Day 2
2: Prison
I woke up with a splitting headache. I'd been hit with a stunner or two, but never to the point of unconsciousness. Mostly during 'crowd control' events. This was a bit more direct.
“About time you came around.” John's irritated call came from the cell across the hallway. I didn't even need to open my eyes to know this was a prison – acoustics and the poor quality of my bed told me all I'd needed to know. Nonetheless, I could feel his presence now, his thoughts mainly of annoyance and worry rather than anger. There was even a hint of victory, knowledge that our enemies had made a mistake by trying to take us alive. Part of me wanted to agree with him, but mostly I feared that the Troopers had known exactly what they were doing.
“Not all of us have taken as many blows to the head as you, John.” Jamie replied. “Some of us haven't acclimated.” We hadn't heard it often, but she had an acid tongue when she wanted to. It tended to only happen under stress, though, and Jamie was stressed. She'd never been jailed before, and she – like me – was suspecting that we were not even officially prisoners. That way when we disappeared on a more permanent basis, they could deny we were picked up in the first place. It'd long been rumored that sort of thing happened, but there was ink on my fingertips still and so it seemed this time there was a record of my incarceration.
John didn't react to Jamie's words, a sure sign he was more worried than he was letting on. “Could you check in on Dana?” he asked me.
I knew at once what he meant. He was worried about her; something had happened during the fight to make him think she'd been injured. It was just a hint, I couldn't tell exactly what he thought was wrong. Something about the way the stunner didn't affect her. “No problem, just give me a second to clear my head.”
I'd stood up on waking, now I sat back down on the bed and concentrated. Dana was unconscious, and not due to stunning. I didn't have to reach far to learn that, but I wouldn't have much time to figure out what had happened. Stunners were especially effective on my kind because they projected sleep into the minds of their victims; I'd be doing the exact same thing to myself by poking around in Dana's mind. This soon after recovering from an actual blast, I probably shouldn't do it for long. I probably shouldn't do it at all. I did it anyway.
Dana was hurt. Thoughts were gone from her, only feeling remained. She was hurt, she had bled. She was cold, her body in shock. I withdrew before I fell into the same darkness.
John looked ashen. “Derek?”
I nodded, covered myself with the thin blanket. The cold she had felt was with me now, or at least that's how it felt. If I could truly have absorbed her pain and injury, I'd have done it, but this was nothing more than my brain acting in sympathy. I could only hope the effects would be temporary.
“She's hurt.” I croaked. My throat was sore from where they'd hit me in the neck. I shook my head – that'd been Dana, she'd been struck there instead of in the forehead only because she'd already been moving. She was fast, I'd give her that. Apparently not fast enough.
“They beat her.” John said bitterly. “She wouldn't go down to the stunner, didn't even work on her, so they did it the old fashioned way. If I hadn't been paralyzed on the damn floor they'd have had to go through me, that's for damn sure.”
He was replaying in his minds the events that broke the siege. I'd been stunned, and Dana had shot but missed. They turned the stunner to her, and she shot the wielder. It had looked, to John at least, like we suddenly had a chance. That's when the two cops who had first locked us down appeared from the back, gas masks to get through the tear gas and a stunner each. Put Jamie and John down then, and though John had apparently not got a full blast, he could still do nothing while Dana fought like cornered. Which she had been, at the end.
“She needs a doctor.” I said, repeating my thoughts earlier and answering the question foremost on John's mind. “I don't think this place is exactly rigged for medical care.”
“Will they send for one?” Jamie asked, the plot for escape already forming in her mind. I could mentally overpower whoever they sent in, make him release all of us. It was a nice plan, even if it relied a bit much on my unreliable ability.
As though reading our minds – and oh, how that would momentarily prove to be apt – the corridor door opened and a man stepped in. Medium height and slightly older than John, he had the look of a man forced from field work after a long career to the back of a desk he didn't much care for. There was a smile on his lips that seemed to communicate he was relishing the opportunity to do something that wasn't paperwork. I say 'seemed to communicate' because that's exactly the case – I couldn't read him at all.
