by K. C. Archer
“What do you mean?” Pyro asked.
Clint started as if suddenly remembering there were others in the room. “Assassinations, kidnappings, bombings. Operations executed in broad daylight and with distinct political agendas. Everything that happened had at least one psychic element to it: mental manipulation, clairvoyance, telepathy, something.”
“And you thought these psychics were the ones who escaped Sector Three?” Dara said.
“Yes. Someone was still manipulating them into serving a twisted agenda.”
“You assumed Yates was one of them?” Teddy asked.
“He was with them, I’m sure of it. He’d been involved in at least four cases that I knew of, each more brutal than the last, but I didn’t have enough evidence to tie him to them.” Clint shook his head, looked at her. “But I wasn’t after Yates. I knew what he’d undergone at Sector Three. The Yates I knew was never a killer. He wouldn’t have hurt anyone.”
“But you put him away despite that. He was your friend,” Teddy said.
“My friend was gone. He’d been gone for years.” Clint rubbed his forehead. “I had no option. I decided that if I couldn’t get to the people at the top, I’d start at the bottom. Start arresting psychics like Yates who I believed were being used as weapons. That way I could shut down the entire operation once and for all.”
“But that didn’t work, did it?” Pyro said.
Clint shook his head.
“So when the government started a new school?” Teddy asked.
“I had to be involved. Because I vowed to never let something like Sector Three happen again.”
Silence filled the room. Teddy and her friends attempted to process what they’d just heard.
“But what about the blood tests?” Jillian asked. “We’re still research subjects. How is that any different?”
“Yes. We’re research subjects. But Whitfield conducts genetic studies, not clinical trials. No student will be subjected to experimental drugs or treatments. At Sector Three, psychics were tortured. Recruits are safe here. I’ve seen to that.”
“Tell that to Brett Evans and Christine Federico,” Pyro scoffed.
“We have no reason to believe that their absence is the result of foul play.”
“But doesn’t it seem a little coincidental?” Pyro countered. “If I were the detective on this case, I’d be looking into whether a vigilante group who used powerful psychics to achieve their ends might be interested in kidnapping such individuals.”
“We don’t think they were kidnapped,” Clint said. “We think they may have been recruited by—”
“When can we see Molly?” Jeremy interrupted. Teddy noticed that Jeremy was getting fidgety, as if he’d had enough of the conversation.
“I’ll keep you apprised of her recovery,” Clint returned. Apparently, he’d had enough as well. He stood. “Whitfield Institute doesn’t keep recruits against their will. If any one of you no longer feels safe here, or no longer believes in the work we’re doing, you’re free to leave. I hope none of you makes that choice.” When none of them made a move to leave the office, Clint dismissed them, saying, “You’re free to return to your dorms. But no leaving the island without express written permission from me.”
On the way out of the room, Teddy tried to catch Jeremy in the hall, but he begged off, saying that he had heard a storm was blowing in and he had to secure his boat.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
WHEN NO ONE SAW JEREMY on Sunday, Teddy assumed he’d left campus to visit Molly in the hospital, even though Clint had expressly forbidden it. But when Jeremy didn’t show up for classes Monday morning, it was clear something was up. A quick visit to his dorm room confirmed it. His clothes were gone. So were the few personal belongings he’d brought with him. No explanation. No goodbye. The rest of the Misfits were left to wonder whether he had lost his faith in Whitfield Institute or was just too shaken by Molly’s injury to stick around.
In the weeks that followed, the team splintered. Rather than bringing them together, the botched mission and the devastation that had followed sent them on different paths. No harsh words were spoken or blame assigned, but a fissure divided them just the same. Pyro set off dozens of fire alarms with as many different girls. Jillian wandered the island’s footpaths, engaging in long conversations with squawking, chirping birds. Dara stayed in her room, writing letters to her grandmother about the characteristic peculiarities of death predictions. And Teddy, reeling from the loss of her friends and the camaraderie they’d enjoyed, again turned to schoolwork, trying to compartmentalize her worry about Molly’s condition and to swallow the guilt she now felt. No change had been reported: Molly remained under the care of physicians at the hospital in San Francisco. Teddy felt she should be with Molly, supporting her friend’s recovery, rather than staying on campus preparing for exams that would take place in the second week of June. She knew there was nothing she could do to help. But the nagging sense of inadequacy just wouldn’t quit.
