Mind Control: A Science Fiction Telepathy Thriller (Perceivers Book 2) (6 page)

Michael couldn’t listen to it. Not in public. He got up from the table as quietly as possible. Alex asked if he was okay, but Michael waved away his concern. No one else noticed, they were too engrossed by the news on the TV.

He had planned to go to his room, but when he reached the corridor, he realised he didn’t want to stay in a building full of other perceivers, where part of his brain would be concentrating on shutting out the rest of the world. He turned, instead, to the door and found himself in the grounds of the camp. The sun had gone down now and there was only a haze of the daylight still in the sky. The street lights had taken over and cast their orangey glow across the road and across the grass. The sun had taken what little warmth it had given the day and brought the night chill to the air. Michael shivered and realised, for the second time that day, he shouldn’t have left his coat in the police station.

He could have gone back in for a jumper or something, but the cool breeze on his face was actually refreshing. He started walking, with no particular plan of where he was going, and ended up in the car park.

~

HODGES WAS STILL
there, giving his car one last check over for the night, and wiping the back windscreen with a chamois leather. He stopped, mid-wipe, as he heard Michael’s approaching footsteps. He had taken off his tie and undone the top button of his shirt, which somehow made him look more human. He always wore a suit and tie to drive Michael around, like it was some kind of uniform, a barrier between him and the rest of the world that meant he did not have to show everyone his real self.

“Shouldn’t you be inside?” said Hodges.

“Yes,” said Michael.

“Had a row with someone?”

“They’re watching the trial.”

“Ah,” said Hodges, as if he understood. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Michael could have looked inside his mind to check, but it was nicer to believe the man knew him enough so he didn’t have to explain himself.

Hodges gave up wiping the back window of the black Audi A4, folded up his chamois leather and popped it in a pocket on the inside of the passenger door. He pushed the door closed again, pulled a set of keys from his pocket and pressed a button on the fob. The car responded with a bleep and a yellow flash of all four indicators. Michael’s body shuddered at the suddenness of it.

Hodges smiled a sympathetic smile at him. “I had a friend who witnessed a bomb explode once,” said Hodges. “For a week afterwards, he couldn’t stand any kind of loud noise. There was one time, someone accidently dropped a glass and smashed it – we found him several minutes later hiding under the table.”

“It’s not the explosion,” said Michael. “It’s the—”

“The trial, yes you said.” Hodges pressed the button on the car keys in his hand again, and the car responded like before, with four simultaneous clicks as the locks of each door released. Michael shuddered again. His heart was racing.

Hodges opened the nearest rear door. “Sit down,” he said.

“I’m fine,” said Michael.

“Sit.”

There was something in Hodges’s tone that suggested it was not open to debate. Michael sat with his bum on the edge of the back seat and his legs dangling out of the doorway. “Was that in Iraq?”

“Yes,” said Hodges.

“Must have been awful.”

“Some of it was,” he admitted. “But I was a soldier, I wanted to see action.”

Michael thought about it for a moment. It seemed wrong, to him, that someone’s job should be going to war. “Did you ever see a suicide bomber?”

Hodges folded his arms and leant back against the body of the car. The dim glow radiating from the street lights highlighted the lines of his face, etched by experience. “I saw the aftermath once,” he said. “A young man had gone into a marketplace with explosives strapped to his body and set them off. He killed more than a dozen people who had simply gone out that morning to buy vegetables. Mindless.”

“Why do they do it?” asked Michael.

“Isn’t that more your territory?” said Hodges. “Figuring out what’s going on in people’s minds?”

“I’d still be interested in hearing what you think.”

Hodges took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “They think their life has no meaning, they can’t see themselves having any sort of future, they can’t see themselves getting ahead in life through education or work or bringing up a family. Then someone comes along who tells them that their life can have meaning in death. So they choose death, and they don’t care who they take with them.”

“Is that what they think when they pull the trigger?” Michael was remembering Stephen, and the thoughts that didn’t explain why he did it.

