Nomad stood in the middle of the main room, concentrating on creating a ball of energy. So far all he had managed to make were vague distortions in the air that would blow up and send him flying into the wall. Erick didn’t want to accidentally hurt anyone or being seen while Nomad was trying to learn to use his powers so they agreed to stay in the apartments until Nomad had the basics mastered.

“Come on Nomad, your getting closer every time, just keep concentrating.” Erick encouraged.

Sweat ran down Nomads face, partly from the heat of the day and partly from the exertion of keeping the energy in his hands from becoming unstable.

“It’s taking shape Nomad. Almost there, don’t lose it.”

Nomad’s hands shook with the effort and he knew he wouldn’t be able to contain it much longer. Already, sparks of energy slipped through his fingers and crackled in the air. Erick noticed too and took several steps back.

“Okay Nomad, you’re losing it, let it flow back into you. Absorb the energy.”

Neither of them had any way of knowing exactly how much energy Nomad had actually gotten into this ball. Only when Nomad felt the skin on his hands begin to split did he know they were in trouble.

“Get out of the way!” Nomad yelled to Erick as he felt it pull free. The blast lifted Nomad off the ground and launched him across the room. As he moved, everything slowed down. Waves in the air from the energy rippled and bent around Erick, his hands outstretched to catch the blast. Nomad was only just beginning to understood the energy and yet, as he watched, the distortions in the air were no longer random spikes. Nomad reached out and pulled at it. He forced the energy back together and the newly formed ball rested heavily in his hands as he hit the floor. Time still crawled thoughb Erick started moving at normal speed.

“You’ll have to consciously slow your mind and body back down,” he said.

Nomad continued to concentrate and soon the world returned to its normal pace.

Every time Erick demonstrated his energy blast there was a blue distortion in the air. As Nomad stood up he looked at the ball of energy in his hand, noting it’s weight and smooth black surface. He had to wonder if he’d done something wrong.

“Wow.” Erick exclaimed upon seeing the orb.

“What is it?” Nomad asked him.

Erick reached out to touch it, but as he did so the orb vibrated angrily until he took back his hand.

“I think,” Erick ventured, “It’s pure energy, more concentrated than anything I’ve ever made.”

Nomad held the ball in the palm of his hand. It was strange. As he looked at the ball he knew and understood everything about it as if it were a part of him. He rotated his hand over and the ball remained in his palm. The ball rolled over his hand and spiraled up his arm and down again at Nomad’s command.

“Amazing.” Erick remarked.

Nomad looked out one of the windows toward another run down building across the street. Erick had used it to show the force of one of his blasts and had then repaired the wall with a wave of his hand. Nomad cocked his arm back, took aim, and threw the black orb at the brickwork. Erick hadn’t been expecting that.

“No!” He shouted as they watched the ball spin out the window and towards the neighboring building.

As the ball flew, pieces of energy began to spiral off giving it the appearance of a small, black galaxy. Erick tried to stop it but couldn’t and so he settle for redirecting it up into the sky.

“What’s wrong?” Nomad asked. “You got to hit the building, why can’t I?”

Nomad’s ball of energy was moving so fast that by then it was only a speck in the sky. Nomad’s hold on the ball slipped. Erick didn’t even try to answer, he didn’t need to. A deafening explosion went off hundreds of feet above. They were both knocked to the floor and when they looked out the window they saw the remnants of the shock wave passing through the clouds above.

“That,” Erick said breathlessly, “Is why you can’t.”

“Wow!” Nomad said, not hearing a single word of Erick’s. “I’m doing that again!”

“What?” Erick asked, “Do you realize how many people out there just heard and felt that explosion? Don’t you think they’ll get a little suspicious, not to mention frightened, if it keeps happening over and over again?”

Nomad hated being told what to do. As far as he could remember he’d been free to do what he pleased. Nomad placed his hand behind his back, knowing Erick would still feel the energy. He focused on how it had felt the first time, recalling the weight and warmth of the orb. The ball dropped into the palm of his hand.

“Nomad,” Erick warned.

“Don’t worry.” he told him as he began to spin the ball around his arm again and then in the air around his body, “I only wanted to see if I could do it again, I’m not going to blow anything up with it.” Nomad rolled it around onto his hand again before absorbing it back into himself.

“Okay.” Erick let out a breath of relief once he saw that the energy ball was gone. “What now?” He asked.

“Well,” Nomad looked down at his cut and bleeding hands, the wounds still fresh from when he’d created his first stable energy ball. “Do you think you could teach me how to heal these?”

“Sure.” Erick answered, “though I thought you already had that one down.”

Nomad shrugged and Erick explained the basics behind healing, how the energy should flow, and so forth. Nomad concentrated on the wounds and on sealing them. In addition to Erick’s advice, Nomad also thought back on how it felt when he healed the old man. Finally, after several silent and uneventful minutes, the cuts began to shrink.

“Don’t get too excited,” Erick joked, “We’ve just been standing here so long that your body’s begun to heal naturally.”

