“If there is such a thing as fate, it owes you a little happiness after all you have been through.” Karina stroked Althea’s hair. “You are so innocent. All you want to do is help everyone. It is about time the world is nice to you back.”
Karina poked her in the side.
Althea poked Karina in the side.
Karina tickled her on the stomach.
Althea attacked Karina’s ribs.
Soon, the blankets lay askew and they rolled around in a tickle fight. Despite Karina’s weight and size advantage, Althea’s subconscious control over her body gave her strong muscles, and the battle stalemated. Their laughter got louder and louder. Soon after they both collapsed, breathless and sweating, three heavy slams hit the wall.
Father was home—and trying to sleep.
Both girls gasped and covered their mouths.
“¡Lo siento!” said Althea.
“Go to sleep,” murmured Father, from behind the wall.
Althea sat up and gathered the blankets, flopping back down and cuddling at Karina’s side. Her urge to giggle grew as they stared at each other. The more they tried to keep still, the more irresistible it became, until both of them burst out laughing again. Seconds later, they held their breath, grinning and dreading another bang.
Father’s mood must have been good, for he didn’t hit the wall again. After a few minutes of grinning at each other, the hilarity faded, and they settled down to sleep.
17
The Devil’s Little Sister
Aaron
A small corridor full of dead vendomats led up to a large cafeteria that could have served thousands of employees. Archon’s army of disgruntled, disenfranchised, psionic teens jostled about in search of places to sit. Older recruits preferred to eat alone, either in the tent city or at the places they stood guard, and the youngest of the refugees were still too new to the country to brave going outside.
They segregated themselves into small groups: a few of the youngest teens sat together at one table. Two geeky-looking boys distanced themselves from everyone else, busy with some manner of hovering electronic device. Aaron chuckled at how much like high school it looked, if students carried fully automatic weapons.
He leaned against the archway at the edge of the light, flicking his thumbnail over the side of his NetMini. When the British schoolgirls entered from the far door, Aaron edged deeper into the dark. So far, no one had noticed him there. If those two saw him, they’d go fangirl and ruin any chance he had of accomplishing what he hoped to do.
The pair huddled together as they walked to the Czechoslovakian man who’d wound up in charge of the industrial-sized food assembler, another item the mechanically inclined psionics brought back from the dead. The girls seemed somewhat less afraid of him than they did the world around them, flashing polite smiles before hurrying off with their trays. The taller one, Lucy, he thought, glanced in his direction, but appeared not to notice him. Jet-black hair shadowed green eyes set in a face so downtrodden, Aaron had to bite his lip to resist the urge to send a comforting telepathic message. Meredith, the younger girl, led the way to a table apart from everyone else. They sat stooped like starved hyenas over their food, wary stares aimed around the room as they ate.
One did not need to be psionic to know they pined for their families.
At last, the object of his hunt appeared: Melissa. She stormed in from the courtyard double doors, which appeared to open on their own. The clatter of a thin plastisteel frame with no glass silenced the cafeteria. Except for the boys with the gadgets, every eye in the room focused on her as she stopped by the ‘cook.’
Whispers started as soon as she passed by. Aaron only caught a few snippets: if she’s Awakened, why’s she still in here with us? Did Aaron go easy on her? She’s such a bitch. Don’t look at her or she’ll start a fight. Melissa glared at the room; fourteen food trays flipped onto their owners all at once.
“Get outta my fucking head, you assholes!” Melissa screamed, fumed, and glared at the man trying to hand her dinner.
She took the tray and stomped along a row between two empty tables. Aaron raised his NetMini and lined up the green corner markers around her face. The second his thumb touched the button to capture a scan, a woman cleared her throat behind him.
“Am I interrupting something I’d rather not know about?”
Anna.
He didn’t flinch. Image capture in hand, he swiped his finger at an app he hadn’t touched in months—the National Police Force Reference Database. He flashed a half-grin. “What is it you think you’re interrupting?”
