“Exactly,” Aaron nodded emphatically, leaning forward in his chair for emphasis. “What do we really know about this Gnotret thing? How sure are we that we can control it if we need to? How sure are we that we’re in charge of our own thoughts and actions?”
“Really, Aaron, now who’s paranoid?” Lucian laughed, parroting Aaron’s words back at him to the other man’s obvious discomfort. Yet Katrina wasn’t so sure they should dismiss Aaron’s worries so lightly.
“He may be right,” Katrina cut in before Lucian could continue. “We have evidence that telepathy is part of the entity. It raises troubling questions. Questions we should consider before we go any further.”
“This is a reversal of what you were arguing before,” Lucian stated flatly, surprise in his eyes. “What has happened to both of you? When did you turn into spineless cretins scurrying to their holes?”
“I am not scurrying anywhere,” Katrina snapped angrily, crossing her arms over her chest. “While I still believe we should continue with the experiments, I am merely suggesting we proceed with a little more caution. This Gnotret is alien, beyond what we already understand. Other governments have looked into psychic abilities and mostly dismissed them! It has never been conclusively proven that humans possess these abilities. Yet here comes this alien thing that either unlocks them or grants them to its human host. What does the entity gain in return? And while we’re asking questions like this, where did the name Gnotret even come from? I just heard the scientists calling it that one day. Who decided that’s what we were calling the entity?”
“I never bothered to look into it,” Lucian replied coldly, disinterest and disdain dripping from every syllable. “It had a name that pleased the scientists who were studying it. What more purpose could the name possibly serve? Am I understanding you correctly in that you believe these cells, single celled organisms without even a shred of evidence pointing towards sentience, put a name into the scientists’ minds?”
“It is a possibility. It’s not something even you can deny, Lucian. After all, this whole thing has been an exercise in the impossible,” Katrina stated flatly, anger flashing in her eyes. She started ticking off points on her fingers. “One, actual living cells coming from space. They survived the descent into the atmosphere and multiply in an alien environment. Two, an idea forms to inject the cells into living animals on our planet. This completely bypasses several steps to study the organism. Where did this idea come from? Three, human trials are suggested next. And we know that that originated with the three of us. So were we under the influence of this organism? Are we still under its influence? How much of our thoughts and ideas are really ours?”
“I knew we should have left the damn thing well enough alone,” Aaron muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. He shuddered as he thought of the hundreds of cells downstairs being studied at this very moment. “I’m starting to think the possible costs of meddling with this thing are outweighing the possible benefits.”
Unable to stand being the room any longer, Aaron stood up and stalked towards the door. He moved so quickly, he was halfway there by the time his chair clattered to the ground. Katrina and Lucian watched him go, bemused expressions on their faces. While tensions had run high before during arguments, one screaming match that almost turned into a fistfight coming to mind, none of them had ever actually left before. But Aaron didn’t look back once he opened the door, a slightly more golden light from the lights in the hallway pouring into the room. Without a word, he stepped through and slammed the door behind him. Due to the soundproofing they’d had installed, neither Lucian nor Katrina could hear his footsteps as Aaron walked away. Yet both knew they were angry steps.
“He’s not bearing up well lately,” Katrina said carefully into the terse silence. While she was not the oldest member of their little Council, neither was she the youngest. And she never passed up a chance to turn things further into her favor. “Perhaps it’s time to let Aaron retire. We need level heads and determination to continue. If he’s getting this rattled by possibilities and hypotheticals, he may truly break if and when any of them are proved true.”
“You may be right. Aaron has always been the least grounded of the three of us. If you remember, I was against his appointment here. But he’d been handpicked by Bertram and nothing I could say would change the old man’s mind,” Lucian replied thoughtfully, staring at the closed door. As he was the most senior member of their Council, and Aaron not having chosen a successor, Lucian would have the most say in who would take over Aaron’s seat. If they chose to replace him. Having a weakened member might work in Lucian’s favor, after all. “Yet, on the other hand, Aaron may be right in his doubts. We’re dealing with something that, to our knowledge, has never been encountered before. And you know how vast our knowledge is.”
“Yes, I do and I wish I didn’t,” Katrina said dryly, rolling her eyes. “Working as a librarian is not something I envisioned when I took this position. So what do you want to do? Do you want to call for Aaron’s replacement? There is a promising young woman I’ve been looking into who might be perfect.”
“I think we’ll leave things as they are for now,” Lucian replied decisively, shaking his head when Katrina opened her mouth to argue. “And that’s final, Katrina. I don’t think a change will do any good at the moment and could damage irrevocably all the work we’ve been doing. If Aaron doesn’t want to be part of these experiments, let him have his way. You and I will continue and see what the results are.”
“What if the results are that Gnotret is sentient and has an agenda of its own?” Katrina asked uncomfortably, her eyes darting around the room. “How do we deal with something we ourselves injected into other people?”
“We merely make everything and everyone Gnotret has come into direct contact with disappear,” Lucian said delicately, studying the nails of one hand in contrived innocence. This wouldn’t be the first time such an ending had come to one of the Council’s many plans. “We know what animals and what people have been exposed. Why do you think I never went down to view the cells or the animals myself?”
