Hidden Faults by Ann Somerville

into my mouth so I wouldn’t scream or beg. I didn’t know where to start trying to make sense of any of this. How could I have suddenly developed pyrokinesis after twenty-nine years? The latest any paranormal was known to manifest was the age of ten, Most were much younger. Adults? Never. The investigators assumed I’d been hiding it. How could I blame them? I had no way of proving any different.
    No one could help me. Paranormals were considered potential terrorists. Anyone hiding their powers was believed to be the real thing. The only surprise was that I hadn’t been sentenced to hang, but then I hadn’t heard of a paranormal being executed since I was a child. Was a lifetime in prison better than death?
    I pulled up the sleeve of my grey overall with my teeth and stared at the dressing over the new injector site. I already understood why paras loathed naksen so much—but why it was taken by those who didn’t need to, I had no idea. I couldn’t think . I could just about feel—but everything was so muffled and slow. I had trouble remembering names. Timo’s full name. The...the woman who worked with Tanika...Ajeile. It was like becoming senile. I would be like this for the rest of my life.
    Tears began to run down my face, but I couldn’t work up enough energy to even cry properly. The moisture leaked out while I sat there, despairing, confused, hopeless. No one cared. No one checked on me before I finally collapsed sideways and found a drugged and unrestful unconsciousness.
    They woke me by shaking me and shouting, dragging me upright before I was properly aware, to begin my imprisonment proper. Silent, heavily armed men forced me into a secured veecle with blackout windows, and then drove for about an hour, emerging into a large concrete bunker. Two massive guards—a third following with an electroreed and gun at the ready—hauled me, without ceremony and still barefoot and chained, through doors and along corridors until we finally arrived, incongruously, in a shower-room.
    There they unchained and stripped me without the least gentleness and thrust me under a cold water shower. They were serious about it too, and wouldn’t let me get out from under the freezing stream until every square midec of skin, my hair, and even under my nails was clean. I was close to hypothermia before they allowed me to get out of the shower.
    Next came the medical examination. The medic covered the new implantation site with synthaskin and took samples of various body fluids. The medic’s attitude was one of undisguised loathing. I couldn’t tell if it was me, my profession, or all paranormals which disgusted him, but he managed to make every procedure close to torture. He also managed to do all of it without speaking to me directly once—asking the guards to make me piss into his sample jar, to make me hold my arm out, and so on. I had been insulated from this raw hatred, I’d heard about, seen directed at others. Now it was my life. Like the naksen.
    They still didn’t allow me to dress, but at least I was dry now. When the medic indicated with a flick of his hand that he’d finished and no longer required my odious presence, the guards dragged me out along another corridor to a barber who removed all my hair with a brisk, efficient technique. No sooner had his clippers stopped buzzing than I was taken to the room next to the barber’s. There a technician sealed my status permanently as one of our society’s most despised members—or non-members, in my case. A tattoo on both hands, warning anyone and everyone that I was dangerous, and why. The point of doing so was lost on me, since I’d never again use the powers that had so briefly and disastrously manifested, but naturally my opinion interested no one.
    Tattoos shitting hurt, much more than I thought they would. What they’d been like in the day when the tattooists used actual needles instead of hyposprays I had no idea, but even the naksen didn’t dull the