by Lan Chan
21
Rich’s eyes flew open. The cerebral monitor’s lights flashed red and yellow. I tried to withdraw from Rich’s mind, but a tendril from the unfamiliar esper curled around me. My fists balled. Anger sizzled in my chest. Dad had tried to warn me, and I’d been so arrogant about my powers that I hadn’t listened.
Wait, the unknown esper thought as I attempted to disengage. Please, it’s okay.
Oh, no buddy, it wasn’t okay. Not okay at all. If I fought to let go, I would be giving away that I’d lied about my class. So I did what I’d always done best: I got aggressive. I raised my right arm and pointed at the cuffs. One after the other, they popped and sizzled as I fried their electrical circuits. Rich jumped as though he’d been electrocuted, which he probably had. The esper in my mind let go. The static shield disappeared, and Rich’s consciousness slotted back in. Too late.
I raised both my arms in unison. The cerebral monitor shot off my head, tearing out a few strands of my hair on the way. It hung suspended in the air for a second before I telepathically tore it off the wall and hurled it across the room.
“Willow!” Rich yelled at me as he ducked the missile. “Stop it now!”
I cast about for more objects to throw. I was about to send a pair of metal-tipped scissors at him when the office door swung open. Three Academy officers stepped in. They tried to grab me from behind. As soon as their hands touched me, I sent a minor electric shock through them. They dropped as though they’d been tasered.
“Enough!” Rich had reached me. It was his turn to manhandle me. I tried to electrocute him too, but I misjudged the strength of the current and forgot about his low-level ability to absorb telepathic energy. He was a very weak Siphon. He clasped hands on either side of my temples. I heard him issue a single command to whoever had been in his head.
Do it!
The room spun around me. My legs buckled. Something snapped in my brain. For a second, I couldn’t remember where I was. I clutched my stomach as my breath came in shallow gasps. The sound of wind rushing in my ears caused me to fall to my knees. I blinked, and there was only darkness.
Then all of a sudden, my shield slammed into place again. Slowly, the world stabilised. I found myself sitting neatly on the couch.
Rich was at the desk opposite me, filling in the last parts of my form. “Okay,” he said cheerfully. “We’re done.”
I stared around the room, unsure how I’d gone from the cerebral monitor to the couch. “Did I do that?” I asked, indicating the upended equipment. Rich turned his head to the side quizzically as though he was contemplating whether I was serious.
“Yep,” he said. “Pretty impressive. You might want to look into some lessons on controlling the electrokinesis.”
“I have to do the requisite Psi-Ops course,” I responded. My voice was robotic. My mind felt as though it was stuffed with cotton wool.
“We both know those courses are rudimentary. Rose would have taught you everything before you were five.” The mention of my mum snapped my thoughts into clarity. I grit my teeth at his casual familiarity. They may have been friends, but we weren’t.
He dug around into a pile of papers and pulled out a pamphlet for an organisation that offered private tuition to espers wanting to learn how to control their powers. I took the pamphlet and shoved it into my backpack.
The whole scene continued to bug me after I was dismissed, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. My test had taken quite a lot longer than I’d realised. By the time I made it out to the mess hall, most of St. Matthews had been processed.
I listened to a message Dad had left on my phone as I ate two slabs of lasagne and a bowl of fries from the mess hall. I washed it down with two glasses of orange juice. There were side effects to using my powers, but I was unusually hungry. A simple Psi-Q test shouldn’t have burned through my energy like this.
“Hey, kiddo,” Dad’s voice said. “I’ve been asked to drop some of the test results back at the lab. Can you take the bus home? No stops along the way to see Gabe either. Pizza night tonight. Love you.”
Just past two o’clock, the St. Matthews bus returned for us. Sister Joan agreed to let me on when I told her about Dad. I lined up with the others to get a seat. Having not shown up to class much, I probably should have expected the curious looks I received. But it still made me anxious to sit down and get out of their eye line.
