The Whole Truth (The Supercharged Files Book 1) (11 page)

Mike nodded, looking slightly
less ill. I wondered if she’d given him a mood tweak. The employees of YuriCorp
had
to be leery of Samantha’s hands; she hadn’t kept her ability private
like some did. As far as I knew, there was nothing in anyone’s contract to
disallow the use of one’s suprasense for personal reasons, any more than there
was anything to disallow the use of one’s breasts as manipulative devices.

“Here come the troops,” she said.
“Cleo, the blank evaluations are in my briefcase.”

Employees shuffled in with
recharged coffee cups. The wishful deserters Samantha had singled out had
notepads, pens and eager expressions.

Mike took a seat near the back of
the room and nodded before he turned into “some guy”. Even if one of the norms
had been looking at him, they wouldn’t have noticed his transition. He wasn’t
invisible—people wouldn’t sit on him or anything—he was just a nonentity.

“Welcome back, everyone.”
Samantha shook hands in a brisk, efficient fashion, smiling and patting as many
employees as she could reach. “I’d like to discuss what happened to Ms. Singh
before we proceed,” Samantha said. “Job stress can result in some serious side
effects. That’s part of the reason why we’re here, to teach you how to reduce job
stress.”

“Raises!” someone suggested.
Everyone laughed. Hey, it was an honest comment.

Samantha smiled. “I know it can
feel like you deserve hazard pay coming in to work some days. Like what
happened with Ms. Singh. Would anyone care to speculate why it happened?” When
no one answered the off-the-wall and over-personal question, Samantha pointed
at them. “Come on, I know you’re all gossiping about it.”

“Nervous breakdown,” one guy
said.

True.

“Drugs,” said an older lady.

Well, she thought so. She didn’t
mean amp, either.

I was surprised they answered
with candor instead of shrugging Sam off, but she’d shaken hands with a
sizeable cross-section, and Mike’s chameleon effect couldn’t be discounted. Nor
could peer pressure—honesty begat honesty. During the ensuing discussion, I
gathered the blank evaluation forms and slipped out the door.

What next? I ought to head to the
front desk for a map and a company directory. Unfortunately my sense of
direction was less than supra. Luckily no one objected to a short, confused
visitor poking around and opening doors. Either that or my fade was succeeding.

That’s what I’d tell Beau when I
got back, anyway.

After I got my bearings, I forced
myself to approach people. Pavarti deserved my best effort. Owning up to the
fact I was an intern of sorts to smooth over my awkwardness, I asked the ones
who’d attended the seminar a few questions.

Had they found it useful? Most
had. Good job, Pavarti. Would they be willing to fill out this wee evaluation
form? They all said yes, but a number had no intention of doing it.

Did they have any concerns about
what had happened to Pavarti? When I asked the last question, I read their
“real” responses and discovered two things. Most thought it was an odd query,
and most felt a distinct ambivalence toward the misfortunes of others.

Modern offices are ant farms of
cubicles, hallways, walls and doors. Some doors had keypads and some were
simply locked. I tried them all. Using this method, I stumbled across the Human
Resources department.

“Hi,” I said brightly to the
woman at one of the desks. No one else was present

She glanced up with a weary
expression. “Can I help you?”

“I’m from YuriCorp.” I tapped my
visitor’s badge. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

“Sure, come in. A shame about
your coworker.”

She didn’t mean it. I couldn’t
tell if that was because she’d caused it or didn’t think it was a shame.

I squinted, but the mask around
her didn’t clarify. “Are you the woman they said came to the seminar several
times?”

Her eyes widened. “How did they
know I was there?”

“Why wouldn’t they know you were
there?”

I was hiding
, said her
mask, while her mouth said, “Yeah, um, I kept getting called away and I wanted
to participate in the whole seminar. I was keeping track of, um, which of our
employees participated.”

Hiding? What, behind larger
employees? The fake ficus? Well, she was skinny. And sort of a cream shade,
with pale hair and a white blouse. It’s possible she blended in to the fabric
of the conference room chairs.

