"You're wondering if what else Kevin told his mom was true," she said. "You want a demonstration."
"You read my mind." He hoped that wasn't literally true. "Something not involving rearranging me at the molecular level, preferably."
Jamie had the sudden and probably silly urge to show off. She could move something with her mind, but maybe something more visceral would make more of an impression. She bent suddenly and grabbed hold of the object around its center. It rose as easily in her arms as a balloon. Only her feet sinking into the soft ground hinted of the weight.
Jack whipped out his cell and snapped several photos. He couldn't escape the sense he was the butt of some elaborate joke. Jamie was frowning but offered no objection.
"You look like you're holding a giant vitamin pill," Zach said with a forced chuckle.
"It does seem to have healing capabilities."
"More than that, apparently."
She dropped it. Any suggestion it was a lightweight prop vanished when it thunked into the wet ground and Zach shoved at it. No give at all.
"You just lifted over 4000 pounds," he said in a hollow voice.
"Yes."
"How is that even physically possible? Your skeleton and muscle would need to be massively re-engineered to move that kind of weight."
"Maybe I'm using my mind to assist my body?" On cue, the black cylinder popped out of the mud and floated a few yards over their heads. "But that just raises another question about what powers the telekinesis."
Zach rubbed his chin, making himself nod while he was melting down a bit inside. The combination of the telepathic Karen Clarkson and the telekinetic/super-strong Jamie Shepherd – not to mention the mind-rending implications of this object – were starting to get to him. This changes everything was the singular thought that flooded his brain.
"I know it's kind of hard to accept." Jamie was smiling at him. "I can't really believe it myself. I keep waiting to wake up or hear some godlike voice announce it's all a joke."
"I've been hearing that voice since meeting Karen Clarkson." He couldn't think of any reason not to come clean about her. "She can read minds, by the way. That's how she found out – not because her son volunteered the information to her."
"Oh." Jamie frowned, nodding. "Telepathy, huh? How Kevin must love that."
"I have a feeling she might have trouble getting dates."
Zach's laugh fell short as Jamie stared at him – not exactly in a condemning way but with sudden intensity. She knew something about being undateable.
They returned to his car. Zach drove back to the house with exaggerated slowness, mainly because he wasn't sure what to do when he got there.
"So what happens next?" Jamie asked, apprehension edging her voice. "I assume after your report the government will come in and take it."
"That's a given. I suspect it will be studied under heavy quarantine protocols. They'll want to stop whatever it's putting out."
"I can see why. It's healed my cancer, Kevin Clarkson's autism, his friend Terry's rare bone disease. Think of all the doctors this thing would put out of business."
"As terrifying as that sounds," said Zach with a strained chuckle, "I suspect they might be more concerned with the other capabilities it's bestowing."
They stopped at the house. Neither of them made a move to leave the car. The air conditioning buffeted them with an icy breeze which felt mostly neutral to Jamie. Heat and cold no longer made much difference to her.
"The government wouldn't like a bunch of people with superpowers running or flying about," she said in a flat voice. "They'd probably want to quarantine them, too, to stop whatever this is from spreading."
Zach pondered his answer. He certainly didn't want to provoke someone who probably had the power to reduce him to elemental atoms, but once again he felt the need to be completely honest with this woman.
"I would imagine," he said. "They'd probably want to study you, at a minimum."
"You've been exposed too, now."
Zach felt a sharp jab of dread. He hadn't thought this out clearly at all. Obviously, a part of him hadn't taken this seriously. Things like this don't happen in real life.
"What were your first symptoms?" he asked with a quiet cough.
"I was sick that first night. I thought it was food poisoning. After that I started feeling really good – almost too good. It was like I was only partly tethered to the earth, as if one wrong step would send me flying." She gave a short laugh. "My subconscious talking to me, I guess."
Sick? Zach was starting to feel queasy as the quarantine implications sank in. Or was he really getting sick?
"I wonder what your superpower will be?"
Jamie was smiling, but Zach knew she wasn't kidding. That idea caused a further shift in his base reality. If he was truly "infected" – or whatever the device did – then anyone he came in contact with now... He stopped himself. What about all the people Karen Clarkson's had contact with, including my dad? What about the two boys or Carl Winters? Carl was in Minneapolis now with the Timberwolves. What about all the people in the Target Center?
Zach brushed cool sweat from his forehead. The Lincoln's icy air conditioning no longer seemed to be working.
"Are you all right?"
He glanced at her, summoning a smile. "Yeah. Just thinking that this thing could be awfully hard to contain at this point – assuming it's as infectious as it appears to be. Karen Clarkson has been around hundreds of students and teachers, and your dad has had contact with God knows how many players and staff and people at the Target Center."
"We could have an epidemic of 'super people.'"
Jamie wasn't smiling and neither was Zach. He knew that was exactly what his superiors would think. A large number of people like Karen Clarkson or Jamie Shepherd would be their worst nightmare. How could you contain a person who could lift a two-ton object and leap off the continent? What classified secrets would a legion of telepaths dredge up? What if an Islamic extremist got some of Jamie Shepherd's powers? National security would be flushed down the toilet.
