Repeat customers always depressed me.
I was dressed in blue overalls with J.D Plumbing & Heating emblazoned across the chest in simple black lettering. My plain brown eyes were reflected in the immaculately polished glass windows of the suburban home I found myself in front of, staring back at me with silent judgment.
I am not the type to lose sleep over my actions, but my current job was well beyond what I had grown accustomed to justifying to myself.
An errant strand of slightly curling black hair fell down on my face and I pushed it back up into the unruly mop on my head. It was summer in the city, and sweat poured off of me in the kind of way only someone with absolutely no physical fitness can manage. I started giving myself a final once-over as I eyed my own reflection, tucking in my shirt and wiping sweat from my brow when it hit me.
A wave of disgust passed over me as I realized that I was primping. Trying to look presentable to - who? Jane was an old friend of sorts to me. A client I'd had occasion to meet a number of times and who I'd come to like a great deal. She was honest to a fault - a rare trait in people I generally have to deal with, and far too intelligent to be anything short of the best at what she did. Unfortunately, the key phrase was 'to me'. From Jane's point of view, this would be our first meeting. Heck, from her point of view she would probably hope it was the last. I should have been worried about how little work I'd put into my job today - but frankly, this was my fifth time here and Jane had yet to catch on.
I quickly swept the grimace from my face at the thought as Jane came to the door. She pulled it open quickly, with an aggressive little huffing noise that was the product of cold air from within rushing out into the heated afternoon. Under better circumstances, she would have probably taken her time opening the door, greeted me politely and asked what I needed. Which was something I knew as an unpleasant side effect of my profession. Instead, she just stared, already impatient and intolerant to my presence.
"Is Mr. Ardin in? He scheduled a maintenance of the heater for today. . ." I said trailing off in mock confusion, hoisting my toolbox (full of tools I could not use) as if to protect myself from the scowl she levied at me for daring to mention her husband's name. It didn't harm her features much. Her nose scrunched up in obvious distaste, and her full lips pressed together into a thin line. Even scowling she managed to be more beautiful than her bastard husband probably deserved.
"I don't remember him calling." her response was quick and curt, a clear sign she was trying to rein her anger in. The change in tone helped me focus, distracted me from looking at her luscious red hair and brilliant green eyes. Reminded me that I was the bad guy, and that part of my job was to make sure that hourglass figure stayed complacent and unaware. And his. The annoyance at that last thought lasted long enough for me to start pulsing gentle suggestions at her using my meager telepathic talent.
No one really knows what happened, or where talents came from. Suddenly, 70 years ago the world just became. . . weird. Supermen and women, wizards, werewolves, mutants - you name the fiction and suddenly it existed. Scientists still can't make heads or tails of it. An experiment a long time ago set two of the pentagons now magically inclined types to summon forth two - well, angels for lack of a better word. Religious people the world over watched as two supposedly divine beings spilled forth into our world. Only both of those beings were the same Archangel from very different versions of heaven. They agreed to disagree - which they did, all across the city of New York, flaming swords in hand. In the end the only thing the world learned was that humanity was far out of its depth.
My particular brand of weird takes the form of Telepathy. Well. Everyone who isn't telepathic calls it that, for those of us in the loop it's less like suddenly getting easily described psychic powers, and more like suddenly being able to broadcast and receive information on a wavelength everyone shares - but no one else is aware of.
I was pulsing 'let him in' about a thousand times a minute the moment I snapped back to attention. Using my talent made me think a little harder, process a little faster. It usually paid to apply that extra focus to my pathetic telepathy, but it takes a moment to adjust. I never relish that moment - It is far to easy for my mind to wander towards unsavory topics and self-depreciation.
It was a psychic broadcast tightly focused on the redhead, bombarding her unconscious mind with my own very, very conscious one. Still, she paused for a moment deciding whether or not to tell me to piss off. There were reasons I wore a plumbers outfit and not spandex.
