by Hill, Travis
He unlinked the window sensor and opened the door. Donella walked in without saying a word. Garret guessed she was under the control of one of the Stockton men. He wondered if he should leave his alarm out where they could spy on it. He mentally punched himself for not asking if they could see through her eyes when controlling her.
“I want to fuck,” she said when he turned around. The voice was hers, but was completely different than what he’d heard earlier.
“Sure,” he said, giving her a cheerful smile. “It’s a good thing I just took a bath, right?”
“Yes.”
Garret led her to the bed, then sat down on it and turned her to face him. He looked up at her face, trying to sense the real Donella. Her eyes were glassy, her expression a mix of exaggerated lust and what he knew had to be fear. Or hate. He felt his own hate begin to burn within him, breaking through his promise to not get involved.
He reached out, grabbed her by the hips, and pulled her closer. With one hand he pulled her shirt up, revealing a flat, smooth stomach. He leaned forward and kissed it, trailing his lips across her skin as he moved from her ribs to the waistband of her pants. Donella sighed, but Garret wasn’t sure if it was genuine or forced. She put her hands on the back of his head, pressing his face into her. He had a moment of guilt that he was going to take advantage of her, but he swiftly shut that thought down.
Garret’s fingers slipped into the waistband of her pants and he gently pulled them over her hips, letting them fall to the floor. He kissed her again, at the top of the mound of curly pubic hair, receiving another sigh and a quickening of her breathing for his efforts. He pushed her back gently so he could remove his boxers, then scooted back onto the mattress, gesturing her to straddle him.
Donella obeyed, and when she felt him slip inside, a moan escaped her. He reached up and grabbed a hand in each of his, palms locked together, and gave them a squeeze. Her hips began to rock forward and back as she build up speed. Garret squeezed her hands again to let her know to slow down. She smiled down at him, and again he couldn’t tell if the smile was forced or genuine. He laid his head back and closed his eyes, using her rhythm to spin his mind into a hyper-focused state.
Garret’s senses heightened as his mind cleared. He involuntarily squeezed Donella’s hands whenever her rhythm increased too quickly. Part of his mind enjoyed the physical sensation, the rest of it focused on finding the thread of consciousness that belonged to whomever was in control of her. Within another minute, he felt it. Unlike some of the more dangerous controllers he’d run into, whoever was on the other end of Donella’s mind was a brute, a hack. Garret was amazed that Donella hadn’t suffered a stroke or a seizure yet.
Once he felt the thread, he was able to visualize it. Slowly, in rhythm with her movements, he allowed his own thread to begin winding its way around the intruder’s, tracing it backward as if it belonged to a computer hacker on the net. A small piece of his conscious mind wondered if the jox had ever had an encounter with a system operator like this. He let his thread trace back along the one belonging to one of the Stocktons.
He gave Donella’s hands a squeeze, and her motion increased in speed, another small moan escaping her. Garret could feel his thread getting close to the source, and gave her hands another squeeze. Donella’s hips began to rock back and forth at a feverish pitch. He could sense the man on the other end, completely oblivious to him.
The man’s brain was locked into both forcing Donella to enjoy sex, as well as siphoning her senses. He was too engaged to notice Garret slipping inside his head. Garret squeezed Donella’s hands one more time, this time holding the pressure, forcing her to rock hard enough that the bed began to pull away from the wall and slam back into it with loud bangs. Garret found what he’d been looking for in Derek Stockton’s brain. He increased the pressure on Donella’s hands.
“Waaaaaaaaaaaa…” Donella’s voice rose in pitch until it was almost a shriek, drawn out over ten seconds as her hips bucked once, twice, then shuddered as she climaxed, the same instant Garret erupted inside her. The same instant he snapped the thread connecting Derek Stockton’s mind to hers.
