Ellie stared down at the boy.
“Who are you?!” she demanded again.
“Hi… um, please don’t get mad at me. I thought – see, I’ve been looking for you,” he mumbled out, holding his arms up defensively.
“Looking for me?” Ellie repeated with venom.
“Sorry, I know that sounds bad… sorry, I’m – see, you – I have powers like you do.”
Ellie blinked. She didn’t know what to say.
“How do you know me?” Ellie asked.
“I – well, I don’t know you, really. But I just… sensed you? Like a signal? And I found you, well, today. That’s why I’ve been following you.”
Ellie scowled.
“OK, so you found me. So what? What do you want?”
“Um… honestly, I was just looking for someone who could…”
The boy trailed off. Ellie pushed on.
“What?” she asked.
“…could understand.”
He looked sheepish and embarrassed at this confession. Ellie couldn’t help but feel for him. Wasn’t that exactly what she wanted?
“What’s your name?” Ellie asked, making a conscious effort to sound more friendly.
“Byron… I’m Byron,” the boy said, climbing up to his feet and brushing off dust from his jeans. He extended his hand nervously.
Ellie had only ever shook her boss’ hand once before, and Pav’s yesterday, and she couldn’t help but feel awkward when she did it now. His hands were warm and clammy.
“I’m Ellie,” she said.
She broke the handshake almost immediately and looked around.
“Maybe we could go somewhere to talk?” Ellie suggested.
“Yeah… yeah, alright, Ellie,” Byron said, “Um… where to?”
“Anywhere that I don’t have to spend a lot of money.”
“So that’s why you’ve been out in the streets… run out of money, huh?”
“Don’t do that. It’s creepy.”
“Sorry,” Byron looked down, embarrassed again.
“But yes, that’s why. It’s not easy to find money even with my… whatever this is.”
“Your power?” Byron piped up, hopefully.
“Don’t call it that. It’s stupid. We’re just people and this is just a… weird quirk of ours. What’s yours anyway? How do I know you aren’t just a creep lying to me?”
Byron suddenly looked horrified.
“I – I’m not, honest!” Byron gasped, “I’ll show you. My power isn’t… well, I can’t just do it here… but I can fix your money problem. Come with me.”
“Where are we going?” Ellie asked, suspiciously.
“To an ATM,” Byron said as he walked away from Ellie.
She followed him back out into the open field. They crossed it and stepped onto the street on the other side, “There’s bound to be one on this street somewhere – yes, look, over there… OK, so… just watch this.”
As they approached, Byron moved his hand over the keyboard and rested it there. Ellie watched as he closed his eyes; the screen entered a pin number, despite the fact no buttons were being pressed. The options to withdraw £250 were selected all by themselves and the machine started to process the payment. Byron lifted his hand and opened his eyes as the money came out of the machine.
“Quick, grab it. Let’s go.”
Ellie grabbed the money and stuffed it into her pocket, and then walked swiftly along with Byron.
“What did you just do?” Ellie hissed.
“Used my power,” Byron shrugged.
“You can hack ATMs?” Ellie asked incredulously.
“Well, it’s more like… talking? Not just ATMs. All machines. It’s called technology manipulation,” Byron replied, somewhat smugly.
They moved up the street, around a corner and away from the busy streets.
“So, you stole that money from someone else’s account?” Ellie asked.
“No, not quite. I created a fake account and tricked the computer into thinking it was real and had £250 in there. So I stole off the bank, if you wanna be technical. Forgive me if I don’t rack myself with guilt over it,” Byron grinned.
Ellie pulled out the money from her pocket and tried to hand it to Byron but he waved her off.
“Keep it; I can do that anytime. You can at least get a hotel now or something. Save my phone number though, yeah?” Byron asked.
Ellie raised her brow.
“Well, you know… if you want, that is. I thought we could just hang out… you’re the first person I’ve found who I can actually talk to.”
“We don’t even know each other,” Ellie replied.
“Well… if you don’t want to, we won’t,” Byron replied meekly.
Ellie considered him for a moment.
