In the morning Timo, Katie and I are still sleepy, but in a better mood and determined to enjoy at least some touristy things. Jamie is amazingly cheerful for a guy who almost got blown up yesterday, discovered that his eyes glow in the dark, and did not get much sleep. He's made a huge pile of pancakes for all of us, too. Cream puffs are gone, and guilty-looking Tarja is sitting in front of the empty box. The whisky bottle that we bought yesterday is also gone, and from the way Rudy is holding on to his head and demanding aspirin we can make an educated guess on where the whisky went.

We go outside for a walk.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Elina> Hi
<Michael> Hi Elina
<Elina> How is our guy?
<Nate> He is ok. On the phone now, using his wife's phone, his own was destroyed in the explosion. He is on the phone pretty often.
<Wei> What is he talking about?
<Nate> Fuck do I know, it's in some foreign language, I assume Icelandic.
<Michael> Does he do that often?
<Nate> All the time. Maybe we better wake up Olafur.
<Olafur> I am awake.
<Nate> Can you listen in on Jamie's conversation? It's in Icelandic.
<Wei> Isn't it the middle of the night there?
<Elina> Olafur is a morning person.
<Sinikka> And Wei's "middle of the night" lasts till 3pm. :)
<Olafur> He is speaking Danish, not Icelandic.
<Elina> But what is he saying? Can you understand? Hanne, Else, either of you awake?
<Olafur> Nothing much, just social chitchat. He does that quite a lot. The interesting part is that he is a native speaker.
<Michael> Of Danish?
<Olafur> Yes.
<Elina> Interesting. You sure?
<Olafur> 95% sure, ask Hanne or Else for the other 5.
<Wei> Hah, he logged onto our wiki last night.
<Wei> Under the username MaryDaniels.
<Peilin> Mary is Jamie?
<Sinikka> Hardly, I've seen her in person. Wei, how do you know it was him?
<Wei> From a Net cafe in St. Petersburg? Who else? Can anyone See her now?
<Elina> She is home in bed. But this is not good.
<Michael> This is really bad.
<Nate> What's the big deal? When Elina finally gets him to come over, a wiki username will be about the first thing she gives him. It's not like anything there is a secret from him.
<Sinikka> This is supposed to be exchange of information, not just us giving it to him.
<Michael> The real big deal is that we are leaking information worse than ever before.
<Wei> Michael, we have always leaked some. It's almost a tradition that some people greet the newbies separately.
<Michael> With friendly greetings and plans for world domination, not with IRC logs and wiki usernames. :)
<Perv> I like this Jamie. I am gonna double up my offer to him.
<Michael> Perv!
<Elina> Perv!
<Perv> :)
<Sinikka> Perv, seriously, was it you?
<Perv> Nope, I just offered friendly greetings and a plan for world domination. ;)
<Elina> Perv, you are getting on my nerves.
<Perv> We all have our crosses to bear. Or crescents as the case might be. :)
<Lauri> Shit!
<Michael> Lauri?
<Lauri> One of the surveillance camera videos shows that he was on the second floor and jumped from there to the first about half a second before the explosion.
<Elina> Damn.
<Olafur> So? I'd do the same if I were him and read the mind of a bomber a second before the explosion.
<Lauri> Yeah, me too. But this is on tape and somebody is gonna start asking questions very soon now.
<Elina> I'll call him and tell him to get out of there.

* * *

Katie's phone rings. "It's for you," she says, and hands the phone to Jamie.

A truck stops next to us, and several armed men jump out of there, screaming and telling us to get in. Tarja tries to run, but one of them grabs her, throws her on the ground and drags her to the truck by her arm. Rudy kicks him in the balls, another man hits him on the neck with his rifle, the third man points his rifle at him, and he lifts his hands and backs down towards the truck where the other guy has already dragged Tarja.

A psychotic-looking guy is pointing his gun at Timo and myself and telling us to get into the truck. He is really scary, and if he were holding a pistol I'd run for it, but the gun looks like it is full-automatic.

A very big and muscular guy is carrying unconscious Jamie to the truck, and Katie is trying to attack him from behind. He turns around, sprays something into her face, and she collapses on the ground.

The truck is huge and it's pretty dark there. They throw us into a heap in one corner, and aim at us from the opposite corner.

Katie regains consciousness very quickly. So probably does Jamie, too, if they have sprayed him with the same stuff, but he has the sense not to open his eyes. I am not sure how the armed thugs would relate to the eyes that glow in the dark, unless they know already.

Katie starts swearing loudly, asking our abductors what the hell they want, and screaming for help. Timo makes some comforting gestures at me, while at the same time sending an SMS somewhere behind my back. He whispers me the license plate number of the truck, and that he has sent a message to a few of his friends in Helsinki, giving them the number and asking them to alert the police. Problem is, these might in fact be the police, but still, modern technology vs. thugs 1-0. Tarja is also sending a message somewhere. Katie's phone is back in her posession, in her jeans' back pocket, its screen lit. She has or had an open line somewhere. Probably the police, or maybe whoever called Jamie a second earlier.

The thugs are talking about making somebody talk - I assume they mean Jamie - and killing the whole lot of us afterwards. I am shocked at how open they seem about it, but then realize that they don't know that three of us can understand Russian. I make the same unwarranted assumption about their Finnish, and translate it to Timo and Tarja. "I understand," says Jamie in Finnish.

