The Mind's Eye, page 21
Chapter Twenty-Two
This just in – a group of unknown terrorists have attacked the Zeller Institute and killed at least forty people. First responders who reached the building reported that most of the security guards and building staff had been killed, but there is – as yet – no word on Professor Zeller or his telepaths…
-AP News Report, 2015
Roger had visited the Zeller Institute twice before, once as part of a group of reporters who had been chosen to witness the opening ceremony and once for a private interview with Professor Zeller. For a man whose primary talent seemed to be annoying people – at least until his theories had actually been proven to have some basis in reality – Professor Zeller was quite a remarkable self-publicist. Back then, Roger had been impressed with the building. It had really been quite remarkable.
It wasn’t so remarkable now. Where the gatehouse had been, there was nothing more than a crater and a great deal of debris. The white-clad FBI officers poring through the wreckage would have their work cut out for them. The bodies outside the grounds – the intact ones had been covered with shrouds – weren’t a pleasant sight. Some of the protesters had been in their teens, too young to die in an act of violence. He turned and looked up towards the building itself. Part of it was a burnt-out wreck; the fire department had responded quickly, but the flames hadn’t been quelled easily. The remainder was badly damaged and, apparently, deserted.
“At least fifty dead,” the FBI officer said when Roger approached her. Agent Evens looked shaken by what she had seen, although it didn’t seem to affect her ability to issue orders to her subordinates and keep on top of the crisis. It might not matter. The terrorists were long gone and the telepaths might well be dead. “Some of the remains may never be identified.”
“And they were just protesting,” Roger said, in dismay. There were countries where anyone brave or stupid enough to protest would be gunned down by their government or arrested and sent to prison for the rest of their lives. In America…there was a right to protest peacefully, although the key word was peacefully. The protest at Harvard had been bad enough, but in its way this was worse. “What did they do to deserve this?”
Agent Evens shrugged. “I think they were just collateral damage,” she said, flatly. “We’ve picked up several protesters who had the sense to run when the shooting started. They’re saying that some of their fellow protesters drew arms and opened fire on the remainder of the guards. The bastards snuck up to the building under cover and then launched their attack without caring about the people caught in the middle.”
Roger looked up as a deafening crash echoed out from the building. Part of the roof had just collapsed inward, smashing through weakened floors and ceilings. He hoped that everyone had been evacuated before it had been too late. People didn’t always react rationally during a crisis, when they had to think quickly and clearly. It was far more common for people to gibber with shock and be unable to think logically. He wondered, suddenly, how the telepaths had reacted. Had they known that they were under attack?
“I think so,” Evens said, when Roger voiced the question. She led him up the road towards nineteen covered bodies, lying on the grass. “Take a look at this…”
She pulled one of the sheets away and Roger recoiled. The dead man clearly hadn’t looked very pleasant in life, but in death he was appalling. His eyeballs had been pulled out and, from the blood on his hands, it was apparent that he’d done it to himself. Roger stared for a moment and then had to turn away, swallowing hard. The expression on what remained of the man’s face would haunt him until his dying day.
He moved from body to body, shaking his head in disbelief. Many of the terrorists had clearly turned on their fellows. Others had killed themselves, apart from one unmarked body with an uncertain cause of death. It looked almost as if the fellow had died peacefully. Roger found that the most alarming of all.
“It may have been the result of a telepathic blast,” Evens said. “There have only been a handful of people killed by telepaths, at least killed by mental powers, so we won’t know for sure until we do the autopsy. And then the results might not be certain anyway. It could just be a coincidence.”
Roger snorted. “Not here,” he said. “Not after what happened to the others.”
“It’s the first thing a defence attorney will raise,” Evens predicted. “Do you know that we have a handful of unexplained deaths that might – I say might – have been caused by a telepath? The problem is that we have no way to be certain. There are a handful of cases of cerebral haemorrhage that have never been satisfactorily explained. Most of them appeared prior to telepaths entering the public mindset, but we don’t know for sure when the first telepath actually appeared. There could have been a telepathic killer wandering around for years without us even being able to deduce his presence.”
“An untraceable killer,” Roger said, with a shiver. “How do we deal with someone like that?”
“We’re working on it,” Evens said. She looked down at her hands. “I think…”
“Agent Evens,” a man called. “You have to come see this!”
Evens ran and Roger followed her. After all, she hadn’t told him not to follow her. The man was waving to a stretcher that had been pulled out of the building, a stretcher that was holding one very familiar person. Professor Zeller had been found, his pale face sending chills down Roger’s spine.
“He seems to be in a coma,” the man said. Roger looked for a nametag and saw nothing. He clearly wasn’t FBI, as he didn’t seem inclined to object to Roger’s presence. Or maybe he did and he had clearly decided not to make a fuss. “We need to transport him to the nearest facility ASAP.”
Evens nodded. Roger wondered if she appreciated the irony. Professor Zeller’s mansion had the finest collection of equipment in the state for monitoring a person who needed mental care, yet it had all been destroyed by the terrorists. He looked down at the staring eyes and shivered. Professor Zeller’s body might be there, but his mind had long since departed. It was not a pretty sight.
