The Hunter and the Hunted

"That is the 'thing' we've been hunting? Doesn't seem too dangerous," Benny continued.

"You've seen what it is capable of. Let's finish this right now." I zoned out and saw myself lying on the floor in a pool of blood that had run from a bullet wound in my head. 'So, this is how it ends,' I thought. My visions of the future weren't necessarily accurate. They showed a possible future, the future as it might be if I didn't alter the present. Unfortunately, I wasn't in a position to alter much of anything just then.

"Now wait a moment," Neil interfered, surprising both Pierre and me.

"What, shrink? I have waited too long for this moment. What do you want?"

"We've been sent here to capture our target, not to kill."

"So what? I don't give a shit. I want to kill that thing, so that's what I'm going to do."

"No, you're not."

I was as surprised as Pierre to see the gun placed on Pierre's temple. I would have loved to enter his head to see what this was about, but didn't dare to leave my own.

"You're kidding, huh?"

"I'm afraid not, Pierre. This is not our mission, and it's murder. I'm not going to condone this."

"I shouldn't have given you that gun, shrink. It's not healthy for you. Benny, kill the bastard."

Benny looked at his gun, which he had leaned against the wall, probably to use both hands to pick the lock.

"I'm quicker, Benny," Neil said, sounding surprisingly cool.

"Shrink, put down that gun, huh? I might let you live."

"No deal, Pierre. You're going to kill me anyway."

I briefly looked into Pierre's mind before looking at Neil again. Our eyes met for a magical second, making my stomach tingle in a way it had never before. I knew that he felt the same thing, even without having to look into his mind. Finally, I nodded to him to confirm Pierre's plans. Of course, he had no idea that I wasn't just guessing.

"Benny, go to the back of the room, please."

"Fuck yourself, bastard."

"Benny, you can do it or I will have to kill Pierre, right now, and you afterwards. I won't enjoy it, but I will do what's necessary."

"Do it, Benny. The fucking bastard's gone crazy."

Reluctantly, Benny moved into position.

"Give her your gun, Pierre," he said, pointing at me.

"The fuck will I."

"Pierre. I'm trying to save your life here. I'm really trying hard, but you have to cooperate a bit."

Pierre looked at Neil with what seemed like a new found respect.

"You better kill me now, because if you don't, I will kill you."

"I like to believe that I still have a bit of decency left. I am doing this to prevent a murder, so it would be absurd to murder you now. I'm trying to save your life and avoid sinking onto your level. I really hope that we can come to an agreement where we can all walk away from this mess."

Pierre thought about it briefly, nodded and handed me the heavy gun. I usually avoided guns like the plague, but this time it was necessary. Then it hit me. Neil had changed a future that I had seen in one of my visions. Nobody had ever done that before, apart from me. I knew that I would spend sleepless nights over how that was possible, but that would have to wait until later.

"The lock picking stuff. Benny, give it to her."

Ah. 'Her.' He had intentionally said 'her,' twice, not 'it.' Finally. Someone, anyone had said it. I was not a thing anymore. Neil had treated me like a human with just that one word. Tears stung my eyes, and despite the tense situation, all three men looked at me in wonder.

Benny finally snapped out of his reverie to hand me his lock picking set.

"You still have the key to this door?" Neil asked me, and I just nodded.

He addressed his two companions, "Okay, this is how we're going to do it. We will let you live if you aren't suddenly overwhelmed by a dumbness attack. We will take your guns and the lock picking set. Both of you give me your Glocks, please. Thank you, kind sirs. You will eventually get the others to free you. You can either go home and live, or you can try to find us."

"Asshole."

"Pierre, you remember how things ended against her by herself? She will have me to support her, now."

I almost started to cry again upon hearing those words. Never in my whole life had anyone supported me in any way. Benny saw it and looked at me with surprising compassion. I was glad that Neil had decided to let him live.

"Pierre, I really don't want to kill you. I need your word that you will leave us alone."

"Okay, okay. We'll go home."

