The Mind's Eye

Chapter Fifteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

Las Vegas became the first city to unilaterally ban telepaths from entering for any reason, particularly gambling, after intensive lobbying by casino owners in the city. The measure was challenged by a number of civil liberties organisations, but after the events at Harvard it is expected to stand. The news came too late to prevent a telepath – who went under the name of Henry Sugar - from breaking the bank at two different casinos within the city. A second telepath was apparently caught in the act and arrested by security guards...
-AP News Report, 2015

Joe Robertson had learned to listen, from a very early age, to the voices in his head. They told him, sometimes, what people were thinking and what they intended to do in the near future. It had honestly never occurred to him that there was anything unusual in having voices in his head. As a child, it had been a defence mechanism against a drunken and abusive father and uncaring mother; as an adult, it was his gift for survival. And gambling; if Joe hadn’t had a drug and drink habit that far surpassed his father’s addictions, he would have become one of the richest men in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:City><st1lace>Atlantic City</st1lace></st1:City>. As it was, he earned money at the tables and then lost it to the pushers and bars in the city.

He looked down at his cards while listening to the voices in his head. There were five players at the table, all – technically – playing illegally. <st1:City><st1lace>Atlantic City</st1lace></st1:City> was second only to <st1:City><st1lace>Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City> when it came to gambling, with dozens of official casinos, but the men and women who played at private games disliked having to give anything to the casino authorities. Joe had his own reasons for avoiding playing in the official casinos; a player who was too lucky, or too good, might find himself suspected of cheating, or quietly barred from the casinos. That, too, was technically illegal, but who gave a damn? Money talked in <st1:City><st1lace>Atlantic City</st1lace></st1:City> and the casino owners preferred to rake in the dough, rather than hand it out to lucky little players. Joe had never given a sucker an even break, if only because no one had ever given him a break.

The voices whispered their words into his mental ears. Two of the players – both women attractive enough to make him wish that they were playing strip poker – had good hands, although nothing spectacular. The other two had poor hands and would probably fold rather than raising the stakes, although one of them – a gambling addict rather like Joe himself – was thinking about bluffing and raising the stakes. Joe knew – thanks to the voices in his head – that the man’s wife was bedridden with cancer and that he had chosen to gamble in order to raise the money for her care, but the addiction had long since overwhelmed him. If he had managed to break the bank, he would have lost it all within hours at the tables.

Joe sat back and studied his companions. One of the women was determined to keep raising the ante and see what happened, confident in her hand and playing skills. Her face was impressively controlled, but she couldn’t hide anything from the voices in his head. They told her that she regarded him with disgust and he felt a wave of anger, anger that he knew would never be allowed physical expression. The other woman was nervous, unsure of what to do or how to act. Joe wasn't sure what she was even doing at the private game; she acted more like an innocent young debutante who had been tossed into a pool full of sharks. The chances were good, he decided, that that was exactly what she was. <st1:City><st1lace>Atlantic City</st1lace></st1:City> drew losers like her like flies to honey, hundreds of thousands of young hopefuls called by the siren song of easy money. In the end, they either broke the addiction or found themselves trapped for the rest of their lives.

The game went on for two rounds before the confident woman scooped up the pot. Joe shrugged, accepted his own losses, and joined the second game. This time, his cards were better and he knew that his opponent was bluffing. The pot fell into his lap and he pocketed the cash – there was no need for gambling chips at private games – before joining the third game. It wasn't going to be a lucrative night, he realised, as the third and fourth games were both busts, but at least it was interesting. He leered at the confident woman and smiled inwardly at the disgust she refused to show on her face.

Pulling himself to his feet – several thousand dollars richer – Joe waved goodbye to his playmates and headed out of the small apartment block. The grimy surroundings of the poorer regions of <st1:City><st1lace>Atlantic City</st1lace></st1:City> were home to him and the thousands of others like him, although none of them possessed the voices in their heads. Shaking his head, he walked into the nearest bar and ordered a beer for himself, settling back in a dark corner to drink it and enjoy the show. If he drank enough to drink himself into a stupor...he didn’t care. Only then, when he was swimming in enough alcohol to pickle a hog, could he get some peace from the voices.

He looked up as the music changed and the dancers came out on stage. They were all young and attractive – and two of them, he suspected, were below legal age – but they all shared the same trait; desperation. They were the dispossessed; the young women who had found themselves on the streets, helpless and alone. They had been easy meat for the pimps and suchlike who watched for such women, worked them into an early grave and then moved onto the next one. There were hundreds of thousands of such women in <st1:City><st1lace>Atlantic City</st1lace></st1:City>, their flesh and blood used until there was nothing left, their bodies eventually dumped and left to rot. The dark underside of the city rarely gave up its victims.

The voices in his head hissed as he looked at a young blonde girl, her naked body showing the telltale signs of cocaine addition. He could have had her, he knew, simply by offering her some of the dollar notes in his pocket. In her situation, she couldn’t afford to be picky – or pricy. He could meet her outside, give her a few dollars, and then make her suck him off in a side street, or take her back to his apartment for the night. And then he might find that she had taken revenge. The chances were good that she, like many street whores, carried a sexual disease that would cause him some pain and hardship, at the very least. Or she might carry AIDS and infect him…he shook his head. If he wanted pussy, he would go to one of the high-class joints in the more upmarket areas of the city.

Staggering to his feet, he left a small handful of dollar bills on the table and headed out, walking back to his flat. The city had been plunged into darkness while he’d been playing and drinking, but the party never stopped in <st1:City><st1lace>Atlantic City</st1lace></st1:City>. He heard the sounds of police cars driving to the scene of one crime or another and shook his head in disgust. <st1:City><st1lace>Atlantic City</st1lace></st1:City> didn’t want to admit it, even to itself, but it had a real problem with corrupt police. Joe had been in a dozen private games that had been raided, a problem that had been solved by handing the cops a few thousand dollars apiece.

He shook his head as a street whore stumbled out of the shadows and offered him whatever he wanted, in exchange for a few dollars. The whore, at the end of her lifespan, shrugged. Her emancipated body suggested that she would die soon and she knew it. Her pimp had long since abandoned her for someone younger and prettier. She wouldn’t see another summer. Joe had no time for sympathy. Instead, he walked into his flat and turned on the light.

“Just in time,” a voice said. The voices in his head screamed a warning, too late. He wasn't alone. “Just think - we were starting to wonder if you had been waylaid by a pretty face with a handful of gold.”

Joe recoiled. The man facing him, sitting on his chair, was a very familiar face, even if they had never spoken before. He was completely bald – rumour had it that one of his enemies had shaved him and then done something to prevent his hair from growing back – and covered in silver rings that had been inserted into his skin. When he opened his mouth to speak, Joe could see the glint of implanted golden rings in his tongue. He presented a chilling appearance, but then it was hardly needed. Everyone knew that the Capper – he’d picked up that name after he’d kneecapped four of his rivals in a single night – owned a third of <st1:City><st1lace>Atlantic City</st1lace></st1:City>’s criminal activities and that he wanted the other two-thirds. Joe had hoped never to come to his attention.

“I’ll get right to the point,” the Capper said. He had an accent that suggested <st1lace>New England</st1lace>, although the truth was that no one knew where he had come from, or even if he had family elsewhere. It gave him a certain strength that many of the other gangsters lacked. “I wished to talk to you in private.”

Joe shivered. The last person who had talked to the Capper in private had been skinned alive. And they weren't truly alone either; the voices in his head were warning him that there were two men behind him, their stares boring into the back of his skull. If he dared to raise a hand to the Capper – fear kept him from moving in any direction – they would be on him before he could land a blow.

“I’ve been watching you for some time,” the Capper continued. The voices in his head were unusually silent. Joe found himself floundering without his secret advantage and knew that he was completely at the Capper’s mercy. “I always look for people who seem to…shall we say be bucking the odds? I run the games that you and your fellow vermin play and I don’t like cheaters. The pattern surrounding you is odd.”

The Capper smiled. It was the most fearsome expression Joe had ever seen. “You don’t always win and you don’t always have good hands,” the Capper said. “You certainly aren’t dealing from the bottom of the pack…on the other hand, you don’t ever lose very much and at times you seem to lose nothing more than the first stake. I think that you somehow know what cards your opponents are holding.”

His gaze sharpened. “I think you’re one of those telepaths.”

Joe couldn’t move. He’d heard the voice in his head screaming GO AWAY, but he’d assumed that it was just another voice, another helpful whisper within his mind. He hadn’t paid much attention to the news, but the voices in his head, suddenly focusing on the guards behind him, whispered that telepaths – perhaps other telepaths – had been discovered. And he, a man who had always been on the verge of madness, might be one too.

“Ah,” the Capper said. “We do understand one another, don’t we?”

Joe couldn’t move as the Capper stood up and advanced towards him. All the stories about how the Capper treated his enemies - the things he did for his own sadistic amusement, the fate of the trusted lieutenant who had tried to betray him and set up his own criminal ring - raced through his head. What would happen to him? Joe knew, without the voices in his head, that the Capper was angry. He could do anything, to Joe or to his friends and family, and no one would dare try to stop him.

“I have an offer for you,” the Capper said. The pleasant tone didn’t fool Joe for a second. “You come and work for me as my pet telepath. You tell me what my rivals are thinking and which of my allies is plotting to betray me. You’ll find that the rewards are quite…pleasant. You could move from this dingy little brownstone to a luxury apartment in my home, with servants and even whores at your service.”

He learned closer, close enough that Joe could smell his breath. “Or you wind up in the river with your throat cut,” he added. “The choice is yours.”

Joe was sobering up fast. He knew that he couldn’t trust the Capper, but…refusing the Capper meant certain death. And besides, being allied to the Capper would give him some protection, protection he had never enjoyed in his life. His apartment had been robbed before by thieves who thought that he had more money than sense.

“I’ll join you,” he said, finally.

“Excellent,” the Capper said. He managed a grin that was the most disconcerting expression he had performed so far. “This is the start of a beautiful friendship.”

***​

David Campbell had been thinking of his wife and two children as he walked him from work in <st1:City><st1lace>San Francisco</st1lace></st1:City>. He was worried about them, not least because they lived alarmingly close to where the first anti-telepath riot had erupted two days ago. The police had managed to break up the riot before it could wreck the neighbourhood, but he was still unsure of their safety. He’d tried to convince his wife to take herself and her daughters to her uncle, who lived on a farm in <st1:State><st1lace>Kansas</st1lace></st1:State>, yet his wife had refused. She had never gotten on with her uncle. David was so distracted by his thoughts that he didn’t notice the figure behind him until it was far too late. A cosh came down on the back of his neck and he crumbled to the ground.

A pair of strong hands rolled him over and he saw a masked face staring down at him. David’s vision was blurred and he couldn’t move, or fight back as the mugger searched him and removed his wallet, house keys and a handful of papers he’d brought home from work. He tried to make his body move, but it seemed as if he couldn’t move a muscle, even his eyes refused to blink on command. It crossed his mind that he might be paralysed for life and he almost panicked. The mugger, who had somehow managed to open his briefcase, took some of the papers from the interior and dumped the rest of them onto the street.

“Answer me one question,” the mugger said. David, who was unable to speak or even moan, would have laughed if his body hadn’t hurt so much. “What is your <st1:stockticker>PIN</st1:stockticker> number for your bank card?”

David said nothing, but the mugger nodded, slapped him across the face and ran off. David’s mind blurred, sinking into darkness; it seemed that, a moment later, he was in hospital. His wife was sitting by his side, watching him nervously. David tried to move and discovered that while his body hurt like never before, he could move again. He took her hand – he hadn’t realised just how much he loved her until he had realised that he might never see her again – and squeezed it tightly.

“Oh, David,” she said. He saw the tears in her eyes and refused to let go of her hand. “They took everything out of the bank.”

David stared at her in disbelief. The bank card should have been secure. He hadn’t told the mugger his <st1:stockticker>PIN</st1:stockticker>. He was still in shock when a pair of policemen arrived and questioned him, pushing him to recall each and every last detail about the mugger. David couldn’t be much help. His memory was blurred and the mugger had been masked. The one question echoing through his mind was how could the mugger have obtained his <st1:stockticker>PIN</st1:stockticker> code?

“We believe that he was a telepath, sir,” one of the policemen said, finally. “You’re not the only victim; thankfully, the bastard doesn’t seem to have that much imagination. A person with telepathy and no scruples could do a hell of a lot of damage.”

***​

Senator Walker liked to open his mail himself, once the security staff in DC had checked it to make sure that no one was sending him bombs or small letters filled with anthrax. It struck him as just the sort of think a populist senator should do and besides, it made sure that certain private letters were never seen by anyone else. Like many political figures, <st1:City><st1lace>Walker</st1lace></st1:City> had secrets, secrets that would destroy his career if they ever got out into public view – and enemies that wouldn’t hesitate to use them to attack him.

The envelope was plain and unadorned, the writing inside was clearly typed out on a computer, but the message almost made him faint. Years ago, he'd had an affair with a young woman shortly after entering the Senate. She’d become pregnant, borne him a son and insisted on raising him as a single mother. <st1:City><st1lace>Walker</st1lace></st1:City> had set up a trust fund, knowing that he could never acknowledge the child as his get, but over the years he had watched his son grow into a young man from a distance. He was proud of his son, yet no one else apart from him and the child’s mother knew the truth of his parentage.

Until now, he realised numbly.

The note was clear enough. It included the address of the mother and his teenage son and offered him a simple choice. He could pay the demanded price – with no guarantee that it would be only one demand – or his career could be destroyed. <st1:City><st1lace>Walker</st1lace></st1:City> stared down at the note, feeling bitter tears pricking his eyes. Only one kind of person could have ferreted out his secret. Only a telepath could have learned the truth.

 

Chapter Sixteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

Speaking to packed crowds today, Senator Thomas Wallis, a front-runner for Republican Party candidate for President in the 2016 elections, demanded that the government place immediate controls on telepaths to prevent a repeat of the Harvard Stampede and other disasters. This comes on the heels of a growing series of telepath and telepathy-related criminal offences against non-telepaths. Wallis stated that if he were elected, all telepaths would be registered, their powers would be brought under control and they would be transferred to a place well away from non-telepaths.

In further news, the Reverend Joshua Peterson, the founder of the controversial Church of the Rapturous Awakening, claimed today that telepaths were hearing the voices and temptations of the devil and were therefore sinners. He called on all good Christians to refuse to have anything to do with telepaths. The Church, which is infamous for its refusal to accept feminism, homosexuality and multiculturalism, demanded that the government ban telepaths from operating on American soil.
-AP News Report, 2015

The President looked down at the folder in his hand and scowled. The Presidency conveyed many blessing as well as curses, but everyone took the President so damn seriously. In his first week in the White House, he had requested – and then forgotten about – information on an obscure topic relating to military readiness. A week later, he had been presented with a massive report on the subject and discovered, much to his alarm, that the entire Pentagon was waiting on tenterhooks to discover what the new President thought of their report. He had learned, quickly, not to make any requests that others would take seriously, at least unless he actually wanted the data.

He scowled as he opened the report. After the first public announcement of telepathy, he’d ordered the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to research telepathy and produce a legal framework for using – or rejecting – telepathy in criminal cases. Their report now lay in front of him and the President found himself unwilling to read it, even though he'd cleared a couple of hours to read through it and then compose a statement for the nation. If the truth be told, he didn’t want to know.

The thought wasn't reassuring. Outside his office, a telepath had been added to the Secret Service officers guarding his life. The telepath – one of the first to be discovered – had orders to check that no one intended to do him harm, but the President knew that the other Secret Service personnel were uneasy with having a telepath near them. Anyone who complained about ‘need to know’ and how they had been deemed as not ‘needing to know’ was either ignorant about OPSEC or a self-obsessed and therefore untrustworthy idiot, yet having a telepath made a joke out of mental privacy. Did the President have a right to order a person’s mental privacy violated because they might pose a threat to his person? He could imagine no more alienating activity. People who had been completely trustworthy might become untrustworthy because their mental privacy had been violated.

Shaking his head, he opened the report and turned at once to the executive summery. President Reagan had once remarked that he wanted all reports and proposals put before him to be no larger than a single sheet of A4 paper and his successors had tried to do the same, although as the government had expanded even further, it was hard to convince the various departments not to produce realms of paper – or its electronic equivalent– every year. If the President made a point of reading all of the reports, he would never have any time to actually do his job.

The writer – an up-and-coming young lawyer on the Attorney General’s staff – knew his stuff, at least. Telepathic evidence was unlikely to be admissible under the current rules of evidence, even though it was not specifically banned. The writer had noted – and the President smiled at the evidence of a wry sense of humour – that it was not banned because no one had considered it possible, not unlike having God come down from heaven and decree a suspect innocent of all charges. The authors of the rules of evidence had never considered it as a possibility.

Furthermore, telepathic evidence could reasonably be construed as hearsay. A court would not be keen on accepting evidence based on hearsay – a person who heard something from someone, rather than directly witnessing it themselves – and a telepath might be unable to prove that he was speaking the truth. The President turned to the expanded section of the report, which noted that there were several ways to make the system workable, but he doubted that the courts would be eager to accept it. The court system tended to be highly conservative. The writer did mention that Spectral Evidence – hearsay based around dreams and visions – would never stand up in a modern courtroom. The last time it had been generally accepted was back during the Salem Witch Trials. The President remembered the preacher who had castigated telepaths as witches and shuddered.

Turning back to the executive summery, it quickly became apparent that telepathic evidence ran into a number of other problems. The Constitution itself could be read as banning telepathic evidence. The Fourth Amendment – which banned unreasonable searches and seizures – could be cited; a good lawyer could probably argue that peeking into a person’s mind was an unreasonable search. The Fifth Amendment – which prohibited self-incrimination, among other things – could be cited, as could the Sixth Amendment, which allowed the accused to confront his accuser. Judges, the writer had started, could draw a parallel between coerced evidence – such as evidence obtained through torture – and telepathic evidence, which could be used to throw the telepathic evidence out of court. The President suspected that that could shatter the traditional lines between liberals and conservatives.

It was possible, of course, to rewrite the rules to allow telepathic evidence to be considered in court, but that would open up a whole new can of worms. The President knew that very few people would be keen on the idea of giving telepaths free reign, which would leave their testimony as nothing more than hearsay – except that, without telepathy, <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:State><st1lace>New York</st1lace></st1:State> would be experiencing the after effects of a dirty bomb explosion. Certainly, telepathic evidence could be used to point the police towards a terrorist, but a competent lawyer could turn that upside down.

The writer had cited a case from <st1:State><st1lace>Massachusetts</st1lace></st1:State> to prove his point. The police had been pointed towards a suspected criminal by a member of the public and they’d obtained a warrant to search his house on those grounds. They’d found evidence suitable to convict the suspect, but his lawyer had argued that the search was carried out on poor grounds and had been able to get most of the evidence thrown out of court. The President flipped to the back and read the latest update on the New York Dirty Bomber trial. Their lawyers were stalling for all that they were worth, knowing that the case would eventually go to the Supreme Court.

And then there was the issue of telepathic crime.

The writer had admitted that while reading someone’s mind wasn't a crime – again, because it had simply never been an issue beforehand – it could certainly be counted as invasion of privacy and charges could be brought on those grounds. However, how could someone prove that their mind had been read? The mere belief that something had happened proved nothing. Another telepath could, presumably, look into the first’s mind and discover the truth, but that raised other questions. And then there was the minor issue that stronger telepaths, when their talent blossomed into life, ended up reading the minds of everyone around them by accident. Could they reasonably be held accountable for that?

And then there was the issue of mind control.

The incident at Harvard – if one could call a riot that had killed around seven hundred people and injured well over a thousand an ‘incident’ – had been an accident, but what if there were telepaths who developed the ability to influence or control minds? Could ‘a telepath made me do it’ serve as a defence? The writer noted that it was possible to draw links between involuntary intoxication – where a victim was drugged without his knowledge or consent – and telepathic mind control. The victim would not be held accountable for what he or she did…except, of course, one would have to prove that they were the victim of mind control, which raised the old issue of hearsay evidence again. Although, of course, a telepathic scan could reveal the truth, if a victim was willing to be scanned by another telepath.

On the other hand, mind-controlling someone into doing one’s bidding could easily be defined as a crime. A person who made someone act under duress – either though naked force or more subtle intimidation – was already committing a criminal offence. If it could be proven that someone had used mind control techniques, charging them with a crime would be easy.

“Enough,” the President said, finally. The writer had gone into too much detail and his head was hurting. “What do we do now?”

He put the report to one side and picked up a different report. As a young candidate, he had hired the services of Boyd and Marshall, one of the most reputable and capable polling firms in the <st1:country-region><st1lace>United States</st1lace></st1:country-region>. Their firm grasp of the public pulse had helped push him to victory, although he was honest enough to admit that luck – and a damaging sexual scandal that had blown his opponent’s career out of the water – and he had continued to retain their services while in office. He wasn’t entirely sure he trusted the polling figures produced by the <st1:State><st1lace>Washington</st1lace></st1:State> bureaucracy.

Boyd and Marshall, after conducting a hastily-organised and extensive survey, had concluded that public feeling was turning rapidly against telepaths. It had never been favourable – the news about the <st1:State><st1lace>New York</st1lace></st1:State> bombers, they’d added, should have been put out quicker – but what had happened at Harvard had scared most of the population shitless. They noted that over sixty percent of the population favoured laws intended to deal with telepaths, while a small minority actually wanted to exterminate or segregate telepaths from the mainstream of public life. It was already having an effect on public policy. <st1:City><st1lace>Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City>’s ban on telepaths was of questionable legality – it smacked of discrimination based on an inherent trait, like gender or skin colour – but it was unlikely that it would be shut down by the State Court. The Supreme Court would probably wind up tying itself in legal knots…and, of course, it was perfectly legal for shops and stores to ban known shoplifters. The casinos in <st1:City><st1lace>Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City> could probably get away with banning known telepaths.

The report went on to say that political figures who loudly demanded action against telepaths were already seeing an upswing in their poll numbers – but then, the President had never needed a polling agency to tell him that. Political figures who jumped on the public bandwagon, for any issue, always saw a rise in their popularity, at least until they got into office and discovered that the real world defied quick and easy solutions. Making speeches was easy; actually crafting political steps and putting them into action was hard. The President had learned that in his first week on the job.

He looked up at the painting he’d placed on one wall. It was traditional that the incoming President had to redecorate the Oval Office and he'd added a painting of all of the American Presidents from <st1:State><st1lace>Washington</st1lace></st1:State> to his predecessor, as if they’d remained alive so that they could share their advice and impressions with their successors. There was George Washington, who was dressed in traditional clothes, rubbing shoulders with Abe Lincoln and Richard Nixon, while John Kennedy stood next to Franklin Roosevelt and George Bush II. They had all been great men, in their way, and how they had conducted themselves had reflected on <st1:country-region><st1lace>America</st1lace></st1:country-region>. How would any of them have dealt with telepathy?

President Franklin Roosevelt’s beaming face seemed to mock him. In the darkest days following <st1lace><st1laceName>Pearl</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Harbour</st1laceType></st1lace>, the <st1:country-region><st1lace>United States</st1lace></st1:country-region> had rounded up and interned hundreds of thousands of ethic Japanese civilians, for fear of what they might do. It had been a shameful act, one of the worst in American history, yet many people wanted to do the same to telepaths. The President hated the thought, but at the same time he knew that telepaths had to be brought under control. If the public lost faith in the government’s ability to administer justice, they would start taking matters into their own hands.

He ran his hands through his hair as he stood up and closed the report. There was work to be done.

***​

It had taken several telephone calls to assemble both his Cabinet and a number of prominent figures from the other party. The President wasn't fond of bipartisanship – it had always struck him as a way for the other party to force concessions or to stall long enough for the idea to be scrapped – but this was important. Besides, with the public eye fixed so firmly upon <st1:State><st1lace>Washington</st1lace></st1:State>, no political figure could afford to stall for long. It would reflect badly upon them at the polls and at the coming elections.

“Gentlemen, thank you for coming,” the President said. He had taken the liberty of distributing copies of both reports to his guests and insisting that they read them prior to the meeting. “Our country stands on the brink of anarchy. History will judge us on how we react to this crisis.”

No one spoke as his words echoed in the air. They knew that he was right. The riot in Harvard had been the worst, but there had been other riots and over a hundred people had been lynched - often people who were not and probably never would have been telepathic. Matters weren't helped by growing fears about what other countries might be doing with their telepaths. <st1:country-region><st1lace>Iran</st1lace></st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region><st1lace>Saudi Arabia</st1lace></st1:country-region> had publicly proclaimed that telepaths were the spawn of the devil and therefore to be stoned to death, but <st1:country-region><st1lace>Russia</st1lace></st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region><st1lace>China</st1lace></st1:country-region> were maintaining a cold silence on the subject. The <st1:stockticker>CIA</st1:stockticker> had stated, in a report meant for the President’s eyes only, that both countries were looking for telepaths who might have been awakened by the Harvard Blast.

It seemed that telepaths were flowering into existence everywhere. The Looking Glass Project had found seventeen telepaths before the Harvard Blast; Professor Zeller’s civilian project had found only fifteen. Now there seemed to be hundreds of telepaths appearing out of nowhere, their telepathy shocked into existence. The crisis was rapidly growing out of hand. The extremists – the ones who believed that telepaths were a colossal threat – were growing louder. The President knew that violence – more violence – could not be far behind.

“We have to act now,” the President said. “This is what I propose.

“We will start a Telepath Corps that will have jurisdiction over telepaths and telepathic crimes committed within our borders. This corps will have the telepathic resources that were scattered out over the different agencies, with a mandate for registering telepaths and dealing with telepathic criminals. Telepaths who work legally – in the courts, for example – will have to go through a training session and accept an ethical background.”

He smiled inwardly at their reactions. They knew that the political firepower assembled in the room could push it through Congress and the Senate, but the various agencies wouldn’t want to give up any control, particularly to a new organisation. The unwillingness of intelligence agencies to cooperate had led to 9/11, the President knew, and neither Bush nor Obama had been able to do much to improve it. No one wanted to give up any power or influence.

“We will insist that all telepaths register themselves with the government, just as we insist on young men registering themselves for possible drafting,” he continued. “Being an unregistered telepath will be treated as a federal offence, with a mandatory prison sentence, as will harbouring an unregistered telepath. We will open up accommodation in <st1:State><st1lace>Alaska</st1lace></st1:State> for registered telepaths who wish to live apart from non-telepaths. Registered telepaths who wish to work as telepaths will be allowed to do so – telepaths who do not want to work as telepaths will be forbidden to use their powers in public life and doing so will be an offence.

“We will continue research into telepathy, particularly into finding a way to block telepathy and to suppress telepathic powers. If telepaths are unable to control their powers, we may be able to find a way to prevent their powers from driving them insane – or prevent criminals from using them for criminal activities.”

He paused. “There will be considerable debate over these measures,” he added. It was the understatement of the century. “There will be those who will claim that we are discriminating against telepaths – and yes, to some extent, that is exactly what we will be doing. We cannot avoid it. We must remember, however, that human rights are important and must be honoured, even for – perhaps especially for – telepaths as well as non-telepaths. If the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, we have to draw out and neutralise the fear. I ask you all to support me in this.”

There was a long chilling pause. He knew what he was asking them to support and knew that, for some of them, it would cost them votes, perhaps even their positions. None of them had risen so high without an ability to keep their finger on the public pulse and they knew that the public would be behind them…as long as their actions didn’t lead to a disaster. They all knew that Harvard might be only the beginning…

One by one, they all pledged their assent. The President felt sick. He was under no illusions as to what they were doing, or where it would all lead. He just knew that there was no other choice. Telepaths had to be controlled.

The only alternative was anarchy.

 

Interlude Two<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

From: Project Looking Glass Analysis Team
To: Looking Glass Distribution List
Classification: Looking Glass Cleared Individuals Only

Following the Harvard Blast, it has rapidly become clear that the blast awakened hundreds – perhaps thousands – of telepaths across the world. Several telepaths within forces deployed in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:country-region><st1lace>South Korea</st1lace></st1:country-region> or <st1:country-region><st1lace>Afghanistan</st1lace></st1:country-region> were awakened, which suggests that telepaths may have become a global phenomenon. There is relatively little information on telepaths within unfriendly states, but we must accept that our enemies will attempt to use telepaths against us as soon as possible.

Researchers within the Looking Glass Project/Telepath Corps have been attempting to define and collate telepathic potential and power. Professor Zeller has, in addition, been attempting to define his own scale. The researchers have classified telepathic power on a rating from one to ten; <st1:stockticker>ESP</st1:stockticker>1 signifies relatively little power, perhaps only an ability to sense emotions, while <st1:stockticker>ESP</st1:stockticker>10 signifies the top of the scale.

It is difficult, however, to pin down what a telepath is actually capable of doing. A relatively weak telepath may be largely indistinguishable from the general population, while a strong telepath with sufficient mental discipline might be able to operate within the general population without being driven insane by their thoughts. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly obvious that very low-level telepathic abilities have been present in humanity for years, with people being capable of reading emotions and developing an intuitive sense without being aware that they were tapping into telepathic power.

