Mind Secrets: A Science Fiction Telepathy Thriller (Perceivers Book 1) (22 page)

Michael closed his eyes. He heard the whispers inside of him. They pushed him into believing Cooper. The man he had fought so hard to run away from.

“If it matters so much to you,” said Michael, “why don’t you just force me?”

“I need you to do this willingly,” said Cooper. “I need you to trust me and for me to trust you.”

“I don’t trust you,” said Michael.

“But I’m telling you the truth, you must have perceived that.”

Michael lowered his barrier and perceived the man who stood before him once again. Not deeply – he couldn’t control his perception enough for that yet – but enough to tell he wasn’t lying.

“Think about it,” said Cooper. “But don’t take too long or I’ll have to make the decision for you.”

Cooper stepped off the platform and picked the handcuffs up from the bench. “Sorry Michael, but we have to put on a show for everyone else.”

Michael looked at the cuffs with disdain, a symbol of how he was locked into a choice between two unpalatable options.

“Stand up and turn around.”

Michael did as he was told. He felt the metal encase his wrists.

Cooper led him back into the corridor where the woman in khaki was waiting. “Take him back to his cell.”

The woman gripped Michael’s arm and obeyed his order.

In his cell, he stood passively with his face towards the wall while she unlocked the restraints. As she did so, he felt something being pressed into his hand. Small, almost imperceptible. She closed his fingers around it.

He turned to face her. Instinctively, he looked beyond her eyes, into her mind. He perceived her feelings – sorry for him, but frightened and desperate for him not to react.

He said nothing and made no movement as she turned and left the cell. He waited for the sound of the guard locking the door, then sat on the bed. He opened his fist to reveal a small, scrunched up piece of paper. He unravelled it. Barely five centimetres square with torn edges, it contained a series of numbers written in blue biro:

5 9 2 0

6 4 9 1

8 7 6 4

3 0 5 5

He read them over and over again and wondered if the numbers meant what he thought they meant.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

MICHAEL WOKE
to the sound of his cell door being unlocked.

With sleepy eyes, he blinked into the gloom to see a hunched figure creep in.

He perceived him before he recognised him. It was Ransom.

A bundle of cloth hit him in the face.

“Put those on,” whispered Ransom.

They were a pair of khaki trousers and T-shirt, like he’d seen others in the complex wear.

“I said I’d get you out of here,” said Ransom. “It’s time to act on that promise.”

Michael stumbled out of bed and put on the clothes. He didn’t have time to scramble around for a pair of underpants, so he went without.

“I thought Cooper wasn’t going to let you back in here,” said Michael.

“I called in some favours,” said Ransom. “Now, less talking, more speed.”

“What about the guard? The cameras?” said Michael.

“They were really big favours. You got the security codes?”

Michael looked at him for a moment, his mind still foggy.

“You should have a piece of paper with numbers on it,” said Ransom.

Of course. Michael reached under his pillow where he had stashed the tiny scrap. He held it in his hand, not sure of what to do.

“You trust me, don’t you, Michael?”

“I don’t know.”

“Perceive me.” He opened his arms in the same gesture Michael had seen before.

Michael looked into his father’s eyes. Beyond his hazel irises, deep and penetrating. A cocktail of emotions flowed from him. Anxiety, sorrow and a touch of fear – all hovering on an undercurrent of love.

Michael withdrew. He shivered. He had no love for his father – not after what he had done to him – and he had no desire to feel his father’s affection for him.

“Now, would you prefer to stay in this cell, or did you want to escape?”

“Escape.”

“Good man,” said Ransom. “Follow me. Be quiet. And forheavensake stop looking like a nervous wreck.”

Ransom peered out of the cell door, then exited into the corridor.

Michael followed.

At the security door, Ransom produced a swipe card from his pocket. He grinned at Michael, then swiped it through the reader.

“Number?” said Ransom.

“Oh.” Michael unfurled the scrap of paper in his hand. He tapped the first number from the list onto the pad:
5, 9, 2, 0
.