Jane furrowed her brow and glanced down at the grey sweatpants and plain black t-shirt she was wearing, obviously displeased with a stranger catching her without her carefully crafted outside persona on. A twinge of annoyance passed through me. Not at being potentially turned away - but at her failure to recognize and revile me like the intruder to her life I was. I'd never worked with the same person so frequently, and frankly, it scared me how completely I'd erased myself from her memory. How easy it had become. A standard job for me could take weeks while I lined up all the factors and advantages I'd need to nudge things in my favor. This? This job had taken me hours. Part of me felt even that was more than I'd needed. Guilt though... guilt didn't pay the bills. So I didn't let up.
Being the most technically skilled telepath on the planet, I could say with confidence that even going all out, there was still a fair chance she could shake me off. While I was innately skilled at the use of my telepathy, I was so weak at broadcasting that the few Capes I'd met with similar talents had simply laughed at me. I was like a high-end car with no motor. The best knife thrower in the world is still going to get killed in a gunfight.
Sweat began to bead on my brow in a way that had nothing to do with the heat. It was an especially hot summer this year and it took all my concentration not to inch uninvited into the cool, air-conditioned entryway. She stared me in the eyes the entire time - like she was expecting me to flee in the face of her ire. I just returned the blank dead-eyed stared every nine to fiver adopts when under professional scrutiny. Eventually, she gave in with a sigh and a shrug, realizing I'd done nothing to warrant the hostility.
"Come in then John," she said with an air of resignation and a glance at my name tag. "Sorry about that. Heaters this way." she grumbled pointing a perfectly manicured finger in one direction before flicking some auburn hair over her shoulder and heading that way herself. I was only briefly distracted by the roll of her hips as she stomped away from me. It probably helped that I was falling into the leering handyman stereotype - but it certainly didn't make me feel like a good person to be so mesmerized by it. Of course, a very rich man had paid me a significant amount up front to keep the peeved redhead to himself, which chauvinistic though it was, spoke volumes about just how amazing she was. I felt another pang of depression shoot through me. I knew pretty intimately how amazing Jane was - and none of it had to do with all the hearts she could stop just walking up the street.
The doorway opened into a long hallway that I knew from experience would lead to a spacious kitchen on the right and a number of smaller rooms and a large dining room on the left. The hall terminated in a circular alcove with a spiraling staircase that could be taken either up or down to reach the other floors. A literal red carpet spanned the length of the hall, with a single small stand bearing a number of wedding photos and a flower vase. It was the only decoration visible, though there were dust laden squares lining the walls where other pictures had obviously been taken down recently. The entryway spoke volumes about the homeowner. The red carpet, all the pictures (of him) that his wife had taken down, his wife's clear beauty, they all spoke of a singular focus in life. Aggrandizing himself. Since I happened to know the man quite personally, this didn't surprise me. If anything it was all quite tasteful by comparison to how he usually acted.
The second my foot passed over the doorway I started the next part of my plan. Crucial if only because I couldn't actually do anything with the heater OR any of my tools. Well - any of these tools at least. I had my own bag of tricks after all. I switched my broadcasting from a single, focused thought, pulsing out on repeat at rapid speeds, to a hellacious cacophony of violently conflicting images, thoughts, feelings and concepts, closing the door behind me as I did so.
If I was a more powerful telepath Jane would have suffered a blinding seizure and died pretty much on the spot. I've seen it done before. Instead, the weak reaction I was capable of causing was more akin to a brief stupor. Like losing your train of thought and forgetting where you are and what you were doing. The befuddlement as I'd taken to calling it, would last about as long as I kept the broadcast up. Unfortunately, I had to be actively thinking about all the things I was broadcasting, so it was extremely difficult not to fall into a pattern and therefore release my victim. Don't believe me? Try thinking about twenty random things. Truly random, no connection between them. Jane stood perfectly still, eyes glazed over in mid-step as I jogged to her kitchen. This was one of the few feats of mental acuity I was actually proud of. A bonafide hero grade ability, even if it was only really at the C lister level.
