“It’s me, just giving you a heads up, Daniel was just released to duty. Your hold has been lifted. So, duck and cover, Angela’s heading your way,” Tina answered, “Gotta go, Gene has me doing some lab work.”
“Thanks Tina,” Ben lowered the targets gently to their shelves and reached out to lift the heaviest from its cradle on the floor. He lifted it high above the highest shelf and set it spinning. It took most of his concentration. It left little of his mind free to wonder how long it would take for the news to reach Angela and less to stew over her.
Ben was thoroughly absorbed in his practice and barely noticed when Angela made her appearance two hours later. She entered the room softly and watched quietly while Ben attempted to place the smallest weight in orbit around the largest weight. Ben didn't notice her until his failure sparked her slight snicker. Ben lowered both targets swiftly but precisely and removed the amplifier. Then he turned to face her.
“Not, bad, what setting are you using?” Angela asked to cover her amusement.
Ben glanced down at the headset, “Five.”
Angela took the headset from him and dialed down the setting then put it back on his head, “Now lift the green one.” Angela pointed to one of the mid range weights.
Ben bit his tongue and allowed her to turn him back towards the shelves rather than arguing. He reached out his mind and lifted. At first the weight barely moved, then Ben got into the groove and managed to move it to a neighboring shelf. By the time the target sat firmly on the next shelf Ben was sweating.
“I’m impressed. So, I assume Gene has spoken with you about your condition.” Angela said teleporting Ben’s amplifier to its shelf.
Her words confirmed Ben’s suspicions that she had turned the amplifier off. “What do you mean?”
“What you just managed takes a rating of more than a thousand, that’s not what your first test suggested you had. I know what that can mean. So has he discussed your options?”
“Yeah, he did a hormone therapy treatment.”
“Those can be effective. They can hold back the migraines. You have a lot more in common with most briaunti than some briaunti. Just be glad you didn't have to go through puberty in less than a week.” Angela’s eyes were firmly focused on the target shelves, avoiding Ben.
“Speaking of which, you should think about how you handle Tina.”
“Either you have a much higher rating, or we think too much alike. I know Tina is more capable than we give her credit for most of the time. The problem is Neely can be contagious. She’s got the third highest rating in this joint, and she has reasons to be over protective.” A dark look flashed across Angela’s face.
Ben shoved his own frustration down into the pit of his gut, and was relieved she had approached him in the mental silence of the practice range. The small bubbles of his own anger were hard enough to keep under a lid, without having to deal with mental leakage from others. “And now we come back to the heart of our conflict. Nobody told me her name, and I've been under a tiny bit of pressure. I didn't think I had to introduce my would've been assassin by name.”
“Yeah, Daniel pointed that out. He will probably point out the fact that I have been under constant pressure for a couple of decades at this point, and try to apologize for me.” Angela finally looked Ben in the eye. “The point is we rub each other the wrong way. I’m sorry for how I behaved, but in future I need all the information, even what you think is trivial. You never know when your trivial tidbit will be an important piece that I need to see an overall pattern.”
“‘In future’... you sound awfully sure about that part,” Ben turned back to the target weights and began returning them all to their proper places. He focused carefully to help hold down a flare of anger at her assumption.
“I... mean... I had hoped you would agree to become a factor.”
Ben lost his concentration and one of the lighter porcelain targets crashed to the floor. “I don’t even know what that really means. As far as anyone has taken the time to explain, they’re just your own personal army pursuing your personal agenda.”
“My agenda? No, there is no personal agenda. I started the fight; the rest of them have all signed on as it passed by. I only lead by default, everybody comes to me for the answers, and solutions they can’t find on their own. I’m the Chief by their mutual consent, not mine. Trust me not mine. I didn't ask for the job, and for some reason I can’t seem to quit.”
“Yeah, well, you seem to be asking for me to join up.” Ben used his mind to sweep the shards of the fallen target into the cleaning slot.
