by Jeremy Flagg
I am not enthused by my position amongst the Society. I have discovered the unpleasantries of this group of unsavory individuals stretch far deeper than I had been led to believe. I am hoping that my position will award me the opportunity to change our purpose in life. I believe there is potential and I am determined to reshape this foundation into something far greater than itself.
Vanessa reread the word, “Society,” several times before it soaked in. The woman was part of an organization, the leader of a group of people that knew about the existence of mentalists. She suspected the woman had lived a full life, but she wasn’t prepared for just how intriguing it was.
It wasn’t the first time she had heard of the group, but much like the Illuminati or the Masons, she assumed they were figments of the paranoid imagination. Just how powerful could a group filled with mentalists be if they turned their energies to the world around them? What change could they bring about, all while the people being manipulated wouldn’t be aware of what took place?
It has been forced upon me. I refused, but the board has decided I must follow in the footsteps of those who came before me. I have decided to concede and I will be taking a student to begin teaching our ways. I hope I can find somebody with a positive outlook on life, with an iron will capable of withstanding the constant sinister nature of this organization. I secretly hope I may find somebody who can replace me, thus giving me the ability to fade into the ether, away from this dreadful responsibility.
“A protégé?” Vanessa thought about the possibilities. What if there was another mentalist out there with the ability to see the future? What if they had the heft of this organization behind them? Vanessa shivered at the thought. A psychic with unlimited resources would be capable of reshaping the future as they saw fit.
“Is this why you brought us together?”
Perhaps it is, came a distant whisper.
The muscles in her body didn’t flinch at the deep voice. Vanessa remained sitting on the roof, holding the book, but her mind slipped away to the white room that never seemed to end. She left her body and stepped into the blinding light, a room only telepaths could reach. She had no doubt the whispering voice knew she would be there.
“Jacob,” Vanessa whispered, the name slipping into her mind. Another telepath was nearby, maybe not physically, but they were probing her mind, testing her abilities.
She knows my name.
Vanessa quieted her mind. A moment of peace flowed through her body and she heard the thoughts of another person. Her wings flared out as she thrust her hand into the open air. Her nails dug into soft flesh as she dragged a man into existence. She wasn’t surprised to see him wearing a perfectly tailored suit.
“Why are the obnoxious always well dressed?”
The man didn’t respond to the power behind her grip. His eyes were nearly as dispassionate as his demeanor. She was surprised he had no fight in him. She pushed him backward. He caught himself from falling. The perfectly groomed man brushed off his jacket, making sure his cufflinks were correctly in place.
“I’ve noticed you,” said the man.
“I appreciate your concern with me. You should be more worried about yourself, young man.”
“Young man.” He laughed. “It’s been a long time since anybody has referred to me as young.”
Vanessa took a step back, her wings folding behind her. Something about the man felt off, wrong, like he attempted to deceive her. It took a moment, but she had spent the better part of her life masking her identity; she knew a telepath’s mirage better than most.
The man wasn’t big by any stretch of the imagination. He was what might be described as petite, small enough that she found it hard to be intimidated. With a thought, the slightest push of her mind, she watched as he dimmed. As his body sunk into the blinding white of the room, a shadow remained, a smoky figure.
“Warden,” she hissed.
“I missed our interactions, Vanessa.”
It had been a year since she encountered him. She wanted to lash out at the former caretaker of the Facility and rake her nails across his face, but a year brought with it maturity. She imagined the light of the room siphoning into her body, creating a barrier along her exterior, securing her inside its brilliance. The room grew dark as the light coated her like a second skin. Despite her muscles tensing, wanting to lash out, she knew she’d need every defense she could muster.
“I appreciate your melodrama.”
“What do you want, beast?”
He laughed. The body he had stolen was younger than the Warden, but she knew there something had changed. She wanted to reach out, let her mind graze his, but she worried he’d break through her mental barriers and drag her into a fight, or worse yet, steal her body.
“He’s a mentalist,” she said in awe. The body the Warden occupied was a mentalist himself. She understood now, his need to subdue her until she submitted. The man had been determined to compound his gifts with hers, but being a Child of Nostradamus saved her from his intrusions.
“This could have been you.” He gestured toward his chest. “Think of how few limitations you and I would have. Jacob is a quaint vessel, but he lacks your maturity.”
“He also lacks the ability to keep you at bay.”
She understood Dwayne’s concerns. Seeing the man in front of her, a pawn of the Warden, she realized it would be easy to reach out and steal the bodies of those around her. The man was evil, but he had shown her the lines she refused to cross. He existed as a dark reflection. Vanessa imagined the line between her morality and his continued to blur.
“You are still filled with fear,” he said, his head cocked to the side. “So powerful, and at the root of it, I can taste your terror.”
“What’s your name, Warden?”
As she asked, she let her defenses break, a slight crack in the light as she reached out with her mind. The heat of his mind washed over her as she caught a brief glimpse into it. It happened faster than a blink of the eye, but she saw Dav5d. The love of her life was missing his legs and he remained suspended in liquid. He floated inside the tube, dozens of wires hooked to his body. She didn’t need press further to know the Warden had something to do with the state of her love.
