by Lan Chan
The only sign that here sat the city’s most feared standover man was the rough russet stubble on his chin and the multiple scars across the bridge of his nose. He placed his elbows on the armrests and interlocked his hands in front of him. His thumb ran slowly back and forth over yet another scar that reached from his knuckle to his wrist.
Finally, he levelled me with a piercing gaze. I was going to wet myself. Esper or not, when a six-foot-four Scotsman was looking at you like you were a puppy, something primal inside told you to run.
“I’m real sorry about William,” he said. “But I hardly know what to say to you anymore. The Academy discovered an arsenal of weapons in the bunker below the factory. You could have been killed.”
There was an edge of disappointment in his tone that cut through me more easily than any bullets could. I thought of Dad and the lecture he’d given me last night. My eyes filled with tears. I flipped over so my back was to Gabe.
“Don’t say anything then. My dad’s just died. I don’t need a lecture as well.” I buried my head in the pillow, hoping to drown the world out and forget that when I went home, my dad wouldn’t be there. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. This wasn’t real. Any minute now, Dad would ring, and I’d be in big trouble, but we’d go home, and everything would be right in the world.
A ringtone went off. Gabe must have pulled his mobile out of his pocket and denied the call because the ringing stopped abruptly.
“That’s the twentieth time Jenny’s called me in the last hour. She’s out of her mind with worry.”
“Why didn’t you just tell her I’m here?” He went quiet – a sure sign he didn’t know what to do with me.
Something occurred to me then. I flipped back over again to face Gabe. I’d completely forgotten about Zeke!
“Where is he?”
Steel darted across his eyes. I could only guess at the horrible things they might have done to Zeke.
“We’ve got him under surveillance. He drove right over the curb and was making a ruckus, so the boys at the door asked him to leave. When did you make friends with another esper? Julian’s having a hell of a time stitching the bouncers back up.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “He saved my life, and you’ve put him in the cells?”
“He’s a threat to the hotel.”
The lights flickered on and off. A sharp pain shot behind my eyes, but I didn’t pass out this time.
“May I please see him?” I said through gritted teeth. Usually, a request like this from me would be met with a swift refusal. But today was the worst day of my life so he relented. He disappeared and came back five minutes later with a wide-eyed Zeke.
“Hey,” I said to Zeke.
“Hey, yourself.” Besides the dark bags under his eyes, he didn’t seem the worse for wear. He probably looked a lot better than I did at the moment.
“I’m going to make a call to Jenny, and then I’m driving you home,” Gabe said. He slipped outside the room. I heard the low grumble of his voice. Zeke came to sit beside me. He leaned over and blew a wisp of hair out of his face.
“So,” he said. “That’s what a Street King holding cell is like.”
“Sorry about that.”
“S’okay. It’ll be a cool story to tell when we get back to school.”
“You mean a cooler story than almost being abducted?”
He smiled and then swallowed. “It’s been a crazy day, huh?” He paused, and his eyes settled on mine. He tapped his head with a finger, and I nodded.
Does it still hurt? he wanted to know. His voice was crystal clear in my mind, and there was no pain in the transmission. I reached out with telepathic hands and tugged at the link between us. He tugged back. What fresh hell was this?
Nah, the effects of the blackout seem to be subsiding. I’ll be okay soon. Thanks for sticking with me.
No problem, he thought. I’ve always wanted a little sister to take care of. He paused. I sensed the hesitant question surface and then retract as though he was trying to be sensitive. The image of me out of it and screaming for my mum as Zeke stuffed me into the all-terrain vehicle was enough of a shock.
Old habits, I guess, I told him.
I take it she left you?
She’s dead. Or so everyone keeps telling me. I played with the tassels on the gold pillow beside my head.
I know how that feels.
Maybe it was this sentiment that prompted me to bring up the memory image. In his way, Zeke truly did know exactly how I felt. His situation was probably even worse because I’d had at least had one loving parent until today. I’d buried so many of these memories that at first, I couldn’t work out what I was remembering.
Then the New China skyline came into view. Mum and I were standing on top of the Oriental Hotel’s roof on a cold winter’s night. I was probably about eleven at the time. We both wore all black. Her hair was gathered up into a loose bun. Zeke’s eyes widened at what he was seeing, but he didn’t say a word as my memory image played out.
Mum walked over to the edge of the building and peered down onto the street. She motioned for me to join her even though there was no railing to keep us from falling. I did so without question. At the time, it was unimaginable to go against what my mum wanted.
“You see the armoured car coming around the corner?” she said. Her soft voice always jarred with the steel edges of her words. I watched the prisoner transport car moving someone from the remand centre to one of their prisons and nodded.
“Let’s say there’s an important prisoner inside,” she continued. “You’re in there with them as a guard. There’s another officer in there with you. The car stops suddenly, and you hear shouting outside and then gunfire. What do you do?”
I took too long to contemplate my answer. When I said I would defer to the seniority of the other officer, she snorted.
