Sightlines

by Santion Hassell

  “Make . . . what up to me? I need specifics.”

  Chase licked his lips and hunched his shoulders forward. “Not trusting you. Obsessing over Holden even after you told me you weren’t in love with him.” He shrugged, wanting to look away but not letting himself. “And not treating you like an equal. Or like I love you and all that bullshit.”

  Elijah didn’t react and kept looking up at him in anticipation, as though it was inevitable for the other shoe to drop in a conversation that had never ended quite right before.

  Chase put his hands on Elijah’s shoulders and yanked him in for a soft kiss. “Believe me, Elijah. I have a ton of fucking regrets about my life, and a lot of them revolve around not being real with you. I wasted a lot of time, and it might be too late.”

  Elijah caught Chase’s chin before he could pull away, and flashed a tenuous smile. “It’s not too late. We’re getting out of here.” He backed up and jogged up the stairs before Chase could take his turn to ask whether that statement was a truth from a vision.

  Community Watch looked the same as it always did, which meant there wasn’t exactly high-profile security. They encountered a couple of guards and the receptionist at the front desk, but it didn’t appear as though anyone had set the alarms to wait for them. Then again, nobody would have thought them stupid enough to storm the fort head-on.

  The receptionist’s eyes widened at the sight of them, and the guards immediately stood up straight. Whether it was because their identities had been spread around or because they looked like a band of troublemakers was hard to tell.

  “Hello,” Jessica said, no smile in sight. “I’m here to see Michelle Hale.”

  “Is . . . is she expecting you?”

  “No, but tell her Jessica is here. With my boys.”

  Chase glanced at her and refrained from arching a skeptical brow. He kept his comments and his observations to himself as they waited, and they were eventually led upstairs. Kyger and Hale were waiting, and they weren’t what Chase had expected.

  The conference room they’d agreed to meet in was Richard’s style. Floor-to-ceiling windows, long glass table, high-backed leather seats—it was more fit for a corporate office than a psychic youth group, and that was always how he’d viewed this place. As a corporation. Kyger and Hale didn’t fit that corporate mold.

  Kyger was a chubby dude with shoulder-length hair, oversized glasses that covered half his face, and he wore a Star Wars T-shirt beneath an open sweater. He was much younger than Richard, but maybe that was because he looked like someone who actually enjoyed his life and had other things to do besides contemplating the dissection of other psys.

  Hale was another extreme. She had bleached-blond hair buzzed short, wore a black skirt and jacket, but had a distressed gray T-shirt beneath that was more Chase’s style than the CW’s. She also had on heels with spikes on them.

  How the fuck had these people ever lowered themselves to befriending a stiff like Richard? Especially since they fit the Community origin story way better than he did. The legend was that a small group of friends had met in IRC chat rooms, seeking other psychics, and had decided to form a support system. And, over time, it had grown into something larger.

  Chase had never been able to reconcile Richard with someone who wanted to help others, but now he could see where the initial spark of that idea might have come from.

  “Kyger,” Jessica said, sitting opposite them at the head of the table. She placed her palms on the glass and lifted her chin, looking for all the world like she belonged in that spot and had never left. “Hale.”

  “Jessica . . .” Kyger stared at her as though she were about to sprout another head. His expression stayed that way even as he shifted his gaze from her to Chase, Six, Holden, then Elijah. “We were told by your raving husband that you’d been kidnapped.”

  “I was,” Jessica said. “By him about ten years ago. I went to the Farm to work, and he drugged me into a stupor and held me captive instead.”

  Kyger and Hale exchanged glances. There was a beat of silence, and Chase wondered if they could communicate. Telepathy was supposed to be a rare talent, but maybe it wasn’t. Or maybe they were both incredulous and had no idea what to say.

  “Let’s get to the point.” Jessica smoothed her palms over the glass, her gaze steady. There was no sign of the shakiness that sometimes seemed to plague her after years of being medicated and kept in a bed. “Can I trust you to hear me and my boys out, or has the staff already notified Richard?”

