The Fire In My Eyes (21 page)

I grabbed the door before she could slam it in my face. “I didn't give up, I just didn't want to hurt her!”

Kaitlyn rolled her eyes and peeled my hand off the door. “You failed.”

The door closed and I heard the lock click. My mind raced. Nikki had been depressed ever since coming back to school this trimester? Had she broken up with her boyfriend? If that had happened, maybe I'd have a chance. I just had to be patient and give her time. There was no need to rush things.

I went back to my room and found it empty. Max and the girls wouldn't be back for a while and Drew had vanished. The laptop was still charging. Even though I was tempted to power it on and install the software that Ripley had given to me, I didn't know when Drew would be getting back, and knowing my luck, he'd walk in at the wrong time. I'd have to wait. In the meantime, though, I could practice a little on my own.

Shade expected me to fail or cause a disaster. Alistair Ripley expected great things from me. My mom expected me to find a girlfriend and explore that side of life. I took a deep breath and tapped my power, highlighting my room in green. One goal at a time.

Whatever hope I had of working things out with Nikki quickly dwindled. She never got back to me that weekend, and even though I dropped by her room from time to time, she was never there. Kaitlyn always agreed to pass my messages along, but I never knew if she did. She never teased me again, simply gave me an empty smile and got rid of me as soon as possible. After the first couple of weeks, I stopped visiting. She was blatantly avoiding me, just as I had avoided her.

By the time Memorial Day weekend arrived, my thoughts of Nikki made it difficult to focus on my training. Shade took advantage of that distraction. “Stop crying over your poor little broken heart,” his voice whispered in my mind. “Concentrate. You'll never master telepathic discipline if you let yourself be controlled by your emotions.”

I thrust him out of my mind and spoke aloud. “You're more distracting than any thoughts of her are.”

“Good.” His eyes abruptly stopped glowing and he gestured for me to sit down. I dropped down on the rooftop and leaned back on my hands to listen to him. “While you're still pushing me out like a four year old throwing a tantrum, at least you're accomplishing the basic goal. Remember your defenses. Review. What's the point of a telepathic attack?”

“It's a waste of time,” I said. “Defending your own mind against external influence is instinctive, and attacking another's mind takes a lot of concentration and power. The only ways it can be effective, according to what you've said, is to take advantage of someone's trust, or as a distraction. And in both those cases, you've got much easier ways to hurt them.”

Shade clapped his hands together. “Good enough. You’ve grasped the basics. There are ways to get into someone's mind if they aren't paying attention, but that's an advanced topic. We'll be going over that and other advanced topics of telepathy in June, such as longer distance communication, and having a mental setting from which you can speak telepathically with people in real time. It's much more comfortable than just pushing words to another person.”

“Sounds interesting. Are we going to go over anything else tonight? I'm not too tired yet,” I said. Telepathic training was tiring, but not like telekinetic practice. I didn't have the physical exhaustion, just a dull slowness to my thoughts.

He hunkered down on the concrete block that had figured so prominently in my early training and looked at me over his sunglasses. “I was thinking of giving you a rest, but if you insist, we'll cover something new. I'll even give you a hand with your current obsession.”

“My obsession?”

“You're obsessing over that girl because she's avoiding you,” he said. “It distracts you. In the interests of getting you less distracted, I'll show you a way to find her.”

“That's possible?” We had only discussed basic telekinesis and telepathy so far. Anything beyond those topics was dismissed as advanced training.

“Of course it's possible. Private investigators can track people down by talking with people they know, looking through public records, following them and watching their movements. If you really wanted to, you'd be able to find this girl.”

“I could, but I don't want to be a stalker. Or obsessive,” I pointed out.

Shade flicked a hand dismissively. “Semantics. Do you want to learn how to stalk her psionically, or do you just want to keep obsessing over her?”

“I wish you wouldn't phrase it that way, but yes, I'd like to learn that,” I said. As creepy as it sounded, being able to find people would be a valuable skill to learn. At least that was some sort of justification.

