by P. S. Power
"Is this... That Mitch guy? I heard he was pretty upset at the government for arresting him for no reason. I can get that, but... We're here to learn how to be peaceful. I am, anyway. That, and maybe become more than we used to be. Damaging things like that won't help anyone."
Kent made some small talk for a bit, and then left, looking determined rather than defeated by their clever ruse.
Chapter fifteen
The hard part about setting up secret meetings, Ben decided, was the extra four people that walked around with you all the time. Not that there was a particular reason for him to be the one to do that kind of thing. The new guy wasn't actually the person to get that kind of thing done, most days. The options for it were kind of limited however. Micha could get it done, but the others would kind of have problems without him being there to help them. In a few days that might change if the new meditation thing really worked for them, but that was going to take practice.
Taking them all along was a real option. They'd all been there to hear what Kent was saying, but Ben actually wanted to have use of his new abilities for once, if it was possible. There was no point to being him, otherwise. Not yet, at any rate.
"Say... I need to go and do some things. Secret stuff? Could we meet up in a bit? I'm not sure how to do this..." He tried to seem embarrassed, rather than shifty, and wasn't really sure he sold it.
Mags grinned at him, her black eyes shining with glee.
"Ooooh. Secret boy alone time. Are you gonna jerk it?" She provided a helpful up and down motion for him, just in case he didn't get her dig.
"Ummmm, no? I think you were volunteering to do that for me earlier? Better stuff than just that. We'll need a rotation schedule for it. Other secret boy stuff. You know, where I go off and whine and cry, alone, so no one can see that I have feelings?" The banter wasn't going to help him, he didn't think, but she just wrinkled her nose. It didn't really seem disgusted however.
More like she was attempting to be cute.
"Fine, go ahead and leave us to burning pain..." Then she moved in and gave him a hug, which wasn't close or anything, but was real enough. Solid and warm. "Actually, it isn't that bad for a while, after you leave the field of influence. Not for about seven or eight hours. Then it starts to build back up again. Are you going to be gone overnight?"
That question seemed real, and Lissa subconsciously clasped his hand a little tighter. Not that he had any place to go like that. He could, Ben assumed, find a room and lock himself away to punish them, but it seemed a bit cold to him. Even playing around that way would be.
"Probably an hour or two? We can meet up at dinner if that's good with everyone? I just have some things to go over with Glenda. Mainly about how I never got that first big briefing? People have been letting things drop, that I know nothing about. Maybe I'm not allowed, but... Yeah. I figured I should get to that." This part was dangerous, since they could all decided to go along, but Ben had a reason for not having them there. "I can't get anything psychically, or at least not much, if you're all standing next to me, and I need the practice."
That got a somber nod from Lissa, and a considering face from Clark. Mags looked away, but nodded, and Lissa shook her head, ever so subtly. As if she didn't think it was a good idea at all.
"I think it's harder for me than the others. Mags is saying it was seven hours. It was more like four for me."
"Then I'll be back in half that time, even if I have to walk out of the conversation part way through? I promise, I won't leave you wide open." Even if it did feel like a bit of a burden having to jump when she whined about things.
That wasn't fair, since he kind of had a feeling that things had been a lot worse for her than they had in jail for him. The situation around her wasn't as intense, but her sensitivity was higher. Not that he'd seen a lot of that really. Most of the time they'd been hanging around all their powers had been shut off, more or less.
Micha waved a bit then.
"The dining hall, in two hours, for dinner. We need to split up, like we did the other night, or the backlash will be killer. I'll go first. See you all then." She didn't wait, since even if she was tiny, and kind of playful half the time, she was also fearless.
That was how Ben thought of her anyway. It was probably why they'd sent her after Clyde like they had.
Mags and Clark managed to leave in different directions after that, and Ben walked Lissa back to her cabin. The women held his hand the whole time, even if it was starting to get sticky from sweat. That was gross enough that he nearly commented on it, but didn't since he was pretty sure it wasn't his.
At the door she turned to him, her silver hair glinting a bit in the sun.
"You'll be right back? In two hours?"
"At the dining hall. Unless I can't find anyone, or it doesn't take that long for me to finish it all? In that case I'll come right back here." Ben nearly quipped that they could have sex, but both of them were probably too sore for that still. He was anyway. She was actually moving pretty well again.
"Okay. Thank you. I know that I'm being a pain. You've been so nice about it all." She seemed a bit worried then, like he was going to catch on to the fact that she was kind of a hassle, and that he wasn't really getting anything in particular from her in return.
Which was actually true enough, so far. No doubt that would change over time. That was how relationships worked. Sometimes one person did more, and at others it would be the other. If that didn't happen, then you were just being used. There had to be a reasonable time limit on it, but coming straight from not being able to get out of bed, the woman probably got a few months to work out a plan that way.
It had been in classes that he'd had, in high school. That he recalled the information was amazing, except that he started to relive the class. Tim Moores had been sitting behind him, talking on his Linkseven, and Mrs. Carol was near the front of the room, as the vid played, telling them all about what they needed to do in order to have decent interactions with others. He hadn't thought anything of it at the time, but now, as he sat there totally submerged in the scene, as if it were happening again for real, Ben noticed that Tim was being an annoying little creep.
