Mind Control: A Science Fiction Telepathy Thriller (Perceivers Book 2) (10 page)

“Well—” Michael began.

“I tried to say you were busy and I could send a police constable,” the woman motored on, “but guess what? He was having none of that either. So, anyway, I just gave in and took all the details and decided to let you deal with it. Have you got a pen?”

Giving in, Michael decided, was clearly the best strategy when it came to the woman whose voice he now recognised as Detective Constable Tania Baker. “Yes,” he said, pulling out his phone and opening the note app.

“His name is Victor Rublev and he’s at University College Hospital in Euston Road. He said could you come tomorrow because he hasn’t got long, whatever that means. I told him you were a very busy man, but—”

“He wasn’t having any of it,” Michael finished for her.

“Exactly. So I’ve passed on the message and now I can finally go home. See you in the office tomorrow. Bye.”

“Bye,” said Michael, but she had hung up before he even finished the word.

Alex was watching him from the sofa. “What was all that about?” he said.

“Another case Patterson was working on.”

“Important?”

“Not sure,” said Michael.

“So, are we going to have another game or what?” said Alex.

Michael looked at his phone, it was approaching eight o’clock. “For another half an hour or so, then I really need to go out, and you need to get back to camp before you get in trouble with Norm the Norm.”

“Who cares about him?” said Alex.

“Just remember you said that when he puts you on toilet cleaning duty.”

“It’ll be worth it.” Alex grinned. Michael came back over, hooked up his mobile phone to the game and started to play.

~

THE GANG HUNG
around the play area like it was their domain, and not somewhere for little children. It was the same five teenagers that Michael had met outside the shop. Laura had squeezed her large bottom onto one of a pair of swings and was kicking up the dirt underneath with her new Nike trainers as she slowly pushed herself backwards and forwards. Chad and E-boy were leaning against the climbing frame as if it were a lamppost, both concentrating on the displays of their identical swish phones. Dave was atop the slide, enjoying being higher up than everyone else for once. And Cheryl stood at the gate, her pointy elbow resting on the top of the railing as she played with her long, lime green painted fingernails.

“Hello again,” said Michael as he descended from the block of flats and out into the open, as if it was a pure coincidence that he was there.

The ones at the climbing frame did not so much as look up from their phones. Dave followed their example and pretended not to notice. Laura looked up from her shoes.
It’s that weasel again
, she thought.

Cheryl glared at him. “Whaddoyou want?” she said.

“I did what you suggested,” said Michael. “I looked at some of the clubs down at the Community Centre, but I don’t think boxing and knitting are for me.”

“Are you for real?” said Cheryl. She was annoyed that he’d interrupted her contemplating her nails. Michael perceived that she’d just paid to have the manicure done and wasn’t sure if lime green was her colour. “Hey, Chaddyboy!” she called over. “This one thinks he’s a right comedian!”

Chad and E-boy dragged their attention away from their phones and, almost in unison, pulled at the cords of the earphones so they plopped out and hung down by their knees. They sauntered over towards Cheryl with a swagger that was supposed to make them look tough to those who weren’t perceivers. Michael, of course, could sense that it was all for show. Dave pushed himself down the slide, but because his bum was bigger than a five-year-old’s, he had to push himself almost all the way down to the bottom. Laura watched from her swing.

“It’s just,” said Michael, as he perceived the group of teenagers so he could judge the best way to ingratiate himself without being too obvious. “Where I used to live there were a bunch of us used to hang out. Otis and Jennifer and Jack, and it was such a laugh. We did
crazy
stuff all the time. I just wondered if, maybe, I could hang around with you.”

Chad laughed. Big, deep guffaws like someone with twice his lung capacity. The others joined in, except for Cheryl, who maintained the pout of a skinny fashion model. It was all fake. Like the swagger, they did it for show. “You wanna hang around with the cool kids, is that it?” said Chad.

“Something like that,” said Michael.

He perceived them all and they were all wary of him. They saw him as too much of an outsider, too keen, too polite. But, still, they didn’t outright reject him and that in itself seemed odd.

“What about it, Chad?” said Dave. “James said we need more people.”

The name sent a quiver of discomfort around them. It was a name, Michael perceived, Dave should not have used.

