by Lan Chan
My movement didn’t make any noise, but there was a streetlight directly over the window. Even a tiny tear in the newspaper would have caused a dramatic increase in the brightness inside the room. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Footsteps pounded in my direction, and I swung my legs over the railing of the fire escape and jumped. My landing was abrupt, but I twisted on the balls of my feet to take the edge off the impact.
Gruff voices called out behind me as boots stomped on the pavement. Tearing from the warehouse, I bolted out onto the street, hoping to lose myself in a crowd. Except this far inside the Docks, there were no crowds. Only the distant swoosh of the water and the shadows of the shipping crates and cranes sitting deathly still. I continued to run regardless, eating up the pavement between me and the road.
If I could get to a more populated area, I had a chance of getting away. It never occurred to me to use my telepathy. Not once did I consider that I might outclass my pursuers in combat. This version of me was prey, not predator. That very fact was highlighted when a crack filled the calm night air and something smashed into my left shoulder. The pain that followed was distant. It seemed bearable to me, and yet my right arm reached up to clutch at the shoulder as though it throbbed.
Turning the corner, I spotted a traffic intersection with two cars heading north towards the industrial sector. I’d almost reached it when something grabbed my shirt and hauled me back. The person snatched me as though I weighed nothing, spun me so that I faced them, and smashed their fist into my bleeding shoulder.
Crying out in pain, my eyes flicked up into the face of my attacker. Recognition was a palpable relief. It was Marcello Virgona, a lieutenant to the Street Queen of Industry Place. I tried to call out his name, to let him know that it was me, but my dream self was muted. And then I heard a voice that cut through the haze of the dream.
“Why are you hesitating, boy?” Gabe snapped. His voice drew closer with the oncoming footsteps. Marcello’s expression turned hard. I didn’t realise until I saw my reflection in his eyes that I was wearing a mask that covered the bottom half of my face. Or that I wasn’t me but some girl with jet black hair and wide-set eyes.
Marcello’s lips twisted into a snarl, his hand reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket as if to draw a gun. The girl who was me but wasn’t me, panicked. She placed her hand over his enormous one, and though I didn’t feel the exchange of power, Marcello began to convulse.
I screamed inside the confines of her mind.
Somebody shook me.
Somewhere, a voice called out my name. “Willow!”
As my eyes flicked open, Zeke’s face loomed over me, his jaw tight with concern. Light streamed through the curtain. My breath came in staccato beats. Slowly the dream faded at the edges and I was back inside my bedroom.
Zeke backed up and I pushed myself up on my elbows. “You were whining in your sleep.” His hair stuck out on the side where he’d slept on it.
“I…” My voice croaked. I couldn’t shake the image of Marcello writhing and trying to detach from my fingers as I electrocuted him. It felt so real but also like I was seeing it through a lens. Clear but distant. It made absolutely no sense. I told Zeke about my dream and his cheek puckered as though he was biting it from the inside.
“You can’t tell the Psi-Ops anything,” he said. “Something weird’s going on.”
It didn’t take a genius to know he was right.
9
There was no point trying to get back to sleep after that, so Zeke went to change into his track gear and I met him outside. It wasn’t even six yet and the others wouldn’t be showing up for our daily track routine for at least another half an hour. It gave us time to work off the tension that my dream had conjured. We ran without speaking for about fifteen minutes before Bianca arrived.
“Something wrong?” she asked as she stretched.
“Bad dream.” She wouldn’t believe nothing had happened, but I didn’t want to go into it. I had enough nightmares that it was a plausible explanation that didn’t invite further questions.
She stared at us for a second and then concentrated on limbering up. By the time we arrived at the Academy, Zeke and I managed to fall back into our regular rhythm.
I dozed through half my morning classes, unable to keep the tiredness at bay. There were fewer faces in here this term. Fewer unfriendly faces as well, which was a relief. After Ballarat, people tended to leave us alone. There was no question anymore about whether we should have been recruited into Hyper. We might have gotten into the program the wrong way, but nobody could argue we shouldn’t be there.
