Nova Academy: A Superhero & Supervillain Novel Page 16

  "We police each other! When a telepath goes too far, other telepaths are able to see what they do and undo it. They talk to the one that's going too far and they make him stop."

  "Yeah, but what's the standard? Who sets that?"

  "Every community of telepaths sets their own standards. There is no central place that sets the rules. It's just a matter of what works best for that community." Carly raises a finger in the air to highlight a point, "But! We live in an age where everyone is interconnected with international travel and trade, and the internet. People all over the world are talking to each other all the time. My dad says there is a lot more uniformity in how telepaths do things than there was a hundred years ago. Back then there were entire countries under the control of powerful groups of telepaths. The world has changed a lot — for the better! And telepaths are part of the reason the world is a better place."

  I can tell Carly is committed to her beliefs and I'm not going to change her mind. I'm not sure I want to change it as there is an argument they are providing huge benefits to society to have people that quietly prevent wars and fix messed up people who may become mass murderers. I can see that. And, they don't have power over me, so it's a lot easier to accept. "If telepaths prevent wars and stop people from doing things like becoming murderers, why don't you stop all crime?"

  "It's too much work to stop all crime. And, it would take much greater control. More than can be justified. Most telepaths scan surface thoughts – things people are actively thinking, and that's where you can easily see the worst from people that have fixations with committing an act. For us to go deeper into another person's conscious can be extremely unpleasant, because you're getting into all the things that motivate them and a lot of it was traumatic for them. It's just, yuck." Carly is wringing her hands and making a face like she just took a full bite of a lemon.

  "I take it you don't like going deep into a person's psyche?"

  "No telepath does. If they do, it's because they're as messed up in the head as the guy whose head they're in. Look, do you like the world you live in? I mean, really. Is this world one you would raise a family in?"

  "Yeah, I would. But, you know what else I would do? I would make sure every one of my kids inherits my ability to block telepaths. And, if they didn't, I'd get them one of those neural neutralizers."

  "Well, that's just because you know you need one," she replies, slamming home a point.

  "You're damn right I know…. Well, I know now." Letting it settle in and start to process in my brain, I turn from Carly and start walking down the dirt road with my hands on my hips and head tilted back, looking at the sky. I do my best big picture thinking like this. Carly stays where she is with her arms now across her chest in a self-hug.

  I get two hundred yards down the dirt road before I start coming to conclusions and turn to Carly…who is still standing by the car, watching me. I start back to the car and organize my thoughts on the way.

  Chapter 35

  "Theo. Hear me out for a minute. Will you do that?"

  Running my hands through my hair, I let out a deep breath, "Yeah, I'll listen to you." What else can I do?

  Carly explains, "There is absolutely nothing you and I can do to stop telepaths from doing what they're doing. These neural neutralizers, they might be able to change that. And, I'm actually glad someone figured out how to build them, but I'm even more surprised a telepath didn't wipe the idea from the maker’s brain as soon as the light went off in their head. I mean, really surprised to the point that I don't think it was possible for someone who doesn't have an advanced telepathic mind themselves to create these devices without being stopped before they even got going. The only exception would be if you did it."

  “I didn’t do it.” I need answers, "So who could have built them? They're all over the science wing of campus, we've seen them. They may have something to do with the break-in at Henderson Robotics, which could mean this is some kind of illegal operation. How much super-villainy do telepaths do?"

  "Normally, I'd say none. Their parents tend to fix their kids as they grow up when they're prone to criminal conduct. So, let's just start with the easiest thing. Where are the science department students getting them? And, why are they being given to them? How can we answer those questions?"

  Once I finish shuddering at the thought of my parents telepathically digging in my head and rearranging the chairs of my own personal Titanic, I get back on track, "There are only two ways. We watch them until we see how they do it. Or, you pull it out of one of their heads."

  "Watching them will take too long. We'll have to get one of them alone and pull the device off his head long enough for me to go digging." Carly has gone into problem solving mode and is running scenarios through her head. I know. I did the same thing when I took my walk, so I give her a minute to work it through and come up with an idea. Who knows, it could be better than the plan I came up with.

  "Wherever we do it, it needs to be isolated."

  I go along, "Right, we'll need to get one of them by themselves with no chance of being disturbed. How long will it take you to read their mind?"

  "Probably only a few minutes. If I can follow their thoughts about the device it should lead me right to the memories associated with it pretty quickly. Memories are like big libraries, except they don't have search engines for people to come in and look for things in a nice, neat cross-referenced catalog. Instead you follow thoughts or stimuli associated with a memory and they'll take you where you want to go like following a trail of crumbs to everything that has to do with that thought, or that stimuli. In this, we'll have the device to use as a stimuli to activate his memory and I can follow that."

  "Wow, but okay. I can work with it only taking a few minutes. Then the only other thing will be we need a place that we have a good chance of escape if we are caught in the act, which means it can't be anywhere there are a lot of people. Definitely not at Oppenheimer Commons. And, we need to pick a target who won't put up a fight, or who we can take down fast enough they don't have time to put up a fight."