“I’m sure YuriCorp would be happy
to supply the roster for each day.”

“I didn’t think of that.” She
smiled in a way that made her thin face seem familiar.

“Wait a minute.” I scrunched my
forehead. “You were in the meeting this morning, too.”

“My boss assigned me to assist
our guests,” she lied. “Get coffee and stuff.” Her mask said,
Nobody was
supposed to know. I was hiding so well that man didn’t see me. Who is she?

“I’m Cleo,” I said, and mentally
smacked myself for answering her unspoken question. “I’m supposed to follow up
with everyone who took the seminar.”

“I’m Tina Harris. I was supposed
to be there,” she insisted. Her mask provided additional information:
I had
to steal ideas.

“Nice to meet you.” What did she
mean, steal ideas? Was she about to launch a rival management consulting firm?

My brain swirled like one of
those crazy lollipops. Hiding. Chameleon. Red alert!

I stuttered. “We’re, um,
assessing, um, I mean, could you fill out an evaluation form?” My conclusion
flustered me so much I sounded like I was asking a movie star for an autograph.

“Okay.” She pulled out a pen. “I
can do it right now.”

Was she the mole? Was she
dangerous?

Nausea contorted my stomach, like
Boris after cramming down too much kibble. I nearly ran like a scared little
girl but gripped the door jamb to steady myself, and prevent the running.

Dammit, I had to keep it
together! This might be our big break. I rustled around in the evaluation
folder until I found a blank. Gingerly, I placed it on the outside edge of her
desk and scuttled back. She might have a second power, the power of hoodoo. She
might have a poisoned pen that overdosed you with amp. One quick jab and you
were toast.

She plucked the form off the
surface of the desk. When she clicked the pen, I jumped. She’d lengthened the
nib.

“You can sit anywhere,” she said.
“Everyone else is in the seminar.”

I was alone with an alleged
thieving evil-doer burner-outer. I elected to remain by the open door where I
could make a quick getaway. “Were you there when Pavarti Singh fell ill this
morning? Maybe you could tell me what happened. She’s a friend.”

“I guess she got stressed. The
guys from programming were acting up,” Tina said with a sneer. “She turned
Richard down for a date yesterday, and he showed up again today. What a stalker.”

Something she said awoke a
flutter across her face. An omission, while not technically a lie, sometimes
resulted in a shadow. Was she lying about Pavarti, programming or this Richard
person?

If she’d been the one responsible
for Pavarti’s illness, her lie would have been black as tar stains on white
pants. I took a stab at what was missing. “Who’s Richard?”

“Richard Anderson, VP of
Marketing.” Tina glared at the evaluation form, her pen marking it so hard I
could hear the scritch. “He’s a horn dog.”

“Pavarti wouldn’t have liked
that.” Mike had listed two repeaters—the love struck VP and Tina, who thought
he hadn’t noticed her. Pair cancellation? “Did Richard ever hit on you?”

“Hell, I mean, heck, no!” Her
scowl made her look like an angry cotton swab. “We aren’t allowed to date
internally.”

Ah, there it was. She was
sleeping with Richard against company policy—and his marriage vows. Yes, he was
a horn dog, and yes, she was stealing someone else’s man, but I don’t think
that’s what she meant by stealing ideas.

“That’s harsh when the only guys
you meet are at work,” I faux-sympathized. What else did I need to know to rule
her out? “Do you have a second job?”

“This is all I do,” she said with
a sigh. “I’ve been here what feels like forever.”

“And you can’t imagine anything
else that could have freaked Pavarti out?”

“No,” Tina said, in all honesty.
“Why are you so curious? She said she had a headache and started crying. Then
she sort of fell on the ground.”

I blushed for the nth time today.
Corporate snooping—I wouldn’t call it espionage because I wasn’t the one
stealing ideas—was tougher than figuring out whether or not your boyfriend was
lying (probably).

“I thought if I knew what caused
her anxiety attack,” I explained, “I could help her.”

