Discovery (Science of Psionics Book #1)

by Dave Renol

  I finally decided that I needed to either stay in my body and deal with the pain, or stay out and wait for it to end. Trying to go back and forth was accomplishing nothing at this point. Wanting to stay current on what was happening, I stayed astral for now. I would have to steel myself before rejoining and I didn’t feel brave enough yet.

  I went out for another scouting foray in order to keep my mind occupied and when I returned, Mark was sitting up and talking. I was ecstatic! I tried sending him a loving message but it obviously got a busy signal, so to speak. Apparently I needed my mind to be inside my brain for that kind of stuff.

  Deciding not to press the issue, I listened to their plan and figured that there was no rush for me to rejoin. I could take all day and night to let my physical mind heal. I ached to let them know that I was ok, but decided to stick with my plan and wait.

  When the time came for them to leave, I watched our watchers closely. Any sign of them spotting Mark, and I would rejoin my body to warn them, despite the pain. I needn’t have worried though. Mark came out of the cave like a cannon ball and took off into the sky like a rocket. He was gone in mere moments, and the watchers were none the wiser. I kept an eye on them for about twenty minutes to make sure that things were safe, and they never budged an inch.

  Relieved, I went back to the cave to keep an eye on Sara. It was always possible that, left to her own devices, she would try something stupid. I’ve never known anyone who could hold a grudge like she could.

  When I got back, it was to see Sara kneeling over my body with a wet rag, trying to get some water into my mouth one drop at a time. It was rather touching actually, like a mother bird with a new chick. She kept it up for about an hour before crawling back to the entrance and resuming her post.

  It was uncanny seeing how long she could lay there without moving. I had thought her story about the enemy sniper in Afghanistan was an exaggeration, but I no longer doubted her. For someone with such a volatile temper, she could also show incredible patience.

  It was far more patience than I had. Itching for something to do, I decided to see if I could locate anyone else in the hills. The two people watching around the pool were still in place, so I passed them with little more than a glance. I swept back and forth down the ridge but found nobody else in our area. Wanting to know how far I could go, I started down the stream path, zigzagging over both sides as I went along.

  I made it almost all the way down to my house before I found anyone. There, in the trees on each side of the path were some of Sid’s men. Slowing down to ensure that I didn’t miss anything, I circled my house at the tree line to check for others.

  Two of them were watching the road leading up to my house. Continuing, I saw another pair watching the road from the other side. I finished the circle around my yard without finding anyone else, so I went to check inside.

  There was a man sitting in my kitchen drinking coffee and holding a two way radio. A quick check in my bedroom showed two wounded men lying on my bed, being tended by a third. Scouting out the rest of my house only revealed one more: Sid was resting in the guest bedroom!

  Going by the numbers that Sara had guessed, if she was right, then everyone was accounted for. She should know about this so she can formulate a plan. Immediately after thinking that, I found myself back inside the cave floating over my supine body. I guess it’s true when they say that you learn something new every day. I had just learned a new facet of this odd ability.

  Firming up my resolve, I braced for the pain and rejoined my spirit to my body. I awoke with a ragged gasp.

  Hearing my gasp, Sara crawled quickly back to me. “Hey girl, how’s tricks?” Without waiting for an answer she shuffled behind my head and propped up my head in her lap. “Have some water, you’re probably parched. Make sure you drink slowly though.”

  She only allowed me a small sip at a time, but each one was like a blast of nectar to my mouth and throat. Feeling much better, I whispered “thanks.” She helped me to sit up fully and gave me the water bottle so I could drink as needed. I took a few more sips and started into my tale of what happened since the explosion.

  “So the bastard set up his command camp in your own home?” she asked indignantly.

  Nodding, I replied “Yup. I think what offended me most was the fact that he put two people who shot my house up in my own bed.”

  “He’s got balls, I’ll give him that.”

  “What do you think we should do?” I asked. “Should we wait for Mark to come back?”

  “That depends. If Mark were to come straight back to the cave, then all will be good. However, if he tries to bring help back to the house, he’ll be leading them into a meat grinder.”

  “Ok – yeah, that would be bad,” I agreed.

  “I suppose I should ask how you’re doing first. Do you feel up to venturing out? Is your mumbo jumbo up to the challenge of getting us out of here and engaging the enemy?”

  “Well, by waiting so long in spirit form the worst of my headache has passed, but it’s still fairly bad. Not knowing what Mark and Carl will do has me worried though. If I had to make a guess, I would say that Mark would come here to the cave since he was worried about me. Carl would probably bring people to the house for proof that the attack was real, at the very least.”

  “Both could be dangerous plans. They got out of here easily enough, but coming back he might be spotted. If Sid went so far as to set up in your house, then it’s entirely possible that he would attack Carl if he came with only one or two people. I think that we need to go on the offensive if we want to ensure their safety.”

  “I don’t think I could kill anyone,” I said with a shudder.

  “I’m sure we can do this without extreme violence. I’ve been thinking for a long time now on how to use your ability in all kinds of offensive ways, and some of them are non-lethal.”

