by Lan Chan
“Don’t flatter yourself. Zeke tells me the scores whether I want to know them or not.”
Two nights ago, in his alias as the shadow boxer Hades, Ryan had won the national championship. Against my protests, Zeke had made me watch while Ryan had taken out his opponent with a chokehold. The move was made all the more difficult because his opponent had been an electro. The camera had shown Ryan’s chest jerking as though he was being charged through a defibrillator. If I wasn’t sure the whole thing was rigged, I’d have been concerned about his heart giving out under the strain.
“A congratulations would be nice.” His tone could melt butter.
“As if you weren’t going to win!” My second slip.
What I meant was that the tournament was definitely rigged to keep the fans happy. What it sounded like was that I had utter faith in him and it never even crossed my mind that he’d lose. I needed to get off this phone call.
“I like talking to you when you’re half asleep.” Then, “So what did the note say?”
I let out a frustrated groan. “Nothing.”
“Willow.”
“You don’t need to know. It’s not like you saw anything anyway, so I’m back to square one.”
“Just tell me. You know you want to, otherwise you would have hung up by now.” Ah, there was that urge to commit violence again.
“It begins with a whisper.”
“What does?”
“That’s what the note said.”
We were both quiet. Ryan had been the one that kept the Psi-Ops from taking me into custody after I blew up the robots in Ballarat. It also meant he’d been around when Lily completed her tests and pronounced that I was in fact a Whisper. Not an alpha esper like I had always believed.
He made a contemplative humming sound. “What are you doing about it?”
“There’s nothing to do. It’s just standard-issue ink on mass-produced copy paper. For all I know it could have come out of the printer in Rich’s office. Lily says there aren’t any tests she can do. We’ve upped security. I even have a surveillance drone circling the compound. So far nothing.”
“But you’re being careful, right?”
“No. That’s why I’m out roaming the streets on a Friday night and not talking to an idiot who dresses up in a costume for fun.”
“I take it you’re still imprisoned in the facility.”
“Last time I checked…”
“I was going to say at least no one can get in there, but if there’s a note…”
“It does beg the question of security, doesn’t it?”
“I’ll be back in a week,” he said.
“Oh, well then, I guess all my worries will be gone soon.”
Someone shouted out his name. “My adoring fans await.”
“Of course they do.”
“Unless you can give me a reason to stay.”
What kind of a thing was that to say?
“Bye.” I ended the call.
My feet dragged as I trudged back up to the mansion. It wasn’t until I was leaning on the door inside my room that I realised I was utterly exhausted.
As I kicked off the slippers and got back in bed, I reached into the top drawer of my bedside table and withdrew the note. The edges were well worn, the result of my constant folding and unfolding of the crease that kept the words hidden. Like I’d said to Ryan, both the ink and the paper were nondescript. Even the font was boring and not cursive. I knew right away that it must have been the default font on a word processor. Only the message itself held any kind of interest, and boy, was it interesting to me. To anyone else, it might have been a flyaway comment, but those five words hit me like a backhand every time I read them:
It begins with a whisper.
I fell asleep with the note still in my hand, apprehension dragging me under. Somewhere out there, someone else knew that I was a Whisper.
3
I woke up groggy and tired. I’d gone back to bed about two in the morning, but four hours of restless sleep did not make for a happy camper.
When I went down to breakfast, Lily and Rich were already in the kitchen. There was something very wrong with people who woke up before six on weekends. Neither of them acknowledged my general grumpiness. Rich simply nodded at me, and Lily didn’t even bother looking up from the news stream she was watching.
“Any chance you can make me eggs?” I asked Rich. Ha! I had more chance of having the court rescind my good behaviour bond. He pushed a plate with two unbuttered pieces of toast in front of me. It was as good as I was going to get. I heaped butter and Vegemite on them and then poured myself a bowl of bran-and-raisin cereal.
“Look out, Lil. I’m sitting down.” It had become a habit for me to announce what I’d be doing around her so as to prepare her for any inevitable touching.
