Unseen

by Stephanie Erickson

  “What do I do?”

  First, you must learn to feel others in your mind, she thought.

  I had never pictured myself in someone else’s mind. For me, it had always been more like overhearing someone who was talking too loud, not an intentional invasion of privacy. The guide popped into my head. That hadn’t been overhearing. I had deliberately searched his brain for information.

  “You did what?” Tracy demanded.

  “What?”

  “You searched someone’s mind for information?”

  “Technically, I suppose I did.” Feeling like I was in trouble, I tried to keep it vague, although I wasn’t sure to what end. If she wanted to know exactly what had happened, it was all there, plain as day.

  “Did you get what you were looking for?”

  “No.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Is that because he didn’t have what you were looking for?”

  “I suppose so, yes.” Neither one of us said anything for a while. She glanced at her watch and frowned.

  “I think we will break early today. I need to speak to David. We will pick back up here tomorrow.” She stood abruptly and went to the door.

  “Tracy, wait.” She stopped. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No, I’m afraid you’ve done everything right.” But there was no smile, no excitement, and no encouragement.

  “That’s convincing,” I said, but she’d turned and left before I could respond, leaving me alone with my words.

  Owen wasn’t waiting in the gym like usual, and I assumed it was because our meeting had ended early. I ventured upstairs on my own, searching for him, but he wasn’t in the kitchen, library, or the living room. Finally, I asked someone. I found one of the guys who had worked with Tracy and me that afternoon. He was sitting in the TV room, watching something.

  “Hey, have you seen Owen?”

  “Yeah, he’s in his room with Mitchell,” he said, not looking up at me.

  “The others are back?”

  “Guess so.” Clearly, he wasn’t interested. I was.

  I took the stairs two at a time, nearly falling onto the landing. Not sure what was driving my sudden urge to see Mitchell, I pounded on Owen’s door, hoping they’d be together.

  Owen opened it partway. “Hey. You’re done early. Listen, this isn’t really a good time. If you want, I’ll meet you upstairs in a little while. Otherwise, I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  “The others told me they were back. I want to see him.” I knew Mitchell wouldn’t tell me anything about where he’d been, if for no other reason than his apparent discomfort around me, but I had to try. The curiosity was eating at me.

  He looked over his shoulder, I assumed at Mitchell. He squeezed through the door out into the hallway, opening it wide enough for me to catch a glimpse of Mitchell. He was lying on Owen’s bed, ashen faced and unconscious. The sight took my breath away.

  “What the hell happened? Is he okay? Should we take him to the hospital?”

  “Settle down and lower your voice for God’s sake. I just got him to sleep.” He said it protectively, like Mitchell was his child or something.

  I crossed my arms over my chest as I waited for an answer, but Owen just stood there. Exasperated, I threw my arms in the air. “What can I do to help?”

  The look on his face softened. “I need you to stay out of it. Mitchell will be fine. That has to be enough for now.”

  “He doesn’t look fine to me.” I stood on my tiptoes, trying to peer over Owen’s shoulder, but he’d shut the door most of the way, preventing me from seeing inside.

  He took my arm and led me down the hallway, away from his door. “Why are you done early?”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it.” You insist on keeping secrets? Well, so do I.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s fine. I need to get back to Mitchell.” He reached for my hand, but I kept it just out of reach. He acted like he didn’t notice. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” His tone was friendly, but final.

  I didn’t respond. No, it was not okay. Clearly, it was anything but okay. Whatever had happened to Mitchell was pretty awful. I wondered about Camden and the others, but I didn’t know them well enough to go poking around.

  I stood alone on the landing, debating whether to go home, or to try and get answers from David. The more I thought about it, the more I was leaning toward going home. If David was the man I thought he was, he’d be with the people who’d just returned. They needed him more than I did right now. And to go barging into his office, demanding answers, when his employees were potentially in a state of crisis, was a bit childish.

  In the end, I opted to go home. But my apartment was lonelier than ever. What had happened today? Now, more than ever, I felt like I was an outsider of this group I’d given up everything to join. And for what? Questions swirled in my head, my only companions for the rest of the night.

  17.

  The next day, Owen was waiting for me in his usual spot. I decided to give him the cold shoulder. Immature? Perhaps. Did I feel better, walking past him with my head held high, saying nothing? Absolutely.

  He trailed behind me as I brushed by. “Well, good morning to you!” he called from behind me.

  I ignored him and descended the stairs, heading straight for Tracy.

  “Hey, Mackenzie, wait up!” He huffed behind me, but I stayed ahead.

  When we reached the second landing, he grabbed my arm. “Hey.” He turned me to face him.

  I hoped icicles would sprout on his nose from the frosty glare I gave him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  The genuine concern on his face gave me pause. Maybe he didn’t deserve this. Then I remembered the way he’d brushed me off, and my resolve turned to steel. “What’s wrong? You can give me the cold shoulder, but you can’t take it?”

  “Mac, I wasn’t giving you the cold shoulder yesterday.”

