by Peter Moore
Evasive. But the good news was that the very work she was talking about doing would eventually give me the ability to find out all kinds of useful information.
We had been practicing for another couple of weeks, and we were making headway. Finding my way into Layla’s mind was easy for me by that point. I knew how to go softly, so it wasn’t startling or intrusive or uncomfortable for her. This was reading. It was easy to lose track of time when we read each other. The only limit was the exhaustion that finally set in from all the intense concentration. I still hadn’t figured out how to do it undetected, though.
I know you’re here, so don’t worry about that for now, she thought. Just get used to moving around, exploring.
I felt like some kind of a cat burglar or something.
Stop thinking that way. It’s just disconnecting you from this. And you need practice writing. Try to put some thoughts here, in my mind.
Right, right. I keep forgetting, I tried to write.
Not quite, but not terrible. Relax. You’re learning really, really fast. You have a talent for this. Okay, now, stay with me. I’m going to open up some areas in my mind for you. See if you can find your way in. You’re going to look for memories, emotions, or data.
I don’t really know how to recognize that.
You’ll know it when you’re there. Try to…well, to feel it in your mind. Relax into it, and I think it’ll happen.
Hey.
What?
We’re having this whole conversation, this whole…interaction, just in our joined minds. Pretty amazing. Kind of brings a whole new meaning to “hooking up.”37
I guess so. Anyway, concentrate on what you’re doing here.
So I did.
Every day I worked on it, and every day I got better. Layla had been right about my having a talent for telepathy. I felt like I was getting more control over it all the time. I didn’t have to look for the “light” anymore. I could enter her mind at will, with practically no effort.
I guess this is probably the best time to explain telepathy, at least the kind I have, in as clear a way as I can. Again, the only way I can do it is by using an analogy, but I think it’ll make sense.
It’s a lot like going into a house. Lots of rooms.
Now, this is a big house, the human mind, and there are lots and lots of rooms. Some of them connect, either directly or by passageways maybe behind the walls. Not all houses are built the same. Some people are easy to read: ranch houses, Colonials. Everything is laid out in a logical, pretty simple way. But some are much tougher: more individualized, maybe not any particular type, but a mysterious structure, with add-ons and confusing construction.
So sometimes you go in and you can pretty much tell exactly where to go to find what you’re looking for. Sometimes it takes a lot of exploring.
In some cases the rooms are wide open; in some cases the doors are partly closed. Sometimes doors are closed but can be opened, and sometimes they’re locked tight. The strength of the lock depends on how and why the host has closed off that part of the mind.
Some of these places are dark and require slow going. Others are brighter and you can move around pretty easily in them. The thing is, as your reading skills improve, it’s kind of like having your own head-mounted light: you can see no matter how dark it is.
So what can you do in this house of the mind? Well, a lot. You can wander around and just get an idea of what the owner is like. You can look for a specific room (childhood memories, plans, hopes, dreams—like I said, most people have pretty big mind-houses) and see what’s there. You can push open doors that the host wanted closed.38 You can even kick in the locked doors, if you’re skilled enough. All that is reading. Writing, of course, is more active. Take things—pull out memories or thoughts. Leave things in the house—messages, ideas. Disrupt things—break mental connections. Back then, it occurred to me that there might even be a way to burn the whole damn place down if you wanted to.
Which I eventually found was a lot easier for me to do than I ever would have guessed.
Whenever people were near me, I concentrated on reading them. I was getting better at writing—putting idea fragments into their minds. I couldn’t do any actual commands yet, not without it being obvious to them that something unnatural was going on, but I was still able to plant sensory impressions and have some fun with it.
One day it was warm, and we sat outside the deli we sometimes went to for lunch.
“Watch this,” I said. I nodded toward the sidewalk across the street.
There was a lady walking and carrying a shopping bag from an expensive clothing store. I kept my eye on her, entered her mind, and did my thing.
She started waving her hand at the air next to her head. She stopped walking, looked around, then started again. And then she swatted at the air, her mouth pressed into an annoyed frown.
“What did you do?” Boots asked.
“I wrote the sound of a mosquito buzzing in her mind. Loud. Like one big-ass mosquito.”
We laughed.
“That is very amusing,” Javier said, his accent sounding especially German, or maybe Austrian, that day. “But imaginary mosquitoes are not likely to do much damage to heroes. If your telepathy is so strong as Layla says it is, then I hope we can expect more impressive uses of your powers.”
The guy was starting to get on my nerves. “What kind of damage are you planning to do to heroes, Javier? Do you have any actual plans?”
“I am working on this,” he said. His voice was low and he avoided eye contact.
“Okay, let’s see how you like this,” I said. “Watch the guy right by that mailbox.”
I had zeroed in on a young man bobbing his head to the beat coming from his three-hundred-dollar headphones.
