Mind Secrets: A Science Fiction Telepathy Thriller (Perceivers Book 1) (18 page)

Jennifer was halfway out the window.

Otis ran towards her. “Jump, Jen!”

Her body disappeared through the opening.

The other two men pushed past Cooper. Otis clambered over the windowsill.

Only one storey to fall, Michael thought – the only thought in his head that belonged to him.

“Leave them!” bellowed Cooper. “They’re not important.”

The men pulled up short. Otis jumped.

Cooper and his two henchmen stood before Michael and Page.

“Well,” said Cooper, “Rachel Page and Michael Ransom. Lucky me.”

“How did you find us?” said Page.

“You didn’t think I’d let the girl go without putting a tracer on her, did you?”

Page’s embarrassment and feeling of stupidity melded with Cooper’s smug, self-satisfaction. Michael moaned. He clutched his head and pulled it down into his knees where it was dark. But he couldn’t escape the pain of perception.

“Bring him,” Cooper ordered.

Hands took Michael’s arms, but he barely felt them. They pulled him to his feet; he was powerless to resist him. They took him from the hotel room and he let them.

His head so full of other people, he was unaware of where they were going. Sights, sounds, colours, lights, perceptions blurred into nothing. There was only the pain, the constant pain. Burning in an ever-bubbling cauldron of human emotion and thought.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THEY PUT HIM
a cell. A grey room only a little longer than the single bed pushed up against one wall. It was narrower than it was long, with a toilet and a basin sticking out of one wall, and a locked door with no handle in the inside set into another.

Michael’s body was alone, but his mind was full of other people. He could no longer tell which emotion or thought belonged to whom. It was just noise. All the chatter of everyone’s heads jumbled together into one, continuous, unbearably loud cacophony.

Michael curled himself up into a ball on the bed and hugged the pillow to his chest. At first, he was aware he was moaning with the pain. He shifted position and felt the wet patch from where he had drooled on the scratchy blanket. After that, he wasn’t aware of what he was doing. There was only the ache in his head.

The cell door must have been opened once or twice because he swore he saw a tray of food on the floor. He let it stay there. He wasn’t hungry and he didn’t want to move. His head hurt too much. The next time he looked, the tray had gone. Maybe it had been a delusion.

Sleep brought a little relief. He tried to sleep as much as possible, but perceptions kept tugging him awake, bringing back the pain.

~

HE AWOKE TO
the sound of the door opening. A shaft of light entered his cell. He squinted at the doorway and tried to make out the shape that stood in it.

“Michael,” said the shape with a deep, authoritative man’s voice: sharp and commanding.

Michael continued to squint. He had seen the shape before. The outline of his suit squared him off, but didn’t entirely disguise his paunch or his six foot tall stature.

“Michael, stand up when I address you,” he ordered.

Michael laughed. He knew that voice from the stairs. He recognised the shape from the hotel room and, inside of him, something familiar touched his mind. It was Cooper.

“Stand up!”

But Michael couldn’t stand. He couldn’t sit. Anyway, he didn’t want to. And, why should he?

The sound of shoes tapping on the tiled floor as Cooper approached the bed.

“What’s the matter with you?”

Michael let out a pained moan as Cooper’s thoughts rose to prominence in his head: a distaste, a disappointment, a distrust.

Cooper grabbed Michael by the shirt and dragged him to a sitting position against the wall. Michael’s body didn’t resist, but flopped like an invertebrate.

“Don’t resist me, Michael. You’ll regret it.”

But Michael didn’t care. He just wanted the pain in his head to go. He just wanted to lie there. He didn’t care if he died.

A blast of anger spilled from Cooper’s mind and ripped into Michael. It brought tears to his eyes.

Cooper pushed Michael away from him. Michael struck the wall by the bed and collapsed back on the scratchy blanket. He buried his head into it. His eyes welcomed the dark, but nothing shaded his mind. He became aware he was moaning again.

Cooper’s footsteps tapped away. The door shut behind him with a violent clang. Bolts clicked into place. Locked in there, alone, he tried to go back to sleep while a myriad of minds clamoured at his consciousness.

