The Mental Observations of Mortimer Anhingas
October 15th,
Normally, this time of day is when I would pull out my journal, decompress all the thoughts in my head that have been building up all day. Especially with most of the students away at the soiree, the dorm is wonderfully quiet, and I have all the time in the world to scribble away in peace.
Today, however, all I can do is sit in my desk chair, staring at the blank pages as I stroke Clancee.
Thinking about failures.
Iris and I are no closer to figuring out anything about the Altered virus. Neither is the rest of the world. Casualties are already being reported.
The boy who set the school bus on fire, dying of heat stroke.
The girl with the hydrokinesis, in ICU from water intoxication.
And so many cases of those with altered reflexes, running speeds, strength, dying from heart failure.
Like Ollie.
Clancee shuffles closer to me to my chin, chirping softly.
“There’s no way to fix this, Clancee,” I mutter. “There’s never been anything like this in the world. It’s like something out of sci-fi but… worse… so much worse.” I rub at my burning eyes. “How many more people are going to die until they find a cure?”
Clancee presses his little back to the underside of my chin. I close my eyes, swallowing hard.
“I hate feeling helpless.”
“But we’re not.”
I jump, turning around to see Iris standing in the doorway, door half open and looking sheepish.
“Good grief!” I pant. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”
“Sorry,” she winces. “I ah… I came to see if you wanted company.”
“Shouldn’t you be down at the soiree?” I ask, noting her lack of formal attire.
She shrugs, sitting on a chair in the corner of the room. “Nah. We’ve got more important things to do.”
“If we can do them.” I rub my face. “See the article about the hydrokinetic?”
“I did. I’ve been holed away in my room making notes.” She pulls out her big pink five-subject notebook. “And I was actually able to make a few good correlations.”
I turn the chair, stroking Clancee. “Such as?”
“The patterns.” She flips open the notebook to about the middle. “For example, all of the cases reported? Kids between the ages of 12 and 14. Outside of one case with an eleven year old and a handful with 15 year olds, most of them fall solidly into the 12-14 age range. Which makes me think that the gene could somehow be on a similar maturation rate as hormones in puberty, and may also be why the powers are so extreme.”
“They haven’t matured enough yet to be easily controlled. Pair that with all the hormones and emotional mood swings…” I grimace. “A recipe for disaster.”
“Exactly. And the fact that the cases with people of the same powers, but an older age, such as the 14-15 year olds, have less severe cases, seems to support the theory.” She flips through the pages. “Another pattern I notice: the cases are starting to fall into three types of powers.”
“There are that many cases?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” She clicks her pen. “The CDC has tentatively labeled these types as Mental, Kinetic, and Natural. Natural abilities are the most common so far. They’re like Ollie’s– enhancement of a function humans already have. Kinetics are like the boy with the school bus fire and the girl at the fountain– they can manipulate elements of the world around them. Closest thing to your classic superhero. And then Mental. Most rare, and so far, most minor side-effects– so far. Anything and everything to do with the brain and mind. There’s cases of being able to see memories, human calculators, being able to speak any language…” She shakes her head. “It’s… astonishing, that’s for sure.”
“We live in strange times,” I murmur. “Any other patterns?”
“All of them have side affects specific to that ability, save for the Mentals, although I have a theory about that, remind me to tell you later.” Iris bites her lip. “Best I can guess, it’s mostly because of the imbalance in what genes it affects. What’s interesting is this.” She pulls out two sheets from one of the folders in her notebooks and hands them to me. “Two cases. Both with similar powers. Tell me what’s different.”
I rub my eyes and squint by instinct at the print, only to find that Iris has already adjusted the font size to be a comfortable size. The detail of that alone makes me smile, and I settle to reading.
“So the first one is about a thirteen year old girl,” I mumble, scanning the pages for what information Iris could be getting at. Clancee keeps pecking at the pages and I’m forced to hand him over to Iris so I can focus. “Cryokinetic. Created and manipulated ice. Died of hypothermia.” I swallow hard. “And then a fifteen year old. Same ability. Still alive. Complains of being cold a lot, but other than that, doesn’t seem to have any side effects besides numb hands.” I look over at Iris. “Do they live in different areas?”
She shakes her head. “Both live in the East coast.”
“So what are you saying?”
“Isn’t it odd that they both have the same powers, and one girl’s lived with it for two months while the other died after two weeks?” She strokes Clancee. “It makes me wonder if we should shift focus in our studies.”
I raise an eyebrow. “How do you mean?”
“The CDC is already working on a cure for the Altered virus,” she says. “What if we figured out a way to help stabilize the powers until the affected patient gets older and they even out themselves?”
“Isn’t that a “treating the symptoms, but not the disease” case?” I ask skeptically.
“No. It’s more like management of an autoimmune condition, or diabetes. Some things you can’t fully cure, but you can at least control it to promote the patient’s quality of life.” She flips the notebook close. “And a management treatment might be more valuable should there not be a way to cure the virus. Genetic diseases are horribly tricky things to mess with, and it’ll probably be a long time before the CDC finds something that won’t kill or sterilize people.”