  The memory of Mitchell lying in that bed, his skin a bizarre ashen shade, came rushing back to me. “Is Mitchell okay?”

  “I told you last night that he was.”

  I frowned at his slightly curt answer. At least, I thought it was curt. “So you did.”

  We stood on the landing in a stalemate. Him with his secrets, me with my anger.

  “Listen, I’m sorry if you got your feelings hurt last night. The only reason I can’t talk to you about what happened is because you’re still a new recruit. You can’t know everything yet. But I promise… there will come a day when you do know everything. No secrets.” He came closer to me and took both my hands in his. “And when that day comes, I can only hope you’ll stick around to share them with me.”

  Tracy came up the stairs at just that moment. “There you are. We need to get to work. There’s a lot to do today.”

  I nodded, not breaking eye contact with Owen, unsure if I was nodding at him or Tracy. Maybe both of them. While Tracy and I descended the last set of stairs, my mind circled around what Owen had said. What secrets did he have that would make me want to leave? I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had something to do with the work of the Unseen. What exactly had he done for them?

  Tracy shut the door behind me a little hard, startling me out of my Owen-centered world. “I need you to focus today. What I’m asking you to do isn’t easy. And you’ll never be successful at it if you aren’t one-hundred-percent focused.”

  I nodded. “Fair enough.” Taking a deep breath, I worked hard to push Owen from my mind.

  “Now, as I said yesterday, you’ll need to work to feel me in your mind. Then, shut me out. Protect yourself.”

  The way she emphasized ‘protect yourself’ made one question spring to my mind. From what?

  Everyone, she thought.

  We nodded to each other, and I knew it was time to get to work. I cleared my mind, trying to ‘find her,’ but nothing seemed different. It was still my mind. I couldn’t hear her thoughts, but I wasn’t sure if that was because she wasn’t thinki
ng, or because I was blocking her. Everything was still so new.

  With nothing to listen to but my own thoughts, my mind tried to wander back to Owen, and I had to re-center several times. I searched and searched for any sign of her. Something out of place, unfamiliar. Then, finally, I thought I felt something odd. Like a shadow from a streetlight that wasn’t there.

  I had my eyes shut, but I heard Tracy shift in her seat. “Good,” she said aloud. I opened my eyes and saw her leaning toward me. “Now, work to push me out. Overpower me. Take back control of your thoughts.”

  I tried to do what she said, but it was too abstract. Once I’d found her, she stuck out like a sore thumb, but I had no idea how to ‘overpower’ her. I took a deep breath before I began. Then, starting in the far corner of my mind, as far away from her as I could get, I spread out my thoughts slowly, like pouring caramel from a jar. They poured through my mind, claiming every nook and cranny. At last, I came to her and washed over her like a giant wave in an angry sea.

  When I was finished, I couldn’t detect any trace of her. Either she’d moved somewhere else, or I’d succeeded in flushing her out. I opened my eyes, looking to her for the answer.

  She stared at me, blank-faced.

  “Should we try again?” My stomach grumbled in response.

  Tracy looked at her watch. “No need. I apologize. I wasn’t watching the time, and it’s three o’clock already. Why don’t we just call it a day?” She started to get up, but I stopped her.

  “Tracy, wait. Did I do it? Was that right?”

  “Mackenzie, that was one-hundred-percent correct. I will see you tomorrow.”

  Owen was working out in the gym when I came out. “You missed lunch.”

  “I just now realized that.”

  “What happened?”

  “I pushed Tracy out.”

  “Like you physically pushed her out the door? Looked to me like she walked out on her own.”

  I smiled at him in spite of myself, sick of being angry with him for his secrets. “No. I pushed her out of my mind.”

  “What?” He stopped in his tracks in the middle of the staircase, turning to look at me. “What do you mean? Explain it to me like I’m an idiot.”

  “Shouldn’t be that hard.”

  He ignored my joke, and I shifted my weight uncomfortably. What was the big deal?

  “The big deal is that it took most of us the better part of a year to learn how to do that. You’re saying Tracy entered your mind, you found her, and then pushed her out. In a day?”

  “More or less, yes.”

  His mouth hung open. “I’m not sure I believe you.” He said it quietly, as if it were some kind of swear word.

  I bristled. “Fine. Let’s go. Right now.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  I sat down cross-legged on the stairs and pulled on his arm, forcing him to sit down in front of me. We were facing each other, our backs against the wall in the middle of the staircase.

  He stared at me intently, and I stared right back, waiting. “Are we really going to do this?”

  “Are you scared or something?” I challenged.

  Frowning, he turned silent. I knew he’d started.

  He wasn’t nearly as elegant as Tracy. His formless shadow was huge, and I found him right away. I smiled to myself when I heard him straighten. He knew I’d found him. Slowly, just as I’d done with Tracy, I overwhelmed him with my thoughts. In the end, we only ended up sitting there for ten minutes or so.

  “Holy shit,” Owen whispered. “Do you know what this means?”

  “Apparently you do.”

  “You could be the most gifted reader in history.”

