llustration of Joey/Alex, a young boy looking at transparent image of babies being grown outside the womb. Sunset logo across the top. [https://64.media.tumblr.com/07d276458192e8fbd9afe5618f746652/52965874fc63b65f-33/s1280x1920/32f3c003d28ab7fa1205bdad5cd7901e1c261f94.jpg]
~
For R.T.
~
Even back when Joey Grace was a small boy, squatting down, drawing on cracked pavement with a lump of sidewalk chalk almost too big for his hand, he had known that if he could pick any superpower (if superpowers were real) it would be to fly. Not like Superman or anything—more like the ability to float. This was because Joey had had a weird power of his own ever since he could remember, except he wouldn’t have called it super. Joey could see the past of whatever he touched—which is why he wished he could float. Sometimes, it was too much to see and hear the pale blue ghosts of everything all around him, overlaying and overlaying over everything, and he just wanted to not have to touch anything at all.
But even then, that didn’t stop Joey from seeing the past of his own body and sometimes that could be even scarier. Usually, it was boring stuff like watching himself sleep. Sometimes the ghosts showed him himself as a baby back when Nicolette, the woman he called mom, found him in an open duffle bag in a dumpster. Sometimes it went farther back to show him as a tiny infant, smaller even, floating inside a big fluid-filled plastic bag with tubes running in and out of it. It was surrounded by dozens of other bags, each with a baby inside. One time Joey tried really hard to follow that thread of ghosts until he saw a man take him out of the watery plastic bag and stick him into the duffle bag, but then he stopped wanting to see that past anymore. Joey knew he didn’t come from a normal place. What he didn’t know was where he had come from or why they had thrown him away.
---
SolCorp Pharmaceutical’s Los Angeles Headquarters. Uranus Department. Present day.
Marek del Sol couldn’t shake the, frankly true, thought that he wouldn’t have had to deal with this if he were still working in the Chicago Office. It was a selfish thought and he knew it, but if he were still heading up the Uranus department of SolCorp’s Chicago branch when this whole Venus missing babies crisis hit, he would have been floored by it emotionally, obviously, but it would have fallen to the folks at SolCorp’s shiny Los Angeles Headquarters to manage the details of the fallout. Now here he was in LAHQ, promoted to one of Uranus’ top five ranked officers, Second in command no less, and it was very much his problem.
Could he have teleported back to his Chicago office and hidden under his old desk? Sure, that was the power, or knack, as they were called, Marek was given when the Company had generated him in their Venus genetics labs (the same ones now missing generated babies) but Marek wasn’t getting out of this. Not by a long shot.
"Missing" was maybe not the correct term. News had broken to the department heads and upper-level staff late the night before that it had come out that Colin del Sol, the head of the Venus Department–or rather the former head of Venus–had used the LA gen lab to create an additional twenty-five babies off the record. Which—and Marek could not stress this enough—was already bad enough.
Sol supplemented their staff of natural-born knacked people with generated knacked people who, like Marek, bore the Company surname, and this boost in labor force was the reason why Sol had been able to be as powerful as it was, ensuring that the public never found out that knacked people existed. Being different was frightening to regular humans and it simply wasn’t safe, so they hid their big secret behind the Big Pharma front.
Word was the former Venus had created these twenty-five unsanctioned gens in the pursuit of them having an especially rare knack that the research and development teams in Venus had not yet been able to generate: probability manipulation. Marek wasn’t sure why the former Venus was so hung up on it, but apparently, he really, really was. Still, it’s not like the Terre Department (which ran child care and education for all Sol kids, nat-born and gens alike) was about to miss twenty-five extra squalling mouths to feed, so he couldn’t have kept them in the Terre nursery.
Instead, Marek had heard he’d abandoned the babies on street corners and in dumpsters with the idea that if their knack of probability manipulation had taken as it should, they’d bend the world around them to increase their chances of survival. The thought made Marek sick.
Oh, and this all had happened fourteen years ago and had only just been uncovered now. So, it managed to get even worse.
“Marek.” Nancy’s voice echoed out from the neighboring office.
Uranus wasn’t much for using her intercom. The heads of Sol’s nine departments, each named after a planet, had a corporate job title that was the same as the name of that department. A great idea? Probably not, but that’s just how it had always been.
Marek dropped the last of the treats in his hand into his hamster's cage and trotted next door to Nancy’s big corner office. People could make fun of him all they wanted for keeping his hamster in the office. They didn't have a hamster. Who's laughing now?
There was an unusual quiet across the department broken by hushed tones that put him on edge. He stuck his head in the door. She was standing behind her desk, rifling through papers. Marek was in his late thirties, tall and sandy-haired with an aquiline nose, and even though he had to look down at Nancy because of her shorter stature, she had the kind of upright posture and stocky, strong body shape that made you feel like you were always looking up at her anyway. His own lankiness and comfortable slouch next to her only served to emphasize how different they really were, but so far they seemed to complement each other nicely.
In the SolCorp culture of order and deference to your superiors, Marek was considered “offbeat” when spoken of in the kindest of terms. He considered himself cheerful, but his evaluations tended to include the word “impertinent.” No matter, he just made sure he was twice as effective when they weren’t looking. Besides, he fully respected his bosses but simply didn’t enjoy being called, “sir.” Gravitas did not sound like much fun anyway.
Nancy del Sol had been Uranus for basically forever. In her early sixties, she’d held the position for something like twenty years. Maybe thirty. It got longer every time Marek talked about it. She was part of the old guard. Department heads tended to hold their positions for years; Sol was actually a century-old organization masquerading as a multinational pharmaceuticals company. It was built to protect knacked people and keep knowledge of them from the public. Not exactly a normal corporate environment where executives could move elsewhere or accept a better job offer at a different pharmaceuticals company. Everyone who worked for Sol had knacks, some more useful than others, some profoundly inconvenient, and it wasn’t the kind of organization you left. Not really. Not ever.
In return, Sol covered everything for knacked people, including housing, education, employment, medical care, internal policing, and protection from regular humans who’d love to dissect them—you name it—often all provided within the walls of Sol’s regional office buildings, like gated communities or little self-contained cities.
