by R. A. Rock
“No, Red, that’s not what I mean.”
I frowned and pulled back so I could see her face. It was so white, I was honestly worried she might faint.
“What do you mean?”
“I had no control over my powers. That’s why the dogs are dead. If I was in control, I would have just knocked them out.”
“Yumi?” Shiv said, coming up to us, an edge to his voice. “Are you saying your powers are back but you can’t control them?”
“No, Shiv,” she said, the shaking rocking her whole body now. “I’m saying that my powers are back and they’re completely out of control.”
***
No one said anything for a long minute after this revelation.
“This is incredibly dangerous,” I said. “Yumi, what can you do to make sure you don’t hurt anyone?”
Yumi’s mental powers are formidable. She can send telepathically across the entire universe. Distance is no object to her, the way it is with regular Telepaths. And she can use her mental shout as a weapon.
But now, with her abilities uncontrollable, she was like a loaded atom bomb, ready to go off at the slightest bump. Not the sort of person you want to hang around with. It was a pretty scary prospect. And when I looked down at those dogs with their brains liquified, I felt my lunch starting to come up.
I swallowed and tried to focus.
What should we do?
“You all need to shield. All the time,” she said, her voice quivering and scared. “And Audrey, you need to hold a shield over Gideon’s mind at all times, as well.”
“Okay,” I said. “That won’t be so difficult. We were used to shielding a lot of the time back at The Agency.”
“I think the sickness might have affected our powers,” Grace said. “We all had a fever and it might have done something to our brains.”
I nodded. That made sense. The ante-prefrontal cortex is an extremely sensitive organ.
“Yumi, what if you tried using some of the basic exercises that you were taught in the beginning when you were learning to control your abilities? Maybe that would help you get some control back,” Grace suggested.
“Okay, I’ll try,” she said. “Everyone shielded?”
Everyone nodded except Gideon, who wasn’t understanding anything.
Yumi closed her eyes.
The windows blew out of the houses all along the street with a terrific noise — shards of glass flew everywhere.
“Shit,” she said, looking more terrified than I had ever seen her. She was almost never afraid but the thought that she might hurt us by accident had her scared out of her mind.
Nobody else said a word.
“Keep your shields up at all times. This is bad,” she said, heading back towards the highway that led to The Wastelands. Suddenly she spun on her heel and faced us again. “We are not staying here tonight.”
No one argued.
None of us wanted to be anywhere near those dogs with their melted brains. Since there was no way we were splitting up, though, there was unfortunately no way to outrun the source of the danger either.
Since that danger was one of our own.
***
Chad
Gideon was looking around at all of us. The wind had picked up and was blowing his long black hair out of its usual braid and into his face. He tucked the strands back behind his ears and stared around at all of us, a troubled expression on his face. Those surprisingly dark green eyes of his were suspicious.
I clenched my jaw as the forlorn moaning of the wind seemed to reach into my chest and drag my spirits down into my feet. This was only getting worse and worse.
“I don’t know what’s going on here. But you people are not who you say you are.”
“What’s he saying now?” Audrey said, still trying to look amused and at ease but failing miserably.
“He’s on to us,” Shiv said, frowning.
“And stop speaking Afrikaans or whatever language that is in front of me, so I don’t know what you’re saying.”
Uh oh. We needed to do damage control.
“Look, Gideon,” I said. “You’re right. We haven’t told you everything about ourselves.”
“I knew it,” he said, his intelligent eyes watching me for any sign of deceit. I respected him and felt terrible about continuing to lie him, so I gave him as much truth as I could.
“We’re from very far away. From a place that has technology.”
His eyes lit up.
“You mean some place where they’re rebuilding? Where there’s actual civilization?”
“Sort of,” I said. “Our mission is classified, so I can’t really give you details, but yes, we come from somewhere where there’s civilization. And the reason that we’re going to Winnipeg is part of our mission.”
“That makes so much more sense,” he said, nodding as he considered my words. “And you used the tech to kill the dogs and blow out the windows.”
“You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?” I said, not confirming or denying his assumptions.
I disliked continuing to keep the truth from him, but there was no way that we could tell him what was really going on. Hopefully knowing a little bit of the truth about us would keep him satisfied.
“And the language there is…” He trailed off.
“It’s a combination of languages, that’s probably why it sounds sort of familiar to you. But we also speak English, as you know.”
“Not me,” Audrey muttered in Primary. Hm. Her understanding of English must be getting better since she had understood that last bit. Though to be fair, she had heard people ask if she spoke English probably a hundred times since she arrived so it really wasn’t surprising that she recognized that particular phrase.
“Except Audrey,” he said. “She speaks this other combo language? Is it like Esperanto?”
“Yes,” Grace exclaimed, seizing on something that was true. “It’s just like Esperanto — but based on different languages than were used for Esperanto.”
