10:59. Friday, December 1st, 2023. Alexis’s Car.
Alexis decided against going straight home.
It wasn’t because it was a nice day out. Sun couldn’t be seen behind the overcast clouds. It was pretty windy making it far colder than it had any right to be.
Maybe it was the guilt for lightly betraying her abolitionist principles, or maybe it was just lingering social anxiety from having to talk to people. Whatever the reason, Alexis decided against going straight home.
Instead, to cheer herself up, she decided to grab some coffee from her favorite breakfast chain, Duncan’s Coffee, which the HPD was pretty close to.
Of course it’s close, cops gotta have their donuts.
Duncan’s was a franchise with not a lot of love outside of New England. Sure they had it, but it was here that they had most locations. Ironically, their slogan was ‘Duncan’s Coffee Fuels America!’
Harmon even has two locations, one on the north side of town and this one on the south side of town. Though even though this one was open for longer, Alexis thought the other was a bit nicer.
After she got her usual order of a medium light coffee and an egg and cheese sandwich, she started to head back home. Because the HPD was on the other side of town from where she worked, she ended up passing by Hoplite Logistics which wouldn’t normally be on her route.
Huh, that girl never ended up calling me back. She did give me enough for my boss to launch an investigation though. Maybe I should swing by.
On a lark, she ended up doing it.
Hoplite Logistics was just off Millbrook Avenue, which offered a view of mostly a lot of trees with the occasional warehouse or business park. But because it connected South Street, where the HPD was, to Main Street, it usually had a lot of traffic. Or, well, a lot of traffic for Harmon.
Hoplite also had another facet that made swinging by a little less difficult. There were actually two parking lots, one for the workers right by their driveway’s entrance, and one further in closer to the building, with all the trucks they used. To enter that one you needed to get through a gate.
What was weird was that there didn’t seem to be any cameras in the parking lot the workers used, and the person at the gate didn’t seem to have a great vantage point to look at it either.
No clue why they designed it that way, but hey, free parking.
She wouldn’t actually enter today, not without talking to her boss first, but it wasn’t weird for someone to park somewhere to eat their egg sandwich.
She could check out the building and figure out when they usually got deliveries. That way when she passed that info onto her boss, she could make sure to show up when they would actually be loading and unloading, the time one would most want to have the help from a psychic.
And with that, I can officially report that I did two whole things related to my job, go me!
Hoplite not being a Telekinetic Establishment would make any case against them harder, you had to prove that they knowingly used psychic labor, and not just an employee using their talent of their own volition against company policy. Which could end up with the employee just getting fired.
Alexis pulled out her food. Have to act the part of someone eating their late morning breakfast, even if that is literally who I am.
“Man, I hate the South Street Duncan’s, they forgot my--” Dink! Alexis’s windshield was hit by a small rock, causing her to flinch.
“What the hell was that?” She asked herself. Her answer came in the form of another rock, hitting her windshield. This one caused a small scratch in the glass.
“Seriously? What the hell is going on?” She looked around. The car is parked so is someone throwing these at me?
It was at this moment she was beside herself. Her rational self thought it was probably best if she just put the car in drive and go home. But there was a small part of her, the curious part, that wanted to know more.
Maybe it was an overcorrection for being so subservient during the presentation to the HPD, but she unbuckled her seat belt and opened the door. Car still running however, in case she needed to book it.
She exited her vehicle and looked around. There was nobody there. The parking lot was empty. There wasn’t anyone who could have been throwing pebbles at her windshield. Maybe a kid threw them and ducked underneath a car?
“Hello?” She asked the parking lot.
Nothing greeted her back.
If it is a kid, they would stay hiding. But why aren’t they in school?
Because she didn’t see anyone, she decided to search for a bit. Leaving the car door open, still running.
It has to be a kid, but just in case it is some sort of human trafficking ring I am keeping a quick exit strategy.
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Alexis understood how irrational that thought was. She understood that the majority of kidnappings were perpetrated by people who knew the victim, and the corollary notion that literally nobody she knew was even aware she would be in this parking lot. Still she couldn’t help but act cautiously from years of willingly subjecting herself to sensationalist media.
She ducked her head underneath the car parked next to her on the driver's side.
Nope, no kids or kidnappers hiding here.
She searched underneath the car that was parked in front of her. Still nothing.
At this rate this will be a fun story to tell Aabria. I don’t think I have ever been the one to share a ghost story before.
Instead of checking the car parked on the passengers side, Alexis decided to call it. If it was a kid, she was going to let them have their fun pranking strangers.
So, she stood back up and went to get back in her car.
Did the wind blow my door shut?
