Astra: Synchronicity (9 page)

"You'll be in deep shit when the captain
hears about this. And believe me, he will."

She tilted her head down and scowled through
her brows. "You do that. Asshole."

His nostrils flared like he wanted to hit
her. Nadine tilted her head and quelled his anger. <us back to my room, please. You overreacted, and if you report her,
you'll be the one in trouble.>>

"Let's go," he urged them. "Clear the
corridor and get moving."

The woman helped Nadine to her feet. "Is
everything okay?"

As she stared up at the imposing lady, she
recalled a recurring vision she'd had ever since she was a child. A
blond woman always starred in it, one who made her life easier and
better. She'd fought back the monsters of her youth and protected
her from fear-mongering psion-haters. It was the closest thing
she'd ever had to an imaginary friend. Nadine always wondered if
she was an angel because impossible situations were suddenly
manageable.

"I'm looking for room twenty-seven," she
said. "The XO assigned me to quarters there and I can't seem to
find it."

Nadine thrust a few bags into the woman's
arms and nodded down the hallway. Between the two of them, they
hobbled back to room twenty-seven without any assistance from the
security guard. When they arrived outside it, the woman finally
realized they would be rooming together, and they shared a warm
smile.

They dropped the bags in the center of the
room, and once the guard shut the door, Nadine hugged the woman.
Relief eclipsed her sadness and replaced it with joy. The figment
of her visions turned out to be a flesh-and-blood person, and she
could not contain the bliss that revelation brought to her.

Today, fate reaffirmed its presence as the
guiding force in her life. Her telepathic prowess made her a Tier-7
psion, but she also possessed the ability of a Seer. For the past
year her visions had abandoned her, being either too cryptic or too
vague to decipher. This woman restored her faith in her abilities,
and she didn't even know her name.

The lady pulled back and offered her a smile.
"Do you know me?"

Nadine shook her head. "I don't believe we've
ever met, no."

"My name is Amii. I'm sorry that guard was
such a jerk to you."

She found the lack of negativity in Amii
refreshing. "Nobody's made it easy for me. You'd think I'd come to
expect that by now. But it never gets any easier."

"Why would you expect people to be rude? Who
are you?"

The comment left her a bit perplexed since
most people recognized her on sight. "Nadine Taylor? Wife of Bryan
Taylor, the Vice President of Chara?" When Amii shook her head, she
bluntly stated, "The psion?"

"I had an accident and lost my memory. I came
aboard with Xander Adams on Pisa." Amii took a seat at the table
while the second lady began to unpack some of her dresses.

Nadine watched Amii curiously. She had a
difficult time sensing the woman's mind. To reassure her it wasn't
a dream, she reached out and touched Amii's shoulder, which
registered as solid. It may have had something to do with her
memory loss; perhaps her mind was too scrambled right now to
decipher.

"Tell me your favorite color," she said at
random as she folded a sweater.

Amii glanced around the room, appearing a bit
uncertain of the answer herself. "Green? I like green."

"I'm thinking red, actually. It's absolutely
the right color for you. You can tell a lot about a person by what
their favorite color is. People who like blue are more sincere and
easy-going. People who like yellow are funny yet cautious."

"What about people who like red?"

"People who like red tend to be intelligent
and lose their memory at the worst possible times," she mused. "But
they're also friendly and reserved. You seem that way to me. Tell
me Amii: do you believe in fate?"

"In the sense that the future is predestined?
No. I refuse to believe that the choices I make today were not
really choices at all. It feels better than resigning to the fact
nothing matters because time is already programmed to unfold a
given way."

Nadine sat down beside her. "That's the way I
thought for a long time. My Seer skills took a lot longer to reach
their potential than my telepathic ones. Everything I've glimpsed
has come to pass. I've grown to realize that time is fluid and
decisions do matter, but in the end most don't. Were the choices
that did matter ever destined to unfold differently? I can't say.
But I do know they don't."

"How much can you see? Do you know what's
going to happen tomorrow? Do you know when you're going to
die?"

