Mind Control: A Science Fiction Telepathy Thriller (Perceivers Book 2) (26 page)

He gasped, the sharp movement enlarging his larynx and pressing his neck into the blade. He forced himself to take shallower breaths as he frantically searched with his perception to understand what was happening. All he sensed were the barman’s looped Russian thoughts and his father’s terror.

“What are you doing?” cried Ransom.

“You wouldn’t tell me how you created a generation of perceivers,” replied Hetherington. “Which made me realise you needed more persuasion.”

“It was the vitamin pills,” said Ransom, desperately. “Everybody knows that.”

“But
how
?” said Hetherington. “What did you put in the pills that turned ordinary children into perceivers?”

“The scientists did it, I don’t know how.”

“Do you really want to play this game?” said Hetherington, his voice playful, like he was enjoying it. “Do you want to lie to me while you watch your son’s throat being slit?”

Michael’s body was yanked round so he faced his father square on and the blade was pressed closer to his neck. His shallow breaths became faster as he felt the steel break skin and a drip of warm blood flow to his collar.

“You’re a perceiver, you know I’m not lying!” pleaded Ransom. “I owned a pharmaceutical company, I paid people to do the science, I didn’t do it myself. I can’t tell you what was put in those vitamin pills, because I don’t know!”

“Then show me.”

“Anything. Just don’t kill my son.”

Hetherington left his position by the door and walked over to where Ransom was kneeling by the radiator. Ransom opened his arms wide. “Perceive me,” he said.

Even though Michael’s body was under the barman’s control, his mind was free. It allowed him to sense his father’s mind – which he tried to do subtly so no one would feel it – as Hetherington probed with his perception.

Tentatively at first, then deeper. Ransom released any remaining blocks and left himself open. Hetherington searched through all the random rubbish of the man’s mind, down into his memories and back to a time when he was supervising the vitamin pill project. He pulled out images of scientific reports with reams of text and pages of coloured graphs.

Michael sensed Hetherington’s impatience. The boy grabbed Ransom’s head – both hands clutching at his temples – and pulled him close. Hetherington locked his eyes with him and leant in closer until their foreheads almost touched. Ransom did not resist as Hetherington violated deeper and deeper into the centre of his mind. Too deep for Michael to follow. So deep that it hurt.

Ransom cried out and clenched his head – his larger adult hands over the top of the smaller child hands of his jailer – pain piercing his mind. He wanted to wrench the boy’s hands away, but the fear of what would happen to Michael if he did, stopped him. His moaning became a wailing. Hetherington still pushed.

“Stop!” cried Michael. “He doesn’t know anything else!”

Hetherington was locked inside Ransom’s mind. He probably didn’t even hear. He certainly didn’t care.

Ransom swayed, his head only held upright by Hetherington’s hands, as the boy’s perception burned through his consciousness.

Michael – helpless in the barman’s grasp – feared it might kill him. He didn’t know if a perceiver could strangle another person’s mind to death and he didn’t want to find out. Looking around the cell for something – anything – he could use, he saw only the mattress, the bucket and the radiator. Even if they could help, he couldn’t reach them. His arms flapped uselessly at his side as more blood dripped from his neck.

Ransom let out a final weak scream.

“Dad!” Michael yelled.

The bucket flew at Hetherington with the force of a football being kicked into goal. Urine spilled out in a stream of yellow which splashed over his body.

The shock caused him to let go of Ransom and the connection with his mind was suddenly severed. Ransom collapsed onto the mattress.

Hetherington turned to the barman, his shirt dripping with piss. “What the hell are you doing?” His anger so loud, it echoed off the walls and floor.

The barman seemed confused, he lessened his grip on Michael.

“Well?” Hetherington demanded.

“
Ya ne znaynu
,” answered the barman.

Hetherington let out a cry of frustration. He kicked the bucket at his feet and it went spinning across the room, spilling the last showery drips of urine as it did so, before it collided against the opposite wall and crashed to the ground. Still furious, Hetherington kicked Ransom who lay barely conscious and groaning on the mattress.

