by Alex Hughes
Well, until that day. I’d been teaching Emily, Tamika, and Charles, three students at once, the ability that had gotten me the professorship in the first place. It was a routine day. But I was high as a kite and I hadn’t realized Satin—for all I’d been trying to hide it—had an effect on the mind.
Before I knew it, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the world had tilted and I’d lost control. Three students, three million ROC students, burned out like cinders in an instant. Gone, gone beyond any redemption, from an accident. From a slip—from a side effect—from something I hadn’t controlled. Couldn’t control. Because I couldn’t let go of the drug I wasn’t supposed to have.
Charles was found dead—by his own hand—in a pool of blood in his suite three days later. His future was gone, gone in an instant; what did he have to live for? The other two—well, they hadn’t killed themselves. But their minds were shredded beyond repair because of my mistake. At the hearing . . . Emily’s mind had curled in on itself like a sodden, wooden knot. Tamika was too traumatized to even show up.
How do you go from being an elite telepath to a normal in a day? How do you adjust to everything you’d ever loved being taken away from you in an instant? My head pounded like a fleet of ice picks to the brain.
I’d found out. My fiancée at the time, Kara, had been the first to find us, the first to see what had happened. The first to report me, testify against me, and see me thrown out of the Guild. As much as her betrayal still burned like fire, it paled in comparison to what I’d done. What I’d done to innocents, to students.
Now, here in the car, I gave up fighting the guilt, the telepathy, the inconceivable reaction pain and rocking world, and I let myself pass out.
* * *
I was aware of distant speech for a long time before I decided to wake up. Slowly the sounds made words, and the words made sense, like a sharpening image finally clicking into place, far away but understandable.
“We’re not going anywhere until he wakes up on his own,” Cherabino’s voice insisted on the other side of my head, through the cracked car window. “I’m not a telepath, and I’m not messing with the normal course of events. For all I know we wake him up early and he scrambles our brains like in the movies. You want to be responsible for that?”
Freeman’s voice made a frustrated sound. “I’ve been up twenty-two hours already and regs say I can’t leave anyone at the scene.”
I realized, slowly, my headache had dimmed to a dull roar, something I could actually manage.
“I thought this was our case now,” Michael’s voice put in.
“Not until the paperwork goes through, not really,” Freeman said. “Right now it’s courtesy. If somebody screws something up, it’s still my watch. It’s still my beating to take.”
I winced, the word “beating” conjuring up far too many images and emotions.
“We’re the last on the scene already,” Cherabino said. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“What will a few more minutes harm?” Michael said.
“Clearly you haven’t been listening, Officer. I haven’t slept in . . . well, far too long. And you’re the last item on my to-do list before a nice warm bed calls my name. I don’t cut corners. You have five minutes or I’ll move the car myself. He can sleep at the station.”
My head was pounding dully, my stomach still entirely unsettled, but neither was overwhelming and both no reason to get Cherabino in trouble.
“I told you, I’m not—” Her head came up to look in the car.
I pulled myself to a seated position. “I’m okay,” I said, echoed it through the Link with as little pain as possible. I didn’t mean to scare you.
“Then we’re ready to go.” Cherabino shot a dose of annoyance straight at me. Stop the pain thing. Now. Then to Freeman: “You’ll have the paperwork on your desk before your shift starts.” She paused. “Want me to tell Branson you’ll be late?”
Freeman and Cherabino locked gazes for a long, long moment. Then Freeman nodded. “A couple hours only.”
“I’ll tell him.”
Then Cherabino gestured for Michael to get in the car, and opened her own door. I took the moment to put on a seat belt. Only then did I realize I still had the sunglasses on. One of the arms was pasted to my head; I loosened it and felt a dissipation of some of the headache.
“Are you all right?” Michael asked. “The scene wasn’t that bad, I didn’t think. No kids or anything.” He looked to Cherabino, who was turned all the way around in her seat preparing to back the car down the twisty driveway around the trees. She made it all the way to the street before she turned on the anti-grav generators and made a highly illegal jump to airspace. Over a neighborhood no-fly zone. With a floating marker above us.
I slammed my eyes closed. We’d die or we wouldn’t, and either way I’d rather not see it coming.
She avoided the marker and we survived, at least for another day.
“I’m okay,” I said, when I finally felt safe opening my eyes. “Shell-shocked, a bit. Nasty reaction headache, but nothing critical.”
“Why didn’t you answer me about time of death?” Cherabino asked, her voice too biting. Maybe I had scared her. Maybe . . .
Shut up, came across the Link and she slammed up the blunt-edged shield I’d taught her, which made the headache worse. I gritted my teeth.
“You asked me about time of death?” I asked. “When was this exactly?” My attention wasn’t all that great these days.
“Shouldn’t we be asking questions right now?” Michael asked. “You dashed out without a word and now you’re not talking. Is this a telepath thing?”
“No,” I gritted out. “It’s a cranky partner thing. What was it you wanted to know?”
“Time of death,” Cherabino said. “And who did it.”
“Not in the last few hours, not several days ago. The coroner can tell you a hell of a lot more. As for who?” I paused. “Not the husband. He’s killed this way before. It’s a . . . sharp mind. A practiced one.”
