by Lissa Kasey
She patted his hand and got up from her seat. “Just some classrooms, maybe? This part of the ISS is a school.” She held out her hand, waiting for him to take it. Aki gripped it tentatively, but there was still nothing from her, not even the candy clouds or dark rain showers. Amazing. Was this how regular people lived?
Outside the little room was a very normal-looking hallway with lockers and doors, like schools on TV looked a century ago. “Classes are grouped by age rather than psi ability. Most lessons are universal. Though the more advanced the student, the more specific the training.” She paused beside one door and gestured for Aki to look through the window. “Occasionally we’ll have a lot of a certain type of psi and create special classes for them.”
Teens sat on pillows in the room, all of them obviously psi. The instructor stood up front writing on an old-fashioned chalkboard. The class listened quietly; occasionally someone would raise their hand and ask a question. Aki couldn’t remember ever attending school. He wondered vaguely if his classes had been like that. Picture-perfect.
The doctor smiled. “Only because this is a high school class. The younger kids aren’t so patient or well behaved. Professor Klune is teaching advanced shielding techniques, which the children are eager to learn since they all have what we call ‘mental’ psi abilities, like yours and mine. Physical abilities are less common, so the classes are smaller, but there is one down the hall if you’d like to look in on that one as well.”
“How is it you can read my mind and not give me anything about you in return?” Aki had known another telepath. Every time he tried to read Aki, he would get a rush of memories of the telepath’s past.
“I’m shielding you. Think of it as reading you through a filter. I can pull small bits from you and block anything of me from crossing through. It’s part of what we teach here. With a little training, you could block me easily.” She waved her hand at the long hallway. “There are classes for all ages and levels. The idea is to help psis gain some control of their abilities, not to hide them.”
“To what end? So we can be used in the next war? So the world will hate us even more for the monsters we are?” Aki’s heart hurt. Did these people really accept psis like him? Was it possible that with a little training, he could touch people, live a normal life even with the curse he’d been born with? But he didn’t want to be someone’s tool. He never wanted to go back to what he’d seen and experienced in the containment camp.
“H78420, Misaki Itou. Did you know there’s a chip embedded in your spine? It tracks your movement for the South. Your designation says exactly what they thought of you. H for homosexual, still a sin in the South, though it means nothing here in the North. It means you’re disposable to the South. 784 for the abilities: clairvoyance, empathy, telepathy, by order of strength. 20 means you were programmed to spy on the North. Likely they released you until they say whatever magic word they put in your head to make you run back to them. Your entire camp was made up of cognitive psis programmed just for this purpose.”
Aki blinked at the words. The H was true. There had been a lot of talk about it at the camp. The rest, though? A random mix of numbers. “I’m no spy. I dug the chip out of my wrist so they couldn’t track me. Destroyed the barcode. Do you think I’d want to go back there? That I’d want to help them at all? Do you have any idea what they did to me?”
“A decoy. The real tracker is in your lower back attached to your spine. Nearly impossible to remove without permanent injury. How do I know this, Misaki? Because I was there in those camps, forced to work for them doing exactly what I just told you. Programming psis like yourself. I’ve seen many psis crippled for life trying to remove that chip. I know how it feels to think you’ve escaped and then find out that you never really did.” She held up her hand; on her wrist was the same faded biohazard mark he had.
Aki gripped the wall as everything seemed to spin around him. Did that mean they could control him? Or worse, that they could find him and drag him back? He couldn’t go back. He’d die first.
“I’ve been here two years….”
“We don’t know their plans. Just what we’ve seen that has come out of their experimentation. We have equipment now that can detect the chip. A sensor dings every time a new psi with an embedded chip enters our territory. The little bit we’ve decoded from each chip tells us what each psi can do and their function. If we can show you how to control your abilities, we may have a chance of negating whatever they’ve programmed you to do.”
“Why didn’t you come get me when I first crossed the border half-dead from starvation instead of letting me nearly die before Bart Rothnow gave me a job as a whore?” They wanted to study him? Help him find control so whatever he did wouldn’t hurt them? They weren’t any different from the South. “Spy for the South. Bullshit. They’d have to put a bullet in my brain first, and I’m pretty sure there isn’t a psi ability to heal that.”
“I understand your anger, Misaki. I wish I could offer you more answers. Just know that some of the things that came out of those camps are much more dangerous than one young man with the ability to see other people’s pasts. Things that render bullets useless and make the last world war look like preschool playtime.” She shook her head, eyes closed, face pinched as though remembering something horrible.
“So I’m, what, less important than the whole? You’ll forgive me then if I return to my unimportant and highly un-worrisome life.” Aki waved her away and headed toward the elevator at the end of the hall.
“Don’t you want to learn how to control your ability? Function among others like a normal human being?”
“That’s the problem with you government people. I am a normal human being. Nothing you can do, say, or teach me will change that.” But he did worry. What if she was right? All those times dragged into a lab, strapped to a table, lights brighter than the sun shining down on him, and then days of darkness. So many others had come out maimed, missing limbs or eyes, or just dead. Not him. Somehow he’d won the torture lottery, come out unscathed, nary a scar. He clutched the wall while his heart pounded.