All of Sol’s departments were designed to support knacked people. Mercury was in charge of administration. The boss's boss. They kept everything running.
Venus was research and development, gens, and all the front-facing pharmaceuticals stuff.
Terre ran child care and the Sol academies—entire schools and dormitories housed underground, fully equipped to train and teach youngsters with knacks—a task Marek did not envy. He couldn’t imagine willingly spending all day every day around middle-school aged telepaths or toddlers who can’t control their telekinesis yet. He shuddered.
Anyway. Mars—well, getting off track a little here, but Mars provided military contracting to allied governments (highly classified of course) which went a long way to funding the rest of Sol’s support, so it still fits.
Jupiter ran finances and accounting. Sol had to be an absolute tax nightmare and Marek was glad someone else was worrying about that so he didn’t have to.
Saturn had intelligence operations which, he assumed, the average agent benefited from in some way, somewhere. Probably. Espionage was above his paygrade.
Uranus, on the other hand, was his pride and joy. They took care of human resources, housing, physical plant, food, and managing communications between Sol offices and the two types of satellite teams, Moons and Comets, who lived out in the world among civilians. It was a department that got overlooked a lot because ensuring the plumbing was working wasn’t sexy or anything, like Saturn’s spy shtick, but he loved it. It’s what made Sol’s self-contained model of company housing feel like home. Marek always figured, if we’re all living under one roof all the time, so to speak, I might as well be a part of what makes that feel good.
Then there was Neptune, which took care of Sol’s internal policing as well as guarding knacked people’s anonymity in the world.
And finally Pluto, in charge of their healthcare and the specialized medical needs of knacked people.
It seemed like Uranus, Saturn, Terre, and Neptune had had the same department heads Marek’s entire adult life. Yesterday morning, he would have added Venus to that list, but that was over and it felt strangely monumental. It was something he’d thought about a lot in the past twelve hours. Twelve hours since a long-standing department head had been deposed. In Sol, department heads weren’t just corporate frontmen or upper management—they were leaders in their, admittedly strange and insular, community.
Marek waited for Uranus to look up from what she was doing. She knew he was there. “What’s up, boss?”
Nancy narrowed her eyes a little as she ruffled a stack of papers; she wasn’t fond of the nickname.
“I want you in on this meeting,” she told him, stopping to tighten her bun of silver-white hair.
Oh, god. It was really beginning in earnest now. He cocked his head. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she replied, unfazed.
“When is it?”
“Now, and you know that.”
He did. She didn’t need to be using her telepathy to read him and it warmed him that they worked well together even after only a few weeks. He had been terrified when he got the promotion. He was convinced that in order to offer him the position, she must have had no idea what he was like to work with or his unorthodox, laid-back approach to running his branch. (And a fair number of his coworkers in Chicago had said likewise.) It was good to be wrong. Marek smiled at her and jogged back to his office for his suit jacket and something to take notes with, and met her as she was locking up her office.
He fell in behind her and they headed toward Terre. Nancy walked with a limp from the injury that had taken her out of the field and landed her in Uranus. A significant proportion of people who worked desk jobs in Sol offices had started in the field but were injured in one way or another, including Marek. Being much shorter than him, her steps were smaller to begin with. He had gotten the hang of keeping pace with her but not enough that he could do it without thinking yet. It didn’t help that he was impatient moving at any pace that wasn’t his teleportation.
“Anything you want me to do in there?” he asked.
“Act like you know what you’re doing.”
He smirked. “That’s helpful.”
“And try to be a little more somber. I assume they erased someone I thought was a friend last night.”
He felt a pang and nodded silently. He felt badly enough he was sure she knew it. Marek hadn’t heard yet definitively about what the former Venus’ fate would be but there weren't a lot of options for crimes of this magnitude. He couldn’t remember if Sol had ever erased a department head. But then again, he didn’t exactly pay close attention in history class.
The meeting was held in the long conference room on the top level of Terre, the same place they would hold the dreaded, days-long student placement meetings that were coming up. The small group was already inside when they arrived, two department heads and one Second, and they looked all the smaller crowded around one end of the long table.
Rafe del Sol, the head of Terre, was already there, as was Saturn, Mackenzie Davis. Rafe had a soft, caring energy about him while Mackenzie was sharper by far. In contrast to his long face, thin lips, and greying hair that always seemed to be on the verge of needing a trim, she had a round, wide jaw and thin, pointy nose. Her hair was short and tidy, sitting just below her chin, and she always managed to look just a little younger than she was, mostly because of the confidence and poise with which she carried herself. Her Second, Louis Solomon, sat next to her on the other side. It hadn’t escaped Marek that there was a prevalence of natural-born knacked people in Saturn, a department which relied on seamlessly fitting into the outside world.
When Louis had been promoted to Saturn’s Second about a week after Marek, he’d hoped the two of them could commiserate over the rank shock and overwhelm of coming to LAHQ, but Louis’ promotion had moved him up from Third. He was a long-time LAHQ resident and used to being in the upper department ranks, so he and Marek didn’t exactly share a newcomers’ bond.
Saturn’s face softened as they walked into the room. “Nan’,” she sighed, standing up and holding out an arm to embrace Nancy. Terre also stood and shook Marek’s hand. They hadn’t met more than a few times, but even Marek knew his grim expression and last night’s growth of facial hair looked out of place on his normally kind face. Unasked, Louis moved down a few seats so Nancy could sit beside Mackenzie, and Marek beside him.
Terre, Saturn, and Uranus talked softly, huddled together. They were all of an age, with Nancy being the oldest. He’d only ever seen them be light with each other but today they looked pained. It wasn’t quite grief but it wasn’t not grief either. It struck Marek that this was about as close to a funeral as the former Venus was going to get.
“This is all pretty crazy,” he muttered to Louis, taking a seat.
“Mm,” he agreed, eyebrows high on his face. Louis was around Marek’s age, but with combed back dark hair and a posture you could raise a flag on. He was stupidly handsome, in Marek’s opinion. The kind that was almost a little too much, especially given his habit of wearing perfectly tailored suits (Marek preferred to stick to the casual end of business casual, himself). When people thought of a Saturn agent, that romantic notion of the perfect spy, what they pictured looked something like Louis. It was an interesting contrast to Mackenzie’s more fluid movements, wavy auburn hair just starting to silver, and her warm, low voice.