“We’ve searched the entire building,” the man continued. “We found a number of other bodies, including three of the telepaths, but the remainder appear to be missing.”
“If that’s the case,” Evens said slowly, “where the hell have they gone?”
***
“What the hell is this place?”
Elizabeth wanted to scream, but she didn’t dare shout, or even broadcast mentally. Leo had warned them that the government was probably already looking for them and even telepathy had its limits when it came to hiding them from remote sensors. They could fool the minds of anyone who happened to be in range, but that wouldn’t last. A single automated system connected to an operator out of range would pick them up easily, if they gave it the chance.
“It’s a hiding place,” Valentine said, easily. Unlike the other twelve telepaths, even Leo, he seemed unmoved by the danger. Elizabeth privately suspected that he was enjoying himself. “We can rest here and recuperate before we move onwards. The people who own this building don’t have the slightest idea that we’re here.”
Elizabeth scowled. Valentine had led them to the large house – it didn’t quite earn the title of mansion – and used his telepathy to convince the small staff that the telepaths weren’t actually there. Elizabeth had been impressed – and horrified – by the skill both Leo and he had displayed. They had forced the staff to accept a contradiction; the telepaths were not there, yet they had to provide food and drink for them. By the time their minds reasserted themselves, Leo had assured them, the telepaths would be long gone.
“Right,” Elizabeth said. “And you don’t think that we might attract attention?”
“Not as long as we avoid doing anything stupid,” Valentine said. He’d insisted, as soon as they left the mansion, that they dump their cell phones and anything else that might carry a microchip. It would have been embarrassing to make a phone call and discover that it brought the government swooping down on their heads. Two of the telepaths had protested until Leo had reminded them of the danger. “We’re not going to be here for long.”
Leo nodded. “We have to get down to the city,” he added. “The government is probably already setting up road blocks and other traps…not that we have to worry about them, of course.”
“Once we’re in the city, we can hide for years if necessary,” Valentine said. “I didn’t pick this place entirely at random. The servants have access to a van that can carry us all down to the city, while our powers will ensure that any cops who try to stop us walk away with the correct impression. We can even get one of them to drive it and make sure that there isn’t even the slightest thing that will make them suspicious.”
“We have to move quickly though,” Leo added. “They might have called in their tame telepaths by now and we won’t be able to fool them so easily.”
That thought brought conversation to a halt. The telepaths showered and changed rapidly into different clothes – stolen from the staff – before watching the news. Both CNN and Fox carried stories about the terrorist attack on the Zeller Institute and for once they had the same slant. Acts of terrorism on American soil were unacceptable. There was no warning about the missing telepaths, which struck Elizabeth as odd. Either the government thought that they were still buried somewhere in the wreckage, or they were keeping it to themselves to avoid panic. She hoped it was the former. She didn’t want her parents to see their daughter hunted by the government across America.
She was feeling a little better when they boarded the van and discovered that it had a small bar that was well supplied with alcohol. Valentine warned them not to drink any, reminding them that a drunken telepath could lose his mental blocks and wind up attracting attention. Leo didn’t argue with him, although three of the other telepaths did, wanting something to take their minds off what they were going through. Valentine won the argument and went forward to program the driver. Without his beard – he had shaved while at the house – he looked different enough to be unrecognisable. As the van lurched into life, Elizabeth allowed herself to relax. Whatever else happened, the die was cast.
“Trouble,” Valentine announced, thirty minutes later. The spark of alarm that flared through Elizabeth’s mind was shared by the others. “This is a small roadblock ahead of us and cops are waving people down. I suggest that we get ready to focus our minds.”
Elizabeth nodded, feeling the consensus building around her. Their minds reached out and sensed the presence of seven policemen, as well as four men they’d arrested, their thoughts slurred by the presence of too much alcohol. Elizabeth felt a flicker of concern without recognising its source; the drunken drivers might be too drunk to be easily influenced by telepathy. They might end up warning the police that something was wrong.
We should kill them, Leo thought. Elizabeth sensed his injured pride and fury. They send their minions to kill us.
No, Elizabeth sent back, before she could hesitate. An emotional argument wouldn’t work, not against Leo and Valentine. They needed cold logic. Dead policemen will attract attention and point them towards us.
There was another concern. Mental control tended to have unfortunate effects on the victim. They didn’t handle a new situation very well or a situation where they might have to make decisions in a hurry. An outside observer might realise that there was something badly wrong with them, even if he didn’t know exactly what had happened, or why. A policeman, trained to watch for signs that a suspect was on the verge of doing something stupid, might just realise the truth. And then they would have to do more than just wipe his mind. If they handled him too roughly, the Telepath Corps would know what had happened and why.
