“When they came to arrest me, I was living in a small apartment not very far from here. They brought along a SWAT team, just for little old me.” She grinned an almost evil smile. “They surrounded the complex, and I had to disable several of them.”
Again, Oliver had a distressed look on his face.
“I have been on the move ever since,” she added.
“Did you kill any of them?”
“No. By then I had learned to control myself, but more importantly, I had promised Greg and Lisa that I would stop. I have kept that promise ever since.”
“So, Greg has known about this all along. That would explain his reaction this morning. Aren’t you afraid that they’ll find you?”
“They won’t find me unless I let them,” She said with no smile, just a cool certainty.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I’ve done this for a long time, and I can always tell when they’re near,” Amanda said with just a touch of pride.
“How?”
“It’s not so different from what you’ve already been doing.” Amanda leaned forward in her chair. “Can you feel the people in the next room?”
At first, Oliver didn’t understand the question, but after a moment he switched his attention from Amanda to the six people in the front office. “Yes, I can.”
“Did you see how you did that? You used your mind like a laser pointer. You went from me to Karen, to Lucy, to Hillary, to Larry, etc. Try it again, but don’t focus on any individual. Let them all come to you.”
Oliver tried, but his mind still hopped from person to person. He tried again, and then again. “My brain feels clumsy, I don’t think I can do it,” he said, his voice betraying his frustration.
“Clear your mind. No, do more than that. Make your mind go away.” Amanda felt his aggravation at her vague instructions. “I’m sorry, Father, if I’m unclear, but I’ve never had to put this in words before. It’s like trying to explain to someone how I get my heart to beat.”
“You’re right, sorry.” Oliver closed his eyes and tried visualizing the air around him. Just for a moment, he lost track of Amanda and felt everyone all at once. The realization immediately brought him back. “Wow, that’s incredible!”
“In time, it will become second nature. A part of you will always feel everyone, and later, everything around you,” Amanda said. “You can also take it a step further.”
Oliver suddenly felt a knife slice through his brain. He reached for his head, but the pain was gone in an instant.
“I’m sorry, but at least one time you should experience what happens when you focus that laser pointer,” Amanda said solemnly. “You can quite literally rip through someone’s mind, exposing their deepest thoughts, emotions, and memories. It will tell you everything you ever needed to know about someone in an instant. It will also disable them. One last thing — it’s a two-way street. You will be just as exposed as your. .” She hesitated for an instant, because she was about to finish her sentence with the word victim. “Subject,” she finally said.
“So that’s how you do it. I mean, did it.” Oliver stumbled over the words. “That’s how you used to kill people.”
“That’s one way. This is another.” The letter opener on Oliver’s desk suddenly flew across the room and embedded itself deep in the plaster wall. “The infection not only strengthens the bioelectric field around us, it allows us to direct it.”
“Scary,” he said. “This whole thing is scary. That laser pointer, I’ve felt that before. I don’t have a clear memory, but Klaus Reisch used it on me.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. He’s been looking for me for a while. He probably hoped that I had maintained contact with someone at the church. Before this morning I didn’t know he even existed; I knew there was someone, but I never expected someone like Reisch.”
“He tried to kill me simply because I had seen his face.” Oliver’s face started to turn red, and anger clipped off his words. “He’s got to be caught and brought to justice.”
Amanda suddenly laughed. She knew how rude she was being, but the absurdity of what he had just said overwhelmed her manners. “Father, do you really believe that there can be justice for someone like Klaus Reisch?” Amanda shook her head, surprised by Oliver’s naïveté. “You don’t arrest people like him, you kill them.” As painfully as possible, she added in her mind.
“I don’t appreciate being patronized, Amanda, and you can’t possibly believe that I would be a party to cold, calculated murder, even if it is a monster like Reisch.”
His irritation wiped the smile from her face. “I’m sorry for laughing, Father, but there are some things you just don’t understand.” She hesitated, wondering if she should tell Oliver what Reisch had planned. He’ll overreact and go off half— cocked, she thought. Already, he’s wondering if he should turn me in for killing a few criminals. What would he do if he knew Reisch was planning on killing millions of innocents?
Something that would probably get him killed, or worse, she answered herself. Despite his willful naiveté, she liked Oliver. He was a good man who had spent his life trying to live his beliefs, and she didn’t want to see him hurt.
“He’s going to keep killing and infecting people until he’s caught,” Oliver said, filling the void in the conversation.
“Probably, but who do you think can catch him, our government? Maybe you didn’t know, but he’s a trained assassin, and governments around the world have been trying to catch him for decades. Let’s also not forget the small fact that he has the same abilities that I have. Besides, once they know what he’s capable of, their desire to stop him will be overshadowed by their desire to use him.”
Oliver looked at her strangely. The animosity she had for the authorities shone brightly.
“Use him or not,” Oliver said, “he has to be stopped, that’s first and foremost. Besides, I don’t believe ‘they’ exist, Amanda. Once people know what he is and what he has done, he’ll spend the rest of his life in jail.” Oliver’s face was taking on an Irish flush. “I know you don’t trust the government, and after what happened to you, I can’t really blame you. But you have to know that yours was an isolated incident, nothing more. Every institution has a few individuals who will take advantage of their position, and our government is no exception; but like it or not, they are the only ones with the resources to stop Reisch.”
No, they aren’t, she almost said. Finding Reisch would be easy; catching him might be a little tricky. Killing him would be a pleasure, Mittens had said. “Listen, Oliver,” she said, dropping his title, “forget the government. If Reisch is stopped, it will be because I have stopped him.” Her face hardened, and her eyes took on a cruel light.
Oliver suddenly saw the Amanda who could kill without remorse.
She continued, “He is hurt, but he will recover, and when he does, he will not hesitate to kill anyone in his path. Including you. . especially you.” Amanda bore into Oliver, and he sat transfixed by her sudden metamorphosis. “This is the grown-ups’ table, Father, and we all play by the same rules. You deal with Reisch as cruelly and as violently as he would deal with you. Notions of due process and justice don’t belong here. They will only get more people killed.” Amanda was starting to get aggravated. Why did it have to be a priest? She thought.