“Come on!” Hetherington ordered the barman. He stomped towards the door, walking with his legs wide like he had just pissed himself.

The barman let go of Michael. The knife was suddenly no longer at his throat. Michael fell forward onto his hands and knees.

Behind him, the door closed and he was left in the room with his father, wondering what the hell had just happened.

CHAPTER TWENTY–FOUR

SO MUCH URINE
had been spilt in the room that Michael could taste it. There was a puddle of it drying in front of him and the mattress next to him was soaked with it. Every time he breathed he couldn’t help but take in its rancid particles which had evaporated into the air. No one from their little prison had bothered to come in and clean it up, they hadn’t even moved the bucket back in case the prisoners had to use it again. They had just left them to sit in their own filth.

The only acknowledgement that they were living human beings came with the delivery of plastic mugs of water and an anaemic-looking cheese sandwich which the zombie barman had brought them. Michael knew he needed the food and hydration, but every time he thought about eating or drinking it, he tasted his own piss in his mouth.

Ransom’s head rested on Michael’s lap. He had fallen unconscious after Hetherington had left the room, and was going in and out of a dream state. At first, Michael slipped his perception into his father’s dreams, trying to find out if Hetherington had done any damage, but he only glimpsed his father’s nightmares. Normal, he hoped, for their current situation.

He kept thinking about the bucket. Hetherington had clearly blamed the barman for throwing it over him, or for allowing Michael to kick it at him. But the more Michael re-ran the events in his head, the more he was convinced that no one had touched it. Like the wires back at the derelict office, the only thing that had touched the bucket was his mind.

Ransom stirred and moaned.

“Are you okay?” said Michael.

“Headache,” he mumbled.

Michael was relieved. Ransom had both understood his question and answered it coherently: a good sign.

Ransom pulled himself to a sitting position, clutching his head with one hand, as full consciousness brought full-on pain. Michael had been perceiving him to try to ascertain if he was all right, but pulled out when he realised the headache was too much to share.

“What happened?” said Ransom.

“He almost killed you,” said Michael.

“You can’t kill people with perception.”

“Are you sure?”

Ransom wasn’t up for a discussion, he just clutched his head and moaned.

“Here,” said Michael, handing over a plastic mug of water. “This might help.”

Ransom took it and gulped. “Thanks.” He passed it back, half-emptied, dropped his hands to his lap and leant the back of his skull against the wall.

“Did you give him what he wanted?” asked Michael.

“I gave him what there was. I have a bioscience degree, so I understand the research, but I couldn’t replicate it. Not without the genius of the people who worked for me.”

“So he didn’t find what he was looking for?”

“His frustration was all over my mind. He kept pushing and pushing, looking for something that wasn’t there, then there was a sudden terrible smell and he pulled out.”

“Someone threw the toilet bucket over him,” said Michael.

“Really?” Ransom laughed, it was so ridiculous. “Ow!” He clutched his head.

Michael indicated the puddle in front of them and the upturned bucket against the far wall.

“Who did that?” said Ransom.

“I think …” Michael trailed off, not knowing how to phrase it. “Do you think perceivers are capable of telekinesis?”

“Telekinesis?”

“Moving objects with your mind,” said Michael.

“I know what the word means, I wasn’t sure I heard you properly.”

“I think … I think I might have thrown the bucket with my perception.”

“Not possible,” said Ransom.

“Are you sure?” Michael had now seen it happen twice with his own eyes and he wasn’t about to dismiss the idea. “I was only able to do it when I was highly stressed, but if I can find a way to do it on demand, I could use it to get out of here.”

Ransom raised his arm with the metal cuff locked to his wrist. “Can your mind unlock this? I can’t even do it with my hands. Unless we can get out of these chains, we’re not going anywhere.”

Michael sensed something at the edge of his perception. “Do you perceive that?” he said.

“What?” said Ransom.

