WIPwed: Psychonauts Fanfic: The Hornblower Incident (Patreon)

So I threatened last week to upload my unfinished Psychonauts fanfic for Work-in-progress Wednesday and I'm keeping that promise. I've been working on it since and I'm so stinkin' proud of it, but I don't want to put it up on Ao3 yet b/c I don't know if my momentum is going to last and like all  my fanfics, this one is a multipart epic so I don't want another Silent HIll: Her Monster situation where it takes me eight years to finally finish the thing. I still have a Discworld sickfic sitting unfinished but I'm currently inspired for Psychonauts so it's getting my attention. And I'm going to share the fruits of that with you today! Obligatorily obvious warning, but this is a Work in Progress which means it's both unedited and unfinished but if you're curious to see what I've been cooking up on the fanfic front, here's the first five chapters!

Tags: Genfic, post-canon Psychonauts 2, TW: Terrorism, TW:bodies, TW:blood. Raz/Lili implied, Sasha/Milla implied,

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The Hornblower Incident

Junior Psychonaut Razputin Aquato spun in Sasha Nein’s office chair, tapping the enter key on the agent’s computer with each revolution. Sasha was on his couch, surrounded by reams of perforated printer paper. He skimmed page by page, tapping the eraser of a red pencil off his shoulder. He paused to circle something in the middle of a sheet and used telekinesis to rip it free of its neighbors and tack it to the wall with a flying thumbtack. Raz completed another spin just as the printer completed its current job, hit the ‘enter’ button. The printer sputtered and started another page. “Not to interrupt, Agent Nein, but remind me again what you’re looking for?”

Sasha circled another column and stuck another page to the wall. “Agent Cruller reported strange activity in a number of foreign bank accounts. He asked me to confirm and, as we are low on assignments currently, I agreed to look into it.”

Raz raised an eyebrow. “Foreign bank accounts?”

“Any psychic criminal worth attention knows to cover his tracks, but a modern business still runs on common currency, no matter how nefarious. If a criminal can’t resort to bartering gold bars, then funds are transferred from accounts. And accounts have records.”

“But...” Raz used the spin to survey the tall, accordion-like stacks of punched paper waiting to be examined. “There’s a lot.”

“And I’m sure Hollis will have words to say about it when she returns from vacation, but until then…”

“Senior Agents to the Nerve Center,” the voice of the Grand Head barked through the overhead PA system. “All senior staff, report to the nerve center.”

“Sounds like Truman might have words right now.” Raz snickered.

Sasha untangled himself from the paper trail and headed toward the door. “I suppose we’ll find out.”

“Want me to keep printing?”

Sasha paused on the threshold. “Actually, why don’t you tag along? Could be educational.”

Raz jolted with sudden thrill, but did his best to stay casual. “He called for senior agents.”

“You’re my assistant today, Razputin.” He cut half a grin. “You can take notes if you want.”

“Yes, sir!” Raz swept a yellow legal pad off the cluttered desk and bounded after, leaving the chair spinning as he rushed to catch up.

The Motherlobe was business as usual outside. Agents floated from department to department, chatting both aloud and telepathically. Psychonauts headquarters was much bigger than Raz’s first impression of it. In addition to the main floor, lobby area, and satellite buildings in the canyon, there were extensive basements below and off-site housing and manufacturing further up the road. Even Whispering Rock was part of the ecosystem with the Nerve Center at the heart – or brain – of the whole enterprise.

Raz walked a pace behind Sasha down the ramp to the nerve center entrance. The thinkerprint scanner surveyed both of them as they approached and opened the first of the series of security doors. Sasha stepped in. Raz was snatched by his ankles and thrown into the landscaping. “Oof!”

“Gotcha!” Lili laughed.

Raz straightened his goggles as he pried himself out of brain-shaped bush. “Hi, Lili.”

“You gotta learn to watch your back if you’re gonna be a Psychonaut,” Lili said.

“I already am a Psychonaut!”

“Junior Psychonaut,” Lili lilted.

“Yeah, but Sasha said I could take notes on the fancy senior meeting. I gotta get going or I’ll miss it!” Raz dove back into the planter to hunt for the legal pad.

Lili rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Dad’s been really tense all day, I don’t think he’s going to let a <i>junior</i> agent into a <i>senior</i> meeting.”

“Still worth a try!” He emerged with the crumpled paper and dashed back for the nerve center door. “I’ll tell you how it goes!”

“Don’t bother!” Lili called before the <i>shwick</i> of the automatic doors hid her from view.

The Motherlobe’s center of operations was a hive of floating screens and flashing computer stations. Agents sifted through reams of international data, sorting evidence of psychic terrorists, troubling events, and news reports. Grand head Truman Zanotto hovered amid the rotating screens and floating agents, overseeing a table-sized read-out station with a steely expression.

Sasha stood with his partner, Milla Vodello, near the door. The Mental Minx smiled sweetly as Raz entered. “Agent Aquato! What a surprise!”

“Sasha said I could assist!” Raz held the legal pad as evidence. “Did Grand Head Zanotto say what this is about?”

“He won’t speak a word until all senior staff are present.” Milla’s brow furrowed. “I’m concerned it has something to do with the great uneasiness I’ve been sensing since this morning.”

Sasha set his jaw. “Have you identified the source?”

She shook her head. “It’s too unfocused, or too large.”

“All right, what’s with the rush?” Coach Oleander barked. The short man was dressed in camouflage today. He marched into the nerve center with a hooded falcon perched on one arm. “I was in the middle of some very important research.”

“Falconry… research?” Raz asked, hopeful.

Oleander scoffed. “I’ll have you know this bird is a scientist.”

“That falcon thinks you are a tree,” Agent Compton Boole said. The former Grand Head was followed by his fellow founding agent, Otto Mentallis, his former co-agent Bob Zanotto, and a brain in a ball named Helmut Fullbear.

The brain beamed his words directly into everyone’s heads. Raz could tell he was smiling by the tone. <i>”Hey, kid! How’s it hangin’?”</i>

“Hey, Psi-King,” Raz said. “How’s progress on finding your body?”

<i>“Not much yet. Otto’s still working on a device to undo his other device.”</i>

“It’s only taken him twenty years.” Bob grumbled.

Otto adjusted his glasses. “Forgive me if I gave up freeze ray development after my prototype all but killed one of us.”

“Enough pleasantries,” Truman said from above. The drone agents floating about the readout consoles scattered as he descended to the head of the table.Raz caught the vibe as he fell under the second head’s narrowing eyes. Truman’s brow leveled. “I said senior staff only.”

“I said he could come,” Sasha said. “Of course if this is top secret...”

“It is.”

“I just came to take notes!” Raz waved the notepad like a peace offering. “I’ll be quiet! I - I can make everyone copies!”

“No.” Truman said. “Out of the question.”

<i>“C’mon, Tru, let the kid stay,”</i> Helmut appealed. <i>”I think we can all vouch for him.”</i>

“Not this time.” He planted his hands on the tabletop, “We have a Hornblower problem.”

Otto scoffed. “Surely not!”

“Who’s Hornblower?” Raz asked. “A psychic spy ? A mental terrorist?”

“A top secret briefing,” Truman reiterated. “Not for Junior Agents. Everyone else to my office. We’re wasting time.”

