The Y People, Chapter 10: Take Me To Our Leader

It turned out that when Jane said "Help me carry...", what that meant was that we carried and she opened the doors, in a distracted kind of not-very-helpful way. We got the machine set up on a bench downstairs, and stood there massaging our hands while she produced a screwdriver from somewhere and started to remove the case.

Once she could see inside, she seemed totally absorbed - it was like Kevin had suddenly gained my power as well. He jerked his head towards the door and we started to leave. But, without looking up, she called, "I'll need some electronic components eventually. Get Marie to come down and open a door."

"Is she autistic, or what?" Kevin asked as we clumped up the stairs.

"At least Asperger's," I said. We knew a few kids who were one or the other, and Sister Mary Anselm had given us a lecture one time.

"It's like everyone has your power in her world," he said.

"Yeah, I was just thinking that. Up until she needs something, anyway."

"Maybe she's just really, really self-centred."

"Yeah. Where are Karen and Marie?"

"Well, according to my sense they're on what feels like the other side of the city, that way." He pointed at an angle in the approximate direction of the warehouse part of the building. "So your guess is as good as mine."

We soon found them, though, through the only door that was ajar. They were in some windowless room eating pizza and drinking fruit juice. Karen looked a little more composed, but her eyes were still red.

"No Coke?" asked Kevin. He loves Coke.

"Only juice," said Marie.

"MIBs are health nuts," I said.

"Men In Black?" He cast me a raised eyebrow.

"Mysterious Invisible Benefactors. But yes, reference intentional."

"Nice."

Kevin and I have known each other for a long time, so we can usually work out what the other one is thinking. Since nobody pays much attention to our conversations, what with the John effect, we don't usually worry too much about including others, either. We have a lot of in-jokes.

"Oh, by the way, Jane wants a door opened," he told Marie as he sat down and helped himself to pizza.

"Jane can wait," said Marie.

"Are you the leader?" Karen said suddenly, to Kevin.

"What? No. We don't - there is no leader."

"But back in the, the place..."

"I always know where everyone and everything is," he said. "So in a situation like that, I had knowledge that everyone else needed. You've told her about our powers?" he asked Marie.

"Yes, I was just about to ask her about hers."

"You should be the leader," Karen told Kevin, overlapping Marie's sentence a bit.

"Why is that?"

"Why do we need a leader?" I asked. "Isn't it a bit 18th-century to assume that someone has to be in charge?"

Since only Kevin registered that I was talking, he repeated my first question.

"Of course you need a leader," Karen said. "It's dangerous, so someone has to be the one who takes charge when things get hairy. We can't just mill around arguing about what to do."

"Shouldn't we have some sort of election, at least?" said Marie. I could tell she wasn't delighted with the idea of Kevin as leader. Marie was the kind of person who automatically thinks she's the leader. Come to that, so was Jane, but she had no people skills - or, actually, a negative amount of people skills. A large negative amount. Karen clearly wasn't a candidate, and nor was I - no good having a leader who nobody notices.

"Well, I vote for Kevin," I said as loudly as I could, stepping forward. "Assuming he votes for himself, that with Karen's vote makes three, so he has a majority."

"Hold on, hold on," said Kevin. "We should have this discussion with Jane here."

"Good luck pulling her head out of that machine," I said.

"Look, can we shelve it for now? We're not under attack. We're sitting here eating pizza."

"All right. We'll talk about it later," said Karen.

There was an interval of slightly uncomfortable pizza-eating. Then Marie swallowed and said, "As I was saying - I've just been telling Karen about our powers, and I was about to ask her about hers."

"I bet you forgot to mention me and my power," I thought.

Karen turned and looked straight at me. "Yes, she did. What can you do?" she asked.

I stared at her for what seemed like several seconds. "You're a telepath," I said.

"Not exactly. I can only hear people's automatic thoughts, or the ones with a lot of emotion behind them."

"What do you mean by automatic thoughts?"