Marek leaned over farther. “Have you heard anything?”
“Like what?”
Marek shrugged. “Has it definitely happened yet?”
Louis shook his head, mouth tight. “No, I don’t think so.”
“How will we know? I doubt there will be an announcement or something.” Marek couldn’t imagine getting a memo just letting them know Neptune had carried out a death sentence.
Louis heaved an annoyed sigh and tilted his head conspiratorially. “We won’t be told formally, he’s an Icarus after all, but it’ll get around.”
It was odd to hear a department head referred to as an Icarus, the name Sol gave to its agents who committed crimes against the company. Once you were dubbed Icarus, your name was taken from you, replaced with a number until you’d either been considered redeemed or…well, the former Venus was a prime example of what happened if the transgression was bad enough to warrant erasure. Your name would never be spoken again.
“How did he get caught after so long?” he asked.
“His Second—”
“Enough of that,” Nancy’s voice interrupted.
They looked up. The others had settled in and gone quiet.
“Sorry, ma’am,” Marek said, switching to formalities in a setting like this. “You know I’m easily distracted.” Well, he could only be so formal.
Nancy scowled. “No one’s fooled by your pretend incompetence.”
“Maybe if you didn’t tell everyone...”
She shook her head, but Saturn gave him a grim smile before addressing the room. “Who are we waiting on?”
“Me,” came a voice, as Josh Marchand, Mercury and head of all of SolCorp, rounded the door at a quick pace. He put up a hand as they all shifted. “Don’t stand up. I’m too exhausted today.” A tall, stately man in his 50s, he was just starting to grey at the temples. He had a strong jaw, dark brown eyes, and a heavily lined forehead—likely the result of days like this one.
Mercury dropped a stack of files on the table and abruptly sat directly across from Marek, who settled back into his chair and bit his tongue, barely breathing. He wasn’t used to being in the same room as Josh Marchand. It was one of the most truly intimidating things about being in LAHQ. It wasn’t only that he was as high as authority went in the Corp; Mercury had a precognition knack. He’d heard it wasn’t an especially fun time, bringing headaches and absent seizures when premonitions hit, but there was something uniquely terrifying about sitting across the table from someone who could suddenly get a vision of the future at any moment.
“No representatives from Venus?” Terre asked in a neutral tone.
“They’re understandably busy. I’ve been briefed on their end of things. And the same goes for Neptune, before you ask.” Mercury was probably ten years Terre’s junior, but you’d never know it from the way he spoke.
“So where are we?” Nancy asked.
“Where we are is that Colin royally fucked us,” Saturn mused out the corner of her mouth.
Marek startled in his seat. It wasn’t a name that was ever supposed to be spoken aloud again. And while department heads tended to have some leeway given their status, now wasn’t the time Marek would want to be throwing that weight around.
“It’s not that I disagree, but keep it constructive, Mackenzie,” Mercury replied through gritted teeth. “We’ve got records of twenty-five unauthorized gens with twenty-one unaccounted for.”
“Don’t tell me the other four are dead,” Terre said softly, head in his hand.
“They are. It seems he tracked the news stories for the first few weeks and marked down reported deaths.”
At that, any attitude in the room drained away.
“What have we got to go from?” Saturn asked into the silence.
“The Venus records show initial locations up and down the west coast but not much else.”
Nancy tapped her fingers on the tabletop. “That’s where our Comets come in, I take it?”
“Yes,” Mercury nodded. “They’re trained to search out even latent knacks and approach people in a sensitive way for recruitment.” Comets were two-person teams trained to find natural born knacked people before they could be discovered by civilians or picked up by one of the two smaller, less organized confederations of knacked people.
“It’s a lot of ground to cover. We might have to start pulling Comets off assignment from overseas,” she said.
“Do it now. I don’t want any delays.”
Nancy nodded to Marek and he hastily scrawled a note, as though either of them would forget.
“Once the gens are here,” Terre began, “we’re going to face some hurdles in housing. And they’ll be what, thirteen? Fourteen years old? if I were them, I wouldn’t trust us after a start like this, so that’ll be an uphill battle for Neptune’s Integration, won’t it?”
“That’s the tricky bit,” Mercury replied. “I’ve spoken with Neptune and if we turn up even half of the gens to bring in for Integration, it will completely overwhelm the department. The Reintegration wing isn’t nearly the size it would take, in neither capacity nor agents, to care for and Integrate that many people in any reasonable timeline.”
There was a small silence. Marek shifted in his chair. Reintegration was one of Neptune’s tools to rehabilitate Icarus and prevent erasure. Its counterpart, Integration, was meant to help newcomers to Sol adapt and adhere to Sol regulations. It involved telepaths and it was best not to think about it.
Nancy cleared her throat. “Is that something we should think about addressing going forward?”
Marek took a breath to speak but held it, thinking better, then barreled ahead anyway. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but is that something we really want to have the capacity to do?”
“No,” Mercury said, shortly. “I don’t think so.” He looked lost in thought.
“We’ve got room for them in the dorms,” Terre offered, rubbing at his mouth, “but these kids are going to need more one-on-one attention than the mentoring system in the Academies can offer.”
“What do you suggest, Rafe?”
Terre inhaled deeply and exhaled long and slow. “For that many? The best course of action I can see is fostering them with teams.” It wasn’t unusual for Sol gens to be placed with Moons or sometimes even other departments’ teams of agents to foster. That was usually when they didn’t show particular academic excellence, or have as high a level of behavioral- and knack-related needs as the kids in the academies scattered across Sol’s international offices had.
Mercury nodded, almost sad. “I’ve consulted with Pluto’s Mental Health Care team and they agree.” He looked at Terre. “Fostering and staggering Integration as needed. So I’m going to need Uranus to coordinate with Terre’s Student Care office to find me thirty suitable teams to host fosters.”
“Thirty?” Nancy gaped.
“Some of them will fall through.” (Marek wasn’t sure if Mercury was being logical, cautious, or a precognitive.) “And,” Mercury continued with a bit of a squint, “I need them to be in the western half of the states. I don’t want any of these kids too far from LAHQ. They will need to come in for testing and some for Integration, and I want that done in-house.”
