by Kal Spriggs
Shaden shivered as he walked along. His body’s aches and pains had only grown worse. Now he stared at the new day with eyes gritty from lack of sleep and pained by the bright light. He’d walked past several hotels, afraid to go in, afraid that they would ask for some kind of identification.
He knew, in theory, that there were places where rooms could be had for cash, with no questions asked. That knowledge did him no good as he stalked past dirty gray buildings covered in government fliers and tagged with graffiti.
Exhausted, he leaned against a skeletal metal scaffold that ringed a building. The morning traffic growled past, the cold streets busy even now. Few people gave him even a glance as they passed.
He felt no surprise at that any more. Dozens, if not hundreds of bums had panhandled him since he left the train station. More still sat along every street and slept in doorways and alleyways he’d walked past. To the average citizen, there was little to distinguish Shaden from the other homeless.
“You aren’t from around here are you?” a voice asked from behind.
Shaden turned and found the two teens from the train station. The boy had some kind of brand across his left cheek while the girl had a set of studs inset into her ears. They both wore the same garish clothing that could have been cast-offs or the height of fashion for all that Shaden knew.
“What?” Shaden asked.
“You’re new here, and looking for someplace to stay?” The girl asked.
“What makes you say that?” Shaden asked, suddenly suspicious.
“Because you’ve wandered around the city lost for the past seven hours, you haven’t asked any whiteheads for directions, and you keep looking over your shoulder like you’re sure that someone’s looking for you,” the girl flashed a bland smile. Her teeth showed the glories of socialist dentistry and reminded Shaden he hadn’t brushed his recently.
“Obviously someone was,” Shaden said back, he looked between the two of them. “Why the interest?” Exhaustion fogged his brain and he forced himself to focus on the two.
“Saw you had cash. Not smart to wave it around like you did. Not in a crowded place,” the girl shrugged. “We can make a deal. Three hundred dollars and we’ll show you a place you can hole up.”
“Three hundred?” Shaden asked. He felt a surge of unease. The faces of the two teens remained cold and empty. They could have been robots for all the real emotion they showed. “How do I know I can trust you?”
“We haven’t turned you in to the whiteheads yet.”
“Whiteheads?” Shaden asked
The boy rolled his eyes, “Fucking cops, white helmets, they’re like pimples, full of pus and shit. Whiteheads.”
“Ah. Got it.” Shaden’s hand went into his pocket and he squeezed the roll of cash with his hand for a minute. He hadn’t yet counted it. It was all he had. Three hundred…
The painfully bright sun crested the building above them and Shaden winced in pain. The light seemed to burn right into his brain. “Okay, do I pay you now or—“
“Now.”
Shaden stepped into a doorway and pulled out the cash. He peeled away at the layers of bills and finally held out his hand. The girl’s hand moved with viper speed to take the bills, but he caught her wrist with his other hand. “If you betray me, I will find you.”
She met his gaze with dark, dead eyes.
Shaden let her go and she took a couple steps back. She flashed him her bland, lifeless smile, “Follow me.”
***
Shaden felt uneasy as the two teens led him away from the crowded streets and deeper into the concrete jungle of the city.
The sounds changed subtly as they walked farther and farther. The bustling crowd trickled off to a handful of people who avoided each other’s gazes. Shaden strode onwards, he felt the limits of his body approach fast. His chest had gone past aches and every move, every step had become agony. His entire face throbbed. His arms, when he looked at them, had a mottling of unhealthy colors. He doubted his face looked much better. He needed rest and a place of safety out of sight for long enough to recuperate. If these two didn’t help him, he felt fairly certain a doorway would do.
The girl stopped suddenly and tapped at her head. Shaden realized she had a skullphone as she began to mutter to herself. The boy stood at her back and stared at Shaden with dead, empty eyes. The girl nodded to herself one last time and spoke aloud, “Change of plans. Cezero wants us to swing by the kennel.”
