Information

Jubal
Legacy Name: Jubal

The Blacklight Yaherra
Owner: Faber

Age: 4 years, 11 months, 3 weeks

Born: April 25th, 2019

Adopted: 4 years, 11 months, 3 weeks ago

Adopted: April 26th, 2019

Statistics

• Level: 8
   
• Strength: 13
   
• Defense: 10
   
• Speed: 10
   
• Health: 10
   
• HP: 10/10
   
• Intelligence: 69
   
• Books Read: 66
• Food Eaten: 0
• Job: Candy Maker

Hello! Name's Jubal, nice to meet you. I enjoy loud music, fruity drinks, cheap ecstasy, free love, and no responsibilities. I also enjoy mind melding with other people. Like Star Trek, only I'm not an alien, and my life (sadly) isn't a tv show (yet). This ability wasn't one I was born with. Actually, a lot of people in my community have started turning up with strange abilities of late. For me, it started on a day a few years ago. A day on which I should've died, but didn't.

I was having a good time. There were good and bad days back then, but this day was a good one. I'd woken up on one of those giant bean bag chairs, the really big, really soft kind, snuggled in between several other warm and sleeping people. My head was pounding, which wasn't unusual, so I slipped out and went looking for something to take the edge off. I found some slip of a thing standing on a corner who I didn't recognise. Girls around here are usually offering a fun time of a different sort, but she assured me she was selling what I was looking for.

The pills looked like the kind of cheap uppers that are common around here. They hit similarly too, making the world softer on the edges and sharper in the middle, but before too long I found myself feeling different, like static was slowly taking over my body starting at my feet and working upward. By the time the static had reached my head I couldn't stand anymore, and found myself lying on the ground and staring at the sky.

That was the last thing I remember, until I was waking up in the local hospital hooked up to an IV and being attended upon by a very haggard-looking nurse.

"Oh good, you're awake," she said dryly. "Sign here."

She handed me a form and I signed without reading it. It wasn't the first time I'd been brought back from the brink of death, and I knew the drill. It was, however, the first time I'd nearly died after only two pills. It was also the first time I'd woken up after almost dying and not felt like shit.

"Hey, love, can you tell me what's in here?" I asked the nurse, pointing to the IV drip, "I feel like a million bucks."

"New drug on the market. Reverses most OD's without side effects. You're lucky we got that big grant; that bag is the only reason you're still alive."

I shrugged and gave her my thanks. She left and I spent the next hour relishing in the feeling of not feeling like shit. Usually that only happens when I'm high, but if sobriety felt like this on the regular, I might actually give it a try sometime.

I was almost dozing off when another person was wheeled into ward where I was and their bed was pushed up near mine. The guy on the bed had that familiar, ashen look that comes from an overdose. A nurse stuck him with a bag of the same stuff I was hooked up to and wheeled over a crash cart, and left, presumably to get a doctor to use it.

I swung my legs off the side of the bed and stepped over to the guy on the bed. He was breathing, shallow breaths, but getting steadier. I didn't recognize him, but I felt a sort of kinship to him. We were sharing a similar experience today. I put my hand on his arm and gasped. The moment our skin touched I could feel cold like ice water rushing over my body, held at bay only by the spot on my arm where the bag was drip dripping medicine into the vein, the same spot the man in the bed had as well.

I let go of him, and instantly the feeling went away. I stared at him, wondering if it was something on him that had spread to me, somehow. Experimentally, I touched his arm again, and the feeling came back, though not as bad as the first time. As I watched him, color came back to his face, and his breathing became less labored. Shaken, I left the man and returned to my own bed.

I left before the man next to me, but not before pulling the stent from my arm and stealing what was left of the bag that had been attached to it. As far as I was concerned, whatever was in that bag was more valuable than gold if it could bring an overdose victim back so quickly as it had us. I hardly even felt worse for the wear for it.

