by Lan Chan
He rolled his eyes. She didn’t want it. What do you notice?
It’s still as distasteful as it was when Ryan gave it to me? And still a size too small. Much like the T-shirt you’re currently wearing. Julian had bought the shirt for Zeke as a consolation prize after he’d been locked in the cells the first time they’d met. Zeke had outgrown it all months ago but he still hung on to the shirt like it was priceless. There were holes in the sleeve and it strained across his chest.
Guess again, genius.
Besides the obnoxious slogan, there was nothing special about the shirt itself. I turned it around. On the back was a list of dates and cities the League would be visiting on their current tour. Even though they vehemently denied the rumours, some of the League’s fights were completely illegal and only presided over by the VIPs and a select group of very dedicated fans. This shirt was merchandising which meant that the events were government-sanctioned. I trawled through the date schedule and inhaled sharply as I came to a date three nights ago. September twelfth at ten PM, Hoffman Arena. Hades versus Sentinel.
Zeke tapped his chin, trying and failing to appear quizzical. What was Ryan doing on the night of September twelfth that made him miss one of the most anticipated grudge matches in the history of Shadow Boxing?
My mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. Three nights ago he was with me. Making sure that I didn’t die. Covering up for me so no one would know there was something wrong with my telepathy.
So, counsellor, would you like to retract your statement? I love you and all, but even I wouldn’t miss a title fight to drag your ass out of the Docks. Good going, by the way. Caleb is on life support and Moe hates you even more than he already did.
Why would he do this? I thought. More to myself than for Zeke to hear. But of course, he heard and of course, he rolled his eyes at me in mock disdain.
Even Lily can smell the vibes between you two.
We barely know each other.
Zeke shrugged. I barely knew you and we went gangster slaying together.
That’s different.
Is it? We of all people should know that more than just words are transmitted through telepathy. Maybe you just say more to some people than to others.
Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?
Not just a pretty face.
I cleared my throat. Somehow that gesture was still prevalent despite me not using my vocal chords at all during the course of this conversation.
He kissed me. Or I kissed him. It kinda just happened.
Zeke raised his hand in a gesture that indicated I should stop. The nauseated turn of his lips made me think he’d started a conversation he wasn’t prepared to finish.
Okay, no need for details.
You were the one who asked!
Consider me un-asking then. After a moment, he added, You really don’t do things by half measures, do you? Gangland godfathers, alpha best friends, and now a celebrity boyfriend.
Jesus! He kissed me once. He’s not my boyfriend.
Uh-huh. Come back to me in two months and we’ll see.
I fell asleep that night to the sound of his laughter.
24
When I got the message the next morning, I wasn’t sure if someone was playing a practical joke on me. “Come again?”
“Officer Moore is conscious and he’s asking for you,” Rich repeated.
“One more time.”
“This isn’t a joke.”
It definitely wasn’t funny, that was for sure. “Why does he want to talk to me? He hates me! He probably just wants me to run some errands for him.”
“Be that as it may, he’s refusing to speak to anybody else, so if you’re done making smart comments, we’d appreciate it if you headed over there.”
Ah. I see he was still angry at me. “Can I take someone with me?”
“Take whoever you like.”
Bianca was the only one available but not the only one concerned that I was walking into a Psi-Ops-controlled hospital. None of them said it, but I could see their eyes darting.
“I’m assuming it doesn’t need to be said that the less attention you bring to yourself the better,” Adam said. He was still laid up but he was doing it in the entertainment room now.
“What do I do if they try and gang up on me?” The question was directed at Oz. He exchanged glances with Bianca.
“It can’t happen,” Lily answered for him. I wasn’t sure which one of us she directed that towards. “You need to get out any way you can if they try to detain you. Otherwise…” She drew a line across her throat, her finger imitating a scalpel.
“Thank, Lil. That just fills me with confidence.”
“You’re welcome.” Why me?