She spun. Her wings smacked into the shadow, sending it backward. He didn’t fall as he skidded along the white floors. She launched herself forward, her wings taking her off the ground, and at the last moment, she slammed her feet into his chest. This time he fell backward and rolled along the ground of the white room.
Vanessa jumped into the air and with a flap of her wings she soared higher. She pulled her wings in tight and fell toward the shadow’s chest. Her knees drove into his torso. She thrust her hand into the Warden’s chest and pushed through the surface until she could feel the empty cavity where his heart should be.
“You’ve become more assertive, Angel.”
He reached up and without so much as a grunt, he pushed her away. The smoke swirled and reformed until he stood in front of her kneeling body. There was a laugh at the disbelief on her face.
“I applaud your confidence, Angel, but you’re not the only one who has grown in the last year.”
“I didn’t have to steal my powers.”
He laughed louder. “I can smell it on you. I’m not the only one who has been taking hostages.” He reached down, letting the wisps of smoke snake along her cheek. “The only difference is my vessel invited me. Can yours say the same?”
She didn’t know what to say to the man. She couldn’t tell what he had gathered from Dav5d or what he was reading off her in that moment. She couldn’t wrap her head around what it might do if she possessed another telepath. She imagined their abilities working in tandem, allowing her access to more power than she could ever muster on her own.
“What is it you want?”
“I hoped in your despair I could overcome you. You would make a delectable trophy, a highlight in my career.”
“You can’t,” she s
aid with a smirk.
“You’re mistaken, Angel,” he corrected. “I no longer need you. Jacob’s Society has offered me every reward I could imagine.”
He misstepped.
“Eleanor’s Society,” she said as she rose to her feet. She didn’t need to see his face; the temperature of the room changed subtly, giving away his concern. The cold rolled off him, both of them, at the mention of the dead psychic. Both of them feared her.
“You are the darkness on the horizon,” Vanessa said.
“Eleanor Valentine—”
Vanessa let her defenses roll along her skin, the light gathering about her fist. Her hand burned almost as bright as the rest of the room. It wasn’t fear she sensed from the Warden, but at least it was concern.
“We’re coming for you, Warden.” She shoved her fist into the torso of the shadow. The light vanished for a moment, swallowed by the Warden’s avatar. A moment later cracks emerged throughout the man’s body. She could feel him being hurled from the white room.
“Eleanor’s Nighthawks are coming for you.”
The figure burst, smoke dissipating into nothingness. The moment the man vanished she opened her eyes, still sitting on the roof. The book in her lap suddenly felt heavy. She looked down at the diary scribed by the dead psychic. She knew the woman still worked through them and one way or another, she was going to stop the Warden.
***
In one corner of the warehouse, the former occupants created small rooms with corrugated steel as walls, looking like something out of an apocalyptic office building. Jasmine contemplated crawling into one for sleep, curling up next to Skits in an attempt for at least a few hours of shut eye. Even with the thought of a firm mattress welcoming her, there was something peaceful sitting this close to a fire. The warmth of the flame and the flickering light dancing across her eyelids were hard to give up, even if it meant feathers and springs.
The team is crumbling, she thought.
Dwayne and Conthan had walked out, the younger trying to keep the older from losing his shit and attacking again. Vanessa sat on the roof, removing herself from everybody, wanting to stay deep in her own thoughts. Jasmine didn’t blame her, whatever had gone down wasn’t pretty. The veteran imagined a thousand scenarios, but none of them involved Vanessa and Dwayne tossing aside their mutual respect to slug it out as they had.
The fire popped and cracked, the same thing her spine was going to do from lying down on the backseat of an old car. On the opposite side of the fire, Alyssa was nestled in a chair with a blanket wrapped around her body. Gretchen sat next to the girl, her chair pulled close enough to the fire pit she didn’t need a blanket.
“How long have you known? I mean, about your powers?”
“The Nostradamus Effect happened when I was three,” confessed Alyssa.
“That early?”
Jasmine opened her eyes into slits. She had known the girl for nearly a year and in all that time she hadn’t asked her much about Alyssa’s past. She wondered if that made her a bad person, keeping the girl at arm’s length. She didn’t want them asking about her past, so for the past year she kept her distance.
“Yeah,” she said. “I don’t even remember it, to be honest. Both of my parents are conservative Muslim but even though the Quran doesn’t permit dancing, Mom wanted me to be involved with other kids. They attempted to assimilate to American culture. I was a bumbling ballerina. There’s a tape of me at a dance recital a couple years later where I was almost majestic. I was six and already at the top of my class.”
“What do you do?” asked Gretchen.
“Muscle memory. If I see it, I can do it. I used to watch the big girls dance. Mom would sit there and tell me if I worked hard, maybe that could be me. I didn’t work very hard and it was me.”
“She must have been thrilled.”
“They wanted to blend in, not stand out. It was bad enough their ballerina wore different clothes.” She pointed to the hijab wrapped about her head. “Then their six year old stole the show. They pulled me out of dance.”