The door clicked open.

There was no guard in the corridor outside. There was no one at all. The lights were dimmed to a night time glow. They turned left. Ransom swiped the card at the next security door and Michael tapped in the second number from the scrap of paper.

The same at the next door.

At the last door, Ransom stopped. “I can’t go any further.”

“What do you mean?” said Michael.

“A teenager alone, dressed in those clothes, is far less conspicuous than taking me with you.”

Michael looked down at the khaki he was wearing.

“There’s a car,” said Ransom. “Parked at the back of the building on the other side of the roundabout. A white Renault Laguna. It’s unlocked. Get into the boot. Someone will drive you out through the security gates.”

“Then what?”

“Then you’re free to do what you want.” Ransom took both of Michael’s shoulders in his hands and looked him direct in the eye. The earnest anxiety coming from him was difficult to block. “But Michael, please take my advice and run. Run as far away as you can from this place. From Cooper, from your friends, from the country if you have to. I can’t escape from this mess, but you can. You must.”

“And you?” said Michael.

“I’m on Cooper’s leash. I can’t leave.”

Ransom reached forward and swiped the card through the reader by the security door. Michael looked down at the list of numbers. Then back up at his father.

He hated his father. For all the things he had done to him. But he was still his father, the only link he had to his past. Suddenly, he didn’t want to leave him.

Ransom must have perceived it because he said, “You need to go. Now.”

“There’s so many things I need to ask you,” said Michael.

“No time.”

Michael glanced back the way they had come. Back towards his cell. He didn’t want to go back there, but if he ran, he may never know the answers to his questions – and he needed those answers.

He pushed Ransom against the wall – so fast, the man had no time to perceive him. In his surprise, Ransom’s mental barrier slipped. Enough to let Michael through: beyond his eyes and into his mind.

“Show me your memories,” said Michael.

“Whaa—?”

“How you created me,” he insisted.

A flash:

Ransom in his office. Younger. In shirt and tie. Sitting at his desk, silhouetted against the window. Another man stood beside him.

Flash out again. To the corridor, in the present.

Ransom resisted.

Michael pushed.

He looked deeper. He had to believe what Cooper had told him, that he was strong. Strong enough to break his father’s resistance and pull the memories from his head.

“
Show me
.”

The man standing next to Ransom’s desk – unkempt with straggly hair – wedged his hands deep into his trouser pockets. “We’ve actually done it, Brian.”

“You’re sure?” said the younger Ransom.

“Oh yes. We’ve found the gene that causes perception.”

“Will my children be perceivers?”

“You carry the gene. There’s a fifty per cent chance. If the donor egg comes from a perceiver too, then I’d say, Brian, it’s pretty likely …”

The memory dissolved.

“Show me more.” Michael concentrated harder, deeper.

The same unkempt man, but at a later time in his life when he had shorter hair, in an armchair in someone’s house. Ransom sat opposite him. In Ransom’s memory was the bitter smell of black coffee that drifted up from the mug in his hands.

“You sure you want to do this?” said the man, who Ransom remembered was called Lockwood.

“Think of a world where everyone can perceive each other,” said Ransom. “Think how people would understand each other. Conflict would be reduced. People would be happier.”

“Sounds too good to be true,” said Lockwood.

“I know. But you can’t deny that life’s been better for us with perception.” Ransom sipped his coffee. It was hot. It scalded his lip.

“Sure. I applaud what you’re doing, Brian, you know that. There’s just a little bit of me that’s frightened we’re trying too hard to play God.”

“God or fate or evolution gave us this gift,” said Ransom. “We were born with it. You’ve got to remember, what we have is a natural genetic mutation which is already spreading among the population. All we’re doing is helping evolution along a bit.”

“By triggering the change in children who would otherwise have been born normal,” said Lockwood.

“Right.” Ransom blew steam from his coffee and took another tentative mouthful. “I have no regrets. I made sure I gave this gift to my child, didn’t I?”

