to the lounge. The chess game I’d been playing with Jane the day before was still sitting on the
table. I sat down on my side while Billy took the other, studying the board.
“Looks like you’re losing again,” Billy remarked to me.
“As long as he doesn’t do anything novel, I should win,” Jane added, a touch smugly. I
grimaced up at the ceiling and sighed.
“I have a few ideas,” I told them, looking back down at the board. I moved one of my
knights forward while telling Jane the move and sat back to wait while she decided what move
she would make next. “Rook to G 2,” Jane said smoothly, her voice simply radiating satisfaction. “Check.”
Billy moved her piece for her, a grin on his face. So far, I hadn’t won a game against
either of them, but I had learned a lot from playing. I moved one of my pawns to take the rook,
clearing my king from danger. We played a few more moves before Michael, Amy, and Dr.
Carnesby came into the lounge. Abandoning the game, we took seats in the armchairs and
waited for Dr. Carnesby to speak.
“Thank you all for being here for this discussion,” Dr. Carnesby said.
“Not like we had much choice,” Sandra interrupted sarcastically, rolling her eyes.
“Yes, well, I still appreciate it,” Dr. Carnesby replied, hardly ruffled at the interruption. “I
would like to take this opportunity to speak with you all about your powers now that the trial
period is almost over.”
“I think I’ve mastered mine and they will come in handy for me,” Michael said. “Being
able to control gravity is a useful little thing.”
“Yes, and I understand my powers as well,” Amy added, flicking her fingers and causing
a wind to blow around us. “I think the only thing now is to think of ways to apply it and that
doesn’t need to be done here. It’s all down to imagination.”
“That is very true and I’m impressed with you all,” Dr. Carnesby admitted, nodding. “How
about you, Sandra? How are your powers coming along?”
“Very well,” Sandra replied, smiling smugly. “I have a good handle on them and it’s
getting easier and easier to control my empathy.”
“Excellent! George, how has your shapeshifting been coming?” Dr. Carnesby asked,
turning to me.
“All right. I’ve practiced enough that I can turn back to my own shape almost instantly,” I
explained. “I haven’t really discovered any limits just yet, but I’ve kept my experimenting simple.”
“Good, good,” Dr. Carnesby approved. “And you Billy?” “I’ve learned how to control my telepathy,” he hedged, not going into much detail at all.
“I’ve also learned how to turn it off so I don’t hear other people’s thoughts all the time. I think
that was the most important thing for me to learn.”
We discussed our abilities further, a strange light in Sandra’s eyes as we let bits of
information dribble out. Ididn’t know what she was thinking but her expression gave me chills.
She looked like a shark eyeing a seal for a snack. After about an hour, Dr. Carnesby called a
halt to the discussion and smiled at all of us.
“Well, if things continue as well as they have been, you all will be walking out with your
five thousand dollars each,” Dr. Carnesby explained, standing. “However, I’d like to ask all of
you to consider participating in some more experiments to discover exactly why Gnotret
changed you all.”
We agreed to consider it then the group separated. Michael went to his room alone and I
could hear music blasting through his door. Billy went to his own room with a notebook he’d
gotten from Dr. Carnesby. I could only imagine he wanted to catalogue what he’d gotten from
Sandra in the discussion. I went to my own room, strangely exhausted and saw Sandra and
Amy sitting down together in the lounge before closing my door. Whatever they were doing
could wait until the morning, I reasoned and fell into bed. Chapter 11
Michael was sitting on his bed, using the music he was playing to mask what he was
doing. Sandra had praised him effulgently on his use of gravity and he’d been thinking of ways
to use the ability as a weapon. Staring at several small objects he’d secreted into his room over
the past few days, including the little origami shuttles he’d made, Michael concentrated on
changing the gravity around them. After he’d started practicing, Michael had learned that he
could manipulate gravity fields around other objects not just himself.
With a tinny crunch, the fork and spoon on the floor were crushed into flat pieces. He’d
increased the gravity around them one hundred times and they were as flat as pancakes.
Looking at the magazine and the DVD case, he lowered the gravity around them until they were
floating around the ceiling, knocking gently into the light. With a grin, Michael reversed the
gravity and the two objects slammed into the ground, leaving a small indent in the carpet. The
shuttles, he continued to waft about the room, as if they were in orbit around him.
“Looks like a weapon to me,” Michael murmured to himself, a smug smirk crossing his
face. A warmth stole across his body as he thought of Sandra and her happiness at finding out
what he could do with his power now. Though, it wasn’t as strong as it had been before. He was
still attracted to Sandra but she was slowly becoming less consuming, less interesting to him.
Deciding to reward himself a little bit, Michael lowered the gravity around himself so that
he floated in the air. A couple days into their second week here, Michael had had a wild thought.
