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.

“Clear, sir,” the SWAT team leader said. In the haste to get the operation mounted, Art hadn’t even caught his name. “The bird has flown.”

Or was never here at all, Art thought sourly. Two days of crunching through every piece of CCTV footage in New York and trying to match it with the memories he’d pulled from a handful of minds had left him dubious about their prospects for success. The mind controller they were searching for might well have left the city by now, relying on his talents to shield him from detection, or he might have burrowed underground and pulled in the hole behind him. Art could imagine a dozen ways a telepath could hide, even from a determined search, and few of them would give the searchers any clues.

He nodded to Alice and they headed forward, walking up the stairs towards the isolated apartment. The building’s landlady was in breach of a number of health and safety laws, but her tenants had never complained; for most of them, it was the best accommodation they could ever hope to have. They paid in cash and were rewarded with a blind eye to any of their misdeeds. The chances were good, Art decided, that the building’s other tenants – who would be being rousted out of their apartments right now – were probably involved with drug dealing or even smuggling. The NYPD had a warrant to search the entire building and he suspected that they – and the local courtrooms – were going to be busy for the next few days.

“It’s completely clear,” the SWAT Leader assured Art, as they entered. “There’s no sign of him at all.”

Art nodded and, slowly, opened up his mind. The SWAT team didn’t include a telepath, an oversight he had had no time to rectify. Besides, a telepath who wanted to use his talent would be blinded by the surge of emotions from the unlucky souls who got in the SWAT team’s path. He doubted that drug dealers would be brave and respond to the intruders calmly, but a telepathic mind controller might be a different story. His mind expanded, searching for the mental stillness that might conceal another telepath, and he relaxed slightly when he found nothing. The mind controller could have been hiding under their very noses, broadcasting I’m not here signals to anyone in the area.

“Check with the monitoring team,” he ordered. He keyed his radio. “Agent Graves...is there anything from the probes?”

The probes – microscopic surveillance devices – had floated into the apartment along with the SWAT team. Art had argued for their inclusion because they could not be fooled by a telepath, no matter how hard the telepath tried to control them. The minds back at the NYPD station couldn’t be tricked into believing that the apartment was empty, or so Art hoped. If the mind controller was powerful enough to influence people at such a distance, resistance would be completely futile.

“Negative,” Graves said. He was a cranky old man, well past his prime, but he had stayed current and he did know his stuff. “There’s no sign that he is here.”

“Good,” Art said, and then changed his mind. “Bad. Get the forensic team up here and have them take the place apart room by room.”

He closed his mental shields and started to look around the room, searching for something out of place, something that would provide a clue as to where the mind controller had gone. He’d been skilled at that in Afghanistan – he’d actually wondered if it had been an early form of telepathy peeking out of his mind – but that was in the middle of a war zone. Now, there was nothing that seemed to be obviously out of place. The room was a mess, yet Art couldn’t blame the mind controller for that – his own room was a dump. He’d never dared take Alice or anyone else to his new apartment.

The apartment smelt funny, he realised, after a moment of consideration. It was easy to see why. Massive piles of unwashed clothes lay everywhere, some of them clearly more expensive than Art would have expected anyone who lived in the apartment to be able to buy. He leaned down, without touching anything, and frowned. Most of the clothing was clearly designed for a woman – in fact, if he was any judge, several women. There were used panties and bras within the pile, simply abandoned. He guessed that the mind controller had been bringing women home, having his way with them, and then claiming their underwear as a trophy of each conquest. He’d known a Marine who behaved in much the same way, although he, at least, had seduced the women fairly.

He stepped into the kitchen and recoiled from the smell. There was an overflowing bin, filled with used takeaway containers and bottles of soda pop – no alcohol, he noted. That made sense; very few telepaths continued to drink after discovering that it weakened their mental shields and left them vulnerable to every stray thought in the area. The kitchen sink was blocked – Art didn’t want to think about what might be blocking it – and half-filled with washing water. It looked as if the suspect had fled the building before the SWAT team arrived, which was interesting. Had someone at the NYPD warned him and, if so, had that person been mentally programmed to pass on a warning?

