Mind Games Read online

  I thought back to my skill list. One of the choices had been Telepathy. “It’s no claim…” I murmured, softly. I was already starting to search the desk. I found that there was a silvery box containing a series of racks for syringes. All were gone save for one. It had a pale blue color and a small Ѱ symbol on it. I picked it up, and hesitated.

  "Do we know if this will work?" I asked.

  "We have eight minutes, lassie," Lucas said. "And bloody security drones are on their way."

  I nodded.

  I slammed the syringe into my neck.

  Pleasure . The most intense pleasure I had ever felt, even better than that squirting orgasm I had felt ripping through my body when I had fingered myself. It started not in my cunt or at the tips of my breasts, but rather surged throughout my whole body like a kettle drum being being beaten. I fell to my knees and screamed in pleasure as my palms slapped against the ground. I arched my back and bucked my hips, gasping and ducking my head against the ground. "Fuck! Fuck!" I hissed as I felt the need to have someone come and rut me. Take me. Do anything they wanted, just fill me.

  Then...

  Light poured from my mouth. It didn't go in a straight line - but rather leaped out and then splashed along the ground like a liquid. My eyes widened and I realized that it was actually a crackling stream of lightning. But it wasn’t the only amazing thing happening. The room was rattling . Every piece of unsecured furniture was quivering, whirring, dancing around as if it was being vibrated in an earthquake. The ceiling fixtures grumbled, and the PDA flipped into the air. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the surge of power faded. I closed my eyes.

  BODY

  MIND

  SOUL

  Strength : 4

  (+1) [5]

  Endurance : 3

  (+1) [4]

  Perception : 2

  +1 [3]

  Smarts : 2

  +1 [3]

  Charisma : 5

  +1 [N/A]

  Psi : 1

  +1 [2]

  MARINE

  NAVY

  CADRE OMEGA

  Kinetic : 1

  +1 [1]

  Energy : 1

  +1 [1]

  Hack : 2

  +2 [2]

  Repair : 0

  +1 [1]

  Seduction : 1

  +1 [1]

  Persuasion : 1

  +1 [1]

  Melee : 1

  +1 [1]

  Heavy : 1

  +1 [1]

  Modify : 1

  +1 [1]

  Maintain : 1

  +1 [1]

  Telepathy : 0

  +1 [N/A]

  PreCog : 0

  +1 [N/A]

  First Aid : 1

  +1 [1]

  Research : 0

  +1 [1]

  PsychoK : 1

  +1 [1]

  ParaPsy : 0

  +1 [N/A]

  What was more, my third bar filled with crackling blue light: Red, Green, Blue.

  Health: 100/100

  Armor: 89/100

  Psi: 10/10

  I opened my eyes, grinning with almost drunk delight as my nerves burned with the afterimages of pleasure. Lightning buzzed along my palms. “Heh. Hehe...ha…” I chuckled.

  “Hows it feel?” Lucas purred in my ear. I almost came again.

  " Stop intruder!"

  The sound of the drone behind me sent me spinning around. I slammed my palm outwards and a lightning bolt smashed into the drone with a roar. The lightning struck with enough force to slam the wheeled drone into the wall beyond the corridor. It crunched into the wall and fragments of smoking, hissing plastic went flying through the air. The drone rolled slightly away from the wall before collapsing to the side with a crash. I looked down and saw that that had used up 1 of my Psi-Points. It didn’t bounce back up again.

  I’d have to figure out how to raise it later.

  "Five minutes, lassie!"

  “I know!” I hissed.

  I forced myself to my feet. I started running - but a dizzy spell hit me in the middle of the corridor. I sagged against the wall, then pushed myself away from it. I forced myself to run, my feet pounding along the ground.

  "Keep going lassie..." Lucas whispered. "You are running amazing for someone who just had their bloody genetic code re-written."

  I got to the airlock door. I put my palms to the emptied voltaic power cells. I closed my eyes and let energy surge through me again. My Psu bar began to drop precipitously - whirring from 9 to 1 in a moment. My eyes whited out as my knees went to rubber. I sagged against the door as the airlock started to cycle with a low groaning noise. So, using energy used...energy. No shit.