“Well, thank you for telling me what you could,” he said, seeming satisfied with my explanation. “I appreciate it.”
“And you understand that Audrey’s going to be leaving, right, Gideon?” Grace said.
“What are you saying about me?” Audrey said, trying to follow the rapid fire English conversation.
“You probably shouldn’t get too attached,” Shiv added.
“Oh, yeah, of course,” Gideon said, looking uncomfortable. “We’re just having some fun, that’s all.”
By the looks on Grace and Shiv’s faces, none of us found this declaration particularly convincing but what else could we do? We had cautioned him as best we could.
“Are you warning him off of me?” Audrey said, outraged again. “You bastards. Just leave us alone. We don’t need your meddling.”
She stormed off after Yumi and the rest of us followed in awkward silence.
I drew a heavy breath.
At least we’re all still alive and our brains are intact, I told myself, trying to keep my spirits up.
It wasn’t working.
Insanity
Yumi
It was thirty-six hours later and we stood at the edge of The Wastelands in the pallid light of a sickly dawn. Fear curled around in my belly like a snake, twisting and wrenching my guts.
This place was bad.
It made a shiver run down my spine and the hair on my neck stand on end. My entire body was filled with anxiety and I had the strongest desire to turn and run as far in the other direction as I could get.
“We can’t,” Chad said as if I had said I wanted to run.
“Did you hear that thought? Did you drop your shield? You know what could happen,” I said, rounding on him. I was instantly seething at the thought that he might not be protecting himself from me. I was desperately afraid that I might hurt one of them with my powers that were completely out of control.
“Calm down,” he said, a worried look in his blue
eyes. “And no. I still have my shield in place.”
“But you heard the thought?”
“I did.”
“How?”
“It’s like your brick was out.”
My eyes got wide.
Oh no. Not him too.
“Chad, go look at your wall. Right now.”
He frowned and closed his eyes, going into his public mind. He was back a moment later, his face terror-stricken.
“The bricks,” he said. “They’re opening.”
“Not all of them.”
“Not yet, but…”
He didn’t say it.
I put my hands on his shoulders.
“You’re not going to go insane,” I said firmly, feeling sick to my stomach. I remembered how he had been put in Solitary Confinement when The Agency had separated us and how he had listened to too many minds at once and it had driven him crazy. “We’re going to fix it.”
“How? How?” His eyes were already taking on that weird look they had had before. Try imagining a room with fifty people in it that are all talking at once. But instead of being able to tune out most of the voices, you have to pay attention to every single one of them. Then multiply that by a billion or so and you’ll get an idea of what was happening in Chad’s head at that moment. “How, Yumi, how? Help me. Please.”
“What’s going on?” Shiv said, looking concerned.
“Chad’s bricks are opening,” I said. “Lots of them.”
“Holy shit. His powers are out of control, too. What can we do?” He glanced at Chad and his face went deathly pale. “Yumi, he looks like he did before. We can’t let that happen to him again. He might not survive this time.”
“I know, I know,” I said, feeling frightened. “I have an idea but I’ll need you and Grace to shield me while I go into his mind. You have to protect him from me. Can you do it?”
“We’ll do it. We’ll do it. You have to stop this. Now.”
Shiv’s voice sounded like he was unnerved. He had seen Chad lose his wits once and I remembered him telling me that he never wanted to go through that ever again.
Chad was staring into space, his head moving back and forth as if he were trying to pay attention to several conversations at once and wasn’t quite managing to keep track of any of them.
“Grace,” Shiv yelled telepathically. It seemed all of us had our telepathic powers back. Not that that was a good thing right now.
She came running as fast as she could from where she had been adjusting the contents of her backpack. All her crap was still all over the ground but that didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered at the moment except helping Chad.
“What’s wrong?” she said, knowing from Shiv’s voice and the looks on everyone’s faces that some sort of serious shit was hitting the fan.
“Chad’s powers are out of control,” Shiv explained concisely. “Yumi has an idea, but we need to protect him from her powers in order for her to do it. There’s no time, help me.”
He closed his eyes, grabbing her hands.
I immediately felt what seemed like an iron vise on my mind. Good. That was their shielding. I closed my eyes and entered Chad’s public mind, which looked like a cozy living room. He was curled up on the floor, the mental construct of his body convulsing uncontrollably.
But I ignored him and turned all my attention to the wall.
Chad has this wall of minds that is made up of a nearly infinite number of bricks. His Receiving abilities are so powerful that he can listen in on any mind in the universe. But if he didn’t have the wall, he would go insane.
And as I looked up at the enormous monument that stretched to infinity in every direction, a brick fell out and smashed on the floor of his public mind — I could hear the sounds of someone’s thoughts leaking out.
A moment later, another brick popped out and fell, crashing next to me and letting more random thoughts spill out and into his mind. I jumped to the side as another one popped out and almost hit me.
