“You’re playing his wife, and he gets to kill you,” Hunter said flatly.
Yeah. Well, he’s been sleazing onto me for the last couple of weeks, and it’s getting worse.”
“What is he doing?” he asked mildly.
Sunny flipped over a card. “Nothing major. He’s just full of innuendo at the moment. Simon thinks he has a crush on me and is not sure how to go about it. I’ve told him in no uncertain terms that I’m not interested in him. I hope that it does the trick.”
“Good. And you’ve complained to the English teacher about him?”
“Yeah. I think Cresants blew me off because he thinks I’m jealous that he gave the role to Jake instead of me.”
“His name’s Jake? Jake who?” Hunter asked casually.
“Oh no. Nuh-uh,” she giggled as she smacked him playfully on the shoulder. He obliged by bending under her shove and pretending that it hurt. “You’re not getting involved in this. I’m not giving you any more information. Hell, you already think I’m the world’s worst agent!”
“You’re doing great.” Hunter met her eyes and gave her the benefit of his slow, gentle warm smile, which reached right to the soles of her feet. She could feel her cheeks heating up.
“Snap!” He smashed his hand down on the pack.
Sunny squealed and leapt five feet into the air. Hunter started to laugh.
He laughed with his whole body, almost creased up with mirth, unable to stop. Every time he looked up at her shocked face, it set him off again.
“I forgot what we were playing,” she said in a small voice.
“Sorry!” Hunter chortled for a few more minutes. “You should have seen your face…”
“You know, that’s not very professional. Unworthy of a man of your standing,” Sunny said haughtily, which set him off again. But she was unable to hide her satisfied smile. She loved seeing him drop his guard like this. After a few moments he got himself under control. He cleared his throat and gathered up the cards. “I suppose we should get back to work.”
“Good idea. I think I’m making progress. I’m getting the sense of my… the thing… the thing that I can do…” Sunny stammered a bit, blocking on what to call it.
“Power, you mean. You have a power.”
Sunny groaned. “That’s so tacky. And so arrogant.” She put her head in her hands.
“What else would you call it? No one else can do what you do, and it’s pretty spectacular. Of course it’s a power.”
“Spiderman has powers. Superman has powers. Batman has powers. I have a birth defect.”
“Actually, Superman was pretty normal on his own planet. It was only on earth that he was special.”
“That doesn’t stop him from having powers on earth.”
“Yeah, but on his planet, everyone has those powers. It would be like us moving to a planet where none of the locals had hands or feet. And they just stumped around everywhere. They’d go nuts if I played the guitar for them.”
“You play the guitar?”
“Nope. The point is they’re not powers if everyone has them.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that one. I think I might even have to concede on Batman too, he didn’t have powers either, did he?”
“No, just cool gadgets and some mean parental issues.” Hunter murmured, looking like he felt a bit of solidarity there.
“Spiderman then,” Sunny said firmly. “Wait, really? Out of all the superheroes, he’s the only one that has actual powers?”
He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe the turn the conversation was going. “Ok, back to where we were before. You said you were starting to get a feel for your power?”
“Urgh, not power!”
“Or gift, if you’re feeling a little bashful.”
She pulled herself together. “Yeah, okay. I’m starting to get a bit of a feel for it. I think that maybe if I can sense the point in which you are most perceptive, then kind of… push my vibrations into you, to cover you completely. I think that’s what I did with the English guy. Hey, how is he anyway?” She asked, curious.
“He’s doing fine. Physically, anyway. He’s going to need some major psychological support for a while though.” He shrugged. “The POW thing doesn’t end when you get let out.”
“Oh.” Tears sprung to her eyes before she could stop them. Hunter reached out to her and put his hand on her cheek.
“Hey. He’ll be alright. And he’s grateful for whatever decision that was made to bust him out of there, whoever it was that did it, whether they be North Korean or some secret elite militia.”
Sunny felt the warmth of his palm on her cheek, and she leaned in involuntarily. Suddenly she realized what she was doing and panicked, she leaned back to break the touch and shook her head to try and clear it.