  “Alright, if you give me a little time to gather my strength then I’ll do my part. Besides – you’re not the only one who would like to see a little payback.”

  Grinning evilly she said, “Payback is a bitch, and the bastard will soon know how true that is.”

  Chapter 24

  Mark: Arrested Development

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” I said for the twelfth time. “It wasn’t like you think.”

  Hearing no reply to my protestations, I slumped against the bars of our small town jail. They had simply shaken their heads at our tale of the siege and proceeded to lock us up with the drunks and crazies that were rounded up last night. The deputy who arrested us thought that we were homeless drifters making our way from town to town, robbing places like the donut shop as we went.

  All we could do was wait for the sheriff himself to come on duty and hope that he would be willing to listen to reason. Carl had slumped down on a cot in the cell and was apparently asleep, but I was too frantic with worry to even think about trying to rest. A madman was loose in the hills and Linda needed my help.

  I had to admit to myself that the officer did have a point. With our scruffy appearance, it was easy to picture us as people who slept under a bridge on a regular basis. I had no wallet, and Carl was carrying a loaded gun in his pants. Since I couldn’t tell him the real reason why Sid would want to shoot at us, my story sounded a little weak even to my own ears.

  At noon, the sheriff finally showed up. Treating me like a dangerous felon, he handcuffed me before leading me to a small interrogation room. “Ok, son – I’ve just had an earful from my deputy about your fairy tale, so how’s about telling me things first hand and we’ll see where we go from there.”

  I related our whole experience over the last few days, heavily editing out the parts concerning our abilities. He watched me steadily the whole time, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He did start when I mentioned that Carl had been shot, and he halted me in my recitation in order to page his deputy. He asked him to check that part of the story out, and then told me to continue.

  I skipped the
part where Sara shot back at the snipers, but emphasized the fact that he blew up my truck. I chalked the mortar shell misses up to bad luck and bad aim on their part. Our flight into the hills became a run into the trees where we simply hid in a cave. It was times like this that made me glad I was a writer; I could come up with all kinds of bullshit on the fly. Finishing with our ‘run’ into town through the forest, I ended with what we were doing at the donut shop when the deputy arrested us.

  He stared at me for a full minute before saying, “That was the most entertaining pile of horse droppings I’ve heard all week. You should be a writer.”

  The irony of that made me groan, but it also gave me an idea on how to prove my identity. “I am a writer. My picture is on both my website and on Facebook. Check it out and you should be able to identify me.”

  “I’ll take a look, but I won’t promise anything. Until I figure out what to do with you, you’ll just have to wait.”

  I didn’t like it, but I could understand his point of view. As he brought me back to the cell, I resigned myself to waiting. He took Carl away for questioning next. Although we had briefly discussed our story, we hadn’t gotten into too many of the fine details. I hoped that he kept things fairly generic so our stories would match.

  At least he had his wallet with picture ID. That and the record of him going through customs at the airport recently should prove that he’s not some random drifter. I wasn’t sure what they would make of his bullet wound; that could go either way. It might lend credence to his explanation, but could also make him look like a thug.

  I paced back and forth in the cell for about an hour before they finally brought Carl back. Once the deputy had left us alone I whispered to him, “Well, what did he say?”

  “He thinks I’m a nutter, but he admitted that our stories matched up enough for him to look into things.”

  “He’s not going up to the house alone, is he?”

  “I think he’s going to check the various police databases on us first and then maybe more questions.”

  “Great. We don’t have time for this crap – Linda needs our help.”

  “Patience, grasshopper,” he quipped. “He may be a small hick town sheriff, but he’s no dummy. All will be well.”

  “Just what I needed … The Canadian Confucius comforts me with calming corny comments.”

  It looked like he had to run that through his head a few times to make sure he understood it right, but then he smiled.

  “I’m at your service, eh!”

  Chapter 25

  Linda: Payback’s a Bitch

  Sara held up a hand, signaling for me to halt our flight. By my reckoning, we were about two dozen yards away from the first pair of watchers. Once we realized that the scouts had no direct line of sight on our cave entrance, leaving became easy. We simply flew out and carefully hugged the rock face until we could get behind them.

  Our biggest advantages were silence and mobility; there was no way we could have snuck up behind these two if we were on foot. We used that advantage to get close, and now it was time for me to get down business. I slowly created a force field in the shape of a column around each of them, being careful not to alarm them early. When everything was firmly in my mind, I snapped them both shut and shrunk them down until they were wrapped tight around the bodies of the men.

  Without pause, I began closing down the ends of the cylinders, making them air tight. I gave Sara the thumbs up and lowered her to the ground, where she immediately began moving in on them. I kept the shield up until they stopped moving, then popped open the top to allow them air again. This was one of Sara’s ideas for offensive, but non-lethal combat. I brought myself to the ground a few yards away, just to be safe.