  " Pretty pretty pretty ..."

  That hissing voice. I looked back.

  Maria was standing at the end of the corridor. She was flanked by two of the Brood. They both hissed, nuzzling against her like eager lovers. One caressed her biomechanical thigh with its spined, dripping tail. Maria grinned.

  "Fetch," she whispered.

  The Brood started towards me. The airlock door slammed open behind me, leaving my back pressed against nothing but air. I scrambled backwards and then slapped down on the airlock controls. The doors whirred shut with a loud clunk . They sealed and clicked as the Brood scrabbled at it. I forced myself to my noodly knees as the airlock door cycled. The Brood drew away from the window and Maria's horned, unearthly beautiful face filled the window. She blew me a kiss and I barely resisted the urge to return it as the airlock doors behind me opened and I pushed myself out into the infinite blackness of space.

  "Four minutes," Lucas said, his voice crackling in my ear. I tried to turn around - and felt the backpack hiss and click against me. I swung around and saw out of the corner of my eye a tiny jet of gas spraying from my shoulder. So, the backpack didn’t just provide air, but also movement. Linked to the nanites, it read my desire for movement in the tension of my muscles and the motion of my legs. A new interface popped up in the corner of my vision: I had an hour of breath, and my jets had a certain amount of fuel, which dropped slightly with every tiny puff of hissing gas.

  But past that?

  Past that, I saw the huge sweep of the Earth below me. It seemed so far. So beautiful. My brow furrowed as I saw the huge hurricane that was slowly heading towards the east coast of one of the continents. I could see the blood red lightning crackling through it.

  Then I shook my head, forcing myself to task. I looked up at the station - and from the outside, I saw that Virgil Station was built like an upside down wedding cake. The bottom - Cryonics - was the smallest ring. Each ring above it was larger by almost a half, meaning that the habitation ring was by far the most massive. That hung above me like a continental shelf. My helmet blipped and a glowing icon appeared on the upper edge of the habitation ring.

  "That's where you need to be lassie. Remember, the time you spend accelerating, that's how long you need to decelerate too!" Lucas said.

  I nodded, gulping to wet my dry throat. I focused, then tried to make a jumping motion. The suit registered the motion and the backpack I wore hissed loudly. I started to shoot upwards. A small distance tracker appeared next to the icon, counting down in a numeral I didn't recognize. The only thing I could hear was the sound of my own breath, the thudding of my own heart. At the halfway point, I swung my legs around and made the same jumping motion I had before.

  I started to slow.

  "Two minutes," Lucas said.

  “I know ,” I snarled. “Shut the fuck up, Lucas.”

  I slowed.

  I stopped.

  The damage to the engine was hard to see at first - until a shifting of the station's position brought a bright pane of sunlight around to shine on the darkness. Then I saw the jagged hole, the blackened metal. Fortunately, most of the energy had been directed outwards , so the station's internals hadn't been too damaged. I reached into my pack, pulling out the foot wide cube that was apparently going to fix this.

  "How th
e fuck do I fix this engine in a minute thirty?"

  "Throw the cube at it," Lucas said, confidently. “If you want me to stop shutting up, that is.”

  "You're kidding ," I whispered. But my arms were already making the motion. The cube tumbled forward, turning around and around. Then, about a foot away from the damage site, it ballooned outwards. Gray goop flew into the hole and the blackened material and swarmed forward. I felt a sudden flare of heat, the gray material turning a bright, cherry red. I lifted up my palm, concealing the image and slewing myself to the side. When I lowered my hand, the metal was cooling and a perfectly functioning station keeping jet was thrusting from the side of the station. My eyes were wide.

  "Holy fuck," I said.

  The engine flared to life. The station started to shift slightly. It was a slow, subtle motion. But it was there.

  "Good work lassie !" Lucas laughed - and I could hear him clapping. "We'll make a tech out of you yet!"

