by Lan Chan
I held the offending piece of paper in my hands as I walked out of the gates of St. Matthew’s High School. In my peripheral, a wave of kids poured out onto the street around me. My concentration was solely on the two neat rows of C and D grades next to a list of classes I barely remembered taking. Maybe if I concentrated really hard, the force of my will would transpose these little black lines, and they’d become an A or B. Fat chance.
An elbow in the ribs pulled me back to the present. The tidal wave of bodies had carried me to the curb. I found myself disturbingly close to the limousine President Xiao sent every morning and afternoon for his daughter Grace. Why she was going to a Catholic high school in the middle of Melbourne instead of being privately tutored was beyond me.
A thin guy in a black suit and designer shades turned towards me. His demeanour screamed bodyguard. His right hand slipped to the concealed weapon at his side. I pretended to flinch and stepped backwards just as Grace came up beside me. As usual, she had her phone plastered to her face. Still, she managed to give me an apologetic smile.
It’s cool, I wanted to say to her. This isn’t the first time I’ve been on the shooty end of a gun.
“Have a good night, Willow,” Grace said. She glided into the backseat of the limo while Suit Guy held the door open. I heard the last strains of her conversation with her dad as the limo eased onto the road. I understood enough Mandarin from my two years at school in New China to know that Grace had received straight A’s again. Of course she did. No teacher in their right mind would fail a foreign president’s daughter –especially one whose father controlled half of the continent.
From the very limited contact I’d had with Grace, she was bright enough to have gotten the grades fair and square. No doubt Dad and Aunt Jenny would say the same thing to me when I got home.
I turned, adjusted my scarf to keep out the cold, and headed towards the bus stop just down the road. A trickle of telepathy slid down my neck. If someone asked me to describe the feeling of an esper trying to read your mind, I would have said it was like when you were a kid and had snot running down your nose, but you were too busy or lazy to wipe it away until it almost reached the top of your lip and started to itch. The wave of itchiness wasn’t localised to me, though, so it wasn’t a personal attack. It didn’t take long for the shouts of glee to reach me from beside the bus stop.
A dozen kids in the grey and blue uniform of St. Matthews, plus a few in the maroon and yellow of City High, were gathered in an open semicircle around the bus stop. By the time I reached them, there was a resounding chant of “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
More kids piled behind me. The shouting reached fever pitch. Through the crowd, I could make out a boy with ash-blond hair and a swimmer’s physique lying on the ground. I didn’t recognise him, but I knew we must go to the same school based on his grey trousers and blue jumper. His blazer had been thrown carelessly on the damp grass. It was now decorated with muddy footprints. Standing over him was a slip of a girl in City High’s plaid miniskirt, white shirt, and red and gold striped tie.
I’m about five foot six. If I stood next to her, she’d probably only just reach my shoulder. She’d be cute if she weren’t scowling behind her thick black-rimmed glasses. Every so often, her head tilted slightly. The itch in my mind flared. Then the boy on the ground would ball up his fist and punch himself across the face.
Over and over again, the girl used her Enforcer ability to command him to hit himself. She kept going even after his lip split. He could no longer open his right eye. The itching in my mind became unbearable. It suggested that the girl was at least a gamma level esper. Tentatively, I sent out a telepathic probe and reached out to her. Her shield was up and extremely agitated. If I tried to break through right now, there was a real chance I could damage her psyche. Snippets of her thoughts spilled out through the cracks.
Breathe. Breathe. Swallow. Blink. I hate you! Breathe. How could you do this to me? Those without psychic ability always worried that any esper could read their innermost thoughts just by looking in their direction. What they didn’t realise was that the mind was complex, with multiple layers of consciousness. At any given time, thousands of physiological commands were being directed throughout the body. Mostly these commands were mundane instructions to keep breathing, blinking, and sweating.
