Day 32

Orin kept reassuring her, and so I found myself leading the way. The two guards were still standing at their posts.

<< What has happened? <<

The telepathic contact was clear in my mind, but I hesitated to answer Orin's question. The death of their sister had broken the triplets' closed telepathic loop, and Morana was likely to hear everything I was thinking. There was no way to let Orin know this and spare her feelings at the same time, and the still-sounding alarm was likely summoning more guards as we spoke.

>> The two surviving sisters are no longer one person. You're with Morana; Val is the more violent one and she's headed to Bowers. >>

Morana grit her teeth. She'd clearly heard me but chosen to say anything. Orin nodded knowingly – though the now-dead Robin had been with him at the time of his kidnapping, he apparently hadn't seen what had become of her. Now he knew, and he wondered if he was any safer now than he had been in the cell.

“No time, no time!” Morana was muttering. Guards were appearing everywhere now, and her limits were becoming apparent. Only about half of any given group would stop moving, and Jamie and I had to keep hitting the rest with stunners. Eventually their surprise at finding us would wear off, and they'd shoot us before they got the chance.

Bowers' control of the city was working for us; these Troopers, the ones designed to guard him, didn't carry radios because he hadn't forseen that they'd ever need them. Not to mention that these guards were lacking the chip that protected them from stunning; Jamie had discovered this earlier by reflexively shooting one of them before Morana had managed to stop the rest. Bowers must have thought his own amplified mind would be sufficient to the task of keeping everyone awake. He'd thought he'd be able to coordinate everything in event of an invasion. Now, though, that coordination had been broken.

I opened my mouth to tell everyone to pay attention to when we got surface Troopers down here, as Damien had demonstrated they carried radios and were expected to check in. The uniforms were different aboveground; more camouflage there and guard uniforms here. I tried to say all of this, but the words wouldn't come. Suddenly there were no words, and the only thing to escape my throat was a cry of pain that I couldn't explain.

There were guards ahead, and they were screaming too. Their faces revealed that they were just as perplexed as us at this development, then they realized we weren't supposed to be there. There were four of them, and none of them froze. Morana had collapsed to the floor, holding her head and rocking, saying something I couldn't hear over the tortured screams of everyone else in the room.

For a brief moment, there was overwhelming blinding agony in blackness.

Then, no screaming, no pain. My mouth closed of its own accord. Jamie stunned the similarly bewildered Troopers, having apparently been the first one to recover.

“What was that?” Orin asked, shaking his head as though to clear it.

“Remember how you saw me back in Haven?” I asked him.

He nodded, suddenly enthusiastic. “It's good to know that I am not going senile in my old age, and that I had in fact seen you!”

“I'd plugged myself into an old amplifier. Bowers has one of his own, and it's a lot better. Whatever's happening to him, it can't be pleasant.” I said.

Morana had stood up. “Val is doing this.” She shook her head and started running down the hall, without even checking to see if we were following. We had little choice; it was only a matter of time until the stunners would be useless.

We turned the corner to find a lone person rushing toward us; Jamie fired the stunner out of reflex and Morana ran right past without even slowing. I, on the other hand, stopped where I was. The stunner had had no effect.

“Thank God, I've found you.” Dana said, unaware that Jamie had just tried to knock her out. Morana's footsteps were quickly vanishing into the distance. I gestured for Dana to follow us as I tried to follow Morana. The sisters' talents were strong enough to locate both Bowers and Orin from a distance; I wasn't that good. If I lost Morana it was likely I'd end up completely lost down here. I couldn't even remember how to get back up to the surface.

Dana kept talking in between breaths – she'd clearly ran the entire way to find us. “Val... she's more bloodthirsty... than I thought.” I wasn't sure if she was telling me this to get me to move faster toward the problem or faster away from it. “She's torturing him... I ran to find you before she started, but... well, you felt that. He's still plugged in.”

Orin was struggling to keep up. I could tell he wanted to reassure us somehow, but I wasn't sure that was even possible. Our trump card – the only reason we'd even got close to the heart of Trooper operations to begin with – was a deeply disturbed person who was likely to kill a powerful telepath while the latter was still plugged into the amplifier. Given how powerful the prototype I'd been hooked into had been, and the fact that this one was far more modern and its user far more experienced, there was no telling how many people would die if his own death was amplified through it.

I caught up to Morana, who was banging on a steel door similar to the one that had separated the hallway and the prison. She was yelling incoherently, and though I could tell there were people on the other side of the door, I couldn't tell whether they even heard her.

