Syafa was glad Saari finally left. She needed full concentration on the young executive from Finance, to see exactly what he had planned.
It was only yesterday she read developing in his mind a plan to siphon part of a government's grant into his own pocket. In his thoughts the name of a woman from Radian who could help him pull it off without anyone the wiser. She caught the name of the woman but couldn't pry further with Bernice crying out for help from Saari with the Kejoria matrix reprogramming.
Syafa had smiled to herself when she read about Bernice predicament in Saari's thoughts. She should have been the one handling the mundane task of resetting the Kejoria's bandwidth's energy grids. A task she loves since it allowed her to be away from the suffocating intimacy of thoughts in the Mentari Jingga tower. Saari directed for a change in the roster when he found out later the contract technician had to wait out the process with her. It cost her a much-relished weekly break at the lush green surrounding of the Kejoria public park and urban forest reserve.
She was inside the prayer room when her older colleague called Saari. She had mind probed Bernice and found her to have no inkling whatsoever where to start with the codes written out in her notebook. Alone, Syafa cast herself into Bernice's mind and assumed control of the older colleague's limbs. Sure, she could place a call, but Syafa knew it was much faster this way. And she could imprint the codes within Bernice at the same time.
It was during the reprogramming she detected the increasingly lusty and malevolent thoughts building in the accompanying technician who was with Bernice. A different person than the jolly and highly amicable but older guy who had been with her.
This one was ready to play out his torrid fantasies for real. She had loosened her hold on Bernice's mind slightly to slip into the young man's, intending to dissuade him. Instead, she found within him pedophiliac tendencies and the experiences of acting them out. She saw in his mind thoughts of ravaging Bernice, uncaring of her pleas to stop.
For the umpteenth time of her life, Syafa decided some people should just cease to exist and proceeded to wipe out the young man's mind. And in doing so, finding more in masses of depraved memories which sickened her so much that all reasonings just took flight. Told herself she'd sort her sins out with God later. Syafa was thus relieved to discover in the finance's executive the mere bravado of any actual planning. She doubted if he could pull it off the supposed paper heist.
Syafa finished off her coffee. Her thoughts went to Saari. She loved being with her Head of Department. They became close during the last seven months after she joined Radian's materials research department, although outright intimacy was never explored. She knew he was married but the emotional pull his presence sparked overwhelmed whatever rationality there was.
It was then she heard the telepathic broadcast. Transmitted en masse to everyone in the building.
You know who this message is for. They are coming for you through your friends.
A quick scan of the 25-storey tower told Syafa those startled few who heard the message were the same set of people she also knew, and immediately she thought of Bernice.
Through the years, she became aware of others like her. People imbued with telepathic abilities. Not wanting to be linked with any, Syafa became adept at living in the fringe of being hidden even when using her abilities. She made sure she erased all trailing telepathic tendrils from her engagements to protect both herself and the people she knew and cared for.
Ganging up on me…
She stood up, not wanting to be caught having to go full telepathic mode in the open. Too quick, the chair toppled, attracting attention from the others at the café. They glanced at her, in their minds wondering who and why and then back to their own thoughts. Syafa propped the chair and half ran to the lift lobby.
And saw progress far too slow.
The morning crowd meant the lifts were on a crawl, stopping at every other floor. Syafa then heard Bernice's wary thoughts before seeing her beautiful senior stepping in through the main doors. Knew the older woman wasn't the type to greet everyone from the get-go, but she saw Bernice registering her presence at the lift lobby. And a cheeriness in her mind at finally meeting someone she could talk to.
"Morning, B. Heard about your unfortunate encounter yesterday. Shouldn't you be at home resting?" she said as Bernice arrived at her side, a sling bag across her broad, almost masculine shoulders.
"Couldn't bear to be alone, Syafa. At least here I'm with company."
"Wasn't your fault. Should have been me there. You saved me the creeps."
"Hah! More like Saari saved you. I don't know why he had to assign me when coding isn't even my strength. He's penalizing me for something. I'm telling him I am never again going to Kejoria. He can show cause me all he wants. Place's freaky as hell."
Syafa could sense the brooding darkness in her companion's mind. She understood her colleague's unnatural chirpiness masked the fear she felt of the incident. Bernice had also pieced together something weird had happened at Kejoria since she didn't remember typing and executing the codes to reprogram the grid's realignments.
"I suppose Rahman would have to go. He took me off the roster already."
"I know. Why did he do that, Syafa? You were doing just fine."
"You remember the one time he joined me at the complex? Said he wanted to see how the whole process went? He caught the attending technician all friendly with me."
"… Oh… Well, that's what you get when you send a woman to do a man's job."
"You know Rahman doesn't do codes."
"Well, neither do I, Syafa!"
Shit! Multiple marauders!
Syafa jammed her fingers at the emergency buttons of the lift, stopping it dead center between two floors as she scanned and connected with the list of people in Bernice's thoughts, aware of the growing number in alien presence moving into their minds. Syafa went into a trance as she sent herself into the minds of those coming under assault.
