by K. C. Archer
Even without reading her thoughts, he’d known what she would ask. But she didn’t have the same information. She knew the names of the three students whose blood samples had been stolen. That coupled with what she’d just seen . . . “It’s about my genetic markers.”
“How do you know about genetic markers?”
Teddy thought for a minute before the lie came, too easily. She hated lying. But she didn’t have a choice. She had to know. “When I bumped into Eversley in the hall the other day, I must have connected with his mind. I saw that he knew I had both maternal and paternal genetic markers. That’s what he’s researching here at Whitfield. Gene markers for psychic ability.” She could sense a shift in Clint. She noticed sweat on his brow, his fingers tensing. Signs she knew how to read from the poker table.
She wanted him to make the last connection: that she had realized her birth parents were psychic.
He didn’t—or at least he didn’t voice it. His gaze flicked to the screw on his desk. “You need to focus on the task at hand. Your parents’ genetic makeup doesn’t have any bearing on what you’re doing in this room.”
Teddy released her frustration with a sound that was part groan, part growl. All right, so maybe what Clint was saying was true.
“It’s not a roller-coaster ride, Teddy. You’re building a foundation here, remember? Just lay one brick at a time.”
His words didn’t cool the simmering impatience that coursed through her. She had lived her entire life oblivious to her past. Now that she was finally beginning to understand it, she wanted know everything immediately. Now. Yesterday.
Teddy glanced at the screw on Clint’s desk. A screw that was so important he had it encased in glass. He really did believe in the power of small things, small steps.
“Fine. Let’s try something new,” Clint said. He pulled a Ping-Pong ball out of his desk drawer. “A plastic ball filled with air wants to move.”
Teddy raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, I know. It has no brain, no central nervous system. It can’t want anything. I’m simply saying that an object in motion tends to stay in motion. The physical properties of a Ping-Pong ball offer almost no resistance to energy. It doesn’t matter whether that energy is psychic or physical force. The ball simply acts upon that energy and moves.” He threw the ball, sending it skittering across his desk. “Now you try.”
Teddy reached for it.
“Not with your physical body. With your astral body.”
Is he crazy?
“First of all, how? Second of all, what does that even mean?”
“Imagine your astral body extending through your physical body to push the ball.”
Teddy took a deep breath. She centered herself, drawing upon Dunn’s meditative techniques for focus. She reached out to the Ping-Pong ball the same way she’d reached out to Clint’s mind a moment ago. She pictured a shadow of her hand stretching forward, a shimmer of fingers wrapping around plastic.
Nothing.
“Try, Teddy.”
“I am.” Again she willed the ball to move. It just sat there. Clint kept telling her to try harder, to summon her power. She did, again and again—with no result.
“You really, really want the Ping-Pong ball to move. But all that wanting it to move—and resulting frustration when it doesn’t—is about you wanting the Ping-Pong ball. Just move the Ping-Pong ball. The Ping-Pong ball does not take directions. Does that make sense?”
“No.”
“Look, Teddy.” Clint shifted in his chair and tried again. “You’ve made it a battle of wills. You versus the Ping-Pong ball. The Ping-Pong ball doesn’t care about you. Just move it.”
Teddy took a moment to consider what he’d said.
Stop thinking. Just do it. Nike should start marketing to psychics.
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. I’ll try one more time.” Teddy took a deep breath and imagined her astral arm reaching out of her body, pushing the Ping-Pong ball across the desk.
It wavered.
Clint scooped the ball up from the desk. “The end goal of this exercise is to draw upon both your telepathic and telekinetic ability. Today it’s a Ping-Pong ball, but one day it could be a bullet.”
Teddy couldn’t imagine moving a bullet. An object in motion with its own speed and force. “Like in The Matrix?”
Clint laughed. “Yes, like in The Matrix. But there’s a whole principle of astral quantum physics behind it.” He held up one hand. “First, telepathy. When you reach out to someone’s mind and encounter his astral body, you access all his thoughts, memories, and feelings out of order, right? You see time in a nonlinear way. As you develop your skill, you may start to see the future, memories that haven’t even occurred.”