Brace yourself, Valentine sent. His mind focused on the policeman as he walked up to the driver’s window, peeking into the policeman’s mind. He’d been ordered to set up a roadblock and search for people who matched a certain description – their description. Elizabeth shivered again as the implications flickered through her mind. The cop had been told to take them alive, but he was nervous and had already come close to drawing his gun in anger once today. Here we go…
The cop entered the mental field and the combined mind went to work. He didn’t see the people in the rear of the van – thankfully, the tinted windows made it impossible for anyone else to see in – nor did he realise that anything was wrong with the driver. Instead, he made a show of checking the driver’s licence and then waddled off back to his car, relieved that he hadn’t found the telepaths. Elizabeth watched his thoughts for a moment longer, as the driver pulled away from the checkpoint, and shivered. Leo had told them, time and time again, that they were the superior race. With power like that, what could they not do?
And what would the government do to stop them?
***
The President had known that it was going to be bad the moment the Telepath Corps Oversight Commission called for a meeting. He’d been involved in delicate negotiations with the Prime Minister of India – the world went on, even if telepaths had appeared and started to upset the balance – and his staff knew not to pull him out for anything less than an absolute emergency. Besides, sharing notes with another world leader was always interesting. Very few Americans who had never been President could understand the stresses and strains of leadership.
“They’re all gone?” He said, once the FBI Director had finished outlining what had happened at the Zeller Institute. “All of them?”
“Yes, Mr President,” the FBI Director said. He was the President’s personal choice for the position and was clearly aware that he could be dismissed for this failure. It was hardly his fault, the President knew, but public opinion had a nasty habit of demanding scapegoats. “We have thirteen powerful telepaths completely unaccounted for – no bodies, no nothing. They’ve gone rogue.”
The President stared down at his hands. “What the hell happened?”
“The preliminary reports on the bodies – the terrorist bodies – were able to identify a handful of them,” the FBI Director said. “They had criminal records, although nothing too serious; most of them served a few years in jail for possessing an illegal weapon. The bad news is that they were all members of the Church of the Rapturous Awakening. We have quite a file on them, Mr President; they believe that there will be a disaster soon, after which New World Order will fade away and the true Americans – by which they mean people who share their beliefs – will come to power. Quite a few of their members have been involved in criminal acts of one kind or another, but we have never been able to pin anything on the Church itself.”
“And they attacked the Zeller Institute,” the President said. “Why?”
“The Church’s official position on telepaths is that they’re drawing on satanic power and are therefore devils and demons,” the FBI Director said. “It is possible that one or more of the terrorists was urged to attack the institute by the Church’s senior leadership, but as they all died we’re unlikely to be able to prove it. That isn’t the worst piece of news, however; the telepaths may pose a more dangerous threat.”
He passed the President a slim file. “The Zeller Institute didn’t vet its telepaths with the Telepath Corps or even us,” he added. “We only obtained their records in the aftermath and…well, this guy surprised and alarmed us. He called himself Cyrus Valentine – and had the papers to prove it – but we know him as Alvin Greenwood. He’s, Mr President, one of the people we’d very much like to have a few words with one day.”
The President frowned. “He’s an anarchist and a mercenary?”
“They don’t seem to go together very well,” the FBI Director agreed. “The short version of his story is that he was recruited by the CIA” – he paused to look at the CIA Director as he spoke – “and trained as an agent of influence – ah, he would be inserted into a foreign country and work to destabilise their government. It was all very secret and…”
He broke off. “Greenwood was involved in the attempt to support a Kurdish-led uprising in North Iraq during Clinton’s time in power,” he added. “The attempt was cancelled at the last moment, the promised support didn’t materialise and the Kurds were brutally slaughtered. Greenwood went rogue, Mr President; he vanished somewhere into the underground and only rarely surfaced, often in some of the worst parts of the world. He takes whatever money he can get, but he isn’t loyal – not really. He’s too dangerous to be trusted by his employers.”
“And now he’s a telepath,” the President said, grimly.
“Yes, Mr President,” the FBI Director said. “In hindsight, he has been working away at young Davidson for months. And now he has thirteen telepaths under his control. We have to find him before it’s too late. He has a grudge against this country and a complete lack of scruples. He could do more damage in a month than Al Qaeda could do in fifteen years of war.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
In an update to the terrorist attack on the Zeller Institute, thirteen young telepaths have been found to be missing, perhaps on the run. The government has issued an appeal for them to come forward to safety. Sources within the government have hinted, however, that the telepaths are wanted on charges of terrorism and may be arrested as soon as they show their faces…
In other news, Wall Street is on alert after the Telepath Corps confirmed that Tiffany Fieldstone, who was arrested on suspicion of theft, was mind-controlled into committing the crime. Her employers refused to comment.
-AP News Report, 2015
“FBI! Don’t move!”
Art watched as the SWAT team stormed the apartment, wishing he could be up front with good men behind him. Or perhaps not; in Afghanistan, when going into hostile territory, they’d started by throwing in grenades and then firing rounds at anything that looked suspicious. He doubted that the NYPD would look kindly on using such methods within the confines of New York City, while the public would be horrified by the mere thought.