“Who knows,” said Hodges. “I suppose they’re thinking of whatever mixed up cause someone has drummed into their head. The young man in the market in Baghdad shouted ‘God is great’ in Arabic before he blew himself up. As far as I am concerned, no god who endorses killing wives and mothers as they buy vegetables to feed their family can be considered ‘great’.”

A wave of disgust and grief poured from Hodges, seeping through Michael’s perception filters. It lasted only a moment before the former soldier pulled back his emotions and locked them away inside himself.

“Was the explosion you witnessed a suicide bomber?” said Hodges.

“Yes,” said Michael. The memory of it was still fresh, unprocessed, painful like the bruises on his back.

“Did you see inside his head?” said Hodges.

“I did,” said Michael, “but I couldn’t see why he was doing it. I tried, but there was nothing there. He kept saying to himself that he was ready to set off the bomb, but he didn’t seem to have a reason. There was no desire to die, there wasn’t any sort of cause in his head. And I probed deep into his mind – deeper than I should.”

The memory of Stephen pulling the gun on him was suddenly there. Accusing him of being a perceiver before the sniper shot him and it was all over.
How could Stephen have known? How could a norm possibly have known?

“So perceivers don’t know everything,” said Hodges.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Michael. He said it as a half joke to try to lighten things up, but even through a smile, his words sounded melancholy.

Hodges shivered in the night air that had suddenly got colder now that the sun had completely set.

Michael realised the man was supposed to be off shift. “I’m sorry, you should be going home.”

“That’s true,” said Hodges.

But Michael didn’t want to leave the safety of the car where he could be alone with his thoughts and no one else’s. “You have your own car, don’t you?” Michael asked. “I mean, you leave this one here and drive your own car home?”

“What are you getting at, Michael?”

“Can I stay here tonight?”

“In the car?” said Hodges.

“It’s inside the base,” said Michael. “It’ll be safe.”

The man frowned and pulled the keys from his pocket. He pressed a button and the boot popped. He went round to the back of the car and rummaged around while Michael wondered what the hell he was doing.

Hodges returned carrying a blanket which he threw at Michael. “The AA says always carry a blanket in your boot in case you break down in bad weather,” he explained.

Michael clutched the soft wool of the material to his lap. “Thank you.”

“Mm,” said Hodges, doubtfully.

Michael pulled his mobile phone from his pocket.

“What are you doing?” said Hodges.

“Texting Alex,” said Michael. “Getting him to cover for me.”

Alex replied almost immediately: ‘Sure thing, geezer,’ said the text, followed by a yellow face icon that winked at him.

Michael giggled.

“What?” said Hodges.

“He thinks I’m off with some girl,” said Michael.

“That wouldn’t be such a bad idea at some point,” said Hodges. “But not in my car. Semen stains are hell to get out of the upholstery.”

Michael smiled, even though it pulled at that scab by his mouth, and unfolded the blanket to spread it out over his legs. Hodges made to leave.

“Hodges?” Michael stopped him.

The man turned back. “Yes?”

“You won’t report this, will you?”

“Michael …” His voice was doubtful, almost apologetic.

Michael realised it might have been a request too far. “Sorry, I don’t want you to risk your job …”

Hodges put his hand on the roof of the car and leant forward so he could look Michael in the eye. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you, Michael. You perceive that, right?”

It had been a long time since Michael had looked into Hodges’s mind to find out his motives, but when he had, he had found no malice there. He decided to trust him. “Good night, Hodges.”

“Good night, Michael.”

Hodges walked off to wherever he had parked his own car. Michael watched him go, reflecting on how tough it must be for him to serve two masters.

CHAPTER SIX

THE FIRST RAYS
of the sun woke Michael, prodding him from sleep like an alarm clock that had been set too early. He felt the grogginess of semi-consciousness for one blissful moment before he decided to move and the bruises on his back complained with a spasm of pain that ran down his spine, into his pelvis, and up into his skull.

He groaned.

