The storm showed no signs of letting up any time soon, so they decided to just settle in for the duration. Miles talked very little beyond his explanation of the Screechers, The Breaking, and The Black. Being a private man, he never liked revealing much about himself. He had learned the hard way that letting people get close generally ended in tragedy. He had very few friends and regarded people as worse than animals. He was more of an observer than anything else. Given the nature of his military training, it only ingrained those feelings much further. He always felt that working alone was what allowed him to be stronger than with a partner or group of people. He was friendly enough when he had to be but he still preferred to work alone. “So tell me about these… abilities of yours. Can you control them and do you know what all you can really do? That was some trick back in the room so I would like to be prepared.”
She smiled at him, a little embarrassed at the attention. She shifted her makeshift seat around to face him a little better. She had found some old wooden crates and they had turned them in to sitting benches and, if the storm continued long enough, they could be used as beds. It was chilly outside and the floor of this warehouse was concrete and thus was very cold. Not something a person wanted to sleep on without some sort of blankets or protection. The crates made logical sense for that reason as well. “I am not entirely sure of what all I can do. I know I can make people think they saw one thing when in reality something else happened. I can also do things that seem like magic but it is really not. Like back in the room, you thought you saw me disappear and then reappear right in front of you. There are two ways to do this, from my perspective. The first is harder to do if you don’t know the mind of the person or being you are delving in to for the trick. It is simple enough though; in its simplest explanation, I can make you think I’m not there. I am not just empathic, you see. I am telepathic. I can not only read emotions and sense them but I can project them and even tell you things without speaking, in a manner of speaking.” He stared at her and he wasn’t sure but he thought he managed to hide his surprise at what she was saying. He did not like the idea of anyone being able to snoop around in his mind. However, he tried to keep an open mind and he motioned for her to continue, “I was trained, at a very young age, you do not enter another’s mind without permission. The only time it is considered acceptable is in situations of extreme duress…” She grew quiet and watched him. From his observations, she was watching for reactions so he must have held his face in check quite well. After she was obviously not going to go any further, he spoke, “But you did it anyway, didn’t you. At least once, if I had to guess.” “Yes, more than once. Though, honestly, the first two or three times it was pretty well accidental. I really had not intended to enter someone else’s mind. I should say the first time it was purely accidental and the second time was but it wasn’t, the third was so that I understood what I was doing and would not continue to do it. I suspect that my mentor knew what I had done and just never said anything. He was the type of man that believed certain things. One of those was the only way to know and understand something was to do it yourself.” “I tried it the first time because I did not believe it was possible. Then, I was able to penetrate my mother’s mind. That was how I learned of the problems with Herra and my mother. The second time, it was so I could understand my success from the first time. It was Herra’s mind I entered. The third was also Herra’s mind and that’s when I found that it’s easier to enter a mind once you’d already accomplished it. There is much I don’t understand. I know this now. It was years before Herra ever made any kind of aggression clear. There had been sort of an uneasy truce between her and my mother. That lasted until she discovered our talents.” She stopped there. It was almost as if she was waiting on something. The look of fear that was seemingly frozen on her face was something of a tragedy to Miles. After a minute or two of watching, he decided to push, “And the second?” She seemed confused at his question, “The second what?” “You said there were two ways to accomplish that trick back at the room. Since you didn’t try to first, so you say; then you must have used the second way.” He seemed agitated at this point, to Genifer and she started to appear nervous. “Oh, right.” She caught on as he explained. She had moved past the trick and now needed to explain. “Well, I’m not sure I can give it a good explanation but…” She paused trying to think of a way to best describe it, “I bent the air and the light that was in the room around myself. I was still there but it seemed as though I was not. It is a form of something my mentor called telekinesis. There are many things possible with this talent. It is a rare talent, as I understand it. I am one of maybe three people in the many I know that can do this.” Miles wasn’t sure he believed her explanation. What proof was there? He was no master of physics and he certainly had never seen it before. He had heard stories though. People being completely alone in a room and suddenly someone else was with them. Her explanation made sense enough; both of them did actually. That didn’t mean it was real. He wouldn’t put it past The Black to want them dead but it made more sense that they would want them as weapons. With those kinds of abilities, there would be little to stop The Black from doing whatever they really wanted. In this land, there were pockets of resistance. People who fought against The Black. In the beginning, and he knew this from his own experience, these resistance pockets were small and easily managed. Now, it seemed as though those pockets had turned in to an organized group. Could these telepaths be the reason why? It would certainly make sense. The Black played off the resistance groups as terrorist trying to bring down the system that kept everything together. Miles, however, knew differently. The Black wanted total control. They were after their own agenda and wanted no other competition. They weren’t bad people; well, not all of them. They were just like minded and believed in dictatorship. He had never been outside of the lands that now formed The Black’s territory. Rather, he assumed he had not left. He knew there had been rumors, in the service, of a big battle coming with some foreign power. So that meant there were other groups that were fighting for control. It was all very confusing and he tried to steer clear of it all. And now, here he was stuck right in the middle. What a mess he’d walked in to all because of a woman’s crying. Never the less, he’d committed and he would not back out of helping her now. All he really had said was that he would get them to a safe place. Once he’d finished that; he could be done and walk away. |