When the first mentors arrived to pick up their cadets, Zeke got up to pack away his things. “Oh God,” I groaned. “Take me with you.”
He was off to the training centre. He and Adam were on the weekday evening shift, which meant that he had time to kill in between. Meanwhile, I realised a couple of weeks ago that Officer Moore, my current mentor, had a bit of a reputation as a layabout, and as such, he couldn’t be trusted to patrol the other shifts. So I was stuck with him alone every day in broad daylight, listening to him wheeze out his nose as he inhaled greasy take-out.
One of the girls from class approached us. “Hey, Zeke. We’re going to study group in the hall. Wanna come along?” She leaned a hand on my desk, her long, white-blonde hair falling like a curtain to block me from his view.
“I’ve got training in ten but I’ll swing by afterwards if I can.” She nodded and walked off with a group of others, her head turning once to look back at him.
“Am I invisible?” I said.
He rolled his eyes at me. “What you are is anti-social.”
I snorted. “I don’t think she wants to be social with me.” I tucked my hands under my chin and batted my eyelashes. Or at least I tried to. It was more uncoordinated blinking. “We’re going to study group in the hall,” I mimicked.
He shook his head at me and then waved goodbye. I wanted to put my head on my desk and sleep. As usual, Moore was late. Fifteen minutes today. Five minutes up from last Friday. Sometimes I wished he wouldn’t show up at all so I could either go home or go out on my own.
Today his uniform was almost clean, which I had to give him credit for. There was one stain at the hem on his shirt that he tried to tuck into his pants, but with the girth of his gut, you could still see it poking out. He lumbered into the classroom. The expression on Officer Waters’s face mirrored my disgust. When I grabbed my backpack, she gave me an apologetic tilt of her head.
At the cruiser, Moore tossed me the keys. “You drive, slim.”
I had a sneaking suspicion that he didn’t know my name. He kept calling me things like slim and sport. Once I think he actually called me Wendy. But he’d been drunk at the time, so it was slurred, and I was too busy trying to keep him from rear-ending the car in front of us.
Sliding into the seat he’d vacated was an exercise in gag-reflex control. I wasn’t normally bothered by mess, but I had my limits and Moore tested them daily. The foam in the seat had warped under the constant pressure of his weight so that it felt like I had something uncomfortable wedged in between my legs. I stuck the key in the ignition and imagined jamming it into his eyes.
“Where to?” I didn’t even have my license. He just didn’t give a damn and assumed that I would control the car with my telepathy.
He shrugged at my question. “Just the general area.” What the hell did that even mean? What general area? What were we supposed to be doing?
I wanted to shout at him, but the one time I’d snapped and done that, he’d accused me of being a hysterical woman and another officer had to drag me away before I throttled him.
Without any guidance, I found myself driving towards the beacon of the city: The Rendezvous Hotel. Moore grunted when he realised where we were headed. His hand stopped halfway into the chip packet.
“Too much hassle in this sector, go west. Up to Chancellors Hill.” I ignored him. When he noticed, a weak tug began
to pull at my shield. I could handle his garbage rubbing up against my leg but not his mind touching mine. The thought made me sick and I turned the steering wheel at a sharp right angle at the next intersection, ignoring the amber light. Car horns blared and I cast out, slowing the two cars in the oncoming lane and pushing back against the ones on either side.
I turned the wheel in smooth motions and weaved us in between traffic before releasing control of the other cars and sliding right into a spot in a loading dock at the front of the Rendezvous.
When I turned to look at Moore, there were sweat patches under his armpits. His complacency and arrogance were as annoying as his poor hygiene. He kept forgetting that I was an electro too.
I got out before he could say anything. There was a little part of me that really hoped he’d stay in the car and sleep or maybe pick up something half-eaten in one of the containers and finish it off. Instead, I heard his door creak open.