We therefore recommend the following:

-There is no point in tracking and arresting a person who possesses a rating of <st1:stockticker>ESP</st1:stockticker>2 or below. They are literally unable to invade thoughts, let alone influence them. Indeed, they may never register because they may never realise that they are telepaths.

-That all telepaths of <st1:stockticker>ESP</st1:stockticker>7 to <st1:stockticker>ESP</st1:stockticker>10 be urged to not only register with the government, but to work with the government, rather than with Professor Zeller or another civilian research program.

-That the project to create ‘<st1lace><st1laceName>Telepath</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Town</st1laceType></st1lace>’ in <st1:State><st1lace>Alaska</st1lace></st1:State> be expanded, in hopes that we can give most of the telepaths a reasonably normal life, separate from non-telepaths.

Regarding telepathic criminals, we have the following to report…

 

Chapter Seventeen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

Federal watchdogs have warned that the so-called Mind-Lock, an amulet produced by GTROF <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:stockticker w:st="on">LTD</st1:stockticker>, that claims to provide protection against telepathic probes is in fact completely ineffective against telepathic probes. Even so, sales of both Mind-Lock and various drugs that claim to either provide telepathic ability or block it have skyrocketed since the first announcements. <st1ersonName w:st="on">Sales</st1ersonName> of tinfoil hats – which are apparently equally ineffective – have also skyrocketed.
&shy;-AP News Report, 2015

“I can hear them,” a man was shouting. “I can hear the angels in my mind!”

Alice watched, as dispassionately as she could, as the man was wheeled into the medical centre. The newly-formed Telepath Corps had taken him out of the Portland Mental Institute after the disaster in Texas City two weeks ago. A mental patient – committed to an asylum since birth – had had his natural telepathy boosted by the Harvard Blast and he’d developed the ability to reach into other minds and toy with them. His madness had run rampant in the institution, driving the staff and the remaining patients completely out of their minds. The emergency responders, when they’d finally realised that something was wrong, had walked into a scene from hell. Only seven people had survived the incident and most of them would be in mental institutions for the rest of their lives.

“This won’t be a pretty sight,” Doctor Sampson warned. He sounded as if – for once – he was finally taking his duties seriously. The Telepath Corps now hosted over seventy telepaths and over four hundred were registered with the government, provoking a crisis over housing and compensation. The towns in Alaska that had been intended for telepaths only still existed as nothing more than building plans. The government had reactivated a number of former military bases to serve as temporary accommodation, but that hadn't gone down well with the civilian telepaths. “There’s no way of knowing if the drug will work or not.”

Alice nodded. The Telepath Corps – and every drug-producing company in the world – had launched a crash project to find a drug that would dampen or reduce telepathic abilities. So far, they’d found nothing and nearly killed three of their test subjects. Alice had known, intellectually, that mental shields tended to drop when the subject was tired, but no one had realised that sedating a telepath would cause them to lose all control over their shields. A sane man had gone to sleep and woken up mentally disturbed, unable to filter his own thoughts out of the general morass that had poured into his brain while he was asleep.

Strictly speaking, there was no need for her to be anywhere near the medical centre, but she owed it to herself – and to her new position as a senior officer within the Telepath Corps – to watch the experiments. It wasn't a pleasant experience. It made her wonder, bitterly, if the scientists who’d served Hitler had talked themselves into believing that their experiments on helpless subjects were justified as well. But then, the Nazis had actually launched a breeding program to try and develop telepathy – as well as carrying out hundreds of thousands of inhuman experiments, just to see what they could do when they were released from the shackles of human morality. The United States desperately needed a tool – a weapon – to use against telepathic criminals...and to give telepaths some hope of a normal life.

“I can hear you, hide how you may,” the man shouted. He looked rather like an Old Testament Prophet, a man who had communed with God and come away with some rather disturbing answers. “I can hear you scuttling in the walls and hiding from the sight of the lord...”

Alice looked away, unable to watch. The man – she’d carefully never looked up his name – had been clinically insane from a young age, so how had he picked up religion? The moment she posed the question in her own mind, the answer was obvious. He’d been peeking – which was becoming the generally-accepted slang for telepathic probes – from an early age, without ever knowing what he was. Alice suspected that the human race was lucky that Captain Russell had been the first telepath to come to the attention of the human race. Someone with fewer scruples might have been able to cause havoc before he was stopped, if he ever was.

“The latest drug should work,” Sampson said, flatly. He was watching the live feed from the sensors hooked up to the man’s forehead. The EEG pattern on the display – with the tell-tale telepathic spike – seemed to flare madly as the man shouted louder. Alice wondered, feeling a tickling at the back of her skull, if he was looking into her mind, yet there was no way to tell. The subject himself probably couldn't tell the difference between her thoughts, the orderlies striving to hold him down and his own.

Alice shrugged. The latest research hadn't been able to identify any telepathic gene that turned a mundane human into a telepath, although the researchers were sure that locating such a gene was just a matter of time. There had to be something separating telepaths from normal humans or the Harvard Blast would have woken up the entire human race. Alice had read reports from Japan and Australia confirming that telepaths had emerged there, which meant that the blast had been global. She was still thinking – and worrying – about the implications of that.

“A cheater doth never prosper,” bellowed the subject, as he was finally secured by the orderlies. “Why not, my lords, I ask? If a cheater should prosper, my lords – why none dare call it cheating!”

He broke down into cackling laughs that seemed to echo in Alice’s skull. One of the orderlies, a strong-looking woman, looked flushed. Alice realised, with a sudden sense of bitter amusement, that she was having an affair and the mental patient had just shouted it out to the entire room. At least no one seemed to be taking note, although the poor woman might have to make some embarrassing explanations later – or maybe not. The ranting of a certified lunatic was hardly something to take seriously.

“Here we go,” Doctor Sampson said. He nodded to her and slipped through the connecting door into the medical chamber. The injector gun with the drug – imaginatively, the developers had called it a sleeper drug – was already waiting for him, lying within a locked drawer. The mental patient, for once, was quiet as the doctor approached, looking down at him carefully. “Hole still...”

Wonder of wonders, the subject cooperated as the doctor pressed the gun against his arm, but let out a stream of curses as the drug was shot into his system. Alice winced at the expression on his face, half-terrified and half-threatening. It crossed her mind to wonder what his thoughts would look like, from the point of view of a telepath, but there was no way to know for sure. Captain Russell had been polite about it, as had the other telepaths in the Telepath Corps, yet it had been impossible to describe mind-reading to her. It was like explaining colour to a man born blind.

The thought made her shiver. The doctors, in their desire to push the limits as much as possible, had claimed that it would eventually be possible to create a drug that would give telepathic abilities to every man, woman and child. Alice hadn't been able to follow the technical explanation – something to do with recombining DNA strands, or so she had gathered – but the implications were alarming. What would become of the human race if everyone could communicate telepathically?

“The patient has been injected,” Doctor Sampson said. “Continue to monitor the subject’s brainwaves. We need to know if they start to falter and...”

“Understood, doctor,” one of the other researchers said, dryly. Alice smiled. There had been no need for Sampson to remind them of their tasks, but he was clearly nervous about the experiment. Sampson had a gung-ho attitude to medical experiments that rather alarmed her and most of his patients, yet he knew as well as she did that there were a great many hopes resting on their success. “The brainwaves remain active...”

Alice scowled as the researcher dropped into medical jargon that confused more than it educated. A human brain, she’d gathered, showed different levels of mental activity depending on what the person was doing. A deep dreamless sleep showed less mental activity than a person suffering from a nightmare, or even a pleasant sexual dream. A telepath, however, continued to have highly-active brainwaves even when sleeping, which doctors suspected accounted for the poor sleep habits and nightmares telepaths regularly suffered.

“So his telepathy remains undaunted,” Sampson said, slowly. “The drug isn't affecting his telepathy at all...”

The subject looked up and smiled a very faint smile. “The angels are no longer talking,” he whispered. He gave Sampson a childlike smile. “Are they talking to you instead, doctor?”

“Mother of...its working,” Sampson said, in astonishment. He looked up at the EEG display behind the patient’s head. Alice was only a layman, yet it didn't look any different to her. Sampson looked back at the patient and frowned. “Your telepathy isn't working any longer?”

Alice shook her head in disgust. Perhaps the drug had worked, perhaps not, but there was no way to know for sure. Even without the mental voices of everyone within range blasting into his head, the mental patient was still insane, still inclined to couch whatever had happened to him in religious terms. His words verged more and more towards gibberish, almost as if he were a drunken preacher. They’d have to test the drug on a sane telepath, just to know if it worked properly.

“Interesting,” Sampson said, finally. “The drug seems to have some effect, but the EEG shows that the subject’s telepathy is still active. Further research and experimentation is clearly required.”

“The angels are silent,” the patient said. Alice rolled her eyes at the childlike fear in his voice. “God is silent in His Heaven and the forces of darkness have fallen still.”

“Give me a full report as soon as possible,” Alice said, as she turned to leave the room. She couldn't bear it any longer. “I want to know exactly what happened, and why.”

***​

“So the experiment was a success?”

“It would seem so, sir,” Alice said. The videoconference might have linked her to her old boss, Director O’Donnell, but she doubted that it stopped with him. Director O’Donnell wasn't specifically within the chain of command for the Telepath Corps, a situation that pleased no one. Congress was apparently balking at some of the appointments the President wanted to create, as well as divesting all of the other intelligence agencies of their role in monitoring telepaths. The debates in Congress were growing steadily more acrimonious. “The doctors tested the drug on a second telepath, a minor criminal with a telepathic talent and not much else. The results were uniformly positive.”

She smiled at the thought. Colin McGovern was a poor advertisement for telepathic honesty and integrity. He’d mugged hundreds of people, peeked into their brains for PIN codes and other security details and then robbed them blind. If he’d had the intelligence to equal his telepathic skills, he would have gone far, but as it was he had left plenty of forensic evidence at each of the muggings. The local police had drawn up a case and when he'd picked on the wrong target – a harmless-looking man who just happened to be a National Guard unarmed combat champion – it had been easy for them to link him to the hundreds of other cases. Alice suspected, from the report, that he’d grown overconfident, or he would have peeked first and discovered that he was about to attack the wrong man.

The Telepath Corps had claimed jurisdiction, much to the relief of the local police – McGovern had attempted to escape twice, using telepathic illusions to hide himself – and McGovern had been transported to the secure facility. The doctors had told him that if he agreed to be used as a test subject, his service would be taken into consideration when he was finally put on trial. He’d agreed, reluctantly, and now stood as only the second telepath to lose his powers. She doubted that it was how he wanted to go down in history, but then he was a pathetic little man.

“So we have a workable weapon against telepathic criminals,” O’Donnell mused. “I don't have to tell you – with Wallis making life hot for the President and the Republican National Congress – that that is very promising news. It should calm the fears of a few hundred frightened political figures.”

Alice nodded, impatiently. Politics wasn't her forte, but then she was still only a very young officer. The CIA would have kept her at junior levels for years; only the transfer to the Telepath Corps had given her additional responsibility before her time. She wasn't sure if the promotion was a sign that people higher up the food chain had faith in her, or if it was a way of divesting themselves of a political hot potato...or, for that matter, if they expected her to fail spectacularly, discrediting the Telepath Corps.

“Still, we need to get more telepaths out on the streets in a policing role,” O’Donnell added. “I’m afraid that not all telepaths are outstanding citizens of our country, or of other countries, for that matter. Did you hear about the news from North Korea?”

“Yes,” Alice said. The Japanese intelligence service had passed it on to the United States. The North Koreans had apparently captured and butchered at least thirteen telepaths, along with their families and – in several cases – their entire villages. There were vague reports that other North Korean telepaths had been forced into the service of the regime, or had tried to flee to South Korea or China, although nothing had been confirmed. The Chinese, at least, weren't talking. Alice suspected, from reading between the lines, that all Chinese telepaths were being drafted into service to the state. “I fail to see what that has to do with us.”

“The North Korean mindset is one that is rabidly xenophobic,” O’Donnell explained. “They – the leadership, at least – hate and fear the South, and us for that matter. They even hate the Chinese, despite the fact that only the links to China keep the state together. The common people are ground down and force-fed political indoctrination on a massive scale. Big Brother is alive and well in North Korea. And, if that wasn't enough, they have nukes and the missiles to deliver them to the south – and, perhaps, to here.

“What happens when they start accusing us of bringing telepaths to negotiating sessions?”

Alice blinked. The President had actually asked the Telepath Corps to provide additional telepaths for the State Department and the Pentagon. Even a low-level telepath could tell if someone was lying – at least if they were knowingly lying – and a more capable one could read surface thoughts and reveal the truth. The advantage of having a telepath in the background had been irresistible, even though it raised all kinds of questions about professional and political ethics. She doubted that any of America’s allies, let alone the country’s enemies, would take it calmly. All negotiations would probably end up being conducted through videoconferencing.

“The regime is touchy and when such a regime gets touchy, blood tends to be spilt,” O’Donnell continued, unaware of her inner thoughts. “We don’t want to risk creating a diplomatic incident when the world is in such a...uncertain state.”

“No,” Alice agreed.

“I’ll put your report before the Congressional Committee on Telepathic Abilities this afternoon,” O’Donnell said, changing the subject. “That should hopefully stiffen a few spines...”

“I would ask you to consider the warnings,” Alice added. She would never have dared speak to someone so senior in such a manner before. Part of her was amazed at her own daring. “The drug loses its effectiveness quickly and...”

“So increase the dosage,” O’Donnell said, shortly. “The more of the drug in their bloodstream...”

“The greater the chance of an adverse reaction,” Alice said. Even she knew that much. “Drugging someone permanently risks poisoning them, or allowing them to build up immunity to the drug. If we increase the dose, we might well poison them, or kill them, or otherwise impair their ability to live in normal society. The doctors are clear that more research is necessary.”

“We may not have the time to wait,” O’Donnell said, grimly. “You know as well as I do that Harvard was only the tip of the iceberg. Telepath-related crimes are on the increase, either crimes committed by telepaths or crimes committed against telepaths – how long will it be before we have even more social upheaval?”

Alice frowned. “How much trouble will we have if we insist that telepaths take drugs that poison them?”

“Tell the doctors to work fast,” O’Donnell advised. He shrugged. “On a different note, Senator Walker has requested a private interview with you and your top operative – I believe that that is Captain Russell. You won’t be getting an official request; he wanted me to pass on the message personally.”

Alice narrowed her eyes. “Is there any reason for that?”

“I don't know,” O’Donnell admitted. He smiled, thinly. “But he is a United States Senator, with vast political power, so it would be wise to do as he wants. He may just want a private briefing from you personally. It wouldn't be the first time.”

“Very well,” Alice said. The Telepath Corps reported to the shadowy Telepathic Commission, established by the President, but she was effectively the operations director. She knew that that wouldn't last – someone more senior would be appointed to the post within weeks – yet she meant to use it while she had it. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“Thank you,” O’Donnell said. “And good luck.”

 

Someone is being misleading here - spot him?

Chapter Eighteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

The first use of a registered telepath in a court case provoked protests and demonstrations outside the courtroom by both pro- and anti-telepath factions. The telepath in question, a junior operative of the Telepath Corps, performed a quick peek on the defendant and bore witness that the man was innocent of the charges brought against him. Regardless, the prosecutor was able to delay the case by claiming that the telepath was, in effect, a friendly witness and therefore could only provide hearsay.

In further news, the enquiry into the events at Harvard University three months ago, which was expected to announce its conclusions today, has apparently been extended. No reason has been given for this change.
-AP News Report, 2015

The lawyer was uneasy in the presence of two telepaths, but then that was growing depressingly common.

“As you know,” he said, trying hard not to betray his nervousness, “there has been some question over your status...”

“We know,” Leo assured him. “Mr Tsing, we have been cooped up in this mansion for the last three months like good little boys and girls. We have cooperated with unreasonable requests from fearful men and women who weren't there at the time and have presumed to judge us based upon second-hand reports. I see no reason to beat around the bush.”

Elizabeth scowled at him, although she had to admit that he had a point. Professor Zeller’s mansion was a magnificent sight, a building that looked as if it had stepped out of a romantic film based in an idealistic Victorian England, but it might as well have been a prison. The other telepaths in the group could come and go as they pleased – if they were prepared to endure life on the outside, near mundane humans – yet Leo and Elizabeth were stuck. They were under house arrest, to all intents and purposes, and it rankled. Leo hadn't stopped complaining about it ever since they’d been transported to the mansion and warned not to leave.

“On one hand, there is the undoubted factor that your actions were in direct self-defence,” Mr Tsing said. He looked ethnic Chinese, although Elizabeth could tell that he was American through and though. Even without touching his mind, she could sense his pride in his heritage – his true heritage – as an American. “You had no choice, but to defend yourselves, and then you had no idea what you could do. The deaths of the rioters were unfortunate, yet there is a general consensus that it was not your fault.

“On the other hand, your actions killed at least a hundred people and wounded hundreds more who had nothing to do with the riot,” the lawyer added. “Their heirs want you tried for murder and the fact that it was a terrible accident cuts no ice with them. Some of them are planning to sue Professor Zeller and the Institute of Mental Research for aiding and abetting the deaths of their relatives. What you did got out of hand quite badly.”

“We had no choice,” Leo protested angrily. “Don’t any of you understand it? We were about to be killed!”

“I know that,” Tsing said, patiently. Elizabeth could tell that he wanted nothing more than to leave, knowing that all of his guilty secrets might have been stolen by now. She knew better. In her experience, most people’s secrets were boring or amusing. “The fact remains that this is a whole new can of worms as far as the law is concerned. Some parties are inclined to view it as an accident and an act of self-defence; other parties want to charge you both with mass murder.”

Elizabeth leaned forward before Leo could explode again. “All right,” she said, tiredly. It was odd how she was permanently tired these days. Her expanded mind made it harder to sleep than it had been before the riot...and telepathy had made sleeping difficult anyway. There were times when she was so tired that she seriously considered trying to obtain a strong sedative and putting herself to sleep by force. “What exactly is going to happen to us?”

“We don’t know,” the lawyer admitted. “The issue has become political and when it becomes political...”

Elizabeth pushed aside her moral reservations and peeked into his mind. His surface thoughts were sparking with nervous tension and memories of Harvard – no, she realised; memories of videos and photographs. He hadn't been there when the **** hit the fan, something that made her feel relieved. Underneath...she had known that they were in serious trouble, but she hadn't realised how much trouble. The entire case had been hijacked by political factions, some of which wanted to demand that both of them be put to death for mass murder. They were scared, scared of her...the thought almost made her laugh. The most powerful men and women in the land were scared of two teenage students, who just happened to be telepathic...

And then she understood why. The merits of the case were important, but public feeling was far more important, certainly to men and women who depended upon public goodwill to maintain their positions. If they let Elizabeth and Leo escape without punishment – no matter how undeserved the punishment was – the public would crucify them. Elizabeth had watched talk shows and browsed the internet. For every person who thought that they were innocent, there were ten who wanted the pair of them strung up from the nearest apple tree.

Unbidden, memories floated to the surface of her mind. When she’d been at school, there had been a pack of jocks that had delighted in tormenting everyone else. They should have been punished for their bullying, but the teachers had liked them – they were good at games – and so they’d been let off, because they were popular. Telepaths were not popular. They might have been innocent – she, at least, certainly hadn't intended to kill so many people – but that wouldn't matter. The court of public opinion had already convicted them and sentenced them to death.

“Right,” Leo said. Elizabeth guessed that he had peeked as well. “So we have to sit here until the issue goes away? What do we have to do to escape?”

“Precisely,” the lawyer said. He didn't seem inclined to hide his true feelings any longer. Just on impulse, Elizabeth peeked into his mind and found his guilty secret. A year ago, while his wife had been pregnant with their second child, he had made out with an attractive female workmate. Compared to some other secrets she had read in a person’s mind, it was tame, but he was ashamed of it. He loved his wife, despite everything. “You have to remain here and keep your noses clean.”

He stood up. “My office will be in touch,” he added. “Goodbye.”

Elizabeth walked him to the side door and out into the car park. The mansion might look great – it had a garden and everything, including a duck pond and a grassy field she would have loved as a child – but it was definitely a prison. The walls were surrounded by armed guards. The only way in or out was through a checkpoint at the bottom of the drive. They claimed that it was to protect the telepaths from outside threats. Elizabeth was sure that if she walked down and asked to be let out they would refuse. They were, after all, under house arrest.

She turned and walked back into the mansion. It had once played host to one of the great political dynasties and its interior design reflected their wealth, although quite a few paintings and other artworks had been pulled out and sold when the family lost most of its wealth. An internet millionaire had stepped in and purchased the mansion, only to lose it himself when the latest dot-com bubble collapsed. Professor Zeller’s family fortune had more than sufficed to purchase it off the creditors and turn it into his Institute. The old man was happy. He’d finally accomplished his lifelong dream.

Elizabeth walked into her bedroom and closed the door, clicking it shut behind her. It was hard to maintain mental privacy in a building full of telepaths, but at least she could preserve something of her physical privacy. The room stuck her as ridiculously large, even for a teenage girl, yet she hadn't been allowed to argue. Professor Zeller was proud of her. She’d had a hand in killing hundreds of people and she faced the possibility of a trial for mass murder, but he was proud of her. Shaking her head, she reached for her laptop, pulled it onto the bed and turned it on. Her old email address was useless now – it had been hacked barely a day after the Harvard Blast – but Professor Zeller had given her a new one. Only her parents and a handful of friends had it.

She skimmed through the four emails quickly. Her parents were concerned about her, although thankfully no one had drawn a line connecting her to her parents. They’d offered to come and visit her, but Elizabeth had refused, warning them that they might be driving into danger. She could feel - when her defences were down - the presence of the protesters on the other side of the wall. Who knew what the protesters would do if they knew that they had the parents of one of the Harvard Murderers in their hands?

A voice echoed in her head. You may wish to come downstairs, Angela said. The younger telepath looked up to Elizabeth, although Elizabeth had no idea why. Angela was only twelve, yet she was already saddled with telepathy and perhaps other gifts as well. Leo is ranting up a storm.

Elizabeth smiled at the mental image that accompanied the message – they’d established that one telepath couldn't eavesdrop on private telepathic messages between two other telepaths – and tiredly pulled herself to her feet. Leo seemed to have some appeal to the other telepaths and that worried her. After today, she knew that it worried her less than it should.

The Smoking Room had, apparently, once been used by the men of the house after dinner. They’d retired there to talk about politics, while the women – who were assumed not to be interested in politics – did the washing up. One of the male telepaths had joked about it and one of the female telepaths had jabbed at his mind, giving him a headache that had lasted for two days. Elizabeth suspected that he would have preferred to have been slapped.

“...Don’t have to put up with it,” Leo was saying, as she entered. “Why do we have to carry the blame for their actions?”

Elizabeth winced inwardly and tightened her mental shields. Leo had shared his memories of what he’d seen in the lawyer’s mind with the rest of the group, a process that made it impossible to lie, at least directly. It wasn't a pleasant experience – embarrassing or private memories tended to bubble to the surface for all to see – and using it showed just how determined Leo was to make his point.

“We are superior to the mundane humans,” he continued. “We read their thoughts. We can, to some extent, manipulate them, perhaps even control their minds. We can kill them though the power of our mental force. Why, then, are we allowing them to dictate to us?”

There was an uneasy pause. Leo had expressed the same sentiments almost every day, but there was a new edge to it now. Elizabeth looked over to the man sitting behind Leo, watching their every move. Cyrus Valentine was a newcomer to the group, a man whose telepathy had emerged in the wake of the Harvard Blast...or so he claimed. His mental shields were very tight and Elizabeth rarely sensed anything leaking out from his mind. Professor Zeller was a mental blank, yet Valentine was also completely unreadable, unless he chose to be read. Elizabeth had not been allowed to read his mind.

“They’re scared of us,” Leo said. “And so they should be. We are, after all, their replacements on Earth. We’re the next step in human evolution, which makes them the dinosaurs, doomed to die out and leave the world for us. We will take their place...

“And they know it. They’re already trying to find ways to block our powers and take away the gifts that evolution has given us. They’re looking for ways to adapt to us and eventually destroy us. Why else would they start exiling telepaths to the frozen wastelands of Alaska?”

Elizabeth winced. The Telepath Corps had been setting up temporary accommodation, but the media had managed to smuggle in a camera or two and portray the temporary camps as permanent accommodation. They'd somehow managed to draw a link between former military barracks and concentration camps from Nazi Germany, leaving many other telepaths reluctant to head to Alaska. And besides, why should telepaths have to move, just because mundane humans were reluctant to have their minds read?

“Think about it,” Leo said. “They will gather us all in Alaska and then they will kill us. Our bloodline will come to an end. The race of telepaths – the superior form of humanity – will die. I ask you – is that fair?”

Elizabeth frowned. “If we are the replacements for the human race,” she pointed out, “surely killing us will not stop the next generation of telepaths from coming into existence.”

Leo scowled at her. “We carry the telepathic gene,” he reminded her, flatly. “What will happen if that gene is eliminated from the human gene pool?”

He turned back to his adoring public before Elizabeth could work it out. Simple logic dictated that telepathy had to be spread far and wide. America was hardly the only country to have telepaths; Professor Zeller had been talking about opening up new chapters of the institute in Europe and Australia. The Russians and Chinese were drafting telepaths into their own version of the Telepath Corps. But then, on the other hand, the news had reported that telepaths were being killed in other parts of the world. There had been a particularly nasty story about a telepath being stoned to death in Afghanistan. If Leo was right – and she doubted it – how many other countries would attempt to exterminate telepathy?

“We cannot remain here, then,” Valentine said. His voice, oozing charm, seemed to echo in the air. Elizabeth had wondered if he’d possessed a minor telepathic gift before the Harvard Blast, which would have kicked his telepathy into overdrive. There was no way to know for sure. “We might as well have a massive bulls-eye drawn on our backs.”

Leo nodded, enthusiastically. “I don’t intend to remain here much longer,” he said. “I think it’s time that we started to fight for our rights.”

Elizabeth felt a wave of alarm. “Leo...we don’t have to fight...”

“Yes we do,” Leo said. His words were almost overshadowed by the anger and conviction that boiled through them and slid into her mind. “The Telepath Corps is already registering telepaths – all telepaths have to be registered. You don’t see them insisting that all mundane humans have to be registered! They’re planning to insist that all telepaths move to crappy little concentration camps in the middle of Alaska, away from everything they have ever known. What next? Will they be drafting us into their wars or will we be told that we have to be sterilised to ensure that no more telepaths are born?

“We didn’t ask to be telepaths! We didn't intend to join a criminal caste purely by being born. None of us meant to become telepaths...”

Valentine spoke into the sudden silence. “The problem with human rights,” he said, “is that they can be taken away. The Declaration of Independence lied to us. There is no such thing as an inalienable right. They will take our rights from us because we are unpopular – a hated and feared minority. Might does not make right, but it damn well ensures who comes out ahead. If we refuse to stand up for our rights, there will be nothing standing between us and the people who wish to strip us of our rights and turn us into chattel – or dead telepaths. You’ve heard the rumours, you’ve seen the reaction to what happened at Harvard...now tell me – if the government could get rid of us easily...what do you think they’d do?”

Elizabeth blinked. “You don’t know they’d do that,” she protested. “They could have killed us all by now.”

“They’re scared,” Leo said. She hoped that she wasn't the only one who could taste the ugly feeling running through his words. “They saw what happened at Harvard and they blinked. How long will it be before they get over that feeling and decide to do something about us?”

“Quite a few years ago,” Valentine added, “there was a case where land-developers wanted to take some Indian land. The Native Americans objected to the white man raping their land any further, so they took the developers to court and won. The court agreed that the Native Americans were in the right. What do you think happened? The developers went ahead anyway and the Native Americans had to move, again.”

Elizabeth stared at him. His words had been sincere, truthful, yet how had she missed hearing about it? It should have made the news. There was a media circus whenever someone thought that their rights were being violated – except for telepaths, of course. Both Left and Right seemed to be backing the Telepath Corps and the laws intended to bring telepaths under control.

“So,” Leo said. “I guess that we will all have to make a choice soon. What side are you on?”

“Leo,” Elizabeth said slowly, “what do you want?”

Leo shrugged. “I want what everyone else wants,” he said. “I want freedom and the right to live my life as I please. What else should I want?”

And he smiled.

 

Chapter Nineteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

A statement released today by the Church of the Rapturous Awakening claimed that the Telepath Corps was the first step in establishing a Thought Police that would invade the mental privacy of every American and expose their secrets to the world. The Church’s leader warned that violence would be the inevitable result of invading American minds – a statement given ominous weight by the death of Officer Singh, a Telepath Corps operative who was shot down by a sniper in New York two days ago...
-AP News Report, 2015

“Well,” Art said, as the exercise came to an end. “That was an interesting disaster, wasn't it?”

He gazed at the other eight telepaths, none of who could meet his eye. Their emotions, leaking through their shields, were contrite; they all knew that they’d gone onto the field expecting victory and had been thoroughly screwed by the opposing force. Even telepathy couldn't turn warriors into superhumans. Art’s team had been wiped out by the enemy.

