The Maleficent estate consisted of a single manor in the center (more so to the front) of a two thousand acre lot of otherwise emptiness (aside from the small forest to the east and the sporadic placement of gazeboes and gardens about the rear. A long twisty driveway led any car that wanted to be there through a rather long awning of trees and, toward the end, a circle around a fountain featuring a meditating boy with water spurting from his upturned mouth.

A rather large front fence kept most visitors wary of approaching unannounced, for it featured not only an electric-looking metal exterior, but a few spikes jutted around the rim of the top of the fence as if the family was taking proactive measures against intruders. Also, the deep cranberry red camera lenses peering from seemingly random places on the fence reminded one fiercely of a set of spider’s eyes.

As the black Lexus approached the fence, the doors that blocked the driveway developed a gap and pulled themselves open with no more than a slight creak. The car drove inside. The gates did not take as long as they had when they opened. They slammed shut with a quake, shaking the car; another reason to announce one’s self before visiting.

The black vehicle traveled straight through the trees that lined the sides of the road and got tangled branches with their opposites on the other sides. Once the opal Lexus got through the curious awning, it moved through a clean black asphalt road—as if dirt were afraid to land on it. The red-orange evening sun hit the black car and reflected off the back window. It matched the eyes of the person looking through it.

Zane surveyed his brothers as they lay asleep in the roomy black leather interior. They were lucky that Zane thought to equalize the temperature (even at his own expense, for he was a little cool) or else they would be sweating and miserable in their sleep. The things Zane did for those boys.

As he peered out of the window, he began to wonder. What was all the space needed for? All of this land was unused for the most part. Sure, it was beautiful with its emerald grass; and sure, it had enough room to house two or three herds of elephants; but it never went to use. There were not many visitors to the Maleficent estate and yet every two weeks an entire fleet of trucks would come with at least fifty lawnmowers and one hundred mowers (they worked in shifts—two people per mower).

This space could be put to such better use, Zane thought, shivering at the coolness expelling through the air conditioner vents. He pressed the button to bring down the window and sighed in relief at the warm lazy wind that blasted his face. His orange eyes lidded as the soft breeze flowed on by like angel-soft skin with a splash of warm kitten breath. The seatbelt holding him down began to feel too restrictive as his chest and shoulders wiggled around, trying to escape the hold of the oppressive safety device. He closed his eyes and rejoiced as the buckle clicked and unwrapped itself from his body, whizzing past until it hung from the harness by his head.

He let his head fall back, eyes unfocused and glazed with the light of the red-orange sun that seemed to be absorbed by the irises. He squirmed again, the after effects of the seatbelt not quite gone. His lips pouted and he went totally limp. A lazy smile crossed his face showing only the top row of teeth that glistened.

The combination of cool air and warm air swirled over his face, making him shiver slightly as he let the tension in his navel go. As his eyes got even more unfocused, his mental sight began to paint over the world. He saw the clashing of the warm and cool air as it whirled about, producing small sparks that—when seen all at once—created an abstract twister. It spun lopsidedly at times, its narrow hips and wide head changing proportions every now and then. Sometimes it faceted off and had two tiny feet supporting it.

The moment was magical. It reminded him of his grandfather a bit—the way he danced in his old age. His mental sight blinked out for a second and returned, the twister now forming the smiling face of Hector Maleficent Sr. Zane gasped and the image suddenly disappeared.

A bead of sweat ran down the side of his face as his heart pounded in the cage that was his chest; a seatbelt which it could never escape by natural means. He instinctively looked down to see the boys still sleeping, though Yordin had shifted a bit. When he had finally caught his breath, the car arrived in front of the wide sweeping staircase that led to the doors. At least he would have time to walk it off.

(Ω)

“Mom,” Zane said, sitting adjacent mother at the large mahogany table that looked as heavy as it felt, “I’ve told you: They don’t care. They don’t want to learn psionics. They’ve got strong twin-telepathy; can’t you be happy with that?”