The boy shot her a quick glance and then gave a sharp nod.
Shaden’s unease climbed rapidly at that signal. His fatigued brain fought for traction as he sensed whatever had changed it did not lie in his favor.
“Come on, this way,” the girl said.
Shaden glanced over his shoulder, back towards the busier streets. He would find more police there, he knew, and cameras that could pick him out of the crowds with biometric computers. Despite the unease Shaden felt, he followed the two onward. After all, he had no other option.
As they walked, Shaden reached out with his mind. His breakthrough in his fight with Janecek had been twofold he realized now. Not only had he gained pyrokinesis, but he found he could sense the world around him. He could feel the cold steel shank hidden up the girl’s sleeve and the cheap pistol tucked into the boy’s belt. He could feel the presence of people in the towering buildings around them and the energy of the wind gusts and the water that flowed through the pipes beneath the street.
As he marveled at that, he had another thought. If he could sense those things, then why couldn’t he sense the thoughts of his guides? Is the mental world so very different from the physical?
Tentatively he reached out with his mind again. He felt a disturbing shift, almost as if a distortion contorted the air before his eyes. A moment later, chaos overwhelmed him. Shaden stumbled to his knees as a torrent of thoughts and emotions rolled over him. His brain felt like the center of a whirlwind as a cascade of distorted images and sounds pulsed through him. He couldn’t shut it out; couldn’t stop the noise and turmoil.
He heard the voices of his guides and his mind locked on theirs in a moment of panic. He could feel the eagerness of the boy to return to his dealer, to spend the money he made on his next fix. His surface mind held little actual thought, driven by his addiction. The thoughts of the girl seemed alien, cold and geometric as she wondered if this mark would need to be carried the rest of the way.
Shaden could feel her disappointment as she calculated the added expense of hiring muscle to carry Shaden to the meeting location. Just as he could feel her excitement at the reward Cezero offered for a man matching Shaden’s description.
“No.” Shaden shook his head. He tried to stand, but his mind tracked deeper into the girl’s and he flopped limply to the ground as his body seemed to grow more distant.
He delved deeper into the open mind and the knowledge of Cezero as the local leader of organized crime, led further to the other jobs that the girl performed on a regular basis. She’d cut the throat of the prostitute who had failed to pay her full share just yesterday. Two days before that, the pair of psychics who wanted fake papers. Cezero had her turn them in to ESPSec, and she kept the money they gave her as a nice bonus… especially after ESPSec shot the one and she gotten that nice watch off him….
“No!” Shaden shouted. He shoved with his mind, and he heard a shrill scream. He stumbled up to his feet. The boy drew his pistol from behind his back and brought it up.
Shaden lashed out and a wave of force slammed the boy into the brick wall behind him. The pistol clattered to the ground as he fell limp to the pavement. Shaden tried to shut out the mental images from the girl’s head as she pulled him deeper with images of mutilations and mayhem. He reached into her mind and twisted and they both screamed.
Shaden choked on a mouthful of vomit and then released the contents of his stomach to the street. He clamped his jaws, and fought to still his gag reflex. The acid burn in his throat and sinuses gave him something
to focus his mind on and he built up a barrier to the chaos of the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of the thousands of people around him.
It seemed to take forever for him to shut off the flow, but when he finally looked up, he found himself alone in his mind once more. A glance around suggested that only a few seconds had passed.
Shaden scrubbed the filth on his face with one hand as he looked between the unconscious boy and the girl who rolled on the sidewalk. She just clutched at her head and made mewling noises.
Another spurt of nausea hit him again as he realized what he had done. That feeling passed as he remembered some of her favorite past-times involved street people and sharp knives. He stepped over her and picked up the boy’s pistol. The small, double-barreled derringer held only two shots. Even so, he tucked it into his pocket. With a surge of unease he reached down and plucked his payment out of the addict's pocket.