“You shoot the officer,” Mum said without even blinking. “An armoured vehicle is monitored by the drones. If it stops, that means there’s been an inside leak, and everyone is a suspect. You shoot the officer, get as much information as you can from the prisoner, and then shoot them too. Then you do whatever you can to get yourself out of there.”
I folded my arms over my chest to keep out the worst of the chill. “Isn’t that a bit drastic?” I said. If looks could kill, I would have been dead twenty times over.
“Death doesn’t understand drama,” Mum said. “You either win or lose. Nothing that happens in between matters. People will disappoint you. Putting faith in them means you’ve already lost.”
“I guess Dad, and I disappointed her somehow because she disappeared on us,” I said aloud. I still had a hard time believing the things the Shadowman accused Mum of doing before she was killed. “And now she’s gone.”
“She was really intense, huh?”
“She was a lot of things,” I said. I blew out a breath of air to keep the tears from coming again. Maybe it was because I was so weak at the moment, but I said something to Zeke that I hadn’t had the guts to admit to anyone.
“She was probably insane on some clinical scale, but I always felt safe when she was around. Now it just feels like I’m…exposed. And now Dad…”
Zeke took my hand in his. I almost thought he understood.
“Don’t worry,” he said just as Gabe returned. “You’ve got me now.”
The green of our mental link sparked. For some strange reason, I actually felt better. Gabe dropped Zeke off at St. Matthews and then drove me home.
27
It rained on the day of Dad’s funeral. I liked to think the heavens were weeping along with me and that it wasn’t just another indication of this city’s crappy weather.
I knew people were freaked out by cemeteries, but the one within the Kew Gardens district was well maintained and planted with exotic shrubs. It felt more like a garden than a cemetery.
Aunt Jenny and I stood at the front of the crowd as the rain pelted down on our black umbrellas. It was impossible to guard
against the onslaught of droplets, but I was glad for the cover that washed away my tears almost as quickly as I produced them.
Afterwards, everyone took turns to come up and give their condolences. Aunt Jenny fielded most of the questions because my voice wasn’t working. The mourners came in waves. After a while, they all blended together in a tide of dark clothing and apologetic sentiments.
Rich arrived with a blond boy I didn’t know. He spoke to Aunt Jenny at length. I could only nod at his sympathetic words. In the back of my mind, I sensed the boy watching me, but I had that feeling all too often these days. It was beginning to become background noise.
I schooled my face into a mask of neutrality, but my eyes were ever watchful, scanning the crowd for signs of a figure I could once have picked out in the dark.
She didn’t show. I had convinced myself that if she was alive, today would be the day she showed up. It was amazing how your own mind could play tricks on you. That was the day I finally accepted that my mum was gone.
A month later, I sat outside the school gym, waiting for Zeke to finish his physical education class. The school was still giving me a hall pass on account of everything that had happened. Oddly enough, without the pressure, I was finding myself in class more often than not. Perhaps because studying proved to be a better distraction than television.
The Academy had arrested everyone they could who was involved with the warehouse incident. There weren’t many of them left after I was done with them, but Rich assured us they would be dealt with to the full extent of the law. Aunt Jenny would make sure of it. I took little comfort from it. Nothing would bring my Dad back.
I clutched a yellow envelope so hard I was almost getting paper cuts. My right leg tapped impatiently until the bell finally rang. It was lunchtime. The yard filled up quickly with students. For once, I didn’t resent the sound of life happening around me. When I couldn’t help it, I even felt a little bit a part of it.
“Hey, Sparks!” Zeke said. He was still sweaty and had a basketball tucked under his arm. His hair had grown twice as long. I got the feeling he let it hang to cover the electrical burns to the top of his forehead. “What’s so urgent?”
I’d called the boarding house last night to tell him to meet me here. Before the incident in the warehouse, it would never have crossed my mind to share something like this. But as the days passed, it became clear the connection in our minds wasn’t going to disappear. I dubbed it our vital link.
Now here I was with the package that had arrived anonymously for me. I hadn’t even shown it to Aunt Jenny. Not because I didn’t trust her, but because she had been so busy since Dad’s funeral organising our lives.
I opened the envelope and pulled out a thin file. My name was printed in neat black font on the top right, along with a picture of me from the day of the Psi-Q test. I passed the file to Zeke and waited patiently until he’d finished reading it. When he was done, he dropped the file back on the table with a smack.
“How?” Zeke said. “I mean, why? Can you tell if the results were changed before or after the files were stolen?”
“I know as much as you do!” I sighed. I scrolled through the file for the hundredth time. Under my picture was a big red stamp designating my esper class, which, according to the file, was gamma. I was still an EK according to the books but under the category of non-threatening.
Zeke absently scratched at his head where the scars were. “I mean, I know I did a good job of staging the warehouse after we called the Academy, but c’mon, gamma class?” Zeke said.
I searched for the meaning behind his aggravation at my being demoted and found it in the way he flicked his attention to and from the drone hovering above us.
“You’re secretly happy I’ve been under-classed, aren’t you?” I asked. He didn’t bother trying to hide his feelings.
