Empires of the Mind By Hibbleton78.pdf

Empires of the Mind By Hibbleton78

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5798963/1/

"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind"

Winston Churchill

Prologue

The street was silent, bathed in the darkness that accompanied the hours just

before dawn. The crunch of gravel was the only sign of life as houses aligned side

by side sat behind perfectly manicured lawns in absolute stillness.

A flame flickered, cupped behind the hand of the only man awake on this street.

He struggled to block the breeze long enough to light the cigarette held between

his lips. His posture straightened as he took a long drag, eyes scanning for

something, unsure as to what—or whom—he was looking for. He stayed vigilant

despite the lack of useful information, searching for anything out of the ordinary

or any clue he could take back with him.

He walked slowly, always keeping to the shadows, even though the dark of night

was a sufficient cover should any of the residents wake up and look out a

window. It was hours later that another set of footsteps joined his.

"Anything?" a young woman asked him. Her voice was quiet, barely more than a

whisper, but she may as well have been shouting as much as it contrasted with

the silence of the past few hours.

He shook his head and sighed, dropping his most recent cigarette to the street

and stubbing it out with the toe of his boot. "Not a fucking peep."

The young woman looked around, taking in the nondescript uniformity of the

standard suburban neighborhood. "Yeah, I didn't have any luck either."

"It'd be a hell of a lot easier if we had more to go on," he grumbled, cautious not

to raise his voice enough to wake any of the neighbors.

"It would, but you know it doesn't work like that," she said, trying to placate him.

"He was only able to track to a general area. This person is around here

somewhere. There aren't too many more places to search. There's no way

someone can hide the fact that they're telekinetic indefinitely, especially if they're

powerful enough for him to pick up on it without even trying to look. Whoever it

is will slip and we'll be here to catch it."

The man scoffed, frustrated and jaded. A month ago he'd been sent to watch a

group of five, to study them and learn their weaknesses so that his bosses could

swoop in and take control of the independent faction, and finally bring them into

the organization's fold.

At least back then he'd known exactly who he was looking for. However, two

weeks ago it was discovered that a sixth person with a unique talent was living

nearby, and priorities had shifted. The organization needed to find their new

target before the existing five managed to make connections with the individual.

While he understood the need to make contact first, he couldn't help but grow

bitter with each night that he was required to disappear into the shadows,

watching and waiting. Finding nothing and feeling like a failure meant that their

wrath would come down on his head if he wasn't successful in his hunt.

"We'll try a different area tomorrow night. Maybe we'll move closer to campus.

You know how these things work. This new person was drawn to this area for a

reason… well, five reasons. Odds are there are more similarities than just being

talented. Whoever this is most likely is around the same age. I've been saying it

since the beginning that we should focus on the college campus. I'd be willing to

bet that's where we're going to find our target."

The man nodded, not looking at the young woman. "Logic," he scoffed. "Seems

they've forgotten all about that. They're all too dependent on their own powers to

acknowledge the obvious. Tomorrow we'll start at the dorms. Classes start in a

few days, so whoever this is may have just moved to town for the new

semester."

The sky began to lighten by degrees, and signs of life started to make themselves

known. The two walked to the end of the street before slipping into a car at the

corner and driving off into the dawn, heading back to rest so that they could start

all over as soon as the sun set.

Chapter 1

Bella tapped the pen in her hand against the desk, just for something to do. The

fist tucked under her chin was the only thing keeping her head upright as the

professor droned on and on. If his excessively meticulous explanation of the

syllabus was any indication, this was going to be a long semester.

She looked around the room to find that she wasn't the only student struggling to

stay awake. In fact, one guy a few rows over had lost the battle entirely and had

happily embraced the concept of the afternoon siesta. The weather wasn't helping

things, either. As her gaze turned to the row of windows on the far side of the

room, she found herself entranced by the steady fall of rain as it pelted

rhythmically against the glass. Dark clouds had rolled in, making the afternoon

look more like early evening, and Bella started wondering what in the hell she

had been thinking by coming back to Washington.

She had spent the past four years of her undergrad in Florida, taking advantage

of her mother's residency status for the in-state tuition rates. She was tired,

though, of the oppressive heat, hurricane warnings, and those damn love bugs so

she decided, as an escape, she'd return to the state where she had spent the final

year and a half of high school.

She clearly didn't think it through; Bella had simply traded the sporadic Florida

downpours for the dreary steady rain of Seattle. At least in Florida, she only had

to deal with the storm for a whopping ten minutes before being treated to hours

of sunshine. Here, it could take days—sometimes weeks—before any evidence

was found that the sun even existed.

Maybe she should've gone back to Phoenix where it was nice and dry, she

thought.

A shuffle of papers brought her out of her thoughts, and Bella noticed that the

professor was starting to send more information around, seemingly finished

detailing the syllabus. She took the small pile from the student in front of her,

grabbed the top sheet for herself, and handed the rest behind her. She looked

down and quickly scanned the title of the article that he had copied before

promptly zoning out again.

She watched with her head resting on her open palm now as her pen rolled back

and forth across the surface of her desk. Though Bella had always tried to be

discreet about her unique ability to move things without touching them, she had

a bad habit of unthinkingly making small movements.

Her fingers—spanning the length of the pen—flexed up and down in a rolling

motion, but always staying an inch away. It was subtle; nobody ever thought

much of it if they had caught her. Her hand stayed close enough that should

someone see what she was really doing, it could be explained away as having

seen the action at a bad angle and it had simply appeared as though she wasn't

touching the pen. It was a believable lie and worked the few times Bella had been

caught; nobody ever thought to question her explanation. Who would believe

otherwise?

