by Lan Chan
Clearly, this wasn’t his first time on the misdemeanour rodeo. “We don’t care about the fact that you took Second Sight,” Iannou said. “We only want to know what you can tell us that might be helpful to our investigation.”
“And I’m the first esper to overdose on it since the beginning, am I?” We all knew what Moore was referring to. He was the first one not to have died or had his brains blown out by whoever was going around killing espers. Probably the only reason he hadn’t been attacked was because I’d been the one to find him, and from that moment, he’d had enforcement crawling all over him.
“You’re the first one who has been conscious to tell us anything,” Iannou said. He caught my expression and quirked his head. “Something funny?”
Taking a chance, I spoke. “I like the way you’ve learned to lead with reason instead of letting your barking dog go at people.” Obviously, someone had clued them in to the fact that Flynn wasn’t exactly the best face for their organisation.
“You got something to say to me?” Flynn said.
Iannou held up his hand. “You two need to settle this another time. Officer Moore, anything you can tell us would be very helpful.”
“What do I get in return?”
“You get not to be arrested for obstructing a Psi-Ops investigation and you get to not lose your job.”
“So, nothing then.” Moore breathed out through his nose like he was about to do them a massive favour. Having lost interest in the conversation, I let my gaze wander to Collins.
Apparently, I had been wrong that she was the Fake Spectra. She had all the qualities I was looking for, but she hadn’t been in the right location.
Still, she had been looking at the floor for the last few minutes and her interest in the interrogation was slipping. If it wasn’t so risky, I’d try to slip into her mind to see what was happening in there.
“I’ve got nothing for you except the supplier that I went through to get it,” Moore said.
“And who would that be?”
Flynn cleared his throat. “This is classified information. I don’t think our Hyper friends need to be here for this.”
“Agreed,” Bianca said. “Good luck on your wild goose chase. Let’s go.”
“Don’t forget what I said,” Moore called out after me. “Three hundred on My Fair Lady.”
“Yeah, yeah. You still owe me for last month’s bets.”
His response was eaten up by the swinging of the door. We were back in the car before either of us said a word. “Was it just me or did he not seem so bad in there?” Bianca asked as she drove us back home.
“He knew.” My voice was thick with concern. “Moore knew about Spectra.”
Her foot slammed down on the accelerator as she swore. If I hadn’t stopped two cars from ploughing into us, we wouldn’t have made it home.
25
“We need to do something about this now,” Adam said when we told the others what happened. “We can’t just wait around for more people to read her memories and learn who she is.”
“Let’s take a moment to think this through,” Rich said. We were sitting in the entertainment room again. Adam was still laid out on one couch but his head was rested on Bianca’s lap. Lily sat at the piano bench as far away from touching distance from any of us as possible.
Oz and I sat on the other couch and Rich on the armchair. Annoyingly, Zeke was still on patrol.
“Have the Psi-Ops told you any more about their theories?” Rich asked Oz. The younger man shook his head.
“They’re playing this one really close to their chest. Don’t ask me how, but I have a feeling they’re not ruling out an internal issue.”
“As in there’s a rat in the Psi-Ops?” Bianca said. “I wouldn’t put it past them. How else does a drug just pop up and get through the borders if the authorities aren’t letting them in?”
Rich held up a hand. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. Did Moore tell you where he obtained the drugs?”
That was the other frustrating thing about all of this. I shook my head. “The dealers never discussed anything in front of him. They know he works for the Academy so they were cagey around him. He’d get an anonymous text with a different location every time. All he could give the Psi-Ops would be the name of his dealer.”
Rich blew out a breath. “Hopefully, Moore’s information will give the Psi-Ops enough to make some arrests.”
Adam’s laugh was dry. “Come on, Rich. When have we ever gotten that lucky? There’s still the problem of Moore and how much he knows about Willow.”
Rich turned to me then. “Are you sure you got all of his memories?”
I could only nod. “I got them all. Now I just have to live with the fact that I owe him big time.”
“I can’t figure out why he did it,” Oz said. “Far be it from me to judge anyone, but he’s always seemed so…”
“Annoying?” I ventured.
“Slack?” Adam piped in.
“Useless?” Bianca added.
“I was going to say disinterested.” Oz smiled when we all gagged. He still liked to see the best in people. “Why now?”
I chewed on the end of a section of my hair. Buried deep within Moore’s psyche was a damning sense of pity. He thought I hadn’t the slightest clue how difficult life was going to be for me. For any electro, really. And I was making it more and more difficult for myself every day. He knew he was a layabout, but that beat being recruited by every King in the city. I kind of understood what he meant.
“I have a headache,” I said. “Think I might go and get some sleep.”
That was what I thought anyway, until the phone rang in the kitchen. “Will!” Bianca shouted. “It’s for you.”
“Who is it?”
“Julian.”
“Oh thank God,” I said into the speaker. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Lockdown, honey. There’s a reason it’s called that.”
“I was shitting a brick. Zeke and I were this close to coming in after you.”
