Sentinel

by Josi Russell

Genres: Colonization; Space Exploration

Synopsis

Rigel Bryant is the only natural born telepathic human in the history of the universe. His father, Ethan, wants him to lock his abilities away, but Rigel doesn’t see why it is wrong to use his gifts.

Rigel’s carefree attitude is shattered when he receives an urgent telepathic distress signal that overwhelms his every thought. The call comes from Ethan’s old friend, Tesuu the Zumiin, who saved his life during his misadventures as Caretaker.

In order to reclaim Rigel’s mind, the father-son pair hire a beautiful pilot named Carine to take them to the Zumiin planet. When the trio arrives, they are attacked by AI robots determined to kill any potential threat to the Zumiin, including their own programmer. Before Ethan and Tesuu can find a solution to the problem, a deadly poisonous snake bites Ethan, sending him into a deep coma. While Tesuu battles the rampaging robots, Rigel hunts for a rare antidote to save his father’s life.

Can Rigel become a hero like his father, or is it too late for him and the rest of the universe?

Release date: November 4, 2016

Publisher: Future House Publishing

Print pages: 388

Sample

Chapter 1

Hospitals always made Rigel Bryant nervous. His sister, Polara, had been very ill with Minean fever when they were children, and she’d had to come in for follow-up appointments for a long time. Rigel remembered some of those visits. Back then he hadn’t known how to stop the thoughts of others from invading his mind. The suffering of the patients around him had washed over him, shot through him, soaked into him. Though today was his twenty-second birthday, and he’d long ago learned how to block out their thoughts, he still shifted uncomfortably while he waited for the cashier.

Her name tag said Sharla. She was an older woman, and Rigel glanced at the other cashiers, wishing he’d ended up in front of one of them. This hospital was a training facility, on the campus of Coriol University and run by the university, so many of the staff members were students, and there were several he’d like to get to know better.

Sharla’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

“So, you’re paying how much now?” The woman peered up at him.

“All of it,” he said, glancing around. He had to get this done before Polara spotted him.

She blinked, and then narrowed her eyes at him, making sure she had heard. “All of this month’s payment, you mean?”

Rigel shook his head. He pulled a card from his pocket and offered it to the woman. The card was clear. A single drop of Rigel’s blood hung suspended in the center of it. That drop proved his identity and gave him access to his account at the Galactic Commerce Bank. “No, all of it. The whole balance.”

Sharla’s eyes widened. She took the card carefully. Rigel felt her suspicion. He heard, in his mind, what she wasn’t saying out loud. What’s this kid doing with a blood card?

Blood cards were a highly secure intergalactic currency for the very wealthy, and according to Sharla’s thoughts, not for guys with scuffed shoes who hadn’t even combed their hair that morning.

Rigel stopped himself from replying. He had combed his hair. It just got a little tousled during his last ride on the hovercycle. He was already missing that cycle. It had been his for three days, and he had loved the way he felt, streaking along with nothing but the wind to worry about.

But he had needed a little quick cash. Late last night he had found out that Saras Company was buying out a company called United Yynium Distributors. This morning he had sold his new bike and put the money into buying as much of the UYD stock as he could, then he’d sold it after the announcement. He’d made a small fortune.

Sharla was scanning the card now, and she saw how much he had made.

“The whole balance?” The doubt had gone from her voice. She was now efficient and businesslike.

“That’s right.” He would buy the bike back tomorrow. There was enough on that card to do this, and to buy it back, and to do a lot more.

“You must like this…” She squinted at her screen, reading. “Polara a lot.”

Rigel didn’t bother answering. He glanced around again. He didn’t want his sister to see him. She couldn’t know what he was doing.

“Remember that she can’t know who paid it,” he said. His tone was more commanding than usual, and he sent into her mind a picture of a locked box.

“Of course, sir.” She was completing the transaction. After a brief pause, she spoke again. “There you are.”

Rigel glanced at the screen. Balance, zero. Polara’s entire education was paid for. She wouldn’t have to worry about anything now except studying and becoming the best doctor on Minea. He couldn’t help but smile.

“Thanks, Sharla,” he said. He wandered back over to his seat and slipped the blood card back out of sight.

It was just in time, too. Polara walked in, her eyes searching the waiting patients. He gave her a little wave.

But she was in her professional mode, and she simply nodded and called his name, as if he were any other patient she’d seen that day.

He followed her into the exam room.