  Sara gave them a quick look over and found them both alive but unconscious, so I dropped the cylinder. She made short work of stripping them of their gear and tying them up. Not only did she relieve them of anything that could remotely be used as a weapon, she also took the shirt and jacket from one of them to replace the rags she was wearing.

  Once they were secured, she flashed me a humongous grin. “I told ya it would work.”

  “I was nervous, but I never doubted you.”

  “Maybe not, but I’m pretty sure I detected a bit of self-doubt in you. Anyway, it worked perfectly and they’re both alive, but out of the picture with no alarm raised. Now let’s not pat ourselves on the back for too long, or Sid will figure it out when these bozos fail to report in on schedule. Now that we’ve started, we can’t stop until it’s over and done with.”

  Nodding agreement, I brought us into the air again and began the journey home. Sara wanted me to keep a mental eye out for troops on the way back in case they were moving up, so the flight was fairly slow. I didn’t mind, as it allowed me to briefly rest along the way. In my weakened condition, flying was taxing my strength and I wanted to be at my best when we arrived.

  Despite her caution, or maybe because of it, we arrived at the next pair of troops without detection. The cylinder trick seemed to have worked pretty good last time, so I repeated my efforts on this pair. Once they were encased, I brought them to us this time so Sara wouldn’t have to get too close to the edge of the trees.

  Once they were out, she stripped the gear again and added it to the growing arsenal in her backpack. “Back into the trees,” she whispered as she finished tying the last knot.

  I hurried us along as best I could. While Sara was dealing with the guards, I had scanned the area around my house and found no surprises. Positioning ourselves as close to the third pair as I dared, I repeated the cylinder attack again. This time, as I began bringing the pair toward us, I heard a shout of alarm from across the road. The other guards had seen their companions floating off into the woods!

  I dropped the guards encased in my cylinder to the ground like a hot potato and lowered the two of us almost as quickly. As soon as Sara had her feet on the ground she was off and running, a gun in each hand. I wasn’t sure what to do yet, so I simply hid behind a tree and started building up a shield for when they started to shoot at us.

  Feeling a tiny bit safer, I closed my eyes and switched to mental sight to figure out what was going on. I quickly located Sara who had taken cover behind a fallen log and was swapping out her handguns for her precious rifle. The two remaining guards were slowly making their way toward us but keeping low and out of sight.

  They reached the ditch on the far side of the road and split off from each other. To make matters worse, Sara seemed to not have noticed the split, as her attention was focused on where the pair would have come out from if they stayed to their original path.

  I couldn’t wait any longer or someone was going to get hurt. Reaching out, I plucked the machine gun from the hands of the first one and flung it into the trees. The second guy must have either been more alert or simply better prepared, as he fought the pull on his weapon and began spraying bullets in our direction.

  Through either luck or skill, some of those bullets came frighteningly close. Some of them hit my shield causing me to cry out in pain, but I refused to let the darkness take me. With a final twisting wrench, I tore it from his grasp and sent it skittering across the gravel of the road. With a silent ‘thank you’ to Darth Vader for the idea, I formed a circle of force around each of their necks and began choking the consciousness out of them.

  It was over in moments, but there were still people inside my house, and now they were aware that something was going on out here. I put the same type of force band around the arms and legs of the four road guards and headed over to rejoin Sara. If our advantage of stealth and surprise was gone, perhaps it was time for a bold and unexpected move.

  “I’m going for the house. Cover me,” I said.

  Sara didn’t bother with words or even a nod; she simply started toward the house in order to take up a position where she would be able to back me up. Saying a silent prayer, I moved deeper into the woods away from the house before gathering my courage for
my next move.

  There was a pair of exceptionally tall trees here, and using them for cover, I shot straight up into the air. I quickly pulled about two hundred feet of altitude and then arced my flight over to come down at the middle of my roof. I hoped that my maneuver was unseen from the house, and since I hadn’t been shot at, I took that as a good sign. I stopped myself a foot off of the roof so they wouldn’t hear any noise and turned my senses downward.

  There was one person at each doorway, but to my sight they all looked the same. It would have been nice to determine which one was Sid so I could take care of him first, but I suppose it didn’t matter. I would get them all out.

  I took care of the one by the patio door first. I simply flung him through the glass door and into the yard where I proceeded to bash his head against the wood pile until he stopped moving. I gave him a couple more raps for good measure and turned my attention toward the next guy. My strength was draining fast with all of the mental activity but all I could do was take a few deep breaths before continuing.

  The next one I chose was the one who was watching from the garage. I took him out of the side door like I did with the last guy, but I didn’t have a convenient wood pile to bash him against this time. I simply flew him up and then brought him down in a loop which slammed him into the ground. He managed to shout out “roof” before impact. He bounced, but he didn’t move after that. Now only Sid was left.

  I started to turn my attention downward again, but heard a clatter form the front of the house. Sid was running away! Smiling in triumph, I quickly tore his gun out of his hands, but before I could do any more I was rocked by an explosion. A grenade, I thought absently as I fell to the roof and began rolling toward the edge.