One simple test. That's all it took to change my life completely. Now, I have to learn how to use my new powers and how to be an agent for The Agency. But most importantly, I need to learn all about my new body. That would take some getting used to. A Flower's Bloom Part 8 by Megan Campbell Copyright  ©2010 Megan Campbell Released: July 26, 2010

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I woke up in the medical clinic. Again. I still ached all over, but it was a different kind of ache. It wasn’t really physical, but I didn’t know how to explain it.

"How are you feeling?" Nina asked, startling me enough to make me jump. I hadn’t even realized anyone else was there.

"Sorry," she apologized before I could catch my breath and answer her question. "I didn’t mean to startle you."

"It's okay," I was finally able to say. "I didn’t realize anyone else was here."

I looked around, and realized that I wasn’t in one of the hospital rooms like I thought. Instead, I had been lying on one of the examination tables. The two of us were alone.

"What happened?" I asked. The weird pain was starting to go away now, which was a big relief.

"When Justin hit the ground, a small shockwave sent everything around him flying, you included."

"I remember that," I said while interrupting her. "But then something else happened. Something else hit me."

"According to Jill, who is a minor empath by the way, Justin pretty much screamed out his emotions after hitting the ground. Dr. Weir and I believe it overloaded your budding new empathic ability, and knocked you out."

"Oh," I said. "Is he alright?"

"Surprisingly, yes," she said. "Justin has the ability to change the density of his body. He made himself lighter when he jumped, and on his way down, he subconsciously made himself denser. It saved his life, allowing him to take the force of the fall."

"Wow, that’s pretty cool."

"Yeah, but you should see the size of the crater."

"Crater?" I asked.

"It's about 10 feet around. That’s pretty impressive considering he landed on the mat."

I couldn’t believe he could leave a crater that big after landing on the mat! It must have hurt.

Nina continued to check a few readouts before turning back to me.

"Ready to get back to the lab?" she asked.

"Um, yeah, I guess," I answered. "How long was I out?" I asked.

"It's been about an hour," she said while helping me down from the table. "I’m sure Dr. Weir will be happy to get you back in the testing."

"I'm anxious to get back too," I said with a smile as we headed out of the exam room.

The rest of the afternoon was spent working on our powers. Dr. Weir had us do everything from breaking our way through walls to using our powers to hide from others.

Around 4:00, the doctor led us to the urban section of the lab. It was here where the real fun began.

"This is the most dangerous part of the power tests," he said to get our attention. "We are going to simulate a mission into an enemy-occupied building."

That sounded like fun to me, and the others appeared to agree when I could feel their excitement.

"This is not going to be easy," the doctor continued. "Your objective is to find and retrieve a flag hidden somewhere inside the building. The flag is guarded by a number of enemy soldiers. Real soldiers. Harming them is not an option. You may incapacitate them in any way that you would like, but if you send any of them to Medical, the operation will be considered a failure."

Wow, strict rules. Although the rules were probably in place to prevent us from harming the soldiers, more than anything else.

"Also, try to keep the building intact as much as possible. Collateral damage is not something we strive for at the Agency."

"Before we start," Nina interrupted the doctor. "Can we get a reading?"

"Yes," he responded, "Of course."

Nina came over to me as the other doctors approached their charges. She had one of those diabetic testers with her again.

"Just like before," she said, and I stuck my arm out. She took the reading, and it came back red.

"It looks like you are done," she said with a smile. That was a relief. It meant that I could go home on time.

Nikki and Justin were also done with the procedure, and within five minutes, we were ready to begin the last power test.

"Each of you will have three tries at this, if you need it," Dr. Weir told us as he led us over to three tables of equipment. "If you can’t retrieve the flag, we will call it a night.

"This is standard operational gear," he continued while pointing to the equipment. "You can take as much or as little as you would like."

I had a "feeling" that choosing our equipment was another test.

"Justin," the doctor continued, "You get to start us off. You may select your gear from table one. There is a small changing booth over there if you want to put on one of the tactical suits. All of the ammunition is a small electrically charged bullet. Getting hit by one will have the same effect as being hit with a taser."

Justin walked over to the table and looked at the different tactical suits. He chose one and then changed into it in the changing booth. Once he exited the booth, he started to strap himself down with every piece of weaponry on the table. When he was finished, he looked like a walking gun catalog.

"Ready," he finally told the doctor.

"Alright," the doctor replied grimly. "The flag is in the large building there in the center. There are three floors and a basement. You need to find a way to gain entry, find the flag, and get out, preferably without raising the alarm."