I concentrate on breathing properly and trying not to faint, and looking out for an opportunity to escape. Should I try to run for it at the first opportunity, even if the others can't? The thought feels incredibly bad, and also very tempting. Why does it feel so bad? I know I'd want any of them to run if they have an opportunity, and anybody escaping would increase the chance of a police rescue. Why does it feel so bad, then? And if it feels so bad, why is it so tempting? And should I even be thinking about that now, or do whatever feels right at the moment if the moment comes?

"If any of you get a chance to run, just run and don't worry about the rest of us, and get the police. It's better for everybody that way," says Jamie. Guess I wasn't the only one thinking about that.

They bring us to a big and almost-empty warehouse. The psychotic guy, who looks like a typical Hollywood-thriller sociopath, has exchanged his automatic for a pistol, and is gesturing Jamie towards the center of one wall. The other five guys, who appropriately look like evil henchmen from the movies, tell the rest of us to get into the corner of the same wall. Then they relax a bit, take their coats off, and they are not standing right next to us anymore or aiming directly at us, but each of them is holding on to his gun and can shoot all of us in a second. One of them is holding on to his balls with one hand and glaring at Rudy.

There is a door fairly close to our corner. It appears to be locked.

"What do you know about the bombing? Who told you?" asks the sociopath.
"Let the others go, and I'll tell you" answers Jamie, predictably.
"I'll shoot them if you don't tell me".
"You'll probably shoot them if I do tell you".

Wouldn't a more efficient way to get someone to talk be to beat them up or something? At least that's what they usually do in the movies. But either the sociopath has never seen 24, or he believes that waving his gun about 5 meters away from a person would work better. And maybe it will. Jamie, on his part, is trying to look very small, very scared and very harmless, which is not very hard, considering that he is at least somewhat smaller than average and quite scared, and his harmfulness - about 25 years of martial arts training - is not immediately apparent, and probably wouldn't help against a bunch of guys with big guns and small salaries anyway.

The sociopath roars and brandishes his weapon, always a good choice when you don't have anything to say. Jamie faints or pretends to faint, and the sociopath seems to be rather lost. He orders one of the evil henchmen to bring Jamie some water.

Do movies shape our perception of the extreme situations that much? The sociopath clearly looks like he expected to interrogate an action hero who was about to put up action-heroic resistance, and seems to be totally lost when confronted with someone who faints when he yells at him and still doesn't say anything useful. But does this mean that he thinks of himself as a movie villain? Damn, I should really leave the pondering on the influence of movies on society for later on. If there is a later on. I feel sick, but manage not to throw up.

The henchmen are obviously not buying Jamie's harmlessness, or at least the two biggest ones hand their weapons to their colleagues, get a paper cup from somewhere, fill it with water from the tap and start approaching him very carefully. He is conscious, and when he notices them he gets a bottle of water out of his jacket pocket, shows it to them, waves them away and drinks from it. They nod gratefully at him and return to where the other henchmen are standing.

The sociopath orders him to his feet. He gets up, tries to be pleasant to the bad guy and talk his way out of it without saying anything useful, but the sociopath is just too angry. He looks like he is on the verge of shooting Jamie, and fires a couple of rounds into the wall next to him.

Suddenly the biggest of the evil henchmen steps in between the two of them, as if trying to stop the sociopath from shooting Jamie. The sociopath shoots the big henchman right in the chest. He goes down, and so does Jamie, although I can't see whether it's because he got hit by a bullet that went through the guy, or just because a very big guy just fell on him. In any case he is very much alive and moving.

"Lyoshka!" screams the sociopath, and rushes to the fallen big guy, dropping on his knees in front of him. He turns out to be not a total sociopath after all, or at least this sounds like absolutely genuine horror and grief. "Lyoshka, Lyoshka," he continues, trying to see whether there is any chance of saving his colleague (friend? brother? lover? relative?), paying no attention to the rest of the world, including Jamie who is currently trying to crawl out from under the timely dead Lyoshka.

The other four evil henchmen are still standing where they are, but in violation of the traditional Evil Henchman Work Morale, they are looking away and seem to be a lot more interested in the late Lyoshka than in their mission or any of us. I sneak up to the door and try if it can be opened without a key. It cannot.

The crying not-quite-sociopath annoys me for some reason. It's as if I considered him an evil machine or movie character at first, but now he is a real person, and this pisses me off. I hate him and his grief, and I want him to stick his pistol in his mouth and pull the trigger.

He sticks his pistol in his mouth and pulls the trigger. There is not nearly as much blood and brains as I expected, and he falls on his back.

Jamie is still sitting on the floor with the two dead men right in front of him, and staring at them. He does not seem to be injured, just shocked. Timo runs to get him, and the four evil henchmen, who now look like lost and scared young men, don't do anything to stop him. When they both run back to us, Timo has the sociopath's pistol in his hand - good thinking - and nobody seems to care.

Suddenly the henchmen are on fire, all of them, as if somebody has poured gasoline over them and threw a match, and they are howling in horrible, inhuman voices and trying to roll on the floor in vain. Jamie takes the remains of the water bottle out of his pocket, takes a few steps towards them, realizes the gross unsuitability of the means to the ends, and stops. Tarja is looking at the lone fire extinguisher that some genius has hung on the wall about 4 meters from the floor, and there might be a ladder somewhere, but they have already stopped howling and have pretty much turned into charred skeletons.

"Aaarrgghhhh! Shiiiiiiit!" Rudy expresses what the rest of us are only thinking. The door blows out, and parts of the walls with it. We run out, screaming. It strikes me that screaming is not such a good idea in potentially hostile surroundings, but there seems to be nobody around in this small industrial area.

