The music is thundering across the spectrum, tugging at the emotions and playing havoc on the baselines dancing in their cages. The lights spin and splash about, flashing their hypnotic rhythm in time with the music. I can feel the sub-harmonics tugging at me, ripping at my emotional level. My date pulls on my arm and steers me toward her little group of friends.
They are purists, the children of nova parents. The much vaunted second and third generation. Born of privilege, wealth and power. They hold the future of the race in their hands and all they can think of is themselves. Considering their parents, its no surprise. I keep closing in. I see my target, dancing alone in the crowd. No one will come too close. They know who her mother is and the threat that entails. After all, they understand that there is power and then there is real power. The Vanishing kind.
I slip away from my date as she closes with her intimates and start dancing with Her. The light plays across her olive skin and her black eyes kindle with interest.
"Who is this new guy,' I feel her think. We dance closer. Her bodyguard, some distance away, notes me but chooses not to act. I am clearly in his line of sight and he has gotten sloppy.
Her body rubs up against mine and I can feel her expanding her quantum aura into mine. Like ice shattering off a rock surface, her aura scatters and sprays around me. I flash my predatory grin. She is both shocked and compelled. She has never met someone like me before. I know that her mother keeps people like me away from her. If she was human, her instincts would be to run, but she's a nova already through her first "rebirth' and there isn't much of the human left in her. She comes closer, lips reaching up to mine as our bodies entwine with impossible fluidity.
I look into her eyes, taking in the face. It's her mother's face, Shandakar. A same-sex clone, because no one has ever been allowed to get close to that bitch. Besides, she is absolutely convinced of her own superiority and doesn't want to dilute it. I will say this much, her security is top notch. I couldn't find a way past it to get at her until I found out about her daughter.
It's a big step. Up until this, I always took the fight to my enemies, but that isn't working. Every time, they get more numerous and tougher and I am more alone. Now, I am striking at their souls. They would not listen, so now their offspring and their future...
The Lesson has ended and the terror has begun. I have been gone for more than two years. Three months ago, I came back, stronger than ever. They are stronger too. Their hold on society is nearly unbreakable and I am really beginning to think I won't win. So, I'm here.
She reaches up to me and pulls my lips down to her own. There is a hunger in that kiss, a willingness to please that she only shares with her mother. It's fear. Behind us, my date is walking angrily to me. She thinks I'm a nobody Uplift, a nova born of baseline parents with no backing but the state. No status except what I gleam from her.
I break the kiss and prepare to melt back into me.
“This isn't even about you”, I whisper to her. Surprise has yet to register on her face. My date is reaching for my shoulder, and angry cutting remark forming on her lips. Now, it's time for the pain to begin.

The change in my heartbeat initiates the computer crash that isolates the club from the net. At the same time, a micros burst floods the face of one of the bodyguards I noticed on an early evening. A magnesium- mox mixture sprays into his face, burning out his eyes and killing his intuitive sense. So much for the early warning system. My right hand sweeps around behind me, decapitating my date. My left shatters my target's breastbone and drives fragments into her throat and carotid arteries. At the same time, I shatter her quantum matrix and snap her ability to "port. She is completely conscious and in a great deal of pain. Good, I need her mother to feel that pain. On the other hand, my date is very dead.
The other bodyguards are just starting to move. They have become so accustomed to letting their quantum senses do their thinking for them that they ignore the more common instincts. The first wave of panic begins to reach the dancers. I start shattering the target's nerve clusters, building up the pain but not letting it overwhelm her and shut her down. I will not let her escape into shock.
A bystander reaches for me. Some kid acting out his bravado and arrogance. His body burst into flame and I can feel his power building. Time to move. I pop up the "stick' I had placed in the floor panels a few hours ago and ram it into the targets forehead. Her body is just starting to fall.
Mr. Quick-Reactions Flameguy gets my palm against his nose-bridge. At the same time, I charge a shattered bit of bone and send it flying toward his node while I cancel his ability to channel flame. As the node blows out the back of his skull, his own flames will cook him. The dancers are just starting to turn and run and the bodyguards are closing on their chosen protectees. As I am moving, I scan the room.
The son of one of the major media figures catches my eye. I snatch up a cylinder from my dates falling bag and propel it toward his gaping mouth. It will take off the back of his head. The daughter of a Public Works honcho is up on a balcony and she is turning to head one of my chosen exit points. I leap for her. One of the bodyguards has the presence of mind to lash out at me with gravitational powers, but I twist aside, mid-leap.
As I clear the balcony, I see the first of the target's bodyguards reaching her body. The "stick' is flashing and he knows it's a bomb. The girl isn't dead yet and he reaches to get the stick out of her. I tackle the next victim and roll out the door into the bathroom. The stick decides that this person doesn't share my quantum signature and detonates in a nanosecond. The explosion takes off her head and releases a hardened, cyanide-producing bacteria in a fifteen foot cloud. Did I mention it was flesh eating?
I ride the explosion and smash through the back of the bathroom, carrying my confirmed no. 5 for tonight. She will die later, though. The bodyguards, they get to live.