“Yeah. Aren’t you? I mean, aside from it being creepy, aren’t you happy that it’s been covered up? You throw electricity, for God’s sake. Imagine the kind of experiments they’ll try to do on you? Or who else might come after you? Better to keep it all under wraps until you can learn to control it.”
“You sound just like my dad,” I said. Thinking of Dad sent a pang of longing through me. I missed him so much, and like all lost opportunities, I wished we’d spent more time together. Now we’d never get the chance.
“Hey,” Zeke said. He was flipping through a newspaper he’d pulled out from his backpack.
“You read now?” I asked.
“Excuse me! Just because the package is pretty doesn’t mean the inside isn’t complex!” He turned the newspaper around so I could see it right side up. There on the first page was an article with recent pictures of all the students who had been killed by the terrorist group known only as Omega.
St. Matthews got away with the fewest fatalities. Through the link, I felt Zeke shudder at what might have happened if I wasn’t there. Halfway down the page, there was a face I recognised. It was Jane. I doubted she was a high enough class for her to be targeted directly, which meant she had died trying to save someone else. I suddenly felt really tired.
I knew that eventually, I would have to tell someone in charge about what I could do. Zeke and I didn’t have the resources to figure this out. A conventional hospital was out of the question. At this point, the options were Gabe and Julian, who were already on the wrong side of the law, or Rich and Jenny, who would have contacts within the Academy and the Psi-Ops. The trick was to keep me out of the category of research subject.
That was a decision for a later day when I wasn’t reeling over a government cover-up of my test scores.
The bell rang soon after. We headed off to our respective classes. It was no wonder Zeke and I never ran into each other. He took things like advanced mathematics and physics. I coasted through on home economics and woodwork. Both of which I was flunking. How in the world did a person flunk home economics? I had only almost set fire to the school twice. Everyone was overreacting if you asked me. I bet they were reconsidering giving me grief about not turning up to classes at this point.
Zeke and I pretty much had nothing in common except that sometimes I would catch him hanging outside the girls’ toilets waving at the girls as they walked past. I’d never really had a proper friend, but I guess I could get used to him being around.
Zeke didn’t need to get a bus home at night like I did. As a ward of the church, he stayed with the other orphans in the chaplain’s boarding house next to the school. I felt for him because Sister Joan lived there with some of the other nuns, so he was pretty much at school all of the time.
Jenny didn’t get home these days until well past seven o’clock. If it weren’t for me, I bet she wouldn’t have bothered coming home from the office at all. The house was full of little reminders of Dad. As a twin, she probably felt the loss more keenly.
Truth be told, I hated being home alone now too. I took a detour to the library. It was dark when I left. The bus wasn’t as crowded at this time of night, but there was also the possibility of some random junkie getting in your face because there were fewer victims around. I didn’t get hassled as much as I used to. I was just as, if not more, zoned out than they were. Sometimes I wouldn’t even register that someone was talking to me.
I’d closed my eyes for the barest second when I heard it. The scream wasn’t very loud, nor was it particularly immediate. That’s how I knew it was a mental scream and not a vocal one. I tried really hard to ignore it and let the bus keep going towards home. The scream came again. This time a single thought floated across with it.
Please help!
The message wasn’t directed at me. It was one sent out of desperation by one of the Whispered. Normally, screaming for help on the streets was a complete waste of time, but we were still in a good neighbourhood. I tried to let the moment pass. Laying low was my main priority these days after what happened in the warehouse. The last thing I needed was for my brain to go haywire and start throwing electricity.<
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There was some phantom part of me that remembered a time when the streets, not literally these streets, but other streets, had been my home. Life had been a constant struggle for survival. These feelings made absolutely no sense considering I’d been lucky enough to have always had a home.
The further away from the voice I got, the worse my chest hurt. Goosebumps pricked my skin. I kept thinking of Dad and wondering if he’d cried out for help. Had someone heard him and ignored it because they were too frightened to intervene? Or too apathetic? This city was full of those who were afraid. What might have happened if somebody got off their ass and stepped in when Dad needed help?
Mum’s voice in my head told me to stay put. This wasn’t my fight. Nobody else would stick their neck out if I was the one in trouble. Funny thing was, Mum’s voice wasn’t nearly as convincing anymore.
I found myself pressing the stop button and alighting at the next stop.
It had started to drizzle. The drops of rain were like little messages from the sky telling me this was a bad idea. My powers were volatile when there was water around. I cursed myself for not bothering to bring an umbrella. Pushing the Psi-Q result file to the bottom of my backpack, I covered it with my blazer so it was somewhat protected.
I pulled a hoodie out and put it on hood up. It would be scant camouflage –especially since I was still wearing my St. Matthews skirt and stockings. I only hoped the darkness would conceal me.
Traffic on the main road was still busy, but once you got into the side streets, it died down significantly. I followed the traces of the mental signature and came upon a dilapidated gas station between two houses on a residential street. The gas station’s big shell sign wasn’t lit up. The state of the peeling paint and weeds poking through the cement told me it had been disused for a long time.
