I broke contact with Doctor Alexander. I’d had enough of him, and I needed to think. The situation was clear—being subjected to the equipment enhanced my telepathic abilities but meanwhile damaged my brain cells so I was in danger of winding up a vegetable. Or not. They didn’t really know. On the other hand, the pisspot had done something unexpected to me: apparently it had unleashed my natural telepathic talent. As I had understood from what I was told, reaching a telepathic stage was not a matter of volume as much as the correct tuning of the combined brain waves, and the pisspot had apparently tuned me just right. So I didn’t need the outside help anymore, although I still had to find out how powerful my natural telepathy was. On the other hand, I couldn’t let them know that I had evolved into a natural telepath, because that would only strengthen their resolve to terminate me. I was now much more dangerous than before, the way they looked at it, because I no longer depended on their equipment. I had let myself into a nice, tangled mess, and nothing in my training had prepared me for it.
My mind felt like a beehive, so many were the thoughts that raced through it. One thought in particular jumped at me: Liv! They want her to go into the slipper, which means that they plan to use her as a human guinea pig. I must warn her!
The hour was almost nine p.m., and Liv would be waiting for me to connect. I prayed that my power would be enough to reach her and I closed my eyes, visualizing her face with as much intensity as I could. The image of her room that formed in my mind through her eyes brought a broad smile to my face. It was working! I took possession of her hand and wrote a check mark on the yellow pad on her desk.
You are here! I was waiting for you! Let me tell you what I did today …
Much as I ached to hear from her, to feel that we were having a normal conversation in a world that had nothing else normal left for me, I had to stop her. I took possession of her hand again, and wrote on the paper, this time at length.
“Whatever you do, don’t go into the slipper. Make excuses. Get sick. Break a leg. Anything, but don’t go into it!!!!” I added four exclamation marks for emphasis, and let her body go. It took her a few seconds to read it.
But why? I don’t understand, she thought. I sensed her bewilderment, and I had to write again.
“I can’t explain now,” I wrote. “It’s important that you listen to me. You are in danger. Don’t train with the slipper or any other telepathic equipment. And destroy this paper. It’s important. Do it now. We both are in danger.”
I sensed the turmoil in Liv’s mind. Of course, I had sprung it on her without any preparation, but I had no choice. She was a good, practical girl, though; she got up, tore the sheet into small pieces and flushed it down the toilet.
I trust you, she thought, and I miss you. Now I have to go back, but I have a premonition that I will be too sick to train for a while.
She had placed herself before the mirror in the bathroom and was smiling as she thought that. It filled me with warmth to be able to see her, and I had to pass some of it on to her too. I took possession of her hand and gently stroked her cheek, then I waved goodbye, and I let go of her.
That evening I spent a little more time hunting around for thoughts, to get a full measure of my new power. I giggled a bit when I found Tom’s mind and dug into it a little, seeing that he was thinking quite impure thoughts about me, the poor guy! But I was too tired to keep this going for long, and after a while I broke contact with the outside world, and in a minute I was sound asleep.
I got up in the morning feeling much better. I sat by my room window for a while, to weigh the situation and decided that I would be okay. I had the advantage of being a step ahead of everybody else, and I was sure that I would pull through. So what if the undersecretary wanted me dead? Who was he, anyway! I may have to make him jump out of a window or something, I thought, and smiled when I pictured it. The feeling of strength the image gave me was enough for me to regain confidence in the future.
I dressed and walked down the stairs toward a delicious smell of coffee and toast. Doctor Alexander was in the kitchen together with the third agent, the one I hadn’t actually met beyond nodding to him on arrival. Perhaps he was my designated executioner, who knew …
“Good morning! How are you feeling today?” asked Doctor Alexander.
“Great. I feel simply great. Is that coffee in that pot over there?”
“Yes,” said the agent who was apparently doubling as a waiter. “Take a seat, and I’ll fix you breakfast.”
“At what time do you want to start training,” I asked, scattering smiles all around to the doctor, to the guard, and to Tom and Jerry who meanwhile had joined us in the kitchen.
“No training today. You can rest and take it easy until tonight, when the meeting in Davos is scheduled to begin.”
“Oh,” I said, feigning surprise, “I thought you had training planned for today. That’s what the schedule said, if I remember right.”
“It did, but I decided not to overload the equipment. You are in great form anyway, and more training is not necessary.”