The training ground belonged to the Marine Corps and Art had asked to borrow it for the day, once the Telepath Corps had finally been given the go-ahead to create a telepathic platoon of soldiers. Telepaths created whole new military issues and the United States intended to be ahead of the game. Art had taken eight telepaths with military training and experience, taken them onto the field and attempted to beat the opposition. The result had been a disaster.

He scowled. The telepaths might have been able to share thoughts and feelings, but none of them had worked together before, even in pre-telepathic training. It didn’t help that six of them came from units that had a tradition of rivalry in the field and that the remaining two had spent most of their time behind various desks. None of them had been able to conceal their opinions of the others – if anyone had actually tried – and Art had had to defuse several confrontations before they turned into fist fights. The opposing force, on the other hand, was a Force Recon platoon that had worked and trained together for several years...and had refused to be bullied into making mistakes by fear of the telepaths. They’d kept their distance, fought using snipers and mortar fire, and unceremoniously wiped out the telepaths. Art allowed some of his own irritation to leak out into the mental field. The Telepath Corps needed to take the lead in developing military telepathy, if only to prevent another country from developing a strategic telepathic superiority.

“It could have been worse, sir,” a former Delta soldier said, finally. Art managed to bite off a curse with an effort, but it was a waste of time. Everyone in the platoon would have sensed the mixture of shock and horror that had flashed through his mind. “At least we forced them to keep their distance.”

“Yes,” Art said. “And what are we going to do when the Chinese or the Russians start bombarding us with rockets or shellfire – weapons, I might add, that don’t have human minds for us to influence?”

“Die, sir,” the Delta Force soldier said. “On the other hand, we won’t be engaging enemy soldiers in the field. They’re not likely to put a platoon of telepaths in a place where they can be shot down by the enemy.”

“One would hope so,” Art agreed. He looked up as he saw Alice making her way towards the tired and smelly group. “Take five, guys; get showers and something to eat, then we’ll hash out what we did wrong later in the day.”

He had to smile as Alice wrinkled her nose when she caught a whiff of him. Four hours out on the training ground, rolling in the mud and attempting to hide from incoming fire, left one covered in mud, grime and sweat. He didn't want to think about what might have been hiding within the mud, although the smell gave him an unwanted clue. Alice looked clean and crisp and completely out of place on the training field.

“You,” Alice said dryly, “stink!”

“Occupational hazard,” Art countered, with a wink. “Just think; you’re alive and free because rough men are getting muddy so you don’t have to.”

Alice smiled. “Senator Walker has invited us to a consultation,” she explained. “He wants to see the pair of us as soon as possible.”

“And so you came to pick me up,” Art said. “You could have called ahead.”

“I didn't want to stay in the compound any longer,” Alice admitted. “Can you...ah, take a shower and join me in the car?”

“Sure,” Art said, without enthusiasm. A meeting with Senator Walker – offhand, he couldn’t remember much about the Senator, apart from the fact that he was on the Telepath Corps Oversight Board – would consume most of the afternoon. “Just give me ten minutes to get changed and issue a few orders and I’ll be with you.”

After spending time in Afghanistan, the showers at the base seemed like the height of luxury, but Art didn't delay. He washed himself, spoke quickly to his second in command and then donned his uniform. The telepath corps didn't have a proper uniform yet – and if some had their way, it never would – so he wore basic Marine overalls. He left off his medals. The Senator would not be impressed and there was no one else to show them off too, except perhaps Alice. She probably wouldn't be impressed by his small collection.

The car was waiting outside when he strode out of the base, the engine already humming away. The MPs would have inspected the car when it came into the base – after a series of car bombings at military facilities in America, security had been tightened up considerably – and somehow he wasn’t surprised to see them admiring the car as he climbed into the rear seat. The CIA-issue cars had been designed so that the driver couldn't hear a word of what went on in the back seats. Art’s tired mind suggested a number of uses for that that the CIA would probably not approve of, if they ever found out.

“The Senator didn't say why he wants to talk to us,” Alice explained, as the car powered its way out of the base and onto the interstate. Art had already guessed that. The wealthy and powerful were not in the habit of explaining themselves to their peers. “It could be something urgent, or it could be just a request for a private briefing. In either case, be polite; Senator Walker is sitting on a good chunk of our federal funding and offending him could have disastrous consequences.”

“I hate him already,” Art said. Alice made a show of rolling her eyes. “You don’t have any idea what he wants?”

“Not even a guess,” Alice assured him. She opened the secure case at her feet and brought out a set of files. “I did bring you some reading material to pass the time.”

Art had to laugh as he took the first file and opened it, placing it on his lap. Despite himself, his mind was more on Alice than on the file. She was an attractive young woman and it had been a long time since Art had been with anyone. Part of him wanted to make a pass at her and the rest of him kept insisting that it was a terrible idea. They had to work together, somehow. It was lucky, he reflected as he pretended to read the first part of the file, that it wasn't her who was the telepath.

He lost himself in the files, refusing to even look at her, until the driver buzzed through from the driving compartment. “We’re nearly there,” he said, as they turned onto a private lane. Art had been curious as to what sort of residence a fairly-wealthy senator would own and he had to bite down a laugh when he saw the house. It was not only big, but ugly, as if the designer had deliberately tried to combine as many styles and cultures as possible. On the other hand, he decided after a moment’s study, it would be easy to defend, at least against infantry who wanted to take the building intact. Perhaps the senator or the person who had designed the house had expected to be fighting off hordes of angry taxpayers. “Please have your papers ready for examination.”

The car stopped at a car park below the house, forcing them to climb out and walk down the path on their own. Two armed bodyguards – Art sensed several more hanging back, probably covering them with hidden weapons – intercepted them and gently, but firmly examined their papers before performing a quick search. They wanted to take Art’s pistol and, after Alice had intervened, he reluctantly allowed them to keep it in custody. He felt naked without it.

“Odd,” he said, as they stepped into the house. He had just felt – and blocked – a very light telepathic peek. Someone in the house was a telepath and had just tried to peek at them. “I didn't know that telepaths were being added to bodyguard teams...”

“The Senator insisted,” the butler said. He had an English accent that would fool anyone who hadn't spent time in England. For reasons beyond Art’s comprehension, the men and women who were wealthy enough to hire butlers were insistent that they had to be English, or close enough to English to fool a casual observer. “The man has enemies and refuses to take chances with the safety of his family.”

“Wise of him,” Art observed, neutrally. The butler was leading them up the stairs and Art was glancing around, trying to fix the route in his mind. The interior of the house, at least, was surprisingly tasteful. “Does the Senator get many death threats?”

The butler didn't answer. Instead, he knocked on a wooden door and opened it a moment later. “The Senator will see you now,” he said, ushering them through the door and closing it after them. “Please don’t hesitate to call if there is anything you need.”

Senator Walker proved to be a genial man, with short white hair and a smile that didn't quite touch his eyes. His handshake was strong and firm, without any silly dominance games, although that might have been because he knew that Art was a Marine and probably stronger than him. Art tried to read the Senator’s emotional state, but all he picked up was extreme agitation and near-panic. The Senator hadn't called them to discuss the Telepath Corps at all! He was tempted to probe deeper, yet there was no time. The Senator was already waving them to chairs and offering them coffee from a side table, playing the good host.

“Thank you for coming,” Senator Walker said, as he sat back in his own chair. “I understand, do I not, that you have both agreed to be guided by the professional ethics of the Telepath Corps?”

Art looked at Alice, and then back at Senator Walker. “I have agreed to abide by the ethical instructions given to us,” he said. Registered telepaths operated under similar rules to doctors; they were bound not to discuss what they saw in a person’s mind, without a warrant or permission from their target. “I believe that that should suffice for you.”

“And I am not a telepath,” Alice added. “What can we do for you?”

“You must understand that this is a delicate matter,” Senator Walker said. “I must ask you both for your word that you will keep what we discuss to yourself.”

Art frowned. He would have been offended, had he not sensed the fear underlying the Senator’s words. Something was terrifying the Senator, one of the most powerful men in America. Logically, it had something to do with telepaths, perhaps even the mystery telepath who had joined his bodyguards. Somehow, Art doubted that he wanted a quiet, off-the-record briefing.

“I won’t talk about it, provided that it does not include criminal activity,” Art said, finally. Alice seconded him a moment later. He repeated Alice’s question. “What can we do for you?”

The Senator hesitated, reluctant to speak. “When I was a younger man,” he said, finally, “I had an affair with one of the young ladies who worked in my office. I was a very junior congressman at the time and I didn't think about the consequences as much as I should have done. I was young, my wife and I were going through a bad patch and I thought that I could get away with it. She was younger than I, with long red hair and a smile that could start a party at a hundred years. Oh, and she had the most remarkable breasts.”

Art had to hide his smile at the sudden flash of emotion from Alice. She wasn't happy at all at the comment. Art reminded himself to look away from her and focus on the Senator. Even without doing a surface peek, he should be able to tell if the Senator was lying to them.

“Nature took its course and she got pregnant,” the Senator continued. “I was shocked to hear about it and even more shocked when she decided that she was going to keep the baby. I had repaired my relationship with my wife and I was in line for a more prestigious position. Mirabelle refused to listen to my pleas, although she did promise to keep the baby’s parentage to herself. I set up a trust fund for her to ensure that she lacked for nothing and I set up another for the child. I watched from a distance as she gave birth and brought my child up as a single mother. And I was proud of him. He grew up into a strong young man.”

“This is very interesting,” Alice interrupted, “but can we get to the point?”

The Senator nodded. “A few months ago I received a letter addressed to my personal mailbox,” he said. “The letter informed me that someone knew about my bastard child and that if I didn't pay up, the entire world would know about my child soon afterwards. I swear to you – no one apart from the mother and I know the truth behind his parentage. Only a telepath could have ferreted out the truth, either from me or his mother.”

He hesitated. “I paid,” he admitted, finally. “I followed the instructions and paid a hundred thousand dollars for their silence. A few weeks later...”

“You got a second note, demanding more money,” Alice said. The Senator nodded, once. “Why didn't you call us in at once?”

“The note made it clear that if I went for help, the telepath would know and my secret would be out,” the Senator said. “I received no less than five demands for money and I have paid out nearly two million dollars.”

Art laughed and fought desperately to turn it into a cough. “Sir, with all due respect, why didn't you confess the truth at once?”

The Senator scowled. “I may be putting my hat in the ring for the next election,” he said. “There are already people – political allies – suggesting that I should run for President. I have not yet committed myself, but I am tempted. A scandal like this would blow my campaign out of the water before it has even begun, to say nothing of destroying my relationship with my wife and my son’s life. And I love my wife. I would never do anything to hurt her.”

But you have, Art thought, coldly. You cheated on her and had a child with another woman.

Alice cleared her throat. “So,” she said, “what has changed?”

The Senator looked up, surprised. “You paid out more money than most people will ever see in their lives to keep your unknown blackmailer quiet,” Alice said. Art nodded. It had never occurred to him to ask that question. “Why have you suddenly decided to call for help?”

“The latest demand wasn't a demand for money,” the Senator said. He picked up a sheet of paper and passed it over to them. “The bastards demanded...well, read it for yourselves.”

Art skimmed the handful of typewritten lines quickly. The unknown writer hadn't asked for money, but for a certain political decision. The Senator had been ordered to push through much harsher controls on telepaths – including mandatory use of the telepathy-suppressing drugs – or his secret would be revealed. As one of the senators appointed to the Oversight Board, the chances were good that the Senator could get the stricter controls passed.

“Weird,” Art said, puzzled. “Why would a telepath want stronger controls placed on his fellow telepaths?”

The Senator shrugged. “The crucial vote is in two weeks from today,” he said. “You have to find the bastard by then, or I will have to give him what he wants. Do whatever it takes to uncover him. Do you understand me?”

“Perfectly, sir,” Alice said. Art could sense the distaste hiding behind her smile. “We’ll be in touch.”

She didn't speak another word until they were back in the car and heading out of the grounds. “That son of a bitch,” she said, angrily. “How dare he expect us to serve as his personal police force?”

Art frowned. “He is a Senator and he is being threatened by a telepath,” he said, mildly. Alice looked lovely when she was angry, at least when the anger wasn’t focused on him. “Catching the bastard will look good on our report sheets...”

Alice started to say something angrily and then broke off as her cell phone rang. “Spencer,” she said, and listened quickly to the speaker. “You’re sure?”

There was another burst of chatter. “All right, I understand,” Alice said. “We’ll start heading to New York now.”

She closed the phone and looked over at Art. “We have to go to New York,” she said. “A fast plane is already being prepared for us. There is a...situation there.”

 

Chapter Twenty<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

Last night’s broadcast of the Jenny Dean Show – the successor to The Oprah Winfrey Show and other such programs – featured several couples who had been torn apart by telepathy. Two of them were couples where one partner had developed telepathy and discovered that the other was hiding a guilty secret; the third was a couple where both partners had developed telepathy and found themselves unable to tolerate the other’s company. The friends and neighbours of the third couple were surprised and unanimously agreed that they were a good and loving couple.
-AP News Report, 2015

Tiffany Fieldstone was happy and wanted everyone to know it. An hour ago, she’d closed a deal for her bank that would ensure that the bank made a vast profit at the end of the year, practically guaranteeing herself a bonus when the time came for bankers to be rewarded. If that wasn't enough, her manager had hinted that a slot was opening up on the board and that she - Tiffany Fieldstone – might be considered a possible candidate. At thirty-one years old, still young and attractive, she knew she could climb high. If the board voted against her, she knew that her record was good enough to allow her to walk into a job with any other bank in Wall Street.

She smiled at the reflection of herself in the restaurant window. She knew she looked hot, if only because of the way some of her partners in the latest banking venture had spent most of their time staring at her low-cut dress rather than the figures. Not that there was anything wrong with the figures, of course, at least not as far as Tiffany was concerned. Even if their venture went bust, the bank’s ass would be covered – and so would her own. She ran her hand through her blonde hair and winked at her reflection. The young interns in the offices below her might catch the eyes of her male counterparts, but how could they ever match her?

“Ah, welcome,” the manager said, as she stepped through the door. Sven claimed to have been descended from Italians who had escaped Mussolini seventy years ago, but Tiffany did not know or care if that was actually true. All that really mattered was that Sven’s Diner served up excellent Pizza – it would have gone bankrupt swiftly in New York if it had served substandard Pizza – and that it was well away from her workplace. And it didn't hurt that Sven was a handsome man without any of the pretensions so common in the more upscale eateries. He didn't spend his time staring at her chest. “Your normal table is ready for you, my dear.”

“Thank you,” Tiffany said, as she took off her fur coat and placed it on the coat hook. The burning fire in the grate seemed to welcome her as she sat down. Briefly, she caught a glimpse of a hooded man sitting at another table, but he wasn't looking at her and so she ignored him. Besides, the menu was right in front of her. Tiffany could be decisive elsewhere, even to the point of being brusque and impolite, yet Sven kept her from making her mind up quickly. So many of his dishes were simply wonderful and she had over two hours to make up her mind and eat. She skimmed down the menu and finally decided on a loaded Pizza. It was a special day for her after all.

She placed her order, suddenly realising that the hooded man had turned and was looking at her, before looking away for a second. Tiffany realised that he had been staring at her and smiled to herself. When he looked back at her, she treated him to a smile that would have melted the heart of the coldest man in the world, wondering if he would have the nerve to ask her out. The man smiled back, rather weakly, and Tiffany met his eyes. A moment later, a wave of dizziness swept through her...

“Hey, are you all right?” Tiffany looked up in surprise. Her food was in front of her and Sven was looking down at her, concerned. “You just...were staring into space for a few minutes.”

Tiffany rubbed her forehead, confused. She’d been on top of the world a moment ago and now her head felt as if someone had filled it with cotton wool. The man who had been staring at her was gone and, no matter how hard she concentrated, she couldn't come up with any impression of what he actually looked like. She smelled the Pizza and smiled, pushing the question of the man and her dizzy spell out of her head. Somehow, she never thought of him again while she was eating.

Sven had excelled himself, as usual, and Tiffany enjoyed the meal as much as she had her commercial victory a few hours ago. Normally, she would have gone for a walk before returning to Wall Street, but this time she had the impulse to return to her office and congratulate herself in private. Her head kept spinning and it crossed her mind that she should visit the company nurse, before she decided that was only a small headache. She'd had worse when she’d been cramming for her exams. Besides, the last thing she wanted to do was appear weak, not when there was a chance at joining the board.

Her office – instead of a cubicle – was a sign that she was a senior and respected employee of her company. A junior employee was easy to replace – thousands entered Wall Street every year – but someone with a record of making profitable deals and transactions like herself was irreplaceable. She mentally patted herself on the back as she sat down in her comfy chair and stared up at the ceiling, grinning to herself. No matter what she did, or how outrageously she performed, they wouldn't dare fire her. She’d just go into another firm and make them vast amounts of money instead. The thought of money fired her mind and she placed an email to the financial department, ordering them to send her a hundred thousand dollars in used notes. The director argued and she cut him off. She was a senior banking employee – how dare he stand in her way? The money arrived barely twenty minutes afterwards...

It crossed her mind that she really should take the money out of the building. It wasn’t easy to pack it all in her briefcase, but somehow she managed it, even though she had to secure the case with an extra strap. Walking to a beat that only she could hear, she walked down the stairs swinging her hips and out towards the great glass doors that invited people into the building. A second later, the alarms went off and a security guard jumped up from behind a desk and ran towards her. The shock snapped Tiffany back to herself and she recoiled in horror, her brain unable to reconcile common sense with what she’d been doing, too late. The security guard knocked her to the floor – the briefcase burst open, showering money everywhere – and cuffed her hands behind her back. Tiffany, still in shock, offered no resistance.

Her last sight, before the darkness descended on her mind and she blacked out, was of a hooded man making his way away from the bank.

***​

Art was feeling more than a little jet-lagged and would have done anything for a hotel bed – or even a barracks bunk – and a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. He had tried to sleep on the plane, but that had proven difficult, not least because of the presence of Alice far too close to him. He couldn't help feeling her thoughts and feelings in his mind and some of them, he knew, were too close to his own thoughts. He wanted to ask her out, yet...what kind of relationship could they have? The Telepath Corps had learned about quite a few married couples who had separated after one of the partners had become telepathic. The non-telepath might have trusted the telepath, yet there would always be a quiet nagging doubt.

“All right,” he said, once the local NYPD officer had introduced himself. The officer had been relieved to see them, much to Art’s surprise. The Telepath Corps had jurisdiction over all crimes involving telepaths, but local cops – or, worse, the FBI – often balked at allowing any outsiders onto their patch. “What’s happened here?”

He peered through the one-way mirror into the interrogation room. A mature blonde woman was sitting on one of the chairs, her hands cuffed to make it impossible for her to leave the chair. Her face was streaked with tears and she looked to be in shock, although that might have been because of her sudden transition from successful businesswoman to common criminal. Art reached out for her mind and touched a rolling mass of fear and confusion.

“Her name is Tiffany Fieldstone,” Inspector Jordon said. “She is – was, I suspect – one of the stars at her local bank. She was attempting to take a hundred thousand dollars out of the bank, apparently unaware that the money was tagged by the accountants and would trigger alarms when she tried to walk out of the building. She was arrested by the local security guard and started ranting and raving about how someone had made her do it.”

Art frowned. “And do you believe her?”

“I don’t know,” Jordon admitted. “She’s smart; her manager says that he cannot believe that she would be so dumb as to take tagged money through an alarm. With a little care, she could probably have smuggled twice as much money out of the building without setting off any alarms at all, yet she does something stupid. On the other hand...can someone be made to do something like that?”

“It’s possible,” Art said. He didn't want to talk about it. He'd developed the power after the Harvard Blast, but every time he used it he found himself sickened by the potential. If someone had developed it without Art’s sense of morals – he found himself thinking of Leo Davidson and shivered – the results would be unpleasant. “It requires a powerful telepath and a great deal of concentration.”

“Right,” Jordon said. For the first time, Art picked up the flicker of fear that was becoming depressingly common. Jordon seemed unsure of what to do. “Can you verify that?”

“I’d have to peek inside her head,” Art said. “If I confirm her story, we can take her for treatment and make sure that the mystery telepath didn't leave any unpleasant surprises inside her mind. If not...well, you can arrest her for grand theft and throw the book at her.”

Jordon frowned. “Will she be held responsible for what she did if someone forced her to do it?”

“No,” Alice said, flatly. “Legally speaking, she would be in the clear.”

Art nodded. “Yep,” he agreed. He winked at Alice as Jordon headed over to the door to arrange for an interview. “We have a blackmailer near Washington and a mind controller here. Do you think that the two are connected?”

“Not unless the second is intended to confuse us,” Alice said, practically. “The blackmailer thought through his plan very well. He made sure that even if his target decided to try to catch him, it would be impossible for him to be identified. The mind controller, on the other hand, didn't realise that no one, not even a senior banker, would be able to take so much money out of the building without being stopped. He’s powerful and dangerous, but he’s not very smart.”

Art would have pressed the issue a little further, but Jordon returned before he could say anything. “Miss Fieldstone has agreed to see you,” he said. “Unless you have any special requirements, I suggest that you use the current interview room.”

“It will suffice,” Art said. He nodded to Alice and allowed Jordon to lead him through a pair of sealed doors. The police station didn't strike him as particularly secure, but then he doubted that New York’s gangs were going to lay siege to it, as had happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. There, a well-built police station was the difference between life and death. “Leave us alone, please.”

Tiffany lifted her eyes as Art entered the interrogation chamber. Art didn't need to be a telepath to know that she was on the verge of collapse. He scowled as he took in the cuffs that held her to the chair. It was obvious that she posed no physical threat and the cops should have removed the cuffs, or at least loosened them. Her hands had to be going stiff by now. Of course, there were politics involved; he suspected that her former employers had been pressing for the police to come down as hard as possible.

“My name is Art,” Art said. Tiffany merely nodded slowly, as if it hurt to even move. “I am a telepath with the Telepath Corps, licensed to perform telepathic peeks for legal purposes. I need your permission to probe your mind and find out what happened.”

He tried to push as much reassurance into his voice as he could. “We can find the person who did this to you,” he added, “but you have to help us. Please let me in.”

“My career is ruined,” Tiffany said. She had a whispery voice, the result – Art figured – of too much crying while she’d been in the cell. If she had been influenced, if she had been forced to act against her will, it might well have broken her. But then, she hadn't been directly controlled; instructions had been implanted in her mind, leaving her helpless to resist or even to know what was going on. Her mind had been pulled into a pretzel. “I...”

“It’s going to be all right,” Art said. “Please will you allow me to peek into your head...?”

Tiffany nodded. Art reached forward gently and placed his hands on her forehead. The wags in the Telepath Corps had already started calling it the Vulcan Mind Meld, but physical contact allowed for a deeper peek. Tiffany’s mind was a churning vortex of confusion, with thoughts and memories spewed up for brief inspection and then falling away, leaving Art wondering if her experience had driven her insane. He braced himself – contact with a mad mind could drive him insane – and pushed forward. A moment later...

He saw it, clearly. Tiffany’s mind was no longer natural. Someone had reached into her mind and stamped around inside, wrecking havoc within her thoughts and twisting her mind to the point where she no longer knew right from wrong. Her mental curves had been flattened, as if the unknown telepath had forced them to remain within set limits, and a whole series of mental commands had been inserted into her head. She wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between then and a normal thought and – like a post-hypnotic suggestion – she would have found herself compelled to justify her actions to herself.

I believe you, he sent, hoping that she would hear his mental comment. Show me what happened...

Her memories crashed around him. Her unknown tormentor had been careful, careful enough to program her mind to refuse to remember him. Art had peeked into the minds of a handful of people with repressed memories, yet they hadn't been able to hide anything from him so effectively. But then, they’d wanted to help him – and they had known that he might see the memory, but they wouldn't. Tiffany, on the other hand, had been programmed to hide the memories. The only consolation was that the job wasn't done very well.

Art was walking beside Tiffany – no, he was in Tiffany – as she crowed over her success. She walked into the eatery and he was there. Tiffany’s eyes just passed over him, as if she refused to recognise his very existence. Art realised that Tiffany had to have been targeted some weeks, perhaps even a month or two, ago. It was the only explanation for how her mind had been rewritten. The Tiffany he was following had slipped into a fugue state...and orders slid into her mind. Art watched helplessly as Tiffany’s mind was violated – raped – in front of him. He reminded himself that they were memories, that they couldn't harm him, but it didn't help. He felt a cold burning anger deep inside him. He wanted the bastard’s head on a platter and his balls in a vice.

He looked back, flicking through the memories until he came up with the best image of the man's face. He wasn't a handsome man, but if he was powerful enough to control people, he probably didn't need to be handsome. He wore a hood at all times, yet Art could see greasy dark hair and an unpleasant, very pale face. Art memorised the face and scowled, promising the unknown telepath a reckoning. He would catch him and throw him in jail...

Tiffany’s mind jerked and Art fell out of her. “It’s all right,” he promised, as her eyes started to fill up with tears. Art raised his voice. “Someone go find the handcuff keys and free her.”

Jordon and Alice entered, followed by a pair of female police officers. “Take her for a shower and then prepare her for transport elsewhere,” Art ordered, briskly. He turned to look at Jordon. “She was telling the truth.”

“Right,” Jordon said, slowly. “How do you intend to catch him?”

Art smiled. “First, I’m going to get one of your officers to help me draw up a picture of what he looks like,” he said. He held up a hand before Alice, at least, could point out that such a powerful telepath could make sure that no one saw him properly. “And then we’re going to load that image into every camera in the city. He’s somewhere around and I intend to catch him.”

 

Chapter Twenty-One<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

A source within the NYPD confirmed that an unnamed woman was telepathically forced into committing criminal offenses. There has been no comment from the Telepath Corps, but Senator Thomas Wallis stated that incidents like this – and the others that will soon take place – make the case for mandatory testing for telepathy and, if telepaths refuse to go to Alaska, mandatory drug administration to suppress telepathy.
-AP News Report, 2015

“You know,” Lieutenant Jennet said, “I’ve heard that they can put images in our minds.”

“I think they’d have to work on you,” Lieutenant Singh countered, gruffly. “You have no mind to influence.”

He smiled at his friend’s consternation to cover his own concern. The last thing he’d expected to find himself doing was guarding a building full of telepaths. Professor Zeller had refused, for whatever reason of his own, government protection, even though the telepaths received more death threats daily than all of their previous clients had received in a month. Instead of requesting the Secret Service, or an FBI Close Protection Detail, Zeller had hired Celebrity Protections Inc and charged them with defending his mansion. It was both an easy task and a very complicated one.

The telepaths didn’t seem too willing to actually leave, which meant that the bodyguards didn’t have to worry about escorting them to the shops and public appearances, but they seemed to attract protesters like a politician attracted lobbyists. Friends and relatives of the people killed at Harvard, religious freaks and civil liberties nuts – strange bedfellows all – were camped some distance from the mansion, protesting the mere presence of telepaths in their society. Thankfully, they didn’t seem inclined to cause a riot – Harvard had probably dissuaded even the most hardcore trouble-maker from picking a fight – but they were a noisy distraction, particularly when they pressed close to the walls and started shouting at the telepaths. Some of the protesters were packing heat and had even unloaded a few rounds towards the building before vanishing back into the crowd, defying the bodyguards to catch them. Singh’s superiors had asked the state police to disperse the protesters, or at least to force them to move further away, but the police were dragging their feet. Singh scowled at the memory. Normally, the state police would come down like a ton of bricks on anyone involved in a firearms offence, yet now they were prepared to let it pass by. The telepaths were a political hot potato.

At least they didn’t seem inclined to poke into the minds of his subordinates, although there was no way to know for sure. Quite a few operatives had flatly refused to join the protective detail, citing mental privacy as the reason, and Singh’s superiors hadn’t tried to push the issue. Quite a few people came to the company after rather…questionable military or police service and they had their secrets. They wouldn't want to share them with anyone, particularly a telepath. They’d all seen the latest soap operas where telepaths – accidentally or purposely – revealed secrets and ruined lives. He'd had less cooperative clients in the past.

“They’re smart enough to know not to play games,” he said, as he turned back to the radio. The visible patrols were only half of the defences. He’d placed a heavily-armed team in one of the outlying buildings, ready and waiting for anyone who wanted to try and take out the telepaths. It seemed that everyone wanted the telepaths dead, from the latest version of Al Qaida to home-grown militia movements. The threats had included everything from sniper fire to an airplane being rammed into the building. “You may be all that stands between them and death at the hands of another outraged mob.”

He glanced up as a white van came into view and rolled his eyes. Professor Zeller – to add to his other problems – didn’t seem to understand the concept of clearing all deliveries with his security guards first. He had a habit of ordering complex equipment from halfway across the country and having it delivered to the door, where the security guards had to search it – often without understanding it – before it could be cleared for entry. The first time a van had turned up, Singh had reacted swiftly and held the driver at gunpoint, convinced that the vehicle was a bomb. After that, he had grown a little more careful, although he was unwilling to compromise his client’s safety any more than strictly necessary. A driver who shat himself when he found himself staring down the barrel of two guns – and others out of sight – wasn't a problem compared to losing the client. His superiors, at least, had backed him up on that one.