“Doctor Grange has got those tests back,” she said matter-of-factly. Rigel smiled. She was so at home here, so good at this. There was no place on Minea that he felt as confident as she did here. She had truly found her calling.

Before he could answer, Doctor Grange appeared. He was middle-aged, maybe fifteen years older than Rigel. He wasn’t one of those doctors with false cheerfulness or annoying humor, but he wasn’t a rigid and curt one, either. His main characteristic was anxiety. He worried constantly about his patients. Not only while he was here. Rigel had met him in the market once and Doctor Grange had been scooping sweetbeans and thinking about patients even then.

The doctor didn’t waste time. He moved through the pleasantries quickly, then pulled up a screen. Rigel saw the doctor’s report in his mind before the screen finished loading.

“I’m afraid we haven’t been able to pin down the reason for your recent troubles,” Doctor Grange reported. That didn’t surprise Rigel, but he was still disappointed.

The doctor must have registered the slump of Rigel’s shoulders and the slight shake of his head.

“Don’t worry. We’ll keep investigating.”

But Rigel didn’t want them to keep investigating. It had been months now since he’d really tasted anything, since he’d really smelled or felt or heard anything. All his senses were dulled, as if he’d been wrapped in a heavy blanket. He’d come in here at Polara’s insistence that whatever was causing it could be rooted out and cured.

The doctor was still speaking. “One more test, okay?” he said. Rigel shifted uncomfortably, but Polara was nodding.

Doctor Grange stepped to the door of the exam room and gestured to a nearby orderly. He entered with a tray containing a bottle of chei fruit juice and three glasses. Rigel watched as the doctor took it and the orderly left.

“Okay,” Doctor Grange said. “Now, our tests came back showing that your taste buds are normal, your nose is normal, your ears are normal, everything is normal.” Doctor Grange smiled. “But Rigel, you and I know that you are anything but normal.”

Rigel didn’t flinch at that. He had seen the inside and outside of normal, and it didn’t hold much fascination for him anymore.

“Your ability makes you a special case,” Doctor Grange said. The words echoed something his mother was always saying.

“Though our senses seem to be five separate areas of our bodies, and five separate elements of our experience, in actuality they all have something in common. That is the brain. The stimuli that we receive from our different sensory organs are all processed up here.” Doctor Grange tapped his forehead. “And up here—” He tapped it again. “—you aren’t normal.”

Now Rigel was interested. Doctors, even the ones who knew he was telepathic, never addressed it. He was one of only three known telepaths, and none of the doctors had any idea how to deal with it.

“I’ve been thinking about your case,” Doctor Grange said, and Rigel saw in the doctor’s mind the catalog of thoughts the man had devoted to Rigel’s problem over the last few weeks. It was vast. Rigel wondered how the doctor ever got any sleep. “And I’ve got a theory.” Doctor Grange gestured to the bottle of juice. He poured some in each glass and gave one glass to Rigel, one to Polara, and took one himself.

“The good news is that for this test, you don’t have to get stuck with a needle. Just enjoy a bit of refreshment. You’re going to read our thoughts as we drink.”

Rigel shifted his eyes to Polara. She didn’t meet his gaze.

He spoke up. “I can’t.”

Doctor Grange raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“I can’t read Polara’s mind,” Rigel said. “I mean I won’t. I—I promised her I wouldn’t, when we were kids.” A grateful smile crossed his sister’s face.

She started to protest, but Doctor Grange cut in. “Okay. I understand. You don’t need to read hers. But I need you to read mine. This is my favorite treat. What I want you to do, Rigel, is to focus on me. Read my thoughts as I drink, and try to describe what you’re experiencing as you read them.”

Rigel nodded. He’d been reading the doctor’s thoughts since he came in.

Doctor Grange tipped the glass up, pulling a little juice into his mouth. Rigel registered the sweetness of it, the tingle it left on the Doctor’s tongue. He registered, suddenly and powerfully, how desperately thirsty the doctor was. He hadn’t taken time to grab a drink all day, and he’d been here since before dawn.

Rigel felt the satisfaction of thirst slaked, tasted the sweetness of the juice, felt the chill of it on the doctor’s lips. Rigel described the sensations as well as he could.

Without a pause, Doctor Grange spoke again. “Now you drink yours.”

Rigel put the glass to his lips and drained it. He tried not to let his disappointment show in his eyes. It was as if they had two different drinks. This one was weak and watery, tepid at best. But Rigel had seen them come out of the same bottle. He knew they were the same. He described it to Doctor Grange.