“Can you still do it?”
There was a pause. Jasmine could see the expression on Alyssa’s face. She stared into the fire, remembering a long-forgotten memory. The girl’s ability made her a keen fighter, one of the most efficient killing machines Jasmine had ever witnessed. It had never crossed her mind that the gift might be used for something else. Goes to show where my head is.
“No,” Alyssa admitted. Her statement held a firm period at the end of it. Jasmine knew the girl’s abilities faded if she didn’t relearn them. The quantity she could absorb directly impacted the duration of her muscle memory. Even with that knowledge, she felt there was something else beneath the statement, something less related to the Nostradamus Effect and more to do with her past.
“You?” Alyssa asked.
“I was in sixth grade, so maybe eleven or twelve?”
“How did you get around detection?”
“My dad has money, I was tutored at home and my parents never questioned it. It was a dirty secret in our family.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I threatened my parents with it all the time. I was quite the bitch. That’s how I convinced them to let me go to art school. When you can become invisible, it’s not like they can keep you in the house.”
“So that’s what you do?”
“I can’t explain it really. Science was never my thing. I can bend waves, like light and sound. When I go invisible I’m there, but there’s no way to see me. I tried figuring it out. But every time I started reading a physics book I figured it was just better to do it rather than study it.”
“We have a friend whose job is to figure out the science stuff.”
“Here’s hoping he can help me.”
Jasmine closed her eyes and basked in the heat of the fire. She wanted to roll over so her other side could warm up, but she didn’t want to ruin the bonding moment between the two. She found it fascinating how easy it was to relate to them now that they were speaking openly.
“Did you know about Conthan?”
The rattle of chains told Jasmine the girl shook her head. “I wish I did. It’d have been awesome to know somebody else with abilities. But he was a late bloomer, I guess.”
There was a long pause between them. “How is he?”
“Good, I think,” Alyssa said. “I don’t want to lie, we’re not the kind of family that talks about this stuff. When the woman watching over your group is a telepath, you don’t really need to share much. And Dwayne is a bit repressed. And Jasmine, she’s military, so she’s not exactly a talker.”
She felt the eyes on her. They were studying her, trying to make heads or tails of her involvement. She had to admit, Alyssa was right, she didn’t open up much. It had always been better to be quiet and observe.
“He seems more confident.”
“He thinks we don’t know about him sneaking out at night. I’m not sure what he’s doing, but he always comes back banged up. He’s got demons he’s trying to exorcise.”
“More demons than I remember.”
“This life isn’t easy,” Alyssa said, letting her voice trail off.
“I was twenty when it happened.” Jasmine’s voice surprised even her.
“The Nostradamus Effect?”
She turned her head and eyed Gretchen through the fire. “The effect happened when I was sixteen. I was twenty the first time my powers did their thing.”
“What is your thing?” asked Gretchen.
“My skin touches metal and can change its density.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, a lot of ouch. They took me to the doctor. The needle broke on my arm. It took days before my skin turned back. I had no idea what was going on. I went for years without it happening again. Eventually it did. This time I figured it out. But back then nobody bothered to test us or track us down.”
Alyssa asked, “How’d you join the Corps?”
“The fuc
king Corps?” Gretchen yelled.
“They found out about me. They recruited me. It was more like they’d kill my family if I didn’t go with them.”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
She had asked herself that question for years. Gretchen’s candidness was a breath of fresh air. She appreciated that the woman didn’t hold back. “I don’t know.”
“You could have run, or hell, could have kicked their asses.”
“I didn’t want to.”
Gretchen didn’t push further. Jasmine rolled her head back on the couch, staring at the ceiling almost three stories above them. She loathed the General, and she counted down the minutes until she could crush his windpipe and tear him limb from limb. Yet despite her disdain for the portly man, there had been something comforting about the armed forces.
“They were like a family,” she admitted. “They knew I was a freak, some of them even liked the fact that I was made to be on the battlefield. I belonged.”
“How did you join the Corps?” asked Alyssa.
“I was part of an old project. They used to have mentalists as part of the military, and even after the Culling, the experiments continued. The project ended when a mentalist escaped. They resurrected it after I moved up the ranks. This time, though, they took more precautions. They stuck a damned explosive in my head and made sure I knew just how willing they were to kill me. They let me select my unit and eventually I became the commanding officer.”
“Didn’t you capture Children?” asked Gretchen. “I mean—”
“You’re right. The last girl I was supposed to capture, I let go. Eleanor’s letter told me to think about what I was doing. I told her to run.”
“The girl in Troy,” Alyssa said in a hushed voice.
“What girl?”
Jasmine’s chest thumped quickly as she imagined the still corpse on the ground. Eleanor had told her to let the girl go, and despite the psychic’s prophecy, the girl died. She wondered if Eleanor had foreseen the girl’s death; perhaps the anger pulsing alongside her heartbeat was part of the mad woman’s plans. Maybe she was supposed to go off the edge and kill the person responsible.