“It’s another delivery for the madman in the building,” he said, with a droll smile. He’d have to inspect it personally, of course, and confirm it with Professor Zeller. Judging from the time, the Professor would be giving one of his lectures at the time, addressing scientists who had come from all over the world to study telepathy. After so long in the scientific wilderness, the vindication Professor Zeller felt was understandable, even if it did make him seem a pompous ass from time to time. “You’ll have to check the manifest and compare it to what the Professor ordered and…”

Time seemed to slow down as the white van pulled into the gatehouse. Combat instincts Singh hadn’t used since he had mustered out of the 10<SUP>th</SUP> Mountain Division were screaming at him, telling him that something was badly wrong. The van was wrong. He opened his mouth to shout a warning, but it was already far too late. A moment later, the van disintegrated in a tearing ball of light that picked him up and carried him away in a wave of sound and fury.

***​

“…So when considering communism,” the lecturer said, “we are faced with the problem that, in order for communism to work, people must behave in a certain way. Specifically, they must behave in the interests of the entire community, rather than in their own self-interest. Unluckily for those who regard a communist society as a workable society, people don’t act that way. They will generally act in what they see as their own best interests.”

<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> scowled to herself. Professor Zeller had hired tutors for the younger telepaths – she had to admit that they could be interesting – and he’d insisted that some of the older telepaths sit in on the lessons. It hadn’t taken her long to realise that the Professor had wanted them to listen to the words and know how often the visiting speakers lied to their students. This speaker, at least, believed what he was saying.

“The people who developed the basis for communism considered themselves smarter than the vast crowd of individuals who made up their society. They regarded the common herd as being too stupid to understand where their own best interests actually lay. When communists took power, they found themselves faced with the fact that the human herd refused to naturally follow the elite – as they considered themselves. They were faced with a choice between forcing the common herd to follow them – or giving up on their dreams. Very few communists chose to give up. They knew they were right.

“Accordingly, they developed the tools for forcing their views on society,” the speaker continued. His words were dispassionate, but <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> could sense his underlying disgust. “They created a system intended to enforce their views and remove anyone who dared to object. Again, in theory, the idea should have worked out well. In practice, the system became warped by its own nature. Disaster was just waiting to happen…”

The entire building shook. <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> came to her feet as she sensed the sudden swell of alarm from the other telepaths – and the naked shock from the speaker. She turned to the window and saw a massive fireball rising up from the gates, just before it occurred to her that showing her face at the window might be suicide. She dropped to the ground and shouted at everyone else to get down, just before the first gunshots broke out. It hadn’t been that long since Harvard and she knew what it meant. They were coming to kill the telepaths!

I told you so; Leo’s voice spoke in her mind. He was broadcasting directly to every telepath in the building, unheeding of who might be listening. We have to get out of here before they kill us all…

***​

John found himself laughing as the first explosion went up, exactly as planned. The Lord was with them today. The telepaths hadn’t bothered to think through their defences very carefully, even though they had to know that they were under threat. They’d only established a single guardhouse and a handful of guards. The bomb would have taken them all out – a regrettable price for exterminating the telepaths. Besides, they’d chosen to take the contract and defend the telepaths, even though the telepaths had been touched by evil. It made them guilty and so they deserved to die.

He pulled his assault rifle out of his bag and shouted for his formation to form up on him. The protesters – useful idiots, the lot of them – were scattering in all directions. Some of them had been injured, perhaps killed, by the bomb, but John didn’t care. He hated liberal protesters anyway; boys and girls who had never done a day’s work in their lives, yet who felt themselves qualified to pass judgement on men and women who actually worked for a living. They deserved to understand that the universe was not always fair and government bailouts didn’t always save the world. He kicked one of the fallen protesters out of his way as the Army of the Lord formed up on him. She reminded him of his wife.

They had been younger when they had married, young enough not to understand that they were making a mistake – young enough not to take anything for granted. Debbie had told him that it was safe for him to sleep with her and yet somehow she’d gotten pregnant. He hadn’t realised until much later that she’d wanted to entrap him into marriage. Like all women, she wanted a man to provide for her, but unlike a good woman she wanted to have the man without performing her wifely duties. The marriage had started out badly and then gone downhill. Every day – every ****ing day – she’d been there, carping and complaining; the house wasn't right for her, the kids needed new clothes, he wasn't bringing in enough money and he was drinking too much. Of course he was drinking too much! What man wouldn't with a shrew for a wife and two screaming kids, one of whom he was sure wasn't actually his. And then he'd snapped and lifted a hand to her.

She’d fled with the kids to the law and the damned liberals in the courtroom had taken her side. John had found himself enslaved by the law, forced to sign over most of his pay without even being allowed to see his kids. Debbie had gotten what she wanted and he was her slave. The one time he'd gone to see his kids – as a father should, on his oldest son’s birthday – the police had arrested him and he’d had to spend a week behind bars. How could they do that to him?

But perhaps it had been a sign from the Lord, for he’d been introduced to the Church by a fellow inmate. John had taken to the Church at once and thrown himself into study, rising rapidly within the ranks. The country was the way it was because godless liberals had thrown god-fearing men out of power and replaced them with a witch’s brew of homosexuals, communists, feminists and work-shy politicians who kissed up to big business while penalising the little man. And now they had telepaths. Soon enough, they would have a thought police force that would root out all who dared to believe in the American Dream.

Yet there was hope; the Church, a congregation of god-fearing men, would take back their country. All they had to do was kill the telepaths before they could be used against true patriots.

He smiled at the thought as the formation advanced. John had never been in the army – the recruiting station had rejected him, although he liked to claim that he had gone to Boot Camp and had been thrown out after refusing advances from a lesbian in a man’s uniform – but the warriors had drilled and drilled until they could move as a unit. They’d broken several federal gun laws in order to arm their force, yet no one in the Church cared. The gun control laws were just another plot to disarm the true patriots.

“Kill them all,” he shouted, and his men took up the cry. “Kill them all!”

***​

<st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> could feel the minds advancing towards the building as she ran down the stairs, trying to keep her balance. The sound of shooting was growing louder, but her telepathy couldn’t pick up any sign of what was actually going on. The attacking minds were brimming with hatred and hostility, yet there was a coldly-focused element to their thoughts as well, concentrated on killing the telepaths. She reached the bottom of the stairs as the gunfire finally died away. For a moment, she hoped that the attackers had all been killed, but she could still feel their hating minds.

What did we do to them? She thought, as she reached the panic room. Leo was there, along with Valentine and most of the other younger telepaths. There was no sign of Professor Zeller. What are they going to do to us?

Kill us, of course, Leo thought back at her. None of them were speaking aloud, yet as their minds interlinked she could feel their fear calming, to be replaced by rage. She remembered Harvard and shivered. How much power could they tap into if they really tried? They want to kill us all. Can’t you feel it?

<st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> shivered. The hatred was growing, yet there was also a form of anticipation…

A moment later, the entire building shook again.

***​

John let out a glad cry as the explosion blew through a section of the mansion. It wasn't right, telepathic voyeurs being given such a building when true patriots had to scrabble in the dirt to live, but the joke was on them. Their telepathy had made them a target and flames were already licking at the remainder of their mansion. And most of their guards had either fled or died quickly. Perhaps some of them had been covert patriots, serving the enemy until the time had come to switch sides.

“Come on,” he ordered. Entering the burning house was dangerous, but he knew that there wouldn't be long before the federals responded to the attack. The Church had promised to delay the federal response for as long as possible, yet there was no way to know if they would succeed. The federals were good at responding to threats to their power. “We have to kill them all.”

***​

Within the panic room, the combined mind of the telepaths was settling down into colder – deadlier – patterns. <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> wanted to take the lead position herself, but Leo – who had been building the gestalt – nudged her aside. Their combined powers allowed for far greater abilities than anything they could muster on their own. The attackers all wore tinfoil hats and Mind-Lock Amulets, but they provided no protection at all.

Look, Leo proclaimed to the group. They have the support of the government! They intend to kill us!

<st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> looked, and shivered. The intruders certainly believed that they had the support of the vast majority of mundane humans. They had help from agents within the government, so much so that they didn’t dare rely on anyone. The government would either draft them or force them to take telepath-suppressing drugs. The growing consensus, led by Leo, was for escape and revenge. If the mundane humans refused to allow them to live free, they would fight…

Now, Leo said. They reached out as one, reaching into the minds of the attackers. Twisted and perverted by hate as they were, it was easy to influence them, even without telepathy.

***​

“John?”

John turned. Debbie was standing there, completely helpless and alone. Somehow, it didn’t occur to him to wonder what she was doing there. He knew it was her, right to the core of his being. Hatred surged up within him and he turned, lifting his gun and firing right into her heart. He laughed as she died and kept firing, as if he was wiping away every last part of her. Her face refused to fade, no matter how much he fired, yet he didn’t care. He was still laughing when four hammer blows stuck his body and he fell away into the darkness.

***​

One by one, the intruders died. It wasn't pretty. The telepaths reached into their minds and turned them on each other. <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> shivered in disgust at some of their memories, even as she played with their minds, manipulating them. It was easy and some of the telepaths, she realised, revelled in their power. The consensus they shared meant that hardening attitudes spread from mind to mind like a virus. Only Valentine, whose mind remained a locked box, seemed reluctant to share in their consensus.

“Time to leave,” Leo said, verbally. The shock of actually hearing his words brought them out of their shared mentality. <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> wanted to be sick at what they had done, even if it had been in self-defence. Harvard had been one thing, but this was worse. They’d mentally raped their attackers and torn their minds apart. “There will be others coming soon.”

Pulling telepathic invisibility around them like a shroud, the telepaths ran up the stairs and disappeared out into the countryside.

 

Chapter Twenty-One<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

This just in – a group of unknown terrorists have attacked the Zeller Institute and killed at least forty people. First responders who reached the building reported that most of the security guards and building staff had been killed, but there is – as yet – no word on Professor Zeller or his telepaths…
-AP News Report, 2015

Roger had visited the Zeller Institute twice before, once as part of a group of reporters who had been chosen to witness the opening ceremony and once for a private interview with Professor Zeller. For a man whose primary talent seemed to be annoying people – at least until his theories had actually been proven to have some basis in reality – Professor Zeller was quite a remarkable self-publicist. Back then, Roger had been impressed with the building. It had really been quite remarkable.

It wasn't so remarkable now. Where the gatehouse had been, there was nothing more than a crater and a great deal of debris. The white-clad FBI officers pouring through the wreckage would have their work cut out for them. The bodies outside the grounds – the intact ones had been covered with shrouds – weren't a pleasant sight. Some of the protesters had been in their teens, too young to die in an act of violence. He turned and looked up towards the building itself. Part of it was a burned-out wreck; the fire department had responded quickly, but the flames hadn’t been quelled easily. The remainder was badly damaged and, apparently, deserted.

“At least fifty dead,” the FBI officer said when Roger approached her. Agent Evens looked shaken by what she had seen, although it didn’t seem to affect her ability to issue orders to her subordinates and keep on top of the crisis. It might not matter. The terrorists were long gone and the telepaths might well be dead. “Some of the remains may never be identified.”

“And they were just protesting,” Roger said, in dismay. There were countries where anyone brave or stupid enough to protest would be gunned down by their government or arrested and send to prison for the rest of their lives. In <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:country-region><st1lace>America</st1lace></st1:country-region>…there was a right to protest peacefully, although the key word was peacefully. The protest at Harvard had been bad enough, but in its way this was worse. “What did they do to deserve this?”

Agent Evens shrugged. “I think they were just collateral damage,” she said, flatly. “We’ve picked up several protesters who had the sense to run when the shooting started. They’re saying that some of their fellow protesters drew arms and opened fire on the remainder of the guards. The bastards snuck up to the building under cover and then launched their attack without caring about the people caught in the middle.”

Roger looked up as a deafening crash echoed out from the building. Part of the roof had just collapsed inward, smashing through weakened floors and ceilings. He hoped that everyone had been evacuated before it had been too late. People didn’t always react rationally during a crisis, when they had to think quickly and clearly. It was far more common for people to gibber with shock and be unable to think logically. He wondered, suddenly, how the telepaths had reacted. Had they known that they were under attack?

“I think so,” Evens said, grimly. She led him up the road towards nineteen covered bodies, lying on the grass. “Take a look at this…”

She pulled one of the sheets away and Roger recoiled. The dead man clearly hadn’t looked very pleasant in life, but in death he was appalling. His eyeballs had been pulled out and, from the blood on his hands, it was apparent that he'd done it to himself. Roger stared for a moment and then had to turn away, swallowing hard. The expression on what remained of the man’s face would haunt him until his dying day.

He moved from body to body, shaking his head in disbelief. Many of the terrorists had clearly turned on their fellows. Others had killed themselves, apart from one unmarked body with an uncertain cause of death. It looked almost as if the fellow had died peacefully. Roger found that the most alarming of all.

“It may have been the result of a telepathic blast,” Evens said. “There have only a handful of people killed by telepaths, at least killed by mental powers, so we won’t know for sure until we do the autopsy. And then the results might not be certain anyway. It could just be a coincidence.”

Roger snorted. “Not here,” he said. “Not after what happened to the others.”

“It’s the first thing a defence attorney will raise,” Evens predicted. “Do you know that we have a handful of unexplained deaths that might – I say might – have been caused by a telepath? The problem is that we have no way to know for sure. There are a handful of cases of cerebral haemorrhage that have never been satisfactorily explained. Most of them appeared prior to telepaths entering the public mindset, but we don’t know for sure when the first telepath actually appeared. There could have been a telepathic killer wandering around for years without us even being able to deduce his presence.”

“An untraceable killer,” Roger said, with a shiver. “How do we deal with someone like that?”

“We’re working on it,” Evens said. She looked down at her hands. “I think…”

“Agent Evens,” a man called. “You have to come see this!”

Evens ran and Roger followed her. After all, she hadn’t told him not to follow her. The man was waving to a stretcher that had been pulled out of the building, a stretcher that was holding one very familiar person. Professor Zeller had been found, his pale face sending chills down Roger’s spine.

“He seems to be in a coma,” the man said. Roger looked for a nametag and saw nothing. He clearly wasn't FBI, for he didn’t seem inclined to object to Roger’s presence. Or maybe he did and he had clearly decided not to make a fuss. “We need to transport him to the nearest facility ASAP.”

Evens nodded. Roger wondered if she appreciated the irony. Professor Zeller’s mansion had the finest collection of equipment in the state for monitoring a person who needed mental care, yet it had all been destroyed by the terrorists. He looked down at the staring eyes and shivered. Professor Zeller’s body might be there, but his mind had long since departed. It was not a pretty sight.

“We’ve searched the entire building,” the man continued. “We found a number of other bodies, including three of the telepaths, but the remainder appear to be missing.”

“If that’s the case,” Evens said slowly, “where the hell have they gone?”

***​

“What the hell is this place?”

<st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> wanted to scream, but she didn’t dare shout, or even broadcast mentally. Leo had warned them that the government was probably already looking for them and even telepathy had its limits when it came to hiding them from remote sensors. They could fool the minds of anyone who happened to be in range, but that wouldn't last. A single automated system connected to an operator out of range would pick them up easily, if they gave them the chance.

“It’s a hiding place,” Valentine said, easily. Unlike the other twelve telepaths, even Leo, he seemed unmoved by the danger. <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> privately suspected that he was enjoying himself. “We can rest here and recuperate before we move onwards. The people who own this building don’t have the slightest idea that we’re here.”

<st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> scowled. Valentine had led them to the large house – it didn’t quite earn the title of mansion – and used his telepathy to convince the small staff that the telepaths weren’t actually there. <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> had been impressed – and horrified – by the skill both Leo and he had displayed. They had forced the staff to accept a contradiction; the telepaths were not there, yet they had to provide food and drink for them. By the time their minds reasserted themselves, Leo had assured them, the telepaths would be long gone.

“Right,” <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> said. “And you don’t think that we might attract attention?”

“Not as long as we avoid doing anything stupid,” Valentine said. He’d insisted, as soon as they left the mansion, that they dump their cell phones and anything else that might carry a microchip. It would have been embarrassing to make a phone call and discover that it brought the government swooping down on their heads. Two of the telepaths had protested until Leo had reminded them of the danger. “We’re not going to be here for long.”

Leo nodded. “We have to get down to the city,” he added. “The government is probably already setting up road blocks and other traps…not that we have to worry about them, of course.”

“Once we’re in the city, we can hide for years if necessary,” Valentine said. “I didn’t pick this place entirely at random. The servants have access to a van that can carry us all down to the city, while our powers will ensure that any cops who try to stop us walk away with the correct impression. We can even get one of them to drive it and make sure that there isn’t even the slightest thing that will make them suspicious.”

“We have to move quickly though,” Leo added. “They might have called in their tame telepaths by now and we won’t be able to fool them so easily.”

That thought brought conversation to a halt. The telepaths showered and changed rapidly into different clothes – stolen from the staff – before watching the news. Both CNN and Fox carried stories about the terrorist attack on the Zeller Institute and for once they had the same slant. Acts of terrorism on American soil were unacceptable. There was no warning about the missing telepaths, which struck <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> as odd. Either the government thought that they were still buried somewhere in the wreckage, or they were keeping it to themselves to avoid panic. She hoped it was the former. She didn’t want her parents to see their daughter hunted by the government across <st1:country-region><st1lace>America</st1lace></st1:country-region>.

She was feeling a little better when they boarded the van and discovered that it had a small café that was well supplied with alcohol. Valentine warned them not to drink any, reminding them that a drunken telepath could lose his mental blocks and wind up attracting attention. Leo didn’t argue with him, although three of the other telepaths did, wanting something to take their minds off what they were going through. Valentine won the argument and went forward to program the driver. Without his beard – he had shaved while at the house – he looked different enough to be unrecognisable. As the van lurched into life, <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> allowed herself to relax. Whatever else happened, the die was cast.

“Trouble,” Valentine announced, thirty minutes later. The spark of alarm that flared through <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City>’s mind was shared by the others. “This is a small roadblock ahead of us and cops are waving people down. I suggest that we get ready to focus our minds.”

<st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> nodded, feeling the consensus building around her. Their minds reached out and sensed the presence of seven policemen, as well as four men they’d arrested, their thoughts slurred by the presence of too much alcohol. <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> felt a flicker of concern without recognising its source; the drunken drivers might be too drunk to be easily influenced by telepathy. They might end up warning the police that something was wrong.

We should kill them, Leo thought. <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> sensed his injured pride and fury. They send their minions to kill us.

No, <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> sent back, before she could hesitate. An emotional argument wouldn't work, not against Leo and Valentine. They needed cold logic. Dead policemen will attract attention and point them towards us.

There was another concern. Mental control tended to have unfortunate effects on the victim. They didn’t handle a new situation very well or a situation where they might have to make decisions in a hurry. An outside observer might realise that there was something badly wrong with them, even if he didn’t know exactly what had happened, or why. A policeman, trained to watch for signs that a suspect was on the verge of doing something stupid, might just realise the truth. And then they would have to do more than just wipe his mind. If they handled him too roughly, the Telepath Corps would know what had happened and why.

Brace yourself, Valentine sent. His mind focused on the policeman as he walked up to the driver’s window, peeking into the policeman’s mind. He’d been ordered to set up a roadblock and search for people who matched a certain description – their description. <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> shivered again as the implications flickered through her mind. The cop had been told to take them alive, but he was nervous and had already come close to drawing his gun in anger once today. Here we go…

The cop entered the mental field and the combined mind went to work. He didn’t see the people in the rear of the van – thankfully, the tinted windows made it impossible for anyone else to see in – nor did he realise that anything was wrong with the driver. Instead, he made a show of checking the driver’s licence and then waddled off back to his car, relieved that he hadn’t found the telepaths. <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> watched his thoughts for a moment longer, as the driver pulled away from the checkpoint, and shivered. Leo had told them, time and time again, that they were the superior race. With power like that, what could they not do?

And what would the government do to stop them?

***​

The President had known that it was going to be bad the moment the Telepath Corps Oversight Commission called for a meeting. He’d been involved in delicate negotiations with the Prime Minister of India – the world went on, even if telepaths had appeared and started to upset the balance – and his staff knew not to pull him out for anything less than an absolute emergency. Besides, sharing notes with another world leader was always interesting. Very few Americans who had never been President could understand the stresses and strains of leadership.

“They’re all gone?” He said, once the FBI Director had finished outlining what had happened at the Zeller Institute. “All of them?”

“Yes, Mr President,” the FBI Director said. He was the President’s personal choice for the position and was clearly aware that he could be dismissed for this failure. It was hardly his fault, the President knew, but public opinion had a nasty habit of demanding scapegoats. “We have thirteen powerful telepaths completely unaccounted for – no bodies, no nothing. They’ve gone rogue.”

The President stared down at his hands. “What the hell happened?”

“The preliminary reports on the bodies – the terrorist bodies – were able to identify a handful of them,” the FBI Director said. “They had criminal records, although nothing too serious; the most served a few years in jail for possessing an illegal weapon. The bad news is that they were all members of the Church of the Rapturous Awakening. We have quite a file on them, Mr President; they believe that there will be a disaster soon, after which New World Order will fade away and the true Americans – by which they mean people who share their beliefs – will come to power. Quite a few of their members have been involved in criminal acts of one kind or another, but we have never been able to pin anything on the Church itself.”

“And they attacked the Zeller Institute,” the President said. “Why?”

“The Church’s official position on telepaths is that they’re drawing on satanic power and are therefore devils and demons,” the FBI Director said. “It is possible that one or more of the terrorists was urged to attack the institute by the Church’s senior leadership, but as they all died we’re unlikely to be able to prove it. That isn’t the worst piece of news, however; the telepaths may pose a more dangerous threat.”

He passed the President a slim file. “The Zeller Institute didn’t vet its telepaths with the Telepath Corps or even us,” he added. “We only obtained their records in the aftermath and…well, this guy surprised and alarmed us. He called himself Cyrus Valentine – and had the papers to prove it – but we know him as Alvin Greenwood. He’s, Mr President, one of the people we’d very much like to have a few words with one day.”

The President frowned. “He’s an anarchist and a mercenary?”

“They don’t seem to go together very well,” the FBI Director agreed. “The short version of his story is that he was recruited by the <st1:stockticker>CIA</st1:stockticker>” – he paused to look at the <st1:stockticker>CIA</st1:stockticker> Director as he spoke – “and trained as an agent of influence – ah, he would be inserted into a foreign country and work to destabilise their government. It was all very secret and…”

He broke off. “<st1:City><st1lace>Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City> was involved in the attempt to support a Kurdish-led uprising in <st1lace>North Iraq</st1lace> during <st1:City><st1lace>Clinton</st1lace></st1:City>’s time in power,” he added. “The attempt was cancelled at the last moment, the promised support didn’t materialise and the Kurds were brutally slaughtered. <st1:City><st1lace>Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City> went rogue, Mr President; he vanished somewhere into the underground and only rarely surfaced, often in some of the worst parts of the world. He takes whatever money he can get, but he isn’t loyal – not really. He’s too dangerous to be trusted by his employers.”

“And now he’s a telepath,” the President said, grimly.

“Yes, Mr President,” the FBI Director said. “In hindsight, he has been working away at young Davidson for months. And now he has thirteen telepaths under his control. We have to find him before its too late. He has a grudge against this country and a complete lack of scruples. He could do more damage in a month than Osama could do in fifteen years of war.”

 

Okay, I just finished the latest chapter and it is really looking good. I like the twist you added with the last few paragraphs. I am having a hard time with the time line. Maybe you can add specific dates to the AP reports. It seems as though the Telepath Corps formed really fast and they are really organized for the amount of time since the blast. Either way it is a great story so far and I am looking forward to reading more!

 

I've kept the timeline a little vague for various reasons - several months passed between the blast and 'now'.

Chris

 

Chapter Twenty-Three<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

In an update to the terrorist attack on the Zeller Institute, thirteen young telepaths have been found to be missing, perhaps on the run. The government has issued an appeal for them to come forward to safety. Sources within the government have hinted, however, that the telepaths are wanted on charges of terrorism and may be arrested as soon as they show their faces…

In other news, Wall Street is on alert after the Telepath Corps confirmed that Tiffany Fieldstone, who was arrested on suspicion of theft, was mind-controlled into committing the crime. Her employers refused to comment.
-AP News Report, 2015

“FBI! Don’t move!”

Art watched as the SWAT team stormed the apartment, wishing he could be up front with good men behind him. Or perhaps not; in Afghanistan, when going into hostile territory, they’d started by throwing in grenades and then firing rounds at anything that looked suspicious. He doubted that the NYPD would look kindly on using such methods within the confines of New York City, let alone the government and the general public.

“Clear, sir,” the SWAT team leader said. In the haste to get the operation mounted, Art hadn't even caught his name. “The bird has flown.”

Or was never here at all, Art thought sourly. Two days of crunching through every piece of CCTV footage in New York and trying to match it with the memories he’d pulled from a handful of minds had left him dubious about their prospects for success. The mind controller they were searching for might well have left the city by now, relying on his talents to shield him from detection, or he might have burrowed underground and pulled in the hole behind him. Art could imagine a dozen ways a telepath could hide, even from a determined search, and few of them would give the searchers any clues.

He nodded to Alice and they headed forward, walking up the stairs towards the isolated apartment. The building’s landlady was in breach of a number of health and safety laws, but her tenants had never complained; for most of them, it was the best accommodation they could ever hope to have. They paid in cash and were rewarded with a blind eye to any of their misdeeds. The chances were good, Art decided, that the building’s other tenants – who would be being rousted out of their apartments right now – were probably involved with drug dealing or even smuggling. The NYPD had a warrant to search the entire building and he suspected that they – and the local courtrooms – were going to be busy for the next few days.

“It's completely clear,” the SWAT Leader assured Art, as they entered. “There’s no sign of him at all.”

Art nodded and, slowly, opened up his mind. The SWAT team didn't include a telepath, an oversight he had had no time to rectify. Besides, a telepath who wanted to use his talent would be blinded by the surge of emotions from the unlucky souls who got in the SWAT team’s path. He doubted that drug dealers would be brave and respond to the intruders calmly, but a telepathic mind controller might be a different story. His mind expanded, searching for the mental stillness that might conceal another telepath, and he relaxed slightly when he found nothing. The mind controller could have been hiding under their very noses, broadcasting I’m not here signals to anyone in the area.

“Check with the monitoring team,” he ordered. He keyed his radio. “Agent Graves...is there anything from the probes?”

The probes – microscopic surveillance devices – had floated into the apartment along with the SWAT team. Art had argued for their inclusion because they could not be fooled by a telepath, no matter how hard the telepath tried to control them. The minds back at the NYPD station couldn’t be tricked into believing that the apartment was empty, or so Art hoped. If the mind controller was powerful enough to influence people at such a distance, resistance would be completely futile.

“Negative,” Graves said. He was a cranky old man, well past his prime, but he had stayed current and he did know his stuff. “There’s no sign that he is here.”

“Good,” Art said, and then changed his mind. “Bad. Get the forensic team up here and have them take the place apart room by room.”

He closed his mental shields and started to look around the room, searching for something out of place, something that would provide a clue as to where the mind controller had gone. He’d been skilled at that in Afghanistan – he’d actually wondered if it had been an early form of telepathy peeking out of his mind – but that was in the middle of a war zone. Now, there was nothing that seemed to be obviously out of place. The room was a mess, yet Art couldn't blame the mind controller for that – his own room was a dump. He’d never dared take Alice or anyone else to his new apartment.

The apartment smelled funny, he realised, after a moment of consideration. It was easy to see why. Massive piles of unwashed clothes lay everywhere, some of them clearly more expensive than Art would have expected anyone who lived in the apartment to be able to buy. He leaned down, without touching anything, and frowned. Most of the clothing was clearly designed for a woman – in fact, if he was any judge, several women. There were used panties and bras within the pile, simply abandoned. He guessed that the mind controller had been bringing women home, having his way with them, and then claiming their underwear as a trophy of each conquest. He’d known a Marine who behaved in much the same way, although he, at least, had seduced the women fairly.

He stepped into the kitchen and recoiled from the smell. There was an overflowing bin, filled with used takeaway containers and bottles of soda pop – no alcohol, he noted. That made sense; very few telepaths continued to drink after discovering that it weakened their mental shields and left them vulnerable to every stray thought in the area. The kitchen sink was blocked – Art didn’t want to think about what might be blocking it – and half-filled with washing water. It looked as if the suspect had fled the building before the SWAT team arrived, which was interesting. Had someone at the NYPD warned him and, if so, had that person been mentally programmed to pass on a warning?

Art shook his head as he stepped back into the hallway to allow the forensic team to get to work. The mind controller was dangerous – no doubt about it – but he didn't seem to be particularly clever. It would have been easy for him to program some of the people in the building – perhaps even the landlady herself – to clean his apartment for him; coming to think of it, he could have probably moved into a finer apartment without tipping off the NYPD. All he seemed to want was money and sex. If Art hadn't known already, he would have been sure that their target was a man – a young man.

“I’m going to talk to the landlady,” Alice said. “I’m afraid the vultures have already started to gather.”