Mrs. Carol was trying her best to help them out, and do her job. She wasn't the best looking woman in the world, or the most dynamic speaker, but the info she was dropping on them had been dead on. Probably not all from the teaching instructions even.
Coming back to himself, he smiled and gave Lissa a hug back.
"Don't worry. We're friends. Though, just so you get where I'm coming from, you're hot, and very attractive. So all the cuddling is..." The trick here, if his old teacher had been correct, was to assertively let the woman know that you were interested without being too crude. "Um, distracting? The hand holding and all that. Not that I hate it all or anything, but that's the point I'm making here."
She didn't have to do it, after the first touch. The others weren't. A bit, but not at the same level. As it stood it really did seem like they were dating already. In love and everything. The woman was pretty nice, but that simply wasn't the case.
She grinned at him however, instead of pulling away in offense or disgust.
"Sorry. I know I've been a little heavy on that. I..." It was so clear that she was trying to say she found him attractive too that he actually picked up the thought from her. Also that it wasn't true, and she was just trying to keep him near her.
Which had to count. After all, she really did want to spend that time with him. All of it, if she could.
"I need to get going? Sorry about running off, but there's a time limit." Ben made himself sound chipper and wasn't all that hurt by her struggling to lie to him, so that he'd think she felt the same way about him as he seemed to with her.
It wasn't true, after all. She needed him. He just thought she was good looking. It occurred to him that, while he would have sex with her, if he could, Ben didn't really need to or anything. It wasn't about emotions really. The thing there was tha
t it probably should have been. There was no reason for him not to think of her like that, and she'd been signaling extreme interest in him, even if it was really just crossed signals. For his part, he liked her okay, and would gladly sleep with her, but Ben wasn't looking for a relationship. Which given that she certainly wasn't, at least with him, was fine.
He was there, with the Cymeds, in order to meet a specific goal. The rest was a distraction. It wasn't a thing that he wanted to risk. Not even to make his hormones feel better. Those were beating at him however. All the freaking time. It made him be concerned with the others, a lot more than he would have if they were men.
Clark for instance, was in just as much need as everyone else. Ben had barely given him the time of day. That needed to stop, since he and the other man had a lot of things in common. For one thing, Ben was hugely muscular and better than average looking himself. Also they had that tall thing going on. The beard too. Shaking his head, he tried to think of other things. There were some, after all.
The man actually knew how to be a telekinetic. The tricks of how things needed to work and all that. Since there couldn't be a lot of such people in the world, that alone should be enough to get them to try and be friends. The other man seemed nice. It shouldn't take more than that, Ben decided. Good people were worth fighting to get to know.
It was really easy to be nice to the girls, since no matter what else, he kind of wanted to fuck them. Even just being near them was easier because of that. Lissa was pushing things though, and Ben was willing to bet she kind of knew that. It hit him that she was actually pretty concerned with the idea, as soon as he got about a hundred feet away. Looking back, he saw a very straight, brilliant blue line, that had measurements next to it, between him and where Lissa likely was inside her cabin. If it could be trusted, they were a hundred and seventeen feet apart. Ben nodded, and was willing to guess that wasn't really accurate. There was probably a few extra inches or even feet. Still, it was probably close to that. He'd need to test that out, if it happened again. As it was, looking at the line which seemed to be part of the world around him, not an overlay, the measurement kept changing as he walked.
Ben kind of needed to find Glenda, if he could. That was a big part of why he'd wanted the others to go away. He could kind of feel her in the distance, which got the line to flip over instantly, running toward the person he wanted to find. Who was a little over three hundred and fifty feet away. Then he shook his head.
"But do you do metric?" Everything was done that way now, after all. The numbers didn't change or anything however, staying in old style measurements.
The line did change however, as he worked down the main pathway that ran through the facility. It worked in straight lines, but following it got him around everything in his path, taking him to a stairway hidden behind several bushes.
It was made of old fashioned cement, and showed wear in places. Bits of crumbling that meant it needed to be repaired. There was a heavy steel door on it, that was a plain silver color, making the whole thing look bland. Like it led to the steam tunnels or another, equally boring, part of the world. That wasn't the case however, since next to the solid looking thing, was a covered box.
Inside that was a rather new and shiny keypad. That was a bit of a shock. The basic idea of a number pad had stayed the same, but everyone used holo projections and sensors for that kind of thing now. Almost everyone. Looking at the thing, he realized something, other than that these people were more than a bit strange at times. A lot of them were old, too. Probably enough so that they didn't try very hard to adapt to the latest technologies all the time.
Also, if he wasn't wrong, then Glenda was inside, behind this door, about a hundred and twenty feet away. Slightly off to the left, at an angle. One that seemed to be twelve degrees off in that direction, from what the number that flashed into place for that told him. It wasn't like a computer or anything, from the feel of it. More like his best guess was being shown to him very clearly. If the feeling of the new thing could be trusted and he wasn't just stuck in the VR room. That would, of course, probably be the best thing for him, but it didn't seem all that likely.