We can hear some sirens far away. I notice that Timo is still holding the gun, and tell him to drop it. He drops it. "Fingerprints," Katie points out. I wish the gun to melt. It melts. I decide to carry on with screaming and running.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Elina> Oh, God. This is all my fault.
<Hanne> Did you see how she all lit up?
<Lauri> Don't kick yourself. That woman just got her Skills a minute ago, you couldn't have known.
<Elina> Not the woman. Jamie had the Skill to make those people go away, run away, forget about his existence, whatever. He didn't know how. Because I didn't tell him. He might have been able to stop the whole thing, and now those people are dead.
<Michael> For fuck's sake, Elina!
<Michael> Several potentials get the Skills every year, and there is usually some collateral damage. Most likely even a highly trained professional like yourself wouldn't have been able to control the situation, and certainly not a newbie who's had your Skills 101, no matter how powerful.
<Elina> Michael, "collateral damage"? Is that what these people are to you?
<Wei> I'd say, collateral goodness. Murderous thugs = bad!
<Michael> Shut up, Wei.
<Elina> Shut up, Wei.
<Michael> Elina, sorry, "collateral damage" was an ugly term, but that's what they are. There is really nothing we can do about it.
<Elina> I know, this was just exceptionally bad.
<Wei> Is it? I heard that when Dana got her Skills, there were arms and legs and heads flying everywhere, and a crater the size of a house.
<Dana> Thanks for the reminder, Wei. Just last month I had a night when I failed to see any nightmares about it.
<Wei> Sorry, guys. I am really having a foot-in-the-mouth day today. :(
<Michael> You always are.
<Hanne> Wei, that's OK, we are used to you. :)
<Elina> But at least you got Dana to say something. :)
<Elina> Anyway, we need to know who the woman is. Her friends call her Mira, but try to get a look at her papers. She sounds like an American, but she showed a French passport at the border.
<Elina> Would be also nice if somebody who sets things on fire were awake. Where is Else?
<Hanne> Sailing again.
<Elina> Shit. Does she ever do anything else?
<Wei> I wish I could still sail at 90. Hell, I wish I could sail at 23. :)
<Wei> BTW, how do we know she really is 90? She says she can make herself younger. She might be centuries or millenia old for all we know.
<Michael> We do know. She got her skills sometime in 1940, and it was Seen by one French guy; we know who her parents were, her mother died only 12 years ago.
<Wei> But how do we know the French guy was not covering for her?
<Elina> You can't suspect everyone.
<Dana> Yes, you can. Or if you can't, you'll learn around here.

We stop screaming when we reach the street. After walking for a few blocks we stop and look around. Tarja's coat is very much worse for the wear after the henchmen have dragged her through the mud, Rudy has a huge bruise on his neck, and all our pants look like we have sat on the floor in a warehouse, but other than that we look OK. There is a bus stop, and a bus coming, and we get on it in hope of getting anywhere else.

The enormity of the suicidal man and the melting gun hits me on the bus after I had a chance to breathe deeply several times and make sure that I don't pass out or throw up. I wish for a chocolate bar to appear in my hand. It fails to do so.

Jamie takes his scarf off and puts it on Rudy's neck to conceal the bruises. Rudy for once doesn't say a single nasty thing about this piece of clothing, in spite of the fact that it is neon green.

The anywhere else where the bus is going turns out to be a neighborhood of 1970s apartment blocks, but it has a subway station, and we head back to the center of the city.

On the subway we look at each other suspiciously.

"We gotta get out of here," says Katie.
"No shit," answers Timo.
"Let's get our stuff and go," I say.
"Fuck the stuff, let's just go," Tarja says.
"Hard to get outta here without a passport," Rudy says.
"Gotta do it fast, though. Soon there are gonna be serious people asking serious questions," points out Jamie.
"What just happened? What did we have to do with it?" asks Timo.
"That would be the first two questions."
"I thought maybe you knew the answers, E.T."
"Not really, Jedi."
"What the hell do you mean?"
"That when you tried to grab that pistol, it jumped into your hand by itself."
"Well, your eyes glow in the dark!"
"Whoa, whoa! What glows? What jumps?" asks Rudy.
"My eyes glow in the dark," explains Jamie. Rudy nods absent-mindedly, apparently thinking that glowing eyes are a rather minor phenomenon in comparison with spontaneous combustion.
"This has nothing to do with it," says Katie. "You are all crazy!"

Timo doesn't say anything, but instead moves as if to grab the water bottle that is still sticking out of Jamie's pocket. The bottle jumps into his hand.

"Cool!" he beams and looks for something else to grab.
"Not on the subway!" hisses Jamie, "are you insane?"
"Insane? I thought that was your gig."
"Whatever. Stop it. Or at least let's move to that corner, away from people."
"How do we get out of here?" asks Katie. "I don't want anyone knowing that we are trying to leave the country until we are at the border."
"A bus or a cab to Viipuri, then a bus from there to Hamina or Lappeenranta?" I suggest.
"Hope there is no surprise waiting for us at home," Tarja says, "I mean at the apartment."
"I'll go up first and see if there is anybody there," says Jamie.
"And then what?" sneers Rudy. "What if there is? You'll walk right into a trap."
"I won't. I don't need to go inside to see if there are people there."

With all the recent events that shouldn't shock us, but it does for some reason.

