This wasn't fair. I looked at the screen in front of me, a screen which should have shown a list of ten to twenty possible powers derived from the genetic test I had to submit last month, but there was only one option. It wasn't even a power I wanted. I briefly wondered what would happen if I refused and told the overseer that I didn't want any power but instead I tapped the only power shown and placed my right wrist into the large machine.

There was a gentle hiss as padded straps tightened to hold my wrist in place and then a sharp stab as I was injected with the accelerant. At school our teacher had warned us that there might be a mild burning sensation, some feverish symptoms or a sense of weakness and that all of those things were perfectly normal but aside from the pain of the needle itself I felt nothing at all. There were a stack of plasters next to the machine and when I was released from the machine's grip I stuck one over my tiny wound glumly before walking away.

Back in the classroom, the air was buzzing with excited conversations. There would have been no point even trying to run a lesson with something this big of a deal happening and so our school hadn't bothered. Nobody tried to ask me which powers I'd been offered or which one I'd chosen. Nobody even noticed that I didn't seem happy with whatever I'd been allowed to pick. Maybe if I'd known the other students better then I would've told someone but I move around a lot. I'd once only been in a school for a single month and at two and a half months, this one wasn't much better. I kept quiet and thought about my next move until it was time to go home.

"What happened at the selection?" my mother asked.

She sounded nervous and just like that any doubts I'd had that she would be as clueless as me were gone.

"You tell me." I replied coldly.

"I don't know wh-"

"My power selection was not normal and you know why. So tell the truth now. I'll know if you don't."

It was a bluff, but telepathy was one of the options for some people. She couldn't have known for a fact that it hadn't been for me.

"What happened?" she asked again and this time I decided to tell her.

"There was only one power on my list. Do you want to tell me why that is?"

She thought about her options. Maybe she was considering whether or not I was bluffing, maybe she was only trying to figure out the best way to tell me - since my power wasn't really telepathy I had no way to know. But in the end, she spoke up.

"Because you've been to your selection before." my mother said.

I tried not to let my face show any emotion but I couldn't fully surpress the feelings of alarm.

"You can't take part in a selection before you're eighteen though." I said.

My voice was level, as if I already knew the things my mother wasn't saying, but in truth I hadn't figured anything out at all.

"You are nineteen." she admitted, "I... changed your age so it would be easier to hide you. But the reason everyone is given a catalyst at the age of eighteen is because if their powers are allowed to develop without prompting then the results are less easy to predict. It can be violent and painful and I didn't know if leaving you to wait until you were a year older would be too late. So at this time last year I enrolled you in a school with the correct age, just that once. Only for long enough for you to be given a catalyst."

My head was swimming.

"Tell me why you had to hide me." I said.

"What power did y-"

"Now!" I yelled.

At this point I think she knew that telepathy was a bluff. But there are other powers out there that could allow me to get what I wanted out of her. Mind reading is one option but for everyone else there is always violence.

"Because you aren't- because some people think you aren't mine." the woman I used to think of as a mother said, "Because I took you away from people who didn't deserve you so I could love you more. Please, tell me what happened."

I felt sick and I couldn't catch my breath.

"One more question," I said shakily, "why don't I remember my first selection?"

I had a suspicion that I already knew the answer but I didn't want to believe it.

"My power is mental manipulation. I removed those memories from you and any others which could have upset or confused you. It was for your own good."

I walked towards the room's closed door.

"It wasn't your choice." I told the woman.

She didn't even apologise, she just looked at me. When she finally spoke it wasn't to say sorry or to try to explain.

"What power did you get?" she asked for the final time.

I opened the door and there was nothing beyond it. Not an empty corridor but literally just endless nothingness and darkness.

"The same as yours. I wonder why I picked it. Maybe I figured out what you'd done to me and thought this was my best option to get some answers but you wiped my memory before I had a chance. But this time I got to you first. None of this conversation has been in the real world. I needed to be sure that I could get some honesty out of you so I put you in a little room inside your head whilst we figured things out."

The woman panicked and I could tell that she was trying to control me right back but it didn't work with her locked away like this.

"I don't think you understand that what you did was wrong, that my memories were not things you had any right to play with. But I think that before I hand you over to the authorities that I can make you understand that.

Now where should I start?"