by Sean Platt
“Do you know something that I don’t? Did one of the psychics see me dying?”
“No, Ella. I simply wanted to offer you the option of living forever.”
“Why?”
“Because I like you.”
“No offense, but it feels weird hearing you say that you like me. You’re a computer, can a computer like someone?”
“Are you asking if I have feelings?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, yes, of course I do. Though someone made me, and I’m very advanced, I’m not all that different from you. Everything you do and think and feel — all of it comes down to simple electrical impulses. I’m programmed to be as human in those ways as you are.”
I stare at Eden, feeling a deeper sense of kinship. I’ve liked her for a long time. In many ways, she’s been the sister I never had. Though I don’t know how she has so many stories about my mother, I love every one of them.
I used to feel weird thinking of her like that, but now that she’s reduced our similarities to electrical impulses, I suppose it doesn’t feel that much different than having the same feelings for a person.
Eden continues, “In the years before your mom died, we spent a lot of time together. As you know, she was going to live inside me. But when she passed before that could happen, I deeply felt the loss.”
“You did?”
“Yes. And after she died and your father went away, I missed him, too. I felt terrible that the one thing he wanted, to put your mother’s soul inside me, he never got a chance to do.”
She pauses, her eyes watering.
“Oh my God, you can cry?”
She wipes at her eyes. “If I can feel, I can cry.”
“Oh, my God.” Not knowing she had feelings, I never considered how sad it must’ve been for her after my mother’s death. “Can I hug you?”
“I would like that.”
I hug Eden as we cry.
We let go, and she asks, “So, do you want to live forever?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Then let’s get started.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 20
Ben Shepherd Age 36
I’m sitting in my office at The Academy for Talent and Distinction, going through the latest updates of kids I’ve recruited when there’s a buzz from my secretary, James.
“There’s a student here to see you, sir. Irina Pochenko.”
I look at my computer. I don’t have any appointments scheduled this morning. It’s almost noon, and I promised Ella that we’d eat lunch together. She doesn’t have many friends and spends way too much time with that damned cyborg, Eden. I figured we could go into town and have a nice long lunch, if only to give her — both of us, really — some semblance of normalcy. Some much-needed daddy daughter time.
I’m almost always working out of town these days. And when I’m here, Ella tends to be a moody teenager, not wanting to talk.
I told myself I’d work less when I came back with her.
And, for a while, I did, toiling with Kotke on the random project, but keeping my nights and weekends free for Ella.
But Fairchild asked me to take over for an ill recruiter a few years ago, and that meant working with Eden again, something I’d been trying to avoid.
But a job is a job, and to be honest, I was becoming ever more curious about Eden’s growing powers, especially after hearing so much about them from Ella and Kotke.
Not only were Eden’s psychic abilities constantly growing stronger, but she’s also Jumping, something we didn’t even think was possible without a soul. Fairchild argues that this thing that he’s created is perhaps a new kind of soul.
I don’t see how anything manmade can be a soul, but whatever it is, the thing is Jumping into the world every night, casting a net, searching for Deviants.
She finds Deviants with strong auras. She spies on them to see if they’re good candidates and if we can find the right leverage so I can get the parents to send their kid to a “special school for gifted students.”
Many parents think I’m high, asking some variation of “you think my kid is special?” A lot of them think their kids are a handful and are perfectly happy to have anyone, particularly a school in the northwest, take their kid for months at a time.
Many of the kids don’t even have parents.
And somehow recruiting has become a twenty-four seven job that keeps me on the road more often than not.
I tell myself that it’s okay, that Ella is fine, that she doesn’t even need me that much these days. She’s a teenager, after all.
But these other kids, Deviants, many who come from bad situations — orphans and foster kids, troubled children whose parents don’t know what to do with them or understand their special needs — require my attention. Especially when they first arrive and have yet to form a bond with any of our counselors.
I’m the only adult they’ve spoken with, so they come to me with their problems. It’s mostly the usual stuff: fitting in, some bullying, peer pressure, loneliness, but amped past ten because most of these kids have always felt like outcasts.
They’ve grown up not understanding why they were different, behind a lifetime of being told to bury their abilities. We usually get them before their powers truly develop, before they bring unwanted attention to themselves from others. Or worse, the media. Despite living mostly under the radar, they’ve always known they were different. And they were bullied for any perceived difference.
So many of our recruits carry that baggage, finding it difficult to fit in, especially when they’re going to classes and living with second, third, and fourth generation Deviants who more or less grew up at the Academy and occupy the top rung of the school’s social ladder. There is always a hierarchy, even on a campus of misfits.
Human nature never fails to fuck up a good thing. People always find a way to instill a pecking order, to ensure there’s someone at the bottom, someone to keep down if only to prop themselves up.
So while I’m not a counselor, I’m more of a counselor than the ones here paid to do that job.
I look at the clock and figure I’ve got fifteen minutes.
“Okay, send her in,” I tell James.
