Page 10 of Anarchy Chained: Alpha Thomas

CHAPTER FOUR - SADIE

The brand-new Cathedral City Asylum is beautiful in a way only buildings can be. It’s not tall, only six stories, and stretches out into east and west wings. It’s not institutional in design, either. Even though the front gate leading onto the property is all gothic archway with pitted stones covered in lichen that remind you of ancient battles in places that are much wetter than here.

It’s last-century modern with long panes of glass near the roofline, accentuated with strips of metal gleaming from a stray ray of sun.

I stop the truck and wait my turn at the gate, acutely aware of the timer on my vision screen, ready and waiting to begin counting up once I initialize the trip.

When it’s my turn, I start the illusion and the timer, but they wave me through, so it only gets up to three seconds before I drop the trip and it resets.

My power is very limited. Five seconds is the average time it takes a person to do a double-take and reassess what they’re seeing. If I need it to last five seconds, it’s perfect. I can go up to nine if I have to. But anything past ten is almost unheard of.

It’s a hitch, and nothing more. A moment when you’re looking out across the hot desert and you see… something. But then it’s gone. What I do is not a mirage. It’s something in between hallucination and delusion. Something people want to see. Something people expect to see. But then quickly realize it cannot be.

It works on everyone except my Prodigy handlers. Nothing works on them. My inhibitor keeps them immune. Each Prodigy child has their own unique inhibitor and mine is coded into my DNA through periodic manipulation. It will last for months before it degrades and has to be reinitialized.

I won’t be out in the real world for months. I know this. The assignment is scheduled to last four hours and one and a half of those hours has already passed. When I finish, I will be rewarded with bliss once again. The dream in my head will become real. I will shut down, and then everything will be perfect until the next time they wake me for a job.

But I am special. They almost never let me outside. I like it this way and I’m anxious to complete this mission so I can return to what I do best.

The map on screen tells me where to park. A worker dressed in the white uniform with the asylum logo approaches me. His name tag says Grant.

This is when things become tricky.

Almost any illusionist can manage what I’ve done so far, but no one but me can manage what I’m about to do now.

The timer starts as I throw the trip. A wave of energy flows out of my head in concentric circles with me at the center.

My net catches almost two dozen people. And the wave is powerful, something that calls me to attention. But they don’t see me. They see what they want to see. What they expect to see. I open the door at two seconds, smile, but don’t talk to anyone because that will cancel out the illusion, and walk straight for the back loading dock. Some of them call out. “Hey, Jane!” or, “Hi, Mike! Are you going bowling tonight?” One says, “Sarah, you look great today. Is that a new haircut?”

I become—whoever. I become the person they expect to see.

At seven seconds I’m pulling the door open, at eight seconds I’m walking down a dimly lit hallway as it closes behind me. At nine seconds I am Sadie again. But it doesn’t matter. These people don’t know I’m supposed to be the laundry truck driver. They’re not even looking at me as my recovery timer counts up the seconds I will need to make a new trip.

It’s a small power. I’ll admit that. It’s fleeting. Nine seconds is not enough time to do much, but I have perfected my art. I can do so much with nine seconds. I can create havoc with nine seconds. I can become a dead child in a mother’s eyes. I can become the husband they lost in the war. I can become a celebrity. I never become a celebrity or any of those other things. The point is to go unnoticed. Getting people to notice me defeats the purpose.

I essentially become invisible. Hidden in plain sight.

No one but me can pull this off en masse.

The bright red path in my vision screen leads me to a locker room as an alarm sounds off in the building. I punch in the code to enter, find the place empty—my handlers taking care of me now with that fake emergency—and go to locker number 818 where there is a gray uniform waiting for me. I pull the loose top on over my existing uniform, then drag the extra-large pants up my legs. Looking down at my chest I see a name tag. I am Phil now. There’s a picture of him inside the locker. Him and his wife. Poor woman. Her husband is probably dead. Well—I chuckle—she’s probably dead too.

I slam the locker shut and follow the lighted path out of the room and into a stairwell, climbing to the fifth floor, home to one escaped Prodigy child called Thomas Brooks.

I access his personal file to get familiar with him. His power is… well, that’s interesting.

My feet are still climbing up the stairs as I read.

Thomas Brooks—Level Ten Mentalist. Level Ten Aggressionist. Level Ten Manipulist. Level Ten Capturist. Use extreme caution. Non-lethal intervention advised at all times.

It’s a unique combination, but it all adds up to one thing. Mind thief. Mentalist combined with capturist means he can steal memories, especially from people who die in his vicinity. Aggressionist combined with manipulist means he can force people to do things against their will.

All together these things mean that unless he’s drugged, he’s always the one in control.

My vision screen has a flashing red caution sign next to his name, and there’s a yellow tag attached to it which reads: Active.

Well, he won’t be active for long. My hand unconsciously pats the outline of a syringe in my pocket underneath my asylum uniform. I have what I need to deactivate him.

When I get to the fifth floor, I enter the hallway. People are insanely—no pun intended—busy because of the blaring alarm Prodigy triggered to help me get in the building, and take no notice of me. So I don’t even have to bother with a trip. There’s a nurse’s station along the far end of the hallway, but there’s no way to get into that computer, so I head to my left, push through another door, and try for one of the empty offices.