If cats could talk, they wouldn't.
- Nan Porter
Matsen retrieved something from a bag behind me and returned to Fred's drooping form. He grabbed Fred roughly by the hair and pulled his head back with his left hand. In his right hand he held a small atomizer and sprayed something into Fred's face. Letting Fred's head drop again, he moved on to Markham and Joy, bound in chairs next to each other.
Suddenly his head snapped up and his eyes were wide open. His face turned red and he strained against the bonds as every muscle tensed for a second. Just as quickly he relaxed again, his head falling forward. He was panting heavily.
"Hey!" Matsen cried.
I looked over in time to see Joy going through the same relaxing phase after the tension. Markham, on the other hand, was still in the midst of the tension phase, with her legs sticking straight out from the chair. Apparently in his hurry, Matsen had neglected to bind her legs, and this had earned him a violent kick in the back from the semi-conscious Markham. She was a powerful woman, and tensed like this, she could have delivered a killing blow with a single kick. If Matsen had just been a little closer, she would have broken his spine. Sometimes the fates do not favor me.
If that makes me sound cruel, so be it. I expected no mercy at the hands of this little mercenary, and the sooner the station was rid of him, the better off humanity would be. I decided then and there to find the particular decanting plant that produced this unsavory family and see what I could do about halting production.
My three companions were groaning as they came to full consciousness. Matsen was prone on the floor, slowly rising to his knees. He tried to reach around to rub his back, but Markham had kicked him in the one place where the human body is not built to reach. Perhaps he could get tips on reaching that spot from his toasted brother.
"Why have you done this?" I asked hoarsely.
I heard the clicking of footsteps behind me and then my hair was grabbed and my head pulled roughly backwards. I felt the sharp cold of a blade against my neck, and gasped as it was drawn lightly and steadily across my throat. I could feel the fire from the cut and the heat of the blood trickling down into my shirt.
"Next time," Mr. Jones' voice whispered in my ear, "I will put pressure on the blade and you will finally cease to annoy me with your incessant yammering. No questions, no talking. Don't. Even. Move."
I held still, and she threw my head forward, once again igniting the fire in my shoulder. I breathed through it, slowly and with great effort regaining control of my pulse and clearing the tears of pain from my eyes.
I looked up again, and noted that Fred, Markham and Joy were all awake and watching me. Apparently I was looking pretty rough, if I were to judge by Fred's look of concern. They were all silent however. I looked each of them in the eye in turn and nodded.
We were all students of the same teacher once. That was all a decade ago or more, but the training had stuck. As the senior student, I was always acknowledged as being the first among the followers, and when we needed to speak as a group, it was through my voice.
The eye contact and the nod were the cue for them to enter into the Finding trance. We all needed to be disconnected from our own pain and emotional responses to be sure to master the situation, whatever it was. A single Finder in the zone was a formidable opponent. Four of them together has simply never happened before, outside of the school. I wasn't sure of what we were capable of though, so I couldn't really estimate how much power we could bring into play. We could be a very effective, very dangerous foe. Except for the small fact that we were all bound and in various states of injury.
I clicked into the trance immediately. My previous struggle to enter this state was gone. Even before Joanie's murder, I had been able to enter this state more quickly and more solidly than any who followed. It only took a moment for me to realize that the difference was my team. They needed me now. It felt weird thinking of them as a team. Dysfunctional to the extreme, but a team nonetheless. I only hoped I hadn't come to this realization too late to do us any good.
As an interesting aside, I had now acquired the ability to step in and out of it at will, without referencing the vortex, or Joanie, at all. I didn't have the time to ponder this, though if I survived, I would have to figure out why this was possible.
I looked over at Fred. Surrounding him were solid bands of light smoke, the impact of his presence and personality on his relationships with his team, his friends, his wife. I watched for a moment as he struggled to find his center and enter the trance. It was like a flickering picture from a broken vid screen, briefly coming alive before going black again. I could see from the tension on his face and the beads of sweat forming on his forehead that he was trying, but the fact was that he was trying too hard. Even if he achieved the trance, the force of his effort would shatter it. I wanted to tell him to relax and let it happen, but he wasn't looking at me, and I couldn't say anything.
I didn't know where Mr. Jones was, and I was fully convinced that she was keeping me alive for a single reason. That reason was not powerful enough to guarantee my life under all circumstances, of that I was sure. So I kept my peace and left him to his struggle.
I looked over to Markham and Joy. Markham had the same serene look that she always carried, so it was difficult to know if she was trancing or not, but my guess would have been that she was. Joy had dropped her usual fiery spirit in favor of a calm, controlled state, and was watching the proceedings with a vague disinterest. She too was in the zone.
Watching, I could see the maelstrom between them, steady and spinning and drawing cause and effect into its black center. Small, nearly imperceptible twitches, the angle of their bodies with reference to each other, the studied way their eyes were positioned so that each was barely within the field of vision of the other, the breath that caught lightly at the throat.
There was still someone missing from our little party.
"Gregson," Mr. Jones said, breaking my reverie, right on cue. "It's about bloody time you showed up. I am getting tired of doing your dirty work. Here are your precious Finders. You said you had Leena, so where is she?"
Gregson step into the semi-circle formed by our four chairs. He hadn't aged well. His hair was still the same steel gray, but his face was haggard from what might have been poor nutrition or lack of sleep, or both for all I knew. He was never a big man, but now he was positively emaciated. His tall skeletal frame was draped, rather than clothed, with what looked like a waiter's uniform. It was dirty and wrinkled.
He raised his bone thin hands in front of him and rotated slowly. He experienced the flow through tactile impressions, unlike my visual and auditory approach.
Facing Markham and Joy, he moved his hands through the air, feeling the individual strands of cause and effect flow past him. A crooked smile cracked across his face. That was the one thing he could never change, that smile of satisfaction when something he had undertaken had succeeded. I should have known back then that his look of smug self-satisfaction overlay a much darker mind. But that was a lesson that had taken years for me to learn.
He turned to Fred, once again weaving his hands through the air, seeking the flow Fred was connecting to. Fred sat there, unmoving, with his head dropped down onto his chest. Finally Gregson let his hands drop.
"Oh, Fereydoon." he said, his voice a whisper. "You were always such a disappointment to me."
Fred looked up, his face lit with a broad smile. "Well, thanks for that, master! I think that is the nicest thing someone has said to me in a while. My heavens, you look like hell. Are feeling ok? Sick perhaps? Dying I hope? Seeing you like this has made my whole day!"
Gregson stood there, impassive and unmoved. "I will be sure to pass on you final words to Alice. And to your daughter."
Then he turned to me.
"Well, murderer," he said to me, his voice dark, "is this our time? Shall I finally take my vengeance upon you for the destruction and death of my daughter, my only child? Shall you now pay for Joan's death?"
I just stared back at it him, one incongruous thought floating through my mind. Fred was right, we Finders were bloody melodramatic when the mood hit us.