The elevator dinged as the door opened. Jackson Taylor stood there looking so pretty and perfect, and Aki hated him. He wanted to hit him, scream, hurt him. Anything to cause him pain for opening his eyes to how he’d failed to escape and once again the world didn’t care. Would they come for him now? Sneak across the border in the dead of night to steal him away after murdering the people he’d come to think of as his family? But no, Aki wasn’t dangerous since he only saw things and couldn’t actually do anything. Why couldn’t he have been born with an ability to start fires or blow people up with his brain? Those skills would actually be useful.
“Take some time, Misaki. Sit in on a class or two. Wouldn’t you like to touch other people like the rest of the world does? Have regular relationships? Not fear what every person is hiding?” Dr. Vitoric headed down the hall in the opposite direction. “Try not to be too harsh with Jackson. His demons are just as bad as yours.” She opened the door to a classroom and disappeared inside.
Jack didn’t try to touch Aki. They just stood in silence for a few minutes while Aki tried to pull himself together. “Take me home,” he demanded of the detective.
Taylor nodded and led him to the elevator and out of the building. Neither of them spoke for several minutes. Fear took a firm root in Aki’s belly. There was still a chip in him. Did they know he loved Candy like a brother? That more than a handful of the companions were his best friends? Or that Bart and Manny were father figures to him? Or that Paris was the only one who could make Aki feel important, safe, or pretty? Would they kill them all just to get to him?
“I’m sorry, Aki. I don’t want you to be mad. I just wanted you to know that you weren’t alone. There are others like you. They can help teach you control.” Back in the car, Jack gripped the steering wheel. “You fear your power because right now it controls you. It prevents you from touching other people or even getting close. You
use it as a barrier to separate yourself from the world because of what they did to you in those camps. I understand. But you’re strong, and if you can get a hold of this thing, you can be so much more than you are.”
“More than a whore.” Aki shook his head. He was safe as a whore, no power, no political standing, no inside information. What could he possibly know or do in his current position? “They just want to control me.”
“They want to teach you to control yourself. No one knows how far that chip can manipulate you. Is it just for data, or is it something more? The truth is we just don’t know.”
“I just want to go home.”
SEVEN
SHANE SAT on his back porch nursing a whiskey. It dulled the pain a little, but didn’t ease the throbbing need at all. He’d have to change. His blood burned with the fire of the A-M mutation demanding to be set free. He’d already put others in place at the department to cover the case while he was out. If he pushed any longer, he’d lose days, maybe even a whole week. Now was not the time to play wilderness. There was a monster on the loose, and it wasn’t going to be him.
He dry-washed his face again, beard so thick he could have been a mountain man. The sun was setting. Taylor said he was going to talk to Aki. He’d been impressed by the jumble, was convinced Aki was wasted as a whore. Nothing Shane said could dissuade him. But he was sure Aki would be just fine turning the man down. Aki hated government, feared the ISS and the police department. Shane understood. He’d seen the camps, rescued a handful of soldiers from them in the past as well as being in one himself for years.
Shane’s house sat only a few blocks from the brothels. It lowered property values, being so close to the red light district. But he didn’t live in the community the government had made for A-Ms, so he was willing to take the good with the bad. No matter how they pushed, he refused to be herded. He had a panic room—that was code—but he never used it.
The smell of the bonfire trickled through the trees. It had been months since he’d been able to attend one of those. And it looked like he’d be on the outskirts again. The information on Candy and Ino hadn’t come back yet. Nothing other than basic specs. Even the two extra bodies were still being scanned for usable DNA. Sometimes things just moved too damn slow.
The information that came back on Aki scared him the most. There was nothing. No birth record, schooling, anything. It was like the kid had never existed. Page was running scans to try to match ages and physical features with missing kid profiles to find him that way. But either Itou had changed his name and lied about where he came from, or he hadn’t existed before Bart took him in two years ago.
The ISS had his camp number on file but no record of him before showing up as H78420 on their scans when he crossed the border. Not even a DNA hit, and the South DNA-profiled everyone. So was Aki hiding who he was? Did he really just not know? Or was the South using him in some way? They had to be hiding something by not keeping his past on file. Shane’s friends were some of the best hackers in the world, yet so far they’d come up with nothing.
Of course that made him worry. He had some maniac killing kids and an untraceable kid with crazy power, all while battling his own personal demon. His gut clenched with hunger that couldn’t be satisfied by normal means anymore. Dammit. Now was not the time to lose it.
He pulled three pounds of warmed steak off the grill and shut it off. He didn’t use enough heat to cook the meat, just enough to take the chill off. Nice and bloody. His mouth watered.
All he could do was put everyone on high alert. Normally the cops stayed away from the brothel party, let them police themselves that one night each month. Tonight there would be two dozen cops patrolling the area and a handful actually at the party. Too many people would stagger home drunk after a night of food and dancing. It made for ripe pickings. Even the under-eighteen crowd snuck in to eat and dance. Rothnow was good, though, keeping the younger ones away from the alcohol, almost like he had a sixth sense. Maybe it wasn’t just Rothnow’s brother that had a mutation. Shane had seen enough over the years to know that the telltale psi eyes only marked the obvious psi. He’d met plenty of gifted folks with normal black pupils.
