Part 2
[Break Out!] The demand crashes into your fragile mind and you know in an instant of total clarity that the voices are demanding no more of you than is necessary.
[Link your mind to ours,] The woman soothes you. [Imagine a flower with its petals opening to a golden sun. Imagine a seed within you germinating and sprouting with new life. Open your mind to us. Let us in.]
You feel others behind her as you do what she asks of you. It never occurs to you to rebel or refuse. You accept the images the others are projecting and become one with the child seeking escape from the womb that has nourished and protected it. You become one with the clenched fist as it slowly opens.
The feelings come slowly at first and then in a near overwhelming rush. You're aware of other people now, individuals far away and yet with all their attention resting on you. You're aware too of the fierce territorial pride of the birds singing in the trees and of the quiet stealth of the cat stalking its prey just a few metres away. You are adrift on a tide of newly discovered senses and it takes you several moments to realise that you are lying on your back in a deserted alleyway, your bike lying a metre or so away, it's front tyre still spinning.
[Who are you?] That's the man's voice and it's sharp and still anxious but buoyed on a great flood of relief.
[Jay.] You tell him automatically. [I'm Jay.]
[Tell us where you are, Jay.] The woman urges. [We'll come to you, explain everything.]
You struggle to your feet, aching all over and begin to pull your bike upright.
[This is too weird.] You're not aware of vocalising the thought until another voices, a younger one, agrees.
[That's what we all thought. Show us where you are, Jay, and one of us will jaunt over there and bring you back here.]
[Bring me back there?] You feel suspicion stirring within you. [Jaunt? I don't understand what any of this means!] Something within you is telling you that you can trust these people but at the same time that makes you edgy. You can feel the barriers they have up to stop you reading their minds and you're confusion is now verging on hysteria. [How do I know I can trust you? You could be using some kind of Jedi Mind Trick or something on me!]
[Jedi Mind Trick?] The man asks blankly.
[It's from Star Wars, John.] The younger voice supplies. [He means he doesn't trust us.]
[But why not?] The woman demands anxiously.
[Well, it is all a little hard to take in.] The man, John, comments. [I seem to recall that you didn't believe us at first either, Liz.] He pauses. [Look, Jay, why don't you give us the name of somewhere close by and we'll send some friends of ours to meet you. If you trust them, perhaps you'll come and meet the rest of us?]
You chose a park for your first meeting with the strange people in your head or the people they sent. You look around the familiar trees, already trying to work out the best direction to run in should it come to that. You're edgy, nervous. The headache is gone and you know that it will never return but your new senses bombard you with sounds you can't hear and sights you can't see. You can feel the children playing at the other end of the park. You can hear the dog prowling through the trees off to one side.
A jeep pulls up to the gates of the park, its canvas a rich camouflage green. You watch as two men climb out and you know, without having to ask that they've come for you. One is tall, blond, a little younger than his companion. The other is shorter, bulkier, with ginger in his hair and sideburns. Both look wary and ready for action although the leather-clad elder man is the more cautious. He moves with the predatory prowl of someone accustomed to having to fight for what they want. The younger man is more open somehow, and he moves with the instinctive grace of a martial artist. You've seen enough of Bruce Lee's films to recognise that even if you are technically too young to have seen them legally.
"Is that him, Chris?" The elder of the men asks, nodding towards you as they approach.
"I'd guess so, Ginge. From the way the kids described him."
The elder man's voice is thick with an East London accent and while it is there in the younger man's voice too, it is weaker. Still neither sound threatening and you stay where you are, leaning against a tall beach tree, as they approach.
"Hey, kid. Are you Jay?" Ginge asks in a low, tense voice. You back away slightly from this intimidating man.
"Back off, Ginge." The other man tells him with a shove. "Can't you see the kid's scared?"
"I'm not scared." You declare angrily.
"Look, whatever you say, kid." The man shrugs. "But you are Jay, aren't you?" You nod cautiously. "Right, well I'm Chris and this is my brother, Ginge. We're friends of the Tomorrow People."
You put the name 'Tomorrow People' aside for a moment. It's only natural that whoever it was you spoke to earlier had a name for themselves. The question is, can you trust these men to tell you about it?
"You don't sound or look much like brothers." You say, looking from the scruffy man in biker leathers to his smarter, taller companion.
"Yeah, well the kid here is too brainy for his own good, isn't he?" Ginge tells you with an elbow into Chris's ribs. "Our folks sent him to a posh school where they taught him to speak proper as they call it. It don't sound natural to me."
"I can speak any way I want to." Chris argued and this time his voice has the same thick accent as his brother's. "I just don't want to sound common all the time, do I?" He added, the accent slipping back to its normal background level. You nod. Only a pair of brothers or very good friends could bicker as these two do.
"Anyhow," Chris continued. "John said that you might find the pair of us less threatening than one of them, what with you being new to all this and not having any telepathic shields and suchlike. So, kid, now you've seen us, do you want to come to the Lab?"
"I...I'm not sure." You admit.
"Look, Jay." Ginge says, and now his voice is soft. "I know you don't have any reason to but you must believe me. These kid's aren't going to do you any harm. They've saved my life more than once. They can help you."
"They've saved me too." Chris adds. "They've saved you too if you only knew about it."
Still uncertain, you hesitate.
"You can look in my head if you want to." Chris tells you suddenly. Ginge stares at him and begins to back away.
"Oh no." He says, laughing humourlessly. "Oh no, oh no, oh no. I'm not having anyone poking around inside my brain again." His brother fixes him with a glare and with a rueful sigh Ginge's resolve crumbles. "Oh all right then. if you must."
"Concentrate." Chris urges. "You can see that we're telling the truth."
Almost without thinking about it you begin to reach out. You can see their minds as hazy, tumbling balls of energy and instinctively you know what to do. The glass door that keep you and the brothers apart swings open as you approach and then your mind is touching theirs and you can see truth and lies, good memories and bad for what they are. Large in the memories of both men loom a series of faces. Young faces, open faces, each with smiles and serious looks mingled upon them. With each face and each grouping of faces is associated a set of images like a movie in miniature. From Chris you see the madness of fighting that swept all the schools just a few years back when you were a junior and know that somehow the faces stopped it. You see Roman soldiers and a strange, shiny time that you somehow know is here although it's not the world you know. Again you see that Chris's friends put all the world to rights. From Ginge you experience the horror of mind control, a figure dressed in white robes, a shining robot and a cage in space. And you see a growing pulsating creature and you know it's after you. It will feed on you unless you can run away, get away.
You stagger backwards, breaking the contact that all three of you have shared and leaving the two men pale and shaken. You look from side to side, trying to escape the creature.
"Jay," Ginge shouts. "Jay, it's not here. The Tomorrow People got rid of it. Jay, it's okay!"
You look from one to the other with nervous eyes and try and quell the panic rising within you. For all you know they could be bringing that creature here while you're distracted, using it to hunt you down. Do you believe them?
Do you:
a) Refuse to believe Chris and Ginge?
b) Believe and go with them?
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