by Ian Somers
Sarah’s eyes shot open and she sucked a sharp breath as she lurched forward.
‘Are you all right?’ Cathy asked, putting her arms around the girl and hugging her tight. ‘Was it a nightmare?’
‘Yes,’ Sarah sobbed. ‘It was horrible.’
‘What did you dream about, love?’
‘I dreamt about the tin man.’
‘Who?’ I asked her.
‘The tin man. He’s coming to kill us all.’
‘Who is this tin man?’ Mr Williams asked her. His voice had remained calm, but I could see it in his eyes that the prophecy had him flustered.
‘I don’t know. He’s going to come after us and kill us. He’s going to kill all your friends too.’
‘The tin man …’ I said, wondering what she was describing. ‘Is he made of metal or something?’
‘No, no,’ Mr Williams scoffed. ‘She must be referring to the character from the Wizard of Oz.’ He looked back at the girl. ‘Is this man looking for a heart?’
‘I dunno,’ Sarah said. She slouched into the seat and stared vacantly out the window.
‘It’s just a dream,’ Cathy told her. ‘Just a dream. The tin man doesn’t really exist.’
Peter Williams and I exchanged a glance and it was enough to tell me that he believed this premonition.
We hardly spoke again for the rest of the journey. We reached the house soon after and tried to calm Sarah down. Nothing worked and she cried for almost an hour straight. At first I thought she was upset because of the vision she’d had, but after a while she told us how she’d been forced by Zalech to watch as he killed her foster parents. Cathy and I didn’t know what to say to her. We just stood there listening to her story. Mr Williams spoke with her at great length and his wise words had a soothing effect on the young girl. He and Cathy brought her to her new bedroom and stayed with her until she fell asleep. I spent some time at Romand’s grave and went to my room about 2am. When I finally climbed under the covers all I could think of was who the tin man from Sarah’s vision could be …
I awoke to find myself strapped tightly to a bed and a dull pain throbbing in the back of my skull. I tried to get up but the thick leather straps across my chest, waist, wrists and ankles allowed for no movement. I tried to use my gifts to loosen them, but could not summon any strength.
I found it impossible to focus my eyes for a few moments. When my vision finally cleared I realised I was in a hospital room and there were tubes and wires attached to my face, neck and chest. There were machines all around me bleeping and flashing. Fear surged through me. I concentrated as hard as I could on summoning some psychokinetic power so that I could break free, but the more my mind sharpened the more physical pain I experienced.
What had happened to me? Who had strapped me down? Did they know of my crimes? Why were my powers not working?
I made one last attempt and pushed myself forward, but the straps gave no sway.
‘The restraints are for your own good, Edward,’ a gentle voice said from across the room. ‘You will only do yourself harm if you leave the bed. Trying to force them while in your condition could cost you your life.’
I tried to speak, but could not. There was some sort of contraption covering most of my face and there was a wide tube filling my throat and prodding at the inside of my chest when I tried to form words.
‘Try to remain calm,’ the woman spoke once more. ‘I know it’s natural to want to free yourself of these ugly machines but they are keeping you alive. You must remain calm, Edward.’
She was lying. She had to be lying. What had they done to me?
Suddenly I became still. I remembered what happened. The panther. It had mauled and bitten me in the neck and before I blacked out it had torn away part of my throat.
‘Don’t try to move and don’t try to speak. Try to calm down. You have suffered horrific injuries but we can repair you. Your powers remain, and you will use them again in time. We have injected you with a specific sedative that numbs your control over true gifts.’
She came closer to the bed and the faint light in the room caught her face. She was younger than her voice suggested and had a softness in her eyes that calmed me when I looked into them.
‘My name is Janet Walters and I will be your doctor while you are here. My goal is to help and protect you, Edward. Soon you will be back on your feet again.’ She sat next to me on the bed and smiled as she adjusted a nozzle on the drip attached to my left arm. ‘I’m going to put you to sleep now. You’ll be going into surgery soon. You’ll feel a little better tomorrow and I’ll be here when you wake.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Your Only Friend
I awoke at dawn and went outside to sit on the bench in the cool autumn air. I used to be able to sleep all day, but my time with Romand and Hunter had changed that and now I instinctively got up at daybreak. Being an agent for the Guild of the True meant you could never truly relax. You never knew what the day ahead had in store and it was probably for the best to be getting up early so you wouldn’t be caught napping if you were called upon by the mysterious people who sat on the Council.
‘Still thinking about the tin man?’ Cathy asked.
I turned to see her standing by the back door with her duvet wrapped around her. Her hair was in tangles and her eyes were puffy with tiredness. She was still a vision of heaven to me.
‘He had crossed my mind once or twice.’
‘Come off it, Ross. I bet you haven’t been able to get him out of your mind all night. I know I haven’t!’
‘It’s the type of thing that’s hard to forget. You think it was just a nightmare?’ I asked.
‘Peter didn’t seem to think so. And he’s the wisest person I know. He looked freaked out about it. He didn’t even say goodnight when I went to bed last night. Just disappeared into his study.’
