Finally we get to our building, and there is still nobody inside. We start packing our stuff, of which there is not a lot, and try to remove all the bugs from it. Much to everybody's disapproval Jamie starts making espresso, but he says that this is an emergency. Normally this statement would have been met with derision, because he always considers failure to procure whatever caffeinated drink he happens to want an emergency, but this time nobody feels like arguing.

When everything is packed the new evil henchmen have already left their restaurant. I carry my bag out of our bedroom just in time to see Jamie sliding down the wall to the floor.

"Oh my God!" screams Rudy. "What happened?"
"He just fell asleep. Elina warned me that this might happen."

When I lift him from the floor he seems incredibly light, and it takes me a moment to realize that my own physical strength is enhanced by Skills.

"Katie," I say, carrying him into their bedroom. "Jamie just fell asleep, it's not a big deal, don't worry."

The only answer is "hrr, hrr", as she is snoring peacefully on the bed. I put him down next to her, and they immediately curl up together in a ball. His mind feels much like hers was when she was sleeping in the subway train.

"Two down, four to go," says Timo.
"What are we gonna do now?" asks Rudy.
"Get out of here and carry them with us," I say. "We certainly have the strength."
"And nobody here would really be surprised about people carrying unconscious friends to Finland," points out Tarja.
"You know what," says Rudy, radiating some kind of excitement, "let's stay here and fight. As Mira says, we certainly have the strength."
"You are insane!" says Timo. "It's not a movie! Do you really want to fight real gangsters with guns?"
"We won the last gangsters 6-0," - points out Rudy.
"That's not a reason to do it again!"
"Don't you wanna find out what it's all about? And kick some ass in the process? I've always wanted to kick some bullies' ass!"
"Guys," reminds them Tarja. "You have superpowers. I don't."
"We'll kick their ass for you too."

This is not the point here. She has the need to do something, and feels excluded and useless. I get up and hug her, which is something Rudy should be doing right now.

We really can kick their asses, it's true. And I can try out my new strength. And there is no way authorities can prove anything. And Rudy's battle-lust is pretty damn contagious. Timo and Tarja seem to be affected by it, too. Is he doing something to our minds? At least not as far as I can see. Am I now gonna always wonder whether or not somebody is doing something to my mind?

"Mira!"
"Yeah?"
"Do you recognize me?"
"No. Who are you?"
"Else Sorensen, Jamie's grandma. We've met a few times."
"Oh, hi! Of course I remember you. Sorry I didn't recognize you. Usually you are not a disembodied voice in my head. But hi. I guess you have the Sight?"
"Heh. You've always been a bright girl.There is something important I gotta tell you. I am sure my dear grandson has figured that out already, but he seem to have passed out before telling the rest of you."
"He wasn't very talkative today. For once."
"Anyway - our Community has always speculated on the possibility of a Skill that would make it possible to manipulate other people's Skills: grant them, take them away, borrow them, make the potentials fully Skilled, etc. No such person has ever been found, so it's just a matter of scientific speculation and popular folklore. But if such a person ever appears, it would not be very wise for him - or her - to make him- or herself known."
"Obviously. This is probably like everyone's darkest fear. What does it have to do with us?"
"At least two of you got the Skills today. Probably three, and I suspect that five. It's quite unprecedented."
"Did you know he had Skills?"
"No. Usually we know each other by Sight, but his Skills are not visible to the Sight for some reason. I can't read minds and wasn't trained in recognizing Skills in person. This is something you have to be taught. Mind-readers, mind-writers and all the other mind-benders can recognize each other without any training, but even they need to be taught to recognize people like myself."
"What are your Skills?"
"Lots of physical things. I can even whip up my own wind when sailing."
"Cool," I say (or is it think?), trying to get the 'how do you recognize a redneck Jedi' list out of my mind.
"Anyway, there is already a lot of speculation that one or more of you might be able to do stuff with other people's Skills. Please don't confirm them, and tell the others. And one more thing."
"Yeah?"
"Michael - one of our high-powered people, Jamie knows who I am talking about - has Faye's picture on the wall. And now he disappeared."
"Faye's? Our Faye's?"
"Yes."
"Where'd he disappear to? Or from?"
"From his home in Sydney. If we knew where he disappeared to, it wouldn't be called 'disappeared', now would it? I'll tell you as soon as I know anything. Take care."