“So yeah, try and push my vibrations into you,” she blurted, trying to cover her embarrassment.
Hunter still sat there, so comfortable and warm in his ripped jeans and holey top, smiling slightly at her. “Okay,” he said finally, “Let’s have another go.” He pulled his legs out from under himself and sat back on the sofa, resuming his meditation position, leaning softly back, arms rested on his knees, palms up.
“Right.” She was determined that it would work this time, but what if it didn’t? What if she would never be able to take him with her anywhere.
Nothing would change, she thought redundantly. She couldn’t bring him over now, and all he could do was give her orders, if you could call them that. And he would be safe, as safe as a secret agent could possibly be. For a moment, she considered not trying.
He would never know. But she discarded the idea as soon as it had come, she just couldn’t lie to him. It would be deceitful, a quality she despised.
And if she were to think about it, she would love to share the beautiful dream-like shining world of the Alternate with him. She wondered if he would see it the same as her and if he would look different to her when they were there together. Despite the formal and often brusque hard-man exterior, on the inside, Hunter was sensitive, caring and a true humanitarian. The more she got to know him, the more he loosened up. He’d admitted himself that he shared things with her that he didn’t share with anyone, and she suspected he didn’t act like this in front of anyone else either. With her, he was almost playful, much more fun and silly.
That could be because of my age, she thought dully. He felt free to be more childish around her. Well, she would rather her be happy around her than not, and there was obviously not going to be any romantic feelings on his part at all.
She held his hand lightly and tried to concentrate. He felt open, more susceptible, so without moving her hand she focused very hard on the buzzing sensation around her. As soon as she got the sense for it, she tried to project it into Hunter.
The feeling was vaguely familiar. She was sure she had done this with the English prisoner. She worked with it, mentally squishing and sloshing her aura over to his. It felt like she was trying to mold buzzing, electric water with her mind. It was bizarre, at times it felt uncontrollable, but she felt like she was getting the hang of it. She wrestled with her own energy for a few moments, trying to tame it and get it to move in the direction she wanted, which was to go into Hunter. He was sitting still, in a deep state of relaxation. When she looked at his face, her train of thought disappeared completely.
He was just so beautiful.
At that moment, she felt their auras touch. She’d stopped thinking for long enough for her energy to do the job for her – it had reached out and taken hold of him. He sat still, with his eyes closed, apparently oblivious to what had just happened, or disciplined enough to ignore it. He was completely covered in her energy, it mixed with his, and he glowed brighter than ever. It was overwhelming, pure pleasure. Still without a thought in her brain, she pulled him with her mind, and he moved into the Alternate dimension with her.
He must have felt the change; he moved only a tiny bit – his lips turned up at the c
orners ever so slightly. Sunny couldn’t help herself – she beamed with happiness and pride and satisfaction, her smile almost split her face in two.
Hunter’s concentration fell away ever so slightly; he started to savour the sensations in the brand new dimension he was in. Eager for him to open himself up and enjoy it with her, but anxious in case he found it too overwhelming, Sunny lifted him up ever so slightly, still holding her hand firmly in his. He followed effortlessly, floating up off the couch and into the air a few feet, and rested there. She turned to him fully and basked in his light. It was glorious.
Slowly, very slowly, Hunter opened his eyes. They grew wider as he took in the new atmosphere, and the girl in front of him. His eyes swept over her, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, he stared at her in awe, as if she were some rare and precious gem. His lips parted, and he spoke.
“You look just like sunshine,” he breathed softly.
He’d said her name, her real name, the shock felt like a smack to the face. She acted instinctively - she snatched her hand away, and Hunter was jolted out of the Alternate.
He fell like a sack of cement, landing awkwardly and hard on the floor.
Chapter 20
“Fuuuuck!” Hunter roared angrily, reaching down to wrap both hands around his injured foot.
“Sorry!” Sunny was mortified. She floated down and pushed herself out of the Alternate and back to reality. Hunter’s eyes went to her when she reappeared; he looked furious.