‘I know. I went into the kitchen for a glass of water in the middle of the night and overheard him on the phone. I wonder who he was talking to.’
‘I have no idea.’
‘What could Sarah have meant by tin man? Does it mean a man made of tin? Something to do with the Wizard of Oz?’
‘You have to remember that she’s only eight years old, Ross. She can’t articulate what she’s seen like you or I can. I’m sure Peter will make some sense of it. Or at least someone in the Palatium will.’
‘You ever been to this Palatium?’
‘Never. I don’t even know where it is. It’s top secret. Big time top secret!’ She left the doorway and sat next to me on the bench and stretched the duvet over my shoulders and wrapped her arms around me. ‘This was meant to be our time. I thought we’d have endless hours to spend together with nothing important to talk about. Just chit chat about music and our gifts and each other and stuff.’
‘And stuff?’ I laughed.
‘Yeah. Stuff,’ she giggled. ‘Don’t underestimate the importance of stuff.’
I leaned over and kissed her softly while holding her tight around the waist. I could have sat there all day with her. It was one of those perfect moments.
‘Such a lovely picture. It almost makes me want to puke.’
Hunter stepped out into the garden holding a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and an unlit cigar in the other.
‘We’re just chatting, Hunter,’ Cathy said to him. ‘Normal human beings do that from time to time.’
‘Human beings do lots of pointless things, my dear.’ He lit his cigar and blew a cloud of smoke above his head. ‘So, did I miss anything while I was sleeping?’
‘Not much,’ I replied. ‘Only a prophecy of doom. We’re all going to be killed by a man made of tin apparently.’
‘How delightful. The little girl scaring you again, Bentley?’
‘Not just me. Mr Williams looked like he’d seen a ghost when she said it.’
‘He’s an excitable old geezer, is Williams. He’s probably been on the phone half the night to Sterling about it.’
‘J
im Sterling?’ I asked. I remembered meeting the man at Romand’s funeral, but I never got the chance to talk to him.
‘Yeah.’
‘Is Jim Sterling the head of the Council?’
‘None of your business, Bentley. The less you know about Jim Sterling the better it will be for you.’
I couldn’t determine what he was trying to get at by being purposely vague. I didn’t bother asking because I knew he’d just fob me off like he always did.
‘Mr Sterling has always seemed like a lovely man whenever I’ve met him,’ Cathy said with a smile. ‘I remember my dad spoke very fondly of him.’
‘Yeah, that makes sense.’ Hunter took a long pull on the cigar and flicked into the dewy grass. ‘Well, I got business to attend to. You two lovebirds enjoy your down-time.’
‘Don’t leave until Mr Williams is up,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘He said he was going to the Palatium with you.’
‘Like hell he is. He’ll only insist on travelling in one of his dinosaur cars. I’d like to get there this century so I’m out of here before he gets up.’
He stomped back inside the house and left the two of us wondering why he was so uptight about Jim Sterling. His dismissal of Sarah’s latest premonition had eased my anxiety a little and I was able to enjoy the peace of the morning in Cathy’s company, something I had longed to do during my exile in rural Scotland. We didn’t discuss the Guild or what had happened in the north-east. We simply chatted and kissed as the sun climbed into the pale blue sky. It was a bright spot in an otherwise dark time of my life.
Mr Williams appeared an hour later and was furious to learn that Hunter had gone without him and spent the next couple of hours cursing under his breath. At 10am Sarah appeared and she sat right next to Cathy at the table and slowly picked at a bowl of cornflakes. Mr Williams called me into his study for a quick chat before he left for the Palatium.
‘I know you were looking forward to having time with Cathy, but you have the rest of your lives ahead of you. I could be gone for a few days. So, I’m asking you to put your budding relationship on hold for the moment and look after Sarah – she’s been through a lot lately and you must both keep a close eye on her.’
‘I can live with that,’ I lied. ‘I’m sure all this will blow over in a few days anyway.’
‘Yes,’ he smiled without confidence. ‘In the meantime, I have photocopied some pages from that book I told you about. I would like you to read them and practice the techniques outlined.’
‘Why not just give me the book?’ I asked. ‘Why go to the trouble of photocopying one section?’
‘I don’t want to lay too much on you at once, Ross. You need to take time to digest each technique properly.’
‘Mr Williams, are you sure the Guild trusts me?’
‘Of course. Why do you ask?’
‘They never fully trained Edward Zalech because they didn’t trust him or thought they couldn’t control him. I’m getting the vibe that I’m drip-fed information about the gifts I have. And I’m starting to believe I am being purposely held back.’
‘They are holding you back,’ he admitted openly and with no shame, ‘though not for the same reasons as in Edward Zalech’s case. We know you have great power, Ross, and you have so much potential, but you are a little reckless and tend to rush into things too much for our liking. Some of the techniques are very hazardous and we would like to wait until you’re a little older for you to learn everything. That’s all it is. You already have enough knowledge to defend yourself and this,’ he handed me the sheets of paper, ‘will strengthen your control. Be patient.’
‘I guess I’m being a bit too eager.’