A small gasp from the next desk startled her. She slapped her hand over the pen,

immediately halting it in its place. Bella looked over to see a small girl with short,

almost black hair arranged in artful spikes. Had she been wearing the wrong

clothes and no make-up, the girl could've easily passed for someone in her early

teens, but Bella was sure that they had to be about the same age.

She was prepared to offer her canned response, but the look on the girl's face

stopped her before she could utter the first word. Her heart pounded in her chest

as a numb feeling washed over her while she pondered the implications. There

was recognition in her neighbor's eyes, and although there was no reason for

Bella to think that the girl could be certain of what she saw, she somehow knew

that her standard explanation wouldn't be blindly accepted.

Bella turned her head to face forward, looking at the professor but with her

attention focused intently on the person next to her. From the corner of her eye,

she could see the figure sitting stone still. The girl still hadn't taken her eyes off

of Bella, and the longer she gaped, the more unnerved Bella grew. She wanted to

lash out at her, she wanted to ask her what her problem was, and she wanted to

remind her that it was impolite to stare, but Bella was too scared of confronting

her and finding out that she hadn't been as discreet as she had thought. So

instead, Bella sat in her seat, unmoving, until the students were dismissed from

class.

She noticed that her hands were shaking as she stuffed her things back into her

messenger bag, and wondered if she was overreacting. Bella had always been

good with subtlety when she did use her gift, having learned over time how to

use smaller motions while concurrently increasing precision. There was no way

that this girl—this stranger—could've seen enough in that moment for Bella to

have given herself away.

She turned her head slightly so that she could watch the girl in her peripheral

vision as she slipped out of the room. Bella breathed a sigh of relief that the girl

didn't try to talk to her. For now, Bella would pretend that nothing had happened.

She would be extra careful in class to make sure that she didn't slip up again.

And if the girl did try to bring the subject up, Bella would attempt to convince her

that she had been seeing things.

Bella stood from her seat and pulled the strap of her messenger bag over her

head, settling it on her shoulder. Grasping at the strap where it crossed her

chest, she stepped quietly out the door of the classroom while her eyes darted

frantically in every direction, clearly anticipating an ambush.

Bella found the girl almost immediately, but she hadn't noticed Bella yet. She was

talking to a guy who was significantly taller than she was, almost comically so,

with wavy blonde hair and blue eyes only for her.

"I found her," the girl whispered loudly. Bella averted her eyes, unreasonably

afraid that the girl would feel the stare and turn her attention to Bella. She didn't

want the girl to know she was there, and she certainly didn't want her to know

that she was eavesdropping.

"Are you sure?" Bella heard him ask her at a normal volume.

"Absolutely. She's here." There was an excitement in her voice that in any other

context wouldn't have felt so foreboding.

Bella swallowed thickly, hoping that they weren't talking about her, but somehow

certain that they were. On shaky legs, she sped to the door and headed outside.

She didn't care that she was getting wet; her umbrella was gripped useless and

unopened in her hand as she rushed to the parking lot. She just needed to put

space between herself and the tiny girl from class.

The drive home was a complete blur; so much so, that Bella couldn't remember

how she got from the parking lot at the university to the parking lot at her

apartment complex. Her head was in a fog, her thoughts incoherent. She was

dazed and unsettled, and nothing made sense to her.

She simultaneously opened her car door and grabbed her bag from the passenger

seat, stepping right into a large puddle.

"Shit!" she yelled out as the water immediately soaked through her shoe. Using

that foot to launch herself over the puddle so that she could keep at least one

foot dry, she slammed the door behind her and tapped the lock button twice on

the fob as she sprinted to the front door.

Bella fumbled with her keys, dropping them in her haste as her hands grew

shakier by the minute. Paranoid, she looked over her shoulder and the feeling of

being watched crept up on her. She saw nothing, not a single person visible in

the complex. Her eyes attempted to focus beyond the tree line that signified the

beginning of the woods just past the far edge of the parking lot, but the steady

rain limited her range of vision.

Snatching the key ring from the ground and finding the right key, she jammed it

into the lock and forcefully swung the front door open causing it to slam into the

wall. She hurried inside, shutting the door behind her quickly and locking the

deadbolt. Her eyes trained on the doorknob as if expecting someone to try to

burst through at any moment, and she laughed at herself for allowing the

paranoia to take over.

Toeing her shoes off, Bella kicked them to the side in the entryway and peeled off

her socks, starting with the newly soaked one, and headed into her bedroom. She

dropped her bag onto the desk chair, and made her way to the closet so that she

could change into something dry.

The feeling of unease never dissipated from her, so after brushing the tangles

from her hair and pulling it into a ponytail, she began to make the rounds to each

of the windows in the apartment making sure each one was locked. The sliding

glass door leading to the back patio unnerved her with how much access it gave

to her apartment when the blinds were open. She moved quickly toward the

door, checking the locks and tugging at the strings of the vertical blinds to give

her some semblance of privacy. Of everything she was feeling, the impression of

being exposed—wide open for all of her secrets to be seen—was the most

unsettling.

In the few weeks that Bella had lived in this apartment she had enjoyed the

solitude. For four years she had shared her living space with roommates—first in

the dorms, and then in off campus housing. It was nice not having to dodge

someone else's mess, or have to go to the library to study just so she could have

quiet. Today, though, the silence was stifling. She felt trapped in her own head as

she ran through various scenarios revolving around that girl from class and what

her words could have meant.

I found her.

She had to have been talking about Bella. It was too much of a coincidence that

she would react the way she did and minutes later make that announcement. But

why was she looking for me? Bella thought. How did she know who I was? What

did it all mean?

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