Marisol Maleficent gave him a look with her heavily-lidded and made up eyes that made him feel as if he were lifting the table he was sitting at. Her lips’ natural pout was covered in red lipstick that complemented her olive Portuguese skin. Her long, curly hair was pulled into six inches of an ornate Mexican hair-clasp to make a ponytail before it cascaded down her back and well down to her exposed calf as she sat.

“That is not acceptable,” she said simply, her medium Brazilian accent more pronounced than usual—maybe because she was attempting to hide her negative feelings. When she had bad feelings about something and they were unexpressed, her accent got thicker with every passing hour it seemed.

“Well, Mom, you’re going to have to accept it, because I doubt they’ll change their minds.” Zane could only sound exasperated. He had this conversation many times before and it always ended up the same.

“Make them change their minds,” she said through her teeth, all of which were extra pearly and seemed sharper than anyone’s teeth would be. Her anger-contorted face resembled a wolf, especially with her hair tightly pulled back the way it was. Zane, however, was not intimidated by this even if he was shocked she would say such a thing.

“I’m not going to make anybody do anything.”

“Did I raise you to be so disrespectful?” she asked, face not changed from its wolf-like state. The energy behind it that made it so dangerous-looking was removed, though.

“No, Mom,” Zane said, still exasperated. “But you raised me to do the right thing.” What happened? He added in his thoughts. This woman was not the woman who had raised him.

A growl (that made Zane jump inside) caught itself in her throat before she said silently: “get the hell out of my dining room.”

Zane was happy to do just that as he walked passed her monstrous self. He did not dare utilize his mental sight around her, for he feared what he would see when he looked her way.

Dinner that night was quite different from Zane’s past experiences. For once in a long time, the family was all together. The twins sat together at one end of the table and Zane sat across from them. At the end of the table closest to them, their grandmother Lenora (a barely wrinkled light-skinned woman with a white afro of wavy curls) sat, looking at them all through her long white eyelashes, as if hiding behind them as she ate her stew. At the other end (there was an empty chair between Zane and his mother) was his father Hector who had his dark curls gelled back into waves with a gentlemanly demeanor about him and his mother, who looked slightly less feral than she had earlier.

No one had anything to say. The twins were old enough that a little salt flying through the air doing summersaults would not impress them anymore; Lenora no longer felt it necessary to ask anyone how their day was and simply pulled the information from their minds herself; Hector was focused on the stake at hand and Marisol was entirely too cross to say anything much.

The dinner consisted of chicken and rice with some greens on the side—hardly as large as usual. The silence was filled with tension—tight enough to pass for a newly strung guitar. No one said anything and every bit of eye contact with anyone was made purely by accident.

Zane’s throat itched with a cough that he would not allow to escape his system for fear of popping the tight drum of silence. It inched its way up. Slowly, slowly, inch by itching inch, until it was at the tip of his throat.

Ahem, Zane let out as lowly as possible. Marisol’s eyes widened and her nostrils flared.

“Hector!” she exclaimed, although he was right next to her. “Your son won’t teach the twins!”

Hector stroked his chin, light olive complexion glistening due to his oily skin—it made him look like a dignified statue that had just been polished. He looked straight ahead as he always did. It was usually at nothing that others could see that he looked at, but it always seemed as if something was there. “Do they want to learn?” he asked to the air.

“Ugh!” she clenched her teeth and stood, twirling on heel and walk-stomping away. Zane’s face fell in relief as he finally let out the cough.

“And you dumped Erana for her?” asked Lenora as she shook her head and went back to her vegetables as Hector made no sighed silently.

Zane knew the whole story by heart. Hector was a hotshot magician with his own show in a local bar and Lenora was an opening act belly-dancer whose ethnically ambiguous features allowed her to pass for Indian and get more money for being authentic until Hector’s show was eventually shortened to incorporate more Marisol Hector had a girlfriend at the time, but had grown a fancy for the woman who would later be Zane’s mother.