“She’s fifteen.” Anna, standing behind him in the dim corridor, folded her arms. “It’s not bad enough you humiliated her in front of everyone the other night, you’re lurking here like a nonce?”
Text popped up in a frame next to Melissa’s picture. He furrowed his eyebrows. “Please tell me you don’t honestly think that.”
“I was hoping not.” Anna let her arms drape at her sides and her expression softened. Light from the room behind her made her white pixie cut glow. “So, what is it then?”
“You ever ‘ave this naggin’ feeling just gnawin’ at the back of your mind?” Aaron pocketed the NetMini.
She glanced at the noisy room. Watching Meredith and Lucy seemed to darken her mood. “Aye. You’re ‘avin’ doubts about all of this, aren’t you?”
Aaron moved closer, gazing into her sapphire eyes. “Tell me you don’t?”
“They’re better off here.” She glanced down. “It’s not perfect, but it’s better than getting killed, or shut up in some CSB laboratory. You think those girls would be happier with little bombs in their brains?”
I think they’d be happier with official asylum. Before his willpower could falter to the point he tried to kiss her, he took her hand. For a few seconds, he found himself admiring the softness of her skin. “Come on. I need to see something, and I think you should see it as well.”
Anna stumbled along behind him, struggling to keep up with his longer strides. “Where are you going in such a rush?”
“You think James will mind if we borrow his car?”
“What? You’re not serious.”
“I am.” He stopped at the door, still holding her hand. “Take a ride with me?”
“What are you doing?” She looked down at her bare legs and sock feet.
“Trying to help.”
Her head snapped up. Eye contact. Aaron felt his eyelids closing a little, his weight shifting forward, his lips parting ever so slightly. Anna looked as though she didn’t much mind the thoughts forming in his mind. Their noses glided past each other. Millimeters from lip contact, they both froze.
“Let me get dressed at least.”
Her whisper floated into his mouth. Aaron glanced aside and down, nodding. “Right. Aye. Knickers would be good.”
Her face went pink. She gave him a playful shove and trotted off. Aaron grimaced, cursing under his breath for slipping. Something was wrong; if he pushed too hard, he’d lose her. Granted, he hadn’t meant to push. He trudged to the main lobby, not bothering to open the glassless doors on his way to lean against the gold Halcyon-Ormyr parked in the courtyard. A small version of Melissa’s face glared at him from his NetMini. Her anger had become that little thing nagging at the back of his mind.
Aaron glanced up at the tower, hoping Anna trusted him.
The hovercar let off a faint hiss as its weight settled straight down onto its wheels. Aaron opened one eye, casting a hesitant glance at the stationary vehicles all around them. A hundred and two stories up, clouds flanked the roof parking deck on all sides. According to the 3D holographic Navcon map over the dashboard, they’d arrived at the address he’d programmed in.
“Oh, that’s quite enough,” said Anna, from the driver’s seat. “Sod it.”
“You nearly hit four advert bots and some manner of flying sushi boat.” He pointed to a small bit of salmon stuck to the windscreen in front of his face. “It�
�s a bloody miracle we didn’t get forced down.”
“This thing’s got a bit more power than I’m used to. You know how it is at home. I never touched one of these bloody flying things till two years ago.” She glared at him. “If you’re going to brick it, you can walk back.”
“No, no… it’s just that I’ve been trying to limit my near death experiences to one or two a week.”
What started as a snarl turned into a giggle at the expression on his face. “You’re incorrigible.”
He sighed. More than anything, he wanted to hold her. Right there in the car, on this roof parking deck, right now, he wanted to kiss her. The weight of the NetMini in his pocket dragged him back to the reason they’d come here.
“What’re you thinking?” she asked. “I’m not sure I like that look in your eye.”
“I was admiring how beautiful your eyes are, if you want the honest truth, and I need them to see something.”
She blushed.
Before she could remind him she loved Archon, he got out. “Come on.”