I could hear him sigh. “I’ve been doing this for twice as long as you’ve been born. I think I know how to handle myself. Gabe always has contingencies for us.”
“Then why the phone call? Is the lockdown over?”
“We haven’t heard from him.”
My heart kicked. “For how long?”
“Two days.”
I relayed what I’d seen in my dreams. “No,” he said. “I’ve spoken to him since then. He and Novak managed to get out before the Psi-Ops tagged them but only because he’s not an esper. One of the Psi-Ops was. Tried to push him into giving up, but whatever you two have been doing seems to be working. He resisted for less than a second but it was enough to keep him from dying.”
Everything came out in a rush of words belying his outwardly calm demeanour. “I don’t know where he is,” I said. Not for the first time, I cursed that I wasn’t able to be out there in the streets. If I’d been able to investigate, things would be different.
Julian made a soft, contemplative sound. “I just wanted to keep you in the loop in case something happens.”
“Have the Kings found anything?”
“You know I can’t give you that information.”
“But Blake isn’t out to get Gabe, right?”
He let out a derisive snort. “Blake knows that going after Gabe means civil war in our ranks. Even if he wanted to, now isn’t the right time.”
I swallowed hard, trying to digest that information. “Okay, well, maybe I can give you some info.” After all, I just wanted this to be over, and if the Psi-Ops weren’t going to get it done, I didn’t care if the Kings did. I filled him in on what I’d learned from Moore.
“Did he say anything about which logistics company it was?” Julian asked.
“I don’t think it was just one company,” I said. “I think it was all of them. Whoever it is has reach.”
“Are you sure you’re not going to get in trouble for this?” he
asked.
“I don’t care. This needs to be done now.”
“Agreed. I have to go. Take care of yourself.”
When I finally got into bed, Zeke was home. He came rushing up the staircase and didn’t even bother to knock before barging into the room. “Hey! I could have been changing!”
“Nothing I haven’t seen. Why the hell did you agree to be in a room with the Psi-Ops? Are you crazy?”
“I didn’t agree to anything,” I said. “It kind of just happened.”
“Are you all right?” Funny, there was no need for him to ask. He could feel it through the vital link. But somehow it felt like the right thing to do.
“He knew me.” Zeke came and sat on the bed beside me. I crawled into his arms. “He knew everything. Saw everything.”
His arms tightened around me. “But you got it all?”
I nodded against his chest. “But imagine if he hadn’t said anything to me? Imagine if he’d gone straight to the Psi-Ops. Imagine if someone else has the same reaction? And the worst thing is that we just don’t know how the hell this is happening.”
“Don’t freak out,” Zeke said. “We’re working on it. Besides, you knew sooner or later the mask had to come off. I thought you were done with it anyway.”
I thought I was.
But there was still a part of me that knew Spectra was the only way I could act without ties to either the Kings or the Academy. Spectra was neutral. Well, as neutral as a person was able to be.
“I should get some sleep. Apparently, there are heaps of books in the Academy library that are out of order and they need someone to re-shelve them.”
He gave me another squeeze. “I’ll come back when I’m done for the night.”
I thought after everything that happened today, I would be too tired to dream. But it was like the scene was waiting for me. As soon as my head hit the pillow, everything around me dissolved.
This time, I was hiding in the brush around a sparsely cropped section of land. There were no distinguishing buildings in the distance to provide territorial context. Since I wasn’t in charge of the dream, I couldn’t turn Fake Spectra’s head toward the sky so I could read the position of the stars.
Her focus was on the warehouse in the distance. Trucks without lights on entered a warehouse in a cordoned-off area of the bush. It was disorientating to move without actually being in command of my body. Fake Spectra crept to the side of the building and scaled the fire escape in practised motions that made me think this wasn’t the first time she’d been here.
Cursing, I tried to think of a way to get a glimpse of her face. Swinging onto the roof, Fake Spectra slid into an air-conditioning grate and wriggled until she came to a position above the main manufacturing floor. It was interesting that in these dreams, I wasn’t afraid of the darkness.
On the floor of the plant, huge vats of what appeared to be gelatinous goo were being stirred by giant whisks. They were heated underneath by an open flame. The distilled steam was funnelled into a big drum with a turbine engine that then spat the mixture out as fine powder, ready to be condensed into a pill.
A woman in a lab coat came in carrying a dialysis-sized bag of red liquid I could only assume was blood. Fake Spectra started moving again, this time back to what had been an intersection in the vents. Turning left, she came to a stop in a small room set apart from the main floor. All I needed to hear was the monitor beeping to know that there was someone lying on the bed against the wall. Fake Spectra pressed her eye right up to the grate to see if she could get a better look.
The patient’s face was half obscured by the metal of the grate. The room was too dark for me to make out distinct features, especially with the sheet partially covering her face. Fake Spectra and I were drawn to the same thing that wasn’t covered up. The patient’s left arm lay on a separate, smaller gurney. Strapped to it was an IV line that was filling rapidly with blood.