First, I went to find the girl who had sold me the pills earlier, but instead of her, I found another guy I'd purchased from before on the corner. I asked him about her, thinking maybe she had a bad batch and wanting to warn her about it, but the guy didn't know her, and I had no other leads.

Next, I went to my favorite club. No use in wasting a good day among the living. I had a few drinks and asked a few people if they'd heard of the girl with the weird pills, but no one had. Before too long I found myself sidling up to a guy around my age who looked up for a good time. I beckoned him to join me in the men's room, and soon as we were there I pushed him against the nearest wall and kissed him hard on the lips.

The feeling was instantaneous. I went from mostly sober, aside from a couple drinks, to feeling the best high I'd felt in weeks. That wasn't the only feeling either. I could feel his arousal; how much he wanted this. I dropped to my knees and he dropped his pants. For as long as our skin was touching, I could feel everything I did to him, every touch, every sensation, and when he was finished, the combined feeling of my own pleasure and his left me shaking so hard I had to clutch his waist to keep from falling to the bathroom floor.

As soon as he pulled away and left the bathroom, the feeling of being high left with him. It wasn't like coming off a high, where the good feeling goes away and you feel like shit. It was like flipping a switch, one minute flying, the next, six-weeks-in-rehab sober. I sat on the bathroom floor, still reeling a little from the experience. I was a mess, but I didn't care. That had been better than any drug I'd had in my life, and I'd tried them all at one time or another.

I briefly wondered if I still had some of whatever pharmaceutical they'd given me at the hospital in my veins, but that still wouldn't explain what I'd just experienced. I hadn't taken any drugs since this morning, before the whole overdosing and waking up in the hospital incident. Whatever this was, it was either from the street corner pills, or the hospital IV.

I got off the floor, newly inspired to get to the bottom of whatever was causing this weird empathy thing, but first, I wanted to bring someone different into the bathroom to see if there would be a repeat performance. After all, if I learned nothing else from science class in school, it was that an experiment was only valid if the results could be repeated.

---

The club closed down at 2 am, and as tempted as I was to go home with some cute girl or guy, I really was even more distracted now with finding out where this ability or power or whatever it was had come from. My experiments had been successful. Very successful. Every person I touched gave me the feeling of their every sensation, not just physical, but emotional too. One girl had been distracted thinking about her boyfriend, who she was cheating on. She never said a word to me about it, but I could feel her guilt, just as clear as I could feel my fingers undoing her bra clasp. It was strange, but what was stranger was how quickly I was adjusting to it. I needed a shower.

I wandered around for a bit, half thinking I would head back to the house I stayed in from time to time and see if the shower was free, but something made me walk past the corner where I'd gotten those bad pills the day before. I sped up when I saw the same slip of a girl standing there. "Hey!" I called out to her.

She wheeled around in surprise at being addressed, and after a moment of staring at me like a deer in the headlights, she took off running. Normally, I was not one to run. Exercise had never really appealed to me. But I wanted answers, so I took off after her.

She led me deeper into the city, down alleyways and through a part of town that tourists never saw, but I was all too familiar with. Anyone unfamiliar with the terrain would have been lost within a few turns, but I had a good feeling about where she was going. My lungs didn't even seem to protest much from the sudden exertion. Whatever was in that IV that had brought me back from the dead was still doing me favors, apparently.

I caught up to her just as she was heading into a mattress store that doubled as a well-known crime front. I had never been stupid enough to get entangled with any gangs in town, but if I wanted to, it would have been easy. I grabbed her by the arm and tugged hard enough to pull both of us to a panting halt. As soon as our skin touched, I was drenched in the cold sweat feeling of terror. I couldn't exactly read her mind, but I got the vague sense that she thought I was an undercover cop.

"Darling," I panted, "I'm not a cop. I'm a customer, okay? You sold some pills to me earlier, remember?"

The fear I could feel from her abated only slightly, but I could tell her defenses were slipping enough that we might be able to have a conversation after all. "Yeah?" she whispered.