  “There were mind readers in history?”

  “That’s the question you’re asking me right now?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess so.”

  “Of course there were. Readers didn’t just appear out of nowhere.”

  “Like who?”

  “Anne Boleyn is one of the most famous readers. She didn’t play her cards quite right, so she was beheaded after being accused of bewitching the king—which was absolutely true, except she was using mind reading, not sorcery.”

  I leaned back against the wall, questioning the extent of my historical knowledge, wondering how many readers were hiding among the ‘normal’ people.

  “Wait, how did she bewitch the king, if she was just a reader?”

  “There’s more to reading than just hearing people’s thoughts. I expect you’ll be learning that from Tracy soon.” He stood up and offered me his hand.

  “So tell me who else we owe our legacy to,” I said, excited to know we were connected with famous figures of history.

  His expression turned dark. “Jim Jones is the most recent reader to come to fame.”

  I didn’t know the name off the top of my head.

  “The leader of the Jonestown cult.”

  I recoiled as I remembered the people who’d killed themselves and their own children after being brainwashed.

  “Yeah. It wasn’t our finest moment. Jones was a talented reader, obviously. He killed those we sent to see exactly what he was up to.”

  I searched my limited knowledge on the event. “Wasn’t there a senator he killed?”

  “That’s the one.”

  The thought that there were readers in government office was overwhelming and intriguing at the same time.

  We walked the rest of the way in silence while I chewed on the new historical facts. But, before we headed into the common room, he turned and looked at me. “Do you understand the impact you could have on the world of readers?”

  I frowned and shook my head.

  He took my face in both of his hands. “You will.”

  The next day, Tracy was as serious as ever, despite the progress I’d made. You’d think I would get a day off, perhaps some accolades. Nope.

  “Let’s get to work,” she said as I sat down across from her in the training room.

  “Not like we’d be doing anything else.”

  That gave her pause. “Did you have something else in mind?”

  I sighed. “Nope. Not a thing.” I was closing in on the end of the second week of my time with the Unseen, but it felt like a lifetime. Everyone kept telling me I’d accomplished an unimaginable amount of work. Suddenly, I felt like I’d appreciate a break.

  “You can have a break on Saturday.”

  “And I will!” She rolled her eyes at my enthusiasm. “Tracy, can I ask you something?”

  “Yes.”

  I tried to formulate my thoughts into an intelligent question, not wanting to waste her time. “I never see you in the common area after we train. What do you do to unwind?”

  “Unwind? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “You’re always working, always with your nose to the grindstone. What do you do for fun?” I pressed.

  She looked hard at me. “This, Mackenzie. This is what I do for fun. If I take it seriously, it’s because I want you to succeed. You have more potential than anyone I’ve ever seen. That excites me.” Her voice remained flat when she said it, but the sparkle in her eye spoke to her genuine passion for her job. “When I’m not training, I’m studying techniques, training methods, and new uses for readers. I’m working hard to stay one step ahead of you, so in the future, I’ll still have things to teach you. You possess an extraordinary mind and I, for one, don’t intend to waste it.”

  Okay then, I thought.

  “If that’s all…” She paused, and I nodded. Even if I had something else to ask her, I knew I wouldn’t get a straight answer. “Today, we’ll work on keeping readers out.”

  “What do you mean? I learned how to push unwanted readers out yesterday.”

  “Yes, and while that is a vital skill, it’s best if you can keep them from ever entering your mind in the first place.”

  That made sense to me.

  “These defenses will not only prevent others from entering your
mind, but they’ll contain your outgoing thoughts too.”

  I perked up. “So, everyone will stop hearing my thoughts.”

  “Ideally, yes.”

  “Ideally indeed,” I mused, longing for the return of some privacy. Up until two weeks ago, I’d never had to worry about keeping my thoughts to myself. I was the only reader on my playing field. I didn’t like having the tables turned, and I looked forward to the return of some peace. I was pretty sure everyone else was eager for that too.

  “I’ve heard it likened to building a wall around your mind to keep your thoughts in, and others out. That’s as basic as I can make it for you.”

  “I suppose I’ll have to figure out the rest?”

  “It’s worked for you so far.”

  “I guess it has.” I couldn’t help the skepticism in my voice. I was new to this. How was I supposed to build a wall in my mind? I sighed. She was right though. I hadn’t had much trouble honing my abilities before, so why would this be any different?

  And it wasn’t. It took me about two days, but I got it. I built my wall with memories, brick by brick. Memories of Maddie, of my aunt, of playing my first instrument, of school, I used everything that made me me—the good and the bad—and built the wall higher and higher, until my sanctuary was complete.

  It felt different when I was done, sort of warm, like I’d just shut a window against a draft I hadn’t realized was coming through. And most importantly, I could tell I was secure.

  Thursday afternoon, as I was clearing my dishes from lunch, I caught a glimpse of Mitchell. His skin still had an unhealthy grey tinge to it, but at least he was up and about. He didn’t linger, though—he stayed just long enough to nod to Owen and grab some food.