  Hale’s lip curled. “I’m not sure where you got the idea that Kyger and I consult with your husband—”

  “My abductor.”

  “—before speaking to someone.”

  “I assumed all Community staff consulted with him before taking a shit,” Chase said.

  Elijah looked at him in exasperation. “Chase!”

  “What? Just being honest.” Chase glanced at the two again. “He also makes it sound like you won’t be around long anyway. Is there a CW benefit package? Do you get to retire in Key West on a yacht?”

  Kyger leaned forward, forearms braced on the table. “We let you up to hear your side of this ridiculous story, and to start the process of covering the tracks of a very messy and very public series of events. Embellishing or lying—”

  “He’s not lying,” Hale cut in, dark eyes trained on Chase. “I can see it.”

  Kyger’s face shuttered, and Chase tried to do the same to his talent. His mental shield was wavering, though, even with Six supposedly keeping them safe from outside interference.

  “Your control over your talents is faltering,” Hale said, reading him again. “Likely because the telekinesis is distorting your ability to handle them. Your brain can only handle so much.”

  Well, that was ominous. He tensed, and Elijah grabbed his hand. Chase squeezed and didn’t let go.

  “So,” Jessica said. “Are you aware that Richard intends to take full control of the Community?”

  Hale pursed her lips, and Kyger said nothing. Neither looked surprised.

  Jessica nodded once. “I take that as you at least having had an idea about it. Do you also know he thinks you prevent him from fully carrying out his vision, and that he’d likely be willing to arrange your convenient disappearances and permanent relocation to the Farm rather than debate?”

  When Kyger and Hale remained silent, it was enough of an answer. Either they knew now, or they’d known all along. Judging from the way Kyger’s gaze slanted away, he’d been a little slower on the uptake. Hale’s expression might as well have been carved out of stone.

  “Explain your perception of the Farm,” Hale said after a beat. “I’d like to know what you claim to have endu—”

  “No, you explain your perception of the Farm,” Jessica said. “Of everyone in this room, you two are the only ones who have never been there. Who’ve never been held there against your will.”

  Kyger sat back in his chair, fingers interlocking as he folded his hands in front of him. When it became clear that Hale wasn’t answering, he said, “It’s where we shepherd psychics who don’t respond well to intervention here at the CW. Like you . . .” Kyger nodded at Chase, then Six, who sneered. “And you.”

  “Richard’s original vision,” Hale said, her voice frozen, “was that it would be a safe space away from the city, where psychics who were traumatized, who don’t have enough of a handle on their gift to remain discreet, or who may be a threat to us remaining a secret, could retreat.”

  “I know what Richard’s original vision was.” Jessica raised her eyebrows and looked so much like Holden with that skeptical smart-ass face of hers that Chase did a double take. “Do you think it turned out that way?”

  “No,” both Kyger and Hale said at once.

  “Why?” It was Holden who shot out the question. When Kyger and Hale looked at him with open dislike, he stepped closer to stand beside his mother. “Listen, I’ve not been on the same page as Richard for years, but I’ve always
believed in the Community. It’s why we’re here and not . . .”

  “Not with Ex-Comm,” Six filled in. “We want to work with you. To fix shit.”

  Hale stood, in all of her over-six-foot glory, and walked closer to their group. Kyger remained where he was, but he’d taken to flipping a pen between his fingers.

  Chase chose that moment to tap into their thoughts, and heard an almost simultaneous: Ex-Comm is real. It’s not one of Richard’s delusions.

  “What we think the Farm really is,” Hale said, voice lowering, “is primarily Richard and his staff there being on a power trip as they try to mold and groom young, susceptible psys, and to brainwash the more established Comm members into thinking they’re doing some version of God’s work by staying there indefinitely.”

  “We also think it’s become some sort of psychic puppy mill.” Kyger flipped the pen faster. It was nearly a blur in his fingers. “We have no proof, but we know he has a very creepy obsession with the Black family, and the idea of manipulating genetics.”

