Dante

  “Well, live free anyway.” The strange girl opens a metal door in the building opposite from the coffee shop. “Our ‘friends’ kept this one open when they were casing the place.” I see a piece of black tape over the latch, keeping the closed door from automatically locking shut.

  I’ve got a lot of questions, but they can wait. I pause, and scan the ground.

  “Hurry!” she hisses, taking a few quick steps towards me. “My microbots will give us cover, but only if we pull out now. The Circle and the law will be tracking us in no time.”

  “The Circle?” I ask, still glancing through the debris. Something sticks out, and I take a few steps away from her.

  “The people who just tried to mindwipe you into a willing slave.” She grabs my numb arm and yanks me back towards the jimmied door. Or rather, she tries. Her grip’s strong, but even with my arms still weak, she’s like a plucky terrier trying to drag an oak tree. A cute one, but still a puppy.

  I stoop and pick up my phone and a handful of Destiny’s cards beside it. I glance at them, warily, before pocketing them, and turn to follow her. “Got it.”

  She flings the door open and looks back at me. I stride forward.

  “Sorry, Dante,” Lyrica says aloud but quietly, instead of for his ears only. “The Faraday cage in this phone cover worked, but they had some powerful ECMs and localized EMPs just now. I couldn’t talk through your earbuds, and I thought they might be listening.”

  “Through the encryption?”

  “No telling what those people were capable of. I’m still analyzing. But your new acquaintance is right. You need to leave.”

  The girl nods. “We’ve got a couple routes with few people and no cameras. And the Circle doesn’t have infinite resources anymore,” she adds smugly.

  “Fine.” I nod, and move towards the door. The girl slips through ahead of me with a sliding hiss across the doorjamb and floor tiles. A plain white apartment hallway greets us, lined with closed doors from one end of the building to the other. And no people.

  I follow her inside, instinctively closing the door softly instead of letting it clang shut.

  My benefactor grabs something from a hook just behind the door and tosses it to me. A plain gray hoody. She pulls another one and slips it on – fortunately also gray. I’m already wondering if she’s allergic to color, or something. “Time to blend,” she says.

  The girl pulls off her white cowl mask and shakes out her hair. Her white, lustrous hair. She looks to be in her teens, about my age, with pale blue eyes and strikingly beautiful features. She slips on her own pair of mirrorshades and meets my gaze over their lenses. “Hi.”

  “Thanks for the save,” I say, seriously. I’ve no idea what this girl’s about, but she’s definitely come at the right time. I’m curious as to how she arrived at exactly the right time, but then, I have a lot of questions already.

  “I just blew all my trump cards on you, so you’d better be worth it.” She glances down into her shades. “Facial recognition. Make my day.” Her eyes narrow, and she flicks her gaze up at me as I shake the last of the tingling numbness out of his forearms. I airbox a few combinations in a blur, then meet her glance. “Hmm.”

  “What—?”

  “Whoa,” the girl says. “Another one. One the Circle hasn’t gotten their claws into.”

  “Circle?” I ask. The fight with Destiny and then Escalante took a lot out of me, and I’m still finding my footing. Probably more due to the drugs and hypnosis than anything else. The short sprints are helping, though. Just getting my blood pumping seems to help overall.

  “That’s what they call themselves. I prefer their street name, ‘The House of Cards.’ A little on the nose, but the shoe fits, y’know?”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “And you’re…?”

  “Ghost,” she says, tossing her white hair.

  Original, I think.

  “I don’t know why…” I begin.

  Ghost raises a hand. “Save it, Dante. Just see if this sounds familiar. You’ve always been too smart, too fast or too strong – maybe all three.” She looked me up and down. “Probably just better, overall. Even compared to other smart, fast or strong people. But they think you’re just gifted, and you know it’s way more than that. You’ve got, say… at least one savant skill – or maybe a dozen. Or you can run three times as fast when no one’s looking, or lift three times as much. Whatever. Just a little too much to explain.”

  “Okay. Maybe.” I wonder where she’s going with this. Or with me, for that matter.

  “You know you’re different, and you know there must be others out there. And just about the time you’ve had a big break – maybe a special school accepted you, or you launched a startup, or you’re interning with some genius, or what have ya’ – suddenly some lunatics drop out of nowhere talking about opening your mind or your third eye or something. And then start brainwashing you down to your toenails.” She shrugs. “Sound familiar?”

  As of five-minutes ago, sure, he thinks. “How’d they find me?”

  “How’d you find yourself?” Ghost shoots back. “Five, ten years ago you’d have been on Reddit or the Darknet or something, poking through sites, asking questions, trying not to be obvious. And they’d have been on the other end, trying to sift through all the chaff, the posers, the lunatics… for the genuine article.”

  “Which is…?”

  “A new Enhanced who doesn’t know what they are or how to protect themselves. Just ripe for the picking.”