The memory dissolved.

Then re-formed.

Ransom squinted into bright lights as camera lenses stared at him and an array of microphones pointed at him. A gallery of journalists in suits watched him, all looking silly in the hairnets the regulations insisted they wore.

Ransom – also suited – stood in a factory. Behind him were stilled machines and operatives in white coats and hygiene hats. Next to him was a heavily pregnant woman beside him.

Michael’s own memory flashed in – this was the press conference he had seen on Otis’s phone, the one where Ransom announced his plan to give away free vitamins to pregnant women. Except he was seeing it from Ransom’s perspective, not that of the news camera. He also realised that the pregnant woman had to be his mother and, inside her bump, was the baby version of himself.

Ransom remembered his feelings of overwhelming love and pride. For the woman at his side, for the child she was carrying, and for the produce of the factory behind him.

“When Mary and I—” he gave his wife a little squeeze “—embarked on the adventure of having a baby, we were lucky. We had money to buy the best care and the best doctors. Not everyone has that opportunity, so I wanted to do my bit to help. That’s why – today – I am offering pregnant women across the country free vitamin supplements. In itself, this small gesture cannot ensure optimum health for mother and baby, but it is my way of helping them towards that goal.”

He stood aside to reveal two plastic buttons – one red, one green – set into the metal framework of the nearest machine and protected behind a transparent plastic box. Ransom opened the box, reached inside and put his hand on the green button. He turned to look at the cameras and journalists. He made an effort to smile in the glare of the lights and pushed.

The factory came to life. The machines whirred and shuffled as they launched into their automated motions and began to churn out little orange pills.

Ransom stepped aside and allowed the journalists to take it all in. And, out of the glare of the cameras, he kissed his wife gently on the cheek. A swell of love, care and protection welled inside of him. “I’ll meet you in the reception area, okay?”

Mary smiled. “See you in a minute.”

As she departed, leaning back slightly to balance the weight of her pregnant body, a seriousness came over Ransom. He looked up as Rachel Page approached him from behind the reporter throng. Like the factory workers, she wore a white coat and hat with a net holding her hair at the back.

“You did it, Brian,” she said.

“Guess so,” said Ransom.

“You’re really going to change the world.”

“For the better, I hope,” he said.

Michael pulled himself out of the memory.

He was back in the corridor. He let go of Ransom and stepped back. He perceived the man’s violation, but Michael didn’t care. He’d got the information he wanted.

“It’s true,” Michael said. “Your vitamin pills caused perception.”

Ransom said nothing. His embarrassment and shame said it all for him.

“You created all this!” He gestured to indicate the complex they were in. “It’s all your fault.”

“I didn’t know it was going to be like this,” said Ransom. “I swear.”

Michael turned away from him in disgust.

“I perceive what you think of me, Michael. But I can’t change it. Lord! If I could go back in time … All I can do is try to make amends now.”

“Is that what the cure clinics are?”

Ransom’s regret filled the corridor. “You need to go, Michael. A lot of people took risks so I could get you out of here. I perceive you don’t care what happens to me, but – for their sake, if not your own – get out of here.”

Ransom swiped the card on the reader.

Michael wasn’t ready to let go the feeling of disgust.

“Please,” said Ransom. His eyes went down to the scrap of paper in Michael’s hand. Michael’s eyes followed. He read the last number on the list –
3, 0, 5, 5
– and tapped it onto the number pad. The door clicked and he opened it.

He took one last look at Ransom – his father; violated, ashamed and pathetic – and stepped outside.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE DARK OF
night brought an eerie quiet to the complex. Four street lights around the edge of the grass roundabout covered everything in a yellow glow. The roads were without cars, the paths were without people and the swish of wind rustling through the trees was without birdsong. Michael opened his perception. Even the minds around him were quiet. And distant. He was almost alone, apart from the two soldiers standing guard with their rifles at the gate.