"You can see through the walls?" asks Tarja.
"I can see people through the walls. At least when they are awake. If I try very hard I can see sleeping people, and big animals."
"Can you see if someone has been there and left?"
"No, but we'll probably notice if somebody has gone through our stuff."
"Do you still think that that's the Russian government doing all this?"
"Hard to say. The people we saw back there were some hired muscle."
"You mean 'the people we killed back there', right?" I ask.
"We didn't kill anyone back there! We didn't even touch them!" says Katie, giving me a nasty look.
"Anyway," says Jamie, "we are being watched 24/7, so please don't say or do anything that those people don't know already. And don't assume any privacy anywhere, they can see and hear through the walls."
"That's it, love. You are going to see a psychiatrist as soon as we get back," says Katie.
"Yes, you do need your medications adjusted," says Timo.
"I am not on any medication right now."
"We noticed."
"I was planning to see a psychiatrist anyway, but that SMS you got right after the explosion yesterday did not come from my imagination. And neither did the six dead bodies back there... At least I hope so," he adds, suddenly looking unsure.
"OK," he continues after a few seconds, "I'll tell you what I know and they know and I know that they know that I know... Argh, you get the idea! There are people who, hmm, have some unusual powers, they call them Skills. 607 of them. I am the 608th. They tend to search for other people like that and spy on them and give them some kind of a Skills 101 lecture so they don't fuck up and break things. Or people. They've been..."

Katie's phone rings, and she hands it to Jamie without even looking.

"What do you mean, 'don't tell them'?" he says, gesturing at the phone with a slightly outraged "I told you so" expression, "it's not like I signed an NDA or something, I'll tell them whatever the hell I please... Well, isn't it nice to hear it now! What exactly stopped you from telling me that before? OK, thanks. Talk to you later." The other person, however, keeps on talking for a couple of minutes.

"Is that one of them?" asks Tarja.
"Yeah. Telling me not to tell you. Also not to set people on fire. Also that some thugs are after us."
"I wouldn't have imagined," says Timo.
"So the thugs are not the same people that are watching us 24/7?" I ask, "That's nice to know."
"No, they are not the same people. The people with those powers - they call themselves the Community - just want to brainwash any new people with Skills not to misuse those skills, and they also seem to have some weird power struggles among themselves, and each party wants the newcomers on their side. So now they are just watching us. If anyone has any Skill that they don't know of yet, don't show them."
"Is there any way for us to get any privacy?" I ask.
"Not that I know of. Anyway - that woman I met Wednesday night in Kamppi, Elina - she is one of them, and that's when they became aware of me and started watching me. She thinks that the thugs are after us because I saw something... saw the bomber. She thinks we should get out of here ASAP."
"Don't need no superpowers to tell you that," mutters Rudy.
"Elina is the person who is 'officially' in contact with me. Apart from that there was one person who sent me their IRC logs and a username and password for their wiki, two persons who made me separate job offers in the field of world domination, and one person who just told me to beware and not to trust anyone. This is getting to be too much for my little anxiety-disordered mind."
"That's why you should share," says Timo.
"What are your superpowers?" asks Rudy. "Can you fly? Teleport? Set people on fire? Predict the future? Travel in time?" he lists possible superpowers in a half-serious, half-joking tone, as if he is not only having trouble believing that this is real, but also having trouble figuring out whether he wants it to be real.
"My superpower is sort of a sense. I don't think it can directly affect the physical world. There are people who can fly, and those who can set things on fire. They don't believe anyone can teleport or travel in time or predict the future."
"You said you could see people through the walls," says Tarja, "does this also mean you can see them when they are behind you, or with your eyes closed?"
"Yeah. I don't need regular vision or light to see people at all."
"Is that why you always do so well when sparring blindfolded?" asks Rudy.
"Aye."
"You little cheating bugger! Wait, how long have you been able to do that? When did you first notice..."
"Always. I think I was 4 or 5 when I first figured out that other people cannot."
"But now some of us got those so-called Skills too, right," I ask. "Or is it all of us?"
"They know about you, Mira," Jamie says, "and also about Timo. But they don't really know what exactly you can or cannot do."
"How do they know about me? Did I do anything visible?"
"Usually they can just see it when they look at you, even from far away. You have some kind of shining aura. Normally they can see it from many kilometers away - I was the first person whose aura they could see only in person."
"Can you see our auras now?" - asks Tarja.
"Yeah - those of you who have them."
"Yeah, but who does?"
"Can't say out loud. The Community has noticed Mira and Timo so far."

Tarja looks frustrated. Jamie's water bottle, which Timo is still holding, jumps to Rudy's hands, and he makes it jump up and down on his hand.

"Whee! I am strong in the Force!"
"I tried and nothing happens! How do you do it?" asks Tarja.
"You just sort of wish for it to jump to your hand, that's all," explains Rudy.
"I tried. Didn't work. It's a sexist Force!"
"And it considers me a girl," complains Jamie, grabbing the bottle back the usual way.

Rudy seems to keep pulling at the bottle. Finally it is torn apart, sparying us all with water and attracting a certain degree of attention. Katie hisses at him.

"Rudy," says Jamie. "The juvenile delinquents on the left are marvelling at the immaturity. Hell, I am marvelling at the immaturity. By the way, can everybody please refrain from setting them on fire? Please. We need to keep a low profile."

The four young people to the left from us, whose facial expressions really do bring the term juvenile delinquent to one's mind, are giving us dirty looks and whispering.

"Elina says I should be able to scare people away," says Jamie, "I think I am about to try that out."

