It’s another slow day. Time seems to cease to exist when we’re not serving a purpose, and it’s dreadfully boring. There’s this feeling in the air, as if someone lit too many candles and forgot to extinguish them. The air is hot and it’s difficult to breathe through the thickness of the atmosphere. The funny thing is that I’m the only one who ever seems to notice this; I’m the only one who’s aware of the fact that the air is suffocating.

I watch over the top of my book as Kendra and Adriana play a game of chess in the center of the room; Arum is napping in the corner as if he hasn’t a care in the world. Brendan isn’t in the building; I know because I can’t sense him, and I believe he’s gone to the local CIA field office or to speak with some politician. He’s always doing things that sound important but are in reality awfully wearisome.

Life for the masterminds behind these operations must be terribly dull. It’s driven many men to insanity, I know, and not because of the tedium of their jobs, nor the fact that they know they are ordering the murders of dozens of people. It is more the fact that, being involved with these programs, they know that people like me exist, that I could simply invade their minds, steal their memories, and become the new mastermind behind everything. They know that I could take over any second, and that scares them. But they’d rather have me here, where they can monitor me, than out somewhere doing as I please, having to be apprehensive of when I will strike and what I will do.

Of course, how dismayed they would be if they knew I was aware of their eyes, of their bugs, both psychic and mechanical. How dismayed they would be if they knew I only let them see what I wanted them to, that I knew how to override their careful surveillance and keep them from knowing enough to destroy me. I’d never let myself fall at the hands of men so utterly beneath me. Yet these men thought themselves so elite, so intelligent, that they’d covered all bases in this covert surveillance. I would have laughed if I found more humor in incompetence.

My eyes trail back to Kendra and Adriana’s game. Adriana’s grey eyes are regarding the board carefully as Kendra sits back and watches her with a self-satisfied smirk. I was convinced that Kendra had found some way to use her clairvoyance to cheat at the game, though Adriana clearly didn’t have the patience or the intellect for such a game. I can hear that the dark-haired girl was thinking of moving her bishop; I almost plead with her not to, for it would open a clear line to her king that apparently she is unaware of.

She moves the bishop and Kendra’s smile grows. I can hear the pleasure within her mind, and, rolling my eyes, turn back to my book. “Check!” I hear Kendra say a moment later, excited. Adriana curses, and I want to laugh. Adriana is not one for a game of wills, yet she always seems willing to try, no matter how much she loses.

I knew that Arum would probably prove more apt for the game; he was quiet and rarely revealed any of his thoughts, but when he spoke, he could be sharp, witty, and intelligent. But Kendra had only asked him once, and he had given her a look that so clearly said, you must be joking, and went, quite surprisingly, into the morgue. Apparently, he had a higher tolerance for Valcourt than I. I had heard Valcourt say something to him that sounded a bit like “la mort des misérables”, which had earned a rare laugh from Arum. That had surprised me; I hadn’t known that Arum had known any French, but then, I didn’t know much about Arum’s past or upbringing at all.

I don’t blame him, of course. It’s rare for someone like us to have had a happy childhood, since any psychic abilities are generally treated with lack of acceptance and scorn. And even independent of that, none of us are particularly close; we didn’t talk about our families or our pasts, our love lives or our hobbies; the only thing we really share is our job.

I wasn’t particularly forthcoming about my past either. The only people that I’m aware of that know about my past are those who have access to my files, which meant Brendan and his associates. Of course, if Arum had come across anything that I had owned during my childhood that I happened to still have, though nothing comes to mind, he could clearly sense it with his psychometry. If he had, he hadn’t said anything about it, though I have a feeling that the revelation that I had killed my parents wouldn’t faze him for a moment. There is some darkness in the younger boy that even I lack the ability to comprehend. At first I had thought my harsh treatment of his mind when he had arrived had been the reason for his dysfunction, but I sensed that he had been broken before that. I wondered about him sometimes.

I let my eyes trail across the room to the subject of my thoughts, who is sleeping on the couch against the far wall. He seems so aloof and yet so serious at the same time. I doubted I would ever understand the boy, especially since I couldn’t sense his thoughts. It’s so easy for me to piss off any of the people I work with except Arum; it seems like nothing gets to him.

As if he can sense my gaze on him, Arum opens his eyes, so impossibly black that they make me feel as if he can look inside my soul. It’s ridiculous, of course; I know Arum’s power, and the only time he’d be able to see anything about me would be when he was in direct contact with an object I owned or touched. That fact is not as reassuring as I would hope it would be; his eyes are the one of the few things I truly find unsettling.