Nancy cocked an eyebrow. “That’s a big ask.”
“I know.”
Nancy flicked a look at Marek and his stomach dropped. He knew then that she meant to delegate that to him. Great.
Louis leaned forward, ducking his head a little. “Pardon me, sir, that all makes sense, but why was Saturn called in here?” Marek caught himself staring hard at Louis. Maybe it was because he was new to LA, but being like, "Hey, man, why'd you make me show up here?" to the most powerful person in Sol did not seem like a wise, good time. (That said, he also didn't know why Saturn was there.)
Mercury sat back. “Mackenzie knows why she’s here.”
Saturn’s mouth pursed. “You want me to find them.”
“I’m sorry, but I do. Even a vague location will give the Comets something to work off of and I don’t want these kids out there a minute longer than they have to be. They’ve been devastatingly wronged. Are you up for it?”
“Of course.”
Marek felt Nancy stiffen beside him and saw her slip her hand under the table to give Saturn’s knee a squeeze. Mackenzie’s temporary omniscience was probably the only knack rarer in Sol than Mercury’s precognition. The concept of it wasn't something Marek entirely grasped but like Mercury’s knack, it wasn’t exactly pleasant to use, from what he’d heard.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Mercury stood up. “Everyone know what they’re doing? I want my office looped in along each step.”
None of the department heads answered, so Marek certainly wasn’t going to, but Mercury apparently took that as an affirmative and left the conference room without saying anything else.
“I’ll be fine,” Saturn said preemptively. No one argued, but Terre slid an arm around her shoulder and leaned into her. Marek knew they’d been married (or as close as people with no legal identity could be) since before Rafe had been promoted to Terre, but he hadn't seen this side of them in public.
Nancy turned to Marek, pulling his eyes away from the couple. “So, I’ll get the Comets brought into LA and briefed.”
He gave her a half-smile. “And I’ll find the foster teams.” She nodded, pleased, and he turned to Terre. “Sir, I’ll need to meet with the Student Care team this afternoon.”
He tapped on the table. “They’ll be right here at three o’clock sharp.”
“Thank you.”
It was all on him now. This was going to be a mess.
---
Seven months ago. LAHQ. Uranus Department.
It didn’t take long for Reeve del Sol to hate somebody. He sized people up quickly, lined up the facts like he was trained to, and made his determination all before even using his telepathy to feel them out. So when the team coordinator from Uranus introduced him to one of his newly assigned teammates, Reeve’s first ever team, these were the facts he drew from: Gareth Saunders was two years older than him at nineteen, practically a foot taller, and more classically handsome than Reeve would ever be. Unlike Reeve, Gareth had grown up outside the walls of LAHQ and he already had years of active field experience, even if it was with Entropy, the opposing company he’d defected from. Reeve disliked the small spark of jealousy he felt in his belly when he looked at Gareth. He looked capable. He wore a plain green tee-shirt and jeans, and their fit and the way he carried himself in them made him seem to stand just that much taller. He was heavily muscled underneath dark skin and his head was shaved clean, which made him look, well, cool (a thought that Reeve recognized as profoundly uncool). All of that produced a brash confidence that Reeve often tried to fake but never quite pulled off.
Reeve, himself, was slightly shorter than average and, despite the rigorous physical training of the Sol Academy, he was on the scrawny side and as of yet unable to shed a manner of babyface softness from his cheeks. None of this was helped by the fact that his wispy hair was a harmless shade of strawberry blonde and dense freckles covered every inch of his skin. To make up for it, he made a habit of keeping himself tidy—hair neatly cut and combed, white button down shirt and khakis clean and pressed. Despite his efforts to come across as professional to a tee, being a telepath meant he knew that most people simply thought he was a bit of a nerd or, at best, stuffy and boring.
It was said that a great deal of thought went into team assignments for agents just graduating from the Academy, with Uranus and Terre departments coming together to assess and properly match them with compatible and beneficial teammates, but the fact that Gareth was looking at him with the kind of affection you’d show a centipede solidified Reeve’s position that this was bullshit.
Teeth gritted, Reeve nodded at him as Gareth sat down at the table in the small conference room. Neither offered a handshake. Reeve kept his hands in his lap. He watched Gareth’s skin flex over his knuckles as he moved his hands restlessly.
“Okay,” the team coordinator sighed, sitting down. “The moon you’ve been assigned to will be stationed in Beatty, Nevada.” She turned to Gareth, “Moons are what we call our teams here.”
“Yeah, they went over your jargon after I went through Integration.” Gareth was stone-faced as he said it.
“Right. Well, it will be a three person moon, which is pretty standard for the area.” She shuffled through a couple of pages in the files in front of her. “The third member is Hannah del Sol, eighteen, who is currently en route to Beatty. I see she is transferring from a Mars unit, but should arrive today. She’s listed here as having an invisibility knack.”
Reeve watched Gareth raise an eyebrow. The Uranus agent slid a file toward Reeve across the table. It had some keys clipped to the outside. “Reeve, you were top of your class and completed all leadership training requirements so you’ve been designated as the team leader. This is everything you’ll need to get set up at your home base. Address, info for your Uranus contact, new IDs, your bank account information, keys to your house and to your car, which should be outside in the front lot. If you’ll just sign here that you’ve received this exit packet, then we can get you on your way.”
He signed.
“Great. Good luck to you.” She smiled, gathered her paperwork, and left the room. Reeve was left sitting holding a folder containing his new life. He’d been relieved when he first learned that he’d be the team lead; now he wasn’t so sure. Gareth’s face moved, not so much to form any particular expression, but more that he couldn’t seem to keep it still.
He met Reeve’s eyes and took a breath. “I hate telepaths.”
Reeve nodded once. That explained a bit. “Okay.” He stood, picked up the duffle that contained everything he owned in the world (which wasn’t much), and left the conference room, heading for the front door.
Front door security scanned their file and waved them through. Reeve stood frozen just outside, eyes closed, under the sun. Wind hit his face and he opened his mouth to try to swallow it. This is what he had been waiting for, all those years in the Academy and then more so in the years after the incident when he’d been pulled out of classes and put into separate, individual schooling. He was ready, had been. It was going to be freedom, but he felt numb.
