by Eileen Wilks
Her brow wrinkled. “None of them that I’ve touched have any kind of magic.”
“Including Smith?”
“No, he has a small charisma Gift. Pretty minor, but it’s there. Could you not ask questions yet? I need to tell this like I planned.”
“All right.”
She cleared her throat. “I first got suspicious when Amanda showed up at the Refuge because I knew he’d lied to me. Mr. Smith, I mean. Initially, I wasn’t going to report any blocked telepaths I found. I didn’t see any reason to. They were lucky to have a block, and they couldn’t do him any good. But Mr. Smith said he wanted to track them. Blocks can suddenly disappear, or so I was told.” She darted him a quick glance. “Is that true?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t, either. Not anymore. But the Omega Project researchers believe that’s so. According to Dr. Webb—she’s the one who went with me to St. Elizabeth’s—preliminary data suggest that some, possibly many, telepaths are born with their Gifts blocked, but puberty disrupts or dispels the blocks. That theory is based on a statistical analysis of catatonic patients incorporating the age of onset of symptoms. I didn’t know anything about statistics back then so I couldn’t evaluate their methodology, but it seemed sound. The problem was that their data might be skewed because they didn’t know how accurate their model was for determining which catatonic patients were telepaths. That’s why they need my help, only I freaked out and couldn’t do it.”
“And Mr. Smith told you the same thing? That blocked telepaths might suddenly lose their blocks?”
“Uh-huh. The idea was that maybe, by the time any telepaths I found became unblocked, his people or the Omega people would have discovered a way to help. It made sense. I thought it made sense.”
“You wanted to help them.”
She nodded but didn’t speak. When the silence dragged on, Rule prompted gently. “Then Amanda showed up at the Refuge.”
“She was blocked!” Anger drew Danny up straight and stiff. “Blocked when I found her, and still blocked when she came to the Refuge. They thought I wouldn’t know. I’d gone off to college by then—”
Rule’s eyebrows shot up. “At sixteen?”
“I’m very smart. That’s not bragging. It’s just a fact, like having brown eyes or Asperger’s is a fact. I wanted to enter college early so I could get away from the Refuge, so I studied hard, and once I left, I didn’t go back for visits. Except for once. It was the anniversary of Zipper’s death, so I went there to bring him some flowers. Amanda snuck out. I was at Zipper’s grave, and she snuck out so she could tell me how stupid I was to bring flowers to a dead dog. Amanda,” Danny announced like a judge pronouncing sentence, “is a mean little sneak and a braggart.”
“It was an unkind thing for her to say.”
“She doesn’t like me. They had told her to stay away from me—”
“Who?”
“Dan and Sharon, the houseparents. Maybe the others, too. The research people. They thought she’d obey them because she doesn’t like me. I’m not guessing about that,” she added. “That’s what she told me. Anyway, Amanda wanted me to know I wasn’t Mr. Smith’s pet anymore, that she was more important than me. I said blocked telepaths weren’t all that special, and she laughed and said she wouldn’t be blocked much longer. She was all puffed up about how important she was, because they were going to unblock her and she was essential to—” She stopped, swallowed, and finished quietly, “To Mr. Smith’s plans.”
“What plans, Danny?”
She took a deep breath. “The first time I saw a reference to the drug was in a financial report that listed ‘LDN1 supplies’ but didn’t say what LDN1 was. I couldn’t find anything more about it until after I ran. Someone slipped up and used its other name in a report—Lodan. A search with that name turned up more reports. No supporting data, but some general reports on a drug they called Lodan. I think they must keep most information about it on computers that are permanently offline. But at least none of those files were changed when the financial stuff was, so I can show them to you. There’s one labeled ‘Practical Applications of Lodan’ and . . . and it’s clear they intend to use the kids as weapons. I think . . .” She had to stop and swallow. “I’m pretty sure they used the kids to kill that man. The one whose body Lily found.”