“That’s because I need your help. I have a job that will get to the belly of why you should be a factor. Do you remember the cult case?”
Ben turned to glare at Angela, “All my life I'll remember it. What does it have to do with anything.” Ben bit back on his tongue, ashamed he had let himself snap at her.
Unperturbed, Angela answered, “Erica was victim number 22 not 21. I believe another girl may have survived, rape and all. I need you and Daniel to find her, and the child born from that rape.”
“The child? A half human...” Ben hissed out a breath, “Where do we start?”
“Now you are talking like you want to be a factor.”
“I want to do my job and help that girl.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
She had always been falling, falling, falling in the black sightless, soundless, scentless, senselessness. It was nightmarish, but she could not awake because she did not sleep. She hadn't slept in a long time, and then waking to this had seemed an escape. She was tired but she dare not sleep for fear of the dreams.
She knew she had a name somewhere, but after so long she couldn't remember it. Much longer and she would have forgotten what a name was, just as she had forgotten “light", “music", and “hope”. Time was difficult too; it had become a count, of thundering heartbeats. She had lost that count many times but was sure there had been millions of them. Tens of millions of them, at a second a piece did that come out to days, or, weeks, or as she feared years. Terror crept into her consciousness as she tried to remember what days, weeks and years were.
A horrible clang shook every cell in her body, dulled every thought in her mind, and reminded her of what pain was. Instantaneously on the heels of the clang came the sound of metal grinding against metal. Then light filtered down through the gel flooding her eyes, blinding her in its presence just as much as it had in its absence. A jolt passed through the gel and suddenly she was floating in fluid. She closed her eyes against the light and saw fireworks and speckles behind their lids.
For a while, nothing more happened, until she began to hear the sound of echoing drips. Her skin was numb to sensation, but she felt her limbs being pulled at by a force she suddenly remembered as gravity. Grunts and the sounds of fibers abrading against each other began to overpower the dripping. Then came nausea as her inner ear informed her that they were moving her.
They handled her roughly, tossing her from side to side. The numbness began to wear off and she began to feel the hands on her. They were rough finely corrugated things, with swirls and whirls of shallow furrows. Slowly she realized that her sense of touch was reporting to her the palm patterns and fingerprints of those that held her. In realizing that, her eyes opened in surprise, and then closed again in pain. The hands lifted her, then lowered her, with much grunting and rustling, to a flat, smooth, hard surface. Hands jerked partial gloves from her hands. She sputtered and coughed as they removed her breathing tube and nose plugs. Her mouth filled with the sour taste of the jell and the air.
Rhythmic thunder approached, or was it just the sound of hard soled shoes on a concrete floor. “Leave!” The word thundered directly in her mind, skipping her ears. She tried to lift her arm to begin to comply but gravity restrained her quite well by itself. Then she realized that whatever had spoken couldn't mean her. Many other feet, covered in softness from the sound, pattered away quickly. She kn
ew she wasn't alone because the thunder shoes remained silent.
“You have been in there a long time, The Dark One was prepared to leave you there permanently. Do you understand me?” The voice came back into her mind, gently, “I have bargained for your reprieve. All you have to do is give yourself over.”
Despite the reasonability of the voice, and the pain the light brought even through closed lids, some half remembered forgettance made her resist. After so long the idea of the dark seemed almost a comfort, but from dim memory, she realized that The Dark One represented an entirely different type of darkness. She couldn't do it; she wouldn't.
“No, don't give your answer now! I will take you to a room there you will have time to think about it and regain yourself, so you can make the right decision.” The thought voice was male, and familiar. It frightened and soothed her at the same time.
The surface she lay on jostled briefly. The sound of the thundering footsteps and the grinding squeal of ungreased wheels crippled her in mind and body. She barely felt the vibrations of the rolling cart over the debilitating sound that bounced like sonar giving her a distorted impression of her surroundings. The room was large and full of hard surface, but quickly replaced by a narrow corridor that seemingly went on forever.