Zane knew that at first his father didn’t mind having his relationship with Erana broken off if it meant he could be with the mysterious Indian woman whose mind could not be read. They began seeing each other and slowly a relationship developed. It had gotten very intimate in a very short time. They had sex, the double-rubber broke, and Zane was born.

The silence ensued. Now that everyone was finished eating, no one dared to be the first to leave the table—after Marisol, that was. Five pairs of varying levels of orange eyes (from Lorena’s yellow-orange eyes to Hector’s brown-orange eyes to the twin’s identical flecked-with-green-orange eyes to Zane’s ember orange eyes) stared each other down into submission, though no one was giving up. No one wanted to have to be the one to deal with Marisol’s temper (even though Lorena would stir it up from time to time).

“A telephone call for Zane,” came the automated in-house announcement system. “From Vitia Vitriol.” Zane felt Yordin’s insides spike, but he had not visibly shook, lest he lose his place in the contest of eyes. “Please pick up the telephone, Zane.” In a second, Zane got up and dashed through the dining room past the twins and his grandmother. Now they were locked in the optical battle.

Zane walked through the hall to the nearest phone which sat on a small table off to the left. He picked it up and pressed the hold button. “Vitia?”

“Zane!” she said quickly, forgoing the formalities. “You must have heard! RainStorm is planning on launching its system on a global-scale for so cheap that even the impoverished countries could buy it! According to them, they’re letting it out for so little money in order to ‘prove that Zane Maleficent is wrong and that anyone can be psychic’!”

He let that marinate over his mind for a moment. “I haven’t heard of this,” he said slowly, considering the options in his mind. He suddenly realized why his father always seemed to make such big decisions slowly even though he was capable of thinking multiple thoughts and scenarios at once. “How did you hear about it?”

“As I said, I used to work there. I was let go such a short while ago that the idiots in the IT department forgot to take me off the mailing list for meetings and executive events. I doubt they’ll ever get around to it; you’d think all they did was eat bananas and play with their… never mind.

“At any rate, the meeting is this up-coming Tuesday at the RainStorm third Headquarters in Macon City—just three miles from Bellevue. If you meet me at your condo on Tuesday morning, we can come up with a plan. Until then, I’m going to brainstorm and I hope you do the same.”

Click.

Zane blinked. When she was not recovering from RainStorm radio waves, Vitia was not one to fool around. She was meticulous, precise, and totally determined. She was also on top of things as far as intel went. Who knew how much dirt she had on RainStorm with her high position? Zane was lucky that she was on his side.

He walked toward his room (deciding that the dining room would put him back in the fray) and right past his mother’s. He swore quietly. She was staring into her vanity with expressionless vivid green eyes, hair twisting down to her ankles as she slouched over in the chair with only her elbows to prop her chin up. He was obligated to go in. She called him in since he decided to ignore the obligation.

“Zane, sweetie,” she said, voice sounding indifferent. “I am sorry for losing my temper with you.” He nodded, saying nothing. It was her time to monologue.

“I only want what’s best for my children,” she sighed. “In this world, being able to read the mind of your competition, seeing things for more than what they appear, control over matter; you excel in these things—it’s your brothers who do not. I am not upset that you can do these things and they cannot. I am upset that you will not teach Yordin and Xaydin. Do you want to feel superior to them? You are already seven years older; is that not enough?”

“They don’t want to learn. They don’t mind just being able to link to only each other. In my defense, I trained myself—Dad and Grandma didn’t help me a bit.”

“If not in experience,” Marisol said, lifting her head, smiling and no longer in the depths of dread, “you beat both of them in raw talent and application.” Zane smiled bashfully. She stood (just a bit shorter than Zane) and kissed him on the lower jaw. “Baby,” she said, “I want to give all my children advantages in life. If the twins absolutely refuse to learn to be better psychics, then I will equip them in other ways.” She walked out, long crinkled maroon skirt swaying with her hips.

