Mind Secrets: A Science Fiction Telepathy Thriller (Perceivers Book 1) (6 page)

“Thank you for your concern,” Jack said with precise politeness. “I’m much better now.”

Michael was still trying to reconcile his memory of Jack with the boy who was standing in front of him when the sound of Mrs Jackson’s voice drifted across the park. “Nathaniel!”

She waved at her son from the touchline.

“Excuse me,” said Jack. “I have to go.”

He turned and walked away without giving Michael a second glance.

Michael took several steps backwards until he felt the solid trunk of the tree at his back. He let it take his body weight as thoughts spiralled through his mind. So that was the cure, he thought. It had taken a strident, vivacious boy and emptied him of his spirit.

Like Michael had been emptied of his memories.

Looking into Jack’s face had been like looking into his own mind – the harder he stared, the more he saw only blankness.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“I’VE SEEN JACK!”
Michael cried as he entered the flat.

Otis looked up from where he was sitting sprawled out on the furthest armchair, tapping away at his phone.

Jennifer put down the kettle halfway through making herself a cup of coffee. “Is he all right?” she asked. She came out of the kitchen to join Michael in the lounge.

“He was…” Michael tried to think of the right word. “… different.”

“But he was all right?”

Michael didn’t know what to say. The way Jennifer was looking at him, it was like she wanted him to say ‘yes’. To tell her that Father Christmas exists, there’s gold at the end of the rainbow and everyone’s going to live happily ever after. Michael didn’t believe in any of those things and so he said nothing.

Otis was the one to break the silence. “He’d had the cure.”

“That’s what he said,” said Michael.

Otis got out of his seat and discarded his phone on the cushion behind him. “Seem withdrawn? Unemotional? Robotic?”

“Yeah,” said Michael.

“Like they’d taken part of his soul and thrown it in the rubbish?”

Jennifer turned on Otis, accusation in her eyes. “It can’t be that bad.”

She turned to Michael. “It wasn’t that bad?”

But Otis’s description wasn’t far off.

As Jennifer looked deeper into Michael, she must have perceived his thoughts because she didn’t ask him again. She just sat down hard on the sofa, like she had no strength left to stand anymore. “We should have stopped him, Otis.”

“How? He’s underage. We’d only have the police coming down on us.”

Frustration was rising inside Michael. This was how it often went with Jennifer and Otis. They’d talk about things and he wouldn’t understand. “Are you going to tell me more about this cure or what?”

“You’re such a skank sometimes, Michael,” said Otis. “How come you don’t know this stuff?”

“Amnesia,” prompted Jennifer.

“Convenient!” Otis sighed. “What d’ya wanna know? I mean, you saw it. It takes away perception. It’s supposed to turn a perceiver into a norm, but it’s like taking eyes from a sighted person or ears from a hearing person. We experience life through ’ceiving. When it’s gone it’s like we’re suddenly blind or deaf. Jack ain’t the first I’ve known who’s been cured. They’re lobotomised. Like little robots programmed to pass exams and join the chess club.”

And play football in matching strips, be polite and obey their mother, Michael thought. “How does it work?”

“Injection. As far as we know. For some reason it has to be given by specially-trained doctors at a special clinic.” Otis gave him a disapproving look. “Not as if you couldn’t have found out all this by looking it up your skanking self.”

He bent down and snatched up his phone from the chair. He spent a few moments typing something and chucked it over to Michael.

Michael – taken by surprise – lifted his hands to catch it. The device bounced off his wrist and turned in the air. He fumbled for it and managed to grab hold before it fell to the floor. He turned it sideways and watched the video which Otis had started to play on the screen.

Soft, classical music drifted over images of a stone-clad building with the sign
Perceivers’ Clinic
on the door. The shot closed in and the door opened to allow in the camera. The shot followed through into a brightly lit waiting area with a smiling doctor in a crisp white coat and several teenagers and their parents looking excited.

A calm voiceover: “The cure is a simple, quick and painless procedure that can be given to any teenager showing symptoms of perception. Just a little injection and your child becomes normal again.”

The shot changed to a bunch of teenage girls playing basketball.