“I guess,” Teddy said, remembering what it was like when she went into someone’s head.
“What if you can extend this philosophical principle from telepathy to telekinesis? If you treat time as nonlinear on the physical plane, too? You could free yourself from the constraints of time itself, potentially change how you experience time—meaning you could actually change its speed. That combined with the ability to move an object . . .” Clint trailed off.
“Means that I’d be able to slow down time in order to bend a bullet’s path.”
“Exactly.”
A knock on the door interrupted them. She checked the clock. Their two-hour tutorial was already over, and another student stood in the hallway, waiting to meet with Clint.
Before Teddy turned to leave, Clint tossed the Ping-Pong ball in her direction. She caught it with one hand.
“One brick at a time,” he said.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
EVEN THOUGH WEEKS HAD PASSED since Halloween, Boyd seemed to take the theft personally. And in turn was personally trying to ruin the first years’ lives by ensuring they could never walk again. After a merciless cycle of lunges, squats, and walkouts, they now were running laps on the track. “Faster!” she yelled.
Teddy tried to block the sergeant’s shouts, not an easy feat when the only other sound was the heavy breathing of the recruits surrounding her. Her lungs burned; a cramp pierced her side. And she still had two more times around the track to go.
She finished the course in the middle of the pack—not great but good enough. She put her head between her knees, gulping air as Boyd tore in to the recruit who stumbled in last.
Molly, as usual.
They had barely spoken since the events of Halloween, but watching Molly crumble as Boyd yelled at her made something inside Teddy soften. She opened her mouth to tell Boyd to lay off, but the sergeant seemed to sense even potential insubordination. She whipped her head around to face Teddy, as if daring her to speak. Teddy remembered the first day of class, the list of acceptable answers: Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am. No excuse, ma’am. Teddy wanted to use other words. One in particular that started with the letter F.
Boyd returned her attention to the rest of the class. “All right, recruits, line up for a couple of announcements.” The students formed a line and stood at ease, feet shoulder-width apart, chest out, chin back, hands clasped behind their backs. Alphas on Boyd’s right, Misfits on her left.
“I heard that there are still rumors floating around about Halloween,” Boyd began. “We will find out who stole from this institution. And they will be punished.”
She paused, letting the threat sink in. “Next. We’re starting a new physical fitness unit. By now you should be at the level of fitness expected of those who choose to serve. If you aren’t, the gym’s open twenty-four hours a day.” She shot another glare at Molly, then hit a wall switch. The heavy vinyl curtain that divided the gym into two workspaces groaned open to reveal a large obstacle course that looked like it had been designed by a sadist: climbing walls, swaying ladders, hurdles, balance beams, rope netting, seesaws, punching bags, monkey bars, and too many other instruments of aerobic torture for Teddy to name.
Next to her, Pyro shifted uneasily. The course looked
hard, and Boyd appeared far too delighted with it for the outcome to bode well for anybody, even a former police officer.
“Oh my God,” Dara said, still panting from their run. “At what point do we just give up?”
The sergeant strode across the gym to stand at the entrance to the course. “This is an official SWAT tactics course, designed to replicate the kind of obstacles you might encounter in the field. You will face similar physical barriers during your midyear exam in a few weeks, so I suggest you take this exercise seriously.”
Teddy’s wistful hope that the sergeant might give them time to acquaint themselves with the course’s various obstacles was instantly crushed.
“Team challenge!” Boyd bellowed. She went down the line, assigning each of the Misfits, and then each of the Alphas, a number. “You will complete your section of the course before signaling your teammate to begin. First team to successfully reach the end of the course wins.” She paused, giving Teddy a hard stare. “Remember, in my class, there are always consequences for allowing your enemy to win.”
Teddy was second to last in the Misfit lineup. She looked over her portion of the course, mentally preparing to tackle it. Boyd blew her whistle, and the challenge began.
Teddy watched as both teams erupted in shouts of encouragement. Pyro led the Misfits. He was up against Henry Cummings, for whom exercise meant a round of golf at his father’s club.