“No, it’s fine. Here,” Ellie conceded.
She swiped his phone out of his hands and saved her number in it. Then, she called herself to get his number and handed his phone back to him.
“Cool,” Byron grinned clumsily.
“So what do you call my… thing?” Ellie asked him.
“Well, I saw you move a can with your hand. That’s called Telekinesis.”
“Yeah, I knew that one… but that’s not all I can do.”
“What else can you do?”
“Well, I can… have an out of body experience.”
“Out of body experience… like astral projection?”
“I don’t know what that is… maybe?”
“The power to separate one’s spirit from one’s body,” Byron recited, “Does that sound right?”
“Yeah… yeah, I think it does,” Ellie replied.
“That’s an amazing power, Ellie. Hell of a lot more useful than mine,” Byron said.
“You just got money like it was nothing. I can’t do that,” Ellie replied.
“Maybe not – but you’d fare much better in a fight,” Byron nodded, enthusiastically.
“Why would I need to fight?”
“Well, I dunno… I just mean if you needed to. If you came across someone… bad. Anyway, my point is… you have amazing abilities! And there’s more out there like us, I can sense them too, can you?”
“Yes,” Ellie replied, though before this moment, she had never consciously considered it.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” Byron asked, waving non-specifically at the street they were walking down.
“Only now you’re noticing?” Ellie replied.
“Well, no… Scottish, yeah?” Byron said.
“Aye.”
“How come you moved here?”
“To get away from a bad situation.” Ellie replied, after a pause.
“Did you come here looking for someone?” Byron asked.
“No, but… I was just drawn to come here, for some reason…”
“You know what this means, don’t you?” Byron asked.
Ellie looked at him, and it seemed her answer was exactly the response he was hoping for.
“What?” she asked, puzzled.
“All of us have these powers, however many of us there are. We’re all connected. We can all sense each other,” Byron explained.
“How did it happen to you?” Ellie asked.
“What?”
“What do you think?” Ellie retorted, impatiently, “The technical manipulation thing.”
“Oh, well – to tell you the truth, I don’t really know. It was about six or seven months ago. One day, I went to the ATM but I had forgotten my card. But then, I don’t know how to explain it – I just knew I could … talk to the machine.”
“Weird…” Ellie replied.
“Yeah,” Byron agreed, “What about you?”
“I just woke up… and I could do it,” Ellie shrugged, then she asked, “Did you feel ill around the time it happened?”
Byron thought for a moment.
“Yeah, actually… I think I had a fever the day before.”
“Me too…”
“What do you think it means?” Byron asked.
Ellie sighed and shrugged, “I have no idea what any of this means. Three days ago, I had no inkling I would even be out of Scotland. I don’t even really know what I’m doing here.”
There was an awkward silence where Ellie felt too embarrassed to continue and Byron didn’t seem to have a response ready. Then, he said tentatively:
“You know, you could save that money… and just come to my place,” Byron suggested.
Ellie double-took.
“Uh… excuse me?”
Byron gaped open his mouth, flustered.
“No – I’m not – nothing dodgy. Sorry, I’m being weird. I just – we’re connected somehow… god, that sounds even more weird -”
“It’s alright,” Ellie replied, saving Byron from himself, and was surprised that she found his blustering amusing, “I know what you meant.”
“I have a spare room, completely privacy. It’s yours if you want it.”
It would have been crazy to think she would have met a random boy in London and then decided within an hour of meeting him to go back to his place. But this somehow just felt different. Whatever it was that connected them, it was bigger than them. And she felt much safer knowing she could stay close to someone else who was like her.
“Sure, let’s go to yours… thank you.” Ellie agreed.
Byron sighed and smiled.
“Right… and then we can talk about this… properly, you know.” He smiled nervously.
“Sure, but I have to get my truck from where I was staying.”
“Lead the way,” Byron said, then stopped himself with a grin, “Actually… maybe, I should.”
© 2026 Rhys Clark. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form, including scraping for AI training or large language models, without the prior written permission of the author.
Writing by Rhys Clark 