The next morning when the alarm went off, she was immediately awake, quickly checking the date to make sure that he once again hadn’t kept her asleep for a while. It became clear quickly that it wasn’t the case, feeling a weight get lifted off her shoulders.

  Since that one day that Jones took her phone away, she had gotten a bit scared of it happening again. As she got up and went back to the living room, she saw him back in front of the television with his robe on, although this time not eating snacks.

  “Don’t you have anything better to do than being in front of the television the entire day? You have been here for a while now doing this.” She turned it off, unhappy that this was his daily activity. “It’s not good for you.”

  “Then what should I do?” He sounded a bit annoyed, looking up at her as he didn’t really seem to care. “I’m not going to school, I’m not allowed to see other people. How will I pass time?”

  That was something she hadn’t considered yet. She had taken him out of his normal life so she could keep an eye on him, not wanting a repeat of when she was young. “You’re not wrong. Maybe I should try to teach you?”

  “No thank you.” His stomach started to grumble, making him look up at her as he rubbed his stomach. “You made food?”

  “Yes!” She quickly ran to the kitchen to get his food, taking it out of the freezer and putting it in the microwave. While her cooking was great, being frozen and then heated back up got rid of a lot of the taste, making it rather bland once given to Jones.

  Still, it was better than constant cookies and chips, so he ate it. As he ate, he looked a bit better at Madison, trying to see if he missed something from the days before. She just looked like an old person, looking like she could be his grandmother. “So, your only powers are aging backwards when sleeping?”

  “Watch it!” She snapped at him before shaking her head and looking away. “No sorry, that’s not fair.” Yes, that’s my only power. I guess that whatever being looks over us all decided that the first set of children should have some way to live forever so that we have a lot of time to do what is needed.”

  “Why haven’t you done it? If you had done your job, there wouldn’t have been a need for me.” He sounded a bit upset, stopping to eat as he looked at her, seemingly mad but hiding his feelings.

  Madison didn’t immediately answer, never really thinking that she might be the reason for further suffering. Therefore, she also didn’t answer his question as she was too busy thinking of the possibility of all of this not happening. “I didn’t… hmmm…”

  Jones watched her closely, putting his plate down next to him on the couch. “Isn’t that what you told me? Need to make people more imaginative? Or what was it that you said?”

  “Something like that.” She walked to the television and opened the closet to pull out the games in there. All of the games were very realistic, wondering how stuff could’ve progressed if things were different. “You know, from what I remember from the dream I had, there weren’t any video games yet. Whatever you see here is all I know. War games, racing games.” She turned back towards Jones. “I knew about zombies and vampires because they already existed back then in my dream, but I didn’t know how to spread the words and by now, I forgot what they looked like, just that they existed.”

  “So what you’re saying is that you didn’t have the means to spread the word?” He started to understand her better now, grabbing his plate back as he started to feel like he might be a bit too rough on her.

  She dropped the games back in the drawer, closing it and sighing. “I’m sorry about your parents. I bet that I would’ve loved mine but, they’re nothing to me. No family, no real need for connection since in the end, I’m too scared of dying to try.” She gave him a sad smile, shrugging. “And just like you said, my powers aren’t anything spectacular so not really much to help me convince people.”

  He nodded, understanding why by now nothing had changed. “And, the others? You said one had some kind of super speed? Where is he? Why didn’t you all work together to figure something out?”

  “That’s because I never met all of them myself. Nor did they meet each other as I was the only one with all the information. I don’t know where the others are right now and I have no way of finding them.”

  “And you haven’t tried to find them either? Maybe, now you could finally try and get it done, spread the word.” He finished the food and pushed the plate onto the couch, away from the edge before standing up and sighing. “Maybe save other people from losing their parents?”

  “Hah, you’re funny. How about you try to find someone who had decades to set up a way to not be found. And maybe some of them might already be dead. Maybe I’m the last one still around? I’ve just been going through the acts of life day after day.” She walked to the couch to get the plate, going back towards the kitchen.”

