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  Dr. Cass turns and touches the desk a couple of times, then swipes her hand over the surface. A holographic image rises out of the glass. I know already that she’s a Naturalist with Transmutation Power—changing one organic object into a different organic object. And a strong one, at that. She’s one of the few who ranks above the 95th percentile. But what she is doing with her desk goes beyond computer programming and well beyond my level of understanding.

  Then I notice the image is of me. A report about my birth, childhood, pictures with my family. The exposure should creep me out, but instead, I’m fascinated.

  “I don’t think there’s any question about whether or not there is a place for you here,” Dr. Cass says as she flips her hand through the air, causing the images to whir by until it stops on one. My Testing Day results. “The work you would be helping us with could benefit the future of our entire society. You could be the key to unlocking the genes that trigger Powers, the key to helping us stop regression for good. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Paragon Diagnostics to study the genetics of someone without a Power. You could help us identify exactly which gene determines Powers and how those powers can be boosted by comparing yours with others. This discovery could help us cure Power-related illness, regression, and so much more. The only question is, are you interested in helping the future of humanity?”

  ORDINARY

  STARR Z. DAVIES

  PANGEA BOOKS

  Copyright © 2020 by Starr Z. Davies.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Starr @ Pangea Books

  www.pangeabook.online

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Book Layout ©2020 Pangea Books

  Cover Design by Shashika Designs

  Ordinary / Starr Z. Davies. -- 1st ed.

  1] Survival Fiction 2] Superheroes 3] Post-apocalyptic 4] Coming of Age

  Print ISBN 978-0-578-54098-6

  Ebook ASIN B07YL9T3VW

  For Tazz and Brynden

  Your randomness inspired an epic tale.

  ORDINARY | noun | or·din·ary : of standard quality or rank, something regular or commonplace; of a person with no unique or distinctive features.

  Part One

  “The Consumption Tax has been a strain on the people, and the Directorate understands that. However, with regression looming over our heads, preservation of our way of life must be the top priority. Elpis is all that remains in this broken world. If the city falls, humanity will go extinct.”

  ~ Dr. Joyce Cass

  2 Months Ago

  1

  I consider myself an honest person. I try to keep my promises. Try to do the right thing whenever possible. But sometimes something happens that pushes all of us to the edge, that challenges our beliefs and how we see the world.

  For me, it’s the desire to be ordinary.

  2

  Three days define who a person will be for the rest of their life. The day they are born. Testing Day, where their abilities are determined. And, of course, Career Day, where social status, wealth, and future prospects are decided for them by an exhibition hall of employers.

  I passed my birth with great pains. According to stories Mom told me, my labor gave her particular difficulty. After arriving too soon, too weak to survive on my own, I lived in an incubator for the first six weeks of my life in a struggle to survive. It’s why she sometimes—annoyingly—calls me, “tough guy.”

  Up until Testing Day, everyone—from my teachers to my neighbors—called me a late bloomer and constantly reassured my parents that eventually I would fall into one of the Four Branches of Powers. They said it as if doing so was something I would just stumble over on the sidewalk one day and say, “Oh look, there’s my Power!”

  Testing Day came early in my ninth year of schooling, alongside everyone else in my class. Those who had already developed their ability were divided into groups based on their Branch of Power: Somatic for Powers relating to the body; Naturalist for those with organic Powers; Psionic for the Power of the mind; and Divinic for those with Powers outside our world. Mostly, this division left me and three other kids—Mo, Dave, and Leo—uncategorized. By the end of the day, only I remained unclassified. Testing Day was a bitter disappointment for everyone in my family—including me.

  Ordinary people have Powers and prospects. I have neither.

  Now I face Career Day, where I get to parade around a convention center with all the other doe-eyed, eleventh-year students and try to convince businesses why my Power is worth employment. Except I still don’t have one, and probably never will.

  I’ve dreaded this day for years. Now, there’s no escaping it.

  Miraculously, my parents haven’t given up on me. They still hold on to the hope that everything is about to change.

  For all our sakes, I hope they are right.

  3

  “Ugene, you’re gonna miss the tram!” Mom hollers up the stairs.

  I rush down, my feet hardly touching one step before I’m moving to the next. I grip the railing and sling myself around the landing at the bottom toward the kitchen.

  Dad stands at the polished granite counter, barely registering my presence. His uniform is perfectly pressed, and medals attached to his jacket chime as he closes his metal lunchbox. His broad shoulders often overwhelm me—a polar opposite of my very average build—but I suppose they are ideal for a high-ranking military man with Enhanced Strength. I never bothered to ask exactly what he does, but I know he works in the Department of Military Affairs.

  Mom sits at the table with a steaming cup of coffee cradled between her hands. The bright white mug peeks through her dark-skinned fingers as she raises it to her lips. A knowing smile sparkles in her dark eyes and I can’t help but wonder if she’s Reading me or Dad with her Telepathic Power.