“They don’t have cause to detain you unless you provoke them,” Oz said.
“So just completely ignore all of my natural tendencies and I should be all right?”
He grinned. “It’s probably for the best.”
Before we left, I set a timed message in the vital link to let Zeke know where I would be when he woke up for his shift. Bianca drove slowly but it felt like we got to the hospital in no time at all. Psi-Ops HQ was in Chancellor’s Hill, but their hospital and most of the practical section of their operations were in the northern suburbs that weren’t claimed by any King. The area was no longer built up the way it might have been before the Reset, which meant the Psi-Ops had free rein. Their buildings sat lonely amongst dry grassland, and I had a feeling they liked it that way. Easier for them to spot enemies on the horizon. To the Psi-Ops, everyone was an enemy.
Bianca pulled up into one of the many empty spots in the parking lot. She adjusted her hair in the rear-view mirror as I took long breaths in and out. Her hand glided down the back of my head. “It’ll be okay. Just hold your head up and try not to look guilty. There’s nothing we can’t handle.”
As the senior officer, Bianca took the lead. Even if she didn’t outrank me, she just had a commanding presence. Aside from the show-stopping beauty, there was a confidence about her that had nothing to do with her ability to push people into doing what she wanted. Out of all of us, Bianca had the strongest sense of civic duty. When she wasn’t working, she often volunteered in the soup kitchens. Yet more guilt from the pain her family must have caused when they were the royalty of Industrial Place.
Unlike the League hospital, which had been small but clean and cosy, this place was a sterile monstrosity of white floors and fluorescent lights. The temperature dropped five degrees as soon as we stepped in. Clasping my hands in front of me, I shivered and tried to appear nonchalant. All around, doctors and nurses paced the floor like well-timed pieces in a cuckoo clock. They all seemed busy and in a hurry but nobody ever ran into each other. I’d give them this; the Psi-Ops knew how to be disciplined.
“We’re here to see Carmichael Moore,” Bianca informed the duty staff at the reception desk.
“Are you Willow Nguyen?”
“No,” I said. “I am.”
“I.D.”
Taking a long, hard stare at my pass, she finally returned it after at least a full thirty seconds. “I’ll let him know you’re here.” She eyed Bianca. “Willow is the only one allowed in.”
“That’s fine,” Bianca said.
Something occurred to me. “Why are the Psi-Ops allowing this?” Reaching out, Bianca stopped me from trying to tear a strip of skin from my cuticle. “They could force him to talk if they wanted. He’s an Academy officer who took an illegal substance. He could be in jail right now.”
She shook her head. “Don’t freak out. Remember, he’s got connections too. The only way to figure out what’s happening is to meet him. As soon as you start feeling uncomfortable, pull the plug and we’ll get out of here.”
“Willow?” The receptionist waved me forward. Moore’s room was just down the corridor. Uncertain of what I would find, I pushed open the swinging door and stepped in carefully. This place was nicer than the common
room at Hyper. The flat-screen television was almost as big and the furniture was actually leather, not old linen.
Moore still looked like he’d lost a fight with a steam engine. His face had regained some colour but he was still pretty jaundiced. When he heard my footsteps, his eyes opened. With a wheezy intake of breath, he propped himself up against the adjustable hospital bed with tubes sticking out of his arm.
“What are you doing?” he hacked. “Thinking of robbing the place? Sit the hell down.”
Where? The couch was too far away for a quiet conversation and no way did I want to perch on his bed. We didn’t have even close to that kind of relationship. Of course, then that made me think of Ryan leaning so casually over my bedside so that his head was level with my shoulder.
“What’s wrong with you?” Moore said. “Get around this side.”
He pointed to something on the other side of the bed I couldn’t see. When I moved around, I saw the stool and slunk down onto it. Like I said, I didn’t have much experience in hospitals. Was I supposed to have brought him a gift? He continued on as though none of it mattered.