  Jones followed her, looking for another time around the house and the items inside. “So, you’re rich then? I thought that if you could live so long that you at least might have some people in your back pocket, like the gangsters.”

  “Who says I don’t.” She gave him a grin, putting the plates in the washing machine. “I do have some connections but they’re limited. I’m scared to keep contacts because eventually, they’d realize my condition and then, who knows how long it takes before I’m captured to be experimented on.”

  “Who says that they will do it? Maybe, people will get inspired by such an ability. Maybe the other people like you will reveal themselves.” He sounded hopeful. Maybe if they did what they were made to do, his parents would be returned.

  “If you were in my position, would you take that gamble?” They were finished in the kitchen, so she decided to bring him towards the dryer.

  Jones had a deep thought about it, following in silence as her question was rather fair. “I guess not.”

  She threw his clothes to him. They were nicely warm and smelled rather nice compared to the days before. “Where can I change clothes?”

  “Right.” She walked to the door and got out. “When you’re done, meet me at the front door!”

  It took around ten minutes before he finally came outside, immediately shrinking a bit when the cold outside temperature hit him. “Why are we outside? It’s so cold.”

  “Well, we need to figure out how your power works, maybe I can teach you something so that when time comes, you’re able to use it better, help people.” She sounded giddy almost, pointing at the somber sky above. “Show me.”

  Jones started to smile, losing a bit of focus on the cold, instead focusing on the clouds above. He started to bring them down towards them, letting them come towards them. He let a big amount hang above them, only taking a small part to let it hover between them.

  “That’s already impressive. Now what else can you do with it? In your dream I saw you sitting on it.

  “Been there done that.” He made the clouds more dense, therefore shrinking it as he let more come down. While still cold and wet, he got on it and lied down. “I suppose that the dream had a different way that nature works because there, it was warm. These are just cold and unpleasant to be on for extended amounts of time.”

  “That’s fine, so you can fly with it. I can try and get a special suite made to keep you warm and dry.” She came closer, touching the cloud to feel how dense it was. “So you can also blind people. Now, something more scary, and I’m trusting you on this. Theoretically, could you choke people with it? Get in their lunges.”

  “Wait, hold on. You want me to do what? I thought we’d do good things with my powers. Killing people doesn’t sound good to me.” He seemed a bit scared all of the sudden, face getting a bit pale. “I don’t think that we should do that.”

  It was clear that she had seen some things that weren’t so healthy for the average person as she quickly shook her head. “Yeah you’re right. How about you show how fast you can let it go, after all it would be amazing if you can reach high speeds with this.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  That was indeed something interesting, something he suddenly couldn’t wait to find out. His eyes looked through the trees of the forest, picking a path that he could easily take without a lot of obstacles and started to speed up.

  Gaining speed was not too fast, feeling a bit too scared in case that he was able to go fast and smash in a tree. He was able to go decently fast, but had to slow down in order to not hit trees. At points, he felt the wind fly past him, thinking that he wanted to try more, go further.

  He found an open space and used it to fly upwards, going past the treetops in open space, turning back towards the house and flying full speed over the trees. He watched the trees go past him down below, seeing that the house he was staying at was rather big for being in the woods.

  For now, he didn’t know how fast he was going but it was definitely faster than he could with his bike. With his focus on flying fast, the second bigger cloud he had captured was forgotten and had slowly started to float upwards, only seeing it once he came back down.

  He stopped in front of her, jumping off with a big grin, shivering as the cold was harder than before due to the wet clothes. “That was amazing!”

  Madison nodded, giving him a slap on the shoulder. “Next time, I’ll try to find a way to measure your speed. Now, give me your phone. I’m going to put a tracker app on it so you can always find this house if we get separated.”

  “Oh, it’s inside in my bag.” He gestured to the door, looking at the cloud again. “Is there anything else we can test?”

  “Ever tried to make other things? Like a ladder?”