He turned the cart and there was a large jolt as it went over a threshold. The pressure of the light on her eyelids dropped as they entered the room, and the sound of cart and thunder feet stopped shortly after. She opened her eyes and could see the blurry image of a ceiling without pain. “I'll leave you in here. Do yourself a favor and don't try to escape. The Dark One can do worse things than kill you.” The thunder of his feet announced the man's retreat, and the hissing close of a door punctuated his departure.
She was alone in the silence of a darkened room, which blazed with light to her eyes. She couldn't lift more than a finger from the cart. Her own scoffing grunt both surprised and momentarily deafened her. She stared up at the ceiling for a long time, hunting through her memories or lack thereof. No matter how deeply she dug, she kept running aground on a hard packed gray wall of misery.
After attacking the mental block from every angle to the point of weariness, she didn't think she had the energy to keep breathing, let alone move. Lying there helpless, she wondered if she could escape, until she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Ben walked into the clinic with something resembling a smile on his face. He ducked around the reception desk into the hall and found the door to the main exam room, which doubled as Tina’s study area, closed. He knocked.
“Come in, but be prepared to act as a nurse,” Tina’s voice chirped. Ben slid the door open and saw Tina scrubbing at a bloody gouge on a woman’s calf muscle with an antiseptic foaming soap. Tina turned to face Ben. “Good, hoped it was you, would've felt silly if it had been Angela. She find you?”
“Yeah,” Ben answered in a monotone.
“So, how’d it go? Pass me the closer.”
“She just came in and interrupted my practice. We were almost civil,” Ben cracked a smile and handed Tina the devise. Tina pinched the two sides of the wound together and ran the closer over it, placing micro-grafts to hold the wound closed. Then she handed the sealer back to Ben who had the surgical spray dressing ready in exchange. After two quick sprays Tina handed it back.
“Stay off of it for today if you don’t want a huge scar. Understand Carlie? I mean it, no more till at least tomorrow!” Tina wagged a finger at the woman’s face.
Carlie nodded. She hopped off the exam table, but didn't hit the floor, instead she levitated out the door without so much as a question.
“Second time in here today, you should see where she managed to bruise herself. So you seen Daniel yet?” Tina gathered up her supplies and put them carefully away.
Ben sat on the corner of the exam table, “No, not yet. I still feel guilty, and well I did storm out of there...”
“He doesn't blame you, and I know he’s practically forgotten about the argument you had with his wife. Not that I think he’d take that personally,” Tina pulled a brown paper sack from a lower cabinet and proceeded to eat her lunch. “You hungry?”
“No, I’m stressing over the assignment, and how to talk to Daniel.”
Tina pulled an extra paper-wrapped sandwich from her bag and handed it to Ben, “Eat, you’re a growing boy!”
“Growing boy? I’m a grown man! I don’t have to eat this darn sandwich!” Ben grumbled unwrapping the paper and sniffing.
“Peanut butter and jam, eat it. You are too growing, which reminds me, Gene wanted me to run some tests on you, check on how you’re doing and all,” Tina dropped her sack on the counter and dug the Everett meter out of its hiding place. She plopped it on Ben’s head before he could object.
This time, when Tina activated it, it felt different. There wasn't a buzzing sensation. Instead it felt like his brain was being pushed and pulled at by invisible hands. It took much longer, or maybe it just seemed that way. Finally it pinged and Tina put it away. She took out another scanner and looked into Ben’s eyes with it.
“That should do it,” Tina picked her pop-pad up off the counter and tapped a few times at it. Then she sat it back down and dug back into her lunch sack for a cupcake.
“And?” Ben asked after swallowing a bite of the sandwich.
Tina swallowed hard, “Fourteen hundred.”
“Is that good? Or does it mean another shot to the head?” Ben ripped off a chunk of the sandwich and threw it in his mouth.
