“You can ask that when there are five of us?” he blustered, his mind suddenly cold with worry. “We saw you fighting to get out of facing three men, so what could you possibly do against five?”
“Those weren’t three men, they were three Primes,” said, still keeping the words to a drawl. “Don’t you know the difference yet between the two? Here, let me show you. ”
I took Serdin’s mind with mine and froze him in place, then reached out to the fat man who stood quivering with fear. I replaced his fear with infuriated outrage aimed at Serdin, then watched as the man fronted Serdin, spit at trim, then slapped him hard across the face. At that point I released them both, then smiled faintly.
“See what it means to be a Prime?” I asked, feeling their minds clang with shock while the other three men whimpered and backed away. “I couldn’t have done that to them, not without half crippling them, but I can do anything I like with the untalented.”
My two victims stared at me in horror, their eyes wide as they remembered every fairy tale they’d every heard about why it wasn’t safe to have awakened empaths around. Serdin’s mind stumbled across an idea and seized on it, and he laughed harshly even as he wiped a hand across his mouth.
“You can do anything you like while you’re awake!” he spat at me, vindictive delight coursing through him. “The only thing I have to say to a Prime is—”
The word he spoke registered in my mind even though I couldn’t quite hear and retain it, but nothing happened. I realized then that he’d tried to turn me off, but I’d been right about two “offs” being unworkable. I’d broken out of the last “off” and had never been turned “on” again, and that made whatever word I was keyed to absolutely worthless. The fat man was staring at me with the same hope-for-vengeance Serdin showed, and wasn’t it a pity I had to disappoint them.
“Would you care to repeat what you just said?” I asked, stabbing into each of their minds with a pinpoint of pain. “I’m afraid I didn’t quite hear it.”
The two men screamed with pain and fear, making the other three cower even harder against the wall they’d backed to, and suddenly I was no longer in the mood for games.
“You take people and do whatever you please to them, and don’t give a damn as long as you’re as well off as you want to be,” I said, beginning to walk slowly forward. “You kidnapped me and drugged me and took away my memories and had me savaged, and all the while you laughed and enjoyed what you were watching. That was bad enough, worse than bad enough, but then I found out you had even killed my baby! Do you know what that means I’m going to do to you now? Have you any idea how bad agony can get?”
The two I was screaming at were on the floor trying to crawl away, slobbering and mewling at what they felt from the leakage of my mind. I wasn’t projecting at them yet, only screaming, but the force inside me had been building ever since Murdock had told me what they’d done.
“You’re equally guilty, both of you, and what I give you will be only a taste of what Rathmore will get if I ever find myself in reach of him!” I screamed. “You were worried about being safe, both of you wanted to be safe! Well, I’m going to make you just as safe as my baby was! ”
I projected at them then, so insanely furious that I was aware of nothing but punishing them. Faintly I heard agonized and terrified screams, as though from far away, but. nothing reached through the madness controlling me. I just kept on projecting, until suddenly there was nothing but black.
I stirred where I lay and took a deep breath, feeling a little tired but very satisfied. I opened my eyes to find out where I was, saw a large room decorated in red and black and cobalt blue, and didn’t understand. The room was a very large bedroom, specifically shown by the wide bed I lay on, but I’d never seen it before and couldn’t imagine where it was. For that matter I couldn’t quite remember where I’d been, but as I sat up with my hand to my head I got all the answers in a way I would have preferred never having encountered.
“Well, now, I’m glad to see you awake again,” a voice said from my right and somewhat behind, a voice that chilled me to the bone. “It’s a good thing I had the foresight to bring you here rather than leave you where I found you. Here we won’t be disturbed.”
I didn’t even want to breathe let alone turn around, but a fascination for horror must be part of all of us. Still sitting on the bed I twisted to the right, to see there was no headboard or wall behind me. Instead, the room extended back almost as far as it did ahead, and sitting in a chair watching me, still in his white uniform, was the null Sec Adjin. Sight of his dark hair and eyes started me trembling, which in turn brought him a smile.
“You killed all five of them, you know,” he said, uncrossing his legs to get out of the chair. “If I didn’t know better I would have sworn they suffocated, there in a room with all the air they needed. You were screaming something about that being the way to kill an unborn baby, to deprive it of what it needs to live. I watched you waiting until they stopped moving, and then I watched you collapse. ”
He walked up to the bed and then started moving around it, obviously coming to the side where I sat. I wanted to run farther and faster than I ever had in my life, but his dark eyes kept me frozen where I was even as he strolled nearer.
“Those people are all over the complex by now, did you know that?” he asked, the calm conversation making it seem like a nightmare for me. “Before any of us were aware of it they were inside, and somehow most of our defensive and pacification systems were out. I went back to tell Serdin what was happening, and found that Serdin had no more interest in knowing. That was where I also found you. ”
“Those people are friends of mine,” I whispered, so petrified that all I could do was shake as he sat down beside me to the left. “They know I’m here, so they won’t stop looking until they find me. You can’t keep me...”
“But I can keep you,” he contradicted over my gasp of pain, the fingers of his right hand closed tight in my hair as they forced my head back. “I’ve brought you to a special room of mine, and your friends will be far too busy with the inmates of the complex to find this room for quite a while. By the time they do we’ll be gone from it, and already started on our new life together.”
I cried out and tried to fight free of his grip, but all he did was tighten it as he laughed. Iii also been trying to hammer at his mind, and for some reason I believed he knew it.
“I’m really going to enjoy owning you,” he said, bringing his face down so close to mine that I thought I’d be sick. “Not only will I have your body to use, but I’ll also have the use of your mind-in the way I train you to use it. Those friends of yours must have gone after Rathmore Heilman on Central too, but what they don’t know is that they’re just clearing the way for me. Before they turn around I’ll have all the reins in my hands, and then they’ll find it’s too late to stop me. I’ll see to the removal of the unimportant, those whose deaths won’t stir up a fuss, and you-you’ll take care of the ones who’ll be best dead without a mark on them. You’ll also be able to reach the ones hiding behind doors and guards, the ones who think they’re safe. You will do it for me, sweet thing, because you won’t dare not to.”
Again I tried struggling as his lips lowered to mine, but I simply couldn’t force him away from me. I was terrified of him, terrified of what he would do, but I couldn’t get away! Deep inside, my mind was crying, a terrible small-child wail that acknowledged the fact of my being lost forever. I’d killed those who had killed my