“Why don’t you sit over there?” She pointed to the stool on the opposite side of the table, as far away from her as possible.
“How am I going to see the TV?”
She scrunched up her nose. The news presenter was too perky for this time in the morning. I zoned out of what she was saying and focused instead on the pretty colours on the screen and forcing down as much food as quickly as possible. That was until the screen panned to the flat rooftop of some of the buildings surrounding the river in the Row. Footage from the surveillance drone caught the dark grey plumes of smoke rising in the sky. The image flipped every few seconds to show a different angle to the buildings. In one, the source of the smoke smouldered from the wreckage of the ice cream shop I’d seen in last night’s dream. It was blown to bits by the pressure of the fire.
The angle flipped again and the toast point got caught going down my throat. On the screen, a lone figure could be seen crouching on the ledge of a building to the left of the burning rubble. She was decidedly female from the shape of her figure. Her hair whipped haphazardly in the wind. As the drones tried to move closer, the figure leapt off the building and disappeared. Not good.
I sputtered loudly and Lily turned up the volume. My eyes teared up and I had to go to the fridge and gulp down a bottle of water.
“…authorities are treating the incident as suspicious, but so far, no suspects have been identified. Academy officers have issued a statement condemning the sighting of the masked vigilante known as Spectra. The public is asked to come forward with any information that may help the Academy pinpoint the source of the blaze…”
“It wasn’t me,” I said defensively when I could breathe again. “I have an alibi.”
“Of course not,” Lily said. “She’s too busty to be you.”
I gagged in my throat. I think I was just insulted.
Rich sighed. “You should have been in bed.”
“I was! I had a nightmare and couldn’t get back to sleep. So I called Ryan to see if he knew anything about the note.” It seemed too much of a coincidence that I’d dreamed of the ice-creamery blowing up.
“Did you tell him the Psi-Ops have voided his arrest warrant due to political affiliations?”
“No. I just asked him about the note and that’s it.” Okay, technically I had forgotten. I was too busy thinking about my own ass on the line. So sue me. Thanks to his new job guarding Grace Xiao, he was off the hook anyway. Somehow I doubted he even cared if he wasn’t.
I had time for a second bowl of cereal and a banana before my bus arrived. It wouldn’t have killed Rich to offer to drive me, but I never asked. It was hard to claim to be responsible if you tried to bum a lift off your commanding officer.
“To and from work and that’s it,” he said before I walked out the door. “No loitering around hanging out with your friends.”
I would have kicked up a stink but I was going to be late for work. If someone held a gun to my head and forced me to answer, I might admit that I missed Ryan a little. Just a little, in the smaller scheme of things. Standing in the second aisle of Hikari’s Garden and Grocer, half-listening to Viktor’s droning voice, I suddenly missed Ryan a lot. Mr. Hikari had h
ired Viktor as Ryan’s replacement.
“The cans have to all face outwards so the customer knows what it is they’re buying.” Viktor punctured his words with emphatic pointing. Out of the three rows of beans on the shelf, only four had cans that were facing the right way.
In hindsight, turning the rest around to piss him off hadn’t been my brightest idea. But in my defence, I’d had a terrible sleep, and as soon as I walked into the store he’d gotten on my back about my skirt being too short and my stocking too sheer.
“It’s a growth spurt,” I snapped without thinking.
His eyes slitted like the reptile he was. I had to tip my head back all the way to look him in the face. Or in this case, in his cavernous nostrils. With one hand rested on his right hip, the material of his stark white shirt billowed around him. He reminded me of the storks they keep in the gardens outside of the New Chinese Presidential house.
“Don’t think I won’t write you up for being a smartass,” he’d said.
Don’t think I won’t punch you for being a snivelling weasel, I’d thought. But I kept my trap shut. It stayed shut throughout his lecture on the correct placement of beans. He must have noticed my eyes glazing over because the lines of his face grew even tauter. If he grimaced any more, I was afraid he’d get a hernia.
