CHAPTER TEN

Melody looked at the room as they entered. "What is this place?" she asked as the door closed behind them. She heard a click and turned to note the panel next to it said LOCKED in bold red letters.

"This is my meditation room."

There was a door on the far right wall. Another audible click and that panel, too, said LOCKED. Mel surveyed the twenty by twenty space, marvelling at the sheer lack of anything in it. The walls were bare, the lights were low. The floor was almost entirely covered by what appeared to be an exercise mat. It was blue and there were four large seating pillows in each of the four corners of the room.

"You have a room just for meditation?" she asked.

He nodded, pulling her with him to the nearest corner. He picked up the pillow, which was white, and took it to the center of the room. Then he led her to the far right corner and picked up another identical to it. They moved again to the center, where he placed it right in front of its twin.

"Come," he said, lowering himself into a cross-legged position on the first pillow. "Join me."

"Kyrano...Meor...I don't want to meditate."

He smiled. "We're not going to. We're going to do some work."

"Work?"

He nodded. "There is something I must explain to you first," he said, watching her adjust herself to mirror his position.

"I would say there are a lot of somethings that fit that description."

"My half-brother has the same abilities I do."

"You can make people go unconscious?"

"I could if I wanted to, yes."

"Oh."

"But I don't use mine that way. I use mine to help, to heal."

"I see."

"But he uses them to invade peoples' minds. I don't believe it never occurred to me before this."

"What?"

"You see, I have been having sporadic attacks since just before International Rescue began operating. Mr. Tracy insisted I see doctors, which I have, but they've never found anything wrong."

"You think that was your brother? But he wasn't here, was he? Not able to look into your eyes."

"No, he wasn't. His power has grown over these past years. He can now attack me remotely."

"Doesn't that mean you're in danger even now?"

He smiled and lifted their joined hands up to eye level. "Not as long as I have this."

She shook her head. "I don't understand."

"Mr. Tracy knows of this because I once told him about the incident which caused my mother's death." He shifted himself so their knees were touching and lowered their hands to rest on them. "You see, he killed our mother and then his father. And he kept me from doing anything about it by the power he has over the minds of others."

"Oh, Meor, I'm...I'm so sorry."

He dipped his head in acknowledgement. "What is done can't be undone," he said. "I awoke to find them dead before me. Belah disappeared that day, never to return to our home in Malaysia."

"But at some point you became his slave?"

"He captured me several years later in India," Kyrano explained. "I was one of at least fifty slaves in his palace, forced to serve him or lose my life."

Her eyes met his. "How did you get away?"

"He kept me separate from the others. It was during those many hours of solitude that I learned of my own abilities. I used them to subdue the guards and escape into the jungle."

She squeezed his hand.

"Several years later I found myself married with a daughter. But my wife betrayed us to him. She joined him and he killed her as well."

"What a sonofabitch."

"That's a good way of putting it."

Mel shook her head. "But that doesn't explain the hand-holding."

The ghost of a smile graced his features. "After he killed Tin-Tin's mother, he came after us. That was when I discovered, purely by accident, the power of the joined hands," he explained, raising their hands up again. "Tin-Tin was only three when he caught up to us in the eastern United States. I was holding her hand when he tried to use mind control and found that he wasn't able to."

"How did you holding Tin-Tin's hand help stop him?"

"He is only able to take one mind at a time. When a person is joined physically with another, psychically they have created a bond, a unification. He can't penetrate that no matter how hard he tries. If I had not been clinging to my daughter's hand, he would have killed us both that day."

"Wow."

"Yes," he said, barking out a short laugh. "Wow indeed."

"I'm sorry I told Jeff about your...what did you call him? Belah?"

He shook his head. "No matter. I suppose I should have revealed his identity long ago. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. What you did was a good thing, Melody. It helped me get past something which has been a danger to us for a long time."

"You know, I never really believed in all that hocus pocus."

He looked into her eyes. "I believe enough for both of us."

"I hope so," Mel said quietly, looking away.

"Hey," Kyrano said, reaching out with his other hand and lifting her chin until she was looking at him again. "Don't be afraid."

"But I am afraid! This is so beyond my world I don't even know how to process it!"

"Then don't try," he replied, dropping his free hand back to his lap. "Just let it be."

She frowned at him, but then felt a wave of something permeate her body as though she'd just moved through an invisible field of static. "What was that?"

He smiled. "Me."

She could only look at him in wonder.