The 50/50 Vaccine

Chapter 12

I wake up to a light knock on my door. “Yeah?” I call out.

The door opens slightly, “How are you feeling?” Lexi whispered to me.

“Better,” I comment without moving. “What time is it?”

“Time to get up and get ready for rotations.”

“Thanks, I’m getting up,” I murmur, sitting in bed and stretching.

“That headache wiped you out last night huh?”

“My vision was blurry. And now that I’m sitting up, I feel like it’s happening again.” I state that the room blurred and then balanced out.

“Do I need to call Sasha?”

“My headache is coming back. Either that or my vision is going bad.” I grumble. “Every time there’s sound, my vision goes blurry and discolored.”

“Okay, I’m calling Sasha. That sounds bad.”

“No, no, no. We don’t need to worry about it. I’m sure it’ll pass in a bit.” I honestly just want her to stop talking and walk away.

“Okay, I’ll leave. Feel better.” Lexi closed the door and walked away. With a deep sigh, I lay my head back on my pillow, eyes closed, hoping the dizziness would subside.

After a few minutes, I can get up and dressed for the day. I leave the apartment and go down the corridor to the elevator. When I approach a group of people my vision begins to blur and the room begins to spin with my dizziness. I feel vomit creeping up my throat as I rush back to the apartment, praying I don’t vomit in the corridor. I successfully made it to the bathroom and decided not to go to my scheduled routines. I’m not going to chance vomiting all day due to blurred vision.

************************************

I open my eyes to the sound of someone pounding on the front door. Not just normal knocking, but it sounds like someone is trying to break in. I sit up and take a breath to give my eyes time to adjust hoping the dizziness is gone. When I feel I can stand without my vision blurring, I get out of bed and head to the door. I opened it and found Sasha standing in the corridor. “You’ve missed your rotation, and when I asked Lexi about it she said you were feeling ill.” As she spoke the room began to spin and blur. I stumble to the couch and sit down hoping the nausea will pass. “Discribe the symptoms please.” Sasha insisted entering the apartment.

“Noise makes my vision blur and the room spin.” I murmur closing my eyes trying to get the dizziness to steady.

“Noise or talking?”

“I don’t know. Any sound.” I snap wishing she’ll hurry up and leave.

After no sound happens for five minutes the dizziness subsides. I open my eyes to test my eyesight and am relieved to see everything is normal. Suddenly Sasha slams the door shut causing me to jump. “Why did you do that?” She holds her finger to her lip then moves into the kitchen and began banging and clanging things around. “Seriously, just stop it. Ugh, there is no need to be slamming doors and draws. You’re going to break something.”

“Not all noises.” She notes softly.

“What?” I ask looking at her confused.

“It’s when people talk around you.” She stated more loudly causing the room to blur. I close my eyes to try and avoid the naseau. “I’ll be back in a few.” Sasha announced before leaving, closing the door softly behind her.

Great so Sasha concluded that my vision is only affected when people talk around me, how am I going to live my life in a place packed with people always talking around me? How am I going to survive living with Lexi if she can’t speak around me without causing me to become nasuous? Here I was thinking I was just starting to have a rejection of the vaccine. Though Sasha doesn’t seem concerned, instead she seems intrigued.

When the door opens again, Sasha is back holding a pair of headphones. “Put these on, and follow me.” She instructs handing me the headphones. I put them on, and everything goes silent. She said something but I couldn’t hear what. I pointed to the headphones and told her I can’t hear anything. She smiled then motioned for me to follow her out the door. We walked down the corridor to the elevators and took one to a floor I’ve only been on when we toured the facility.

The lighting in the corridor is dim. Sasha turns around and produces a note pad that she wrote on. ‘You can remove the headphones.’ I took the headphones off and noted how quiet it was in the corridor as well. We walked to the very end of the corridor and entered a small room, closing the door behind us. It seems like a cozy waiting room, with big plush chairs, soft classical music playing, dim lighting, and a coffee table containing a jar of pens, and stacks of notebooks.

“Please have a seat,” Sasha whispered. We’ll switch to written communication in here.” She sat down and took a notebook and pen and began writing. ‘We’ll have to narrow down what is going on. This is where we start all recipients with the ability of telekinesis, telepathy, or empathy links. All abilities related to the mind.’

