Chương 211: 199. Dead minds

Marvin and I both looked at the map lying on the FBI's big conference table, with similar confusion written across our faces. He stood beside me, tracing a red line with his eyes, a deep frown still etched into his features. After finally finding the point on said line closest to the building where we encountered the wormy enemies, he then used a tape measure to check the distance. We all looked at the key to make sure it was correct.

But no matter how long our eyes stayed on the numbers, they refused to change into something that made more sense. It was still the same, around two hundred meters in a straight line to the nearest underground facility. Not to mention, the abandoned metro tunnel was about fifty meters down.

"That's a long distance to cover underground," Filip commented.

"Not to mention, to fit that table, they would need a massive tunnel. A machine would take days, if not months, to dig that. I imagine there are smaller tables or easier ways to do it. Right?" he asked, looking at me. I barely registered his question, the words pushed out of my mind by a vague memory. When I had been checking the best land for my mansion, I remembered seeing the map with locations of all the once-existing mana pathways. And I was pretty sure there was one under New York.

I didn't remember the exact address, but the general area was correct. Whatever used that pathway in the past was destroyed. Or should be. And the pathways didn't connect yet. They wouldn't for some time, so what was I looking at? Was it a coincidence, or was there a remnant of something under the ground?

"Sam?" Filip's loud question broke me out of my thoughts.

"Well, sure. I mean, I'm pretty sure it was just a trap, so no need for a ritual table that big."

"So back to the drawing board?" Rey asked from the side.

"Do you think I could try to read the map?" Josh asked.

"You know, like look at the place and—""No," I cut him off.

"That's divination. And it doesn't work like that."

"Can't we try some other divination then?" Marvin asked.

"You can't just do a reading and ask about how something was carried in. And you'll still get some vague words to decipher," I answered him, still gazing at the map.

"There is one clear explanation still, and that is that they carried the table in, not noticing its size compared to the door, because they never considered other options and just did what was easiest."

"And digging over two hundred meters and then burying it back down would be the easiest?" I shrugged.

"Maybe." The effort required for something like that was overwhelmingly larger than just putting the goddamn things into a truck and transporting them like any other furniture. But the theory fit. If the Talapir needed a nest, they would need to move a large amount of equipment in and out without much trouble, so using an existing underground facility and expanding it to their needs was the best option. Any workers could be bought off or put under the influence of mind magic. But I expected something much closer.

Was I off? Did they just dig under the building and use some really well-hidden hole in the basement as the entrance? My eyes wandered to the abandoned metro tunnel again. The issue was that it was perfect. The place was already underground and had an entrance wide enough to bring machinery in. The effort to create a nest or base would be much lower, and even movements by larger groups of people could be covered up as maintenance work. It fit, aside from the distance from that goddamn table.

"What do you suggest we do?" Marvin asked.

"I think we still check the underground angle," I proposed.

"Okay," Marvin nodded.

"I'd imagine those tunnels still need to be maintained. I'll ask the workers if they saw something. What should they be looking for? A comically large hole in the wall?"

"Maybe," I said, honestly not sure myself.

"In the meantime, I'll prepare Josh for any more voices screaming in his head. And when you talk with the workers, look for lost memories or strange sensations. Those can indicate mind magic."

"Yeah, we know that much," Marvin said.

"We're not complete amateurs, you know."

"Fine, fine." The boy in the wheelchair looked at me with wide eyes.

"You mean I'm supposed to go with you to the nest?"

"Yeah. At least to a point," I replied.

"I'm hoping you could sense the queen's presence before it senses us. And locate her if it turns out it's a whole underground labyrinth."

"Can't that… mushroom friend of yours help?" Josh tried to find another solution.

"He's more proficient with his fists than his mind." Josh clearly hesitated for a few seconds, but finally agreed with a rather sour face. We finalized the plan. We would first check the metro line theory while the rest worked on other angles, looking for any dig sites around the area where we fought. Aside from that, I would also inform the cats on my side, but given how dangerous the parasites might have been, using the FBI as a proxy actually wasn't that bad.

