Whisper: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Novel (Spectra Book 3)

by Lan Chan

  Rich shook his head. “They’ll never get Shadowman to go along with it.”

  “That’s half the problem. They think the Shadowman is behind it all. They think he’s trying to create espers so he can make a push for the territory just under City Square and around the Docks. Moe is spitting fire and threatening to shut down half the wharf. His lieutenants are practically lynching anyone that steps onto his turf.”

  In my dream, I’d been eavesdropping on a Street King meeting. If that dream was real—and I couldn’t see why it wouldn’t be, considering I had almost met the fake me—then it meant that the Kings had been considering action for a while.

  “If you get caught…” Rich said.

  “I won’t. I didn’t the first time, remember? Zeke told on me.”

  And I still haven’t forgiven you for it, I sent Zeke. He answered by punching me on the shoulder.

  “She doesn’t have to entirely do it on her own,” Lily said. “I could tap into the surveillance drones. We could watch her the whole time and I’ll delete the traces afterwards.”

  Bianca bit her bottom lip. “It’s worth a shot.”

  “We still have lives to live,” Adam said.

  “As if you ever sleep,” I countered. He tipped his head and smiled.

  “I don’t like it,” Rich said. “Too much could go wrong.”

  Lily responded by flicking the screen over and showing us the brain scan of yet another Whisper who had suffered from prolonged use of Second Sight. The lesions in the brain almost dwarfed the tissue. “A lot is going wrong already.”

  Rich sighed. I could almost hear him thinking that I wasn’t worth it. That this was too much trouble to go to for one person.

  “I have Sundays free now. Court approved. You can’t control what I do on my time off. If I get caught you can deny knowledge.”

  “I really don’t like this,” Oz said. “But what choice do we have?”

  “The Academy could make an official request for a meeting with the Shadowman,” Lily considered. “Ask him directly whether he’s the source of Second Sight and ask him to stop.”

  Bianca raised a brow. “Do you really think that’s going to help, Lil?”

  Lily tapped her fingers on the table. “He asked for alternative strategies. Not ones that might be plausible.”

  Oz huffed. “It makes you wonder why it’s taken so long for them to decide there are too many chiefs in this city.”

  “Not really. They all kept to their territories. Until Spectra.”

  I almost choked on my own spit. “What’s the supposed to mean?”

  Lily tapped the table again and I equated it to her version of a shrug. “Every King has a limit to his power and influence. But Spectra has no boundaries, and now that she’s been tied to the Shadowman, it’s no wonder the other Kings feel threatened.”

  I placed my hands over my face and sank down onto a dining table. “Oh God. This is all my fault.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Lily said. “Only that Spectra might have been a catalyst for an explosion that would have happened sooner or later. Regardless, that’s not our immediate concern. We need to get a sample of Second Sight.”

  “Not this again,” Rich muttered.

  “I want some Second Sight!” Goodness! She was going to throw a tantrum.

  I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay! If I come across any drugs, I’ll hand them over to you.”

  “It might be too late by then,” Lily said. “Oscar, can you get it from the Psi-Ops evidence lockers?”

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Oz responded. “That place is guarded more closely than a prison.”

  “You could get in if you wanted.”

  “I’m not doing it. Besides, they’ve tested the substances and haven’t come up with anything conclusive other than high amounts of glucose and lactose.”

  It was a lot to have to think about. The way Rich’s face contorted said he was thinking about it pretty hard. In the end, he decided to continue giving the Psi-Ops the benefit of the doubt. When I opened my mouth to protest, he stared me down. “The whole point of you being here is for you to learn that you can’t take the law into your own hands. It’s late. You all need to turn in.”

  Seeing that he wouldn’t be swayed, the others got up with me to disperse. “I want to speak to you, Lily,” Rich said.

  “Not again,” she whined.

  “Again.”