  “‘Breeding,’” Chase said with a rough laugh. “That’s what you want to call it? Pairing up psys who’ve been convinced that they’re doing the work of some higher power, or people they kidnapped like Six and Jessica, and convincing them to sleep together after some nice thorough brainwashing? Or people like my mother, who . . . he’s been raping while she’s drugged and incapacitated.”

  Behind him, Nate sucked in a breath. “Are you . . .”

  The little boy with the white hair and gray eyes flashed into Chase’s mind. “I’m sure,” he said from between gritted teeth. “And you people can try to spin it however you want, but I’m calling him what he is. A kidnapper, a torturer, and a fucking rapist.”

  The color drained from Hale’s face, but she didn’t speak. Her eyes flew to Jessica.

  Six stepped up then, crossing his muscular tattooed arms over his chest. “He enslaves us. That’s what they did to me, Chase, and Elijah. To Lorelei and Jessica. Even his guards, who aren’t above killing to keep us quiet and contained, are essentially his slaves. You have no clue how bad it gets. How far Richard and Jasper are willing to go to keep control and to hide what they’re doing. Including breeding psy kids to become brainwashed drones, and permanently silencing anyone who tries to leave.”

  Kyger released a low sharp whistle, but Hale looked toward the window, smoothing a hand over her blond hair, and pursed her lips. She looked strained under the weight of what they were saying, but was still trying to keep her composure.

  Chase glanced at Holden, and saw his brother watching Hale carefully. He was probably reading her emotions and evaluating whether they matched her body language. After a beat, he said, “I’m sorry we’re telling you this all at once.”

  “Thank you, but I can’t help but wonder how this has never come up before. Has no one escaped before?”

  Jessica put her hand on Chase’s arm. He started, but didn’t pull away. “Who would have told you, Michelle?” she asked. “I went there willingly, hoping to make a difference, but was incapacitated for years. I was helpless. It was only later, when the people who now call themselves Ex-Comm infiltrated the Farm, did I have the capacity to think clearly.”

  Jessica squeezed Chase’s arm then. “And as for escaping? We’re the first people to escape with our lives. Chase and Elijah almost didn’t manage that.”

  “They shot me.” Elijah’s words rung out clearly in the quiet room. “And then Richard intended to use me as sexual reward for . . . whoever. I’m sure I’m not the only person to get that treatment.”

  Kyger sat up straight. “We send children over there. Teenagers. If he’s doing things like that—”

  “I already fucking told you that your boy is a rapist,” Chase snapped. “There’s no if.”

  “Show me.” Hale strode closer to them and didn’t stop until she was right in front of them. “All of it.”

  Jessica looked up at Chase. “Are you ready for this?”

  Ah, that explained why she’d touched him. He could take their memories and put it on full blast for Kyger and Hale. Although, judging by the way Kyger was shutting down and sinking in his chair, he didn’t have the stomach for it. Chase didn’t have those same concerns for Hale.

  So, he opened himself up to Jessica, and let her horrors wash over him. Then he took from Elijah, more than what he’d already seen of his time in the silo. It was a cluster of his worst fears, of any normal person’s worst nightmares, and it took every ounce of Chase’s control to keep his brain from tearing the room apart.

  He had to wrench his attention from Elijah and redirect it to Hale, who now looked like she was bracing for a full-on assault.

  “You ready?” he asked roughly. “It ain’t gonna be fucking pretty.”

  “Show me,” she said again. “If you want our help.”

  So he did.

  Fragments of memories from Jessica started years ago, before she’d gone to the Farm.

  “He’s just a child,” she shouted, following Richard across the room. “What right do you, and the rest of the board, have to sentence him to go to that Farm? You’re not a judge. You’re not God.”

  The smack that followed was vicious, but Jessica never flinched. She didn’t look away. She just stared at her husband with a promise in her eyes.

  The Farm spreading out beneath a gray sky, less developed but still ominous in quality. Jessica wearing all white and seeking out Six, who was already wearing a guard uniform.