The doctor was nodding. Rigel felt a strange mix of empathy and excitement streaking through Doctor Grange’s mind.

“That’s what I thought!” he said. “Rigel, there’s nothing wrong with your mouth. It’s your brain that we need to address. You see, the brain’s whole job is to gather and process information. We are constantly exposed to stimuli that help us operate in our world. But the brain gathers much more stimuli than we really need. It is equipped—programmed, really—to sort and give precedence to some information and ignore some information altogether. In order to sort through the information, the sensory system is able to adapt to stimuli so that we aren’t overwhelmed all the time.” He took another drink, and Rigel couldn’t help but tap into the Doctor’s thoughts, just to experience that taste again.

“So the senses register something strongly at first. Then, as you continue to experience it, they adapt to the stimulus and dismiss it. It’s the reason that when you first put on your shirt in the morning, you feel it on your shoulders and that one itchy seam annoys you, but by the time you leave the house you’ve forgotten about it. Your brain has adapted to the stimulus.”

Polara weighed in. “Or how the marsh at the first lake in Tiger Mountain Park smells awful when you first get there, but after you’ve been there a while, you don’t notice it.”

“Right,” Doctor Grange said, “that’s called olfactory fatigue.” He laid a hand on Rigel’s shoulder. “It’s a natural part of the brain’s job. The more times a particular synapse has fired, the more likely it is to get fatigued and stop registering the stimulus. So my theory is that you are experiencing a kind of neural adaptation, or sensory fatigue. You have experienced so many sensations so many more times than most people, that your brain has adapted to those constant stimuli and you are not experiencing things as you used to.”

For the first time in a long time, Rigel felt a glimmer of optimism. This made sense.

Polara seemed hopeful, too. She was nodding and tapping her fingers with excitement. Rigel loved her for that. “Is there anything we can do about it?” she asked.

Doctor Grange shifted his gaze from Rigel to Polara. Rigel was surprised to detect, in the doctor’s thoughts, a shadow of concern.

“Polara, I appreciate your help. And there are some treatments we may look into, including medication and sensory deprivation periods. But at this point, I’m going to have you leave so that I can speak to your brother alone about his options.”

Polara looked surprised. Maybe even a little hurt. But she was a professional and Doctor Grange was her superior. She nodded and turned toward the door. “Yes, Doctor.”

Doctor Grange didn’t want to hurt her, Rigel saw, or embarrass her. “I’ll go over the notes with you later.”

Polara closed the door behind her, and Doctor Grange turned back to Rigel.

“As I said, there are some options. The thought blockers that your father and Kaia wear might be a place to start.”

Rigel’s excitement turned bitter in his mouth. “No. I don’t want a thought blocker.”

Doctor Grange held up a hand. “I know this is something your mom has fought for a long time. But hear me out. Your dad hasn’t experienced this sensory fatigue because he has always worn a blocker. His brain isn’t constantly experiencing sensations felt by other people. It might be worth looking into, at least temporarily suspending your ability to give your brain time to rest.”

Rigel almost turned the doctor’s thoughts away from the blocker, but he stopped himself, instead trying to convince him with words.

“I won’t wear a blocker. That’s who my father is, but it’s not who I am.”

His voice must have conveyed his conviction, because Doctor Grange nodded. “Okay. There are some other options, although you should know that I have no idea how they’ll work. You’re the first case of this, of course, so I’m just guessing about what could help.”

The doctor closed his eyes briefly and tapped them with his fingertips, thinking. “Let’s see. We have medications that can disrupt the brain’s prioritizing mechanism, in effect making everything top priority. It would probably help you regain some sensory perception. But your brain would adapt to it eventually, too.” He stopped tapping and rubbed his eyes. Rigel felt Doctor Grange’s fatigue, felt how the doctor subjugated it to his other thoughts, pushing it away. Rigel admired that. He had seen many undisciplined minds that magnified whatever thoughts came into them and ran with those thoughts regardless of where they took them.

“I suppose we could do complete sensory deprivation for a while,” Doctor Grange mused.

“How do you do that?”

“It would require a dark room, minimal contact with others, careful monitoring for several hours at a time over several days.” Doctor Grange was nodding.

Rigel couldn’t imagine that. Sitting in a dark room for hours when the world was waiting outside. He shook his head quickly.

The doctor was thinking of something else. That shadow which had entered his mind had not left. He tried to push it away, to subjugate it like he did his own weariness, but Rigel sensed it had something to do with his problem, so he reached for it, teasing it out of the doctor.

