Drew Karpyshyn - Ascension

Hendel was as shocked as any of them to see Gillian standing in the back of the room, her hands raised to the sky and her face twisted into a mask of rage and fury. And then, to his horror, he realized that she wasn't done.

The table in front of her flipped over, the empty chairs surrounding it cartwheeling away like they had been kicked by some invisible giant. Lunch trays all around the cafeteria shot straight up to the ceiling, sending a shower of food and cutlery over the students as they came back down.

Panic set in. Screaming students leaped from their seats and raced to the exit at the far end of the cafeteria, knocking one another down in their scrambling haste to escape. Their now-empty chairs were swept up and tossed haphazardly about the room, adding to the chaos.

Hendel was on his feet, moving against the tide of the crowd in a desperate attempt to get closer to Gillian. As big as he was, it was still difficult to wade through the sea of bodies trying to flee the scene.

"Gillian!" he shouted, but his voice was drowned out by the screams of the mob.

Nick was still lying on the floor amid the ruins of the table on which he had landed. Hendel dropped to one knee to check on him: he was unconscious, but breathing.

Leaping back to his feet, he continued to press forward, shoving kids roughly aside in his desperation until he broke free of the crowd. Less than thirty feet now separated him from Gillian.

The space between them looked like a tornado had passed through: overturned tables and chairs were strewn about, the floor was slick with spilled food, milk and juice. Gillian still stood at the back wall, her hands still raised up. She was shrieking; a high-pitched, keening wail that sent a shiver down Hen-del's neck.

"Gillian!" he cried out, running toward her. "Stop this right now!"

He jumped over a downed table, his feet almost sliding out from under him when he landed on the slick remains of someone's lunch on the other side. He pinwheeled his arms for balance, only to be knocked down by a flying chair that struck him from his blind side.

The blow stung but it wasn't disabling. He scrambled back to his feet, his sleeve and knees covered in milk and bits of crushed, soggy bread.

"Gillian!" he shouted again. "You have to stop!"

She didn't respond, didn't even seem to know he was there. He started moving forward again, his hand dropping down to the stunner at his belt. But he hesitated, and instead of drawing it, he tried one last timeto reach her.

"Please, Gillian! Don't make me—" his words were cut off as he was struck by an invisible wave of biotic force. It hit him in the chest like an anvil dropping from on high, knocking the breath from his lungs. He was lifted off his feet and shot straight back like he was on a rope being pulled from behind. He crashed through toppled tables and chairs, banging his head and slamming his elbow so hard it made his right hand go numb.

He came to rest twenty feet later, amid a pile of chairs and lunch trays. Groggy, he struggled to his feet. The effort made him cough, and he tasted blood in his mouth.

Hendel rook a moment to gather himself, then drew upon his own biotic abilities, releasing them a second later as he threw up a powerful high-gravity barrier to shield him from flying furniture and further biotic attacks from Gillian.

Crouching behind the shimmering wall of the barrier, Hendel fumbled with the stunner at his belt. His right hand was still numb from the blow to his elbow, and he had to reach across with his left to grab the weapon.

"Please, Gillian, don't make me do this!" he called out one more time, but the girl couldn't hear him above the sound of her own screams.

Therewas a sudden burst of light and heat a few feet to his side. Snapping his head around, he saw an astonishing sight: a swirling vortex of concentrated dark energy was launching vertically in a pillar toward the ceiling, building to a critical threshold before collapsing in upon itself.

A biotic with advanced military training, Hendel instantly recognized what had happened: Gillian had created a singularity — a subatomic point of nearly infinite mass, with enough gravitational force at the center to warp the fabric of the space-time continuum. The nearby tables and chairs began to slide across the floor, drawn inexorably toward the epicenter of the cosmic phenomenon that had suddenly manifested in the middle of the space station's cafeteria.

Moving on instinct, Hendel popped up from behind the barrier, fighting to aim his weapon against the rapidly mounting gravitational pull emanating from the singularity. Locking on his target, he fired. The stunner found its mark and the singularity vanished with a loud clap and a sharp outrush of trapped air. The girl's screams cut off instantly as electrical impulses shot through her. She appeared to stand up on her toes, her head thrown back as her muscles went rigid. Then her body convulsed, sending her limbs into a brief spastic dance before she collapsed unconscious to the floor.

Hendel rushed to her side, calling on his radio for medical backup.

Gillian muttered something in her sleep. Kahlee, sitting on the edge of her hospital bed, instinctively reached out to place a comforting hand on her brow, only remembering at the last second to pull it back.

She wondered if the girl was waking up. Nearly ten hours had passed since she'd unleashed her biotic powers in the cafeteria, and the doctor said it would take six to twelve hours for her to regain consciousness after being hit with the stunner.

Kahlee leaned in and softly whispered, "Gillian? Can you hear me?"

The girl responded to her voice, rolling over from her side onto her back. Her eyes fluttered then snapped open wide, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings with confused terror.

"It's okay, Gillian," Kahlee assured her. "You're in the hospital."

The girl sat up slowly, looking around, her brow wrinkled in confusion.

"Do you know how you got here?" Kahlee asked her.

Gillian folded her hands in her lap and nodded, her eyes lowered so she wouldn't have to look at Kahlee.

"The cafeteria. I did something bad. I hurt people."

Kahlee hesitated, uncertain of how much detail the girl could handle. There had been a lot of property damage, and a number of twisted ankles and swollen fingers from people in the fleeing crowd who had fallen and been stepped on. The most serious injuries were to Nick, who had suffered a concussion and a bruised spine, though he was expected to make a full recovery.

"Everybody's okay now," Kahlee assured her. "I just want to know what happened. Did someone make you angry?"

"Nick spilled my milk," she answered, though Kahlee already knew this from talking to the boy.

"Why did that make you so angry?"

The girl didn't answer. Instead, she said, "Hendel was yelling at me." She frowned and crinkled up her brow. "He was mad at me."

"Not mad. Just scared. We were all scared."

Gillian was silent, then nodded, as if to say she understood.

"Do you remember anything else about what happened, Gillian?"

The girl's face went blank, like she was slipping deep inside herself, trying to dig up the answers.

"No," she finally answered. "I only remember Hendel yelling at me."

Kahlee figured as much. They'd taken readings from Gillian while she was unconscious, pulling the data from her smart chips to see if it could tell them anything. But what they'd seen didn't make any sense. There was a sudden spike in her alpha wave activity in the days leading up to her outburst, but no logical explanation for the increase. Personally, Kahlee thought it could have been some emotional trigger: her alpha levels had climbed the day after her father's visit.

"How come Hendel's not here?" Gillian asked, her voice guilty.