Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Psychic Scream

"To the contrary Citizen is the word our group uses to keep our members from being identified. And you keep saying "Your group" talking about me like I am some sort of "leader" but that just isn't the case."

"Well, why don't you explain to me."

"Citizen404 doesn't have a leader and it isn't supposed to. Citizen 404 is special because everyone has the same amount of say as anyone else. Your thoughts and your opinions are judged by merit. If your thoughts or ideas receive enough backing than that is what the group does. We don't always agree on what to do because we are a conglomerate of people who work together. Sometimes there are causes we support I don't agree with and sometimes there are things I support that others do not agree with, but the important thing here is that everyone actually has a say."

"If you aren't the leader than why do we see you appearing in so many videos. Why are you the one credited for coordinating all of these attacks."

"Just because there is no leader doesn't mean there aren't people with access. The average person may be able to learn how to hack, but at the end of the day some of us just have greater access, a greater ability to get the ball rolling. I have friends in certain places, I know people, and I can do things that other people just can't do. I won't give you more than that for my safety and the safety of the people I know."

"And what is our motive behind all of this?"

"I want the people of earth to be free. I want humanity to be free. And President Hunt is a snake."

***

Eris shot up in bed heart already racing. Her dark hair fell down around her shoulders in great rolling waves as she desperately looked around the room in a confused effort to orient herself. It was hard to understand at first what had woken her up, but it didn't take long before she figured it out.

She could sense their minds from here. More than two dozen UNSC operatives bearing down on the house from all directions, getting in position to breach and arrest everyone inside. In a panic she threw off the sheets and got out of bed, sifting through the minds of the people outside and trying to find where everything had gone wrong.

They didn't have much to go on, but her worst fears were confirmed. They knew what she could do and they had finally put two and two together. She was suspected of stealing information from government agent's minds and using that information to access classified documents.

They were absolutely right.

Eris had traveled to many new locations just to walk by people they suspected to be intelligence officers, and in so doing she had learned plenty of things she shouldn't know. She had helped to release plenty of things that would destabilize the Hunt administration. But she had gotten to cocky, somewhere along the line they had suspected her, found out who she was, and guessed at her abilities.

And now they were here to arrest her and everyone inside the house.

She raced out into the hallway throwing herself against Martha and Jim's door, bursting into the room with her hair flying in a vortex around her face.

Martha leaped upright in bed and Jim almost rolled off the other side, grasping for the shotgun he kept under his bed.

"They're coming!" Eris shouted.

"Who!" Martha demanded.

"No time." She said running forward, "Put on jackets and boots and then meet me by the back door. You have two minutes."

To their credit, Martha and Jim didn't ask questions looking between each other once and then exchanging a nod. Jim grabbed his shotgun from the floor, and Martha retrieved a handgun from her nightstand as Eris ran out of the room, nearly plowing into the doorframe as she tried to concentrate on the movement of the men and women outside."

She fumbled for her phone in the other room as she strapped on her belt, sending a quick text into the chat and hoping that he was awake to hear it.

@MadAnnon: Help they found us_

She shoved the phone in her pocket and made it to the back door just as Jim and Martha were coming after. Jim was in his long brown winter coat with its hood up, his large snow boots laced hastily up around his pajama bottoms, shotgun still in one hand. Martha was pulling on a pair of hybrid mittens and fingerless gloves. Their jackets swished as they walked.

Eris, unworried about the cold turned to look at her grandparents.

In the dim lighting of their home, they looked less like her grandparents and more like battle hardened badasses from one of Adam's post-apocalyptic sci fi movies.

"Do you trust me?"

The two of them nodded.

"Then you do exactly what I say, we head for the woods on the back right perimeter."

They nodded again . Eris waited for the perfect moment eyes half closed as she listened to what was going on outside, and then she pulled the door open, "GO."

Together the group of them rushed into the snow, Eris floating and Martha and Jim running, though it was difficult through knee high snow. The officers weren't yet in position, but they were close, so she was going to have to make this quick. They approached the gap in the circle, even as the officers approached the end of the treeline, and they would be spotted.

She urged them faster, and she was glad that Martha and Jim were in such good shape, otherwise this would not have turned out as well.

Even so, one of the officers spotted them.

He managed to get out a sharp call to the others before Eris took care of him. She hardly knew what she was doing, but in a moment she was inside the man's head flooding him with his own traumatic memories, throwing his worst moments back in his face. The man gasped as if he had been dunked in ice water and staggered falling to his hands and knees in the snow.

Eris withdrew, feeling horrible.

That seemed.... Extreme.

"Jim grabbed her by the hand, and they continued to run. Before them, the gap was closing again. She could hear shouting.

They knew her family was no longer in the house.

She gripped Jim's arms.

"I'm going to need you to carry me."

The older man seemed reluctant to relinquish his shotgun, but he did as told handing it to Eris as he picked her up. She was still wearing her gravity belt, and turned her weight to almost Zero for him, but she still needed to concentrate, closing her eyes as she bounced gently against his chest, cradled like a child in his arms.

Eris hunkered down deep inside herself, focusing all of her attention on the men that were coming to intercept them. She felt where they were, quickly grew to know their minds, and then as they burst through the trees she did soemthing she had not resorted to doing I n a very long time.

She directed a psychic scream at them. Most humans could not feel when someone was intruding on their minds, but on occasion she was powerful enough to do it. The wave washed over them, piercing into their minds like a cold metal spike. The men gasped and fell to the ground clutching their heads as the group of them ran past. Eris's own head began to throw and she grew dizzy, head lolling back on her neck as the trees whipped by above them, dark limbs outlined in black against the Impetus Star that glowed in the heavens above