“Apologies, Razputin,” Sasha said. “I know I got your hopes up, but if the mission is as important as it sounds, then it wouldn’t be appropriate.”

“But Sasha – !”

“There’s no point in arguing,” he said. “I’ll see you in my lab later.”

“Aw!” Raz groaned. He tucked the yellow legal pad under his arm and sulked through the sliding doors back to the atrium where his fellow unprivileged agents conducted business unaware of the super cool top-secret stuff was going down mere feet away.

A dirt clod bounced off the back of Raz’s head. He turned to see Lili leaning on the wall with her arms crossed and eyes half-lidded.

She nodded like a drug dealer finding a mark. “What happened to your meeting?”

“Sasha totally flipped on me!” Raz whined. “How am I supposed to get above Junior Agent if they don’t trust me to know anything!”

“Why do you want to sit through a boring meeting anyway?”

“Because it’s senior staff only!” Raz cried. “This is where the big world-saving stuff happens. True Psychic Tales worthy stuff! The big time!”

“Okay, okay. If you gush anymore I’ll puke.” Lili’s mouth twitched in a barely perceptible smile. “Wanna sneak in?”

“Really?” Raz gaped, the deflated. “They’re upstairs in your dad’s office”

She flipped her pigtail over her shoulder. “Watch. And. Learn.”

Part 2

Harold didn’t run as fast or jump as high as he had as a young rodent. Years of snacking in a submarine can do that to you. But being stranded in the Rhombus of Ruin didn’t take away Harold’s rat instincts. He had a confounding knack of always being exactly where he needed to be whenever he needed to be there. In this case, it meant he was sunbathing in Lili’s garden in the quarry outside HQ.

Lili smiled and jogged to the pudgy rodent. “Harold! There you are!”

Harold nodded to her from his repose atop a tiny lawn chair. <i>Chhht</i>

“I hate to interrupt your ‘me time,’ but Raz and I need your help,” Lili said. She was as sweet as she ever got when talking to plants or animals… and sometimes Raz, but not often Raz. He hopped up the last bit of climbing vine to join his girlfriend in a patch of sunlight. Lili bent the bendy end of Harold’s swizzle straw toward him and let the rat take a long drag of lemonade before continuing. “Raz and I need to do some top-secret spy stuff. Would you be our man in the field?”

Harold chittered his reply. Raz wished he was a Zoolinguistic. He wasn’t sure if Lili was, but she took the sniffs as an agreement either way.

“Excellent! Would you let us tag along?”

Harold chittered again. He set aside his tanning reflector, took another sip of lemonade and rose onto his back legs in a beckoning gesture.

Raz snapped his goggles into place over his eyes and focused his power of clairvoyance on Harold. The world fell from around him a moment as his psyche fled his body and took a seat within Harold’s head.

The rat’s eyes became his eyes. The ears became his ears. The twitchy little nose illuminated every edible root, nut, and berry in Lili’s garden. He couldn’t read Harold’s thoughts – that was at least two additional psychic powers and probably one affinity – but he got a picture of what life was like at rat-level, and a projection of Harold’s perspective. Mostly he saw Raz and Lili as odd, bipedal rats.

<i>“Okay, Harold,”</i> Lili said both physically and telepathically. She was sitting in Harold’s brain just like Raz was. The effect of her thoughts in Harold’s brain, her words in Harold’s ears, and her words in Raz’s ears created a really upsetting echo. He watched himself cringe through Harold’s eyes. Lili saw it, too, because she reached her human arm out and slugged Raz in the shoulder as she continued. <i>”Dad’s having a secret mission in his office upstairs. Can you climb through the walls and listen in on what he’s telling the others about? It’s really important.”</i>

Harold nodded his head, bobbing the world up and down in the process, and scampered into the bushes.

Raz kept his focus on the rodent as Harold wove through the bushes, climbed rocks and wriggled through cracks his girth should have probably kept him out of. Before Raz really knew what path he’d taken, Harold was back in HQ, squeezing beneath floorboards and into vent covers. With almost supernatural skill, he wriggled through gaps in structure and infrastructure until he was crawling up the wall between Truman’s office and the conference room.

<i>“Wait, we’re already here?”</i> Raz thought aloud. <i>”It was that easy?”</i>

<i>”Easy?”</i> Lili scoffed in his head. <i>”Harold’s a Psychonaut! Not just anyone can do it.”</i>

Harold snorted in agreement.

Raz cringed. </i>”Sorry.”</i>

Harold ascended another layer of ductwork into the ceiling and descended again into another gap and finally emerged into the Top Secret Senior Staff Meeting

Sasha, Milla, Oleander, Compton, Bob, Otto, and Helmut’s brain ball were seated in office chairs around a conference table. Truman stood before them, the red tie his daughter Lili gave him as a “welcome back to your cranium” present peeking from beneath his long, curly beard. He clicked a handheld button to advance through slides on an overhead projector where Oleander’s falcon was currently roosting. Its tail feathers obscured a corner of the new slide where the words “MIND BOMB” were written in scarequotes.

<i>“A mind bomb!”</i> Raz thought, awestruck.

Lili matched his enthusiasm. <i>“You mean like TPT 48? The Great Mind Wipe of Professor Storch?”</i>

<i>“It has to be! But I don’t remember a Hornblower in that issue.”</i>

<i>“A horn blower?”</i> Lili asked. <i>“Why do you care about a horn blower?”

“Truman mentioned someone named Hornblower.”

“Dumb name.’

“It’s probably code.” </i>Raz hushed her. <i>“Look at the screen!”</i>

Truman’s slide advanced to a mugshot of a broad-shouldered man with a hunched stance and shaggy mutton chops. His arms were thick and curled so tight with muscles it looked like his prison uniform was about to burst off. The label on the snapshot read Grinsmith Forrut Horatio and the prison number was followed by unfamiliar symbols.

Raz squinted. <i>“Is that Elvish?”

“Mongolian,”</i> Lili answered.

“Horatio escaped our international high-security compound this morning at two o’clock this morning Krasnoyarsk Time,” Truman said. “Local governments are on alert, but he is already out of the Psilirium dampening zone. We have reason to believe he’s headed west.”

“And you’re sure that it’s him?” Otto said. “His sentence was eighty years’ hard labor.”

“That’s barbaric!” Milla cried.

“He shouldn’t have gotten himself arrested in Siberia,” Otto said.

“He mind-wiped four hundred people,” Compton said, sadly. “We were only able to restore functionality to half of them. Hard labor is severe but he committed a grievous crime.”

Truman snapped his hand button and moved the slide to an image of Codename: Hornblower’s Psychonaut arrest record. “Horatio is a highly volatile individual. He has struggled with deep-seeded psychopathy since youth and an unchecked narcissism that has only been encouraged through childhood. This led him to groups like The Mentalists and the New Thinkers.”

“Blah, politics?” Oleander scoffed. “I thought he was in jail for mind-wiping people.”

“The Mentalists and New Thinkers are officially categorized as terrorist groups,” Sasha said. “They believe in psychic superiority.”

“He developed a psychic technique he called ‘Mind Bomb’ that could separate the tether between the mind and body,” Otto said. “As exemplified by our friend Helmut, here, the human mind and body are connected by more than just meat. Non-psychics have a weaker connection – most can’t survive a separation for more than a couple minutes. A notable example was our friend Gristol Malik who required a … er… surrogate body to keep his awareness active while his brain was removed.”

