SLAM

by Tash McAdam

  San Diego

  US copyright ©2014 by Tash McAdam

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informational storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except for inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

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  Published in the United States by Glass House Press, LLC, 2014. GLASS HOUSE PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Glass House Press, LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-9749096-9-1

  Library Of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication is on file with the publisher.

  Cover by White Rabbit Designs and Creations

  Book Design by Inkstain Interior Book Designing

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  First Edition

  ARC (n) – The only known opposition to the Institute, the Anti-Reprogramming Collective was founded in order to pool knowledge and abilities in the hopes of standing against and one day destroying the threat to the livelihood of telepaths.

  The Arena (n) – The training and testing area for operatives at ARC headquarters.

  Blank (n) – A person who is immune to psionic interference. A Blank cannot be read by a Reader, nor influenced by a Projector. They are also more difficult to affect with telekinesis, although this is not impossible, and can be done, usually only by an extremely strong Projector.

  Comm (n) – Communication device used when telepathy is out of the question, either due to distance or the necessity of secrecy.

  Google (n) – Defunct technology god worshipped throughout the twenty-first to twenty-fifth centuries.

  IdentCard (n) – Provided by the governing body of the Cities in order to identify individuals, similar to a passport. An IdentCard will include biometric information such as fingerprints, and also state whether or not the person carrying it is a Citizen.

  The Institute (n) – A government agency that abducts telepathic children and forces them to gather military intelligence. The Institute imposes the will of the government upon the people of the cities.

  Operative (b) – Someone who has met all the requirements of ARC training, and is trusted to venture out of the safety of the shielded areas.

  Projector (n) – A person who is able to transmit information to their surroundings or other people, regardless of the other person’s telepathic ability.

  Psionic (n) – A person with the ability to use one of the three branches of telepathic ability. Sometimes referred to as a ‘telepath.’

  Psionic (adj) – Of or relating to telepathy. Eg, ‘A psionic attack’ would be a telepathic attack.

  Reader (n) – A person who is able to absorb mental information from their surroundings or other people, regardless of the other person’s telepathic ability.

  Shield (n) – The layer of protections that covers telepathic power and hides it from Readers. It has been theorised that Blanks are telepaths with shielding powers so strong that they are rendered invisible to a mental search.

  Telekinesis (n) – The ability to move something or someone using only the mind.

  Telepathy (n) – The transmission of information from one person to another without using any of the five usual sensory channels or physical interaction.

  Thought-form (n) – A projection. For example, a silent communication, or a telekinetic movement.

  SERENA BITES THE inside of her cheek so hard that the thick, metallic taste of blood coats her tongue. Normally she’d be resisting the urge to bear her teeth for the gory effect, but not now. Don’t cry, for freedom’s sake, don’t cry. Her eyes sting, making it difficult to keep her gaze steely and focused, as befits the soldier she so desperately longs to be. The smell of cordite and burning is thick in the air, and she tells herself that it’s the swirling grey smoke causing the tears prickling at the corners of her pale blue eyes. The wash of orange illuminating the faux alleyways casts an unnatural pallor over the dark walls, adding to the forbidding atmosphere.

  The blinking red light flashing above the passage she just limped from denotes her failure and forms an angry halo behind the stocky man towering over her. Kion Arbalast – one of her own personal heroes – scrunches his thick eyebrows together as he reviews data from her unsuccessful attempt.

  C’mon, Kion. Don’t drag this out.

  He looks up, almost as if he’s heard her internal groan, his broad fingers still moving rapidly over the flat datapad balanced in one large hand. “Failure in the third quadrant.” His voice is gruff and raspy, but they’ve known each other for years, so she recognises the sympathy in the crinkles around his sky-blue eyes. “Get yourself to Medical, ASAP.”