It was a person, Michael was sure of it. Distant, but there. A presence he had felt before. With thoughts he couldn’t quite distinguish, but which
felt
English. It wasn’t Hetherington – the boy wouldn’t be as stupid as to walk about with his mind open like that, even at a distance from his perceiving prisoners – but it
was
someone he had perceived before.

The more he concentrated, the closer the presence became. By the time the door handle turned, Michael had recognised the mind as belonging to Doctor Lucas.

Doctor Lucas’s nose wrinkled at the smell as he stepped inside their cell and closed the door behind him. He appeared more stressed than the first time Michael had seen him and looked less of a scientist without his white coat.

Recognition flashed across through Lucas’s mind as he saw Michael. “I thought it was strange the Metropolitan Police had such a young person on the force. But James tells me you are a perceiver, so it makes sense.”

“Who are you?” said Ransom, revealing this was the first time he had encountered Doctor Lucas.

“Your son knows,” said Lucas. “Perhaps you could ask him.”

Scientist researching perception
, Michael thought. He hoped it was enough to answer Ransom’s curiosity, because he needed to search Lucas’s head for information which could be useful.

“I came here to continue my research, but I told them I needed more data,” Lucas continued. “If they could acquire Brian Ransom’s research, I said, it could advance my own work by years. I expected them to hack a computer and steal some documents, I didn’t expect them to bring you here. I’m sorry.”

And he really was sorry. He was embarrassed that his request had led to a violent kidnapping, and disgusted at seeing someone he admired chained up like a farm animal. So much so that he could barely look at him and kept staring at the crack of sky that could be seen through the tiny window above them.

“Release us,” said Ransom.

“I’m not in charge of that.” Lucas shook his head. “But I could offer you a way out.”

He left a deliberately dramatic pause for his words to sink in.

“I’m listening,” said Ransom.

“Work with me,” said Lucas.

“The man who got me kidnapped? Are you serious?”

“Deadly,” said Lucas. “James thought he could pull the knowledge from your head, but just because he can read your thoughts, it doesn’t mean he can understand them.
I
can understand them, Mr Ransom. I’ve been studying perception for a long time, it would be a privilege to work with a pioneer of the field.”

“Pioneer,” said Ransom, with irony. “That’s not what they call me in the media.”

“Because they don’t understand. You had a vision of a world where people could understand each other at a deeper level, because they could share their thoughts and feelings openly. I can offer you the chance to continue your research. Don’t you want to see your work spread? I can offer you that. And I can offer you some of the best facilities available to the Russian government.”

His voice was full of optimism and promise, but his head was full of doubt. The building he was in, out in the industrial wastes of Moscow, was an empty shell with little equipment and fewer staff. His Russian handlers said his sudden escape from Britain had caught them by surprise and it would take time to arrange a work environment for him. Part of him believed that the cogs of Russian bureaucracy turned slowly, but another part wondered if the people who had recruited him back in England really had the full backing of an administration that could provide him with all the resources he had been promised.

“I was wrong,” said Ransom. “I thought perception would bring peace, but instead it brought violence. Don’t you remember the rioting on the streets of London two years ago? People
died
because of me.”

“Ignorant people killed each other because they didn’t understand, Mr Ransom. What would have happened if you had been able to explain to them? What would have happened if women understood that taking a pill would see their children grow up to have special powers? Wouldn’t they have embraced that chance? I’m offering you the possibility to start again, to learn from the mistakes of the past. You and I, we could work together to improve your gene therapy. In years to come, it will be seen as a gift to the world.”

“And if I refuse?” said Ransom.

“Maybe they will let you go home, I don’t know,” said Lucas. “That’s if you really want to go back to Britain to spend the rest of your life in jail.”

Noise of footsteps in the corridor made Lucas jump. Worried, he stood up straight as the door was thrown open and Hetherington came in with his face full of anger.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” he shouted, throwing his blocks around the man’s mind so Michael’s perception was suddenly shut out.

“I just came to see,” said Lucas, looking intimidated by the boy forty years younger and six inches shorter than him.

“I told you not to! They can perceive everything in your head, don’t you understand?
Everything!
”