Sophia woke up in the wee hours of the morning drenched in cold sweat. Her face was damp with tears. She’d had another dream about her mother. The two of them had been in the study, talking about school. Suddenly, Sybill burst into the room and rushed at their mother with a knife. She stabbed her repeatedly, while Sophia stood frozen and unable to help. The last thing she saw before waking was her sister’s teeth, flashing white and clean against a face smeared with blood.
Sophia kicked the blankets off and sat up, breathing heavily. As she glanced around the room, she saw the journal Hazel had given her months ago still lying in the corner. After hesitating for a moment, she went over and picked it up.
Crouching by the window, she wrote a letter to Sybill, composing it by the light of the waning moon, without pausing to think about what was being poured out onto the pages. When the first pale rays of dawn filled the room, she paused to rest her cramping wrist, watching the light ripen into the golden freshness of a new day. It was only when the sun had climbed high above the horizon that Sophia allowed herself to read what she had written:
Dear Sybill,
i always had a hard time believing in hell before, but maybe we came up with it at some point because some people really deserve it. why should evil human beings do shitty things and then just get away with it? why should you rest in peace? why should you get any kind of mercy at all, when you never showed any, when nobody around you was ever safe? you shouldn’t have been allowed to live for as long as you did. i’m glad that tree man tore you apart. i hope it hurt. i hope you were in agony the whole time. i wish i could’ve made your suffering last longer. i wish instead of holding you while you bled out, i’d kicked you in the head. for every person you hurt, i should’ve cut off a different part of your body. there would’ve been nothing left of you then. you’d be a bleeding screaming stub.
Sophia closed her eyes and rested her forehead on her knees. The morning sun felt warm and comforting against her back.
***
“.... but it’s called recollection reparation. It’s pretty dangerous to try alone, but I know Clara won’t teach me. I didn’t even bother asking her in our last Session,” Sophia said, moodily stabbing at the food on her plate. She looked across the table at Val, who was munching complacently on a piece of lettuce. “You want any of this, by the way?”
“I’ll nab those carrots if you’re done,” Val said, reaching across the table. “Maybe you could ask someone else to teach you.”
“Like who?”
“No idea. Just spit-balling.”
Sophia sighed and then scowled at her fork. “I mean, imagine if I could fix consciousness. Think about how many people I could help and heal.”
“You’d be a pretty big deal. Can I be your first apostle? Can we make them all women this time?”
“I’m serious, Val.”
“Who says I’m not, gorgeous?” Val said brightly. She cheerfully stabbed a damp piece of broccoli with her knife and raised it to her mouth. Sophia sighed again.
“I keep being told I’m not a functioning Telepath, but maybe I’m not a Telepath at all. Maybe I’m supposed to be something completely different. Why is everyone so obsessed with convincing us we’re dog shit?”
“Money?”
“What?”
“Everything here is modeled around the idea of suppression, right? They put the fear of God in us by saying that if we do our thing, we’ll hurt ourselves. Or worse, the people we love. Can I have your cookie too? Wait, is that raisin--- ew, never mind. I thought it was chocolate chip.”
“What does any of this have to do with money, Val?”
“Oh, right. Well, think about it. Wouldn’t it throw a wrench in everything if we discovered that we don’t actually have to suppress our powers? The best way to keep making money off people is to make them think they need you, right?”
“I’m not sure if that applies to me, though. Reynolds is my legal guardian--” she grimaced-- “so wouldn’t he be paying my way? Why would he waste money promoting something he knew was false?”
“You are so cute. You think truth has anything to do with it? Look, I’m not saying money is all that’s behind the whole ‘you suck’ message. I think some people really should suppress their powers. But you know…” Val looked around at the busy dining hall, then leaned forward, lowering her voice. “If you want to learn more about this recollection thingy, I might be able to hook you up with some resources.”
“I already went through every book in the library that had the word ‘telepath’ in it.”
Val settled back into her seat and picked up her fork. “Have you ever been to the library’s third floor?”
“No.”
“There’s a room up there that’s for ‘research purposes only.’ It’s locked and guarded by security. I bet it has some material they wouldn’t want us little people getting our hands on. Dig?”
“You can get me access?”
“Not me. Jude knows how to get in. He might be able to help. Come to the Lavender Ward lobby during your free period this afternoon and we can run it by him.”
Sophia felt her blood beating with excitement as she strolled into the Lavender lobby later that day. Jude (his ponytail even sloppier than usual) and Val were sitting by the fireplace; per usual, they were in the middle of a heated conversation. Sophia approached slowly.
“...because if you shave higher than the knee, you’re a skank,” Val was saying.
“What if you’re just a girl with really hairy high-maintenance thighs?”
“Not even then.”
“I dunno, Val, this seems like a system built on highly erroneous assumptions.”
“I don’t make the rules--- hey, Sophia.”