He abruptly stopped walking and looked up. He held both hands, palms out, in front of him and said something we couldn’t hear. He shifted to take a step to his left, then did the same toward his right. He stopped, laughed, and said something as he pointed to his right. He laughed again and took a step in that direction before heading forward on his way.
“I made him think there was another guy, one that he bumped into, and then did that crazy shuffle people do when they don’t know which way the other person is going to go.”
“And what good will that do us?” Javier asked.
“I made the image completely detailed. He could give a specific description of the guy, just like if he’d been there in real life. Not easy, but I did it.”
“Again, amusing, but what use does it serve for our purposes?” Javier asked. He was definitely getting on my nerves.
“Think about it, Javier. If I can project the image or idea of a person to block someone, I can project an army of Phaetons, or a building, or lightning, or fire. Imagine if Flatliner is coming our way to attack. I can make him think he’s looking at trees instead of us, and he turns to go in another direction. Is that useful enough for you?”
That shut him down pretty tight. All he could do was nod and smile to disguise his embarrassment.
Looked to me like I’d won that round with him.
BRADLEY BARON: “There’s a reason we call them powers rather than abilities. It’s because that’s how they make you feel.”
PROSECUTOR 9: “And how is that?”
BRADLEY BARON: “Powerful.”
The People of the United States v.
Defendant #5958375-Er/00-m
Trial transcript, p. 253
Control
I was going to the lair a few times a week. I wasn’t crazy about every person in the crew, but hey, you can’t love everyone.39 The truth was that I liked the subversive nature of what we were doing. They kept the lair mostly dark, which I figured was mainly for effect.
Some illumination came from Javier’s h
alogen work light and several computer monitors. He and Peanut were often hunched over the computers, speaking in hushed tones. They wouldn’t say what they were doing. Boots and Layla teased them, saying that they were looking at porn. The only reply they got, a nonsensical one at that, was Peanut calling back, “Yeah, you wish!” I figured Javier liked the idea that he was working on something secret from the rest of us. And Peanut liked the idea of doing anything Javier liked.
Boots watched more TV than any human being I’ve ever known. It didn’t matter what was on; she would watch sitcoms, reality shows, nighttime soaps—anything. And she’d watch them over and over, and she could recite the dialogue while watching.
Since the day outside when I showed the Vitals some of my skills, I had been concentrating on getting to the next step: writing specific commands or thoughts into someone’s mind without it being known by the target. It wasn’t the same as what I’d done outside; putting a sound or sensation in someone’s mind was easy. Putting in more complicated thoughts was a much harder deal. This wasn’t something Layla could do; when she wrote, you were aware that there was another presence in your consciousness. I wanted to be able to do it undetected. I wanted stealth.
It was during one of those times when we were developing my telepathy that we heard a litany of shouts and excited curses coming from Javier in the other room. He was definitely revved up, but it didn’t sound like he was unhappy.
All his loud carrying-on made it pretty hard for Layla and me to concentrate on what we were doing, so we pulled ourselves together and went out into the living room. Javier was doing a victory strut around the space, hooting and hollering as he did.
“What the hell?” Layla said.
“We’re in! He is willing to talk to us.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Who? Who? Who have I been trying to make contact with for the past two months?”
Given that Javier never talked to me unless it was absolutely necessary, and also given that I had less than zero interest in reading whatever he was thinking, I had no idea what he had been doing for the last two months.
“The Big M, man!” he shouted. “He is interested in talking to us!”
Boots shook her head. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
“How did you find him?” Layla asked.
“Not easily, believe me,” Javier said.
“Who are we talking about?” I asked.
Javier took a deep breath and very obviously relished the moment before he finally answered. “Mutagion.”
Mutagion. The Mutagion. He had to be in the top ten domestic (or top twenty international) most hunted Phaetons. Not likely you could find a man, woman, or child in America who hadn’t heard of Mutagion. His name was commonly invoked as a way to get children to behave, as in, “You keep playing with matches and Mutagion’s gonna come and take you away.” The funny part to me, though, was I couldn’t say for sure exactly what it was he had done that was bad enough to earn his reputation. Anyway, whatever it was, he was one of the most hated villains in the country. Javier had to be lying. Layla seemed to agree.
“You’re lying,” she said.
“Why would I make this up? We tracked him down on the Underweb and kept making prefaces.”
“Prefaces?”40 41
“He says he’ll meet with us,” Peanut said.
“About what?” Layla asked.
“Does it matter?”
She looked at him, astonished. “Does it matter? Um, yeah.”
“Do you understand what this means?” Javier asked.
I couldn’t help myself. “It sounds like it means you got an appointment with a guy hunted by every law enforcement agency and hero—individual and team—in this nation and several others, and, though there’s a decent chance his reason for agreeing to meet with us very well could be to kill us and bury us in shallow graves, it probably isn’t too important to know what exactly the purpose of the meeting is. Like, what could go wrong?”
“Oh, and there’s one other thing,” Peanut said. Javier shot him a look. Peanut shrugged and said, “Well, there is.”