When he was certain that her light footsteps were totally gone, Zane let out a huge sigh. He knew it was going to be the end of his mother’s Psionic Plan for Pairs campaign, but she was quite vague on her intentions. What was she planning? Whatever it was, RainStorm was planning something much more diabolical and that had to be put out of commission first.

In his room sometime later, Zane found himself with his head propped on the palms of his hands as his elbows dug into the hard silver metal desk. He was dazed as his mind traveled back in time to his first night in Bellevue a year ago. He had just gotten the penthouse he wanted and had a speaking engagement the following night. He was so scared about it, for he brought the apartment with his own money—money he saved from childhood and money he earned speaking and doing other jobs. He was only seventeen at the time.

“Zane,” Xaydin called through the open door. “Can you help me pack up for the Academy?”

“Sure,” Zane got his mind back into the present. “What do you need?” he asked.

“My socks, my green hoodie—the ones we got at that fair a year ago when you got the black one, and my Intermediate Psionics Theory book.”

Zane’s eyes went wide. “You take that class?”

“Yep,” he answered, failing to hide the proud grin that was appearing on his face. “I might not want to do it, but I do want to learn about it—this way, if you ever go renegade or rogue or something, I can handle you.”

“Well,” Zane said slowly, looking for the words to use, “I’m proud of you… But are you really going to try to stop my evil if I ever decide to go to the dark side?”

“Yep,” he answered, grinning again. “I’m a hero!”

“You are, are you?” asked Zane. He lifted the cover from his bed telekinetically and deepened his voice. “How much of a hero are you if you cannot escape my wooly blanket of semi-doom?”

Xaydin dodged it as it flew around the roomy space of Zane’s room, attempting to engulf him. When it was close enough, Xaydin hopped into the middle of it and brought it crashing to the floor. Working quickly, he tied the end corners together and then tied those knots together.

Zane looked at him bewilderedly as his brother went on to make hasty work of the makeshift weapon. “What the…”

“See,” Xaydin smiled. “You didn’t take the class because the professors thought you were already too advanced for it (stupid them), but this is covered in the telekinetic section. When defending against something that is being manipulated—especially levitated—you’ve got to first look for where it’s being lifted and then get that point under your control.”

He cleared his throat importantly and continued. “From there, you’ve got to get any other possible points of interest under your control. If you were an enemy, it would have been dumb for me to tie those knots up, but since your goal was only to get me covered, how could you with a bunch of knots?”

Zane just stood there, dumbfounded. “Don’t worry,” Zane assured his brother as some socks, the green hoodie, and book came sailing in through the door, “I don’t plan on going rogue anytime. But I don’t want to see you starting some psionic police force.”

Xaydin grinned again, “Now I will,” he said as he plucked his possessions from the air and walked out.

Zane really was proud of him. He was just upset that his mother could not see in the twins what he could. Her last sentiments showed promise though. Maybe she would just accept that her boys didn’t want what she wanted for them. Maybe.

Later that night, Zane, Xaydin, and Yordin were at the bus terminal that would take the twins back to school. Zane learned that they had taken many classes that he would have never thought they would have. His first surprise was Xaydin’s Intermediate Psionics Studies course, but when he found out about the Cosmetic Theory: Focus on the Face and the Sentient Minds: Communicating with Circuits courses, Yordin’s Starology and African Paganism courses seemed normal in comparison.

But he was not one to talk. He himself took Peruvian Alpaca Linguistics, Calender-Making: Why the Mayans Never Finished, and Brooklyn: Breeding Place for Cross-Cultural Accents?

When the bus got ready to pull off, Zane sent the twins on quickly and made a call to the dean of the school, explaining that they would be there in an hour or so and to have someone ready to retrieve them. Once that was done, he hopped into his own black BMW and sped away into the night.