Rule spoke in a carefully neutral voice. “Lily said there was magic on the body. That an odd kind of telekinesis had been used to cut the man’s throat.”
Danny nodded once, the movement jerky. “I need to tell you about Nicky.”
* * *
THE woods here had more trees and less brush than the ones Demi had traveled with Rule Turner last night. More trees meant less brush, she supposed, because the heavier canopy cut off too much sunlight for smaller plants to grow well.
The shade felt good. Air-conditioning would have felt even better. She missed air-conditioning.
As they walked, she told him about Nicky. How they’d met, what Nicky was like—an early-admission student like her. An animal lover and vegetarian like her, too, though he took it farther than she had—“He won’t own anything made of leather.” And his uncle had Asperger’s syndrome, so he understood. And he liked her. He was her first real friend since the third grade. He wanted to be a veterinarian, and he got really good grades, and he liked a lot of the nonviolent computer games she did.
Nonviolent because he was a Quaker. It wasn’t just that he’d been raised that way, either. He believed in Quakerism. She explained about the Society of Friends carefully so Rule would understand.
Nicky was also Gifted.
The words had tumbled out until she got to that part. She liked talking about her friend. She didn’t like talking about the rest of it. It felt like betrayal. It was betrayal—she was breaking her promise. But he wouldn’t want her to keep silent anymore. She had to believe that.
“It felt like a telekinesis Gift?” Rule repeated when she’d stumbled to a halt.
“Almost the same,” she corrected. “But it isn’t TK. He can’t pick things up with it. The only thing he can do is lash out. It’s force, he said. Pure force. When he was little, if he got mad, he’d just flail out with it, and sometimes he broke things. Once he hit his mother, and that scared him. As he got older, it got stronger. That scared him, too, because he has a temper. Not so much for himself, but he hates bullying and . . .” She had to stop and swallow. It was Nicky’s hatred of bullies that had led Mr. Smith to him.
“But if it’s just force,” Rule said softly, “not a blade . . .”
“The force could be shaped. Back then, he didn’t know how to do that and he refused to learn. He wanted his Gift to go away.”
“He told you that? When?”
“When I first found out about his Gift. I was so startled!” Partly just because he’d touched her. That always startled her. But mostly because she’d never felt magic like his. He’d known something was wrong, and she’d done something she never did. She’d told him about her own Gift. “He made me promise not to tell anyone, so I didn’t report him to Mr. Smith.”
“Were you supposed to? He wasn’t a child, an orphan.”
“College students aren’t eligible for the Refuge, but Mr. Smith wanted to expand his program by recruiting people who were adult or nearly adult. So after I went to college, I was supposed to report any Gifted students I found, but there were only a couple. I couldn’t go around grabbing people, could I? Mostly I didn’t touch the other students, so I only found two who were Gifted. And then Amanda showed up at the Refuge.”
“And you stopped trusting Smith.”
Her forehead wrinkled in a confusing wash of feelings. One of those emotions she could identify, though. “I was so angry! I said I’d quit if he didn’t come talk to me. And he did, too. He came to see me at the dorm. He claimed his people had figured out how to help telepaths, but only if they could be treated while they were still blocked. I said that Amanda told me they were going to unblock he
r, and he said that was the only safe way to do it. Tests showed Amanda would be one of the unlucky ones who came unblocked at puberty, so they had to remove her block themselves to do it safely.” She sighed. “He made it sound reasonable. He even said I could take a sabbatical and see if Amanda did okay before I looked for any more Gifted kids for him. But he couldn’t explain away one thing.”
“Why not?”
“Isn’t it obvious? If everything was like he said, why hadn’t he told me earlier?”
“About Amanda?”
“He should have come to me and said, ‘Danny, I have good news. We can help any blocked telepaths you find, but we have to bring them to the Refuge right away.’ But he didn’t do that. He waited until I was gone to bring her there, and when I showed up, they told Amanda to stay away from me. They didn’t want me to know about her. So I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t have actual evidence that he’d lied. I needed facts.”
