[Author's note: I decided to use mind-talk in a dialogue-form, enclosed in " " to ensure you can see the difference between thoughts and thought-conversation.]
Chapter 7.1 – 26 November – Determination
* * * * * * * * * *
She had tracked him down on campus. It hadn't been too hard to do so, but she wanted to know more about him. About what kind of guy he was, about his life and most of all, if she should
fear
him.
He hadn't noticed her ability back then at Daniel's. She didn't know whether he knew about her or her ability and she hadn't been able to find out either. He had already learned to shield his mind from others, which meant that he wasn't new at this game. And people who had this ability were either friendly or dangerous, but always cautious. She needed to know which one he was and how much she had to watch herself.
She hadn't needed to keep him in sight, but she thought it'd be useful if she at least had an idea of how he functioned in the group of friends. Was he mindful? Was he brash? He seemed like a friendly guy last night, but appearances could deceive. She had experienced that too often unfortunately. So now she was scouting.
He was sitting in the cafetaria – not the place she
wanted
to be due to the many thoughts and conversations disrupting her concentration – and he had company. She recognized them from yesterday: Jenny, Richard and one more she hadn't met before. And to her amazement this one had her guard up as well.
I hadn't expected to find
one
, but now I've already found
two
people with abilities. This might turn out to be more dangerous than I thought. Could it be that they are agents trying to look for me? Or is it merely coincidence that they're here? A mighty curious coincidence having two of them at the same table though.
She decided to probe the other guy first, to not attract attention to herself as she almost had done with Vincent last night. Richard didn't give up much useful information; he'd been friends with Vincent since a few months and they had hung out together often. He didn't know about his ability though.
Jenny gave up much more interesting information, although Talitha discovered that her mind had a slight barrier around it. Jenny had only recently found out about his ability and apparently she was the only one whose mind Vincent could read.
Now that's a new one,
she thought.
He can only read her thoughts and noone else's? Now that's a curious limitation.
She learned about their history, how he had got to know her online and how they had become friends – and continued that offline – and eventually even hooked up. They had become an item.
Now that's some trust. He can read her mind and she is okay with that despite not being able to read his. Either she's naive, or she's really in love with him, so much that she's willing to give it all up.
.
Another thought crossed her mind, a more unsettling one.
Or he has subdued her and made sure that she doesn't deny her feelings for him, effectively enslaving her.
That was new to her too. She had never imagined using her ability in that way to snatch herself a boyfriend. Then again, she'd never really had the luxury to think about a normal life with a boyfriend. But the mere thought made her tense; she wondered if they had tried to do a similar thing to her back home.
She had only discovered the first glimpses of her ability when she became fourteen and it had mostly rendered her useless, with headaches and other illnesses. By the time she turned fifteen, she had realized what her ability meant – that she picked up thoughts from others. She had told her parents – back then she still had both – and not long after she had realized the mistake.
Her father, CEO of a company, saw her potential as a valuable asset to his company. His company was losing the battle with a competitor bit by bit and he thought it would be a real good chance if she could peek in the boardroom meetings from said competitor. It would give him insight and the ability to prepare before the other company could launch a campaign or a product which would render his own useless – or at least less interesting.
At first she had agreed, willing to help her father's company felt like a good idea and making sure that he wouldn't lose his job – or the company as a whole – seemed to be a good cause. Everyone makes mistakes.
She hadn't yet turned sixteen when her conscience started gnawing at her. The realization that when his company wouldn't go belly-up meant that his competitor would. She would be responsible for singlehandedly making a lot of people go hunting for unemployment. She had talked to her father, tried to talk him out of it. He wouldn't have any of it. And she was starting to see her father change, from near-desperation, trying to save his company to eager to crush his competitor and reveling in his power of overseeing. A man who had been drinking from the beaker of defeat and then managed nipping at the beaker of victory. He wasn't nipping anymore. He was
bathing
in it.
She had been a
captive
of his. Not in terms of chains, but in terms of parenthood. He was her father. He knew best. Talitha had never been one to speak up, to rebel, so she endured. But day by day she found herself more against the things her father wanted from her. She wasn't the only one; his wife, her mother, left. She hadn't been eightteen yet and her mother had suddenly disappeared one day. She had cried, wondering why she hadn't been taken along because she didn't want this life her father had in mind for her, wondering why her mother had left her behind.
But with her age and length, her ability had also grown. She had reached out and sought the reason for her mother's sudden disappearance. Her father should know the reason. And he knew, she found out. He had known that her mother had also started to grow a conscience and had put the pressure on
her
. Eventually, after multiple threats not only involving her, but also her daughter –
his
daughter – she decided that being away from him would be the better option. She fled.
She didn't get far. Once her husband knew of her treachery, he had her tracked down and
put down
. He got away with it. She never even knew the woman was dead until she had probed her father. That was the time when she decided that this wasn't the man she once loved. And that this
definitely
wasn't the one she wanted to aid in saving his company. So she fled as well.
He had tracked her down a few times by regular means. Missing person's, known associates with the law, private detectives. She had been caught a few times, but she had always escaped by using her ability. By now she had found out that while she could read minds, she could also
alter
them – make people believe the things she wanted them to believe.
Once she had been captured and brought back home, she had done intentionally so she could use her ability on her father. But something was wrong; she couldn't read his mind anymore. It would take her a while before she would find out why that was, but by then she had escaped already and had been on the run for almost a year. He had found others with her ability and employed some of them to protect himself. With power came paranoia after all.
She discovered that these people could track her down faster, easier. She adopted different aliases which didn't work well enough. Then she tried to manage shielding herself from trackers. That worked – for a while. So this time she decided to go farther away, getting more distance between them. Not staying in places, just moving and moving until she had enough distance.
And now she had discovered that there were people with abilities here. At the university she enrolled. It wasn't odd that she wasn't all that thrilled about meeting others who might be affiliated with these people who were tracking her down. So she had to take the first shot. She had to make sure that they were not there to rat out on her. And for the first time she wondered if they weren't on
his