The youthful offenders come up to us, swaggering in a somewhat exaggerated way and looking at us malevolently with half-hooded eyes. Their swagger reminds me of Jamie about 20 years ago; the half-hooded eyes, of my friend Rachel the night when she got arrested for driving under the influence of a 3-liter bottle of Manischewitz and tried to seduce the cop in order to avoid being booked for drunk driving.

"Do you have a light?" one of them asks, spitting on the floor. Suddenly their eyes widen, their faces become very pale, and they run away, screaming and shoving everyone else out of the way. At the other end of the subway car they try to claw their way out into the next car, but luckily at that point the train arrives at some station and they run out, still screaming. The rest of people in the car stare at us.

"Way to go with the low profile, mate," Rudy pats Jamie on the head.
"It smells! Next time try not to make them shit themselves," says Tarja.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, wishing I could see our apartment now. I see it very vividly in my mind's eye, some guy placing some small objects in our luggage. The image is much more vivid than I can normally imagine, I can see the pores on the man's face and read the serial numbers on the little objects (bugs? tracking devices?) I wonder whether this is real, and try to remember all the places he puts them in.

"Can you zoom in on his face, please?" asks a voice in my head.
"Jamie? What are you doing in my mind? Go away! Hus-hus! Shoo!" I reply, also in my mind.
"Please. I wanna see."
"Can't you see by yourself?" I do zoom in on the man's face, though.
"No, I don't have that kind of Skill. I can only see it through your mind. This is very disturbing, I have to follow your "eyes'" focus. I'd barf if I looked all the time."
"So don't. See, the guy is going away. Why did you wanna see him?"
"I wonder whether he is the bomber."
"Is he?"
"Hard to say. This sense is sort of like vision. I think what you have is the Sight that Elina and the others keep talking about. I saw the bomber with my other sense. Which is... not like vision."
"What the hell is going on with us? You know more than you are saying. I wanna know everything right now."
"I wish I knew. When we get our stuff and get on a bus I'll show you all their irclogs and wiki."
"How does your "other sense" work?"
"It's very hard to explain. I gotta think about it."
"How come you never told us?"
"It's a scary thing to tell. Nobody would have believed anyway. Or maybe they would have... Katie kind of knew, anyway - we never talked about it, but she sort of expects me to be able to read her mind."
"I've heard that a lot of women expect their men to read their minds."
"Not when they are thinking about statistics, they don't."
"Could you also communicate telepathically all your life?"
"Don't know, never had anyone to communicate with. I just spoke telepathically to Katie. Gonna try it with the others now."

I decide to try it on Timo:

"Psst! Can you hear me?"
"Yeah. It's so cool!"
"What do you think about all this?"
"Superpowers good, evildoers bad. Fire bad, tree pretty, you know?"
"No shit."
"Listen - sorry for asking - did you set those guys on fire?"
"I don't think so. I suppose neither did you?"
"No. Who do you think did?"
"I have no idea. In any case it's probably not their fault, it was an accident, they didn't mean it. Listen - I think I killed the guy that shot himself. I didn't mean it either. And I melted that gun you dropped."
"Yeah, but it would be nice to know who among us is capable of that. At first I figured it was Jamie - he is evasive, looks guilty, and just lectured me on forgiveness - but now I am not sure."
"I don't think so, he is always guilty of some mischief, and therefore always big on forgiveness. I think forgiveness is gonna become the word of the day among us very soon, Jamie is just faster on the uptake."
"I don't feel in need of forgiveness, personally."
"I do. I think. I just killed a guy."
"You didn't mean it."
"I wished for it."
"We all wish for all kinds of bad things, but we don't really want them to happen to people. I mean - you did not know this was gonna happen, right?"
"No, but I am not sure it would have stopped me if I did."
"You were acting in self-defense."
"True."
"What kind of things can you do? I mean, apart from making people shoot themselves, and melting guns."
"Thanks for reminding me, honey. I can also see things from afar. Just looked into our apartment, and there was some guy putting bugs in our luggage. Can you do that?"
"No. What does it look like? I mean when you try to look at things from afar?"
"Sort of like Google Earth in a proper human-eye resolution, and it can see through the walls. It can also have sound when I want it to. Hold on, I think I can pipe it through to you. See?"
"Wow. Wow!"
"What can you do?"
"I think I can just grab things and apply force from a distance. Like make things jump into my hands. Hey, I can do this!"
"And this year's award for the most unappropriate time and place goes to..." I comment, as I start feeling rhythmic pressure between my legs. Timo laughs and stops.

I look at the rest of them. Nobody is saying anything, probably everyone is communicating telepathically. Rudy seems overexcited, Jamie preoccupied, Katie grim and Tarja confused. I start wondering again which one of them set those guys on fire. My first guess would be Rudy, but that is just a hunch.

There is a young Muslim woman sitting to the left of us, where the juvenile delinquents used to be. She is adjusting her hijab and thinking about having sex with Rudy in a missionary position. An elderly nun next to her is having similar thoughts about Katie, but they also involve whips and handcuffs. I pointedly concentrate on not staring at either of them. The Muslim woman is also thinking on some level about some home improvement project she and her sister are trying to carry out, mostly about replacing the bathtub with a newer one, and the nun is thinking about getting some coffee.

