Contents
Theta Waves Box Set
BOOK 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
BOOK 2
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
BOOK 3
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Theta Waves Box Set
THETA WAVES
Books 1-3
Copyright 2014 Thea Atkinson
All rights reserved
Published by Thea Atkinson
Edited by Amanda J. Triplett
No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form electronic or otherwise without permission from the author.
Theta Waves series and all related characters and elements are copyrighted to Thea Atkinson.
All rights reserved.
BOOK 1
Chapter 1
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Phoenix
Theda noticed the stranger watching her from across the rubble of the ruined street. Fo the second time in as many days, he leaned against the graffiti of a building strangely untouched by the warfare that had left almost everything around her in ruins.
Older than she was, probably late-twenties. Longish hair the color of charcoal. He was tall although he seemed to be doing his best to disguise it. He slouched into himself with one boot sole--cowboy boots, no less--braced against the wall as though he belonged there when Theda knew damn well he didn't. He was too groomed, too... well, too damned clean to belong hereabouts.
"You don't fool me," she whispered.
The man at her feet, struggling to stand, made a sound like he didn't understand what she was talking about.
"Not you, old man," she said, trying and failing to help her client back to a doddering stand. "Him."
She jabbed her elbow in the direction of the stranger across the street. Watching him from behind hooded eyelids, he almost looked like he didn't want to be there as he leveraged the other foot against the sidewalk. She noticed he'd picked the one place where the bricks were still nice and flat and patterned. Not so many of those anymore--too much damage from the holocaust for the cobblestones to look neat. Most now heaved up in places, tripping filthy vagrants and respectable survivors alike, not that the two of those things could be separated, anymore, either. The mere notion of filth and respectable matched as poorly as the sidewalk stones--at least in Theda's part of the supercity.
Even in the shaded late afternoon light, even beneath the shadows of leafy treetops stretching leggy, malnourished branches to heaven, she could tell the stranger was studying her. Looking through her, she thought, as she squatted next to her card table on her side of the street, trying and failing to help her client to stand. She peered down at the old bloke, wanting to find some compassion, but feeling none.
"You good, old man?" she asked him.
He batted a hand in front of his eye before nodding uncertainly.
"Smokin'," she said. "Now get the hell up."
As he struggled to rise, she peered beneath her lashes again at the man across the street. His presence unnerved her in ways that made her make stupid mistakes, the latest one even now struggling to get up and to keep his eyes open. She couldn't say she blamed the old guy for passing out--his specific trick had been filled with crusade massacres. Still, she couldn't afford the lolly-gagging. It was dangerous.
"Come on," she said to the john, slapping his cheek. "Get your wiggle on and get the hell out of here. You got your ride."
The ride had shown him exactly what a prick he'd been in his last life. The old codger had rightfully earned a grisly death if she cared a damn to tell him so. She didn't. She just let him ride her visions because she did care about two other things: godspit and money in exactly that order unless she needed money for the godspit. Then the two were reversed.
In the end, she concerned herself with getting paid--just like any professional woman of trade--because it afforded her both of those things.
"Good thing I got your cash up front, old man," she said and yanked at his elbows. He kept stumbling back onto one knee.
"I can't," he stuttered. "...I mean, it was all so--"
"Real?" she said. "Yeah. I know."
He stumbled again and lay flat against the bricks of the sidewalk. He held onto the crumbling leg of her card table and she winced, thinking he was going to break it.
"Fuck, man," she said. "You're going to be all right. Just get the hell up."
She darted a look across the street. Her stalker had staked his claim to that spot ten minutes ago, the same as he'd done for the last four days. Before she had a chance to coax said client from a faint on the sidewalk. The stalker must have seen the exchange of money, watched as the codger had fallen, was watching still as she rapped the gent's cheeks in a vain attempt to rouse him.
Now she had one more thing to care about: safety. She should never have plied her trade at all in the face of that unnerving stare from across the street. But she'd assumed the stranger was a potential john, waiting to see if her price was worth the ride.
Like the hookers who came and went around her, sometimes flashing splinters of smiles at her, sometimes trying to run her off, Theda had settled into her chisel-colored survival instinct the way any good magician from Old Earth might have. Except she plied her trade from a card table with a bowed-in middle and joints rusted nearly clean through. And the trick was different. Very different.
