XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation

by Brad Magnarella

  “Why’s that?”

  His response slipped out. “She has a lot of doubts.”

  Scott waited for Gabriella to ask him to elaborate on the doubts and was relieved when she only nodded. “Everyone’s process is different, Scott. Your abilities are an extension of your interests, things you were already passionate about, so it’s natural for you to be excited about them. From what I understand, Janis’s experience was almost the exact opposite. Her abilities altered the life she had known, the person she thought she was.”

  Scott only nodded. He wasn’t ready to bring up Janis’s doubts about the Program itself.

  “Just give her time. With her mentor’s assistance, she’ll learn to conquer those issues.” When Gabriella leaned forward to rest a hand on his arm, Scott’s gaze dropped to where her blouse had tipped open to reveal the edge of a tan bra cup. “But we’re going to need your help too, Scott.”

  He looked up. “Huh?”

  “Director Kilmer mentioned your leadership potential. I happen to agree with him. And leadership means holding a team together, especially when members express doubts.”

  Scott’s spine straightened, seemingly on its own.

  “Do you think you can do that?” she asked, patting his arm.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice deep with duty and importance. “Yes, I can.”

  Gabriella replaced her glasses, glanced at her watch, and then peered around at the computer monitors. Her eyes glinted with mischief as she dipped her head toward his. “What do you say we give the brain games a rest and jump ahead to some off-def?”

  Scott pumped a fist. “Yes!”

  In the time it took for Scott to don his helmet and activate the visor, Gabriella had programmed the far wall. Scott took his place before a strip of tape on the floor thirty feet from the wall.

  “We’ll begin with a speed and accuracy sequence,” she said.

  Scott nodded, not taking his eyes from the arrangement of padded tiles. A tile separated from the top left corner of the wall and glowed red. Scott concentrated and released a pulse. Thanks to the enhancing powers of the helmet, the process was almost instantaneous. His pulse rocketed along an invisible laser beam and into the tile, knocking it back in place.

  The light changed from green to red.

  “Hit,” Gabrielle noted as the green glow faded.

  Another tile separated and lit up red, this one near the wall’s center. Scott slammed a pulse into that one as well. Sensors behind the tile recorded Scott’s response time and the force of the blast.

  “Hit.”

  As the session progressed, the tiles lit up faster and faded more quickly. To Scott, the exercise was like a cross between Whac-a-Mole and Merlin. He slipped into another one of his zones, honing in on tile after tile, blasting them green until the wall looked like something Christmas-themed.

  It didn’t hurt that Gabriella’s voice was becoming more and more animated with each call of “hit.” She was the legendary Goblin, after all. That’s what Scott told himself anyway. The fact that she was a knockout was just an afterthought.

  By the time Scott finished his perfect round — to Gabriella’s applause — his problems with Janis felt far away.

  10

  Even though Janis knew what was going to happen, the sight of it happening again opened a cold, sick pit in her stomach. The trash heap at the side of the hotel suite had begun to rattle.

  Center yourself, Janis thought.

  Newspapers and soiled sheets spilled from the rising figure. A wet, garbage-y odor floated across the room. The bum blinked at her from a tobacco-brown face, a wool hat pulled almost to his split earlobe. Janis traced the pale scar down his neck, just as she had done that March day in Tallahassee.

  Center yourself, Janis.

  “I-I’m sorry,” she heard herself stammer toward the bum. “I didn’t know anyone lived here.”

  The same odd light grew in Split Lobe’s eyes as his face slid toward a leer. Behind his nubs of black teeth, a pale tongue rolled back and forth, making smacking sounds. Janis’s eyes fell to his filthy coat. One of the inner pockets concealed a knife. He meant to hurt her.

  “I’m leaving now,” she told Split Lobe, the words lumping in her throat.

  Now, like then, he shambled to the middle of the room, the hems of his blue pant legs flapping around filthy socks. The toe that poked through a hole in one of them bore a horny orange nail.