I share the information telepathically with Timo and Rudy. Rudy, whose mind has been disturbingly one-track lately, suggests finding that Michael and kicking his ass. Timo takes a couple of seconds to remember who Faye was - he'd heard of her but never met her.

She used to be our friend, and Jamie's girlfriend for several years. She was very sweet, and had a wicked sense of humor, and loved to do everything dangerous, just like he did. And she would have also outgrown it, if she hadn't died a horrible death at 21. Faye and Jamie and a bunch of other people had a sort of a travelling club. Fourteen - or is it already almost fifteen - years ago eighteen of them went to Angola, and were attacked by some kind of bandits, who raped them, did really horrible things to them and then shot them. Only four of them were found alive, including Jamie. Faye wasn't among those four. Her dead body wasn't even in one piece.

Luckily I don't have to explain all of this to Timo now - he has heard the story before, and nods "aah, that Faye...".

A few minutes later six men come inside, take their guns out, and start going up the stairs.

They shoot the locks off, kick down the door, and run in screaming. The screaming intensifies as all their guns fly out of their hands, two of them going into Timo's hands - I am not sure where the rest went. Tarja steps out from behind the door and hits one of the evil henchmen on the face with a cast-iron frying pan, without any Skill enhancement, but very much with feeling. The man falls down.

I kick the closest guy in the balls, and try to punch him in the face, but as my kick has thrown him upwards, the punch hits his stomach. He howls.

Rudy kicks one henchman so hard that he flies towards the ceiling and breaks it with his head. Another guy destroys part of the wall, and makes a hole that goes outside, but luckily doesn't fall out. The third guy - the leader of the evil henchmen - is kicked into the toilet wall, and Rudy is rotating the fourth man above his head, holding him by his leg. Here goes our deposit for the apartment.

"Be careful, Slayer," says Timo calmly, still holding his pistols. "These are real people with real skulls and spines - though probably not brains - try not to break them too much."

All the henchmen are still alive, and at least capable of moaning, but Rudy clearly wants to correct that. Suddenly a roaring three-meter-tall monster erupts from Jamie's and Katie's bedroom and charges them. The monster is a fairly exact copy of a werewolf in crinos state - halfway between a wolf and a human - from one of the Werewolf RPG books. As my eyes see the werewolf, both my Sight and my mind-sense tell me that this is just Jamie, waving his hands, saying "grr! argh!" and generally having a good time.

An attack by the huge monster does nothing to improve the henchpeople's day, and with the scream of "argh" they run, hop and limp to the door. All of them seem at least marginally mobile, including the man whose empty head broke the facade of the building.

"Stop," I order their leader, and he stops. He wants to run as much as the rest of them, but apparently cannot disobey me. "Sit down," I order the monster-Jamie. He seamlessly changes into a huge wolf, as tall as a human when standing on all four legs, but otherwise absolutely natural-looking, and sits down. Or rather the wolf-image sits down - the real Jamie remains standing.

"Oh, you are so cute!" says Tarja, scratching the wolf behind his ears. She doesn't have the Sight or any other Skills, but clearly has no problem recognizing the wolf as Jamie. He reacts to her touch in his regular human and somewhat catlike way, smiling and purring. In the wolf the purring sounds like growling, and his smile doesn't look quite as nice as usual when it shows ten-centimeter fangs. He realizes his mistake, and wags his tail, and then proceeds to do other things with the illusory wolf-body that don't really map onto a human body, such as scratching behind his ear with a hind paw.

"Come here," I order the henchman leader. He desperately wants to run but still cannot disobey me.
"On the second thought, stay where you are," I change my mind when I see a puddle that is forming under him.

"What's your name?"
"Sergey," he lies.
"Don't you dare lie to me!" - I slap him hard, not taking the Skill-reinforced strength into account, and he falls down.

His name is Vyacheslav Morozov, and he calls himself Slava, as I read directly from his mind, but I want him to say it.