‘You are. You have a lot of time to know all there is to know about the true gifts.’ He handed me a card. ‘My mobile phone number. Use it only in an emergency. Stay vigilant while I am away.’
I slipped the card into the back pocket of my jeans and took the sheets to my room and started reading …
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
‘The Dual Shield’
Rudolph Klein (Der Orden der Befähigten) The Unlimited Gift. (1978)
One of the mistakes made by many novices when using psychokinesis in combat is that they think one-dimensionally. They think of either attack or defence and do not consider utilising both tactics simultaneously. I have seen this with my own two eyes; powerful people who have become over-confident in the impact of their attacks that they neglect to protect themselves properly and pay the ultimate price for this oversight. Likewise, those with an overly-cautious instinct concentrate solely on defensive strategies and allow their opponent too much time to work out a way of bypassing simple shields. Too much effort on either is misguided. A master of any of the true gifts will always consider both tactics at the same time.
There are a number of ways to protect oneself while launching an assault, but in this chapter I will outline the most consistent and best, in my opinion. Of course others will prefer alternative methods which I will outline in later chapters of this book. I believe these methods all have weak points, but are nonetheless very effective. They are as follows:
Chapter 16 - Ground Pulse System - Designed by Martin Washington in 1892. Chapter 17 - The Cube Rotational - Designed by Pavel Zorchan in 1918. Chapter 18 - The Vacuum Cycle - Designed by Ben Clarke in 1951. Chapter 19 - The Double Domino - Designed by Carla Robbin in 1974. Chapter 20 - Kinetic Fusion - (Theorised by Trevor Banks in 1976).
In this chapter I will focus chiefly on The Dual Shield, which was first created by Angela Barnes in 1963 while she was working with the Guild of the True. Barnes was one of their top tutors at the time and in the early 1960s she began training two very promising psychokinetics and was developing new manoeuvres for them to practise. She was sparring with them when she found that being outnumbered by two skilled people required a new technique altogether, one that encompassed both offence and defence.
Her solution was simple, but ingenious. She created a globe shield, which is an old technique used for a number of centuries. It is essentially a circular shield of power that acts as a force field. Her variation was inspired. Barnes discovered a way of making the energy field impenetrable from the outside, while porous from the inside. In layman’s terms: nothing could pierce the shield, but she could allow objects and kinetic assaults to pass through it from the inside.
Her talented protégés could not combat this technique. And in time she made improvements on it. In 1971 it became a requisite for all higher-ranking psychokinetics to learn. As always, the Guild never revealed their most important techniques to junior members.
Barnes died in 1973 and never lived to see the Dual Shield brought to maximised capability. It was later that year when Erik Okker created a dual shield with a one-kilometre diameter. It was a powerful shield too, speeding cars could not enter it yet he could still launch simple strikes like the slice or the spear from within.
Okker had studied and practised the dual shield for many years and it was he who was tasked with teaching his colleagues how to perfect this power. Okker claimed he had used a simple regime: a small room and a ping-pong ball. He would create the shield close to his body, and threw the ball through it at the wall. It would ricochet and then strike the exterior of the shield. It took him time to get it right, but within a month he had it perfected. After that he practised at expanding the shield.
The first couple of pages were intriguing. I had never fully considered both defence and attack with the one move. I read the rest of the pages, but they were very technical and more aimed towards people who did not have psychokinesis, so that they could fully understand what the dual shield was. He also explained how it was used by a couple of the Guild agents, and his own small group who were based in Germany from the late 1960s and were an ally to the Guild. They didn’t actively work alongside the Guild; they had an exchange system of sorts for a couple of decades. Ideas and even pupils were passed from one group to another, thus both would
benefit because the ideologies of the two were very similar.
It warmed the heart to know there was another group like the Guild. That the world wasn’t simply filled with evil organisations who cared only for money and power. Perhaps there was hope yet for the gifted community.
I put the papers aside and went searching the house for a ping-pong or tennis ball. I couldn’t find any so I settled for one of Mr Williams’s golf balls and quickly returned to my room. I really wanted to learn how to create the dual shield. It sounded like the type of thing that could come in handy one day if I was to come up against an imposing enemy.
I woke to find the dull throb in the back of my head was no more. It was replaced by a tightness in my face and sparks of pain in my neck. I opened my eyes fully and saw there was a plastic tube feeding from a machine to the right of the bed and into my throat and there were still a number of wires connected to my body.
My eyes gradually focused on the figure standing by the end of the bed. It was the woman, Janet Walters, who had spoken to me when I first woke after I sustained my injuries. Her long white coat gleamed in the light pouring through the two windows to the left of the bed.
‘Welcome back,’ she said with a warm smile. ‘I’m pleased to inform you that the surgery was a success. You’re surely through the worst of this now.’
I wanted to talk to her. I had so many questions. When I tried to speak nothing happened, apart from a sharp pain zapping the base of my neck.
‘You have questions,’ she said, as she watched my mouth trying to form words. ‘There’s probably a lot on your mind.’
I tried to lift my head from the pillow, but could not. I simply blinked once and Walters was smart enough to know that meant yes.