With the gray cover up, he could see the pad, but there was no way for him to get in without a code. Except that there were three numbers that had smudges over them that he could see, and another that he noticed when a green blob highlighted it for him. All of the regularly used buttons got that treatment. Then the numbers were arrayed above the pad, in individual lines. There were a lot of them, but as his hand came up, they suddenly changed, warping in place, until only seven were left.
On the bottom were rather long strings of digits, with the blue ones on the top only being four each. The top two were like that, so he picked the top one and put it in, getting an angry sounding beep when he hit enter. No alarms sounded however, so he did the next one down, which got a satisfying click from his left. The cover, which was made of gray composite, had to be put down by hand, and the metal thing was a beast to get opened, even though it didn't squeak at him or make screaming metal noises. It was just heavy, and took a bit of power to use.
Inside he could hear gunfire off in the distance. It wasn't regular, but was preceded by a bright orange flash that came about three seconds before the noise happened. There was a tunnel of corrugated steel that was plenty tall enough for him to walk through, and doors that went off to either side. Taking his time, since he didn't want spies to sneak in behind him if important things were happening, Ben struggled with the door again.
Then he headed into a maze of tunnels, trying to find Glenda. It wasn't that far, but still took him about three minutes. The tunnel had a door in it, or actually several, but Ben followed the line instead of opening any of the other ones. Another booming sound came from the one he wanted, so he opened it carefully, trying to feel behind him, with his mind. If anyone was watching him, he couldn't tell. They probably knew he was there however. The idea that the world wouldn't be filled with cameras was too hard to imagine really.
The things were everywhere.
Inside the new room, he saw a gray clad Glenda, wearing high tech noise canceling ear coverings, and holding a very large weapon. She made a note about something on her pad, using a solid state keyboard for it, like the door had, and blinked as she looked up and saw him. She hurried, but took off her red and black ear protection and set the cup shaped things on the bench that held a rather large gun. It had probably been responsible for all the noise.
It was also huge. Thick and heavier looking by several times, compared to what the military or police used. Which was probably because it wasn't a fire arm. Ben shifted back to about a week before, talking to Glenda, and getting data from her about her job. Making weapons. This one was most likely air powered, since that was what she was working on for the time being.
"Ben! What are you doing down here? For that matter, how did you even find it?" She sounded a little sharp, but didn't seem that worried about it. Just surprised.
"Um. I followed a blue line to you, and then some numbers came up, for me to try, to work out the door combination? I wanted to talk to you. There are issues." That he had those probably wouldn't surprise anyone, but the woman winced.
It was nearly comical it was so overdone. Not fake though. He could feel that much coming off of her, even as she tried to slam up a wall to keep him out. Except that he wasn't trying to get in, just listening to what she was throwing at him.
"You know, you might try that new meditation thing? The gamma one? That seems to kind of work. No one else could do it yet. Clark is close. Um... Wait..." He tried to recall what it was like, earlier in the day, when that happened. At first nothing, but then he was pushed into the memory of it, which meant being back in the room. There was a lot more information, but none of it was all that psychic in nature.
Ben carried that outward, and saw a lot of blobs and line in the room he was in. One of them was clearly Glenda's heat signature, which was in green, for some reason
. He would have guessed red, but there it was, slowly rising off her body. He also wasn't getting anything from her at all. Not even a little bit.
"It seems to be working for me. Keeping you out of my head. Anyway..."
Glenda held up her left hand, palm toward him. It was a nearly martial looking move the way she did it, instead of just suggesting he stop talking.
"I know, I haven't been paying as much attention to you as I should, Sorry about that. The new project here isn't going as well as I like and it's been bothering me. That's not a great excuse. I promise that we'll get to the briefing. Maybe later tonight? After dinner? The others can sit in on it, if they want. It's the same basic pitch they all got, back in the day. Boring, for them, but you might not think it's that bad." She tried to look pleasant then, and mainly made it happen. She wanted him to go away, but didn't want to be rude to someone that could walk through her private security system without seeming to need to think about it first.
"I don't know. It depends what we work out here. Kent, the spy? He approached me earlier. Really, all of us, and asked if we knew about the plan to attack the Central Processing Node in Utah. Something about you having been feeling him out about doing that, because we have an agent in the field who's about to be caught? Lissa and I basically sold the idea that we didn't know anything about agents, and that it sounded like a virt. Also we might have hinted that you get way to into your little scenarios, and that you could possibly just be a bit unbalanced that way. I forgot to mention that he should just get you in bed instead. I was preoccupied and forgot to do that. I did mention that it sounded like something Mitch would be involved in right now, since he could be pretty mad about being arrested."
"Really? All right. Coming to me was the right thing to do. I'll need to look into all of that. I didn't approach him at all, so try not to think too harshly about me. I'll need to get with Kyle and some of the others. In the mean time, you sound like you're being hit from a lot of directions. How are you holding up?" She so clearly wanted to run off that it was nearly funny, looking at her just then.