Officially, they had come to an agreement. I knew that Pierre was lying. Neil knew that Pierre was lying. We both thought that Pierre was a ruthless murderer. If Neil shot him now, it would be the easiest solution. The problem was that Neil wouldn't be better than the pond scum, Pierre, in any way then. He, too, would be a liar and a murderer. Taking the moral high ground might cost us our lives later, but from what I had seen of Neil, there was no way to avoid it. He was a good person and he wanted to remain so, even if it cost him his life.

"Let's go," Neil just said, and like a child, I followed him out of the room. He locked the door, silencing the swearing Pierre inside. "Where do we go now?"

"I have another hiding place in the tunnels."

"Hmmm, I don't like that. That's a trap. There's only one exit from the mine, right?" I just nodded. "No, that won't work. They have all kinds of explosives. All they have to do is to blow up the exit and they have us. You have some telepathic abilities, right?"

"Yes."

"Can you use them now?"

"No, not in here. The steel seems to shield it. Back in the laboratory, my abilities were limited as well, but I never knew why. It was underground, and there was a lot of steel there, too."

"You will have to tell me all about it later. You can sense what's inside this room?"

We were in the main room, which was basically just one big space with a lot of staircases.

"There's no one else in here. I can't sense Benny and Pierre though."

"Understood. If we go to that balcony, can you sense the others? We left Erik and Aaron outside."

"Probably."

"Let's go."

We cautiously moved onto the balcony and even Neil's abilities were sufficient to sense those two. They were right in front of us, lazily sitting on a block of concrete, catching some sun and keeping their injured feet elevated. We silently went back inside.

"There's another exit from this building, Neil."

"Okay. Where do we go from there?"

"Back into town. I shouldn't have come here. I kind of panicked. I have many hiding places in the city. It's my home turf."

"Okay."

We started our way back, avoiding the front of the mine building. We were still on the run, so me moved at a brisk pace. Still, it gave us some time to get acquainted. It felt good. It felt so damn good to have a friend.

"What's your name, by the way?"

"F," I simply said.

"F, like the letter?" I just nodded. "That won't do. Every human needs a proper name. Did you have a name when you were a child?"

"I don't remember anything before the laboratory."

He looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

"How about Effie?"

"Okay," I simply said, but I don't think that I'd ever been so happy. A name. For me. That seemed like the last missing piece to becoming human. Unable to resist, I looked into his mind, wanting to see how he perceived me. I saw him looking at me and seeing a young woman. He saw me as frail, but attractive. My heart soared upon seeing this. He thought that I needed a haircut and seeing me through his eyes, I couldn't have agreed more. I was soaking up his appreciation.

"Hey!" he suddenly complained and I shrank back from his mind. "I felt that."

"You... what?"

"You were inside my mind, right?"

"You noticed that?"

"Yes. I could look into yours while you did it. Did you know that?"

"No." I was a bit shocked. "That has never happened before."

He just laughed.

"You're beautiful, you know that?"

"Oh, come on. I need to wash, I need a haircut..."

"Oh, you are definitely beautiful, physically. I was talking about your mind, though."

I was pleased, but not used to having someone else inside my head, and somewhat annoyed. "What gives you the right..." I started before I realized the absurdity of the accusation. I had entered his mind out of curiosity, and had inadvertently given him the ability to look into mine, in return. I could hardly blame him for that. What was going on here? Was he something special, or would everybody enter my head at will from now on?

"I'm afraid that I've seen a lot in a very short time. I like what I saw, Effie. I mean, your mind, not what happened to you. So, you have two abilities." I just nodded. "You can read other people's minds and see the future?"

"Yes, and I can mildly influence others. I can trigger things that they want to happen anyway. Neil, when you say it, it sounds so easy. It is not. I know that I've become some kind of legend in some people's minds, some kind of uber-monster. That is greatly exaggerated. Yes, I can read other people's minds if they are near enough. I have no problem being in yours, but Pierre's for example: it's pure filth. I lose a part of me every time I enter such a cesspool. I'm not some kind of super hero."

"I see."

"And the future thing is a bit dicey, as well. I think it works like this. The future is not set in stone. What I see is a future as it would most probably happen if I don't change it. So, if I see that a truck will hit me, I just don't cross the street and it won't happen. Other people don't have that information. The truck driver can't see the future, so he won't slow down. He has no idea that something is going to happen, so he has no chance to change the outcome. As nobody is warned, everyone keeps doing what they were about to do, turning the possible future into a real one."

