Flicker

Author : Leif Hansen

Terra didn’t laugh. Not because I pushed my joke too far, as was typical, but because she suddenly realized what I was.

Within the few seconds it took for me to deliver my puerile punchline, her mind had grasped the meaning of my eyes’ incautious flicker from blue to gold, and she was up and running, running as fast and far as her legs would take her. Yet it was futile, she had come too close and would soon feel what she only briefly saw.

With a few bounds of my augmented legs I easily caught her and, despite her loud protests, tagged the indentation on the back of her neck, transferrering power. “You’re IT!” I declared as we burst into a pile of posthuman giggles on the warm summer grass.

“I’ll catch you later” she said before tessering, her eyes flickering gold before burying themselves beneath a beguiling brown.