  “You think they got me through the Internet?”“Not easily,” Ghost shrugs. “But sure. You’ve got AI to answer most of your questions, not shady sites and weird hobbies. They’ve got fewer nibbles on their old fishhooks, but a lot more processing power to look for candidates. Just a few data points, and these guys can draw a line.”

  Ghost slides down the hallway in front of me, a faint whistle of pressurized air coming from her shoes as she does so. The girl seems to barely move her feet and almost skates along. Ghost spins in midstep and faces me, now sliding backwards.

  “First time with the Circle?” she asks as she backpedals. She’s literally moonwalking past the closed apartment doors along the hall, yet moving as fast as a human air-hockey puck. I trot to keep up – not my top speed, but as fast as I can without thundering down the hallway and looking obviously unnatural to anyone glancing out a peephole.

  Ghost shows no such concerns about appearances. Or how much danger we just went through.

  I cock my head at her. “I thought that was obvious?”

  She shakes her head. “Not really. That’s my best guess, but you’re way better prepared than most.”

  I shrug as we zip along the long hallway. “Blame my AIs. I don’t plan for everything, but I can tell them to work a problem and they’ll spend as much time or compute on it as they need to.”

  “Nice gear,” Ghost comments. “Turn here.” She whips around a corner backwards and I follow, thankful we haven’t run into anyone yet – literally. I’m not sure if Ghost can see behind her or was just incredibly confidant, but she seems to be getting faster as we talk.

  “So they’re after me because I’m gifted,” I summarize. “Or extra-gifted, I guess. How does that work?”

  Ghost grins impishly. “First off, you’re not fooling anyone with your ‘play dumb’ routine, Man of Mystery. Your high school experience is basically taking college classes in person and graduate studies online. You stopped playing sports in middle school, probably when you couldn’t hide how good you were anymore, and your life is a walking pile of red flags for anyone looking for an Enhanced.”

  I raise an eyebrow, but say nothing. When in doubt, let them talk.

  Ghost slows for a moment at the end of the new hall and pops open a door with an ‘Exit’ sign which obviously does not open outside. A handicapped-accessible ramp appears as the motion sensors flip on the lights, curving away out of sight as it descends below street level. Evidently we’re taking the subway.

  “Honestly,” Ghost continues as she slides backward down the ramp, accelerating with the new slope, “I’m surprised someone hasn’t tried to pick you up already. Especially someone more on the ball than ‘The Circle.’” She makes a face.

  I race after her, but running downhill on a smooth ramp’s no challenge. “There are others like them?” Play dumb, indeed. Like a bag of hammers. Nana Price would be proud.

  “Far as I can tell,” she admits. “Breaking the Circle’s back made the low-rent copycats nervous, and probably screwed things up even for competent operations. But if you know the tech and you’ve got no morals, one thing follows another, y’know?” She shrugs. “And then you’re running your Enhanced slave sweatshop in some suburban strip mall or subterranean swamp, wondering why people think you’re a monster. And figuring you’d better mindwipe the world into thinking better of you.”

  “As one does,” I deadpan.

  “Just sayin’,” Ghost replies. “Any questions?”

  “If they had hypnotic commands buried in my mind, how did they get them in there? How did they get that many in there?”

  Ghost looks away, though not down the ramp she’s furiously backskating down. After a few moments, she looks back at him again, just over the lenses of her sunglasses. “The simplest answer is usually the most-likely one. Do you know anyone with opportunity? That’s typically the best place to start.”

  “Wait, you mean—" And Nana Price strikes again.

  “Friends, family, fellow philosophers, fun hangouts, you name it?” She shifts her stance, sliding one foot behind herself, and starts to slow. “Yeah, usually the ones it hurts the most to think about trying something you should check first, if only to rule them out. On the positive side, they don’t need everybody doing it, so you probably weren’t betrayed by everybody.” Ghost’s rear sneaker’s skidding her to a halt. “The downside? Might not be betrayal. They literally brainwash people into doing their will, and someone might not have a choice, or even know what’s going on.” She slides up in front of a subway access door. “But either way, someone had to embed most of those triggers – they’re not generic. So you’ve been seeded and mapped. And the Circle was either involved or stole the map from whoever was.”

  Dante shakes his head. “I can’t—" I can. But I’d rather not.

  “If you don’t believe me,” Ghost sighs, “just take five, and talk to your phone. I’ll bet your AI has a few ideas already. And I bet they’ll line up with mine.” She takes a long step back, then turns towards the subway door. “I’ll be outside when you’re ready.” She opens the way with a final nod and steps through it.

  The door clangs shut behind her, leaving me alone with my thoughts. And with Lyrica.

  Patreon page. The first 10 chapters are already up there, even for free subscribers, and you can also see the art which didn't upload to Royal Road.