There were explanations, of course. He could be one of the Afflicted – one of the many possible effects of the viruses that had caused the Plague Wars was resistance to telepathy. But this man was wearing a Trooper uniform, so that ruled most Afflicted out. He could simply be one of the few naturally resistant, but Troopers also tended to lump such people in with Afflicted, since there were almost no reliable ways of telling the difference. He wasn't wearing one of their helmets, which were designed to block out telepathic abilities of all kinds. The very fact that he wasn't wearing such protection, in fact, lead me to the final conclusion.
<< A good guess <<
I blanked my mind immediately. One of the first things someone like me learns is how to block out other telepaths. Technically the troopers consider anyone with our ability to be Afflicted, but it'd long been rumored that they trained their own group to counter the 'rebel threat', and the reason the first thing I learned was how to block out reading was precisely because I knew those rumors to be true.
<< Staying quiet? But I was hoping to have quite the conversation with you. <<
“I don't have anything to say to you.” I spoke out loud to give a heads-up to my companions. To them, it looked like our interrogator-to-be had merely stepped into the corridor and stood there. Hopefully, he was counting on that impression to intimidate them; by letting them know that he was just speaking to me, I'd deflate that impression. John knew how to deal with mind-reading questioners, I'd helped teach him myself through his fierce objections. Jamie, though, I would have been worried about had I not been blocking all thoughts from my surface mind at the time.
<< I have much to say to you. <<
He walked to my cell, turned to face me, and though his mouth never opened he kept that slight grin on it the entire time.
<< Tell me, Derek, what do you want? <<
“I want you to get a doctor for her. I'm not saying or thinking a damn thing until you do.” I gestured toward Dana. Surely they had to know how badly she'd been injured!
The man – his name was 'Shaw' if the nameplate attached to the uniform was to be believed – turned to look into Dana's cell and paused. I could tell he was doing the same thing I had moments before. Unlike me, though, he didn't shake or shiver or even seem to feel anything. He simply stood there and turned back.
<< She's worse than I had hoped she would be, but she fulfills her purpose nonetheless. <<
I frowned, tempted to answer him with my own mind if for no other reason than to spare my fellow inmates the conversation. But I wouldn't give Shaw the satisfaction of speaking to him on his level. “What purpose is that?” I said, hoping I was vague enough not to tip off John or Jamie.
<< Simply put, she is leverage. Tell me what I want to know, and she lives. Fail to do so, or wait too long, and nature will take its course. <<
Mind-to-mind communication between two telepaths is often in words or sometimes images, but it is of course perfectly suited toward carrying emotions as well . Shaw's thoughts were tinged with an annoyance of his own, though whether at my refusal to speak to him the way he wanted or towards his men's rough treatment of Dana was not clear.
That they had been his men was clear, though. He was close enough for me to read his rank now, and he was indeed an officer. His men had come in with stunners because they wanted me alive, probably because I was a telepath. I still found it somewhat strange that someone who was essentially an Afflicted had risen so high in the ranks, when Trooper rhetoric was all about “Preserving human purity”.
Either Shaw noticed my scrutiny of his uniform, or my concentration was beginning to leak.
<< You're surprised one of our kind has the kind of power I enjoy? Things have changed since the days of your father. <<
I was taken aback, enough that my mind-blanking momentarily failed me altogether. What did he know about my father?
<< I didn't know him, I don't think there's a man alive here who does. But we all regret what happened. Our kind aren't treated like that anymore. We're not lab animals, in fact, we're the ones in charge now. Did you know that Bowers himself is one of us? <<
I nearly laughed out loud at this. Bowers was the vice-president! Hell, the constitution, such as it was nowadays, had been specifically amended to keep people like me out of any kind of office.
<< Of course we don't advertise the fact. The people have long been told that telepathy is not only caused by a virus – a virus which is far more likely to kill or scar you than help – but that it is itself a virus which must be eradicated. But I know the truth. And so do you. <<
It wasn't impossible to lie to a mind-reader. It was just incredibly difficult, and if Shaw was lying he was doing a damn good job of it.
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“Today I couldn't open the door. There was an intercom I never had to use before, and nobody answered it. Nobody was outside the doors, and I couldn't even see anyone outside the locked-remotely windows. I guess they decided to make my stay official.”