Unfortunately, having no friends meant that no one was holding a seat for me. The double seats on either row were filling up fast. My anxiety increased the further back I walked. I dreaded the thought of doing a full bus length and having to go back. Or worse, just standing around aimlessly with nowhere to go until all the seats were filled and I’d have to share with a teacher.
Thankfully, two rows from the back, there was an empty seat next to a boy who seemed to have fallen asleep with a baseball cap over his face. I did an instant visual sweep for chewing gum or wet patches on the seat, but it was all clear. Phew.
Fifteen minutes later, I realised why no one else wanted to sit next to this kid. You couldn’t really even describe him as a kid. His legs were so long his knees dug into the back of the seat in front of us. They jutted outward to take up some of my legroom too.
But it was the other thing that everyone else besides me knew to avoid. The boy must have been having a vivid dream. Every so often, he’d move around in his seat. When he did this, our double seat shook. Everything that wasn’t bolted down, including my backpack, went flying. The other kids must have known the cues to look out for because they’d throw things at him at just the right time to watch the objects whiz around.
I finally got sick of dodging pens and bananas and elbowed the guy in the ribs. His arm shot out like a snake. His fingers curled around my bicep. The cap fell from his head as he shook the sleep from his grey eyes.
“What the hell?” he said. All around us, kids cracked up.
“Throw her off the bus, Zeke,” the redheaded boy in front of me suggested. He winked when I gave him the middle finger.
“Hey, Zeke,” I said. “Mind letting go of my arm?”
Zeke continued to turn his head this way and that, as though he was stuck in that semi-lucid state between sleep and wakefulness. To jog his memory, I sent him a little zap. He jumped back, and I was free. Unexpectedly, his cap, which had fallen to the bus floor, spun around like a spinning top and landed back on his head. I had to admit, it was a cool power to have.
“Aren’t you a friendly little thing?” Zeke said to me. He repositioned the cap on his head and tugged it tight. “Got ourselves an EK. What’s your name, Sparks?” I didn’t know where this was going and didn’t relish the thought of making myself known to these kids. But I didn’t see any way out of it.
“Willow,” I said. “But I prefer Will.”
“I think I prefer Sparks,” Zeke said. He chuckled to himself. I thought perhaps he’d go back to sleep because he snuggled back into his seat, but instead, he peered at me disconcertedly for ten minutes flat without speaking. It didn’t help that Redhead in front kept craning his neck to check us out and then whispering to the Asian boy beside him.
I tried to ignore Zeke for as long as I could. The afternoon sun fell lazily over the dark stubble on his chin. He was pretty cute in a sort of football player gone rogue kind of way. His hair poked out from underneath the cap, and his T-shirt had more than one hole in it, but at least he didn’t stink or anything.
“So, Willow,” Zeke said after the longest and most uncomfortable silence ever. “Why haven’t I seen you around the yard?” I stared straight ahead, contemplating how I could get out of speaking to him without being rude. Apparently, I took too long, because moments later, I felt him in my head.
I would have remembered a girl like you, he thought. I didn’t know what possessed me, but instead of immediately kicking him out of my brain, I turned and pinched the top layer of skin on his forearm. Then I twisted until he yelped.
“Jeez!” he snapped. “
All right! No need to get physical.”
What you did was worse than physical, I sent him. The etiquette is to ask permission before you just trespass on somebody’s thoughts. It was amazing how quickly his face twisted from a grimace into a wry grin.
If you didn’t want me to talk to you, why’d you leave your mind open? He sent back. Seems like you could easily have blocked me out.
I had no idea why I wasn’t shielding myself like I usually did. It was almost as though I’d taken a metaphoric knock to the head that I couldn’t remember. Even now, the cotton wool feeling was still there. Redhead turned back once more. I kicked his seat, and he quickly decided to mind his own business.
So, Sparks, Zeke insisted. You can’t be that new that we wouldn’t have crossed paths. There’s only so much talent at St. Matthews.