Aaron crossed the parking area to the elevator hub, Anna following at an awkward distance. She remained silent on the ride down to the forty-eighth floor. Lifeless brown carpet, neat, clean, and bland, stretched a hundred meters out to a four-way corridor framed by pale green walls with glowing clamshell-shaped lights of frosted plastic every three doors. He went to the eleventh apartment on the left, and stopped, facing it.
“Follow my lead.” He pushed the doorbell.
“What are you doing?” Anna whispered.
“Just follow along.”
He tapped his foot for a little over a minute and brought up a blurry image of a Division 0 ID on the physical screen.
The door opened, revealing a bleary-eyed man in his middle-to-late forties. He had a little paunch inflating his powder-blue sweater, and the telltale crimp of a senshelmet compressed his bushy, receding hair.
“Can I help you? You know I’m still at work right now.”
Aaron held up his ‘badge’ for an instant as he started talking. “Tactical Officer Pryce, Division 0. This is Agent Postlethwaite, with Investigations. Do you have a minute to discuss your daughter, Melissa?”
You are a bastard. Anna’s voice echoed in his mind.
The man backed away as Aaron invited himself in, fighting the need to smile, still talking fast and loud.
“We’re looking into her recent disappearance, and wondering if she has tried to make contact with you or your wife.” He pulled the NetMini out of his pocket, flipping to the panel showing the results of his search. “You would be Mr. McKay? May I call you Ken?”
Anna followed, hardened eyes fixed on Aaron. Postlethwaite? Really?
“Uhh.” Ken scratched his head, worsening his already horrible hair. “Is this gonna take long? We haven’t seen her in a while.”
A woman’s voice came from the right. “She ran away again?”
Her mother, a forty-something version of Melissa, emerged from a beige hallway. She had the same fiery presence and black hair as her daughter.
“Please, one at a time.” Aaron smiled at the father. “What can you tell me about her?”
The man rambled on about how dangerous she had become: getting into drugs, worshipping the devil, planning to murder them in their sleep. Aaron ignored most of the words, telepathically delving into the man’s mind instead. His thoughts gravitated to every screaming match they’d had in the last months of her living at home, before Division 0 had taken her the first time. In her father’s memory, Melissa’s eyes glowed red and smoke curled out of her lips as she snarled. Aaron concentrated, burrowing deeper into the man’s thoughts. A feeling as if he had head-butted a gelatinous mass spread over his face. For an instant, he saw a sobbing Melissa pleading with her father not to hate her—the man remembered her screaming how much she hated him.
An implanted memory.
“… so we let you people take her before she killed us,” said Ken.
The woman glared. “And a lot of good that did. Can’t you people hold on to your criminals?”
Aaron glanced at Anna. Read his mind. Something’s been done to him.
She squinted at him, but turned her attention to the man as Aaron approached the mother. He peered at a collection of finger-sized holo-bars on a bookshelf; pictures of Melissa at various ages glimmered above them. At ten, she smiled and looked innocent, but in the next photo dated a few months after, she stared at the camera with a ‘please don’t hate me’ expression.
That’s when they discovered her ‘gift.’ He brushed aside a twinge of guilt. When Aaron’s talent had manifested at eight, his father had been enthralled like a giant child given a wonderful new toy. He kept insisting that Aaron do things, and found it brilliant. His mother didn’t even bat an eyelash, commemorating his psionic firsts the way the parent of an ordinary boy might’ve made monuments to any other milestone in their son’s life. Yet this girl hadn’t received anything but fear from her own family.
“Mrs. McKay,” said Aaron. “Your daughter has run away from the dorm again. Home is the first place she’ll likely go.”
The woman’s strong presence crumbled in seconds. She trembled, as if he had told her half of West City wanted her head on a pole. When he dove into her thoughts, images of poltergeist-like activity surrounded him. Eerie echoes of a screaming girl came from everywhere at once. Aaron broke out in a sweat, trying to force his way through the sense of falsehood. What had been knives floating around in search of parental throats became books, holo-bars, and stuffed animals.