I woke up with a splitting headache. I'd been hit with a stunner or two, but never to the point of unconsciousness. Mostly during 'crowd control' events. This was a bit more direct.
“About time you came around.” John's irritated call came from the cell across the hallway. I didn't even need to open my eyes to know this was a prison – acoustics and the poor quality of my bed told me all I'd needed to know. Nonetheless, I could feel his presence now, his thoughts mainly of annoyance and worry rather than anger. There was even a hint of victory, knowledge that our enemies had made a mistake by trying to take us alive. Part of me wanted to agree with him, but mostly I feared that the Troopers had known exactly what they were doing.
“Not all of us have taken as many blows to the head as you, John.” Jamie replied. “Some of us haven't acclimated.” We hadn't heard it often, but she had an acid tongue when she wanted to. It tended to only happen under stress, though, and Jamie was stressed. She'd never been jailed before, and she – like me – was suspecting that we were not even officially prisoners. That way when we disappeared on a more permanent basis, they could deny we were picked up in the first place. It'd long been rumored that sort of thing happened, but there was ink on my fingertips still and so it seemed this time there was a record of my incarceration.
John didn't react to Jamie's words, a sure sign he was more worried than he was letting on. “Could you check in on Dana?” he asked me.
I knew at once what he meant. He was worried about her; something had happened during the fight to make him think she'd been injured. It was just a hint, I couldn't tell exactly what he thought was wrong. Something about the way the stunner didn't affect her. “No problem, just give me a second to clear my head.”
I'd stood up on waking, now I sat back down on the bed and concentrated. Dana was unconscious, and not due to stunning. I didn't have to reach far to learn that, but I wouldn't have much time to figure out what had happened. Stunners were especially effective on my kind because they projected sleep into the minds of their victims; I'd be doing the exact same thing to myself by poking around in Dana's mind. This soon after recovering from an actual blast, I probably shouldn't do it for long. I probably shouldn't do it at all. I did it anyway.
Dana was hurt. Thoughts were gone from her, only feeling remained. She was hurt, she had bled. She was cold, her body in shock. I withdrew before I fell into the same darkness.
John looked ashen. “Derek?”
I nodded, covered myself with the thin blanket. The cold she had felt was with me now, or at least that's how it felt. If I could truly have absorbed her pain and injury, I'd have done it, but this was nothing more than my brain acting in sympathy. I could only hope the effects would be temporary.
“She's hurt.” I croaked. My throat was sore from where they'd hit me in the neck. I shook my head – that'd been Dana, she'd been struck there instead of in the forehead only because she'd already been moving. She was fast, I'd give her that. Apparently not fast enough.
“They beat her.” John said bitterly. “She wouldn't go down to the stunner, didn't even work on her, so they did it the old fashioned way. If I hadn't been paralyzed on the damn floor they'd have had to go through me, that's for damn sure.”
He was replaying in his minds the events that broke the siege. I'd been stunned, and Dana had shot but missed. They turned the stunner to her, and she shot the wielder. It had looked, to John at least, like we suddenly had a chance. That's when the two cops who had first locked us down appeared from the back, gas masks to get through the tear gas and a stunner each. Put Jamie and John down then, and though John had apparently not got a full blast, he could still do nothing while Dana fought like cornered. Which she had been, at the end.
“She needs a doctor.” I said, repeating my thoughts earlier and answering the question foremost on John's mind. “I don't think this place is exactly rigged for medical care.”
“Will they send for one?” Jamie asked, the plot for escape already forming in her mind. I could mentally overpower whoever they sent in, make him release all of us. It was a nice plan, even if it relied a bit much on my unreliable ability.
As though reading our minds – and oh, how that would momentarily prove to be apt – the corridor door opened and a man stepped in. Medium height and slightly older than John, he had the look of a man forced from field work after a long career to the back of a desk he didn't much care for. There was a smile on his lips that seemed to communicate he was relishing the opportunity to do something that wasn't paperwork. I say 'seemed to communicate' because that's exactly the case – I couldn't read him at all.
