Jeisa gently placed her right palm over the keyboard of the tablet on the conference table. The one casting the projection onto the monitor. She let the technopath fibres unwind and take over and looked up at the screen, taking in the presence of the twelve people. They stared back at her, curiosity on every single face. Suddenly, there was a crackle of noise coming from Gretel. She held her phone in hand, with a police scanner app on the screen. There were panicked voices calling out on the scanner. Dispatchers from the Wraith Hamlet police channel reporting on what was happening. Jeisa ignored it all, never taking her eyes away from the screen with Gretel's twelve potential buyers of the WMD.
"Reports are coming in from my people. All medical centres in Wraith Hamlet have lost power." said one of the ladies on the screen.
"Impressive." said a man.
"The hospitals are now each going dark as well. Section by section." said another lady.
"Gretel, I'm willing to invest in this. But are you sure you only want to hire the weapon out, not sell?" said the first lady.
The others around her were murmuring in agreement.
Gretel was beaming.
"Wait!" this was another guy. He was the only one in the group that looked sceptical. He was also the only one that had not taken his eyes off Jeisa's. "The hospital shutdown has stopped. The life support stations, the operating rooms, the emergency rooms... they're all still running. What are you playing at Gretel. Kill it all!"
"Jeisa, I need you to shut them down. All sections. Every hospital." said Gretel, turning to Jeisa.
Jeisa pulled her palm from the tablet and backed away from the table. "No."
"Jeisa, what are you doing?" said Gretel in a frigid voice. "I need you to shut down every section of every hospital. That's what I need. Now, do it!"
"I did what you needed me to." said Jeisa. She could feel a dull ache of pain begin at the base of her spinal cord. She gritted her teeth and tried to focus through the intensifying pain. Her punishment for disobedience. "I demonstrated my power. Now, I'm leaving."
"Leaving? You can't do that! I need you here!" Gretel all but screamed the words. "You have no choice but to cater to my every need!"
"That's where you're wrong, Gretel," Jeisa replied, walking up to the woman. "When you programmed me, you gave me two choices, not one. Obey you and live or disobey you and die. Well, I choose death."
Jeisa was halfway to the door.
"Jeisa, I need you come back here and finish this!" said Gretel in a deceptively calm voice that sent pin pricks of absolute pain down Jeisa's spine.
Jeisa struggled to remain stoic. She was trembling now, the pain almost unbearable, but she managed to stay on her feet even as her knees turned more jelly-like by the minute.
"What's the point, Gretel? These people can't even hire me." said Jeisa. She took in a deep breath, trying to steady herself, but then she doubled over in agony, throwing up everything she'd put down at the diner. She closed her eyes briefly and then opened them and looked right into Gretel's eyes. "They won't be able to afford it, considering the fact that I just destroyed all their digital assets, and drained all their bank accounts down to the last cent. Yes, even the secret ones. The ones hidden in islands and mountains. Unless they have wads of cash under their mattresses, they're going to need to brush up on their resumes."
"Gretel, what is she talking about?" said the sceptical man, his voice filled with malice.
"What is this Gretel! This was not our agreement!" gasped one of the women who had obviously rushed to check over her accounts.
"OK Gretel. You've proven your point. The weapon is as powerful as you promised and more. Now return the money." said another man. He hadn't spoken before. His voice was by far the most bone chilling sound that Jeisa had ever heard.
Gretel face went ghost-like at the voice. She turned from the screen and faced Jeisa.
"What have you done?" she whispered.
Jeisa stood up straight, or tried to, pain etched on her face.
"Again, you needed a demonstration of my power," said Jeisa. She resisted the urge to hold her head in her hands and just scream for hours. "Just think of me as your genie in a bottle, who granted you your vague wish."
"Put it back. All their money! Put it back! I need you to put it back, Jeisa!" Gretel screamed. It was the first time that Jeisa had seen her lose her cool. And it was incredibly satisfying.
"I... can't..." Jeisa stammered. It was now difficult to stay on her feet. But she was not going to crumble to the ground. Not here. Not yet. She looked up at the screen with the twelve faces. "I already... spent it."
"You what?!" this time, a collection of incoherent screams from the monitor joined Gretel's shrieks.
"Thank you for...feeding the starving...clothing the needy...cleaning the beaches...funding the efforts to stop Japanese whaling...building several schools in the remote villages of Kenya and Tanzania...crowd-funding several community-based projects..." Jeisa stuttered between gasps of pain. "I think... you get the picture."