  “Oh, you’re not going anywhere,” Split Lobe promised. That awful, wet smile again.

  Now call the power to you, she thought. But gently.

  Vibrations began to tremor through her. Pulsing lines of light crisscrossed the hotel room, connecting her to the man blocking her way. She tried to forget about the knife in his pocket or the fact that, any second, he would begin clapping and stomping, bringing the hotel and its nightmarish squatters to life.

  Make him fear you, a voice commanded.

  A drug-like pleasure seeped into Janis’s bloodstream, fogging her thoughts. She aimed an open hand toward Split Lobe. The lines joining them pulsed more brightly, more violently.

  Make him feel pain.

  Janis hesitated, resisting the voice. It was her own. Or rather, it came from the part of herself she had quarantined away — the powers part of herself.

  “You were trying to protect what remained of your normal life,” Mrs. Fern had explained to her. “But in doing so, you created a separate being. One that developed on its own, free from the moral constraints you would otherwise have imposed on it. A wild child. You’re a powerful empath, Janis. Emotions are magnified for you. In times of intense emotion, the psychic wall you erected between you and the wild child wavers, giving her a voice. And when she convinces you to let her out … well, she takes over.”

  Blood is good, the voice told her.

  “What we must endeavor to do,” Mrs. Fern had said, “is integrate the two parts, such that you, Janis Graystone, own and control the abilities. But in order to do that, we need to evoke certain emotions, put the two of you in the same room, so to speak. Through hypnosis, we’ll tap into your power to revisit past events. The more traumatic the event, the better.”

  Across room 611, Split Lobe continued to watch as though waiting for her to deliver her next line, his oily face shining around a leering grin. Instead, Janis concentrated into the throbbing meridian lines, trying to coax them back under her direction.

  Center yourself.

  But something was tugging against her. She braced against the tug before easing off.

  Gently, Janis. Everything must be done gently.

  Mrs. Fern was teaching her that struggle would only strengthen the division within herself. Janis let her control spool out a little, let the wild child run with it. The bum hesitated, as though sensing that they had gone off script. Then one of his hands disappeared inside his coat and reemerged holding the serrated knife. He advanced toward her, smooching the air.

  “Here, kitty kitty kitty. Heh-heh.”

  Janis looped coils of luminous threads around Split Lobe and tensed. His whiskered mouth slackened mid-chuckle. He eyes flew from Janis to each of his pinned arms. Grunting, he inched forward like a penguin. Janis drew the threads tighter. The knife clattered to where his feet had begun to rise from the carpeted floor.

  “Wh-whattya think you’re doing?” he stammered.

  Feeling neither fear nor fury, Janis suspended him a foot off the ground. If anything, she felt delight.

  I’m doing it! she thought. I’m in control of my pow—

  Something wrenched the luminous threads from Janis’s grasp. Split Lobe’s coat bulged around where the threads bit into his body. He screamed and kicked his feet until one of his dirty socks flapped off.

  Make him fear you. Make him feel pain.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this,” Janis whispered to her other voice. She eased her awareness back around the threads. “It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. We can work together.”

 
; The threads jerked from her control again.

  Ignoring Mrs. Fern’s advice, Janis gritted her teeth and jerked back. The thrumming died. The threads disappeared. Freed from their hold, Split Lobe collapsed to his hands and knees.

  I don’t share control, the voice said.

  Split Lobe found the knife and staggered to his feet. His rheumy eyes swam then fixated on Janis.

  She concentrated toward him, one arm raised.

  Nothing happened.

  It’s my way or no way, the retreating voice said. Janis pictured a petulant child gathering up her toys — or in this case, her abilities — and heading back to the walled compound Janis had built for her. Fear slid into Janis’s gut as Split Lobe’s lips pulled back from his coal-black nubs.

  She tried again to concentrate toward him.