"You know the voices in your head? The ones that crazy people think are coming from outside them, but actually are your teachers and parents and stuff, or what you imagine they'd tell you? Those thoughts."

"So let me get this straight. You hear voices in other people's heads?"

"Well - I've never thought of putting it like that, but I suppose, yes?"

"So it was probably just as well that you didn't have your powers in that prison, then," said Marie.

Karen shuddered and went silent, looking inward. Marie's power of opening things extends, unfortunately, to her big mouth, and what's inside is frequently not what people need.

Kevin, on the other hand, knows exactly where people are, and jumped in to distract her. "John's power is that people don't notice him or remember him," he said, "which is why Marie didn't say anything about him. It's, um, kind of a mixed blessing."

"To put it mildly," I muttered, then blushed when Karen shot me a look. I'd just thought, "I'll never have a chance with a girl like Karen." It wasn't a completely unhappy look, which was something, though it wasn't like she was smiling either.

I would really have to watch my thoughts around her, and it wasn't going to be easy.

The Gift of Lit

Here's a little joint project by some Podiobooks authors, including me. In the lead-up to Christmas 2009, we'd like to suggest that you consider buying our books as gifts, or asking others to do so for you.

HORROR

NIGHT’S KNIGHTS by Emerian Rich

Buy it here at << Amazon >> (starts as low as $13.00)

Vampires on a quest for knowledge attempt to create the perfect offspring, but from the shadows an even more demonic evil threatens their immortality. Markham is a simple Irish immigrant striving for the American dream in 1860 when coach robbers cause his untimely death. Severina is an exotic beauty from the jungles of Brazil whose family is brutally murdered by the same man she later calls lover. Julien is a knight who serves as guardian angel to his family but has no clue about his predestined fate. Will a powerful mortal named Jespa be the one to save them all?

FANTASY

BRAVE MEN RUN by Matthew Wayne Selznick

Buy it here at << Amazon>> (starts as low as $8.98 new)

April 18, 1985 - Into a world already wound tight with the desperate tensions of the Cold War comes Dr. William Donner with a startling declaration: superhumans exist, they demand autonomy, and he has the reality-bending power to enforce their status. The traditional balance of power is thrown askew by the addition of not one super-powered human, but six thousand. Before the Donner Declaration, high school sophomore Nate Charters was just an outsider and self-proclaimed freak. His unusual appearance, hair-trigger reflexes, and overactive metabolism should have made him something special, but his differences and low self-esteem have long since marked him as a target for the jocks and popular kids. Now, just as his unique nature brings him the attention of a self-assured older girl, Nate must find his place in the world. Why is he the way he is? What really happened to his long-dead father? Why is his biggest rival suddenly interested in a private meeting? Is he part of a remarkable, powerful new minority… or just a misfit among misfits? Nate must discover the answers to these questions quickly, because those in power know more about him than he could ever imagine. And they’re closing in…

Mike's Endorsement: I have just finished listening to this in podiobook format, and it's really good. If, like me, you like superhero fiction (and don't mind it being a bit more realistic than the usual capes and tights), definitely check this out.

LOST GODS by Drew Beatty

Buy it here at << Lulu >> (starts at $15.50 new)

Kweku Anansi is just another member of the African diaspora, trying to make a place for himself in his adopted home of Toronto, Canada. He dreams of better days, of a time when he could stop running small-time cons just to make the rent. He dreams of the life he used to live, centuries ago when he was revered as a god. A chance encounter with a fellow con man with a dark and secretive past of his own plunges them both into the dark world of the lost gods, gods who would do anything to be worshipped again. Including destroying the world, if necessary. How far will Anansi go to reclaim his godhood? What will he give up to have true power again?

Mike's Endorsement: Another very good book which I highly recommend, well-written, well-plotted, amusing and exciting.

