I'm on the run! I know you might not get this, hell... I might not even survive! But it helps me concentrate my mind, helps me focus; which I've found is a very good thing. They've done something to me Talia. They've changed me, I'm different... I can HEAR everything... I can FEEL everything. It's as if...
August 13th, 2257. Somewhere on Mars. 15:30
"Hey! Help me will you," Loffler shouted back to Ironheart. Jason could become so involved with his letter writing, it was only thing keeping him sane. Loffler didn't write anything, perhaps that's why he was further gone than Jason?
Jason dropped the letter and his stylus back into his bag and crawled over to where Loffler was struggling to remove a metal panel.
The two's escape from the Psi Corps facility had been daring to say the least, noble even. But where they had been hiding for the past nine or so hours was less noble. They had escaped Syria Planum without having to kill again, injure yes, even maim, but end the life of a fellow telepath no. Loffler's abilities seemed not as advanced as Jason's, but that was perhaps because he started the treatments as a P6 and Jason a P10; not that they'd had time to consider this during their attempt to flea. But Loffler had time and again wanted to weild somesort of pyrokenesis in the manor Jason had been forced to use it.
Jason still felt the tug of guilt at the back of his mind, it was one of the many things tugging away inside his ever expanding mind, about having to leave Santos behind. They HAD gone back for her, Loffler and Jason had both agreed the three of them were in it together... but they found her in her quarters sound asleep through the use of drugs and nothing could wake her up, and they couldn't have carried her all that way: Could they? Jason and Loffler had made a run for it, Kelsey and Bester hot on their tails... Jason had narrowly avoided several PPG shots but somehow they always seemed to miss, did he have the ability to make Bester miss telepathically?
The two of them were now held up in a small access cubbiehole that's only use was to allow personnel a crawlspace between the air reclamation units for Dome fifteen-Beta and fifteen-Gamma on Utopia Planum. They had managed to catch four or so hours sleep before being forced by their subconscious' to face the waking nightmare again.
With Jason's help, Loffler, managed to pry of the metal grate from it's housing; breaking a few attaching clips in the process. He set the thin sheet down beside him and peered through into the darkness beyond. "I can't see a thing," Loffler explained sounding unsurpised. Jason gently pulled his companion out of the way and starred into the darkness himself, although his eyes could not see anything his mind could see everything. "There's a crawlspace a few metres long, then there's an access hatch. We can escape through there"
"How do you know Bester and the Psi Cops aren't down there?" Loffler asked timidly.
Jason paused for a moment, really contemplating the question. "I just know..." Loffler just looked blankly at him for a momet, maybe deciding whether to trust him or not. Eventually he nodded and led the way down the crawlspace. Low and behold a few metres down the way, just as Jason had prophesized, Loffler discovered a hatch; he pried it open with much more grace and ease than the previous one and peered down. After determining the coast was as free as possible he dropped down.
The room the two escapees found themselves in was, of all places, a men's lavatory. A rather unclean and foul smelling one at that. It was a tight squeeze but Jason managed to find space to open the door, which to add to their inconvienence swung inwards. He stepped outside and was grateful to find no-one awaiting them, he didn't know which would be harder to explain: the status as rogue telepaths, or why two sweaty men were coming out of a toilet cubical together. Loffler paused to use the sinks, splashing a bit of water on one's face could releave even the worst fatigue. And unlike the facilities found of space station and some of the farflung Earth colonies which used rays of concentrated light to wash one's hands, Mars' had a supply of water thanks to the ice that clung to it's polar regions. Jason saw the intelligence behind the idea and mimiced his companion's actions, breathing out with a deep sigh afterward. Both of them quickly shook their hands dry and raced for the exit way. Loffler reached out for the handle to pull the door open but Jason quickly slammed the door shut again. "What?" Loffler asked, looking into Jason's eyes, he'd learnt by now to trust his superiorly telepathical friend, he knew things no other telepath could possibly know; or maybe the drugs and the on set of telekenesis had driven him insane. Jason was holding his temples, a reaction to whatever was powering his psychic visions, or prophecies. "They're out there! The Psi Cops, Bester and Kelsey. They're out there"
Loffler was a-panic all of a sudden, "How could they know where we are, we've got to get away!" Jason simply nodded, he wanted to try and be strong and confident for the both of them. This Loffler wasn't the same one he'd conversed with on the rid to Syria Planum with a few months back, that one had been full of stories; ancedotes, whit and charm. This Loffler was a like a terrified child hiding from a bully in a school closet: was it just his way of reacting to the rogue status he found them lumbered with? Or an irrational terror brought on by the mental instability that obviously came hand in hand with the experiments they had undergone at the Psi Corps. The Corps is Father, the Corps is mother, my ass Jason thought to himself looking into Loffler's terrified eyes. He had to act. He had to save them: Both.
