Free Elevated (Book 1): Elevated by Daniel Solomon Kaplan Page A

outline of Jex becomes clear again. His silhouette is darker than the objects in front of him. Faint, but still visible.
    “Jumping jacks. You’re doing jumping jacks.”
    “Right,” Jex huffs after he stops. “Your sense of density is quite good. Keep working on it.”
    “Weird, at home I can see through walls easily, but here it’s hard to see very far.”
    “You can see through walls?”
    “Yeah, at home I can.”
    “Fascinating. Must have a powerful density filter. Which is why you’re thrown off here. Too much junk around. A wall is uniform. Easier to filter out.”
    “So I guess I shouldn’t be trying this trick at a warehouse.”
    “Wouldn’t recommend it.” Jex motions his hand for me to turn around, which I do. He smiles. “Ok, now that was cool.”
    We both laugh.
    Jex steps over to his desk and pulls out some papers. “I hacked the university server and downloaded these files. Instructions on harnessing Scanner ability. Good exercises. We’ll go through them together. We’ve already done the first one. I can safely establish you are a “High Density, Low Surface Area Scanner” which means we’re going to focus on surface area challenges.”
    We go right to work. The exercises involve Jex writing things or asking me to describe textures of objects. We go for hours and the drills begin to scramble my head. The line between what I see with my eyes and my sonar becomes fuzzy. Reality itself loses its color and texture from the sensory overload. After the fourth exercise, I’m exhausted.
    “You need to take a break,” Jex says. “I’ll go get some water.”
    With Jex out of the room, my brain relaxes and I find myself collapsing into the office chair. I haven’t felt like this since my algebra exam last year. Jex returns with a glass of water and hands it to me. I have to smile when I spot the large can of beer he brought for himself.
    “You’re doing great. In fact, I think you’ll be ready very soon,” Jex says, chugging the beer down.
    “Ready for?”
    “Think it’s time to find out about your dad.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You told me your father was labeled an Unsound. But you weren’t given a classification.”
    “No, they said they don’t release that information.”
    “Well, no, it’s because there isn’t any information.”
    “What?”
    “The record for your dad has been tampered with.”
    I get up out of the chair. “But why?”
    “Let’s figure out the ‘what’ first. We can worry about the ‘why’ later,” Jex says as he sits at the desk. His fingers dash across the keyboard.
    A photograph appears on the screen of a stern-faced middle-aged man. Wiry blond hair emphasizes his pale, sallow skin and contrasts with his dark black suit. I recognize the scrawny man immediately from Basic Cuisine. He apprehended the elderly man with three arms.
    “Maddock Steele,” Jex says in between gulps of beer.
    Shelly’s dad. I’d never seen him before, but I know his name.
    “As far as I can tell, he made the entry about your dad. He works in GC&R, the GEMO Control and Regulation department. He should have the full story.”
    “And how do we get the truth from him?” I ask.
    “That’s where you come in. We’re going to track him together.”
    “Spying?”
    “If you want to look at it that way.”
    “You want me to spy on a man who works in GEMO Regulation using my powers? That’s crazy. What if I’m caught?”
    “You want to know, don’t you?”
    “The whole thing sounds freaky to me. Following someone around makes my skin crawl. I thought you were going to help me control these powers.”
    “I thought you wanted to know more about your dad.”
    The whole idea is crazy. I haven’t even gotten comfortable with my power and now Jex wants me to use it to spy on someone? “But we’ve just started.”
    “If something is up with your dad, we can’t just wait around. He could be in real danger.”
    “I’ll have to think about it.”
    “Understood.