“What’s that?” Layla said.
Peanut took a breath to speak, but Javier held up his hand and took the lead. “Mutagion will not have anything to do with us unless we first prove we are for real.”
“Prove we’re for real how?” Layla asked.
Javier took a deep breath. “He said we have to do something to show that we’re serious.”
Boots said, “Um, like what?”
Peanut shrugged. “He didn’t say. It’s just that we have to do something that’ll prove to him that we’re serious about being villains. He wants to know what we’re about.”
“Yeah, well, so do I,” I said.
Javier glared at me, and I realized I should have kept my mouth shut. But the guy was reckless and the fact that he apparently hadn’t thought this out at all made me angry.
Javier was clearly angry, too. “What do you think we are all doing here? Hanging around in a little club? Fun and the games?”
“I’m not really sure, to be honest. Maybe you should tell me.”
Javier stood up a little straighter, kind of like a dog raising its hackles.
“Okay, boys,” Boots said. “Let’s just keep cool. We’re all on the same side, right?”
Back off, Layla thought to me. You’re making an enemy, which you don’t need.
I’m not trying to make an enemy. Before we go off and do something to prove how badass we are, I just want to understand what he wants from this Mutagion guy, I thought back to her.
Javier is arrogant and stubborn. And he holds a grudge. You need to be careful with him.
Why?
“Are you with us or not?” Javier asked me.
“If being with you means I’m supposed to blindly support every single thing you do and say—”
“And now I ask again: are with us or not?”
Discretion is the better part of valor, as they say, so I decided to back off and save my energy for whatever conflict with him was bound to come up next. “Yes, I’m with you.”
“Then I thank you to stop arguing with me.”
I wasn’t arguing. I was asking questions, but if I said that, we’d start all over again, and in addition to making an enemy, I still wouldn’t get the answers. Why don’t you ask him what this is about? I thought to Layla.
“Okay, anyhow,” she said, “what are we trying to do by contacting this guy?”
Boots chimed in. “You got to him on the Underweb? Phaetons can type? And read?”
“Some can, some cannot. It all depends on how damaged they are,” Javier said.
I could feel Layla getting as impatient as I was. But she had a history with Javier that I didn’t have, so she could get away with a more direct confrontation than I could. “So again: what is it we want to meet with him for? Other than possibly getting murdered by him, that is.”
“That’s something we will need to talk about. What can he do for us? He is a major person in the antihero movement. He’s as good a connection as you can wish to get.”
“Okay, yeah, but so what do we want this connection to do?” Boots asked.
“You know, I don’t know,” Javier said, now openly pissed off at everyone. “Here, me and Peanut went and made this amazing connection with a hero—and by that, I mean a villain—and instead of being impressed and excited about it, all you are doing is tearing it down.”
This was my chance to maybe do some damage control. “Look, Javier. I’m sure I speak for everybody when I say we’re both stunned and impressed that you could make real contact with a Phaeton at all, much less one of the most famous and feared ones. We’re blown away, seriously. And yes, it
’s a big deal. But it’s kind of like when you have an enormous destructive power: if you don’t know how to handle it and what you want it to do, it can blow up in your face. None of us wants that. We’re just trying to figure out how to make the most of the great work you did.”
He glared at me. Is this guy trying to make an idiot of me?
No. It sounds like he means what he’s saying, I sent his way.
“Okay, I guess you are right,” Javier said. “We will have to talk about it. Maybe I overreacted or something.” But I am certainly not going to apologize to this kid. If he is waiting for that, he’s going to have a long wait.
I wasn’t waiting for that. I couldn’t care less if he apologized or not. What I did care about was what I had just done.
Without even trying, I’d put a thought in his head, and somehow I’d done it in his own mental voice.
I had just made my first stealth mind incursion. Not only did he not know I had been in his head, but he also thought the idea I’d planted was his own.
And that is what is commonly known as mind control.
Who We Are
Half an hour later, we were all sitting on the couch and chairs, gathered around the low table loaded with snacks and drinks, continuing the Vital team meeting.
“I wonder what Mutagion looks like,” Boots said. “There are no clear pictures of him. Not that I ever saw, anyway. And I can’t believe he can use computers. They say he has claws instead of hands.”
I shook my head. “There’s no evidence that he actually has claws.”
“There’s no evidence that he doesn’t!” Peanut said.
Layla said, “What the guy really looks like and what exactly his handicaps or whatever are is a whole other discussion. But we didn’t come up with an answer: what’s the goal of connecting with him?”
“Well, precisely that. A connection,” Javier said.
“What do we want from an arrangement with—I can’t believe I’m saying this—Mutagion?” Boots asked.
Javier didn’t say anything. Nobody did.
I figured maybe I could get the conversation actually moving forward. “Okay, I don’t mean this in a sarcastic way, but—forgetting about Mutagion for a minute—what exactly is it we want to do? I mean in the grand scheme of things?”