"What was in those pills?"

She shifted her feet, uncomfortable, and I could feel her guilt creeping across my chest like a gradual tightening. "It's just X," she lied. I could taste the lie like a sourness in my mouth.

"It wasn't just X, love, it almost killed me. I'm not mad at you, I know you were put up to it, but I still need to know what it was," I said as gently as I could.

"I don't know," she said softly. It wasn't a lie, I could tell, but it wasn't the full story, either.

"What do you know?" I asked.

"Supplies are low. It's not as easy to get stuff from below the border anymore, and what we do get isn't as good as it used to be. Police are making things harder too, half our boys are locked up right now. That's why they're making me sell."

I nodded. That made sense, but it didn't help me a whole lot. "Where did the pills you gave me come from?"

"Mexican supplier, weird guy. Calls himself Cabrón, but that's just a nickname. He's never given us anything really bad before."

"Know where I can find him?"

She nodded her head towards the mattress store in front of us. "He's probably there now. I won't talk to you, though. He only does business with us."

"I don't need to do business with him, I just need to know what was in those pills."

The girl bit her lip, and I could feel the guilt come back again. She wanted to tell me to get lost, that I was shit out of luck, but her guilt was making her want to help me. "I'll ask, okay? But I gotta be subtle about it. And I can't see you again tonight, it'd be too suspicious. But I'll find you tomorrow and let you know what I find out."

I let go of her arm. "Thanks. Seriously, thank you. You could be a real life saver."

She gave me a weird look, like she wanted to be dismissive, but her bashfulness wouldn't let her. "Whatever," she said, but she smiled softly as she walked towards the mattress store.

Content that I was finally going to get some answers tomorrow, or at least closer to them, I walked to a house where I knew I could safely crash for the night, and slept as soon as my head hit the couch.

---

I woke up the next morning to the sensation of eating. I could also feel something on my knee. I opened my eyes and looked down into the startled face of a rat. It froze in fear, the barbecue flavored chip it had been eating still clutched in its paws. We stared each other down, and I could feel the rat's apprehension, but also its strong desire to keep eating. My new power apparently worked on animals.

I waved my hand at the rat, doing my best to shoo him without scaring him too much, and he got the memo. He shoved the chip in his mouth and ran, off to who knew where. No one owned the house, it had been abandoned years ago, and would eventually be bought for pennies on the dollar to tear down and rebuilt as expensive condos when gentrification reached this part of town, but for now it was a squatter's paradise. If you didn't mind sharing it with the occasional rat.

My stomach grumbled. Sometimes I could go days without feeling hungry, but something about sharing the feeling of eating with the rat had kick-started my own hunger. By now I was in desperate need of a shower and a change of clothes, but my growling stomach was suddenly of higher priority. I stumbled out of the house and went in search of something to eat.

The sun was high and back on the better side of town the street vendors were already busy selling their wares. I bought something called a taco boot, which was obviously trying too hard to look quirky for social media, but which tasted amazing anyway. As I was shoveling the loose taco ingredients into my mouth with a plastic fork, I got the unique sensation that I was being watched. I looked around, but couldn't see anyone looking my direction with any particular interest, so I shrugged and started walking towards the flat where my clothes were stashed, and where, hopefully, I could take a shower.

I was another mile into town when I finally caught a glimpse of who was watching me. A man in a poorly fitted suit was trying not to be seen while still following close enough to see which turns I took. I was being tailed. I finished my taco boot and sped up, using a shortcut I was familiar with to double back and come up behind my stalker.

"Hey there, sweet stuff," I said to him pointedly, slipping in behind him and grabbing his hand. He about jumped out of his skin, and I could feel his surprise and fear, but I could also feel a complete lack of malice. He seemed to have no intention of hurting me, which was good to know. He was, however, caught a little off guard by my flirting. I figured I could use that to my advantage. "I was hoping you might tell me who you are and why you're following me, since I can tell you aren't after my phone number."

