Chapter Text
Excerpt from the 1947 Advanced Homo Sapiens Report:
Terminology of Abilities
Watchers: Individuals with precognitive abilities, in layman’s terms they can see the future. Initial testing has proven indisputably that outside variables can affect the foreseen vision of the future. Best results have been recorded when subjects document their vision through the means of drawing what they’ve seen. It is theorized that because of the number of unknown variables that affect the course of all things that a Watcher will never accurately foresee anything over a week in advance. SEE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF ABILITY.
Movers: Individuals with the ability to move objects, the term telekinetic established by parapsychologist J.B. Rhine has been associated with this ability. Based on air fluctuation recorded in subject testing and the input of Dr. Oppenheimer it is theorized that atomic frequencies may be involved with implications of movement happening at the molecular level. Further study is needed to confirm this hypothesis. SEE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF ABILITY; SEE PROPOSED ADDITIONAL TESTING.
Pushers: Individuals who can implant thoughts, emotions, and even whole memories into the minds of others. In limited testing Pushers have been able to insert thoughts into as many as 3 subjects at a time. The duration of the implant has lasted as long as 72 hours. It is theorized that depending on the strength of the Pusher that the number affected and duration could be much longer, with the possibility of permanent duration. Caution: These individuals are deemed highly dangerous. Further testing must be conducted with the threat they pose in mind. ADDITIONAL SECTIONS CLASSIFIED.
Bleeders: Individuals who emit auditory vibrations. These vibrations with prolonged exposure can cause rupturing of blood vessels, to both the Bleeder and those within hearing range of the vibration. It is theorized that if the vibration is emitted long enough it could become lethal. Until there is a way to prevent self-damage to the Bleeder this cannot be determined. SEE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF ABILITY; SEE PROPOSED ADDITIONAL TESTING.
Sniffs: Individuals able to track the location of people and objects. Initial tests indicate that with tactile access to an object that's been in direct contact with what is being searched for a Sniff’s effectivity is dramatically increased. It is theorized that Sniffs may be able to detect things up to hundreds if not thousands of miles away. SEE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF ABILITY; SEE PROPOSED ADDITIONAL TESTING.
Shifters: Individuals that can temporarily alter the appearance of object. Initial testing has concluded that objects must be roughly the same dimensions otherwise the shift will not work. Shifts are not permanent and there is not enough data yet to theorize if they ever could be. Duration of the shift has been linked back to the overall ability of the Shifter. The stronger the Shifter the longer the shift lasts. Longest Recorded Shift (Current): 17 hours, 25 minutes, and 13 seconds. SEE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF ABILITY; SEE PROPOSED ADDITIONAL TESTING.
Wipers: Individuals that can temporarily erase memories. In limited testing Wipers have been able to remove up to a year of a subject’s memory, with return of it taking from 5 to 36 hours. It is theorized that Wipers could permanently erase memories. Caution: These individuals are deemed highly dangerous. Further testing must be conducted with the threat they pose in mind. ADDITIONAL SECTIONS CLASSIFIED.
Shadows: Individuals able to mask both people and objects from detection from Sniffs and initial testing indicates temporarily from Watchers. SEE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF ABILITY; SEE PROPOSED ADDITIONAL TESTING.
Stitches: Individuals able to induce rapid healing. Testing proves that reconstruction happens at the cellular level. Slides show cells having been reconstructed back to a healthy state. It is theorized that cells could alternatively be deconstructed. SEE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF ABILITY; SEE PROPOSED ADDITIONAL TESTING.
Felicity was four years old the first time she understood that what she was seeing wasn't the product of an overactive imagination, but rather some tangible future. A possibility that could come true, become reality, if things progressed in the established order.
She was five when she realized she could affect that order and change what she had seen.
At age six she saw the lotus for the first time. A perfect white bloom being gently spun by a thin fingered hand before being offered to another. Felicity saw this image countless times throughout her life. Having seen the peaceful moment so often it had become certainty in her mind – it would happen, eventually. It was also frustrating because the vision had only expanded slightly over the years. Just enough to see a rough, weathered hand reach out to take the lotus. Cool, pale aquamarine painted fingers touching warm, thick callused ones causing a zing of connection and overwhelming sense of belonging.