She fell over, gaining control of her faculties just in time to stop herself from pitching headfirst into the floor. When she propped herself back up, trying to catch her breath, she became frightened at the sight of Garret. He was still on his back, holding his hands up as if hers were still clutched in them, his erect member throbbing as it bounced off his lower stomach repeatedly. She reached down to touch him, but jerked her hand away from the crackle of electricity that arced between her fingers and his leg.
Garret was oblivious to the woman, too busy slicing into the mind of Derek Stockton. He’d only done it once before, and it had started as an accident. He’d progressed to making the teenager flop around before dying, almost every blood vessel in and near the eyes rupturing all at once from too much force. Garret did his best to be delicate this time, winding his way through memories and neural links, looking for any information Derek would know and remember about Yvonne, Brewster, and its residents.
Within seconds he was appalled at the flood of sickening memories stored inside Derek’s mind. Donella wasn’t the first nor the only one that Derek and his brother Elmore had forced into sexual slavery. Valin Radek, an older man from the second most powerful family in Brewster, was in on the scheme as well as the two brothers. Garret forced Derek to get out of bed, put on clothes, and walk down the hallway to his brother’s bedroom.
“Deke?” Elmore asked, groggy from too much homemade beer after dinner.
Garret found a second ability within Derek, and began forcing him to send waves of pain into his younger brother. Elmore screamed, rolled off the bed, and fought back, whipping an old lamp from the nightstand to crash into Derek’s face. Garret didn’t let the young man scream or feel the pain, instead increasing the torment he delivered to Elmore. His brother tried to attack again, but the agony was too much, breaking his focus. Garret heard, through Derek’s ears, Elmore’s bones begin to shatter.
The door behind Derek blew inward, catching him in the back of the head. Garret’s link with him instantly went black. He blinked and looked into Donella’s face as she knelt by the side of the bed. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Garret put his hand out, touching the side of her face. He caressed her cheek then gently pulled her head to him. Donella laid her head on his stomach and continued to cry while he stroked her short hair, wiping tears from her cheeks every few seconds.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a few minutes.
“Don’t be. You got him out of my head.”
“Yeah, I meant that I was sorry for taking advantage of you. It was the only way I could do that without giving myself away, without alerting them.”
“What did you do?”
“I’m not sure, but I don’t think Derek or Elmore will be bothering you again. However, we need to find this Valin Radek dude and smoke him and get Yvonne back. Then we should get the hell out of Dodge.”
“Yvonne? You know where she’s at?”
“I don’t know exactly, but this Valin dude will, since he’s the one that Elmore gave her to.”
“Gave?”
“Listen. This is what we’re going to do. You can either juice and go with me to get your daughter, or you can not juice and go with me to get your daughter. Either way, we need to get her and get the fuck out of this madhouse.” Garret shuddered at the memories he’d pulled from Derek Stockton’s head. Yvonne and Donella were only the tip of the iceberg.
“Is she hurt?”
“I don’t know. From what I got out of Derek’s mind, she was still alive a week or two ago, I couldn’t really get a clear idea of an exact time. The guy that has her ‘loans’ her out to his pals.”
“What did you see?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Garret said, shaking his head. He didn’t want to relay to her the sickness in his stomach as he remembered, through Derek’s disturbed memories, the sometimes viole
nt, always dehumanizing sex he’d engaged in with Yvonne. Multiple times over the last few months.
“What do we do?” she asked, seeing his expression shift into what she thought was disgusted rage.
Garret moved her head and got up. He went to his smaller duffel and rummaged around inside until he found the pill case. He snapped one out and walked back to the bed, handing it to her.
“Swallow that. We’ll wait half an hour, and then you can juice.”
“What does it do?”
“It makes you see leprechauns. Just take it.”
She gave him a dubious look, but put the pill in her mouth and swallowed, grimacing at the aftertaste as it scraped along her tongue. Garret went to the small sink and washed himself, turning back to Donella and gesturing for her to do the same. While she was at the sink, he dug around in his tablet bag for the 3DH goggles. He had two extra sets of H-Vis, but with no more Google, no more of any kind of manufacturing, they had to last him the rest of his life. The 3DH goggles were as tough as iron, and the internal lenses couldn’t be scratched without a diamond tip.