“You said we were going to find more girls,” protested Laura, kicking up the dirt from under her swing.

E-boy turned to her. “We need to replace Stephen and Jazz after they—”
died
, said his thoughts “—left.
They
weren’t girls.”

“There’s always been too many boys in this gang,” Laura moaned.

Chad took a few more steps to join Cheryl where she stood at the gate. He bent forward and leant both his forearms on top of the railings so he could look up at Michael. He maintained his air of superiority while, inside his mind, there was an anticipation of cruel excitement. “Do you think you’re worthy?” he said.

Michael paused. He didn’t want to sound too eager, but on the other hand he didn’t want to be rejected. “I suppose so.”

“Then prove it,” said Chad.

The excitement mounted within the others.

“How?” said Michael.

Chad grinned.

CHAPTER TEN

PATTERSON HAD BROUGHT
the television into the flat and the television had brought the news. Michael had turned it on because there was sod all else to do inside on his own during the day. The news had pictures of his father dressed in a suit, walking towards the Old Bailey flanked by people Michael didn’t know, who he assumed to be his legal team. Running around him were photographers and a camera crew. Ransom didn’t acknowledge their presence, nor did he try to dodge them as he entered the stone edifice of the legal building.

“Today the court heard from a witness who claims her daughter was ‘poisoned’ by the pills Brian Ransom gave to pregnant mothers through his company, Ransom Incorporated,” said the voice of a male correspondent as pictures of outside the court continued to play on the screen. “Marianne Croucher told the court: ‘I thought I was taking a vitamin pill, something that would make sure my baby was born healthy, but it turned out I was taking a poison that would scar my daughter for life.’ Mrs Croucher went on to say that her daughter showed the first signs of being a perceiver at the age of twelve and was cured at the age of thirteen. But, visibly emotional, she told the court that by that time, the damage had already been done and her daughter has not been the same since.”

The television report cut to the image of the reporter, a greying man in sober brown suit and tie, standing on the road outside the Old Bailey. “Mr Ransom sat listening passively in the dock throughout this morning’s testimony. He denies twenty counts of Administering a Noxious Substance with Intent to Cause Bodily Harm and the trial—”

Michael switched it off. He couldn’t bear to hear any more.

He thought of Alex, who had been assigned to work in the court system, and took his phone out of his pocket. He checked the display, but he had no messages from anyone.

He sent Alex a text: ‘How ya doin’?’

The text went through, but no reply came back. The display dimmed with inactivity and eventually went to black.

Michael awakened it again and saw the notes he had jotted down the night before. It reminded him, he was going to tell Patterson that he had left his phone in the flat. He called the office.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant Patterson isn’t here at the moment,” said a male voice he recognised as the chubby detective he could never remember the name of. “I could take a message, or you could try him on his mobile.”

“No,” said Michael. “Can you tell him he left his mobile in the flat.”

“Ah,” said the detective. “What flat?”

“He’ll know what I mean.”

“Okay.”

Michael thanked him and finished the call.

He read the note on his phone again. He hadn’t written much down apart from Rublev’s name and the name of the hospital, but he remembered Detective Baker’s words. She had said Rublev hadn’t got long which, seeing how ill the Russian looked at their last meeting, probably meant not long to live. He also remembered the promise Patterson had made to him. If Patterson wasn’t around, Michael decided, then he would have to honour that promise.

He turned off the TV and consulted his phone for the best way to get to Euston Road.

~

MICHAEL BREATHED IN
the smell of cleaning fluid, its perfume so artificial it added a cloying taste to the air. His body absorbed its germ-killing properties with each mouthful, but he wondered if the clinical air also contained tasteless radioactive particles that would burrow into his lungs and wreak damage inside of him. There were no radiation warning signs or people wearing hazard suits around Victor Rublev’s hospital bed, but Michael suspected there was a reason he was being kept in his own private room, and it wasn’t only because he had the money to pay for it.

Rublev lay shrivelled in his bed, a shell of a man who seemed to have shrunk inside his own skin. Despite the tubes that fed liquid and drugs into a vein in his arm, his body looked desiccated, with translucent loose skin that gathered in wrinkles around his sunken eyes, on his withered neck and over the atrophied muscles of his arms. Light from the bright but cloudy day filtered into his window by the bed, reflecting off the pristine painted white walls and highlighting the array of medical equipment that sat in homage around his bed. It did nothing to lift the darkness where Rublev lay in a hospital gown, draped around his fading body like a shroud.

