As Pam reached out to knock, the door was yanked open, revealing an excited-looking brunette woman wearing glasses and scrubs.

  “Pam, you’re here! And you brought the students, excellent! Please, come inside,” she said, stepping aside and waving us forward.

  Olivia and Pam didn’t hesitate to step past her, so I followed once the way was clear. The office wasn’t that big or fancy, but it had a strangely cozy feeling. It had the same vinyl floor and generic fixtures oasthe rest of the facility; the doctor had apparently spent a lot of time decorating. The walls were painted a light olive color, instead of the powder blue. She had a large, hardwood desk with a couple of plush chairs clustered around it, and several large wooden shelves filled with knick-knacks.

  “Olivia, it’s good to see you again, and you must be Tamera,” Dr. Michaels exclaimed, sticking out her hand. I have to admit, I was a little weirded out by her happy, excited attitude, so I was a little hesitant to reach out to take it.

  Despite my hesitance, the doctor smiled. “Shy?”

  “Just not used to people being so welcoming,” I replied.

  “Fair enough, I won’t push you. I hope you’ll feel a little more comfortable around me once we get to know each other better,” she said. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

  I slowly made my way to one of the chairs in front of her desk, sinking into the plush green fabric while she made her way around to the other side. Olivia took a seat by my side, while Pam wandered towards the back of the room and stood there with her hands clasped behind her back.

  “As you may know, my name is Dr. Erica Michaels, the head of the research, Rupture prevention, and therapy lab here on campus,” she said, pulling out a pen and thick notebook. “I’m sorry to pull you away from your orientation, but I was watching the situation upstairs, and I had a couple of questions for you.”

  “I figured someone would want to ask us questions, but I never expected it to be the head of research,” I replied. “Did we do something wrong?”

  “Oh no! Quite the opposite. You two performed admirably! That Rupture manifested so close to the lobby that there probably would have been several civilian injuries, maybe even deaths, if it weren’t for Olivia’s warning,” Dr. Michaels explained. “I admit I was a little skeptical about her powers when I first heard about them, but now that I’ve seen them at work, I can’t be more excited!”

  “Isn’t that a little disrespectful?” I asked, glancing at Olivia. “Saying you didn’t believe Olivia when you first met her?”

  “Oh, you misunderstand me,” Dr. Michaels exclaimed. “It’s not that I didn’t believe her, it’s just we didn’t have any way to test her powers. This lab is dedicated to testing students, understanding their powers, helping them learn to control them, and minimizing the number and effects of Ruptures. However, as exciting as Olivia’s powers are, we couldn’t find a way to trigger them without an actual Rupture.”

  “Okay, well, I understand why Olivia is here, but why me?” I asked.

  “Do you really not know? No idea at all?” Dr. Michaels smiled. “It’s because you managed to handle an entire invasion by yourself. It usually takes an entire class, or a squad of operatives, to keep a Rupture that well contained. According to your file, you weren’t even sure what your power was. Is that still true?”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  I felt my blood go cold. I was more certain that my imaginary friends were part of my power somehow, but I wasn’t exactly sure I was ready to share my secret with everyone. I almost broke down just telling my friend.

  The feeling of a warm hand enveloping my own snapped me out of my daze. Looking down, I found one of Olivia’s hands. When I looked over at her, she smiled encouragingly. I got the message, there was no point in putting this off, and she was there to support me.

  Glancing over at Dr. Michaels, I swallowed to clear the lump in my throat. “Sort of… I still don’t quite understand how it’s happening, but I know what’s happening.”

  “Please share!” Dr. Michaels declared, picking up her pen and preparing to take everything down.

  “Well, the thing is… I’ve been isolated by kids my own age for a long time, nearly ten years,” I said. “And in order to cope with the loneliness, I kind of… created some friends.”

  The doctor just nodded, not looking up from her notepad, so I continued.

  “For a long time, I just thought they were nothing more than something I imagined up to keep me company,” I explained. “They’ve never been able to interact with anything before, but at both the market and upstairs, they were able to hurt the invading… things.”

  “Uh-huh,” the Doctor mumbled, scribbling wildly. “And have you had the same imaginary friends for the full ten years?”

  “Uhhhh… no? I had a few over the years; they come, and they go, but Hairy has been with me since the beginning,” I replied as I stared blankly at the doctor. “I just told you my imaginary friends beat up interdimensional monsters. Don’t you find that weird?”

  “Weird, yes? Out of the realm of possibilities, no,” Doctor Michaels replied, closing her notebook. “I can see why you’d want to hide your ability. Having imaginary friends at your age might be a little embarrassing, but it’s far from the strangest power I’ve heard of.”

  “It’s not?” I asked.

  “Of course not. For every person with the ability to call lightning from the sky or throw fire from their hands, there are ten people with a relatively useless power, like being able to change their hair color at will or detect all the metal objects in their general area. Most people may associate Empowered people with these incredible superpowers, but the truth is most Empowered are simply regular people with a party trick,” the doctor explained.

  “Wait…” Olivia said, sitting up. “Then why don’t you try harder to protect everyone? The guidebook is very clear that most students won’t be protected during a Rupture. Aren’t you sentencing them to death?”

  “Do you think it was our first choice?” the doctor growled. “When Empowered people first appeared, the BEI tried to protect everyone, but for every person we saved, we lost several dozen men. Firearms work on some of the weakest invaders, but they fall off against the stronger entities. The truth is, we can’t protect everyone; we’ve tried. Even when we saved people, more often than not, those same people would later cause Rupture to manifest. It was a never-ending problem!”

  When she stopped ranting, the room was quiet for a moment. I was taken aback not only by how quickly the doctor’s mood changed, but also by how passionately she ranted.

  Dr Michaels took a couple of deep breaths to calm down, then continued. “Do I think the process is fair? No. Ninety-nine percent of the Empowered people on campus never wanted powers, and don’t want to be here. They don’t deserve what happened to them,” Dr Erica explained. “That being said, we can’t let them walk around the streets either. Like it or not, every single Empowered person can cause a catastrophe, resulting in the deaths of dozens, or even hundreds of other people. Do they want to? No. That won’t prevent it from happening. Like it or not, the system we have, putting everyone through training and then moving them to an Enclave, is the safest option for everyone. Having strong Empowered in the same area makes it more likely that someone can prevent the entities from causing excess damage, or killing too many people, while also keeping the non-empowered safe.”

  “You sound frustrated,” Olivia said.

  “How could I not be? The system may work, but that doesn’t mean it’s fair,” Erica replied quietly. “My twin sister was only sixteen when she was taken away. She never even made it through school.”

  There was another moment of silence.

  “That’s why I worked so hard to get to where I am, to try and find a way to either suppress Rupture and prevent them from forming, or reverse the Empowering process, so people don’t have to go through the same terror that my sister did,” Erica explained.

  “It’s a noble goal,” I said.

  “It’s a fool’s goal,” the doctor replied, with a self-deprecating smile, “but I won’t give up. Will you help me?”

  I smiled in return, “Yes.”

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