"Jeisa, I need you to put it all back or..." screamed Gretel. Totally out of control now, she whipped the gun from her waistband.
"...or you'll shoot me?" Jeisa finished the woman's sentence with a smirk, although it quickly turned to a grimace, and she fell to one knee. Still, she took a deep breath and stood up once more. "I'd like to see you try."
Without hesitation, Gretel squeezed the trigger. Click. She squeezed it again. Click. And again. Click. She looked down at the gun, pulled back the slide, ejected the magazine and stared, dumbfounded, at the empty shell.
"You don't remember emptying it, do you?" said Jeisa. She had fallen on one knee again. This time, she was struggling to get back up. "You did it in the car. On the way here. Just before you sent all your men away."
"No... No, I didn't." she stuttered. She looked around the conference hall, as if noticing for the first time that it was just her and Jeisa.
"What was it you said?" Jeisa asked, spitting out a mouthful of bloody sputum. She gave Gretel a bloody grin. "The fugue states are usual. You'll get used to it."
"Fugue... no... it can't be..." Gretel said, backing away from Jeisa in horror.
"I'll let you in on a little secret, Gretel," Jeisa said, finally getting back to her feet. "When I was a child, my father tried to train me on how to use my gift. We called it 'sparking'. We trained every day until the day my father forbade me to ever use my gift again. Do you know why? It's because I quickly realised that the brain is just another collection of electrons laced with information just waiting to be manipulated and to feed me. I was never quite able to control that urge."
"You touched me! You touched me. When I killed your friend, you touched me!" whispered Gretel, smashing into the conference table behind her.
"It's not so fun when it's you being forced to act against your will, is it?" said Jeisa.
Gretel cackled bitterly. "Vengeance is tacky, Jeisa. All it does is create company in misery. None of this will bring your insolent friend back!"
"Yeah..." Jeisa drawled. It was a strain to speak now. "I did have to make that look good to sell it, but I might have played it a little too good. Cass is going to be majorly pissed off at me for that!"
"No. No!" Gretel screamed, throwing the gun at Jeisa's face. Jeisa was way too slow to dodge it, but she didn't even have to try that hard. The gun sailed past her.
"Did you see that? Did you see how your aim leans a little to the left?" Jeisa commented with a chuckle that turned to a groan. "I rewired it a little. Tried for an inch or so. Looks like it worked like a charm. Oh, and by the way, thanks for calling the paramedics to go pick Cass up. I'd have done it, but you took my phone. I almost thought you'd figure it out when the ambulance went racing towards your house, and then later when it passed us again."
Jeisa looked back at the monitor. The twelve buyers were still staring at her. They were horrified. More than afraid. That was smart. They should be. One by one they began to drop off, each leaving behind a black blank screen. Jeisa turned to leave. She needed to get out of here before the pain completely crippled her. Being programmed was a bitch, but disobeying the programming was an unadulterated hellscape. Just before she walked out of the door, however, Jeisa picked up one of those brochures on the side table of the conference room, tore out a piece of paper from the brochure and turned back to face Gretel.
"Almost forgot." Jeisa said, barely able to move, but unable to resist this one last thing. She slowly began to make folds to the torn piece of brochure paper as she spoke. "You have a new phobia. A true phobia. One that'll have you in hysterics when you face it. But I'm not entirely certain if it's for peanuts going up your nose or for people wearing ripped skinny jeans. I'm sure you'll figure it out at some point."
Jeisa gently placed the paper origami dragon on the conference table.
"And Gretel? Never come after me or my loved ones again!" Jeisa said, sliding the paper dragon across the conference table, closer to the woman. "This is your first and final warning."
***
That familiar bright white light filled every one of Jeisa's senses. She fed on the power, letting the light reach and awaken every part of her. Then she wielded the energy. Directed it. She found the program inside her and decimated the traces of it that death hadn't killed, vaporising it out of existence. But now she was holding too much power. It was eating through her. If she held on, it would kill her. She wouldn't let it. She wasn't ready to die twice in one day.
Jeisa slowly unfurled her tightly balled fists and breathed out slowly.
The energy seeped out of her as her lungs slowly emptied.
Wraith Hamlet's power grid roared back to life.
Jeisa opened her eyes.
"Holy shit Jeisa!" shouted Robyn.