  “Yes, sir.” She bites the words out, hoping that her voice won’t break with frustration, disappointment, and pain. Her raging emotions are begging to release her telepathic power and prove that she’s better than the qualification course she’s just failed. Only the knowing look on her instructor’s face – and the calming mantra she’s been taught since she was a child – keep her in check. I am separate, I am still. I am separate, I am still. The mantra urges her to keep her power dormant inside her skin, divided from the atmosphere.

  But the effort of controlling herself is too much. Even with the meditative phrase, her telekinesis thrums around her, filling the air with an electric tension. Right now, if she was outside the protective steel of ARC headquarters, she’d be sending up an unmissable signal. The psionic power she was born with – the ability to affect matter with her mind, and bend it to her will – translates into a staticky feeling that radiates from her slight form and smells faintly of ozone. She is close to exploding.

  The last time she lost control and let the power burst out of her, it took weeks to beat the dents out of the metal furniture she had smashed against the walls. That had been the day her brother was taken.

  And now the day when she can go after those who took him is being pulled further away from her.

  Still trying to force herself to relax, she deepens her breathing and drops her shoulders. Separate, still. Argh. Just let me out of here! Why are you still talking?

  “You can try again in thirty days. Work hard, trainee; I’m sure you’ll pass next time. Your session report will be on ARCnet in two hours.”

  She can feel her cheeks heating as she interprets his statement to be a suggestion that she hasn’t worked hard enough, and bristles.

  “She cheated!” The words spill out of her mouth before she can swallow them, and the lights above flicker erratically, one of them blowing out with a loud pop. The sound makes her flinch. She’s losing the battle against her storming emotions, breaking protocol by using her powers inadvertently. Like a child. Oh shit. She clenches her fists, purple bruising showing starkly against knuckles white with pressure, and the pain helps her regain focus. The lighting steadies back to its usual level, minus the exploded bulb.

  The ARC deputy commander frowns at her, but Serena knows him too well to be afraid, even if he does look furious. Straightening her stance, she winces at her protesting leg and waits for his judgment. Though if he wants me to do labour, he’s gonna have to wait ‘til the medicos clear me. Always a fidget, she hopes he knows it’s pain – not childishness – making her wriggle when she has to shift her weight again, unable to hold the attentive pose.

  He sighs and rakes shoulder-length brown hair out of his eyes, then rubs his stubbly face like he’s exhausted. “You’re arrogant. Part of it is my fault, for encouraging you to test so early, but you must learn to keep your emotions under control, and stop believing you’re better than everyone else. We couldn’t trust you on a mission now, even if you did pass. You’ll see Johan every day this month for ext
ra classes, and when he tells me you’ve improved, you can try again.”

  It’s one of the longest speeches she has ever heard out of the stoic man’s mouth, and she pauses in surprise for a moment. Then she realizes what he’s said, and scowls. Awesome. Not only is her injured leg threatening to collapse under her, but now she’s racked up another set of punishment classes. Johan, the main recruit trainer, is a bully … punishment duties, extra work, physical pain – you name it. ‘Life skills,’ he calls his teaching methods. Torture, more like it. Next week is going to suck. She’s already scored recycling duty for ‘back chatting’ one of her teachers. Just ‘cause I pointed out an obvious error in his lesson, I have to haul plastics all week? He should be doing it for being an idiot. And now this!

  Kion’s weathered face softens slightly, but she refuses to meet his eyes. She doesn’t want his pity. It doesn’t matter if he feels bad for her – she failed. It’s his job to make sure operatives are ready for the reality of a world where telepaths are hunted as soon as they set foot outside the safety of their headquarters, and that means that right now he can’t be on her side.

  He flicks his fingers and her kit bag rises into the air, hovering next to her in unspoken dismissal until she obediently fastens a mental grip around it. Only then does he release his hold. Glowering, she pulls at it telekinetically, so that it follows in her wake as she hobbles away. Her power and control are still volatile, though, emotional and physical distress making her concentration waver, and the bag jerks in the air as it moves after her. Usually this would embarrass her, but she’s too upset to care. She trudges out of the gloomy Arena, leaving its replica streets and alleys behind her, and deliberately avoids looking up at the lanky girl who unfolds herself from the wall next to the road, smirking. The same road where Serena had been writhing in pain scant minutes before.