The door was locked, so now she was locked out. And she hadn’t taken her phone with her. Boo, now the coffee is gonna get cold!
She started walking toward the booth at the gate. She could probably ask to borrow her phone to call roadside assistance if she explained her situation. It would be weird explaining why she chose to eat at their parking lot, but she could tell them that she was just really hungry and that distracted driving could get you pulled over!
It only took a few steps though before she heard something shatter behind her. Her car’s window had been completely destroyed. She still didn’t see anyone around. She was convinced everything up until this point had been done deliberately.
This has to be some prank. If their goal was to steal my car they wouldn’t have shut my door just to shatter the window. They would have just hopped into the car when it was still running while I was checking underneath the other cars, right? Unless the car door getting closed really was just an accident.
None of it added up.
If it is a carjacker, why bother tricking me with the rocks to get me out of my vehicle? There aren’t any cameras and it is out of sight of the security post at the gate, so surely any of the other cars would have made better targets. A few may even be unlocked!
Idea’s bounced around her head as she debated whether to run for the gate or to run to her car so she could drive off.
Is it possible Hoplite hired some sort of psychic security and are deliberately scaring people away? That wouldn’t just be using psychic labor without filing the proper paperwork and getting the proper training. It would be… It would be… I don’t know what it would be but it would have to be super illegal right?
The issue with Hoplite being in this situation though means she couldn’t rely on the gard’s at the gate to help her out, because they would be the one’s doing this to her.
“S-seriously! W-who's ever doing this? Stop! It isn’t funny! D-destroying someone’s property isn't cool! And just so you know I am, like, a really powerful psychic, so better just walk away!” Alexis said in her best threatening voice. Her best would have been a lot of people’s worst.
She was almost tempted to throw in a ‘and I work for the government!’ just for good measure. But most people weren’t as afraid of the government as they probably should be and even Alexis had to recognize that.
She started to walk toward the vehicle, every muscle in her body screaming at her not to.
In her head she knew that getting inside her car and driving off would be the best move, but getting her body to understand that was another thing entirely. The window being shattered could have been a blessing in disguise because it meant she could manually undo the lock. The car was even still running.
Hoping with everything that she had that there didn’t actually have to be some sort of fight. She took a few steps toward the car.
As she got closer though, Alexis was not prepared for what she saw, even with all the other strange things that had happened to her in the last few minutes. The car next to hers was being ripped apart, piece by piece. Something was tearing into the metal, and ripping into it with invisible claws like it was putty.
Parts of the car were flying. The roof hit the pavement of the parking lot with a loud clang. The tires started to roll. Then the door to the car made a whooshing sound as it came directly at where Alexis was standing.
All Alexis could think about was how the door was just getting bigger and bigger. And when she realized that this could be the moment she was killed, all she could think about were all the stupid decisions that lead her to that point. She had no idea why any of this was even happening.
She didn’t have time to duck or move out of the way. She didn’t have time to even yell out a profanity.
Instead at the moment of would be impact, something occurred which hadn’t happened in months: Alexis’s talent activated.
----------------------------------------
She had the lowest Danger Level a psychic could get, not just because of her rare trigger condition or the fact this trigger condition was somehow inconsistent, but because when it did activate it wasn’t really all that powerful.
All her talent would do was act as a cushion between her and the projectile. The only thing notable about her talent besides its inconsistency was its shape. Unlike most defensive talents, hers didn’t take the form of a wall of force or a protective sphere, instead it took the form of a pair of invisible wings.
Still, the talent wasn’t all that strong. It could maybe block a tomato. Though because her talent was more of a cushion then a shield, it would at least be a lot less messy doing so.
Here though? The moment the car door flew toward her, she felt the wings were bigger than they had ever been before. They bent to slow down the door’s speed, until it came to a full and complete stop, just inches in front of her face.
Whatever was tearing into the car next to Alexis's though didn’t seem to notice, and carried on like nothing happened. Shredding the passenger seat. Alexis wasted no time hesitating however, and lunged for her car, unlocking the door, putting it into reverse, and speeding off.
When she got home she caught a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror and saw that she had been crying. She honestly had no idea when she started. After getting to the front door, she went to unlock it but dropped her keys. When she went to pick them up she saw that her hands were shaking.
It wasn’t just the thing that had been destroying the car that had her scared. It also wasn’t the fact that if her talent had chosen to activate at anything other than its full strength she probably would have died. It wasn’t even that she had cut herself on the glass unlocking her door.
It was that when her talent had activated, she was brought back to the day of her awakening. The memories flooded into her all at once, and now that she was home she had nothing to do but cry.