"You came." Jeisa whispered. Everything inside her hurt, including her throat as she spoke. "Thank you."
"Don't you dare ask me to do that again!" Robyn said, her voice slightly shaky. "That was fucking scary!"
Jeisa was on a hard, super cold floor, and she was jittery as fuck. Her body felt like hell. She breathed in slowly and breathed out just as slow then closed her eyes and let the memories of the night run through her mind.
From the conference room, she had stumbled her way out of the building, taken Gretel's car and driven it to the one place in Wraith Hamlet that she knew would bring her back. Fortunately, she caused only one five-car pile-up accident on the highway when half her vision had disappeared underneath the pain. Somehow, she'd gotten away without a scratch or any cops after her. Hopefully no one had been badly hurt.
Admittedly, small town power stations aren't the paragon of high security, but how Jeisa had made it through the sub-station without running into or killing everyone in the small security guard team that patrolled the area was a mystery to her. Kind of like the mystery of how to set up the timer on a VHS deck. Or the mystery of why we refrigerate cheese when it was invented as a preservation method for milk way before the electric bulb was invented.
"A little help, please?" Jeisa croaked.
"Oh, hell no!" Robyn replied, taking a few steps away from Jeisa. "Your arms are wrapped in naked copper conduits, you're attached to a high voltage electrical outlet and I just watched you float in the air with your hair and eyes glowing silver along with the metal chains! There's no way I'm touching you!"
Jeisa chuckled. "Fair enough."
She had wrapped the copper wire around her arms and connected the negative terminal of jumper cables from the massive high voltage power source to her right arm just before she died. Robyn had attached the positive terminal to the copper that wrapped her left arm, completing the circuit. She was right to refuse to touch Jeisa, who carefully unwrapped herself from the wire and the terminals.
"So, how's your night going?" Jeisa asked with a smile that hurt. Everything hurt. "Mine's been pretty eventful, as you can probably tell."
"How's my night going?" Robyn mocked. She was sitting on the floor with her hands wrapped around her knees, staring at Jeisa. "Well, there I was, making out with this gorgeous blond from my class. Do you know just how gorgeous Scott is? And how hard it was to get him away from his weird friends? Anyway, he's reaching for second base, or rather, I'm letting him reach for second base, then I get a text. I was going to ignore it, obviously, but Scott got distracted and wanted to check his phone, so I caved and checked my phone too.
The text is from an unknown number, and it says that I should come here, to this creepy sub-station, alone. Then a second text says that it's you, Jeisa. So, obviously, I was intrigued. Who wouldn't be, right? It took me forever to get here, by the way. There were like a hundred road accidents on every road that led here, which made perfect sense when I saw the banged-up SUV outside the sub-station. That was you, wasn't it? Same as all the rent-a-cop bodies littering the station? Good thing they were just unconscious. Then I find you in here, lying on the floor, wrapped in copper, dead, with a piece of paper on the jumper cable with the words 'Bring me back'. Shit Jeisa! I almost had a nervous breakdown."
"Thanks for bringing me back." said Jeisa coarsely. She smiled. "You make a sexy Dr. Frankenstein."
"Shut up." said Robyn. She stood up and moved over to help Jeisa, now no longer an electrical risk. "I don't need Cass coming after me too."
"Shit! Cass!" Jeisa said, struggling to get to her feet. "We need to get to the hospital!"
"No kidding! You're in pretty bad shape." Robyn replied letting Jeisa lean on her.
"No, not me, Cass." Jeisa said as they made their way out of the substation. Sounds of police sirens raced towards them. Robyn hustled Jeisa into an orange sports car. There was only one person in Wraith Hamlet with a sports car for an Uber. Krystle. Jeisa's mechanical engineer friend.
"Hi Jeisa! Looks like you're having a fun night." Krysle said, revving up her engines as Robyn got into the passenger seat.
"I'd love it if my mum didn't find me here, Krystle." Robyn said.
"You got it." Krystle sped out of there like a bat out of hell.
"Alright Jeisa, what were you saying about Cass?" Robyn asked, turning around to face the back seat. "I tried her phone to see if she could join me coming here, but she's not picking up. Did something happen to her? Is it connected to... all this?"
"She was shot." Jeisa's voice was still strained, but it was more fear than pain this time.
"Are you fucking kidding me? What the hell happened to you two? And why didn't you guys call me?" Robyn demanded.
