April
Chapter 3: What Happened to Avery


"I'd heard stories about this kid named Avery, from Charity Falls. They say they captured him three years ago, when a plan to sieze his best friend went wrong. The story goes that when his best friend disappeared over the cliff above Creeper's Forest, the agents took him in instead. At first they said they killed him, but it leaked out that he was being tortured underground for information about the Gifted who escaped.

Then, about three months later, guards from the facility spread out into the Dray Falls area, saying they had quit. They settled in towns and told the story of how, one night, Avery nearly killed them all.

The Government agents assigned to the facility had been torturing him regularly, everday since he came in. They were getting harsher and more violent by the time. On several occasions, when they'd beaten him to a pulp, the hed of security had to be called in, and remind them that he was a regular kid, not a gifted, and they couldn't use such force.

The guards had stopped feeding him and were ordered not to check on him for two weks. After that, the agents went to question him again. They met him unconscious on the floor. When they couldn't wake him, an agent pulled out a taser nd tasered him. That's when they say it all changed.

Avery woke up all right, but not the way they expected. He woke up Gifted. They say he's telekenetic and used his power to injure and kill officials that night. Guards out in the watch tower were electrocuted, the governmnt agents assigned to him died, they'd both shot themselves in the head. The building itself seemed to to be under his control. Some rooms froze their inhabitants, others steamed them. Fires sprang up spontaneously and weapons fired on their own accord. The facility was in a state of total chaos, and in the midst of this, Avery hovered in midair in his room, eyes glowing bright blue, so the guards said."

"How'd they stop him?" I asked in a whisper. The story had me spell bound.

"They didn't. He collapsed after about a half hour, unconscious. The few guards who survived and hadn't run off bound him with block restraints and moved him up to the research floor. Rumour hasit he's still there in his hydro chamber, unconscious." She paused, perched on a boulder. Somehow we had stopped moving, and were sititng undr a particularly thick grove of trees. April seemed to be thinking, and so was I.

Avery was Gifted.

A part of me couldn't help but feel overjoyed. But he'd been tortured.  What kind of person had that turned him into? Would he still be the quirky hardhead I've known for most of my life? What if he really was still unconscious? I didn't even consider that the story wasn't true. It had to be. April was sincere throughout. Not once had the vibrations she gave off faltered. April, who's large brown eyes were studying me from her tilted head.

"What?" I asked her uneasily.

She studied e still for a moment. Then,

"They said she controlled rocks."

"Who" I asked, wondering if she really had caught on that easily.

"His best friend," she replied. Her eyes were still watching me closely, and I felt as if she were studying more than my outsides.

"Really?"

"Mmm-hmm." Another pause. "You control rocks."

It was a statement. She had realized who I was.

"I do."

The way she stared at me was unnerving. How could a kid have eyes that penetrating? After a few minutes, I started to squirm. She relaxed, finally, and posed another question.

"Are you going to rescue him?"

I gazed into those unearthly brown eyes. "I am."