Art scowled. The NYPD had thrown up a cordon around the apartment block as soon as the SWAT team moved in, but someone had clearly had the presence of mind to call the media and sell the story for a few bucks. A person with a cell phone or a video camera might well have been able to take some footage to attract their attention and, after the dramatic disappearance of some of Zeller’s telepaths, the press would draw a line between the two events. The thought had crossed Art’s mind too, although he had reassured himself that the mind controller had clearly been active a long time before some of Zeller’s pupils had vanished into the underground. That meant, at least, that it was a telepath no one else had ever met.

The thought of Zeller’s pupils was a worrying one. Art had access to the classified alert that had been passed to the Telepath Corps, a warning that the rogue telepaths might have linked up with anti-government activists. That wasn't good news. Art had rather liked what he’d seen of Elizabeth, but Leo certainly had the personality to be a major pain in the ass. And if he wanted to cause trouble, he certainly had the power to do it.

“Captain,” a woman’s voice called. Art looked up to see Doctor Waianae shouting at him. “Can you come and look at this please?”

Art nodded and stepped back into the apartment. Doctor Waianae was Japanese-American, a short elfin woman with a slim, almost boyish figure. Her porcelain face concealed a surprising amount of insecurity, although she never lacked for male companionship. Art had sensed Alice’s reaction to her and had been forced to conceal a smile. The Doctor might feel that her small breasts and tiny figure were unattractive – a result of growing up in a world where large breasts and curvy figures were taken for granted – but he knew that men found her desirable. He didn't know why she worried so much about her life.

“This is one of his shirts,” the Doctor said, briskly. “Can you pick anything off it?”

Art shook his head. He blamed the media personally. A fake telepath had claimed to be able to feel psychic impressions off an item that had belonged to someone else, but the claim had never been verified and the faker had refused to be tested under controlled conditions. Perhaps it was possible – after all, you could tell a great deal about someone by what they bought and used regularly – but no one in the Telepath Corps had developed any such ability.

“No,” he said, flatly. The Doctor’s cool professionalism hid a multitude of other feelings, including an unwilling attraction to Art personally. He tried to push that thought aside. “What can you tell me about him?”

“Young, probably no older than twenty-five,” the Doctor said, briskly. “He took no precautions at all; we took prints and DNA samples and we’re running them through the databases now. If he’s ever been arrested and fingerprinted, we will have him and the people he brought back here. And he had a drugs habit.”

She nodded towards one of the opened cupboards. Art could see a small bag of white powder inside, as if someone had just tossed it carelessly into the compartment. That was odd for a telepath, not least because drugs – like alcohol – weakened the mental shields. On the other hand, if one spent most of one’s life smashed out on drug trips, the chances were good that one might not notice – at first – when telepathy started to appear. Why not? It could easily be dismissed as yet another drug induced hallucination.

“It might not be his, of course,” the Doctor added. “He might well have used his powers to assert control over the drug gangs in the area and made them his slaves. Or he could have pushed them into providing him with drugs for his victims. A drugged mind would be even less able to fight back.”

Art nodded, sickened. “How many women did he bring back here?”

“We're uncertain as yet,” the Doctor admitted. “We’re picking up dozens of separate DNA signatures in the room. The chances are good that most of them are his victims, women compelled to come with him, sleep with him and then forget the experience. The bastard must have been living a dream.”

Art sensed his disgust and understood. A normal rapist could be caught and convicted on the strength of his victim’s testimony. A mind controller, on the other hand, could leave the women convinced that they wanted him, or make them forget the whole experience afterwards. Indeed, the more Art through about it, the more he was convinced that that was what the mind controller would do. Why take the risk of being identified when he could wipe their minds and send them home happy and ignorant?

“We may manage to identify some of his victims,” Art agreed. As he spoke, it occurred to him to wonder if that might be the best thing to do. Surely it would be better to leave matters undisturbed. How could he explain to someone that they’d been raped and then made to forget the experience? On the other hand, their memories might one day surface, leaving them confused and terrified. “They might give us a clue where to look for him now.”

He shook his head. “Send me a complete copy of your report,” he ordered, finally. “I’ll be downstairs with the others.”

Outside, half of the building’s population where in handcuffs, sitting on the ground and waiting for a police van to come take them away. The NYPD had been though most of the building and found more than enough evidence to convict various occupants – including the landlady – of all kinds of charges, mainly drug possession and distribution. Art knew nothing about the economics of the drugs trade – at least outside Afghanistan, where the Marines had been involved in capturing or killing drug barons and the terrorists their money supported – but it struck him as stupid to keep all of one’s drugs in one’s own apartment. The gang members clearly hadn't been expecting the police raid.

He looked over at the landlady, who was cursing at Alice. She was a fat ugly woman, wearing a dress that should have left rather more of her body to the imagination. Art had disliked her on sight and the brief contact with her mind had left him feeling sick. Maria was the runt of the litter, the fat sister who had always been overshadowed by her three thin and pretty sisters, all of whom had made good matches and escaped the streets. She had moved from man to man, the last of whom – her least worthless husband – had left her the apartment building. And now even that was taken from her...

Art staggered as her thoughts and feelings crashed through his mind, then stabilised himself, rebuilding his mental blocks piece by piece. Maria – the landlady – clearly had a very minor telepathic power herself, or perhaps the force of her resentment was so strong that she was somehow able to slip into Art’s telepathy and bombard him with her thoughts and feelings. As soon as he could trust himself to move, he walked over to her and placed a gloved hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him resentfully.

“You’re going to lose your building,” Art said, flatly. There was no way around that, unless someone went to bat for her and somehow he doubted that anyone would be willing to do that. The chances were good that she was looking at some serious jail time. “I need your help. If you help me, I will help you.”

Maria swore at him in a language Art suspected was Italian. He didn't know enough to be sure, although several of the words were familiar. “Get ****ed,” she said, finally. The concentrated venom in her voice made his head spin. Behind it, hope and fear warred in her breast. “Why should I do anything to help you?”

“Because I’m the senior officer here,” Art said. It was stretching a point, but the Telepath Corps did have jurisdiction and Alice would back him up, if necessary. “I can make the difference between you going to jail and being released as a victim of a mind controlling telepath.”

He smiled at the churn of emotions playing out across her mind. “Right,” she said, finally. “I have had enough of promises from pigs. What guarantee do I have that you will keep your word?”

“None,” Art said, honestly. “You don’t have much of a choice, though. Do you?”

Maria glared at him, and then nodded. “All right,” she said. “What must I do?”

Art pulled off his glove and touched her forehead. The physical contact made the link stronger and the intensity of her hatred and fear crashed against him, almost throwing him back out of her mind. Slowly, he concentrated on her mysterious lodger and skimmed through her memories. There wasn't much – like he’d done to his other victims, the mind controller had fiddled with her mind, making it impossible for her to recall much about him – but there was a clue. The mind controller had been addicted to women. He’d brought women off the streets – some clearly whores, some clearly wealthy women – and ****ed them, before releasing them back out into the wild. Art was almost relieved. At least they weren't dealing with a killer.

He broke the contact and nodded at Alice. “I think we know where we have to go next,” he said, finally. A few hours of research with the NYPD would confirm it for him and then they could act. The mind controller, it seemed, had been fond of a particular speakeasy. Art snorted at Maria’s mental tone. Speakeasy indeed – the last time he'd heard anyone use that word had been during a documentary about Prohibition. “And then we can set a trap.”

Alice nodded. “All right,” she said. He caught a whiff of her mental state and smiled. She didn't like Maria any more than she liked her. “Let’s go.”

“One moment,” Art said. He looked down at Maria and resolve crystallised in his mind. “A few debts have to be paid.”

He called over one of the senior NYPD officers and issued orders. Maria would not be arrested, at least not formally. She would be taken to a place where she could find a second chance, if she chose to take it. If not...he suspected that she would soon find herself in trouble again. The Telepath Corps might not approve of his choice, but then...the telepaths had to pay their debts.

How else could they become good members of society?

 

Chapter Twenty-Four<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

Rumours have reached us that a large number of Indian telepaths have attempted to defect to the US and Britain following an official decision of the Indian Government that all telepaths are to be drafted into an Indian version of the Telepath Corps. The news follows rioting in several Indian cities against lower-caste telepaths, including a handful of untouchables who have revolted against the superior castes. There has been no official statement from the White House or Ten Downing Street...
-AP News Report, 2015

“I feel,” Alice subvocalised, “like a bloody whore!”

It was the fourth day she’d worked at Paddy’s Pub – a warehouse that had been purchased by an immigrant and turned into a drinking den. Paddy, a man who was clearly proud of his Irish roots, had filled the entire room with Irish pictures and decorations, while insisting that his bar maids wore green uniforms that showed off most of their bodies. It was about as authentic as some of the ‘genuine’ Native American artefacts she’d seen sold to gullible tourists, but few of the clientele seemed to care. Paddy, by accident or design, had started his business on a borderline between two of New York’s gangs and the pub served as neutral ground.

She’d expected that Paddy would demand references and proof that she had a right to work in America, but instead she’d just been handed a uniform and told to put it on, before reporting for her first shift. Paddy, it seemed, had no intention of either reporting his takings to the IRS or paying his bar maids anything like a living wage. The other girls, who ranged from sixteen to twenty-seven, were all hopeless, their lives destroyed by drink, drugs and the sheer drudgery of their day to day existence. It was a side of America that Alice had never really believed existed until she’d seen it, the perfect place for a rogue telepath to hide.

“And you look like one too,” Art sent back. He was waiting in an unmarked van, two blocks away from Paddy’s Pub. They’d chosen not to involve the NYPD any more than strictly necessary, if only because the various gang leaders and criminal masterminds in the area would probably have their own hooks into the department. “I thought that that was the point.”

Alice wanted to scowl, but she kept smiling at a sailor who was beckoning her over to sit on his lap. The CIA wasn't the most women-friendly organisation in the United States, yet nothing she’d endured at Langley – including the suggestion that she was too young and inexperienced to be trusted with a proper position – was anything like what she’d gone through in a few hours at Paddy’s Pub. Her bottom had been fondled or pinched more times than she could count, her breasts had been groped several times – at least she’d been able to slap the gropers, to general hilarity – and she’d been propositioned at least five times an hour. It was easy to see why. The other girls, all of whom needed the money desperately, would be happy to do anything for cash. She’d heard a sixteen-year-old talking quite openly about giving up her ass for money, telling her co-workers about a man who was prepared to pay her a hundred dollars for anal sex. Alice knew that the girl wouldn't last long. By twenty, she’d be worn out and heading for the gutter.

Art’s idea had been simple enough. The FBI had managed to identify several of the mind controller’s victims and most of them had one thing in common. They were young and they were blonde, just like Alice. If the mind controller liked coming into Paddy’s Pub and trawling for girls, he would see Alice and be tempted to use his powers on her. Alice had reluctantly allowed Art to place a handful of mental blocks in her mind – hopefully preventing the mind controller from peeking and realising that it was a trap – but she knew that the whole plan hinged on a long shot. The mind controller could be halfway to Australia by now.

She pushed her doubts aside as she felt a hand start crawling up between her legs. Quite calmly, she stepped forward and left the groper behind. She wanted to draw her hidden weapon and put a bullet through his head, but that would have solved nothing. If the man had decided to make a fuss, the bouncers would have tossed him out on his ass. They were the only thing between Paddy’s Pub and complete anarchy. Picking up a handful of empty glasses, she carried them towards the rear of the pub and into the kitchens. It, like the flat that had housed the mind controller, would never pass a health inspection. She had already resolved not to eat anything produced in the kitchens. The staff, underpaid illegal immigrants from China or Mexico, took the glasses from her and waved her towards the restroom. Alice was tempted, but she didn't like the restroom, not when half the staff were shooting up and the other half were smoking themselves to death. Besides, it was all part of the Blonde Princess act. The mind controller would get off on the thought that he might be the first to score with her,

The thought was unpleasant, but it had to be faced. The FBI had attempted to profile the mind controller from his apartment and while most of their conclusions had been obvious – they’d stated that he liked women, which was clear from the clothes in his apartment – they had made a number of good insights. Or so Alice hoped. She had very little faith in professional profilers. They sometimes made bad mistakes and, because they were taken seriously, others got hurt in the crossfire. They'd claimed that he liked to take women who would normally have been completely out of his league, ones that others in his circle would never be able to touch. By acting as if she would never give herself to anyone, Alice should have made herself a target – or so the theory ran. If they were wrong...she didn't intend to stay here forever. One more week and then she would leave, blowing the whistle on Paddy and his Pub afterwards. The NYPD could raid it and perhaps give the girls a chance of a better future.

She stepped back into the main bar and was instantly assailed by deafening heavy metal music as some of the girls got up on stage. Alice had flatly refused to dance on stage when Paddy had asked and he hadn’t pressed the issue, much to her surprise. Or maybe it wasn't such a surprise after all. Paddy had more girls willing to strip naked on stage than he had places, so he might be happy to leave her as a barmaid. Besides, if she ever did weaken, he'd be able to charge extra for her first show. She took one look at the girls, shivering at the thought of ending up like them, and then turned back to her job. There was a tray of beers that had to be taken to a table...

Alice froze. Just for a second, she had felt someone touch her mind. She looked up and saw a hooded man standing in the shadows at the edge of the room. It took everything she had to pick up the tray and walk towards the table, already aware that the mind controller was starting to slip into her mind. She prayed silently that the mental blocks would hold. If they didn't hold, she would be exposed. The mind controller might tip Paddy off before Alice could escape or call for backup. She keyed the hidden signal in her dress – sending an alert to Art – and then started to unload her tray. Strangely, none of the men at the table – all gang members spoiling for trouble – attempted to grope her. Once she had finished unloading her tray, her body moved of its own accord, heading for the person in the shadows. If it hadn't been for the mental blocks, she realised, she would never have known that something was wrong.

Up close, there was nothing strange about the mind controller, apart from a gaunt face and piercing eyes. Alice felt her body shiver under his gaze, turning and walking out the door and into the cold night air. She was aware that he was following her, yet she couldn't turn her head or break out of his control. Her body was moving against her will, swinging her hips in a saucy manner she had never used before, even with her first boyfriend. She hoped that Art was following them and would be in position to intervene soon.

Her treacherous body stepped into a building and up a flight of stairs she’d never seen before. She guessed, as the mind controller moved ahead of her, that he’d already secured a new apartment, either by paying cash or simply using his powers on the owner. It was definitely a nicer apartment than the previous one, but someone she doubted that she would have time to admire it. He walked past her, threw himself onto a chair and turned his gaze on her body. Slowly, her hands moving against her will, she started to play with herself. One hand started to stroke her breasts; the other reached down into her panties, provoking a strange response from her body. She was surprised that she wasn't panicking, although she guessed that he was using his powers to keep her calm. At least he didn't seem to get off on terror and fear.

The thought was no consolation. Her hands were already removing her top and revealing her breasts to his hungry eyes. A moment later, she started to inch her pants down. She saw the bulge in his pants and shivered. If Art didn't come quickly, she was going to be forced to go all the way with him. And yet she still could not panic.

***​

Art had watched in astonishment and dismay as Alice walked out of the club, followed by a man wearing a hood. The mental feel of the mind controller had been shocking. It was clear that most of his development had followed a very different course to any other known telepath, for his mind seemed completely chaotic. He was also very dangerous, not least because he wasn't entirely sane. Art followed him at a distance, relying on his own powers to keep him hidden from view. He didn't even dare draw his pistol and shoot the mind controller in the head. The spark of emotion might have tipped the bastard off.

He took a moment to fall back as Alice was forced to enter another apartment block, almost indistinguishable from his previous house. He guessed that everyone within the building had been programmed to serve as the mind controller’s guards – if not his servants – after he’d lost the previous apartment, which meant that they might alert his target. The door slammed closed and Art held himself back for a few moments, just to allow the mind controller to reach his apartment, before pulling out a lockpick he’d used in Afghanistan. The apartment locks yielded easily to his pressure and the door opened, allowing him entry. He pulled a small terminal out of his pocket and checked on Alice’s signal. Art had been careful not to tell her that she had been carrying a transponder as well as a radio. What she didn’t know couldn't be read from her mind.

The terminal said that she was upstairs, so he followed her, opening his mind as far as he dared. There were faint traces that suggested that there were others in the building, but no one waiting in ambush. He reached for his pistol and checked it quickly, before pausing in front of the mind controller’s door. The sign on the front read ZELLER, which made him jump. Was it a coincidence, a joke or a sign of a genuine connection? Professor Zeller was still in a coma, according to the latest report from the Telepath Corps. All attempts to probe his mind had been useless, of course. Whatever perversion of telepathic talent he had that made peeking into his head impossible had doomed him to remain in a coma. No telepathic mind healer could help him return to himself.

Art listened carefully, wondering just what was going on. He could hear the sound of someone breathing deeply, a harsh masculine sound. It dawned on him that his caution might have led to Alice being forced into sex, just as so many other victims had suffered. Angrily, throwing caution to the winds, he kicked the flimsy door and it shattered. Inside, a naked Alice was performing a seductive dance, while the mind controller was sitting on a chair, playing with himself. Art hesitated, just for a second. It was almost too late.

FREEZE! The mental command blasted into his skull. It hurt, sending unpleasant tendrils of pain running through his mind. A non-telepath would have frozen, unable to move, perhaps even unable to think. Even a telepath who had skirmished with other telepaths found it hard to move, but then none of the drills the Telepath Corps had carried out had risked serious damage. Art realised, as the pressure on his head swelled into a hellish nightmare, that even a victorious skirmish might leave him with serious mental damage. The thought was paralysing, far worse than wounds he might have suffered on Afghanistan’s plains. He could have taken the thought of losing a leg, or an arm, but not his mind.

He’s pushing at you, idiot, Art thought to himself. The mental battle was taking place within his skull. He pushed back hard, reaching out with his own talent to slash into the mind controller’s mind. A name – an insistence of identity – flickered through his skull. The mind controller was called Henry. There was no hint of a surname. Henry’s thoughts and feelings – his surprise and rage at being violated – raged back at him, daring him to keep pushing into his mind. Memories flared open...

...He was lying on the ground, his chest hurting from the beating. An overweight man was staring down at him, slowly returning his belt to his waist. The young man was in so much pain, yet he didn't dare cry out, knowing that it would merely mean another beating...

Art winced. Henry was fighting back, hacking away at Art’s own memories. For someone who had never encountered another telepath, he seemed to understand mental combat far better than Art. But then, Art had never fought another telepath to the death...

...The Drill Sergeant is laughing at the clumsy recruit; the other recruits are laughing. The entire Marine Corps is laughing at Little Art, who cannot fight, or ****, or shoot straight. The merest exercise is impossible for him; guns shatter in his hands, he cannot bring himself to fight the foe, even on training grounds. When he is dismissed, it is almost with relief. He was never cut out to be a Marine.

Art felt cold anger flaring through him. It hadn’t been that way at all. His anger gave him new strength and he pushed back, allowing his anger to slash deep into his foe’s mind...

...The woman is laughing at the skinny young boy. Why would she want to go out with him, let alone allow him to share the pleasures of her body? Her boyfriend comes over and beats the skinny boy up, laughing at him for daring to even think of touching his girl. The pain and rage flare up within him and lash out, ripping the jock’s mind apart. For the first time, the boy has touched the power he possesses and loves it...

...One girl, a dozen girls, a hundred girls, so many that even he loses count. The girls who rejected him when he was a powerless youth go first, compelled into his bed and made to perform shameful acts. Later, when he leaves school and flees into the underground, there are others, girls who can give him money as well as sex. He’s a simple man. All he wants is money and sex. Even when he first hears of telepaths, other telepaths, it never occurs to him to draw a line between his gift and theirs. He is special...

Art felt a vein pounding away in his forehead. It was stalemate. He couldn't dislodge his opponent and his opponent couldn't dislodge him. He’d ****ed up, part of his mind reminded him; the battle would be decided by endurance and the winner would be the one who collapsed last. Except that even the deadly embrace would leave him with mental damage...he couldn't retreat and he couldn't advance. A moment later, the fight ended suddenly.

He opened his eyes in disbelief. Alice had knocked the mind controller – Henry, he reminded himself – out with a bottle she’d found on the side table. The grip that had threatened to overwhelm and destroy his mind vanished, leaving him spinning dizzily. He finally collapsed to the floor, stunned. The pain, perversely, helped him to focus. A moment later, he was aware of strong arms rolling him over and warm lips pressed against his. With their touch, there came an awareness of identity. Alice was kissing him.

“You’re an angel,” he said. She was still naked, save for her socks. He knew that there was a problem, but he couldn't comprehend it, not with his head still spinning. “You saved my life.”

“You cut it very fine,” Alice countered, grimly. She sounded shaken. Art tried to reach for her mind, but all he felt was a roaring pain at the back of his head. “A few moments later and...”

She shuddered. “But he’s out of it now,” she said. “That mad plan of yours worked.”

“Good,” Art said. Every word was an effort, but at least he could think. Maybe there was no permanent damage after all. “Call it in; get someone to come take him off our hands and shoot him with sleepers. We need him secure before...”

The darkness rushed up suddenly and bore him away into nightmares.

 

Chapter Twenty-Five<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

Saudi Arabia reported the world’s first major case of telepathic terrorism when an unknown telepath broadcast feelings of hatred and fear into one of the country’s major cities. The resulting chaos, perhaps inspired by the Harvard Blast in America, took the lives of over seven hundred men and women. Particularly targeted were the religious police, who were torn apart by howling mobs in the streets. Saudi Arabia, which has refused to consider rescinding the fatwa against telepaths, is bracing itself for further attacks.
-AP News Report, 2015

“You have to admit that the view here is great,” Leo said. He grinned as he lay back on the bed. “We have to rebel against the system more often.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. The penthouse suite on top of the skyscraper belonged to an oil millionaire who was currently in Texas, attending to business. The five telepaths – the remainder had headed to New York, instead of Washington – had walked through the building, convinced the servants that they were guests of the owner and had received the run of the place. None of the servants would remember them when they left.

“And the lifestyle of the rich and powerful,” Leo added. “We could have this for ourselves once we win the war.”

Valentine shrugged from where he was sitting, gazing out into space. “I was in touch with a few of my contacts,” he said, slowly. While four of the telepaths had remained in the penthouse, waiting for the word, Valentine had been out on the streets looking for allies. Leo had expressed a hope that Valentine would find other rebellious telepaths, but Valentine had referred to contacts in the underworld, people who lived their lives in hopes of frustrating The Man. “They’re impressed with what we’ve done so far, but they want more.”

Elizabeth frowned. “And what have we done so far?”

“My point exactly,” Valentine said. He smiled, without humour. Unlike the other three, he refused to show them what he was feeling, let alone thinking. He was older than them and perhaps mental privacy was more important to him, but it made it harder for Elizabeth to trust him. “Some of them feel that we’re just another band of runaways, while others fear that we’re working for the federal government and intend to arrest them when we meet them.”

“We’re on the run from the federal government,” Leo protested, pulling himself to his feet. “Don’t they know that?”

Valentine shrugged expressively. “It wouldn't be the first time that someone in authority managed to slip an agent into the underworld and maintain him there for long periods of time,” he said. “The FBI has undercover agents in most anti-government militia movements and criminal rings in America. The only ones that are fairly safe from penetration are the ones that demand a high entry price and even they are not immune to having their members turned, either because they want out or because they have been threatened by the law. I don’t blame them for feeling a little paranoid.”

“The FBI has agents everywhere?” Leo said. He sounded dazed. “How the hell do they manage that?”

“They wipe a person’s record and create a new one,” Valentine said. “There’s no shortage of ways to do it. Many of the gangs are always looking for new members and muscle. The infiltrators get plenty of training and support, everything they might need to slip into a gang. The FBI cannot condone infiltrating the gangs that demand that a person kills someone in exchange for a position, but the others...if the government believes that they could be dangerous, they get infiltrated.”

He grinned. “They have agents in right-wing militia groups and left-wing protest groups,” he added. “If there’s a protest march planned that might be inconvenient, it gets diverted or pushed into senseless violence. The riot at Harvard only went so badly wrong because there were people in the crowd who wanted to produce an excuse for cracking down on telepaths.”

Elizabeth remembered the riot and shivered. There might have been government agents in the crowd, but the feelings they had produced had been all too real. She’d killed then, she knew; hundreds of people were dead because of her, including many who hadn’t been trying to kill her. She wondered if she would ever wipe the blood off her hands. There were times when she envied Leo. His belief that telepaths were the superior race gave him a mental framework for dismissing the lives of ordinary humans. Elizabeth didn't have that luxury.

“Why?” She asked, hoping to divert attention. “Why would the government bother to infiltrate few harmless organisations?”

Valentine grinned. “The political organisations, left and right, exist to challenge the government,” he said. “It doesn't matter if they’re right-wing nuts who believe in returning the Ten Commandments to the courtroom and prayer to public schools, or left-wing nuts who want to ban nuclear energy and disband the military; they both challenge the government and the men who run it. Their mere presence is a threat to the government and governments always concentrate on securing their power first. They waste no opportunity to embarrass, discredit and eventually disband any such organisation.”

He winked at her. “Which is lucky for us, for it gives us thousands of potential allies, if we can convince them that we are worth supporting,” he added. “They’ve been stung before, so they will be careful at first. We have to prove ourselves to them.”

“We don't have to prove ourselves to anyone,” Leo snapped. He stroked his chin, where he was trying to grow a beard to fool the CCTV cameras that were already doubtless looking for them. It wasn't working very well and Valentine had already been talking about obtaining a fake beard for him. “We’re telepaths! They should be coming to us and begging for support.”

“I’m afraid they don’t actually see it that way,” Valentine said. “They need proof before they risk exposing themselves and it has to be dramatic proof, the kind of proof the FBI would never sanction. We have to make our position clear in no uncertain terms.”

“You’re talking about carrying out a terrorist act,” Elizabeth said slowly. She still had nightmares about the minds she’d sensed snapping out of existence at the riot, killed by her – even if she hadn't meant to do it. “How many people do you want us to kill to make the point clear?”

“Well, that’s rather up to you,” Valentine said. He grinned at her unpleasantly. “How much of a show of power do you want to make?”

“One that will make them back off and leave us alone,” Leo said. The icy determination – and hatred – in his mind shocked her. Elizabeth had known about his beliefs, but the new feelings washing through his mind were worse. “We could start by crashing a few aircraft and then perhaps picking off a political leader or two from a distance...”

“And that wouldn't win us any friends,” Elizabeth snarled. She didn't want to kill anyone again. “The mundane humans would be screaming for the government – and the Telepath Corps – to hunt us down as dangerously insane terrorists and they’d be right! We’ll just make them more scared of us, more determined to wipe telepathy out whatever the costs...if we are a separate race, we could be looking at extinction. They won’t let us set up home in Alaska after we have killed a few thousand people, will they? They’ll put us on Death Row and execute us.”

“We are the superior race,” Leo said, firmly. “We can win...”

“Oh, give it a break,” Elizabeth snapped. “You’re a telepath, not Superman. The last time I checked, a speeding bullet could catch us before we even turned to run and our skin isn't exactly made of armour. Reading minds isn't that great an advantage in a tactical situation - is it? Maybe we can send soldiers running away from us, or get them fighting each other, but we can't influence robots or drones. They’ll send an unmanned aircraft overhead and drop a missile on our heads and that will be the end of us!”

She realised that she was shouting and lowered her voice. “We are not gods,” she said. “We cannot afford to provoke a war of extermination.”

Years ago, while she’d been in college – it felt like a lifetime ago – she'd studied the Perfect Heresy, the rise and destruction of the Cathar Religion in France. They’d struck her as wonderful people, far superior to the Catholic Church – particularly after all the priestly abuse scandals – and yet they’d been destroyed by the Christians. Having right on one’s side was no guarantee of victory. And there were plenty of other examples of a race being threatened with extermination by an outside force. Hitler and the Jews were merely the most prominent.

“We need to make it clear that we can live in peace with them,” she said, finally. “If we start by committing mass slaughter” – again, her mind whispered – “they will have no way out of the crisis, save by slaughtering each and every telepath down to the very last man, woman and child. You said it yourself” – nodding to Valentine – “that government show a much smarter and deadlier side of themselves when their power is seriously threatened. We are going to threaten both that power and their reason for existence, protecting the American population.”

Leo stared at her as if he had never seen her before. “And you suggest...what? We cannot stay here forever. Even if the rich bastard who owns the place stays away for a few more months, we are consuming more food than they would over the same period of time. Someone might notice and then realise where we are. What do you suggest we do?”

“We cannot stay hidden forever anyway,” Valentine added. “That redneck fool senator is already talking about mandatory telepathic testing and drugging for telepaths who refuse to join the Telepath Corps and be indoctrinated into service to the government. It won’t be long before they bring in ID cards and random sweeps for subversives and unregistered telepaths, including us. And then where will we be?”

He leaned forward. “There is an election coming up in a few months,” he reminded them. “The person who wins that election will be the person who shapes the government’s response to telepathy. Do we want to risk hiding until we discover that the next President is someone who intends to make such mandatory precautions real?”