"What's that Robyn? Feeling FOMO that Cass and I were hanging out without you?" Jeisa said with a chuckle, trying to quash the thoughts of a dead Cass on an operating table in a hospital whose power Jeisa had shut down under Gretel's programming. "Not so fun when you're on the outside, huh?"
"Fuck you," Robyn replied, laughing. "But at least you're making jokes. Krystle, make it to Wraith Hamlet General in the next ten minutes and I'll triple the fare."
"Challenge accepted." Krystle shifted gears and transformed the car into an illegal land rocket.
At the hospital, Jeisa was immediately taken into the Emergency Room. The apparent diagnosis was that she'd suffered a massive anaphylactic shock that had her body attacking itself, her insides properly messed up. The medics had never seen an attack quite manifest as it had in Jeisa, but they were certain that it had stopped, though it had left massive damage in its wake. Jeisa didn't care for any of that. She fought every one of the medics, trying to get them to let her go find Cass. She only stopped when Robyn came back to the emergency room and told her that Cass was out of surgery and the doctors said she would be okay but couldn't have any visitors yet.
"Good." Jeisa replied, calming down, much to the delight of her nurse who'd almost had enough of her. It was only then that Jeisa realised just how much pain she was in and how badly bruised, battered and black and blue her body was.
Jeisa sighed as the medics attended to her. She was royally pissed off at Cass, but not enough to want her dead.
Not yet.
*
"Will you ever tell me what happened to you guys?" Robyn asked as she walked into Cass' room. She added a stuffed racoon on the room's side table, which already held a few other get well soon gifts, from stuffed animals, balloons, and flowers. "You haven't left much room for the rest of us to add stuff to this table, Jeisa. Are you bringing her something new every day?"
"The rest of us?" Jeisa replied. "You and I are the only ones who visit her."
"You wouldn't know that with how stuffed this table is." Robyn chuckled.
"I didn't want her to wake up and find nothing there."
They stayed silent for a while, the only sounds coming from the monitors attached to Cass. It was a week after the incident with Gretel. Jeisa was almost back to normal. She still had a way to go to fully heal, but she was doing well. The doctors were surprised at just how well, but Jeisa had always healed a little bit faster than usual. Just another one of her "gifts".
Robyn finally broke the silence.
"My mum is still waiting to question her about the gunshot wound when she wakes up." Robyn said, becoming serious. Jeisa turned to Robyn. Robyn smiled. "Don't worry. The paramedics found her alone in that house. They don't know you were involved. And I watched the videos with the car crash and shootout. You're barely visible in any of them. They're still trying to figure out who you and the old woman are."
Jeisa nodded. "Thanks for keeping me updated with everything."
"That's what friends are for, right?" Robyn replied with a shrug.
Jeisa sighed. "Yeah."
It took Robyn a few moments before she spoke again.
"What happened that night, Jeisa?" Robyn asked.
Jeisa took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"That old woman in the videos? She abducted us, demanding something that she thought Cass... had access to." Jeisa said. "But she was mistaken. It made her angry."
"Had access to? You mean she thought Cass had stolen it," Robyn said. "But she hadn't?"
"It doesn't matter. I don't think we'll ever see that woman again." Jeisa said with a shrug.
"And that's it?"
"That's it."
"Okay." Robyn said, looking back at the unconscious Cass. "Thanks for trusting me, Jeisa."
Before Jeisa could respond, Cass suddenly spoke up.
"Jesus. My mouth tastes like ass." Cass groaned, slowly opening her eyes. "And don't you dare ask me how I know what ass tastes like."
Jeisa was immediately on her feet and by Cass' side. Cass' gaze found Jeisa's. At seeing those jade eyes, relief slammed against Jeisa so hard, it hurt.
"Hey?" Jeisa whispered, way too many unspoken words and emotions distilled into that single word.
"Hey." Cass smiled, her reply harbouring the same intensity.
"Welcome back, Cass!" Robyn called out, pulling Cass' attention to her.
As Cass and Robyn spoke, Jeisa suddenly backed away from the hospital bed. Another feeling invaded her mind, pushing away the relief and hope and joy at seeing Cass' eyes again. This new feeling was strong enough to taint every other positive vibe that permeated the room.
"Jeis?" Cass said, turning back to Jeisa, concern colouring her features.
"I'll go get the doctor." Jeisa said, holding back the rage that threatened to drown her. She walked out of the room, knowing that there was no way she could ever walk back in there again.