  Casting her a sympathetic glance, Zeke and I left the room. She was staring at the floor with her arms hanging limply at her sides. Poor kid. It must have been hard to constantly be reprimanded when you knew you were right. Sometimes I worried that the restrictions they placed on her would become suffocating. She had the makings of a supervillain if there was such a thing.

  19

  Oz followed us to the dorms. At the top of the staircase where the hallways diverged, he hesitated.

  “I know you’ve been avoiding the subject, but I don’t think we have the luxury of procrastinating anymore.” I knew he was talking about the dream scan. I also knew that I really didn’t want to do it.

  “What if I accidentally lash out at you again?”

  “I’ll try to be as non-threatening as I can.”

  I couldn’t be as blasé about it. “Can Zeke be there?”

  “Whatever makes you feel more comfortable.”

  Sadly, for the next three nights, I didn’t dream. To make matters worse, admin couldn’t find anyone to take over as my mentor on short notice, and surprise, surprise, nobody wanted the wayward esper hanging about while they did their job.

  I was stranded at the Academy. Everybody else was too busy with their work to assign anything to me, so I spent the day being admin’s lackey. Fetching coffee and entering charge sheets into the database was not even slightly stimulating. I was like a hamster in a wheel, constantly running but not actually getting anywhere. It was frustrating as hell.

  Thursday night felt like it was going to be a repeat of every other night when I found myself awake just after midnight. I’d thrown open the covers in my sleep and the breeze that rattled the curtains had woken me.

  “You alright?” Zeke asked from the floor at the foot of my bed. I never even heard him come in anymore.

  “Yeah. Just trying to get comfortable.” It must have worked because before I knew it, my eyelids fluttered. The breeze became steadily stronger and my feet touched down on a hard surface. A womp womp in the skyline caught my attention. Uh oh.

  I stared up at a pair of newly refurbished anti-psi rods. There was only one place in Victoria where these rods were legal and that was Ballarat. To my left, the charred remains of what appeared to be an aeroplane hangar blocked out the near skyline. Big blue letters stood out from the beige paint of the skeleton of the building.

  I didn’t need the complete logo to recognize the simple slogan of Kaur Pharmaceuticals. Was it a coincidence that the country’s number-one pharmaceutical drug company happened to be located so close to where I was standing?

  I took a step forward and almost tripped on a piece of raised earth. When I glanced down, however, it was clear that the earth wasn’t raised so much as that I was standing in a hole. A narrow crevice that looked to have been birthed by something heavy smashing into it. Something like the breastplate of an anti-psi robot.

  Beside me, boots crunched on the sidewalk. I turned to find that I was no longer alone. On either side of me, Zeke and Oz’s figures materialized from thin air. Or thin mind. Whatever the expression was. Dream me, who I was sure now was Fake Spectra, startled but she didn’t seem to be able to pick up their thought signatures. What had caught her attention was the spiral of red light that coursed up the length of the anti-psi rod. She flinched as though in pain and I recognised her reaction from my own experience.

  Before I could get a better grip on my bearings, she was sprinting away. Unlike in the Docks, I had a better concept of the layout of Ballarat. We charged through the field of dusty earth arou
nd the now desolate Hoffman exhibition centre and then through the small stretch of highway until we hit the outskirts of another built-up industrial area.

  Fake Spectra tracked through the darkened streets, keeping to the shadows and using the alleyways as much as possible. She came to the back of a rundown hotel where she climbed up the guttering and swung onto the balcony of the second storey. With light footing, she tracked to the grate of an industrial air-conditioning vent, and deftly pried the grate open, slipping inside. She shimmied her way through the duct until she hit upon a grate that looked down into a dimly lit room.

  For a second, she pressed her ear to the slits and then she shook herself. It was as though she’d forgotten that she was an esper and there was no need for primitive physical straining in order to hear.

  Her mind cast out, and I felt myself being pulled away with it the same way that happened when I piggybacked on one of the probes belonging to the other Hyper agents. Part of the training was about trust. To let another esper lead you without attempting to take control. Even if I wanted to right now, I was nothing more than a voyeur. Believe me, if I could, I’d have taken over her mind completely. The probe she’d sent out was rough. She flinched as it touched upon the shields of the half-dozen people inside the building.