When he opened his eyes, Gareth was staring at him, shaking his head slightly.
“You grew up never leaving that building, didn’t you. What do they call you…’Academy Kids’?”
“Yeah,” he replied, his jaw tight. Reeve pulled the keys out and hit the unlock button. The lights flashed on an older tan Buick Riviera and they headed toward it. They tossed their bags in the trunk and Reeve moved for the driver’s side.
“Whoa,” Gareth put his hand out for the keys, “I’ve heard about your Sim-U-Car training video game crap. Have you even ever driven a real car?”
Reeve’s teeth clicked shut, nearly on his tongue, as it began to form an answer that wasn’t supposed to be said out loud. Something in his stomach burned and flipped. He tossed Gareth the keys without saying anything. The perimeter gate security scanned their file and waved them through. They were outside the Sol compound and heading toward their new home base. Reeve was seventeen years old.
Just down the road, Gareth pulled over and grabbed the file from Reeve. He scanned the map and muttered to himself as they drove off, but he seemed familiar with the area. They could have been in Paris for all Reeve knew about how to navigate these streets. He watched Gareth drive. He had the type of athletic body that Reeve imagined he’d have when training in the Company gym, but somehow he was never able to get that kind of definition. There was a jagged raised scar, shiny against Gareth’s dark skin, encircling his right elbow. Reeve knew he was staring and wanted to quietly slip into Gareth’s head to find out more, but people didn’t tend to appreciate that.
“I didn’t think healers scarred,” he commented instead.
Gareth kept his eyes on the road. “It’s from when the knack triggered.”
“How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
“You used to be in Entropy?” Even without touching his mind, Reeve’s telepathy could feel the spike of primal fear that emanated from Gareth at even the mention of the name. Entropy was a second company that gathered knacked people together who didn’t have much love for Sol. They used a board game company (Entropy Games) as a cover and were said to live up to their name, causing chaos wherever they went. The official record was that Gareth had defected but Reeve was getting the sense that the more accurate word was escaped.
Gareth ran his tongue over his teeth, moving his jaw. “Listen, we’ve got a five hour drive ahead of us. You’ve been stuck in that building your whole life—why don’t you just look out the window at the real world and keep your damn mouth shut for as long as you can.”
As it turns out, Reeve didn’t want to make small talk anyway. At least not after they got out of the city and onto 14N. It was a landscape that Reeve had only ever seen in movies and the thoughts of others. The Mojave Desert was in turns jagged rocks and flat, hard land that went on forever. The sun etched shadows into the distant mountains, making them look like piles of crumpled blankets. There were desperate looking clumps of scrub that he could barely believe were alive.
And it was quiet. Reeve could feel the current of thoughts running in Gareth’s head, and he tried to tune out his need to sift through them, but other than that, there was nothing for miles. After the crowded halls of LAHQ, the desert felt like being asleep. He stared, breathless, forehead pressed to the glass, and fell madly in love.
He let Gareth brood and soaked up the silence. When they pulled into the parking lot of a tiny food mart and Gareth got out, Reeve let him go without comment. Gareth came out with his arms full of bags.
“Shouldn’t be much farther and I don’t trust that we’ll be able to find a store in this town.”
They took the 190 through Death Valley National Park. Beatty was just on the other side. The town was smaller than he expected. They drove down the main strip past gas stations, a dingy motel, a hardware store, tall wooden billboards without signs on them, and that was about it. Heading through the residential section the houses were almost entirely prefabs, double-wide trailers, and RVs parked on small lots. A few strangled looking trees grew in yards that were otherwise bare. Their assigned house lay on the outskirts at the end of a dead-end dirt road, half a mile from the nearest neighbor. It was a squat little ranch style home with an uncovered wooden porch running the length of the front of it. Gareth parked and stretched, rolling his shoulders. “Well, at least no one’s going to bother us out here.”
Reeve nodded, hoisting his cramped legs out of the car.
“Hey, you dropped something.”
Reeve turned to see Gareth leaning over to the passenger-side and picking up a prescription bottle from the corner of the seat. He held out his hand to take it back but Gareth brought it up to read the label. “Dextroamphetamine? Go-pills?” He looked up.
Reeve set his jaw and extended his open hand. “They’re standard issue for certain telepaths in Sol. I was constantly surrounded by hundreds of minds at HQ.”
Gareth gave the bottle a shake and slapped it into Reeve’s hand. He quickly shoved them in his pocket.
“So you’re what? Not good enough to block them out? Great.” He started gathering groceries.
Reeve blinked, shook his head and barked, “No,” a little too fast. “They’re standard for higher level telepaths because our range is larger and more sensitive. Uppers sharpen the mind and give greater control. I have them because I’m good. I skipped two grades in the Academy.”
“Yeah, I know what they do. Bring the keys.”
He stuck his chin out and took a breath, watching Gareth haul his bags to the door. The sun was getting low, throwing shadows. He grabbed his duffle and hustled to catch up.
Inside, the house was dusty and close. It was fully furnished, though the furniture was shabby and only a few lightbulbs worked. As soon as they established that the refrigerator worked and Reeve got the air conditioner running, it seemed like a viable home. Once Gareth had put away the last of the food, he opened a few cabinets until he found a pair of coffee mugs and gave them each a cursory blow to clear the worst of the dust.
“You drinking?” Gareth pulled a bottle from a brown paper bag and gave an apologetic shrug. “I grew up in California wine country and then lived in Paris for a while.” Paris was where Entropy had their headquarters. He fished out a pocket corkscrew and started opening it without waiting for an answer.
Reeve sat down at the table and watched. He knew Gareth was just pushing his buttons, as telepaths on the whole didn’t drink. Reeve had only ever known one telepath who drank and he forced the thought away but he could already taste the adrenaline, metallic and bitter on his tongue. It looked like a Merlot. Something about the way the low sunlight filtered green through the neck of the bottle and the soft squeak of the cork made Reeve’s stomach drop. He was seeing a half-grin, easy laugh. He studied the wood grain of the table to try to make it stop, but he could still hear the sound of Gareth pouring. Gareth set one in front of him. It was a mug, not a glass. His teeth were throbbing and his breath began to hitch. The smell of it hit him. It made him feel like a wine stain on worn wood. These were memories that were supposed to have been wiped from his mind. He needed to tamp them down, make it stop. So he took the only exit he could think of that would get him out of the confines of his own head. He sent a thought into Gareth’s mind.