For as many times as she saw those hands, for a comforting as the repetitive vision was - particularly after ARGUS snatched up her mother - the when of the moment had never become clear to Felicity. Even the night before, when she’d been painting her nails the color she’d seen so often, it hadn’t seemed like the moment was finally at hand. The aquamarine paint had become habit; cycling through every fifth time she did her nails. Her way of trying to force the moment? She wasn’t certain, but for as much as she knew it would happen, after eleven years of seeing it she stopped expecting the moment to come to fruition.
Her day started like many had before, waking with the bitter taste of a vision permeating her mind. Reaching for her pens she noted that it had been a particular nasty visualization that ended with her and an unknown companion dead. Seeing her own horrible death was not new. It happened for the first time when she was eight while she’d been playing at the park two blocks down from their temporary home. It had been the day ARGUS took her mother and it was the vision of her own slit throat accompanied by her mother’s painful lament that kept her from racing straight home. Instead she’d watched from a safe distance as ARGUS captured her mother … not that a serene, handcuffed Donna Smoak being steered out of their shitty apartment complex could be considered the normal ARGUS takedown. They had to have at least suspected something was wrong she remembered thinking, but the agents appeared too pleased with themselves to even consider that her mother had allowed them to apprehend her. That she had in fact warned her daughter two days prior not to come ploughing towards her if she was wearing her favorite dress – a tight, royal blue number spotted with tiny pink polka dots. “Just walk by me baby, as if I was a stranger,” she’d whispered putting her to bed.
Felicity had promised and in doing so she’d been left mostly on her own to survive in the world. People would appear sometimes with messages of encouragement or instructions from her mother. Months and years later, which according ARGUS wasn’t possible, she was still getting directives from Donna. Her mother was the best and obviously had a plan. That fact comforted Felicity when little else could. Alone in the world, chasing visions through bottles of booze and ducking ARGUS wasn’t a life. Not one anyone should have to live, but through the uncertainty and the despair that surround her she had hope. ARGUS hadn’t been able to strip that from her, even if they had Shadows on her mother full-time. She may have only managed to get a vision of Donna a handful of times, but her mother had seen so far and Felicity trusted that she hadn’t been left to her own devices and sporadic help for no good reason.
She had faith. Even if her most recent vision told a tale that said she should feel otherwise.
Pen scratched against paper as she furiously drew what she’d seen to better understand and interrupt it. Though she’d been drawing her visions for years Felicity had never perfected the craft, her illustrations were still childlike – her choice of bright, neon colors not helping to elevate the look of them. Her choice of artistic tools matched her hair; her long, wavy blonde tresses had streaks of pink, purple and deep emerald green running throughout.
Her mother had been color; bright, bold color unafraid to standout against the dull monotone wash of the world. Her hair, the bright colors of her nails, her trademark color wheel stripe leggings were all reminders of Donna Smoak. A reminder that while not there physically, her mother was always with her.
Felicity huffed in frustration as she took in her drawings. The crude lines she’d put to paper did not do justice to the Adonis she’d seen. A strong scruff lined jaw, with sharp cheekbones and fathomless blue eyes that were the capping beauty to a lengthy, defined muscular form. If the tight, distressed t-shirt was any indication his abs had abs.
Not a useful observation, Felicity reminded herself. Closing her eyes she focused on the other details about him – his clothing had been dark (charcoal t-shirt under a hunter green hoodie, black jeans and work boots), everything showed age but appeared well-tended. His movement had seemed purposeful but tense, his muscles coiled as if ready for a fight at any moment, and his gaze always on the move assessing his surroundings. Head on swivel, the Army term the first of her mother’s helpers instilled in her sprang to mind.
She had been walking behind him, not seeing him from behind, but actually there with him and he’d been careful to keep her covered. He was protecting her. But why? Felicity wondered. That hadn’t been a part of her vision. The two rough and tumble looking Bleeders and the malevolent brunette directing them had been though – their lethal intent had been clear, along with their success. Again, she wondered why.
Opening her eyes Felicity considered the nearly empty bottle of Wild Turkey that was sitting on the wobbly bedside table. The scarred tabletop was probably the nicest thing about the crumbling room in the rent by the hour establishment she’d spent the last three days taking refuge in. She’d prefer to start her morning with the strong, slightly bitter hit of caffeine instead of a burning chug of booze.