  That was when it hit me. She wasn’t an esper. Whatever telepathic power she was exhibiting, it must be the effects of S2.

  Distantly, I felt Zeke contemplating the same questions. But it was Oz who had gone preternaturally quiet. His presence kept blinking in and out. The tiny part of me that still held on to conscious thought realised that he was attempting to read her from the confines of my mind. The problem was that I wasn’t in control of anything that happened, and at such a distance, even his ample powers couldn’t connect.

  Fake Spectra very crudely skimmed the thoughts of the men in the room and unfortunately came up against static. She clucked her tongue in disapproval and then removed a metallic device from the pocket of her bomber jacket. Even in my dream state, I was shocked at the appearance of the eavesdropping device.

  The tech was invented by a company called Lennox Inc. for the use of military intelligence. It was popular for a time until telepathy rendered it ineffectual. The tech was now defunct but that didn’t mean it was allowed. The model she held up to the window went back at least five decades. It was hard to imagine who still had access to that kind of outdated technology.

  As she switched the dial on the receiver to block out surrounding noise and the first strains of tight voices spoke in my ear, a tiny spark of an idea ignited in my mind. The Psi-Ops had a storage facility which housed tech that they used for teaching purposes. I was willing to bet that this device came from there. Did that mean Fake Spectra was a Psi-Ops agent? Or was she channelling me in more ways than one and broken into the facility?

  “Are you sure you weren’t followed?” a gruff male voice said down below.

  “Can’t be sure of anything anymore,” another, distinctly feminine voice said. It was a familiar voice, one I might have been able to pick out sooner had I been in control.

  “How many cases came through?” Gabe said. My chest constricted so that I thought I wouldn’t be able to breathe. Zeke’s consciousness blinked into my peripheral, eager to catch every word.

  “Only three,” the woman said. Gabe hissed and walked into our line of sight. The grate allowed me a glimpse of his ochre-coloured hair gone slightly grey at the temples. The forest green of his flannel shirt was cut into ribbons by the slats of the grate.

  “And it was just left there?” Gabe said. “Out in the open?”

  “Yep.” The woman walked up to his side and the added visual aid allowed me to identify her. She had impish blonde hair and sharp Slavic features. Selina Novak, the only other alpha-level Enforcer, besides Bianca, that I knew of in the city. She was also chief bodyguard to Claudia Di Grassi, the Street Queen of Industry Place. Did Claudia know Novak and Gabe were in cahoots?

  Selina moved around the box at the centre of the room, her steps light. She reminded me of a she-wolf circling its prey. Fake Spectra tracked the box like it might grow legs and disappear out of the room. She tensed as Gabe tore open the tape holding the top of the box closed and flipped the cardboard lid. The box rattled and I knew then it was probably full of S2.

  Gabe held up an orange plastic bottle. A tall, lanky, dark-haired man I didn’t know came up beside him. He too reached inside the box for a bottle. Without spending much time examining it, the man picked up the entire box and emptied the contents onto the floor. Dozens of bottles rolled onto the carpet, rattling like the tail end of a snake. Packing foam floated all around like snow. The man then turned the empty box upside down, peering at every surface and every corner as though trying to identify markings.

  A bottle rolled directly below the ceiling grate. I felt the Fake Spectra’s desire to reach out and grab it. There was at least a thousand dollars’ worth of S2 in each bottle. Yet Gabe and his compatriots kicked them aside as they inspected a five-dollar cardboard box.

  It took me a little while to figure out that they were trying to search the box for signs of postal marks or other indications that might lead to figuring out where it came from.

  Finally, Gabe grunted in disgust. “Nothing.”

  “Can we run it through a bio-scanner?” Selina asked. “Surely there’s got to be some kind of physical clues left on there by somebody.”