Truman cleared his throat and kept the conversation on track by advancing the slide again. “His theory was that the psychics would be able to use their abilities to pull their minds and bodies back together, but non-psychics would not. He intended to separate the sheep and the goats as they say.”

“Lemme guess,” Oleander said, “the plan failed.”

“No, it worked perfectly,” Truman said, advancing the slides. “He released his Mind Bomb in a remote Siberian town called Kholodnyy. The blast severed the mind/body tether of everyone there. We know for certain there were at least five psychics in that town, including one of our remote agents. She was able to pull herself together fast enough to identify him as the culprit.”

The slide transitioned to the photo of a sweet looking old woman in a massive furry hat. Raz didn’t recognize her at first, but the ring she wore on her finger meant she was likely Agent Bidel Nost from True Psychic Tales #144. She was a lot younger in the comic, but it said in her bio on the inside-back cover that she had retired to a Siberian town. Was that how Horatio found her? Did he target her home knowing there was a powerful psychic living there? Raz grit his teeth. Harold chittered and drew his attention back to the conversation.

The slide had advanced to the image of a maximum security prison with layers of perimeter wall built high with brick and festooned with coils of barbed wire.Truman was summing up a marked list of security features including a Psilerium barrier marked by a large orange bubble.

Bob grunted. “How’d he escape? We build places like that to keep dangerous psychics inside them. Was this Psychonauts oversight?”

“It was a Soviet facility, but our security system, yes,” Truman said.

“Were there no guards?” Bob persisted.

Truman advanced several slides showing the inside of the prison. Dead guards and inmates lined the walls. The Psilirium generator was broken. The front doors were wide open and several vehicles were missing from the carpark. Finally, the projector turned to the image of a city street littered end to end in fallen bodies.The room went stone silent. Raz’s chest clenched so hard, he almost lost the connection to Harold, his head filling instead with war, and drowning, and lice...

Lili’s hand found his hand in real life. He gripped it.

<i>“Should we stop?”</i> She thought to him.

<i>“No, we gotta know more,”</i> Raz replied. <i>”I’m sure your Dad has a plan.”</i>

“The image you’re seeing here is Fanrong, China,” Truman said. “It was taken four hours after the escape.”

“How many people?” Milla asked.

“Over one-hundred thousand.”

“One-hundred thousand!” Compton muttered.

“It must have been the whole city,” Otto said as if the image before him were a math problem he needed to solve. “This would be all over international news otherwise.”

“Yes. And neither the Chinese nor the Soviets don’t want news of it getting out, either. Bad for their image,” Truman said. “Thankfully that means we are the lead organization on this project and to a small degree, their cooperation. China has already set perimeters around the city. People on the outskirts are in protective custody and everyone calling in or out have been told there is a power outage.”

“All this because of one guy?” Oleander asked.

“Yes,” Truman switched slides again, revealing security camera photos of Horatio, somehow more hulking than his mug shot with a wild beard and the upper-half of a prison jumpsuit tied around his waist. He was accompanied by two dozen other inmates wearing the same jumpsuits and toting shovels and pickaxes. “The escape happened during a routine Psilirium refueling procedure. In order to keep the barrier up and running, the stock of Psilirium needs to be replaced every five years. The projector is shut down, the core is replaced, and the system is booted back up. Horatio launched a Mind Bomb during the bootup, freed the inmates and used them to dig his way out of the compound.”

“How is that possible?” Sasha asked. “With Psilirium poisoning, his psychic powers would still be repressed.”

“Horatio’s natural psychic affinity is geomastery,” Truman said by way of explanation. “Geomastery is considered a minor affinity in most. Often Geomasters go undetected in general society. He is able to sense space, distance, and volume at a glance. He used this to multiply the effects of this bomb to devastating size. While in prison, he was prevented from practicing the Mind Bomb as he’d originally crafted it. He had to… adapt.”

Truman switched the slide to a medical diagram of a man’s head and brain.

“While Horatio’s Geomastery was a psychic trait, his grasp of mathematics was a learned skill. It took a decade, but he mastered the Mind Bomb on paper. And once he’d perfected his theorem, he spent a second decade implanting it into the unconscious minds of his fellow inmates using suggestive hypnosis. Horatio was the one who triggered the Mind Bomb at the prison, he was not the one who generated it. He used his fellow inmates.”

“He detonated… people?” Compton asked.

“Worse. Psychics,” Truman continued. “Those whom, if he were sane, should be protected by his philosophy. This isn’t about who deserves to live anymore. Horatio is weeding the garden. He’s killing as many non-psychics as he can and he doesn’t care about preserving his own kind to do it.”

“How many psychic prisoners were on site?” Otto asked.

“Forty-five.”

“How many did he detonate?”

“One in the prison, and a second in the city.”

“Only one psychic was used in Fanrong City?” Sasha asked. “Generating an explosion of mental energy that size would shred the mind of a healthy psychic beyond repair. The prisoner would have been killed instantly.”

“Even worse. The man was decapitated.”

Truman turned the slide. Raz shielded his face in real life, but it did nothing for his mind’s eye. Thankfully even Harold found the slide too galling to look at.

“How’d he trigger it without psychic powers?” Oleander asked.

“It’s old-fashioned hypnotic conditioning,” Otto answered. “He could have triggered it with a word or a symbol. Even a smell. And without worrying about the fate of the prisoner, he didn’t even need his detonator’s cooperation. They may not even know what they are.”

“Were all of the forty-five escaped prisoners given this conditioning?” Compton asked.

“Unsure, but we have to assume they were,” Truman said.

“So there are dozens of walking time bombs out there capable of killing whole cities. Triggered by a signal no one survived to know,” Oleander said. “So why are we just sitting here? We gotta catch this guy before he detonates again!”

Sasha pondered the question. “With residual Psilirium poisoning, Horatio would not have survived the blast at Fanrong. It’s likely he was far from the detonation site when the bomb went off.  We know his gang are headed south. There’s only so far men can travel by motor vehicle in that area. They have to be on the Asian continent.”

“That narrows the field, at least.” Milla’s voice was troubled. Her eyes flit near imperceptibly to Sasha who canted his head a fraction. Raz hoped they were thinking something encouraging to each other.

“What of those who have already fallen victim to this?” Compton spoke in a trembling tone. “The hundred-thousand people? Can anything be done for them?”

“That’s where you come in,” Truman said, sounding a little more ‘Grand Head’ than he did before. “You all are my top agents. All previous assignments are suspended, I need all hands on deck for this one. I’m sending everyone in this room to Fanrong for recon.”

<i>”Uh, hand raise?”</i> Helmut thought. <i>“Some of us don’t have bodies.”</i>

“And some of us aren’t agents,” Bob added with a bitter snort.

“But some of you were and some of you can be again.” Truman fixed his uncle with a long look, one that addressed the tension and forced through it on sheer momentum. “As the Psychic Six… Seven… You have unparalleled experience in the field of deep mental exploration. Many of the victims are still alive and recoverable through mental reconstruction. I want you to save as many as we can.”

“Of course!” Compton regarded Otto, Bob, and Helmut’s floating brain, gaining confidence with each glance. “Whatever we can do, we will do it.”