“There is one other thing, maybe.” Doctor Grange glanced around unconsciously. What could possibly be making him this nervous?

Rigel saw in the doctor’s mind a bright memory, like a thread through his thoughts. It was intense and shining, and Rigel wanted to know what it was. He pulled at that thread. Doctor Grange leaned in close and dropped his voice.

“I tried something once, a device. It was a little button you put on your back. It was alien tech, I’m not even sure how it worked. It was newly on the market then. A salesman brought it by the office, insisting that it would intensify any experience.” There was the bright memory. Rigel saw how the doctor, then just out of school, had tasted flavors he’d never known, had seen colors that had never existed for him before.

“Yes!” Rigel blurted. “Let’s try that!”

A troubled look had crept into Doctor Grange’s eyes. He shook his head quickly. “No. That’s not the best solution. In fact, it has just been discontinued due to some reports of severe side effects. I don’t even know why I mentioned it.” He looked at Rigel. It was an expression Rigel had seen before, a knowing and wary look that told Rigel the doctor knew he was not alone in his mind. Doctor Grange knew that Rigel had manipulated him into discussing it.

“I think we should start with the sensory deprivation. I’ll be sure we have someplace ready for that treatment when you come in two weeks.”

Rigel could see the possibility of trying the device slipping away. But he had to have it. Alien tech or not, if this intensifier did what the doctor said it would, he had hope of actually experiencing things again.

“What company made the intensifier? How could I find one?” There was a note of pleading in Rigel’s voice.

The doctor paced. “I’m sorry I mentioned that. We need to focus our efforts here on resting your synapses, not on increasing the intensity with which they fire.”

Rigel wasn’t used to being told no. He gritted his teeth against the hot frustration rising in his chest. He needed to know what the device was called. If the doctor wouldn’t tell him, Rigel had no way of finding it. His thoughts churned with desperation and helplessness.

But Rigel had never been helpless. Not even when he was a baby. Even before he could roll over or speak or walk he had been able to connect mentally to people and sway them to his will. He had tools to use in situations like this.

Rigel had been observing the doctor’s conscious thoughts, but now he dove into the unconscious ones that lay beneath the surface. Doctor Grange’s mind was fully accessible to him.

There was a tap at the door. The doctor opened it and chatted briefly with the orderly. Someone was having an allergic reaction. They needed him down the hall quickly.

He turned back to Rigel, the constant worry for his patients filling his mind again. “Will you make another appointment up front? I want to talk more about this.”

Rigel nodded, searching through the doctor’s memories furiously, trying to keep a pleasant look on his face while he did so.

He stayed in Doctor Grange’s mind as the man left and walked down the hall, as the doctor entered another room and began working on the other patient.

Rigel caught it just as the orderly returned to oust him from the room. A single errant thought, sprinting out of Doctor Grange’s mind as he barked for the nurse to bring him medications. That thought held one word: Fiyl.

Rigel had never encountered the word before. He needed to track it down. When he checked the watch on his neural interface wristband, though, he realized that he was supposed to be at work soon.

But he was one of the richest people on the planet now. Did he really need to go to work? And this mystery needed solving. What was Fiyl, and how could it help him? He would have to do some research to find out. And that was something he couldn’t do at home. If this thing was no longer legal, he didn’t want to be looking at it from his parents’ house. If the Colony Offices flagged his search, he didn’t want them getting in trouble.

When he left the hospital, a low gray drizzle made gentle music on the pavement. He turned toward Emelia’s apartment.

***

This wasn’t how Ethan planned to spend his son Rigel’s twenty-second birthday.

Walking through the rain, freezing, trying to track the kid down, was a far cry from the cozy party Aria had planned at home. And the bike was supposed to be a gift.

A new hoverbike: red and silver and top of the line. Ethan had seen Rigel ride off on it toward his job at the pub by the spaceport this afternoon, and he’d seen it streaking by tonight with someone else on it.

Ethan was trying not to panic. Just because Rigel wasn’t on it didn’t mean that he wasn’t okay. Rigel could have loaned it to someone. But Aria was terrified. She didn’t like him working in the pub, said it was full of creeps and criminals. Ethan had calmed her, had left her to talk it over with Polara while he went down to check on Rigel himself.

But Rigel hadn’t come in for his shift.

Ethan opened the door and saw the night and the driving Minean rain. Twenty-two. At what point would Rigel stop disappointing them, stop breaking their hearts?