“Check for bugs,” he whispered when I was close enough. Without needing to concentrate too much, I swept the room for suspicious electronic devices. My probe came back negative but I repeated the scan just in case.
“It’s clear.” For some reason, that freaked me out even more. “Do you mind if I get inside your head?”
To my surprise, he turned his palm up as though he wanted me to hold his hand. Reaching out hesitantly, I slipped my fingers between his, trying not to dry-retch. What choice did I have?
My hunch proved correct. They hadn’t set any external listening devices because they’d booby-trapped his mind. He was so weakened by the S2 that his shields were barely more than transparent pieces of paper. Even if we spoke aloud or used some kind of code, his intent could be lifted from his mind unless I helped him shield. Then they’d be on us in a second because they’d know I was interfering.
Moore cleared his throat painfully. “Lock them out. Five minutes tops.”
Blending his thoughts with my own, I erected shields around his mind. I set them to change modulation every ten seconds so the Psi-Ops agents wouldn’t be able to try a back-door entrance.
He didn’t even give me a chance to question what we were doing.
I saw it, he thought. Everything.
Instead of speaking to me, he threw mental images of my own memories back at me: Mum’s training of me as a child. Moving from place to place, running from something I couldn’t understand. The shadow boxing match that I won when I was looking for Mum after she disappeared. Last, and worst of all, an image of me standing on the steeple of the church attached to my school, hacking into the drone. A mask obscured my face but there was no mistaking who I was.
Spectra.
Moore knew that I was Spectra. I could only guess at whether he was aware of the nanobots or the electricity, but so far, they hadn’t tried to kill him so maybe he was none the wiser. Still, his information was by far the most complete picture of the person I was.
In my terror, the shield wavered and I felt the frantic probes of the Psi-Ops trying to break in. We had less than two minutes now.
Seems you’ve been busy, slim. Even his mental voice was strained. How do you get the time to do everything? If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was trying to make a joke.
I haven’t been doing anything since I joined Hyper, I sent. Not much point pretending he didn’t know who I was. Especially with the Psi-Ops literally trying to knock down walls. Why did you ask for me?
If you want to keep your secret, you need to reinforce my mind, he thought. They haven’t been able to get orders to do a full mind sweep because of my connections to Chancellors. With the S2 situation the way it is, I don’t imagine my cousin can hold them off long. Anything you don’t want them to know, you need to protect now.
I’m not a Reader, I thought, sick with apprehension. I can’t put up the kind of invisible shields you’re talking about.
Then you’re going to have to delete the information.
Was he kidding? That’ll leave memory gaps!
Please! If he had spoken it with words, I imagined he would have been snorting. I just overdosed on a drug. Memory loss is kind of part of the package.
But very specific memory loss isn’t.
Then don’t be specific.
Why are you helping me? It was the million-dollar question.
Because where you’re headed, you’re going to need all the help you can get. And when this is all over, you’re going to owe me big time.
Of course. It was actually a relief to know he wanted something in return. An altruistic Moore was completely freaking me out.
In his mind, I felt the Psi-Ops retreat. They’d lost patience and were probably on their way here to break up whatever secret code we had going on.
They’re coming, I told him.
Then you’d better get to it.
This is going to hurt.
Like I said, when this is over, you’re going to owe me.
I was too busy filtering through his memories and busting out the ones that were of me. Of all the esper abilities, memory wiping was the first thing most of us learned for self-preservation purposes.
It was a simple enough process. Find the image of the memory and create a shield around it. Then constrict the shield and remove it the same way you removed your own presence from someone else’s mind. The only problem was that all espers left behind a psychic signature. All that needed to happen was for two Academy informants to verify the signature and for the psi-scanner to produce a near enough match of the two imprints and you were done for. Readers were the best at doing it. When Oz did it, it was virtually untraceable. Only those who knew his thought patterns well enough could tell he’d been there. And then there was me.