“Thank you.” Truman relaxed a fraction. “Agent Mentalis will take lead on IRL recovery. The blast separated the soul bond between brain and body, for non-psychics that means coma or death,  but for latent psychics – those with a strong tether and no training – that means unfettered ability. The People’s Republic Agents have reported instances of astral projection, body-jacking, eruptions of Pyrokinesis, Telekenesis, and Geokinesis among other disciplines. I’m putting Agent Mentallis in charge of therapeutics to calm these minds down.”

Otto adjusted his glasses. “Fine.”

“Agent Boole will be in charge of the mental portion. While Otto works on the damage these rogue psychics are doing on the outside world, you’ll be calming them from the mental world.”

“I will enlist Cassie’s help,” Compton said. “We will do our best.”

“And me and Helmut?” Bob asked.

“You two are in charge of the non-pyschic mental reconstruction project.” Truman managed half a smile. “Helmut knows what it’s like to wake up out of nothing. It may be the difference between life and death for these victims.”

Helmut bobbed in his cerebral juices. <i>“Sweet,”<i>

“Yeah, yeah, but what about Horatio?” Oleander asked. “We can’t just sit around a ruined city while he and his bomb army are out there somewhere. He’s gotta be baked half to death by Psilirium at this point, I doubt he got far, we can still catch him!”

“I agree,” Truman said. “That’s why you, Milla, and Sasha are on offense. Milla will search the cognitive landscape, you and Sasha are in charge of the physical. We need to find Horatio and stop him before he launches any additional attacks.”

“Nice!” Oleander grit his teeth. “I always preferred a direct assault.”

Milla crossed her arms. “This is not a carpet bombing, Morceau. We need to locate Horatio and apprehend him. We cannot get inside his mind if he is in tiny pieces.”

“Ah, whatever, all we need is the brain,” Oleander snorted. “Otto can put it in a jar and we’ll figure things out from there.”

“You know as well as anyone that preserving his brain only works if his body is still alive,” Sasha said with a touch of the irritant that always cropped up when he talked to the coach. “The Mind Bomb breaks the tether between Mind and Body. One cannot exist without the other. We will run into the same issue if Horatio’s body or mind are eliminated. A certain amount of information can be drawn from an inert brain, but not the details we need. Not the trigger that changes a convict into an explosive.”

Oleander rolled her eyes. “Fine. Geez.”

“You all have your assignments,” Truman said. “ Planes leave in two hours. Recruit any other staff you need.”

“I want Agent Nerumen.” Otto said.

Milla spun her chair toward him. “Gisu’s only a junior agent. Do you really think that would be appropriate?”

“I want her,” Otto said. “The Netavidad sisters as well. They’re strong elemental psychics, they can help with the cleanup on the surface.”

“But the casualties…” Milla shook her head. “They’re too young.”

“They’re Psychonauts,” Otto said.

<i>“If he gets them, I want Martinez,”</i> Helmut added.

“No. No Junior Agents in the mental world,” Truman said. “And no Junior Agents around piles of dead bodies. Milla’s right,  I’m not putting their minds at risk, and I’m not traumatizing them earlier than I have to.”

“How many <i>adult</i> agents are you allocating?” Compton asked.

“All available, although I’m keeping the name and nature of the target top secret,” Truman said. “Only those in this room know of Horatio’s involvement, the rest are told the culprit is classified. If Horatio is returning to The Mentalists, they’ll have ears to the ground. I don’t want him catching wind of us and detonating another bomb.”

“Gotcha.” Oleander gave two thumbs up.

“Good,” Truman said and clicked off the projector. “If everyone has their instructions, we have no time to waste. Horatio will likely need a safehouse to wait the Psilirium poisoning out. Once he’s back up to full strength, he’ll be able to sojourn anywhere on the astral plane and detonate his bombs wherever in the world they wander. He could actually get his wish – a world occupied only by psychics, and the deaths of billions of innocent people. Let’s find him before that happens.”

“To work, everyone,” Otto said, rising. “Time to save the world again.”

Harold chittered as the Psychonauts rose from their seats. Lily released Raz’s hand and thought to him. <i>”We should go.”</i>

<i>”No wait.”</i> Raz thought. Truman was staring across the table at Sasha and Milla with an intense look that betrayed mental communication. Raz focused in tight, but the exchange was over before he could hear it. Sasha and Milla waited for the other agents to leave before joining Truman at the front of the toom.

Raz nudged Harold mentally <i>”Can you get closer?”</i>

Harold chittered in reply. He hopped along the cabinets at the top of the room and hovered over the Grand Head and his superstar agents. Truman lowered his voice. “I have a job.”

“Top secret within top secret?” Sasha asked.

“It requires a certain finesse.” Truman replied. “I am aware that we are getting a late start on this. We need a backup plan for when Horatio’s psilirium poisoning wears off. Before Horatio was a terrorist, he had a profitable career as a psychic duelist in the underground fighting scene. He was historically hard to beat.”

“What discipline did he use?” Sasha asked.

“Weaponkinesis.”

“Weaponkinesis,” Milla repeated. “I’ve not heard of this.”

“I have,” Sasha said. “Sparingly. I’ve read about it.”

“Then you know how exclusive a discipline it is,” Truman said. “Those who train in it usually maim themselves in the process.”

“How gruesome,” Milla said.

“It consists of multiple weapons – usually edged weapons – manipulated by telekinesis,” Sasha explained. “The weapons are kept constantly in orbit around the duelist, shifting position to strike or defend. It is a flurry of flying knives that keeps the opponent at arm’s length and death close at hand.”

“Hence the maiming,” Milla concluded.

“It is also a mathematically heavy discipline,” Truman added. “And so Horatio was naturally inclined toward it. Weaponskinesis is governed by strict rules that require a lot of focus and concentration. Duels between Weaponskinetics are seen as a religious ritual by some Himalayan monks including, for example, the order that trained our perp.”

“Is he a member of this order?” Sasha asked.

“Doesn’t seem so. They’re passivists.”

Sasha crossed his arms. “Then I’m not following your thought process.”

“Horatio has been subdued by Psilirium exposure for a long time,” Truman said. “Everyone here knows what it’s like to suffer from that.”

“Unfortunately,” Milla agreed.

“When in the throes of the delirium, sufferers hyperfocus on elements of their psyche that their conscious mind is inclined toward,” Truman said. “I considered tapping into his Geomastery, but I doubt we’d get Horatio to drop everything and take a pop quiz.”

“You said thai technique was rule heavy,” Sasha said. “Would engaging him in this discipline hold his attention long enough for our agents to infiltrate his mindscape and root out the triggers for the bombs?”

“If we can find a duelist capable of meeting him one on one,” Truman agreed. “Unfortunately we don’t have anyone on staff with experience using Weaponskinesis. Like I said, it’s rare.”

“So we conscript a duelist,” Sasha decided.

Truman handed him a folder. “As part of your search, I’m sending you two to the monastery where Horatio trained to recruit someone who may be willing to duel with him. It’ll be a hard sell. Like I said, they’re pacifists. But perhaps if we explain that the goal is preservation of life, they’ll agree to fight on our behalf.”

Sasha nodded. “I’ll crate up the Kingfisher.”

“Why not the Pelican?” Oleander said.

The three turned. The coach stood on the threshold with his hands on his hips.

He pointed at the ceiling. “Forgot my bird.”

