by Jon Davis
Eventually, I heard a familiar voice ordering the door to be opened. I looked up as Dane Eisenhawk walked in, smiling. He said, “Hello, Vaughn. I’m glad to see you. Being out there alone, despite what your followers may think, can be a terrible thing. Now, perhaps you’re ready to answer a few questions?”
I said, “Ah, sarcasm, such a scarcely used verbal resource these days. Why, that’s right up there with the rare cynic you never see in the world! So, Dr. ‘Eisenhawk,’ what can I do for you?”
Ignoring my own sarcastic comments, Eisenhawk placed a phad on the table. Opening it up, he brought up a video and started it running. I leaned forward to watch what I knew was coming. Scenes from the hospital appeared. Naturally, it was the only place anyone could have gotten information about my powers.
I hadn’t even noticed the cameras as they recorded my fight with Yasmine and Kular. As I watched, I noticed that the editing was superb. Every scene made me look as if I had attacked a bunch of innocent bystanders after I blew up Rao Kular’s office.
The coup de grace, of course, was me tackling Brand. The cameras caught my tackle, and the physical damage that I had caused with my yell of outrage. From there, the view cut to Kular and Brand disappearing in more sparkles of light. The image was clear, but there was no sound; the cameras had no audio recording. Too bad. Whoever saw this would’ve heard what was going on. Because just looking at Yasmine wouldn’t give away the fact that she was a telepathic terrorist.
Watching this, I noticed that there were no images of Dana or BJ. Angela was recorded at times, but she looked like a victim. From the way the video had been edited, it looked as if I had been the one to take her down. After it faded to black, Eisenhawk turned the phad off and leaned forward.
Putting his hands together, he gave me a smug look and said, “Vaughn, this hasn’t gone public. Frankly, I doubt people would understand what appeared on this recording. Perhaps you can explain.”
I looked at him. Then I glanced at the soldiers. Both of them were scared. I could see it in their eyes. Although there hadn’t been any sound to the recordings, I had no doubt that the ‘scientific expert’ sitting across from me had explained what I’d done. Now, after seeing it again, they both were looking at me as though I was a living weapon of mass destruction. So I had to do this next thing very, very carefully.
Nah.
Looking at Eisenhawk, I said, “Yes. You need to talk to a guy named Ian Devonshire. I think he’s the mastermind behind the whole thing. Could you search for him? I don’t think he’s very far away.”
Silence filled the room. Watching Ian Devonshire—a.k.a. Dane Eisenhawk—staring at me with pure shock was…okay, it was fun. His eyes glinted as they flicked between me to the soldiers. His heart began beating a mile a minute.
Then, without turning his head, he said, “Everyone clear the room. I need to talk to the prisoner alone.”
The soldier on my side of the table snapped to attention. I finally noticed the name tag on his outfit, Perez. He said, “Sir! We have orders to guard this prisoner. We can’t leave. You know how dangerous he is.”
Devonshire looked at the two soldiers and seemed to concentrate on them for a moment. His voice was hard as steel when he said, “Clear the room, Lieutenant. Now!”
They left before I could take another breath. The door closed, and I looked at Eisenhawk with admiration. “Dude, I want to be able to do that!”
He smirked and said, “You’d be amazed what authority can do.”
Opening his phad, Devonshire tapped some buttons on the thin screen. With a motion of his head toward the cameras, he said, “There, now we can talk. With a little push of my mind, the soldiers will stay out for a while.”
I laughed ruefully for a second and then let it die, as I glared at him. “So, who does Dana see when she looks at you, Ian? For that matter, who does the government see you as?”
He sat down across from me and sighed. Shaking his head, he pulled out an identification badge—the kind with a magnetic strip on the back—and slid it to me. On it was a picture of a man with deep lines on his face, thinning blond hair, and blue eyes. The name under the picture was ‘Dane Eisenhawk.’
I glanced at him, trying to imagine him as that picture. Yeah, no, I couldn’t see it. I decided to keep thinking of him as Ian and said aloud, “So, Ian. You’re using an ectoplasmic projection?”