“So you hacked into the NSA computers.”
“No, I talked to Nicky. Then I hacked into the NSA. It was Nicky’s idea.”
Rule seemed surprised about that. She explained why she’d decided she could tell Nicky about Mr. Smith. It went against the agreement she’d signed, but when Mr. Smith broke his word by bringing Amanda to the Refuge, she wasn’t bound by hers anymore, either. Not that the courts would see it that way, but she did.
“The elves would agree with you.”
She thought about that for several moments. “That makes me extremely curious, but this probably isn’t the time to ask about elves.”
“Probably not.”
“Getting full access took a long time. I got into the NSA computers within a week of getting Mr. Smith’s log-in, but I had to find the place where he’d hidden all the Bright Haven data. That was slow. And I didn’t know about the drug yet, not until after Nicky went missing.”
He needed her to explain that, so she told him how Nicky was suddenly not at college and his parents didn’t know where he was, and how she thought of Mr. Smith right away. “I don’t know why exactly. Lots of things might have happened to Nicky that didn’t involve Mr. Smith. But I knew he’d have loved to get hold of someone with Nicky’s Gift, and I couldn’t stop thinking about that, so I went to the Refuge to find out if he was there.”
She told him what had happened at the Refuge—the uniformed guards, how Mr. Smith had found her, and what he’d said. She described seeing Nicky and how odd he’d acted, and how confused she’d been until he pretended they’d been boyfriend and girlfriend. That had been so absurd she’d realized he was lying—and if he was, it was because of Mr. Smith. Then he told her to run.
“And you did. Just like that?”
“Yes, but that’s not the important thing. You can see that Nicky did several things he would never have done if Mr. Smith weren’t controlling him somehow.”
“Is that why you think Smith has developed mind control? Because your friend did things that were out of character?”
“That’s part of it.”
“What’s the rest?”
“I can’t tell if you believe me about Nicky.”
“I can’t helping thinking that if your friend was under Smith’s mental control, he wouldn’t have told you to run.”
“He only managed that one word, and he couldn’t even say it out loud.”
Rule nodded. She still couldn’t tell if he believed her, and was about to ask again when he said, “I’m impressed with the way you reacted. Not many people would have the courage to take off like that, without money, without anything.”
“Oh, that’s because of my strategy. When you have an enemy who’s much more powerful than you are, you have to take him by surprise. What’s the one thing no one ever expects?”
“Aliens?”
She stopped and frowned at him.
“I never expect aliens. Demons, perhaps, but not . . . it was supposed to be a joke, Danny.”
“I don’t always get jokes. I have a sense of humor, but jokes often depend on context, and I often miss the context.”
“I see. So what is the one thing no one expects?”
“For you to use the maximum force to achieve a goal instead of the minimum.”
“That . . .” he started, then fell silent. When he went on, it was in a different kind of voice. “. . . is rather brilliant, actually.”
She smiled, pleased.
“Though there are exceptions. Suicide bombers spring to mind.”
“No, because they think they’re doing the minimum necessary to achieve their goal of martyrdom. You have to put their actions in context, which is hard for me, but I think that’s why I figured out that everyone always uses minimum force, because I’ve thought about context a lot.”
“Are you talking about social context or worldview?”
“Both, because for neuro-norms, social context is a huge part of their worldview. I didn’t understand that for a long time. It’s like the way a blind person lacks the context that sighted people take for granted. Blind people can do a lot of the same things sighted people do, but they have to use a different approach, and some things that are obvious to sighted people aren’t part of a blind person’s world at all. I’m socially impaired. I get surprised all the time by people saying and doing irrational things. Take gay marriage. Why would some people get so upset that people they didn’t even know wanted to get married?”
“For the same reason men denied women the vote for so long. It threatens their status and their understanding of the world.”