Michael perceived Rublev’s ghostly presence drifting from one half-thought to another, but Rublev did not sense Michael until he reached the side of his bed.

The man’s thoughts coalesced into recognising the world around him. “Sergeant Patterson’s friend,” he croaked in a whisper just loud enough to be heard over the air conditioning.

“Sorry we couldn’t come sooner,” said Michael. “Sergeant Patterson is investigating the terrorist bombing at the Capital Hotel.”

“I heard,” said Rublev, struggling with each syllable. “Why do young people want to throw their lives away when there are so many others desperate to hang onto life?”

Rublev gasped for air, his throat rasping as it forced life-giving oxygen into his lungs. Rublev knew, in his mind, that talking strained his body and he accepted the coughing fit that followed, shaking the bed as the spasming momentarily blocked his ability to breathe.

Michael perceived the pain in the man’s chest, and his desperation as he fought against it. “I’ll get a nurse,” said Michael.

“No!” Rublev gasped. He grabbed at Michael’s hand where it rested on the side of the bed and gripped it tight. As tight as if he were a fit and healthy man.

“They can do … nothing …” he gasped.

Michael did not pull away and Rublev lessened his grip. It took several long minutes, but his breathing returned to a staccato kind of normal. Through it all, his mind was lurching between lucid understanding of where he was and dream-like memories of his past. Michael saw bits of London that he recognised – from the distinctive sign for Tottenham Court Road tube station, to the tower that held Big Ben. There were images of unfamiliar places in which Rublev remembered himself as a younger man of tall, slim build. They might have been glimpses of his home in Russia, but Michael associated Russia with cold and snow, and these images were all sunny. One face kept returning in those memories: a young woman smiling, in a white summer dress decorated with yellow flowers that swished as she walked.

“In the top drawer,” said Rublev with one large and difficult breath.

Michael used his free hand to open the drawer of the bedside cabinet which was empty other than for a few scattered medical leaflets and a sealed envelope with ‘Sergeant Patterson’ written on it in calligraphic script. He pulled out the envelope and showed it to Rublev. The man squinted. Michael held the envelope closer until the Russian was satisfied at what he saw and relaxed back into the pillow.

“All. In. There,” he managed.

“I’ll give it to Sergeant Patterson,” said Michael. “He may have some follow-up questions, if that’s okay.”

“No questions,” gasped Rublev. “All. In. There.”

Michael put the envelope in his pocket and felt the man’s hand weaken its hold around his own. “Stay … with … me …” he whispered.

Rublev panted a hard-fought breath.
I’m going
, said his thoughts, and then the words turned to Russian, tumbling through his mind in sentences that Michael did not understand.
Skazhi Andrei Orlov … pozhalsta … skazhi Andrei Orlov chto on bil prav.

Rublev panted another breath. Memories spiralled in images of distorted faces and places washed in red or brown or blue colours. An older man with grey swept-back hair and layers of clothing – shirt, tie, cardigan, jacket, overcoat – smiled at him then faded away. The face of the woman in the summer dress appeared in one moment of clarity before she was eclipsed by the grotesque grins of men in suits and the twisted facade of a grey concrete building.

Rublev willed another laboured breath into his body and pain shot through his chest.

Fear gripped him. He was drowning in a room of plentiful air, reaching out for oxygen. Michael perceived Rublev gasping for life, but his body was not responding, not breathing.

Darkness grew inside Rublev’s mind. He felt each painful beat of his heart like a hammer blow to his chest, but still not strong enough to force his blood to pump very far. The bleak reality of nothingness encroached as he struggled to cling on to each hard-fought moment. Tumbling Russian words became meaningless syllables as memories were extinguished. It hurt so much that he detached himself from his body. Memories became blobs of flashing red, brown and blue lights that winked into the darkness and turned into dim and infrequent blurs as they drifted away. Night drew in, with no moon or stars, a blanket of black. It encased him in its cocoon of nothingness, sucking the last spark of light until his mind became a vacuum and his body stopped.