Deciding to give herself ten minutes to see more she steeled herself to face the icy water that flowed in the battered shower attached to her room. Felicity had counted six missing tiles to go along with three chipped and twelve cracked ones when she’d first inspected her transitory lodging. If she was unable to expound upon her vision, she’d hit the whiskey, though she decided either way her visioning went any morning that started with the foretelling of her own death earned her a sweet, frothy caffeinated concoction instead of her typical straight black selection.
You had to live sometime after all.
The pain was excruciating, a fire burning through him, one that inundated every molecule of every cell in his body with white hot agony. His muscles knotted, his lungs seized and his mind blanked on everything but the current coursing through him. As his body seceded control of itself he couldn’t even tell who he was let alone recall how he wound up in this harrowing predicament.
When the fiery surge suddenly stopped there a moment of brilliant relief as in its absence his muscles went lax. He was finally able to suck much needed air into his lungs; however, the harsh draw of oxygen into his body had pain echoing through him. The physical ache swamped him, triggering the memory of the only thing that had ever hurt worse – a grief he’d spent years burying, but stripped of the emotional walls he built around himself he could only fall into the memory unable to tell the difference between the panicked beating of his heart he felt then versus the nebulous present.
… … …
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…
Two pair of feet padded quickly against carpeted floor, nearly soundless, but not quiet enough to avoid detection. His trembling hand was tucked in the firm, warm hold of his father’s larger one as he was tugged through the hotel’s nondescript hallway. His father’s long legs ate up the distance and he found himself nearly tripping as he raced on his toes, never able to put his foot down solidly on the ground in an effort to keep up. He was vaguely aware of the maid they passed shuffling supplies on her cart as they raced towards their room.
He was just coming to stop, panting as he tried to catch his breath, when his father yanked him into the room and moved the door closed behind them with a violent bang. The pull on his arm hurt, but he didn’t dare protest. It wasn’t usual for his father to haul him around uncaring of inflicting injury. It was only when ARGUS was close – when they were in danger – that his blue eyes got hard, his stance tense and his words short.
“Oliver,” he snapped drawing his attention from where his father’s hand was grasped tight around his skinny arm. His kind, strong boned face was craggy with exhaustion and worry. They’d been running for so long. “Son,” he said softening his voice, bringing up his hands to cup his face. “I need you to listen to me. This is the most important thing I’m ever going to tell you. You have to remember. Okay Oliver?”
Tears stung his eyes, but he nodded his head, his soft-skinned cheeks rubbing against his father’s rough palms. A hint of smile touched his father’s lips. Though he didn’t say it Oliver could hear the message behind the way his look gentled, ‘good boy’ it spoke. “Someday a girl is going to give you a flower. You got that?” his father asked as apprehension laced his voice. “A flower,” he repeated.
Oliver mouthed the word ‘flower’ as something beyond his hearing alerted his father. His hands fell from his face as he threw one up to move the doors to the adjoining room open. “You have to help her,” he ordered. “Helping her helps us all.”
His father must have read the confusion on his face because he hunched down before him. “I know this doesn’t make sense right now, but I believe the woman who told me that and I need you to believe me. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” his answer came out low, but fierce. Tears stained their matching cerulean eyes but they grinned at each other. “I love you, dad.”
“I’ve always said you were special son. Turns out I was right,” he said proudly, ruffling his hair.
Muffled noises from the hallway broke the moment, returning the cold look to his father’s face. “ARGUS is here. You have to keep moving,” his father commanded as he ushered him towards the doorway he opened. “Move and don’t make any decisions a Watcher can track.” Those were the last words his father spoke to him before he pushed him through to the other room, slamming the doors between them, cutting him off from ARGUS’s men and what transpired next.
Using the sounds of the door exploding into pieces between two opposite forces and the grunts of confrontation to masks his escape Oliver did as directed, he moved, running from the room and ducking down the hallway into small crawl space. Eyes wide with fears, wheezing for air, he watched a lithe African American woman in a tailored suit and spiky heels stride down the hallway and into their room. An eerie quiet descended after her entrance, followed by a movement burst, before shots sounded.
“What a waste,” the woman said with a flat voice as she stepped out of the room sweeping drywall dust from her dark jacket. Over her shoulder she barked, “Bring his body to the lab.”