He sits up on the couch, yawning and shaking his head quickly to remove the hair from his eyes. I have no idea what possessed him to dye his hair so many outlandish colors, but whatever it was, it now remains a medley of blues and greens, blonds, blacks, reds, and purples. He’s still a cute little thing, of course; I find myself wanting him sometimes in the late hours of the night. I’d feel uncomfortable about taking him, though; I’m very wary of the idea of putting myself in such a situation with someone I’m not sure I can control.

I can control Brendan, which is why he is such a perfect candidate. I get the impression from him that he hasn’t slept with his wife in years. Clearly, they do not have an ideal marriage; in fact, it was three months after I came here from Blackthorn Manor that I first found out that the older man even was married. He had never thought of her in my presence and has done so very rarely since, so I found it easy to ignore her existence. I found it easy to take advantage of the man twenty years my senior with tired eyes that looked as if they had seen too much.

Certainly, the job we have never provides the opportunity for a functional, loving relationship. Perhaps when Brendan had still been young, before he had become disillusioned and influenced by the job, before he had overseen the deaths of so many, watched the blood on his hands accumulate, watched the person that he sees in the mirror every day twist and warp into this shadow creature he doesn’t recognize—perhaps then, he had believed himself capable of love.

Relationships for us rarely extended beyond this building. It would be hard, I imagine, to go home and try to explain this job to someone; hard for someone to understand the horrors we saw—we caused—on a day by day basis. It would be hard for someone to understand how everyone in this building was so broken, so cold and emotionless.

I knew for a fact that Arum had spent a significant time in the bed of our good Doctor. It sickened me as much as it fascinated me. I wasn’t sure how he could tolerate the pompous, condescending man. Yet Arum always seemed so unruffled by everything, so perhaps he had tolerance enough for that kind of unfounded elitism.

Yet that relationship is as much about dominance and submission as mine with the older CIA agent. It is about fighting for dominance, trying to force the other to submit. It is a struggle for supremacy, a battle for the upper hand at every turn. It is bitter yet delicious to force a mind into submission, to create so much desire out of frustration and anger.

I didn’t know how Arum managed that twisted relationship with Valcourt after his short stint of time here. He had been in this work for barely four months—the first two weeks spent strapped to a bed while I took everything in his mind and snapped it, grabbed everything I could find that he cared about and shredding it to bits. He was the only one who didn’t scream as I violated their mind; Kendra and Adriana had screamed—Tristan, too, had screamed as I had placed that black virus in his mind, screamed again as I had rendered his leg useless and laughed as I departed from my badly-maintained prison. And that anguish and suffering had been sweeter than his love or his lust even.

Now that I couldn’t see what was in Arum’s mind anymore, I wished that I could go back to those weeks within his mind, wished that I would have savored the memories that I had seen rather than sorting through them mechanically and tossing them away so carelessly. I wish I had taken a better look into that enigmatic brain when I had had the chance.

Those fathomless black eyes look at me still, and for a few long seconds, I think that Arum is going to speak to me. Yet he just looks over to Kendra and Adriana, who have started another game of chess that Adriana will doubtlessly lose, and shakes his head to himself, standing up and leaving the room without a second glance at me. Sometimes, I doubt that I will ever understand what goes on inside Arum’s head. And yet, I almost cherish that fact; it makes things interesting when we don’t have an assignment—when I don’t have killing and torture and mayhem to occupy my mind.

Arum goes to see Doctor Paul Valcourt.

I can feel the doctor’s pleasure at Arum’s appearance immediately, even from rooms away. I can feel his arousal, his fantasies about pinning the boy down or tying him up and taking him harshly. It has me revolted within seconds, and I wonder whether they’ll just take to those actions in the morgue, next to the dissected bodies of Sandra and William Doyle.

And yet as much as their relationship has me sickened, it also has me intrigued and immeasurably aroused.

I make my way to Brendan’s office, sensing that he’s returned.

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It’s piano this time, I can tell, as I stand outside Brendan’s office, which I know means that things are no longer all right. This time, it’s Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz”. I almost laugh as I walk into his office to see him sitting back in his desk chair with a worn copy of Faust in hand. I wonder if Brendan sees the irony in that, or if he just put in a classical CD and sat back to read some Goethe.

I wondered if it was pure coincidence, but with Brendan, it almost seems that nothing is a coincidence. It seems as if he plans everything, and I still wonder who initiated that first encounter between us, who had the upper hand then. Even as I had dug through his mind to find his most sordid fantasies, the ones that he hid from his wife and his co-workers and everyone else who thought him respectable, I wondered if he had planned it all that way, if he had wanted me to see that so I would enact those fantasies in the darkest corners, fulfill the desires most people never had the courage to reveal so that someone could assuage them.