“Pressures of modern society?”
Tina signed the bottom of the form with a flourish and handed it to me. “I like
your twin set. That’s a great color on you.”

“Thanks,” I said, since it was
true. “Level with me, Tina. Why do you go to the session every day? Is the
catered lunch that good?”

She twiddled a piece of
white-blonde hair. “Okay, okay. Everyone complimented the seminar so much, my
boss assigned me to come up with an ongoing motivational strategy. Not that I
was stealing your actual ideas.”

Good Lord, a norm would have
known she was lying.

“Our R&D teams follow
kaizen
.
That means we try to eliminate waste and improve business functions.” It was
both a disappointment and a relief she wasn’t our terrorist. She could barely
fib about pilfering intellectual property, much less disrupting a fellow
supra’s brainwaves.

“I’ll look
kaizen
up on
the Internet. Thanks.” She pulled open her desk drawer and withdrew a small
tape recorder. “I’ve got a ton of work to catch up on.”

I bet she did—she’d spent her
week stealing Pavarti’s seminar. Did she realize she’d been in the presence of
other supras? Did she know we existed or was she alone, like I had been?

“Hey, here’s a good joke,” I
said, wondering how to broach the topic. “If you could have any super power,
would you want to fly or be invisible?”

“Fly,” she said,
because I can
already be invisible.
“That’s not a joke.”

“I told it wrong.” I backed out
of the office feeling about as dumb as I’d ever been in my life. “Something
about invisible flies.”

I hadn’t found anyone connected
to the mole or Pavarti’s burnout, but I had found a sneaky blond chameleon.

~ * ~

On the way home, I told Samantha
about Tina.

“John needs to come with us
tomorrow,” I said. “She didn’t hurt Pavarti, but I think she’s a chameleon.”

“You won’t be on site tomorrow,”
Samantha said. “Your part’s done.”

“I didn’t talk to everyone.”
Returning to the software company, even knowing Tina would be lurking as well
as whoever, or whatever, had burned Pavarti, was a break from the dumpster. The
part of my day where I learned about management consulting was like being in
school, but the part with Beau was like being in hell.

“I know you’d like to spend the
day panting after John,” Samantha said with a mean grin, “but you’re not ready
to interact with the public for extended periods of time.”

“I don’t pant after John.” It was
a more refined admiration, with deep breathing. “We have a date this Saturday.”

“He’s helping you move furniture.
That’s not a date, Cleo.”

It would be if my plans
succeeded. “I did great today. Look at this stack of forms.”

“I want to tell you a joke,”
Samantha mocked. “Do you have super powers?”

I’d initially glossed over my
idiocy with Tina, but Sam had gotten her hand on my arm when we’d gathered her
supplies, the sneak. Otherwise I wouldn’t have confessed that to Samantha or—dammit!—bragged
I had a date with John.

“I don’t want you touching me anymore,”
I said. “It’s unethical to manipulate your coworkers.”

“I don’t want you reading my lies
anymore,” she retorted. “It’s unethical to pry into your coworker’s heads.”

I glared and did not avert my
gaze. I didn’t use my skill to cause trouble like she did. “It’s my job.”

“It’s not your job to read me.”

She might not think so, but I
wasn’t convinced. She was the one dating the Psytecher who kept trying to
enlist me. “If you’re in my line of vision, I can’t help it.”

“I can’t always help it, either.
If you think I’m bad, you haven’t been around enough touch supras.”

I didn’t believe her, though she
hadn’t lied. “You know, I’ve always wondered. Are your tits real?”

Samantha pressed her lips
together, and we drove the rest of the way in silence.

Chapter 9

Hot Date, Not Date

Tina Harris turned out to be a
full-functioning chameleon. The fact I’d stumbled across her partially
alleviated the fact I hadn’t made any headway finding out what happened to
Pavarti.