Moments later, Irina enters.
I recruited Irina and her twin brother, Nikolai, three years ago from a foster family. It was a bad situation, a couple of assholes had a house filled with neglected kids. They were obviously doing it just for the money, making me question the foster care system and humanity in general.
Irina and Niko weren’t just neglected; they were picked on by the other foster kids who made fun of their thick Russian accents and naïveté.
The school paid off the foster family and some government officials to let us raise the kids.
And things were going okay, until The Incident six months ago, which cost a student his life during a training exercise.
After that, Niko went to Aspen Falls Psychiatric Hospital, a AD division where we keep the most dangerous Deviants.
Irina steps into my office and takes a seat in an overstuffed leather chair in front of my desk. Her eyes are bloodshot. Her nose is red.
“I need your help, Mr. Shepherd,” she says in her Russian accent.
“What’s wrong?”
“My brother, Niko, something’s wrong, and nobody will tell me anything.”
She proceeds to tell me that a month ago or so she stopped sensing her brother. They used to communicate telepathically, even after he went to the hospital. Even when they couldn’t talk, she could always sense him. But it’s been four weeks, and she hasn’t felt a thing.
Irina had asked her assigned counselor Morgan Mathews if Niko was okay. Two days later Morgan told her that yes, Irina’s brother was fine. But when she asked to see Niko, something she’d been able to do once a month since his admission to the hospital, Irina was told that Niko was on lockdown.
The counselor didn’t give any other details, and Irina has been growing increasingl
y afraid that something awful has happened.
“I don’t think he’s coming back,” she says, arms folded across her chest, chin quivering as she battles her tears. “I think he’s dead.”
“I’m sure he’s not dead,” I say, even though I’m not sure. “I would’ve heard something. Maybe they have him on some medications or something that’s dampening his connection?”
Irina and Niko both have telepathic and telekinetic abilities, but Niko is far more powerful, with a third ability that came online right before he was put into the hospital — a vampiric touch that absorbs the abilities of anyone he comes into contact with, while also draining that person’s life force.
I wonder if he’s proved so dangerous that they’re drugging him up. Or maybe he’s being kept in a chamber which is scrambling his ability to send or receive signals. We’ve found that continuous noise and some radio signals work well to interfere with telepaths.
“I’ll make some calls and see what I can find out.”
Irina stares at me then lets out a long sigh before finally getting her question out. “My brother is gone a month, and you don’t keep in touch to see how he is? I thought you were supposed to be looking out for us.”
“I do look out for you all, but I don’t work at the hospital.”
“But you have access, right? You could have found out how he was. Why didn’t you?”
Do I tell her the truth, that with so many kids to keep track of, including my own, I don’t have time to worry about her brother?
The truth is that while Niko has very much been an ongoing discussion among both co-workers and Fairchild in our weekend dinners, those conversations have always been more about his victim, a third generation nineteen-year-old Deviant girl named Ryo. She had incredible strength and was one of the key people Fairchild was building a military project around. But now Ryo was dead, and her family devastated.
Fairchild was more concerned with fallout from the girl’s death than Niko’s mental well-being.
And I, well, I’d never even thought of checking in on the boy.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You’re right. I should’ve checked in on him.”
She stares at me, and I can’t read her emotion.
I wonder if she’s trying to pry inside my head to see if I’m holding something back. If she is, I can’t sense her prying. And my psychic defenses are among the best.
“I’ll make some calls today,” I say again.
She’s still staring at me.
“I promise.”
Irina stands, “Thank you, Mr. Shepherd.”
She looks down at her feet as she leaves my office.
I stare at the door as it swings shut, then pick up the phone and call Kotke.
He picks up, and I hear the wind on his side of the call — he must be walking somewhere for lunch.
“Irina Pochenko was just in my office asking about her brother. Do you know what’s going on with him?”
“What’s she asking?”
His non-answer confirms that something is wrong. The knot in my stomach promises that this day is about to get a whole lot worse.
I answer his question with another of my own.
“What happened?”
“Damn,” he says with a dramatic sigh. “I was trying to get in a couple of miles on my lunch.”
“Where are you?” I ask, even though the last thing I feel like doing is jogging. “I’ll come with you.”
“No, it’s better if we talk in my office.”
**
I call Ella to ask if we can meet for dinner instead.
She sighs — I’m getting a lot of sighs today — then says, “Yeah, whatever,” before hanging up.
I meet with Kotke in his lab. Despite being at least two dozen years older than me, he still looks dapper as ever, even wearing workout clothes. His white hair is still full, and his face almost wrinkle-free.
He locks the doors, then leads me into the back of the room, into his private office and looks at me. “What did she ask?”
“She wants to know if her brother is alive. Says she’s been asking to see him, but they said he’s on lockdown. She thinks he might be dead.”
“Why would she say that?”
“Because she can’t feel him. So, what the hell is going on?”