  “Once I spend the cyber modules,” I said, laughing raggedly. I knew that this was merely the first step. A way to save the Earth, to buy us some time. But even without Virgil Station raining down on it like an asteroid impact, I knew that the Tesc were an immensely dangerous threat to everyone there. To me. To my family. To the woman in my dreams.

  I slowly smiled. "But don't call me lassie anymore, Lucas," I said.

  "Oh?" he asked.

  I chuckled. "Call me Beatrice.

  “Well, Beatrice,” Lucas said, his voice filled with deference. “I have some good news fer ya.”

  “Oh?” I asked.

  “You just got ten cyber-modules.”

  I grinned.

  Softly, to myself, I whispered: “Ding.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The airlock doors cycled shut and I let my head sag against the wall for a few moments. The feeling of no longer being dangled over a pit was something I was going to revel for a bit. Seeing the Earth had really crammed the importance of what I had done so far. Virgil Station was no longer in an unstable orbit. It was no longer going to plunge through the upper atmosphere like the fist of a furious god. It was no longer going to smash into one of those massive, blue-blue oceans and create a tsunami the likes of which our poor planet hadn't seen for centuries.

  But that left one big question.

  "What now?" Lucas asked. His voice was smooth and clean inside of my head, his visage flickering to life inside of my interface. It was comforting, seeing that handsome, dark haired face. I took hold of my space suit helmet helmet and yanked it off, breathing the station air. I had gotten into the air lock that was on the second level down from Habitation – Lucas had said that it was PsyOps.

  "What does PsyOps do?" I asked.

  "It's a fancy term for rest and recreation, La- Bae," Lucas corrected himself. Halfway. My brow furrowed.

  "Bae?"

  "I'm not callin' ya Beatrice. I'm not paid by the syllable," Lucas said, sounding dry. "PsyOps has a lot of recreational shite. Immersion Rooms, some restaurants, a null-G pool, that kind of stuff. But it also has some working food dispensers, if you're getting hungry. It’s also linked to the P-tube network. So, uh, happy days for you."

  The mention of food made my stomach growl ravenously - almost as loud as the rattling clunk of the ten cyber-modules I was owed. I placed them onto my palm, one at a time, watching them melt and sink into my skin. My cyber-rig registered them and prepared to use the nanites contained within to augment and expand my abilities. I frowned, taking a few moments to compartmentalize the hunger and instead focus on my upgrades.

  I had seventeen modules - a bounty that I had never imagined possible back when I had been salivating over just one mod. I closed my eyes and brought up the interface, looking at my inventory, at my skills, at my stats.

  BODY

  MIND

  SOUL

  Strength : 4

  (+1) [5]

  Endurance : 3

  (+1) [4]

  Perception : 2

  +1 [3]

  Smarts : 2

  +1 [3]

  Charisma : 5

  +1 [N/A]

  Psi : 1

  +1 [2]

  MARINE

  NAVY

  CADRE OMEGA

  Kinetic : 1

  +1 [1]

  Energy : 1

  +1 [1]

  Hack : 2

  +2 [2]

  Repair : 0

  +1 [1]

  Seduction : 1

  +1 [1]

  Persuasion : 1

  +1 [1]

  Melee : 1

  +1 [1]

  Heavy : 1

  +1 [1]

  Modify : 1

  +1 [1]

  Maintain : 1

  +1 [1]

  Telepathy : 0

  +1 [N/A]

  PreCog : 0

  +1 [N/A]

  First Aid : 1

  +1 [1]

  Research : 0

  +1 [1]

  PsychoK : 1

  +1 [1]

  ParaPsy : 0

  +1 [N/A]

  W

  R

  E

  N

  C

  H

  PISTOL

  N x1

  SHOTCANNON

  Remembering how useful it had been, I started off by purchasing upgrades for Psychokinesis and Psi, noting how each time I purchased an upgrade for Psi, it got more expensive than the Strength upgrades had been. Where going from Strength 3 to Strength 4 had cost four cyber-mods, going from Psi 2 to Psi 3 cost four points and it claimed going from Psi 3 to Psi 4 would cost six . However, each rank of Psi increased my Psi Points by ten. And if it had the same enhancement on the raw strength of my psychokinesis that my strength had on my inventory carrying capacity...well, it’d be worth the investment.

