“Is that her?” asks the younger of the two.
“That’s her,” Agent Banks answers.
“We’ve got a whole team out here. Why don’t we just take her?”
“We can’t risk it. She might see us coming.”
“I just don’t feel right using this big old tranquilizer gun on a little girl, let alone kidnapping her in broad daylight, no less.”
“If it makes you feel any better, Agent Chase, I assure you that this is no ordinary little girl. Just like for our other subjects, the tranquilizers are absolutely necessary, both for our safety and theirs. Besides, our research team is entirely confident that nothing will be done to intentionally harm her.”
“I should hope not. That’s something that I’d hate to have on my soul come judgment day.” Chase’s voice is not as convinced.
“Our government just simply wants to study her, and others like her. No harm done.” Banks’ voice never quivered, as if he had prepared for years to explain his actions.
“But still--” Agent Chase is interrupted as Agent Banks signals for quiet.
“Hold on, Chase. Steady the gun. She’s within range.”
“She’s in my sight, sir.”
“Fire at will, Rookie.”
Chase wraps his finger around the trigger and squeezes it slowly. THWIP!
“I got her,” Chase said as he puts his radio to his mouth.
“Good,” was all Banks could respond, “Let’s take her in.”
“All units move in,” Chase orders into the radio, “and make it quick.”
Agent Chase and Agent Banks have just acquired a new captive to be poked, prodded, and studied thoroughly. Their new specimen is Jenny Dixon, a young girl in pigtails who was just playing in the park. Her only crime is the fact that she is not just another typical 8-year-old girl. They will take her away to some darkened room to extract what they can from this special youth. But the precocious child has always had a knack for imagining her way out of sticky situations.
Jenny is taken to a darkened room. The only source of light is a flickering fluorescent light that emanates a sickly green halo. There are other cells around the one they had put her in; all empty. Each small enough to be uncomfortable and large enough to not be categorized as entirely cruel. She does not remember much about the trip to this strange place. But she managed to recollect a portion of something that could not have been part of a dream.
“There was a shot,” she thinks to herself, “I was injected with something I remember that for sure. I must’ve woken up when I wasn’t supposed to. Yes! I remember now! They injected something into my neck so I’d go back to sleep.”
Jenny reaches around to the back of her neck. It feels sore.
“Then, I was right. It was no dream. I might as well go to sleep until I can dream up a way out of here.”
“I hear breathing. Who else is here? Where am I?” The mysterious voice beckons, straining to hear for an answer.
“My name’s Jenny. I can’t tell you where we are because I don’t know either. But now that you’re here we can get out. What’s your name?”
“I don’t know. I’m looking at a reflection of myself in this tiny mirror on the wall and I can barely remember if this is really what I look like, let alone my name.”
“Maybe they used an extra dose of medicine on you so you wouldn’t ask questions,” Jenny suggested.
“For a little girl, all of this seems to be oddly familiar ground to you.”
“The bad men have been after me for a while, Mister. My mom and dad have managed to keep me away from them my whole life, but I guess I wandered a little too far from the playground the other day.”
“Oh, you poor thing. Don’t worry; I’ll make sure you get out of here. But what would they want with a little girl like you? What’s so special about me for that matter?” Jenny’s cellmate tries to stick his head through the bars in a vain attempt to see what this young damsel in distress looks like.
“We can do things… special things.”
“Like what?” Half of his attention is still on the mirror trying to fully remember the visage facing back at him.
“Magic. Some of us heal, some of us transform, and some of us can make the impossible seem possible. Everybody can do something different.”
“You’re parents… They can do things too?”
“No. But they knew I needed to be protected.”
“This isn’t your first time here, is it?”
“This is the first time the bad men have actually caught me.”
“I’ll make sure they don’t hurt you. But I can’t do anything special. At least, I don’t think I can.”
“Maybe you don’t remember.”
“That’s true! They drugged me so bad that I can’t remember my name, or my face for that matter! Maybe I can’t even remember what it is I did that got them so interested in me. I wonder what it is I could do. Maybe the bad men didn’t want me to remember. Maybe it’s something that can get us out of here.”
“Oh please, mister! Try and remember. I miss my mom and dad so much.”
“I’m trying, Jenny, I’m trying. Don’t fret; I’ll see to it that you see your parents again, and soon… I promise.”
“I can help. I know what you do.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s what I do. You can make things, anything you want, appear out of nowhere.”
“You can sense other people’s magic, Jenny? I can see why they want you. But I don’t want to use my powers just yet.”
“Why not?”
“I might set off an alarm or something.”
“Just wish for the key and it will appear in your pocket.”
“Patience, Jenny. We don’t want to act too hastily. I can barely remember how to do this myself and I don’t want to put either of us in any more danger than we already are. But we do have to get out of here.”
“Well, why don’t you test yourself, get some practice?”
“You’re a smart a little girl, Jenny. I’ll see if I can get that pen from the table.” Jenny’s cellmate closes his eyes and breathes slowly. Jenny looks impatiently at him and keeps an eye out for an agent. The stranger opens his eyes and reaches into his pocket. The pen is in his hand and he can’t help but smile. He takes the mirror from his cell of the wall to see Jenny, but seeing her anxious eyes welling up with tears brings him back to the matter at hand.