After she’d forwarded the file to Yates’s lawyer, Teddy had hoped for news. An email, a phone call, a letter—any word from Yates that he would honor his promise to help her find her mother. But the days passed and she heard nothing.
So Teddy worked harder. She hadn’t been strong enough during the mission; her influence hadn’t held; she hadn’t been able to control her telekinesis. With considerable effort, she’d mastered just one feat: directing the path of Ping-Pong balls and paper clips.
All those months ago, Clint had said that if she worked hard enough, she might bend a bullet. If she remembered correctly, the process would involve manipulating time. Or something.
Recalling that conversation, she was filled with self-recrimination. If she had mastered that sooner, as Clint once hoped, could she have changed the trajectory of Molly’s fall?
The question kept her up at night.
* * *
She couldn’t ask Clint for help; she was determined to find a solution on her own. Instead of giving up in frustration, as she once might have done, she spent her days in the library, scouring the shelves for anything that might guide her, though she knew she should be studying for her exams.
One day she discovered a slim pamphlet written in the 1920s by a man named Swami Panchadasi. He explained that bending a bullet wasn’t just about moving an object but about slowing time. Or, rather, about transcending time. He encouraged the reader to accept the idea that the past, present, and future occurred simultaneously, not discretely. It was a concept that Teddy had only just grasped in astral telepathy—she could sift through someone’s mind to access a lifetime’s worth of memories. But its implications for astral telekinesis eluded her.
In Seership, Dunn looked both east and west to understand psychic phenomena. Teddy put down the Panchadasi pamphlet and picked up a textbook on astral quantum mechanics. In a short passage titled “The Theory of Astral Telekinesis,” it described two principles that clarified Panchadasi’s assertion. It explained the movement of subatomic particles as they “jumped” around in time. Teddy—any human, really—was composed of millions and millions subatomic particles, so she could also jump around in time. The textbook continued by describing the universe as probabilistic, not deterministic. Past events, those that had been observed, were fixed, but future events, which had not been observed, existed in “a state of probability,” where many outcomes were still possible . . . until one became most probable as time passed. The wiser the clairvoyants, the more likely they were to select the most probable outcome. (Teddy wondered: had Dara seen only a possible outcome for Molly’s fall, and was that why she had survived?)
Teddy understood the theory of an astral telekinetic being able to jump around in time to influence an outcome. But she still didn’t see how to put it into practice. Neither the textbook nor the pamphlet had provided any practical way to do that. So she took a page from the professors at Whitfield, copying their methods: if she tuned in to people’s minds by imagining a
walkie-talkie, and she sorted through their memories by imagining a house, she would devise a metaphor to control time.
She needed a device that would capture events second by second. She’d taken a film class in high school, and they’d used real film—not digital—to document action frame by frame. Teddy cut and pasted celluloid in the school’s lone editing dock to make dinky films about the kids at the local 7-Eleven. If she imagined time like an editing dock, she could run through events at the speed of her choosing.
And so Teddy started to visit the lower shooting range, where upperclassmen practiced marksmanship. She stood on the sidelines, pretending to watch but instead focusing on extending her astral self out through her physical body, while simultaneously trying to slow the movements of the world around her.
Gunshots always broke her concentration.
Panchadasi had warned that it took great practice and even greater patience to “become a being of a simultaneous universe.” Patience had never been Teddy’s strong suit. But that didn’t prevent her from returning to the range again and again.
