Spirits of the Earth: The Complete Series: (A Post-Apocalyptic Series Box Set: Books 1-3) by Milo Fowler (paper ebook reader .TXT) 📕

not?" Another temple-tap. "I can lead you through it. But it'll work best if we communicate telepathically throughout the process."

"I have a feeling I'm not your first."

He smirks. "Listen, I'm not going to force you to do anything. You tell me to beat it, I'm out of here. We'll catch up at the banquet." With a grimace, he moves to rise.

"You're not going anywhere." I point the knife at him.

"She's got me right where she wants me," he murmurs.

I give the console another glance; I still have fifteen minutes to wait. Then another ten before the retriever's aerocar arrives to cart this guy's ass to HQ for holding. So I have some time to kill.

"Fine." I exhale, but I don't relax my grip on the knife. "Show me."

"It works best if you close your eyes—"

"Not happening."

He nods as if to say he figured as much. You've managed to quiet the other voices—neighbors, people flying by your window. Otherwise, you'd be a basket case right now. So that's good. What you'll need to do is focus on my thoughts. We're sharing a telepathic link at the moment. I'm sending, you're receiving. But in order to read thoughts that I'm not sharing, you'll have to trace this signal to its source. Pull back the curtain—

You're a big fan of metaphors, I think at him without realizing what I'm doing.

He grins. There you go. You've taken your first step. Another metaphor, I assume, since I'm not moving. Now maintain that trajectory, and let's see what you can read on your own. I'm not going to send anything your way for a few seconds.

The quiet is welcome.

Followed by a blast of moving images and dissonant sounds, another maelstrom similar to what I experienced from my neighbors, but this time the storm emanates from only one source: the young man sitting on my floor. I try not to flinch as scenes from his life hurtle past me and crowd my vision. Not my actual vision—I can still see everything in my cube. I haven't closed my eyes. This is some kind of hyperreality, overlaid on top of what's really real. Moving and breathing ghosts from this guy's past.

I have to remind myself to breathe as I learn more about him than I ever cared to know. This is an investigation, nothing more. He doesn't know me. We share no blurry past. He's a dust addict, and my augments are just wonky, giving me these superhuman mental abilities.

His name is Erik. Scenes play out from when he was a boy, live-action footage that's blurry around the edges. We were at the same boarding school before they split us up—Camp Hope. Playing hide and seek in the dormitory, chasing each other up and down those faux-mahogany stairs, three flights of madness, laughter, then some tears as I slipped and fell, splitting open my left knee. Erik was there at my side when I landed in a crumpled heap. He had his sweater off and bunched up, pressed against the bleeding, his brow knitted with concern. He blamed himself, but I was the klutz who'd tripped on the braided rug. He was always too fast for me to catch.

Absently, I rub my knee beneath the stiff material of my black uniform. The scar remains to this day.

I glance at him. Erik. Resting with his eyes closed and his hands folded across his flat abdomen. He is one of the Twenty, and I do remember him. But why haven't I until this moment?

Never looking back...we live only now…

A chill shivers down my neck even though I'm sitting in sunlight.

Next item to investigate: dust usage. Like running a search on the Linkstream, I scan Erik's memories for any illicit deals with dust smugglers or moments alone with a line or two of the stuff ready to snort. There's nothing. Not a single longing glance at a snuff box.

So he's not a dust freak. But I can't wrap my mind around any alternative explanation for his abilities. Is he some kind of superhuman? An above-average VR model living a few rungs higher on the evolutionary ladder?

Erik is two for two, as far as telling the truth. Next up: his involvement with terrorists and the attack on Hawthorne Tower. Will he be three for three? Has he been straight with me this whole time?

A knock at my door causes the scenes and sounds from Erik's mind to dissipate like steam. I glance at the console. My call was received five minutes ago, and a retriever was dispatched to my location. That's who must be outside.

How did I lose track of time?

Shutting down the console, I return my kitchen knife to its resting place and step over Erik on my way to the door. He looks sound asleep. Must be exhausting to have someone sift through your memories.

I wave my hand in front of the door, and it slides aside. Two of the Chancellor's security clones stand in the hallway, shoulder to shoulder. Their white armor shines, pristine, as do their black face shields. No way to tell what they look like underneath. No reason to. They all look the same, from what I hear.

"Sera Chen, you will come with us," they say in unison, in the same gender-neutral robotic voice. Even though they're flesh and blood, these things always behave more like automatons than people.

"What's going on?" I keep my body between them and Erik. No idea why. Subconsciously, do I think of him now as the impish boy I often had to protect from our headmaster? I was good at talking us out of difficult situations. Our teachers had no patience for childish pranks; they expected us to behave like miniature adults. "I'm supposed to report for duty—"

"By order of the Chancellor, under Emergency Stipulation 5.6, Subsection 2, in the event of a threat against law and order, all members of the Twenty are to be sequestered until that threat has been neutralized."

I nod slowly. The Tower attack must be even