"Stay close," he whispered. His hushed voice set the tone of their emergence from the bathroom. Jason had a little telepathic headups for the Psi Cops approach, but he was still not 100 confident in his newly acquired gifts. The two moved silently down a series of meandered and most importantly desserted corridors. There descent from the air reclamation crawlspace had deposited them inside a machinery works of somesort, worked by only a very few personnel charged with simply maintaining the efficiency of the industrial technology.
They were making good progress towards the facility's exit until Jason raised his hand to halt proceedings. On the opposite side of the thick metal door they'd stop infront of; Jason could sense Alfred Bester. The man's slight physical size hide well a very powerful telepathic mind, one that was particularly distinct and one Jason was unlikely to forget in the near future. "Bester is on the other side," Jason whispered, despite the enormity of the machinery works all around them their noise output was minimal.
"What do you mean you can't shut them down? Do you understand who I am?" Bester was asking the Work's foreman. Bester somehow could intimade anybody, maybe it was his manor, maybe his confidence, or was it THAT uniform? even a 6ft2 240lb foreman. "Starting the machines up again taking fourteen hours! My bosses will have my ass if we loose fourteen hours of production because some guy in a Black uniform turns up out of the blue and tells me too!"
The foreman was standing his ground. His day had started off like any other, simply clocking it, catching up with the guys, before handing out that duty shift's work roster and getting to it. He'd just taken the first bite of his replicant beef sandwich back in his office when Joe, on of the relief guys from Section 67, told him there was a Psi Cop to see him on urgent business. He'd given brief details on the fugitive's rogue status and shown mugshots but nothing else: and now this Psi Cop wanted his machines shut down? Bester opened his mouth as if to ask again, but then stopped and using his mind spoke to the foreman. 'You can either be our friend, or our enemy. Our friends profit, our enemies... well I don't think you'd want to find out'
The foreman looked into Bester's cold ruthless eyes then turned around and worked a few controls on the mass of wiring and buttons infront of him. He spoke into a small microphone mounted at the top of the large dash, "Attention everybody. We're shutting the machines down. I repeat shutting the machines down." The foreman jabbed his oversized index finger down on a stereotypical large red button and the low murmuring rumble of the machines began to die down.
"Thank you," Bester said offering the foreman a single smile.
'With the interference from those damned machines gone we should be able to locate Ironheart and Loffler easily telepathically. In their unstable condition they'll be transmitting stray thoughts all over the place,' Bester telepathically said to his female companion, who nodded readily.
The noise of the machines shutting down might have been unfortunate for the foreman and whoever he worked for, but it was life threatening news for Loffler and Ironheart. The two telepaths bolted back the way they came, taking a few different turns at different intersections than they had on the way there, hoping to discover an alternate way out. Suddenly they were confronted by two large burly men in coveralls, both carrying boxes of equipment and tools talking to one another as they approached. They looked up to find Ironheart and Loffler standing there like deer in the headlights.
"Hey you can't be..." the one of the left started to say, but he was cut off... "Hey!" was all that escaped his friend's lips before he was silenced also. Both of them slung to the ground by Ironheart's mind.