"Okay," he said and looked toward the building.

"You can go when you are ready," the doctor told him.

Justin took a deep breath and then started walking toward the building. The doctor walked over to a bank of monitors facing away from us.

"You two wait there," he said pointing to Nikki and me. "You need to be as unaware of what’s inside as he is."

Nikki and I sat on a bench facing the building Justin was walking toward.

When he reached the building, he started to run and plowed right through the side, leaving a large hole in the wall. An alarm started sounding immediately.

"Stupid," Nikki said beside me.

"Yeah," I agreed.

We sat there watching and waiting for about five minutes before the alarm turned off. Two minutes later, Justin was carried out of the building on a stretcher, knocked out or worse. As they approached, another group started to fix the wall Justin had knocked down.

"Your turn, Nikki," the doctor said as he approached us.

I sat and watched as Nikki changed into a Tac suit and chose her equipment. She looked more professional when she was done. She didn’t take any guns with here, but she did have a couple of gadgets that I couldn’t identify.

When she was ready, the doctor told her she could begin.

Nikki quickly made her way down to the building, where she worked her way to a window within her reach. She pulled something out of a pocket, and used it to open the window. She snuck in, closing the window behind her.

I sat around bored for 15 or 20 minutes before Justin sat down next to me.

"Hi," he said in a downcast tone.

"Hi," I replied. "You okay?"

"Yeah, it just wasn’t what I expected."

"What was it like?" I asked. Any information I could get would be helpful.

"I can’t tell you," he said, and then slumped back and looked at the building. I just shrugged and looked myself.

It wasn’t very long after that we saw a flash of light through the second floor windows, and an alarm soon followed. Two minutes later Nikki was brought out on a stretcher of her own. This was going to be really tough.

"Your turn, Jaz," the doctor said to me and pointed to where I could get my equipment.

I walked over to my table to see what I had to work with. It looked like everything was labeled with a name and a short description of what it did and how it worked.

I started with the Tac suits. There were two different suits to choose from. The first one was a standard armored suit. It boasted being able to stop most ammunition. I recognized it as the suit that both Justin and Nikki had selected.

The second was more to my liking. It was called a Chameleon suit. The wearer had the ability to change the color of the suit upon command, via some kind of interface that the suit had. Since I had already decided that stealth was going to be my MO, I picked it up and headed for the changing booth.

Once I had it on and stepped out of the booth, I was amazed to find that I could control it with a thought. It amazed me even more when the doctor tried to explain to me how the controls worked. I could actually control the suit without the interface. I wasn’t quite sure how, but the doctor thought it had something to do with my minor appearance power.

Once I got the hang of the suit, which hugged me like a second skin, I pulled my hair into another french braid and headed back to the equipment table.

I carefully studied the different items, but most seemed to be too bulky for me, or of little tactical value in my mind. But I did notice that there were a few more Chameleon pieces that I felt were tailor-made for me.

I picked up one of the Chameleon guns. It was a small pistol that was perfectly shaped and weighted for my hand. It had an identical twin still lying on the table. I was beginning to think that there was a "right" and "wrong" set of equipment on the table, and I had to decide which was which.

I strapped the small guns and their holster around my waist, and grabbed a few clips that were also coated in the Chameleon material. There were a few other items on the table that were in the Chameleon family, but I left them behind, feeling that my powers could accomplish the same goal.

The only other piece of equipment I picked up was a pair of thin shades. When I put them on, a small Heads Up display appeared, showing me all kinds of information I would not normally have access to. The doctor and I were both surprised to find out that I could manipulate the small computer system without using the small glove that usually acted as the interface.

The doctor finally concluded that I must have some kind of ability that allowed me to tap into computer systems, which also provided a better explanation of my power over the Chameleon suit.

Wearing an all white Chameleon suit, with a pair of white shades that had a pink tint to the lenses (but only on the outside, because I could see normally through them) I told the doctor I was ready.

"Good luck, Jaz," he said before setting me about my mission. "I think you have a good chance at doing this."

I smiled and then started walking toward the building. As I approached, I started to "feel" around me, trying to gather as much information as I could. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I could tell exactly where everyone was in the building. I could tell that the majority of the people were on the first two levels, but there was only a single cluster of three people in a room on the third floor.

I felt that room would be a good place to start, and that a top-down approach would probably be best.

When I reached the building, I jumped, landing lightly on the roof. Just as I hoped, there was a hatch that led to the floor below.

I walked over to the hatch, and reached for the release, but a sudden image of a blaring alarm made me pull my hand back. The hatch was alarmed.