Elizabeth stared down at her hands. She hadn't realised, because they had all been so close back at the mansion, that Leo had brought his strongest supporters to Washington. She had wanted to go with him to keep an eye on him, but it suddenly crossed her mind that four telepaths on one would be quick and decisive. If Leo started to wonder about her loyalty, he might well kill her or try to rewrite her mind...

“We cannot start by killing people,” she said, trying to conceal her inner thoughts. Luckily, she would have known if anyone had actually been reading her thoughts. Being so exposed to one another had made them all more sensitive and more tolerant. “If we kill political leaders, it will turn them into martyrs rather than the criminal traitors they are. We need to embarrass them instead. That shouldn't be too difficult. The way they have been pushing for controls on telepaths suggests that they all have their guilty secrets. We peek into their minds, discover their secrets and then expose them to the world.”

“We can hardly step forward and tell everyone without getting arrested,” Leo sneered. “That is an absurd idea and...”

“No, we can't,” Valentine agreed. “On the other hand, we can definitely use one of the underground internet newspapers to spread the word. Quite a few of them have links to the more respected newspapers and television programs, so the word would spread quickly. If the political leader tried to sue, he’d discover that it would be impossible to save what remained of his reputation...”

He grinned. “Best of all, we wouldn't have to show ourselves so openly,” he added. “They’d know what had happened, but the world wouldn't know – which would make them wonder what else we might know that we have decided to keep to ourselves, so far. They’d be hit by their own inner demons...”

Leo laughed. “Anyone would think that they had something to hide,” he said. He grinned. Elizabeth blinked in alarm at the sudden burst of dark amusement that flickered through his mind. “I have a better idea. There are always political press conferences going on around Washington. Let’s crash one of them and make the bastard confess to his sins in public.”

He looked up at Valentine. “Wouldn't that convince your contacts that we are to be trusted?”

“Probably,” Valentine said, slowly. “They’d certainly be delighted at embarrassing a politician. We’d have to check with them first, though; they might have particular targets in mind. I’ll see to that now. Everyone else can get a rest and we will move out tomorrow.”

Elizabeth frowned inwardly, pulling her own mental shields around her. She still didn’t trust Valentine, even though Leo seemed to trust him completely. It would have been easier if Valentine showed his emotions to the other telepaths, but his mental shields had strengthened in the last few minutes. She had the distant feeling that she understood – too late – how he was manipulating Leo. He showered Leo in tales of government misconduct and offered to help make his dreams real. Leo probably hadn't needed much persuasion. He’d been convinced he was a superior form of life before the first telepaths had sprung into existence.

She shook her head at Eugene, who had sent her an unspoken invitation to share his bed, and walked into the room she’d claimed for herself. She hadn't risked having sex as a telepath – indeed, she’d curtailed physical contact as much as possible, like almost every other telepath – after hearing about some telepaths who became so closely entwined in one another that it had proven impossible to separate them into two separate minds. They might have been the lucky ones. Other telepaths – or telepath-mundane pairings – had failed because they’d suddenly learned all of their partner’s innermost secrets. Eugene was a nice boy, in his way, but he was very definitely a loyalist. He would have told Leo if he knew about Elizabeth’s doubts.

The room she’d claimed for herself had clearly been designed for a pre-teen girl, or perhaps a very soppy teenage girl. It was covered in pink; pink wallpaper, pink furniture and a pink bed. Elizabeth had laughed when she’d seen it, but after two days of sleeping in it she’d decided that she positively hated the colour pink. The laptop on the desktop was useless. The room’s owner had put a password on and Elizabeth’s poor computer skills couldn't unlock it. She shook her head, pulled back the sheets and settled down into bed. At least the pink mattress was comfortable. The maids had changed it for her on Elizabeth’s command, although they hadn’t been able to change the colour. Or perhaps there were simply no other colours.

She started to breathe deeply, focusing her mind. Professor Zeller’s old exercises – she wondered, briefly, what had happened to the Professor – still worked, allowing her to sleep in reasonable comfort. She hoped that her nightmares weren't being broadcast to the others. There was no such thing as privacy at night any longer, not in a world that included telepaths. She closed her eyes and started to think...

Leo had gone off the deep end, aided and abetted by Valentine. It was clear, just from his mental tone, that he actually believed most of what he was saying. Elizabeth had hoped that she could talk him into settling for less than total victory or defeat, but that was looking increasingly unlikely. Quite apart from Valentine whispering poison into his ear, the government was looking for them and wouldn't be too happy when they found them. It occurred to her that she could simply walk away and vanish into the shadows, relying on her own telepathy to keep her hidden, but Valentine was right. The government would be searching for them and, eventually, it would start mandatory testing for telepathy.

And Leo’s actions would probably make that inevitable.

Elizabeth’s thoughts chased themselves uselessly, around and around. If the telepaths frightened the normal humans enough, perhaps they would be left in peace – or perhaps it would be war to the knife. If two telepaths, linked together and panicking, had been able to wreck havoc in Harvard, she knew that thirteen would be able to cause vast damage, perhaps even break the telekinetic barrier. They could lay waste to an entire city...

No, she thought. That couldn't be allowed. If the embarrassment campaign worked, there would be no need for mass slaughter, no need for a war that could only end in genocide. She had to believe that it was possible, because otherwise there would be no home for her. She wished Professor Zeller was with them. His wisdom might have helped them find a way out of their predicament. Slowly, unwillingly, she fell into a fitful sleep.

***​

“There's still no trace of them?”

“No, Mr President,” the FBI Director said. “They haven't shown themselves at all. We have had no luck in tracing them to their final destination.”

The President scowled. There were thirteen rogue telepaths, among the most powerful in the world, loose in America. God alone knew what they were planning. The entire country had been placed on alert, watching for them. Once they were found, perhaps they could relax a little.

“And Professor Zeller?”

“Still no change,” the Director said. “His coma remains unbroken.”

The President nodded, reluctantly. He had hundreds of questions for Zeller.

And it looked as if they would never be answered.

 

Chapter Twenty-Six<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

The European Union today announced the development of a Euro Corps of Telepaths, who would be charged with supporting counter-terrorism activities and border security. Rumours have emerged from Brussels that the Euro Corps was brought into existence through the combined efforts of France, Germany and Britain – and done so over the objections of most of the European Parliament. Telepaths in France and Britain have helped expose and capture many terrorist cells in both countries...

...Russia accused the Chinese Government of allowing a telepath to peek into the mind of the Russian Ambassador to China, following a small border dispute two weeks ago. The Chinese denied the claim and accused Russia of attempting to undermine the Chinese Government...
-AP News Report, 2015

Senator Curtis Hughes was a beefy black man, elected twenty years ago to the Senate and, so far, hadn’t even been unshaken by the Tea Party Movement. Roger disliked him on sight, as did many others in the media, even though they knew that Hughes had been quite successful at pleasing his constituents. Rumours of scandals plagued his career, as they did to all political figures in the world, but somehow nothing had ever stuck to the man. He’d been quite willing to unleash an army of lawyers on anyone who dared to repeat some of the more outrageous rumours, including the one that linked him to organised crime and voting fraud.

He scowled as he stood in the press pit and watched as the Senator outlined his plans for the future, including a possible bid to become the Democratic Candidate for President. There were several other major figures in the party considering a run for President themselves, so it was clear that Hughes didn't want to show his hand too soon. Roger had never quite understood the process, but he did understand that the prospective candidate had to bring in enough funds, without exposing himself to the media for too long. The longer his name was in the public eye, the greater the chance of some of the mud that would be thrown at him sticking to him. It wouldn't be the first time a seemingly inevitable victor had been derailed by the sudden discovery of an embarrassing fact.

The Senator was, of course, talking about telepaths. “I say to you all,” Hughes thundered, “that the use of telepaths in law enforcement is quite unacceptable! Can a telepath tell the difference between a fantasy and reality? How long will it be before the Telepath Corps becomes the Thought Police, poking into our minds and using whatever it finds as evidence against us?”

Roger shrugged, jotting down the high points in his little notepad. As he understood it, from his interviews with Professor Zeller’s pupils, a telepath could easily tell the difference between a false memory, one born from a fantasy, and a true memory. The false memory would lack the hundreds of tiny impressions that the true memory would have - everything from temperature to ambient feelings. But the Senator was speaking to men and women who were scared of telepaths, worried that their innermost thoughts and feelings would be brought out on display. They might have good reason to worry. Only five days ago, a telepath – a thirteen-year-old girl in school – had been exposed, using her powers to read minds for her own amusement. The courts were still arguing over what, if anything, she could actually be charged with. Could she be charged with invasion of privacy or worse?

“And I pledge that should I be elected, I will ensure that every known telepath is told to go to Alaska and live there, or take sleeper drugs to dampen their telepathic powers,” Hughes continued. Roger lifted an eyebrow, wondering if he’d misheard. No, the other reporters were reacting as well. It was rare for political candidates to make such blunt statements, if only because their rivals would have a field day making fun of it. A statement in favour of one issue would ensure that everyone who was not in favour of that issue would line up on the other side. But then, telepaths were only a tiny percentage of the population. Losing their votes wouldn't matter a damn if the remainder of the population voted for him. “They will be taught to control themselves or be separated from normal people.”

Roger listened to the remainder of the speech, but there was little else of interest in it. As always, the Senator took questions from the media, carefully picking out the reporters who were sure to ask favourable questions. Roger rolled his eyes cynically; reporters always had their political favourites, the candidates they would root for, ignoring all traditions of journalistic neutrality. The first question was harmless, one about how the Senator treated his constituents; good for nothing more than a sound bite. The second was political dynamite.

“Senator,” a voice said, “is it true that you’re having a relationship with a woman called Yolanda who is not your wife.”

There was a stunned pause. A moment later, the Senator started to speak. “Yes,” he said. Roger stared in disbelief. By the look of him, the Senator couldn't believe the words coming out of his mouth either. “I fell in love with Yolanda after my wife refused my advances. I had tried to introduce her to some of my favourite sexual games, but she refused to play. Yolanda loved experimenting with me, although we sometimes went too far and I had to pay for her to get an abortion because an illegitimate child would have ruined my prospects of becoming telepaths...”

Roger – the entire press pool – just stared as Hughes destroyed his political career. The words just kept rolling out; he'd committed adultery on many occasions, he’d accepted bribes, he’d spread lies and nonsense about his rivals, he’d used blackmail and threats to ensure that his state got a large slice of the federal pie...there seemed to be no end to the confession. He was even talking about taking drugs as a young man and using prostitutes before he married his wife. The live feed from the event would be on CNN and Fox by now, he knew; none of the Senator’s army of lawyers or PR men would be able to stop it from going viral. The entire country would see it by afternoon.

“**** me,” he said, as the confession finally came to an end. He couldn't help, but notice that the army of supporters and assistants behind the Senator was a great deal smaller. Men and women who had believed in him had been disillusioned forever. Whoever ran against Hughes in the next election would not lose, even if he had his own scandals to overcome. “What the hell just happened?”

***​

Elizabeth watched from the sidelines as Senator Hughes collapsed on the stage. She hadn't meant to make him collapse, but there had been a sudden unexpected pressure in his mind, throwing her back into hers. A moment later, he’d just crashed down into darkness. She hoped that she hadn't killed him by accident, although after what she’d seen in his mind she found it hard to care. A world that had nothing, but telepaths wouldn't have such dishonesty in high places. It would be impossible to hide such a mind for long.

Come on, Leo sent. She’d insisted on doing the probe herself, knowing that Leo might well lose control and seriously hurt their target, instead of just humiliating him. It helped that the Senator had been terrified of telepaths, not without reason. His list of crimes seemed never-ending. We have to get out of here.

Elizabeth nodded and led the way out of the crowd. Hundreds of others were leaving, some already using their cell phones to call their resignations into the office. Others – citizens who would have voted for Hughes in the election – looked angry. How could they vote for him now? She wondered if they’d just switch en masse to the other party, or if they’d just stay home in disgust. The general mind tone was full of sudden anger. Hughes would be lucky to be elected to Assistant Garbage Disposal Officer if there was an election tomorrow.

“I expected him to have support from the Telepath Corps,” Leo muttered, as they kept walking. They could already hear the sounds of sirens heading towards the stadium. Someone had probably called the police and suggested that Hughes be taken into custody before his former allies in the criminal syndicates realised what had happened and sent assassins after him. Or maybe someone had realised what had happened and sent the police after the rogue telepaths. “They should have guarded him.”

Elizabeth shrugged, remembering the only Telepath Corps member she had ever met. “They might have had a peek themselves and discovered the truth about him,” she said, thoughtfully. “Hughes clearly decided that telepaths, even telepaths who were supposed to be on his side, were a liability. I think he’s just learned the error of his ways.”

Leo chuckled as two police cars drove past them. Elizabeth sensed the presence of a telepath in one of the vehicles and pulled her own mind inward, concentrating on hiding. The other telepath didn't notice them, his thoughts intent on something else. There was no way to know what without risking a probe and that would have certainly alerted him to their presence.

“And what will happen,” he asked, “when the Telepath Corps starts peeking into the heads of the people they are supposed to guard?”

Elizabeth smiled. Walking like this, almost as if they were two young lovers, made the world seem almost normal, just as it had been before her powers exploded into life. The illusion was shattered as they walked into a small cafe and met up with the other three telepaths, led by Valentine. Their thoughts were calmly focused, but glittering with victory. They had succeeded. Their task hadn't been as dangerous as peeking into the Senator’s mind and forcing him to spill his secrets in front of a captive audience, but it had been richly rewarded.

“Success,” Valentine assured them. “We got everything we wanted from the targets.”

Leo nodded. “And then I am afraid the next step in the plan is for you, Liz,” he said. Elizabeth nodded. She disliked that part of the plan, but it was necessary. Besides, it would keep her away from Valentine for a few hours. “Good luck.”

***​

Gary lived for computers. As a youth, his parents had bought him an old Windows machine that had been destined for the scrap heap. Gary had, instead, bought a handful of books on computers and somehow managed to repair and vastly improve the old machine. Other computers followed after his parents realised that he had a talent, each one expanding his knowledge of both computer hardware and software. Gary became a master programmer, cutting his teeth on Linux and other free programs, before expanding outwards into computer hacking and even mischief. He wasn't political, although he had once helped hack into a congressman’s computer after the man had demanded greater controls over the internet; his only concern was keeping access to his beloved computers. His apartment was crammed with the machines. When he ran them all simultaneously, as he did most of the time, he had to use air conditioning to keep the room cool.

The knock on the door reminded him that the real world sometimes intruded on his existence, an existence that was more in cyberspace than in reality. Given a choice between the cold greyness of reality – where a fat nerd like him would be mocked relentlessly – and the warmth of cyberspace, he knew where he wanted to live. Girls didn't mock him in cyberspace – one of his proudest achievements was discovering how to unlock the passwords of a hundred different porn sites and spreading them over the internet – and he could have them whenever he wanted. It was so much cleaner than living with an actual girl, or so he told himself. The girl at the door took his breath away.

She was young, shapely and adorable, just like his favourite porno star. When she passed him the small hard drive containing a list of computer servers and passwords, he knew that he was in love. He’d been told, by one of his contacts, that there might be a chance to hack into servers that – so far – no one had been able to access, but they hadn’t mentioned the girl. He would do anything for her. He took the hard drive back to his lair and – feeling nervous at even making a tiny pass at her – beckoned for her to follow him. He expected her to leave, but instead she followed him into the room.

He knew she was impressed because her mouth fell open. Grinning, he sat back down in his chair and picked up the manipulator glove that allowed him to manipulate objects within cyberspace. Very few people could use a glove naturally, but Gary – whose early experience had given him a freakish insight into how computers thought and reacted – had no problems using one. The girl looked suitably impressed as he linked up the hard drive to the computer network and started to examine it. It wouldn't be the first time someone had given him a virus, but most computer viruses couldn't thrive on his machine. It would need to be a virus designed specifically for his computer and he had been careful to make sure that no one had the information that would allow them to create one.

The data fell open in front of him and he smiled. He didn't know how she’d done it – he was sure that it was all her work – but the passwords of some of the most secure databases in the world lay in front of him. The secret databases of the banking sector, the insurance companies, the military-industrial complex, the state department...they were all open to him. He was barely aware of time passing as he started to poke through the internet, slipping through links that led to proxy servers and then into his destination. Secure firewalls that had daunted the most determined hackers fell open at his touch. They could hide nothing from him.

“All you have to do is spread this far and wide,” the girl said. Her voice sounded unbearably sweet in his ear, like the voice he’d ripped from a porn star and used for his alarm clock. “I want the entire world to know about it.”

Gary, who would cheerfully have killed for her, nodded. “Yes,” he promised. He knew that there was no way that a major babe like her would deign to kiss him, but at least he could dream. “I will make sure that everyone knows.”

***​

Elizabeth looked up at the wall of computers and fought hard to keep herself from bursting into laughter. It looked like a computer geek’s paradise, which she supposed it was, in a way. Gary seemed to live a twilight existence, having long since hacked into the power companies to make sure that they kept feeding his computers electric power without noticing that they were doing anything of the sort. Valentine had told her that Gary was unlikely to give a damn about politics, but like all such outcasts, a pretty girl could get through his defences with ease.

She looked down at his mind and realised that Valentine had been right. Gary was easy to manipulate, even without telepathy, not when she looked so much like his dream girl. She’d caught a glimpse of the image surrounding her in his mind and found herself smiling at how pretty she looked. She’d pushed a handful of other commands into his mind while he was distracted, covering her tracks. Even if the Telepath Corps peeked into Gary’s brain, they’d only see the porn star he admired. She wondered if they’d waste time trying to track her down.

The plan was simple enough. The most powerful firewalls in the world couldn't stop someone who had the right password, the passwords that Valentine and the rest of his team had been systematically pulling out of the right minds. The data that Gary found would be dumped out onto the web, creating a security nightmare for their targets. Even if they managed to wipe it out of the web, no one would ever trust their security again. The damage would be considerable, or so she hoped.

Gently, she touched Gary’s mind and implanted a fantasy, and then walked out of the apartment. She hadn't realised how warm it had been in there until she walked out, back into the outside world. Gary seemed to live in a hothouse. She would have been surprised if Texas was any hotter. Shaking her head, she walked outside and headed back to the meeting point, where the others were waiting. If anyone managed to trace the hacker back home, all they would find would be Gary. Oddly, exposing him like that caused her a pang of guilt. Gary had been a genuine innocent, without any fear of telepaths, or even hatred. All of his emotion was reserved for his beloved computers.

“Hey,” Leo said, as she walked in. He was grinning unpleasantly, his mind flaring with malice. “Take a look at that.”

Elizabeth glanced up. The television had been set to Fox News and the presenter was talking about Curtis Hughes. Leo clicked a switch and the volume came up, allowing them to hear what he was saying. The Senator’s career had come to an end. It seemed likely that he would never be free again; at least once all of the criminal acts he had admitted to committing were proven. She hoped that other political leaders took note. They could all be targeted by rogue telepaths. Maybe they’d see sense...

Or maybe they’d just become more determined to hunt them all down.

 

Chapter Twenty-Seven<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

Official Washington is reeling today after the shock confession of Curtis Hughes, formerly one of the prime Democratic candidates for the Presidency. Hughes, whose confession was broadcast live to the entire country, claimed responsibility for a multitude of criminal acts and has been taken into custody by the FBI. His angry political workers have deserted him in droves, two of them even going so far as to start a recall election. A spokesman for the Democratic Party pledged a full investigation prior to the DNC.
-AP News Report, 2015

“So,” a voice said. “How are you feeling today?”

Art’s eyes opened and he found himself staring up at a pair of naked breasts. For a moment, he was completely stunned and then he remembered. After handing the mind controller – Henry the Mind Controller, part of his mind whispered mockingly – over to the FBI, they'd gone back to their hotel and fallen into bed together. It had been a long time for both of them and they’d spent half of the night making love.

“Very good,” Art said, reaching for her. Alice came willingly and he felt her breasts pushing against his chest. He felt her desire as she touched him, feeling the emotions running through her body and mind. “And how are you today?”

She kissed him and, for a long moment, all thought was forgotten. Art could feel her pleasure as he touched her, caressed her and finally slipped inside her, allowing him to make her feel much better. Oddly, he was sure that she could feel him as well, even though it should have been impossible. Perhaps his telepathy had opened up a two-way link between their minds. For a second, he remembered the two telepaths who had merged into one being and almost drew away, before deciding that there was no better way to go. It didn't happen; when they separated, they separated permanently.

“I think we’d better get a shower,” Alice said, afterwards. She pulled herself off the bed and staggered towards the bathroom. “They want us back in Washington ASAP.”

Art blinked at her, and then reached for his cell phone. It was blinking away with an urgent message, ordering him to report back to Washington and the Telepath Corps as soon as possible. He opened his mouth to complain about her leaving him to sleep, before realising that it would be churlish. Besides, he wasn't too unhappy about the delay. He was still smiling when Alice left the shower – wearing a dressing gown and her hair down – and ordered him into the shower. He winked at her and held up the cell phone.

“I wanted to make sure that you were all right,” Alice said, by way of explanation. Art remembered the mental conflict with the mind controller and shivered. There didn't seem to be any permanent damage, but there were gaps and flickers of pain running through his memory. He recalled how the Telepath Corps had used stress-inducing techniques to help awaken new telepaths and shivered. He knew how they felt. “And besides, I wanted to take you to bed.”

Art caught the towel she threw at him and stepped into the shower, troubled. He hadn’t used his telepathy to force Alice into bed, yet there was a quiet nagging doubt. Had he done it unintentionally? The mind controller would have forced her into bed without a second thought, but Art...how could he know if the feelings she had for him were real, or something he had created in her mind? He turned on the shower and felt warm water sluicing him down, washing away the sweat and stains of sex. There truly was no way to know, apart from asking another telepath to probe her mind, and even that might not be conclusive.

You’ll find out when you die, a voice whispered in his mind. You’ll know if you had a lover or if you’re nothing better than a filthy rapist...

Art shook his head angrily and turned off the shower, towelling himself down as he stepped out and studied himself in the mirror. There were no obvious signs of injury caused by the mind controller, although the scars he’d picked up while on active duty still showed clearly. Alice had kissed them all, one by one, and he’d loved her for it. A soldier’s wife had a hard life and far too many marriages and relationships were broken up by the stresses and strains of combat.

“...The Stock Exchange is shivering after multiple hacking attacks on various banks and other companies left their secrets open for all to see,” the television said. Art frowned – he hated television in the morning, although it was closer to noon – and stepped back into the bedroom. Alice was sitting on the bed, watching CNN. “It has been discovered that several banks do not have the financial reserves to cope with a sudden run on their money. Furthermore, they have continued to invest in toxic stocks, despite the lessons of 2008. As the word spread, thousands of investors and private citizens have started to make a run on the banks, demanding their money before the banks run out of reserve cash.”

Art blinked. “What the hell?”

Alice tapped her lips and switched to Fox. “...Been confirmed that a group of rogue telepaths obtained the passwords for the State Department and the Pentagon’s innermost computer databanks and spread the word to the hacker community. In a deliberate repeat of prior politically-motivated hacking, the telepaths have been broadcasting the secrets to the entire world. It may be days before we obtain a complete list of secrets, but highlights known to be on the web include a secret plan to offer sanctuary to Saudi and Iranian telepaths and a military operations plan for withdrawal from Afghanistan...”

“My God,” Art said, in astonishment. “Who did this and why?”

“The Pentagon spokesman, General Harrison, stated that the combined telepathic and hacking attack was an act of terrorism,” the speaker continued. “Whatever the motivations of the key players, they have successfully weakened the United States and embarrassed the country in front of the world. The White House has not yet commented, but sources within the FBI have stated that hunting down and capturing the telepathic terrorist – or terrorists - has become the first priority for the FBI...”

Alice clicked off the television. “I spoke to Washington,” she said, wryly. “They want us back there for a meeting. It seems that the faecal matter has definitely hit the fan.”

Art nodded. He’d been a young Marine during the last financial crisis and could still remember how his parents had come alarmingly close to losing everything. The Marine recruits had wondered if they’d be called out onto the streets to keep the peace, although in the end that hadn't been necessary and they’d gone to Iraq instead. If it had happened again, with government budgets so tight, he doubted that there could be another bailout. Besides, if the bankers had been taken insane risks again, there country would not be inclined to let them get away with it.

“No arguments,” he agreed. “I take it that they have already arranged for an aircraft?”

Alice winked at him. “How did you guess?”

***​

The Telepath Corps had decided not to build a prominent headquarters in Washington, even though all of the other intelligence agencies had their own headquarters near the centre of power. It had been pointed out by various PR experts that most people preferred telepaths out of sight and out of mind – particularly the latter – and having a large and expensive government building would only provide a focus for tension and riots. For the moment, the Telepath Corps was operating out of a CIA installation near Washington, although as the separation between the two organisations got wider, they would probably have to move.

Art allowed Alice to precede him into the briefing room, giving him a chance to catch his breath and focus his mind. Inside, the room had been equipped for video conferencing, with the three Senators who served as the Oversight Committee and the President himself displayed on the screens. Doctor Sampson, Agent Evens and a handful of people Art didn't know made up the remainder of the conference. Agent Evens nodded to him, her thoughts agitated; her transfer to the Telepath Corps hadn't been entirely willing. And she wasn't a telepath herself.

“All links secure,” the technician stated. “You may speak freely.”

Art concealed a smile. The United States was good at creating secure communications networks, at least under normal circumstances. The NSA had designed powerful encryption programs that should have made it impossible for anyone to listen in to their conversation, at least under normal circumstances. What would happen if a telepath obtained the encryption algorithm or even managed to listen in telepathically? Professor Zeller had started out working with remote viewers after all and that part of the program had remained firmly with the CIA.

He looked up at the President, who looked pale and tired, and at the three Senators. Senator Walker – the blackmail victim – looked deeply worried, leaving Art wondering if there was a connection between the blackmail attempt and the current crisis. Senator Wallis looked calm and composed, yet there was something in his face that Art didn't like. He could tell, even without telepathy, that the Senator was trying to find a way to game the current crisis to his advantage. Senator Gilliam Forrester, a woman Art had never met in person, just looked harassed. Her constituents would be demanding action.

The President opened the discussion. “Yesterday saw the first outbreak of what we have come to call telepathic terrorism,” he said. “I don’t think I need to remind anyone that this situation is already highly volatile and could become much worse. Agent Evens – the floor is yours.”

Agent Evens nodded. “Thank you, Mr President,” she said. If she was intimidated by suddenly finding herself speaking to people who were normally well above her pay grade, she didn't show it. “The most notable event was the shock confession of Curtis Hughes. After he recovered from the shock, Hughes claimed that a telepath made him confess to his crimes and other...misdeeds. A telepath from the Telepath Corps was invited to peek into his mind and confirmed that he was pushed into admitting the truth. The telepath also discovered that what he admitted was the truth. He wasn't forced into lying about imaginary misdeeds.”

Art frowned at the thought. Could Hughes claim to have been forced to lie? Perhaps not – even if a telepath’s report wasn't considered legally admissible in court, the reporters were probably already trying to verify the story. His mistress would sell her story to the highest bidder and retire, once the quickie book and movie deals came through. She’d have to move fast, though; scandals didn't have a long shelf life before they were replaced by the next set of scandals.

“The second attack, however, was considerably worse,” Agent Evens continued. “The telepaths obtained passwords and access codes for hundreds of secure databases and passed them over to a hacker from the hacker community, a young man the FBI’s Computer Crime Division has been struggling to build a case against. We have that case now, but too late; the information he retrieved has already been distributed onto the net and has spread abroad. The results have been...worrying.”

She nodded to one of the men Art didn't know, who scowled. “The key to keeping our financial system working is public confidence,” he said, gruffly. “The public faith in banking has been low for the last few years, ever since the financial crisis in 2008. That has, in turn, hampered development, investment and future profit. Bankers are regarded as the lowest level of life form imaginable. We were working to attempt to rebuild trust, but the release of secure databases has shattered all of our work. The world now knows that parts of the banking system are still hollow.”

The President frowned. “Can’t we hold it together?”

“Not easily, Mr President,” the speaker said. Art winced at his mental tone. Deep inside, the man had already given up. “The problem lies in the public’s perception of the banks and their stability. If the public remains calm and refuses to panic, we can patch up the holes and keep the overall system going. The public, however, is not calm. The word is spreading that the banks are failing – each rumour only adds to the panic – and the public is trying to withdraw their money, which leads to others trying to withdraw their money as well...”

He shrugged. “The bottom line is that we may be looking at another financial slump, perhaps worse,” he concluded. “We do have emergency powers to try to slow the crisis, perhaps hold it back long enough to keep the system together, but they are unreliable. And then there is the effect of the attack in the first place. It made us look like fools.”

“True,” one of the other unnamed men said. Art realised that he was from the State Department. “The release of various secret documents from secure databases will have long-term implications for our security, as well as our relationships with other countries.”

“That’s a long-term concern,” the President said. “Who is responsible for this?”

Agent Evens bowed her head. “It would seem that the attack was carried out by the telepaths who escaped from the Zeller Institute,” she said. “We captured the hacker and peeked into his mind, finding only vague and unhelpful memories caused by another telepath. However, we checked the entire apartment and found DNA evidence – the person who visited the hacker and convinced him to help was Elizabeth Tyler.”

