The Rise of the Cyborgs

Chapter 12: Home, Sweet

Trouvaille (n.) A lucky find.

Metas POV.

The next day at the end of school I was sitting near the Mexican cantina hatch again. I had got my phone back and while I waited I took a picture of the weird little pretend cantina in the middle of the atrium. I held the phone under the table. I could see ghosts of pictures. The last one was the cantina. I could see the way the upper-level walkways got to close to it. After school, I was tired. We hand remedial literacy. Faking not reading was almost as exhausting as not reading.

"What you doing?" Hannah asked me as she passed by. She smiled - she was such a wonderful person. Funny, sensitive, the light of the room when she was up.

"Magic trick," I said.

"oh I love tricks. Show me." Hannah said. 

"Take a photo of anything in this room. But don't show me."

I closed my eyes. I heard a click.

"OK. Put your phone back in your pocket." I said.

I looked at her. I felt I could reach out with my mind and see the photos on her phone. The phone felt worn. It had been thrown across the room some times in a fit of rage. It had been wet with tears. It had fragments of beautiful poetry she wrote on it.

I put my finger to my head. The photos scrolled through my mind.

"I see, I see" I pretended. "Was it of your bag?" I asked.

Hannah's eyes light up. She turned her phone on and opened the image to show me.

"Wow, that's good."

Mentally I looked at Hannah's other pictures. Along with the ghostly images. I could also sense information about the photograph. There was one which had been looked at more than the others. It was a selfie of Hannah's arms around Brooklyn.

"that's quite a neat trick." Hannah said. "you should be on TV."

I smiled I was greatful she didn't ask me how it was done.  "I don't think people like us get on TV these days. Not unless it's on CCTV. On a crime show. You hanging well?"

Hannah pulled a face "I can feel like on the way up."

"That's good isn't that?"

Hannah waved her Head casually. "No, I'm frightened. I'm on my way up which means, sooner or later I'm going to be on my way down. Things can get bad then. The highs are getting high. The lows well are starting to scare me. The drugs make me... I know its weird and ungrateful but like I'm kind of dead inside. All my ideas are stolen by them. I can't think  you know?"

I smiled "Yyour're going to be fine." I promised, "we are here for you."

Hannah tilted her head slightly. "we should swap numbers."

I looked at her number floated in white in mid air next to her hand "isn't yours 555 4534 34311?"

Just then her phone started to ring. She pulled it out of the bag.

"oh, it's you." She said.

I pulled my own phone out to discover it had magically dialled her number.

"I think my ass loves you even if I don't," I said. My sass covered my confusion. I was just thinking about her number and my phone coincidently dialled her? I wasn't even sure I how I knew it.

Just then Valerie turned up. Hannah was getting a lift home with Valerie's folks, so the two said goodbye and departed.

Later I saw warden Craven walking with Zoe. Zoe looked like she was some kind of zombie. I stared at Craven's chest again and felt my mind burrowing into his phone. I was slightly afraid of myself. On the one hand, I knew this was completely impossible. On the other hand, I knew I had just done it with Hannah's phone. Looking again I saw new pictures. Craven had taken new photos of Zoe. The pictures were fresh. She was showing her naked breasts. One had a picture of cravings hand reaching out. Reaching to the solemn-eyed girl in the picture. It was a portrait of a trapped bird sealed tightly in a cage. There was disgust, and it seemed mostly for her self. She tried not to look at the camera. Always looking off, like a child in a ship looking out to sea.