  She doesn’t head to Medical. She knows she will need to, eventually, but right now she doesn’t want to face anyone else. Or perhaps it’s more that she doesn’t feel like obeying orders. Call it a rebellious streak. She chooses the long way around the back of the squat training block, so she doesn’t have to pass the often-crowded mess hall, and the five-minute walk back to the small dorm room she shares with two other teenage girls feels like it takes weeks. It also lasts about ten minutes longer than it should. The metal corridors echo with footsteps, but she manages to avoid bumping into anyone by taking short sojourns in convenient storage units or empty rooms.

  By the time she finally limps through her door, she’s almost hopping, unable to put weight on her injured leg. She carefully strips off her black shock suit, trying not to flinch, and Young Shannon gives her a sympathetic smile. Serena flops angrily, but carefully, onto her bunk.

  “Better luck next time,” her other bunkmate, Jue, mutters in a voice not totally devoid of sincerity.

  The two sidle out the door, leaving Serena in peace with her defeat, and she watches them go without changing her expression.

  The three of them are on friendly enough terms, but mostly they were just thrown together by circumstance. Honestly speaking, she wouldn’t be sorry to see the last of them. If she’d passed the Arena today, she’d be jubilantly moving her meagre possessions over to the rowdy chaos of the Barracks right now, instead of lying here stewing in the wake of two girls she has nothing in common with. Her closest friends are older and have already graded up, and her dorm-mates know she doesn’t want to be here. More than that, they know she has little patience for their childish antics and preoccupation with romance.

  She snorts as her pale eyes land on Jue’s holo-image of Gav Belias, one of the handsomer heroes of the City Watch. Oooh, what a hunk. I just want to grow up and marry him. Blech. His sparkling, honey-brown eyes and slight, secretive grin make it feel like he’s mocking her, and in a fit of pique, she twitches a finger at the holo, sending her telekinetic ‘muscles’ lashing out.

  The picture flickers, and then disappears, leaving the dark grey wall blank but for the fat vertical stripes of texture on the wall – typical of the shipping containers that make up most of headquarters. She twists her mouth to one side, hoping she didn’t break the little machine – one of the only personal possessions in the room – then shrugs. She’ll check it later, and buy a new one if she did. She’s in an awful mood, but that’s not Jue’s fault. Even if the girl does have terrible taste for slack-jawed idiots with dimples deep enough to lose a fingertip in.

  She still can’t believe she failed the Arena. Shot in the arse, at that! She groans and drops her chin heavily onto her chest, the thin material of her undershirt sticking to her sweaty skin. She’ll be the laughing stock of ARC, and that traitor Abial – her one-time friend – will probably be leading the crowd. All this time, helping each other through lessons, working together on projects ... and it seems that status is actually more important than ten years of friendship. Important enough to exploit intimate knowledge about Serena – the knowledge of her defences, no less! – to mess up the biggest day of her life.

  Serena knows she’s the best tactical student ARC has ever had. That’s what the scores say, anyway. But it’s just not translating. She’s successfully run the Arena an unheard-of four times in training sessions, and completed her first trial before she even turned fifteen. Nobody else works as hard as she does, especially no one as young. When it comes down to the operative test, though, everything seems to go wrong. Repeatedly.

  Maybe having to face an entire team of trained operatives is a bit different from practicing with other students, a little voice in her head whispers.

  She scowls. All that extra time she’s dedicated to studying, meditating, practicing, and she’s messed up again. A trap – a single powerful image, projected by someone who knows her weakness – caused her to falter. She dropped her mental shields in a split second of distress, and in that moment, the rubber bullets started smashing into her side, lifting her off her feet and sending her flying.