Nomad ignored him and concentrated harder until the cuts disappeared altogether.

“You know what, Nomad?” Erick said after Nomad’s hands were healed. “At this rate I’ll run out of things to teach you by the end of the week.”

Telekinesis, the ability to move objects with the mind, came next. Erick started out by demonstrating it for Nomad. Erick took him over to one of the windows that faced the street and pointed to a few garbage cans and spent the next few minutes startling those that walked by on the sidewalk by making the cans jump or skid forward a few inches. Once he finished, he tossed his old blanket onto the floor in the middle of the room.

“Okay, basically what you’ve got to do for this one,” Erick instructed, “Is to find your focal point. I’ve found it works best for me if I focus the energy into the center of my chest or one of my hands. Then channel that energy into the object you want to move. The larger the object, the more energy you’ll need, the same thing goes for making it move faster.”

Nomad began to center his energy around his hand. It grew warm and Nomad extended it out towards the blanket. Several things occurred at once. The blanket disappeared in a puff of dust, a short, high-pitched whir sounded and the wall on the opposite side of the room shook, shattering the window.

“Ummm.” Nomad stammered, looking up at Erick for an explanation. “What did I just do?”

Erick walked over to where the blanket use to be and knelt down. He felt the floor and then went over to the wall to examine the window.

“That’s enough for today.” Erick spoke very rigidly with a definite hint of anger.

Nomad readied a protest when Erick turned his back on him, repaired and opened the window, and then flew out leaving Nomad alone with only his curiosity to keep him company.

With Erick gone, Nomad attempted to use telekinesis on small rocks or pieces of wood that were lying around, but with the similar results.

“Stop before you break something important.” Erick spoke in Nomad’s mind.

Nomad tried to find where Erick had gone but there was no sign of him.

With Erick gone, and still unable to use telekinesis properly, Nomad lay down on his makeshift bed. It took a while but eventually he fell asleep. When Nomad awoke the next morning Erick sat in the middle of the room cooking pancakes and eggs. It was a strange sight. Erick was levitating the pan while generating a blue flame beneath the pan.

“Showing off?” Nomad said.

“What, this?” Erick asked and shrugged. “I just thought a hot meal would be nice. My appology if you will for overreacting.”

“Where’d the food and dishes come from?”

“They were liberated in the dead of night from people who didn’t need them as much as we do.” Erick replied, brandishing his spatula like a sword.”

“Right.” Nomad said and sat down beside him. “When are you going teach me how to do that?” He added, pointing to the flame.

“Oh,” Erick said, “This is just heat energy. It’s not really anything special, just a different way of channeling the energy blast. Go ahead, give it a try.”

Nomad raised his hand up to eye level and began allowing energy to fill his palm where it began to take the familiar shape of a black orb.

“All right now,” Erick said, “let it leak some energy out and it should turn into heat.” Considering how often Nomad’s energy blasts had accidentally exploded, Nomad was wary of intentionally weakening the containment. The black orb wavered and flicked a small tongue of flame. The heat was immense and both Erick and Nomad leaned back from it. Nomad pulled back on the energy he was letting out and the flame followed suit.

“It’s hotter than yours.” Nomad noted.

Erick nodded. “It takes some practice to fine tune it, like any other power.”

“Why are you making breakfast?”

“Like I said, it’s my apology for yesterday.” Erick answered without taking his eyes off the food.

“Don’t mention it, it’s okay.” Nomad said, although I didn’t quite know why.

“The thing is, Nomad,” Erick explained, “That blanket was kind of, important to me. It’s stupid, I know. You just caught me off guard when you disintegrated it. It was from an old friend.”

Nomad walked over to the window through which Erick had demonstrated his jumping dumpsters.

“Why was that blanket so important to you?” Nomad asked as he watched two teenagers walk by on their way to school.

“I showed you some memories of Sarah, right?”

“She’s the one that was killed?” Nomad asked him.

“Yes.” He answered. “Anyway, that blanket was one of hers that we used while we were here, while I was first learning to use my powers.” Erick’s voice seemed to be almost too casual, as if he were trying to make himself believe that what happened wasn’t that big of a deal any more.

Neither spoke much after that and Erick turned his attention back to cooking. When the food was ready they ate in silence.

“So, where were we?” Erick asked after breakfast.

He looked out the window and brought several small rocks up from outside and set them down in a row on the floor.

“Now then, I was thinking last night that your problem is that you put too much energy into your powers. So, I want you to hold back. Just use the smallest amount of energy you can and then build up from there.”

Nomad nodded and moved into his regular place in the middle of the room. He still thought about what Erick said earlier about how Sarah had been with him from the start, and how she had died. He wanted to know more about their time together but knew this wasn’t the time.

“Nomad? You ready?” Erick prodded his side and brought his mind back to the task at hand.

A part of Nomad wondered whether Erick had read his mind. He’d been getting lax with his usual mental defenses and didn’t like that. Nomad looked down at the first rock and began focusing on it. He raised his hand and felt the energy surge out of it and hit the rock, disintegrating it instantly and shaking the back wall yet again.