She turned those tricks with the same sense of resolve as the prostitutes, though. It was a fair enough description, an easy enough way to describe what she did, except maybe that analogy of prostitution wasn't even right. Maybe she was more like the fortunetellers of old Earth: like Nostradamus or those famed kids from Fatima. Or, like a ghost whisperer in some archaic, entertainment-based television series. Except, all those descriptions failed to nail her trade down just right because no one in his right mind in this new world would admit to believing anything remotely divine was left behind.
And now that bastard across the way and this old codger was putting her at risk because divinity in New Earth was a death sentence. The god had already come and gone and left the globe in devastated ruin. Faith and good had left with Him, leaving nothing in His wake but a wasteland that needed to shake its way back to equilibrium.
"Nothing left hereabouts but crime," she said to the john.
His eyes fluttered open and he peered up at her. "What?"
"Crime," she repeated.
His grey bushy brows furrowed and she sighed. "Never mind. Just get the hell up before you get me arrested." She pulled at him again and he found his feet.
Crime was the least of the atrocities, of course. There was hedonism. And hopelessness. Those things they had aplenty.
"You said you'd help me escape," he complained.
She glared at him. "Did you get out of this fucking shithole?"
He sobbed and caught it with his teeth. Nodded.
"Then stop belly aching. You got what you paid for."
She had no patience for the johns. Most of them had a decent place to live still. The holocaust, the apocalypse, the rapture as the chosen might have called it, left Theda peering at the bustling afternoon street from a derelict card table day upon day, calling to people as they passed by, in order to earn a living: "Hey," she'd coax. "Want a magic beyond any? I can do it for you. Give you some escape."
Magic. A foolish thing to ply when men wanted sex and debauchery; she figured that out quickly enough, had to change her come-on in the early days, but that was fine; Theda was a smart gal.
"I can give you a ride you'll never forget," she'd say, and that one would get them. A chance for some filthy old fart to roll over on a girl in her twenties. Old fools.
She learned early to target the old men; the younger ones weren't so inclined to pay for sex, not when they could take it for free. A girl didn't find fresh-faced young men like her first trick anymore; they'd all become too jaded.
She'd offered to do her first trick for half a ten, so long as he had the right paperwork. Like this old codger here, she knew he imagined an experience entirely different than what he got. And just like this gent, she'd gripped the young man's hand tightly as she'd drawn out her pin and stuck him deftly in the thumb like her mom had taught her. A bubble of blood had risen on the pad of his skin and she fought the urge to smear it between her thumb and forefinger as she slipped his greasy digit into her mouth.
She concentrated very hard, as hard as she'd ever done when she and her mother worked together in the last days, before they knew it was the last days, when Theda had begun her training. She drew hard on the flesh, pulling in even more of his fluid as she focused.
She got shifts of colors for a few seconds, then the unnerving sound of gunfire, the acrid stink of gas and mouldy earth. She presumed he felt the burning that came with the stink she caught wind of. Mustard gas, something whispered to her psyche. So, the poor young fellow had been in the First World War during his last life. Had died as a soldier, retching in his trench, along with a dozen other men.
She wasn't sure how much he'd understood, but she did know he got all of it--all of them did. Every detail, every nuance of sound, each smell, and sight. He was there because she was there. And because she was there she knew things about him that he wouldn't want anyone to know--least of all himself. Poor soul had flattened right out on the remnants of sidewalk--just like this old fool-- and she'd had to rummage through his pockets for the five-dollar bill before chasing him off.
The old gent in the here and now, was still swaying on his feet, enough that he stumbled and went to one knee again. She knelt down next to him.
"I said get the fuck out of here," she hissed in his ear.
It was often this way with the reincarnated. When their lives got telecast to them in living, breathing, reeking color, they felt the shame again as though they were fresh. Except, most of them didn't quite understand that it was their own soul memories they were experiencing; they imagined it was a reaction to a vision she had somehow pressed into their consciousness, a roller coaster ride of hallucination. They weren't really sure how she did it, or even if it was something she actually did to them. They just knew they lived something in those moments and it was worth the price of admission. A short bit of exhilaration in a life filled with agony and despair.