May begrudgingly gave way to June, but the fog didn’t dissipate, and still there was no news from Yates. The sky was perpetually gray, the horizon blurred against the sea.
On a rare cloudless morning in early June, only one other student turned up at the range—a third-year named Max Waldman. One of the school’s best marksmen. He gave her a curt nod, then slipped on his protective hearing gear and shooting goggles. He lifted his weapon, checked the chamber, then assumed a firing stance and eyed his target: a paper cutout of a man with his arms resting at his sides, his feet shoulder-width apart.
Teddy stood to one side. She applied the lessons she’d been practicing for weeks. She focused on the scene in front of her. Watched Waldman squint as he sighted his mark. Heard the click of the trigger and the sharp explosion as the bullet left the chamber. She reminded herself that since time itself wasn’t linear, she could take all the time she wanted. I am a being of a simultaneous universe. She recited the line from the text over and over, like a mantra.
She saw the world around her as if in slow motion. The wind caressing pine needles through a nearby tree. The undulating pattern of a bird’s wing above. Teddy saw Waldman’s shot, and she imagined reaching out her astral hand to nudge the bullet, while also holding the film deck still. Her head throbbed. She felt the deck speeding up beneath her fingers. She was losing her grip. The bird’s wings were speeding up.
Then it was over. She was back in her body, back on the physical plane. Teddy looked at Waldman’s target. The bullet hole was nowhere near the head or the heart, where Waldman would have aimed. It was at the very bottom, just outside the target’s left foot.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Cannon. Even the best marksmen miss from time to time.”
She whirled around. “Nick.”
For a moment, she could only stare. In the weeks following the debacle at the FBI offices, she had seen Nick around campus. But the icy glare he had sent her way whenever he caught her looking in his direction had silenced her more effectively than anything he might have said.
She understood. She’d behaved horribly.
Still. Here he was. Close enough to touch. And since he hadn’t immediately turned and walked away, she chose to interpret that as a sign that he might finally be willing to listen to her apology. Not forgive her—that was ages away, if they ever got that far. But at least he might be willing to hear her out.
“Nick. About what happened—”
“You can’t be serious.” He turned slightly, his expression one of disdain. “You’re something else if you think I’m going to listen to your excuses.”
His words cut deep, but she deserved them. “I’m sorry, Nick. That’s all I wanted you to know. If I thought I’d had any other choice—”
“Right.” He laughed. “That’s exactly what I’d expect you to say.”
“What?”
“You had to lie to me, steal my files, break in to the FBI computer. You had no other choice.”
Teddy faltered but forced herself to go on. “I blew it. I know that. But what was between us was real. I felt it, and you did, too.”
He stared at her, his gaze cooler than she’d ever seen it. “Was,” he said. “Past tense. You like to gamble. You took a risk.”
She watched him stride away without looking back.
* * *
In bed that night, Teddy tossed and turned as she replayed her meeting with Nick in her mind. It was well past two in the morning before she finally drifted off to asleep. She dreamed of the yellow house. Teddy pounded on the door, screaming for her mother to let her in.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
IF TEDDY HAD THOUGHT MIDYEAR exams were tough, finals were another thing altogether. Twice as long and twice as hard. Teddy felt like she’d run several marathons on the astral plane over the last twenty-four hours. Each of the skills she’d learned this year were tested in a series of written and practical exercises. Only the last one—an oral exam—remained.
She entered the same small classroom in Fort McDowell where she’d taken her entrance exam all those months ago. She half expected to find Clint waiting for her, smirking, but Dunn and Boyd sat in the two chairs on the other side of the table. She didn’t know if she felt relieved or upset by Clint’s absence.
“So,” Dunn began, clasping his hands in front of him. “It’s been quite a year, Ms. Cannon.”
“I’ll say,” Boyd said, shuffling some papers.
Dunn shot her a look, then returned his attention to Teddy. “This portion of the final exam is simple. Explain to us the most important skill you’ve mastered this year, and then demonstrate it.”