Art winced. He'd known that Leo was capable of doing something stupid, just to prove his own belief that telepaths were superior to normal humans, but he’d thought better of Elizabeth. She had been reluctant to assert any superiority and had been traumatised by what had happened at Harvard. Indeed, the more he thought about it, the more he wondered if the whole idea had not been hers. She wouldn't have wanted to kill anyone else. Leo, on the other hand, could blithely have killed thousands of people if it suited his aims...and he was allied with one of the most dangerous free agents in America.

“Which means that all thirteen of them have become terrorists,” Senator Wallis said. “Mr President, I don’t believe that we can delay any longer. We need to catch those...people before they get out of Washington, or before they cause even more havoc.”

“Yes,” the President said, dryly. “Now, where do you suggest we start looking for them?”

“We have a plan, of sorts,” Agent Evens said. “The problem, however, is that they may have left Washington. If so, the task of hunting them down becomes a great deal harder. They can interfere with the minds of non-telepaths and we don't have that many telepaths in the Telepath Corps...”

“So we draft them,” Senator Wallis said, sharply. “We order all of the registered telepaths to join the Telepath Corps for the direction of the emergency. We give them some training and add them to hunter teams. They can tell if someone is attempting to manipulate their minds and call in back-up from the Telepath Corps.”

Art exchanged a glance with Alice. He had to admit that the plan was sound, at least in theory, although it might take weeks before the terrorists were hunted down. The anarchist they had with them would know all the tricks and know where to hide, places that would be overlooked or ignored by the searchers. And telepathy gave them a major advantage, perhaps two; they would know where the searchers had been and slip into the cleared areas. Washington couldn't be sealed off like a city in Iraq, not if the President wanted to remain in power. He had to admire whoever had come up with the plan. The chances were good that half of the American population would hail them as heroes.

The President looked over at Art. “Captain Russell,” he said, “is that plan workable?”

Art flushed. He had never imagined that he’d be in a position to advise the President, not after he’d developed telepathy and had been recalled to the United States. The vague dream of rising to the top of the Marine Corps had always been nothing more than a dream, but now...all of a sudden, he realised what that meant. The wrong advice could do more than merely end his career. It could get people killed.

“The plan is sound,” he said, reluctantly. “I think, however, that it will require considerable training before a civilian telepath is ready to join the hunt. We need to get started sooner rather than later.”

“See to it,” the President ordered. He stared down at his hands. “I will have to address the nation in an hour. It would be nice to give them some hope.”

***​

“My fellow Americans,” the President said, an hour later. The cameras followed his every word. “We know now that the current economic crisis facing the country was caused by a group of rogue telepaths, who invaded minds and caused them to act in ways not suited to the country’s advantage. They have attacked our country and weakened the government.”

He paused. “After consultation with Congress and the Senate, in order to deal with this nightmare, I have ordered the drafting of every registered telepath into the Telepath Corps,” he continued. “All telepaths will be given training and then put to work to counter the terrorists and make our country safe again. I ask for all telepaths to respond to the call. Your country needs you. Your friends and families need you.

“This country has endured many a crisis,” he concluded. “We have survived them all and we will survive this one too. Goodnight – and God bless America.”

 

Chapter Twenty-Eight<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

The President’s decision to draft telepaths has been met by mixed responses from the public. Many have applauded the President’s decision, but both civil liberties and privacy advocates have questioned the use of the draft – the first since Vietnam – for recruiting telepaths to the government’s side. Public opinion is, in fact, divided on the so-called telepathic terrorists – they have a surprising level of support from many on the internet, including those who used to work for Curtis Hughes. Others say that forcing him to confess in public was cruel and a foretaste of what humanity might expect in a world dominated by terrorists...
-AP News Report, 2015

“Welcome to the lair of the revolution,” Valentine said, as he waved Leo and Elizabeth into the warehouse. “A third of the anti-government activity in Washington passes through this warehouse, from smuggled guns to propaganda leaflets that the feds would snatch and destroy if they got their hands on them. Your presence here is a sign of trust from the leadership.”

Elizabeth frowned. Valentine talked a good game, but the warehouse just wasn't that impressive. On the outside, it looked as if it was permanently on the verge of falling down, with a handful of homeless people gathered around it. On the inside, it was dark and grimy, with hardly any lighting worth the name. It struck her as more of a hideout for junior criminals than the heart of the resistance that Valentine kept talking about.

“Of course it’s not that impressive,” Valentine said when her doubts began leaking out of her mind. Elizabeth realised with a start that Valentine’s telepathy was growing stronger, but then they were all growing stronger. Being on the run forced them to develop stronger telepathy, for God knew it was their only advantage. In the two days since they had launched their first offensive – as Leo had, rather grandly, called it – they had come alarmingly close to being captured twice. If the policemen had had a telepath with them, the game would have been up. “What were you expecting? Perhaps you wanted bright lights and a sign reading SECRET MEETING HERE?”

Elizabeth flushed at his tone. “The underground knows that the only way to remain alive and free is to keep operating on the down low,” Valentine added, dryly. “They cannot risk being detected by the feds, or they’d come down on their heads like a ton of bricks. They know what they’re doing.”

“Fine, good, glad to hear it,” Leo said, tartly. They stepped into the main warehouse and stopped. There was no one there. Elizabeth reached out with her mind and sensed nothing. “Why did we come here?”

“The feds have been desperate to locate us ever since we embarrassed them,” Valentine explained. “We’re here because they need us to check out the loyalty of some of their people. The government is offering ten million dollars for our heads – preferably without the bodies attached – and they are worried that some of their people will take the shot at instant wealth.”

“Oh,” Elizabeth said. “I thought you trusted these people?”

“I trust the leadership, even if we don’t always agree,” Valentine admitted, “but what about the others? The junior members, the ones who might only be playing at being rebels who want to smash the system; the ones who have questionable periods in their past; the ones who may have ulterior motives of their own...we cannot trust them all.”

He grinned. “There’s an old military saying that says the largest trustworthy group is around fifty men,” he added. “After that...there are going to be divided loyalties, whatever else happens. You don’t get old in this business by taking chances.”

Elizabeth frowned. “But how can they trust us?”

“The government has put a massive price on our heads,” Leo pointed out, sharply. He sounded tense and Elizabeth wondered if Valentine had told him something more about the meeting than he’d told her. “They can trust us not to want to betray ourselves to the government, not after they started drafting telepaths into their army...”

Valentine looked up as a noise echoed through the warehouse. “You two go into that room and get ready,” he said, pointing to a dusty door. Elizabeth stepped over to it and discovered that the room inside was surprisingly clean and untouched. It had no windows and so they could turn on the lights. The person who had originally owned the room had a fondness for an Indian model, one with long brown legs and dark eyes to die for. Elizabeth ripped the calendar down and dumped it in the waste bin.

Twenty minutes passed slowly. Elizabeth could hear chatter outside, but it was impossible to read thoughts at that distance, at least without being able to see the person. She strained her mind and caught flickers of emotion – nervous eagerness mixed with trepidation – but sensed nothing else. Leo took a chair and sat down on it, his mental shields drawn tightly around him. She couldn't read anything from his mind at all.

The door finally opened and Valentine came in. “They have agreed to come in one at a time and be interviewed,” he said. “We didn't tell them that they were having their minds read – it would only have upset them. If one of them is a bad apple, someone working for the feds, freeze them and hold them. We can deal with them in a manner that will terrify anyone else who is even thinking about infiltrating our organisation.”

“Of course,” Leo said, too loudly. “When do you want to start?”

Elizabeth took one of the other chairs as Valentine went back outside. A moment later, he came in with a young man who was clearly determined to shock. He had shaved all of his head, apart from a single shock of hair in the exact centre of his skull, which he had dyed bright green. He had so many rings on his fingers that Elizabeth shivered, knowing that she would have been nervous around him if she’d seen him before she became a telepath. The sudden flush of lust through his mind as he saw her shocked and repelled her, even though she had thought she was used to such involuntary male thoughts. Men, particularly young men, couldn't help themselves when they saw a pretty girl.

Leo winked at her and reached out with his mind. Elizabeth followed him a second later, suddenly becoming aware of the young man’s puzzlement. He didn't understand what was going on, or why he was there and part of him was worried about it. His memories rose up in front of them and they swam through them, realising how the boy had grown up with an abusive mother and no father. He had no idea who his father had actually been, something that had nagged at him as he grew older. He’d drifted into the movement by accident, but had been an enthusiastic participant, once he realised that he was allowed to cause as much trouble as possible. He’d thrown stones at policemen, turned protests into riots and much more. Darker memories flared around them and Elizabeth looked away. She didn't want to probe too closely.

“Loyal,” Leo said, finally. He touched the young man’s mind, blurring it so that he wouldn't recall what had happened. “Send in the next one.”

The second person was a girl who didn't seem to have a single cell in her brain. Elizabeth had cracked jokes about dumb blondes before, but this one really was dumb – and, for some reason, she had dyed her hair blonde. She was possibly the stupidest person that Elizabeth had encountered, someone so caught up in the romance of being part of an underground movement that it honestly hadn't occurred to her to question it – or, for that matter, to develop any politics of her own. She could have been a fascist or a communist, a socialist or a libertarian – she just didn't have any convictions at all. Elizabeth rolled her eyes as other memories rose up and knew, somehow, that Cholula would burn herself out before too long.

But she was loyal, if only because she didn't have the imagination to be anything else.

The night wore on as seven more people were paraded before the telepaths. Elizabeth had sometimes wondered what pushed a person into the underground; now she knew, in so many ways. Some had the conviction that they were doing the right thing and that they had to fight against the system; some believed that it was the gateway to future power and position for themselves. A handful just liked the free drugs and even freer love. The parts of the movement that connected to the colleges and college students encouraged throwing away old taboos, helping the ones who would become true anarchists to lose their inhabitations, just so they could rebel against society and strive to bring it down.

The eighth person was different. She looked like a teenager, complete with tight jeans, short top without a bra and a weird hairstyle, but her thoughts were too ordered to be real. Elizabeth and Leo shared a glance and then reached out, realising in a moment of shared horror that they were looking at an undercover police officer. The policewoman wasn't a telepath – or else the game would have been over at once when she sent for help – but she recognised them. Elizabeth tore through her memories in a panic, feeling the cool contempt the policewoman felt for the people in the movement and her certainty that the movement was being exploited by enemies of America. Elizabeth saw the movement as the policewoman saw it and recoiled. It was nothing more than a group of silly children playing games.

FREEZE, Leo sent. The policewoman shivered and froze, unable to resist the telepathic command pouring into her mind. Valentine leapt up at once, heading out to warn the others that they had caught a spy and that their bases would be compromised. YOUR MIND IS OURS.

Elizabeth watched as he dug into the policewoman’s mind, pulling out everything she knew about them. The policewoman – her name was Cheryl, it seemed – had been placed within the movement a year ago and she was looking forward to leaving when her time was up, for she hated the movement. Elizabeth ignored that and pressed onwards; she’d been warned to watch for the telepaths, Valentine in particular. She hadn't been told why, much to Elizabeth’s frustration, which suggested that someone knew that she might encounter the telepaths in the future.

Leo had been more practical. He checked through her mind for any radios or other emergency supplies, and then carefully removed them from her clothes. A tiny button, it seemed, was a distress bleeper, something that would have had the Washington PD crashing in on the meeting within minutes. Another device was a tiny recorder that wouldn't have been fooled by any telepathic illusions. A third was a device that, after some prodding, her mind finally admitted was a portable DNA sampler kit. Elizabeth was horrified and yet relieved. At least they’d caught the spy before she could get a word out to her superiors.

True, Leo sent. Elizabeth didn't like the sense of grim resolve echoing through his mind, followed rapidly by a darker feeling she really didn't like. Leo seemed to be considering extreme options for dealing with the spy. On the other hand, they will suspect something when she fails to report back after the meeting...

Valentine returned to the room. “We have gotten the others out of here,” he said, grimly. “They know about the danger now, but we’ll have to act quickly. This bitch may not be the only one inside the movement.”

“She’s the only one she knows about,” Leo said, calmly. His mind started to slip into the policewoman’s mind, issuing new commands. Elizabeth felt the policewoman’s horror as her body went limp, no longer responsive to her commands. “I think that we can have some fun with her before we wipe her mind and dump her.”

Elizabeth stared at him in horror. “What are you...?”

Leo ignored her, concentrating on the policewoman, who stood up at his mental command. A moment later, her body started swaying in time to an imaginary beat, while her hands reached under her shirt and clasped her breasts. Elizabeth recoiled as the policewoman’s hands started to remove her shirt, leaving her breasts bobbing in the open air. Leo’s mind was pushing against hers now, causing all kinds of reactions; the woman’s mind was suddenly torn between a sickening arousal and outright terror. She started to cry silently as her hands reached down to her jeans and pushed them down, stepping out of them and then reaching for her panties. The thin silk was already stained with her unwilling arousal.

“No,” Elizabeth said, flatly. She reached out with her own mind, only to discover that both Leo and Valentine were controlling the girl. She couldn't free her from her sudden enslavement. “I won’t let you do this, not to anyone.”

She touched Leo’s mind for a second and was nearly sick. She had never realised just how deep his contempt for mere mundane humans truly ran, even though he’d been prepared to kill to achieve his goals. He thought he had the right to take the policewoman – to rape her – because he was superior – and because he’d been denied it when he’d been a mundane human himself. If he cared about the policewoman’s horror and terror, her own thoughts and feelings, it was only to enjoy her forced submission to his will. Elizabeth saw – and cursed herself for not seeing it earlier – just how far gone he truly was. A world dominated by Leo, or people who thought as he did, would be a nightmare.

“She would have betrayed us,” Leo said. The policewoman was still moving at his command, removing her panties and then bending over the chair, ready to be raped. Tears were still dripping from her eyes, but she was allowed no other movement. “You know that – she would have sentenced us all to death without a second thought. It is right that we punish her before...”

“And we are the superior beings,” Valentine added. His mocking voice echoed in the still air. “Why should the inferior not submit to us?”

Elizabeth stared at him, finally understanding why the policewoman had been warned to watch for Valentine in particular. He'd been carefully manipulating Leo ever since they had first met at the Zeller Institute, wearing away at what remained of his humanity until nothing remained, but the broken man convinced of his own superiority. And Elizabeth had helped; she’d helped them flee the Institute and helped them to carry out acts of terrorism against the country. And all of it had been meant to do nothing more than spread chaos. The fact that it made it impossible for Leo and his allies to expect mercy was only icing on the cake.

“I thought we were supposed to be better than them,” Elizabeth said. She gathered herself, knowing that if they both decided to attack her, she’d lose quickly. At least Leo had stopped fumbling with his pants. The frustrated rage was bubbling up within him, threatening to overwhelm his mind and what remained of his rationality. “How are we superior if we force them to have sex with us?”

Leo looked up at her and she recoiled, transfixed by the wave of emotion pouring out of his mind. A mixture of lust, anger and even misogyny, memories of a life spent knowing that he was smarter than most of his contemporaries, yet also knowing that his contemporaries rejected him and the girls he lusted for chose to go with the dumbass jocks rather than smart boys who wouldn't harm them. Elizabeth had never known just how deep his feelings ran, or how well Valentine had played on them. There was no hope of appealing to reason now. He wouldn't listen to her...

She lashed out with her mind, aiming at the policewoman and hoping to shatter the bonds Leo had placed on her mind. A second later, a wave of mental force from Leo sent her stumbling backwards to the floor, while Valentine leapt at the naked policewoman and knocked her down herself. Leo was on top of Elizabeth a second later, his mind boring down into hers and trying to knock her out; Elizabeth, suddenly thinking that he might want to rape her, found new strength and lashed back. Leo seemed to recoil from her mental blast, but before Elizabeth could capitalise on her success she felt Valentine behind her. A moment later, a blow landed on her head and she fell back to the ground. Strong arms gripped her, rolled her over and started to tie her hands behind her back.

“I told you,” a voice said, as if it was echoing from a far distance. She heard an ominous click, but she couldn't identify it through the pain in her mind. It seemed impossible to focus her mind on anything. She wasn't even sure what had happened. No, she knew that; someone had hit her from behind. She was trapped and helpless. “I told you that she didn't have what it took.”

“I thought she would come around,” a second voice said. The hands were working on her legs now, tying them together. She could barely feel anything though the roaring in her mind. It dawned on her, suddenly, that her telepathy had gone wonky. She was reading far too many minds at extreme range. “I liked her.”

“There’s no time for that in a revolution,” the first voice said. It sounded ruthlessly practical. “You’re going to be much more ruthless than that if you want to win.”

A moment later, Elizabeth felt another searing pain on her forehead...and then there was nothing, but darkness.

 

Chapter Twenty-Nine<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

The financial panic continues to spread with reports of additional banks going under or calling in their markers. A number of banks have called in their loans from foreign countries, resulting in a tidal wave of default racing through <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1lace>South America</st1lace> and <st1lace>Africa</st1lace>. The FEC ordered many banks to slow their trading and appealed for calm on Wall Street, promising that everything could be sorted out in time. Their words do not impress, however, and massive protest marches are expected in many American cities...

...In the meantime, a viral broadcast from the telepathic terrorists has hit YouTube and spread across the internet...
-AP News Report, 2015

“This isn’t working out too well.”

Art couldn’t disagree. The <st1:country-region><st1lace>United States</st1lace></st1:country-region> possessed around four thousand registered telepaths. Of those, roughly two-thirds were powerful enough to be useful and, at the same time, capable of controlling their powers and surviving for extended periods in normal society. Those telepaths had been drafted and ordered to report to the nearest draft office for processing, but many had simply refused the call. Others, who had wanted to keep their newfound power a secret from their family and friends, had been exposed and were furious at the government. Their lives had been ruined by the call from the draft board. A handful of civilian telepaths were even planning to sue the government.

He looked up at the map of <st1:State><st1lace>Washington</st1lace></st1:State> pinned out on the wall. The government had had to go back to pen and ink in a hurry and not everyone was adapting well, but until the government computers and databases could be secured there was little other choice. The government had been crippled in many ways – the central <st1:stockticker>IRS</st1:stockticker> database had been wiped, leaving the government without a solid record of taxpayers – and the repercussions of the damage were still being felt. Even if most of the lost data could be restored from back-ups, it would still be incomplete.

The Telepath Corps had deployed its active strength to support the more mundane law enforcement teams, but Art had no illusions as to the difficulty of their task. <st1:State><st1lace>Washington</st1lace></st1:State> was a massive city and the telepaths couldn’t be everywhere at once – besides, Leo and his band of merry men might well have abandoned the city by now. Worse, the residents of <st1:State><st1lace>Washington</st1lace></st1:State> didn’t like the idea of mandatory telepathic probes – even gentle peeks to prove that they weren't telepaths themselves – and outright chaos seemed permanently on the verge of breaking out. It could have been worse. Across the world, governments had dissolved into chaos or had been overthrown as the economic shockwaves smashed bastions that had seemed unbreakable. Even the more stable countries were having problems.

And the public paranoia against telepaths was growing stronger. In the two days since the economic attacks, several telepaths had been shot, including a pair from the Telepath Corps. One of the assassins had been caught and had been revealed, when another telepath had peeked into his mind, to have been a man who had cheated on his taxes and had been convinced that the telepaths would find him out. Art hadn’t been able to understand it when he’d found out. Cheating on one’s taxes was bad – or so he tried to convince himself – but it wasn't exactly the crime of the century. How guilty had the man felt that he’d been prepared to commit murder in hopes of covering it up?

“No,” he agreed, slowly. The problem was that most of the telepaths who wanted to be involved in law enforcement or intelligence-gathering had already signed up with the Telepath Corps. The remainder were either sullenly willing to work or simply unwilling to work, their irritation and frustration shimmering out into the mental field. Art knew that they didn’t dare put an unwilling telepath out in a position where they could do considerable harm, yet how much choice did they have? “This isn’t going well at all.”

“And then there’s this march,” <st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> added, flatly. “The government refused to try to block it.”

Art scowled. A day after the President’s broadcast, rumours had begun circulating in <st1:State><st1lace>Washington</st1lace></st1:State> of a massive public protest against telepaths and telepathic intrusion in law enforcement. It was billed as a March for Mental Privacy and was likely to attract most of the population of the city, instead of just the usual suspects of students and others with limited knowledge of the real world. The public anger was palpable in the wake of the economic shock and conspiracy theories were running wild. The latest was that the telepathic terrorists were actually working for the Telepath Corps, causing havoc so the Telepath Corps could take over the government. It was nonsense, of course, but people were starting to believe it.

“Yeah,” Art agreed. He shook his head in disbelief. This was <st1:country-region><st1lace>America</st1lace></st1:country-region>, not some godforsaken country in the <st1lace>Third World</st1lace>. Such things weren't supposed to happen in <st1:country-region><st1lace>America</st1lace></st1:country-region>. “What were they thinking?”

He looked up at the CNN broadcast from <st1:State><st1lace>Washington</st1lace></st1:State> and shuddered. Leo had released a video onto YouTube and it had spread wildly, moving from site to site ahead of any attempt to shut it down and wipe it from the internet. It was a mixture of threats and raving paranoia, claiming that telepaths were the superior race and, at the same time, the government had attempted to wipe them out. It had been picked up by the major news networks and had helped spread paranoia around the world. There were other statements that purported to come from the terrorists, but the video was the only one Art believed. It had the right mixture of arrogance and pompous self-justification that he had come to expect of Leo.

<st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> stepped up to him and took his arm, giving him a kiss. “I think that they were worried about their freedoms,” she said, tiredly. He could sense her frustration every time their bare skin touched. “And if Leo wins, will they have any freedom at all?”

Art scowled. Once the first telepaths had entered the public eye, it hadn’t been long before people had started writing novels and producing television programs about what living in a world dominated by telepaths might be like. Art had read a couple of them and declared them nothing more than airport reading, but some of the books had dripped paranoia, claiming that telepaths would want to be worshipped and would know – instantly – if their servants were harbouring any rebellious thoughts. The optimistic ones – if such a word could be used – had ended with telepaths being killed or neutralised by tailored viruses, while the pessimistic ones could have given the Draka books a run for their money.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. Detective work came hard to him. He would have preferred a visible enemy he could shoot. Even running counter-insurgency in <st1:country-region><st1lace>Afghanistan</st1lace></st1:country-region> was preferable to this. “I just don’t know.”

***​

Crowds had been gathering outside the White House all morning, even though the protest wasn't officially scheduled for several hours. Roger watched from the safety of the press pool as the protest organisers started handing out placards and signs for the protesters to carry, a strange mixture of anti-telepath statements and demands for mental privacy. The crowd was the largest one he had seen in his entire life, far larger than the protest march at Harvard or even back before the Iraq War. Telepaths touched everyone in the <st1:country-region><st1lace>United States</st1lace></st1:country-region>; no one, whatever their feelings, could remain immune.

He glanced up as a police helicopter clattered overhead, watching the protesters from high above. The policemen gathered at one end of the protest looked concerned, those who weren’t wearing masks and body armour to protect their bodies. Roger had heard through the grapevine that the march had been banned and the protesters had gathered anyway, daring the police to do anything about it. Nothing had been confirmed, which suggested that it was just a rumour, but still…the air smelled of trouble. He remembered Harvard and shivered. The crowd didn’t seem to care about the danger.

From high above, he knew, the crowd would look like a single living creature. Roger had protested himself while he’d been in college and knew how it felt to be part of a greater entity. A crowd knew nothing of common sense, or even of self-preservation, not once the mob mentality had taken over. People who would otherwise be smart enough to stay out of trouble would be lobbing rocks at the police and breaking windows, as if wanton violence and destruction would help them achieve their aims. A telepath wouldn't have been able to operate near the crowd, he hoped; even for a non-telepath, the waves of concentrated feelings were almost overpowering.

He made his way through the fringes of the crowd, trying to ignore the blaring music someone had set up from a vehicle they’d brought into the street, towards the protest leaders. They were unfamiliar, thankfully, but when he asked they refused to be interviewed, citing privacy concerns. They assured him that the protest wasn't about a minor issue and the people who had come to the protest were more important than the leaders. That was odd – normally, protest leaders loved the spotlight and had to be pushed out of it – but Roger was forced to accept it. They seemed unwilling to comment further, on or off the record, and they refused to be filmed. He decided not to point out that the entire march would be under police surveillance from high above.

The stewards were working on the crowd as he slipped back to the press pool. The crowd started to chant loudly, ringers in the crowd shouting out the words, knowing that others would be swept up in the wave. “WHAT DO WE WANT? MENTAL FREEDOM! WHAT DO WE WANT? NO MORE TELEPATHS!” Roger shivered again as the noise echoed out over <st1:State><st1lace>Washington</st1lace></st1:State>. It looked as if the entire city had come out to join the protest march. The crowd started to move, heading past the White House and up through the inner core of <st1:State><st1lace>Washington</st1lace></st1:State>. The noise was shaking the entire area. Roger hoped that the congressmen and senators were taking note. The crowd was in an angry mood and wasn't likely to vote for them in the future.

And then it all went to hell.

***​

Art had been – mentally, at least – cowering away from the noise in his mind. The crowd seemed to have turned into a single massive psychic broadcaster, blasting their unholy din into his mind and into that of every other telepath in <st1:State><st1lace>Washington</st1lace></st1:State>. Art could sense flickering headaches all over the city through the mental waveband, telepaths feeling the noise and suffering because of it. He pulled his shields as tightly around his mind as he could and tried to hold out. <st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> and the other non-telepaths were lucky. They might be deafened if the noise grew much louder, but at least they wouldn't be risking mental damage.

And then he sensed it. There were sly intrusive thoughts, beaming out into the crowd. He glanced up, sharply, realising that an unknown telepath – several unknown telepaths – were beaming violent thoughts into the crowd. The emotions were bitter and twisted, yet they would somehow be amplified by the crowd, spread from person to person like a virus. The crowd’s mass mental tone was shifting, growing uglier and more violent by the second. Art reached for his radio, desperately trying to sound the alert, but it was already too late. No one saw who threw the first punch, yet within seconds the crowd was turning on itself and everyone else. The crowd-monster was convulsing in pain as alien thoughts lashed into its combined mind…

A fist slapped Art’s face and he fell back. The crowd wasn't the only group affected, he realised in horror; the telepathic memes were being broadcast into the police and watching civilians as well. <st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> was staring in disbelief as her hand moved, seemingly of its own accord, to slap Art again. Art caught the hand and, using the sudden mental contact, pushed the maddening thoughts out of her head. She stared at him and then jumped back as one of the police liaison officers tried to take her head off with his truncheon. Art flattened him with a punch and then looked around, down into hell. The police lines had collapsed into an orgy of violence and rape. Several policemen were firing randomly into the crowd, some lost in the madness, others aware of what was happening, yet unable to stop it.

Art took <st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City>’s hand for comfort and opened his mind just a tiny fraction, hoping that he could survive the mental maelstrom long enough to locate the telepaths responsible for the growing disaster. The impact of so many minds thudded into his soul, but somehow he held himself together long enough to sense the enemy minds. He didn’t recognise their mental touch, which suggested that they were either some of Zeller’s former pupils or completely new terrorists. Locating them was difficult, but somehow he managed it.

“Come on,” he snapped, and pulled <st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> with him. He pulled his mask on as tear gas canisters started to explode, although there was no way to tell if some of the police had regained awareness or if they had just started firing off tear gas at random, still caught up in the nightmare. Art skirted the edge of the crowd, knowing that to try to wade through it would be suicide, and cursed under his breath as a body fell in front of him. A man large enough to be a sumo wrestler had blocked his path, maddened eyes overflowing with hated and rage. Art didn’t hesitate. He drew his pistol and shot the man in the leg.

<st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> followed him as he came up to the press pool – the reporters were fighting each other, smashing their equipment in the process – but it wasn't them who caught his attention. The enemy telepaths were broadcasting their thoughts out to the crowd, which meant that they were detectable – no amount of telepathic shielding could hide them. They had to have slipped in while hiding in one of the media vehicles, Art realised, or else they might have been caught ahead of time. He lifted his gun and pointed it towards the three telepaths. Leo himself, sadly, wasn’t there.

“Stop it,” he barked. Even in his best parade-ground manner, it wasn't loud enough to be heard over the riot. The backwash of emotions was chilling – he was sure he could sense minds just snapping out of existence, either dead or losing themselves completely. They might never recover from what had been done to them. “Stop it now!”

The three telepaths looked up at him in shock – they hadn’t expected to be caught – and reached out for him with their minds. Art had expected that and pulled the trigger at once, blowing a hole through the first telepath’s head. The other two fell backwards in shock – their minds had to have been linked to allow them to survive the crowd and broadcast poisonous thoughts into the ether – and collapsed, blood leaking from their ears. Art hoped – even though he knew they needed information – that was shock had been enough to kill the bastards. He had no idea how many people had died in the riot, but it had to number in the hundreds, at least.

He checked both telepaths, reassured himself that they were both out of commission for the moment, and then keyed his radio. “You need to send in reinforcements,” he ordered, hoping that the reserve forces hadn’t been contaminated by the mental broadcast too. His mind felt musty as he rebuilt his shields. “I’ve stopped the broadcast, but we need help.”