Pyro took off fast and didn’t slow down. He shot through a pipe, crab-walked over a strip of netting, climbed up a steep incline wall, grabbed a rope, and hurled himself toward Dara.
The Misfits flew through the course. Teddy watched, caught between awe and excitement. Her teammates were kicking some Alpha ass. Dara finished fast, and so did Jeremy. The Alphas remained a solid three obstacles behind. Their lead wavered a bit when Jillian was matched with Liz Cook, who flew over the balance beam as though walking on air. But Jillian was stronger. She burst through a maze of foam pads far faster than Liz, and smacked Teddy’s hand.
Teddy ran, Zac Rogers trailing behind her. She swung across monkey bars, sprinted up and down a seesaw, and high-stepped through a tire course. She couldn’t believe that only a short time ago, she’d spent every evening balancing a bag of Tostitos and salsa on her stomach while scrolling through dumb Instagram feeds in her bed. Now she felt—strong. Sure, her muscles ached from Boyd’s torture, but she could rely on her body in a way she never had before. All those years she’d never played team sports because of her epilepsy diagnosis. And now, as she pushed off the wooden board and propelled herself forward to tag Molly waiting at the next station, she felt a high similar to what she felt while playing poker.
She loved to win.
Teddy tagged Molly, finishing her round of the relay. Molly took off running. To everyone’s surprise, she handled her obstacles like a pro, running, leaping, crawling, climbing, gaining speed as she went. Molly scampered up to the top of the climbing wall and grabbed the rope to rappel down the other side. The Misfits erupted into pre-celebratory cheers. For once, finally, they were going to win.
“Don’t do it!” Kate Atkins shouted to Molly, hurling herself over the obstacles as she raced toward the climbing wall. “Look down! You’ll fall and break your neck!”
Molly froze, the rope caught in her hand.
Teddy stared at Kate, dumbfounded. Everyone knew that Molly was scared of heights. It seemed impossible that anyone could be so mean.
“It’s too high!” Kate shouted.
Molly’s face drained of color.
Teddy clenched her fists so hard she felt her fingernails bite into her skin. She was going to get Kate for this.
Kate reached the top of the wall and pulled the rope out of Molly’s hands. She rappelled down the other side, landing in a crouch. As Molly slowly, painstakingly, made her way down, the Alphas celebrated their victory.
Teddy caught Kate’s upper arm. “What the hell was that?”
Kate jerked her arm free. “That’s called winning, Cannon. You ought to try it sometime.”
Rage surged through Teddy. Unbidden, she felt her electric wall flare in her mind. She wanted to humiliate Kate the way Kate had humiliated Molly.
Pyro stepped between them. “Chill, Teddy. It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter? How can you say that? She cheated!”
Suddenly, Boyd was by her side, too. “Let me make one thing perfectly clear, recruit. There is no rule prohibiting the use of verbal tactics against a classmate.”
“But that’s not fair!” Teddy protested.
“Fair?” Boyd’s eyes went cold. “You expect the enemy to play fair?”
Teddy swallowed hard, biting back her words. She wanted to take Boyd down, too. But she stood there, breathing hard, trying to remember that this wasn’t worth getting kicked out of Whitfield. She couldn’t risk another infraction. Not with the pending investigation.
Boyd continued, “It’s my job to prepare you for the field. I can goddamn guarantee the enemy will exploit every weakness they can. When you’re in pursuit, the enemy won’t let you scale the smaller wall because you’re delicate—and I’m talking to you, Cummings.”
Henry Cummings studied the floor.
“The enemy doesn’t care how many Zen meditations you do. The enemy doesn’t care how hard you try,” Boyd said. “If given a chance, the enemy will slit your throat. You need to pay attention in my class. That’s the only way you’re going to survive out there in the real world. Am I making myself clear?”
Both the Alphas and the Misfits mumbled their assent. Teddy’s throat was burning.
“Dismissed,” Boyd said.