“It’s okay, Jenny,” he assures her, “I think I’m getting the hang of it again.”
“Please, hurry!” she begs him from the reflection of the mirror. He closes his eyes and begins to picture the image of the key in his hand. His slow breathing calms Jenny down, but his heartbeat is so fast it sounds like a hummingbird in his chest. As he opens his eyes he reaches into his pocket.
“Jenny! I did it! I got the key.” He can hear Jenny weeping from the corner of her cell. He pushes his arms through the bars in front of him and reaches around, “Jenny, here! Take the key!”
Her crying abruptly stops and she quickly snaps the key card from his outreached fingertips. She swipes it across the lock and the bars slide open. Jenny steps out and walks towards her cellmate’s cage. Her face is dry with no trace of tears as she hands the key to him. She smiles up innocently at her fellow captive.
“There you go, Jenny,” he says smiling at her, “I’m glad to see you’re not crying anymore. That’s very grown up of you. Now go wait over by the door until I get out.”
Jenny runs toward the door as he swipes the key on his lock only to have it respond with a dull beep. It’s still locked. He tries again and again but the mechanism refuses to cooperate.
“Hold on, Jenny! I’ll be right out. I’ve got to get a different key for me.”
He closes his eyes and reaches into his pocket one more time and finds another key. As he swipes the key, the stranger smiles to himself. The gate slides open and he walks through slowly. Jenny is nowhere to be seen.
“Jenny? Where are you?” he whispers. Just then, he hears footsteps traipsing down the linoleum hallway on the other side of the door. He looks around for a weapon, but nothing other than the pen he materialized earlier. It’s all he has, so he grips it tightly preparing to defend himself. The perspiration on his brow beads as every step thunderously draws near. A sudden bout of vertigo strikes him.
“It must be the drugs again,” he thought to himself. The steps stop for just a brief moment, that to Jenny’s cellmate, seemed to last a bit longer. They start up again only this time they rush. He experiences the dizziness again, and the now running footsteps seem to be coming from directly behind him. He quickly turns his confused face towards the migrating sound and sees the front door.
“How can that be?” he thinks to himself, “I was just looking at the door. How can it be behind me? If it’s behind me now, what was I looking at?” He turns his head again and nearly runs into a concrete wall.
“I’ve got to get out of here!” He turns around again towards the “second” front door just in time to hear the gate lock. He’s back in the cell. Jenny comes around the corner, smiling at him, and waves goodbye as she walks away.
“Jenny! I think I’ve lost it. You’ve got to get out of here. Jenny? Jenny? Are you there?” But Jenny was already gone. Agent Banks runs through the door just as the most severe dizzy spell knocks the cellmate off his feet. He clutches at his pen, his only hope for survival.
“Get away from me!” he yells out.
“You’re going to be okay. Your faculties have been compromised. We understand.”
“You’re telling me. You’re the one who drugged me and put me in this freak asylum. I won’t let you hurt Jenny.”
“The Dixon girl is gone? All units be advised that Jenny Dixon has escaped,” Agent Banks radios. More footsteps approach and Banks’ backup arrives.
“It looks like he’s got a weapon, sir. I wouldn’t approach him just quite yet,” an agent warns.
“It’ll be okay,” Banks assures the agent, “He won’t hurt me. He’s just a little out of it. Besides, that’s not what confuses me.
“What’s that in your hand?” Banks asks through the bars, “Open your hand, rookie. What’s in your hand?”
He opens his hand and sees that there’s nothing there. The pen that he thought had materialized at the speed of thought was still on the desk where he first saw it. He crawls towards the mirror he took earlier and finally sees a face he recognizes, his real face; it’s the face of Agent Chase.
“I’m starting to remember now, sir. What happened to the girl?”
“Young Miss Jenny Dixon got away. She used her power against you.”
“How can sensing other people’s powers be used against me?”
“Sensing other people’s powers, Agent Chase? That’s not what she can do. She has the ability to invade your mind and recreate a world subject to her wildest imagination, an imagination that is impossible to discern from reality when you’re caught in its grips. That is until she chooses to let you go. I’m guessing she let you out of it the moment she got far enough away. Did she say anything to you?”
“Yes, sir. She said ‘goodbye,’” Agent Chase replies. The revelation of Jenny’s true intentions took the wind out of him. Banks reaches into his pocket and swipes the key across the lock freeing Chase. “I’m sorry, sir. I let her get away.”
“Don’t be sorry, Chase,” he assures his confused colleague, “We’ll get her again one day. It was my fault to send you here alone. I underestimated how developed her abilities were.”
It’s just another day at work for Agent Banks, and one unique orientation for his new trainee Agent Chase. Their only error was a mere misjudgment of an 8-year-old girl and the full potential of her imagination. She might be playing in the park or skipping rope on the street like any other normal little girl the next time she is seen. But for Agents Chase and Banks, they know to take extra caution approaching a carefree Jenny Dixon, as it could be just another diversion from a precocious youth who has a knack of imagining her way out of sticky situations.
The End
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