Espers could communicate with each other telepathically, but that was also why we had shields to keep each other out. Unless the esper was a Reader, they wouldn’t be skilled enough to tap into the conscious thought stream. The rest of us could force our way in, but it wasn’t pretty.
I wasn’t a Reader, but I would bet money this was your typical breakup spat.
I cast about for signs of a teacher or even a parent. The crowd of kids had grown too big for any one person to push their way through. Years of living under Mum’s paranoia made me hesitate – then a shot of grief flashed through me. What she thought shouldn’t matter anymore. Dead people had no opinions.
The next round of Psi-Q tests was being conducted tomorrow. I figured there was no point being moderate with my ability anymore.
The sickening smack of the boy’s shattered fist against his cheek made up my mind. His physical pain made slipping into his head a breeze. It was always easier communicating with a Whisper. In a blink, I expanded my shield to include his consciousness. The hundreds of instincts his mind threw out faded into the background. The link was rudimentary because he had very little latent telepathic ability, but I managed to hang on to his fragile mind.
Don’t react, I instructed him mentally. In response, his head twisted in an attempt to find me in the crowd.
Who are you? he thought. The link between us was tenuous at best.
Nobody, I thought back. Forget about me. If you don’t want to continue getting your ass handed to you, then just do what I say.
The girl’s force of will pressed down on my shield. The itching made me scratch my head. She was strong but undisciplined. Any esper within a hundred metres would have felt the itch of her emotion-filled attack. The girl flung herself at my shield in confusion like a battering ram. I had to fight the urge to push back. Finally, her eyes hardened in understanding.
“Whoever’s doing that better get the hell out of his mind before I make you really sorry!” she snarled.
Heads cast about all over the place, trying to spot the ballsy esper who had suddenly weighed in on the fight. I couldn’t help the smirk that automatically drew across my lips. I had to hand it to her for being spunky. Too bad she’d have to jump up two designations before she’d be making me do anything. Plus, because I was in the boy’s mind, I could see up her skirt, and it was hard to take someone seriously when you could see they had floral panties on.
A horn blared as the bus pulled up alongside the stop. Student bodies encroached onto the road blocking the bus’s slip lane and forcing it to inch forward at less than a crawl. My peers reluctantly stepped out of the way.
Whatever you need to say to her, make it quick, I sent the boy. I don’t have all evening.
With my mental assistance, he managed to push himself to a standing position. Off the ground, he towered over the girl. Pre-Reset, he would have been the alpha in this relationship. Since the global electromagnetic pulse that caused humanity’s psychic Reset, physical strength was no longer the dominating attribute.
Through the boy’s single good eye, I saw the girl’s resignation. No matter how hard she pushed, there was no way she was getting through my shield. The boy swayed to her side, his balance sketchy from the repeated knocks to the head. He placed a hand gently on her shoulder. She shook him off immediately.
“It’s over, Jane,” he said. She refused to look at him. This was totally awkward. I couldn’t even distance myself in case Jane went on the offensive again. “I’m really sorry. But I can’t take this anymore.”
He made a sweeping gesture as though to indicate that this meant both her and the scene she had orchestrated. “It’s too much. I hope
you can understand that. I won’t get the Psi-Ops involved, but you need to quit getting in my head.”
What do you know? He was actually a cool guy.
We both took Jane’s sullen expression and her silence as acceptance. The tension in the crowd dispersed as the boy gathered his belongings. He strode past me on his way to the bus. I saw myself from his point of view. I was all limbs under the layers of my blazer and opaque stockings. My dark hair was tightly tucked into a beanie. A scarf still covered my mouth, but the dying afternoon sun caught the flecks of gold in my hazel eyes. I was homogenous amongst the many mixed-race kids in Melbourne. After Australia seceded Perth and Northern Territory to China in order to pay off its post-Reset debts, immigration boomed.
Half the kids following the boy muttered about what a letdown the fight had been. I fought my way down the bus and into a window seat. The boy’s eager questions filled my mind, but I ignored him. Maybe he hadn’t learned his lesson from the last esper he dated. It wasn’t until the doors closed that I released my hold on him.