“When you do find that kid,” the burly owner of the pub called after him, “tell him he’s fired.”

Chapter 2

Rigel liked being with someone who didn’t know about his ability. His family, and even Doctor Grange, always had such high expectations for him. His mom was always trying to convince him that he had a higher calling, a purpose that his telepathy would help him fill.

It was helping him now. As he moved his hands through Emelia’s black hair and kissed her to the easy beats of WaterDragon Swim, his favorite band, he watched her thoughts carefully to see what it was she liked and what it was she was hoping for. Right now she was thinking, I love this song.

“I love it too,” he murmured, so caught up that he forgot she hadn’t spoken.

Emelia pulled back from him just slightly. “How are you doing that?” she asked.

The music pulsed in the air around them. He used his neural interface to turn it down slightly, trying to think fast.

“Doing what?” He had learned that no one ever admitted out loud that they thought he was in their mind.

“Sometimes you answer me before I even ask, or respond when I haven’t said anything.”

Rigel pulled back, too. He had to do this carefully. He tried to look confused and maybe a little uncomfortable, as if he didn’t understand what she meant. He sent her the idea that he might leave and pulled a little further back. She didn’t want that. She moved toward him again and he spoke, making his voice smooth and comforting. “I just know you that well, Em.”

Emelia relaxed slightly in his arms, and Rigel tried not to smile. It was so easy to convince people when you knew what they really wanted.

He felt a twinge of guilt as she smiled up at him. It was a real smile, an open and sincere one. Emelia was always too trusting. Of everyone, not just him. But Rigel pushed the guilt away, walled it in behind the pleasure of holding her and allowed himself to smile back.

He had brushed just a little too close to the line. Reading minds and anticipating exactly what everyone wanted made people crazy about him. But if he did it too obviously, too quickly, then they caught on. Everybody liked that he could do it, but nobody liked knowing that he could.

Emelia was here in Coriol on an internship. It was the third of four business internships, and she had been away from her home on Earth for nearly a year. Rigel knew that she was, most of the time, lonely. Emelia was only here for a while, and she would soon be on her way to her final internship on a different planet. Rigel could use her sense of isolation to pull her closer just as easily as he could use his arms.

She kissed him, and Rigel kissed her back. He felt her attraction, felt her excitement, and fed off it. She was envisioning telling her friends about him, and he reinforced her idea of how jealous they would be.

Sometimes, manipulating thoughts was like a thermostat, especially in cases like this, when someone was suspicious and Rigel was trying to be subtle. Rather than controlling thoughts by planting direct ideas or images, Rigel would turn up the heat on certain emotions and chill others, guiding people through their fears and desires.

WaterDragon Swim spiked in volume as the door to Emelia’s apartment came crashing in on the floor, just inches from them. Rigel barely had time to look up as three members of the Coriol Defense Civil Division, the police force called the CDCD, took hold of him and dragged him to his feet.

“Come on, guys!” Rigel pushed back at them, but they had him in the familiar cuffs pretty quickly.

“Be warned that your words may incriminate you, Rigel Bryant,” said the largest of the three officers.

“Stan! Why so formal?” Rigel kept his voice light, probing the man’s mind for information. They’d met before. Stan had arrested him at least twice. “What is this all about?”

“You’ve gone too far this time, kid.” Stan shook his head. “They’ve got you set up on insider trading and felony theft.”

Rigel made his face show surprise. So that was it. They’d figured out where the money had gone.

Emelia had given him the perfect access. He owed his new fortune to her rambling thoughts.

“Listen, guys, I made a lucky guess. So I bought UYD stock just before Saras scooped them up. So I had a hunch that something was coming when nobody else did.”

“How did you get that information?” Emelia asked.

“I’m sorry, Em.”

“Sorry for what?”

Stan spoke up. “Sorry he used you to get the info about the merger.”

“What?”

“He’s a telepath,” Stan said. “Or a super-telepath. While you’re focused on making out, he’s wandering through your head, opening every file drawer in the cabinet.”

“That’s impossible!”

“Is it?” Stan asked. “What did you eat at your eighth birthday party?”

Emelia looked confused.

Rigel felt the relief of finally coming clean. “Squid,” he said.

Emelia’s hand flew to her mouth. “How did you know that?”

Rigel turned to Stan. “It’s usually cake.”

Stan nodded. “Usually chocolate.”

“Nice to see you haven’t lost your skill, kid.”

“Wait, how did you answer that question?” she asked.

“I didn’t. You did,” he said.. . .