THE FOX by Arlene Radasky

Buy it here at << Amazon >> (starts as low as $20.99 new)

The Fox by Arlene Radasky is a historical romance and fantasy novel that looks at true courage and truly selfless acts. In this epic fiction that crosses centuries, Druid healers at the beginning of recorded time will be rescued from obscurity by an archeologist of the twenty-first century. Jahna’s clan lay in the path of destruction exacted by the Romans. Her fate is sealed unless a bargain is made with the Gods, which without a doubt means a human sacrifice. Two thousand years later, Aine MacRae is on their trail. A struggling archaeologist, she is on the verge of uncovering the village where they once lived. Encouraged by a ghostly visit, she will do whatever it takes to unearth time’s mystery. Greed almost triumphs leaving the truth and ancient stories buried forever, but an undying love is rekindled.

CHASING THE BARD by Philippa Ballantine

Buy it here at << Amazon >> (starts as low as $12.69 new)

Born into the human world with a gift; a gift that brings him to the attention of powers both dark and light from the World of the Fey, it is his burden to defend all the world. Sive, the goddess of battle, hopes that he may be able to change the fate of her people.The Fey are dying, killed by something beyond the boundaries of worlds, and Sive will do anything to save them. So she enlists the help of her trickster cousin Puck to guard the child, and watch him grow into his gift. But a dark power imprisoned by human and Fey, plots to destroy both worlds, and unmake all that they have created. Can one boy stop the destruction, even if he is William Shakespeare?

Mike's Endorsement: A fellow Kiwi author, and she writes extremely well. I was riveted to this. Get hold of it!

THE DAWNING OF POWER by Brian Rathbone

Buy it here at << Amazon >> (starts as low as $17.98)

The Dawning of Power is the debut trilogy in Brian Rathbone’s fantasy series: The World of Godsland. Echoes of the ancients power are distant memories, tattered and faded by the passage of eons, but that is about to change. A new dawn has arrived. Latent abilities, harbored in mankind s deepest fibers, wait to be unleashed. Ancient evils awaken, and old fears ignite the fires of war. In times such as these, ordinary people have the power to save the world . . . or destroy it.

THE WHITE SHADOW SAGA: THE STOLEN MOON OF LONDOR by A.P. Stephens

Buy it here at << Amazon >> (starts as low as $8.60)

The era of peace among the elves, men, and dwarves comes to an end when one of Londor’s twin moons disappears from the heavens. Without the moon’s balancing effect, evil forces grow bold, and warfare, sickness, and chaos threaten life itself.

Hearing the prayers of desperation that ride on the violent winds, the ancient wizard Randor Miithra, servant to the elf-gods, takes it upon himself to mend the world he has sworn to protect. The task will not be an easy one, though, for the wizard, too, has begun to feel the effects of the world’s imbalance. As Randor struggles to maintain some semblance of his powers, he meets a secretive band of colorful characters from all walks of life, drawn together by a common goal: to find the stolen moon, whatever the cost. It does not take Randor and his motley company long to see that someone or something does not want the moon returned to the heavens.

The road is perilous…the stakes have never been greater…will they find victory…or will they only find their deaths?

SCIENCE FICTION

THE VATICAN ASSASSIN TRILOGY by Mike Luoma

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This three in one omnibus edition collects all three novels in the “Vatican Assassin” Trilogy under one cover. “Vatican Assassin”, “Vatican Ambassador” and “Vatican Abdicator” are joined in this volume by an extensive appendix of previously unreleased background material. There are some early concept sketches by Mike Luoma, as well as “The History of The Future”: a timeline developed to extrapolate from today into the future setting for the story; “The Original Story Outline”; “The Story of The Project”; “The Alien Timeline” and more.

THE PIRATES OF SUFIRO by David Lee Summers

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The Pirates of Sufiro is the story of a planet and its people — of Ellison Firebrandt the pirate captain living in exile; of Espedie Raton, the con-man looking to make a fresh start for himself and his wife on a new world; of Peter Stone, the ruthless bank executive who discovers a fortune and will do anything to keep it; and of the lawman, Edmund Ray Swan who travels to Sufiro seeking the quiet life but finds a dark secret. It is the story of privateers, farmers, miners, entrepreneurs, and soldiers — all caught up in dramatic events and violent conflicts that will shape the destiny of our galaxy.