  Split Lobe broke into a shambling run, leading with the knife. Janis threw her other arm out as he crashed into her, the blade’s serrated edge biting into her stomach. From her back, she watched the bum straddle her, knees pinning her arms. He raised the crusty knife overhead.

  “No!” Janis twisted her head away.

  And then she was peering up at Mrs. Fern’s inverted face. The slender white crystal, whose pendular motion Mrs. Fern had used to hypnotize her, was back around her neck. Janis instinctively ran her hand over her stomach — no stab wounds — before swinging her legs over the side of the couch.

  “It’s not working,” she said, sitting up in the training room.

  The curtains of Mrs. Fern’s silver hair shifted when she chuckled. “Well, you’ve hardly been at it.”

  “Hardly…? It’s been a month.”

  Mrs. Fern rose from the pillow beyond the end of the couch where she had been kneeling and straightened her skirt. “I warned you it would be a lengthy process. And it is working. Each time, your moments of control become longer, steadier.” Her eyes shone with amusement. “But I think you know that.”

  “The end result’s always the same, though. Either I tear the bum to pieces or he turns my guts to chop suey. Lately, it’s been the second.” Janis ran a hand over her stomach again, recalling the cruel texture of the knife. “I know what you’re going to say, but that doesn’t exactly feel like progress.”

  “That’s because you’re a perfectionist.” Mrs. Fern joined her on the couch. “I’ve read your term papers, remember?”

  Janis allowed herself a small smile. Mrs. Fern’s face, at once comical and elegant, smiled back. Janis was still having trouble reconciling the idea that her English teacher was affiliated with the Program.

  “English was my first love,” she had told Janis on the inaugural day of training…

  * * *

  “The occult, or what was called the occult when I was growing up, became my second passion. Telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition — I was fascinated with them all. And that, Janis, was because I partook in all of them.”

  “Were you in the last group of Champions?” she asked hopefully.

  Mrs. Fern shook her head. “I was never of that caliber. I did belong to a psychic group, however. This is when I was living in a small town outside of Baltimore. We met in the basement of a nineteenth-century Victorian to practice our abilities. A fitting place if ever there was one. Dark, drafty rooms, creaking staircases, hidden passageways — a ghost or two, it was rumored. But most important, the meetings were secret. We were all respected members in our community, you see. I was teaching at a private girls’ school at the time. If word of these nocturnal meetings ever got out, well, you can imagine the suspicions it would have aroused. But careful though we were, someone did learn of our meetings. One night a man in a black suit came tapping, tapping on our door. He said he worked for the United States government and was interested in employing our unusual set of aptitudes.”

  “For what?” Janis asked.

  “A psychic spy program. Don’t look so surprised. It was to be our country’s first such program, true, but there are many historical instances of soothsayers standing behind the thrones of leaders.”

  “What did they have you do?” Janis asked.

  “Well, those of us who agreed — and I was one, of course, the offer being far too tantalizing to pass — it began with testing and training. A little like what you’re doing now. Mostly remote viewing experiments, because that’s what the U.S. was most interested in. Those were the early years of the Cold War, you must remember, before satellites and U2 spy planes. The U.S. was desperate to know what the Soviets were up to: troop movements, the location of military installations, the whereabouts of nuclear material, things of that nature.”

  “But why did they decide to use psychics?” Janis asked, scrunching her face.

  “They learned the Soviet military had started a psychic research arm for their own spying purposes. And as you should know by now, anything one side does, the other side tries to do better.”

  “Were you successful?”

  “The program, whose code name changed more often than I could ever keep track, ran for some twenty-odd years. And yes, we had our fair share of successes. But it’s the age-old story, Janis. As technologies improved, the interest in our, shall we say, unorthodox forms of information gathering dwindled. In the mid-seventies, the government shuttered the program for good.”

  “And then you were contacted to become a trainer for the Champions Program?”

  “Two of us were contacted, yes. I was asked to assess you, and Mr. Giles to assess your sister. His specialty is mental suggestion. A good fit for your sister, wouldn’t you say?”