Aaron decided to take a chance. “Melissa wasn’t trying to kill you.”
“Of course she was!” yelled the mother. “She had her coven here that night. They were waiting for us to go to sleep so they could slit our throats.”
Mrs. McKay slumped to her knees, sobbing. Images in her memory showed Melissa sneaking up on her while she lay in bed. The white sleep suit Melissa wore flickered between a snug knee-length garment and a long, hooded black silk robe that covered everything but her head and toes. Her daughter’s face shifted as well, a ghostly, superimposed grin of demonic glee hovered over an expression of fear. A group of specters, other faceless teen girls, vanished and manifested in time with Melissa’s robes. In one blink, a frightened daughter came looking for comfort; in the next, seven devil worshippers closed in, daggers eager for blood.
“It’s not real.” Aaron gasped for breath. “You’ve been tampered with.”
“You people haven’t helped us one bit,” said Ken. “We sent her to you as a frightened child, and now she’s a bloodthirsty psycho.”
“You should leave,” said the mother.
“Ken. Look at your wife. She’s trembling. Does that seem like the woman you know? If she’s anything like Melissa, she’s not afraid of a damn thing.” Aaron squeezed his fists tight. “To the point of stupidity.”
Sweat beaded along the man’s forehead as he glanced at his wife. His mind knew Aaron had a point, but something else in there pushed him to doubt. Anna put a hand to her mouth, eyes widening with shock at what she appeared to see in his thoughts.
“You sense it, don’t you?” Aaron looked at her. “False memories.”
“Christina,” whispered Ken, reaching for his wife. “She’ll be coming for us.”
“What’s going on?” asked the woman. “I saw things. Those other girls were appearing and disappearing. The robes too. I—”
“They weren’t real. A fabrication. Your daughter was coming to you for help.” Aaron focused psionic energy into Christina’s mind, battering at the telepathic imprint. It felt as though he chipped at a boulder with an icepick. Heat filled his lungs from the exertion. “Think about your daughter. Your little girl. She still loves you.” A tremor of vulnerability rattled the stone inside her brain, but not enough to dislodge it.
Anna intercepted Ken as he moved to grab Aaron by the shoulder. “I’ll need you to stand here, sir. Need I remind you this is an official
investigation?” I thought you got sacked.
Aaron cringed, trying to balance his psionic war with the incoming telepathic message. He found a sliver of spare concentration to reply. Get… picture… young.
Her stare flicked from him to the shelf full of small vases and holo-bars. She ran to it and back, holding a transparent image of Melissa, around six or seven years old, up to the woman’s face. Anna’s mental voice crept into Christina’s mind, a telepathic message mimicking the plea of a little girl.
Mommy, help me.
His right leg twitching from the strain going on in his mind, Aaron let off a surge of power. Anna’s imitation of a child worked like a prybar, letting him get ‘under’ the implant and rip it loose. Images, sounds, and feelings exploded in the woman’s consciousness as the past six months returned to the way she had truly lived them.
Aaron staggered backward until he fell onto the sofa, panting and gasping, as exhausted as if he’d iron-manned a Frictionless match without any intermissions or even water. Christina continued to tremble, though it seemed a product of anger rather than implanted fear. She stared at Aaron until Ken broke the silence.
“Look, you bastards in black have done enough damage to our family. Our daughter’s gone insane, what more do you want from us?”
“She’s not insane, you idiot,” screamed Christina. “Something’s happened. You… we were so fucking stupid.” She glared at her husband. “Don’t just stand there gaping at me. We have to find her.”
“You want to let that creature back into this house?”
Christina slapped him.
“Hold on, Ma’am,” said Anna. “It’s not his fault. Same thing’s been done to ‘im as you.”
“Are you really with the police?” asked Christina.
“Yes,” Anna replied, quick enough to seem convincing.
The woman folded her arms. “What’s with the accent?”
Angel Descended (The Awakened Book 6) Page 19