He looked surprised and muttered, “I see Dana’s been talking.”
I nodded. “Well, she can’t see through your illusion, but that’s not the point, is it? Why are you doing it? I mean, what are you doing here? Are you gathering intelligence about the Empowered?”
Ian sighed. “No, originally I was just dealing with the fallout from the Day. I had to make certain Alex Shaw was…well, never mind. Once the Empowered appeared, everything else I was doing has gone down on the list of importance.”
I looked at him. “Was Alex one of the ‘New Men’ that made Yasmine so edgy? Did you block her? Because if you blocked her psi-probe, then you should know, she’s really kind of pissed off.”
As I spoke, he looked confused for a moment, mouthing the words ‘New Men.’ Then he chuckled and said, “Oh, wow. She managed to pick up something from me after all.”
I cocked my head. “What did she get from you?”
Ian laughed for a moment and shook his head, saying, “Noumenonii. She got the name of my people. I’m a member of the Noumenonii.”
I mouthed the word silently and then said, “I don’t know that word. What does it mean?”
Ian sat back and looked at me speculatively. For a split-second, I felt something brush across my forehead and then pull away as an image of Angela crossed my mind’s eye. I said, “Just tell me. I don’t need you in my brain, psi-boy.”
With a flash of annoyance on his face, Ian said, “It would’ve been easier to just show you, but the name of what we are is Noumenonii. The word stems from the term ‘Noumenon,’ which means, roughly, ‘of the Mind.’ The term was coined by our people in ancient Greece.”
I nodded. He continued, “The word itself means ‘People of the Mind.’ It’s what I am, Vaughn.”
I nodded. I had figured out that part a while back. But it was nice to know for sure. I said, “And ‘Dane Eisenhawk’? Who, or what, is he?”
Ian chuckled and then said, “There is no Dane Eisenhawk. I created that persona for this mission. The identity has a history that I completely fabricated. It was deep cover enough to allow full access to the resources necessary to fix the problems that Alex Shaw created.”
I stared at him. “Fix the problems? What problems?”
Ian looked away, saying nothing. I could tell he didn’t want to tell me anything. But it didn’t take a genius to figure things out. “You set off the religious nuts, didn’t you? You did it to confuse the effort to do any serious scientific study about him.”
The pseudo scientist snapped his head around to meet my eyes with a hard, angry glare. “No! We didn’t! That wasn’t anything to do with my people! I was assigned here to make sure that Alex didn’t…”
“Making sure he didn’t what? What did you do, man? Come on, tell me!”
Ian sighed. “I had to make sure he wasn’t tracked back to the Noumenonii. We had to be sure that we weren’t compromised by his going public.”
“‘Going public?’” I muttered. I stared at him, understanding. I didn’t like what I just realized. “What the hell, you didn’t help him stop Yama?”
Ian looked down at the table, unable—or unwilling—to meet my eyes, as he said, “No.”
“No, what?” I said through gritted teeth.
For a moment, Ian struggled with his words. There was a conflict going on in his mind. Then his voice turned hard, as he looked up at me and said, “No, I’m not here to answer your questions. This isn’t an interrogation about my actions, Vaughn. This is about you and what is going on in Riverlite! And, most of all, this is about any information you can give me about that damn
telepath, Yasmine!”
I stared at him for a moment; so much for the friendly banter, we’d been having. I said, “No, it doesn’t work that way. Tell me why your people didn’t help Alex. He gave his life to save everyone. What? Were all of you asleep at the time?”
Ian’s hand slammed down on the table. “No! You will tell me what I want to know! Or this little drama goes to the press, along with the fact that you’re under arrest for being a terrorist!”
Uh huh. And that was the other shoe dropping. Except I had my own threats. “Go ahead. I’m sure the very public trial will give me plenty of chances to tell people about Alex’s people. You know, the Noumenonii. After all, I can’t be the only one who’s been wondering about Alex’s origins. And I don’t mean the divine ones that the media is so fond of pushing out to the public.”
I saw that it struck home. Ian started to say something, then closed his mouth. I had him, and he knew it. For some reason, I was immune to his powers, did that mean I was immune to others of his kind as well? I’d probably find out someday.
