How did she find herself in these situations? Stuck crawling through the sewers on her hands and knees, she was still glad she was here. Even covered in waste and things she didn't dare contemplate, she was in a better spot than she deserved.
For years, she had used her gifts to take from people. The universe had blessed her with a useful mutation, and she'd all but wasted it just robbing private residences. Most mutations were small things, little switches in genes that altered how a person looked, or turned a protein on or off... often you couldn't even tell who was a mutant. A tiny percentage, though, had an obvious mutation. Those fell into two categories... obvious physical effects, like being covered in scales or having slit pupils, and obvious powers, like telekinesis, telepathy, or other related powers.
In the genetic lottery, she won big, and she almost wasted the whole thing. Sure, she'd been born into an upper-middle class family, and had been given every opportunity. Discovering she had a talent for moving things with her mind had come early, and she'd used it just to play pranks on her brothers and friends at school. Then came the first crime.
It was a small thing. She just used her talent to break into her school to alter a grade. She wasn't caught, at least not by the school. Someone else was watching though. Tom was a local thug, a small time crook, looking for a way to up his game, and when he saw Sheila breaking into the school with a wave of her hand, he knew he had it.
He had pictures, and he said he would take them to the school if she didn't do just as he said. Sobbing, she agreed. He started her out by using her to move cameras so he could enter stores undetected, then he had her lifting large objects with her mind to up their take, and finally, he simply sent her out on her own missions.
Eventually, someone more powerful noticed their activities, and tried to force Tom to give Sheila up. Tom refused, and Mr. Harris shot him. Sheila didn't want to go with someone who would so callously kill another person, but after living as a crook with Tom, Mr. Harris had plenty to blackmail her with. Sheila went with him, and at first it wasn't so bad. He had her doing the same kinds of jobs Tom had, but one night, he tried to take it further.
He walked into Sheila's room and started to take off his shirt. When Sheila complained, he just told her it was part of the perks of being one of his favorite employees. Screaming didn't help, he just smacked her, so Sheila did something she never thought she would. She reached out with her talent and grabbed his heart in a tight fist of mental energy, holding it still. When your heart doesn't move, it can't pump blood. If your blood isn't pumping, you tend to die pretty quickly.
Sheila watched as the naked man laying nearly on top of her struggled and died. Then she calmly dressed in something warm and walked out as if she were going on a regular mission, and she never looked back.
All she knew how to do was commit crimes, so she set herself up and stole what she needed to survive, almost always from private homes, so as not to draw too much attention to herself. Then she robbed the wrong house.
It belonged to another mutant. He worked for the government, in the army as a counter-mutant operative. Not her lucky night.
His gift was telepathy, and before she knew what was happening, he was inside her head. Somehow, he shut out all of her senses, all of her talent. As far as she could tell, she was in a black box whose walls were just outside her reach.
When the light and sound returned, she was sitting in a court room, watching as people left. Sitting next to her was her planned victim.
"Sheila, you just joined the army. If you play along and do every task you're given, you'll serve out two terms of enlistment, and then be allowed to leave without anyone stopping you. If you try to escape, try to disobey, or even do too much to irritate your superiors, you will be punished. At best, you'll be given more work. At worst, you'll be executed. Understand?"
"What if I don't want to?" She glared, debating an escape attempt right that moment.
"Well, for all the crimes you've committed using your talent, you'd be locked up... but the government doesn't have an effective way of keeping someone with your gifts in jail. So they could kill you... there are a lot of accidents in jail... or they could put you on so many drugs you'd be out of your mind. Hell, they could simply lobotomize you and remove your ability to use your gift."
That put the fear of God... well, not God, but something... it put the fear of something into her. So, she agreed to work for the army, and they set her to cleaning the plugged drains in the sewer. Damn them.
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