“When I speak, it doesn’t affect my vision.”

‘Is it just your vision that’s affected, or are you hearing voices in your mind?’

“Just my vision.”

‘That’s a new one. I’ll send someone in to help guide you as best as possible.’

“Who?”

‘I’m hoping Emil, but if he’s not available then Milly will come in.’

“Why do you prefer Emil over Milly?”

‘Emil has the gift of empathy, Milly has telepathy.’ Sasha quickly wrote. ‘Both are great mentors, just with the empathy link Emil can sense what is affecting you.’

“Telepathy is the ability to read thoughts, wouldn’t that be just effective, or more effective?”

“Calm versus chaotic energy.” Sasha stated outloud with a sigh and I understood what she was referring to. It sounds like Emil has Lexi’s energy and Milly has Noah’s energy.

“Either will be fine.” I assure her with a smile. Sasha smiles back, then gets up and leaves the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts in this peaceful room.

When the door opened, a young man entered the room with a tablet. His dark brown curly hair framed his boyish face well. He looks like he’s only 10, but I know it’s just my brains concept of age. Anyone younger than me looks like babies at this stage in my life. He’s probably in his twenties. He holds the screen of his tablet to me and I realize he’s using it to communicate with me. ‘Hello, my name is Emil. Sasha has informed us that you are experiencing blurry vision when someone speaks. I need you to describe what you are seeing more than describing it as blurry vision.’

“My vision blurs, the room spins, and I become naseaus.” I shrug not knowing what more he needs me to tell him. “It started last night when I got a massive migrane from the blurriness.”

‘Can I try something?’ Emil writes.

“Yes, anything to solve this issue.”

‘I’m going to speak outloud. I need you try and focus on what specifically is happening to your vision when I speak.’

“Okay, I will try.”

“My name is Emil. I am an empath, which means I can sense and read peoples emotions.” He spoke out loud. “What do you see when I speak?”

“The room went green when you spoke about your ability, and just became brighter when you asked what I see.”

“Blurry?”

“Yes, but only while you spoke.”

“Interesting. What color does it show when I say the following statement. “The sky is green.”

“The room blurred redish.”

“Techincally, the sky has no color, the blue coloring is a reflection in the atmosphere of the oceans.”

“That was a light green.”

“This can be fun. It sounds like you have a very rare ability that I’ve only read about in comic books.”

“Wasn’t all our abilities only in comic books until Greenway began messing with genetics to create the ultimate vaccine?”

“Fair point.” Emil smiled. “If I’m correct, you have the ability called, synesthesia. Escentually, when you think of something, your brain will associate it with color. Though I think your ability may go further than that, but it’ll take time and experimenting with various scenarios to see the extent and limitations of your ability.”

“I’m not seeing color based on what I’m thinking about.” I point out.

“Which is why I’m speculating that instead of seeing color associated with words, you are seeing color based on the statements. It’s only speculation until we dive into your training.”

“This is my ability coming in?”

“Yes.” He smiled calmly.

“I was worried I was developing a late rejection with the migrane I had yesterday and the naseau.” I admitted.

“I suffered several panic attacks before we figured out that I’m an empath. I was just so overwhelmed I couldn’t leave my apartment. Sasha had this floor built to accommodate my ability, and I’ve designed it for soothing and comfort.”

“Have the lights always been dim?”

“Yes, it provides a soft, calming affect.”

“It helps with the blurriness as we talk.”

“The bright lights are making you feel the blur effect worse on your eyes.”

“Great, so I need to hide down here until I get this under control.”

“No, you will work down here, but if you wear the noise canceling headphones in the corridors you should be okay walking around. I’d just have a notepad on hand to tell people you have noise canceling headphones on and can’t hear them. I’m going to suggest that Sasha gets the lights in your apartment dimmed for you to help as well.”

“I need to let my roommate know.”

“I’m sure they will understand.” Emil assures me. “The key to having any ability related to the mind, is calm and peaceful. If you become overwhelmed, your negative responses kick in.”

“Which is why the blurring of the room triggered dizziness and naseau.”

“Pretty much, yes.”

“Okay, I’m ready to start training. Tell me what I need to do.”