But right now, I had given Ian notice that we were both on some kind of even ground. Seeing that he understood that point, I decided to give him something that he wanted. I said, “Fine, she is a full-on telepathic terrorist. She can read your thoughts, control people, and she almost single-handedly turned Africa into a two-state continent. Any further questions? Oh, and she wants you dead!”
He said, “What are her plans, Vaughn? You have to know by now. Tell me!”
I leaned forward as I said, “No. You tell me! She tried for weeks to get at this place, and you blocked her out. How? If you had the power to stop her; why didn’t you find out what she was up to, then?”
Ian winced, and then said, “We were able to block her, but the power she has is sufficient to stop any probing. We couldn’t get past her mental shields. You know what she’s up to, so tell me!”
I sat back for a moment, looking at this man. Dana had loved him once. No, she still loved him. So there must have been something good in him. But what they had done to her…
I said, “Answer my question first. Why didn’t you help Alex stop Yama? Why did he have to go it alone? Where were these Noumenonii?”
Ian shook his head. I noticed he tensed up. His voice was tight when he finally answered. “We didn’t know he was alive. We didn’t even know he was here.”
His face was a mix of anger, remorse, and sadness. Something had happened, all right, something that had marked him. I asked, “Did you know Alex?”
He sighed. “I knew of him. It’s a long story.”
I chuckled. “Wow, really? Well, sum it up. You tell me yours, and I’ll tell you mine. How come your people didn’t know he was here?”
He looked at me, hesitant. I knew he wanted to push me on Yasmine. But I needed to know why this psychic based culture hadn’t done anything for my friend. Finally, he relaxed, giving in to the situation, and reached down inside his shirt. He pulled out a silver chain that had a light pink crystal attached.
I cocked my head a little as I said, “That looks familiar.”
Ian snorted and answered, “It should. I’m certain you’ve seen it before. It was found among Alex’s personal items that he left behind.”
Click…that was it. I had first seen it in my sophomore year. Alex and I had gym class together, and I remembered that he had worn that around his neck. Despite the jeers from bullies about it looking ‘faggy,’—their word, not mine—he never took it off. One jerk had even made a grab at it. It was the only time that I had ever seen Alex angry. No one ever touched him after that. The guy who tried to take it recovered after his sprained wrist healed. Yet, Alex had left it behind. Why?
Ian put it back under his shirt. I said, “Cool, so you’re essentially grave robbing. Nice, but not too surprising, given the things I’ve heard about your lot. Alex told me it was his mother’s. So what does this have to do with your inability to keep track of one of your own?”
Ian flinched at the tone of my voice. Yay, I finally got someone to listen to me. But it was in a bad sort of way as he started getting angry. His voice was cold when he spoke. “It’s a psi dampener. His mother created the thing and keyed it to Alex. She…left us. Actually, she ran away. And we never even knew he existed until the night he pulled that aerobraking maneuver with Yama.”
Blink. Blink. I said, “What are you talking about, Ian?”
Ian sighed. “Vaughn, Alex stopped Yama twice. The Day was the second time. But he also did it the night the asteroid first brushed the planet’s atmosphere.”
I looked at him, shocked. For the next few moments, all I could do was stare. All at once, things became clear. The way the asteroid had passed over us, and the reason why the first meteor hadn’t caused as much damage as the scientists had expected; it was all thanks to Alex. And I remembered the ditch in the middle of the road, the ditch with no meteor fragment. To myself, I muttered, “Alex…he crashed there. And he told me he slipped on ice…wow.”
Ian didn’t notice my words. He looked at the crystal for a moment longer and then put it back under his shirt. But I wasn’t finished. Something was wrong with what he had said. The timing—it didn’t make sense.
I said, “Okay, fine. Then why didn’t you help him when the damn thing came back?”
Saying nothing, Ian looked back at the phad. Reaching out to it, he opened up a picture on the screen. I saw that it was Alex. Or rather, this was a very young version of Alex Shaw. A tired looking woman stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders. They were standing in front of a Cessna Turboprop plane.