  “Prints are almost impossible to lift off porous material,” the tall man said. “But we don’t have much choice.”

  “What do we do about the rest of this?” Selina’s arm swept over the bottles on the floor.

  “Get rid of them,” Gabe said. A coil of distress wound tight in Fake Spectra’s chest at the thought of all that S2 going to waste. Her thoughts were so occupied with obtaining the drug that her mind was closed to anything else. Mine wasn’t and neither was Selina’s. Her head snapped up at the same time I felt the brushing of another powerful mind sweeping through the area. A split second later, my esper host breathed in sharply.

  “Company,” Selina snarled. My attention focused on Gabe’s rapid-fire reaction to Selina’s warning. In a heartbeat, he’d drawn his gun, took aim, and was pulling the trigger. Too bad he was facing in the wrong direction. Fake Spectra’s mind constricted with fear as the glass in the window shattered.

  I willed her to slide back away from the air vent and to get the heck out of there but she was frozen with fear. Canisters of tear gas sailed in through the broken window, billowing smoke that eclipsed the view. Darkened shapes moved towards the door that burst open. I heard the staccato rhythm of gunfire and then a pulse vibrated through the Fake Spectra’s mind.

  She blinked once, twice, and then her mind short-circuited. Searing pain coursed through my head. I screamed, only to be awoken by a pair of hands shaking me. Zeke’s familiar aftershave filled my senses, followed by his voice reassuring me.

  My eyelids fluttered. The ache in my head snaked towards the base of my skull. I whimpered and shook. The door to my bedroom flew open. Clutching at my head, I tried to cover my ears to dull the ache.

  Somebody pressed a cool palm to my forehead and then I felt Adam inside my head. His presence acted as a numbing agent, sapping some of the pain.

  It wasn’t until he reached my shield, and the edge of the final image Fake Spectra had thrown at me blurred, that I realised he was distorting my memories to try and get me to disassociate with the pain. It wasn’t an aspect of illusionism that I was aware of but one that I was suddenly grateful for.

  After a few minutes, the pain receded enough that I was able to get a grasp on my breathing. Adam’s hand retracted, though I still felt his residual telepathy.

  “What the hell just happened?” he said aloud.

  Opening my eyes, I saw that he wasn’t the only one to rush in. Rich and Bianca were standing by the door. He was still dressed in his uniform and she was getting ready for her overnight shift, her hair half bra
ided, her shirt hanging loose. Adam stood beside my bed, his arms crossed over his chest.

  Zeke and Oz exchanged a glance but stayed quiet, which I assumed meant they were leaving it up to me to provide some kind of explanation. Cowards.

  I glanced at Rich. “These visions I’ve been having, they’re not dreams. Somehow, I’m tapping into the real-life thoughts of some esper on Second Sight. I’m pretty sure she’s this person going around impersonating Spectra. I see what she sees and what she saw is messed up.”

  I relayed the scene to him and watched as his brows knitted together. It was hard to imagine his expression being anything else these days. He seemed to permanently be scowling. Oz and Zeke confirmed my version of events but very clearly left out one important factor. The assumed outcome of the scene.

  What I’d experienced was very much like the pulsating beat of the anti-psi rods in Ballarat a few months ago. Only on a much larger scale. It could only mean one thing: Someone had set off a psi-detonation device. A very low-scale replication of the electromagnetic pulse that had occurred during the Reset.

  The aim of the device was to immobilize any espers in the vicinity. The last government to claim usage of such a device had been newly reformed Korea. Even the Psi-Ops forbade usage of such a weapon. Which meant that whoever had set it off was operating well outside of the law. An anti-psi pulse wouldn’t affect Gabe in any way, but bullets might. The same ones that I’d seen being fired by at least three assailants who came through the burst door.

  “We need to get out to Ballarat and check out what’s happening.” I followed up that statement by flopping back on the bed exhausted.

  “Agreed,” Adam backed me up.

  “We need to contact the Psi-Ops,” Rich countered.