I wondered who had the upper hand when I let him tie me up to the wrought-iron frame of my bed; who had the upper hand when I turned his own sadistic fantasy on himself and chained his arms instead. I wondered who had the upper hand when I had provoked him into screaming at me, forced in into such an uncontrolled frenzy that his passion was more than I could have imagined, until he had pinned me against the wall and fucked me without abandon. I wondered who had the upper hand the first time I sucked him off, made him moan; I wondered who had the upper hand every time I came soundlessly, expressionlessly, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a reaction, refusing to let him know if I liked or hated what we did, if I craved it like he did, or if it disgusted me, or if I just needed something to amuse myself. I wondered if this was how he wanted it; this cold, impersonal sex that was so exciting and so different from the sex he had obviously abandoned with his wife.

It must be difficult for him, and for Valcourt, to be the only two in the building without psychic ability. The rest of us can control them, find our way into their minds, their pasts, see their futures and find all their hidden scars, all the things that they refused to acknowledge in the light of day. I had never done so to Valcourt, as I had so little interest, but I assumed that Arum had found some way to use his power to control the man; I couldn’t imagine Arum relinquishing control to anyone. Yet I’d done it to Brendan, and it had been sweet; like honey and sugar and caramel all at once, and like something else nameless, less tangible and so much more profound.

But I still wondered who was in control.

Brendan looks up a from his book as he hears me enter and shakes his head, placing the old volume face down on the table—a volume which I can now see is in its original German, and obviously years old. Brendan was nothing if not cultured and sophisticated, and yet he was too broken and haggard for his sophistication to reach very far into his personality. I imagined the man when he was younger; he must have been quite a delight, and so very exciting; so very cultured and learned that the lesser folk must have clamored to him.

He must have been attractive and exciting and intelligent and interesting. But now he was just a broken, aging man who had obviously had something to say, but never had the chance to say it. He was someone who had obviously joined the CIA hoping to do something amazing, world changing and exciting only to find his hands bloodied before he could get out, only to find his soul stolen before he knew what had happened to it. But this man still had the determination to fight, to try to prove himself as equal to a group he knew he never could be truly equal to. He still fought to get the upper hand against those who had abilities he could never posses, never even comprehend.

But something in that was still overwhelmingly attractive, still so undeniably succulent. There was something about it that made you want to possess him, to be possessed by him until you forgot who had initiated it and who had given in, until you forgot who was in control and who was being dominated.

“Did you want something, Karayan?” he asks in a voice so carefully-schooled to sound bored and disinterested, as if he still thought he could fool me after all this time, and with all these abilities. His mind is already tingling with anticipation, though of what, it’s hard to tell. He savors our non-sexual power play as much as he savors our sexual one; he enjoys dangling that empath who bears a slight resemblance to me in front of my face, suggesting, in only the vaguest terms, that he thinks the boy will tempt Tristan, that he wants to watch me fall apart if he does. I wonder if it will break him instead if he finds I cannot be broken, that I will not allow myself to be manipulated by a lesser man, for all the genius he was.

I merely give a nonchalant shrug and pick a book up off the shelf; he keeps a small portion of his home library in the office most of the time, and I can see Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, Machiavelli’s Prince, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Aristotle’s Poetics. All works that indicate the profound intelligence he is capable of; the intelligence that has been wasted on following the orders of political higher-ups and orchestrating assassinations. I’d pity him if I had the energy.

I can still hear Valcourt in my head while he is with Arum, his pleasure and barely comprehensible thoughts. I can hear Brendan’s thoughts too, both wary and anticipatory as he sits quietly regarding me, allowing me to finish looking through his things wordlessly. There’s a picture of his thirteen year old daughter, but I’ve always noticed that a picture of his wife is absent. I’ve noticed, too, that he keeps his wedding ring in a box in the drawer of his desk a large amount of the time, putting it back on before he leaves work. I wonder what his wife would think if she knew that. I wonder how much his wife really knows about his life, his job. I wonder if she knows why time has aged him so much, why he is such a broken shell of the man I imagined she must have thought she married. I wonder why she stays with him, if they talk over dinner or just go about their separate business. I wonder how traumatized his daughter is by his parents obviously dysfunctional marriage, or if they’re both willing to keep up appearances for her sake.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks me after a minute. It has become a kind of ritual with us. Since I always know what he is thinking, he’s taken to asking me what I’m thinking when I become taciturn. Most of the time, my intentions are pretty plain; he can tell when I’m trying to annoy him, get to him, provoke him into anger or into desire. Yet there are times when my motives aren’t so clear, and I think those times scare him.

“Your wife,” I say truthfully, turning to face him with an unreadable gaze. His brow furrows, his lips become pinched, and even without the added benefit of being able to see into his mind, I can tell that he doesn’t like talking about his wife. Yet that makes it more fun, more amusing to try to provoke an answer out of him.

