Page 38 of The Tracker's Dawn: Sunderverse
CHAPTER 14
Eric and I faced eachother in the training room. His blue eyes assessed me as if he were looking at me anew. After a long minute, he blinked and shook his head.
“Honestly, I don’t know what to tell you, Sunder. Where to start. I have no idea how these powers of yours work.” He rubbed his chin. “How about you try to explain?”
“Okay, I’ll do my best.” I thought carefully, then began. “My tracking abilities rely on all my senses. When I track someone in a trance, I can activate my senses one at a time. I normally start with my nose. My hearing and sight follow. I’ve never used my taste or touch. It would be impractical, really.
“Anyway, when I activate my sense of smell, the scents that surround my mark hit me full-on, and at first, it’s confusing as hell when the onslaught comes. It took a lot of practice to not let them overwhelm me. I learned how to sift through them, how to identify them, then discard them one by one. They’re still there but in the background. It’s the same with my hearing and sight.”
“So what happened when you used these skills on that hybrid?”
“It’s hard to explain exactly, but it was like I was able to push a sensory overload into him all at once. All the senses, though, even touch and taste.”
He considered. “But how? You weren’t tracking anyone, so where did the shit you sent into them come from?”
Good question. I hadn’t stopped to think about that. “Hmm, I guess it must have come from me. Maybe all the stuff I’ve experienced throughout my life...”
That was the only thing that made sense.
Eric frowned, uncertain. In truth, he was just helping me explain this to myself, and trying to put it into words for someone else was actually working.
“In that case, maybe...” he started tentatively, “would it help to focus on a particularly...busymoment of your life? Not sure if that’s the right word, but maybe you know what I mean.”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, maybe it would.”
“Can you think of such a time?”
I cringed as one instance immediately came to me.
He waved his hands in the air. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to tell me what it is.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, wondering if he was trying to spare me or himself. Either way, I preferred not telling him. The time of my life I’d thought of wasn’t one that made me proud. It was actually thesuckiest, that wallowing nightmare after Jake left me when I fell off the deep end.
During the time I was homeless, I experienced so much. Bitter cold, hunger, thirst, insults. It had been pure misery, and at times, before Rosalina helped me get my shit together, it felt inescapable, like hell.
“So... keeping that in mind,” he said, “try to shock me.”
“No! What? Are you crazy?! I could kill you.”