  “Love you, Mom,” I say, grabbing an apple from the bowl on the countertop. Before I can say the same to dad, he has already left the room.

  “Good luck, Tough Guy. Knock ‘em dead.” She laughs as I brush a kiss across her cheek and bolt through the back door.

  “Where’s your jacket?” Mom calls after me, but it’s too late to turn back now.

  The tram roars down its line, coming in flashes between the houses at the end of the block. The stop is down a nearby alley. Crap, it’s gonna be close.

  A Somatic frowns at me as he rushes by at a sprint several times quicker than I could ever manage, his stocky form giving away his Power before I spot the Somatic mark on his arm. Sometimes, things move too fast for my taste.

  Cursing under my breath, I tuck the apple into the pocket of my dark blue dress pants and pump my legs as hard as I can to catch up. The tram stops at the corner of the block just as I break out of the alley’s mouth. A slender leg—one I’d recognize anywhere—just disappears through the open tram door.

  “Bianca!” I call out. “Hold the tram!”

  Bianca sticks her head out, then leans through the open door, gripping the handle inside. Her black hair cascades around her shoulders.

  But the tram is already moving.<
br />
  “You’re late again, Ugene!” she shouts, holding a hand toward me.

  I reach, just missing her fingers.

  Bianca leans farther, her foot hooked on the edge of the doorway—an easy feat for her and her Somatic muscles. “Jump!”

  Without hesitation, I throw myself at her and the moving tram.

  Bianca’s hand clamps down on my arm and yanks me into the tram as if I weigh the same as a gym bag.

  I thump awkwardly against the front of the self-driving tram and stumble to the floor, dirtying my pressed dress pants. No one on the tram moves to help me up.

  Bianca easily swings her body inside and smooths her red blouse over her toned stomach. “What would you do without me?”

  Probably die? I chuckle, causing Bianca to scrunch her nose. “Catch the next tram, I suppose,” I say, examining the blood slowly seeping from a fresh scratch on my elbow. “You could try a gentler landing.”

  “And you could try being on time for once,” Bianca says, offering a hand to help me up.

  I take it, stand, and brush myself off, then notice that everyone else on the tram is staring at me, shying away like I have a catchable illness. Everyone here knows me somehow—through school or just the commute or my neighborhood. I have a reputation as that Powerless kid. Regression from Powers is a real danger to Elpis, which makes me look like Undesirable Number One. Heat rushes to my cheeks, and I’m thankful for my darker skin.

  Bianca makes her way to a seat. I sit nearby.

  For the remainder of the ride to school, I admire Bianca when she isn’t looking. I can’t help it, really. The perfect shape of her long, muscular legs revealed beneath a tan skirt. Her wavy black hair, which shines even when the light isn’t hitting it. The way her smile lifts the corner of her eyes when she shifts over for an older woman who boarded the tram.

  I would have missed the stop for school if she hadn’t been going to the same place. Shaking out of my stupor, I step off, remembering the lump in my pocket.

  I reach into my pocket and my fingertips brush against the wet skin of the apple. Upon examination of the apple’s skin, I spot a large bruise where it must have hit the tram floor along with me. Sighing, I bite into it anyway and enter the tall, arching doorway proclaiming Memorial High School in all its glory engraved in the stone.

  Everything about Memorial High School screams upper-class from the gleaming windows to the pristinely polished tiled floors. The students all bear the same I’m better than you body language. The clothes reflect high fashion. Salas borough schools are for the well-off. The eighty-plus percenters. All the parents rank high on the Cass Scale—a scientific algorithm that determines the strength of each person’s individual power based on rigorous Testing Day exams. In another day, I will be cast out of this society and thrust into the lower classes, where the Consumption Tax will inevitably land me in prison within months.

  The Tax was introduced when I was ten to balance the scales. Everyone’s Power creates an output into society—whether it be growing food or offering services to help others, basically anything to help society run smoothly and efficiently—but for those who consume more than they produce, their Taxes are raised. Basically, the more your powers contribute to society, the lower your taxes because you give more than you take. The inverse is true as well. The less your powers contribute, the higher your taxes. When you can’t pay, you end up in prison until the debt is paid. My contribution is at zero. I’m in serious trouble.

  Tomorrow, once Career Day has had a chance to dole out job offers to the students, my class will graduate. I may not feel great about my prospects, but at least I will be out of this place. I doubt even the wasteland beyond Elpis could be worse than high school. And I may have no choice but to find out.

  Lowerclassmen rush off to class. The graduating class gathers in the gymnasium on bleachers, waiting to be bussed off to Career Day.

  Bianca rushes over to her friends.

  I stand near the bleachers watching when someone bumps my shoulder, nearly knocking me to the ground.

  “Watch it, Pew-gene,” says Jimmy, probably one of the dumbest, but most talented, Naturalists in our class. He tested into the 85th percentile for his Naturalist power on Testing Day—particularly in Hematology—and ever since his arrogance inflated to cosmic levels.

  “Your wit is astounding, as always,” I grumble, rubbing my shoulder.