There were explanations, of course. He could be one of the Afflicted – one of the many possible effects of the viruses that had caused the Plague Wars was resistance to telepathy. But this man was wearing a Trooper uniform, so that ruled most Afflicted out. He could simply be one of the few naturally resistant, but Troopers also tended to lump such people in with Afflicted, since there were almost no reliable ways of telling the difference. He wasn't wearing one of their helmets, which were designed to block out telepathic abilities of all kinds. The very fact that he wasn't wearing such protection, in fact, lead me to the final conclusion.
<< A good guess <<
I blanked my mind immediately. One of the first things someone like me learns is how to block out other telepaths. Technically the troopers consider anyone with our ability to be Afflicted, but it'd long been rumored that they trained their own group to counter the 'rebel threat', and the reason the first thing I learned was how to block out reading was precisely because I knew those rumors to be true.
<< Staying quiet? But I was hoping to have quite the conversation with you. <<
“I don't have anything to say to you.” I spoke out loud to give a heads-up to my companions. To them, it looked like our interrogator-to-be had merely stepped into the corridor and stood there. Hopefully, he was counting on that impression to intimidate them; by letting them know that he was just speaking to me, I'd deflate that impression. John knew how to deal with mind-reading questioners, I'd helped teach him myself through his fierce objections. Jamie, though, I would have been worried about had I not been blocking all thoughts from my surface mind at the time.
<< I have much to say to you. <<
He walked to my cell, turned to face me, and though his mouth never opened he kept that slight grin on it the entire time.
<< Tell me, Derek, what do you want? <<
“I want you to get a doctor for her. I'm not saying or thinking a damn thing until you do.” I gestured toward Dana. Surely they had to know how badly she'd been injured!
The man – his name was 'Shaw' if the nameplate attached to the uniform was to be believed – turned to look into Dana's cell and paused. I could tell he was doing the same thing I had moments before. Unlike me, though, he didn't shake or shiver or even seem to feel anything. He simply stood there and turned back.
<< She's worse than I had hoped she would be, but she fulfills her purpose nonetheless. <<
I frowned, tempted to answer him with my own mind if for no other reason than to spare my fellow inmates the conversation. But I wouldn't give Shaw the satisfaction of speaking to him on his level. “What purpose is that?” I said, hoping I was vague enough not to tip off John or Jamie.
<< Simply put, she is leverage. Tell me what I want to know, and she lives. Fail to do so, or wait too long, and nature will take its course. <<
Mind-to-mind communication between two telepaths is often in words or sometimes images, but it is of course perfectly suited toward carrying emotions as well . Shaw's thoughts were tinged with an annoyance of his own, though whether at my refusal to speak to him the way he wanted or towards his men's rough treatment of Dana was not clear.
That they had been his men was clear, though. He was close enough for me to read his rank now, and he was indeed an officer. His men had come in with stunners because they wanted me alive, probably because I was a telepath. I still found it somewhat strange that someone who was essentially an Afflicted had risen so high in the ranks, when Trooper rhetoric was all about “Preserving human purity”.
Either Shaw noticed my scrutiny of his uniform, or my concentration was beginning to leak.
<< You're surprised one of our kind has the kind of power I enjoy? Things have changed since the days of your father. <<
I was taken aback, enough that my mind-blanking momentarily failed me altogether. What did he know about my father?
<< I didn't know him, I don't think there's a man alive here who does. But we all regret what happened. Our kind aren't treated like that anymore. We're not lab animals, in fact, we're the ones in charge now. Did you know that Bowers himself is one of us? <<
I nearly laughed out loud at this. Bowers was the vice-president! Hell, the constitution, such as it was nowadays, had been specifically amended to keep people like me out of any kind of office.
<< Of course we don't advertise the fact. The people have long been told that telepathy is not only caused by a virus – a virus which is far more likely to kill or scar you than help – but that it is itself a virus which must be eradicated. But I know the truth. And so do you. <<
It wasn't impossible to lie to a mind-reader. It was just incredibly difficult, and if Shaw was lying he was doing a damn good job of it.
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posted by Roger Ostrander at 6:31 PM
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