CRIME DRAMA

JACK WAKES UP by Seth Harwood

Buy it here at << Amazon >> (starts as low as $7.68)

In JACK WAKES UP, we are introduced to Jack Palms, a movie star turned drug addict, turned has-been who has been living off of the residual checks from Shake ‘Em Down, his one–and-only action movie. The money is drying up though, and this new clean, uneventful life is starting to become too much for Jack to bear. So when an old friend comes calling and asks Jack to use his former celebrity to show some out-of-town high rollers around San Francisco’s club scene, he’s happy to oblige. What Jack doesn’t know, however, is these “guests” are a pack of former KGB agents turned coke dealers out to make a big deal with Jack as their tour guide. Soon people are turning up dead, and Jack’s got too many gunmen after him to count—including a South American drug cartel, a mountain-sized Samoan enforcer, and a mobbed-up strip club owner with an army of thugs. That’s not to mention a gorgeous new girlfriend who may be planning on shooting him in the back and the homicide cop who’s just given Jack twenty-four hours to bring down the Bay Area’s biggest drug dealer.

But the thing that scares Jack the most? He’s starting to have fun.

FICTION

CITY OF MASKS by Mike Reeves-McMillan

Buy it here at << Lulu >> (starts as low as $9.97)

In the city-state of Bonvidaeo, by custom and law everyone must wear a mask and act in character with it, or face civil, social and religious penalties. Gregorius Bass is sent to Bonvidaeo as the Envoy of Calaria (primarily to get him out from underfoot). Masked as the Innocent Man, and in the company of his radical young Bonvidaoan servant, Bass stumbles into mystery, intrigue, heresy and murder.

Mike's Endorsement: What can I say? This one's mine. People keep telling me they like it. If you haven't checked it out, please do.

TECHNO THRILLER

7TH SON: DESCENT by J.C. Hutchins

Buy it here at << Amazon >> (starts as low as $9.21)

As America reels from the bizarre presidential assassination committed by a child, seven men are abducted from their normal lives and delivered to a secret government facility. Each man has his own career, his own specialty. All are identical in appearance. The seven strangers were not born, but grown — unwitting human clones — as part of a project called 7th Son.

The government now wants something from these “John Michael Smiths.” They share the flesh as well as the implanted memories of the psychopath responsible for the president’s murder. The killer has bigger plans, and only these seven have the unique qualifications to track and stop him. But when their progenitor makes the battle personal, it becomes clear John Alpha may know the seven better than they know themselves…

SPECULATIVE FICTION

DREAMING OF DELIVERANCE by R.E. Chambliss

Buy it here at << Amazon >> (starts as low as $19.99)

Five years ago when Lindsay Paulson, a naive college student and talented distance runner, was 18, she was convicted of drug smuggling. Now, halfway through a 10-year prison sentence, she begins having what seem to be dreams, in which she leaves her cell in the night and visits another reality called Trae. Dreaming of Deliverance tells of Lindsay’s experiences both in Trae, where she finds herself among people enslaved by terrifying creatures, and in prison where she tries to make sense of what’s happening in her sleep: Is she actually escaping from prison somehow or is she losing her mind?

FANTASY FICTION HISTORICAL

THE MARK OF A DRUID by Rhonda R. Carpenter

Buy it here at << Amazon >> (starts as low as $16.55 new)

Have you ever had a dream so real that when you awoke, it didn’t leave the recesses of your mind for days? Eve McCormick just did, and this experience will change her life and the lives of those around her permanently. A twenty-six year old hypnotherapist who oversees a research project based on discovering the answer to an age-old question, “Is reincarnation fact or fiction?” must learn to trust a Welsh stranger. An ancient Celtic prophecy and long sought-after revenge entangles the past with the present in the struggle for existence that threatens to destroy her project. A druidess and a shape-shifter must join as one to save the Druid way of life, while a Queen conspires to kill Erin’s only High King. Will the oaths and agendas of the past reach across the centuries to strengthen or destroy?