Stepping into the kitchen - a huge island countertop affair - I palmed a fairly mild roofie into the steaming mug I knew would be there. I wasn't going to do anything untoward to Jane of course, but I needed a pretty open mind to work my magic, and I simply didn't have the time to coerce Jane into getting blackout drunk or otherwise impaired under her own power.
All that prep work I mentioned? In this case, I'd spent about an hour hovering around the neighborhood, telepathically blasting the need to drink a stupendous amount of tea. If another telepath had been passing by they'd have probably dropped in on me just to check my sanity. Of course, since I was so weak, this had the lesser effect of getting a handful of people to get the urge to drink a little tea and nothing more.
Finished my task, I had made my way back into the hall with Jane and gently placed the cup containing the still hot tea on the small table nearest her - then ceased the befuddlement.
"The heater been doing anything funny lately ma'am?" I queried, seemingly as confused about the sudden need for maintenance as she was annoyed by it. I was verbally prodding her, directing her attention to what I wanted and leaving no room for her to ponder the sudden blip in her memory. People I befuddle do still have a vague awareness of their surroundings, but unless they spend a lot of time and energy trying to remember it their rational minds will typically just sweep the memories away the same way you tune out most things that you find inconsequential. Selective attention at its finest.
"No. In fact it's been sitting here looking pretty and expensive just like everything ELSE in the house." her tone of voice left the fact that she included herself in that category unspoken but obvious. I winced at that but stuck to doing what I was paid for and otherwise minded my own business. My silence and pained smile seemed enough of a response for her, so she snapped up her cup of tea without any thought as to why it was there, and continued speaking. The tirade lasted all the way across the - fairly large - home, and included some things I'm sure were lies I was meant to pass on as rumor. A subtle jab at her husbands reputation that I knew was more than just the idle chatter of a housewife. Jane was a trophy wife certainly, but stupid, she was not. The entire time she spoke I paid special attention to her cup of tea. While she had picked it up, she had yet to take a sip of it.
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By the time we'd hit the stairs going down I'd already pulsed her with 'drink your tea' thousands of times. If I was lucky she would head up for a sip or two before I had to start pretending to fix something. Of course, luck and I don't get to talking all too often, so I naturally intended to assist the matter.
"If it's alright with you ma'am I'll need someone to turn the hot water on and off as I work to test it." I croaked awkwardly, setting down and opening my toolbox on the floor next to the heater. It wasn't something I'd usually say - if only because it made no sense to need her to do so, but repeated visits to a house I couldn't afford, so I could deal with this woman who was out of my league, were beginning to grate on me. I'd dealt with her long enough that she had become a person instead of a job to me. Telling that douche Patriarch that this was my last job for him wasn't going to be much fun either. You'd think a guy who could fly faster than the speed of sound would be able to avoid getting caught cheating on his wife simply by dint of choosing to do his business in some far off impossible to discover locale. Instead, the idiot had been in his bed, at home, with his neighbor's wife when Jane had gotten home two days ago. I usually wouldn't have been called to involve myself at that point, but in a blind rage, Jane had gone tearing through the house destroying things in retaliation. Which is how she'd found the secret compartment Patriarch kept his costume in.
When I looked back up at her from my toolbox while contemplating this, Jane was staring at me, a curious look in her eyes. I started to panic, palms already sweaty from stress before her face returned to normal. Like she'd hadn't been staring me down for some reason.
"Do you owe my husband something then John?" she asked stepping within arms reach of me. Sympathy rolled off her in waves, no doubt born from a misguided feeling of camaraderie. A mutual dislike for her husband. If nothing else, I had to respect the fact that she hadn't tried to seduce me at all. In my long career, I have had more than my fair share of superheroes wives thinking a great way to get back at their shitty, inattentive husbands was to sleep with the help. While from their point of view this was the petty type of thing rich sociopaths got up to, for me it would mean drawing the ire of one of the very real gods that traipsed about the earth using childish codenames and even more childish costumes.