"No. And thankfully no." She took a deep
breath, trying to find words to describe the transcendent
experience peering into the future was. "I'm not a true Seer. I get
visions about major events in the near future. I don't typically
know things more than a few months in advance, if that. For
example, I knew my trip to Sirius would be more or less viewed as a
success so I hope that bodes well for relations between the UE and
the PAU."

"It must be amazing to possess that sort of
power…though I'd have a hard time dealing with visions of doom. It
would've been horrible to know I'd lose my memory and not be able
to change it. For all I know it's the first misstep of many."

"I've always found pessimism to be a
self-fulfilling prophecy."

As she stood, Amii propped her head on her
fist. "I think I've always been a pessimist. And after losing all
memory of who I am, now I have a good reason to be."

"Worse things can always happen," Nadine said
while she paced across the room. "I mean, there's death. Paralysis.
Loss of limbs. Drowning…"

"Pretty sure that counts as death. What if I
had this great life somewhere with a great husband before getting
kidnapped and who knows what else."

"You're not afraid of me, are you." Nadine
didn't even phrase it as a question since the answer itself was
already clear. "You don't fear the thought of being forced to
reveal your darkest secrets to a stranger against your will?"

"Should people live in fear that the person
they just walked past on the street is going to pull out a
disruptor and shoot them in the back? Or that their transport just
might fall out of the sky while they're onboard? Normals have used
psions as the single target for all their fears since the Exodus.
Being different was reason enough to brand them the scourge of
Astra." Amii seemed passionate about the cause, a fact that
appeared to surprise even herself.

"You are different from anyone I've ever met,
Amii. I don't think you're a psion, but…I'm sure it's nothing,"
Nadine assured her. "I'm just happy to have found one person on the
ship who doesn't treat me like a freak."

"We're all freaks, Nadine," she said with a
smile. "Some of us just hide it better than others."

The second lady grinned, knowing the truth
behind those words was worth its weight in platinum. It was rare to
find someone so willing to forego preconceived notions about
psions. She'd found a man like that once in Bryan Taylor and today
discovered the same spark in Amii. For that, she felt like the most
fortunate psion in Astra.

***

Why did it always seem like bad situations
got worse before they got better?

Magnius sat on his bed and peered out the
window in the same vapid suit he'd put on early this morning. The
heat had long since drained out of his clammy hands, and though the
air was warm, he shivered. His brisk heartbeat hadn't relaxed since
his life had been flipped upside-down, and its strong cadence made
his entire body pulsate. In an entire universe of options, he felt
like he had none.

Yesterday, his wife stormed out on him, and
tomorrow Tiyuri planned to take him back to Aliane. In the Astra
neighborhood Abyssa was just a day removed from Vega, a fact his
subconscious mind never forgot. Her shroud of dread reached its
glacial fingers over the bleakness of space surrounding Superbia,
and he wondered if he'd ever really escaped her.

Night had fallen in complete darkness, a rare
sight on Fantasti. Not a single moon illuminated the blackened sky,
unusual because Nuage had dozens. The brightest star in the sky,
Arcturus, peered back at their tiny world from roughly thirty-two
light-years away. The distorted constellation of Orion barely
resembled its Earth counterpart from this part of Astra. A faint
halo of light from Comet RD-65 soared across the southern horizon
on its regular fifty-year trek between Vega and Nuage. From the
second story of his home, the spectacular view quieted his racing
heart.

The glint of a ghostly visage reflected in
the window, and his hair stood on end. Tiyuri lurked in the house
somewhere keeping an eye on him—an ever-present reminder that
opposition was pointless. He stood six-foot-four, a towering
warrior with amazing strength and dexterity, who possessed the
ability to go unseen. He was not a supernatural magician, yet his
power of subliminal suggestion convinced people to ignore him. The
man could murder someone in a crowd of thousands in broad daylight,
and no one would see him. Being a psion gave Magnius an advantage
over normals; he couldn't always see Tiyuri, but he did sense his
psionic presence nearby.

A part of him sympathized with Tiyuri. Had he
been born on a more benevolent planet, his future would've been a
bright one. His unwavering loyalty would serve him well in the
Allied Fleet. He wouldn't be saving puppies, but he wouldn't be a
monster.