Teddy gathered her things and rushed for the exit. All she wanted was to get out of there and find a way to blow off steam before she exploded. It seemed arbitrary what rules were upheld in Boyd’s class. That Teddy had almost been rejected from Whitfield all those months ago on a technicality, but Kate was lauded for belittling a fellow student? That wasn’t right. Just as she reached the door, though, she felt a hand on her shoulder. Teddy whirled around, ready to snap at whoever had the audacity to approach her. But it was Molly. She looked Teddy straight in the eyes and uttered a single word: “Thanks.”
The first words Molly had spoken to her in weeks. Teddy shrugged as if to say it was nothing. But one look at Molly’s face reminded her that Molly was an empath; she knew exactly what Teddy was feeling. Molly was the first and only person who had understood her.
CHAPTER TWENTY
AFTER THE SHOWDOWN ON BOYD’S obstacle course, the recruits at Whitfield went on lockdown. Exams were around the corner. In the history of the institution, only one class had managed to survive their first year with all its members. Looking around at her fellow Misfits as they sat in a drafty classroom in Fort McDowell, Teddy was determined to return to Angel Island in January.
The only bright spot in their rigorous schedule: a short reprieve off-island for Thanksgiving break. Both Misfits and Alphas were counting down the days until they could say goodbye to Whitfield and its vegan fare (well, except Jillian). But what waited for Teddy in Vegas? Casinos, poker, Sergei. The old Teddy.
She dragged her thoughts back to Clint’s lecture, the last before the holiday. Clint had picked up on the room’s restless energy and begun telling a story. “So I knew we had the right guy in custody,” he said.
“But you didn’t have any physical proof,” said Zac Rogers, “right?”
“Right,” Clint said. “A psychic’s word—even when you’re one hundred percent certain you’re right—isn’t going to hold up in court. So we had to let him go.”
Liz Cook frowned. “Couldn’t you have done something?”
Clint turned to her. “Like what?”
“You know, get him to confess. He was a child molester. Couldn’t you have used your skill at mental influence to force him to reveal everything?”
Clint shook his head. “That’s coercion. I can use what I know to encourage a confession, but I ca
n’t force one. That’s not how the system works.
“In this situation, though it may be hard to empathize with a defendant, try to understand why he or she behaved in a certain way. Combined with the extrasensory insight you have as a psychic? That’s invaluable. That will allow you to get a genuine confession in a way that no one else can.”
He waited a bit, letting that sink in.
Zac shifted in his seat. “So let me get this straight. Even if I know someone’s guilty, I’m supposed to just sit there and watch a rapist or a serial killer or a terrorist walk out the door? Unless I can try to feel sorry for him and talk about his feelings?”
Clint bristled. “If you can’t get a confession? Or you’re not willing to put yourself in a place to get one? You don’t have a choice. You have to try. And no matter what type of case you’re working on, the cardinal rule of psychics in police work always holds.”
Clint stood and strode to the dry-erase board behind him, writing in bold letters: A PSYCHIC CAN NEVER USE HIS POWER TO TAMPER WITH EVIDENCE OR TESTIMONY TO BENEFIT THE OUTCOME OF A CASE.
“Sometimes the end justifies the means,” Jeremy said.
Teddy looked at him. She couldn’t help remembering what he had told her about his mother’s death on 9/11: he couldn’t do anything before the planes hit the Twin Towers.
“Not when the means are illegal,” said Clint.
Jeremy held Clint’s gaze for a long moment, then turned his attention to his textbook, brushing his fingers along the frayed edge as he muttered softly, “I just don’t like to see innocent people get hurt.” Molly, sitting beside him, placed her hand over his.
Clint sighed. “Nobody does.” With that, he shot a glance at the clock. “For those of you heading home for Thanksgiving, enjoy your weekend. We’ll reconvene Monday afternoon.”
Teddy had gathered her things and moved to follow the rest of her classmates when Clint stopped her.
“I didn’t see your request for a pass to leave campus on my desk,” he said.
“I’m staying here to study,” she said. The thought of an empty campus held a certain appeal. No awkward encounters with Pyro, or Nick, or Kate, or Molly, or Boyd . . . The list was getting long.