Shaden looked around self-consciously. He half expected a gathered crowd. Instead, the handful of people on the street simply gave the scene a wide berth and continued on, their eyes everywhere but on the three of them.
Shaden shook his head. He stumbled away from the two criminals, his pain slightly dulled by the surge of adrenaline. Even so, he knew he would need someplace to hole up soon. With the local crime lord working with ESPSec, he had little option but to get off the streets as soon as possible.
He glanced up at the sun with bleary eyes and bit back a curse. There was only one way he could find a place to hide. Slowly, he opened the barrier he had raised around his mind.
***
“Sir, ESPSec just filed a report on possible psychic activity in Manhattan,” Misha’s face appeared on the screen of Halving’s phone. “I’m sensing an extremely powerful telepath in the area. It feels like it’s only barely in control.”
“You think it’s our escapee?” Halving asked. “He’s shown no signs of Psi Gamma before. What makes you think it’s him?”
A moment later the screen split and Cyrus’s face appeared. “You know my feelings on the ‘classification’ system you people use. Besides, I recognize the feel of his mind.”
“Sir,” Misha said, “Cyrus already has some local muscle with him and he’s enroute.”
“Oh?” Halving asked with a raised eyebrow.
Cyrus shrugged, “You’ve dealt with Cezero before. I figured since he’s handed over psychics to you before, he’d be eager enough to do it again.”
“You’re not my best at combat,” Jonathan Halving said. In truth, Cyrus was infinitely more valuable in a support role over direct action. Misha, though, was out of position and Janecek was dead. None of his other people had the leadership potential to fill Janecek’s role, either. Except Angel, he amended, and it’s not like I could trust her in the field. Blackmail only worked so far and he didn’t know how she’d react if he ordered her to kill someone.
“I’ve more control than the boy can even hope to manage right now. I don’t have to be as strong as him, just more focused,” Cyrus said. “Besides, if worse comes to worse, I can have the muscle put a couple bullets in him to break his concentration.”
Cyrus had seen plenty of combat, especially back in his revolutionary days. Given his practical nature, he wasn’t likely to continue a fight if he sensed he was outmatched.
Halving nodded, “Do it. Break contact if things get… interesting, though.”
The old man nodded, before signing off. Halving smiled slightly. The excitement was good for Cyrus; he looked more alive than he had in months.
***
Shaden practiced with his newfound ability as he searched for a place to hide. He sifted his mind through the people nearby, tapping into each person’s consciousness, looking for information on where he could hide. He’d slowly begun to filter out the gritty details of other people’s minds when he noted a curious absence in the street behind him, as if the entire street wasn’t there to be felt.
He stopped and leaned against a wall, painfully aware that he needed the support. He used its solid surface to conceal the drawing of the pistol from within his trench coat. Shaden slid it up his sleeve, and then casually turned to see what awaited him.
The old woman who stood only a few paces behind him didn’t seem out of place in the dingy street. She brushed lank, slate gray hair out of her wrinkled face with a greasy hand, and gnawed on a dirty fingernail.
She didn’t look much different from the hundreds of homeless people he’d seen on the streets since his arrival in the city.
She spoke to him absently, her eyes unfocused, “So… it worked, John? I felt your mind’s touch, to think that it worked…”
As Shaden stared at her, he felt an instant of recognition, as if he knew her, and knew her well. He faltered with his mouth open to answer her by name. He stared at her, her name on the tip of his tongue, and then slowly sat down. He felt something crumble as her name slipped away. Shaden knew in that instant that he’d lost something, something dear to him, but he didn’t know what.
On top of the day’s events, it proved one blow too many.
He felt the brush of another mind against his, and he let it in. He felt her mind slip around and through his, past his defenses before he even realized she was there. Her mental touch was delicate and smooth, yet she seemed to penetrate every bit of his mind before she pulled out. The touch left him quivering and uncertain.
