Mind Control: A Science Fiction Telepathy Thriller (Perceivers Book 2) (12 page)

Mrs Reynolds looked puzzled. “The body has already been taken away by the coroner. My staff informed the correct authorities, Sergeant. Don’t you people talk to each other?”

Patterson managed an embarrassed smile. “We’ve had a lot on,” he said.

She frowned. “I will get my secretary to send you any files that you need. It’s just a shame, Sergeant Patterson, you weren’t able to visit Mr Rublev at the hospital while he was still alive.”

Having had the last word, she turned on her heel and walked off, leaving Patterson looking somewhat bemused as nurses, busy on other tasks, continued to flutter round them.

CHAPTER TWELVE

MICHAEL TOOK A
series of buses back to the flat from the hospital, while Patterson headed for the office to catch up on the Rublev investigation. Michael had perceived guilt in Patterson’s mind that he hadn’t taken Rublev seriously on their initial meeting and, even though he had a legitimate reason for being distracted by other things, he felt he’d failed to do his duty.

Patterson had suggested calling Hodges to drive Michael back to Kennington, but turning up at the estate in a chauffeur driven car would not have created the correct impression. Besides, while Michael was on assignment, Hodges was probably allocated another job. So he rode London Transport, like he had done the day Rublev died, meaning it was late by the time he got back. He made himself some something to eat from the bits and pieces Patterson had left in the fridge, and waited until it got dark.

~

MICHAEL WENT TO
the play area, but the gang wasn’t there.

He went to the shop, but they weren’t there either.

With nowhere else to look, he decided to stand and wait for a bit, leaning against the lamppost like he had seen Chad and E-boy doing the other night. After five minutes, he thought a figure in a hoodie emerging by the empty shops at the other end of the pedestrianized walkway could be one of them. But he was mistaken, it was a different teenage girl.

After what had to be about half an hour feeling the cold steel of the lamppost at his back and half-heartedly playing a game on his phone, he decided the gang wasn’t coming and he needed to look elsewhere. He thought, as he dawdled past the boarded-up shops, that none of the gang had said what place, time or day they would meet him again. They had just said that they would. If they weren’t at one of their usual hangouts, then perhaps there was some event on television they had all stayed in for, like a big football match. Michael wasn’t into football. He sort of liked it, but he had no memory of growing up supporting a team or playing with friends in the park or at school, so he didn’t keep track. He checked the TV schedules on his phone as he walked back towards the block of flats.

The road where the two young boys had once ridden their skateboard felt eerily quiet. Only one car passed him the whole time, with the rumble of its tyres sounding an empty echo as the noise bounced off the buildings, and faded to nothing. He turned into the communal garden where dim outlines of the play equipment were visible in the light coming from the windows of the surrounding occupied flats. It was still devoid of teenagers, as if the Pied Piper of Hamlyn had taken them all away.

He turned towards the back entrance and almost bumped straight into a figure standing in the dark.

It was Dave. Almost indistinguishable in the alley, hands buried in the pockets of his moss-green parka, he stood resting against the wall with his face shaded by the hood of his coat pulled up over his head.

Michael hadn’t perceived anybody there. He didn’t have his blocks erected, only his everyday filters, so he should have picked up on Dave’s presence. It scared him that he hadn’t.

He made the effort to perceive him now. A ghost of a mind whispered inside of Dave’s head. The intelligence that Michael had perceived when they first met was replaced with the dull machinations of a consciousness that was barely thinking. His eyes stared at Michael from out of the hood of his coat while his thoughts only said,
collect him
.

“Dave,” said Michael, aware as he spoke that the breathiness of his voice gave away his anxiety. “I didn’t see you there.”

“Come with me,” said Dave. He turned and walked in the other direction.

“Where are we going?” said Michael, following.

“To where you can become one of us,” said Dave.

The name
James
formed in Dave’s mind.

“I thought I became one of you last night,” said Michael, keeping the conversation going in the hope that Dave’s mind would reveal more.