  "Okay, who? And where?"

  "I know the where, the who is going to depend on the when, though. For the where, I think our best bet is to take someone down who is using a private lab at the student labs. The rooms are private, and secure, and we'll be able to find someone working alone. The private labs are in use 24/7, so the when should be when the labs have the least number of people there, which is usually between three and four AM."

  "And what about the 'who?’ "

  "The private labs have to be reserved in advance and are always booked several days in advance. We can pick anyone we want on the signup list."

  Chapter 36

  We decide to make the grab this coming weekend, which gives us three to four days to decide who on the private lab signup list will be the best one to take. Stopping by the student lab the next morning after our talk out in the woods, I make a list of all the people who have reserved the lab for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights anywhere from midnight to five AM. There is a little more risk of students still being in the building at midnight, and some early risers, but I want to make sure I find someone who, first and foremost, is wearing a hat and Carly can't scan them. Next, and most important, is how much of a fight I think they'll be able to put up, which is as much situational as individual. A guy using a grinder with hearing protection on, or who is head to foot in bulky protective gear because they're working in one of the private foundries, will be easier to sneak up on, but I don't want them to be a Class 3 or Class 4 no matter what they're wearing, or doing.

  I go over the list and one name sticks out, "Hajiro Sukimaki." Hajiro is in my Engineering for Advanced Minds class and I've seen him trying to lift an eighty pound mounting bracket for a rocket motor during lab. He's definitely baseline strength as people were laughing at him trying to muscle that thing into place. He's also been wearing a hat to class for the past few weeks. I just need Carly to try and scan him, just in cas
e he just happens to like hats.

  The next day is Wednesday, one of the days I have my engineering class, and I have Carly standing behind one of the pillars outside the exit to the lab so she can give Hajiro a quick scan on the way out. The only thing she knows about him is he's a Japanese guy with a hat and always walks with his head down, which kind of precludes her seeing his face to know if he's Japanese or not. She'll figure it out.

  When I come out, she falls in step with me, "He's blocked. Same feeling as all the others, only he didn't react when I scanned him."

  "That's not surprising, the guy is pretty meek. I doubt he would have reacted if you smacked him in the head."

  "He sounds perfect."

  Chapter 37

  I go in the front entrance to the student lab, just like I always do, and head for my locker. A couple people are down one of the halls to the public labs, but otherwise the place is pretty deserted, which is normal for this time of night. I know because I'm in here at this time at least a couple times per week to work on my suit or some other thing that pops into my head. Currently I have six projects going, besides all the stuff I'm making for my suit. Some of it is more or less research to test out if the concept will work, like my 'Polyphase Neural Scrambler', which like it sounds, is based on some fantasy I'm having of how a neural inhibitor might work. Which is to say it's a knockoff based on what I know about telepathy and a total guess as to how to disrupt the power. It is not as easy as just disrupting brainwaves like it is with a baseline mind.

  Rummaging around in my locker, I find the Loop Recorder I created, which has two pieces, one of which I'm going to place on the ceiling next to the security camera, and the other is a projector that fits over the security camera lens. The piece next to the camera will record for thirty seconds and then transmit it in a loop to the receiver/projector covering the lens. I made it out of an old junk digital camera on the cheap this morning and I'm hoping it works long enough for us to get in and out of the building. The hall I have it projecting down is the same hall as my locker, and the same hall the private lab Hajiro is using tonight. Once the recorder is set up, I head down to the end of the hall and go to the left down another hall that goes to the back emergency exit. This hall has a security camera as well, but where they have it placed all I will need to do is flip the camera around in the other direction as both directions look the same. No one is around using the hall, so it's unlikely they'll notice they have two cameras looking down the same hall.

  I make quick work of the subterfuge and get to the back emergency exit where I open the door and drop a wedge into the opening to keep the door from closing. Carly is standing just outside and I see her. "I'll be right back," I tell her, and head back down the hall and out the front door that I came in. I want the security cameras in the front to see me leaving just in case something goes wrong and we are not able to make our escape undetected, or if there is an investigation.

  Keeping an eye out that no one is around and I'm unobserved, I make my way around to the back of the building, and Carly. She's already in the same outfit she wore when we did the stakeout in Chicago, and mine is in the bag at her feet. I switch into mine and am very aware I am without my shield and hammer tonight. I couldn't afford to bring them here as this is where I made them and I can't be sure no one here has seen them. I am wearing the new gloves I made with the bar taser on the knuckles, which will definitely rattle anyone's cage if I hit them with it. I don't have my new power supply yet as I'm still enriching the fuel for it, but I did hook up an extra battery pack that I have for my field generator, so the taser maxes out at a short, five thousand watt jolt, rather than the sustained, twenty thousand watt jolt it could do. It'll have to do.