  Crushing her hopes of getting her operative’s pips – the badge that will mark her as a soldier and show she can be trusted to leave the safety of ARC headquarters. And pushing back the day when she can finally go after her missing brother, with the equipment and support she knows she needs.

  Those things – that equipment – can only come from ARC. ARC, the Anti-Reprogramming Collective, is the one thing that fights the insidious hold of the government agency known as the Institute. In a world fraught with danger for someone like her – a Psionic, possessing telepathic powers – only ARC is safe. Originally formed by accident when three telepaths on the run banded together, and now a sprawling underground community, ARC is kept secure by thick steel and operatives trained to hide their powers while they forage and purloin necessary supplies. They are the resistance. A single hope in the fight against the Institute.

  But for Serena, ARC’s safety isn’t enough. Hiding while the Institute uses Psionics – uses her brother – to gather military intelligence, to hunt and find those who would rebel, to kill ... that’s not something she can do. The driving force in her life is the knowledge that her baby brother is lost, and she won’t stop trying to find him until she succeeds or dies in the attempt. Once she becomes an operative, she’ll have proven that she can go out into the world without bringing the full rage of the Institute down upon their heads. Then, and only then, will she be able to ask for a team, to propose a mission. To go after Damon with armour, and weapons, and other warriors.

  She presses a scraped hand to the raw meat-coloured bruising that mottles the back of her hip and thigh, visible even through her white undershorts. The flesh is hot, swollen, and throbbing so badly she swears she can almost see it pulsing with her heartbeat. Sighing, she inputs a request for a cold pack, and waits for the automatic vacuum tube system to drop it into the locker by her feet.

  Moments later, a dull thunk lets her know it’s arrived. She wriggles around on her thin foam mattress to grab it, and holds it gently against the worst of the bruising, hissing as it m
akes contact. Three bullets connected in almost the same spot, and the ugly mark they left looks like a three-petalled flower, each petal the size of a fist. But the cold seeps into her muscle and numbs the bone-deep injury, cooling her still-sparking temper as well.

  It was an unfair attack, but in the Arena, failure is failure. Never mind that no one out in the real world could do what Abial had done. She flinches away from thinking about the broken form of her baby brother – a manufactured picture designed to shock and hurt. A manufactured picture that worked because Abial had known how to send it. Outside, on a mission, there’s no way anyone could be familiar enough with her telepathic frequencies to penetrate her mental defences like that. Or know her well enough to project such an effectively debilitating image. But Abial had known how, because they’d practiced together for so long. And she’d used it against Serena, sneaking a vicious thought needle through her protections. Showing her the thing she feared most: her baby brother, bruised and broken. Unsaveable. Dead.

  Once Serena wavered, distracted, another operative’s slashing thought form – a mental weapon as effective as any physical spear – had ripped her concentration to shreds. Her psionic protection – the invisible but solid bubble surrounding her to cushion blows – was destroyed. So instead of going around her running body, the rubber bullets used in the Arena had slammed into her. If the training gun had been one of the energy weapons used by the Institute, she’d be dead, bled out from a shredded artery and shattered femur.

  She clenches her jaw, anger closing her throat. She turned sixteen seven weeks ago. You aren’t even allowed to try until you’re sixteen, and then only if you’ve completed all the pre-courses. Serena’s gone into the Arena twice, now, and her second attempt – today – was thwarted by the very girl who’d been her training companion for her entire life. Abial, who had passed the Arena at the age of sixteen and five months, after two unsuccessful attempts, making her the youngest qualified operative ever. They’d iced each other’s hard-to-reach bruises, stretched cramping muscles and beaten each other bloody with good-natured smiles. They’d grown up together, pitting themselves against one another and working as a team to hone their skills. Throughout childhood and into adolescence, they had been the closest trainees in age and skill, and thus pushed together. Even back when neither of them wanted to be actual soldiers, and were just training because it was required of every Psionic at ARC, they were at least friends.