I look at Timo. He is thinking about how much fun it would be to make me come right here in the subway just using his new Skills, but is not intending to do so. He is also afraid that the thugs, or rather a new set of thugs, will find us again, and that whoever has set people on fire won't get his or her powers under control. I am his primary suspect. He is also worrying about authorities catching us. The Community that is watching us 24/7 does not seem to worry him at all, in fact he'd welcome some instruction in Skills from somebody experienced. He also envies my Sight a bit, and is planning to ask me to show him a number of things tonight.

On a deeper reading: he is not sure he wouldn't have killed those guys himself if he had a chance, and is therefore inclined to understanding the act, but the idea fills him with dread anyway. He tries not to think about it. He also feels bad about having been nasty to Jamie a few minutes ago, even though he has apologized (apparently telepathically) and the apology was accepted. He feels genuinely guilty about having been jealous about Jamie and me, and seeing him as a threat, and having befriended him just for the purpose of keeping an eye on him, especially now that their friendship has become real on both sides, and he finally understood that I left Jamie eleven years ago for a very good reason and am not going back, all the personal fondness and occasional sex nonwithstanding.

I try to check how he feels about our open relationship in general. He doesn't seem to be bothered about the sex I occasionally have with other men, unless he suspects there is something more than sex involved, but he seems to feel somewhat guilty about occasionally having sex with other women. And now I can see the reason too: the two women he occasionally has sex with are married, and one of them is his boss. Uh-oh. No wonder he has never told me who they are.

He has also voted for Anni Sinnemäki, and was too embarassed to tell me. Heh.

Suddenly his mind becomes opaque and absolutely unreadable.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Lauri> How many of them have the Skills now?
<Elina> At least three: Jamie, Mira and Timo. But I suspect there is at least one more.
<Hanne> How could that happen?
<Elina> Your guess is as good as mine.
<Elina> Extreme situations sometimes cause the potentials to start using their Skills, but two is too much of a coincidence. And two potentials in the same place is quite a coincidence too.
<Elina> OK, I hate saying "I told you so", but now do you guys believe that we have an emergency?
<Hanne> Yes, but what are we gonna do?
<Elina> I have no idea. We've never had three untrained Skilled people in the same place simultaneously. I don't think we've ever had three untrained Skilled in the world simultaneously.
<Lauri> We need their cooperation, we don't have the power here to handle them by force.
<Wei> You guys do remember that Jamie is reading us, or will be, right?
<Else> Who cares, at this point it's better they know too much than too little.
<Elina> Funny that Mira shows up so clearly on scan when Jamie and Timo don't.
<Sinikka> We need to get them over the border, I'll take it from there.
<Hanne> Sinikka, do you realize how much more powerful they are?
<Sinikka> They won't hurt a little old lady who'd just ask nicely.
<Wei> Sorry for asking this: what do we do with people who refuse to cooperate?
<Lauri> Err, nothing much... We force them if we can and leave them more or less alone when we cannot. I mean, you know Dana and Perv: "cooperative" ain't their middle name, but they sort of hang out here and don't do anything horrible.
<Wei> What if we had a new Dasha?
<Lauri> I'd consider killing her, Elina would probably disagree.
<Elina> We are not having a new Dasha. Not this time, anyway. I'll try to talk to Jamie and maybe Mira. Did anyone find anything more about that whole gang?
<Lauri> I tried to See their papers but it was sort of hard.
<Wei> Do you always have to use the Sight? Dammit, people, there are direct links from Jamie's homepage to all of theirs.
<Hanne> Heh.
<Elina> Usually it's hard to find enough info on someone on the Net, but Jamie has too much, it's hard to find the useful stuff in it.
<Sinikka> Thank god for the young generation. :)
<Lauri> Another one for our good news collection: Jamie has a history of mental problems. Looks like he could use Elina in more way than one.
<Elina> What problems?
<Wei> How do you get into somebody's psychiatric records?
<Lauri> I didn't; he was discussing the matter openly on some web forum. There is a diagnosis there, but I don't know what F43.1 means.
<Elina> Post-traumatic stress disorder. I wonder what was the trauma.
<Lauri> Call him and ask?
<Elina> Hah, I found who was feeding him information all the time. Else!
<Else> Who, me? What gave you that idea?
<Elina> Hmm, what could that be? Maybe the fact that he is your grandson and you hid that little detail from us?
<Else> Like it's any of your business?
<Wei> Else is more loyal to her own grandson than to us? God, I am so shocked.
<Dana> And this Community is so known for its loyalty and trust! :/
<Else> While we are at it, Elina, check out Jamie's photo gallery, years 1986-1990. The dark-haired girl who is with him in most pictures. Doesn't it suprise you that she is also on Michael's living room wall along with the other family photos?
<Elina> I can't See Michael's home from here and neither can you.
<Else> Anyone awake in Australia?
<Brendan> There is a picture of her on his wall alright. Hey, Jamie is also in that picture!
<Else> Michael, care to explain?
<Brendan> Where the hell is Michael?
<Elina> He is not there?
<Brendan> He is not anywhere in Australia.
<Elina> Great. What are we gonna do now?

* * *

I try to put the horny Muslim and the lesbian nun out of my mind, and decide that playing with the Sight is a lot safer, at least as far as the yuck factor is concerned. I try to find the warehouse where the sociopath and the evil henchmen tried to kill us. It takes a little while, but I find the half-destroyed building and look inside, expecting to see the police, because police, firefighters and similar rescue services tend to be attracted by the sound of half of a front wall of a building falling off.