How many are there? Hard to keep track…
She found herself in the consciousness of Bernice, Saari, Mohir, Rahman and, curiously, a young man she didn't know who her older colleague was strongly tuned towards.
A cackle of laughter boomed in all of them as Syafa erected her defenses, building walls in the minds she currently occupied. She readied herself for the onslaught as blots of darkness appeared before her. Blots that split into smaller dots pulling in all directions into shapes she knew exactly what.
Dogs… Shit…
Teeth gnashing, they came at her hastily build walls in tens, smashing into it and shattering into pieces which flowed back into the sphere of blackness from where they had emerged.
She found defending against the rushing imageries easy enough, and knew their attackers had something else in store. Finding the incessant attempt at invoking her fear tiresome rather than harrowing, Syafa focused and simply erased the attackers launching pad within light spheres she had created. That the players were still nowhere in sight told Syafa how much they thought of her as a foe.
Why now, though?
Being inside the minds of her colleagues unnerved her. Even in her alert state, Syafa could see the myriad of secrets she could peer into at so intimate an intrusion. She had found the same when she linked up with Bernice for the programming. Syafa thought it fortunate the dead technician's thoughts had gone all lusty towards Bernice. She was pulled into exploring her senior's memories when she detected the technician building up his lecherous courage.
Syafa intruded in his mind and saw the past sexual violence. A teenager just starting her secondary school his last victim. Memories of the young girl's screams of pain as he penetrated her amidst the dusty confines of his cabin home. She probed deeper, detecting vile darkness and found more of the evil he did to others even younger. Syafa extinguished those memories and then switched him off. It was the most merciful thing to do.
Her attackers launched a second wave of assault, tapping into the fears of her friends. Loneliness, for Bernice. Manifesting as a blankness. A space so expansive. Syafa could feel her host buckling, an extreme sadness developing within Bernice.
Clever bastards.
She knew she had to be resourceful in countering this new wave as each had to be dealt with differently. Fortunately for Syafa, the level of maturity in both Mohir and Saari allowed them to dismiss the threat with but the merest of assist from her. Syafa stood guard still, whilst concentrating in dealing with the others.
Most troublesome was the stranger, an auxiliary police officer by the name of Sivanathan, whom Bernice had developed an affinity with. His fear of being unable to match the expectations of others a vulnerability telepaths loved to manipulate.
Syafa retuned her focus, diverting from her two male seniors to stave off the increasingly manic suggestions of incompetence invading the young man's thoughts.
It was then she saw the manifestation of her hosts' person of special interest appearing in each of the mind she was protecting. Saw a naked herself, all fiery red hair swirling around waist, manifesting in Saari's mind. An intertwined figure of grotesque amalgamation of half a man and a woman with their bodies sewn together wrongly Bernice. Mohir had an elderly, rotund, woman whose flesh peeled off and melted as she crawled on the floor towards him.
Whoever you are you know you cannot win. We are greater than you could ever be.
Try me, assholes!
Her wall in each was holding against the new assault, but Syafa could see her own persona becoming more translucent from the combined effort of staving off the attacks at the same time of preventing her hosts' minds from embracing the mutilated forms of the deepest desires.
How many are they pushing against me? Must time this right… Damn!
Relinquishing her grip of her mental barricade, Syafa lashed out against all her attackers at once. Her focused thoughts took the form of tunnel drillers smashing past the images onto their conjurers.
Two of her attackers succumbed almost immediately, their consciousness dissipating into nothingness. She caught the third attempting to break the telepathic bridge linking them with the others. The bridge that was the launching pad of the assault. A young man. Images of roiling roulettes, stacks of circular chips in his mind.
Who the hell are you?
Too late she sees the mind she was tuned in fracture and crack at the center. Syafa felt a strong force building up from within her attacker who also shocked by the sudden turn. She could see his fear increasing, caught between two opposing forces engaged in a savage battle.
They're sacrificing him. Savages. The squirming diminishing mind caught in the maelstrom of the telepathic battle did little to distract her as Syafa remain focused. As it did before, her rage of past indiscretions experienced enable her to gain more and more ground against her still anonymous foes.
A distant ping suddenly entered the cauldron of incessant telepathic energies. Followed by the cranking sound of metallic surfaces grinding against each other.
The lift doors
Syafa felt her foes' defenses giving way as whatever remained of the battered consciousness buffering them shattered to pieces. The shrapnel of the attacker's mind shimmered into pieces around her. Only then did Syafa noticed another presence hidden within the dead young man's mind. A female. A veteran. Outflanking her with an attack she didn't anticipate. The sudden intrusion disrupted Syafa's almost linear thoughts' channel.
For the first time since gaining her abilities, Syafa could feel herself being torn asunder as her screams of pain filled the void that was once the third conjurer. She struck out blind into the mass of minds in the assault against her while severing the links with her friends.
The battleground went very bright, blinding her in a torrential sweep of blankness of destroyed minds. Syafa pulled whatever remained of her own tenuous tendrils of thoughts and hastily retreated into a self-created opaque shell as everything around her began to dissipate and disappear.