"I see what you feel. Pictures, I guess. I don't know."
Scores of PhDs in fields he didn't understand wrote papers about him.
The frightened, barely literate farm boy from North Dakota slowly fell away, and a self-assured, young-adult version of Wade took his place. In time, he began to verbalize his responses on a higher level.
"What do you see in my mind, Wade? Do you see words or pictures?"
"What do you see when I speak?" he answered. "Do you see words coming from my mouth? How does your mind know what I'm saying?"
In his senior year of high school, he stopped studying for exams. Why should he study when the answers were right there in the teacher's head? He took Russian and began speaking the language fluently in three weeks just by concentrating on the instructor.
He lost his virginity to Sheila, but then left quickly afterward when she began thinking that he'd been okay but didn't compare to her last boyfriend, Steve.
His teachers started making him take his exams in a private room.
But most of them understood his sometimes difficult behavior. He was different, and they did not expect his schooling to be normal.
However, when new arrivals came to the institute, he was often put in charge of helping the young children adjust to their new environment. Early on, Wade exhibited strong-almost obsessive-tendencies toward protection over the institute's children, especially any who had been abused or neglected by their families… due to their abilities. He remembered all too well how it felt to be blamed and punished for his gift.
The children responded well to his assurances that everything would be different now, and he always let them talk to him, even though he could simply read their thoughts.
One thing Dr. Van Tassel did discover was that if he, or anyone else, put a conscious effort into blocking Wade, it wasn't difficult to lock the young man out. But the doctor never stopped thinking about the possibilities for Wade's gift.
"You could be anything you wanted, my boy. Anything."
The problem was that Wade didn't know what he wanted. At nineteen, his self-assured nature wavered when he was faced with choosing a university. The memories of fear and ostracism from his childhood had never quite passed away. The people in Colorado seemed to like him, and Dr. Van Tassel was the closest thing he had to a father. He hadn't seen his own since leaving for the institute.
His first thought was to go into social services-specializing in child protection. But he wasn't certain that his motivation was correct, and he had no idea where he wished to attend college.
The issue eradicated itself when he found out that he didn't have to make a choice. The institute arranged a full scholarship for him at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. All he had to do was go back and work with Dr. Van Tassel during summers and breaks on new tests or research projects. Relief flooded through him. That was safe and perfect.
"What are you majoring in, son?"
"I don't know. What should I major in?"
"That's up to you. As long as you continue working with the doctors at the institute several times a year, you can choose anything you want."
More choices. All his life he had hidden behind one wall or another. Now he was going back into mainstream society, where people had once beaten him with pitchfork handles.
College turned out to be quite different than he expected, though-full of pretty girls, liberal professors who questioned the government, and law students in black wool coats walking past Peace Corps soon-to-bes. It was amazing. But the pull to remain part of the institute, part of a safer world, still influenced him. He decided to major in psychology.
Dating, football games, and a part-time job in the university bookstore became part of his life and made him feel normal. Knowing how his girlfriends really felt about him wasn't an insurmountable problem. He simply took it for granted that even people deeply in love had evil thoughts about each other once in a while. He had long since grown used to reading the casual malice behind someone's smile. Those emotions were human.
His friends and lovers, however, didn't take his abilities so lightly. In his junior year, he fell hard for an anthropology student named Karen. She had long, brown hair and hazel eyes. He loved even the tiny freckles on her nose.
"This isn't working," she told him after six months. "I can't stand that you know what I'm thinking every minute, and you're a blank wall to me. I never know what you're feeling."
"Then ask me."
"I shouldn't have to."
That particular brand of pain and loss was new to him. He flunked statistics and had to retake it in his senior year.
After that, nothing of real note happened in his life until midway through graduate school. When he was twenty-three and working on his master's in developmental psychology, an inspector from the Los Angeles Police Department flew out and made an appointment to speak to him while he was on summer break at the institute. Dr. Van Tassel instructed Wade to make an effort to stay out of the inspector's mind.
"I'm Will Redington," said a tall man in a business suit, extending his hand. "Dr. Van Tassel's told me a little about you. We need you to do something for us."
"What?" Wade asked, immediately suspicious. This situation smelled as if he would have to make a decision.
"Just listen to one of our departmental psychologists talk to an officer," Redington said calmly. "That's all we want you to do. You'll be in a separate room with me, on the other side of a two-way mirror. You can see and hear everything that goes on. I just need you to tell me what the officer is thinking during the interview."
"Is he being accused of something?"
"I can't tell you that."
Wade looked to Dr. Van Tassel for help.
"It's your choice, son. You don't have to do anything you don't want to."
"What would you do?"
"I'd use my gift to help as many people as possible."
That wasn't much help. The inspector looked as if he flossed with a bicycle chain.
"Okay," Wade said uncertainly. "When?"
"Two days." Redington smiled. "We'll fly to California tomorrow."
Two days later, Wade found himself in an air-conditioned Los Angeles precinct. The interview room turned out much like Wade expected it to be-small and windowless, with an empty table and chairs. The officer in question's name was Mark Taylor. Wade was placed in an adjoining room on the other side of the two-way mirror Redington had promised. He was told to watch and listen to what went on.
Officer Taylor had a stoic, passive expression and answered the questions being asked him with all the emotion of a brass chess piece.
"Mark," the psychologist began, "how are you feeling about Christopher's death right now?"
"No one forgets something like that right away," Taylor answered. "I'm angry, but I'm dealing. It doesn't affect my job performance."
His answer sounded healthy and logical. Wade gently reached out into the man's mind, and then fell forward out of his chair in shock. Hatred and rage and visions of violent death flashed before him like an NC-17 film.
"Wade." Someone was shaking him. He looked up to see Inspector Redington's face looming over him. "What do you see?"
"Christopher…" Wade choked. "He's dead. They cut his throat open and pulled his tongue through the hole."
Slight surprise registered on Redington's face. "Yes, we know that. But what is Officer Taylor thinking?"
"They killed Christopher," Wade shouted, "and you don't even care!"
"Sssssh, keep your voice down."
Wade started shaking. Christopher was Mark's partner. They'd been working under cover with some small-time cocaine dealers, trying to flush out big game.
"Who killed Christopher?" Redington asked suddenly.