I EXPECT TO WAIT on M-I for a few days and resort to a DM, if necessary. They decide to frustrate me within twenty-fours, with a reply waiting by the time I get back home to Mom and Dad’s house from Whispers in the wee hours of Sunday morning. A DM, turns out, is necessary. They keep the message brief, bordering on rude.

REPLY TO: Mississippi Trending ?

USER: M-I-CrookedLtr

Yes. Seems a lot of dosing up is going on in Mississippi. Sounds like you could use an ear. See: TOPIC: CB-Folx. Talk soon… maybe.

What do British people call this? Cheeky? In the U.S., it’s just called being an ass. I remind myself that we’re people with unheard of powers, at least I am, using a dark web message board. Everyone’s social game has the depth of a teaspoon.

I don’t bother going back to the CB-Folx post. I can read minds, so reading between these lines isn’t hard. I cue up a DM window for M-I-CrookedLtr and launch another calculated risk into cyberspace. Supposedly the message lands somewhere in Mississippi.

Sleep crawls over me as soon as I snap off my monitor and fall into bed.

Jangling bells wake me around noon. My phone takes a wallop before I realize the sound is floating up the stairs.

“I’m up!” I shout down to Mom. Missing Sunday lunch is a big no-no, and Mom invents sadistic ways to ensure I don’t.

“Oh, Kian,” her sing-song cadence comes back, “we’ve got about thirty minutes before everything is ready.” Translation: Wash the bar stink off your ass before hauling it down to my table. Which I received the word-for-word translation of the first time I failed to do so.

By the time, I’m up to standards—mine anyway, I’m out of time for checking if M-I deigns me worthy of a fresh reply. Why I’ve begun picturing this individual as a rather short, plaid-wearing snob instead of another jeans and t-shirt redneck, I’m not sure, but the new image sticks in my head.

I enter our dining room still bouncing outfits off the M-I character in my head. The fact that I’m not even considering who might be in the room aside from my parents makes it all the more jarring when I recognize a foreign stray thought zipping through my mind. Like its own sort of smelling salt, the thought draws me fully into the collective conscious of the room.

Mom’s back is turned my direction, and I see Dad on the porch pulling ribs off the grill. So, who the hell’s the guy sitting at the table? I’m inside his head within two ticks of the clock. He’s an agent. Ah, one of the new ones… But not new to DOSE. David… Martin. There it is. Part of the group Paxley keeps worrying on. Crap, he notices something’s up.

I flee his mind before he can rise. While my next move isn’t the smartest, I decide to have a little fun.

“David?” I approach and extend a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Mom’s mouth hangs open, and David takes way too long to reciprocate my greeting. When his brain and tongue meet each other again, he makes zero attempt to cover up his shock.

“I’m a bit lost,” he confesses. “How do you know who I am?”

Normally, I give agents a wide latitude, but Paxley, Vander, Roberts, the whole DOSE crew have been cagey since reporting on the changes with my winged oppressor. If what M-I says is true and things in Mississippi are heating up, life is going to heat up for my family. Whether they’re ordinary human agents like Vander and Roberts or can transform into some kind of mountain lion like Paxley, I’m about to start using my power for answers.

“I…don’t know. Your name just came to me when I saw you sitting there. It’s like I’d known you were coming.” I keep it innocently prophetic. Enough for a good few paragraphs in whatever report he files.

David chances a look at Mom for help, but she’s homing in on me. If I didn’t know better—and I do—I’d swear she was telepathic. Dad rescues the moment by cluelessly striding in with his platter full of ribs and a boisterous “Let’s eat.”

My ambush shakes David. Whatever his game, he’s off it. I’ll credit him a good front. Mom and Dad can’t tell a thing. But even the teensiest dip inside his head reveals a bumper car pileup of epic proportion. In one way, I feel bad for him, but of his own, verbal admittance: he’s not actually going to be part of my detail. This tidbit erases most of my guilt, because if you’re not going to be helping me, then screw you. Are you just here for the show?

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

So, you just stopped in to get a glimpse of the firstborn. Yay, you!

Several things happen, not all at once, but I feel like they do. First is a first. I realize that although I said absolutely nothing, David heard me loud and clear. Meaning what? I’m speaking inside his head, like that freak show does in mine. Second, distracting from the more important first but probably for the best, David very nearly chokes on a bite of roll he’d taken moments before my unintended psychic assault. These are followed by general alarm from Mom and Dad over an issue that neither David, despite his hacking, nor I, who haven’t budged, have bothered to actually care about.

What starts as a cowbell call for a normal, Sunday lunch ends with an ah-ha moment for all of us and two hours of follow up.