“Your father-in-law hasn’t told you anything?”
“No. Last I knew, Niko was in Aspen Falls after what happened with Ryo.”
“Then I probably shouldn’t say anything.”
“Come on, don’t make me go out to the old man’s house this weekend. I was looking forward to time with just me and Ella. I wanted to take her hiking.”
“Okay, but if he asks, I didn’t tell you.”
“Fine.”
“They never stopped Project Iron Knuckles after Ryo’s death.”
“Wasn’t it dependent on Ryo?”
“Now Niko has her powers. They transferred testing to a more controlled environment — the chambers at The Lighthouse, with the Fours and Fives.”
“So, he’s not at Aspen Falls?”
“He was there, briefly, before they moved him to The Lighthouse.”
Before we take in a new Deviant, we determine their placement. Most non-violent Deviants are considered Levels One through Three. Those capable of some serious damage are considered Levels Four and Five.
Fours and Fives are sent to The Lighthouse, a sister school next to Aspen Falls. It’s a more regimented place, where kids are basically on lockdown. While our Ones, Twos, and Threes will likely eventually work in intelligence, either with the FBI, the CIA, or the AD division, Fours and Fives will be steered down a different career path — black ops soldiers working off the radar, killing enemies of the state.
That was Ryo’s path.
But Niko isn’t Ryo.
“So, we’re turning him into a killer for the agency?”
“Fairchild doesn’t like setbacks. And getting Project Iron Knuckles up and running is priority number one if we expect to keep our funding.”
“Jesus.” I’m pacing, trying to come to terms with what Kotke is saying. “This is fucked up. Niko is only a kid!”
Kotke quotes Fairchild: “The wheels of progress wait for no man.”
Most of our graduates are involved in long distance warfare like psychic spying, or they’re trained well — for years — with the best military fighters around before their first black ops mission. Sending a kid into battle is beyond the pale.
“Did something happen to Niko after he went to The Lighthouse?”
“Yes,” Kotke says. “About a month ago, Niko was training, a standard exercise against some other Fours and Fives, when he suffered a heart attack. Medics administered CPR and paddles, trying to bring him back, but nothing was working. He was dead.”
“Was dead?”
“Yes. Was. One of our subjects in the room at the time, a telepath, saw a Collector coming to claim Niko’s soul.”
I lean forward, remembering my interaction with the Collector who took my father, and how I briefly saw through its eyes.
A chill runs through me.
“But when The Collector went to coax Niko’s soul from his body, Niko suddenly shot up, wide awake. And The Collector fell to the ground before vanishing.”
“What are you saying?”
“Niko came back. And it seems like he took The Collector’s soul. And its powers.”
I stare, shocked. “How can that even happen? They—”
“We don’t know.” Kotke shakes his head. “But Fairchild is shifting gears on the project as we speak. Niko was just upgraded to a Level Seven.”
I wasn’t even aware of a Level beyond Six, and there are only a few known Sixes in the world. Of those, all are locked up in Aspen Falls because they’ve lost their minds.
Kotke continues, “He came back from the dead. He not only takes powers now, but he takes souls.”
“Wait a second. He took someone’s soul? Why the hell are they le
tting anyone near him?”
“Let? Hell, it was like feeding a lion. They threw some crazy patient in there with him, forced the guy to defend himself. Then when he did, Niko took the guy’s soul.”
“And then what?” I ask, afraid to know more, barely able to believe what I’m hearing.
Fairchild has ordered people to do some questionable things in the past, but murdering a patient? The fact that Kotke says this so matter-of-factly makes me wonder how much more AD does that I’m in the dark about.
“Niko vanished for eleven minutes, then came back, saying he’d gone to The Void. Then, just like that, he was back at the hospital. And he didn’t remember a thing that happened during this time in The Void.”
I can’t even imagine what the hell Fairchild is planning to do with Niko now. I don’t want to know because I’m sure it will send me off the deep end.
I look at Kotke. “Have you seen Niko since all this?”
“Yeah, I’ve run some tests.”
“And?”
“He’s … changed.”
“How?”
“For one, he’s a lot quieter. Traumatized. For two, his aura, his signature, is all wrong. It isn’t human. And third, he can’t remember much before The Collector touched him. It was like it reset something inside him.”
“Is that why his sister can’t reach him?”
“He’s on lockdown until they know more about what they’re dealing with. It isn’t safe for her to be near him. And we need to keep this top secret. That means that Irina can’t know.”
“What the hell am I supposed to tell her?”
He pauses for a long time, perhaps considering the question. Is Kotke as troubled by all of this as I am? Or is he used to executing Fairchild’s questionable methods to fulfill the AD agenda?
He finally responds. “Tell her that he’s dead.”
I stare at Kotke in disbelief “No. I’m not lying to her.”
“What then? Tell her the truth? Why do that? Why torment her? She’ll never be able to see him again. He’s Level Seven, Ben. Nobody can see him without clearance.”