Growing up in the Academy, Reeve had been taught that all telepaths experience their knack in their own way. It isn’t a matter of hearing a person’s thoughts word for word or watching their memories like an old movie. The information was synesthetic and came in through a variety of senses that have to then be translated before they could be verbally communicated. In order to graduate from the Academy, telepaths were required to be fluent in this personal translation. Some saw it in shifting colors, felt textures against their skin, or heard shifting patterns of light. Reeve tasted thoughts and they felt like a cool, multi-colored liquid pouring from the backs of his eyeballs, running down his throat.
The second his mind touched Gareth’s to tap into the constant flow just beneath the surface, Reeve felt Gareth’s immediate and shocked withdrawal. Not the kind of defense that Reeve would have expected from a fellow telepath, but more like the instinctive recoiling of a dog used to being kicked. He knew he should stop, but he couldn’t.
There were no words for the rage that was rising in Gareth. There didn’t need to be. Reeve had no use for words at the moment. He tapped into Gareth’s eyes and saw himself sitting in the kitchen chair. He looked small from Gareth’s height. The endless freckles and his light ginger hair made him look even younger. Reeve could see his own vacant expression, face gone slack.
Gareth’s brain was a tangle of panic and his building dislike of this kid they’d put in charge of him. He felt Gareth gather himself and manage to distill the storm in his head into one word for just one fleeting moment.
Out.
But Reeve had started feeling like he could breathe again, and these thoughts, good or bad, for a brief time weren’t his own. Not his own glitched up memories, no faces that weren’t supposed to be there. Gareth’s composure dissolved into a blurred image of blood and dirt and flesh. A memory of a quiver in his stomach from running all night breathing fear and salt. The image of himself sank and shifted as Gareth got to his feet.
Gareth ripped him out of the chair and Reeve let himself be flung and held against the wall. The snap of his head hitting the wall was a distant thing. There were powerful hands gripping his shoulders with strong, shaking fingers.
He could feel Gareth’s mind was racing with a violent sense of restraint that felt like pulling a plane out of the sky with twine. He wanted to cut his knuckles on Reeve’s eye sockets. It would be so easy to snap this kid in half. Just start breaking bones until there was an expression on his face.
“Out,” Gareth said aloud, breathing quickly. He tightened his grip. Tangled up in his Gareth’s sensations Reeve could feel his own collarbone creak under a hand that wasn’t his.
“Let go of me. I outrank you.” Reeve could hear his voice but didn’t remember deciding to speak. He had been in Gareth’s head just long enough to know that this was maybe the worst possible thing for him to say and he wasn’t sure what he was hoping would happen.
Reeve remembered his own body and moved to look up at Gareth. He could see his own grey-blue eyes were oddly cold. Either Reeve was shaking or Gareth’s panicked thoughts made it seem like he was. He pulled back enough to stop looking out of Gareth’s eyes. There were some images you could never get out of your head.
Gareth’s mind was racing, spreading out to touch old memories. There were flashes of light hair and the feeling of his cheek pressed against cold white floor tile. A man with a mind like a knife.
This isn’t the same.
Reeve wasn’t sure which one of them had thought it.
Gareth leaned down close, his face strangely blurred in Reeve’s vision. “Out!” Louder this time and ragged at the edges. His breath was hot and close and still smelled like red wine. Wrung out, the scent rushed through Reeve, tinting his body pink and red. His heart twisted in second-hand grief and Reeve withdrew, cutting the mental thread that had connected them. The stream of thoughts stopped, the dregs trickling down his throat to curl, cold and sour in his stomach.
After a moment of silence, the hands holding him released and Reeve’s heels hit the floor with a jolt. He hadn’t realized that Gareth had been lifting him up that much. He slowly looked up at Gareth and found a face like a slammed door. He touched his own eyes—realizing he had been crying, slow and silent.
“I’m going out,” was all Gareth said, plucking the keys from the table without slowing as he made for the door.
He didn’t move until he heard the tires churning dust outside. He blinked his eyes slowly, focusing on the burn. The wine. Reeve grabbed the two mugs and the bottle and poured them out in the sink. He ran the water to wash away the stain. The dusty faucet coughed brown, then ran clear. He trashed the bottle along with the mugs so he wouldn’t have to wash them. Reeve slid his back down the wall to sit on his heels full of a mislaid longing he wasn’t sure was his own. He was seventeen years old.
-
Gareth wasn’t even sure where the hell he was going. He could stay on 95S and follow it east out to Vegas or blow straight through and catch the 15 back to LA to tell SolCorp exactly what he thought about his team assignment. A goddamn telepath. Couldn’t it have been anything except another telepath?
And now he was back in this shitty car again. He gripped the wheel hard enough to ache. This Reeve kid was completely green with it, had never killed a man, never been out under open sky until this morning—but here he was, placed in a position ranking over him. Even though Gareth had been running missions for years with Entropy. Plus it didn’t help that he was clearly a short, freckled twerp. He took a deep breath and focused on the endless black ribbon of asphalt and the wind battering past his eyes, taking moisture with it.
He tensed his arms and closed his eyes, taking a slow measured breath in and out—waiting as long as he could before opening them again. It was a game he played with himself sometimes. When he opened his eyes, if he’d drifted right, then he’d keep driving. If he’d drifted left, he’d go home. He opened his eyes and corrected; he had drifted left. Gareth wasn’t turning around.
At least Reeve wasn’t tracking him. When he got out of his head, he was all the way out. Not like Adler, his old boss, who had always kept a silent link on Gareth whenever he took off on one of his drives. And really, all the times that Gareth was standing right next to him, too—an intangible brain-leash that had been hooked in right behind the center of Gareth’s forehead. Telepaths could make you redefine your concept of “headache.”