To everyone’s dismay, Pavarti had
suffered more than a burn. She’d actually had a stroke. The normal doctors were
attempting to determine the cause with little success, and our experts made
little progress themselves. No thanks to me, we had no answers. We couldn’t
even confirm Pavarti’s situation was artificially induced. Although she hadn’t
had any of the usual contributing factors, supras did experience strokes at a
similar rate to the rest of the population.

Roxanne Spivey, whose touch
talent included chemical healing, visited her daily in the stroke unit to administer
therapy. No other burnout victim had been affected so strongly, and the office
was awash with rumors. Sheila had been the first supra who’d objected to site
visits, but when Pavarti’s condition became known, several consultants asked to
be reassigned to research. A few were considering jobs in less hazardous fields—or
with less beleaguered corporations.

If Psytech was behind this, they’d
made strides this week. Samantha had to pat a lot of hands and do a lot of
damage control.

Since it was the only thing I
could do—besides my job—I sent Pavarti a bouquet of sales flyers. I thought it
might help for her to see something cheerful. I still had to make up my lost
time with Beau. That was why I was sequestered in the lab Saturday evening,
date night, when John was due to pick me up any minute.

Due? He was here. My phone buzzed
in my lab coat pocket. Just as quick, a ping of nervous energy jolted me. Beau
glared at me from the other side of the table in the soundproof room where we’d
been conducting a test of my slowly improving chameleon skills.

“What’s that?”

“My, uh, phone.” I slipped it out
of my pocket and flipped it open.

Even if I hadn’t had a date, okay
an appointment, it was past the time most employees toddled home on a Saturday.
It hadn’t been easy to extract John’s promise to loan me the use of his truck
and his lovely muscles. After all my wheedling, I’d be damned if I missed his
call.

Okay, not his call, his text
message. Beau grabbed for my phone, and I leaned away to read my message.

I’m here. Ready?

So romantic.

3 minutes
, I texted back.

“What were you thinking, bringing
that in here?” Beau complained. “You’re not supposed to have anything metal or
electronic on you.”

“Nobody told me that!” I covered
my mouth in feigned shock. Beau’s ban on electronics was his personal
preference, and Jolene and the other techs played along. They didn’t affect the
equipment or most supra testing. Too bad I couldn’t call him on it.

“Dammit, Cleo. We’ll have to redo
all of today’s work.”

“You call this work?” I was
supposed to concentrate on being unnoticed while he played violent or emotional
movie clips.

“Maybe if you called it work, you
wouldn’t be so bad at it.”

“Meow.” Considering his choices,
lab training today had been more like
Rorschach
for the
MTV generation. We’d watched parts of The Breakfast Club, Platoon, Top Gun,
Akira, Hellraiser and Tron. I had no idea how these cinematic gems affected my
fading, but I bet I did a better job when Hellraiser was on.

“Get the phone out of here.”

I took his decree as my escape
clause. “It’s past quittin’ time. See you Monday.”

I clattered out before he could
stop me. Even so, I heard him yell, “You’d better come to work tomorrow!” at my
retreating form. We’d be receiving my first formal assignment in a couple
weeks, and he wanted me to work every day until then.

Hell, if things didn’t go well
with John, I probably would. What else was I going to do, go to church with
Lou? I’d considered it. She’d been teaching me permissible use of the Registry
and her own indignant brand of supra politics. Aside from the door to door
sales kids, the only Lampey from my complex I’d met was her ancient Uncle Herman
next door, and he was half-deaf and cranky and always asked if I’d brought pie.
At Lou’s request, I ran errands for the old guy. He’d had a hip replacement and
couldn’t get around until it healed.

Such was my sad life. Mornings
with Beau, lunch with some combination of Samantha, Lou, John and Ursula,
afternoons with textbooks and training tapes, and, more often anyone should
have to bear, evenings with Beau. You’d think the guy liked me.

He didn’t.

Tonight was my first expedition
with John since I’d been hired, my need for his manly truck and
mattress-lifting muscles a convenient pretext. I’d dressed for the occasion.
Tight shirt, skirt, heels, make-up, hair in an up-do that threatened to become
a down-do in that sexy, I swear it’s not on purpose way. Though my cleavage was
exposed and as far as I knew he was straight, Beau hadn’t noticed, commented
rudely about noticing, or lied about noticing. I’d let my lab coat gape open to
see what he’d do.