(Ω)

“Vitia?!” Zane jumped as soon as he saw the woman in his apartment. “What are you…? What have you done to…? And who is…?”

She looked quite different than the last time he saw her a few days ago. Her complexion was less pasty, but still had a green glow. Her hair was a bit shorter than Marisol’s, but it was wild with corkscrew curls that generally went in the down direction. One thing stayed the same though; her cutthroat demeanor was fierce as all hell—it probably showed more now that she was in charge and not putting off RainStorm brain-altering waves. She was sitting on Zane’s bed with a boy who looked as if he’d just been in some sort of war.

He looked about Zane’s age with black hair just like Vitia’s (though much shorter) and a just-as-green-but-less-pasty complexion. His face—especially his dark green eyes—were sharp and pointed, looking distinguished even given his state. His blue shirt was tattered and looked as if it would crumble if he moved even an inch. His pants were once long, Zane was certain, but had been cut extremely unevenly. It didn’t take much to see that the boy was her son. But Vitia didn’t seem old enough to have a son.

“This is my brother, Vulpo. Forgive his appearance. I should have made him change before we got here.” He waved the peace sign quickly, making Zane do the same.

“What happened?” he asked either of them.

“Football,” replied Vulpo.

“With robots?” asked Zane, taking in the black oil stains on his clothes and realizing that they would rub off on his covers.

“Yes, actually,” he said. “Before my sister came to get me—” he threw her a dirty stare, which she blocked with her own equally disarming stare “—I was working with my newly created interface. Without proper time to shut down, the protocol self-destructed and I just happened to be in the vicinity of, oh, eight of them. It’s lucky they were set to low levels for stun purposes.”

“So all your work is gone?” asked Zane, realizing that he could replace the bedspreads.

“No. Just the physical aspects—but since Vitia’s paying for it, it should be okay…” he let it trail off, though his green eyes were quite formidable. They were as dark and as sharp as his mother’s.

“Well,” Zane said, his face softening. “Can you please get the hell off of my bed? You’re as clean as my dirty laundry. Shower’s downstairs and my clothes are in the top drawer. Undies are clean, too.”

“Axe or Dial?”

“Don’t touch my Dial.”

“Tidies or boxers?”

“Your choice.”

He watched as Vulpo got up and began to walk, though a little tiredly. Zane smiled with a small pucker of his lips at the boy’s back as he limped slightly down the stairs. A quick look to the bed showed that he was right to be so tee’d off. Oil stains were smeared onto his cream covers. He hissed slightly and levitated the wireless phone from the wall.

“Laundry services?” he asked as he pressed zero. “I need a huge favor—I’ll pay extremely well. This is Zane Maleficent, in the penthouse… Yes, the one with the twins… I don’t know which twins you’re talking about—they are not adorable! Definitely the wrong twins… Okay then, see you at seven. Night!”

“Speaking of which…” Vitia began.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Zane said, dropping his duffle bag on the floor and rounding on the green woman. “How do you keep getting in here? Why are you here now? And why didn’t you stop him from sitting on my bed like he was?”

Vitia looked disinterested as she blew the tips of her nails, effectively undermining Zane’s authority. “Are you quite finished yet?” she asked. Before he could answer, she said: “In case you’ve forgotten, RainStorm is after me. They are not some clueless company with nice toys—they are a dangerous organization with no competition. It just so happens that your properties are all shielded from their view. They’re after me and I want to be shielded—simple as that. As to how I get in: I’m smart.”

Zane’s eyes relaxed a bit. He knew she would not reveal whatever access point she had used to get in. He also knew that she was smart enough to seal it—whatever and wherever it may be—against intruders. Other intruders, that is. She probably saw herself as something of an honored guest—and she was—though Zane thought he should be able to reserve the right to allow or deny access to his home.

He ran a hand through his straightened hair and pulled it back, exposing his ears through the mess of mostly grouped strands. The problem with curly hair was that it tended to group with other hairs, even when straightened. He figured he’d stop doing that sooner or later anyway. The process was too long and to do it every morning… Unthinkable.