Wait! Who are you? he thought.
Nobody. I cut off his connection. I was nobody at the moment, but tomorrow that was all going to change.
19
I had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. Dad and Aunt Jenny had my report card with a side of phone call from the school social worker. I twirled the pasta around on my fork and let it slip through the tines again.
Jenny sat on my left, her back straight and her meal untouched. If ever I was tempted to try and read her mind, it was now. Sadly, that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. She always reminded me of a swan. Everything about her was sleek and graceful.
In stark contrast, Dad sat opposite me and was wearing a constipated expression. He pinched the bridge of his nose. His eyebrows drew closer the longer he stayed on the phone. If I listened really hard, I could almost decipher some of what Miss Contee was saying on the other end of the line. It helped that she had a naturally booming voice, but it wasn’t loud enough. I closed my eyes for a split second and cast my thoughts to the cordless phone.
The earpiece blared to life. Dad pointed a finger at me in warning. I begrudgingly reset the volume.
“Uh-huh,” Dad said when he could get a word in. “Yes, definitely. I want the best for her too.” Quiet on Dad’s end. More loud feedback from Miss Contee. Then Dad grimaced and shot Jenny an incredulous look. “Believe me, the last thing my daughter needs is more stimulation. I’ll take care of it. Sorry you had to take time out to call.” Dad hung up before he could be drawn into another long rant.
He placed the cordless phone back on the wall mount and sat down again with a heavy thud. With his pointer finger, he slid my report card across the table towards himself and stared at it for the hundredth time. Occasionally he would shake his head, glance quickly up at me or Jenny, and then return to scrutinising the card like he wasn’t seeing it right. Finally, he sighed and ran his stubby fingers through his crop of short chestnut hair.
“Tell me what I should say to you, Willow,” Dad said. He rested his head in the palm of his hands. “I just don’t know how to get through to you anymore. You can’t just stop showing up to classes.”
“To be fair,” I said, “C- is pretty good for a class I only went to once or twice.”
Dad grunted his indignation and leaned forward in his seat. “No Atherton has ever failed a class before—”
This immediately got my back up. “I’m not an Atherton, though, am I? I’m a Nguyen. Nguyens don’t even finish high school. Maybe if you’d let me change my name, it might give me some academic motivation.”
It was so typical of Mum to come up with this hare-brained idea to give me Gran’s maiden name instead of her surname or Dad’s. I was sure it was all part of her elaborate plan to keep me off the grid. Like being an alpha esper was the worst thing in the world. It didn’t matter to her that the Nguyens had once been the most notorious street gang in Melbourne. And now that she was gone, I felt like I had no legal ties to Dad.
He let out a groan. “Don’t start this again, young lady. Your mum wanted you —”
“She wanted a lot of stuff, and look where we are now,” I snapped. Dad withdrew as though I’d hit him. A wave of guilt washed over me, but I couldn’t stop. We both needed a reality check.
“Maybe we should all just accept that I’m never going to be an academic genius.”
Dad and Jenny shared a conspiratorial glance. I often wondered if being twins, they shared a form of telepathy of their own. Moments later, I dismissed the thought. While Jenny was a Void, Dad had the most psychically susceptible mind I’d ever come across.
I wanted to point out that sometimes I was too distracted to go to school because a large portion of my energy was expended remotely shielding him from the espers in his lab. They volunteered to be experimented on for the advancement of science. I knew my own kind. Espers were in high demand in the job market. Any esper who had to settle for experimentation was lazy, dying, or criminal. Mostly, the latter.
“So you’re flunking out of classes to get back at your mum?” Dad asked. I shrugged.
“I haven’t cared about what she thinks in a long time,” I said as convincingly as I could. It has been five months since my incident with the Shadowman, and I hadn’t run off to exact revenge. I should have been getting a medal instead of another dressing down. “Besides, who is going to care how smart I am when they find out what I can do?”
