Page 5 of Mindeater

For two hours, they watched each other.

Saren had tried only once to reach out with his mastery, and the boy hissed like a feral cat. The reaction seemed to have burned like scalding water, so he didn’t try again. He twiddled his thumbs, hummed under his breath, and for about ten minutes, nodded off from pure boredom. Usually, he wasn’t swayed by one’s scent. Not that he’d ever asked, but he could deduce it had something to do with his infertility. A part of him was gone, tossed out like trash, so it made sense he didn’t submit to alphas or feel at peace around omegas. But the boy’s scent was strong. His head had been feeling fuzzy for a while.

Saren tried to figure it out again. Ideas bubbled inside his mind. Horris liked a particular incense, bergamot. But that wasn’t it. The boy didn’t smell of citrus, although there was that undercurrent of spicy smoke. Unique to him alone. One day he’d give it a name, but not today.

When it was clear they weren’t going to be having any conversations, Saren decided to leave the room to wash up and get some air. That's when the boy made a noise.

A grunt of sorts. Panicked. Urgent.

“I was just going to wash up for supper,” he explained, hand on the doorknob.

The boy shook his head.

“Okay,” Saren drew out the word. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, then?”

A flash of steel pierced through the thick curtains of black. The look fled as quickly as it came. The boy’s mouth parted, tongue wiggled inside it, and he croaked before grabbing his throat.

“You can’t speak?”

A head shake.

“Sore throat?”

A more urgent head shake. He stormed over to Saren, cornering him against the door. His stomach swooped violently as his head swam with dizziness. Static licked up his arms, chest, and throat. “What is it? I…I can try to help?”

A hand reached out, careful to touch the sleeve of his shirt, not his skin, lifted it, and placed it at the nape of the boy’s neck. Saren instantly recoiled. The sensation hurt. A rebound like two opposite magnets. “What are you doing?” He panicked and ripped his hand free.

The boy growled low in his throat and repeated the motion. Wide-eyed, Saren let him manipulate his hand. Typically, when Saren touched someone, his mastery went rampant. He sought out every thought, emotion, and sensation he could and tried to steal it. With the boy, there was nothing to steal, so he had to rely on his physical touch to figure it out. Fighting back his instinct to latch onto whatever lingered in the boy’s mind, Saren ignored the tugging and yanking, the gaping maw of emptiness trying to eat him when his fingers made contact.

His nostrils flared as waves of alpha pheromones infiltrated the small space between them. It shouldn’t have been possible for the boy to release them on command like he was—not at their age—but Saren couldn’t bring himself to ask how. Whatever he was doing worked. The siphon from the boy ceased, and warmth flooded through him, settling low in his belly. Going lax, Saren allowed his fingers to feel, and there, right at the base of the boy’s hairline, was a bump.

He grunted and looked at him as if to say, see?

“Can I look?” Saren asked, feeling woozy again.

Nodding, the boy spun and gathered up his long hair. Fingering the spot gently, he recognized what had been done. An implant to staunch mastery and limit certain brain functions like speaking. It was barbaric, and Saren had only read about it in his textbooks. He'd never seen it done on a person, and what made it even more bizarre was that the implant was in the wrong spot. These types of implants were usually placed in the belly.

“This is why you can’t speak,” Saren murmured, pushing and poking, trying to see how it was connected to the brainstem. “It needs…s-surgery to remove. I think.” He physically trembled just saying the word. “I can’t remove it. I–I’ll have to tell Patryn. He’s my guardian. He’ll know what to do.”

The boy hunched over and dropped his hair. He moved away from Saren, withdrawn and angry.

“Can you write?” Saren hoped he could. It would make communication easier in the meantime.

The boy didn’t respond, just moved farther away until he was against the window.

“I…I can teach you. To write, I mean. And read. If you want?”

Silence.

Defeated and concerned, Saren left the bedroom.

***

After bathing and putting on a fresh outfit for supper, Saren hunted down Patryn in his library. It was the place Saren often found anything and everything he wanted to know. Some of the books within it were banned from most Telex communities, containing blasphemous ideologies, battle concepts with key elements to hurt those with mastery, and more. Patryn had those locked away. He’d said all history mattered, and all whispered truths should be known, but Saren wasn’t ready for them. When he became Maven, he would learn.

Patryn had one such book open on his desk. He stood, a rolled cigarette between his index and middle fingers, a cloud of smoke steaming from his nostrils. He shut the book and covered it with loose paper. “Saren.”

“Sir, we need to talk about the boy.”