“That was just the initiation,” said Dave.

He would not say any more, even though Michael asked him a couple more questions. In the end, he gave up talking and concentrated on perceiving.

Dave’s mind reminded him of the emptiness he had perceived in Jerome Tyler and Stephen Bailecki. The only thing Dave thought about was where he was going, with a list of directions playing over and over in his head.
To the main road, take a left. Walk past two streets then turn into Ebbern’s Road. At the industrial estate, enter the second block of buildings on the left and go to the second unit with the blue door
.

It was like one of those children’s songs that build up line-by-line, but backwards. As Dave carried out each instruction, that part of his mantra fell off the list. Eventually, only one instruction was left:
Go to the second unit with the blue door … Go to the second unit with the blue door … Go to the second unit with the blue door
.

At last, they were there, and the mantra stopped.

The blue door was made of painted wood and not dissimilar to the front door of the flat he was living in. It was set into the side of an industrial unit, a utilitarian brick building with a metal shuttered front and a sign,
A.F.G. Limited –
painted in red letters above the shutter – which had got smudged and gone streaky where rain had got in.

Dave knocked on the door.

After a moment, it was opened by Cheryl. She stepped back and let them inside.

If Michael had been paying more attention to his perception, he might have noticed that her mind, too, was devoid of much thought. But he only perceived her presence as he walked into a square hallway lit by a dusty bulb hanging from the ceiling. The purpose of the hallway seemed only to act as a conduit to a steep set of stairs. Like the bulb, it was undressed, with no carpet or covering on the wood.

Cheryl took them up to the first floor landing which was laid with a worn sticky carpet that must have had something spilt on it in the past because Michael’s shoes ripped themselves free with each step, as if it had been laced with a trail of syrup. The trail ended at a door which Cheryl opened without knocking.

It had the chill and mustiness of a room which hadn’t been heated for a long time. It must once have been an office because two desks were shoved up one end of the room, one of them still with a landline telephone on it. The phone, like everything in the building, looked like it hadn’t been touched for a long time: it was covered in dust and had a cable that ended in a tattered pair of brown and blue wires where it had been pulled out of the wall. There were two chairs, one a coffee-stained office chair with grubby purple upholstery, and the second a sturdy varnished wooden chair with arms which looked like it had been stolen from behind a teacher’s desk.

The final three members of the gang were there: Chad, E-boy and Laura, each standing round the edge, having claimed a wall each to lean on. They were not talking, they were not looking at their mobile phones, they were merely leaning, their thoughts only revealing that they understood Michael had arrived. Like Dave, their personalities were dulled. It was like perceiving them through tracing paper: he could see the outline of them, but he couldn’t perceive the detail.

“Dave, you found him,” said Chad.

“It was easy,” said Dave, closing the door behind him.

Michael turned to look as he heard the click of the latch. It sounded ominous. Perhaps it was the creepiness of being shut in a room with five people who felt like half-people.

“What’s going on?” said Michael. He looked at all of them in turn, perceiving the answer in their heads.

You’re here to meet James
…
You’re here to meet James
…
You’re here to meet James
…

Chad took the wooden chair from where it was tucked under one of the desks and pulled it to the centre of the room, turning it to face the far wall. “Sit down,” he said.

“Why?” said Michael.

“You must sit down,” said Chad.
Sitting down is next
, said his thoughts.

Michael nervously sat in the chair and stared at the grubby white wall ahead of him. He perceived the others carefully and continued to feel no threat from them. But he also perceived that they had no notion of what was going on any more than he had.

Michael thought back to the basic undercover training the Metropolitan Police had given him. There were two golden rules: not to draw attention to himself and always have an escape route. He realised he had just broken both of them. He gripped the arms of the chair nervously and sat up straight against its high back, waiting for the gang’s next move.