The falcon chirped an irritated “Caw!” and swooped down to land on his arm.

“I heard the whole thing, by the way,” Oleander said. “A secret top-secret mission to recruit a deadly warrior? Sounds like a good time to me.”

“Morry, I don’t know…” Milla started.

“What happened to <i>Time is of the Essence?”</i> Oleander said. “This is a walk and talk, it’ll be fine.”

Truman slouched. “Fine.”

“Yes!” Oleander pumped a fist. “I’ll pack my bag. What’s the weather like at this monastery?”

“It’s on the top of a Himalayan mountain so… pack a sweater.”

Oleander marched off, bird in hand. Milla followed with a sigh. It was Sasha’s turn to hang back. He thumbed through the folder and waited for Truman’s attention. The Grand Head waited in the doorway. “Something else?”

“I’d like to bring Razputin if I may.”

Raz’s stomach leaped on an adrenaline springboard of excitement, but he focused on Harold to keep from losing the connection.

“I said no Junior Agents,” Truman said.

“I won’t involve him in any conflict with Horatio. This is a walk and talk mission in a pacifist monastery. The most we have to worry about is Morry.”

Truman snorted. “You’ve taken a shine to him, haven’t you Nein?”

“He reminds me very much of myself.”

“I don’t need to be a psychic to see that,” Truman said. “What’s the draw? Psi-blast affinity?”

“He’s a bit of a generalist at the moment,” Sasha said. “His natural affinity is unrecorded but if I don’t miss my guess, I think he’s a telepath.”

“A telepath? Really? What led you to that?”

“Mind reading is one of the first skills he mastered without instruction,” Sasha said. “Not to mention Telepathy and Astral Projection often go hand in hand. No one can deny his skill as a mindwalker. He navigates the mental world better than many of our fully-trained agents, and has done so since his first foray. If he is willing to learn, I’m certain Agent Aquato will grow into one of the Psychonauts’ most powerful mental navigators. Perhaps even the best.”

“Better than you?”

“Indeed. With training.”

Raz’s heart swelled so big he thought he might choke on it. Sasha Nein, his childhood hero, told the Grand Head of the Psychonauts that he, Raz, was a potential superstar. Pride flushed his face so warm he was concerned it was pyrokinesis kicking in. Lili slugged him in the arm. Raz almost forgot she was in there listening. Harold snorted as if he disagreed.

“Alright, I’ll allow it,” Truman said. “Raz is clever, but he’s cocky. He needs to see aspects of this job he hasn’t read about in comic books. Just him out of harm’s way.”

“I will.” Sasha tapped the folder. “Let me brief Razputin. Assuming all is well. We’ll leave within the hour. Tell Morry to leave the bird.”

“Figures you’d leave me with that job.”

Raz watched Sasha reach the door and was jerked out of his clairvoyant trance by a slap to the face.

“Ow!” Raz grunted, rubbing his cheek. “What was that for?”

“Sasha’s going to brief you!” Lili said, her open hand still open in the follow-through. “He thinks you’re in his office! You gotta go!”

“Oh no!” Raz turned on his heel and dashed back toward the main entrance. “Thanks Lili! Thank Harold for me!”

Lili waved him off. “Go get ‘em, Tiger!”

Raz swung and leaped along the quarry terrain and rolled to a stop on the pavement. Instead of taking the front doors, he dove straight for the Otto-ban pneumatic tube network where he bounced around like one of the brains in balls until he reached the branch for Sasha’s laboratory. He ascended feet-first, kicking upward and sailing with a backflip into the lighted room. With scarcely a pause, he dashed around the corner and hopped into the office chair, smacking the Print button as he rolled past. The printer began ribboning out another banking document. The chair spun and revealed Sasha standing, arms folded, in the corner of his sitting room.

“Razputin.”

Raz gulped. “Agent Nein.”

“Am I to assume you heard every word of that meeting?”

Raz gulped again, harder. “Yeah?”

Sasha sighed and shook his head. “Head back to your family’s campground, ask your parents’ permission and bring a warm coat. We leave this afternoon.”

Chapter 3

“The Himalayan mountains? Absolutely not,” Donatella Aquato cried.

“But Mom!” Raz whined, a repurposed Whispering Rock parent permission form in his hand. “This is a big save-the-world level case!”

“Even more reason you should not go.” Donatella snapped a wet towel as punctuation and hung it on a clothesline to dry.

Aquato family were still camped in the Questionable Area. Truman had given them a permit to run their circus in the parking lot on a semi-permanent basis hoping it would increase tourism  ic to the whole site. Things felt a little more lived-in when Raz visited, but the campsite was still heavy with a sense of impermanence. After a life on the road, Raz should find the electricity of the campsite homey, but after finally making it into the Psychonauts he couldn’t find the thought of traveling circus life very exciting. He still had a place with his family, but chose to stay with the other agents in the Motherlobe dormitories instead of at camp. It was a weird transition, but it wasn’t all bad. Frazie spent the night sometimes. She was getting more comfortable with the idea of being a psychic and getting to know Norma and Lizzie pretty well, too. Dion was also getting to know Gisu, although the less Raz knew about that stuff the better. Raz’s father was okay with him living away from the tent, too. His mom, not so much. All the more reason to sleep in the dorms. He didn’t want to be “Little Pootie” forever.

“Come now, he’s not going alone,” Augustus said from across the campfire. He was balancing on one foot and attempting to juggle with his mind. He wasn’t good. “You’re not going alone, are you Razputin?”

“Sasha and Milla are taking me,” Raz said, purposefully excluding the coach.

“Bah.” Donatella hung another wet towel. “How am I supposed to make sure you’re eating when you’re in the Himalayas?”

“I’ll bring snacks,” Raz said.

“And will you also be bringing peace of mind home for your mother? Because you have not left me any,” Donatella said.

“Mom,” Raz whined. “Come on, please. Sasha says I need my parents’ permission!”

“Your mother says ‘no,’ Razputin,” Augustus said.

“But you don’t understand!” Raz persisted. “This is my chance to really help out!”

Augustus set down his juggling batons and pulled Raz. “I know it can be frustrating, son. Some day you’ll be an adult and you can make your own decisions, but right now you are ten years old and the adults in your life still have to look out for you. There will be other super secret world-saving missions you can go on in the future.”

“Not if we don’t stop Horatio from mind-bombing everyone,” Raz muttered, but knew better than to raise such arguments with his parents. Shoulders hunched, he sulked back to the parking lot and through the swinging doors of the Lumberstack Diner. Previously a breakfast hut (and temporarily a weapons manufacturing site if you’re honest about whatever Sam Boole was doing in there,) the Lumberstack was the new hobby of ex-head of the Psychonauts Ford Crueller. Unlike Raz, he had opted <i>not</i> to live in the dorms of the Motherlobe, preferring the surroundings of nature and the memories of Green Needle Gulch. And proximity to his new/old girlfriend Lucy, who was Raz’s grandma/great-aunt Nona, and sitting delighted at the counter clicking her heels together.

Ford was in the kitchen flipping flapjacks with hsi apron and chef’s toque on as if he were back flipping burgers in Whispering Rock’s cafeteria. He flipped a pancake toward the ceiling, caught it on his spatula, and posed to Nona’s polite applause as one of his previous attempts came free of the ceiling and splatted on the floor.  “Why, hello there, Razputin! Come to taste-test the Lumberstack’s new menu? I’m cookin’ up some real winners.”