"Did you kill them?" Loffler asked as the two continued to run.
"No, just a suggestion that they were both very tired," Ironheart said, he had been forced his kill his old friend... Cooper, and he wasn't ready to kill again.
A few running strides later and they had reached what appeared to be a fire exit. They pulled on the manual release lever and the door swung open, revealing another bland gray corridor. The dodged hastily inside, closing the door quickly behind them.
Bester and Kelsey came across the two workmen as they strode quickly, not quite running, around the machines. Bester had been right, Ironheart and Loffler were both projected random stray thoughts all over the place and without the background interference from the industrial works Bester and Kelsey, both P12s, could easily pick them up and were hot on the fugitive's trail. "Dead?" Bester asked as the two stopped and Kelsey checked the body's pulses.
She shook her head and they started off again. "Almost a shame," Bester said, his ruthlessness being displayed not just in what he was saying or the thoughts he was entertaining but by the grin he wore whilst he was speaking too, "Could've been something else to charge them with."
Having raided a department store of some new clothes, Jason had picked a long beige duffel coat with gray slacks and Loffler had grabbed a thick leather jacket with high collars and a baseball cap, the two fugitive from Psi Corps "justice" meandered as casually as possible through the hoards of people waiting in Marsport to board their flight to the stars. They had been fortunate to avoid Bester and Kelsey in the machinery works, and even more fortunate that security guard had been to busy talking to his girlfriend on the link to notice their clothes still had the tags on them as they left the department store. Now they need a way off Mars, a fake identicard, or a freighter Captain willing to look the other way for the right price. And they didn't have much time.
Bester and Kelsey stood on a balcony high above where the masses intermingle at the gates of Marsport. They looked down from near the roof of the massive dome into that crowd, not using their eyes so much as their minds. Whether it was the larger volume of people with stray thoughts or that Loffler and Ironheart had learnt to control their outbursts wans't clear; what was, was that the Psi Cops were frustratingly no closer to catching their targets, and they had almost gotten away, almost got off Mars. Bester wasn't in the habit of loosing rogues, and he didn't want to start now, especially these ones... ones that could dismantle everything he and his associates were trying to build for Earth Alliance.
"Come Ms. Kelsey, we aren't making any progress from here," Bester said turning to head back inside the stairwell that had brought them to their presapice.
"Why not just issue a warrant for their arrest and invalidate their identicards, so they can't leave on a transport?" Kelsey asked, remaining where she stood.
"For one I like to keep Corps matters internal, there's no need for mundanes to become involved unless absolutely necessary. And two, I don't want their names getting on any ISN reports, or people could start to wonder why no shuttle cars ever go to Syria Planum." With that Bester turned to face the stairs and began to descend, "Coming Ms. Kelsey?" he called back up as he continued on his way, waking his young and inexperienced assistant from her self enduced pondering waking-slumber.
Realising they had no currency, and therefore no means to get anywhere Jason and his companion had been reduced to one final plan: Being a stowaway. Mars, being Mars, and Martian workers, being Martian workers, they were counting on the little truth inside all stereotypes that meant at least a few crates being taken aboard ships headed out of Mars wouldn't be checked. Neither of them were astronomers, nor stellar cartographers and neither of them had heard of most of the destinations of the freight ships. Sure Earth passenger lines rarely went outside of Earth control space, and normally stayed within the "home systems", colonies like Mars, Io, Proxima 3 etc. but freighters... well they weren't known as Deep Space Boomers for nothing. After turning down a few ships that looked like they were manned by Narns or Drazi headed home they found a reasonably unguarded Earth-manned vessel's cargo. Just as they were about to sneak in amongst the large containers they were halted by an authoritive voice behind them.
Loffler and Jason turned around to find themselves starring at a very short man with a clipboard, he was no taller than 5ft, yet his voice was deeper than Jason's cool raspy tone.