Jamie was the epitome of grace under pressure. Morana still had the Ident card we'd taken from the prison guard, and Jamie took it while our trump card was still ineffectively using her fists on the door. She swiped the ID, and the door opened.

A room not unlike the control room I'd been in just earlier that week was before us. This one had been fully staffed until very recently, though, and the equipment was far more modern. Most of the monitors were showing error messages or extremely erratic vital signs. The technicians whose jobs it had been to monitor the monitors were all slumped over.

Stepping into the room revealed that things had quickly gone from bad to worse. The amplifier room itself was visible through broken glass, and Bowers was still on the table I'd seen him on when I'd first used my own amplifier.

I'd heard the phrase 'a broken man' before, but never had I seen the literal representation of it. Jeremy had been disconnected from the machine, which was the only reason we weren't all writhing in agony and clutching kneecaps we'd believed shattered. Val stood over him, a bloody tire iron that had once belonged to Dana clutched in her hands. She was laughing, a long low laugh that hinted at a horrible hysteria. Even as we watched, transfixed, she brought the iron down on Bowers' shoulder. There was a sickening cracking noise and a hoarse scream from the man who had until moments ago ruled the entire city on his own.

The noise was what did it. I ran forward to the door that connected the rooms, and everyone followed. Bursting through, I tackled Val.

If I'd been thinking clearly at the time, I probably wouldn't have done it.

There was no pain, no feeling at all really. Just a spreading coldness and a sensation of falling, a sensation weight. I was so heavy, so cold and numb. My vision died, blackness creeping in from the edges as all my senses shut down. I wouldn't be needing them anymore. It was all over. I'd lived a good life.

“No!”

The voice had seemed impossibly distant when I'd heard it, yet Morana was still saying it when the world sprung suddenly back. I breathed deeply, unaware that I'd stopped. The sound of my blood flow in my ears was nearly deafening. It, too, had stopped. I slowly began realizing that I'd been dead.

“He tried to hurt us.” Val said, her voice as cold as the place I'd been moments before. She stared at me hatefully.

“He tried to save you.” Morana said to her. “You were beating a man to death! I already lost one sister. I don't want to lose you, too.”

Val kept looking at me, teeth grinding and hand still clutching the bloody tire iron. She looked as though she wanted to resort to using it instead of her indifferent ability to recall death. Then her eyes closed, she let out a sigh, and dropped the crowbar.

“What have I become?” she said, finally moving her horrible gaze from me, instead looking toward her sister.

“Come, sister. Let us leave this place.” Morana walked forward, wrapping an arm around her sister, nearly holding her up. All of Val's strength seemed to have left her.

I stood, not recalling when I'd fallen. I glanced over at Bowers and saw that he'd passed out from the pain. He was breathing shallowly, and though there was blood it didn't seem that he was bleeding much, at least not externally. The only one of us who could even in theory provide medial assistance had been Robin, and I doubted what remained of that woman would help. She wouldn't finish him off, true, but restoring him to health was quite a different beast altogether. It was probably good for all considered that he hadn't been hooked up to the amplifier when he passed out, else the entire time zone would probably be taking a nap.

Actually, that wasn't such a bad idea.

I turned to Orin, who was looking at the sisters with worry. “Orin, those stims that Gallow had distributed to everyone before the sleep-bomb went off, how do they work?”

Orin thought for a moment. “If you mean biochemically, I'm afraid I don't know. If you mean practically, they provide an amount of protection against Trooper-made stunning effects. Taken beforehand at the right time, they entirely prevent the stun from working. Taken afterward they can wake someone from the stupor. Even a partial dose shortens the duration of the effect.”

“Are they more effective than the Trooper chips?”

Orin shrugged. “It depends on the magnitude. The Trooper chips are designed specifically to filter out stunners and sleep-bombs. They don't help against even other telepaths projecting sleep.”

I nodded. This was starting to come together. “When do you distribute them? If there was an evacuation, for example, would you give everyone some?”

Orin laughed lightly at this. “If there was an evacuation, everyone would take as much of it as they could carry. It would need to supply them and everyone at the safehouse they'd be assigned to.”

“Dana, I need you to hold on to this.” I said, handing over my stunner. Dana had been looking down at the tire iron as though trying to decide whether it was salvageable.

She took it, but asked “Why? Aren't you going to need it? We'll have to do a lot of blasting to get out of here.”

I shook my head. “If this works, we won't have to blast anything. I'm going to hook myself up to the amplifier, and have you stun me.”

Dana considered. “It's a solid idea; I don't think Bowers would let Troopers get outfitted with chips that would block out his sleep commands, so it's unlikely they'd work. Do we have any stims?”