“No.” Raz hopped onto one of the counter chairs and rested his chin on the formica.

“Awww, Pootie,” Nona said in her reedy voice. “Are you having a difficult time?”

“Oh… Don’t worry about it, Nona,” Raz sighed dramatically. “Mom and Dad won’t let me go on the big Psychonauts mission.”

“Ohh?” Nona asked.

“It’s not fair, either! Truman said I could go. And it’s not like I’m going by myself, I’ll have the stars of True Psychic Tales looking after me,” Raz sighed again.

“Buck up, Junior Agent, things aren’t that bad,” Ford said. A towering plate of pancakes slid across the counter and booped Raz in the nose. “Have a short stack.”

He could hardly believe Ford of all people would be so optimistic – including calling the mountain of fried pastry “short.” He picked up a fork and carved a wedge out of the heap. “Why weren’t you at the briefing, Ford? Bob and Helmut were there.”

“Don’t worry, I got the short version from Truman, then the long version from Milla.” He poured another disk of batter onto his cooktop. “They’ve got plenty of agents on the case, they don’t need an old bag of bones like me.”

“That’s not true, Ford. This Hornblower guy is – ”

“Ahem,” Ford interrupted with a pointed glance at Nona. Raz bit his lip. After the events with Gristol Malik and the defeat of Maligula, Raz’s grandmother had been growing more Lucrecia- like every day. She had a lot of memories to process, and a lot still repressed. Even with her worst inclinations under control, she was still an unknown entity and a powerful psychic. Ford placed himself on permanent Lucrecia-watch duty, both in penance for the damage he both caused and failed to prevent, and also to rekindle the romantic relationship they’d forged in youth. It was a comfortable place for him, too. He wanted Nona back to her healthy Lucy persona as much as anyone.

Raz stuffed a forkful of pancakes in his mouth to stall and tried again. “Truman wanted all hands on deck and I have a chance to be some of those hands. I even have a sub-mission picked out that’s pretty safe. If mom would just let me explain it..”

“Pootie, your mother worries,” Nona said. “She has much to worry about. Our family has run away from war, we had grief and the unknown and lies to manage, but we always made it through because we were together.”

Raz swallowed.

“You ran away from home, you learned to use your psychic powers, you moved away.” Nona canted her head toward him. “You’re growing up, Pootie.”

“I mean, I am…” Raz hesitated.

“And being grown up means you have a lot more responsibility.” Nona wagged her finger. “People count on you .You count on people. Choices matter more. Do you understand all that?”

“Yes, Nona,” Raz said.

“Then I will sign your permission slip,” Nona said.

Raz’s heart leaped. He tried his best to contain the glow he knew was beaming from his eyes. “Would permission from my Nona instead of my parents be good enough for Sasha to let me go?”

“For Sasha? Hah!” Ford laughed. “Go pack your bags.”

Raz passed Nona his slip for a signature and bounded down from the stool. He barreled through the door, but paused to listen at the crack. Nona was chuckling. “Little scamp.”

“He’s still a little boy, but he’s got big potential.”

“You’ll keep an eye on him, won’t you Crully?”

“I always do, my love.”

Chapter 4

The Pelican flight to Nepal was a long trip, thankfully Truman sent them with plenty to do. Their top secret mission-within-a-mission was not a replacement for the duties doled out in the conference room, they had double the work and hours of flight time to make a dent in it.

Milla needed to meditate in order to locate Horatio and his horde in the mental world, so she built a temporary vibe-zone in the back of the plane. The path between the cockpit and the bathroom was loaded up with cushions and incense. Milla floated above them wearing a flowing green dress with a silk shawl that drifted around her like Saturn’s rings. Normally music and lack of distractions would be necessary for full immersion, but with Sasha, Raz, AND Coach Oleander aboard, she compromised and vanished into a set of headphones as a substitute. Raz was nervous about possibly getting around her to go the bathroom, but Milla peeked one eye open and whispered. “Go on around, Darling. You won’t startle me.  I’m sensing you as well, after all.”

Sasha was in the pilot’s seat as usual and Oleander was on the computer browsing news reports, aerial maps, train lines, and petty thefts. He slouched against the console with his jaw heavy on his hand and clicked through the readouts as loudly as possible. Sasha left the Pelican on autopilot and continued his own private study.

“Aarrgh!” Oleander groaned. “I’m tellin’ ya, Nein, a group of forty guys moving together is not gonna show up in all this stuff! They’re gonna be spotted by local cops and military or airforce radar. We need to be hacking into the war machine, not leafing through  these newspaper listings.”

“You’re welcome to monitor those as well, Morry.” Sasha flipped pages in a spiral-bound book with his mind. “Although I doubt a strategist such as Horatio would move his men like a pack of marauders through the countryside. Every one of those prisoners is a bomb ready to detonate. I imagine he’s scattered them throughout the region.”

“Finding all these different guys is not as important as finding the top guy!”

“I know that.”

“So why am I wasting my time calculating mileage when we could strike him from space?”

“Patience,” Sasha said without looking up. “We need to catalog all possibilities before we are able to narrow them down. We cannot do anything until we reach mainland China. Use the time we are inactive to prepare.”

Oleander crossed his arms. “I’m not one of our campers, you don’t have to lecture me.”

“Then get back to work,” Sasha said.

Raz sat in a swiveling chair with his own assignment – more mapping bank accounts, this time specifically for withdrawals around the time of the first bomb. If Horatio didn’t have access to a bank account somewhere, his terrorist friends probably did and he would need a significant amount of money  to buy a bunch of train tickets or rent a bunch of cars. Raz admitted he didn’t think he’d be fighting a world-threatening villain with a highlighter but, suspended in the tension between Sasha and Oleander, he was hesitant to complain. He peeked sidelong at Sasha’s reading material, wishing he could spin a little Clairvoyance and read over his shoulder but certain Sasha would notice if he tried.

He noticed anyway. “Something you need, Razputin?”

“I, uh… just…” He cleared his throat. “Are you learning about these monastery guys?”

Sasha sighed and turned another page. “What little there is to learn, yes.”

“What kind of monks are they?” Raz asked. “Are they all psychic?”

“Yes, it’s a requirement.”

“Do they all know this Weaponkata fighting technique?”

“It doesn’t say.” The page turned again. “Very few outsiders have been welcome at their temple. Most of the information we have is from rejected postulants who only had temporary access to a small portion of the grounds. Horatio is rare in that he was admitted as a full monk, but left the order to pursue is own agenda. Most the monks commit their entire lives to achieve their order’s primary goal.”

“And what goal is that?” Oleander asked. “World domination?”

“Their entire belief system is devoted to ‘tempering the soul,’ which is a phrase they cultivated to describe perfect balance between the mind and the body. Soul tempering would give them perfect control over their psychic powers as well as perfect control over their bodily functions. To achieve a perfect temper would gain them immortality.”

“Immortality? That’s rich.” Oleander snorted.

Raz leaned forward over his printouts. “Has anyone ever gotten the perfect temper?”

“Of course not,” Sasha said. “Immortality is as foolish as necromancy. Bodies are matter, chemicals, and electricity. No amount of thinking, even for a master psychic, can reverse the effects of entropy or the passage of time.”

