Part 35 (1/2)
FORTY-SIX.
SEPTEMBER 2379.
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM.
Telepaths were dying beneath her hands, beneath her power, and Jael could only let them slide away as the merge ate through their minds. Nothing she could do would keep them alive long enough for her to stabilize their minds. She couldn't save most of them, so Jael settled for a few, two of them being Lucas's sisters. She kept a careful mental touch on Samantha and Kristen as she worked on the Strykers she could help. Jael judged the state of the fight by the state of those two Sercas and how damaged their minds were becoming.
Only when telekinetics started teleporting into the street in droves did Jael realize how many Strykers they were going to lose. She was inundated by the spiraling death throes of too many minds, and they threatened to take her down with them. Even her s.h.i.+elds weren't enough, the mental shrieks of the dying clawing at her mind. For the first time since she'd dipped into a person's mind for psi surgery, Jael closed herself off to their thoughts and pain, trying to find her balance again.
The telepaths who were purposefully held back from the merge to be available for the fallout couldn't have known what was coming. They couldn't have foreseen that Strykers would be dying in the streets, slumped over one another, bleeding in the gutter, minds tangled together in a knot that no one could undo.
Then the cause of the whole d.a.m.n mess teleported into the street, legs crumpling beneath him as he appeared. Someone screamed for Jael, but she was already running, stumbling over bodies to reach Lucas. The Stryker merge that had hung over the mental grid for so long finally broke down completely, the Serca siblings losing the viselike grip they had on everyone's minds. Lucas, for all his immense power, was so far gone, wrapped so tight and stretched so thin, that he never even felt it when his mind broke.
Samantha did, but she could do nothing, had nothing left to reach for him with that could help. Her telepathy was as shattered as the merge, and Kristen was no longer present to help pull Lucas out of the mental abyss that threatened his sanity. Kristen was already gone, mind broken beyond repair and shutting down, one dying spark in a wave of many. Try as she might, Samantha couldn't find Lucas in the mess that was the mental grid, and Jael felt the girl slip away somewhere deep inside herself.
Jael crashed to her knees beside Lucas's body, yanking at the lock of his skinsuit helmet and prying it off. She cus.h.i.+oned his head with one hand, letting her fingers catch the weight of it rather than the street. At the touch of her mind to his, Lucas's eyes snapped open, pupils tiny black pinp.r.i.c.ks in a sea of dark blue, blood leaking out of the corners like tears.
”Lucas,” Jael said, heart pounding in her chest. Stay with me.
He focused on her, or seemed to. Recognition was there, but Jael knew, somehow, that it wasn't of her. She would never know what he saw in that moment.
He opened his mouth and choked on words. ”I-”
Breath stuttered in his chest. Jael felt his mind fall through the mental grid.
She couldn't catch him.
Jael felt the ma.s.sive, gaping hole in Lucas's ravaged mind-all that was left of him after the merge-swallow everything in the wake of the trauma he'd inflicted on himself. Jael was effectively shut out, clawing at his mind and not even touching s.h.i.+elds, just empty s.p.a.ce.
”Lucas,” she whispered, staring blankly down at his unconscious form and the slow rise and fall of his chest. Jael needed to transport him to the Strykers Syndicate immediately, but she wasn't sure if any telekinetics were left who had the strength to teleport.
A shadow drifted over her and Jael looked up, staring at Jason and Quinton. Jason had his arm slung over Quinton's shoulder, letting the other man take most of his weight. An ugly rip was torn through his uniform and skinsuit, blood having saturated the area, but his chest seemed whole. The grief they exhibited rubbed against the raw places in her own mind. Quinton was staring down the street with a dead look in his eyes, seemingly unaware of his surroundings.
”It's over,” Jason said, eyes bloodshot, voice raw and wounded. ”Threnody detonated the bomb. Kerr made sure Nathan and his Warhounds couldn't leave the explosion radius before everyone else teleported out of range.”
Jael closed her eyes, her mind still searching for Lucas's. ”And the people already in s.p.a.ce?”
Quinton spoke, but he didn't sound like the man Jael knew. ”Let them die out there.”
PART NINE.
Tabula Rasa.
SESSION DATE: 2128.09.28.
LOCATION: Inst.i.tute of Psionics Research.
CLEARANCE ID: Dr. Amy Bennett.
SUBJECT: 2581.
FILE NUMBER: 881.
The doctor kneels before the girl, one hand gripping the cascade of wires that hangs from bruised skin. Those bleached-out violet eyes seem sunken and they no longer look at the camera. They look elsewhere.
”Aisling,” the doctor pleads. ”We can't survive like this.”
The girl is still and quiet, one hand clutching a white card. After a long moment, she unclenches her hand and lets the card fall to the floor. ”Thank you,” she whispers.
The doctor picks the card up, turns it around to see the shape on the underside. ”We don't want your thanks.”
”I know.” The girl smiles and leans forward, the effort making her gasp. She presses a kiss to the woman's forehead, like a benediction when it isn't, not in her prison cell. ”I wasn't thanking you.”
The doctor drops the card to the floor and reaches out to help the child lean back in her seat. Behind them, the machines click and hum and whine, a nonstop sound that has been a constant companion to them both.
”What do we do?” the doctor whispers. ”What do we do next?”
”Anything you want, Lucas.” Aisling smiles, eyes wide and glazed and looking at things no one else can see. ”Anything at all.”
FORTY-SEVEN.
OCTOBER 2379.
TORONTO, CANADA.
It never changed.