The crowd was slowly coming back to its senses. Very few of them had come for violence and, as the alien thoughts faded out of their minds, they stared down in horror at what they had done. The police were no better. They’d turned on themselves in an orgy of violence, or worse. Art looked away from one of the police officers. He was staring down in horror at what he had done, unable to believe his eyes. The poor bastard had murdered his partner.

Slowly, order was restored with the help of Marines from the nearby Marine Barracks. Art found himself in the odd position of issuing orders to officers he would have saluted months ago, but there was no time to worry. There were thousands of injured people on the streets and hundreds – perhaps thousands – of dead bodies. The streets of <st1:State><st1lace>Washington</st1lace></st1:State> had run red with blood. Sickened, Art saw to the transfer of the two captured telepaths to the Telepath Corps and then joined the rescue teams. He owed it to the people he had failed to save.

***​

Roger came back to himself slowly, feeling the strange unwanted thoughts fading out of his mind. He found himself looking down on a scene from hell. Kristy McHale, a bitch of an anchorwoman, lay in front of him, her skull smashed in by a rock. No, by a camera, the same camera he held in his hand. Sickened, unable to believe his eyes, Roger slowly collapsed to his knees. What had he done?

He’d killed her. There was no way around it. He’d murdered a woman he didn’t like – hated, in fact – and part of him had enjoyed it. The nightmarish thoughts at the back of his mind mocked him. He’d killed her and he’d loved every last moment of it. He told himself that even the Wicked Bitch of the West – as she had been called by her enemies – didn’t deserve such a fate, yet it was hard to convince himself of that. It was so hard to even think clearly.

“Dear God in Heaven,” he said, finally. For the first time, he realised just how far the madness had reached. He had been far from the only victim. “What happened?”

He had a feeling, somehow, that he already knew the answer.

 

Chapter Thirty<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

At latest report, over two thousand people died in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:State><st1lace>Washington</st1lace></st1:State>, with far more than that either injured or maddened beyond immediate recovery. The city is under martial law; Marines from <st1:City><st1lace>Quantico</st1lace></st1:City> have joined the <st1:State><st1lace>Washington</st1lace></st1:State> PD and <st1:State><st1lace>Washington</st1lace></st1:State> National Guard in maintaining order in the wake of the chaos. The President has appealed for calm and is, according to official statements, in a secure and undisclosed location.
-AP News Report, 2015

There was a dull roaring in her head, a sense that she was on the verge of fading back into madness and pain. The headache was lurking at the edge of her perception, yet every time she thought about it, she felt new twinges of pain tearing her mind apart. She wasn't sure if she was alive or dead, or trapped endlessly in a hell within her own mind. The darkness seemed to be alive in its own way, pulling her towards oblivion. She wasn’t even sure who she was, or what she was doing…or what had happened to her.

<st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City>, a voice said, in her mind. Your name is <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City>.

The thought was like an anchor for her. She clung to it gratefully, even as the pain seemed to grow stronger, a permanent ache in her head. The thought somehow made her stronger; if she had an ache in her head, she definitely wasn't dead, nor was she in Hell. <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> focused, trying to concentrate on her own memories. Thoughts and feelings roared around her, yet it was hard to recall what had happened before she had collapsed. Her mind had been traumatised, she realised, and she was unable to recall what had happened to her because her mind was trying to protect her. The thought was galling, yet…where was she?

As if the thought was a key, her eyes sprung open. She hadn’t even been aware that they were closed until daylight flared into her mind, sending a wave of pain screaming through her body. <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> wanted to scream and discovered to her horror that no sound came out of her mouth. Her mind raced, unable to decide if she was deaf or mute or…she realised, a second later, that someone had gagged her. The thought was such a relief that she almost fainted back into the darkness. She wasn't deaf.

All right, she thought, focusing on her own mind. What happened?

Her mind stubbornly refused to unlock and reveal its secrets. Instead, she heard a moan and turned around. For the first time, she realised that her hands and feet were bound, bound so thoroughly that she could barely move. She managed, finally, to twist her head and look towards the source of the moan, a naked girl lying on the floor. She, too, was bound and gagged; her eyes were wide with panic. The sight finally unlocked her memories and <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> nearly fainted again. Leo – the man-boy she had liked enough to trust, at least to some extent – had tried to rape the other girl.

The memories were vague on precisely what had happened. Someone had hit her, she suspected; she certainly felt concussed. Who had it been? Leo had been in front of her and besides, he’d resort to telepathic power rather than a physical struggle. Had it been Valentine or someone else? If so, who could it have been? And where were they now?

A nasty thought ran through her head and she checked herself as best as she could. No, she was still fully clothed, which was a relief. And she was stuck. If Leo and the others had abandoned her, they had left her alive only to starve to death. She doubted that they would come back for her, not if Valentine was calling the shots. Leo might be sentimental towards a fellow telepath – it explained why she’d been left alive, at least – but Valentine had no conscience. The real surprise was why he’d left her alive in the first place. Had it been just to please Leo?

She scowled to herself, feeling the gag pushing uncomfortably against her lips. In the movies, the damsel in distress could always free herself – if she wasn't waiting for the prince to come and free her – but real life worked differently. A few moments of struggling convinced her that whoever had tied her hands knew exactly what he was doing. She could barely move, let alone break the ties or unpick the knots. The movies had made it look easy…

A thought crossed her mind and she reached out with her telepathy, only to recoil as a sudden headache blasted back into her mind. She hadn’t even noticed the absence of pain until it returned. Her telepathy was useless, perhaps permanently. The thought didn’t distress her as much as she would have thought. It wasn't as if the telepathy had been useful for her. She’d been used, by Leo and the others, to help spread terror across the country. What did it say about her, she wondered, if the only reason she’d turned against them had been having her nose rubbed in just how evil they were?

There was another moan from the other girl. When <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> looked over at the undercover policewoman, she found that she was giving her a reassuring look. <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> would have laughed, if she could; she’d helped get the policewoman into the mess and the policewoman was trying to comfort her? The thought only made her more determined to escape, but how…?

Slowly, she pushed her tongue against the tape Leo had placed on her mouth. It was hard – the taste was horrible and she wondered if the glue was poisonous – but somehow she managed to keep it up. It was painstakingly slow, but eventually she was able to work off the gag and spit out the rest of the glue. At least she could breathe normally…the policewoman made another sound and <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> realised in a flash of understanding that they could get out. It was hard to crawl towards the policewoman, but eventually she found herself in a position to start working on the ropes binding the policewoman’s hands behind her back. She bit the poor girl several times before finally biting through the ropes. A moment later, the policewoman was able to stand up, free her legs and then remove the gag.

“Thank you for saving me,” she said, as she started to unbind <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City>. “They didn’t touch me after knocking you out.”

“Good,” <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> said. How had the policewoman known that she had needed the reassurance? Had she developed telepathy after her capture? “What do we do now?”

The question brought a wave of despair running through her mind. Where could she go now? She couldn’t go back to Leo, Professor Zeller was in a coma…and besides, she was still a wanted criminal. Perhaps it would be best to surrender to the authorities and let them decide her fate. Even Death Row would be preferable to a life on the run, with everyone trying to hunt her down.

“You’ll be fine,” the policewoman assured her. “I’ll speak for you. You risked your life to save mine.”

<st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> was still puzzling over that when the policewoman, having recovered her clothes from where she’d been forced to dump them, picked up her radio and called in to her office. Ten minutes later, a single police van arrived, with two police officers and a single telepath. Her own telepathy wasn't working properly, but she didn’t need it to sense the policewoman’s consternation. Her call should have brought a small army of policemen to her aid.

“All hell has broken loose up near the White House,” one of them explained. “The entire department has been sent there. We were only cut loose because you mentioned a prisoner from the enemy side.”

“Yeah,” the policewoman said. She looked over at <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City>, sympathetically. “I'm afraid we’re going to have to arrest you for the moment, but everything will be all right.”

“No, it won’t,” the telepath said, as the policeman slipped cuffs onto <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City>’s wrists, locking her hands behind her back – again. “I’m afraid that nothing will ever be the same again.”

***​

<st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> frowned as she studied Elizabeth Tyler through the one-way glass. The girl had been attractive when they’d first met, back when Professor Zeller had announced the birth of a whole new set of telepaths, but now she looked beaten down by events. The Telepath Corps doctors, the most experienced in dealing with telepathic patients, had inspected her and reported that she was basically fine, apart from some malnutrition and minor injuries. They hadn’t been able to explain the odd mental effect surrounding her.

It was weird, but the more <st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> looked at her, the more she was sure that she knew what <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> was feeling, perhaps even thinking. The report from the captured policewoman tended to confirm it, and she – like <st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> – was no telepath. Somehow, <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> was broadcasting her thoughts and feelings to anyone within range, even if they weren't telepathic. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, even though it was clear that the girl had no idea what she was doing. Had a single bump on the head inverted her telepathy?

“It would appear so,” Doctor Sampson said. They stood together, watching the girl. <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> had been left in the interrogation room alone, her hands cuffed to the chair, while the Telepath Corps argued about what to do with her. Technically speaking, she was a terrorist, yet she’d risked her life to save another life. The courts were going to have fun deciding what to do with her. “Everyone seems to know what she’s feeling, if not thinking. I think the rest of her life is not going to be fun.”

<st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> frowned and quirked an eyebrow at him, puzzled. “Most telepaths are capable of putting up mental shields to prevent themselves from being bombarded by outside thoughts,” Sampson explained, dryly. “Miss Tyler, on the other hand, may not be able to prevent herself from broadcasting her thoughts. She will have no privacy for the rest of her life, even if she lives away from other telepaths. Even a non-telepath will be able to pick up on her thoughts.”

“I see,” <st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> said. The thought was sickening, in a way. She knew that Art – she had stopped thinking of him as Captain Russell at about the same time they’d started sleeping together – could read her mind, but she trusted him not to peek more than strictly necessary. Besides, having a lover who could tell when she was happy – and what gave her pleasure in bed – was wonderful. But being unable to prevent it from happening? Who could endure such a life? “Is there nothing we can do for her?”

“We could try injecting her with sleeper drugs,” Sampson said. “The problem is that we don’t fully understand what’s happening. Professor Zeller used to claim that all humans were broadcast telepaths, yet no one had the ability to pick up on thoughts – at least not until the first telepaths came into existence. Yet what she’s doing tends to neglect that, at least to some degree. She’s broadcasting her thoughts to anyone within range.”

<st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> considered it. “Telepaths are capable of mentally altering a person’s mind,” she pointed out. “Perhaps the ability is a warped version of that – she can’t stop herself from broadcasting her thoughts, rather than mental commands.”

“Could be,” Sampson agreed. “Which does rather lead to the next question – what are we going to do with her?”

“The only thing we can do,” <st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> said. “We get her to work with us.”

She grinned, nastily. “At least she won’t be able to hide anything from us.”

***​

<st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> sat on the hard chair, feeling the throbbing in her head slowly recede. After two tries, she had given up on using her telepathy, not after developing a massive headache that had come close to killing her. Or so she had felt. She wasn’t able to read any minds, even that of the doctor who had examined her or the female officer who had escorted her to the shower and toilet. Her head just felt delicate, as if she’d been drinking too much the night before. The bumps and bruises on her body didn’t help.

She looked up as the door opened, revealing a blonde woman who was oddly familiar, although it took her a few moments to place the face. The woman had visited Harvard when Professor Zeller had made his announcement to the world and again after the Harvard Blast. She didn’t seem much older than Elizabeth herself, but her face was tired and worn. There was a nasty glint in her eye that <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> didn’t like at all.

“Good afternoon,” the woman said. “My name is Alice Spencer and, for the moment at least, I am…charged with dealing with your case. Do you know what happened this morning?”

<st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> shook her head. “I was a little tied up at the time,” she said, sardonically. She hadn’t even realised how much time had passed until they’d escaped the warehouse. “What happened this morning?”

“Your friend Leo and his gang attacked a protest march,” <st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> said, flatly. <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> realised, in a flicker of horror, what had happened. “They broadcast memes – I don’t pretend to understand how – into the crowd. The result was a bloody riot and mass slaughter. The death toll, so far, is upwards of two thousand people.”

<st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> felt sick. They’d discussed the possibility when they’d been on the run, but she had thought that she’d talked Leo out of using it. Valentine, on the other hand, must have encouraged him to try it…and, without anyone to hold him back, Leo would have taken the idea and run with it. Every mind that accepted the memes would start broadcasting them onwards, as well as physically attacking everyone within reach. Unlike most forms of telepathic control, pain and shock wouldn't break the victim free. It might even linger if the telepath was killed.

“Whatever Leo is up to, it has to be stopped,” <st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> snapped. <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> couldn’t disagree. “We need you to help us catch him. Where is he now?”

“I don’t know,” <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> said. Briefly, she outlined their hiding places, but she knew that Leo and Valentine would have the sense to move, once she deserted them. She might have managed to get a telepathic message off before they knocked her out, although she didn’t know who she would have tried to call. Telepathic communication only worked when done between two telepaths who actually knew each other. And besides, whatever they’d done to her head, it had killed her ability to send messages. “I really don’t know.”

<st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> nodded. “I believe you,” she said. She smiled, a smile that left <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> wondering what she’d missed. <st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> wasn't a telepath, unless she’d developed telepathy since last they’d met. Perhaps the chair was a lie detector in disguise. “Which leads to the next question, doesn’t it? What does Leo want?”

“I don’t know if it is Leo any longer,” <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> admitted. She started to tell them about Valentine. As she spoke, she had the odd impression that <st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> already knew most of what she was telling her. “Leo thinks that telepaths are superior and wants us to rule the world; Valentine…I don’t know what Valentine wants, except that he has been manipulating Leo ever since they first met.”

“Yeah,” <st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> said. “He’s the one with the knowledge that makes him dangerous.”

<st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Later,” <st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> said. She looked down at <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> for a long moment. “You know that you’re in deep ****, right?” <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> nodded, reluctantly. “You could be charged – hell, you have been charged – with terrorism and economic warfare. The chances are good that they will end up filing charges of treason as well – the information you leaked from the Pentagon cost lives and treasure. You need to work to earn a pardon, if that is even possible.”

“I know,” <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> said. She felt the bitterness welling up within her and tears starting to form in her eyes. “I was wrong. I…I was wrong.”

<st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City>, oddly, reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Yes,” she said. “Everyone makes mistakes when they’re young and so sure that they understand the world. Your mistakes were just…larger and more damaging to others than most mistakes. You aren’t innocent, but you’re not completely guilty either.”

<st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> snorted, bitterly. “Not completely guilty,” she echoed. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me,” <st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> said. She stepped back and smiled. “The choice is yours. You can help us track down your former friends and allies, or you will be transported to a holding pen prior to a short trial. The population wants blood, Miss Tyler; they will be happy with your blood, if it is offered to them.”

“I know,” <st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> said, again. “How long will it be before they come for your blood too?”

<st1:City><st1lace>Alice</st1lace></st1:City> shrugged. “It’s already started,” she said. “Protests outside Telepath Corps facilities have turned into riots; gunfire has claimed the lives of several telepaths…we even intercepted a steam of mail bombs sent to <st1:State><st1lace>Alaska</st1lace></st1:State> and the telepath towns there. If you have any loyalty to your country, or your people, or even your type, help us now before this gets out of hand.”

<st1:City><st1lace>Elizabeth</st1lace></st1:City> didn’t really need to think about it. After what Leo had tried to do – and what he’d done in <st1:State><st1lace>Washington</st1lace></st1:State> – she no longer believed in his cause. Telepaths weren't superior to anyone else, any more than a woman was superior to a man because she could bear children. Telepaths just had an extra ability. Maybe one day the entire human race would be telepathic, but until then…they would have to live together. And Leo would make that impossible. He would provoke a war that would only end with one side exterminated or enslaved. He had to be stopped.

“I understand,” she said. “Whatever it takes, I will do it.”

 

Chapter Thirty-One<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

In the wake of the disaster at <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:State w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Washington</st1lace></st1:State>, seven states have introduced emergency legislation banning telepaths – registered or unregistered – from residing within their borders. These unconstitutional measures are expected to pass through state legislates within the week. They may not be in time to save hundreds of lives as a number of real or suspected telepaths have been shot dead over the last two days, while others have gone into protective custody. The ACLU has fractured over the last two days, with no coherent response to emergency pleas from civil liberties campaigners…
-AP News Report, 2015

“So,” the President said. “What do we do now?”

He had always disliked the emergency bunker. Located twenty miles east of Washington, hidden under a farm that had been – covertly – federal property since the 1970s, it seemed cold and sterile to his gaze. It was a chilling reminder that he’d been forced to flee Washington and even though he knew that the President had a duty to remain alive and free, it was galling. At least he wouldn't be running for re-election. His opponents would have made much of any flight from Washington, no matter how necessary. They’d have said that the President had abandoned the citizens of Washington to their fate and they would have been right.

There was a long pause. Nine men and women had joined the President’s videoconference call, yet no one seemed willing to commit themselves to anything. The Vice President seemed to be the least willing of all, not least because he was hoping to make a run at the Presidency himself – if there was a next election. The President had never seriously considered that there might not be another election, or another President, but now he wondered. After what had happened in Washington, after Harvard, how long would it be before the fundamental glue holding America together melted?

“Perhaps we should look at the results of the disaster,” the President snarled. “There are only thirteen rogue telepaths, just thirteen, and look how much damage they have done to us! Just thirteen men and women have brought us to our knees. What happens when they decide to do something even worse?”

The FBI Director coughed. “There are only nine left now,” he said. The President looked up, hopefully. There had been so much to do that he hadn't been able to follow the progress of the investigation. “One is dead, shot through the head by Captain Russell; two were captured and transported to the Telepath Corps holding centre...and one was apparently abandoned by her fellows after she turned on them.”

“I see,” the President said. He scowled down at the table. “And what have you learned from the two captive telepaths?”

“Very little of use,” the FBI Director admitted. “They were kind enough to give us the location that they’d been using for a base, but when we abandoned it...”

He paused. “I should show you the video instead,” he said, grimly. “Mere words cannot describe it.”

The President watched grimly as the video sequence began to run. All SWAT and SF force carried tiny video cameras these days, used mainly to allow them to study and learn from their mistakes. A handful had been used in courtrooms as evidence that someone had genuinely been captured while engaged in terrorist operations, or that a person hadn't been the victim of mistaken identity, shot down by his own rescuers. He’d authorised the deployment of the technology personally, believing that it could be used to counter black propaganda run by the enemies of the United States.

The SWAT team had gone in first, followed by five telepaths from the Telepath Corps; their progress monitored by a UAV hanging high overhead. They had met no resistance; the staff in the building had just been sitting on the sofa, waiting for them. The moment the team burst in, the staff members had started to chant and nothing, not threats or pleas, had managed to quieten them.

“WE ARE SUPERIOR,” they chanted in brainwashed unison. “WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE.”

The President shivered. The Telepath Corps had authorised an emergency peek into their minds and had discovered, to their horror, that the staff members had been brainwashed. No, in many ways it was worse; their minds had been ruthlessly rewritten and then locked in place, beyond any help from mere humans. Even telepathic mental care, practiced by a handful of telepaths who had gone into the medical field, had been unable to help them. They might never recover.

“Miss Tyler has been much more forthcoming,” the FDI Director confirmed, changing the subject. The President felt only relief. “However, she was actually knocked out and abandoned by them a few hours before they started their operation in Washington, so while we are convinced that she is telling the truth, there are certain limits to what she can tell us about them. Her telepathy – which appears to have reversed, broadcasting her thoughts and feelings to anyone within range – makes it impossible for her to lie to us.”

“But they have moved their bases,” the President said, sourly. “Can she tell us anything useful?”

“We’re still asking her questions,” the FBI Director admitted. “We know, now, that Leo – their leader – is definitely under the influence of our renegade anarchist. We did wonder if the anarchist was really a telepath at all, but sadly Elizabeth Tyler was able to confirm that he was definitely a telepath. As to what they want...their goal, as far as we can tell, is to cause as much havoc as possible. There is no real political goal.”

The President scowled angrily. “So all they’re really doing is lashing out,” he said. “What the hell does that gain them?”

“Very little, apart from anarchy,” the FBI Director explained. “But then, that’s what the anarchists want. We know that the rogue telepaths were involved with checking for FBI operatives within the underground movements and located quite a few, leaving us blind when we need their services desperately. The anarchists want anarchy, Mr President, and they will do whatever it takes to create it.”

The President nodded. On his desk was a draft law proposed by the Senate, one that would see the entire country brought under martial law. Everyone living in the United States would be forced to undergo telepathic screening...and, if they were found to be telepathic – or have telepathic potential – they would be forced to move up north to Alaska. The ones who refused would be transported to internment camps and kept permanently drugged, at least until they changed their minds. It was a violation of everything the United States stood for, yet somehow he knew that it would be passed uninaminously through the Senate and Congress. He would have the choice between vetoing it – and perhaps being impeached by an angry Congress – or signing his name to the most inhuman act committed in America since the internment of the Japanese-Americans in 1942. The polling firm had told him that public feeling would be soundly behind the act, once they heard of it, but that was no surprise. He had only to turn on the television and watch the news to know that. There were anti-telepath marches and riots in a dozen cities and plenty more were simmering with anger.

“I understand,” he said. He pressed his hand to his forehead. “Is there nothing we can do to catch them before they do something worse?”

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff answered the question. “We can be fairly sure that they’re still in Washington,” he said. “The NSA traced back their second message to a cyber-cafe in the city, a message sent after martial law was declared and a ring of steel erected around the city. We can search the city thoroughly for them, knowing that they cannot get out without breaking our line. We have considerable experience in searching cities...”

“They’d just have to keep their heads down and the lines would pass over them,” the FBI Director disagreed. “Do you have any idea how hard it would be to search a city the size of Washington? It isn't as if you can destroy it as you move through the city...”

“We know what we are doing,” the Chairman snapped back. They were all tired and impatient, and guilty. They were watching their beloved country falling apart. “We can do it.”

“If there is no other choice,” the President said, “then we will have to search the city. If we can't come up with any other options by nightfall, we will start searching the city tomorrow morning.”

He forced his face not to reveal his anguish. The logistics of searching an entire city were going to be herculean, to say nothing of the damage the soldiers would wreck as they moved through the city, even without terrorists and insurgents sniping at them. Or maybe they would have terrorists and insurgents sniping at them; somehow, he doubted that the criminal gangs would allow the soldiers to search their drug dens without a fight. And then there was a prospect of citizens being pushed into resisting the soldiers by the rogue telepaths...

“We’ll speak again at nightfall,” he concluded. “Until then...well, good luck to us all.”

No words had ever tasted so bitter in his mouth.

***​

“Do you think they did this to you on purpose?”

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said when Art posed the question to her. Simply being close to her was an ordeal, because he could sense her thoughts even though his mental shields. His mind kept reacting as if he were under attack. “I can't see Leo trying to develop the techniques to do this, but...”

Art nodded. As a punishment for a rogue telepath, a deflector, he couldn’t think of anything better. Elizabeth would have no privacy for the rest of her life, wherever she lived. Depending on what kind of deal was made in the end, he suspected that she would end up living alone, perhaps up in a survivalist cabin somewhere in the woods. He remembered an old friend who had become a survivalist and made a mental note to look him up. Perhaps he would know a suitable property for her.

“On the other hand, he does love the grand gesture,” Elizabeth added. “Maybe it’s his idea of a joke...and a warning to anyone else who might be thinking of changing sides.”

Art tasted her bitterness and nodded. Elizabeth hadn't known what she was getting into and, unlike many others who had been sucked into the terrorist networks, she had at least tried to break free and save a life. An undercover policewoman owed Elizabeth her life, if not more, even though she hadn't been able to discover much before she was caught. The anarchist networks were drawing together; once the police spies and suchlike were eliminated, Art had no doubt that they would be used to cause havoc. Leo would have the grand gesture of his dreams.

He stopped, dead. A thought had just crossed his mind. He should have dismissed it at once, he knew, and yet it was impossible to push the thought back out of his mind. If Leo liked the grand gesture, then...there was one grand gesture that would appeal to both Leo and his secret backer, the number one terrorist target in the entire world. It was insane, it was unthinkable, and yet it was impossible to dismiss. It might just work.

Art keyed his cell phone and called a very special number. “Alice, it’s Art,” he said. The problem with his idea was that the moment anyone higher up than himself got wind of it, it was going to be squashed without the President ever hearing about it. Art knew what he would do to a junior officer who brought him such a plan and somehow he doubted that anyone higher up the food chain would be enthusiastic about the plan. “I need to speak to the President, personally.”

Alice sounded shocked. “Art...why?” She asked. He couldn't blame her for worrying about him. Unlike some CIA officers he’d met, she was genuinely worried about the men and women under her command. “I can get you a chance to talk to him, but he might not be willing to listen.”

“Just let me speak to him for ten minutes,” Art said. He winked at Elizabeth, who was staring at him in surprise. She wouldn't like the idea either and he had already resolved not to mention to anyone that she’d been there when he’d thought of it. It would only upset them. “I think I can convince him to listen to me for longer.”

In the movies, he would have an instant line to the President and as much time as he needed. In the real world, the President had very little time to deal with anyone, even being so exalted as foreign leaders and even Senators and Congressmen. The concept of him having more than a few seconds for a mere Captain was absurd, but then he was a Captain in the Telepath Corps and, to all intents and purposes, the field team leader. Alice might end up as the permanent Operations Director, yet without telepathy she couldn't command telepaths on active service. Art could and did.

He ignored requests – and then outright orders – from various people to tell them what he wanted to tell the President. Alice took some of the flak for it as she cleared the way through a small army of secretaries and assistants, before the President was finally notified that Art wanted to speak with him. The delay didn't amuse Art, who found himself wondering what would happen if – when – terrorists unleashed a major disease in an American city. The entire country could be infected in the time it took to alert the President. Finally, in a secure video room, he had his conference.

“Mr President,” Art said. He’d been told that normally any junior officer would be briefed on White House Protocol, but it hardly mattered during a state of emergency. “We need to catch those bastards before they do anything worse and we need to do it without tearing the city apart.”

“Of course,” the President agreed, dryly. Art had done nothing more than state the obvious, after all. The President would hardly disagree that the terrorists needed to be hunted down and killed before they did something worse. “I understand that you have a way to capture them. Do you have a way of peeking across the entire city, perhaps?”

“I’m afraid not, Mr President,” Art said. The Telepath Corps had tried linking their minds together and searching for Leo and the remaining rogues, but there had been no sign of them. The telepathic field they’d generated didn't have anything like enough range to scan the city. “We do, however, have another idea.

“We’ve been proceeding on the assumption that Leo is actually the one in charge,” he continued. “We now know that that isn't entirely true. Leo is being manipulated by the older and wiser Alvin Greenwood, whom he knows as Cyrus Valentine. Greenwood – or Valentine – is an anarchist. He delights in causing chaos, both to show the weakness of society and to force the forces of reaction – that’s us – into a massive crackdown that he feels will win them more recruits. I think it was him, not Leo, who picked Washington as the target for their madness memes.”

“I follow your reasoning,” the President said, calmly. There was no trace of agreement or disagreement, but Art had expected neither. “What does that allow us to do?”

Art took a breath. “There is one target in Washington that he would want to target, above all others,” he said. “Leo would want to target that target as well, for different reasons. It strikes me that if we played out cards carefully, we could lure the bastards into a trap and destroy them once and for all.”

“Right,” the President said, calmly. “And what is this target?”

There was a long pause. Art braced himself. “You, Mr President,” he said. In a moment, he'd know if he had saved his career, or shattered it beyond repair. “Leo hates you because you brought in all the legislation for controlling telepaths, legislation he sees as an attack on his entire race. Greenwood hates you because you are the personification of authority...”

“Not for half the country, I’m not,” the President said, wryly. “Half of the country is composed of sore losers after each election.”

“Yes, Mr President,” Art agreed. He thought about adding the other reason Greenwood/Valentine would have to target the current President in particular and decided that it would be pointless. “If you were to be exposed, they would use you as their next target, rather than someone or more vulnerable.”

The President stared down at his hands. “The Secret Service is going to hate you,” he said, flatly. “I’m not sure if I shouldn't refuse outright.”

He shook his head. “I’d have to hold a press conference,” he said. “And it would have to be in an insecure area. There would be other dangers, apart from telepathy.”

“Yes, Mr President,” Art agreed. He hesitated. “I don’t think that anyone would hold it against you if you refused...”

“When you’re President, you’ll understand that sometimes the only purpose of this job is to serve as a punching bag for everyone who has had their feelings hurt,” the President said. “It would be nice to be more proactive, just once.”

He looked up at Art. “I’ll make the arrangements,” he said. “And Captain...you must catch these bastards before anyone else gets hurt.”

His image vanished from the display. Art sat there, slowly shaking his head. One way or another, he was committed now. No matter how anyone looked at it, protecting a person who had to be exposed to the general public was difficult, even for the United States Secret Service. The President was the greatest target in the world, as far as terrorists were concerned.

One way or another, he knew, the die was most definitely cast.