The Most Intrusive Cerebral Disruption Yet pt 2

"No, no, you're right, that's completely out of the question," Castle said, pretending to not be disappointed, thumbs twiddling just out of Kate's peripheral sight. Having spoken—with vehemence and fair amount of hissing—her peace over his request to "appearify his jacket and the food" from the taxi too, Kate redoubled her silent intimidation tactics on her cell phone, waiting for that shrill confession.

"Didn't care for that jacket anyway," Castle said. He leaned forward, then back, spread his hands in his lap and ran them to his knees, fidgeting.

Kate didn't spare him a glance this time. Well, not a long one.

She'd called Agent Dunham not five minutes ago, surprisingly reaching the agent on the first try, and briefly explained the situation. Ten minutes, Dunham had said. Ten minutes to get her division in order and pull strings down the line to the 12th and get Kate on the first plane to Boston. Kate couldn't even pretend to work.

The phone rang.

"Beckett." Kate started shuffled papers together like it was the end of the day, earning perplexing frowns from the boys. Castle was playing on his phone, bottom lip jutting slightly in concentration.

"It's Dunham. Your Captain should be on the phone right about now. You'll be good to go. I hate to ask, but do you have airfare covered? Since this isn't technically case related I couldn't get you a flight."

Kate glanced at Castle, at the screen on his phone. "I've e got it covered."

"Flight leaves in three hours," Castle said, finishing up and closing an app. He and Kate leaned together so he could speak into her phone. "Leaves at three, so we'll be in Boston around five."

"Around five. Okay, either Peter or I will be at the airport to pick you up."

Castle quickly settled into a relaxed pose, rubbing his mouth while murmuring, "Captain's on the move."

Kate said, "We're on our way," and slapped the phone onto her desk when Montgomery called her into his office.

His only words: "Go take care of it, whatever it is."

Leaving instructions with Esposito and Ryan to hunt down the driver—and their lunch—from whose taxi Castle had vanished and to let her know the moment they had the man and his outrageous story under wraps, she and an edgy Castle made for the parking garage.

Corner of her bottom lip between her teeth, Kate surveyed her open driver's side door, gripping the keys tightly.

Castle paused suspended half in, half out of the passenger's seat.

"Maybe you should drive," Kate said, slowly and evenly. Irritated at the inability to trust herself. She felt fine. No dizziness, nausea, sudden weird ticks, or excessive irritability—that had been a fun day—just well founded worry and confusion. She could ramrod stubborn pride aside and take precautions in case this new mental development became unstable and for any reason she couldn't control the vehicle, endangering lives. Especially Castle's. So Kate outstretched the car keys, but didn't move until Castle rounded the car and took them.

To his credit, Castle acquiesced without celebration. Until he thought she wasn't looking. His face contorted with constrained glee. He composed himself for the most part by the time he slid the key into the ignition, but the glittering burst though his pores when the engine revved and he locked into reverse. Then paused.

"Castle," Kate said, shoving her amusement out with a snap. "We only have three hours, and I'd like to go home and pack an overnight bag just in case."

His eyes were closed. "Yeah, just give me a minute. This is a momentous occasion. It's like sitting and participating at the table in the interrogation room for the first time."

"Let's hope your driving isn't as disastrous."

His fingers danced over the steering wheel like it was made of gold. "No, I—wait, my first interactive interrogation wasn't—"

"Castle. Drive."

"Fine."

They rode first class. Separately. He'd purchased the tickets without noting the aisle sat between their seats. He wanted to change arrangements, whatever the price, but Kate shoved him on through to the terminal until they were seated, him sulkily and Kate huddled in the eye of her thoughts as they stormed in her head. Unbidden images of teleportation gone heinously wrong—so much for Galaxy Quest being a light parody—or, and she wasn't sure which was worse, external mind control and having no ability to exact her own will over her own body. Science fiction nightmares. And Kate still refused a nightlight. Not that she could even ask for one. Nothing in her training at the academy or even her active years on the force could prime her to escape her own mind. Compartmentalize, yes, but what the hell was she supposed to do when the compartments held no boundaries to the symptoms of her scientifically enhanced brain functions.

She can't believe she just thought that. And meant it.

Kate surfaced from her whirlwind to find the plane just now taxing onto the runway and Castle across an absurd amount of aisle drumming his fingers on the armrest of his seat, pensive and concerned. Kate would have reached across and touched his arm had the chasm between them not been so wide, and widening. Her fingers curled. She didn't know what she'd say if she had his attention anyway.

After take-off Castle ordered two waters, which Kate drank embarrassingly fast, giving herself brief hiccups.

"Hey," he said, his bottled water outstretched. Kate, breath held because that had always cured her hiccups, studied Castle's hand, his elbow perched on the armrest. She took the bottle, and their hands met comfortably in the middle. It wasn't a strain at all. Kate thanked him, and sucked down that bottle as well.

He tried to play with his phone, appear busy, but his mind was on her heavily, thrumming like a pulse slightly out of sync with hers. He'd successfully distract himself for a moment but his thoughts fell back, like a lighthouse in fog, in and out of her oversensitive mental awareness.

Kate didn't read minds like certain telepathic Martian superheroes. No disembodied voices in her head, or pictures pulled from someone else's. She sensed motion, kinetic biological electricity that bounced through neurons, shifts in emotion and thought pattern, anything with spark, energy, the natural state of being at a subatomic level. Theoretically she could do a great deal with these passive abilities, break the boundaries of changing room or coffee temperature so long as it wasn't too cold. Motion detection. Heightened awareness. Pinpointing a bug lazily crawling along the floor, feeling lies, truths, drowning in a sea of emotion held off by a dam of untapped power. With extreme concentration all in motion she could touch, contain, expand, alter, working out the muscles until she was tossing massive inanimate objects around like toys. It terrified her, steeled her resolve to minimize the abilities' use, make sure the budding telepathy never resurfaced. She'd read her cortexiphan trail file. Memorized every cliff note, footnote, side note scribbled on scraps of paper, picture and video recording. And none of those notes ever mentioned teleportation. At the apparent height of her facility she had never so much as transported an object across a room, much less city blocks. So this was something new, unexplained, unimagined. Which meant, and somewhere buried deep, from before she knew about cortexiphan and any of this fantastical reality, the old Kate balked, but she was mutating.

Oh God, Kate was mutating.

~*~X

And it's even longer. Oy vey. The first part was three pages with a nice breaking point, so here are another three pages with a nice breaking point. Three is a nice number.