The old woman hunched over and sat on the dirty street beside him. “So, I see now.” She spoke softly, almost to herself. “Such a prize, but at such a cost. Such a tragic cost…”
Shaden turned to her, and finally managed to push out words, “Who are you? Please, tell me.” He needed to know what he had lost.
The pain revealed in her face mirrored that in his soul.
She spoke softly, “What they did to you, what you did to yourself…” She shook her head. “It is a wonder that you recognized me, even for an instant.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “Who knows if it was worth it?”
“What was done to me, why do I feel that I am not who I am?” Shaden demanded. “I know that there’s something, I can feel it in my mind, now that I look. I… What have they done? What have I done?” He clenched his jaw in anger. Confusion and exhaustion and anger warred for a place in his head.
The woman shook her head, and pushed the hair out of her eyes once more. The motion seemed so familiar, so right, somehow, that Shaden lost his train of thought.
She finally spoke, slowly, as if mulling over every word. “What was done was done for a reason, a hope of something better. I thought the cost was too high then.” She let the silence drag for a moment. “Now, though, now, I am not so sure.”
“Tell me, please.” Shaden practically begged, wondering why the pain was so much, what price he had paid and for what reward.
The woman looked straight at him. Her familiar hazel eyes pierced his heart. “I can’t. If I did I would destroy all you have accomplished so far. That would make the cost too high to bear.” She sighed again, but now her slumped shoulders straightened. “It is good to see you again, and, I think, I would like to fight by your side for a time.” She smiled now, and it was so familiar that it made his heart ache, but he nodded.
“Good, I wish we had more time, so that I could teach you some skill with your mind, but I perceive that time is a limited thing at the moment.” She stood and cocked her head at him, “I suppose you can call me Janis,” there were some tears in her eyes for a moment; she cleared her throat, “for now.” She glanced over her shoulder, “You’ve drawn a lot of attention with you mental antics. There’s a team headed this way, and a second one not far behind. We’ll have to fight them.”
Shaden stood, he gripped her hand and they started down the street.
Janis pulled him into an alleyway and they stood silent for a moment. The old woman glanced around the corner and nodded, “They’re coming.”
Shaden began to send a thought out, but Janis’s raised hand stopped him. “Please
, they already know you’re here, let’s not let them know exactly where you are.”
Shaden blushed at her sharp tone. “It’s not my fault I don’t know how to be delicate, it’s not like I’ve had much time to learn. I thought I did a good job.”
Janis sighed, “Everyone with the slightest shred of ability felt you from here to Buffalo. I suppose if you were a little more blatant, you could get all the normals to hear. Now be quiet while I work.”
He felt her mind send out a delicate strand of thought that slid away. If he wasn’t so exhausted and in as much pain, he might have felt embarrassed. As it was, he just felt glad for the time to lean against the wall. It would be so easy for him to sleep…
Janis tapped him on the shoulder and he realized that he had fallen asleep. Shaden blinked hard to focus and saw that her eyes were still closed as she searched for the people here to kill him. She opened her eyes after a moment. “Two of them coming down the street on foot. There’s also a psychic, he isn’t very strong but he’s well shielded and very tightly controlled. I shielded us both from him, but only barely.”
“The two normals, has he protected them in any way?” Shaden asked. He felt uneasy at the course of action that came to mind. Unfortunately, he saw no other way to defend himself and he somehow doubted that the men chasing him felt any of the self-doubt that plagued him. Even so, a voice in the back of his mind whispered that he couldn’t trust his abilities, that he couldn’t trust himself. But these people were here to kill him… and in the face of that, what choice did he have? He only wanted to survive.
“No, he only protects himself. I’m not sure exactly where he is, only that he’s closer… and I think he knows you have help now,” the old woman said.
He had thought hard about what he might accomplish with his abilities. Shaden could project his consciousness and he could give and take energy in the form of heat. He combined both abilities and he felt a kind of moral justice in killing two bad men in a very bad way. From what mental glimpses he got as he touched their minds, they deserved worse.