Winters Family Psi Chronicles 2: Project Onyx (3 page)

“How’s it going?” she said.

“You want to join us?” Dick asked.

“Sure,” Amy said.

“I need to get back to my homework,” Brian said.

“What? We haven’t finished this game yet.”

“I’ve already played a bunch of games and it’s getting late.”

“You only played three and it’s still pretty early,” Dick protested.

“It’s after nine. Brian should probably be working on his psionic protection,” Paul threw him a pointed look.

“That’s right. I probably won’t have time for any more homework tonight,” Brian said.

He shouldn’t have wasted so much time goofing around. He closed his bedroom door, positioned himself comfortably in his office chair and set the timer for one hour. He noticed immediately that his shielding was substantially weaker which was a major disappointment. He’d expected it to last much longer with no measurable signs of weakening over the first evening. Brian realized he’d spent several moments brooding about his predicament. He forcefully brushed aside his thoughts and focused on the task at hand.

Chapter 3

Brian, Amy, and Derek met for lunch as close to the far corner of the cafeteria as possible. Brian and Derek chose the standard food which was pizza, French fries, canned mixed fruit and green beans while Amy had made herself a salad from the bar along with an apple and a milk.

“You seem to be doing a lot better today,” Derek remarked.

“I am. The shield that Dr. Bettinger put up degraded a bit before I went to bed but held up firm overnight and degraded only a little today. My empathic abilities are under control. It’s been nice,” Brian said.

“It sounds like you’ll be able to reinforce the shield and keep it strong,” Amy said hopefully.

“It seems that way,” Brian said. “I’ve got my fingers crossed.”

“Did you want to meet up at Roe’s Café after school and play some pool?” Derek asked.

Amy turned to regard her brother expectantly. Obviously, she and Derek had already discussed this ahead of time. Brian enjoyed hanging out at Roe’s Café but he had a lot of homework and studying to catch up on. He’d begged his French teacher for an extra credit assignment and she’d caved in with the stipulation that he finish it tonight and turn it in tomorrow. Brian wasn’t about to blow off an opportunity like that.

“Sorry, guys, but I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I should probably be in good shape for the weekend though,” Brian said hopefully.

“You’ve turned into such a stick in the mud,” Amy teased.

Brian chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

“I’ll be glad when this week is over. It seems it’s really dragging,” Derek said as he picked at his pizza.

Brian finished off the last of his own pizza and shrugged. It had been an especially difficult week for him but that was because of the psychic burnout. He wasn’t sure why Derek was experiencing any problems.

“Algebra is just killing me this week,” Derek said.

“Me, too,” Brian said. “We’ll be finished with the chapter next week and will be moving onto something else. Hopefully, it will be a lot easier.”

Amy didn’t remark on their math struggles as she was excellent in arithmetic. She was currently taking Trigonometry and acing it. In fact, she found most of her classes extremely easy.

“I heard Zack is complaining about me,” Brian said. “He’s telling everyone he wants a different partner that doesn’t faint. I heard he argued with Mr. Hagen about needing someone else to work with but Mr. Hagen said he had to wait until he changed seating assignments again.”

“That sounds like Mr. Hagen,” Amy said.

“Zack is such an ass,” Derek said emphatically. “I wish someone would teach him a lesson.”

“Maybe you should teach him a lesson,” Brian suggested.

“Maybe if he ever ends up being my exercise partner, I will,” Derek said.

Amy smiled with amusement and took another bite of her salad. The end of lunchtime came all too soon and they hastily separated when the warning bell rang out. For psychic control and development, Mr. Hagen lectured the class on some new abilities, focusing on the telepathic skill of invisibility. He’d touched on it a week ago but it was a difficult concept to grasp. Basically, telepathic invisibility was an illusion that tricked the minds of those in the immediate vicinity. Any surveillance equipment would detect the individual. Mr. Hagen usually spent a lot more time focusing on skills for telepaths as half the room were level ten telepaths.

“Today is going to be our first day of trying out this new skill,” Mr. Hagen said. “Reach out with your minds and link with me so you can sense the process as it happens.”