  “You can trust me, Sixtus,” she whispered. “I’m not like them. I want to help you leave this place.”

  Six regarded her without emotion. “They’ll never let me leave.”

  Jessica waking in the middle of the night to find someone dressed in white towering over her. Richard standing nearby. The prick of a needle, and then the building fear and realization.

  “Aren’t you sorry you decided to meddle?”

  Jessica watching, drugged, from her window as a young man in white shorts sprinted to the gates. Six chasing him and then, after several vehicles followed behind them, a gunshot.

  Hale leaned against the table, her dark-brown skin going ashen.

  “Had enough?” Chase asked. “That’s only a fragment.”

  “Keep going.”

  Chase, as a child, strapped to a table.

  “You’re incredible,” Jasper was saying, his voice distantly breaking through the medicated cloud surrounding Chase. “Everything I’ve always wanted to explore.”

  “Fuck you . . . Jasper.”

  Then the pulling. The feeling of his mind being ripped apart. But no screaming. Even medicated, Chase had gritted his teeth until his eyes streamed but he’d never released a sound.

  “Is you not letting Jasper actually kill me supposed to satiate my concern that you were still sitting there watching him try to suck me dry?” Chase demanded.

  Richard looked out the window. “I apologize for that.”

  “You apologize? He’s been doing this to me since I was a kid, Dick. And . . .”

  “And what?”

  “I didn’t know you knew,” Chase said, his voice rough. “And I never told you because I know how informants and snitches get treated here. But I didn’t know you gave the okay for me to be a science project.”

  “You were never a project.”

  “So what the fuck was I? Research?”

  “Yes.”

  “She feared what would happen if the government knew we existed,” Richard was saying, “so to reassure her, I told her I’d show her the Farm. I’d show her . . . our plan.”

  “The plan to study people like her?” Chase asked. “Powerful raw psychics?”

  “Yes. At first she was excited, just as I expected. She was born into a family just as obsessed with remaining strong, and after I met her, I realized the value in breeding psys.” Richard shook his head as if thinking back to that time. “She agreed to stay and participate in Jasper’s study. But then she changed her mind. Something
spooked her, and she vanished.”

  “‘Something spooked her’ . . . More like Jasper spooked her. Did it ever cross your mind that the man is a fucking psychopath?”

  “Over time it has, but I’ve also realized he’s a necessary evil. With his help, we’ve crafted so many powerful psychics.”

  Elijah being dragged away from the lake by Kyra and Will, who were dressed in full-body armor. Blood smearing across the grass.

  Elijah being tossed into a cell in the silo as he clutched his arm and cried. Will slamming a booted foot into his stomach for good measure.

  Elijah standing in the middle of an all-white room, shaking, his eyes lined with dark circles. “Please let me use the bathroom.”

  The man who stood in front of him smiled. “You can once you make the choice to tell me about Chase and his brothers.”

  Will and Elijah in the back of the SUV. Will ripping at his clothes as Elijah twisted away and fought. The driver flicked a glance behind him, cringing.

  “We’re dumping the freak right now, slut,” Will whispered in Elijah’s ear. “And once he’s dead, Jasper said you’re mine.”

  Hands pressed onto Chase’s shoulders, and it was only then that he realized he’d started shaking. His eyes had closed, his head tilted forward, and he could feel the pressure building again. The sign that things were about to go very wrong.

  He sucked in a breath, clenching his hands into fists, and tried to pull it together.

  “Calm down,” Elijah said in his ear. “The table just cracked.”

  “Fuck.” Chase stepped back from Hale, looking around wildly and found everyone staring at him. He reached out automatically and found Elijah’s hand, closing it in his once again. “Sorry,” he croaked. “I don’t have a good handle on it yet.”

  Hale nodded, but the shared memories appeared to have shaken her too much to care about a cracked table. Another look, this time without bleary panicking eyes, and Chase saw that Kyger had come to stand next to her.