“What about her?” Brendan asks gruffly, his gaze never leaving me. I shrug indifferently and lean onto the edge of his desk, crossing my arms. I can tell that this irritates him, and he looks at me expectantly. After a moment, I give a dramatic, exasperated sigh.

“You have a picture of your daughter and not your wife. Why is that, Brendan?” I press. He releases something akin to a growl in the back of his throat.

“Perhaps I just don’t want her looking down at me while I fuck you,” he snaps. I smile maliciously; I’ve struck a cord.

“Perhaps,” I say noncommittally, making a move as if I’m going to get up and leave the room. Brendan does exactly what I thought he’d do, and grabs me by the arm, hauling me into his lap and kissing me harshly.

Brendan’s kisses are always severe, demanding, a constant fight for dominance and blood. They’re so different from the kisses I had once shared with Tristan, years ago, which had been filled with love and compassion and everything that I find to be disgusting now. They’re teeth and hair pulling (on my part, because I’d never let him near my perfect platinum locks) and grasping and scratching, and this kiss is no different.

I suck his lower lip into my mouth, worrying it between my teeth and biting down almost hard enough to draw blood. His hands, still grasping at my back, become harder, more abrasive, scratching at the skin they can reach as I force his head back for a deeper, more violent kiss. I can taste blood in my mouth, but I’m not sure if it’s mine of his, and I don’t care.

Lubricant is retrieved from a drawer at some point, and before I know it, I’m lowering myself onto Brendan’s erection, both of us still nearly fully clothed, and he’s throwing his head back in a deep moan—which makes me glad that I had shielded this room months ago—while I stay silent, expressionless. His fingers dig into the skin beneath my shirt and I can feel a thick rivulet of blood dripping down, my long hair falling forward to frame his face as I begin to move.

It’s hard and hot and fast and needy, his moans and my fast breaths mingling in the room, the sticky hot aroma of sex spreading. We kiss again, and this time, it’s his teeth on my lips, then his teeth on my nipple as I continue to ride him and he grabs at the skin of my hips to encourage or discourage my movement. It’s slick and hot and deep and musky and suddenly, we’ve both released and I find myself collapsing onto him, burying my face in his neck.

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I enter one of the labs a few minutes later, which is right next the morgue now housing the bodies of Sandra and William Doyle. This is one of the less practical labs, filled with animals of all varieties that I think the government provides just to keep Paul Valcourt complacent, to allow him to dissect and torture and send waves through the minds of these poor beasts to drive them to insanity and laugh as he sees that he has control over such menial creatures.

Arum is standing in the corner of the room, looking down into the cage of a small, white lab rat that is drinking out of a water bottle on the side of the cage. I wonder why it’s segregated from the other rats, why it has its own cage. He has his hand against the white bars, looking down at the poor creature as it begins pacing the small space aimlessly.

I smell of sex, and I know that Arum can tell; I know that he is aware of the same odor coming from him, but he makes no attempt to hide it and neither do I. I’m sure he knows that I’ve been aware of his relationship with the doctor for some time now. It doesn’t seem to bother him that I know, and he’s never brought it up, nor has he brought up my sordid affair with the CIA agent.

I walk up to Arum, standing just behind him. I have more than a foot’s worth of height advantage over the other boy, yet that never makes me feel as if I have the upper hand. I may, but I can never feel his reaction to things, so I never know for sure. I never know whether I intimidate or scare him; whether I put him on edge the way he does me, or whether he has any semblance of happiness or sadness inside that mind of his. It’s all…blank.

Arum seems to sense that I’ve come closer to him, but he doesn’t turn around. I can see the muscles in his back tensing, though, as I stand close to him and let my hair fall forward to tickle his neck and shoulders. We stay silent for a long moment, both watching the rat, which it is now becoming apparent has been altered somehow; it is pacing around the cage agitatedly, as if it’s half mad and looking for escape. It’s more than just the fact that it’s caged.

“He’s been sending radio waves into its brain until he’s driven it mad,” Arum informs me with something that sounds almost like sorrow in his voice. I didn’t have to ask who Arum was referring to; Valcourt had no qualms about performing experiments on anyone, human or creature; had no qualms about the harm that could be done to either. He was a sadist of the greatest kind, but I couldn’t criticize.

I reach my senses in to the small creature, finding in its tiny, simple brain that is indeed mad, having no comprehension of anything, but hearing that dim, dull buzz that sounds just like I know radio waves sound still embedded in its brain, sending the already lost creature further into madness.

Without hesitation, I find the creature’s neck with my senses, and, using my telekinesis, I snap it. The creature falls dead instantly.