When Garret’s chron alerted him that thirty minutes had passed, he reset it for another fifteen, just to be safe. Donella had put her pants back on, and now sat across from him in the chair. She looked nervous, but he couldn’t tell if it was the drug causing it. He glanced at his chron again.
“Okay,” he said. “Listen to me carefully. Once the module completes, you might not feel anything for up to five minutes while your brain tries to make sense of everything, tries to open up new pathways. Just stay calm. At some point, you’ll feel like your brain is a race car engine that keeps revving up, spinning out of control. Don’t be frightened. It’s normal.
“Once you feel that, tell me right away. I’ll help you get it under control. Whatever you do, don’t attempt to do anything crazy, no matter how natural it feels. Everyone is different with this. A lot of people have a lot of the same abilities, but there are a lot of unique abilities that I’ve run into as well. Sometimes the ability feeds off your emotions, most of the time it feeds from your knowledge. If you can combine the two, you’ll be pretty fucking scary, but most can’t get past the noise enough to let their knowledge or emotions get any kind of real control over it.
“I’m going to give you a mental exercise to get your mind to focus on anything but your ability. When you’ve done it right, the exercise will make the noise in your head fade into the background. To bring it back to the foreground, just stop the exercise. With practice, your unconscious mind will learn to utilize the exercise, and it will feel natural. But for now, tamp it down hard. I don’t need you blowing yourself or the town up. I’d like to get out of here in one piece, and I’d like to be able to bring my gear with me.”
Garret pointed to the two duffels and two tablet bags that he’d carried since fleeing Austin. Donella nodded her head, not really understanding anything he said. Noise in her head, spinning minds, focus, blowing people up, it was all nonsense to her. Her daughter had tried to explain it a few times, but it made as much sense then as it did now. He motioned for her to put the 3DH goggles on.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded her head. Garret tapped the command in his charged tablet, and watched her body stiffen, jerk, then relax. When it was over, he went to her chair and removed the goggles from her head. He watched her, his guard at maximum. She wouldn’t be the first juicer to freak out and accidentally try to fry him.
“I… I feel funny,” she said.
“Good. That means it worked. Is your head starting to fill with chatter?”
“Chatter?”
“Noise, sounds, voices, memories, like your head won’t shut the fuck up suddenly.”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice distant as she tried to follow the burst of activity in her mind.
“Let me know when it begins to drown everything else out.”
Within a minute her hand shot out and grabbed his leg. “Make it stop!”
“Listen to my voice,” he commanded, and she looked up.
Garret began to sing to her, the melody of his voice relaxing her, the words of instruction dulling the cacophony in her brain just enough for her to begin singing along. Garret smiled as he dropped out of the song once she was able to take over, repeating the three short verses for another two minutes until she had the whirling, confusing rush of noise in her mind under enough control to not be dangerous to herself.
“Would I die if I didn’t do that?” she asked, feeling the spin of her thoughts begin to ramp up when she spoke.
“No. Well, maybe. People sometimes freak out when they realize what they can do. You wouldn’t die from just the buzzing in your head though. You might die from unleashing something dangerous without realizing it. There are only a couple of others who know the trick I just taught you. As far as I know, everyone else has to live with bees in their skull.”
Donella laughed as she imagined angry hornets inside of her skull, stinging her until she fell over dead. She wasn’t sure why it was funny, but the way her mind formed images was clearer, more vivid than she ever remembered.
“So, how do you know the trick if only a few people know it? Are you the guy who caused all of this?” she asked, her arms spreading wide to mean the collapse of the entire world.