“Fine. It's a bit sooner than I expected, but it's the last basic concept you need to learn, so what the hell. It's the cornerstone metasensory concept, what we call Sight.” He placed extra emphasis on the last word. “Think of it as an enhancement to your normal vision that lets you see psionic phenomena. That could be anything from looking for a specific person to scouting for latent traces or energy flows. Learning to focus it on something is just like focusing on what you want to manipulate with telekinesis, or on who you want to contact with telepathy. You've got a solid grip on both of those, so I figure you can learn this easily.”

I didn't have a clue what latent traces or energy flows were, and I suspected that he wouldn't tell me if I asked. “So this Sight thing is like augmented reality?” I asked.

“What’s that?”

“Sci-fi concept. People have miniature computers implanted and linked to their optic nerves and their brain. Sort of like a heads-up display that's always there,” I explained.

“Never heard of it explained quite that way,” he said. “Seems like a good way to describe it. But yes, sounds like you have an idea of what it is, and that should make it easy for you to learn. It's a foundation topic, just like what you've been learning. Once you get this down, we'll spend more time perfecting the basics, and then we'll be able to move on to advanced concepts.”

I nodded. “What do I need to do?”

“First, you need to understand the concept of interconnection.” He sketched in the air, drawing a series of glowing green lines pointing in every direction. “Everything connects to everything, including you. It's what you instinctively manipulate with telekinesis and telepathy. Metasensory powers allow you to visualize or otherwise sense that interconnection. It's limited in distance just like telekinesis or telepathy.”

“What's the practical distance limit for this power?” I asked.

He shrugged and the lines dissipated. “Everyone's different. Average psions can resolve their Sight out around a thousand feet away, maybe a quarter mile. Eventually all the connections start to blur and you can't tell one from another. If you can't distinguish them, you can't accurately focus on them.”

“How do I use it?”

He sighed. “Impatient as always. Listen, Parker, it's an important, dangerous concept. Just like your power in general, you don't want to rush into it. Your brain has no reference for this. It's sensory overload. People have fainted, blacked out, had seizures, even minor strokes when they first use their Sight. It's confusing and you need to focus quickly. Do you understand?”

“I think so. I want to give it a try,” I said. How could someone have a stroke doing something like this?

He shook his head. “All right. Turn around.” I faced away from him and looked toward the city. “Now, call up your power, but keep it low. Too much will burn your eyes and that's a bitch to recover from. My last trainee managed to do that. He was crying blood. Not pretty.” I tapped into my power, keeping it low and stable as he had instructed. “That's fine. Now focus it inwards toward your vision. Imagine that you're going to see the world through a filter of psionic power. You don't have to get too fancy. Just concentrate and tell me the moment you start to see things.”

“What sort of things?” I asked.

“Everyone's Sight manifests differently, but most people describe the first time as a massive spiderweb of lines. Without the spider. Usually without the spider.”

“What do I do when that happens?” I asked.

“Focus on me,” he said. “Don't let it drift. If you do, cut your power as fast as you can.”

I focused as he had instructed and tried to visualize a way to look at the world through psionic energy. A simple way to visualize it was to think of it as a pair of glasses that I could put on and take off at will. I imagined myself putting glasses on, where the lenses were filters of psionic energy. They slid on and I could feel them pressing down on my nose and ears, heavier than I had thought, and my vision suddenly changed.

Out of the city of Troy, flickers of light suddenly rose toward the sky. At first, there were only a couple, but within seconds, there were hundreds, then thousands. All around me, everything grew tendrils of light, tiny threads that glowed in myriad colors, defying any attempt to focus on them. Everywhere I looked, more grew, from the buildings, from the individual parts of buildings, from the bolts and rivets holding those parts together, from the molecules and atoms that made up everything around me. I clapped my hands to my face, covering my eyes, but I could still see those threads, everywhere around me. Even closing my eyes didn't hide them. I could hear them sliding against each other, chiming with the wind, shimmering music that resonated in my bones.

