back to the lounge.

Jensen hummed with concern as Hale finished his reports “remarkable, each of them is showing incredible power, they seem to be able to control their abilities far better than anyone else we’ve seen before” he said, Jensen turned back around and took the report sheet from him “I’m going to give Ace a set of treated Playing cards, I’ll have him on basic levitation exercises to do in his spare time” Hale added, Jensen nodded “alright, but what are we going to do about miss Doe?” he asked. Hale sighed “apart from an incredible knowledge of a number of medical, engineering and IT fields, we can’t find any meta skills emerging, however, her cranial scans have shown increased activity, she may have simply gained a few additional I.Q points” he sighed “Jensen, I’ll give it to you straight, we can train her in combat, but as a super hero, she wouldn’t do very well” Hale said, Jensen stood up “Batman doesn’t have super powers and he’s one of the greatest heroes of all time, even if he is fictional” he said. Back at the lounge, everyone was sat around playing poker with the cards Ace had been given, he had just and so managed to make one of the cards hover an inch before the headache it was causing forced him to give up “I fold” Ben said as he flipped a poker chip, they had been given some fake chips to use in their game “royal flush!” Isabelle threw her cards on the table, now it was between Penny and Ace “brother is bluffing it is obvious! Face is redder than beat up root!” Penny laughed, Ace chuckled “its beetroot, and I’ll think you’ll find, straight aces is nothing to bluff about” he grinned, Penny roared comically and threw her cards down “little paper boxes betray me!” she pointed accusingly at the playing cards as Isabelle folded her arms and Ace claimed the pot. “I call bull! How could you get straight aces? Besides, I don’t think Ace should be allowed to play full stop” Ben said, Ace laughed “because I’m a telepath?” he asked, Ben nodded “you could be looking into our minds right now and we’d never even know” he said, Ace rolled his eyes “I can’t enter your mind without you knowing, trust me, you’d know if I was in there…” he thought for a moment “I wonder what your mindscape is like?” he said as he looked at them all, “why not look brother?” she said, Ace shrugged “I’m too tired, maybe tomorrow”.

Ace sighed “I spoke with Jensen today, he’s given us a choice, we can work together as a team of heroes or individual heroes or just secret service agents or not at all” he explained, Ben perked up “you mean, we could be a super hero team? Like the Young Justice Organisation?” he asked, Ace nodded “if we all chose it” he said, “oh cool!” Isabelle grinned “we could all have matching themed outfits” she said, Ben nodded “we-” “could take a fecking minute to talk about whether or not everyone actually wants to be a super hero?” Ace cut him off. Silence filled the minute that followed before Ace spoke again “look, I’m so week right now, I can barely move around on my own, how the hell am I supposed to fight crime?” he asked, “but… let’s say I do get stronger…” he smiled “what would we be called?” he asked, Ben smiled “well, I quiet like the theme of gambling, I could be eh…” he scratched his head, Penny gasped “cowboy man can be Texas Hold them! Spotted woman can be Domino, I can be Russian Roulette and brother can be… eh… Poker!” she said. Ben laughed “poker?” he wheezed “I do like Texas Hold ‘Em though, what about you Izzy?” Ben asked, Isabelle hummed “Domino would be rather fitting” she said sweeping her hair out of her eyes, “I like it! I am Russian and I love spinning game with gun!” Penny grinned “you could use guns! That would be so cool!” Ben said “I don’t see how my name fits my powers though, and I don’t think Ace is very happy with his name” he said. Ace was sat listening “no, no! go on, I’m just listening for now” he said, “well, Ben you could have something related to coin tossing or poker chips? You love heads or tails to make up your mind” Isabelle said with a rather sour face “oh come on! You’re still gong throwin’ a hissy fit about that?” Ben sighed “but yeah, I could be something like Gambler” he grinned “no, we’re all going to be called the Gamblers” Isabelle said, Penny nodded “won’t name send bad message to little, little girls and boys?” she asked Ben waved dismissively “nah, don’t worry about it” he said, “Hmm, I wanna use swords, duel wield you know? I’m thinking something like Coin Cutter” he said.

“No, it’s too much like Captain Cutter” Isabelle said “alright then, Coin Toss or…Oh! Damascus Dollar and I could have a Damascus steel sword!” Ben sat forward, Ace smiled “or you could stick with Texas Hold ‘Em, it sounds better, plus you’re a Texan and you could just use Poker chips as your calling card or something” he said, Ben nodded “or that” he chuckled. “What about brother?” Penny asked, Ace hummed “I like the idea of all of this, but I think for now I’ll hold off on a name until combat training and when we get to pick our outfits” he said, “but… I think I like the sound of being a hero, if I manage to regain my strength” he smiled, this brought smiles to everyone’s faces, they hadn’t been sure if he’d agree to being heroes with them or not. Meanwhile, at Heathrow airport, a private jet was sitting on the runway by the building, waiting for someone to arrive, the Pilot stood at the bottom of the stairs staring at his watch when a voice behind him said “am I late?”, the pilot turned around to see a man dressed in an all-white business suit and a large hat covered his face “you John Pike?” the pilot asked, the man nodded “yeah, come on, let’s take off as soon as possible” the man said and began to climb the steps after the pilot, once on board the stairs were pulled away and the door closed. “just to clear up, you want me to land on the edge of the strip?” the pilot asked after reading the flight rout “yes, as far away from the main building as you can, you’re alright with unregistered flight plans aren’t you?” the man asked back, the pilot hummed through the speakers “if there’s a little extra in it, I can even come up with an excuse for landing an empty jet” he replied, the man grinned “good, money is of no concern” he took off his hat and sighed, “I have a lovely stable job in medicine” Doctor Toxin smoothed back his hair and relaxed as he jet turned on the air strip and took off “America, here I come” he chuckled.