Teddy reflected on her time at Whitfield. Six months of school and she hadn’t mastered anything, exactly. She could make a paper clip zoom across the desk, but nothing heavier; she wondered if that was a notable display of telekinesis, given that she had once blown a door off its hinges. Damned if she was going to let Dunn and Boyd know about her experiments on the shooting range. And while she might breach Dunn or Boyd’s mind, if she infiltrated their consciousness, she couldn’t be certain she’d locate a memory that would confirm her tenuous hold on astral telepathy. She could start an auditory telepathic connection, but so could everyone else in her class. Teddy felt she had been called on her hand at poker with nothing to show. She cleared her throat. “Mastered?”
“Yes.” Dunn nodded. “Mastered.”
Teddy thought about how she’d made it through the year. She couldn’t have completed the midterm without Kate. She couldn’t have solved the Corey McDonald case without the Misfits—even, she reluctantly had to admit, Jeremy. She couldn’t have found the video without Molly. Molly, who was still in the hospital. And she couldn’t have done any of it without Clint, who had taught her so much, then abandoned her when she needed him most. Be vulnerable, he’d said.
“I still have a lot to learn,” Teddy said. “When I first came to Whitfield—” She stopped, thinking of the first obstacle course when she’d abandoned Molly on the wall. “I only looked out for myself. I didn’t think that anyone would look out for me.” She thought of the stupid arguments she’d had with Jillian and the not-so-stupid arguments she’d had with Molly. Teddy sighed. “I guess the skill I’ve learned the most is that I have to trust my team. I know that’s probably the wrong answer,” she said, glancing from Boyd to Dunn. “It’s probably supposed to be something psychic, right? But that’s the honest answer.” That’s the vulnerable answer, Teddy thought.
Boyd cleared her throat. “I think we’re done here, Cannon. Results will be posted tomorrow.”
* * *
Everyone wanted to celebrate. Teddy thought it was premature, as they didn’t yet know if any of them had passed the final exam. But the others walked down to the Cantina, and she went with them.
“Hey, Cannon,” Kate said as Teddy approached the wooden bar. “World’s not ending . . . yet. T
here’s still something to celebrate.” Kate clinked her margarita glass to Teddy’s.
“Very funny.”
“Seriously, you look like you just found out your puppy died.”
“I feel like it.” Teddy drained her drink.
Kate looked down at the wooden bar. “So, I—” She hesitated, which was unlike Kate. “I think I’m supposed to tell you something. It doesn’t make any sense to me. But I told you if I got anything about Jeremy, I would tell you.” She rattled the ice in her glass. “Claircognizance is strange. You wake up and you just know something in your bones. Like you’ve always known it, and you don’t know how or why. But I think I’m supposed to tell you that he cut the rope. On purpose. You’ll know what it means.”
He cut the . . . what? Teddy’s mind whirred as the pieces suddenly, horribly clicked into place. Jeremy was the one who’d brought the rapelling gear. Jeremy had been on the roof when he wasn’t supposed to be. The only reason to tamper with Molly’s gear would be to prevent her from sending out the video. Which would mean he’d been the one to call in the bomb threats to the hotel and FBI headquarters. To change their room reservation. But why? He’d appeared shocked and devastated in the alley after Molly’s fall, but had that been an act? It didn’t add up. He’d been the one to encourage the group toward breaking in to the FBI to secure the evidence that would free Yates.
Teddy’s thoughts lurched forward, making other connections. The obstacle course at midyear. He’d also been in the lab on the night when the samples went missing. Yates believed that whoever took the blood samples had ties to his organization. Jeremy, with his boat, had unfettered access off-island; he’d be able to transport the samples without anyone at Whitfield knowing. Teddy had seen it, too, when she’d looked into Molly’s mind. The doctor’s bag, the boat that night on Halloween. They’d been smuggling the samples off-campus.