"This is way, way above my pay grade," he said. "All I can do is let my bosses know and let them take it from there."
"Would the DHS even handle something like this?"
"Doubtful. But I don't know what government agency would. Probably a combination of agencies and officials, including the President himself."
Jamie gazed through the windshield to the southeast toward what she imagined was the nation's capital.
"I want to cooperate, Zach," she said. "But I'm not going to be locked up and poked and prodded like a zoo animal. Maybe you're not aware of this, but I'm trying to save my property."
"I heard something about that. How is it going?"
"A local jeweler is examining 947 uncut diamonds I gave him a couple of days ago. With any luck, he'll make a generous offer."
"Where did you get that many uncut diamonds?"
Jamie held up her hands and squeezed them into a fist.
"Are you telling me you compressed pieces of coal into diamonds with your bare hands?"
"Graphite, actually."
"That's..."
"Insane?"
"I had a choicer word in mind, but that works."
Zach amused himself for a few moments imagining all the ways that Jamie Shepherd could make a fortune with her abilities. Besides flooding the market with diamonds, she could undoubtedly show up at DARPA or any branch of the military and name her price as a super-soldier. Hell, any branch of the government or major corporation would pay her millions on general principle just to have her sign on. The money-making possibilities were endless. But he decided it might not be wise now to encourage those kinds of thoughts. She was a smart lady. She'd figure it all out soon enough.
Assuming the government didn't throw her in a cage just as she feared.
"Anyway," he said, "I hope that works out. You have a beautiful place here."
"Thanks."
"Well..." Za
ch gripped the steering wheel. "I should probably get out of your hair."
"Time to report to your superiors?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Please tell them what I said about not being locked away somewhere as a lab rat. I will cooperate, but not like that."
"I'll let them know."
Jamie popped open her door.
"It will work out, Jamie," he said.
She swung herself out – as though she were in zero gravity in a space capsule, Zach thought – and paused, staring back at him, her eyes a glacial blue.
"I hope so," she said.
Chapter 8
FOUR HOURS AFTER A phone call with some attached photos, Zach had an audience with the Director of Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency at the DHS Science and Technology headquarters in Washington D.C.
The next morning, Zach was called into Assistant Secretary of Defense Harold Weinstein's office, where a who's who list of prominent intelligence and USG agency people were present, including the Standard and Technology's Undersecretary, Washington Office CDC Director, the CIA Chief Scientist, Homeland Security's Assistant Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, and a colonel from the National Air and Space Intelligence Center.
What surprised Zach was that his brief text and few photos, which easily could've been Photoshopped – and for all they knew, Jamie could've been holding up a five-pound hollow plastic cylinder – had been taken seriously enough to grant him this illustrious audience so swiftly. The closest he'd come to Undersecretary Mason was at a party commemorating the Directorate's anniversary, and no one had seen fit to introduce him, a lowly research scientist, to the high muck-e-mucks. Now he was keeping company with a group of individuals a short step or two down from a presidential cabinet meeting.
Had they learned something beyond what he'd told his boss? This was obviously making powerful waves high up in national security echelons.
The President's National Security Advisor, Helen Snelling, appeared to be in charge of the meeting.
"Ian has provided us all with a brief summary of the situation," she said. "I will bring the results of this meeting before the Council and the President. Before I do that, I want to be convinced there's something here that represents a genuine threat to national security. I want some hard evidence. What do we have of that now?"
"We have this, Advisor Snelling," said the Science and Technology Undersecretary Andrew Mason.
The big screen television on one wall flashed to life. A short video, courtesy of Zach's cell, showed the cylindrical object hovering over their heads and then plummeting to the ground.
"That's it?" The National Security Advisor looked pained. "I've seen more convincing videos of ghosts on YouTube than that."
"And there's this. A news feed today."
The Undersecretary's voice had turned grim. A ring of police cars around what appeared to be a prison blew apart without any sign of an explosion or shots fired. An armored vehicle and several police SUVs lifted up and rolled away as though caught by an invisible tornado. A line of grinning orange-clad men streamed through the breach. Some officers shouted warnings before opening fire – and they were blown off their feet, arms and legs flapping like rag dolls, swept away by the apparent same force that had knocked over the police vehicles.
"This is James River Correctional Center in Jamestown, North Dakota," said Undersecretary Mason. "Apparently, there was a mass breakout two hours ago. The local news has no clue about what happened."
"I take it there's a connection between the prison and the object?"
"Yes, Helen. One of the prisoners is Terry Mayes' brother. Terry Mayes recently had a miraculous recovery from a rare bone disorder for which there is no known cure. Fibro-something or other – "
"Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressive?" said the Washington office CDC director. "I've never heard of anyone recovering from that."
"Exactly. It turns out that this young man had contact with the object, along with his friend, the son of Karen Clarkson."