  Janis nodded distractedly, her brain still whirring with questions. “So that first day of school, when you talked about the Roman god Janus, you already knew who I was? You knew what I could do?”

  “Let’s just say I sensed the enormity of your potential. Now, what do you say we start developing it?”

  * * *

  Mrs. Fern’s movement on the couch returned Janis to the present. Her English teacher/Champions mentor rubbed her hands together as she stood. “Well, are you ready to go back under?” Her crystal pendulum shifted in front of her neck as she faced Janis.

  The idea of the bum’s blade sawing into her stomach again made Janis grimace.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘not quite yet,’” Mrs. Fern said. “How about a centering session, then?”

  Janis stood to stretch her legs. She gazed around a room that, besides the couch, featured an assortment of woven mats and meditation pillows and smelled faintly of sandalwood. Colorful images of what Mrs. Fern called mandalas — “Eastern symbols of radial balance” — covered the walls. The space looked less like a training room for the next generation of Cold War weapons, as Mr. Leonard had referred to them, and more like a New Age spa.

  “You said you weren’t a member of the last Champions group,” Janis said, “but did you ever, I don’t know, cross paths with them?”

  Mrs. Fern shook her head. “I wasn’t even aware of their existence, truth be told.”

  And Janis could sense she was telling the truth. That was what she appreciated about Mrs. Fern. Though eccentric, her mentor never seemed to conceal anything from her. When Janis asked a question, Mrs. Fern replied with an honest, if occasionally enigmatic, answer.

  “Do you feel anything about them?” Janis whispered.

  “In the early days of the psychic spy program, I had to take an oath. Among other things, I was never to use my abilities to peer into the classified programs or activities of my government. And if my psychic radar picked up a stray piece of information, I was never to share it.” Mrs. Fern tilted her head in apology. “I’m still beholden to that oath.”

  Dead end, Janis thought.

  She trailed Mrs. Fern, who had begun straightening the room. “Did you ever feel like you were being used?”

  “That depends on how you look at it, Janis. I was only as valuable to the U.S military as the information I was providing them, true. But what if that information helped prevent a nuclear disaster i
n those colicky days of the Cold War? Wouldn’t that have been in my interest as well? Wouldn’t that have been in the interest of my family and friends? My community?”

  “When you put it that way,” Janis mumbled, “sure.”

  “Besides, I was being paid to explore a fascinating area of experience. Not an opportunity that comes along every day, I wouldn’t think.” Her owlish eyes sparkled behind her glasses.

  Janis nodded reluctantly. Like a splinter lodged beneath her fingernail, she still couldn’t tweeze away the notion that something horrible had befallen the last group. Some sort of … betrayal.

  “Well, if we’re done for the morning,” Mrs. Fern said, fluffing a pillow against her chest, “why don’t you go ahead and take an early lunch?”

  The mess hall was in one of the outbuildings, accessed by an underground passage. As Janis walked the length of the Barn, she could hear Scott blasting away behind the door to his training room. She paused to listen. When the blasts stopped, Gabriella’s breathy voice announced his perfect score. Scott responded with something Janis couldn’t hear, and the two of them laughed.

  Heat broke out over Janis’s face.

  Sure, pair Scott with a sexy computer nerd. Like that’s not being obvious.

  She shook her head and resumed walking. She wasn’t sure what annoyed her more: that the Program was trying to woo Scott to their side, away from her skepticism, or that Scott was allowing them to do it. Becoming a superhero was his lifelong dream, fine. But in their scarce alone time, Janis found she couldn’t even begin to talk about her suspicions without him shutting down.

  And wasn’t that what had reconnected them?

  Janis descended in one elevator, walked a short distance, and ascended in another. Being early, she was surprised to find Tyler sitting at the mess hall’s back table. Janis prepared herself a lunch tray — a portion from each of the color-coded bins, per the rule — and approached Tyler from behind.

  “Mind if I join you?” she asked. He usually ate with Creed and Jesse.