“You better be careful, slim. It’s my recommendation that’ll get you a passing grade this year.”
I flashed him a bright smile. “Are you coming or not?”
“We got no business here.”
“They have hot wings in the restaurant upstairs.”
He almost knocked me over to get inside. I waved at Rex who was wiping down the black marble behind the bar. His dark brows knitted together when he glanced at Moore. My mentor was a splotch of grime in an otherwise spotless interior. Moore took a step back as though Rex might jump over the bar in one leap and take his head off. I really hoped it was going to happen, but Rex just shrugged and started cleaning glasses with a crisp white towel.
“Everything on the level here?” Moore asked. Figures that he would pick now of all times to go all Academy.
“What would you do if it wasn’t, Officer?” a voice said from the bottom of the staircase. I swallowed and watched as Moore shrank inside his uniform. If ever there were a living embodiment of the word soulless, it was Edward Blake.
The King of City Square stepped lightly over the cream tiled floor as though he were gliding on air. He towered over Moore and stood as solid as a tree. Or maybe a bear better suited him, considering the fur that hung over his black suit. Outside he would have roasted but the air conditioning in the hotel made it possible for him to be comfortable. You didn’t want to be around if Edward Blake was uncomfortable.
He stuck a calloused hand out and Moore jumped before he realised it was just a handshake. My eyes flickered from one to the other, unsure of which one of them I disliked more. Edward turned to me then and the full weight of his scrutiny slammed into me like a force field.
“To what do we owe this pleasure?” A beam of light from the chandelier above bounced off his black hair, the colour so even I knew it had to come out of a bottle. He was pushing fifty but clung to physical signs of youth like a lifeline. In his profession, you didn’t last long past a certain age. Not unless you were well respected or utterly feared. Blake was the embodiment of the latter. And he’d made the mistake of appointing a Captain who commanded the former.
“This is our patrol route,” I said. His smile was tight and never reached close to his eyes. Nothing ever reached those eyes from what I’d experienced.
“How quaint. I hope you find everything here in order.”
“We just got here,” I said.
“But we’re not staying long,” Moore added.
“Don’t leave on my account.” He didn’t address Moore when he spoke but continued to give me the third degree.
“We weren’t going to.” For a heartbeat, I left it as a challenge and saw the first crack in his facade. Then I grinned. “Moore wants hot wings.”
The tension in Blake’s shoulders dissipated. I wasn’t stupid enough to think he’d believed my sidestep, but today he decided to let it slide. “Then wings it is. Tell the restaurant I sent you and they’ll take care of it.”
He made a hand gesture to someone waiting in the lobby and two men who I recognised from other visits left with him out the front door. Beside me, Moore let out a breath. It didn’t last long before he rubbed his hands together and started heading up to the restaurant. “Coming, slim?”
I wrinkled my nose as Rex tried to hide a grin. “I’ll wait for you down here.”
There was not a second’s hesitation that he was leaving his cadet unattended in the lair of a Street King. Rex slid a glass of water across the bar to me.
“Do you know if Gabe’s around?”
He shook his head. “You know I’m not supposed to give out trade stuff to the Academy.”
“Don’t give me that crap. Where is he? I really need to talk to him.”
“My lips are sealed.” I took that to mean Gabe had given him an express order not to say anything to me should I show up. That was never a good sign.
“What if I just say a bunch of stuff and you nod if I’m right?”
Another shake of the head. I wanted to kick the stool but knew it would only hurt my foot. “What about Julian? Is he in?”
“There’s a payphone over there if you want to call him.”
“Are you serious? You’re not even going to page my godfather for me?”
He spread big brown hands over the top of the table and leaned over it. Had I not grown up in his presence, it would have been an intimidating gesture. Veins popped out of his sculpted arms. He was like a beautiful, dark wooden statue.
“When you pull up in an Academy cruiser—illegally parked, by the way—and bring a uniform in here, you’re going to be treated like any other officer.”