I changed the view on my shades, and was happy to find a view that allowed me to see electrical currents and devices. The alarm itself was a small contact just near the hatch release, on the inside. Somehow, I could tell that the alarm would not go off as long as the two pieces of metal were touching.

This would be easy. I "reached" out and held the two pieces together, mentally unscrewing the piece from the hatch. When it was no longer secured, I opened the hatch and slipped inside, screwing the piece back in place as soon as the hatch was closed. It was then that I realized there was a man patrolling below me, and I was lucky he was out of range when I entered. I would need to be more careful.

I dropped from the ladder that led up to the hatch I came through, landing quietly on the floor below.

There was a camera pointed directly at me. Berating myself for not thinking about it being there, I quickly changed my camouflage to match my surroundings. The hallway was dark, lit only by emergency lights, so I changed my Chameleon equipment to black. My hair followed suit, and I also darkened my skin to as dark of a tan as I could get it.

I quickly jumped into the shadows and hurried down the hallway until I was under the camera. If I could control the Chameleon suit with only a touch, could I access the camera somehow?

Unfortunately, I couldn't reach the camera from where I was standing, I was way too short. There wasn’t anything to stand on either.

What about the wire? The camera had a wire that entered the wall at a socket just above the mounting bracket. If the wire went down the wall, I might be able to get close enough.

I switched my shades to the electronics view. Perfect. The wire ran right down the wall to the floor below.

I placed my hand over the line I could see in my shades. I could feel the connection to the data in the wire, but I couldn’t understand it. It was choppy, like I was only getting pieces of the information.

I stretched out, trying to get the rest of the information. Immediately I had success. I could see exactly what the camera was seeing. I could even see what the other cameras were seeing.

I was starting to learn how to control the different cameras when I had a flash of something hit me. Almost like seeing something happen, I had just enough time to realize it was another precognition vision when the patrolling guard came around the corner looking right at me.

He was surprised, but his hesitation became his undoing. Somehow, I was able to instinctively shut the camera off with my left hand still against the wall. At the same time, I drew my gun from my right holster and shot him before he had even registered what was happening.

Another second later, I had holstered my gun and was "pulling" him toward me, out of the camera's view. Once he was safely where no one watching could see him, I turned the camera back on, hoping no one had seen the short downtime.

The guard was out cold. Doctor Weir had said that the taser rounds would leave a person unconscious for about 45 minutes, way longer than the mission should take. But that also meant I wouldn’t be getting any information from him either.

I turned my attention back to the link with the camera. Nobody appeared to be scrambling about, so I took that as a sign that no one else had been alerted to my presence.

Finding the flag was relatively easy. Whoever was watching through the cameras had labeled one of them "Flag Room." It was being guarded by three people, but they appeared to be more interested in their card game than the flag.

Getting the flag would be tough. It was inside of a clear case, in the middle of their card table. I couldn’t think of a way to get it without taking out all three guards.

The other problem I had was that I did not know where the flag room was. I could access all the data from the cameras, but they appeared to be on a closed system. The computer on the other end was rudimentary, and appeared only to serve as a recording point, and a splitting point where the data was split to be shown on several different monitors. It surprised me to learn that I could figure out all of this from a simple wire.

I was still assuming that the flag room was the one on the third floor. As far as I could "feel," it was still the only room that contained three people.

I continued down the hallway, dancing through the shadows to avoid the cameras as much as possible. It didn’t take me long to reach the room. There was a camera on the wall opposite the door. It was pointed directly at the door which would complicate opening it.

Standing out of sight under the camera (I had checked to make sure), I studied the door, trying to figure out how to get in.

I was relieved to learn that getting in would be easy. The door had a very simple lock, often found on a bedroom door. I could simply open it with my powers.

Taking out the guards was my only concern. If I managed to catch them by surprise, I could probably get them all with the taser shots before they could fire back. It was my only option at this point.

I took a deep breath and drew my guns. I shut down the camera and then I quietly unlocked the door, and pushed it open with my powers.

I was surprised at how slow they were moving. In fact, it seemed like everything was moving slower than normal. It had started the moment I entered the room.

The door swung open, and immediately the guards were reaching for their guns, but they were too slow.

I pointed each of my guns at a different guard. Two quick shots and they were slumping in their chairs. The third one managed to bring his weapon up, but he took my third shot to the chest before he had it trained on me.

With all three guards slumped on the table, I holstered my left gun and approached them. A quick glance over the table showed that I had interrupted a game of Hearts. With a sly smile, I replaced the flag with the queen of spades and quickly left the room.