~

THE MAN WHO
appeared next at the door was not wearing a suit. His outline was softer. Saggy, even. As he walked forward, the light from the bulb above revealed he wore a patterned black and blue checked jumper and a faded pair of blue jeans.

Michael perceived his presence. But it wasn’t harsh like Cooper’s. It was closer than the background of other minds, but it didn’t stand out from them. It mingled among them, until the man became part of them: indistinct and unreadable.

“Hello, Michael,” he said.

Michael squinted harder. There was something about the man that tugged at his memory. Something about the way his black hair with flecks of grey and increasingly greying beard framed his face. Something about his smile.

The clang of the cell door closing made the man jump. He turned round as the bolts secured it shut. Locked in there together alone.

Michael dropped his body back to the bed. He decided he didn’t care. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than the pain in his head.

His body tilted slightly sideways. He thought it was disorientation. But when hands reached out to touch him, he realised it was the effect of the man’s weight sitting on the bed alongside him. Michael shrank away from the hands. But they did not hold him cruelly. They gently lifted him from the blanket and pulled him onto the man’s lap. Michael didn’t resist. There was something about the way he touched him, something about the aura he gave off – something in the cloud of perception – that encouraged Michael to trust him. His face nuzzled into the softness of the man’s jumper. Its washing powder smell, mixed with the faint musk of the man’s natural scent, evoked a feeling of security.

It lessened the pain. The sensations in his head seemed weaker. Imperceptible at first – they faded so slowly – but they definitely faded. Like a marching band striding down the road, getting further and further away. Snippets of people’s minds outside the cell floated in and out of his consciousness: hunger from someone who had missed lunch; a headache from someone else; a man’s boredom; a woman’s fatigue. Getting fainter. Dampened. As if wrapped in a blanket.

And, all the while, the man held him. Arms clutched around his upper body, pulling him close into his lap.

“I used to do this when you were small,” said the man. “Do you remember?”

“Remember?” Michael mumbled.

“You were always a strong perceiver, Michael. I did this to protect you, to help you learn to control it.”

Michael opened his eyes and looked up at the bearded face of the man who held him. He was greyer than his picture. His hair was longer. But Michael still knew who he was. “You’re Brian Ransom.”

“You used to call me ‘Dad’,” he said.

Michael played the word over in his head: Dad. It didn’t seem right to call the stranger by that name.

“What are you doing?” Michael said. The other minds still whispered – they were there, but they did not hurt anymore. His head throbbed, but it was a normal headache, the remnants of trying to cope with the bombardment of perception.

“I’ve cocooned your mind,” said Ransom. “I’ve reached out with my perception to shield you. It’s a temporary respite to help you regain your strength.”

“You’re …?” It hurt to think. “You’re … a perceiver?”

“You know that, Michael.”

“I … don’t remember.”

He nodded sadly. “Rachel told me. I thought she exaggerated. Unfortunately not.”

“Rachel?”

“Rachel Page, my assistant.”

“Why didn’t it come back? My memory. When she unblocked my perception, why didn’t it restore my memory?”

“I don’t know,” said Ransom. “We think it might have been destroyed for good.”

Michael felt tears on his cheeks. Hot, silent tears.

“We didn’t anticipate how strong you were. We were going to cure you, hide you somewhere safe – that’s all. But you resisted. You broke free in the middle of the treatment. We were pulled out of your mind so fast, it caused some damage.”

“Mend it. Give me my memories back.”

“Damaged for good, Michael. I’m sorry.”

Michael cried out. A long, despairing cry.

Whispers of a dozen minds surged in his head. Their feelings and thoughts suddenly loud; clamouring for attention all at once. Stabbing at him with pain.

Then subsiding. The volume turned back down to a whispering hiss.

There was concentration on Ransom’s face. “This is difficult for me,” he said. “I can’t hold on much longer.”

“You’re going to put all those minds back in my head? You can’t!”

“You have to learn to control it.”

“I can’t!”

“You did when you were a little boy. You can again.”

“I can’t! You did this to me. You damaged my brain! You’ve got to make it stop.”

