Fancy Dress

They're calling it I-Day now, as though being hit by an alien invasion wasn't enough. Not that I care any more, the virus has wiped out so many, and what the virus left the government took anyhow.
I still think those that died in the initial onslaught were the lucky ones. They didn't have any immunity to the virus and it just killed them. Respiratory arrest the medics called it. Most people got hit with the flu-symptoms and recovered a few weeks later.
Then there was us.
At first it looked like we were alien-flu victims same as anybody else; sickness, fever and chills, headache, perhaps a few stomach cramps or muscle pains. Nothing exciting. Nothing to say your world is changing, get ready. But the people around us were getting better as we got worse. Hospitals and emergency stations assumed we were the inbetweeners, caught between those that died outright and those that recovered. Our symptoms got worse; the sickness became prolonged vomiting, first the orange chunks of stomach lining (you know, the ones that look like diced carrot), then the lurid green bile and finally the flecks of blood as the bile burnt our throats away. The sticky phlegm and mucus from the flu turned bloody and infected, and those stomach cramps? They turned to diarrhoea. That would have been bad enough, but everyone one of us started bleeding with it, the blood and filth just running down the legs of people to sick to clean themselves.
That killed a lot of us, the dehydration and infection from zero-hygiene. And that wasn't the end of it.
The muscle pains got worse. Pressure built up in your ears until you put your hands over them and squeezed, praying the pain would stop. It did, eventually, but not until the pressure burst your eardrum and pus oozed out. We were all deaf for a long time after that.
Antibiotics didn't help - this was an alien virus remember? At least the papers said it was aliens, some still argue it was a military weapons experiment that went horribly wrong. Frankly I don't care, like everyone else I lost people I loved. Mam and sis to the virus, dad to the system. The authorities went crazy, putting communities on full lock-down. If you weren't in your home town went the virus hit, too bad. Personally I think the government finished the job for the virus, they took families that were already shattered and broke them completely.
When that's you and your family, you don't really care if its aliens or damn government.

TK, that was the most common effect of the inbetweeners. Telekinesis, it's been the stuff of bad horror flicks ever since Hollywood discovered fishing twine, but now it's fact. I once saw an old man throw a car across the river, guy didn't even break a sweat. 'Course he must have been a grade three or even a four. Ones and twos can't do more than party tricks.
Then there's your Readers and Writers, the telepaths. Most Readers are smart and keep a low profile, after all who wants to sit next to a telepath on the tube? As for Writers - they don't just read your mind, they can control it; re-write your thoughts, geddit? - they keep a very low profile. Most of the ones and twos got wiped out. Either they couldn't control, or were stupid enough to not control, their powers. Lynch mobs and vigilantes went after them in the droves. Fives and sixes, even the smart fours, stay under the radar; they use their power quietly, so you don't even know they've been in your mind.
And then there's the Elementals. Rarest of the rare, Els are easily the most powerful. Scientists reckon it's because we underwent the most metabolic and physiological adjustment (that's more medic-speak for you, everyone else just says changed), it's guessed that those that would have been only ones and twos died in the transition. I might have met an El three before, but certainly most rank as a five or a six.

Some people still come up to me and say 'oh wow, an El, you're so lucky,' and I just want to punch them in the mouth. Oh sure, I have this super-duper awesome power, but I'd give it all back a hundred times over to have Anna pull a face over dinner or nick my sweater again. Just because I have control over the elements doesn't bring dad back from wherever the government sent him once the lock-down was lifted - millions were re-located in the wake of the virus and without any way of tracking him down, he's as dead as mam and Anna.

So yeah, I'd give it all back, and I don't know a single El who wouldn't.