City of Masks review

Just found (via Google blog search, which I have fed into my feed reader) a nice review of the podcast version of City of Masks on Livejournal. The reviewer initially wasn't sold on my reading, until s/he (I think she) realized that I was "doing the voices" of the characters.

I don't have (and don't intend to get) a Livejournal account in order to comment directly on the post, but thanks, krazysidhe, for your kind words. I'm complimented that you thought of doing fanfiction, though I'm also glad you decided not to. And (if you find this), have a look at The Y People and see if you like that too.

Officially on hiatus

Obviously, The Y People has been unofficially on hiatus for a while. But I'm now admitting it.

There are unlikely to be more updates until November because of looming exams. December to February may be a bit patchy depending how demanding my summer semester study is (probably fairly demanding).

After February, though, I'm hoping things will pick up. Bear in mind that The Y People is an amusement for me and I have a lot of other things going on in my life, some of which are harder to justify shelving for an extended period. But I do plan to continue and I do want to continue, so please remain subscribed and normal transmission should (eventually) resume.

The Y People: A brief intermission

Greetings, Faithful Readers. As you may have guessed, I've been busy with other things lately - university assignment, conference talk, that sort of thing - and haven't updated The Y People as a consequence. I hope to do so soon.

I thought I'd say hi, though, and offer you the opportunity to interact. I'm very happy to receive comments on any post in The Y People - I know some of my fellow Goodreads authors are following, and your questions or critiques are very welcome.

On this post, though, I'm specifically inviting comments which suggest what power Karen might have. I do have an idea, but you might have better ones. We're going to find out in the next chapter, which I'm aiming to do on Sunday (NZ time, Saturday in much of the rest of the world).

I'm writing by the seat of my pants here. I seldom know how a chapter ends when I start typing it. I do know approximately what is going on behind the scenes (which is more than I knew when I started), but you and I are discovering stuff together. Is this experiment sustainable? Stay tuned and see.

And if you have ideas for Karen's power, please leave a comment.

The Y People, Chapter 9: Ructions

Kevin was tying the sleeves of his coat to the door. He let out a hiss, then said, “The guard’s coming. We’ve got about 30 seconds.”

Jane produced her own lockpick and had their door open in the first of those seconds. The three girls spilled out, Karen unwillingly – Marie had her by the elbow. I think she was still a bit fuzzy from the drugs.

“Kevin, get out here,” said Jane. “Can you lift that machine? I want to take it with us.”

Kevin started over towards the machine, which was the size of a large desktop laser printer. I hefted one end. It seemed possible, though I wouldn’t want to carry it far, and I nodded to Kevin, who said, “Yes.” Nobody except him was looking in my direction. They had all forgotten I existed as soon as the suppressor went off.

“Grab it, then, and let’s get going,” said Jane.

“The guard’s nearly here!” he said.

“Then grab fast…” began Jane, but at that moment the guard appeared in the doorway, skidding to a halt – he’d obviously broken into a run and was panting. He checked himself with his shoulder against the door pillar and levelled his rifle at Kevin, who was crossing his line of sight to get to the machine.

I didn’t see exactly what happened next. Something came from Marie’s direction and hit the guard, who convulsed and dropped the gun. I had already pushed off from the table, I think with the idea of tackling Kevin out of the way of a bullet or something, and rocked the rickety platform enough that the lantern fell off and smashed on the floor. It was suddenly almost pitch dark, just a bit of dim light coming in from the corridor. I cannoned into Kevin and bounced off, but he grabbed me and kept me from going down.

Over the guard’s moaning, Kevin shouted, “Everyone stay still for a second! OK, I know where you all are. Just let me guide you. Marie, reach out to your left and grab Karen. Jane, Karen’s in front of you. We’re both over here in the middle of the room. I’ll come over your way and then I’ll guide Marie to the door.”

“What about the machine?” wailed Jane. It was as emotional as I’d ever heard her get.