∞ ∞ ∞

David steps out and calls down to the gate. Vander, Paxley, and Abrams—the Detachment Lead, whose presence means serious business is at hand—speed up in record time, but David vanishes like a fart in a hurricane. Shaken, Mom and Dad invite them to the living room. They lead our grim procession past the forgotten entrails of lunch, back through the kitchen, and onto the soon-to-be pyre of our sectional.

Because DOSE isn’t a bunch of idiots, Paxley starts them off. “Micah, Agent Martin informs us that you’ve begun manifesting new powers. Are you able to explain those?”

I let them think I’m trying to find the words, when I’m really trying to find out what Paxley knows. Something’s there but it’s too opaque for me latch onto. “I’m not very good at it, but I think I can…read minds.” Saying that aloud feels good and sounds insane, no matter how true it is.

Abrams sits up much straighter, and Vander throws a dark look Paxley’s direction. For her part, Paxley maintains her normal composure. “If you know, when did this ability manifest?” She asks with a sympathetic smile, as if I wouldn’t take note of when I suddenly started traipsing into other people’s heads.

This question makes me nervous. Lying is an option, but I might save those for more technical questions. “Well, I,” Vander’s leaning slightly forward, and Abram’s brow creases like someone folding paper. “I don’t know. I guess it’s been awhile? I suddenly just started…knowing things when I talked to people. Sometimes I thought they’d said something, and other times I thought I was just getting good at reading the room. You know?”

Vander cuts Paxley off before she can follow up. “But you were able to plant a thought in Agent Martin’s head. Correct? To speak without speaking, if you will?”

“I’ve never done that before today!” I answer loudly, honestly.

He raises a surrendering set of hands, but there’s a smug look of satisfaction on his face.

Paxley quickly takes over, “We’re only concerned for your safety, your parents’ safety. We don’t know much about these new abilities or how they collectively work.”

The blurry thought from earlier crystalizes in her mind, and I can’t help the startle. Her face grows concerned; then, it pops with the realization of what just happened. Paxley hangs her head.

Abrams clocks all of this and makes it worse, for them. “Micah, you don’t have any reason to lie to—”

He never finishes the thought. Dad’s on him like a starving dog on steak. They go round and round for a few minutes. Dad wants answers, real answers, and DOSE keeps feeding him obfuscation. What they seem to have incredibly forgotten in that moment is me. With every denial, half-truth, and ‘we don’t know,’ their minds spill information about dreams, abilities, intentions, fears.

True, they don’t understand a lot of what they learn. It’s the fears that keep them from telling us more though. They aren’t bad guys. Their problem is they know who the worst guy is but not how all of us impacted by him will eventually react. What if we turn into the enemy? Even I can admit that’s a fair point.

“Just stop!” I clap my hands like my third-grade teacher used to do. It works. I turn to Mom and Dad. “Let’s come back to this. Okay? Give us all time to get over the shock.”

As they rise to leave, the temptation to give them a taste of their own minds hovers just behind my lips. For my parents’ sake, I hold back. Aside from Paxley, watching DOSE agents fight throw pillows due to nervous energy is satisfying by itself.

A god of something must exist. For my eensy trade of admitting to some psychic abilities, I receive a bounty of information. To Mom and Dad, I confess most of what I know about myself. They aren’t remotely upset with me and get why I wouldn’t want to mention anything. Once we’ve hugged it out, I slip back upstairs to give them their own time to process.

∞ ∞ ∞

I boot up my computer, and while it whirs to life, I notice a rangy, dark coyote slipping through the trees way down the drive. I’d love to see the look on Roberts’s face if he saw that. The man has a pathological aversion to all things doglike. Maybe I’ll tell him one slipped the gate when I head to campus in a bit.

Back to the task at hand. I boot all the necessary security features and ‘take my seat,’ as we say, at the Table. M-I doesn’t disappoint, but they’re still an ass.

DIRECT MESSAGE

Hued_Shadow: Can’t do CB. Whispers in Saltville?

M-I-CrookedLtr: How quaint… Sure. Wednesday night. Don’t worry about how to recognize me. I’ll recognize you.

Hued_Shadow: Oookay. See you then.

I could do CB. But with all the weird vibes coming off my agents about Freemont, I figure an off-day trip, and my first in a while, to an apparent underground hotbed for pwps to be unwise. At least, M-I seems to get that much, and how they’ll recognize me isn’t a big mystery. They’ve posted about their ability enough for me to know it’s a stronger version of mine.

My only issue: not being on the Whispers’ schedule for Wednesday. Nothing prevents me from just showing up, but again, it’d be another red flag. Luckily, I saw this coming, and the fix is easy. I open my contacts and call Gerald.