Raz sat for a moment, recalling the advice Milla gave him when they were discussing the Deluginists. The ability to do something isn’t as important as the belief that it can be done. Beliefs drive people to actions. He wondered if Horatio was the same. “You said these guys were pacifists right?”

“That’s correct.”

“Does soul tempering mean they’d like… focus on being moral or ethical or…”

“You’re thinking of the soul in a different way than these monks are,” Sasha replied. “These monks are not Hindu or Buddhist or Franciscan or any of the orders you may have learned about. They don’t weigh things in reference to good deeds or directives. These are psychic scholars, to them the soul is an indelible presence of self that lies in tension between the mind and the flesh.”

Raz studied his mentor with suspicion. “Do you believe in the soul, Sasha?”

“Of course.”

“Really? Even with all your science…?”

Sasha raised his head to finally give Raz his full attention. “It is thanks to science that the soul is a proven fact. Don’t let the term confuse you, regardless of anyone’s view of death or life after death, all people are a combination of body and mind, psychic or not. As psychics we have the ability to draw the two aspects of ourselves further apart than the common non-psychic person could, but that tether is still there. That is what we are calling the soul.”

“So the soul is the part of us that can astrally project into other people?” Raz guessed.

“No, that is the mind,” Sasha said. “Our minds are our egos – the thoughts, memories, and emotions that make you who you are.”

Raz grimaced. “So our brains?”

“Our brains are the organ our minds are housed in, but they are not the mind itself. The mind is intangible,” Sasha clarified. “As psychics we have the ability to separate our mind from our body but if either element ceases to exist, the remaining portion of the subject ceases to function. No matter what length of time or distance, the mind alone cannot sustain itself without an associated body, and the body cannot sustain itself without its original mind. That is the tension. That connection is the soul.”

Raz sighed. “I still don’t get it.”

Sasha softened. “That’s all right. You focus on those figures and leave the theory to me.”

“Sasha…” Milla interrupted. She came forward on stocking feet, worry in her eyes. Raz tensed. Any moment of any day, Milla would prefer to be floating. She wasn’t thinking of herself.

Sasha rose. “Is it him?”

“It may be.” She turned sharply to Oleander. “Eighteen degrees south of our bearing, please.”

“Oh! Ah! Right!” Oleander spun back to his station and punched buttons with renewed enthusiasm. Up popped news bulletins and emergency reports from a place called Buxing – a much smaller city than Fanrong by the look of it, but still sizeable according to the map.

“Focus tighter on the northwest portion,” Milla instructed. “There should be a plaza – ”

A flash of scrambled mental noise flashed through Raz’s head. He dropped his paperwork and pressed his temples to still the ringing in his mind. The feeling hurt similarly to being ejected violently from a psi-portal – a combination of physical pain from the fight in the mental world and the disorientation of returning to the real world without warning. Only with this, there was no safe place for his mind to land back in. It was his own head, and his mind was a ping pong ball slamming hard against his skull and the backs of his eyeballs as the echo of foreign voices screaming like ghosts in his ears.

Oleander squawked. Sasha winced. Milla let out a scream and doubled over. Raz looked up and saw waves of mental energy streaming from her head. Her knees gave but Sasha caught her before she fell and she clung to him with her forehead pressed to his shoulder until the feeling had dulled.

Oleander blinked. “What was that!?”

“Another detonation?” Sasha asked.

Milla nodded.

“Do you know how many…”

She shook her head against his chest and he let the question die.

Milla’s shoulders relaxed. She shifted back to a more balanced stance but kept hold of Sasha, the desperate grip changing to comfort-seeking embrace. He compiled without any question, standing with her in the cockpit and holding her steady for a little or long as she needed. Raz’s stomach knotted. They’d felt the effects of the mind bomb even at a distance. He couldn’t imagine what being on the ground would be like. At least one person was dead for sure – the man who’d served as the last bomb was mutilated by it. Even as a psychic, Raz wasn’t sure how or if he’d pull his mind and body back together if he were caught in the actual blast instead of the edge. What had Milla felt in the mental world? Was it a wasteland in there now? More likely it was chaos – suddenly crowded with a thousand displaced minds, all scared. All screaming like the echo he heard in his own head. He remembered the hidden vault in her mind and felt sick all over again.

Oleander cleared his throat. “Fifteen minutes until Buxing. HQ and Otto are aware of it, but we’re closest. Are we going to detour?”

Sasha nodded.

“All right. Detour.” The Coach drew a sky breath and transferred flight controls to his chair. “I’ll uh… calculate mileage.”

The hurt of watching Milla suffer doubled tenfold in Raz’s chest. The image he saw on Truman’s slideshow of the bodies laying in the streets returned to him, towing the wake of Grulovian memories and visions along with it. Sasha glanced down at him over his shoulder. Raz didn’t have to read his mind to see his thoughts. Regret.

He wished Raz hadn’t come.

Chapter 5

The Pelican descended on a marketplace in Buxing. From above the town looked undisturbed. Cute single-story buildings stood side-by-side with old-world wooden houses. Sloped roofs with clay tiles sheltered concrete-paved sidewalks. A statue stood in the center, surrounded by greenery. No fires burned. No buildings were broken. Not a blade of grass was disturbed. But at street level, the roads and sidewalks were littered with unconscious people. Cars were stacked bumper-to-bumper on the urban road. Spilled bags of groceries lay feet from shoppers’ arms. Bikers and skaters were crumpled in heaps with their vehicles crashed alongside. Blood smeared slumbering faces from busted noses and broken crowns. No one moved, not even animals.

Raz watched out the porthole window with his lower lip between his teeth. He reminded himself that they weren’t all dead bodies yet. Truman said a portion of the Siberian town Horatio hit was saved and Helmut and Bob were working hard at saving the victims of Fanrong, but neither case stopped Buxing from looking like a massacre. The mind bomb took out men, women, children, and the elderly. No one was spared. The silence put every nerve in his body on edge.

“Sasha and I will run a sweep,” Milla reported. “If there are signs of Horatio’s whereabouts, we must know them immediately. Agent Mentallis is on his way with support. Stay by the radio.”

“Aye, ma’am,” Oleander said.

Milla’s eyes were weary, but she’d otherwise recovered her usual presence. She smiled. “Please continue scanning the area for signs of activity. We know he’s not in the city, but it’s possible he needed to be close for the detonation. We must prevent more attacks.”

“You got it,” Oleander said.

Sasha tugged the lapels of his suit. “Raz, stay on the plane.”

Raz’s heart was still raw. He was so excited to be trusted and included, now he felt like a burden. He couldn’t help feeling he’d done something wrong. “But…”

“Please don’t argue,” Sasha said. “We’ll be back soon.”

“I’ll take the air,” Milla said.

“I’ll follow on foot,” Sasha agreed. “Let’s go.”

The two agents took off down the Pelican gangplank. They moved between bodies, not stopping to help or check for vitals. Raz stomach tightened more. He understood that stopping Horatio was the highest priority, but so many people needed help and he was just standing there useless. Oleander returned to the pilot seat. “Don’t worry too much. We got here fast as we could. Otto will sort out the rest.”

“I hope so… just…” Raz gripped his own arm in a weak attempt at comfort. “We’re not really going to sit here and wait, are we?”