“I want you to fix this up and then you can start sweeping around the register.”
I was halfway done returning the bean cans to their former glory and was rotating the tomato cans around the wrong way when the news bulletin on the radio caught my attention.
“Authorities have intercepted a shipment of the drug Second Sight at the border between Melbourne and The Strip. The shipment was being sent inside cans of baby formula. The street value of the haul is estimated to be between a hundred-and-fifty and two hundred million dollars. Rumours have surfaced that the drug itself not only has a hallucinogenic effect but that in some instances, it can cause the manifestation of latent telepathic abilities. The Psionic Special Operations Unit has declined to comment on the issue until further investigation….”
Second Sight, or S2, was the supposed wonder drug that could make someone an esper. From what Gabe had let slip, it hit the market a couple of weeks ago and had the potential to overtake anything else on the market. They said that compounds in the drug were all-natural. Whether or not the effects were real or imaginary remained to be seen. My bet was on it being a marketing gimmick. I’d be surprised at the lengths the underworld went to in order to push their drugs if I hadn’t seen firsthand the way Gabe disposed of anyone trying to muscle in on his turf.
My reverie was interrupted by the slow beep of a truck backing up. The roller shutter at the rear of the storeroom began to open. Viktor chose that precise moment to decide he was on break.
“Go and help unload.” He waved the unlit cigarette in his hand at me. The urge to punch him was so strong I stomped out the back door before I could give in. Mr. Hikari waved at me out the driver’s side window as he backed the truck into the loading bay. I didn’t wave back and my lips turned down.
He opened the driver’s side door just as the hatch at the back popped open. Inside were white plastic buckets filled to the brim with fresh flowers from the farm his family-owned. It was just on the outskirts of Kew Gardens and was worth a mint. He caught my expression and patted me lightly on the back.
“I swear I’m going to murder him,” I said. Whether he believed me or not, Mr. Hikari only chuckled. He didn’t know the exact nature of the indiscretion that had gotten me into Hyper. If I made him believe it was violent, maybe he’d fire Viktor out of fear for the man’s safety.
“He’s good at bringing in the customers.”
I made a non-committal sound in my throat. From what I saw, the customers Viktor brought in weren’t exactly A-grade material. I’d spent enough time watching people inside The Rendezvous to know what a thug looked like. Viktor had the telltale signs of a petty criminal all over him. Nervous, darting eyes, jumpy as hell, and unable to take any kind of challenge to his authority. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Mr. Hikari was using the store as some kind of delinquent halfway house.
I grabbed one of the shopping trolleys in the bay and moved it beside the truck. The buckets were half-filled with water that added to their weight. Without the EK, I probably would have passed out after my third lap around the store. I was just placing the last bucket onto the trolley when something occurred to me. “Does he help you restock when I’m not here?”
Mr. Hikari waved me off. I took that as a no. He was taking inventory and would be off again shortly to pick up more produce. His arthritis meant that the one thing he could still kind of do painlessly was driving.
Back inside the store, I arranged the buckets of flowers in the tiered stand on the left. Anything that wouldn’t fit would go into the cool room. As I moved back and forth between the sink in the back, filling up buckets to top up the water, I caught sight of Viktor glaring at me from outside the store. He was chatting to Steve who owned the pizza shop across the road.
What now? It wasn’t until I turned and caught the dark scowl on my face in the reflection of the water that I realized I’d greased him off first, and he was only reciprocating. At least the feeling was mutual. As I was mopping up the water I’d spilled, Mr. Hikari scuttled back into the store. Viktor appeared ten seconds later, a grin plastered onto his face. He left a black sneaker outline on the floor.
“How you doin’, Mr. Hikari?” Viktor said. I closed my eyes and counted down from a hundred. The bell over the door sounded again and I heard stomping. Normally by now, Mr. Hikari would have called out a greeting. When I opened my eyes, the four reasons he hadn’t, stood within arm’s reach.