The sun had just dipped behind the mountains, giving Gareth a much needed break from squinting into the orange sunset. He had decided on Vegas. He’d let this guy spend the night being freakishly damaged by himself and hopefully he’d be straight by morning. Gareth didn’t know much about him other than he had been gen’ed at LAHQ and had grown up in the Academy in LA. He knew that they don’t ever let the Academy students out until they graduate. The ultimate homeschool kids, because that never backfires. Maybe being outside in the fresh air scared the shit out of him. Gareth shook his head. Told himself it didn’t matter and he’d deal with his new boss’s problems later.
He watched a car approaching ahead of him. It seemed like it took hours for it to grow from a tiny speck against the road into something car-shaped. It was some kind of SUV, but as it blew past him Gareth saw that its windshield was heavily tinted, all the windows were, enough that he couldn’t see the driver at all. Gareth watched it in his rearview. Ford Explorer with a clearly illegal amount of tinting. Those were the type of cars SolCorp used for company business.
“Goddamn it,” Gareth sighed. If this was his new teammate heading to Beatty and she got stuck alone and car-less in a house with Reeve acting like a brain-happy nutcase, he’d feel pretty shitty about that. Plus, he was going to need an ally in that house. He eased on the brake and pulled a sharp U-turn. His tires squealed more than was ideal, but if there were Sol agents in this car, it wasn’t like they weren’t going to notice him no matter how whisper-quiet he swung around. He sped to catch up and was settling into a respectful following distance when he felt the sharp touch of another mind in his own. He swore at length and swerved with the shock of it, kicking up a cloud of dust as his tires hit the dirt. Picking up speed to get closer to the car, Gareth worked to focus his thoughts.
Take it easy—I’m Company. Name is Gareth Saunders. Are you bringing my third team member out to Beatty?
Instead of a response, Gareth felt the quick, forceful intrusion of the telepath giving his brain a once-over, probably verifying his identity, recent history, intentions, etc. He hoped that was what he was doing. He tried to focus on just driving straight ahead and being patient and not responding to this inspection how he’d like to because this agent had no reason not to liquefy his brain if Gareth “overreacted.” At least the probing was disinterested, if thorough. It didn’t feel personal. More like an invasive medical exam. They were professional about it, but still rooting around inside your brain. He grit his teeth and waited until the presence slipped away.
Okay, Saunders. Pull ahead and we’ll follow you.
Gareth blew out a sigh that puffed out his cheeks. He hit the gas and passed them, leading them back up 95 and toward home. Home. It wasn’t a word Gareth used sparingly. For a long time, any place he had left a bag was “home.”
Driving home always seemed to go too quickly for Gareth. He led them up Main Street and down the rutted dirt path to their house. He put the car in park and rested his forehead on the wheel. Telepaths were going to ruin everything he liked.
When he heard the pop of the SUV doors, he shook himself off and got out. The driver was a guy in his mid-thirties in a casual suit who nodded at him as he stepped down from the car. Gareth scanned the area looking for Reeve, hoping that if he came outside, he wouldn’t make a huge embarrassment of himself. If Gareth thought that Reeve was scrawny, the woman who hopped down from the passenger side was in a league by herself. She was wearing a hugely oversized Danger Mouse t-shirt and loose fitting jeans; all the extra fabric seemed to highlight that she was built like a rail. She had a cute nose and a tom-boyishness about her. Her wavy, shoulder-length brown hair looked unbrushed.
“Hey.” She gave him an open, friendly smile, creating small dimples in her cheeks.
“Hi.” Gareth thought she was cute, if too boney and flat-chested for his taste.
The telepath who had driven her cleared his throat and gave Gareth a stern look before popping the trunk and bringing out a long, tan drag bag and a clipboard. He handed off the heavy bag to Gareth who shouldered it. He turned to his new teammate, “This all you have?”
“Yup, that’s it.”
“Just need you to sign,” the driver said, handing her the clipboard. “And we’re all set here. Nice meeting you, Hannah. Saunders.” He gave a quick smile to Hannah and a nod to him. Gareth felt the light brush of his telepathy, just enough to be felt. It was a sort of handshake gesture that some Sol telepaths liked to adopt. Gareth thought it was stupid, and he thought so loudly as the agent drove away. Hannah waved at the disappearing tail lights.
“I’m Gareth.”
“Hannah del Sol.”
He adjusted his grip. “What the hell do you even have in here?”
“0.338 Lapua.”
“You’re a sniper?”
“Mm-hmm. They had me on a Mars track, but I ended up not being a good fit, I guess. Trained in a lot of basic military stuff.” She stepped toward him and held out a hand, “I got that.”
Gareth didn’t know a lot about the Mars Department. They were essentially Sol’s army and he’d heard that Mars agents were known for their work hard, party harder attitude. He furrowed his brow, but he knew he could be territorial about his own weapons, so he shrugged and handed over the bag. She shouldered it with the ease of long practice, if not brute strength.
Close enough to touch him now, Hannah reached out her hand to Gareth’s arm, hovering her fingers inches away from his skin. She smiled apologetically, “Do you mind?” Gareth tensed, but nodded the go ahead, curious. She shaped her hand to mirror the curve of his forearm and held it there, just above his skin. Gareth looked down at the top of her head. He could see her eyes were closed. She stepped back and looked up at him. “Thanks. I’m an empath. I wanted to get a sense of what your energy feels like, since we’re living together.”
“I thought you had an invisibility knack?”
“I do, and that is the one that’s effective in the field.” She scratched at the side of her nose, scrunching it up. “But the empathy I feel all the time.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“How does my energy seem?”
“A little fast moving, but warm.”
“Is that good?” Gareth saw her gaze suddenly drift off and settle just to the left of him. She looked blind and her mouth opened slightly. He whipped his head around to look behind him, but there was only desert. He was just about to shake her when she blinked and looked back over at him.
“Yeah, it’s good. Sorry. Reeve says we should head inside. He’s making dinner.”
Which was not the reaction Gareth had been hoping for. If Reeve had gone into her head and she’d flipped out (and by now he was admitting that he had sort of flipped out) then maybe it would prove the point that you just don’t pull that shit, but she seemed totally unfazed. He sighed. “Okay, let’s go.”