“What the hell was that?”
“I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry!” She rushed over and tried to have a look at his ankle, knowing it was a dumb thing to do. He rolled away from her, which stung. Sunny supposed she deserved it. She took it on the chin. “Let me have a look,” she pleaded, as he rolled his jeans up.
“What, so you’re a medic now?” he muttered, not looking at her. Sunny moved away, giving him some space, and shrunk herself into a corner of the couch like a scolded dog. To be fair, she wasn’t sure what his ankle was supposed to look like anyway, so she couldn’t have helped. She just sat there, watching him gently turn his foot this way and that, assessing the damage.
“It’s a little tender. I think it’s probably just sprained.” He turned and glared at her, but when he saw how distraught she looked, he sighed. “I’m sorry.”
Sunny couldn’t meet his eye. He unwrapped his hands from his injured ankle and leaned towards her, and tried again. “Hey. I didn’t mean to yell at you. It just felt like you kicked me out, just then. I was startled. I’m not mad at you; I’m mad at myself. I let my guard down.”
Guard? She stared at him, confused. Hunter looked down, trying to hide something in his eyes. “You must have been trying to high five me or something, right?” He looked back up at her, and she met his gaze and gave him a tiny glimpse of a smile. “That’s better,” he said softly.
Her smile grew a little bit bigger. They stared at each other for a moment, both apparently wrestling with what to say next. Finally, Sunny unfolded herself from the couch and walked to Hunter’s kitchen. Opening the freezer, she extricated a bag of peas and rummaged around the kitchen until she found a clean tea towel. She wrapped the towel around the peas and brought it back to Hunter, who had hoisted himself up on the couch. Sunny knelt beside him at his feet and put the peas gently on his swollen ankle.
“Ahhh,” he sighed, closing his eyes and leaning his head back. He rested there for a few minutes before he finally spoke again. “I gotta say; that was worth a sprained ankle. It was unbelievable!”
“It is, isn’t it? And we didn’t even get very far.”
“The colours, the vibrations, the energy of everything! It was exactly like you described. And the floating – I barely even felt the lift, and it was completely effortless.”
“Wait ‘til we’re whizzing over the Amazon. That will blow your mind.”
“Ha!” he snorted. “I hope you can keep from fist-bumping me when we do that. I don’t think I’d survive a forty foot drop into the jungle.”
Sunny grew serious. “I’m so sorry, again. I don’t know what happened,” she said gravely. It was the first real lie she’d told him. It sat on her irritating and grating, like severe eczema.
“Don’t worry ‘bout it.” Hunter closed his eyes again and leaned back. “We’ll try again. Maybe we should try handcuffs just to make sure you don’t drop me again.”
At the mention of handcuffs, Sunny grew very hot. She had to balance the peas on his ankle and withdraw her hand; she was worried about melting them. The lounge room was still dark and velvet, with the warm, gentle glow from the orange lamp in the corner casting strange shadows on the furniture around them. Lying on the couch and tinted with a soft burning light, Hunter looked like a Greek god, a young lord of the underworld in repose.
“We’ll try again,” she said softly. “I promise I won’t drop you this time.”
“Let’s just relax for a while. I get the feeling I might not be so receptive next time.”
Sunny swung her legs around to sit on the floor, leaning back against the couch, still beside his injured ankle. “I’m so sorry,” she sighed. “We were on a winner, too. But I think the important thing is that we managed it. I remember what I did, the mechanics of it. I remember the sensation, and how I… coaxed my energy to meld with yours, then I could pull you in with me.”
Hunter was smiling slightly with his eyes still closed, as if he was reliving the last fifteen minutes. “Man, that was crazy. I had my own ideas about what it would be like, but…wow.” He opened his eyes and looked down at Sunny. “It was amazing.”
She had a thought. “It’s funny, but you never really doubted what I could do. I know I appeared to you right here, popped in out of nowhere, but you were never skeptical at all.”