Maybe they might learn something before we needed to risk our own personnel. Once the briefing was over and we all walked out of the climate-controlled boring office, I finally got Josh all to myself for training.

"Have you been doing the exercises I told you?" I asked, walking next to him.

"Yes."

"Good. And?"

"I can control it much better. But… My sense is also growing stronger. I can feel things more… sharply?" I nodded.

"So-called newbie gains. Any growth will feel substantial in the beginning phases."

"I understand, but—wait, where are we going?" he asked as we took another turn, going toward the back of the building rather than the room turned into the installation depicting my latest murder.

"To the back. The FBI let me borrow a car. We could take mine, but your wheelchair might be a problem. Vans are better."

"And where are we going?" he asked, to which I smiled.

"To the morgue."

"What?" If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Today's lesson is minds—or rather, minds of the dead," I said, turning to him with a smile.

"I suspect you sense a particular aura left by people in a given place. It consists of their movements and actions, as well as their thoughts and feelings. To you, it mixes into one, but it should be different streams. So I want you to try and sense the stream responsible for the mind—the thoughts and feelings."

"And read the emotions of the dead?" he asked, skeptical of the idea.

"Before they died. It will not be muddled by their current thoughts, so the dead should be a good start. We will find fresh corpses, and you will tell me what they thought before death, more or less. Once you get proficient and used to…" I paused, looking for proper wording, "more extreme sensations, we will move to mind defense," I explained, laying out the prepared curriculum.

"Do I have to?"

"Yes," I answered firmly. Afterward, I got him into the car, and we were off to the morgue. The place itself wasn't particularly interesting. At least not for me. While I walked behind the doctor leading us to the bodies without any excitement, Josh grew increasingly tense. Interestingly, I could feel his mind begin to spill into the surroundings. An empath's equivalent of throwing nervous glances around, I'd imagine.

We were finally led into the morgue, and after getting a list of bodies we could use for our study—at least that was what the FBI document told the doctor—we were left alone in the cold room.

"Oookay," I said.

"Let us begin."

"Wait," Josh said, stopping me.

"Do I have to look at them?"

"Yes," I said, then went to open the shelf but stopped myself, turning to him with a frown.

"Why… are you acting like this?" I finally asked, not finding better words.

"Huh?"

"I mean, I heard you were quite motivated about the cases. You even saw that veiled man's installation of whatever it was and didn't fold. Rey told me even Filip got shaken. So why do you react like that now?" Josh looked aside before taking a breath and exhaling slowly.

"It's because of the mind and emotions. I just don't like how it feels to read them. That's all. And I get it." He held out his hand, stopping my words.

"I still have to do it, so let's get it over with." I looked at him for a few seconds, narrowing my eyes lightly. But finally, stopping the train of thought in my head, I opened the fridge and pulled out the body.

"Let's get it going, then." We spent a good few hours inside the morgue. My initial idea was just to get a feel for what he could do, but his demeanor changed my approach. He was talented. Sure, my only way of judging was to compare him to what I had read in the old tomes, but still, from my understanding of the mind, he should be considered a great empath. But his will waned so easily when it came to emotions. After each success, instead of wanting more, he wanted to retreat, asking if this was enough for today.

So each time, I answered no, deciding to see where his limits lay.

"He thought of his family," Josh said, his slightly bloodshot eyes looking up at me with anger, as they had for the past half an hour.

"Good. But what thoughts? Did he want to kill them?"

"No," he hissed through gritted teeth.

"He wanted to be with them. He felt regret. A shitload of regret. He was a good father and didn't deserve to end like that. Or to be used for experiments."

"Right," I said, ignoring his tone.

"So can you get the names of his children?" Josh looked at me in silence, searching for something as his facial muscles flexed under the skin.

"James and Hela."

"Good," I said, confirming with the dead man's card.

"Another one."

"No," he protested.

"Last one."

"The last two were supposed to be the last ones."

"Yes, but for the last two I was joking. Now I'm fully serious," I said, and without asking any more questions, turned to one of the morgue shelves.

