COSTLY victory but we've got her, Madame. We've done it. She's no more.
… how many… who did we lose?
Names, M? The rules…
Just flash them to me. The rest doesn't need to know.
She still found herself flinching despite steeling herself waiting for his name to appear amongst those whose minds the young upstart had extinguished.
A thrust of focused thoughts, solid and battering, switching off minds. So unlike their conjuring techniques which thrived on manipulating their victims to act out whatever it was they had wanted them to do.
She had codenamed the newcomer as the ghost. Slippery, he had evaded all their efforts at identification. In him she discovered a someone whose abilities seemingly surpassed her own. One she had honed through decades of experimenting the limits of mind controls. Abilities allowing her to sit at the top of the hierarchical throne of the Cabal. She still remembers the delight she felt hearing the applause from the core members as they approve her appointment. Memories from a distant past.
The ghost's entrance into their world was both spectacular and deadly. Twenty years had passed since, but the memory had remained within the more senior members of the cabal. The sheer force of the newcomer's burst of focused rage tore through their defenses then. So much that an elderly member succumbed to the shockwave. They had noticed his absence with only the next day's news report confirming the worst.
They had scoured the globe and discovered a foe who seems adept enough to hide from their mind scans. Tens of them and not a single trace other than left-over telepathic tendrils whenever the ghost used his abilities. Their scouting discovered nothing but scant geographical locations of such via soaring heart beats and nose bleeds of those in close vicinity.
The men in their ranks think the ghost is a young man. She thought otherwise.
The closest they had gotten to the ghost ended up with the cabal's first fatality from a direct confrontation. Her own protégé. A young Asian telepath who baited the Ghost by toying with multiple teenagers around the Malaysian capital city and its urban outskirts in a bid to lure their foe out. He had wanted to prove his credentials as a top talent in the Cabal. The initial manipulations of his victims' minds didn't see any result. He had then decided on his own to up the ante with multiple suicide attempts. His ruse worked.
The ghost appeared and fried his brain, leaving her protégé an empty shell of man, sitting in his room still with an erection from the mental manipulations of the young ones. She knew immediately it was him featured in the news the day. The post-mortem found his brain liquified, leading the skull to cave in from the external pressures filling the sudden lacuna.
She lost another of her protégé to the Ghost today. One whom she had taken under her wings to train. She felt a hollowness building inside of her and switched off her telepathic link with the rest. They didn't need to see her in this state.
Without the tiresome linkage that blurred spatial realities, she could breathe in again the sheer luxury of satin on her skin. The calming soft leather embracing her lithe frame, sinking the slightest into soft plush wrappings of a custom-built chair. She had ordered it the day she assumed the post. Took all three days for the set to arrive. Movers placed the smaller two in front of the mahogany table she called her own.
A blank monitor stared at her. A silent companion and the sole witness to her prone self. In being the most defenseless at the same time of being flushed with abilities making them close to demi-gods walking the earth. Wondered if the Ghost had the same vulnerability as she scrolled the list of names deposited inside her mind by the Committee. Souls extinguished from bodies left as empty husks. Living containment bereft of the personalities within. She had prayed they would come out unscathed but knew enough not to count on any divine assist. Their sins certainly did not warrant any favors from any higher powers.
Still….
The buzzing from a cell phone placed at the left side on top of the table broke her silent soliloquy.
Damn! How could I have been this careless?
She glanced at it, saw the digital text on the screen. A soft cuss escaping her lips as she picked it up and answered.
"Yes, Tan Sri?"
She switched back her abilities and read what he really wanted even as the man at the end of the call spoke. Those in power had the tendency to think everyone was tuned to their thoughts and knew exactly how they wanted things done. She knew better.
Responded in kind to the instructions with affirmative "uh huh" as she recorded everything in her mind. She couldn't help but cringe as she trawled the cacophony of boisterous thoughts in him at the very moment. Brain matter didn't feature in some people, no matter the standing in life they achieved.
Hang on there, Carissa. He's still needed. Until then…
She straightened herself at the chair, realizing only then how much she had slumped. The battle had indeed taken a lot from her. The link to her fellow compatriots severed, she appreciated the freedom in not having her thoughts melded with the others. She imagined them to be worse off in ridding the thorn in their side. Something bothered her in how the young upstart was able to fortify so quickly the list of minds they had gleaned from the scientist. The initial plans for a coordinated suicide and mad rampage by their targets came to naught.
He was ready for us. Barely but ready. Almost as though forewarned. Did someone leak? Were we betrayed?
She knew Johansson's plan would wreak havoc their victims' life with death a stark possibility. She understood her reasoning. Necessary crudity in the plan's execution to draw the Ghost out in the open. They had chance upon the clearest lead from the female scientist who didn't have an inkling what she had to do during an onsite working trip.
Who was it? Only a few of us knew…
Focusing, she began backtracking through the tendrils of telepathic communications of her fellow members in the Cabal to the point of time before the onslaughts. Going back and forth through their thoughts archive in motion. A backup method only she knew about. The others would not approve. Of course they wouldn't. Information was power and, in her memory banks, she had plenty.
An inadvertent gasp still left her lips as she discovered an impossibly miniscule moment of disconnect in the link they shared.
But he's a founding member… Why did he…
She felt and saw her hands trembling. Clenched them into fists, but still they trembled. A single thought formed in her mind.
Revenge.