What if he could manipulate the gravity around himself enough to be able to fly? Every night
before going to bed, he’d experimented with the gravity fields around himself, trying to figure out
how to propel himself across his room, stop himself, rise higher, and sink lower. Michael had
gotten very good at moving himself around his room but couldn’t wait until they left the facility to
try it out in the open sky. He hovered above his bed for a few moments, enjoying the sense of weightlessness
he’d once hoped he’d eventually find working for NASA. Every once in a while, Michael would
wonder what Sandra had planned for after the trial. He believed that his ability would be
extremely useful at NASA but if Sandra had other plans, he’d follow her. Of course. The warmth
intensified over his body as he thought of her. A flush rose on Michael’s cheeks and he allowed
himself to float down to his bed. Sandra had wanted to keep their relationship quiet from the
others and Michael had agreed. Even though it meant that they weren’t able to spend as much
time together as he wanted. Smiling, he let the warmth take him over and his thoughts turned
completely to Sandra. She was still fun to think about, even if his enthusiasm for her seemed to
be waning. It wasn’t totally lonely without her here, he mused.
-----------------------------------------------------------
As she and Amy sat in the lounge talking, Sandra smiled to herself when she felt
Michael start thinking about her. She’d created an emotional path connected to any thought of
her that made Michael aroused and want her. It kept him wrapped firmly around her finger and
the man would do anything she wanted. Brushing over his emotions, Sandra did notice that they
weren’t nearly as strong as before. Perh
aps Michael was building up a tolerance without her
there to lean on him. It was something to think about later. Turning her attention back to Amy,
she made appropriately soothing noises as Amy complained about George.
“And he had the gall to say it was you manipulating me,” Amy exclaimed, rolling her
eyes. Sandra snapped her complete attention back to Amy at that, wondering how much
George might have put together. “He said you were trying to separate me from everyone else.
Build allies or some ridiculous thing like that.”
“That is completely ridiculous,” Sandra agreed, laughing while inside she seethed.
George seemed to have picked up a lot about her intentions, though not the whole of it. Oh well.
It was time to step up her timetable then. Concentrating on Amy, Sandra slipped easily into her emotions and searched for the best way to draw Amy to her side. Then found it and almost
laughed out loud at how easy it would be.
“You know, Michael and I were thinking of starting a show of some sort after the trial,”
Sandra stated calmly, eyeing Amy carefully. “With the abilities we have, we could make a lot of
money and eventually be quite famous.”
“Really?” Amy asked, sliding into the manipulation Sandra was doing easily. “I’ve always
wanted to be comfortably off. Enough to travel and do whatever I wanted, you know?”
“I do indeed,” Sandra replied. She carefully built up layers of greed and desire for
recognition and fame, building them slowly so that Amy believed it was all her own doing. The
greed felt like smooth, cool metal sliding over her skin and Sandra delighted in the sensation.
Desire for recognition and fame felt like feather light touches over her whole body, almost
ticklish.
“That’s why I wanted to work for a huge company,” Amy continued, her voice taking on a
dreamy quality as Sandra built her emotions up into a bonfire. She also attached the feeling that
these things would only happen if Sandra was the architect ofthem. “I would be paid well for my
advice and I would be important.”
“Well, you could do that with us,” Sandra coaxed, releasing her hold on Amy’s emotions
and letting them speak to her. “Come with us when we leave. You could be rich and famous and
have people coming to see you from the world over. With your power over all the elements,
you’d be huge.”
“I would, wouldn’t I?” Amy asked, her voice still dreamy but sharpening with greed and
desire. “George is a lost cause now. I doubt I’ll do anything other than empty my things out of
our apartment. I think I will come with you. That sounds like a wonderful idea.”
“Perfect,” Sandra murmured smugly, giving Amy a wide smile full of teeth. She could feel
her manipulations taking hold of Amy and changing her without the other woman realizing it. This was the best part of being an empath: changing others to suit her needs so that they were
happy to provide whatever she wanted.
“When do you want to leave?” Amy asked, her eyes glassy.
“Oh, I’ll let you know,” Sandra replied. “Now I think it’s time for bed. I’m exhausted, aren’t
you?”
Amy nodded, a yawn coming out of her mouth right on cue. Sandra let her get up first
and head to bed, exulting in the welter of emotions that Amy was feeling right now. It had been
easier than she’d thought to get Amy on her side, to take over her will so completely through her
emotions. She followed Amy and headed into her own room, satisfied at a job well done. Now
she just needed to decide when to leave. And if that five thousand dollars was worth staying the
whole time for.
------------------------------------------------------------------
The rest of the week was quiet and the fourth week of the trial rolled around without
much fuss. We still practiced our abilities and Billy and Jane tried to figure out what Sandra was
planning. I could see that Billy wasn’t having much success because he started walking around
with an annoyed look on his face. Michael was still almost slavishly devoted to Sandra and I
could see similar behavior in Amy. That actually hurt.