"I see. Still pretty impressive. I've never heard about abilities like these."

"No reason to be awed. My powers are very limited, I've just used them cleverly. I've never seen anything that's more that about 30 minutes in the future. And if I'd bet on a horse race, I think I would already change the future."

"Have you tried it? All you might change are the odds."

"No, I haven't. Have you seen my memories of the laboratory?"

"Just a glimpse. I didn't want to pry."

Damn, he was more decent than I was. I never had shown any such scruples.

"Well, my first memory is one of being strapped to a table in a laboratory with the face of Dr. Orlov staring down at me. To this day, I have no idea who owns that lab, who he worked for or where I came from. I spent some unspeakable time inside there. One day, our dear Pierre, who worked there as security, kind of stole me. Inside the lab rooms, my abilities were quite limited. I could not really enter other people's minds, just vaguely sense things and I couldn't see the future, maybe because of the spatial limitation. I get weak and claustrophobic in small rooms, especially when there's a lot of steel around. I'm not good inside cars either."

"Wow."

I was surprised by my own loquacity, but it was so good to let it all out.

"Well, Pierre smuggled me out of the lab. Once we were in the open, I could unfold my full potential for the first time. You've seen how it works. I look into minds and see what people plan to do. I can set traps according to it. For instance, I looked into the future and knew exactly where Erik would step. I placed a knife there, and he stepped right on it. It's easy if I have enough time and space and can stay on top of things. Once I'm put on the defensive, I'm lost."

He smiled at me. It felt good. I don't think that I had seen a genuine smile before. I wanted to kiss him, but was afraid I would drive him away.

"Anyway, I've been on the run since then." I didn't want to tell him everything right then, especially about Pierre. Not because I didn't trust him, but because I didn't want to drive him away. He obviously hadn't looked around inside my head very thoroughly. "Being on the run is not as difficult as it sounds if you have my abilities. I know the combinations of locks, I know where people hide things, I know what they will do. I tried not to steal from normal people, but I had no choice but to live on stolen goods and money."

"Why do you think Pierre is still hunting you down?"

Difficult question. I wasn't too sure about it either and I didn't want to tell him about that dark spot in my past. It was just too embarrassing.

"I defeated their first search party. Quite thoroughly. Don't ask for details, please. They were cruel, dumb and arrogant. None of them returned."

I watched his reaction, but to my relief, he seemed unfazed. He had really fascinating green eyes. His entire face was somehow alluring...

"I see," he interrupted my beginning adoration.

"I guess they found out that Pierre was involved in my escape and kindly asked him to repair the damage he'd done. I never wanted to look into his brain longer than strictly necessary but I saw that they gave him two options. One was to get a lot of money, survive and find me. The other included none of those things. It definitely helped motivate him. Pierre had smuggled me out of the lab to sell me to someone else. I don't know to whom. A government, a company, I don't know. I have no idea if his current employers are those guys, or Orlov's organization. I don't even know what Orlov's organization is. I found no indication that Pierre knows any of these things himself."

"I see. All of that makes sense, but what do they really want? They will never really be able to control you. I see how your abilities might be valuable, but I can't see you cooperating."

"You're right, that's not what they need me for. I'm pretty sure that they were working on some kind of equipment, I have no idea what. Have you ever had one of those old TV sets? Most of the time it's just static, but sometimes a picture appears. You try to understand what it is, but it's already gone?"

"What? No, ours always worked fine. Well, we had a broken remote once... Ah, I see what you mean."

"Shortly before Pierre stole me, I had experiences like that. Somebody was able to enter my mind. Very briefly, though. Not long enough to really see anything, I think. Still, it was scary as hell. They were getting better. They tried all kinds of detectors around me. They wanted to understand my ability. I'm pretty sure that they were trying to build machines to emulate my abilities."

"A government could rule the world with shit like that."