He stood very still and his eyes stared off into space as he waited for the level ten telepaths to link. Brian found this part of the class to be extremely boring as there was no way he would ever be able to achieve these skills. Without warning, Mr. Hagen abruptly vanished. Brian flinched with surprise because he’d allowed his mind to wander. His gaze searched the empty spot where his instructor had been standing. He reached out with his empathy and could barely detect Mr. Hagen’s emotional state. Mr. Hagen had achieved the Quiet which was a state of mind where one’s thoughts and emotions were muffled and virtually undetectable. Dropping into the Quiet was an exercise commonly utilized by the military for stealth as everyone could detect the presence of someone sneaking up behind them with their psionic senses. When one embraced the Quiet, only level ten empaths could detect them as it was possible to suppress one’s thoughts but there was still a small amount of emotional leakage that could be detected.

Brian pretended he couldn’t sense his instructor as Mr. Hagen crept to the back of the class. He didn’t turn until right before Mr. Hagen spoke out loud again. Derek was the only other empath in the room but he didn’t feign interest in the current exercise. He was looking through his notes on his current empathic exercise.

“Was everyone able to sense the process as it was completed?” he said sharply.

Everyone flinched with surprise except for Brian and Derek as even the telepaths had lost their link during the process of invisibility. Mr. Hagen strode to the front of the room and instructed them to link with him again. He repeated the process but this time picked up a random student’s textbook just before dropping his invisibility field.

“I could feel most of you maintain your link for a longer duration during the process,” Mr. Hagen said. “It is important to monitor the entire exercise in order to experience how to perform the act of invisibility and then to duplicate it.”

“It feels like you’re slipping away on purpose,” Zack said.

“You need to keep practicing,” Mr. Hagen said coolly. “And of course it feels like that. The way the process works is by fooling your senses into being unable to detect me.” He fixed a cold hard look at Zack before sweeping his gaze over the room again. “We’ve run out of time for this particular exercise. I want everyone to focus on shoring up your mental defenses. I’m going to assess their strength and grade them.”

Mr. Hagen slipped behind his massive desk at the front of the room and gently probed everyone’s psionic shields. It only took him about fifteen minutes to scan the entire room and he was so adept that usually Brian couldn’t even tell when his own shields were being tested.

“Only one of you failed. You will receive your scores tomorrow,” Mr. Hagen said as the bell rang to dismiss class.

Brian couldn’t stand the suspense of waiting. He made his way over to his instructor who was still seated behind his desk.

“Yes, Mr. Winters?” Mr. Hagen regarded him coolly.

“I was wondering if you could tell me my score?” Brian asked.

“I told everyone they would receive their scores tomorrow.”

“Could you at least tell me if I failed?” Brian asked.

“You were not the one who failed,” Mr. Hagen said.

Relief swamped through Brian and he thanked his instructor before stepping outside into the sprinkling rain. It was typical Lynnwood, Washington weather. He drove straight home and began studying. He was looking forward to catching up so he could start hanging out with his friends again. Only a little more than two years and he’d be finished with high school altogether. He was deeply engrossed in his algebra when a prick of unease stirred within his empathic senses. He looked up from his work and turned to face the door. He couldn’t discern anyone in his room but could sense the emotional leakage from someone. Adrenaline pumped through his veins as he realized that a level ten telepath had slipped into his room under the cloak of invisibility while entrenched in the Quiet. To reach both states simultaneously required advanced military training.

Something stung Brian’s left shoulder. He looked down to see a tranquilizer dart embedded in it. As he reached to pull it out, blackness crept along the edges of his vision and fatigue rapidly settled over him. In a matter of seconds, he’d lost consciousness. When he came to, he was lying flat on his back with restraints securing his wrists and ankles. Brian’s body burned with fever and his mind swirled in chaos. He blearily gazed at his surroundings. There was an IV tube stuck in his right arm and a monitor beside him gauged his current medical condition. His mind was foggy and the room seemed to spin like a top. Brian pulled ineffectively at the restraints that bound his wrists. He rested his head back against the cot he was lying on as the fever, pain, and fatigue overwhelmed his senses. He passed out again and woke up sporadically for brief periods of time. Finally, the fever was gone and only a dull ache in his forehead remained.

