C. Omololu - Intuition

“Hey! Get in here!” she calls from the other side of the curtain. Her voice is raw from the ventilator, but otherwise she sounds almost back to normal.

“How are you?” I squeal, bending into her outstretched arms as she squeezes my neck tight. The Akhet vibrations I’m getting from her are unmistakable, and relief rushes in. Despite everything I’d insisted to Janine, there was still a nagging corner of doubt that I might have been wrong.

“SO much better!” she says. “My circulation is still funny, so they’ve still got me hooked up to some drugs, but that’s nothing compared to how it was.”

“You’re right,” I say, pulling the chair in the corner up to her bed. “Because it was bad.”

Rayne’s face gets serious, and I can hear the noises from the hallway in the silence between us. “You have to tell me everything. Griffon was here with Peter, but he’s being weird. He keeps staring at me and touching me on the arm, but he won’t tell me anything, even though I know he had a lot to do with fixing this mess.”

“Hang on,” I say, and get up to close the door. I sit back down and look at her face. She looks the same, open and trusting, but I know everything has totally changed. Janine said not to tell anyone, but Rayne isn’t just anyone. She’s the pin on which everything else pivots. There’s no other option, so I tell her everything. Everything except the fact that Veronique’s crazy plan worked. Everything except the fact that she’s now Akhet.

Rayne doesn’t say much until I’m done, just nodding her head here and there, like pieces of a puzzle are falling into place. “So Veronique’s actually dead?” she asks with tears in her eyes.

“Yes,” I say, finding that I feel surprisingly unemotional as I describe what happened and the news reports that followed later that night. At one point I had so much hatred for her that all I wanted was to see her dead, but now I just feel empty. “Don’t waste a tear on her, though. She almost killed you.”

“I know,” Rayne sniffs. “But she didn’t mean it. She only did it because she loved Alessandra and thought there might be one last way to be with her again.”

Alessandra. I have to find out if Veronique was right. I lean toward Rayne. “There is something else,” I say. I try to think back to the day at the slide when Griffon told me about being Akhet and what he said. But I was ready for it then, ready for some sort of explanation about what had been happening to me. Rayne doesn’t have a clue. “Have you noticed anything different lately? Has anything changed?”

Rayne is about to answer when we hear footsteps in the hall.

“Hey there! So good to see you!” Rayne’s mom says, pushing the door open and setting a bag down on the tray at the foot of the bed. “I brought Rayne some food from El Balazo, but there’s plenty to share. What are you two all huddled up about?”

“Nothing,” I say, sitting back in my chair. Rayne looks at me with a question in her eyes. “We can talk about it later, it’s no big deal.” In a way, this is better, because once I tell Rayne, it can’t be undone. Her world is going to change soon enough—I might as well let her have a little more normal.

I didn’t know this many people could fit into Janine’s office.

That’s my first thought as I open the door to find it full of adults I don’t recognize. “Sorry!” I say, glancing at the clock. I’m sure she said to come at two, but a faculty meeting must have run over or something. I start to back out the door when Janine stops me.

“Cole, come in! We were waiting for you.”

I pause. That doesn’t exactly give me a good feeling. “You were?”

“Yes. Sit down.” Janine indicates an empty chair over by the sofa. Her face is impassive, and I’m getting nothing from her movements about why I’m here. This must be what a trip to the principal’s office feels like.

As I walk into the room I spot Griffon, and the familiar jolt runs through me. I keep thinking it’s going to get better, but it doesn’t—that combination of longing and loss hits me every time. He’s not sitting down, but leaning against the windowsill in the far corner looking tense, like he might get up and leave any minute.

I take my seat and decide not to offer up any guesses about what’s going on here. There’s the guy Christophe who was at Griffon’s house that day, along with Janine’s friend Sue and two other men that I don’t recognize. Giselle is nowhere in sight.

“We’ve been discussing the situation with Veronique and Rayne,” Janine says. “And the others felt that it was time to bring you into our little group. See if there are ways you can help us out.”

“Okay,” I say, in my best noncommittal voice.

The Asian guy with long, dark hair leans forward. “We heard you were invited to a Khered gathering.”