Michael asked, “Why isn’t he here, then?”
“Maybe he cut him up into pieces and stuffed him down the drainpipes,” I said testily.
Cherabino met my eyes through the rearview mirror, and a question sense leaked over the Link. I noticed her forehead was creased like she had a migraine; maybe some of my headache was leaking over.
I upped my barriers between us and accepted the resulting fireworks in my skull as the necessary price. I took a breath. Tried to remember what the question was.
“Well, did he?” Cherabino asked. “Stuff the pieces down the drainpipes?”
“I don’t think so. If he did, though, he didn’t kill the man there, or anywhere close. I only felt the one death, though in that house there could be a herd of tap-dancing psychic monkeys and I wouldn’t know the difference.”
“What’s wrong with the house?” Cherabino asked.
“Monkeys get psychic?” Michael put in.
“I told you. He beat her—and worse. And he did it a lot. Every board of that house was covered with a crazy level of emotion. And I don’t know. Maybe not; I’ve never seen testing on monkeys, and the Guild tests everything.”
“So you couldn’t see anything.” Cherabino paused. “Why not?”
Why was she pushing this in front of Michael? “It’s complicated,” I said, stalling.
“Say it with the fish tank.” She merged into air traffic without so much as checking her blind spot, and I swallowed a yelp. Michael was hanging on for dear life.
“Okay,” I said, for his benefit, once it was apparent we were going to live. “Imagine the world is a fish tank, one of those big tanks you see in doctors’ offices.”
“It has sand, a ceiling, maybe some coral, and lots of goldfish,” Cherabino said in a continuous stream. “Bottom-feeders and the like. Me a
nd Michael and half the world are shiny orange goldfish, the Guild and you, maybe, are huge Japanese koi. We get it.”
I sighed. “Are you going to let me tell it or not?”
“Do you have to be difficult?”
“Boy, someone’s testy today,” I said. When she swerved to avoid an airbus, I swallowed my words. “I take it back, you’re the soul of sweetness and light.”
“Goldfish. Fish tank. Talk.”
I tried to find some kind of explanation that didn’t depend on either my injury or me doing something wrong. Finally I settled on, “It’s like there was algae in the water, okay? Or thousands of slow piranhas the size of a fingernail coming after me. I fell into the tank and spent most of my time fighting them off.”
She got quiet then.
“That’s why you dashed out?” Michael said. “To get away from the piranhas?”
“More or less.” I looked down, ignored the latest swerve as Cherabino decided to get in the ground exit at the last possible second. She screeched into the parking lot of a Thai restaurant, stopping hard enough to throw me against the seat belt. Great. Since last summer with the crime scene behind a Thai restaurant in East Atlanta, I couldn’t smell peanut sauce without gagging.
“Can’t we do Mexican?” I asked.
“Was that really necessary?” Michael asked her, testy.
“No and no.” Cherabino opened her car door, turned back around to look at me. “You’re eating.” Then at Michael: “Don’t criticize the driving. It’s bad for your health.”
I sighed and unbuckled my seat belt. Probably good to get fuel in me; I’d passed out, after all, and was still feeling weak. Plus the whole head-pounding-and-possible-major-reinjury thing. “You realize I’m nauseated already?” I asked her.
“You can have plain rice, fine. But you’re eating.” She paused as I unbuckled my seat belt. “What else aren’t you telling me about the scene?”
“Nothing, really.”
Silence came from her as Michael stopped, uncomfortably, outside the car.
“The killer feels familiar,” I said, just realizing it. “I’ve seen him—or at least his mental signature—before.”
“Guild?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t know.”
* * *
Swartz arrived early, and I was already waiting on the curb, my headache low and ignorable. Swartz was always early; he was one of those old men who never slept, and as my Narcotics Anonymous sponsor, well, he was even older. He’d been clean when I was in diapers.
It was raining again, long drizzly streams, which suited my mood. But the good news was, it had been raining for days; probably all the nasty pollution was long gone, pulled out of the air days ago. This would just be dirty water and cloud spit. I pulled up the collar of my coat and stubbed out the cigarette. My umbrella sat beside me, unused.
Swartz’s aircar grounded with a lurch. The anti-grav system must be on the fritz—Swartz worked for DeKalb County schools on the southern section as a teacher, working with some of the poorest kids in the area. He didn’t get paid much.
Swartz opened the door from the inside; the lock must be stuck now too.
“How are you?” I asked, by rote, as I slid into the seat. My head protested the sudden movement, but it settled.
Swartz nodded hello and pulled off into traffic, caution and precision guiding his movements. He drove like an old man, checking his blind spot five times before a vertical lane change, keeping a careful eye on all the other cars in all directions. Easier to head the problem off before you got to it, he often said.
“Today?” His slate gray hair, heavy wrinkles, and weathered features argued with the strength still in his shoulders and arms. Swartz was no weakling, age or none. He could still kick my ass any time he wanted.
“Today what?” After all day trying to force work past my limitations, my attention span now rivaled a gnat’s. If the gnat was feeling peckish. “Could you repeat that please?”