Morana and Val had seated themselves in the control room, but Morana looked up as I asked this question. “I have my share from the attack, as does Val.” she frowned. “Robin's mind-blindness rendered her immune to the sleep-bomb, but we hadn't been sure, so we had medicine.”

Dana shrugged. “So we'll pass out, but we'll wake up before the army out there. Good enough. Only problem, Derek, is that I recall you saying something about the last amplifier being the most hideously painful thing you'd ever endured, and that you'd rather chuck yourself off a cliff onto jagged rocks than try on a baseball cap, let alone the amplifier had.”

“It's not like I have a choice.” She was right about the amplifier. I could only hope Bowers had improved on the prototype. Otherwise it'd be very painful indeed, though chances were good I'd survive. Whether I'd manage to fight through the pain before the Troopers got to us, that was a different question.

Jamie came up to me and kissed me, deeply. Then, sighing, she said, “You'd better come back alive, because I do not want that to be our last kiss.”

“It won't be.” I promised. I turned from them, looking again at the mutilated but still living body of Bowers. I knew it wasn't the amplifier which did this to him, but I couldn't help but wonder if I'd share his fate. Then I took the helmet and put it on my head.

I nearly fell over; the amplifier had been running this whole time and to come into it mid-session was disorienting, to say the least. I was aware of the whole city, apparently the last thing Bowers had been trying to concentrate on before he'd been forcibly disconnected. The Troopers from aboveground had indeed already filtered underground, and were already spreading throughout the compound. They didn't suspect yet that their leader was under siege, else they'd be making their way directly do here. That'd buy me time.

My hopes about this amplifier had been justified, it seemed. There was no pain, no disorientation other than the first moment. I felt like I always did, only now my range was farther than I'd ever known it to be. I could see everyone in the room I was in, feel their minds like I always had, yet I could reach hundreds – perhaps thousands – of miles north and know each telepathy in that area.

I began taking a census of every telepath in Trooper controlled territory. There were untold hundreds of thousands, more than even I had thought in my most optimistic estimates. Afflicted and quarantine zones accounted for some, safehouses for others, but by far the majority were people who didn't even know they had it. It lie dormant in them, the plague having allowed it but letting something else be the catalyst of its awakening. I was awed.

I didn't have time. Someone had come across one of Bowers' personal guard, and come to the conclusion that the leader himself was under attack.

“Close the door, try to secure it.” I said, out loud. My friends seemed surprised to hear me speak normally, but Dana closed the door and Jamie began working on a way to keep it closed.

I went back to my census, gathering together in my mind everyone in the rebellion, everyone from Haven. It would take too long; I'd just have to broadcast to everyone. I looked at Dana.

“Get ready.”

I hoped desperately that Troopers didn't carry stims. I doubted they would, as they considered themselves immune.

>> >> >> >> USE YOUR STIM, NOW! >> >> >>

Everyone who wasn't telepathic in the room used their stim instinctively as the suggestion overpowered them. Everyone who wasn't telepathic in the entire time zone did the same thing. Rebel leaders would likely not recognize the mind-voice. Would they obey? The stims did have side-effects and shouldn't be overly used, but there was no real harm in sticking yourself with one. I waited, precious seconds melting by, seconds during which the Troopers came to the stuck door and tried to knock it down. I smirked, remembering the siege that had begun all this. We'd come full circle.

Jame hadn't had time to prevent the ident readers from opening the door. One of the Troopers on the other side swiped theirs, and the doors opened.

“Now.” I said to Dana. If I waited, it'd be too late.

She pulled the trigger.
EPILOGUE:



REBELLION!

“ATTENTION, LOYAL MEMBERS OF OUR CIVILIZATION:

Do not panic! The rumors you have heard are true – a years-long plot by telepathic elements, some deeply planted within our organization, has come to fruition and hurt us greatly. Many cities north of here are in open revolt against our just rule, against the law that has protected them since the Plague Wars.

All is not lost! We have in custody the former vice-president, Jeremy Bowers, the apparent mechanism by which the plot was launched. The telepathic plan to rule us from within was thus uncovered and thwarted, and the device which allowed Bowers such unmitigated control has been destroyed. Never again will we allow the impure to hold such a high office. Effective immediately, all Trooper elements are being tested for telepathic influence. We shall root out all Afflicted, and put them in their proper place.

Should you show any symptoms of Affliction, turn yourself in immediately! You will not be harmed, but we cannot allow you to possibly be used by the rebellion.

They are everywhere, only here in Meadows are you safe! Stay indoors! Stay tuned for further instructions!”

-- Final Edict of the Troopers.




THE END

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