  He smirks. Then the air thins and the room tilts slightly to the left. I stumble, catching my balance on the nearest bleacher before easing my unusually heavy weight onto the bench. Jimmy’s laughter reaches my ears as my blood thumps hard.

  “Mr. Richmond, you’ve been warned about using your abilities on another student,” a stern male voice says.

  I blink as the air rushes back and the world rights itself. Mr. Springer, the Natural Biology teacher, stands between Jimmy and me with his arms crossed.

  Jimmy rolls his eyes and joins Bianca and her friends, sliding his arms around her waist. Watching it makes my stomach revolt.

  Mr. Springer turns to me. “Are you okay, Ugene?”

  “Peachy,” I mumble, rubbing my aching temple. That twat gave me a headache.

  “Well, okay then. Get to your seat.”

  Mr. Springer removes himself from the situation, allowing me to recover with some modicum of dignity.

  Unlike most of the teachers at school, who gave up on teaching me anything useful when no Power emerged, Mr. Springer taught me genetic biology, power mutation, and the potential indications for latent Power triggers. At first, I think he still believed he could help me discover my Power. But my affinity for understanding the science behind Powers—along with my hunger for the knowledge—encouraged him to continue. Together, we examined my DNA in relation to his to see what made me different, or if any hope remained.

  “There’s nothing exciting about being ordinary,” he used to say. “But you don’t need Powers to have brains.” Easy to say when you have both.

  About ten minutes into the school day, everyone is loaded onto buses and carted off to the convention center downtown. In the overcrowded bus, I sit alone and watch the buildings grow as we approach, until they loom high over our heads. The tallest is Paragon Tower, home of biomedical research and pharmaceutical giant Paragon Diagnostics. The four corners of the building twist clockwise into the sky like a massive helix, coming to a point at the 200th floor. On cloudy days, the top stories disappear.

  We pass a construction site for a new skyscraper. Two workers hoist a steel beam, barehanded, from a truck and walk it toward the skeleton of the building. They lift it above their heads, and the beam floats out of their hands, rising toward the highest point of the building, where another team of men works to guide the beam into place using Telekinesis.

  Some of the strongest Somatics and Psionics work in construction, lifting building materials with muscles and Telekinesis. The stronger your Powers, the more you’re paid.

  The bus pulls up to the largest of the three squat towers outside the convention center, and everyone pours out. Crowds are gathered beneath the overhang that covers the convention center’s sidewalk.

  I hang back at the end of the line, not at all eager to haul my unspectacular backside into the exhibition hall. As I inch toward the front of the bus, I examine the signs reading “Powers are Powers no matter what” and “Abolish the Cass Scale.”

  While some signs are more creative than others, they all convey the same feeling—that people shouldn’t be discriminated against based on the strength of their Power; that they shouldn’t be imprisoned because they can’t pay the Tax. It’s irrelevant to me either way.

  I don’t have a Power.

  As we make our way to the doors of the convention center, protesters sneak flyers into the hands of everyone unfortunate enough to make eye contact with them. A woman with blonde hair pulled back into a severe braid shoves a blue page into my hand. I don’t know what to say—not that there is time to say anything—so I read the
flyer as I follow the others toward the exhibition hall.

  Fight Prop 8.5! jumps out in large, bold letters across the top of the page. It goes on to invite those opposed to Proposition 8.5 to join the fight. Unsure exactly what this proposition is or what difference I can really make, I stuff it into the pocket of my dress pants to throw out later.

  4

  Students filter through the open doors of the exhibition hall where the cacophony of noise filters out. As we enter the hall, each student gives their name and is handed a glass tablet illuminating their selections. I peer over Mo’s shoulder as he turns his unit on and the holographic results display on the tablet, showing his rank on the Cass Scale, 19, and his potential job prospects: 52. He heads deeper into the hall.

  “Name?” the woman at the door asks.

  “Uh, Ugene Powers.”

  She looks bored as she enters my name and a code into the tablet, then hands it to me, revealing her Naturalist brand—the encircled Oak Tree—on the left hand.

  I step through the open doors into the noise of the exhibition hall. Employers are divided primarily by the Branches of Power—though some of them have jobs in multiple branches. Banners hang from the ceiling advertising the different Branches: Somatic in red with the logo of flexed muscles, Naturalist in green with the logo of an oak tree, Divinic in blue with the logo of the Milky Way, and Psionic in yellow with the logo of a brain. In each section, rows upon rows of employer booths stretch across the massive floor.

  I stumble forward as an excited student rushes past, shaking me out of my shocked stupor. I activate my tablet and look down at my results. The bright blue lettering and zeros mock me.

  Cass Scale Rank: 0.0001

  Employment Booth Listings: 3

  The option to see the listings or bring up the exhibition hall map rises from the tablet. I chew my lip and tap the choice to bring up the location of my three potential employers on the exhibition hall map. As the hologram changes, I glance over in time to see Jimmy showing off his results to his posse.