by Lan Chan
Origin
Spectra Book 1
Lan Chan
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 by Lan Chan
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, (electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
All names, characters, groups, and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and all opinions expressed by the characters, whose preferences and attitudes are entirely their own. Any similarities to real persons or groups, living or dead are coincidental and not intended by the author.
Cover by Christian Bentulan
Editing by Contagious Edits, and Lorie Collins
Contents
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Part Two
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
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Part One
Code Name: Raven
1
I crouched on the flat roof of a high-rise and contemplated the sanity of what I was doing. Across a narrow alleyway, the bank sat shrouded in shadow. Anxiety made my gut quiver. The buildings in City Square blocked out sunlight during the day, but at night, in the middle of winter, they created wind tunnels. Biting cold air blasted at me from either side but I’d elected not to bring a jacket. The electrokinesis tended to raise my core temperature, making my body run hot. The last thing I needed was to slip in my own sweat.
A persistent itch on my left forearm became unbearable. I glanced at it and huffed. I’d absent-mindedly scratched my skin raw. Telepathy wasn’t supposed to manifest physically, but I swear there were times when I could feel electricity sparking beneath my skin. I readjusted the bandana covering the lower half of my face. I’d briefly considered using a balaclava but figured that was a bit on the nose. After all, I wasn’t actually here to steal anything.
Pushing the discomfort aside, I forced myself to focus on the task at hand. Esper or not, it would take every trick in my arsenal to break into Heritage First National Bank. If it came to the crunch, the EK might be the only thing that could save me. Most advanced technology might be banned thanks to the Reset, but there were hover drones to look out for and banks were one of the few institutions that got a free pass on the Technology Restriction Act.
I would be dead meat if Dad or Aunt Jenny found out. A spike of irritation burned through me and tempered the guilt. If either of them would tell me where Mum was, I wouldn’t need to be skulking around on rooftops like some voyeuristic creep.
The official party line was that Mum had abandoned us. You would think being a lawyer, Aunt Jenny could have come up with a better story. I called bullshit. After fifteen years of living under Mum’s near-constant scrutiny, no way would she up and leave without a word unless something was very wrong.
Mum is the only Basic, the term for a non-telepath, I’ve ever known who could resist a telepathic command for more than five seconds. Enough time to disarm, disable, kill. If she was running, then everybody left behind was in a lot of trouble.
Reaching out with a sliver of telepathy, I connected with the first hover drone flying within visual range. I had this plan down pat, but it required split-second execution and pinpoint concentration.
The drones flew in pre-designated patterns. In the city, there was one drone to every five hundred square meters. There were fewer where the Academy did their foot patrols and fewer still where the Street Kings paid off the Academy to look the other way. It was a flawed judicial system, cobbled together after a worldwide technological terrorist attack, but it was the only one Melbourne had.
In concentric order, I touched each drone that would have even the slightest visual range of the bank and the block around it. Gritting my teeth, I layered my own commands over the top of their monitoring algorithm. This would ensure that once my telepathic net was activated, the drone’s cameras would reroute to a different sector rather than record what I was doing. Satisfied that they were operational, I hunkered down on the rooftop and tapped into the bank’s internal surveillance.
Heritage First National was the city’s leading safety deposit bank. Their other branches handled transactions, but this was there they kept items of sentimental value to their customers. Often these items were also priceless. Jewellery, deeds to yachts, and urns with grandpa’s ashes. What I was after wasn’t worth more than a dollar. But it was priceless in my search for my mother. So if it meant breaking into Dad and Aunt Jenny’s safe deposit box then so be it. I’d asked nicely, and they’d evaded. Now it was time to get sneaky.
The electronic system wasn’t going to be a problem. The guards were another matter. There was one sitting at the desk in the foyer. Two more patrolled the ground floor. There were two in the back entrance and three in the monitoring station belowground. Unfortunately, this was also where the safety vault was located.
Half an hour ago, the heating in the bank’s foyer “mysteriously” cut out. Maintenance wouldn’t be contactable until the morning. With temperatures outside plummeting, it meant for some very uncomfortable guards. At the same time, the air conditioning in the monitoring station started pumping sleeping gas into the room.
At five minutes to four, the guard in the foyer started to groan and clutch at his gut. His uniform was straining to contain the bulk. During his break, said guard had a cup of coffee from the jug in the break room. The jug in question may have been laced with soluble laxatives thanks to an earlier recon mission.
My gloved hands gripped the roof railing when my telepathy alerted me to his lifting the phone receiver on the desk. I made a break for it, leaping the five feet onto the bank’s fire escape. Scaling down the gutter, I telepathically listened in on the guard’s conversation.