“For now, we are just talking and getting comfortable. Tomorrow, we will begin a light training to see how your vision is affected with more statements that aren’t so obvious.” Emil explained. “In a few weeks, we’ll bring another person into the room to talk with me to see how you are affected when multiple people are talking around you. Eventually, we’ll expose you to bright lights with one person, then add to it, until you are able to handle going to the café at meal time and not have a negative reaction. From there, you’ll graduate to the community and be giving the choice to live within the compounds territory, or leave the group all together. If you chose to live in the community, you’ll be giving a choice of a job.”

“That sounds like a training plan I can get behind. It’s nothing like my roommate’s random training.” I comment.

“What’s their ability?”

“She’s a human magnet. Almost killed herself with the forks and butcher knives trying to find an ice cream scooper.” I answer. “I know it sounds funny in retrospect, but I was scared in the moment.”

“What’s her name and whose her trainer?”

“I’m not sure who her trainer is, but Lexi is Sasha’s cousin.”

“Oh, Lexi.” Emil begins to laugh. “Yeah, we’re just messing with her. The person she’s working with isn’t even her trainer. Sasha didn’t tell me, you were Lexi’s bunkie.”

“You know Lexi?”

“She’s my little sister.”

“So, Lexi’s training is just the family messing with her?”

“Yeah. She’s always so calm and collected, we actually have a pool going on when she’ll finally snap and tell Sasha she’s not going back to training.”

“I think she’s pretty close to it. I’m not sure you all should continue messing with her. Yesterday, she was very upset.”

“She’ll laugh about it when we tell her. Just don’t say nothing, I have money on her holding out the longest of the pool. She’s a tough kid, always has been.”

“She’s kind, why would you do this to her?”

“Because, I guarantee she’s figured out how her ability works by now. I suggested challenging her strength and limits. The others like pranking her, and she can handle herself enough that when it’s done, she’ll be teaching them a lesson not to mess with someone who can control metal.” Emil shrugged. “As long as she’s not in danger, it’s nothing serious.”

“She had garbage on her last night. She looked so sad and defeated. She told me that my idea of her thinking about the object helped pull them to her, but she walked away from training when they drove a car in.”

“The garbage is drawing a line, but I’m glad she’s finding her limits.”

“She didn’t attempt to move the car, she was upset about the trash as it spilled all over her multiple times.”

“I’ll speak to them, that is pushing Lexi to far. She’s always been a bit of a germaphobe.”

“Thank you.”

“I want to know if she can bend metal with her mind, but with her not actually training yet, I’m not sure how long it’ll be until she finds out.”

“I’ll ask her if she’s tried. She’s been challenging herself, considering she needs to train herself.” I reply.

“I guess you are right, we should stop teasing her and get serious.”

“I don’t think this is the time to tease her. If I’m being honest, it’s very reckless of the family to do this when she’s just getting her ability. She almost died with a butcher’s knife to the jugguler because she was looking for an ice cream scooper. Teach her to prepare her, and avoid having her get killed when she becomes so overwhelmed that she snaps and her ability pulls things completely to her and she doesn’t know how to stop it, because her family was too busy having fun teasing her instead of training her. I doubt any of you would be laughing if something bad happens to her.” I scold.

“You’re a good friend, Mandy. She’s lucky to have you.” Emil replies looking down at the table. “I’ll talk to the family tonight and put a stop to the pranks. You are right, her ability is dangerous for her and those around her.”

“Good, I’m ready to return to my apartment. I need to lie down for a bit.”

“You can do that here.”

“Tomorrow, as I’m sure I will need some breaks.” I insist.

“Okay, it was nice meeting you. I will see you here after breakfast to work on training.” Emil replies standing up from his chair. “I need to think of a few statements.”

“Can I make a suggestion?”

“Sure. Your training is guided by me, not dictated.”

“Maybe have more than yourself come in one at a time to say different statements? To prevent me from learning your tell when you lie.”

“That’s not a bad idea. I’ll see who is available to help tomorrow.”

“Great. I’ll see you tomorrow then.” I stand up, grab the headphones, and a notebook with a pen from the table and exit the room. I happily walk down the corridor, stopping at the elevator. I slip on the headphones, and jot down my note telling everyone that I am not being rude, but am unable to hear them. At least my ability isn’t one of the scary ones I was worried about getting. Though I fear my training will be taxing on my mental energy and take an extensive amount of time to concur.