“What are you grateful for today?” he prompted.
“Oh. Grateful.”
Every week at our usual morning coffee, he made me list three things I was grateful for, and had for the last six years. Even the question made me taste the strong licorice coffee all over again. But we’d missed this week—parent-teacher conference for one of his kids that morning—and I hadn’t rescheduled. He wasn’t saying anything about it, but I knew he was watching.
“That’s a morning thing.”
“Good to have a reminder of what you’ve got.”
I took a breath. “My job’s on the line now.”
“You say that every few months,” Swartz returned, turning up the speed of the windshield wipers with equanimity. “They’re no more going to get rid of you than the school’s going to start teaching gun classes.”
I shifted and thought. “Well, maybe they should teach classes. The kids certainly have enough of them. This time they’re serious, though. Paulsen says I’ve got to get a certification or some such to keep my job—those are the rules, the politicians say. There’s a budget crisis.” I took a breath, waited for the thoughts to settle again. “Oh, and Cherabino’s still pissed at me and I ran into an old student today—dead, at a crime scene.”
Swartz whistled. “Big day.”
“Yeah.”
“Can you renew your thing at the Guild?”
“I don’t know.” I slumped down in the seat.
Swartz only let me sulk for so long. “Three things,” he prompted. “Gratefulness.”
I sighed, breathed. “Okay. Three. Telepathy’s getting more reliable. With the exception of me overdoing it today, it’s been coming back more or less like I expected. It looks like I don’t need to go see the Guild doctor after all.”
“Good to hear.” He nodded, slowed down to stop at a floating air light turning yellow. “What did you do to yourself today?”
“Something stupid. Cherabino asked me for a favor and I couldn’t not do it for her.”
Swartz was oddly silent.
I added, “Like I said, I’ve coached a lot of students through recovery, nothing this bad, but it seems to be on the same pace. I know the exercises to do. I know what’s going on. There’s no reason to give the Guild—or the department, for that matter—any ammunition to use against me.”
“You’re being bullheaded, son.”
“Even so.”
He nodded and shifted tactics. “You been praying about it? About what to do if it doesn’t come back on its own?”
I took a breath. Swartz was a lot more comfortable about the God part of the Twelve Steps than I was. “Sometimes,” I admitted quietly, like it was a shameful secret. “I need a miracle. This is my life, Swartz. This is who I am. I’m a telepath, a damn strong, ethical telepath. A good one. I need this. So, yeah, I’m praying, okay? I’m praying.”
“Sometimes God works quietly. We’ll both pray a little harder. He’ll listen. Sometimes you’ve got to ask for help.”
I took a breath, the moment, the longing too intense.
“Now tell me about the student,” Swartz said.
I was silent.
“The dead student at the crime scene.”
“I heard you.”
He waited, as we drove closer and closer to our regular meeting.
I sighed. “It’s Emily, okay? Emily.”
“You know I told you to find her and the other one to make restitution.”
I looked down at my feet. “I sent letters.”
“They were very short letters. Making amends is about more than a half-assed letter, son. I’ve said this before.”
And what sat like a fog in the car between us was the certain knowledge I couldn’t apologize to Emily in person now. Death had a way of making things too final, too quick. “I can solve the case at least. I can find Emily�
�s killer. Won’t that make amends?”
“It’s a start. You need to find the other one and apologize in person. You’ve let this go too long.”
“I could do that, I guess.” But I knew I wouldn’t, not if I could help it. “Solving this case will make amends.”
Swartz was quiet as he parked. I knew the subject wasn’t done, even if it was shelved for a while. He turned to me, taking off the seat belt. “You know there’s more than one certification in the world.”
“I know. It’s just . . .”
“You’re worried about the felonies.”
I nodded.
“They’re all drug related. Since the Second Chance Act, if you can pass the tests they don’t matter. If you did the rehab. And you did. We’ve got all the paperwork; it’ll be fine. You’ll find something. How much time do you have to figure it out?”
“A few weeks at least.” I felt distant, like there was some overwhelming shock that hadn’t quite registered yet. That’s right, I was going to lose my job. My job and my support system and everything else. In a time when my telepathy—the only thing I did that mattered—was on the fritz. I was inches from that cliff, inches, even if I chose not to think about it.
“We’ll figure it out.” His certainty put a cap on the end of the conversation.
It was the last week of September, I thought, as I stepped out of the car into an inch of dirty water, my gray umbrella fighting with the wind. September. We’d be looking at Step Nine one more time, making restitution for the harm we’d done. Again.
I limped along after Swartz, who as usual had brought out his own ugly striped umbrella. I hated September.
* * *
That night I stared at my ceiling, barely visible blockish shapes attesting to the Tech still hidden in the walls—Tech I’d converted to shield me from Mindspace while I slept, a therapy, a failed attempt at normalcy. That kind of Tech was illegal, against the spirit if not the letter of the laws, but I’d tuned it to cancel out my brain waves in Mindspace so I could actually rest, so I could actually think. It was worth the trouble for my sanity, if nothing else, and the components had been here when I’d moved in, the old office building badly converted. As long as I never got caught it wasn’t a big deal.