“Bruno,” the guard said. “Switch out with me. I need to visit the crapper.”
“Aww man, not again,” Bruno’s gruff voice answered.
“Just do it!”
As my feet hit the pavement, I threw an invisible electrokinetic net around my body and counted to three. Circling around to the entrance Bruno had just vacated, I touched the floor-to-ceiling glass door and ran a small charge over the electronic lock.
Red. Orange. Green. Bingo!
The locking mechanism clicked open. One of the perks of being an EK was the side order of electromagnetism. Deadbolts? No sweat. I eased them up and pushed the door open.
I shuddered inside the building. It was colder in here than outside. Gritting my chattering teeth, I made a break for the internal staircase. A quick scan of the cameras told me they were cooperating and panning to other sections as I moved.
Every door in the building was equipped with a security pass scanner. Running my palm over the key
pad, I mimicked the frequency of the last card that had passed through. The door clicked open. Two levels belowground, I let myself out and onto the floor where the vault was contained. Sprinting past the guard room, I saw them slumped in their chairs, fast asleep. Excellent.
None of them moved when I relieved them of their master keys. The vault had a dual unlocking mechanism, fully-reinforced handle and door, and one hell of a security program. I wasn’t going to get away with this heist clean. There would be server metadata somewhere tracking every time the vault was opened. I just hoped when they did their inventory and nothing was missing, they’d leave it at that. False positivity sometimes worked.
Slotting both keys into the keypads on either side of the vault, I turned one manually and the other telepathically. The biometric scanner hummed. I bent down to allow the laser to pass over my eye and fed it the borrowed data it needed.
“Access granted,” the computerised voice over said. I held my breath as the vault door hissed and then started to rotate. The wheel clunked to a stop and I heaved it open, slipping inside.
Automatic lights came on to illuminate the tiny desk bolted to the floor. The scent of damp concrete filled my nostrils. A slim-lined computer sat on the desk. Booting it up, switched to a pair of thin touch-sensitive gloves and typed in Dad’s name: William Atherton. The server came back negative. Right. Next, I typed in Jennifer Atherton.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Box 37, Row 12, Column 16.
The requisite safe required yet another key. I wasn’t going to do that again. Placing my palm over the lock, I focused on the mechanism and pushed the bolts into the right configuration. The safe unlocked without complaint. Reaching inside for the deposit box, I flipped the lid open and my jaw dropped.
It was empty. Sonofabitch.
This couldn’t be right. Every bit of eavesdropping I’d done in the last month told me there was something in here. Taking a chance, I turned the box upside down and shook it. All that happened was the dust inside it wafted up and made me sneeze.
Closing my eyes, I tried to affect an inner environment of calm like my guidance counsellors always suggested. According to them, aggressive tendencies were just a matter of mental discipline. Shows how much they knew about espers. What I really wanted to do was drop the box on the concrete floor and kick it as hard as I could across the other side of the room. There would be time to blow my fuse later.
Instead, I forced myself to be logical. Detail. Think. Why would Aunt Jenny have a box in here with nothing in it? Working on a hunch, I dragged my finger along the inside edge of the box. A rough corner snagged on the nano-fibre of my glove. Huh. Taking the roll-up toolkit out of my pocket, I retrieved the filament screwdriver and wedged it between what I thought was the base and the side of the box. Taking care not to bend the thing out of shape, I ran the screwdriver across the base until I heard a click. False bottom.
The metal divider lifted like the lid of a tin can to reveal a single playing card.
The king of diamonds. When I held it up to the light, there were markings all over it. Like a toddler had taken to it with a pen and scrawled with glee. Using my teeth to remove the glove of my right hand, I ran my palm over both sides of the card, taking a mental impression of it for future investigation.
Satisfied, I replaced it as carefully as I could. The door of the safe deposit box was just clicking back into place when an almighty alarm blared, and the vault’s door began to shut me in.
2
Mother of God! My feet took off before my brain could quite catch up. Reaching out telepathically, I wedged a wall of electromagnetic energy between the vault door and the wall. It screeched to a halt, caught between opposing forces. The door vibrated in a way that seemed to wrench the whole vault. I jumped through the thin opening just before it snapped shut, grazing my left shoulder on the metal.
In my eagerness after finding the card, I’d forgotten the stupid thing was on a timer. Now I had less than five minutes to haul ass out of the building before reinforcements showed up. Footsteps pounded on the metal staircase, telling me it was too late. Against the periphery of my telepathy, I felt the commands for the building-wide lockdown activate. Rolling metal doors began to descend over the glass. They didn’t need to catch me. Just keep me contained long enough to ferret me out.
Dammit! This was going to be a problem. In my head, I heard her sneer. My mum’s sharp voice echoed in the recesses of my memory.