The rate of extraction was disturbing. No human could possibly produce that much blood that quickly and survive. I guess that explained the other needles that were sticking out of her right arm. They must be pumping her full of nutrients and other synthetic drugs to enable her body to function. It was a fate worse than death. After only a cursory glance at the victim, Fake Spectra turned her head away. Her lack of interest made me think she wasn’t here to rescue the patient. She was here to ensure her supply of S2 remained unhindered.
Just when the feeling of nausea rolled through me, another mind tapped into my dreams. Zeke. He must have come back into my room and noticed I wasn’t truly asleep. Worried, he tried to draw me back into the safety of the vital link.
It’s fine. I want to stay, I told him and then projected the reason for my reticence.
In my dream state, I felt him hiss. Should I get Oz?
Probably a good idea, I sent. This doesn’t feel right.
Mere seconds later, Oz’s thought signature appeared. His surprise coated the link along with fascination, and in my peripheral, fear. What we were doing had no precedent. If something were to go wrong, it could shatter all three of our minds. I signalled with an image for them to remain in the background. It was difficult enough to concentrate whilst I was trying to keep up with Fake Spectra without their thoughts interfering with the input as well.
Down below, the patient groaned. The same woman who had carried the bag of blood into the manufacturing floor entered and made her way to the IV. She checked that everything was in order and flicked the half-filled bag of blood as if she was swatting away an insect. A moment later she was gone without so much as checking on the person under the covers. Revulsion flooded my mind, but I was too intent on peering down into the room to be able to tell where it was coming from. Or maybe that was because both boys in my head were equally appalled.
It would have been so handy if Zeke could bridge our minds and push back the sheet so we could see who it was being tortured. As it was, we were mere bystanders. Fake Spectra appeared satisfied with the progress of the scene below her. She started shimmying away from the grate when a sound against the wall caught her attention. Moving rapidly back into position, she slotted her hands through the grate and attempted to bend the metal to get a better look. At first, I wasn’t sure if anything was going to happen, but very slowly, the metal heated and became malleable. I could have done it without much effort, but for her, it seemed to take the wind out of her sails.
Tired or not, the gap between the slats widened to allow a better look inside the room. I felt her jaw drop as light began to spark against the blackened window. At first, it concentrated in one spot just above waist level. Slowly, the line lengthened into a semi-circle. Someone was cutting into the glass. When the man-sized circle was complete, the person on the other side must have suctioned the section of cut glass because it slid away from the window easily.
My relief at the gruff figure standing in the gap was palpable. Gabe stepped through the gap left in the glass and Selina came in after him. Both had contusions to several parts of their faces and Gabe was sporting a nasty cut above his left eye that was swollen and probably impaired his vision.
Fake Spectra’s heart seized as Selina rounded the bed and unceremoniously yanked the IV from the patient’s arm. Blood so thick it was almost black pooled at the crease of the patient’s arm. While Gabe cut the blood bag open so its contents spilled over like a squashed juice box, Selina gripped the edge of the sheet and tugged.
All three of us inhaled as the figure underneath the sheet was revealed. Jasmine. My one-time court-sanctioned counsellor. An Omega agent in disguise and an EK esper. I wasn’t the only one injured when the anti-psi robot exploded in Ballarat. Unlike her co-conspirators, her body was never recovered. It was assumed that she burned in the resulting fire
Fake Spectra’s anxiety kicked into high gear. Without the need for words, Gabe and Selina both reached for their sidearms. The moment stilled to a creep as they raised their weapons and fired.
26
; The vital link flared with green as Zeke grasped mentally. Too shocked for clarity, all I could do was stare at the bloody holes in Jasmine’s forehead and chest. Fake Spectra’s fist pressed against her lips in a silent scream. I felt her insides roiling. Whoever she was, she didn’t have a lot of experience with death. In the room, Selina flicked the sheet back over Jasmine’s head. She nodded at Gabe, but instead of going back through the cut circle in the window, Gabe opened the door leading to the manufacturing floor.
Scrambling to get them back in her sights, Fake Spectra frantically crawled back to the other grate. Once more her attention settled on the state of the factory. It was no wonder the Kings had gone into lockdown and Gabe had stopped communicating with me. It occurred to me that maybe even Julian’s call had been a set-up to throw me off the scent of their plan. The room was quiet bar the thump of boots on concrete. The whirl of machinery now stood at a standstill. Half a dozen bodies lay on the floor, the patches of red pooling beside their appendages left little question about the state of them.
Belinda Le, Ricky Wong’s third-in-command, paced the perimeter of the floor peering at the instruments being used in the Second Sight distillery process. Several other guards did the same. There were about a dozen of them in all, and they were less than delicate as they dismantled equipment.
“You sure we can’t keep any of this?” Belinda said to the room in general.
“Torch it all,” Gabe commanded.
She grimaced but went back to her task.
Selina came up beside Gabe who had picked up a can of petrol. Up until then, she had been circling the room, her head tipped up as though she was listening for something only she could hear. Something only we could hear. The other Captains weren’t espers.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” she said. Having spent too much time around me to ever discount the instincts of an esper, Gabe immediately stopped what he was doing.