  Jones tilted his head a bit, looking at the clouds while thinking of it. “Why should I need one? I can use it to fly upwards.”

  “I don’t know, maybe one day you’ll need it? Maybe multiple people need to be able to go somewhere and you need to focus on other things so you make a ladder? Just try it.”

  He shrugged, mumbling something incomprehensible before focusing on the cloud, slowly molding it into a nice and sturdy floating ladder. Just to prove that it was functional, he climbed on it, getting his hands wet. “Pleasant it is not.”

  “Next test!” Madison grabbed a small notepad that she had in her back pocket. “I’ve been thinking about this. How about impact. A test where I hit your cloud with multiple things, and one where you try to uproot a tree.”

  “And how will we test that?” Jones followed her as she walked to a garage door to the left of the entrance.

  She opened it up with a remote as the door opened up. Inside was a full weapon gallery, showing swords, axes, guns, everything that anyone would need to do some bad stuff. “By this.”

  “Woah…” Jones walked in, looking at all the weapons, not going too far inside. He had been here before and threw a glance at the ammunition storage. “How come you have these weapons?”

  “Careful with what you touch okay? I don’t want you to die right now.” She herself grabbed a sword and a couple of throwing stars. “I got them over the years. It started as self-defense, then a collection.”

  She seemed to forget that he was only fifteen, grabbing a big gun. It was rather heavy for him so he just summoned his cloud to help him carry it, going around to grab multiple weapons and putting it on the cloud.

  Once she saw what he was doing, she came over, seemingly remembering his age. “Maybe it’s better if you don’t do that.” She grabbed a couple of guns and put them back, seeing that he was very disappointed. “Go grab a sledge hammer and take it outside, I’ll be there soon.” She grabbed the last couple of weapons off his cloud and put them back as Jones groaned and walked off.

  With them having grabbed what they needed, she set up a dummy against a wall. “Make the hardest wall you can with your cloud. First let’s start small.” She grabbed the throwing stars and threw them at the wall. It got stuck in the wall and not that deep either.

  She walked to the wall and looked at it, grabbing the throwing star and easily pulling it out. “Well, I might just not be strong enough to do much damage.” Instead she grabbed a Kitana. “Let’s see if it can withstand slashing.”

  Jones looked at his wall. It wasn’t that thick for a cloud, at least that’s what he felt like. It was as wide as his fist but it just looked so fragile. It proved when Madison slashed it in half with a sword. The pieces drifted apart for a bit before he forced it back together. “I guess wearing clouds as armor is off the table.”

  “Maybe, but let's see if it can stand against heavy weight.” Madison grabbed the sledgehammer and swung at the wall, feeling it give a bit when she hit it but not too much, staying intact.

  Jones didn’t even need to try to keep it intact, not really being affected by what was happening to the cloud. He looked at her and shrugged a bit. “In terms of trying, I don’t feel anything so it isn’t really straining.”

  She nodded, putting the sledge hammer to the side, huffing and panting a bit as it was heavier than she had expected. “Okay, keep the wall, let’s go non-lethal for a while.” While not a weapon, she had grabbed a leaf blower, turning it on and putting it on the highest setting.

  The wall was immediately blown to pieces, being immediately removed and left as water on the ground and wall. It was very anticlimactic and rather disappointing.

  Madison lowered the leaf blower and looked at Jones. “Could you maybe try it again?”

  Jones hesitated, looking up at the sky and brought some more down, making a new wall and a bit thicker to cheat but this time actually trying his best to keep it in place.

  As Madison started again to try and blow it away, she saw that Jones was actually trying, tensing up and trying to keep the wall in shape. The insides held strong, able to stay intact but the outsides started to get blown away. The further that it deteriorated, the faster it got. After multiple seconds, it was fully gone again.

  He fell down on the ground, panting as things felt rather painful inside. “Aw! I think I have a headache now.” He grabbed his head, feeling and hearing his own heartbeat thumping away.

  “Come on, get up. I can’t wait to test further. I want to know how strong your powers are!” She grabbed a pistol, loading it and pointing it at the dummy.