"The professor who exhibited telepathy?"
"Yes. Then this young man, Terry Mayes, visited his brother in the prison."
No one spoke for several seconds while the National Security Advisor's expression coalesced in hard lines.
"I see," she said. "I believe we have established the possibility of a national security threat that should be addressed immediately on an emergency basis. I will be apprising President Morgan immediately after leaving here. He's already aware of the basic aspects of the situation and is planning to convene an emergency session of the NSC and other advisory staff within the hour on my recommendation. I would ask that no one in this room take any action until the President and his advisors have decided on a course of response."
"That device that should be recovered immediately," said a forty-something woman in green fatigues. The silver eagle on her cap and collar labeled her as an Air Force Colonel. "We have a team in place. On my word, we can remove the object within ten minutes and transport it to Wright-Patterson under full environmental isolation protocols."
"Again," said the security advisor, tightlipped, "I would ask that you refrain from intervention until the meeting in the Executive Office has taken place."
"Whatever the President and his staff decide, that object needs to be secured."
"It's been in the same location for days. I see no reason that it will go anywhere in the next few hours."
"And what if it does? From what Dr. Walters said, it's been moved at least once. And judging from what we just saw, Jamie Shepherd could move it anywhere she wished at any time."
"My statement stands."
"And that's all it is, Ms. Snelling – a statement, not an order. We have full statutory authority to make this recovery, with or without Executive approval."
"This isn't the time for a pissing contest, Colonel Adams. Not for our country, and not if you value your career." The NSC advisor turned to Zach. "You've spent some time with Jamie Shepherd. How do you think she'd respond to an uninvited incursion on her property?"
"She said she wanted to cooperate," said Zach, feeling uncomfortable with everyone's eyes on him. "But she also said she wouldn't accept being thrown into a cell and experimented on – 'like a lab rat', in her words."
"We would want to run tests on her, at a minimum," said Jenna Ellis of the CDC.
"I'd recommend going gentle on her."
"Noted," said Helen Snelling. She rose from the table. "Unless anyone has further comment, I need to see the President. Thank you all for coming."
IT SOUNDED like one of her dad's favorite movies: Apocalypse Now. Jamie had watched it as a child with him, and it hadn't made much of an impression – except the Ride of the Valkyries scene: helicopters blowing away a village to the music of Richard Wagner.
From the kitchen window where she sat sipping a cup of coffee, she watched three helicopters approach: one a large, giant green grasshopper, the other two sleek black wasps. Armored vehicles followed by a big semi-truck rumbled down her driveway in a mushroom plume of yellow dust.
Jamie wasn't in a good mood. Earlier that morning her dad's jeweler friend, Dave Mitchell, had offered her $50,000 for her bag of nearly one thousand rough diamonds. From what she'd learned on the internet, that was beyond a low-ball offer for diamonds that by his own admission were decent grade and averaged between four and five carats. Mitchell had a lot of plausible-sounding reasons – mainly about how difficult and time-consuming it would be to unload that many diamonds – and fifty thousand dollars was a nice piece of change, but it wouldn't do anything for paying off the Jacobsons. Nor would her dad's sixty-thousand dollar signing bonus with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
And now a bunch of heavily armed people were rolling onto her land – technically no longer her land, but still – to seize the object that Cal had once fantasized about selling for big bucks but now would be taken without so much as a by your leave.
Or would it?
/> Jamie imagined the helicopters slowing down and finally freezing in the sky and motorcade coming to a gradual halt. Just idle imagination, but the moment her whimsical image took shape and evolved something like desire, it seemed as if the Wagnerian advance did slow. Or am I seeing things?
At the same moment, another thought invaded her head: the object was on her land. Wasn't it rightfully hers, not theirs? Shouldn't she be compensated for it? Wouldn't that be fair? They could afford to send an army but not give her enough money to save her property?
The invading force had now stopped – not wishful thinking but in reality, just as she'd imagined: the helicopters hovered above the stalled column of vehicles, rotors thumping and engines racing. She zoomed her vision in on the driver and pilots' shocked faces, and smiled. They were okay. She had the mental dexterity to stop them without hurting them. It seemed she could feel them as if they were a weight she was holding off her chest. Not a lot of weight. Maybe a pound or two. With a mental shove she might send them scattering over miles.
Jamie's smile soured. With a sigh, she released some of her counter-force, and the armed assemblage resumed its advance more sedately. Politely. At the same time another thought occurred to her: Why not move the object somewhere else, make these people negotiate with her a little?
She watched the black cylinder rise to the top branches of the willow trees one hundred yards distant. Propelled by a sharp command, it ascended in a blur through the clouds and was gone. Stay. The mental energy required to keep it aloft occupied a tiny speck of thought in her mind – less, it seemed, than she needed to keep her back straight as she walked from the kitchen out to the front porch. She doubted the object would come crashing back to earth, but she was still exploring the nature and extent of her powers and couldn't be certain.
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