Kevin let go of my arm, took two steps in the darkness which rang on the concrete floor, huffed, and came back. He nudged me. “Take the other end, mate, this is heavy,” he said. I fumbled for it in the dark, got an end, nearly dropped it and then managed to stabilize it. Towed by Kevin, I stumbled across the room, back towards our cell, I had to assume. He took me on a slight detour to avoid the guard, who was still incapacitated, and I heard him kick something – by the sound, likely the gun. It skittered off further into the room.

“All right,” he said, speaking a little breathlessly – the machine was heavier than I had realized. “Marie, take one small step to your left and then a medium step forward.”

There was a moment’s pause, and then, “Marie!” he yelled. “The other guard is coming. Snap out of it, you’ve got to get us out of here.”

“Sorry,” came her voice out of the darkness, and a confused noise of shuffling feet as the three girls, clinging blindly to each other, lurched towards the door. I heard a small squeak from the hinges, and then there was a light. She’d opened a door back to our home base.

Kevin and I hurried as best we could in the wake of the girls, who rushed through the door. Marie stood to one side, holding it, and slammed it behind us just as a portable light came bobbing along the corridor outside our former prison. We half lowered, half dropped the machine, and I shook out my hands, which had been cramping.

“We’re well out of that,” said Kevin.

“What did you do to the guard?” I asked Marie, but she ignored the question until Kevin repeated it. “I found something in my pocket all of a sudden and kind of – fired it at him,” she said. “I… do you think he’ll be OK?” She held out a small yellow-and-black device in one hand.

“As long as he doesn’t have heart problems,” said Jane. “That’s a taser.”

“You tased him?” asked Karen. She reflected for a moment, then added, “Good. He looked at me in a way I didn’t like. Like I was… good to eat or something.” Her eyes turned inward. Marie’s expression went from worried to dangerous. She took a couple of steps towards Karen and put an arm around her, upon which Karen melted down and started sobbing and clutching Marie. Marie led her off gently, opening a door into a room with some couches where they could sit down.

Kevin and I looked at each other awkwardly. Jane had ignored the whole incident and was clucking over the machine like a hen with one chicken.

“I could miniaturize this,” she said. “Small enough to wear.”

“Great,” I said. “I might be able to be visible from time to time.”

She ignored me, but with Jane that didn’t necessarily mean a lot.

“You know,” Kevin said, “I felt a surge when the machine went off. Like my power came back stronger than ever. I knew that other guard was coming, and I’d only glanced at him in passing. I usually need to have at least a conversation with someone before they show up on the radar.”

“Maybe that’s why Marie could pull something out of her pocket without a door,” I said.

“Is that so?” said Jane, still ignoring me for a reason I was starting to understand. “That’s very interesting. If suppressing the effect temporarily makes it surge up stronger afterwards, that would imply… hmm. Help me carry this downstairs to the lab.”

The Y People, Chapter 8: No Doors

“Jane, this was a terrible idea,” I said.

“Shut it, kid,” said the large man with the automatic rifle. “Just walk slowly and quietly towards the hill.”

Turns out that in the middle of a field, none of our powers were actually very useful, tinfoil hats or not. No doors for Marie to open. Kevin didn’t know the guard, so he didn’t sense him coming. No technology for Jane to tinker with, and standing in the middle of an open field with a tinfoil hat on makes you noticeable, even if you’re me.

The hill had a kind of bunker built into it. The entrance was at an angle into the hill and screened behind a couple of trees. From a distance, you’d never spot it.

There wasn’t a door on the entrance, I noticed. Inside the entrance was a kind of security booth with a transparent screen in front of it – bullet-proof glass, I had to assume. No door there, either. To get into the booth you had to go through a full-height turnstile in an alcove on the right-hand end, and it was clearly controlled from inside. There was another guard there, watching a security monitor.