“That’s not fair.” I slapped my hand on the counter, making the glass shake. “I’m not allowed time off to come here otherwise.”
He shrugged. “Sucks to be you.”
I was aware that I was pouting as I slid off to use the payphone, but I couldn’t help it. This wasn’t turning out to be as simple as I’d thought. The phone in Julian’s office rang a couple of times before a pleasant female voice picked up. “Dr. McNamara’s office, how may I help you?”
“Sandy, it’s Willow. Is Julian there?”
There was a pause on the other end. “Are you downstairs, hon?”
“Yes.”
“Is that your cruiser on the curb?”
“Yes…”
“Are you on duty at the moment?”
“For God’s sake! This isn’t a shakedown. I’m not even a real Academy officer.”
“No, but you’re Hyper Division which is much worse.”
“That’s a bit rich coming from a receptionist to a Street King doctor!” I could feel her smiling through the phone but she remained resolute.
“Boss’s orders, hon.”
I imitated Lily when she was having one of her fits. “I’m trying really hard to be reasonable. If he’s free, could I please speak to him before I connect the call myself?”
She breathed a heavy sigh, knowing that if I wanted to, I could patch the call, any call, without her permission. “Give me a sec.”
The hold music wasn’t great. Some old-fashioned stuff from the pre-Reset era that my dad would have loved. The phone clicked and then Julian’s voice came over the line.
“Hi, honey,” he said.
“Don’t ‘hi honey’ me! It’s taken me forever just to get to talk to you. You’re supposed to be the nice one.”
“What can I say? He doesn’t want you to know where he’s gone.”
“Why not?”
“Willow.” Why everyone felt the need to say my name in that reluctant, disapproving way was beyond me. You’d think I was asking them to sacrifice a dog or something.
“Just give me a hint.”
“He’s my husband, love. What do you expect me to do?”
“It’s Second Sight, isn’t it?” Silence on the other end of the line. That didn’t sit well with me. “At least say you’re not involved. Tell me Edward Blake hasn’t gotten him involved in distributing this drug.”
“Nobody knows where S2 comes from and I d
on’t like this line of questioning.” I knew he was right. This was getting dangerously close to an interrogation. What could I say, though? I didn’t exactly have a demure personality.
“Was he in the Docks last night by any chance?”
Another pause that I translated as confirmation. My heart started to thump like a drum. Precognition wasn’t a recognized telepathic power. The fact that some espers swore they dreamed things that hadn’t yet happened was inconclusive at best. But then how did I explain what I saw last night?
“Listen, honey, I’ve got a patient. Can you get your aunt to bring you by the house soon?”
“Are you sure you’re going to see me if I show up?”
“Don’t be a smartass.”
“Fine. Could you please get Gabe to call me at Hyper when he gets home?”
I hung up and went to wait for Moore inside the cruiser. My mood dived deeper with every car that beeped at me for being illegally parked. A mood that got infinitely worse when we arrived back at the Academy. Waiting for me in the admin room was Oz and three Psi-Ops agents.
10
Moore slunk off like a weasel, not even bothering to hang around and lodge the paperwork from our shift. One of these days I was going to kill him; it was just a matter of time. The line of officers in front of the admin service desk parted for me when they realised the Psi-Ops were there waiting for me. Not in any hurry, I sedately filled in the paperwork and handed it in along with my ID number and Moore’s.
Then I walked into the spare office where the Psi-Ops were waiting for me. If they were going for silent intimidation, it was sort of working. Oz smiled at me from behind the desk. He was wearing his full uniform with the shirt sleeves rolled up.
Two of the agents, men in the usual black attire, sat on a grey couch to my left and a woman sat in one of the guest chairs in front of the desk.
“Willow,” Oz said. “These are agent Collins,” he pointed to the woman, “and agents Flynn and Iannou. They’ve been assigned to investigate the prevalence of Second Sight. This is Willow Nguyen. She was one of the officers who called in the potential overdose in the Row.”