I wake up.
When I sleep, I remember who I was and what I did. Since I came out of the coma, the dreams have become much clearer. I always remembered that I killed those people, but only as cold, hard facts. Now, it is real again. It is something I have learned to deal with and except as part of me.
With the memories, the power is returning as well. This time, with it comes a level of understanding of what and who I am…and who I can become. It no longer frightens me, nor does it entice me to go back to what I once was. I am finally accepting …me.
I feel out and see what I can do today. I smile and the dream makes more sense. I pick up the phone and give him a call. The phone doesn't ring. It never has.

“Hello, Pedro. It's Jason”.
“You always say that. This is becoming a habit. Something is going wrong and I predict a radical shift in certain areas.”
“I know. I feel it as well. I was just calling to let you know I will be working on one aspect of it.”
“I will watch for the permutations, then. Thank you for calling.”

We never talk much.
I have always found it a bit unusual that so few people have figured out that I can see the futures. Not like Pedro, but then our gifts always manifest them in different ways. In the past, my "gift' wasn't always that reliable, but things are getting better now that I am no longer swimming against the tides. It's getting stronger and coming with more clarity. I am almost healed and soon I will be back to where I was. I have got to figure out what I am going to do, as well.
I call another number. His secretary puts me through when I tell her the reason for my call. He asks me to come by his office as soon as possible. He has just learned that the DeVries agent failed to make his regular contact. I know he's dead. Maybe, if the father had told the agent everything, he might have been successful and maybe the father is wondering what he is going to do now.
I normally don't stay in Delhi, but I had a feeling that I should be here. It takes me ten minutes to drop by his office. On his desk is a picture of his daughter. The same olive skin and black, black eyes that I remember. I look at him and see were this is going. DeVries is going to learn that he knew his daughter had Teragen sympathies and this kidnapping is bogus. He sent their agent into a death trap.
I will have to fill in some of the details, but it won't be hard for them to confirm what I already see. I know why he wants his daughter back. It's the same reason she will love no one else as long as she lives…except for herself. It's the same reason he lied to the agent and hasn't gone to the authorities.

I smile and act real nice. He is curious about how I heard about this, but his initial checks tell him I'm some soft-under the shell, do-gooder. He thinks I'm a loser and he is oh-so-polite because he "knows' me and thinks he can use me. As he fills me in on all the "essential' information, I am downloading a report that will make it to Anna DeVries desk sometime tomorrow. He mentions that he is "uncertain' about the DeVries agent's intentions, I fail to take the hint, and so he drops it. He brings up his righteous anger at his daughter's tormentors and I tell him I don't do wet work. He asks how much, and I tell him how some things just need to be done. Now he is convinced I'm a complete idiot. He tells me he has all his hopes in me and I nod sagely and tell him I won't let him down.
As he ushers me out the door, I can see him calling a Janissaries to "clean' things up when I get back with his daughter. Me, I'm wondering if it is worth leaving his daughter with this sick fuck for even the twenty-four it will take DeVries to make her an orphan. I see a doorway and decide that it's worth the pain to take it. When she recovers, she will be a multi-millionaire princess. If I place one or two special people in her path, she might actually come out okay.