"Because I remember him pawing through his phone for the number of your company just yesterday." she continued her gaze panning over my figure with steadily increasing confusion. I shrugged noncommittally at that, though inside I was starting to sincerely lose my grip on inner peace. The part she had left unspoken was 'right after I found his costume.'
"Just so happens I had an opening today. A guys gotta make a living." I said, with a deliberate calmness and a belligerent tone to my voice that I hoped would convey the sense that I was just the average tradesmen trying to get by, who didn't particularly care about his clients outside of what they paid him to. Which usually is true of me, if not really in this context.
"Hmm." was her only reply. It didn't sound very convinced and her eyes had a contemplative look to them when she eventually turned and headed back up the stairs, to the kitchen. I tracked her all the way up with my power. I'm a weak telepath at best, and most of the really strong ones can only really tell what direction people are in, but strength doesn't really have a whole lot to do with the skill. I wasn't really reading her mind - mostly because I lacked the ability to - it was more like tracking the miscellaneous static all thinking beings produced by being conscious relative to my own position. Again, a highly useful, extremely specialized skill - that would do absolutely nothing for me in the event a D lister with super strength threw a car at me.
Once I was sure she'd made it to the kitchen I switched from tracking her back to spiking compulsions at her from within my limited range. I would give it a few more minutes before going upstairs, ostensibly for a glass of water or a bathroom break if she was still awake when I finally went up the stairs. I would easily be able to tell if she was still conscious if I continued tracking her - but I could broadcast compulsions and track at the same time. In fact, I couldn't really do more than one of any kind of telepathic operation at a time.
"Sorry, I just need to use the-" the words fell from my lips several minutes later, as I rounded the needlessly long staircase to see Jane laid out on the ground in the kitchen doorway, mug of tea cracked and dripping a few feet away.
See, I'm a disgustingly weak telepath. I can't just invade a persons mind on a whim. I have to metaphorically scream my compulsions over and over again just to get people to consider them. But with the right set of circumstances, memories? Memories are like files in a cabinet to me. My relatively low telepathic power combined coupled with sheer finesse lets me fiddle with peoples memories and brain chemistry in ways most other Telepaths couldn't even consider without burning out their targets. But for me, the only challenge is getting in. Hence the LSD.
I crouched on the ground next to her and got to work worming my way into her thoughts. Making my way to her memories and experiences. The source code of her being. That's all people are really. Handfuls of memories that inform how we react to future situations. It didn't take me long to find her memory of the last two days. They were recent and she'd been thinking about them frequently. A late night at work. Coworkers that won't stop hitting on me. A door opens. Relief.
Then everything goes wrong. Cassandras in my bed. My husband's in her. Smashed doors, broken chairs. A Spandex suit. Confusion. Loss. Listlessness. Then the repair guy again. This is the fifth time. First?
I pull back a bit in abject horror at that last thought. I don't just 'change' memories. I take them, and little bits of relevant knowledge with them. Then I push out fake memories in their place. I've never experienced that process to be anything less than absolute. Jane shouldn't have been able to remember me. Shouldn't have recognized me at all actually. I frowned, but eventually chalked it up to repeated visits and added it to the list of reasons I was done with the god damn Patriarch.
I pulled out the memories of a cheating husband and Janes subsequent rampage. In their place, I left a pleasant night with the hubby, and a good time gotten out of hand because of some alcohol. At least the moron had followed my instructions and minimized damages to the house to a level that could be mistaken for such. It'd leave her with a headache afterward, but she'd probably rationalize away the last day or so of listless depression she'd been in.
