Extraordinary Mistakes

4. Dealing with your own limitations

The doors open on the sixth floor and Abigail gets out to the frenetic rhythm of a morning on the classes floor. She walks toward her office, trying her best to avoid being hit by the children and teenagers that pass by.

On the walls, there are several quotes about deviant acceptance. She passes by a picture of Ánh Thi Nguyễn, 2003-2025 in loving memory. Abigail always looks away and pretends to focus on something else.

"Aminu, morning! How was your weekend?" She enters her office, and he's already there. "Love your t-shirt!"

He smiles, removes his expensive headphones, puts them on his neck instead, and shows off his t-shirt, with a painting by Julie Mehretu.

"Spent studying, you know. How's Emily? Were you with her?" His Nigerian accent shows, and he looks around the room.

"Yeah, we went yesterday to their place. Well, considering everything that happened, she is doing... okay."

"Will the terrorism ever stop?"

"Not everyone wants a better world, my friend. How busy are you today? Can we have lunch together? In the indoor garden, please?"

"Nah, too many people there, Abigail. Can we go somewhere else o?"

"Library it is! Do you have classes today?"

"In the afternoon, yes, now I have lab duty."

"So, let me guess, you're here for... coffee?"

"Don't ever taste..."

"The coffee downstairs. Trust me... I have no interest in checking what is it you nerds do there all day!" She laughs.

He smiles, puts his headphones back to listen to one of his favorite playlists, with tracks from Tems, Ayra Starr, and CKay, grabs a coffee on the way to the elevator. When he passes by Ánh's photo, unlike Abigail, he stops to look at it for a while.

***

Emily exits the elevator on the tenth floor.

"Lovely to see you, Emily! Looking good!"

Different people come up to her as she passes them by in the hallways on the tenth floor. She has just finished up a briefing and is onto the next.

"Emily, why are you here?!" Jade Harris asks, she's the number two most powerful in the world, and a fifth deviant generation, which is unheard of.

"It's themarketing floor... I'm the number one... where else would I be?" Emilysmirks.

"I meant on the Institute. You should be resting after everything that happened..." the girl looks directly into Emily's eyes.

Emily looks away after a few seconds.

"Dealing with your own limitations was probably hard," Jade lowers her voice.

Seriously?! Emily refuses to face her.

"What limitations?" Emily raises her voice.

"I'm not attacking you. Chill," Jade comes closer, "Have you had time to deal with what happened?"

"Obviously, Jade. Obviously..." she clicks her tongue, "in the slight breaks between all the interviews that I have scheduled."

Jade laughs and steps even closer.

"Good to know. This was a pleasure, as always." She starts to walk past Emily, puts her hand on the girl's lower back. "Take care, will you?" And leaves.

Emily rolls her eyes. Her cheeks turn red, and she can't help but smile. No matter how their last interaction went, the girl always had the power to make her smile again. 

***

"Morning, Miss Parker!" the children say in unison when Abigail enters the classroom.

"Morning, everyone. Hope you had a wonderful Day of Peace. Let's start with a minute of silence in the president's memory."

One minute goes by. Some children cry, and Abigail puts her hand on their shoulder.

"Ok, so in our last class, we spoke a little about the war. And even though we were clearly winning, our enemies kept murdering us indiscriminately."

Abigail shows several photos to her 7-year-old class. While ones cried, others laughed because they didn't understand the severity of the situation. One of her students told her that if he were there, he would have killed the enemies. 

No matter how long it passes, this hatred will never be truly in the past. Abigail bites her tongue to prevent her from crying.

"So, until the Day of the Ariston Massacre, we had lost over 250 thousand soldiers." She shows photos of the cemeteries filled with funerals and the families crying out. "We also know that deviants are naturally selfish and impulsive. This can only be reversed with the sort of education that the institutes provide worldwide."

Abigail looks down from time to time to follow the manual.

"Our enemies were savages. They had no education, and no organization in their so-called movement. Ruthless power-struggles. And one group had a lethal weapon. The Angel of Death. On the 26th of April 2013, she decimated the Ariston community, as we'll see in this video."

She plays the video; it has no sound. At first, nothing happens. There are people on the streets going about their business. The footage focuses on the main square. A 15-year-old girl in a white hoodie talks to an older woman. 

Megan's right hand turns blue, and she fires it in every direction. Out of nowhere, the entire architecture of the community changes, new buildings show up. Several children bleed out on the floor, mothers hold their babies and fall to the floor.

On the main square, completely different from before, Megan's right hand turns blue again and this time flowers pop up around her. She stands in front of the same woman, who lies on the floor, dying.

Out of nowhere, a dazzling white light forms a circle surrounding the outskirts of that community. Heads full force against the main square. Dust fills the air for a few minutes. And then, there's nothing there. All the bodies, buildings, reduced to ashes.

The older woman, and Megan, vanished.

"So, what happened here?" Abigail asks.

"The Angel of Death killed those deviants!" A student replies.

"Exactly. A single deviant did this monstrosity. Having an ability is a responsibility, we can't use it to cause harm to humans, we can't use it to cause harm to other dutiful deviants. The only deviants that should be hurt are..."

"The bad deviants!" the children say in unison.

Abigail smiles.

"Miss?"

"Yes?"

"Were the children at the Ariston community all deviants?"

"Yes, the Ariston community only allowed deviants in."

"Did the people hold a minute of silence for them?"

"No. They were terrorists. No one cried for them."