Then changed again to show one of the girls standing on the courtside, speaking to an interviewer out of shot. “I feel soooo much better.” She had long flowing hair as soft as a shampoo advert and a smile as white as a toothpaste commercial. “It’s just like being a normal kid. I’ve been able to join the basketball club and concentrate on my school work. I wouldn’t ever want to go back to the way I was …”

The video continued, but Michael had seen enough. He passed it back to Otis.

“I’m presuming Jack wasn’t acting like that?” said Otis.

“No,” said Michael.

“Propaganda’s everywhere,” said Jennifer. “We’re trying to tell people the truth, but they keep shutting down our websites.”

“Jennifer’s in touch with ’ceivers all over the country,” said Otis. “Maybe we can do something to stop it, if they don’t cure us all first.”

Michael sat on the chair opposite Jennifer. “What else does this cure actually do?” he asked.

Jennifer didn’t answer him immediately. She rested her elbows on her knees, clasped her hands together, sat her chin on top and looked at him. Looked into him. After a moment, her expression changed. A smile suggested she had found what was looking for. “You think you’ve had the cure,” she said.

It was the one thing that had dominated Michael’s thoughts since leaving the park.

Otis laughed. “Michael? A perceiver?”

“Why not?” said Michael.

“I’ve ’ceived you, Michael mate. I’m telling you, you’re a norm.”

Michael turned away from Otis’s mocking laugh, hoping to get more sense out of Jennifer. “Is it so ridiculous? The cure affects your brain, right? Could it affect memory?”

She shook her head. “They remember. They just can’t perceive anymore. It’s what’s so cruel. Knowing what you once were and realising you can never be that person again.”

“But Jack forgot stuff,” said Michael. “When I asked about you two, he looked at me blankly.”

“He remembers,” said Jennifer. “He’s moved on, that’s all. The cured don’t hang around with perceivers. They turn their backs on us.”

“But …”

The conversation wasn’t going the way Michael had imagined it would. They hadn’t looked into Jack’s eyes like he had. Michael wasn’t a perceiver – at least, not anymore – but he wasn’t wrong about recognising something of himself in the boy who insisted his name was ‘Nathaniel’.

“Are you sure it does all that with one injection?”

“Using specialist doctors and the specialist clinics,” said Jennifer.

“Doesn’t sound like a big deal,” said Michael.

“It ain’t like we haven’t thought of this stuff before,” said Otis.

“And?” said Michael.

“And nothing,” Otis replied. “The few of the cured we’ve talked to only remember the injection. Then they wake up in a recovery room.”

“So you don’t actually know what goes on inside clinics.” An idea was forming in Michael’s head. An exciting idea. Generating a plan as he spoke.

Otis nodded, like he was perceiving Michael’s thoughts as quickly as he was having them. “If you want to find out, why don’t you go into one of the clinics?” said Michael.

“No!” Jennifer stood up and backed away from the others, shaking her head. “No way, Otis. I’m not going near one of those places. I’m not.”

“Not you,” said Michael. “Me.”

Jennifer looked at him, uncomprehending. “But you’re not a perceiver.”

“Exactly,” said Michael. His mind was racing ahead of theirs. It was exhilarating. “Either I’ve always been a norm or I’ve already had the cure. Either way, it can’t hurt me.”

“As far as we know,” said Jennifer. “You’ve seen what happened to Jack. What will it do to a norm?”

Michael didn’t know. He hoped he wouldn’t have to find out. “I need to understand what happened to my memories … to get them back.”

Otis scoffed. “You might as well climb Mount Everest to learn about knitting!”

That wasn’t fair. “Even if I don’t find out anything about my own situation, I might find out something about the clinics that can help you.”

“Why do you care?” said Otis. “You’re not one of us.”

“But I’m sleeping on your sofa,” said Michael. “Maybe I don’t want to be homeless.”

Otis put his head to one side and looked into him, like a dog trying to understand a human. It was unnerving. Not like when Jennifer perceived him. He felt the prickle of hairs on his arms as his skin developed goose pimples. Only for a moment. Then Otis righted his head again and Michael’s skin relaxed.