I haven’t been around much, I thought back. School and I don’t gel all that well.
Woo, I bet Sister Joan really loves that! I can’t even be late to class without her standing over me.
I bit my bottom lip. I have ways of covering my tracks.
You’ll have to show me sometime.
Even though I kind of liked talking to him, I wouldn’t bet on it. But once we were back at school, I didn’t intend on keeping in touch. The thought was alarming. It meant that some of Mum’s insanity had rubbed off on me without my consent. It was always her who insisted that emotional ties would get me hurt one day. But she was gone now, and Melbourne was meant to be our permanent home. So maybe, just maybe, I could start making friends.
Zeke seemed to have lost the urge to sleep. He wouldn’t shut up. When he got bored of speaking to me, he started punching the back of the Asian kid’s chair to get his attention. They had a conversation about some shadow boxing icon they both seemed to have a man-crush on.
I’d almost dozed off when a surge of my own telepathic energy came rushing back. My mind snapped open at the same time my eyes did. There was only one source it could have come from, and that was the booby trap I’d placed in Dad’s mind. If the energy was back, it meant something had happened to the shield. I tried to reconnect the link but couldn’t make contact.
Dad! I screamed telepathically with all my might. It was met with echoing silence. I was out of my seat in an instant and bolting to the front of the bus.
“Stop running back there!” the bus driver yelled at me. The three teachers went into immediate situation assessment mode. Before they could order me to stop, a deafening explosion rocked the bus, and the driver lost control.
22
The front right side of the bus levitated a metre off the ground. The bus driver tried to turn the wheel left to get away from the explosion but rotated into oncoming traffic instead.
The bus slammed back down with such force that I was thrown backwards. I only managed to keep upright by catching hold of the back of a seat. The front section of the bus buckled. Glass shattered everywhere. Kids screamed and tried to get off either by storming the walkway or squeezing out of the jagged glass jaws of the broken windows.
“Jesus!” Zeke screamed. I hadn’t noticed him come up beside me. He yanked me backwards and threw his arms up in the air. Drivers in oncoming cars screeched their horns, but we were too close. Just as I thought they were about to collide with us, they seemed to grind to a halt.
Zeke staggered. I realised he was attempting to push the cars back with his telekinesis. I witnessed the abject horror on the faces of the two drivers in the front-most cars before they were crushed like soft drink cans by other cars hitting them from behind.
My world contracted to the sound of horns and screaming. The acrid stench of burnt metal and oil wafted in the air.
“Zeke!” I yelled, afraid he would be unable to hear me over the commotion. “Leave the other cars to me. We need to get off the bus!” Apparently, someone else had the exact same idea. A deafening tearing sound accompanied the sight of the back of the bus being ripped clean off. It took a few of the kids in the back row with it.
Zeke and I gripped the back of the seats in the middle of the bus. Smoke from the tires blew into the remaining shell, obscuring our assailants from sight. Their silhouettes appeared in the gaping hole at the back of the bus. All five of them held machine guns.
Something cold slid over me. It was the side of me that was born of cold, dark nights alone in the wilderness of New China’s desert. It was also the side that I wanted to keep buried because she’d seen and done too many unspeakable things to please her mum.
The silhouette in the middle raised his gun and was disarmed by Asian boy –another TK esper. The boy tried to do the same to the other gunmen, but he was suddenly thrown through an open window. It seemed that some of the gunmen were espers themselves.
A change in the direction of the wind meant the smoke was beginning to disperse. Our attackers were dressed in combat fatigues with black hoods over their faces.
They were not uniformed and displayed no gang insignia, but they had that hardened edge that came with life on the streets of Melbourne. I cast my mind out over them and ran smack into a wall of static. They all had on anti-psi cuffs.
I drew my palm into a tight fist. As I did so, each one of their cuffs began to constrict until they were misshapen strips of scrap metal. The cuffs cracked and with them went the static wall. The attackers’ thoughts were now fair game. The esper kids took full advantage of that.