Instead of the police there is a new batch of evil henchmen (henchpeople? henchcitizens?). Their leader, who doesn't look half as psychotic as the late sociopath and is quite stylish in a film noir way in his beige trenchcoat, is studying the remains of this morning's evil henchmen and simultaneously trying to negotiate a raise on the phone, claiming, quite understandably, that dealing with us makes them entitled to some hazard pay, and threatening to quit and find another evil boss to work for if that hazard pay is not promised right now.

He also tries to suggest that not going after us at all might be a safer alternative, and not very costly in terms of lost face, because we are not local players. The evil boss, however, seems to order our interrogation and/or elimination, and promise the requested raise.

The trench coat man and his evil henchmen discuss the raise, the feasibility of chasing us, our possible origin, employer and weaponry, and someone named Anton and his credentials as a bomber, as opposed to Chechnyan terrorists. The general consensus is that the raise could be higher, that we were probably hired by some evildoer - a competitor? - named Petya, that our abilities and weaponry are unknown but clearly dangerous (they keep referring to Jamie as "the karate guy", which makes me suspect that he not only saw the bomber, but also applied his favorite ancient oriental martial art move called "kick the bugger in the nuts really hard"), and that Anton, whom they discuss in the exact same tone the software engineers use while discussing DataDetonator contractors, is a really dumb asshole, but still better than the Chechen suicide bombers that they had considered using. The opinions vary as to whether the Chechens were incompetent because they were Chechens, because they were women, or because due to the nature of their operations they were severely lacking in experienced personnel.

The ultimate concensus is that hunting us is such an important mission that they definitely need to have a nice lunch first, and they go to a nearby eatery, leaving the earthly remains of the previous henchmen in the warehouse.

I try to tell this telepathically to everyone. Tarja and Katie don't respond, and I say it out loud. Everybody nods.

The subway car is clearly full of horrible perverts thinking about unspeakable things. I try to avoid reading their thoughts and read Jamie's mind instead. It's completely unreadable. I try Katie's. Holy shit! It's totally alien, full of some kind of cyclic patterns and not a single recognizable human thought. So there really is an alien among us...

"Don't be silly," says Jamie telepathically. "This is what a sleeping person's mind normally looks like."
"Shit, I got really frightened. How can she be asleep at a time like that?"
"One way of dealing with stress. And, Mira - don't read people's minds. It's not nice."
"Look who is talking! You have probably read our minds all our lives!"
"Sometimes, when I needed to. I try not to do it without a good reason. People need their privacy."
"OK, but you have read mine, and now I want to read yours. Are you blocking me somehow? Open up!"
"I can't. There are some things I know about this whole thing that I really shouldn't share. One thing I should show you is how to shield your mind from reading. Like this," he shows me.
"Does this always work?"
"No, but the reader must be much stronger than you to break in. And you'll notice the intrusion in any case. At least that's what their wiki says. You can do this for other people, too."
"Did you stop me from reading Timo a while ago?"
"Yes. It's not good for you, or him, or your relationship."
"That's for us to decide."
"Wanna tell him that you tried to read his mind and ask him to decide?"
"OK, you have a point."
"Sometimes it is good for a relationship, but it's better to limit it to when you absolutely have to."
"Anything else you wanna teach me?"
"Wait till we are somewhere safe. Or at least safer. And a word of advice: if you want to practice mind-reading, better start with people you only see once, not with your friends. It will help you to calibrate what is normal and what is not."
"They are all fucking perverts here!"
"No, the sexual thoughts just tend to be on the surface. People sort of think them loudly. Although that nun is a bit more perverted than most, and that kid over there too."
"What other kinds of things can be read?"
"Anything. Thoughts, memory, emotional states. Here, you can read my sensory input. No big secrets there."

It feels really weird, like being - wholly or partially - in his body without any ability to control it, while simultaneously being in my own, too. At least I get an answer, or one instance of an answer, to the question that I used to think about as a kid: is another person's red the same as my red? His vision and hearing don't differ from my own in any noticeable ways. His sense of smell, however, while not really duller, cannot pick up some of the smells that my own does. His sense of touch is keener than mine, and he seems to be rather highly aware of all the inner surfaces of his clothes. No wonder he's always liked silk sheets.

I concentrate on the input from his body, wondering what it feels like to be a man. Having a dick and balls is a bit inconvenient, but not as much as you'd expect. Having no breasts, OTOH, is kind of fun. One thing I notice, however, is that he is definitely not feeling quite well. Not really sick, but very tired, cold, sleepy and very hungry in spite of all the pancakes. Probably also some kind of a stress reaction.

He yawns. This makes me feel a bit tired, too, and I leave his sensory input in peace. The evil henchmen version 2.0 still haven't gotten their lunch. Evil lunch.

In spite of the recent lecture against interfering in people's minds, Jamie himself keeps touching all our minds all the time, nudging people to touch him physically and even rewarding the touch afterwards with some warm fuzzy feeling. I don't think he realizes he is doing that. I wonder if all the cats can do it, too.

In the meanwhile we arrive to our stop and come out of the subway. I take a look at our apartment with the Sight, and it's empty.

As we pass a department store Jamie stops:

"We need some new clothes. Tarja, get yourself some new coat. Katie, flat shoes. Rudy, our hair is too conspicuous. Timo, just tie your hair back. Wait for me here."

Rudy, Timo and I stop as the rest of them disappear inside, and wait at the doors. Rudy is offended at the idea that his hair is too conspicuous, but it is dyed three shades of red, one of which is neon orange.