Caught up in his own thoughts, he left Vitia on his bed and walked off to the metal kitchen table on the same level. He didn’t notice the half-naked boy (save for a loose towel) who’d went into the refrigerator and pilfered a few small bags of chips, for if he had, he would have surely been turned on beyond measure.

He did notice, however, the light snoring of Vitia on his bed, arm hung over the side and looking as fierce as she did in the day. Her black lips and cat-like eyeliner made Zane feel as if he were getting too close to some sort of exotic cat—a panther or something.

“Sad, isn’t it,” came a voice from behind Zane, humid breath puffing into his ear. The voice was chillingly cold and the breath so disarming that all Zane could do was turn around feebly to at least see what was causing him to go weak in such a way.

It was Vulpo, wearing Zane’s long Civic Center t-shirt about him and sporting corkscrews tied-back with one of the no-snag rubber bands Zane brought for his own hair when it wasn’t straight. It took a moment for Zane to take it all in before he rounded on the abnormally close green boy.

“What’s your problem?” he asked, trying to keep his voice low for Vitia’s sake. “What the—”

“Sorry, sorry—it was a joke; a bad joke.”

“Ninjas are noisier than you are!” Zane said in his hushed whisper of a voice. “Do you have repressed issues or something?”

“Many—want to talk about ‘em?”

(Ω)

Zane found out that Vulpo wasn’t as much of an asshole as he appeared to be. He was just somewhat distant from social reality after being taken away from his work and not getting a full explanation until the point where Zane brought him up to speed on everything.

“So, you mean to tell me that RainStorm’s patented psionic-generation system is a dud?” he asked crestfallen. His surface thoughts told Zane that he had been looking forward to getting one and the prevailing overhead rumors of it getting increasingly cheaper would not matter anymore.

“Umm, something like that,” Zane said, waving his hand dismissively as he began to think about the nature of the system. “It burrows under people’s wills and gets to the core of their mind—a side-effect of that is in about thirty-five percent of those who use it, it brings out the psionic abilities they already had. Thirty-five proven accounts out of one hundred are better than nothing in this thirst-for-proof field. At any rate, though, the radiation it emits makes the people who use it susceptible to waves produced by some central wave-emitter-thinger and thus controllable by the very technology they sought to use to increase their power.”

“Wave-emitter-thinger?” asked Vulpo, not bothering to suppress a sarcastic smile. Zane’s eyes focused slightly on the other man’s face. It might not have been that big of a deal, but Zane saw physical habit in Vulpo’s entire face. The way he interacted with his sister, with Zane—someone he’d just met. He had a superior sort of air about himself that obviously stemmed from his genius in the field of science. With this in mind, he took another look at the green-outlined boy.

His demeanor denoted a nonchalant cover with a hedonist center. He would not start a conversation, but he would sure as hell engage in one if pressed—pushing his views and spreading his philosophical aura over anyone who would be covered, thus creating something of a replica of himself in someone else. It was as disturbing as it was intriguing.

Zane allowed his mental sight to flash for a second. After a slight struggle (his mind was not as closed to invasion as his sister’s, but there was definitely a genetic psionic block attributed to them both) he saw Vulpo as a virus-like creature with appendages for striking only at opportune intervals of times and a telescopic veil for protection.

Zane decided that he would keep an eye on Vulpo. Even though his mind was open to invasion, Vulpo’s mystique lied not in his ability to keep others out, but in his curious ability to be as mentally fit as he was and still be susceptible to invasion. Besides, he was hot. But where did Vulpo Vitriol’s allegiance lie? Where did he draw his power from and to whom did he bestow it to—and in what form? These were the questions that every suspicious person asked themselves. But Zane was a psion, and there was only one way to find out.

“Want to go to brunch with me tomorrow?” he asked.