"Excuse me," Jason began smiling, it was the first time he'd smiled in quite some time; even if it was fake it stretched muscles he hadn't used in a while.
"But where is this particular cargo going? And how long will it take to get there?" he asked.
The short man scratched his bald head, and looked down the list on his clipboard. The man wasn't quite sure why he was complying to the strangers request, infact he'd been ready to call security and have them escorted out a moment ago.
"A little colony on Alpha Tanuga 7, It's only a few days jump," the man reported just before collapsing into a deep sleep.
"You are getting good at that," Loffler said, it was the first time he'd smiled for a long time too.
"Here," Jason said going over to a small cupboard and opening it. After fighting away the mops and brooms that fell out onto him he helped Loffler drag the unconscious man into it. Thanks to his tiny frame the man fitted perfectly and Jason closed the door behind him a job well done. All there was to do now was find a crate not yet sealed, conceal themselves in it and hope Alpha Tanuga 7 wasn't more than 3 or so days away otherwise they'd die of dehidration or starvation, or both. But turning back around that plan fell apart, Loffler was in the hands of Bester and Kelsey and the former now had a PPG trained at Jason.
"Got you," Bester said with a satisfied smirk. "You had us going all over Marsport Mister Ironheart, but I figured you might come here. I knew you had no money... no way of bribing your way aboard so stowing away in a cargo crate was your only option."
Jason went to move slightly to the left but found Bester gun extended further towards him and Bester tone take a threatening turn for the worse. "I wouldn't go to far," Bester said, "Now I'm giving you the chance to come along peacefully"
"I thought you terminated rogues on sight?" Jason said, he wasn't trying to seal his own fate, he was just trying to negotiate his way out of this... for some reason his sleeping trick wasn't work.
"Are we to valuable to let go that easily? Let me guess, you want to sedate us and take us back to Syria Planum to perform more experiments"
Bester was silent, he didn't like being dictacting to in that manor and was a little stumped as too what to do about it, true was he wanted Jason and Loffler alive to take back; and also true Jason was far to powerful a telepath now to manipulate through normal means.
"Not again," Jason said under his breath. He was looking at the ground, a thousand and one thoughts going through that crazily powerful mind of his, "NOT AGAIN!" he cried at the top of his voice, raising his head to look Bester dead in the face. Suddenly Bester and Kelsey were both knocked off their feet, Bester's PPG going flying through the air. In between a series of lorry sized cargo containers where this confrontation was taking place, and nobody had seemed to realize these crates were actually ready for loading onto the cargo transport. Most transport vessels were too large to land inside an atmosphere, so smaller shuttle craft would do the majority of the ferrying; but these were specialist crates, going on a smaller specialist vessel, and the the area where the crates were stakes was actually the lowered flatbed of the interstellar ship, docked with a specialized port at Marsport.
Suddenly the ground started to shake, which thwarted Bester's efforts to raise himself to his feet. Jason and Loffler had run to grab hold of the nearest crate as soon as the Marsquake had begun. But it was no subsidance in the ground itself, the transport vessel was simply ready to raise it's crates into the ship's belly. Bester finally raised himself to his feet and could do nothing but watch and the retratching cargo flatbed lifted Jason and Loffler to safety. Soon they were safe inside the belly of the cargo ship, and having cracked open one of the crate discovered rare and spicey food stuffs... they might not have any taste buds left by the time they reached their destination, and a rather large bill, but at least they wouldn't go hungry. Jason and Loffler let their weary bodies slump down the side of their open crate, smiling to one another... they'd escaped.
Bester was fuming, he turned around to his assistant. "Get the damned ID of that vessel and tell it to halt!" Kelsey spoke into her link, relaying Bester's commands, and got a reply back, "Sir, it's a private vessel that already late for it's departure and the space-traffic controller is refusing to delay it any longer"
"DAMN!" Bester exclaimed, it was a slip from his usual cool facade. "Find out it's destination, and book us the next flight. I'll follow them to the ends of the Earth."