Art shook his head as he stepped back into the hallway to allow the forensic team to get to work. The mind controller was dangerous – no doubt about it – but he didn’t seem to be particularly clever. It would have been easy for him to program some of the people in the building – perhaps even the landlady herself – to clean his apartment for him; come to think of it, he could have probably moved into a finer apartment without tipping off the NYPD. All he seemed to want was money and sex. If Art hadn’t known already, he would have been sure that their target was a man – a young man.

“I’m going to talk to the landlady,” Alice said. “I’m afraid the vultures have already started to gather.”

Art scowled. The NYPD had thrown up a cordon around the apartment block as soon as the SWAT team moved in, but someone had clearly had the presence of mind to call the media and sell the story for a few bucks. A person with a cell phone or a video camera might well have been able to take some footage to attract their attention and, after the dramatic disappearance of some of Zeller’s telepaths, the press would draw a link between the two events. The thought had crossed Art’s mind too, although he had reassured himself that the mind controller had clearly been active a long time before some of Zeller’s pupils had vanished into the underground. That meant, at least, that it was a telepath no one else had ever met.

The thought of Zeller’s pupils was a worrying one. Art had access to the classified alert that had been passed to the Telepath Corps, a warning that the rogue telepaths might have linked up with anti-government activists. That wasn’t good news. Art had rather liked what he’d seen of Elizabeth, but Leo certainly had the personality to be a major pain in the ass. And if he wanted to cause trouble, he certainly had the power to do it.

“Captain,” a woman’s voice called. Art looked up to see Doctor Waianae shouting at him. “Can you come and look at this please?”

Art nodded and stepped back into the apartment. Doctor Waianae was Japanese-American, a short elfin woman with a slim, almost boyish figure. Her porcelain face concealed a surprising amount of insecurity, although she never lacked for male companionship. Art had sensed Alice’s reaction to her and had been forced to conceal a smile. The Doctor might feel that her small breasts and tiny figure were unattractive – a result of growing up in a world where large breasts and curvy figures were taken for granted – but he knew that men found her desirable. He didn’t know why she worried so much about her life.

“This is one of his shirts,” the Doctor said, briskly. “Can you pick anything off it?”

Art shook his head. He blamed the media personally. A fake telepath had claimed to be able to feel psychic impressions off an item that had belonged to someone else, but the claim had never been verified and the faker had refused to be tested under controlled conditions. Perhaps it was possible – after all, you could tell a great deal about someone by what they bought and used regularly – but no one in the Telepath Corps had developed any such ability.

“No,” he said, flatly. The Doctor’s cool professionalism hid a multitude of other feelings, including an unwilling attraction to Art personally. He tried to push that thought aside. “What can you tell me about him?”

“Young, probably no older than twenty-five,” the Doctor said, briskly. “He took no precautions at all; we took prints and DNA samples and we’re running them through the databases now. If he’s ever been arrested and fingerprinted, we will have him and the people he brought back here. And he had a drugs habit.”

She nodded towards one of the opened cupboards. Art could see a small bag of white powder inside, as if someone had just tossed it carelessly into the compartment. That was odd for a telepath, not least because drugs – like alcohol – weakened the mental shields. On the other hand, if one spent most of one’s life smashed out on drug trips, the chances were good that one might not notice – at first – when telepathy started to appear. Why not? It could easily be dismissed as yet another drug induced hallucination.

“It might not be his, of course,” the Doctor added. “He might well have used his powers to assert control over the drug gangs in the area and made them his slaves. Or he could have pushed them into providing him with drugs for his victims. A drugged mind would be even less able to fight back.”

Art nodded, sickened. “How many women did he bring back here?”

“We’re uncertain as yet,” the Doctor admitted. “We’re picking up dozens of separate DNA signatures in the room. The chances are good that most of them are his victims, women compelled to come with him, sleep with him and then forget the experience. The bastard must have been living a dream.”

Art sensed her disgust and understood. A normal rapist could be caught and convicted on the strength of his victim’s testimony. A mind controller, on the other hand, could leave the women convinced that they wanted him, or make them forget the whole experience afterwards. Indeed, the more Art through about it, the more he was convinced that that was what the mind controller would do. Why take the risk of being identified when he could wipe their minds and send them home happy and ignorant?