“Remember, Nomad, hold back, it’s a small rock so it only needs a very small amount of energy.” Erick motioned toward the next rock and Nomad began again.

He extended my hand again, building up the energy, and then started to feel his way around the rock. Nomad enveloped the rock in energy and then closed his hand. The rock raised a few inches into the air. A faint outline of Nomad’s hand appeared in the air surrounding the rock, clutching it tightly. Glancing down at his hand he saw a similar effect inside of the rock he was lifting.

The rock began to shake as it rose higher. It wasn’t until a fine powder began falling from the rock that both Erick and Nomad realized that, although the rock wasn’t disintegrating outright, it was still being crushed. Nomad eased off even more to the point that it felt as though he was barely putting any energy at all into it and the rock stabilized. The rock moved clumsily around the room a couple of times until Nomad felt that he understood the power.

“Well,” Nomad said, bringing the rock down for an easy landing, “Is it time for the garbage cans?”

Erick looked puzzled for a moment Until Nomad walked over to the window.

“Alright, Nomad. Now just be careful that you don’t hurt anyone.” He said.

Nomad smiled mischievously and began watching for prospective passers by. They didn’t have to wait very long before opportunity came in the form of the two boys Nomad had seen earlier that day, now on break for lunch.

“Now remember,” Erick prompted, “Don’t overdo it.”

Nomad winked and stretched out his arm toward the cans. He waited until the two were right next to the cans before he made them move. As soon as the boys were in place, he let just enough energy escape to make three of the cans jump forward a foot or so, and the forth to spin in a tight circle, spraying the boys in garbage. The boys jumped back, not quite sure if they believed what they just saw.

Nomad entered the boys minds and growled.

“Aaarrgh!” The garbage cans seemed to cry out as they lunged toward the boys. Tears leaked out of Nomad’s eyes and his sides hurt from laughing as he watched them run away as fast as they could.

“That’s enough.” Erick cut in as Nomad started making the cans pursue the boys.

Nomad looked up at Erick, expecting to see him laughing as well, but instead he looked upset.

“I think you took that a little too far.” He said as he stood up and opened the window the rest of the way. “I’m going to go make them forget this.”

Before Nomad could say anything, he was gone. Nomad slumped against the wall and sat down. Where he’d been expecting congratulations, he’d instead received condemnation and a pattern seemed to be developing that Nomad didn’t like.. Then Nomad realized what Erick had just said. He could erase memories. Could he perhaps bring back memories? Erick did very little to hide his curiosity about Nomad’s past but he’d never offered to help Nomad remember anything.

Erick was quiet when he returned and it was awkward between them once again. This was one of the reasons Nomad avoided interacting with most other people because he often seemed to make things uncomfortable.

“Erick,” Nomad finally said, “I want to ask you something.”

Erick looked puzzled, but allowed motioned for Nomad to continue.

“You can make people forget things, erase their memory, right?”

“Yes.” Erick answered with a slight look of perplexity. “As long as what I want them to forget happened recently.”

“Well,” Nomad began, “When I said I first woke up in that park over there, I meant what I said. I don’t remember anything before that day. I don’t know who I am, where I came from or how I got there and I’ve been wandering around trying to stay hidden ever since.”

Erick didn’t respond so Nomad went on.

“I do have one clue though, here.” He handed Erick the Bible with the torn piece of paper. Erick read the note through and then examined the book.

“I don’t know what the Bible is about, or the message. But, I do think that I might be able to help you to remember at least some of your past.”

Erick moved closer to him so that they were only an arms length apart.

“You’re going to have to lower all of your mental blocks for this to work.”

Reluctantly, Nomad dropped his guard and he placed his hands on either side of my head. The abandoned apartment vanished and was replaced by the large room with the sloping floor and shadowed men standing in the distant corner. Bright red light flashed and Nomad’s head felt as though it had split open. His knees buckled but Erick maintained his hold on Nomad’s head, dropping to his knees to stay with Nomad. The red light intensified as Erick continued to press deeper into Nomad’s mind and the pain became unbearable.

“Stop!” Nomad screamed when he couldn’t take it any longer and Erick let go.

Nomad finished vomiting before he even knew he’d begun. Cold sweat made his shirt cling to his chest and his breathing came in ragged short breaths.

“Let’s never try that again.” Nomad told Erick when the pain subsided.

Erick motioned with his hand and Nomad’s pile of sick flew off the floor and out the window.

“Did you find anything?” Nomad asked.

“No,” Erick said but he didn’t quite meet Nomad’s eyes when he answered.

Something about Erick’s tone also made Nomad question his honesty on the subject, but the pain and nausea were enough for now that he let it drop.

“Thanks anyway Erick. I’m going to bed.”

It wasn’t very late but after what had just happened, Nomad needed to sleep.

“I’m going out,” Erick still seemed oddly stiff as he left.