The man had another shiver of fear run through him, but he tried to outwardly hide it from me. He, of course, had no way of knowing that he couldn't hide any feeling from me while I had my hand on his. "I wasn't following you, I was just walking," he said lamely.

"You're less cute when you play dumb," I said, "Come on, walk with me, since you're so intent to follow me anyway. We can chat on the way, starting with you name and what you're doing." I pulled him along by the hand, walking in the same direction I had been heading before the little detour to catch up with him.

"I'm Vincent, and just supposed to keep an eye on you, that's all," the man said.

"Good to meet you, Vincent, I'm Jubal, but I'm guessing you already knew that."

The man shook his head. "I didn't, actually. My clients, they ah, they just want to know you aren't a threat. They have enough trouble as is, they don't want any more."

"Your clients?" I prompted.

"Yes, my clients. They, uh, run a business moving product you're familiar with. Like the product you purchased yesterday."

So he was with the gang behind the bad pills I'd taken. Probably fresh out of school and swimming in debt and taking gigs for organized crime because they paid more than legitimate gigs. "Well, Vinnie, can I call you Vinnie? I'll have you know that product of theirs almost killed me yesterday. I don't really appreciate that."

"And that's unfortunate, and we will be looking into that, however when you start asking questions about the product my clients get a little nervous, and they send me to check on things."

"And what will you tell your clients about little old me?"

Vincent chuckled, mostly to relieve a little nervous tension. It helped a little. "Well, I don't think you're a threat."

"Good!" I squeezed Vincent's hand and swung our hands between us as we walked. "And now that you know I'm not a threat, I don't suppose you'd know more about what was in those pills?"

Vincent shrugged. "Any number of things. You got a bad batch. It happens. My clients will handle it. They just want to know you won't go around asking any more questions."

"Don't know if I can promise that, Vinnie. I almost died, remember?"

"You knew the risks. It's not like you can complain to the better business bureau. Just lay off the questions and my clients will lay off of you."

I sighed. I had hoped I would get some new information from the guy, but I was beginning to think he didn't know anything. I decided to try one last ditch tactic. "Well, Vinnie, I didn't intend to tell you this, but it wasn't just that your product almost killed me. Ever since almost dying and then being brought back to life yesterday things have been...different."

Vincent's hand tightened around mine slightly, and I could feel several different emotions run through him before settling on curiosity. "Different, how?"

"I can feel things when I touch people. Physically, mentally, all of it. For example, right now I can feel you hanging onto my every word because you know something I don't, and I'm assuming it has to do with those pills."

"You're wrong about the pills," he said with a slight smile. I expected him to lie, but I only sensed honesty.

"Then how do you explain this?" I asked, shaking our clasped hands in emphasis.

Vincent shrugged. "I don't know much, just that there have been rumors recently. People get taken to St. Mary's Hospital for overdoses, and they get treated with something new. When they come out they're right as rain, except a few of them come out with a little something extra. Sometimes something strange."

"Like being able to feel other's feelings?"

Vincent nodded. "That's a new one to me, but yes. Like that."

"So it has something to do with the treatment we received as St. Mary's, and there are others like me? Is that what I'm hearing?"

"You didn't hear it from me, or from my clients."

"Oh of course not, Vinnie. Wouldn't dream of it." I stopped walking and let go of his hand. He had been much more helpful than I expected. "This is me," I said, gesturing to the building in front of us, "If you need to find me in the future."

Vincent straightened his tie. "I'm sure that won't be necessary, on the understanding that you leave my clients alone."

I gave Vincent a mock bow of surrender. "I'll lay off the questions about your clients and their product. It's been fun, Vinnie, but a shower is calling my name now, so if you don't mind?"

Vincent waved in acknowledgement and began walking back the way he had come. As soon as he was out of sight I went inside and flung myself into a cool, delicious shower.

tbc

Credits: art by Ankoku, overlay edit, story, and profile by Faber, background from pexels.com.