“We may manage to identify some of his victims,” Art agreed. As he spoke, it occurred to him to wonder if that might be the best thing to do. Surely it would be better to leave matters undisturbed. How could he explain to someone that they’d been raped and then made to forget the experience? On the other hand, their memories might one day surface, leaving them confused and terrified. “They might give us a clue where to look for him now.”

He shook his head. “Send me a complete copy of your report,” he ordered, finally. “I’ll be downstairs with the others.”

Outside, half of the building’s population were in handcuffs, sitting on the ground and waiting for a police van to come to take them away. The NYPD had been through most of the building and found more than enough evidence to convict various occupants – including the landlady – of all kinds of charges, mainly drug possession and distribution. Art knew nothing about the economics of the drugs trade – at least outside Afghanistan, where the Marines had been involved in capturing or killing drug barons and the terrorists their money supported – but it struck him as stupid to keep all of one’s drugs in one’s own apartment. The gang members clearly hadn’t been expecting the police raid.

He looked over at the landlady, who was cursing at Alice. She was a fat ugly woman, wearing a dress that should have left rather more of her body to the imagination. Art had disliked her on sight and the brief contact with her mind had left him feeling sick. Maria was the runt of the litter, the fat sister who had always been overshadowed by her three thin and pretty sisters, all of whom had made good matches and escaped the streets. She had moved from man to man, the last of whom – her least worthless husband – had left her the apartment building. And now even that was taken from her...

Art staggered as her thoughts and feelings crashed through his mind, then stabilised himself, rebuilding his mental blocks piece by piece. Maria – the landlady – clearly had a very minor telepathic power herself, or perhaps the force of her resentment was so strong that she was somehow able to slip into Art’s telepathy and bombard him with waves of emotions. As soon as he could trust himself to move, he walked over to her and placed a gloved hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him resentfully.

“You’re going to lose your building,” Art said, flatly. There was no way around that, unless someone went to bat for her and somehow he doubted that anyone would be willing to do that. The chances were good that she was looking at some serious jail time. “I need your help. If you help me, I will help you.”

Maria swore at him in a language Art suspected was Italian. He didn’t know enough to be sure, although several of the words were familiar. “Get fucked,” she said, finally. The concentrated venom in her voice made his head spin. Behind it, hope and fear warred in her breast. “Why should I do anything to help you?”

“Because I’m the senior officer here,” Art said. It was stretching a point, but the Telepath Corps did have jurisdiction and Alice would back him up, if necessary. “I can make the difference between you going to jail and being released as a victim of a mind controlling telepath.”

He smiled at the churn of emotions playing out across her mind. “Right,” she said, finally. “I have had enough of promises from pigs. What guarantee do I have that you will keep your word?”

“None,” Art said, honestly. “You don’t have much of a choice, though. Do you?”

Maria glared at him, and then nodded. “All right,” she said. “What must I do?”

Art pulled off his glove and touched her forehead. The physical contact made the link stronger and the intensity of her hatred and fear crashed against him, almost throwing him back out of her mind. Slowly, he concentrated on her mysterious lodger and skimmed through her memories. There wasn’t much – like he’d done to his other victims, the mind controller had fiddled with her mind, making it impossible for her to recall much about him – but there was a clue. The mind controller had been addicted to women. He’d brought women off the streets – some clearly whores, some clearly wealthy women – and fucked them, before releasing them back out into the wild. Art was almost relieved. At least they weren’t dealing with a killer.

He broke the contact and nodded at Alice. “I think we know where we have to go next,” he said, finally. A few hours of research with the NYPD would confirm it for him and then they could act. The mind controller, it seemed, had been fond of a particular speakeasy. Art snorted at Maria’s mental tone. Speakeasy indeed – the last time he’d heard anyone use that word had been during a documentary about Prohibition. “And then we can set a trap.”

Alice nodded. “All right,” she said. He caught a whiff of her mental state and smiled. She didn’t like Maria any more than Maria liked her. “Let’s go.”

“One moment,” Art said. He looked down at Maria and resolve crystallised in his mind. “A few debts have to be paid.”

He called over one of the senior NYPD officers and issued orders. Maria would not be arrested, at least not formally. She would be taken to a place where she could find a second chance, if she chose to take it. If not...he suspected that she would soon find herself in trouble again. The Telepath Corps might not approve of his choice, but then...the telepaths had to pay their debts.

How else could they become good members of society?