“Focus!” Shade roared.

I could barely hear him over the fury of the infinite number of threads, but I forced myself to follow his instructions. I had to think of him, my trainer, his dislike for me, his devotion to orders and duty, the way I saw him, the way he wanted to be seen. The more I concentrated on what I knew of him, the quieter the threads got, and suddenly they all vanished. All of them except for one, thicker than any others I had noticed. When I looked closer, I realized that it was actually several threads, braided together. It originated at the center of my chest and curled around to my left, traveling behind me. I turned around to see that the other endpoint terminated at Shade's chest.

“This is amazing.” I lifted a hand to touch the thread, but it wasn't real. Or was it? A tingle ran through my fingers as they passed through it, but I wasn't sure if it was something I felt or just a reaction from my mind as my fingers passed through something that looked solid. “What else can this do? What else can I see?”

Shade stood up and stepped away from his seat. “See for yourself. Lift the block.”

I tapped more power and gripped the brick with my telekinesis. More threads appeared in my field of vision, a link from each fingertip, coiling together into a tight braid that connected right to the heavy block. I lifted it and the thread pulsed with green energy. When I lowered it back to the ground and let myself rest, the thread vanished with a distant tinkling sound. “This is amazing,” I said.

“You're getting the hang of it,” Shade's voice came as a telepathic message. I looked at him and noticed a new thread appear between us, this time connecting us forehead to forehead. It shimmered green again as he sent another message. “Go ahead and let it go.”

I twisted my power off. My vision flickered and returned to normal. I felt my heart pounding in my chest. My breathing was a little ragged, not like it had been when I first started training, but I was more tired than I had been lately. My vision was blurred and I saw sparks every time I blinked. “Takes a lot out of you,” I said.

Shade shrugged. “Just like everything else, the more you use it, the easier it gets. Unlike the other techniques I've shown you, this can actually injure you if you’re not careful. Telekinesis and telepathy will tire you out. You run out of juice, you fall over. It's self-limiting in the amount of damage you can inflict on yourself. Your Sight is something your brain isn't prepared to deal with. Your brain needs to integrate the metasensory senses with your normal senses. Over time, you might start sensing psionic phenomena by sound, scent, touch, even taste. Vision is the easiest way to see it and that's where we have people start.”

“Is this where you're going to tell me not to use it until I'm used to it?” I asked.

He snorted. “Of course not. You're going to use it to find that girl no matter what I tell you, and I don't care if you burn your eyes out in the process. People only make that mistake once. They spend a week with our medical staff, getting their retinas rebuilt. If it gets out of control, force your power off and try again. It's the only way you can get comfortable with it.”

I nodded. Just as he said, I was planning to use it no matter what he said. This could be handy in everyday life. “Thanks. Are we training on Monday since there aren't any classes?”

He shrugged. “I'm taking the weekend off. You can come here if you want, but I won't be around.” As usual, he turned his back on me and jumped off the edge of the roof. That always indicated the end of our training for the day. Where he went, I had no idea, but I assumed that the Establishment was based nearby. He probably had a house or an apartment nearby, close enough to make it to campus at a moment's notice.

I shrugged and walked to the stairwell leading down from the roof. Where he lived wasn't really my concern. I had other things to think about right now, like when I was going to track Nikki down.

My opportunity came that very weekend. Lisa and Drew organized a Memorial Day picnic for our group of friends. There was a small park near the dorm and we took over a corner of it. Andreas acquired a grill from sources he refused to divulge and Max produced a selection of hot dogs and hamburgers. Drew declared he would man the grill, but only after we played some basketball on the nearby courts.

Lisa pulled me aside after Drew made his announcement. “I'll give you five bucks if you make sure Drew plays skins,” she whispered.

I chuckled. “Where's Jess?”

“Setting up the ambush,” Lisa replied, then held her finger to her lips. I had no idea what ambush she was talking about, but I assumed it had something to do with Max.