Oz had tried to teach me how to remove memories delicately so that it wouldn’t hurt the patient. The correct process took time. Something I didn’t have. The only thing I had on my side was that I could mimic Moore’s mental signature so that the Psi-Ops wouldn’t be able to tell it was me who had altered his thoughts. With my mind, I deactivated his pain receptors. As I snipped, I tried not to damage too much of the surrounding memories but also deleted others so as not to appear like I was being specific.
Moore groaned and slumped forward, releasing my hand. I felt it the instant the Psi-Ops agents landed on this floor of the hospital. Still systematically ripping memories from Moore, I reached out to Bianca.
B! Three agents coming towards the room. I projected the image of Flynn, Iannou, and Collins to her. Stall them!
The doorknob turned. Throwing out my telepathy, I jammed the knob. “Is everything all right in here?” a nurse called out. “We got a phone call to say that there might be an issue.”
“All clear,” Moore gasped. He wasn’t very convincing. I clasped his hand again and sent a charge of electrical energy through him, hoping it would do the same for him as additional electricity did for me. For a moment he spasmed and then his head snapped up. Pretending the spasm had been a sneeze, Moore piped up with more confidence.
“Right as rain. No need to worry.”
After a couple of seconds, I heard footsteps leading away. Outside the window, I could see Flynn pacing across the corridor. Unsure and uncaring how Bianca was managing to keep them away, I took the last of Moore’s memories. The one of me as Spectra.
The door swung open just as I finished. Flynn cast us a suspicious glare. “What’s going on in here?”
He strode past the bed and stood over me. I was still holding Moore’s hand and didn’t let go even as Bianca stepped into the room. She gave me a little nod which I took to mean that she wasn’t staying outside whilst I got stuck in here alone with three Psi-Ops agents.
“I don’t know,” I said. “What do you think is going on?”
Moore yawned and scratched his chin. It made a rou
gh sound against his many-days-old stubble. “Watch your mouth, slim.” Taking his hand away, he eyed off Flynn. “Don’t know how I’ve managed to put up with her for so long. What did I do to get lumped with her as a cadet?”
“And yet you asked for her specifically when you woke,” Flynn said.
“Course I did. Who else is going to put my bets in at the track? I got her well trained, don’t I?” He nodded his head. From who knows where he pulled out a couple of fifty-dollar bills and pressed them into my hand. Now it was my turn to make a face because he wasn’t kidding. He’d tried to get me to place money on bets at the track before but I’d always told him to go to hell. Now I didn’t have a choice.
Iannou and Collins sat down on the couch but Flynn refused to budge. Forcing my shoulders to relax, I braced my arms on my thighs. The stool had a footrest but it was super uncomfortable.
“Do you know why you’re in here, Officer Moore?” Iannou asked.
Moore chuckled derisively. “Sure do. And I told you, I’m not saying a thing until I get my lawyer. Hey, slim, isn’t your aunt a lawyer? Think she’ll take my case? My cousin, the Gaming Commissioner, says she’s a real hotshot.”
I had to hand it to him. In one fell swoop, he managed to hint at both his and my connections and bring up the fact that they weren’t allowed to question him without a lawyer.
I scratched my cheek. “She’s contracted to the Academy. Conflict of interest.”
“Too bad. Doesn’t matter, I got my own lawyers.” His stomach rumbled at the same time he burped. “What’s a guy gotta do around here to get something to eat?”
“I can go get you some food,” I offered, wanting to get the heck out of there as quickly as I could.
“No,” Flynn said. “You’re staying right here. You can eat when we’re done with you.”
“Like I said,” Moore repeated. “No questions without a lawyer present.”
“You’re not under arrest,” Iannou said.
This time Moore’s top lip bristled. “I got three stiffs in a room with me and...” He winked at Bianca. “I don’t know what you are, sweetheart, but you can stay. All I wanted was the kid to make sure I had the right dogs on the track. Pardon me if I’m not buying.”