I looked at him. “What’s this, a family picture? I’ve seen his mother, Claire. Why show me this now?”
For a moment, Ian gazed at the picture. I could see his face through the screen of the phad. With an almost idle tone to his voice, he said, “You have to understand, Vaughn. For centuries, humans have persecuted those with psionic talents, as either witches, or pretending that we simply don’t exist. Religious madmen, politicians, and dictators found us out and saw the Noumenonii as either tools or obstacles to their raw need for power.”
I waited. But he kept looking at the picture, lost in thought. Finally, I said, “A point can only be made if you say it, Ian.”
Ian blinked and put the phad down. A look of understanding came across his face. Then he said, “The point that you want me to get to is that you want our help to stop Yasmine. And I have to say…no. We will not help you, Vaughn. We cannot help you. It would expose us…and we will not take that chance. Not now, not ever.”
Damn. Why wasn’t I surprised? Still, I had to try. I said, “Yasmine is going to come here. She knows you exist, Ian. She wants you, too, now.”
Ian waved that away as he said, “Actually, Yasmine would never find us. I’m sorry, Vaughn, but we’ll simply stay hidden. Just as we’ve done all these centuries.”
I put my hands on the table, trying to keep from grabbing the man and shaking him. As quietly as I could, I said, “Look, she’s not going to be alone. If she’s doing what I think she is, she’ll have a group of people. A couple I already know about—”
Ian stopped me with a raised hand. “They won’t matter, Vaughn. No matter what Yasmine does, we will not become involved.”
I glared at him as my voice became louder with growing anger. “So you’re safe. While the rest of us get plowed under, you and yours will just sit on some Mount Olympus-style throne and watch while Yasmine turns our lives into some stupid game of super heroes versus super villains!”
I slammed a fist down. “No! It’s your world, too, Ian! Yasmine will take you out! Hell, you straight out stopped her! She has you in her sights, man! What makes you think she won’t work out some way to get at you once she’s finished with us? She’ll go after you, your people, and anyone who even smells like Noumenonii.”
Ian shrugged and said, “No, she’ll only find untrained psychics. We don’t reveal ourselves until after they’ve been trained to a c
ertain level of capability.”
I stared at him in wonder. Was he that stupid? I could see it easily. If Yasmine got past me, then she would eventually go after Dana’s coven for the information. Hell, she’d probably find out about Dana by ripping my mind apart for information. And if it wasn’t Dana’s coven, then probably some other group would have the…oh…well…damn.
“That’s why no one remembers you. The Noumenonii erase memories to keep people from asking questions. The witches know you exist, true. But none of them knows where you guys live. Oh, that’s clever,” I said.
Ian flinched. He looked away for a moment, uncomfortable with how much I was guessing. Good, I wasn’t about to let this go. I needed their help, damn it. And if a little guilt-ridden trip down memory lane gave me a chance to get that help, then so be it.
I said, “She loved you. You know that, right? Dana loved you with all her heart, and when you disappeared, she quit. She walked away from the coven, the city she was born in, and she was going to live the life of a reclusive librarian. All to get away from the devastation you and your band of psychic merry men left behind.”
He muttered, “Stop it. There are good reasons…”
I gave a snort and said, “Right. Super psychics have great reasoning skills; I can see that. You idiots couldn’t even hold on to one woman and her kid. Yet, you think you can hide forever from the Empowered.”
I grabbed the phad and looked at the picture. I saw Claire Grell—once Claire Shaw. Alex looked to be around six or seven. They were standing in front of a plane. I looked at Ian. “Claire died in a plane accident over a lake in Nevada, near Las Vegas. Was this taken right before she died?”
He nodded and said, “That was on the laptop in Alex’s bedroom. Someone took the picture just before she took off that day. Alex was left behind on the ground. After the plane went down, he was sent to live with Brian Shaw.”
Claire had green eyes and light auburn hair cut short. She was smiling. I noticed that she had worn a crystal bracelet around her right wrist. I also saw the pink crystal hanging down the front of Alex’s shirt. I looked at him. He looked—well, he looked unhappy, almost scared.
