Deserter: New Life-Chapter Four-Revealed

Sam shifted in his seat. “It is getting better, isn’t it?”

Rain lifted her eyes to his. “I’m not screaming, am I?”

He’d take that as her way of saying yes. “You know, I don’t know anything about you.”

Rain shrugged. “You don’t want to. And I don’t know anything about you either. How old you are. Where you’re from. You’re last name.” She shrugged again, as if nothing like that mattered.

“Easy. Thirty. Earth. Dux.” Sam crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back.

“Ducks?” She lifted her brows mockingly. “Like quack?”

Sam shook his head. “Not ducks. Dukes. French? You do know about the French, right?”

“Sure. One of the Earth races. Actual races still are separated there. On Earth, I mean. Unlike colonies and off Earth settlements, where different races were integrated and mutated according to their surroundings. Not to mention certain levels of different substances resulted in large populations acquiring different abilities. Like a lot of the people from my home planet have ESP of one sort or another, empathic tendencies being the most common.”

“Where *are* you from?”

“Atlar. And I’m twenty-six, if that’s your next question.”

“Actually, it was. But I don’t know your last name yet,” Sam stated, curious now.

“Cloud,” Rain joked. It was the answer she gave everybody. The truth of the matter was, she didn’t know her last name. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever even had one. She could use Clark’s, but that would just be stupid.

“Rain Cloud,” Sam murmured wistfully. “Has a certain ring to it.”

Rain lifted a dark brow. “Sure. Truth? I don’t have a last name.” She didn’t know why she’d told him that and surprise registered on her face momentarily before being wiped out and replaced by her usual blank mask.

Sam registered it, but didn’t understand it, so didn’t press the matter. “Okay, so we’ve been working on this for four months. And it is helping, right?” Sam asked, changing the subject back to her problem.

“Yeah, I said that, didn’t I? The exercises are working. That’s why I’m not screaming, remember? I can still hear things, but I can almost get it toned down to normal levels again.” Rain forked a bite of the goop she’d been eating into her mouth and forced it down with a gulp. “Have you figured out what caused the problem? So it doesn’t happen again?”

“I don’t know. It didn’t happen until after you got shot though, right?” Sam asked, leaning forward now. Rain studied his strange golden eyes. They weren’t the same sort of gold as Brand’s. Not wolf-like. Just unusual. They intrigued her.

“Yeah. So what happened between the time I got shot and that first attack that night?” Rain was surprised they hadn’t analyzed this earlier and figured it was because Sam had been trying to keep her sane, and she’d been trying to build up her resistance again.

“Well, I carried you in and ran you to the mend chambers.”

Something clicked in Rain’s mind. “Right, the mend chambers. Can the chambers repair any sort of head injuries? Tinker with the brain?”

Sam’s eyes widened. “Yeah, actually, they can. Concussions, small brain hemorrhages. Shit, I hadn’t even thought of that. That’s why we don’t use them on people with any sort of psychic powers. It can screw around with the frontal lobe and mess things up. *That* must be what happened!”

“Maybe that explains my aversion to them. Subconsciously I knew, or maybe even remembered, that it could screw me up in the head more than I already am. Damn, I probably heard that somewhere. If only you’d known I was empathic before you threw me in that thing.” Rain felt better knowing what the problem had been, now knowing not to do it again.

Sam wasn’t sure how to answer. He felt he would have risked it anyway, just to make sure she would live. But he knew he was lucky to not have had Rain go insane. The first few days had been terrible for her.

They’d started building up her resistance by bringing first one person at a time, then two, three, and so on. She was almost completely able to move in groups again without having an episode. Although, she often got migraine headaches from the stress of blocking out so many loud voices. It was easy for her to break through walls of resistance now, if she so chose to do so.

“I don’t know, though. This could be a plus for me. I couldn’t read minds before, just pick up emotions. I used my abilities to heighten my senses as well. I couldn’t use what other people around me were seeing, hearing, and smelling to amplify my senses of sight, hearing, and smell.” She paused and took a few more bites before grabbing a bag of brown sugar and throwing in a few more clumps and stirring it in. “I think I can read minds now. Actual thought. I don’t know if I’d like to rape someone’s mind though. Especially if I found it was half as bad as my own.” She shook her head. “No, until I can control this new thing, I’ll just stay to myself.”

“We should practice that. You could mind speak, couldn’t you?” Sam queried.

“Yes, with some people. They usually had to have some sort of telepathic abilities also, though.”

“Try with me, I’m pretty sure I don’t have any,” Sam said.

“Okay, but if this hurts, tell me to stop.”

‘Can you hear me?’ Rain questioned silently.

‘Whoa. This is weird. Can you hear me?’ Sam answered.

Rain nodded and smiled. ‘Does this hurt?’

‘No. It... tingles, though, in a weird sort of way. Almost feels like my brain inches. Could you scratch it?’ Sam teased.

Rain laughed out loud and mentally. ‘I don’t think so.’

Sam shrugged. ‘To bad,’ he answered, then scratched his head.

Rain laughed again. “Okay, that was easy, because I’ve done it before. Now, being able to extract actual information. Not just randomly, either. But having a specific goal and looking for that one thing. But more than that, finding it immediately instead of crawling through a well of information.” Another gooy bite. “If I could do that, it would be helpful.”

“Want to test it?” Sam asked.

“Okay. But I don’t know what I’m doing, and I might hurt you,” she warned.

“I trust you.”

Rain blinked and leaned away from Sam. No one had ever said that to her. “Really?”

“Yeah, Rain. Really. Go for it.”

She shook her head. “Okay. What should I look for?”

“The town I was born in.”

Sam felt a sudden tingling in his head, but it wasn’t painful, and he probably wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t known what Rain was going to do.

She cocked her head. “Yakima, Washington.” She grinned. “That was easy. You were thinking about it. Did it hurt?”

Sam shook his head. “No.”

“I’m going to try something else. Tell me if it hurts.” Rain thought a minute then delved back into Sam’s psyche. When she resurfaced she looked at him strangely. “You knew I was a killer the first time you saw me.” She paused and her face hardened. “You knew who I was. You’re a Ranger.”

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