I’d kept my word to Amy, staying away from her and not talking to her even though that
was all I wanted to do. I wanted to convince her, somehow, that Sandra was just manipulating
and using her. But I recognized the glassy look in her eyes whenever she saw Sandra, though it
wasn’t quite the same as Michael’s. Whatever Sandra had done, Amy was hers just as much as
Michael was.
The second day of the fourth week, Billy found me watching a movie. I was really just
watching the screen blankly, not taking in what was going on. He tapped me on the shoulder
and I jumped, looking up at him with surprise. “I’ve got some news,” Billy murmured, looking around the room. “Come back to Adam’s
office. We need to talk.”
I nodded and shut the movie off. Following, I could hear conversation in Sandra’s room
and recognized Amy’s and Michael’s voices. It sounded as if all three of them were in there
discussing something. I couldn’t stay and listen, though, as Billy waved urgently at me. When
we got to Dr. Carnesby’s office, Billy and I perched uncomfortably on the examination table after
I closed the door.
“I’ve found out some of Sandra’s plans,” Billy said without preamble. “She wants to turn
their abilities into something like a traveling circus. She’d call them magicians and charge dearly
power over all the people who came to her shows. She could instill in them the desire to do
whatever she wanted.”
“She could do anything, get anything done for her,” I breathed, shock and dismay
etching my face. “Sandra would be difficult to catch because she would keep moving. Plus, she
was going to become a lawyer; she’d know how to stay on the good side of the law while
breaking it entirely.”
“Yes, this is a problem,” Dr. Carnesby sighed, running a hand through his hair. “What do
you intend to do about it? You two are the only ones who can resist her so far.”
Before either Billy or I could answer, we heard pounding footsteps sprinting away from
the door. There were only three options for who that could be and we looked at each other,
aghast. Dr. Carnesby hurried to the door and opened it, seeing Michael disappear down the
hallway and into Sandra’s room. A scream of rage ripped through the building a few seconds
later; Sandra had found out we knew her plans.
Billy and I ran down the hallway, half-formed plans being made and discarded in my
head as we went. We were definitely outnumbered but hopefully our abilities were matched. As we drew even with the doorway, we saw Michael standing at the wall leading to the outside and
glaring fiercely at it.
“What...?” Billy started to say before a fireball zoomed at him. He managed to dodge it in
time but the fireball smacked into the wall behind us, scorching a black mark on it. Amy
appeared from the corner, a feral grin lighting her face. She conjured another fireball and threw
it at me. I barely stepped aside in time, my limbs sluggish due to shock and dismay. I’d never
seen that look onAmy’s face before and I prayed I never saw it again.
“Take the wall down, Michael!” Sandr
a yelled, pointing at the wall. Michael nodded and
raised his hand towards the wall. His other hand pointed off to the side, where I knew Billy was.
A grinding sound permeated the room as plaster rained down from the wall. Zigzagging cracks
appeared in the wall but I was distracted by another fireball as Amy kept doing her best to hurt
or kill us.
“Amy, don’t do this. Please!” I begged as I dodged yet another fireball. “Please, this isn’t
really you.”
“Yes it is!” Amy yelled, her voice wild. “Sandra has shown me a different way to get what
I want and I follow her. If you stay out of our way, I won’t be forced to hurt you. But try to stop us
and I will do my best to killyou.”
I could see Billy pressed against the wall near the door, his limbs splayed out from the
pressure exerted on him. I risked a look at Michael, seeing total concentration on his face as he
held Billy in place and worked to take down the crumbling wall at the same time. I could feel a
tickling at my mind, despair threatening to overwhelm me. Remembering what Billy had said
about having a slippery mind, I concentrated on a pane of glass. The tickle went away and I saw
Sandra scowling at me from the other corner.
“Jane, the sedative,” Billy managed to say before his breath was seemingly stolen. His
mouth gaped open widely, panic covering his face as he tried to speak. I heard an insane giggle and turned back to see Amy, a wild frenzy on her face, staring at Billy. She turned to me,
giggling again, and raised a hand.
Amy completed the gesture with another fireball thrown in my direction. I couldn’t dodge
this one in time so I thought about one of my more familiar forms. Almost instantly, I dropped
down into the form of the tiger Amy had first seen me in. The fireball flew harmlessly over my
head, impacting on the wall. I growled at Amy and lunged, hoping to incapacitate her. A gust of
wind caught me in mid-leap as the wall finally gave way and sunlight streamed into the room. I
hit the other wall hard, my vision graying around the edges.
“Amy, let’s go!” Sandra called as she and Michael darted through the hole. Amy threw
one last contemptuous look my way before following. I heard Billy drop to the ground, one hand