“You expected this?” Katrina gasped, eyes wide in surprise. And no little fear. She’d been one of the first to study the enhanced rats. “How could you even have known?”
“I didn’t know,” Lucian said simply, shrugging. “I merely planned for the worst case scenario. Expect the worst and, if it doesn’t happen, you can be pleasantly surprised. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when your hands don’t get dirty.”
“I... see,” Katrina said slowly. Her mind skimmed through memories, wondering if Lucian had ever seen her studying the rats. There was no doubt the removal of a Council member would be accomplished with as much ease and lack of remorse as the removal of the enhanced rats. Should it ever come down to her or Lucian, Katrina would make sure that she was the last one standing. After all, there was always room to move upwards in the Council as well as down.
Chapter 2
Five weeks. Five long weeks since the last time I had seen Amy’s face. Since I had seen Amy with a fireball in her hand and murder in her eyes. The hatred and fury in her eyes had stunned me and still did. I’d never seen that expression on her face before and I prayed I never would have to again. Of course, I probably would considering Sandra’s control over her. And that was something I had no control over. My ability had turned out to be shapeshifting, not controlling what others felt or thought. But there was someone I knew who could read minds and project his own thoughts into other’s minds: Billy. Which led to the reason I was standing in a hallway, waiting quietly for classes to let out.
Against my better judgement, Dr. Carnesby had convinced Billy and I to go back to our classes and at least finish out the semester. While he had a job, here at the University and with the corporation that funded the trials, we did not. My job at By The Stack was still waiting for me as was a full course load of classes. Billy had even more classes than I did as many of his were labs. But, for the fi
rst semester since I started my undergraduate work, I felt no enthusiasm or wish to continue with classes. Amy was gone, controlled by Sandra, and Billy and I were the only ones who might have a chance at getting her back. If it was even possible at this point.
But before I could sink into a deeper sorrow with that thought, the students in the classrooms made a break for the doors. Which was something I was delighted about, honestly; the smell of formaldehyde was really starting to give me a headache. Billy was the last to leave his classroom, holding a quick, earnest conversation with the professor before walking out. He smiled at me when he saw me and gestured for me to follow him.
“Hey, George, what’s up?” Billy asked in his quiet voice as we made our way out of the building.
“Don’t you already know?” I asked, the ghost of a grin hovering about my lips. It was a game we’d played for a few weeks now, one of the few things we could joke about since our lives had changed so completely.
“Not this time,” Billy shook his head, sighing. He rubbed at his forehead and grimaced. “I keep myself pulled in pretty far when I’m in class. Way too many thoughts from way too many people that I really don’t want to know. So, what’s the matter? You look like someone just ran over your dog.”
“I was thinking about Amy,” I replied sadly. Billy snorted but didn’t say anything. By now, I’d come to associate that particular sound with the thought ‘Gee, tell me something I don’t know’. “We haven’t heard a thing about her, Sandra, or Michael in the five weeks they’ve been gone. No sightings of people using weird abilities or anything like that. What are they doing?”
“I have no idea and it’s bugging me,” Billy grumbled, leading the way to the dorms. He stayed in a dorm rather than finding his own apartment to save money. After all, he didn’t need a lot of space and having a dorm room to himself was enough. “Every time I try to find any of the three of them, all I get is fuzziness. I can find anyone else that I know but not them.”
“How are they doing that?” I asked, anger and confusion spiking in my voice. Billy was my last hope. If he couldn’t find them, what other way was there? He unlocked the door to the dorm and gestured for me to walk in first. I waited in the stairwell, not knowing where Billy’s room was. This was the first time we’d gone to his dorm to talk. Usually, we were at my apartment or the warehouse the trial had been held in. Secrets were easier to keep there.
“I don’t know,” Billy repeated, annoyed. He walked up the stairs to the second floor, turning right down the hallway. His room was the last on the left and had a whiteboard on the door. There was a note from what I assumed was another med student as it talked about scheduling an autopsy for one of their labs. “As soon as I know how it’s happening, I hope I can find a counter to it.”
Billy pushed open the door, walking inside and setting his backpack down on his bed. I followed and closed the door behind me. While dorms were not the most private of places, having your door open usually meant you wanted company or didn’t mind people walking right on in. Having the door closed meant that people would at least knock. I turned around to study Billy’s room, curious as to what it might look like. He was a very self-contained person so I expected his room to appear the same, to be clean and neatly organized with nothing out of place.
What I saw was nothing of the sort. Billy’s room was actually a study in contradictions. There was a bookshelf above his bed that was organized very neatly, little statues acting as bookends so the books didn’t fall off the sides. They looked to be made of marble and were snakes. They curved in opposite directions and I saw that they could be fitted together. It reminded me of the caduceus, something I’m quite sure was intentional. Yet, that was really the only neat part of the room. Billy’s bed was unmade, green sheets and a green and black blanket tangled up at the foot. There were pens, pencils, notebooks, and note cards scattered across his desk, a few note cards covering the keyboard of his laptop. The laptop was shoved into a corner, ribbons flashing across the monitor from his screensaver. There were even a few fiction books stacked up on one corner of the desk, perilously close to falling over. His hamper in the corner was overflowing with clothes but none had fallen to the floor. At least not yet. And his wardrobe was wide open, the clothes folded haphazardly on the shelves. The business clothes were hung neatly, though.