Shane got up and opened the latch on his gate, letting it fall free. Anyone dumb enough to venture into his home and small yard tonight would have a death wish. He stripped off his shirt and kicked out of his shoes. Sometimes it was just better to let the shift go rather than hold it back. There were plenty of trees around the bonfire. He could watch from a distance. More than just Candy and Aki, he could watch the patrons, look for anyone behaving oddly. Someone else who might be observing for potential prey. Maybe his killer would be in the crowd, and Shane would recognize the smell. He’d gotten a faint bit of it at the warehouse. He was good with smells, could track Aki through the whole of City M if he had to, and the kid didn’t even wear cologne. The fact that his wolf always perked up at the scent was something he didn’t want to analyze.
Just thinking of the kid made him worry. What about Ino? Somehow, McNaughton was sure they were related. Not just because Aki happened to be best friends with the boy the PI had been hired to find, but because they looked enough alike to be brothers. Secrets made for enemies.
He growled, stripped out of his pants just as he heard the music beginning in the distance. He left the food down low enough to be easy to eat. But it wouldn’t be enough. The change was about the chase, and no amount of preparing could stifle that. He would have to hunt. The woods were full of rabbits, coons, and fat squirrels. Was it sad that all he could think of was how a small blond psi would taste? Or how good it would finally feel to have the kid under him?
JACKSON DROPPED Aki off at the bottom to the steps leading up to the brothel. Aki didn’t even look at the detective before opening the door and sliding out of the car. “Don’t come back to the Gem, Detective Taylor. I don’t need saving. And I’m not what you’re looking for.” Aki raced up the stairs and into the building.
Everything passed by in a blur as he rushed to his room, stripped out of everything, and jumped into the shower to scald away the day. Was it true? Did he still have a chip in him? Could they find him anywhere? He showered until the water turned cold, then stood in front of the mirror trying to see every bit of his skin. Nothing seemed even to mimic a scar. His back was flawless, oddly so, as he remembered being whipped more than once. He’d had scars when Paris had pulled him out of the gutter. Time couldn’t really heal those more than it could the ones inside, yet they were gone. He could vaguely recall the doctors at the camp slicing into his back. He always passed out. Lost days. The memories faded. Maybe the chip was the reason.
What if they came for him now? What if there was some secret word that made him a killer?
The silence of the building made his heart pound. They could be watching him right now, and he wouldn’t know. The place was empty because everyone would be at the bonfire already. He shuddered at the idea that someone was watching him in the dark like he was some sort of science project. At least at work, people paid him to let them watch him, and in turn they were watched by the guard. No one would drag him off to experiment on him when he was at the Gem. Out here in the open, it was harder to forget that he was safe. Easier to believe that everyone who wandered by him or glanced his way had an ulterior motive. The bonfire was all about letting all the troubles go and just dancing, like ancient tribes of indigenous people swaying to mysterious gods and goddesses. He just had to let the anxiety go and enjoy himself like he had a dozen or so times before.
Aki loved to dance. Normally he enjoyed the many eyes that watched him with desire. Tonight he feared it. Would there be spies from the South watching him? Waiting for the right moment to take control?
He dressed in a hurry, choosing warmer clothes for the chill in the air—a thick royal-blue sweater, black leggings, a white belt—and left his hair down to shine in the moonlight and from the glow of the fire. He thought about finding something with pockets for his phone,
but decided he wouldn’t need it since guards and his Gem family would be all around him. He slid into his gorgeous blue heels, knowing they’d make it harder to dance but loving the way they felt. As he rushed down and out the back, across the manicured lawn, and toward the park, he could hear the drums pulsing.
The fire, though contained, brought a moment of panic. The leaping wall of orange flames reminded him of so many horrible things.
He hadn’t thought of her much before that day. He’d seen her in the camp. Watched her get dragged off a time or two. She called his name more than once. Said things like she knew him. But he couldn’t recall meeting her.
GuEal was a pretty seven-year-old girl with an easy smile. She had slanted psi eyes like all the rest. She often offered him food as though she somehow had some to spare. Hyeon didn’t like Aki to spend time with anyone else. But she was crying that day.
Aki knelt beside her, hesitant to touch. They all got more than enough of that. “Don’t cry. You don’t want the guards to see, do you?” Outbursts meant beatings.
She shook her head, sniffled, and wiped her tears on the sleeve of her ragged dress.
Aki took several pieces of wax out of his pocket. Leftovers from candles that no longer had wicks, not that they had a way to start a flame anymore other than the giant pit of bodies. He’d spent some time perfecting the colors, using anything he could find to give them something more than the gray, black, and brown they lived in. Four colors, red from berries he’d paid the guards dearly to have, green from the last bits of plant life he’d been able to rescue, yellow from a handful of chemicals they had access to, and white, which was more chalk than wax. “The back wall is clear enough for some art and far from the guards’ notice,” Aki told her as he handed her the colors.