Nada.

The first thing John said when I
met him by his truck was, “You look nice.”

“Thanks. I’m finally acclimating
to Tennessee weather.” It hadn’t gotten any cooler as spring was baked into
nonexistence by summer. I fluttered the already low neckline of my shirt to air
condition myself. “The trick is to dress for it.”

“Uh, right.” John tore his
attention away from the girls and opened my side of the truck. He’d changed
into shorts and a polo shirt that hugged his pecs in a gratifying way. He
watched my legs as I slid into the seat. “Can you move furniture in those shoes?”

“They’re comfortable,” I lied.
The strappy leather sandals with cute flowers on the toes propped me up three
inches taller. I could almost bury my face in John’s neck at this height, and
men did love to see a woman in foolish shoes.

A tiny frown creased his brow.
“We can call Al.”

“No,” I said, a little too
quickly. Tonight was going to be just me, John, and my new bed. “He’s busy with
his kids. Dance recital.”

For a man who’d licked me on day
one and flirted with me on day two, John had been slow to follow up on the
possibility that was moi. There was that “No White Lies” factor, plus my
penchant for prying, but he was attracted to me.

Even a woman without a neural lie
detector could have figured that out.

YuriCorp had many unmarrieds of
both sexes. Going to work was like a reality dating show for the X-Men
sometimes, and it wasn’t restricted to our office. I couldn’t quit fantasizing
about what it would be like to date someone who knew about me. It had to be
better than the alternative.

John, good-looking to start with,
had the added attraction of being one of the few YuriCorpers who wasn’t with
someone and who knew the truly true truth about Cleo Giancarlo.

“Where are we headed?” he asked.

“Cool Springs.” I crossed my legs
in what I hoped was a sensuous manner, but instead of being sexy, I thwacked my
knee on his dash. Hard.

The glove box fell open. A mad
amount of crap erupted like convicts escaping prison.

“Yikesabee.” I grabbed and
stuffed. How had he squeezed so many maps and ketchup packets and receipts and
tire gauges and...was that a set of wind chimes?...into such a tiny space?

“Sorry about that. I need to get
that latch fixed.”

“And do some cleaning and
sorting.” Bending and contorting to scrabble on the floor, I stomped a pack of
ketchup. It splooged across my shoe. “Gross.”

“There’s napkins,” John said
helpfully.

“There’s a kitchen sink.” He
wasn’t pissed I’d violated the sanctity of his truck with tomato product. Good.
Guys could be funny about their cars.

“I want you to know,” I said, my
voice echoing from the floorboard, “I appreciate your help. I tried to strap my
mattress on top of my Volkswagen, but it kept sliding off.”

I had ketchup between my toes and
inside the petals of the jaunty flower on my shoe. My sweet white and blue shoe.

He chuckled. “You’re in Tennessee
now. You need a truck.”

“Why, when you have one?” My toes
clean, I abandoned the flower, discarded the napkin into a small trash
container, and straightened. I crossed my legs again, avoided the dash, and
smiled flirtatiously. “That’s what friends are for.”

He apparently didn’t care to
dwell on the level of friendship implied by truck-borrowing because he changed
the subject. “How’s your training with Beau going?”

“He’s not happy with my
progress.” An understatement. “How am I supposed to keep him from figuring out
I have abilities beyond my half-assed fading?”

“You’re not that bad. Beau’s
gifted in two areas. He can be uncompromising.”

“Two!” I commented, startled. “I
thought he was a chameleon.”

“I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
John flicked on the radio, the soft buzz of country filling the cab. “Only he
can tell you, and I bet he won’t. It’s not in the Registry.”

More supra etiquette. Don’t ask,
don’t tell. A person with a skill like mine, also not in the Registry, should
be sympathetic, but knowing Beau could work some unknown freaky mojo on me was
not cheering.