I see Griffon flinch, and Janine tilts her head in irritation. “Tetsuro! Seriously.” She turns to me. “Sometimes even centuries of living can’t force some people to learn manners. Or patience.”

I start to rise out of my chair when I realize what he just said. “You mean Drew’s party? You’ve been watching me?” I suddenly feel creeped out as I look around. How did they do it? I didn’t tell anyone about the invitation.

Janine puts her hands out and tries to calm me down. “It’s okay. Just a little harmless poking around—nobody has a hidden camera on you, I swear. Things are just a little tense right now, and it’s best to keep tabs on everyone’s whereabouts.”

I sit back and fold my arms across my chest. “I don’t like anyone poking around in my business.”

“We’re sorry. It’s as much to keep you safe as anything.”

Suddenly I get what Griffon was saying about time. It feels like in one split second I don’t belong to myself anymore. That whatever I do is part of something bigger. I look at him, but he won’t meet my eyes.

“Let me make some introductions,” Janine says. “You’ve already heard from Tetsuro. He and Christophe have been working on fuel cell technology in Switzerland with Griffon, but just transferred down to South Bay. This is Eric.” A blond guy with glasses gives a little wave from the sofa. “And you’ve met Sue.”

Sue smiles at me. “What Tetsuro was trying not-so-tactfully to say is that your new connections in certain Khered circles, along with what we know are impressive developing empath skills, could be the perfect combination to help us with some research.”

And then I get it. They don’t have any idea who trashed the lab or who killed Veronique. Despite Janine’s assurances, they’ve come up empty, and somehow they think that I can help. “You want me to spy on Drew and his friends?”

“ ‘Spy’ seems a little heavy-handed,” Christophe offers. “We prefer to look at it as observing with a goal.”

I stare at him. “Call it whatever you want, I’m not sure I can spy on anyone, or that it’s going to help you at all.”

Janine leans forward. “Griffon says that when you connected with Rayne, you were able to go much deeper than before.” She watches my face, gauging my reaction to her words. “That you were able to actually see images rather than just feel emotions.”

I nod. “I did. For a few seconds. But I have no idea how. And it made me feel really sick.” I can see an exchange of glances around the room.

“Telempathy is a skill that so far exists only in legends and rumors,” Sue says. “To be able to master it would be something immensely valuable to the Sekhem.”

I remember the feeling of weakness and nausea after I made contact with Rayne. “I’m not in a big hurry to try it again.”

Sue holds up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “No one is asking you to,” she says. “None of us expect you to go that deeply at the Khered gathering. Just poke around a little, see if you can get any information from casual contact with the other guests. We need to find out who did this, and every minute that goes by puts everyone in more and more danger,” Sue says. Her mouth is set into a grim line, and I can feel the intensity in her gaze. “Anything you can give us is valuable at this point.”

“But they killed Veronique,” I say. “So she won’t be able to do something like this again. The worst of it’s over, right?”

I see wary glances flit across the room. “Not exactly,” Janine says.

Christophe clears his throat. “We have reason to believe that they didn’t go to the lab looking for Veronique. Someone got word of what she had been working on and went to get the formula. Veronique was just collateral damage.”

“When we searched the lab after the break-in,” Sue says, “we found evidence that files and samples had been taken. Which ordinarily wouldn’t be of too much concern; ergot fungus in its standard form isn’t going to do much damage. Even if it were spread as an epidemic, once it’s identified, it’s fairly easily treated, as you’ve been able to see. But Veronique was able to somehow synthesize a totally unknown form of ergot, one that has the capabilities of transforming the very essence of a person. As you’ve discovered, Veronique’s research did what nobody through time has been able to do—to create an Akhet from an ordinary Khem.”

“But how is that a threat?” I ask. “I suppose I get why some people would choose to be Akhet—the kind of immortality it brings. But I don’t see the harm.”

Janine smiles. “And I love that you don’t see it.”

“The harm is that the people who now have this knowledge in their possession aren’t good people,” Sue says. “And if you give the formula to the worst of the worst Khem, you can create a group of Akhet who exist not to help the world, but to destroy it in pursuit of their own fortune and power. A group who will get stronger and smarter with each passing lifetime, who will use that immortality to take risks like the world has never seen before.”