“No.” He lied. “I’m just some guy who figured it out. Luckily for you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll be able to focus better than others. You’ll be able to put more energy into the thought or the action since half or more of your brain won’t be wandering, worrying, thinking of anything but what you are trying to accomplish. When you use your ability, you’ll be able to focus on it without all of that noise or buzzing in your head interfering.”
“What will I be able to do?”
“I don’t know. It seems to be random, but it also seems to be a stepping stone to doing a lot of things.”
“What do you mean?”
Garret put his hand on her shoulder. “Meaning… let’s say you can shoot lasers from your eyes.” She smiled and covered his hand with one of hers. “Well, I’ve never seen anyone that can do that, but this is just an example. Anyway, once you figure out how to do it, it seems to open up something else, connects to some other area of the brain maybe, and then you can… create a new ability, or build from one you can already do, evolving it. So instead of only being able to shoot lasers from your eyes, now you can shoot them from your fingertips as well.”
He frowned. “It’s hard to explain, but once you feel it click into place, it feels like something you’ve always had. And it feels natural when it starts to connect to some other knowledge and form… I don’t want to call them ‘ideas,’ but kind of like ideas. Sort of like those children’s books that help their brains connect objects or concepts to others with pictures. But you have to control it first, or your mind will always be fuzzy, stuck in a rut, so to speak. Your power will be muddy, muted, if you don’t have a clear head and proper focus.”
“How powerful are you?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I can do a lot of different things. I’ve never really thought about it. Sometimes I’ll realize I’m doing something that I didn’t even know I could do.”
“Like free me from someone else’s mind-control?”
“Sure.” Garret smiled. “Like that, for example.”
“When will I know? When can I do stuff like burn down buildings and kill someone with my mind?”
“Calm down.” Garret’s laugh made her smile, but he could see the seriousness in her face. “Why? Are you plotting revenge? Against me for taking advantage of you?”
“No, not you.” She moved his hand to her cheek. “There are a few others in Brewster I’d like to have a few minutes alone with.”
“I’m sure. But for now, let’s focus on making sure your head doesn’t explode, or your head doesn’t make someone else’s head explode before we can snag Yvonne and get out of here.”
“When will we go?”
“I’m thinking in the morning. You’ll go about your normal routine and I’ll check out of the motel. We’ll meet up down the road. Then we’ll double back and make our way over to Radek’s place. You should be able to wander off behind the motel and no one will notice for an hour or so, right?”
“Trevor Barco will notice.”
“Don’t worry about that. I think with whatever the Stocktons have been up to tonight, everyone will be too busy to worry about one norm wandering away.”
“What if he isn’t too busy?”
Garret leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s try to get some sleep.”
He returned to the bed, plopping down on his back. Donella stared at him, making him uncomfortable, especially when he realized she was staring at his partial erection. Garret’s face turned red and he pulled the sheet up to cover his lower half.
“Sorry,” he mumbled in embarrassment.
“Don’t be,” she said, standing up.
Garret watched her remove her clothes, unable to take his eyes from her dark skin. He didn’t know how old she was, but her face and her body suggested she was in her late twenties, which couldn’t be right because of her daughter’s age. Her graying hair suggested she might be in her late forties, maybe even her fifties. With no grocery stores to buy hair dye, he’d seen a lot of gray hair over the last few months.
She pulled the sheet back and nudged Garret until he moved over. She lay next to him, her hands tracing lines across his arm and his chest.
“Are you sure?” Garret asked, feeling himself respond down below.
“It will be the first time in almost four months I’ve done it of my own free will.”
*****
Garret awoke to the urgent buzzing in his ear. He reached over to the nightstand and touched the tablet’s screen, silencing the alarm. He froze at the sound of the lock’s manual override being triggered with a physical key. He focused on keeping the door locked as he nudged Donella until she woke up. He immediately put a finger over her lips to make sure she stayed quiet. After listening for a moment to the muted voices outside of his room, he motioned for her to hide on the other side of the bed while he put on his pants.