“A mission that goes according to plan doesn’t prove anything. It’s what you’re willing to do when things go wrong that matters.”
I had never been willing to go to her lengths, which in her eyes made me a failure. Banishing the memory, I ran the length of the corridor until I reached the monitoring room. The guards inside were still asleep. I could kick myself for leaving so much evidence but there was no time to second-guess it now.
The staircase door opened. I flattened myself against the left wall and prayed that this child’s trick would work now. Dad and I played hide and seek a lot when I was a kid. As a Basic, his mind wasn’t conducive to telepathic communication, but he was suggestible. Often, I’d hide in plain sight and used my telepathy to make him turn his head the other way, missing me completely.
My mind stilled as four men stomped into the room. Two wore the black stealth uniforms of Street King-employed guards. Which meant at least one of them was an esper. Telepathic energy was like an itch in the brain when it wasn’t intercepted. As an alpha, my shields were inherently strong. But that just meant other minds pinged against it, making me want to scratch like crazy. The Kings were thugs, but they were high-paying thugs, and any esper worth their weight could make a healthy living working for one. Sure, you had to compromise your morals, but what were morals when your kids were starving?
Sending out a divergent mental probe, I brushed against each of their minds and evaluated what I was up against. Three Basics and a delta-level Telekinetic. Clever to employ a TK in a bank. There were a lot of things a TK esper could defend against. Like a barrage of bullets. Against an alpha though, it really wasn’t a fair fight. I dispensed with fair as soon as his eyes tracked close to me.
Through the guard’s minds, an undercurrent of physiological commands looped on instinct. These commands were the body’s instructions to breathe, to blink, to sweat. It all happened subconsciously, and it was dead boring. Everybody thought all espers could read their innermost thoughts but only Readers could do that. They also assumed their thoughts were interesting. It was almost laughable how arrogant people are.
As their heads turned, I implanted a single thought amongst the physiological ones. As a unit, they focused on the wall opposite me as they ran past. In a second, they would know they had been pushed. By rights, I shouldn’t have been able to do that. But my EK was a little off and I’d always been able to tap into the body’s natural electromagnetic field. It meant that I could force a person to do what I wanted. But unlike Enforcers, the person knew what I was doing and could fight me.
As soon as they ran past, I made a break for the door. Leaving covertness behind, my footsteps pounded on the floor. Mum would have been ashamed. I could be quiet if I wanted to, but speed and stealth were always a trade-off and the alarm still going off in my ear kept telling me: Get out! Get out! Get out!
“Hey!” one of the guards shouted. The TK tried to push the door shut. He was quick. I was more motivated and slipped through just as the door slammed shut behind me. A light touch to the lock short-circuited the mechanism. Meaty arms banged on the door. The handle rattled futilely. It wasn’t much but it gave me a few seconds. My feet ate up the steps three at a time. Going down and out wasn’t an option. The only way left was up.
I should have known it was too easy when the metal door to the roof simply popped open. The mental attack came a second before the physical one. A surge of pinpoint telepathic energy smashed into my shield. Sparks ignited behind my eyes. The psychic blow hurt enough to make me clutch my head. My legs buckled b
eneath me. It left my body completely open. A cold, blunt object pressed against my side. Thousands of volts of electricity surged from my hip, coursing through my bloodstream.
A smile tugged at my lips. Tasers were like candy to an EK esper. The energy from the voltage boosted my telepathy and dampened the mental blow the beta-level Reader had aimed at me.
Crouching low, I spun around the attacker beside me until I was behind him. Kicking out with my right foot, I sent him sprawling. Snatching the Taser from his upended hand, I returned the favour. Without looking to see whether he went down, I turned on my heels and ran.
“She’s an EK!” screamed a woman with a high alto voice like she’d just been sucking helium. Taking care not to let my face turn towards the light, I leapt off the top of the bank’s roof and onto the lower roof of a bakery. Any hope they wouldn’t give chase dissolved as soon as three bodies thudded down behind me.
I hurtled off the roof and landed on the lid of an industrial dumpster. The resultant bang reverberated in the alleyway. I’d just lit a flare telling them my exact whereabouts.
This hunt was on and I was the mouse. Luckily, mice tended to thrive in Melbourne. This mouse knew every hidey-hole.
I raced down Elizabeth Street, dodging traffic as I crossed illegally over the road. My feet travelled on muscle memory, weaving through alleys, and over back fences. The other esper’s probe bounced off my shields as she tried to break through my defences. Thank God I wasn’t registered with the government yet. If I were, the fact that I’d just outclassed a beta would narrow their field of inquiry to less than fifty people in this city.