“Bit of a mess,” I commented with a smile, settling into the chair by the desk.
“Sometimes I get busy and can’t be bothered to clean,” Billy shrugged, hopping up on his bed and crossing his legs underneath him. “I don’t have a roommate to complain and I don’t get many visitors.”
“You’ve seen my apartment,” I offered, looking at the pictures on the desk I hadn’t noticed before. “Amy was the one who was fanatic about cleaning. I pick up but it’s not a priority for me.”
There were three pictures in small frames on Billy’s desk. One was obviously him and his family as there was a strong resemblance among all members in the photo. Billy had his arm around a shorter woman, their violet eyes staring right into the camera. An older woman and man stood behind them, folding both people into hugs. I wondered if this was the only picture Billy had of his entire family or if this was just the most important one. The second picture was of a woman nearly Billy’s height and Billy himself on a carousel. The woman was grinning and was reaching across the space between their horses to hold Billy’s hand. She was pretty, curly brown hair blown back from a round face with dark brown eyes. Billy was looking at her rather than at the camera and there was an expression of joy and awe on his face. I could only assume this was a girlfriend as that expression was intimately familiar to me. It was one I’d worn often with Amy. The third was of Billy and a guy, standing shoulder to shoulder next to one of the many statues that adorned Navy Pier. Their hands were clasped tightly together between them, almost as if they were trying to be discreet about it. The sun was shining down onto their heads, giving both guys almost a halo.
“Friends of yours?” I asked, gesturing at the two photos that weren’t family.
“Ah, ex-girlfriend from my first year of graduate school and ex-boyfriend from undergrad,” Billy said, looking at the photos and smiling fondly. Though more at the guy, I noticed. “I broke up with Sarah because I caught her cheating with one of her friends. We’d been together for a while and I really thought things were going well. I keep her picture around to remind myself that there were happier times. Brandon and I are still friends. We broke up because he transferred to a different school after he graduated. Wanted to pursue something different for his master’s degree. He’ll call me sometimes and we’ll talk. Being friends is easy because we were friends before we started dating.”
“Huh,” I said, surprised. “I didn’t know you were interested in guys too.”
“It’s not something I tell most people,” Billy shrugged, trying to look unaffected. But, by now, I’d gotten to know him pretty well and could see the ghosts of an old pain. “Not everyone has been as accepting as you appear to be.”
“You know, it’s nothing to do with me,” I replied, shaking my head. “You’re a cool guy and you’re a friend. The fact that you’re bisexual doesn’t affect that. Who you’re dating is not my business.”
“Thank you,” Billy told me, relief clear in his voice. He smiled and shifted on the bed, stretching his legs out over his blanket. “So, on to other things, yeah? What did you actually want to talk about?”
“Well, partly I want to know if you’d made any headway in finding the others. But there was something else,” I said, voice trailing off. I still thought it was an extremely horrible idea but I had no say. “You know how Dr. Carnesby is performing these medical trials at the direction of the Corporation? They want him to continue them. He told me earlier today. They want more people with superhuman abilities like us.”
“What?” Billy exclaimed, shock and worry crossing his face. “They don’t even know how we got our abilities and they just want to keep testing? I�
�ve done a lot more research over the past few weeks and I can’t find anything related to Gnotret. No animal trials, news articles, discoveries, nothing. This isn’t safe and shouldn’t be continued.”
I nodded slowly in complete agreement. There was also the problem of the others. If Sandra could choose to run off and do whatever she was doing, what was to stop anyone else from doing the same? While she didn’t have that dangerous of an ability, unlike Amy or Michael, hers was far more insidious. Sandra could do so much more damage with her control over other’s emotions. She’d already done a lot, warping Michael’s perceptions and taking Amy away. Then, a thought intruded that I’d been working hard to ignore for the past week or so. What happened if and when we did get Amy back? Would our relationship go back to what it was before? Was it even possible for that to happen? Sandra had to have something in Amy’s emotions to build off of. Some crack in the wall that she could wedge into and play merry hell with the emotions within.
“He wants us to help, if we can,” I told Billy, shaking off those thoughts. There was nothing I could do about it now and they would only serve to distract. “Classes are over in another couple weeks and Dr. Carnesby wanted to start a new trial after summer starts. Apparently, the brains behind the trials want more people participating.”
“This is a really bad idea,” Billy repeated, biting at his lip and staring at the wall as he thought. “But maybe having us there isn’t such a bad thing. I can read minds and you can shapeshift into anything. Maybe we can keep others from taking off like Sandra did. And, if anything goes wrong, you are best equipped to deal with problems.”
Expansion (The Accidental Heroes Chronicles Book 2) Page 2