"Maybe, I don't know. If someone can do it, I guess others will learn it soon enough. The only thing that really changes is that privacy is a thing of the past. Yes, I know," I interrupted him, "I'm the worst of them all. I have an excuse, though. I'm fighting for my life, here."

He held up his hands in the universal peace gesture and I loved him for not judging me.

"Anyway, from what I saw in their minds, their machine worked only on me. Some kind of connection is already established with my brain. Some gate is opened in my head that is closed in other people's."

"That sounds pretty useless."

"Right. Maybe that's why they need to have me back. I'm not exactly sure why they feel the need to kill me, though. There is obviously more than one organization involved. At least one of them might see me as a threat that needs to be removed."

We walked on in silence for a while until curiosity got the best of me. I felt like I needed to know more about him, but I didn't just want to take a look around in his head. That would have been disrespectful.

"So how did you get into this sordid mess?" I finally asked.

"Umm, I'm a bit embarrassed that I took the field with the wrong team. I have a reputation as a negotiation expert. By chance, I came across and prevented two suicides, which made it into the papers. That was enough for the city to ask me to help with a bank robbery gone awry. The police had a specialist for that stuff, but he had the disadvantage of being an ignorant idiot.

"It kind of snowballed after that. It seems that nobody is really keen on putting their ass on the line in such situations. People were going to die if they failed. Even worse, the publicity might ruin their careers. My trick was to not think about it. Besides, I never wanted a career in the police business, so I had nothing to lose.

"I did okay, mainly because I listened to what people had to say. Those were always very dramatic situations and most of them really wanted to talk. Most were just in a state of mind that made them hard to understand. Once I managed to do that, the rest was usually easy. Most people in extreme stress situations are desperately looking for help.

"I still think that what I did was way overrated, but I earned some money with it. Well, maybe not all that much, but at least more than I earned at the university as a junior professor. That job turned out to be not just boring, but also grossly underpaid. I'm still deeply in debt for my student loans.

"Then some mysterious organization contacted me. 'Travel the world at our expense, handle a few negotiations while you're there, and get a ridiculous amount of money.' That didn't sound too bad. Of course, I had some doubts, but I really needed the money.

"We were never told what to expect. That caused the soldier boys' imaginations to run wild. Fantasies turned into rumors and into stories told at the camp fire. You wouldn't believe what kind of creature you've been in their minds. A powerful predator, an alien, even Bigfoot was discussed seriously."

I laughed when I heard that and showed him my tiny feet. He showed me that sweet, unassuming smile again.

"Looking back, I think my presence was some kind of fig leaf. The whole thing was probably planned by some kind of committee and someone decided that it shouldn't look like a straight execution."

I nodded while we made our way to retreat number seven in an old industrial building in silence.

We both managed to get some much-needed sleep, pretending we were safe behind two heavy locked steel doors. The mattress was damp, the food was old, our prospects were more than questionable, but the company was awesome. After having fallen asleep without any bodily contact, I woke up in the middle of the night with my head on his shoulders.

My first reaction was to punch him out for this, but quickly realized that it wasn't his fault I put my head there. I sighed as deeply as I ever had, listened to his heart beat and relaxed immediately. There wasn't just a physical connection, but our minds had begun to intertwine. I sensed this, but had no idea what it meant. I didn't like new or unknown things, but this one failed to bother me.

Surprisingly content, I went back to sleep.

I felt their presence. They were coming nearer. Something was different, this time. I knew it unsettled Neil to watch me mindlessly staring through the cracks of the blind wire glass window. I couldn't help it, though. Panic was beginning to block me and that might be deadly for me, and even worse, for Neil.

Shit.

This wasn't good. Someone "saw" me. Someone knew how to find me. I couldn't "see" him, though. It should be the other way around.

"What's up?" he finally asked.

"They're coming."

"Pierre?"

"Probably."

"What? I thought you... I mean, come on..."

"Pretty bad, huh? I was almighty when I wasn't on your team. Now that I am, I can't do shit. I feel completely vulnerable. Sorry."

"Well, yeah... What about looking into the future?"

"Nothing. I can't find a single thread."

"Damn."

"I have no idea what happens here, Neil. I'm as frightened as you are. I know that they are coming, but I can't enter their minds."