My mental net was still cast over the five gunmen. Though most of their thoughts were background functional stuff, there was one command that resounded between then.
Get the telekinetic alpha.
I looked to Zeke where he had frozen in place and knew he had heard the same. These men, whoever they were, had been sent here to get him. There was no time to mull over the reason why. They raised their guns and opened fire.
All the kids who hadn’t gotten off the bus threw themselves to the floor or ducked down behind the seats. They needn’t have bothered. I heard the bullets flying out of the barrels, saw the kickback each time a trigger was pulled, but the bullets slowed in midair and rotated as though they were stuck in invisible quicksand. Zeke was stopping as many of them as he could. It made sense now why they wanted him. An alpha level TK was a very handy thing. So was an alpha level electrokinetic, I thought, but now wasn’t the best time to wonder why they weren’t after me too.
Just a second longer, I transmitted to Zeke.
When I turned, a trail of blood ran down his nose. A second was all he would be able to maintain. I stepped in front of the bullets and spotted two vintage black all-terrain vehicles that would have been great for travelling off-road to avoid detection. The problem with these vintage cars was all the additional electronics onboard.
With barely a command from me, the vehicles came to life. The roaring of their engines was lost in the other commotion, but that didn’t dampen the impact they made as I revved their engines to the point of burnout and dragged them directly into the backs of our attackers. The firing stopped, but I didn’t chance it. I threw the cars into reverse and rammed them again. Three of the attackers dropped to the ground, clutching at their broken limbs.
Now that we were out of danger of being shot at, Zeke flicked his wrist. The guns flew through the air and landed at our feet. He levitated one of them in the air, turned it over gently as though it was a precious stone, and then cast it aside.
Relief flooded through me. For a second, his mind had been open, and I read his intention to open fire back. I wouldn’t have had a problem with that except that I needed at least one of these guys alive.
The two attackers left standing attempted a retreat to their cars. I had sealed the doors shut. I vaguely grasped the chaos around me. Sometime during the shootout, one of the teachers must have called the Academy. Sirens could be heard further back down the highway. I limped off the back of the bus to a scene of scattered glass, ash, and blood.
I averted my eyes from the bodies of two students lying prone on the asphalt. Kids stoo
d or sat around in groups. Some wailed hysterically. Others were mute with faraway expressions.
Mr. Cheng, my aging chemistry teacher, had gotten hold of one of the guns and was using it to keep the attackers at bay. He had them on their bellies on the ground. It was weird, to say the least, to see Mr. Cheng in his button-front cardigan and wire-rimmed glasses pistol-whipping someone.
He didn’t seem all that comfortable with it and was probably only doing it because, as a nun, Sister Joan refused to pick up a weapon. Mr. Saunders, the football coach, was throwing up over the grassy knoll.
I wanted to do the same whenever my eyes gazed over at the dead bodies of my classmates, but I forced the revulsion down and buried it with the other emotions I couldn’t afford to give in to right now.
“Sir,” I said as I approached Mr. Cheng. His head turned in unison with his body. I found myself facing the barrel of a gun again.
“Oops! Sorry, Willow,” he said. His voice cracked, and his hands shook.
“I need to talk to one of them,” I said. Before he could protest, I bent down on my knees and placed my palm on one of the attacker’s cheeks. Their hoods had been removed. Up close, even with all the ashy grime in the way, I realized this man couldn’t have been much older than I was. Not that age made much of a difference on the streets. I chose the much more direct route to his mind rather than verbal sparring.
Why did you do this? I sent him. He was a Basic. He didn’t stir, and if I hadn’t seen the small tear that dropped onto the ground, I would have thought he was very well trained. His underlying survival thoughts to breathe and heal barraged at my shield. I pushed back, keeping them from overwhelming me.
You’d better speak if you don’t want to be hurt, I thought at him. I’m not a Reader, and if I try to get information from you that you won’t give up, it’s going to hurt – a lot.