Chapter 7 : The Flash
Commander Henderson's household smelled like furniture polish and fear.
I stood in the entry hall at 0800 sharp, uniform pressed, expression blank, while the head of household security briefed me on my duties. Standard interior patrol. Check windows, doors, servants' areas. Report anything unusual. Stay out of the family's way unless summoned.
The Commander himself was in his study with two other men whose voices carried through the walls—something about trade quotas and border enforcement. His Wife was visiting another household. The Martha staff moved through the corridors in practiced silence, carrying linens and meal preparations with the efficiency of people who'd learned that visibility meant vulnerability.
And in the pantry, a Handmaid sat on a wooden chair, waiting to be searched.
"Minor infraction," the head of security said. "Found her looking through the Commander's correspondence drawer. She claims she was dusting, but the Wife wants her searched before she's returned to her room."
I nodded. "Understood."
The pat-down was routine. Hands along the cloak's seams, checking for hidden pockets. Fingers running through the fabric at collar and cuffs, searching for anything contraband. The Handmaid stood motionless, eyes fixed on the wall, submitting to the violation with the practiced stillness of someone who'd been searched before.
My hand brushed her bare wrist where the cuff had ridden up.
The world exploded.
—Henderson's study is third door on the left, he meets with the agricultural coordinator on Mondays, the cellar behind the pantry shelving holds three cases of pre-ban whiskey, the Tuesday kitchen staff is Margaret, Ruth, and the new girl whose name starts with D, Commander Henderson takes his coffee at six-fifteen and his wife hates the—
I stumbled. The information slammed through my skull like a freight train, too fast to process, too dense to hold. My hand dropped from the Handmaid's wrist. The flood stopped.
"Guardian?"
The Handmaid was looking at me now. Her eyes held a question I couldn't answer.
"Button," I said, the lie forming faster than thought. I reached into my pocket—where a spare button from my own uniform sat, saved for repairs—and held it up. "Found it in your collar seam. Contraband from another household, maybe. You'll need to account for it."
Her face went pale. A button wasn't much, but in Gilead, any irregularity could spiral into accusation.
I tucked the button away. "I'll handle the report. You're clear to return to your room."
She left without another word. I stood in the pantry doorway and waited for my hands to stop shaking.
The cellar behind the pantry shelving.
The information was still there, crystal clear despite the fading headache. I knew Henderson's house layout like I'd lived here for years. I knew his meeting schedule, his staff names, the location of his hidden liquor stash. All of it had poured into my head through two seconds of skin contact.
Second power. Touch-based. Information transfer.
I walked my security route with deliberate care, checking the download against reality. Third door on the left—Henderson's study, voices still audible through the wood. Pantry shelving—I found the hidden latch exactly where the flash had shown it, a cellar door concealed behind bags of flour. I didn't open it. Didn't need to. The information was already verified.
The Tuesday kitchen staff passed me in the corridor: Margaret, grey-haired and efficient; Ruth, younger, moving with nervous energy; and a girl whose name badge read DOROTHY.
Starts with D. The flash was right.
My skull throbbed. The migraine was building behind my eyes, a pressure that felt like someone had inflated a balloon inside my brain. The cost of pulling that much information, maybe, or the cost of holding it all at once.
I needed to test the boundary.
At 1030, a Martha named Helen carried a stack of dishes through the service corridor. I stepped forward to steady the load as she navigated a corner—a natural movement, helpful rather than intrusive. My hand touched her arm through her sleeve for two seconds.
A smaller flash this time.
—supply deliveries on Wednesdays, the Commander drinks heavily on Wednesday evenings, the Wife suspects he's having an affair with the new Martha but won't confront him, kitchen gossip says the Handmaid from the pantry search was actually looking for something specific but nobody knows what—
I released her arm and stepped back.
"Thank you, Guardian," Helen said, adjusting her grip on the dishes.
"Under His eye."
She walked on. I leaned against the corridor wall and pressed cold fingers to my temples.
The power worked on multiple people. It pulled information they knew—consciously or not—and dumped it into my head without warning or filtering. Personal details, household secrets, gossip, schedules. All of it mixed together in a rush that left me gasping.
I just took something from two people without their permission.
The thought arrived with a weight that had nothing to do with the headache. The Handmaid in the pantry hadn't consented to having her knowledge stripped. Helen the Martha hadn't agreed to share Commander Henderson's drinking habits. I'd reached into their minds and pulled out whatever I could find, and they had no idea anything had happened.
This is a weapon. The realization settled into my chest like ice. And I just used it on innocent people.
The security shift ended at 1600. I walked back to the barracks with Henderson's weekly schedule memorized, his cellar location mapped, and a growing list of questions about what I'd become.
Hidden Piece Discovery found hidden things. That felt clean—passive, observational, a tool for gathering intelligence without contact.
Knowledge Share—the name arrived from nowhere, or maybe from the same part of my brain that had labeled Discovery—took things from people. Valuable things. Private things. Things they might die for if the wrong person found out they knew them.
I have a second power. And this one terrifies me more than Discovery.
The migraine faded by evening, but something else remained—a faint sensation on the back of my tongue, like whiskey I hadn't drunk, memory of a taste that belonged to Helen or the Handmaid or someone else entirely. A fragment of their lives, lingering in my head like an uninvited guest.
I sat on my bunk and stared at the familiar water stains on the ceiling.
Two powers. Discovery and Knowledge Share. Both useful. Both dangerous. Both carrying costs I don't fully understand.
Tomorrow's assignment board showed Putnam household security. Commander Putnam—the one from the show, the one who lost his hand eventually, the one who met with Fred Waterford for political scheming. A Commander I had meta-knowledge about, in a household I'd never seen.
I closed my eyes and let the headache's last echoes fade.
Test the boundaries. Learn the rules. Figure out what this power can do before I'm forced to use it when it matters.
The taste of someone else's whiskey faded slowly, leaving only the bitter residue of knowledge I'd stolen without asking.
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