  “Can we take a break?” He took a deep breath, standing back up and looking at her and then at the dummy. Slowly, things started to get clear to him that maybe, she wasn’t that well up there. “Madison?”

  Her eyes shot to him, gun following and aiming at Lucas, having her teeth laid bare in her wicked smile. “Ah, yes, sorry.” The smile disappeared, lowering the weapon quickly and putting on the safety. “I’m very sorry about that. I don’t know what happened there.” She then took the bullets out of the gun.

  “What was that all about?” He continued to hold his hand against his head, continuing to hear the war drums that meant he was alive.

  That question was something she felt a bit ashamed about, holding the gun close to her chest. “I’ve been alive for a long time, I don’t really know everything that happened to me but sometimes, things come back up you know?”

  “Right…” It wasn’t a great explanation but as he looked back at the weapons, things felt a bit more real all of the sudden, starting to think that perhaps he was going to have to take care of her. “How about you choose the next things you want to test out and we’ll do it tomorrow?”

  “Wait, I wanted to try one more thing, purely out of interest.” Clearly, she had been thinking about this for a while because the blindfold came out quicker than he could see where she got it from, seeing it sway in the light breeze that came through the forest.

  “Blindfold?” He shivered, still being cold with his wet clothes.

  “I wanted to see if you could grab a cloud if you can’t see them. You know, in case it’s dark or something. A moonless would be very unfortunate if you can’t gain control of what you can’t see.”

  “I guess that’s valid.” He took the blindfold and put it on, looking in her general direction. “Although could you please put the gun down?”

  “Yes, of course.” To be sure that he knew that it was gone, she threw the empty gun on the ground, making a thud sound when it landed. “There, now try to control a cloud.”

  Jones still had the cloud from before hanging above them. And while that cloud stayed in place, he wasn’t really able to find anything around him. It felt as if he was asking solid matter to move. Basically nothing happened as he did his best. Once he tried to move the cloud that he was already forcing to stay above them, he could feel the cloud, shaping it into something that looked like a flower. “I don’t think I can.” He took the blindfold off and looked up, seeing the flower but no new clouds. “I can’t find them up there.”

  Madison nodded, finding it rather disappointing but not everything could be perfect. “That’s fine, at least now we know more.” She grabbed some of the weapons and brought them back to the garage. “You go back inside and rest as I clean up. Maybe go back in the robe I gave you because those wet clothes will get you sick.”

  As Jones walked back inside the house, he couldn’t help but shake off a feeling of dread with how quick she changed when she got a weapon in her hand. Seeing her long life, he didn’t doubt that she participated in at least one big war.

  Getting the robe on gave him time to think, wondering if there were hidden trauma’s from years ago that perhaps were forgotten but not gone. There was no way for him to find out and she already said many times that she doesn’t remember.

  He waited, seeing her walk in without any weapons as she then went to the kitchen. Without saying anything, he closed the door, starting to get flashes of his dream again. There wasn’t a lot for him to do now, wondering if there was anything on the news about him or his parents.

  Back in school, not many people cared for him let alone were his friends. His phone also wasn’t the best and had very limited storage so didn’t have a lot of games either. As he went to his room and grabbed the phone, remembering that he hadn't really used it for a while now, seeing that his phone had a bunch of messages and missed calls.

  Most were from his grandparents as there were other numbers that he didn’t know. He just ignored the notifications and went straight to the search engine, putting in words like missing family and where they lived. For now, there wasn’t a lot to find, except a small news story about a family disappearing into thin air leaving everything behind with the police still investigating everything.

  Reading this together with a picture of his house made him tear up again, remembering his parents and the good times he had with them. He never hated them nor wished them gone, starting to feel like their disappearance was his fault. In the end, he put his phone on the night stand and lied down, feeling tears stream down onto the bed as he started to shiver. It took a while but eventually, he fell asleep, listening to the others waking up and doing their thing for the day.