"What's your real name, asshole! I feed liars to my wolf!"
"Vyacheslav."
"You have a last name?"
He thinks of lying for a moment, but decides to stick with the truth. "Morozov."
"Good thing your first name isn't Pavlik," comments Rudy, displaying more knowledge of Russian culture than he should.
"And you are working for?"
"Oleg Sidorenko." He is surprised I don't know it already.
"And you were sent here to?"
He hesitates. "To kill you. I am sorry, please don't kill me, I have three children..."
"Yeah, right," says Jamie. I am not sure that the Edinburgh accent goes well with the giant wolf look. "He doesn't have any children, or even a wife. Can I eat him now? I am hungry."
"I am sorry! Please don't eat me!" He tries to ward the wolf off with a cross he is wearing on his neck, without much success.
"Try the Microsoft logo," mutters Timo.
"Then he'll be eaten for sure," grins Rudy.
"Why did he order you to kill us?"
"You killed some of our people."
"OK, why did he order them to kill us?"
"One of you saw the bombing. That's all Anton's fault! Normal people don't stay in the building while blowing it up."
"This is a new and disturbing definition of normality," says Timo.
"Who is Anton?"
"The psychotic idiot son-of-a-bitch that Oleg hired for the bombing."
"What's Anton's last name?"
"I don't know! Honestly!" He is not lying.
"So the bombing was ordered by Oleg Sidorenko. Why?"
He looks at me like I am insane. "Because the store belongs to Petya."
"Petya who?"
This time he doesn't believe me. "You know damn well who. You work for him."
"We don't. Petya who?"
"Pyotr Klimov."

I could interrogate him more, but I can see it all in his mind. Two organized crime bosses, destroying each other's property and innocent bystanders. I get his address, the names and addresses of the other evil henchmen on his team, and the address of his boss. Then I shield my mind from reading, think for a second whether or not I wish to know the names of the people we killed, and decide that I really don't. "Now fuck off. If I ever run into you again, I'll really feed you to the wolf. You better change your line of work," I say. Another line of work is really under serious consideration as I speak. Also, as I speak, Jamie wipes the contents of the conversation from the man's mind.

"One more thing," I say. "You need to pay for all the destruction, you need to wipe the puddle," I throw him some paper towels, "and you need to tell me who is your person on the bombing investigation team." He doesn't know the answer to this question, but turns out to have a susprising lot of money in cash, the equivalent of about 400 euro in various currencies, and doesn't even try to conceal it. He gives it to me and runs.

"Great. Now you are robbing people," says Rudy. "Do you think they have summer jobs in Guantanomo?"
"Our deposit is not nearly enough to cover all the damage here."
"What? You're gonna leave the money to the owners? I have always suspected there is a fine upstanding citizen inside you somewhere."
"Hope not. I am very careful with birth control."

The tension is gone from the atmosphere, and we all touch the wolf and scratch it - him - behind the ears. The visual and tactile illusion is perfect, the fur really feels like fur. He did not even try to get the smell right, and the fur smells of shampoo and the huge mouth smells of espresso. He stretches a bit, comes to the one surviving mirror, and wags his tail at himself. "Can someone take a picture?" he asks.

Tarja takes a picture, which turns out to be a fair representation of the wolf look. Jamie comes and takes a look at it, and turns back into a human, as instantly as he has turned into a wolf. At the same moment the picture of the wolf also turns into a picture of himself, looking as human as usual. "Damn," he says. "Elina told me that some people can produce the kind of illusions that can fool a camera, but I guess I am not so lucky."
"How did the picture change?" asks Tarja.
"It didn't. The whole illusion is in your mind, whether you are looking at me or the mirror or the camera. The real photo showed the real me all along."
"So it wasn't some kind of shapeshifting?" asks Timo.
"Not really. It's not like I could really bite the guy. I mean I could, but it would have been a regular human bite."
"Did you have to turn into a picture from Werewolf: The Apocalypse?" asks Rudy. "What if one of those people played it?"
"They certainly would have gained a new respect for the game," says Timo. "Wow, I wish I could do that, would be really fun in werewolf LARPs," he thinks.
"Anyway," says Jamie. "We can't stay here. Get a car or something. I am not feeling well, wake me up when you are ready."
"What were you doing that drained you so much?" I ask him telepathically.
"There is something wrong with Katie, she is not handling this well, and I tried to keep her together somehow. Don't worry, she'll be OK." He goes to their bedroom, falls on his bed and is instantly asleep.
"Daft little bugger," Rudy is annoyed. "Scared the assholes off and spoiled my fun. Did he have to come and rescue them?"
"He wasn't rescuing them, honey. He was rescuing you," says Tarja. I try to avoid reading her mind, but the deep sadness is right there on the surface. If something deep can be on the surface.

I try to read sleeping Jamie' mind through the closed door of their bedroom. There are no actual thoughts, just the same cyclic pattern as before. If he is seeing any of his habitual nightmares, I can't discern them. He is still very tired, hungry and scared.