“Oh, I doubted that you could zip around the globe the way you do. That’s why I was so surprised when you came back with those orders the first time. But it was obvious that you were something special.”
Sunny thrilled at the words. “But you seemed to accept it so readily. You’re the only person I’ve ever come out to, but I don’t think I’d get the same response that I got with you.”
He propped himself up so he could look at her better. “Once I saw you do it, it wasn’t hard to believe at all. And, strangely, it seems to be such a natural part of you, I can’t see anything supernatural in it. Your power just seems like an extension of who you are.”
She rolled her eyes to hide her blush that sprang up. “Don’t say power!”
“Gift, then. It’s not unusual, for you.”
“Wow. Thanks.” Her heart was thudding a little, but she was starting to get used to his compliments. He sure knew how to make you feel special, she thought wryly. And it wasn’t as if he was doling out compliments like they were candy, indiscriminately scattering them around just to see the effect when they landed.
“Besides, I’ve seen other people do supernatural things before,” he murmured casually.
“You what?”
He smiled. “There’s other people in the world that have unusual gifts. Not like yours – I don’t think there’s ever been anyone in this world that could do what you do. I’ve never ever heard of anything like it. But I have met a guy who can read thoughts.”
“Really?” Sunny was impressed. “Awesome! What does he do, is he, like, a mega famous TV medium? Has he been on Millionaire? How has he used it?”
Hunter frowned slightly. “Actually, he’s in one of our classified offshore facilities. In isolation, pretty much. By his request. And, he’s a raging alcoholic.”
“Oh.” She was a little deflated. “I suppose he would be. It would be pretty awful, hearing what everyone thought about you all the time.”
He gave her a humorless smile. “You catch on quick.”
“And hearing everyone’s sick thoughts. Sometimes you can’t help but think something awful, even though you would never follow through on an idea that popped into your head. I once h
ad a twisted thought about pushing Steph out of an open car door while we were speeding down the highway, and what it would look like to see her get mushed like a slab of scotch fillet through a grater. Of course, it was terrible, and I would never do anything like that, and I never got any pleasure out of the thought, either. It just popped in there; I guess I hated her that much.” Sunny paused to draw breath. “But to hear that sort of stuff all the time! You’d think that humanity was doomed.”
“I think you hit the nail on the head.”
“I think I have some empathy with him, because I could conceivably spy on anyone, at any time. I remember that speech that you gave me about that, and I haven’t done it. At least I can turn my power off.”
He smirked at her. “You said power.” She glared back. “And he’s not the only one,” Hunter continued more seriously. “I’ve heard of a guy in Jakarta who can burn things with his fingertips, if he concentrates hard enough.”
“Well, that doesn’t seem like a very practical power,” Sunny commented. “Although, you would never have a cold hamburger ever again.”
“And I’ve heard stories of a few people who have telekinetic powers.”
“That’s awesome. What are they up to? Living it up as magicians in Las Vegas?”
“I believe they are all guests of their governments,” Hunter said mildly.
“You mean, they work for the government? Like what I do, work for the Intelligence divisions?”
He paused before he answered. “No, not really.” He paused again. “More like, they are non-voluntary residents of secure government facilities.”
“They’re prisoners?”
“More like, they are detained for their own safety, and the safety of the general public.”
“But they’re… they’re… incarcerated. They’re not free.” Sunny was genuinely upset.
“Mouse, they could be dangerous. And in some cases, like the guy who reads minds, they’re better off where they are. He was a mess before we brought him in. Also, you can imagine that there are some very bad guys out there that might try and force these people to use their powers for their own benefits. We have to prevent that, by keeping them safe.” Hunter sighed and put his hands over his eyes. “I don’t like it either. Some governments are a bit more forceful with these people than others. Ours, for example, just strongly encourages those with unusual gifts to stay with us. And we are a lot more gentle with them than others. Think ‘Hellboy’ rather than ‘X-Files’ style incarceration. Excellent accommodation, good food, 24-hour bodyguards… ”
The Mouse Page 17