The kitchen came alive at my command. Cubes of ice shot from the dispenser attached to the freezer door, the microwave heated an empty rotation plate, and the blender rattled on the bench.
Almost as quickly as the ruckus started, I ended it. Telepathic ability manifested itself at different ages, depending on the individual. My parents had known I would be an alpha since I was two. Their car battery died on a family vacation. While we were waiting for a tow, I got antsy and restarted the engine with my mind. I didn’t remember a thing about it. Then again, I seemed to have few memories before we moved to New China when I was six.
“Being an esper isn’t everything,” Aunt Jenny said. She turned to impale me with the full extent of her scrutiny. I shrank like the many defendants she helped put behind bars.
This was the conversation I was dreading. Dad, I could handle, but even I didn’t have the balls to verbally spar with the Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions. “What if you come up against someone like me?” she asked. “A Void. Someone completely shielded.”
I took a gulp of water from the glass next to my plate. I’d seen murderers and rapists do the same to buy some time when she had them on trial. Voids were an issue. But only because I couldn’t read their minds. A solid right hook usually did the trick, though. I didn’t want to say this to Jenny. I was already in the bad books for my violent tendencies.
Jenny took my avoidance as a point for her and continued. “Worse still, what if the Esper Restriction Bill changes? What if they erect psi-cancelling rods all over the city like they’ve been threatening to do for years?”
I took each point on board, mulled them over, and then dismissed them. From what I knew, the debate about additional esper containment had been happening for decades. There was nothing to indicate Parliament was any closer to a consensus. I’d managed to evade the surveillance drones the whole time we’d lived in Melbourne. I could evade anything else they decided to throw at me.
The thing about espers was that we were so busy protecting our thoughts, we often forgot the physical cues. I must have been smiling because Jenny ever so slightly smiled back. This shark was circling.
“What if the electrical grid goes down completely?” she said. The blood drained from my face. “Or you’re stuck in the outskirts? No technology, and no lights. Nothing that you can control with your mind. What will you do then?”
“The chances of that happening are slim,” I said weakly. I swallowed hard at the thought of oppressive darkness all around me, bearing down on my chest and stealin
g the breath from my lungs.
“A slim chance is still a chance. Your grades are abysmal. Legitimate employment, beyond physical labour, will be reduced. The Kings won’t waste an alpha on a desk job. Sooner or later, you’ll end up in the Strip or out in Silhouette Row. Or worse, one of the Kings will ask you to eliminate another esper. I’d like to think William and I raised you better than that.”
It was a nice touch of guilt, but that didn’t justify Dad giving her two thumbs up and me a smug nod.
“There are other jobs I could do,” I said. I had to admit to myself that there weren’t many great jobs out there for an offensive esper like me. As soon as they found out I was an EK, nothing else would matter. I would become hired muscle, and my employer would expect me to use it. No matter the moral cost.
“There are other jobs I could do too,” Jenny said. “But I enjoy the law. I’m good at making sure the people who corrupt this city are where they belong. But it’s difficult when espers are involved, especially alpha level ones. We’re fighting a losing battle against something we don’t truly understand. It would be great to have a few more of you on our side. I don’t want to believe that you’ll settle on a career just because it’s easy.”
I hated all this logic and reasoning. I wished Jenny would yell at me like Mum used to. It was much harder to drown out arguments when they weren’t yelled at me.
“Why don’t we make a deal,” Jenny said. She was offering me a plea. Great. “You attend eighty percent of your classes until you graduate. If you get over a B- average, we might consider not grounding you for the rest of your life.”
“And I get a dog.”
“No deal,” Dad said immediately. “How about you get a B average, and I don’t forbid you from seeing Gabe?” Huh. So he did have a pretty good idea where I was spending a lot of my time when I wasn’t at school. Let it never be said that William Atherton was a fool.
