Pulse

Luckily for Dylan, the balls and blocks were made of foam, and the cups were plastic.
    “Very funny,” he said, instantly putting every item back on the table in the places where they had been. One ball was missing, a green one, which bounced off Dylan’s head and rolled away on the roof.
    “You missed one,” Faith said.
    “I can see you’re going to be a model student.”
    Faith didn’t answer. She was not going to let Dylan run the show, at least not without getting some answers first. Dylan could see he wasn’t getting anywhere, so he resorted to bargaining.
    “If you move the yellow ball into the blue cup, I’ll tell you why you can only use your newly discovered skills up here on the roof of an empty building.”
    Faith stared at Dylan but didn’t move. She raised an eyebrow and smirked, and the yellow ball lifted off the table. It lifted in front of Dylan’s face, then floated around his head three times before peeling off and landing in the blue cup.
    “Slam dunk,” she said. “Your defense stinks.”
    The ball came out of the cup and returned to where it had been, which was all Dylan’s work, and then he leaned back in his chair like he were going to take a nap.
    “Try again,” he said, taunting her enough that she momentarily forgot she was owed a reward. She went to work again, thinking of the yellow ball, but nothing happened. She kept trying to make it move, but it had turned to granite on the table. Not only that, but each of the three cups on the table popped up in the air and landed on top of the ball, one after the other. She kept trying to move the ball, and it kept sitting there. Dylan was vastly more powerful than she was. It was nothing to force the items not to move even when Faith was giving it her all.
    “The reason we have to do this up here,” Dylan said as he made the cups dance in the air like they were being thrown by an invisible juggler, “is because up here, no one can feel what we’re doing.”
    “Why not,” Faith asked.
    “As long as we’re higher than other carriers, they can’t detect a pulse.”
    “So whoever you don’t want finding out about me is down there while we’re up here?”
    Dylan nodded, setting down the cups on the table. “Signal won’t carry up or down very far. But side to side at the same level, a pulse will ripple out about thirty feet. Think of it like a pebble hitting a pond. The ripple only goes out, not up and down. That’s what a pulse does.”
    “You keep talking about a pulse. You mean like the one in my neck?”
    Faith felt the soft space under her cheek, searching for the tiny tremor under her skin she knew was there. Again, Dylan wouldn’t answer unless Faith participated in some work. He made her stack the blocks, move the balls into different cups, get all the foam items floating at once. Dylan was surprised at how quickly she learned and how precise she was with her movements.
    “My head is starting to hurt,” Faith said after about fifteen minutes of work. She held her hand on her temple and looked down at the table.
    “That’s normal. It will get easier, and you’ll get stronger. Right now you’re moving things that weigh almost nothing, but it’s a start.”
    Faith smiled softly and placed her hands flat on the table. Dylan was blown away when he felt himself moving, rising slowly in the air until he was lying flat on his back ten feet over the table.
    “Impressive,” Dylan said. But then Faith felt a sharp pain in the side of her neck, and suddenly Dylan was free-falling. He should have landed on the table, sending the balls and the blocks and the cups flying everywhere. But instead he only fell until he was an inch away from landing, then hovered in the air, turned over, and sat himself back down.
    “You might not be ready for something as heavy as me,” he said. “I’ve got a huge head.”
    Faith laughed nervously. She touched her neck again, thought of the pain, which bore a strong resemblance to being stuck with a tattoo needle.
    “It’s nothing to worry about,” Dylan said. “Think of it as a growing pain. Over time it will happen less and less.”
    Faith nodded and smiled weakly. When he said things like that, it made her think about how her life wasn’t ever going back to the way it was.
    “How many people can move things the way you and I can?”
    Dylan took his time answering, and even when he did, it was vague.
    “More than just you and me.”
    “That’s not much of an answer.