The thug in front of me smiled, exposing canines crowned in gold. Ricky Wong was the resident Street King, and being from the most affluent suburbs of Melbourne, his thugs were often decked out in the finest that money—or in this case, dentistry—could buy.
Mr. Hikari came up beside me. “Can I help you, gentlemen?” I tried to reach out for him, but he stepped around me. When I turned to locate Viktor, he had melted into the aisle beside the hessian sacks and watering cans. If it came down to it, I swear to God I would drag him out and throw him at them if I had to.
Along with his golden teeth, the main thug had the pudgy, round face of a child, but his sparse facial growth jarred with that image. He rested his elbows on the counter. His black, jaw-length hair fell forward and he watched Mr. Hikari through a curtain of it.
“Mr. Wong wants to know if you’ve reconsidered his offer of assistance.” His voice was sharp, almost pleasant. If he wasn’t leaning on my boss I would have said it was nice.
Mr. Hikari shook his head. “I’m sorry, boys. I’ve told you I don’t need any of your help. Tell Ricky I appreciate his concern. If I have any problems I’ll call the Academy.”
Mum would have called it idealistic stupidity. Unfortunately, in this instance, I had to agree. There were just some folks who thought they could save the world through the goodness of their actions. Dad had been one of those people and they’d killed him for it.
“Oh yeah?” Pudgy Face said. He straightened up from his slouch. “How do you explain that big sign on the roof of your building?”
Uh oh. A couple of months ago, I’d spray-painted the Spectra symbol on the roof of the shop as a message that the building was under Spectra’s protection. The problem was that I now had a curfew. Besides last night’s faux sighting, Spectra hadn’t been spotted in months.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mr. Hikari said.
Pudgy Face’s top lip curled. Not good. I let my mind sweep across their consciousnesses. Two Basics, a Whisper, and an esper. I ignored the first three and expanded my probe to glide against the esper’s shield. The orange of his puffy snow jacket reflected the yellow tones of his skin. It made the whites of his eyes the colour of light cheese. His shield wobbled precariously as I brushed against it. I’d ne
ver felt anything as flimsy before in my life. Not from any esper I’d ever encountered.
I was hit with a sudden impression that I knew him, or at least his mind, from somewhere. My eyes were physically glued to his face as my mind circled around, inspecting his shield.
Feathering my telepathy across his shield, I tried to glean information from his peripheral thoughts. It was an intangible intrusion. Something I’d done a million times before without being detected. Yet somehow, the thug turned his head.
He peered around the store as though something had caught his attention. Eventually, his gaze settled on me. Those yellow-stained eyes peered right at me. Pretending to flinch, I swayed innocently on the balls of my feet. I let my chin drop onto my chest, eyes cast down in submission. At the same time, my mind reeled with contingencies.
At times like these, I really wished that I was an Enforcer. With a single thought I could compel them to leave and they’d never even know it had happened. The one problem with being an offensive esper was that I could never hide anything. And there I went again forgetting that I wasn’t an esper at all.
“You think Ricky’s going to believe that you have a gigantic Spectra symbol on your building and you don’t know a thing about it?” Pudgy Face said. He took a step forward, looming over Mr. Hikari. One more step and I would have to intervene.
The phone rang and I jumped. Pudgy Face gave me that thousand-dollar golden grin again. Curling his arm over the counter, he picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
Sometimes the regulars would phone in their orders and we’d pack it up ready for them to pick up. Judging by the way the thug’s eyebrows knitted together, I didn’t think it was one of those calls. “Who the hell is Willow?”
Whoever it was on the other line kept talking and Pudgy Face continued to listen. The longer the conversation continued, the slacker his expression became. Colour me shocked when he pulled the receiver from his ear and held it out to me. “She wants to talk to you.”
I hopped over the bucket, forgot about the puddle of water I had been trying to mop up, and skidded to the left. My arm reached out and caught hold of the nearest solid thing which happened to be the esper’s wrist. He went rigid but didn’t try to fling me off.
