Cassie obviously wanted to change the subject, because she went straight to generic small talk with her next question.
“So, what do you think you’ll be doing today with Olivia?”
Nothing, hopefully.
I wasn’t interested in making small talk, especially about Olivia, and so I shrugged and replied “who knows”. In the moment after I’d done it, I realised I was definitely picking up on some of Cassie’s more obvious traits. I’d heard that happened with friends, but hadn’t had enough time with anyone to notice that before. It was interesting.
A wisp of hair sticking on Cassie’s cheek distracted me. Without thinking, I reached out and caught the strands in my fingers, intending to tuck them behind her ear, where I guessed they were supposed to be. I paused as her hair caught the light. Bright, natural highlights appeared from within the normal brown colour as the light moved across the hairs. From a coppery-gold to a darker bronze-red, it was as if her hair had suddenly become metal in my fingers the moment I touched it. I moved the strands one way, and then another, tilting them to watch the colours merge and change. It was beautiful.
A flash of green caught my attention and I realised Cassie was staring at me. Quickly – and guiltily – I tucked the hairs into their proper place and offered her a swift smile of apology. Cassie stepped away from me, just as I heard the reception door slide open behind me. I guessed my stalker-scrutiny had freaked her out. Well done, Balik.
“Hi Balik! How are you this morning?”
Olivia suddenly appeared by my elbow, standing too close to me, and as loud as ever. I took a breath, potentially preparing to answer, but of course, this was Olivia, and so there was no need for my input to the conversation.
“I wonder what we’re doing today? Did you have a nice afternoon yesterday when we finished early? I ended up at Park 14 with a group of people from school, you should have come too, you would have loved it!”
Automatically I slipped into my usual role: nodding and offering smiles at regular intervals. It was easy enough to let Olivia’s questions just wash over me.
“Hi Joel!”
Olivia’s greeting brought my attention back to the group. Joel was ambling towards us, and nodded at Olivia’s welcome.
“I saw you this morning from my bedroom window – where were you going at that time?” She demanded.
“Just running. Then, I saw Cassie and Balik at the canteen and we had breakfast together.” Joel replied.
At the mention of my name, I looked across at him. I couldn’t help but notice that Joel had chosen to stand opposite me, on Cassie’s other side. She looked quite small sandwiched between us, especially as Joel towered a good four or five inches over my own head. Olivia passed between Cassie and I, moving towards the changing room when Medic Karlina appeared in the reception.
At first, I welcomed the silence following Olivia’s brief appearance. Then I realised that with only Cassie, Joel and myself stood there, the silence was stretching from awkward to excrutiating at a rapid pace. For once I felt concerned about falling into an uncomfortable silence. Perhaps I didn’t want Cassie to think I was rude…? Whatever the reason, in a move completely out of character, I started a conversation with Joel.
“So, you were out running this morning – anywhere nice?”
This single question was enough to start things going. After initially looking surprised by my interest, Joel fell into a comfortable recollection of where he’d been running and which parks he preferred for different reasons. I offered a few observations of my own and, before I knew it, everyone was back in the room.
Medic Karlina stepped forwards – making sure she had everyone’s attention – and with a glance at her viewing screen started our daily briefing. “You’ve now completed six weeks of the placement with us here at The Clinic, and feedback on all of you has been generally positive so far.”
Cassie sighed at my shoulder. I caught her gaze and flicked my eyes at her shoulder, asking silently if she was in pain. A slight shake of the head told me she wasn’t, and we both turned our attention back to the Medic.
“To help you get a wider range of experience here we’re going to reorganise you into new pairs for the next few days and see how well you can share the knowledge you’ve already picked up.”
New pairs?
I snuck a hopeful peek at Cassie and found she was already looking at me. I stretched out my arm, showing off the long-sleeved suit that only Cassie and I were wearing. Surely, that meant we would be partnered together.
Reading from the viewing screen, Medic Karlina announced the new pairings. “Balik and Cassie will be working in research and records for the next few days.”
She looked up at the group, not focusing on us directly, which made me think she didn’t actually know who Cassie and I were. That was probably an even worse compliment than the generally positive feedback. It had been nearly two months and she spoke to us five days a week. How difficult was it to memorise a few names and faces?
Medic Karlina read out the next pairings swiftly, not that I was interested.
“Does anyone have any questions?” she asked.
Silence.
“Excellent, let’s get going then.”
She turned away from us and began tapping on her viewing screen again. It was obviously our cue to leave. Cassie and I nudged towards each other – sharing a brief grin – and waited for one of the Medics to identify themselves as our mentor for the new placement. We got Medic Jones, who I’d met a couple of times already. Without preamble he escorted us out of the reception.
I looked down at Cassie as we passed through the orientation reception doors and smiled to myself. Today was already turning out to be even better than I’d hoped.
