The next morning, as her dreams were slowly fading, she was startled awake by the sound of papers being rustled. She reached out with her mind to try and find out who her unexpected guest was and grew frustrated at not being able to make contact with their mind. Frustrated at her inability to make contact, she parted her eyelids enough to sneak a peek. Surprisingly though, her guest was sitting in the chair next to her bed, grinning at her while staring straight at her.
Thinking this girl was one of the people Wanda had warned her about, Jessica snapped her eyes open and started babbling about angels walking through walls, floating through the air, and any stray words or thoughts she from the people in the psych ward that she could pick up. Unfortunately, the girl just chuckled and clapped her hands after a couple of minutes. This irritated Jessica so much that it was all she could do to refrain from cussing at the girl. She fumed for a second then shut down and rolled over, putting her back to the girl thinking that she may eventually think she had gone back to sleep and leave her alone.
But, as she was laying there thinking about trying to either bust into the girl's head with her talent or with her fists, it felt like someone was trying to make her mind jump to different subjects. So she used her talent to follow the push back to its source and used it like a doorway into the other person's mind. Doing so, once she had access to the source mind, she returned the favor and used her talent to shake loose information about the person.
Surprisingly, Jessica's mental stalker quickly stopped rooting through her head and started trying to push her out of their own mind. After a moment of fighting with them to keep her access to their mind open, they finally pushed her out and blocked her. Afterward the girl in the room with her half sighed and half growled and finally said, "I thought you wanted to meet your 'mystery girl' but apparently I wasn't as openly welcomed as I thought I would be."
Sitting up and facing the girl, Jessica used what knowledge she had gathered from her short adventure through the girl's mind and testily growled, "Well Dawn, if the daughter of the guy that slashed my chest open to the bone had been polite and introduced herself when she woke me up instead of acting like some creepy kidnapper stalker, I might have more openly greeted you."
Grinning and putting her hands up in a gesture of surrender, Dawn lightly chuckled as she said, "OK. Truce. I'm sorry but I've just never met someone whose mental abilities were just as strong as mine. And I've never come across someone able to learn new uses of their talent and apply them so strongly and so quickly before so I was a little unprepared for our meeting to become so hostile so quickly."
"Well I'm usually not that friendly when I first wake up anyways. Besides, it's partly yours and Wanda's fault with the whole warning about having to act crazy and hide my talent around people without talents of their own." Jessica grudgingly offered.
"Speaking of which," Dawn replied, "Given how aptly and forcefully you used your ability, I'm guessing you're gonna want to keep the ability?"
"I do." Jessica quickly answered. "But I also want to go stay with my brother like I had planned on doing before those guys kidnapped me and brought me here."
"Normally you would be stuck here for a while because of the 'side effect' of the drug." Dawn grudgingly replied. "But after going over your medical checkup we might have a way to arrange getting you released or maybe organizing some type of supervised visitation deal. The only thing though, is I need an answer to what I was originally rooting around in your mind looking for."
"Which is....?" Jessica prompted.
Dawn half smirked / half blushed and shyly asked, "Umm... How old are you?"
"I'm fixing to turn 16 in a couple weeks. Why? Are y'all gonna lock me up for not being 21 at that bar those boys that were flirting with me invited me into? Or are y'all gonna ship me back off to my mom or something?" Jessica defensively answered.
Dawn raised her hand in a peaceful manor and then answered, " Breathe girl. You only being 15 is a good thing because I can inform my dad that he gave the drug to an under-aged minor and tell him that by spinning the story to your brother as a rescue story like you had been doped with date rape and hallucinogenic drugs, we could cover the company's butt and also provide an excuse for anything you said about your time here. That way he wouldn't have to worry about you going free and causing trouble with his ongoing experimenting with the drug before he puts in for official approval of it from the government. Plus, if you ending up here got out to the press, it would be looked at as a rescue story instead of a kidnapping."
Surprised but hopeful, Jessica asked, "So me not being 16 years old yet is actually a good thing? And I really might get to finally see my brother again?"
"Hopefully it will turn into a good thing and you will get to go see your brother. But, given how strong your talent is and how quickly you are learning it, we might have to compromise by asking you to 'volunteer' to work here when you turn 16 in a couple weeks."
"I will if my brother lets me, but he might want me to work with him at his business he runs in the city." She answered.
"Well I'll have to see about that part when we get to meet your brother then. Either way though, we're gonna have to set up some kind of set, structured time together for me to teach you more about your talents. If we don't then you'd be taking a huge risk of hurting yourself or others around you on a permanent basis." Dawn replied, "Not to mention the very real possibility of you pushing yourself too hard and ending up losing all control of your ability and ending up super wacky crazy like the others on this wing."
After their meeting Dawn was sitting in the office area that Wanda had set aside for her and those assistants that she was needing for the medical areas of the company's facility. Thinking about how, as she had watched her dad cut open Jessica and start to apply the drug to heal the wound, Dawn had noticed something strange and was now looking through the recordings made of the incident and the test results they had run on the girl the night before to determine if she had seen what she thought she had seen or if she had seen the procedure so many previous times her eyes and her mind were looking into the anticipated future or something. Looking through the video recording of the incident, she had just verified that she had actually seen what she thought she had when Wanda rushed in and excitedly informed her, "I think we've found a piece to the puzzle of how the talents work!"
Startled, Dawn looked up and, before she could ask for further explanation, Wanda supplied, "The new girl already had the healing ability before she was given the drug! Because of that, and her demonstrating the telepathy so quickly and so strongly, we can further narrow down what genes the drug changes that activates the talents."
Dawn asked, "So we might be able to identify potential talents with DNA tests then?"
"Yes and no." Wanda answered. "I don't know about specific talents yet, but it should allow us to at least narrow it down to a certain family of talents and maybe also identify who will be able to use their talents more readily than others."
"I'll definitely have to see if her brother will let us 'hire' her as an employee then." Dawn said.
To which Wanda added, "Speaking of the brother, I'd be interested in seeing if he has the same talents as his sister. And maybe even seeing if we can determine if they were inherited from the mother, or the father, or if they showed up through other means."
"Speaking of the mother," Dawn added, "When rooting through her mind I discovered that we already know of her mother."
"How?" Wanda asked.
"She used to work for us when this drug was being developed." Dawn answered. She then filled Wanda in on who Jessica's mom had been and finished with, "After the accident with the equipment, her mom quit, gladly signed Dad's nondisclosure agreement, and moved as far away as she could apparently."
"And, comparing timelines to how old she says her brother is, it looks like she might have just gotten pregnant a month or two before she quit." Dawn added.
Surprised, Wanda said, "So the brother might also have full blown talents and healing like you and the other kids that have been born here with parents exposed to the drug during pregnancy do."
"It looks that way." Dawn answered.
"I also found out that you and her share a gene that we've only found in 2 others so far. So you two might share a talent." Wanda added.
Dawn then suggested, "Maybe we should put her through the testing for all the talents then and see what turns up. I think I'll take her to the secure area later today and work with her to see if we can unlock any more of her talents."