Rumors of how the assassin had gone to kill
Aliane and was instead persuaded to join her cause for the honor
and justice of psions everywhere became ingrained in her lore. She
found her way out of almost any situation. After 250 years, her
notorious exploits took on a life of their own. She'd replaced the
Boogyman because she was real.

Years ago, Magnius respected her. The most
powerful telepath in Astra saw worth in him. Potential enough to
tutor him. At the time he was too young to understand how often she
killed people to maintain her extraordinary power. And then after
what she did to his best friend's father—he still longed to forget
the terrible sight.

After dinner, he began to pack his bags when
he asked himself why he bothered. He didn't plan to bend to
Aliane's will so her only recourse would be to kill him. If she
didn't do it right away, she would in time. That is, if she didn't
have some other heinous plot in mind.

He browsed through the drawers of the
nightstand next to him. Lyneea kept jewelry inside, and the fact it
hadn't been touched meant she'd left in a hurry. He grabbed his
shoulder satchel out of the top drawer and tossed it onto the bed.
He'd withdrawn a few thousand dollars after work as he did every
Tuesday; the act seemed pointless at the time, but having it now
felt like a godsend. For the first time in his life, he regretted
not owning a disruptor. Only a headshot would stop Tiyuri, and
Magnius had never been proficient with the guns.

The bottom drawer had a comtab inside. He
took it out and scrolled through the recently viewed files. Most
were books his wife planned to read. But a scrap of a notefile
caught his attention. It had the word "Kearsarge," today's date,
the address of a landing pad on the other side of the city, and a
universal time less than an hour from now. Was it possible she
hadn't left the planet yet?

If he planned to escape, this was his best
chance. The prospect scared him shitless, but no matter the
outcome, he needed to try.

He stuffed the comtab into his satchel in
case he needed to refer back to it and returned to the window.
Lyneea's electric commuter vehicle sat in the driveway next to the
angular black monstrosity Tiyuri arrived in. He could not risk
getting into the garage for his hoverbike so the tiny car would
have to do. He took a few deep breaths, realizing the jeopardy he
was about to throw his life into. For an instant he wished he were
a Seer to assure himself this was the right decision.

He unlatched the window and quietly slid it
open. The warm ocean breeze caressed his face and tempted him to
stay, but he couldn't. He tossed the satchel outside and watched it
flutter to the ground. Before he managed to step onto the
overhanging roof, he felt an invisible arm wrap around his neck and
begin to choke him.

"Going somewhere, Magnius?"

Tiyrui's tight grip had him gasping for air.
The assassin didn't have to bring him voluntarily. Incapacitated
would do just as nicely. He loved to flex his muscles every chance
he got. If only Magnius could use that to his advantage…and before
he lost consciousness.

As his perception began to waver, Magnius
lurched backward and slammed him into the dresser. Tiyuri yelped as
the mirror shattered, breaking his stranglehold enough for him to
slip out of his grasp and dart to the other side of the room. He
reached for the doorknob but it didn't budge. Locked.

He felt a heavy object slam across his back,
forcing him to double over from the stunning blow. When he turned,
Tiyuri stood there behind him, swinging a glass lamp at his head.
Before the sight even registered in his mind, Magnius reacted,
blasting the man back ten feet into a wall with a telekinetic
repulsion wave. The discharge embedded Tiyuri in the drywall, but
he shrugged off the pain as he climbed out. A dusky sheen gave him
a phantasmal appearance, but he charged back into the fray without
pause.

His captor moved faster than a mortal man had
any right to. Magnius had not yet recovered when he found himself
grappling face-to-face with a master fighter. Tiyuri locked his
arms around his head in an attempt to gain the advantage, and
Magnius pulled away with every ounce of strength he possessed. They
stumbled around the room in haphazard motion, and their flailing
broke shelves and a display case on the wall. Lyneea's porcelain
figurines wailed as they smashed against the floor. The two
careened back into the dresser. The moment he fell onto it, Magnius
felt his weight crush every object on it.