Soon, the bricks were falling fast and furious and Chad had disappeared. I hoped he was simply unconscious in his private mind because the alternative was not something I would allow.
I stared up at the wall, where bricks were popping out and falling all over the place and thought hard. There had to be something I could do. He was the most powerful Receiver and I was the most powerful Sender. Our abilities were complementary.
I had to be able to stop this.
I thought about what I had done to the dogs. My powers melted brains. What if I melted part of his brain — the wall — so that the bricks would solidify in place and stop popping out?
I would have to count on Shiv and Grace to keep me in check. Hopefully their choke hold on my mind would give me the necessary control to be able to do this.
Sort of the way a person who had one of those neurological diseases couldn’t control their hands but if someone helped control their hands for them then the person could still write their name with help. At least, I assumed it would be like that. And that it was going to work.
Because it had to work.
It had to.
Or Chad would go insane again.
And this time… he probably wouldn’t survive.
Out of Control
Yumi
I was in Chad’s public mind and I needed to save him.
And quickly.
But first, I did a concentration exercise to bring my mind into laser sharp focus. Then I pulled in all the control I could muster, which wasn’t much.
But I had to do this.
Chad was counting on me.
I couldn’t make him happy anymore. Hell, I couldn’t even forgive him for something that wasn’t even his fault.
But I could do this.
I could save him.
It was the least that I owed him after everything he had done for me in my life.
So, with rock solid determination, I raised my hands slowly out to the sides and all the bricks that had fallen lifted up into the air and returned to their spots. As other bricks tried to pop out, I pushed against the wall, keeping all the bricks in place.
Then I prayed that Grace and Shiv were holding tight to my mind and shielding Chad and I screamed as loud and as long as I could. To tell you the truth, it felt really great to just let go and not hold back. I had never let loose with my powers before — ever.
When I finally ran out of breath, I looked up at the wall and watched. No bricks popped out. No bricks fell.
I walked up to the part of the wall that was in front of me and touched one of the bricks. It didn’t move the way they used to. Before, Chad could give a little tug and the brick would slide out, like a drawer does. Now, even when I pulled on the brick, it wouldn’t move. I could still see the brick’s outline, but it seemed to have been fused into place.
The door to Chad’s private mind opened a crack and I could see him peeking out.
Please God, don’t let him be insane. Please, please, please, please.
“I’m not insane,” he said, coming out. “What did you do?”
I shrugged, feeling suddenly weak.
“I fused the bricks so they wouldn’t pop out.”
“You what?” He went over and touched the wall. “But how will I be able to get them open again? How will I use my ability?”
I stared at him in consternation, the consequences of my actions suddenly becoming clear.
“I don’t know.”
“Yumi,” he said, his face aghast. “You might have done something irreversible.”
“But I couldn’t just let you die,” I said, my eyes filling with tears, which rolled down my cheeks. His face changed then and his eyes got that hard look again that I disliked so much.
“Oh, so now you understand,” he said, his blue eyes cold.
We gazed at each other for a long moment before he finally spoke.
“You should go. Grace and Shiv will be getting tired of shielding.”
“How
did you know…?”
“Of course I know,” he said, looking irritated. “How else could you be in here without this place turning to goo?”
True enough.
“Now go. Before they lose control of that shield.”
I frowned.
“Chad, I’m sorry.”
He nodded.
“I know.”
He knew. But that wasn’t forgiveness, was it?
And that’s when I realized how very cruel I had been to him for the past year. But I had no idea how I could ever make up for the way I had treated him.
***
Yumi
When I opened my eyes and called out to Grace and Shiv, they sagged down to the ground, weak from the effort of giving me some control over my mind.
“Regular shields in place,” I reminded them but neither of them could even speak. “Are you guys okay?”
They nodded and Grace’s voice was hoarse when she spoke.
“I thought we weren’t going to be able to hold it. I thought that we would let go and Chad would die.”
She began to sob and Chad finally opened his eyes and went to his sister, wrapping his arms around her.
“I’m okay,” he said. “You guys did good.”
“So?” Shiv said, his face looking drained.
“Yumi fused the bricks,” he said, managing not to look as angry as he felt. I could feel the fury coming through the soul bond and burning my mind. I didn’t care. I welcomed the pain. I deserved it.
“Fused the bricks?” Grace pulled out of the hug, her eyebrows drawing together as the consequences occurred to her. “But…”
“It was the only thing to do,” Shiv said, though he clearly realized the magnitude of what I had done, as well. “At least you’re still here and sane, man.”
He stood up on trembling legs and gave Chad a long hug.
“None of us could have stood it, if you’d gone insane again.”
Shiv had been the one who had had to care for Chad when he was crazy and it had taken its toll on him.
“I know,” Chad said, his stormy eyes landing on my face. “There was nothing else to do.”