“Truman said no kids and dead bodies, we should probably listen to him,” Oleander said.

“Are they really all dead?” Raz asked. “How many of them are there?”

“I dunno. One report said 50,000? Something like that.”

“And we’re sure all of them were hit by this bomb?” Raz asked.

“I’m sure you felt it in the air.”

“Yeah, yeah I felt it,” Raz shivered with the memory. “But 50,000 people…”

“When Sasha and Milla get back, we’ll start knitting some back together. Until then, you sit tight. Agent Mentallis will be here in ten.”

As Oleander spoke, an explosion broke the silence outside. Shingles rattled on the nearby storefronts and a thin cloud of dust drifted into the market square. Oleander stood for a look out the window then checked the local readout. “Wild mind.”

“What?” Raz asked.

“A wild mind. A psychic out of control of their powers,” Oleander explained. “It happens sometimes to latents in car-crashes and stuff. Concussions. Sleepwalkers, too. Their brains are still active but their minds are gone.”

“What do we do?” Raz asked.

“WE don’t do anything,” Oleander said. “Track the movement for Otto when he gets here. Hope it doesn’t kill anyone.”

Another explosion shook the square. Flames flickered against a plume of smoke two streets over. Raz balled his fists against the wall. “But the town is covered with vulnerable people. What if that fire is on top of someone, they can’t move.”

“Bad luck.”

“Can’t YOU go do it?” Raz challenged. “I get not letting me go, but you’re a Psychonaut. You can’t sit here and do nothing.”

“No choice kid. Lassoing a wild mind takes two people,” Oleander said.

“Then forget Truman’s orders, let’s go get it done!” Raz said. “I know you’re not scared of Sasha and Milla – ”

“Hey, I know I’ve got a history of disregarding human safety, but I don’t like this any more than you do,” Oleander said. “And fact is, this is not appropriate for a Junior Agent even if you were an adult. It takes coordination and timing and mental navigating and a whole lot of coordination that you’re not prepared for.”

“I’ve saved the world twice. Once against you,” Raz said.

Oleander pouted.

“Sasha said I was one of the best mental navigators he’s ever seen. I fought and defeated Maligula. You’re telling me I can’t at least try to do this?” Raz said. “Come one, Coach.  You and me - partner mission! That way we can at least save one person out here.”

“Argh!” Oleander grunted. A third explosion rocked a street closer to the pelican. One of the rooftops shuddered and sagged. The coach grit his teeth and hopped up from the console. “Okay, fine. But you gotta do everything I say!”

Raz snapped a salute. “Yes, coach!”

“Okay. Follow me.” Oleander opened the gangplank just long enough for the two of them to descend.

He dodged around the unconscious bodies and trotted through a narrow alley to the site of the last explosion. Raz expected a shrieking maniac or a mindless zombie, but found more of the same. He glanced up and down the street either direction with a frown. “Did we lose them?”

“Shh!” Oleander hissed.

He pressed two fingers to his temple and reached out with his mind. Raz could sense the yellow-gold glimmer of Oleander’s mental influence beaming out in waves. They slipped through bodies and walls without hindrance but bounced off something in front of them. A figure. Raz could make out an arm and shoulder as the invisible man turned.

“Duck!” Oleander cried. He shoved Raz back into the alley and dove across the street into the open door of a building. A concussive blast rattled the spot between them, popping Raz’s ears and shattering the plaster in the walls around him. Dust and particles swirled from the epicenter where the subsonic attack left a crater in a perfectly clean bit of asphalt.

“Sonokinesis,” Raz muttered to himself. “TPT 107.”

<i>”Razputin!”</i> Coach Oleander beamed into his head.

Raz responded in kind. <i>”I’m okay.</i>

<i>”I’m gonna need to pin this guy down here. Your job is to find the body he came out of.”</i>

<i>”His body? How will I know </ii>

<i> “I know you know how to use Clairvoyance. No one in this town has a mental presence anymore, but this guy’s a latent psychic. You’re going to sense an echo of what’s going on out here. Sense for it. When you find him, I’ll tell you what to do.”</i>

<i>”Okay!”</i> Raz dashed back toward the ship and around the periphery of the square until he was behind the wild mind’s last location. He leaped into a back handspring and rolled across the road, skidding into an adjacent alley. The fire the wild mind had started was in the next road. He’d crushed a moped with a nearby blast. The wreckage smoldered against a restaurant door where a greeter was slouched against a topiary. Raz paused to mentally move him away from the flames as he dashed up the street. The first explosion happened not far from the second. He located a familiar crack in the road and opened his mind to start scanning.

As Oleander said, the minds around him were quiet. Raz’s skin prickled. Never in his life had he opened his mind on purpose and received nothing in return. Even as a little kid he heard the thoughts of his siblings. When they were performing in the circus, he would often open his head to the crowd and pick up distracted thoughts like shopping lists and important dates and people who’d forgotten to turn over their laundry. In the streets of Buxing he heard nothing. Every mind was blank, and not even blank like a dead person. Blank like a void. Not even the campers at Whispering Rock who had their whole brains removed were this empty. The mind bomb had blasted everyone’s thoughts miles away from their heads. What happened to them? Where had they gone? How could the Psychonauts get them back?

He rubbed his arms as he continued slowly up the street. The crunch of his heels seemed weirdly loud. Another explosion boomed behind him. Raz jumped and turned toward the new smoke trail, but a niggle tugged at his brainstem from somewhere behind him. Rounding on the street he sensed the faintest of a blip from a man in an apron laying slumped forward on the counter of his crepe stand.

The man was middle-aged and lean with a bald spot on the back of his head. His elbow had landed on his cooktop and the cotton sleeve had burned away. Raz lifted him with telekenesis and laid him gently on the road. The skin in the open patch was badly burned as well. Raz cringed and checked his mind again. The glimmer of a pale purple mental signature encased his empty mind like plastic wrap.

Raz beamed a thought out to Oleander. <i>”Okay, I found his body. </i>

<i>”Good. You got your psi-portal with you?”</i>

Of course. It hadn’t left his backpack since he’d stolen it off Sasha’s desk back in Whispering Rock. <i> “I got it right here!”</i>

<i> “Good. Now this is gonna be the weird part. I’m gonna need to go in your head and try and stir his attention. There’s not gonna be much to look at, but if you can get him thinking just a little bit, I can reach back in toward you from here.</i>

<i> “Stir thoughts. Got it!”</i> Raz said.

<i> “Look for a lifeline. When you see it, tug it hard and tie it down to something. Then we can get smelling salts or smack him around a bit and pull him back that way.”</i>

Raz couldn’t imagine what a smack to the face would achieve that a third degree burn on the arm would not, but he did in fact have smelling salts so no worries about that. He pulled the tiny door-shaped psi-portal from its pocket in his pack and planted it in the middle of the man’s forehead. <i> “Okay, I’m going in.”</i>

<i> “Watch your back. You’re right I’m not scared of Truman or Sasha but I AM scared of Milla. I don’t want my neck wrung.”</i>

Raz snapped is goggles over his eyes and concentrated on his subject. The portal opened, revealing the swirling depths of the mental world within. It’s glow pulled Raz’s consciousness toward it. He let himself be drawn out of his own head and into the waiting landscape of the crepe-vendor’s mind.

to be continued....