“It means you’re still growing, and that might mean another treatment. The good news is another couple hundred points and they start teaching you how to teleport. Then you can go anywhere,” Tina pulled another chocolate cupcake from her sack and tore into it viciously.
Ben’s remote pin began tweeting, “Okay, Bea, what’s up.”
Daniel’s voice came out of the speaker, “Ben, would you like to go for lunch? We need to talk over our assignment.”
Ben looked down at the half eaten sandwich, and over at Tina who waved him on, “Yeah, sounds good. Where do you want to...”
“Meet?” Daniel asked stepping into the room, “Here’s good. How does Chinese sound?”
“Better than PB & J,” Ben re-wrapped the partially eaten sandwich and handed it back to Tina.
Tina smiled and shooed them out, “Just as well, you have no idea how many different types of anatomy I need to study.”
“You have to forgive her you know,” Daniel said as the door slid closed behind them.
“Tina?”
“No, Angela, she’s under a lot of pressure,” Daniel answered, pausing at a bend in the corridor.
Ben walked past. “She said you’d point that out. Really Daniel, I’m okay. I think we have opened lines of communications.”
Daniel caught up in two steps, “You’re still pretty hostile.”
Ben didn't respond until they were practically to the elevator. “You should have seen me last week.” Ben stabbed the elevator button, “But it isn't all her. Apparently my telepathy is just a bit of a problem.”
“Really, how high has your rating jumped?” Ben stared at Daniel for a minute, ready to ask how he knew about that. “I can’t read you anymore except when you’re going to talk out loud.”
“Fourteen hundred this morning.” Ben answered and pulled Bea’s remote off of his collar. Then he sent it dancing through the air with his mind. When the elevator pinged its arrival Ben plucked the pin out of the air and replaced it on his collar.
Daniel applauded and stepped into the elevator. “Whoa! You've been practicing. I’m truly impressed. -Ground level please.” The elevator doors closed and it hissed into motion.
“It was a good place to avoid discussion.”
“Speaking of discussion, how are we going to find the girl?” The elevator came to a stop in the garage.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
/> Miranda lifted her leg from the floor and held it, through the count of ten, twenty, thirty seconds. Then she repeated with the other leg. She rolled to her stomach and did twenty-five pushups. She would have done more, but she was bored with the exercises. Physically she had recovered from her stay in the tank. Miranda suspected she was in as good if not better condition than she had been before. The problem was that she couldn't say whether that was so, because her pre-tank memories had yet to return, except as faint and frightening impressions.
What she did know was her status as a prisoner. Uncertain as to why they held her, Miranda did know that they worried very much about her potential for escape. At first, while still crippled by the general atrophy of her body, she didn't have the faintest impression of what that potential consisted of. Since then, she had entered into a daily discipline of physical training to restore her mobility.
That daily regimen had made her aware of the sheer potentials her body, and mind, possessed. She was capable of some almost unbelievable things using her mind alone. She had lifted and thrown around everything in the room with the power of her thoughts. She also rediscovered quite by accident her ability to teleport. As amazing as those things were, she was more surprised to discover she could secrete things other than sweat from the glands in her palms.
While most of her discoveries astonished her she did have partial sensory memories of them, the chemical secretions from her palms left her drawing blanks from her spotty memory. Miranda would have liked to ask someone if it were a new ability but she had only seen three people since being brought to the cell. The first two alternated bringing her meals. The third was the man that had brought her to this cell. His name was Dichen and he seemed to know her quite well from before; he was the one that had revealed her name. She had started to ask him on one of his infrequent visits about the secretions, but he had quickly turned uncommunicative and left.
Miranda paused, and let her ears make full report. There was the distinct sound of Dichen's footsteps approaching, but he was not alone. She pushed herself up, rose, and then indecisively sat on the edge of the bed. The second set of footsteps were much quieter, almost silent. If her ears didn't retain their sensitivity from the tank, she doubted she would even have noticed them.
Eyes Love & Water Page 22