“Why are you so nice to him?” I
asked. “He’s not nice to you.”

John shrugged. “I don’t have to
like him to work with him. He’s an excellent trainer, able to discern what a
person ought to be capable of to help them achieve it. Not knowing the full
extent of your abilities hinders him. I’m sure he’s frustrated.”

Yuri’d had to employ a little
subterfuge of his own to delay further DNA scans of me so no one in the lab
would get suspicious. Jolene hadn’t said anything, but I caught Beau poring
over my charts several times a week.

“I noticed.” I checked my purse
for the bed receipt. “Still doesn’t answer how I’m going to perform as a bona
fide consultant. Beau will be assigned with me as my trainer.”

“Maybe you’ll have enough of a
breakthrough to convince him you’re getting your information like a chameleon.”

And maybe not. “I didn’t do well
with Samantha the other day, and I don’t have to hide from her. I couldn’t find
anything to help Pavarti.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
If he’d been another man, he might have given me a one-armed hug. “You didn’t
have a chance to prepare. A consultant’s suprasense isn’t the only thing she
needs on site.”

I didn’t want to argue when I had
a much more harmonious evening planned. “I’m sure it’ll come to me. First
assignment jitters.”

We reached Cool Springs, a
suburban shopping community that had a retail density somewhere in the platinum
card range. In one of the higher end furniture stores, I’d ordered a new bed,
queen-sized, the better to share with someone.

I could have had the store
deliver for an extra eighty bucks, but it had occurred to me John might be the
type who couldn’t resist a damsel in distress, or at least a damsel in need of
a tall, strong guy. If I could arrange for a large spider to be in my
apartment, I could further reinforce his image of me as a girl like other
girls, someone appreciative of his manliness.

I needed to coax him past the
seeing lies part of me. I’d steer the conversation away from work. It wouldn’t
be easy, considering his disinclination to discuss his personal life. I don’t
know what lies he was afraid I’d see.

I started out with a standard.
“Seen any good movies lately? How about that new Bond flick? Summer’s the big
blockbuster season.”

“Nah.”

Oh, yeah. John didn’t watch
movies. Maybe the small screen.

“That was some season finale on
Hero
Wars
. You know, that show about people who find out they have superpowers?”
Even before I’d been introduced to the supra community, the show had
entertained me greatly. “Did you catch it?”

“I don’t ever remember to record
it. Drives me nuts how unrealistic it is.”

Inviting him to watch with me and
drink every time a hero exhibited an ability that didn’t exist in the supra
world was more obvious than I wanted to be (let’s get drunk at my place!).
Besides, neither of us was a drinker. I could bitch about the show but that
wouldn’t involve him in the conversation. My goal was to get him involved—with
me.

“You said you followed the
Titans, right?”

He nodded. “I don’t have season
tickets since we schedule a lot of out of town assignments in the fall, but I
always catch the games on television.”

John didn’t seem the type to
break the guy mold. He probably mowed his yard every Sunday, and the only thing
he could cook was TV dinners and steak. “You think they’re going to have
another rebuilding year or follow up on the momentum they gained at the end of
last year?”

John raised an eyebrow. “You
watch football?”

“What?” I asked with a shrug. “A
girl can’t watch football?”

A girl couldn’t read up about the
Titans before her date with a man who liked the Titans?

We parked in front of the
furniture store. John almost took my elbow to cross over the driving lane but
pulled back before he made contact. What a gentleman.

Inside, the transaction went
smoothly. The salesman from whom I’d gotten a great deal, naturally, asked John
to pull around back. Lucky for me and my tight skirt, two store employees
loaded the pieces in John’s truck and tied them down, and we were back on the
road before I could say, “Dude, I knew you’d lied about the free lamp, but I
don’t care because it was tacky.”

Everything had gone so smoothly,
the evening was going to draw to a close sooner than I’d intended.

“After we set my bed up, would
you like to...” I paused and coughed, because I’d nearly said, “would you like
to try it out.” “Would you like to have a late dinner?”