Because there was no pleasure in New Earth, not since the god had come, no real joy in living, and so, whether a little trick of the light, a trick of the hand, a trick of some sort of hallucination, it didn't matter. It was a pretty trick she turned, indeed. No one in New Earth cared about such trivial things as morals, ethics, even the old-fashioned notion of sin. It was back to the primeval concerns of eat, sleep, forage, fornicate, and if all that was taken care of, you moved it up a notch. Steal, kill, use, and assault. Same things really, just on another playing level, like some kind of warped Dante's inferno high on a gob of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Now, not quite eight months after the war, she actually made enough money every day to buy a three day-old egg sandwich each morning from the survivor's station, one that, fortunately, came with a smear of godspit taped to the bottom of the cellophane wrapper.
The coffee she got free, left on the back step in a thermos by the manager of the station, Ami. A good man for a dealer, even if he was a bit intense for her tastes.
She wished she could say she was grateful for Ami's kindness; instead, the only thing she was grateful for was the money for the sandwich and the smear of bliss-inducing drug that he taped to the bottom.
Only the physical touched her: the sun baking her arms to a toast-colored brown, the rain making her card table even more dilapidated. Most times she didn't even feel sorry for the prostitutes who set up shop with a bruise or two on display.
No more. Not since the stranger had showed up and set up across the street. These last four days were the first time in nearly eight months that she felt some sort of anxiety past getting her next fix; and she paid attention to that nervous energy. She'd be a fool not to.
All because of that unflinching stare from across the way. She'd need to find another spot, perhaps, to peddle her wares. For now, she had her hands on her knees, studying this new arrival from beneath a hooded gaze, wondering what he thought of her particular brand of shenanigans.
She wondered what he thinking as he watched her help the john finally get to a steady stand. She worried he'd noticed the way the john gripped her hand as though she were a tether holding his body from falling off a very steep cliff before he toddled off, still reeling from his vision.
What she worried about was if the new arrival would infer something remotely spiritual about what he saw--because lawlessness, hedonism, and debauchery were all very fine and good in this new world, but religion of any sort most definitely was not.
And what was definitely not welcome in New Earth brought death.
Chapter 2
Her stalker was still there two hours later. The sky was gloaming above the buildings and the shadows had begun to stretch out as though they'd leaked from a bucket of tar.
If he was after a re-vision, he would have come already. The thought that he'd just stood there instead of approaching made her stomach squirm. He wanted something, that was for sure. She should be careful. Maybe it was a good thing no one else had hired her today. She felt her jeans pocket for its contents because she couldn't stand the thought th
at she'd lost what was in there. She couldn't hear the crinkling sound of cellophane, but she felt its slipperiness against the cloth. The other pocket held the money. Everything would be okay. She stood. Stretched.
"See you tomorrow, buddy," she whispered and then when she looked up from tucking the ratty table awkwardly beneath her armpit, intending to be done for the day, he straightened up.
She swallowed hard at his movement. "No," she muttered, terrified this was it, the time when he would stroll across the street. The moment when it all went to shit. She sent an enquiring glance his way, a come-on of sorts, playful, teasing. Testing him.
"Just a hooker," she muttered. "Nothing more, buddy." She held her breath, almost hoping he would head for her and then hoping he wouldn't. She was a mess of uncertainty. She needed the day to be over. It had already been too damn long.
Just when she thought he'd amble over, he pushed himself against the graffitied wall and shuffled off up the street. Her breath hissed out like a leaky tire. She watched him head west, away from the slummier bits, higher up the hill where shoppers and business people did their best to make normal lives in a ruined metropolis.
"Keep going," she urged him. "Keep going and turn down on Mockingbird." She felt like an ancient GPS, directing him, willing him toward the rattier part of the city. "Don't go to the rich half. Don't."
She felt a moment of panic as she watched him saunter toward the better half of the supercity.
"Keep goin, buddy," she said. "And I got your number."
Going straight would lead him to the section that kept the only real law in the city, in the entire globe.
He didn't pause and turn. He kept on over the crest toward the elite section.
"Shit," she said. "Fuck."
She felt her grip on the table had grown too tight. Her fingers hurt. Maybe he wasn't a bounty hunter. Maybe he had nothing to do with enforcing that global law that tortured and put to death anyone who even remotely sparked the mere idea of religion. Maybe he was just a lookie loo come to see how the other half lived.
She realized her hands were shaking and the edges of the table bit into her thigh. With a sigh, she dropped it. It was on its last anyway. She told herself that nothing would matter soon, not even the possibility of being accused of religion-mongering; because soon she would be lost in a spit-soaked haze where the only god she worshiped was Pleasure.
Theta Waves Box Set: The Complete Trilogy (Books 1-3) (Theta Waves Trilogy) Page 1