  After increasing my Psi by 2, I also increased Psychokinesis by 2, putting both at 3. I figured that would be useful. But then I increased my energy weapons by 2 as well, since I seemed to be using my shotcannon a lot, and it used energy pellets. With my final three mods, I upgraded my perception by one. I wanted to stop getting fucking ambushed.

  This complete, I took one last sweep of my purchases, to make sure everything looked right. I felt a faint, buzzing hesitation at the back of my mind - as if my rig was waiting for confirmation.

  BODY

  MIND

  SOUL

  Strength : 4

  (+1) [5]

  Endurance : 3

  (+1) [4]

  Perception : 3

  +1 [4]

  Smarts : 2

  +1 [3]

  Charisma : 5

  +1 [N/A]

  Psi : 3

  +1 [6]

  MARINE

  NAVY

  CADRE OMEGA

  Kinetic : 1

  +1 [1]

  Energy : 3

  +1 [4]

  Hack : 2

  +2 [2]

  Repair : 0

  +1 [1]

  Seduction : 1

  +1 [1]

  Persuasion : 1

  +1 [1]

  Melee : 1

  +1 [1]

  Heavy : 1

  +1 [1]

  Modify : 1

  +1 [1]

  Maintain : 1

  +1 [1]

  Telepathy : 0

  +1 [N/A]

  PreCog : 0

  +1 [N/A]

  First Aid : 1

  +1 [1]

  Research : 0

  +1 [1]

  PsychoK : 3

  +1 [3]

  ParaPsy : 0

  +1 [N/A]

  I opened my eyes.

  This wasn’t the same as when I had augmented my strength. That had been subtle. This made my nerves burn. My eyes tingled. My brain crackled. I closed my eyes again and hissed, my interface filling with a static fog. A subtle whirring sound filled my ears, followed by a crackle, then silence. But the silence itself was overlaid with a bouquet of fresh smells and a fine opera of different new sounds. My skin tingled and it felt
as if I could feel every single nanite that pressed against me. I also had an intuitive understanding of the flow of the universe around me.

  Molecules whirred in their orbits. Matter grumbled under its breath, embedded into the heady foam of the Higgs-Boson-Hakim Field. The flow of electromagnetic energies caressed my spine like the touch of a lover, feeling out the cybernetic implants inside of me. I felt hot, bright flashes as more connections were formed in my mind and in my nerves and in my cells. The nanites of the cyber-mods had done their work good.

  I held out my hand and focused upon a piece of detritus on the corridor - a discarded chunk of plastic. I focused and saw my Psi meter drop from 30 to 29 as space warped around my palm. The chunk of plastic flew up and hovered before my palm with a sound not too dissimilar from the end of the fucking world. It didn’t move so neatly, though. There was a screaming, tearing sound as bolts were yanked from the walls and a metal panel on the corridor peeled up from the corner.

  I wasn’t neatly plucking an item off the ground with a tweezer. I was hate-fucking the cosmos into doing what it was fucking told and it felt so goddamn good. I grinned, then threw out my palm, shoving as hard as I could, and the projectile I had lifted off the ground impacted against the far side of the corridor, about fifteen meters away from it. It exploded into a haze of fragments, denting the metal wall with the impact.

  “Hah!” I laughed.

  “Bloody hell, Bae!” Lucas yeped into my com link. “What the fuck was that? Half the gravimetrics I’ve hacked into have gone completely bugfuck.”

  I grinned, looking down at my fingers, seeing the faint crackle of static electricity buzzing around them. “Oh, I’ve just been practicing my psychokinesis. I think I like it.”

  “Well, save it for the Tesc,” Lucas said.

  I nodded, then frowned. “I wish I knew how to get psi points back . Upgrading my psi did it, but that’s not feasible to keep doing. Cyber-rigs rate stats from one to five…”