“Hi,” Sophia said, sitting next to Val on the couch and eying Jude with open wariness. He smiled impishly at her in a way that did not inspire confidence. “So. I hear you’re a man with a certain set of skills.”
His smile widened. “I understand you’d like to use them?”
“Has Val told you what I need?”
“Yeah, I get the gist. This thing you’re trying to do. It’s supposed to show you how to repair memories, right?”
“That’s the theory.”
Jude drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. Then he shrugged.
“Okay, what the hell. I don’t like Simon being fodder for a crazy Telepath anyway. I’ll help.”
Sophia blanched guiltily at the mention of his brother. “How’d you…” The rest of her sentence faded, but Jude helpfully finished it off:
“…know you were sucking out my brother’s brains on a daily basis?”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“It’s not daily.”
Jude smiled wryly. “I know how a Defective Telepath gets nutrition. I’ve read a lot about the process.”
“How?” she demanded. “Where?”
“Why, in the books contained in the room you are currently trying to access. Look at us, bringing it full circle. I’ll try to have something for you by the end of the week.”
“What?”
“Books. I’m sorry, am I at the wrong meeting?”
“It’s just---you’re going in alone? You don’t need my help?”
“You’d just get in the way.”
“How will you even know what to look for?”
“Because you just told me what you wanted to read about, dumbass.” He grinned when she glared at him. “Relax. I’ve done this dozens of times.”
“Isn’t there security? Locks?”
“Loads,” he said smugly, the subtext being I’m just that good.
Sophia decided to leave it at that. A few days went by. She didn’t see Jude, and just when she was wondering if he’d forgotten about the whole thing, he appeared next to her in the Meadow lobby during her free period.
“Hi sunshine,” he said brightly. “What an unbelievable coincidence, seeing you here.”
“Yeah, life is a real fucking wonder and a half.”
“Come to my room,” he whispered, keeping one eye on a bustling Hazel.
“Never took you for the bold type.”
“Har har. You’re a true wit. Do you want this shit or not?”
“Okay, okay.”
She stood up and followed him, doing her best to look casual, and they managed to slip out of the Meadow lobby undetected.
Jude’s room was almost identical to her own. The main difference was the color scheme: beige instead of various shades of blue.
“Help yourself,” he said, pointing to a small stack of books on his bed. “I picked thin ones so they’d be easier to hide under your shirt to smuggle back to your room.”
Sophia went over and eagerly began to root through them.
“Encyclopedia of Telepathy,” she read aloud. “That could be useful for the basics...Recollection Gaps in Adolescence…that looks a bit clinical…. Telepathic Brain Removal for Beginners...holy shit, that’s awesome…”
“The one behind it---there---seemed pretty relevant.”
Sophia glanced down at the thin green book he had placed in her hands: Memory Reparation and Sealing: The Art of Mind Manipulation. Sophia stuck it neatly into her waistband. It felt chilly against her stomach. Once she was assured it would stay in place, she began to carefully stick the other books behind it.
“Thanks for doing this,” she said, adjusting her pants. “I know it was risky.”
“No problem. Breaking and entering is the most excitement I get around here. I included some books about basic power stuff too, like classifications.”
“Why? Is there gonna be a quiz later, professor?”
“You didn’t even know what Class 4 meant and I don’t wanna have to put up with your vapid questions for the duration of your stay at this lovely establishment.”
“What makes you think I’d come to YOU for answers?”
“There’s no one else to go to.” He grinned.
Sophia rolled her eyes as she slipped the last book into her waistband; then she tucked her shirt in, stepped back, and spread her arms. “How do I look?”
“Like a law-abiding citizen with a slight beer belly.”
“Excellent.”
“You have about two days with those and then I’ll have to return them. They need to be re-shelved before anybody has time to notice they’re missing.”
“Are you going to tell me how you managed to pull this off?”
“I like to keep an aura of mystery about me, Sophia.”
She sighed, but decided that some things were probably better left unsaid. She slipped back to her own room, hid the books, and returned to the lobby in a matter of minutes. She sat down in a chair in the corner and did her best to look like she’d been there the whole time. Hazel was on the phone behind the front desk; she showed no signs of ever knowing Sophia had been gone in the first place. Satisfied, Sophia slumped in her chair and relaxed, dozing in the afternoon sun until the free period ended and she was ushered to the Sanctuary for her daily meditation.
She thought of the books for the rest of the day, counting down the minutes until lockdown. When it finally arrived, she stayed in bed long enough to make sure most of the residents on her floor had fallen asleep. Then she jumped up, retrieved the books, and settled onto her bed to read by the light of the lamp on her bedside table.
It didn’t take long for her to discover why something like The Art of Mind Manipulation was not available to the general public.