Next was the good part. My guilty pleasure as it were. I sifted through Jane's memories for, well skills for lack of a better word. A skill and all the accompanying training and memories that supported it. I sorted through Janes whole life, front to back - her childhood, puberty, all the schooling she'd ever received and every lesson she'd ever learned. Eventually, I settled on accounting. It seemed useful enough, if not exactly flashy. I pointedly ignored her self-defense classes, because no one was more aware than I that in a superpowered world, I would either be able to make my way using my power, or I was fighting something that could kill me with an errant thought or flick of the wrist. Not that I ever fought anything. Again - plumbers clothes, not spandex.
I gently scooped up all the accompanying memories and split them. They'd still be there for Jane in this case. She wouldn't suddenly forget how to count or something. But the memories would fade just a little bit. Be less vivid. There would be just a little less emotion behind them for her now. I, on the other hand, would be the proud owner of a brand new set of memories. Since most people remember things chronologically I had been working backward. Changing and copying things as I came upon them. Now, on my way back out I left a compulsion to stay asleep for at least a few more hours, and erased my visit, and her fall. In their place, I left an afternoon nap and a slumbering hand knocking a favorite mug off the table.
Everything in place, I gently slid out of her thoughts and back into my own perfectly motionless body. Since I was working at the speed of thought, it had only been about a minute since I'd left - but since I literally wasn't in my right mind, I hadn't been breathing for about the same duration of time.
It felt like crap but it didn't bother me much. I used to think I'd pop back into my body already dead when I first started doing this. Years of practice have made it a negligible risk at best. Once I'd taken a deep, gasping breath, I got to work carrying Jane up to her bedroom and arranging a couple things to match the new memories I'd left her. The entire time I was consolidating my memories, slipping inconsequential moments that weren't at the core of my personality down the drain. Eventually, I settled on erasing my week long binge watch of Friends to make room for the new memories. I did that a lot. Binge watch television shows. It was an enjoyable way to pass the time that doubled as leaving me an easy stretch of time to track down and swap for something more useful. I didn't have cable, and the only media I owned was a complete collection of the show Friends on DVD. I'd tried for variety at first a long time ago, but after a while, I realized I had just been re-watching Friends every time I erased the memory - so sold the rest of my DVD collection.
Now done covering my ass, I quietly walked out of the expensive suburban home making sure to gently close the door behind me.
Or at least I tried to. A sudden meat hitting pavement noise was the only warning I had before I blacked out. When I woke up no more than a couple seconds could have past but I was no longer in even vaguely familiar surroundings. Now I was situated atop a skyscraper overlooking the city - or rather a city. I had absolutely no recollection of where I was. The skyline was vastly different from where I had been, and Thurbrook - the town I had just been working in - was nowhere near a large body of water, which is what this one seemed to be built around. A large Adonis bodied man wearing a white and red spandex body suit hovered in front of me, eyes crackling with a foreign energy no one had ever been able to identify, illuminating a strong jaw and high cheekbones that were framed perfectly by made for tv hair. Despite the obvious speed we'd been moving, he looked perfectly put together, like he was preparing for a talk show - though the baleful glare he leveled at me would have certainly scared any audience half to death.
"John." He said, in a business-like tone. Almost bored sounding. I had to steady myself and wipe blood from my ears and nose before answering. The son of a bitch had let me catch the edge of a sonic boom before scooping me up in the bullshit physics-defying field he could project to stop random passers-by from being cleaved in two by his passing. I'd have yelled at him but the truth was I was scared shitless. He could murder me with no one the wiser simply by throwing me so hard my corpse was burned up on re-entry. Which sucked - because I had already decided to break ties with him. For all I feared the man, he was still at least nominally a Hero. A good guy who didn't destroy people for no reason. I'd have liked to say any reason, but I knew him too well to believe that.
I finally pulled my wits together and pushed myself to my feet looking him in the eye when I greeted him, my body aching and blood leaking from parts of me I'd rather have not thought about. I scowled at the most powerful man on the planet and spat "Patriarch".