“Fine by me,” I said. “I’ll go for a stroll. The air here is superb.”
“You can go, provided that Tom remains close to you. I know that you didn’t let him stay near, yesterday, and that’s against the director’s instructions.”
“Oh, okay. Whatever, I don’t care,” I said.
“Good,” said Doctor Alexander, and nodded to Tom, as if to grant permission to go.
After breakfast, with Tom dutifully at my side, I walked up the hill. We reached the summit, and I picked a place from which the chalet was not in view to sit down. Tom sat beside me, courteously keeping enough distance to give me some basic privacy. I gazed at him and was surprised to see that he wore a thoughtful and even a tormented expression on his face. Was he the one charged with killing me? Perhaps he was and the thought was tormenting him, which was a credit to him, but no help to me. These Secret Service guys are all duty and service, and if his job was to terminate me, terminate me he would, no matter how much it pained him to do it. I had to know more, to get prepared for whatever was in store for me.
I closed my eyes, breathed in the cool, healthy Swiss air, and opened my head to Tom. In a split second I was in his head and what I saw amazed me. He wasn’t sad because he had orders to kill me; he had just lost his mother, who had passed away on the day of our departure. He hadn’t been able to attend her funeral and that was weighing on him immensely. I kept listening to his thoughts, and the Tom who revealed himself to me was completely different from what I had expected—a gentle, delicate man, quite the opposite of your stereotypical Secret Service agent.
Have I already said that I am an opportunist? Well, I am, and I saw an opportunity here. In the shitty situation in which I found myself, I needed a friend, if not an ally, and perhaps Tom was the one. I gazed at him and spoke softly.
“Tom, why don’t you come sit here beside me?” I said, in an inviting tone.
Tom’s head jerked up in surprise, and he took a few seconds to respond.
“As you wish, Miss Tessa,” he said. Trained to obey without questioning motive, he came to sit on the grass next to me.
“Tell me, Tom, do you have family?”
“Only my father and one brother.”
“Oh. What about your mother?”
“She passed away. Yesterday,” Tom said, visibly a prey to a strong emotion.
I placed a hand on his arm and squeezed it. You don’t need to tell me that I’m a manipulative bitch. I know I am, and you would have done the same in my place. But then something unexpected happened—I started to identify with him and his torment. Being inside his mind I could actually feel it, pretty much like he felt it, and a genuine need to ease his pain took over, pushing my manipulative needs to the background.
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said, and my eyes were moist as I said it.
“Thank you, you’re very kind.”
“Tell me about her. Were you two close?”
“Oh, yes. Close. Very close.”
It was like opening a dam. Tom started telling stories about his mother. He went on and on, until at last his voice broke and I saw stealthy tears forming in his eyes. I felt awful, I swear, using his feelings like that, but I consoled myself that I wasn’t doing anything wrong or bad to him. On the contrary, I was allowing him to vent his sorrow, to grieve, which was what he needed right then.
I got up and went to sit on my knees before him. He turned his head so I wouldn’t see his emotion, but I touched his chin and he turned it back.
“Don’t be ashamed,” I said, speaking softly, “let it out. It’s good for you. You need to mourn.”
“I … I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have …”
“Nonsense!” I said. I hugged him gently. At first he resisted, but then he yielded to the embrace. We remained like that for a minute or so, with him trying to contain his sobs so I wouldn’t hear, and me feigning to ignore them. I probed his mind and saw relief there, and then I released the embrace.
“Feeling better?” I asked.
Tom had wiped the tears from his eyes surreptitiously before releasing the hug, but his eyes were red. He nodded, attempting a smile.
“I apologize. You are a wonderful person, but I shouldn’t have lost my bearings like I did.” He really sounded abashed.
“Listen, Tom, if you don’t stop apologizing, you’ll be in trouble with me. It’s all understood and perfectly human. We aren’t going to tell anybody about this, okay?”
“Thank you so much,” he said, almost choking on his words.
I stoked his arm in a friendly way. “Don’t mention it. This is what friends do, and if it helped a little, I’m glad. Now let’s sit here and enjoy the view. When you feel ready we can go back.”
Tom nodded, and we remained sitting there for a few more minutes. I used the time to probe his mind again and was pleased to see how grateful he was to me and how warmly he thought of me. Hopefully one less in the gang that I needed to watch my back against.