"No!" he shouted. I was about to ignore him, but this time something happened. He lost control over his consciousness, and I could feel it slam into me like a wave. Thankfully, I had faked my aura, so he shouldn't have recognized me. But the sensation wasn't pleasant. Not to mention, had I not been trained, he might have actually injured me. It was the equivalent of pushing someone in anger, but for the mind. I turned sharply to him, meeting his eyes, letting some of my original aura reflect in them.

Josh also froze, realizing he had done something wrong. We looked at one another in tense silence, his anger swiftly replaced by confusion.

"This time," I began slowly as the silence continued for slightly too long.

"This one was on me," I said.

"I did push you too far. But do that again, and I'll show you how a proper mental attack feels," I threatened, withdrawing my own aura back inside.

"Got it," he said, gluing his eyes to the floor. I closed the shelf. This was kinda what I was waiting for. He finally let his mind run wild thanks to the stress, so I wasn't really angry with him. His consciousness was fascinating, a wave of thick mist, a form I had never experienced before. I wondered what more could be done with it. We went out of the morgue after clearing everything with the doctors, finishing tonight's session.

It was the middle of the night when we got back to the car, standing lonely in the darkened parking lot. Josh was silent through the entire process, his face pale, although I wasn't sure whether it was due to effort or guilt, or both. His reaction was once again slightly off—exaggerated. He shouldn't have understood how dangerous his attack was. Yet his jaw muscles threatened to shatter his teeth with how hard they were flexed. There was one reason I could think of that would have this effect.

"Not your first attack?" I asked, leaning against the car. He didn't answer.

"Look. You don't have to treat me like your friend. I don't want in on your heart's secrets. But I do need to understand what's causing any blockages in your path. Attacking with your mind can come in handy, but you can't hesitate and have a moral conniption each time you have to do it."

"Just… drive me home… please," he said, not looking in my direction.

"Okay," I agreed but did not move yet, deciding to use one more piece of knowledge I had recently learned.

"You know, if you master your mind, you might get out of that wheelchair." The shift in his facial expression was indescribable, like watching an actor exercise his facial muscles before a dramatic performance, making sure his shock, anger, despair, and disbelief were on point. His visage finally froze in disbelief mixed with sadness, his eyebrows knit and his mouth half-open. Yet to my surprise, there wasn't much happiness to be seen, just mostly shock.

"I thought you'd be happier," I commented.

"I…" he began speaking but then immediately stopped, opening his mouth wider a few times, trying to get control of his words.

"My father practically killed himself working three jobs to pay for insurance, for all the fucking therapies, doctors, medicine, and whatnot. And now you're telling me that it's because of this… gift?" he finally asked, raising his eyes to look at me.

"You're telling me that all I had to do was do mind exercises?" His voice rose with each word.

"Well, not really," I said, holding his fiery gaze.

"From what I read, a lot of empaths suffer from some sort of disability, usually losing either a sense or some part of their mobility. It's because of your mind, an open field, a cluster of senses that should not be a part of a human consciousness. So the brain gets confused. There is only so much it can control and experience. So usually, you pay with one sense for the new ones. But with specialized training, you might learn to direct your mind to the part of the body it lost," I explained.

Even if he walked, it wouldn't be exactly easy as his mind settled into one structure over time. I read about it and wanted to do more research before I broke the news to him and told him something more concrete. But I needed the empath motivated, especially around mind arts.

"Fuck's sake," he said as a chuckle escaped his lips, which then slowly morphed into laughter.

"I… all that time, it was just my mind not realizing I have legs? So that I could figure out what dead people thought as they died, huh?" he said once his laugh died down. I waited for some time, giving him a moment to calm the raging emotions before making my proposition.

"So how about it? You tell me about what's on your mind, and I can try to see if we can have you walking again?"

"What… what if I don't want to?"

"I'd call you a moron," I replied. A short chuckle escaped his lips, followed by a sigh.

"Fine," he finally spat, and then, with a serious face, looked at me.

"I'm pretty sure my father got killed because of me. And right afterwar… I gave my own mother dementia."