Another wave of other people’s minds crowded in on him. The pain was worse than before. He didn’t have the strength to bear it.

It subsided a little. Not as much as before. Still loud inside his head.

“I have to withdraw now, Michael.”

“No!”

“I’ll be back. Be strong now.”

He touched Michael on the head. A caring touch like a father might with a sleeping baby. Then he pulled back. His arms withdrew from around Michael’s body. The cocoon of protection withdrew from Michael’s mind. The cacophony of perception rushed back.

Michael screamed in pain. He writhed on the bed, trying to push the minds away – but they weren’t solid, he couldn’t touch them. He looked up to Ransom for help, but the man was retreating from him. He turned his back and knocked on the cell door. Unseen hands outside turned the lock. Ransom walked out of the cell and Michael was again alone with the unyielding pain.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

RANSOM RETURNED
to the cell periodically. There was no window in the enclosed grey room, no daylight to judge the passing of the hours, but Michael suspected he visited once a day. Ransom must have perceived the hatred Michael had for him, but he said nothing about it. He merely cocooned Michael and spoke to him softly, explaining how to control the perceptions that reached his mind.

Michael submitted to his instruction. No matter how much he hated his father for what he had done to him, it was nothing compared to the pain.

Ransom told him how to isolate a single mind from the melee of everything around him. To listen to its tone, categorise it and excise it from his consciousness, until it was possible to ignore it. It was like, he said, a hearing person could block out the background noise of traffic or music playing in a restaurant. Then, after ignoring one mind, he learnt to single out another. And another and another. Eventually, Ransom said, it would become second nature and the thoughts and feelings in his mind would become his own again.

But it was hard. He was so tired and sleeping was difficult. Ransom gave him some tablets to help him sleep, but they only made him more groggy when he awoke and weakened his ability to control his perception.

On one visit, Cooper accompanied Ransom into the cell.

“When’s he going to be ready?” Cooper said.

Cooper’s sense of self-superiority had entered the cell with him. The perception of it was loud in Michael’s mind.

“He’ll be ready when he’s ready,” said Ransom.

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re going to get.”

“Ready for what?” Michael asked. He was more able to function – more able to follow a conversation – now that he’d had several tutorials with Ransom.

Cooper’s frustration spilled out of him. Along with a jumble of hatred, distrust and suspicion. “Work quicker, Ransom.”

“I told you, this will take as long as it takes,” said Ransom. “Michael’s making progress, but he’s strong and it can’t be rushed. Can I suggest, however, that if you want him to work for you when all this is done, you should stop despising him.”

Anger joined Cooper’s collection of emotions. “What did I say about perceiving me?”

“You’re like a foghorn, Bill. Tone it down a bit.”

With disgust, Cooper turned and left.

Michael was confused. “He wants me to work for him?”

“Don’t worry about it now,” said Ransom. He reached out his mind and cocooned Michael in a protective shield. Michael relaxed into the peace and pain-free solace of it and prepared for his next lesson.

~

DAYS LATER
and Michael’s mind was almost clear. The rumble was still inside his head, he still suffered from headaches, but the pain and the bombardment had lessened enough to allow him to think. He thought about where he was: locked in a cell in some unknown place, away from his friends, away from society, and even away from the police and their rules on dealing with prisoners. He’d not been offered a solicitor and he hadn’t been read his rights, suggesting that he had none.

Michael flinched at the unexpected turn of the lock of his cell door. He sat up on the bed and held his breath.

The door opened and Cooper took a step inside. Michael was aware enough to notice Cooper had dispensed with his usual black suit to one of dark blue. But there was a day’s stubble on his chin and the first shirt button above the belt of his trousers was undone. It gaped to reveal a patch of pale belly and a couple of wiry hairs.

“Ransom says you’re well enough for me to talk to you.”

Michael drew his knees up to his chest as an instinctive barrier. “Talk to me about what?”

“Shall we go somewhere more comfortable?” said Cooper. “You must be sick of this cell by now.”

There was something sinister in the way he said ‘more comfortable’. Michael tried to perceive Cooper’s intentions, but as soon as he opened his perception, a dozen other minds flooded in and drowned out the man’s thoughts.