Brian tugged at his restraints then stretched his neck so that his gaze could roam throughout the small, cramped room. Stark, white concrete walls surrounded him. Beside his cot rested another one a short distance away with an unconscious teenaged male who was also restrained. He had tousled red hair, pale skin, and a spattering of freckles on his face that ran down both arms. A large mirror hung on the wall across from both of the cots. Brian could sense the presence of two people stationed behind the mirror in another room. His mind felt foggy and constrained. He realized he had been drugged and that his mind was slowly clearing.

Brian pulled at his restraints again but they only gave an inch and there was no way he could escape from them. His mouth was extremely dry and he immediately wished he had some water. The boy on the other cot stirred and abruptly awakened, pulling sharply at his restraints. The door across the room opened and a tall, medium set woman stepped into the room. Her blond hair reached her shoulders and her blue eyes swept over both teenagers as she approached the redhead first. She wore a white blouse and black slacks and clutched a clipboard in her right hand. She jotted down some notes as she stood over the cot.

“Where am I?” the teenager asked. “What did you do to me?”

The woman smiled at him and positioned herself between both cots to address them.

“You are very special people and have been selected by the government to make you even more special,” the woman said.

Brian realized she engulfed his mind in a strong telepathic shield that he was incapable of penetrating. It prevented anyone from tracking him down and isolated him telepathically from his family and friends.

“You have to let me go!” The redhead glared heatedly at her.

In spite of his anger, he radiated a sharp and pungent fear that caused Brian’s empathic senses to stir with alarm even though the woman’s telepathic shield muffled his ability.

“Calm down, Russell,” the woman said. “You and Brian will only be here for a short while. Your participation in this project is a great service to your country.”

“I don’t care! Let me go!” Russell said.

The woman pinned him with a cold, hard look. “You will calm down or I will knock you out again. Your cooperation is mandatory. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” His expression turned sullen.

“I will only require your participation for a maximum of seven days. After that time, we will know for sure whether or not your psychic abilities were successfully enhanced by the procedure. You have been unconscious for several days while your genes were enhanced by a specially designed retrovirus. If all goes well, you will both become multipaths,” the woman said.

“Retrovirus?” Russell echoed. “What if we don’t become multipaths?”

“Once I’ve determined if you’ve become multipaths or your abilities remain the same, I will release you. You will need to keep everything you see here a secret or you will be charged with treason and terminated,” she said.

Even though she kept a powerful psionic block up and operated in Quiet, Brian could sense the lie tingeing her words. She had absolutely no intention of allowing either of them to live.

“What’s your name?” Brian asked.

“You can call me Samantha,” she said.

Her emotional energy indicated she spoke the truth about her first name.

“I’m going to release you both. Don’t make any trouble or your will be severely punished. There are guards monitoring you at all times. In the next room is a testing area and living quarters combination. There is a bathroom with clean clothes. You will find lunch and water in the living area. I will give you both a couple of hours to eat and get refreshed before we begin testing your abilities,” she said.

Samantha released Brian first then Russell. She led them both to the next room which was the size of a large living room. It had stark, white concrete walls, beige carpeting, and a brown couch shoved up against the back wall. A large mirror hung at the front of the room with a door beside it. The bathroom door was situated on the far side of the room. A small card table rested beside the couch with a plate containing sliced sandwiches, a couple of drinking glasses, and a pitcher of water. A trio of cheap, plastic chairs were grouped in one corner of the room with a small, circular wood table in between them. Samantha left the room via the door beside the mirror. Brian detected her and one other individual behind the mirror watching him and Russell. Russell stared at the food and a mixture of trepidation, hunger, and anger swirled chaotically from him.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Brian said and swiftly left the room before he could protest.

He stood under a stream of hot water and tested the shield that encased his mind. A wave of helplessness and terror tore through him and he squeezed his eyes shut as he struggled to calm himself. The only way he’d live through this was by finding a way to escape. Samantha planned on killing them once she’d determined the results of her experiment. He leaned back against the shower wall and forced himself to calm down as the hot water streamed over him. He felt marginally better after he’d finished up and dressed in fresh clothing comprising of jeans and an oversized blue tee shirt. When he returned to the testing area, Russell had consumed half the pitcher of water and half the sandwiches. As Brian poured himself a drink, Russell made a beeline for the bathroom.