  Head to toe now in my stealth black suit, albeit without the armor pieces, I'm ready to go in. Carly and I head in after checking the hall is clear. It's empty and I don't hear anyone, so we make our way down the corridor to Hajiro's private lab. The door has a magnetic key card, which isn't an obstacle since I made a copy of it back when I used this lab for making my armor pieces. Listening at the door, I swipe the key card and crack the door to peek inside. Hajiro is standing at the foundry in full protective clothing, including a big helmet with blast shield over the face. He's holding what looks like a glass pipe into the furnace and spinning it around.

  When we enter the room, Hajiro is not wearing his neural neutralizer while working in the protective suit he is wearing. And, Carly is able to make him go to sleep almost instantly. I grab the glass blower before it hits the ground to save the guy’s work. She gets to work and soon gives me an update on her progress, "He doesn't know where he got the hat or the neural neutralizer. He only knows it's the coolest thing there ever was and he wants to wear it all the time. He's even sleeping with the damn thing on. His memory has been erased of everything else related to it – how he got it, who gave it to him, it's all gone. I'm going to have to go deeper in his mind and start kicking over things to see if I can find something."

  "How long do you need?" I ask her.

  "How long do I have?"

  "Two hours until his lab time is over, but we need to be out of here by four-thirty."

  "Why's that?"

  "The early crowd is here by five, and we want to be long gone by then." Super geniuses tend to work all hours.

  "All right, then. I'll see what I can do.” She turns back to Hajiro, “Watch the door, I've got him. Oh, and break that thing he was working on."

  Looking at the glass, then back to Carly with a question mark lighting up my face, she says, "I'm going to plant it in his head that he broke it and needs to start over to cover the time we're here."

  I feel bad because I know what it is he's making, and a 'focus' for advanced optics are really hard to make, and the crystal glass is expensive. Sorry, Hajiro.

  I hang out by the door listening and we catch a break no one bothers us for the forty minutes Carly is digging around in Hajiro's head. The hall is clear when we're ready to leave and I grab my gadget off the security camera and we make our way out the back.

  "What did you find out?" I ask her on the way back to my dorm.

  "He has no memory of anything about the neural neutralizer or anything associated with it. But, I think I might have something else. Every couple days after classes, at 5:30, he has a compulsion to meet a bus in the back of the Oppenheimer student parking lot to go work at a 'part-time job'. The thing is, it's not associated with any other memories. There's no memory of getting a part-time job and there's no memory of him working at his part-time job, even though he has memories of riding on the bus — which means the compulsion was planted in his mind. He may have other things buried deeper, but that's what I could get in the time you gave me."

  "When's the next time he's meeting the bus?"

  "Tonight."

  Chapter 38

  "Look, is that the bus coming?" I ask.

  "It looks the same as the one in his memory."

  Carly and I are standing at the front entrance of the parking lot for the Oppenheimer Quad, which is on a dead end street that backs up to a forested area. The other entrance is a one way street, so no matter which entrance the bus uses, it's going to have to pass where we're standing when it leaves. "Good. I'm going to pass behind it as it comes out of the parking lot and put on the tracker."

  We wait and watch as students come walking from the different dorm buildings in the quad and approach the bus. All of them are wearing hats, but not everyone out on the quad wearing hats is heading for the bus. "You think they have them going in shifts?"

  "Could be. We can check tomorrow and — Look there! That's Hajiro going to the bus."

  "You called it. Nice work." Carly's telepathic abilities are incredible to me. Scary and incredible.

  "Are we going to follow them?"

  "No. The tracker will record its position and tell me where it's been in about ten hours from now by sending a file to a dropbox I setup online."

  Carly is laughing as she
says, "You are so Cloak & Dagger."

  I shrug back at her and say, "Maybe I should call myself, 'The Shadow'."

  "Sorry, it's been done."

  "How about — Wait, they're leaving. Hold on." I walk over like I'm going to cross the driveway to the parking lot on the sidewalk and wave the bus to go ahead. Doing like I always do passing behind a moving car, I time it so I pass just behind the vehicle. As it passes, I reach under the bumper and stick the tracker to the inside of it and keep going.

  Catching up to me, Carly declares, "Well, that's it until we get a file from your tracker, right?"

  "Yup. I'll check it in the morning and we can look at it in Super Powers class." Not passing up an opportunity to create quality time, I add, "Carlos told me he was going to see a movie tonight with some friends."

  "Do you want to go?"

  "No, I was thinking more along the lines of my dorm room is free tonight." I didn't have to let that idea hang out there very long.

  "Let's go," and she grabs my hand and pulls me along.

  Chapter 39

  Carly makes it to class ahead of me and has staked out a mostly empty section at the back of Super Powers 301's auditorium classroom. "Hey," I say and sit beside her. The professor's not here yet, but it's normal for him to be five to ten minutes late for class. I'm pretty sure he has tenure, because he's mailing in his lectures and should have been fired a long time ago.

  "Hey, yourself."

  "They found the tracker last night about forty-five minutes after they left."

  "How? And, how do you know they found it?"

  "When I checked the dropbox this morning the file was there, but the time stamp was 5:58 PM. Someone had to of set off the anti-tampering trigger and it sent its packet early."