Chapter 12
I guessed that Cassie wasn’t overly impressed with our new placement task. Just a hunch from the frequent sighs emanating from her side of the small room. It didn’t bother me particularly. I had access to a viewing screen, and was running several basic research paths – as requested by our Medic – in the background. This morning I had much more important research of my own to do, and it wasn’t something I would find reviewing health statistics of the inhabitants of the station. There was only one person’s data I needed.
Everything was running perfectly on my two main screens, and I was just about to open up a new one for my own research, when Cassie interrupted me. I was surprised. With her continual tapping on the keyboard, and lack of conversation, I had assumed she was in a studious mood.
“Balik – can you show me what you’re doing?”
She sounded reluctant and irritated, an odd combination. I turned in my chair to face her and was about to ask why, when she answered my unuttered thought.
“My searches keep coming back with nothing.”
Nodding my head, I spun back around and wheeled along to make some space at the desk beside me. Cassie stepped closer, but hesitated, seeming nervous all of a sudden. There was no way she would be able to see from where she was, and so I tugged her closer.
I hadn’t meant to pull too hard, but Cassie stumbled and half-fell into my lap before I could catch her. When she tried to get up, I put my hand on her waist to help, but then thought better of it and nudged her closer to me instead.
Swallowing the rocks that had suddenly appeared in my throat, I was about to ask her is this OK, but I didn’t want to sound nervous. Instead, I let bravado get the better of me. “So, do you have a question – or was this just an excuse to get closer to me?” It was so naff – and out of character – I couldn’t help grinning.
Naturally, Cassie came right back at me with something better, calling my bluff when she replied in a cool voice. “I have questions. But, I can move somewhere else to run through them, if that’s more comfortable for you?”
That shattered my illusions of appearing suave and confident. Maybe I should stick with being myself. “You’re just about perfect where you are,” I told her, adjusting my arm so that
it encircled her waist more fully. This was the closest I’d ever been to Cassie – or any girl for that matter. Unless you counted yesterday’s emergency examination, but it would probably be frowned upon to count that as even vaguely romantic.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take me too long to show Cassie how to run the searches and ten minutes later she was back at her own terminal running some sequences. I could tell she was bored: she was fidgeting in her chair and bouncing her foot back and forth, heel glued to the floor, toes in the air.
I hadn’t bothered trying to look at my own stuff following Cassie’s interruption, just in case she wanted to see my screen again. And so I needed a new distraction. It didn’t take long for me to find one.
“Cassie?”
“Yes.”
“You know yesterday, when we were in the park?”
There was a pause. Then a cautious sounding “yes.”
“Have you thought any more about what happened?” I sounded too hopeful and I knew it.
“Nothing happened.”
“Oh. OK.”
* * *
“What about now?” I was hoping for a different answer to the twelve previous times I’d asked the question.
“How many times do I have to tell you?” Cassie hissed. “I CANNOT hear what you are thinking!”
“Maybe it’s something to do with attunement?” I mused, ignoring Cassie’s angry expression and staring at her head. Or maybe the key was not in conscious thought, but subconscious…
“Can you let it go?” Cassie turned away, focusing her attention back on her screens. “I feel like I’m some sort of experiment or research project for you!”
“Come on – I’m not that bad – I just want to see if you can do it again.”
Cassie spun back around in her chair to face me, and I thought she was just going to tell me again that nothing had happened. So, I was surprised when she actually said: “I’m dealing with it.”
Dealing with it? If that was the case, then it meant that there was something to deal with, didn’t it?
“It was just a strange coincidence,” she added.
The two statements didn’t add up. She was saying it was nothing but a coincidence, but also telling me that she was dealing with it. It couldn’t be both. And, the fact that she was avoiding eye contact only made me believe it more. There was something.
“You’ve barely looked at your screen since we’ve been here.” She admonished. “We’ll not find anything to discuss in our research document if you don’t at least try and focus – I don’t want to fail this.”
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “Firstly, we can’t fail as it isn’t a test. Secondly, I don’t need to focus to pull together observations on the data they’ve given us: I’ve already got five lines of investigation searching as we speak, with research hypotheses ready for each. And thirdly, you are a much more interesting subject than any of the stuff we’ve got here.”
She scowled in response. “Thanks for not making me feel like an experiment.”
I tried not to laugh. She was very cute when she was angry, and it was quite distracting.
As I watched, Cassie pulled out an automatic discourse headset, and very deliberately pulled it on. I assumed this was to let me know that the conversation was over. I chuckled, then picked up my own headset and put it on, mimicking the extremely serious look on Cassie’s face.
“So – can we try again?” I asked, when I caught her peeking back at me.
At first I thought she was wavering. Her face relaxed from the frown momentarily, and I took that as a good sign. But, she didn’t answer me and the silence began to fill the small room, like an invisible, suffocating cloud.
Reluctantly, I turned back to my own screens, ignoring the data scrolling across them. All the joking had gone now. It just hurt that there was obviously something she knew about this, and that she was hiding it from me. How could anything be that bad, compared with what she knew about me?