“I’ll take that as an answer for now,” said Otis. He strolled around the room and went back to his armchair. He sat and spread his legs wide. He rested his elbows on his knees and leant forward. “So … memory-challenged norm-boy – what’s your plan?”

CHAPTER EIGHT

OTIS DROVE MICHAEL
out to the countryside in his ugly, dented hatchback and left him to walk the last mile to the cure clinic on his own. The authorities had set up the cure clinic for one day in a building usually used by a private healthcare company. How Otis had managed to set Michael up with an appointment at such short notice, he didn’t ask. There were a lot of things to do with Otis he didn’t ask about. It felt safer that way.

At the front desk, a short, wide woman squeezed into a trouser suit one size too small for her, took Michael’s picture, his name, fingerprints and contact details. Michael lied. He used the false name Otis had given him, handed over the bogus ID and appointment card he had brought with him and trotted out a fake address and contact number. She noted it all down in her computer without comment. Michael tried not to show he was relieved to get through the first part of the plan.

She asked him to sit in the waiting room of plush furnishings, springy carpet and neutrally wallpapered walls. It was already full of other teenagers, some with their parents – most with just the one, others with a pair – all sitting with stark faces around the edge. Not exactly the excited group which had been portrayed on the promotional video. Michael hadn’t brought anyone to play parent and he realised it made him stand out from the others, so he kept his head down and avoided making eye contact with anyone. Fortunately, no one seemed interested in him. If they weren’t playing with their phones, they were looking at their own feet and occasionally making hushed comments to their parents.

The woman, whose buxom chest strained the top button of her one-size-too-small jacket, sat at a desk at the head of the room like an exam invigilator, watching the children in her care with a stern face. If one of them – especially one of the younger ones – looked directly at her, she would smile. But otherwise, she spent her time staring blankly ahead or typing the odd thing on her computer. She was the one in control. With one word from her, a teenager would be called and off they would disappear to be cured.

Michael’s plan was to pose as a patient, ask as many questions as he could, snoop around as much as possible and get out without having the treatment. He’d tried asking the woman in the bulging jacket, but all she did was hand him a leaflet and told him to sit and wait.

The mother of the girl sitting two chairs away shifted uncomfortably on her seat. “Do you think there’s a toilet close by?” she whispered to her daughter, one of the youngest ones there. Probably thirteen, with braces on her teeth and long ginger hair running in a plait down her back.

“Mum! Again?” said the girl.

“I’ll ask.” The woman, ginger-haired like her daughter and surprisingly tall when she stood on her high heels, went over to the desk at the front.

The girl shifted up the couple of spare seats next to Michael. “I think she’s more nervous than me,” she said.

“Really.” Michael tried to sound disinterested. He’d chosen to sit on that chair especially because there were free seats on either side of him. Now one of them was occupied by the girl.

The woman at the desk directed the girl’s mother into the corridor. The mother nodded a ‘thank you’ and was out of the room.

The girl leant in close to him. “I know you’re not a perceiver,” she whispered.

Michael stared at the girl in shock. He suspended his breathing as he waited for the tiniest sign of what she was going to do next. He thought about running.

“Don’t worry.” The girl smiled. “I won’t say anything.”

He glanced around at the room to see if anyone else had heard. They seemed oblivious.

“How did you …?”

“I haven’t been cured yet,” she said.

Of course. Everyone under the age of eighteen in that room was a perceiver, apart from him. It only took one of them to be curious enough to look closer. He felt such a skank. Quickly in and out was the plan, mingling with non-perceiving adults so he wouldn’t be noticed. He hadn’t counted on the waiting. The long, interminable waiting.

“So, what you doing here?” said the girl.

“I’m standing in for my brother,” said Michael, keeping his voice low. “He didn’t want to come.”

“Liar.”

Of course she could tell he was lying. Another one of those irritating tricks perceivers had.

Michael looked up at the fat woman. She was staring out of the window where the trees of the landscaped grounds were bowing gently in the breeze. He wished she would look at her computer screen, see his name, call him to the front and get him away from the prying girl. But the woman continued to stare with hardly a blink.