Sleeping in the back seat of a car was not the best medicine for someone caught in a bomb blast. But it had the advantage of being gloriously quiet. He opened his mind further and perceived the silence. He was cocooned in an emptiness where no one was lying awake worrying, or missing their family, or having inappropriate sexual thoughts about an actress from the television. He was alone with his own thoughts and it was beautiful.

He also needed a pee. Michael struggled to sit up in the car, his back complaining with each muscle movement. The blanket was caught up round his feet and required several kicks to get the damn thing off him. “Ow, ow, ow!” he said to himself.

Finally, he was able to shuffle along the seat, open the door and step out into the fresh air to taste clean oxygen. His breath turned to vapour as he exhaled into the open air. It had been a clear night, causing the temperatures to drop and bring a frost, which the early morning sun was already burning away. In the brightness of daylight, the car park seemed like a tarmac field, stretching out to the hedge boundary, big enough for a game of football. Hodges’s car sat like a molehill in its space, metres distant from the twenty-or-so other military molehills which had been parked there for the night. In the shade of several towering trees, a row of khaki jeeps reminded him of the many bumpy trips he’d taken in them to reach ghastly military exercises on Salisbury Plain.

Michael walked away from them to the nearest hedge where he unzipped his trousers and released his bladder with that glorious sensation of physical relief. A stream of yellow urine arched into the undergrowth, discharging its warmth in vapour that rose into the air with a musty human smell. As he squeezed the last urine from inside of him, the presence of another mind crept into the edge of his perception. He hadn’t been paying attention and the mind was suddenly close. Along with the smell of coffee.

He turned.

Pauline stood there, all in black like he had first seen her, with a steaming mug in her hand. Her gaze automatically dropped to his groin.

“Shit!” said Michael, caught by surprise, grabbing his willy and shoving it back in his trousers. Heat coloured his cheeks.

Pauline was grinning. “Morning,” she said.

“Don’t you knock?” said Michael.

She looked around the half empty car park, closed a fist and rapped on thin air. “Like this?”

“Ha bloody ha.” His face still felt as red as an over-ripe tomato and he knew she had probably perceived his embarrassment. He should never have let his guard down, even when he was alone.

“I brought you some coffee,” she said, holding out the mug. A twist of steam rose gently into the cold of the morning and it smelt like civilisation.

Michael took it and sipped. His whole body warmed at the prospect of coffee stimulation as he swallowed and tasted its welcome bitter earthiness. “How did you know I was out here?” he asked.

“Alex,” said Pauline.

“Alex?”

“He winked at me in a suggestive way this morning,” she said. “I thought he was hitting on me. Turns out he thought I was out with you all night.”

“Oh.” Michael laughed.

She didn’t find it funny. “What have you been saying?”

“I asked him to cover for me,” said Michael. “You know, make it look like I’m asleep in my room so Norm the Norm doesn’t know. When we do that, it’s usually because the other person wants to be with a girl.”

She rolled her eyes. “Boys!”

Michael drank from the mug. It was more lukewarm than hot, having been carried all the way from Galen House, but it was still more than he expected. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“I tried to find you last night to talk to you, but Alex said you left when the news about the trial came on.”

“Yes,” said Michael.

“Don’t you want to see that bastard pay for what he’s done?”

“Not really.”

“If it wasn’t for him, my mother wouldn’t have taken that stupid pill,” she said.

“I’m not saying he didn’t do anything wrong,” said Michael. “I’m just not sure I want to watch it laid out in front of me on television.”

“Don’t you want to see him face his crime?” said Pauline, getting angry. “That pill changed my DNA before I was even born. If it wasn’t for him, they wouldn’t have taken me away from my family, I wouldn’t be …” Her voice cracked. She stopped talking before it became too obvious. But her emotions gave her away; the pain of separation was easy to perceive.

“You didn’t have to leave home,” said Michael. “Not after the Perceivers’ Law. We have a right not to be discriminated against.” He remembered how hard perceivers had fought to make that law a reality. He remembered the elation as he sat in the Houses of Parliament and heard the Prime Minister, John Pankhurst, promise that perceivers would be allowed to live freely in Britain without fear of persecution.

“How long have you been in here?” asked Pauline.