“Why are you hiding this from me?” I asked her silently, unable to say the words aloud.
“Look…” Cassie said, pausing and taking a breath. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to hide anything from you. It’s just this whole thing, with you believing that I can hear what you think…it’s too strange. Implausible”
My heart stopped. I swear it did – just for a second, but it did stop. I turned to stare and found myself looking at the back of Cassie’s head. The headset was in position, above the cascade of dark hair, and her eyes were fixed on the screen in front of her. I couldn’t have said a word then if my life had depended on it. Cassie was answering the question I had just asked myself, not her. But, the important thing was that it was in my head – I hadn’t said it out loud. If I were going to say it, I probably would have worked harder to sound a little less hollow and despairing.
My heart re-started. Where my badgering had failed, it seemed straight forward honesty had succeeded. Albeit, honesty that I had not offered her through choice… Cassie was still talking, and I realised that I was getting exactly what I’d wished for. Cassie was revealing secrets about herself, to me, that I doubted she had ever told anyone before.
“I can’t really understand it. And, more than anything, I don’t want you thinking I’m some kind of freak.” Cassie broke up her serious words with a soft scoff, and sounded lighter when she continued. “I promise, once I’m feeling a bit better we can experiment all you want. As long as you promise not to try and dissect me or anything.”
I couldn’t believe it. Whatever had happened the day before in the park, was happening again now! But this time Cassie was fully conscious, and appeared to be controlling whatever it was that made it possible for her to hear what was in my head, rather than what I said aloud. If I was allowed to experiment, as she had just said, then I might as well start now.
“You promise?” I asked, letting the words hover inside my head; just as I had a moment before when I thought I was just talking to myself.
“I promise,” she confirmed.
“Can you look at me and say that again?” I asked internally. “I want to see your eyes and make sure you’re telling me the truth.”
“Fine,” she grumbled, whirling in her seat to face me. “I promise that you can experiment all you want with me to see if I can hear what you’re thinking.”
“Thanks – that’s all I wanted to hear.” I replied silently, and watched as Cassie’s jaw dropped to the floor.
“I – just – heard – you – ” she stammered,
“I know,” I told her, pulling the headset off and speaking out loud again. I was unsure if it would scare her if I kept just thinking things at her. Cassie seemed almost as shocked as me, which was odd. A few moments earlier, I had been convinced that she knew what was going on and was just hiding it from me. Is it possible she had been hiding it from herself, too?
It would probably help if I explained what I thought happened. She just looked confused, and a little unwell if I were truthful.
“It started when you put the headset on – or when I put it on – I’m not sure which.” I tilted my hand from side-to-side as I tried to work out what had happened first. I found I was confusing myself now, which wasn’t a great start. I decided to try a different approach. “What was the first thing you heard?”
Cassie was still staring at me. Her eyes were half-glazed, as though she was just waking up and not completely aware of what was happening. I waited for her answer.
“You asked me why I was trying to hide this from you… You sounded a bit…”
Upset? I didn’t bother to say it when her words trailed off, although I guessed that was what she had heard in my head. Instead I muttered “I know,” and then let the enthusiasm take over. “Try it again!”
Without seeming to consider what she was doing, Cassie did as I asked. Her eyes found mine and locked on. I tried to be as calm and focused as possible, hoping it might help her.
There we sat. I pushed words, thoughts, ques
tions, at Cassie… Nothing happened. I waited and tried again. Her eyes remained on mine, but as more time passed there was only silence in the room.
“Nothing?” I asked eventually, although I already knew the answer.
“Nothing,” she confirmed, sounding a little disappointed herself.
“OK.”
Cassie still had her headset on, but I had taken mine off. We’d both been wearing them a few minutes earlier, and I wondered if perhaps that was the connection. I pulled the band around my head and settled it into place.
“What about now?”
Cassie re-focused on my eyes, just as she had last time. I stared back at her and waited, willing her to hear me. “Come on…come on…” I pleaded, desperate for something to happen. Cassie gave a small nod. “You can hear me?” I asked. She nodded again, giving me a small smile, as my own face split into a wide grin.
I was about to jump up and start bouncing around. This was huge! This was amazing – something I’d never heard of, or read about, or even dreamed it was possible for someone to do. Then, I checked myself, not wanting to break Cassie’s concentration.
Maybe I should try something more difficult than words…? We’d come this far, after all. “I wonder if…”
I concentrated on building a picture in my head. I imagined one of my favourite parts in Park 42 and began filling in the details. The grasses, bushes and trees: all different shades of browns and greens. The dappled light coming through the overhanging branches, different to the usual flood of brightness from the mirror-sky.
As an afterthought I added Cassie and me to the scene. Working with things I had definitely daydreamed about before, I let Cassie see one of my own secrets. We were standing close together and I pictured wrapping my arm around her waist, just as I had earlier. In my head, Cassie’s body moved easily into mine and I used my other hand to stroke across her cheek and turn her face to mine. I leaned in and –
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