“I still think curing would be better than just a management treatment,” I remark.
“But if it’s between management and death–”
“That’s not a fair comparison,” I argue. “You already said not all the cases lead to death. And a band-aid fix isn’t going to solve the fact that these people are going to be altered for the rest of their lives. Management allows them to live to the future, but a cure could actually give them their future back.”
“It’s better than letting them suffer,” she snaps.
“It provides an excuse for people to ignore the root cause and put off a real fix being made.”
“And how long will that fix take?” Iris demands, standing up. “And how many people will die waiting for that fix? I’m not saying that this is the only solution, but you have to acknowledge sometimes when the results of the hypothesis requires the focus of the experiment to shift to explore new answers.”
I bolt to my feet. “And you know that going down rabbit trails can derail an entire project and cause more harm than good.”
“It’s not a rabbit trail!” Her hazel eyes are copper with anger. “I’m trying to keep a bunch of scared kids from dying while their parents wait for a savior.”
“And I–”
“You what?” She crosses her arms. “You want to be that savior?”
I choke, losing all my words under that piercing gaze.
“I…”
Do I?
A coil of guilt snakes in my gut and suddenly I can’t keep her gaze anymore.
“Mor.” Her voice softens. “We can’t change the fact that they’ll be called “different” their whole lives. We can’t change the fact that it might take years to find a safe cure.”
“We can if we find it ourselves,” I croak.
“We don’t have the resources to find it ourselves.”
“But I–” I grit my teeth, words dying in the back of my throat. “I don’t want… I don’t want them to be–”
“Like you?”
The two words are soft and gentle as Iris could say them, but they’re still blades to my chest.
“Yes,” I choke. “Like me.”
A mutated, out-of-place, outcast, burdening, good for nothing–
“But I love you the way you are.”
The spiel of derogatory voices from myself and people from my past halts.
I stare at her.
“What?”
Iris flushes, but she still repeats it.
“I love you the way you are,” she murmurs. “I don’t care that you’re different.”
But you’re only one person, my mind whispers, but it’s only half-hearted compared to the surge in my chest.
She’s the only person that matters.
“Why?” I sputter.
She gives a soft laugh, biting her lip as she looks down at her feet.
“Because you make me laugh,” she says. “And you have a good heart, even if your stubbornness drives me crazy. You want to help people. I see that. That’s a lot more than other people want to do. But you can’t let your past with your own struggles cloud your judgement. Yes, a management treatment won’t heal them. Yes, they’ll be called different. But different is better than dead. One kid dying is bad enough— the casualty count is eleven now. And I think their parents, I hope, would agree that it’s better their kids be a little different than to no longer be here.”
Voices from the past disagree in my head, but I try to shove them back.
“Do you really love me?”
Iris blushes.
“Yes.”
My chest burns and a piece of my soul shatters a little bit.
For the life of me, I can’t remember the last time anyone told me that— even my own parents.
“I love you,” I say, voice shaking so much I’m not even sure she could hear me.
“Well that’s a relief,” Iris snorts. “Otherwise this would be a lot more awkward.”
I laugh, releasing some of the nervous tension in my chest. “I would have told you sooner, but I didn’t know how.”
“But we know now.” She’s close, much closer that she had been before. “So… what now?”
I want to kiss you.
The thought makes my face heat up, and from the way Iris’s blush deepens, I know my thought has been found out.
Iris stands on tiptoes and I start to lean down, trying to think about how to do this—
Clancee, from his spot on Iris’s shoulder, pipes angrily and bites my chin. I jerk back in surprise, almost flinging him to the side in the process. I catch him before he tumbles to the ground. “Clancee!”
The gosling titters, shaking his tail.
Iris falls apart laughing. She strokes Clancee, then looks up at me.
“You know, with everyone at the soirée, we’ll have the Nookery all to ourselves.” She grins. “Wanna take this study session there?”
“Sure.” I put Clancee back in his brooder and stuff notebooks and papers into my satchel. I haul the strap over my shoulder and look at Iris. “Can I get a second shot at that kiss?”
Iris’s eyes glint.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“What are your real thoughts on pumpkin spice?”
For a second I’m confused, then I catch the mischief in her words and I groan. “You know I hate it, don’t you?”
“From the moment you took one sip,” she cackles.
“What else have you been hiding from me?”
Iris leans forward, and thankfully, starts kissing me before I have a chance to overthink it. I taste the pumpkin spice, but I think, in this case, I can bear it.
When we break apart, her voice is breathy.
“That I’ve been wondering what kissing you would be like since tenth grade.”
“Impressed?” I quip.
“Eh, we could both use some practice.”
Now I’m the one wheezing with laughter. “To the Nookery, then?”
“Yes.” She smirks. “And pumpkin spice.”
“I’m more of a hot chocolate kind of guy.”
“Of course you are.”
***
The Journal of Iris Gray
October 15th,
Stayed up until curfew with Mor. He kissed me <3
No closer to solving the issue with Altereds, but…
I have a boyfriend now ^_^
~ Iris Gray
This is literally amazing.
But those poor kids 💔