We were ushered down a short, doorless, concrete-lined tunnel into an old-style prison area with metal bars across the otherwise open fronts of three cells. Two were empty, but the middle one held a rather pretty but very rumpled girl with black hair and long eyelashes. In contrast to skinny Jane and tiny Marie, she was noticeably girl-shaped.

On a rickety table sat a device of some kind, which buzzed gently. An outdoor extension cable, the kind that builders use, led from it off up the tunnel, back towards the guard station, and a workshop lantern plugged into the same power supply gave a harsh light. A security camera with a red light showing was fixed to the wall above the table, and its cable also led back to the guard station.

The guard made us take off our tinfoil helmets and put them on the ground, then gestured Kevin and me into the left-hand cell, where he locked us in. He unlocked the middle cell and put Jane and Marie in there with the other girl. The cells had concrete walls between them, so we could no longer see each other, but we would be able to talk.

Kevin was clutching his head and looking haunted and disoriented. I guessed that the buzzing thing was the power damper. I looked at him with concern, but he glanced at me and shook his head: I’m OK.

The guard picked up our helmets and left.

The girls immediately began talking. It quickly emerged that the pretty girl was Karen, and that she had been here for a day or two, she thought. Mr Brown had shown up at her school in Sydney and abducted and drugged her, and the light stayed on all the time, so she was a bit hazy on exact times. My guess was that he had headed on to Sydney when he failed to pick us up in Auckland.

“He was so weird?,” she said, in a pinched Australian accent. “Not like a real person somehow?” She had the habit which some girls have of making statements sound like questions by lifting the pitch of her voice at the end of her sentences. “And I thought he was going to kill me, or, you know… hurt me? But he just brought me here.”

“Do you know where this is?” asked Jane.

There was a pause, and I imagined Karen staring at Jane, flummoxed. “How did you get here?” she asked.

“We came – a different way. We didn’t see where it was.”

“The guard sounded like he was from the US,” I said. “The South, I think, but I only know American accents from TV.”

“That’s John,” said Jane, noticing me talking and remembering my name easily under the damping field. “He and Kevin are from your part of the world. New Zealand.”

I let that pass – New Zealanders hate to be lumped in with Australians – and asked, “Do the guards come round, or do they just watch the monitor?”

“They feed me now and then,” she said. “Did that Mr Brown guy get you too?”

“Uh, no,” said Jane. “Actually, we were coming here to rescue you.”

“You knew I was here?”

“We were pretty sure someone was here – one of… our kind of people.”

“You mean you can…”

Jane hushed her. “Don’t let’s talk about it where the guards can hear. I don’t know if our enemies know exactly what we can do, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

Under cover of checking on Kevin, who was now sitting on the lowest of the three bunk beds, I fumbled a couple of Jane’s devices out of my belt. She’d made the belt, too. It was a belt for hiding things. The guard, being shorthanded, hadn’t searched us, but if he had, we were prepared.

“There aren’t any proper doors here,” said Marie, apparently irrelevantly unless you knew. “Glass doors and anywhere I can see the other side – it doesn’t work.”

“Kevin, will you take your coat off? You’re the biggest,” Jane said, no doubt equally mysteriously to anyone who was listening, including me in this case.

We normally would have locked gazes at this point and shared our puzzlement, but he looked around the cell somewhat vaguely. His eyes slid past me, and I knew the first device, a kind of battery for storing powers, had worked. He began to take off the long coat he was wearing. I wandered casually over to the door.

“The Centre will want to know about this place,” Jane pattered on. “Marie, do you think they’ve been set up long, or only since the Incident?”

While the guards were, hopefully, focussing on her and the now intentionally nonsensical information she was “leaking”, I eased the other device into the lock and gently clicked it open. The cell was fairly new, and the lock moved easily. I swung the door slowly open and slipped through, pushing it to behind me.

“Kevin,” said Jane, “how’s that coat? You want to hang it across the door of your cell?”

Clever Jane. If Marie’s power only worked when she couldn’t see the other side of the door, the answer was to set it up so that she couldn’t.

I strolled casually and, I hoped, unseen across to the humming box and pulled the cable.