She beamed, delighted that he saw it, too. “That’s right! I had to think and think to figure that out. Though I still don’t see why they’re so scared of changing their minds.”
“Because the world is a dangerous place. If it doesn’t work the way we believe it does, the danger becomes unmanageable.”
The ping! of sudden understanding gripped Demi, holding her motionless. That fit. That fit so very well. “That’s why I was so shaken up about Amanda,” she breathed. “It wasn’t as if I’d ever liked Mr. Smith all that much, but when I found out he lied, the world didn’t make sense anymore. Then when I saw the guards at the Refuge . . . and when I saw Nicky there and knew the lies were even bigger and more terrible than I’d guessed—” She stopped and swallowed. It didn’t help. So many feelings clumped up in her throat that she couldn’t squeeze a single word past them.
She’d tried so hard! But she hadn’t made anything better. Instead, things were falling apart. She’d messed up. Nicky and the kids were still in Mr. Smith’s hands. Rule was an escaped prisoner. Lily Yu had been captured. And Mr. Smith had made Nicky kill someone. A homeless man.
How would he ever get over that?
“Danny?” Rule said in that soft voice he used sometimes.
She swallowed again and managed to answer. “What?”
“Are you okay?”
“Of course. I haven’t been hurt. Were you thinking of my blister? It hasn’t bothered me much today. The bandage protects it.”
“I meant emotionally okay.”
“Oh. I don’t know how to answer that.”
“I’m going to hug you for a minute so we can see if that helps. If it doesn’t, tell me and I’ll stop.”
Because he’d warned her, she had time to close her eyes. Sometimes that helped keep her from overloading. He put his arms around her the way he had last night. She ducked her head, eyes tightly closed, and was hit with so many sensations—the pressure from his arms, arms she didn’t control that were connected to a body so solid . . . he was taller than her, and stronger. Separate from her. His T-shirt was soft against her face. She could smell him, and the scent made her feel . . . she couldn’t find the word at first, then it came to her. Safe. She felt safe.
Maybe this was how a father’s arms felt. She’d always wondered.
His phone vibrated. It was in his pocket and set on silent, but she heard the faint hum from it vibrating. “Should you—”
“It can
wait.”
But she felt tense again. She had to make sure he understood about Nicky, then tell him about the drug. “You can let go now.”
He did.
She automatically stepped back. Should she tell him his hug helped? He’d said to tell him if it didn’t, not if it did. Maybe she should say thank you. While she tried to figure that out, he took out his phone.
It had been a text, not a call, she saw when he opened the message window. And maybe it had mattered, because he frowned when he read it. “I have to call José.”
While he did that, she tried to line up clearly in her mind what she should tell him about the drug and how to say it so he’d understand her conclusions. She’d planned that out that last night, but she wasn’t sure she’d convinced him about Nicky, so she needed to—
“Shit!”
That interrupted her thinking.
“When?” he asked, and, “That was the exact wording?” And then he didn’t say anything for a while. He wasn’t frowning, but he’d cursed, so he must be upset. “How are people reacting?” A pause. “Not surprising, but not good. Not good at all. Carson should have called about this. He didn’t, so . . . yes. Try to reach him. I’ll call back in minute.” He disconnected and raised his voice slightly. “Come in close.”
“What’s happened? Who should come in?” Her stomach was jittering around like crazy.
“Mike, Reno, and Eric. Danny, you know how you needed time to think last night? I need that now.”
She nodded. She knew how that was, how you couldn’t stand to have people talking at you when you were trying to think through something complicated. But it was hard to stay silent when she needed to know what was going on.
One second she and Rule were alone. The next, Mike was there, startling her so much she jumped. He nodded at her. A moment later, two more people joined them—Reno and Eric. At least, she assumed the chunky one was Eric. She knew the other one was Reno, having met him last night. She remembered because she liked his name and he looked kind of like her—skinny, with skin the color of caramel candy.