"I am not fucking afraid," says Rudy, "Let them come, I bet we can kick their asses." I assume he means the thugs.
"Probably," says Timo noncommittally.
"I kick ass," repeats Rudy. "If I only knew back then I wouldn't have let them drag us there and threaten us with guns."
"Did you set them on fire?" asks Timo.
"Unfortunately not. I wish."

He puts his fist through a brick wall, without any visible damage to the fist. I glare at him but don't say anything, trying to take a look at their minds. Timo is not thinking of sex for once, but that we gotta hurry and that doing things about clothes and hair is not gonna be much of a camouflage, not with Katie being the tallest woman in the known universe. He is exaggerating about the known universe, but he is sort of right, the most conspicuous thing about us is her height. Rudy is reading some poetry in his mind, trying to concentrate on it, probably trying to prevent us from reading his mind, which makes me want to read it immediately.

"Ugh, Jamie..." he says as Jamie emerges from the store, dragging Katie by the hand, and the poetry dissolves into images of gruesome violence done to some hat designer, "what's that thing on your head? I don't mind people wearing pieces of dead animals, perish the thought, but you are aware that you are wearing an entire dead spaniel, right?"
"I know it doesn't look good, but it will help us blend in," answers Jamie from under a fur hat with floppy ears, which really does resemble a dead spaniel, is too big for him and was probably not designed to be worn with hair in a bun, but seems to be fashionable here at the moment. "Here is one for you, too."
"Argh! If you think I am wearing one of those you are fucking deluded! I have superpowers now, don't piss me off!"
"It's only for a few hours. One more word from you, and I'll buy you a hijab," threatens Jamie, putting the other floppy-eared hat on Rudy.
"We gotta go, the new bad guys already got their lunch served," I say.
"What are they eating?" asks Tarja.
"Some kind of ground meat thingies with potatoes."
"This is not happening," mutters Katie, looking at her feet in sneakers.
"Is Rudy's insanity contageous? You can wear sneakers for a few hours," I say.
"Not the sneakers. The whole thing. Not happening... Can't be real..."
"Looks real enough to me," I say. "I know is kind of unbelievable..." " What can you do?" I ask her telepathically.
"Nothing!"

I try to read her mind, but it is shielded the same way Jamie's was, and I can see that he is the one shielding it. Why am I not seeing any shining auras that he was talking about? I try to look at my friends with the Sight, but it shows no auras either, just some diffuse light. It takes me a second to realize the it is coming from myself. Does that sense that I used earlier to read minds have a visual component? It does, and now I can see everybody's auras except Tarja's. I start wondering whether she doesn't have one or I just cannot see it. Katie's aura, however, is very bright and strong, the brightest of us all.

In the way home I hear another voice in my head: "Mira?"
"Yeah?"
"It's Elina. Jamie told you about me."
"Yes."
"I figured I'd talk to you too, just in case."
"In case of what?"
"He is not doing very well right now."
"What's wrong with him? Can you read his body or mind from there?"
"No, but it's plainly visible. I think he is just running out of energy, that's all. What is he doing?"
"Walking."
"No, I mean what is he doing with his Skills? He is clearly using some Skill that's burning up his energy way too fast. Reading minds can't do that, and neither can the Sight, which he doesn't have anyway, but you have. The Sight is that sense that you use to watch things at a distance."
"What makes you think I have the Sight? What is Jamie doing? Is it dangerous? What's gonna happen to him?"
"You wouldn't have been able to hear me if you didn't have the Sight. I have no idea what he is doing, I hoped you could tell me. In any case it's not directly dangerous physically - he is just gonna pass out and fall asleep at some point, and wake up very hungry. Just don't let him drive in this condition, OK?"
"OK, thanks for the tip. But I have no idea what he is doing. Except for stressing a lot."
"Now - what are your Skills?"
"I... I'll discuss it with you in person. I guess I'll need to see you in person anyway, when we get back?"
"You can see me now, too." She guides my Sight to Rovaniemi, where she is on a coffee break in some private doctor's office, presumably her own. She looks much like on Wednesday in Kamppi, jeans and a sweater, and waves at me. I smile.
"Wow."
"Anyway - be careful with your powers, and keep me posted."
"How - do you have a phone number?"
"I do, but you can just talk to me telepathically." She does, however, give me the number.
"Wait... Is there anything I should know? Or anything you'd think I can or should be able to do with the Skills?"
"Well - you won't tell me what your skills are. If you can read minds, you can usually affect them to some degree, and if you can affect them you can also read them, but these are two separate Skills. You might be able to scare people like Jamie did in the subway. You might spin illusions, and he probably can, but most people can't spin the kind of illusion that would fool a camera, so keep that in mind. A lot of people have the kind of Skill that lets them manipulate physical objects and lift them and enhance their own strength. A lot of people can heal themselves a little - extremely useful if you have a serious long-term injury, but for any acute problem an emergency room usually works better. A lot of people can heat or cool things a little. Other Skills are a lot more rare. If you decide to try flying, be careful."

While we are walking I take note of how all the women around us notice Rudy, the furry hat nonwithstanding. I have had no idea that there can be a man whom every woman notices. Timo and Jamie are both attractive men, and a number of women clearly find them sexy, but to all the other women they are sexually quite invisible. Even Katie, who is a very beautiful woman and attracts a whole lot of men's openly admiring glances, seems to be sexually invisible to those men who are not interested in her. But every single woman, even the ones who are not in any way attracted to Rudy, strongly acknowledges him as a man whom a lot of women would want. Damn, we really are conspicuous, or at least he is. I wonder if this is some Skill, and if yes, if he can stop doing it.