He was suddenly aware of the smell of coffee. Not stale like the spillage on the office chair, but freshly made. The door clicked again. Someone new had entered. Michael’s perception immediately honed in and he sensed a mind younger than the others: male and curious. He sensed him for only a moment before the mind clammed shut and Michael’s perception was kicked out. Michael tried to get back in, but he was blocked.

The mind belonged to a perceiver.

Michael rushed to put up his own barriers as the young male walked round to the other side of the chair and faced him.

He was a boy, with curious hazel eyes that stared out of a face that was still soft without the hint of stubble. He was barely a teenager, maybe thirteen years old, and yet he stood with the assuredness of an adult, dressed in a smart, clean, ironed light blue shirt and black trousers, holding a steaming mug of coffee in his hand.

“You’re a perceiver,” said the boy, who had to be James.

“Yes,” said Michael. He couldn’t deny it, it would have been obvious as soon as James’s perception touched his mind.

Michael reached out to the others. Their minds were still open to him, but they were blank and told him nothing. They merely watched and waited.

“Don’t worry about them,” said James.

Michael felt a chill as he realised James was aware of what he was doing. Even though the boy was immature, his ability was advanced. Michael did as he was told and withdrew his perception, deciding he needed to concentrate only on the boy.

“Unusual to find a perceiver of your age who hasn’t been cured,” said James.

“Is it?” said Michael. He felt the boy’s perception trying to worm its way into his head and maintained his blocks.

“They don’t like people like us wandering around. I hear some people try to resist, but once they know what you are, they keep hounding you until their paperwork says you’ve been turned into a norm.”

“I hid my ability,” said Michael. “In the early days of the cure programme, they weren’t as organised as they are now.”

“Liar!” screamed James, throwing his mug of coffee aside, sending an arc of brown liquid flying through the air and falling to the carpet – hot drips landing on Michael’s face – until the mug smashed against the wall. Ceramic pieces crashed to the floor.

Michael wiped the splashes from his cheek.

“Why have you been trying to get into my gang?” demanded James.

“I just moved into the area and I wanted new friends,” said Michael, still trying to wrap his lies in truth. “And your gang’s the one with new phones and trainers and stuff.”

James’s face sneered in anger. Michael could only guess that’s what he was feeling because he couldn’t perceive through the boy’s blocks. James slapped his hand across Michael’s face, leaving a stinging impression on his cheek. “Don’t lie to me! Why?”

James leant in close, the remnants of coffee still hanging on his breath, and stared with wide hazel eyes. Michael felt him pushing at his blocks, harder and harder until he had to concentrate to keep them steady. James let out a cry of effort as he kept up the pressure. He grabbed Michael’s face with both hands and clasped his fingers around Michael’s jaw.

Michael’s blocks wobbled, he let out a little bit of himself, as he shook his head to try to physically break free, but James held him tight. His perception started to pulse, like a battering ram pulling back for hit after hit, jabbing again and again at Michael’s barriers. But Michael was strong and experienced and he kept the young perceiver out.

“Argh!” cried James in one last exasperation of frustration as he tossed back Michael’s head. Michael’s skull hit the back of the chair, giving James his only piece of frustrated pleasure.

James stepped back, breathing heavily as he paced in front of Michael, working off his anger.

Michael thought about running. Chances are, if he timed it right, he could get through the door and down the steps before they realised what was happening. But there was more to understand. The gang was run by a perceiver, that was clear. Why he was out on the streets leading a gang of older teenagers, and why they were happy to let him, Michael didn’t understand. If he ran, he might never find out. So he elected to continue to sit.

James walked across to Chad and stared directly into his face. The older teenager did not move, did not flinch. Like a guard outside Buckingham Palace, he stared straight ahead as if he wasn’t even aware James was in front of him. James walked on, stopped in front of Dave and did the same thing. He repeated it with Laura and Cheryl and E-boy. Michael thought about trying to perceive what was going on between them, but he feared James would detect him and so Michael relied on only what his eyes showed him.