“We are scientists, not police,” Wichtmann reminded her. “And we are not even in your country. We are here to promote human evolution, and we have no wish to put our test subjects in prison. If we are to study your situation, we must have the facts.”
“Again...it was only when they attacked me.”
“Then you have killed human beings with your touch?” His eyebrows were raised, but he seemed more curious than horrified.
“Dr. Wichtmann, I grew up on the streets, alone,” she told him. “Sometimes, a man would see a vulnerable young girl and attack. I had no choice but to protect myself.”
“How many?”
“How many?” she asked back.
He sighed. “How many men have you killed, Juliana?”
“I don’t know, I try to block it out...Five? Seven?”
“Five or seven?”
“Yes.”
He noted this down. “Does your power spread only through touch? Can it become airborne?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s only happened through my touch.”
“Hm. And is your touch harmful to nonhumans? Animals, plants?”
“Animals, definitely. Plants resist it better...but if I stand on a patch of grass too long, it will eventually turn brown and die.”
“How long does it take to kill a person or animal?”
“If I just touch them, they usually get away with an infection that fades in time. If I hold on for a minute, they’ll die.” Juliana squirmed nervously. His questions made her feel even more exposed than she already was. “I try not to kill people, honestly! Sometimes I can just threaten them away.”
“And people believe your threats? What do you tell them?”
“I don’t have to say much. I just...” Juliana held out her arm, and dark sores opened from the crook of her elbow all the way to her fingertips. They spread up to her neck, then ruptured open along one side of her face, turning her eye the color of diseased blood. One of the nurses in the corner screamed. “You don’t really have to tell people not to touch you, if you look like this.”
Dr. Wichtmann gaped, then pulled his surgical mask from his neck up to his face. “Are you certain it isn’t airborne?”
“I’ve worked at a freak show for years, showing these things off to crowds in a small room at the back of a tent,” she told him. “No one’s ever gotten sick, or I would have stopped doing it.”
“You can exhibit symptoms at will?” Wichtmann asked. He wrote much faster now, his eyes bugging behind his glasses.
“Sure.” Infected wounds and blisters opened all over her body, turning her into a mass of disease and gore. Both the nurses gasped at the sudden transformation, as did Dr. Wichtmann, who took an extra couple of steps back from her, even though he’d kept a good distance between them since he’d arrived. He turned his head and barked orders at the nurses in German.
One of the nurses crossed her arms and shook her head, but the second nurse grabbed the first one’s arm and pulled her along. They reluctantly approached Juliana and took samples of the dark fluid and blood leaking from her sores, the inflamed cluster of pustules on her cheek, the sticky bile that leaked out through the leprous decay of her stomach. They took what seemed like an endless series of photographs.
“Does it cause pain?” Dr. Wichtmann asked.
“I guess it’s a little itchy.”
“Not for you, I mean for others.”
“Oh. I think so. They usually kind of hiss and pull away, and then they have lesions wherever I touched them.”
“And you can make them heal at will, too?”
“I can heal myself.” Juliana’s disease symptoms closed and vanished, leaving traces of blood and other fluids here and there on her skin. “I can’t heal anyone else, though.”
Dr. Wichtmann scribbled more notes. “I have determined that your supernormality may be genuine. You will have testing this afternoon. Until then, you have two hours lunch and recreation.” He turned away.
“What kind of testing?” Juliana asked, but he left the room without answering. After he’d been gone a few seconds, the two nurses raced out the door, casting fearful glances at Juliana and whispering as they departed.
Juliana quickly dressed herself. A guard in an S.S. uniform escorted her to the mess hall, which was still mostly empty because she was early. She sat alone at the usual table in the back. She’d hoped to see Sebastian at lunch, but none of the other test subjects were here, just a group of S.S. men at the center table. Three young nurses arrived, but one of them pointed at Juliana and whispered to the others, and all three immediately turned and left without eating.