The book didn’t simply talk about advanced methods of memory modification; it discussed in detail all the horrific things that could go wrong if the method was performed incorrectly. The consequences ranged from erasing crucial memories to rendering a person as good as dead. There was one account of a man who had attempted to manipulate his wife’s memories when she threatened to divorce him. His goal had been to erase all traces of every nasty fight, but the wife ended up slumped on the floor like a sack of putty, her tongue hanging out, face slack, eyes rolled up in her head. She was reduced to the state of an infant and spent the rest of her life re-learning how to eat, walk, and talk. Pictures accompanied this gruesome story. Sophia knew it would be a while before she could forget those images.
Another study highlighted the tragic case of a telepathic daughter and her mother: the daughter had attempted to help her mother forget a painful experience suffered at the hands of her ex-husband. However, the daughter lost the thread at some point during the process, and she ended up twisting the mother’s memories so much that the mother became another person---a violent, unpredictable one---with a whole other set of childhood “memories” and “experiences.” The mother ended up breaking into her daughter's home and stabbing her to death in bed.
But it wasn’t all horrific.
One young man managed to heal the dementia that had been eating away at his brother’s mind for years. A grandmother used the ability to enter the memories of her comatose grandson and bring him back to consciousness. Yet another---and by far the most interesting---case told the story of a college graduate who used her knack for recollection reparation to work for a rehabilitation program at a private government facility. She would spend her days sitting with criminally insane felons and healing their minds, removing the hatred they had for their victims, themselves, and the world in general. The success rate was staggeringly high, and the facility was still under operation today---though the paper maintained its anonymity by giving codenames to all the participants and to the facility itself, simply referring to it as “Project Camilla.”
Sophia was still mulled over all of it when she heard a soft knock on her door. She quickly shoved the books under her pillow, hurried across the room, and cracked open the door.
“Oh,” she said, deflating with relief as Jude slipped inside and closed the door behind him. She went and sat back down on her bed.
“The security on your floor is surprisingly lax. Anyway, I thought I’d sneak over and see how the research was going.”
“It’s rough.”
“Yeah, there’s a reason why they hide this stuff on another floor, huh?” He strolled over to the bed and sat next to her. He smelled like fresh linen---the detergent used for his scrubs, no doubt---and something else, a sweet and gentle scent that seemed to come from his skin rather than his clothes.
“Have you read a lot of stuff from the restricted area?” she asked.
“Probably half of what they’ve got in there. I’ve been here a while and reading’s the only thing that helps me sleep. I’ve been breaking into that room for years.”
“How can they not notice?”
“Because they’re not paying attention. They don’t think we’re a threat.”
Sophia hesitated before asking her next question:
“Has Simon been here for a while too?”
“Yeah. He’s actually why I started breaking into that room in the first place. I wanted to find a way to help him. I thought they were hiding dirty research secrets or something, but…nope. Turns out they were honestly doing everything they could for him, and he still burned up anyway.” He glanced down at the pile of books resting between them. “Some of these don’t look like mine. You been doing your own research? I’m hurt.”
“Well you can dry your eyes. That’s just stuff I got from the peon library to pass the time. I have a hard time sleeping too.”
He picked up the book nearest to him and checked out the cover. “I didn’t even know our library had Baudelaire.”
“Yeah, he was shoved in a dusty corner with Flaubert.”
“A dusty corner is exactly where Flaubert belongs. His writing is like a fart: it stinks and then lingers for too long after its finished.”
“Wow. Tell me what you really think, Jude.”
“Yeah, I don’t mean to brag, but having strong opinions about insignificant crap is kind of my thing.” Sophia stared at him, tilting her head. “What?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she said, laughing. She quickly covered her mouth to muffle the sound, and when she lowered her hand again, her voice was much quieter: “I can’t decide if I like you or not.”
“You’ll eventually realize that you do. Most people are big fans.”
“I dunno. You don’t seem like a great influence.” She grinned and poked his ear. “Two…three…geez, are there four piercings on this ear?”
“Correct,” he said, closing his eyes. He seemed to relax as she gently rubbed his earlobe between her fingers. “And two in the other one. Of course I’m not allowed to actually put anything in them while I’m here, because why should I ever get to do anything I like?”
“You seem like a gold hoops kind of guy.”
“That’s rude. I’m more into diamond studs. Mostly because they pissed off my dad and I’m mature like that.”
They heard a sudden noise out in the hallway and they both froze. After a moment the footsteps faded. They looked at each other for a minute, and then Jude climbed to his feet.
“I guess I should head back to my floor,” he whispered. “Sounds like I overlooked some security.”
“Okay. Be careful going back. And thanks again for the books.”
“Happy to help out a fellow delinquent.”
He closed the door quietly on his way out. Sophia flipped through a few more books and briefed herself on what Jude had referred to as “basic power stuff.” Most of it was pretty clinical, clearly meant for researchers and therapists. But there were other parts that were quite interesting. She stayed up too long reading, finally falling asleep at around two in the morning.