I retraced my steps, avoiding the cameras as much as possible, and was soon back on the roof.

I changed my Chameleon suit back to what I had now set as the default settings, white with a little bit of pink striping in various places. My shades also had pink lenses again. It looked great with my long blonde hair.

I jumped off the roof and made my way back up to the doctor.

"Nice work, Jaz," he said while taking the flag from me.

I returned his infectious smile.

Nikki was able to get the flag on her third try, barely. The guards were shooting at her as she ran from the building.

Justin wasn’t nearly as lucky. It was clear that he wasn’t cut out for stealth work.

The doctor gave us thirty minutes to change, and told us to meet him in the conference room back in Medical.

After we had gathered around the conference table, the doctor started the debriefing.

"Congratulations to all of you," he said. "Each one of you did very well today, and we are pleased with the results."

"Yeah, right," Justin commented sourly.

"We are pleased, Justin. With all three of you."

"Maybe with the girls, but I didn't even get the flag."

The doctor chuckled before responding. "Getting the flag was not the objective of the exercise, Justin. While we did want to see how you used your powers to try to get the flag, we use this exercise as a classification system.

"The real value was to see what strengths you have, and what role you can bring to the group."

The doctor smiled as he looked at me. "Take Jaz for instance. She excelled at this mission because her talents and powers are suited well for stealth operations. After she entered the building, we completely lost track of her until she entered the flag room. Even then, she was in and out so fast that we weren't even sure what had happened until we re-watched the tape from the one camera she thankfully left operational while she was in the room."

Bummer! I thought that I had taken care of all of them.

"Despite her many stealth capabilities," he continued. "She still was able to take out all three guards in under a second before grabbing the flag and heading out."

Under a second? It seemed like so much longer to me! I noticed the doctor was smiling at my shocked expression before turning toward Nikki.

"Nikki," he said. "You appear to be an 'all around' agent. You were able to adapt to situations quickly. The downside comes from how bright your powers are. They certainly don't tend to be stealthy. Good work."

"Justin," he continued as he turned toward him. "You are definitely a man of brute force. You may not have the stealth ability of the girls, but you did have the highest kill count. You almost even made it to the flag room before reinforcements arrived. That can be just as helpful of a talent as being stealthy."

"Hmmpf," was his only reply to the compliment.

The doctor shrugged and continued. "Anyway, like I said, we are pleased with the results. We believe that the three of you have a wide variety of talents and powers that will make your team very flexible and capable."

"So what's next?" Nikki asked.

"Next you finish high school," the doctor replied. All three of us groaned.

"Once you have finished your finals and graduate, we will bring you back here to begin your formal training. Until then, please use your powers wisely. Try not to let others know that they exist. We don't want the knowledge of them becoming public knowledge.

"You are free to do whatever you want here in the complex until Sunday morning's flight home. Jaz, we want to see you again early tomorrow morning to see if we can learn any more about the precog powers you displayed earlier. How about around 7:30?"

"Okay," I replied.

"Well, in that case," the doctor said while standing up. "Congratulations to all of you and welcome to the team."

All the doctors shook our hands, and I even got a hug from Nina.

We met up with the members of A1 in the cafeteria. After eating we decided to take Theresa's advice from last night and see a movie. I was glad it didn't involve anything more than sitting. I was feeling somewhat drained.

The theater was still playing the same two movies, so the rest of the girls and I were happy to finally get a chance to see ‘Love is Real’. The boys just wanted something to do. I guess suffering through the movie was enough as long as we were there.

By the time we got back to our rooms, I was ready to flop into bed, but I wanted to call my sister first.

After getting ready for bed, I grabbed the phone and climbed under the covers. Because it was late, I decided I better call her cell phone instead of waking up my parents at home.

"Hi, Cami," I said when she answered.

"Hi, Jaz," she replied. "How did it go today?"

"It was awesome," I told her. I then continued on to tell her all about the days events and my new powers. We also chatted for a while before I told her I needed to get to sleep.

"So I'll see you on Sunday?" she asked as we were wrapping up our conversation.

"Yeah," I replied. "The doctors said that we will all be headed home Sunday morning."

"I can't wait to finally see you."

"I can't wait to show you," I said with a giggle. "It won't be long now."

"I love you, Jaz," she said.

"I love you too, Cami," I replied. "Good night."

"Good night."

The day’s events were catching up to me, and I was extremely exhausted, but I had a wonderful feeling in my heart as I fell asleep.