There was a girl, he could remember that now. A girl with blue hair… no. A girl who dyed her hair blue, to hide the way it really looked. He could see her now, twirling and spinning, alone on a crowded dance floor, the light around her as slow and thick as honey. And her hair. Beneath the blue dye, he could see it, so clearly that he wondered how he hadn’t noticed before. It wasn’t blond.
Her hair was made of light.
He did not remember her name, not at first. He remembered, instead, a group of monarch butterflies above California coastal sage and scrubland, orange wings against the brilliant blue sky; the smell of sandalwood and salt water; distantly, the sound of the waves breaking on a rocky beach.
Just like that, he remembered Eerie, lost in more ways the one. He remembered Rebecca, lying unresponsive, just a meter or two from where he lay. He remembered Katya, probably unconscious in a slowly rising pool of freezing water.
“Alex?” Emily asked him, sitting up slowly, her expression worried. “What has gotten into you all of a sudden? I told you not to worry…”
That was it, he figured. Over before it started. He’d already triggered her suspicions, with a slight emotional shift. Emily would notice the little cushion that Eerie had knitted him, and use telepathy and empathically induced bliss to make his mind a clean slate again. She would be able to do it just by thinking about it, long before he would have a chance to try to stand up and reach for Rebecca, to try out Gaul’s plan for waking her up. That was, if he was even able to activate the catalyst effect. He had never really understood it, after all. It was just something that happened when he touched people, sometimes…
Then he had a thought. It was a surprising thought, and it made him smile for some reason. Emily look briefly confused, but she misread it, and smiled back down on him, buying him a second or two more before she knocked him for a loop again.
He closed his eyes, and he thought hard about Rebecca; her dry laugh, her omnipresent cigarettes, her thoughtful, warm brown eyes. He thought about the first time he had met her, at his activation. He thought about the way it felt, when she worked on him, the tides of energy and emotion. He thought about touching Rebecca, Rebecca touching him. Some of his thoughts were more socially acceptable than others, but he had no idea what would work.
The connection between their minds flickered to life like a spark. He felt as if he were drawing Rebecca up from the bottom of a very deep well, out of the darkness and the echoes. The effort took his breath away.
Rebecca sat up bolt upright, like the girl from The Exorcist. Emily let out a little shriek in response.
“Fucking finally,” Rebecca gasped, tugging the IV needle from her arm. “Now, anyone who doesn’t want to start reliving their childhood traumas better start telling me where Alistair is, and what the fuck is going on.”
“You brought a telepath, and the pretty girl does barriers, and Chris hides behind them like a bitch. What kind of tricks do you do?” Alice asked, approaching Song slowly, a revolver in her right hand, still pointed at the ground. Xia followed behind her, while Curtis, Michelle and Chris all huddled behind the barrier. “Out of curiosity.”
“All sorts of things,” Song answered calmly. “But in this case? In this case, I think I will take control of the nanites inside your friend with the mask, and then he and Michelle can focus all their effort on killing you.”
Alice tossed her hair and laughed, but the laughter trailed off, and she got a funny look on her face.
“Hey, Xia,” Alice said quietly, glancing over her shoulder. “What are you apologizing for?”
The Kevlar Alice wore was flame-retardant. That didn’t stop Xia from lighting it up like the a dry hillside in September, but it did give her time to leap through a nearby shadow. She made a series of three quick jumps, until she was sure she was far enough away to be out of his range, than she hit the ground rolling, and shed her overcoat on the way back up, leaving it in a smoldering pile behind her. She barely had her feet underneath her when she noticed a slight distortion in the center of her field of vision, a ripple in the stone flooring that she recognized just in time to fall backwards, through her own shadow, porting ten meters to the right. She stepped out from the shadow of one of the supporting buttresses of the massive ceiling, in time to watch a whole section of the wall cave in with a sound so thunderous she felt it more than she heard it, directly behind where she had just been. Michelle was still pulsating with light the color of a pale yellow wine; Alice adjusted her expectations of the woman’s telekinetic power accordingly.
The room was large, but there was no question of hiding. Both Xia and Michelle had turned to face her, waiting patiently for her to close into range again, so that they could burn and bludgeon her. Song slumped over on the ground behind them. Behind her, in the soap-bubble barrier, Christopher Feld cowered. In the distance, she could see the dust and hear the grunts and curses of Leigh and Mitsuru’s fight. Alice looked uncertainly at the pistol in her hand.
She glanced over at Gaul, distant at the far end of the room, standing over the Source Well as if he was worried it would run away.
Boss? You have any more cards up your sleeve? Because this would be a great time to find out that we secretly have the advantage…
She glanced over at Gaul hopefully, but he just stared back, demanding and pitiless.
“Fine, have it your way,” Alice said sullenly, walking at Michelle and Xia as if she had nothing to be afraid of. “But this is a pretty sorry set-up for a man who can predict the future.”
28
Emily planted her hand firmly on his chest, as if she planned to claim it in the name of God and country. She glared at Rebecca, and Rebecca, still dressed in a hospital smock and still clambering out of a hospital bed, glared right back.
“You better back off, Rebecca,” Emily warned. “I’m not as you remember me, and I’ve got Alex elevating my power. You don’t stand a chance.”
“Yeah, not while you are like that,” Rebecca admitted. “For all your vaunted power, though, you still lack technique. Any skilled telepath would have noticed me waking Katya up, and having a little chat with her. Sorry about this, Alex.”
He was about to ask what she was sorry for, when it seemed as if he was stabbed, in the right thigh, the left shoulder, and between his thumb and forefinger on his right hand. When he looked at his hand, he saw most of an acupuncture needle protruding from the wound, and then he suddenly found his voice again, and yelled inarticulately.
The catalyst effect ended so abruptly that it was like being in a room filled with loud music only a moment before, and now is blanketed with an awkward, questioning silence. Emily’s presence in his mind receded like the tide, and its place, he found anger and a sense of betrayal, left behind like shells on the sand in the wake of a storm.
“Now that we are back to our normal footing,” Rebecca said, standing up on unsteady legs, “why don’t you tell me where Alistair is, before I decide to tear it out of your poor little brain, Emily?”
Emily smiled, kissed Alex full on the mouth, and then, before he had a chance to react, melted into water. He found himself again staring helplessly at his dripping wet chest and arms as Emily disappeared, still in too much pain to contemplate removing the needles that pierced him. Rebecca looked slowly around the room, at the water she was ankle deep in.
“She’s gone. Fucking hell,” Rebecca said blankly. “When did she start doing that?”
“Things got really complicated while you were away,” Katya muttered, splashing into the room. She saw Alex gingerly touching the needle in his arm and smacked his hand away. “I’ve composed the best narrative I can with a concussion. Just read it off my brain.”
Katya seized his arm firmly, pinning it to the trundle bed, and then smiled apologetically.
“Next time I see that bitch, I swear I will have figured out how to kill her. Now, hold still,” she said sweetly, “I’d hate to accidentally hurt you.”
Alex didn’t cry out while she removed the needles. He made faces, writhed, and swore loudly, but he didn’t cry out. He felt good about that.
“Hey, Katya,” Rebecca said, examining her stringy, greasy hair ruefully, “nice story. Now, if you give me a
