Slowly, he reached into his pocket and took out the key. He turned it in the lock. She pushed open the gate and stood before him on the other side. I guided her to step through the gate as I slipped out from underneath the blankets. I made sure I was soundless, keeping Tellison’s focus on her, his eyes never leaving hers. I guided her to place her hand in his. I Willed them to walk ahead of me down the hall, two zombie-like figures, in a daze, looking straight ahead, hands clasped together, driven, now, toward a new goal: “need to get to the office, need to get Cartari’s weapons.”
I slunk in the shadows behind the pair walking ahead of me as Tellison led us to the office, empty except for one other snoring guard, kicked back in his chair. Tellison gathered up all of my weapons and brought them in a bunch to me. I quickly slipped them into their proper sheaths and holdings: I am whole again. My gearbag, however, had been taken home by someone or other and I would never have it again. My handy comm was gone, too. Axis would surely be panicking about not having heard from me. I needed to get to my ship and send a message.
I asked Tellison for his money sack and was pleased at the amount of glorains inside. They paid their police well in this city. The guard wavered, looking at me, a weak sense of realization coming across his face, so I Willed a new wave of desire into him and forced Zaya to place her hand on his cheek: “desire her, want her, do as she wants…”
Then, to Zaya: “he is the answer, he will lead us out of the City… Keep him calm, keep him contained… Keep him wanting you.”
I took a deep breath and then waved my arms forward. “Outside, we need to go outside. To the edges of the city. Let us go, quickly.”
As we were leaving down the hallway, we passed a coat closet. I opened it and grabbed a nice long, black fur-lined winter robe-length cloak with red feather accents for Zaya. I wondered who had left it there. I handed it to her just as we were exiting into the snow.
“Put it on.”
“Yes.” She was still under my mind control. I half expected her to call me Commander or Sir, at the very least, and it pained me to see the blank look of obedience. She was captured by my mental sway. She swept the cloak over her shoulders with the practiced habit of a queen and I wondered who she really was.
“To the outskirts of the city,” I told Tellison. “Lead us there.”
I had to get the guard to do what we needed him to, and I didn’t think I had the strength to get him to do what we needed him to do on my own. Plus, we needed him with us, in case any question came up of us being held under guard. We were just being escorted from one precinct to another. Just until the edge of the city. Plus, Zaya had told me she was from another region; she didn’t know this area well, either. We needed him - for the moment.
Zaya held to Tellison’s hand and I kept in step behind them, hat low, but warily looking from side to side and checking behind us as we exited the station. The problem with holding these two prone in the mental connection, was that I couldn’t make them move very quickly. They were trodding along rather slowly. I twisted at the mental connection, trying to make them move more swiftly, but their bodies just jerked ahead in a kinesthetic conundrum, as if their bodies were not their own to command; which they were not at the moment. I was going to have to tolerate the slow pace.
The snow was falling down in light flakes, but there was a mass of black clouds to the north, the direction I needed to go, that said a major storm was ready to let loose.
“Turn right…”
Soldiers marched past us and around as we ducked down a right alley.
We skirted quickly through a market as vendors took down their wares. I snagged some supplies quickly, food stuffs, mainly, knowing I had a trek ahead. I would find a safe place to leave the guard and Zaya, soon. She had been so close-lipped with me, but as soon as I lifted the mental hold, I could ask her where someone friendly was, escort her there, then head back to my ship, and take my leave.
We rounded a corner and a police precinct was letting loose a shift. We ducked left and headed up a cobblestone street.
This would actually be a good place to leave our guard friend. We were on the edge of the city. We were backed up to the hills, the mountains and trees broadly visible just on the other side of one last line of residential buildings.
I left him standing, facing a wall, giving him the command to study its nuances, then took Zaya around a corner and her sit and study the floating snow. I went back to the officer.
With a hand to his forehead, and a knife in my hand, I released him, stripping away the initial tendril of thought I had placed inside his mind, unweaving all the emotions I had spent into his body, and flooding back into him the idea of freewill and drive.
He staggered to the side, clutching his head, moaning, nearly falling, and burst into tears.
Tellison looked at me, face stricken in dumbfounded agony. As his eyes adjusted to my image, seeming not to notice the knife in my hand, he collapsed from his sob into giggles and took my hand.
Then he backed off and stood still, staring at me, tears still streaking down his face, but his smile was