Inside, the AC had barely made a dent, but with the sun having gone down, Gareth still held out a little hope of the house hitting a more comfortable temperature soon. Hannah set her bag down and stretched. Reeve turned around from the counter. Gareth tried not to tense every muscle in his body, but it was a losing battle.
“Hey.” He was drying his hands with a paper towel. There was a dull red bruise by the collar of his shirt.
“I passed our partner here on the highway.” Gareth looked back at Hannah. She was moving her eyes back and forth between Reeve and Gareth with her eyebrows slightly drawn together. She also seemed to realize this and abruptly stopped.
“Hi, Reeve.”
He smiled back at her and nodded his head at Gareth, “Yeah, he doesn’t like me.”
She rolled her eyes, “I can tell. What’d you do?”
Reeve’s mouth was a thin line. He balled up the paper towel and tossed it onto the table. “Enough.” Reeve was working hard to avoid eye contact with either of them.
Hannah gave her head a quick shake. “You don’t really like him either though.”
“That’s not helping,” Reeve breathed, raising his eyebrows.
Gareth’s head hurt from looking back and forth between Reeve and Hannah. He wasn’t sure what the hell had just happened.
It was Hannah’s turn to let out a sigh. “What’s for dinner?”
“I was going to make burgers.”
Hannah smooshed her mouth to one side of her face. “I’m vegetarian. My knack can read animals, too, and eating them feels pretty gross.”
Gareth rubbed at his head and tried to catch up. “Seriously? Do vegetables not have feelings or something?”
“They do, but it feels different.”
“So, how ‘bout two burgers and a…grilled cheese? That must be really distracting.”
Hannah cocked her head, “Says the guy who hears my thoughts unless he’s trying not to. And yeah, that’d be great, thanks.”
She craned her head to look down the hall and then left toward the living room. “So have you guys set up house rules yet?” They stared blankly. “They never taught you guys how to share space with people? Okay, for example: I like to meditate. My best friend at the public school I attended was Buddhist and I kind of got into it,” she explained with a shrug. “So if you guys don’t mind, could you please not disturb me when I’m meditating. Things like that.”
They nodded at her, mutely.
“Anything else you guys want to throw out there? Anything you want to ask people not to do?”
Gareth and Reeve put in a great deal of effort into finding something interesting about the floor by their feet.
“No? Really?” Hannah blew the hair away from her eyes. “Fine. Well, think about it and we’ll come back to you. Also, I propose that since this is our home, we can dress however we’re most comfortable while we’re here. Sound reasonable?”
“That works for me,” Gareth agreed quickly, since if he could get away with not wearing shirts in this heat, he was going to. Reeve nodded.
“Glad to hear it,” Hannah said with a huge grin and took off her shirt, confirming to Gareth that she hadn’t been wearing a bra.
“Whoa!” Gareth cried and shot a look over to Reeve whose eyebrows had arched up nearly to his hairline. Her jeans were next. They fell easily off her hip bones to the floor and she wasn’t wearing anything under them. “Whoa!” he shouted again and whirled around to stare at the wall, flinging up a hand to block his periphery.
“Hey, this is how I’m most comfortable. Having an invisibility knack means there doesn’t tend to be a lot of benefit to wearing clothes so I had to get into the habit. Plus, I mean come on, it’s hot as balls in here.”
Gareth peered over his other shoulder at Reeve, who had his mouth open to say something, but a moment passed and no sound came out.
“Do we have our own rooms?” she asked, “I want to stash these clothes and my bag.”
Gareth heard Reeve clear his throat. “Two bedrooms up here and two in the basement. Protocol says I take the room closest to the door, and you’ll probably be cooler downstairs.”
“Sounds good.”
Gareth heard the scrape of her rifle bag on the floor and her footsteps on the linoleum. Her hand clapped him on the back as she walked past, making him jump and squeeze his eyes shut tight. “You’ll get used to it,” she laughed. There was a shuffle of more footsteps and the sound of the basement door opening.
“It’s safe now,” Reeve said into the silence.
Gareth opened his eyes and peered down the hall in the direction she had gone. “Christ. Is she…? Christ! How are you okay?”
“Everything’s gender-neutral in the Academy, including locker rooms. We don’t make a big thing of it.”
“Jesus,” he breathed. Was he the only sane one?
“Would it help,” Reeve asked, “if I told you she doesn’t shave? Anything?”
Gareth continued to stare at the wall. “Not even a little. You know she’s a sniper? A fucking vegetarian sniper.”
“And a Buddhist apparently. A nudist Buddhist.”
Gareth whipped his head back to Reeve and for a moment their eyes locked, each not knowing what the other was going to do next. Then something in Gareth snapped and he was bent in half by his own laughter. At that instant, Gareth thought it may be intractable and he’d be doubled over, shoulders heaving, for the rest of his life. That would be pretty okay. He heard Reeve laughing beside him, a quieter, more controlled sound than his delirious hooting. Choking a little and sucking in a big gulp of air, he tried to wind it down. He managed to straighten himself somehow, wiping tears out of his eyes.
“She is. She really is.” He looked over and realized he had unconsciously put a hand on Reeve's shoulder to stand up. Reeve had stopped laughing and was standing stock-still, like Gareth was some woodland creature he might frighten away if he made any sudden moves. Gareth dropped his arm and rubbed at his shaved head, not sure where to look.
Reeve gave a half-smile. “That rules thing—it’s not a bad idea.” He looked down, took a quick, sharp breath, then looked back up at Gareth. “No wine. Really just red. White I could probably deal with. Drink whatever the hell else you want. I don’t give a shit about alcohol. Just, no red wine.”
Gareth took a few deep breaths, muscles tensed. The longer he stayed quiet, the more he expected Reeve to start reading his thoughts. It didn’t happen. “I can do that,” he said, nodding. “But I need you to stay out of my head unless it’s really necessary. If you just feel like it or something, you’ve got to ask me first.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Reeve’s eyes couldn’t seem to settle anywhere long. “Hey, I’m—I’m sorry about earlier.” His face was red under his freckles.
“Yeah, me too.” Gareth stretched, popping his neck. “Let’s go get that food going.” Gareth turned around one last time to peer down the hallway and caught sight of Hannah’s face, partly sticking out from the doorway to the basement, with a thin smile on her lips.
***