I crouched down beside the broken SPECs, and Evelyn joined me. I said, “I didn’t mean to block his fist with your device.”
Evelyn touched the bridge of my nose. It stung a little. “I’m glad it didn’t do more damage to your face.” She looked back toward the bits on the floor and sighed. “I guess it’s back to the drawing board….” She trailed off, stared for a moment, thenplucked a bit of wire and plastic out of the jumble. She held it up and said, “This shouldn’t be here.”
To my untrained eye, it looked no different from all the other electronics. “Maybe it’s the guts of some other part.”
“It’s not. I assembled every component myself. But I never installed a transmitter.”
Ice shot through my veins as if I’d just been injected with some experimental serum. And I realized that it didn’t matter how much I liked Evelyn. How much I trusted her. That she was a decent human being.
Whether she knew it or not, National was still pulling the strings.
And none of us could afford to let down our guard.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
THE POLICY WAS clear. Jacob had been injured in the line of duty. He had to be checked over by a medical professional.
My husband was not pleased.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
If a stun-gun disruption to his nervous system was nothing, I’d hate to seesomething. “I’m in charge, remember? Sit down and stop glaring at me—I’m not gonna budge.”
Jacob worked his jaw a few times…but parked his butt on a nearby radiator without argument.
He wasn’t the only one banged up. Poor Boswell looked like a prize fighter who’d been scraped off the floor of the ring, and Evelyn was walking gingerly. But the two of them focused on the myna bird on the light fixture while Haskel tried to lure it down with a grape. Eventually, Boswell just reached up and grabbed the thing—surprisingly gently, for such an ungainly guy—and handed it over to its frazzled owner.
Sarah had come out of the fray with just a couple of scratches, and Sledge had some finger-shaped bruises forming on his neck. Although the fight had gone out of him, I’d separated him from Sarah. She was in the kitchen and he was in the bathroom.
But while I could keep them apart physically, reintegrated Sarah wasn’t willing to let things go, even if she had to yell her truth through the wall. “I hate your stupid face! I hate your stupid arms! I hate your stupid six-pack! I hate your everything! I’m sick of hiding from you—and I don’t have to! Never talk to me again! No Insta, no Snapchat, no nothing! Or, I swear to god, I’ll post that picture of you when you were a zitty little butterball. Yeah, that’s right, I kept it—and I’ll show that thing to everyone you know!”
And Sledge? Not a peep. In fact, he’d gone into the can without any argument at all. Just a neutral, “Okay.”
Even so, I was with Sarah. I still hated his stupid face.
A team showed up from HQ in unassuming navy uniforms. They could have been anything, from plumbers to pest control. But the one in charge flashed her F-Pimp credentials—not just a medic but a full-fledged MD, and a precog P-2 designation, to boot. I wondered if she’d seen this coming. Heck knows, there wasn’t much to see anymore, just a few banged up people and a scattering of feathers and salt.
The doctor pulled out a pen light and shone it in my face. “Pupils equal and responsive.”
I winced away. “Don’t worry about me. Agent Marks stopped a stun gun with his neck.”
“And he’ll be taken care of. But I’m assessing you.” Of course. NPs were second class citizens as far as admin was concerned. And, like it or not, I couldn’t challenge that assumption.
She clipped a thingy to my finger and took a reading. “Your pulse is elevated, but that’s to be expected. You don’t need stitches.”
Stitches? For what? She unpacketed an alcohol swab and dabbed the bridge of my nose. Ow.
“Use an icepack for the swelling.” She then launched into an extensive line of questioning about the last time I’d taken any medication, in particular any psyactives or antipsyactives. I told her about the mugwort, then clarified that was the day before. “That only hangs around in your system for half a day. So, you’re sure. You haven’t utilized any psyactives today? None at all?”
My eyes went to a chipped piece of plastic on the floor where the SPECs had fallen. Talk about a psyactive—those things were in the same league as a GhosTV. Maybe even more. Back when television went digital, Jacob and I marveled at all the channels the new antenna could pick up. The SPECs were a lot like that, because they boosted my one-channel brain to pick up all kinds of crazy shows.
The potential was massive. All those subtle bodies packed into our physical shells—imagine being able to tease them all apart and see what each one could do. If the empathic talent had its own body, likely the same could be said for telepaths and precogs and clairvoyants. And maybe the TKs were the ones who could wrangle their subtle bodies best.
All of which had implications for psychiatry. They didn’t even know how so many medications actually worked. Maybe the meds functioned on some kind of psyactive level, and changed the way the physical body interacted with one of its subtle counterparts. Seeing how people acted when their empathic body was gone, I had to wonder if certain mental issues had more to do with the subtle bodies than the physical brain.
The question was, how would they test for it? Lock me in a room…and instead of a dead woman’s wig, I’d be stuck with apair of glasses. No, I reasoned, that was then and this is now. They’d find a more humane way.
And yet…could I really be so sure of that?