Katie's mind makes me recoil for a moment. It is badly disrupted, full of pain, guilt, and some strange black fire. She is seeing a nightmare where she is going around with some huge futuristic firearm, killing the guys we just let get away, and then their families, and thinking "what did I do that for? it wasn't supposed to be like that!". I reach out and extinguish the nightmare, but the guilt and the black fire remain.

"I'll go to the car rental place around the corner," I say. "Tarja, wanna come?"
"I'll come!" says Rudy.
"No. You guys need to be here watching those two," I tell him, and continue telepathically to Timo, "those three. Sorry for leaving you alone with them, I'll try to get back fast.""Let's go."
"Just be quick. I can handle them." He is still holding the two pistols, but his mind seems as normal as you can expect under the circumstances. On the surface, anyway.

We run down the stairs. What am I gonna tell her? "Sorry you didn't get any superpowers?"

"Must be hard. I am sorry."
"Sorry I didn't get any superpowers? I was too, but now I am scared for the rest of you. It's changing him. And you, too."
"I am just the same old me."
"The same old you didn't use to be a Grand Inquisitor."
"The same old me rarely had the reason, or the occasion. If not for the Skills, I might have used heated kitchen utensils on that man."
"Possibly. Or you would have been long gone before he came."
"We would all have been dead. Shot," I remind her.
"True."
"I am not turning into some kind of monster." As I say this, I notice that am trying to reassure her mind directly without her knowing, and withdraw, ashamed. Maybe I am turning into some kind of monster. "Neither is Timo. Nor Jamie. He's had the Skills for years."
"But Rudy is, isn't he? Or maybe he always was? And god only knows what's happening to Katie. Or whether there even is a Katie anymore."
"There is. She is just... hurt, sick, I don't know."

The rental place has only one car left. "Antique," says the employee proudly. It's a Russian car made in the 1970s and called Zaporozhets, ZAZ-966 model with air-cooled engine and only four seats. Oh well, where you can fit in four you can always fit in six.

I park the car on the sidewalk beside our building, and, after talking with Tarja for a couple of minutes, where we reassure each other of our friendship, we go up. Timo is packing the six pistols into his own bag and Rudy is trying to demand at least one for himself.

"Time to wake them up," I say, and extend my mind-sense into Jamie's and Katie's bedroom. They are awake already, their minds shielded from us but open to each other.

I see tentacles of black fire coming from Katie and penetrating Jamie's body, some through existing orifices and some right through the skin. My attempt to interfere comes to naught as I cannot go through the door or penetrate their mind-shield. They don't really talk to me telepathically, but Jamie touches my mind and I suddenly know that whatever is happening is at least consentual. This is still not very reassuring. I check his sensory input. He cannot see or hear anything at the moment, but the sense of touch and the mind-sense remain.

Being penetrated by the tentacles doesn't really hurt, but he is still braced for pain. The tentacles start pumping the black fire into his body and mind, and this really does hurt. Ouch! I withdraw immediately.

This lasts maybe ten seconds, and the process seems to be under his conscious control. At some point he cuts it off, and the tentacles withdraw. They seem to leave no wounds or marks, but it's hard to be sure, because they are fully clothed. He is full of black fire, and there is still some remaining in her, but the disruption in her mind is gone.

Suddenly he is all engulfed by a flash of black fire. This lasts just a moment, but when it's gone everything within about ten centimeters of him that is not a part of him is burned away: his clothes, his ring and bracelet, the scrunchie he was using to tie his hair back, and a significant part of the sheets and the mattress. I check his sensory input again, very gingerly, but he can see and hear now, and is not in any more pain than you can normally expect from a person who just had the air in his lungs, the contents of his stomach and the mattress under him suddenly disappear.

"Oops," he says. The flash clearly wasn't an expected part of whatever they were doing. "Argh, my wallet!" he wails mentally, realizing that it was in his back pocket and is now gone. "My ring! My bracelet!" He doesn't seem to be upset about the other stuff.

Katie, whose mind doesn't seem to disrupted anymore in spite of the remaining pain, guilt and black fire, concentrates on something. Two blobs of metal appear in midair and slowly assume the form of a ring and a bracelet.

"Here, love. Sorry, can't do the wallet. Hope your passport wasn't in your pocket."
"Thanks. No, it wasn't."

They get up. Katie's black fire is now diminished and under her control. Jamie's, which filled him competely just a minute ago, seems to be subsiding, integrating into his mind and body. He is not tired anymore, and when I try to look at auras, his aura is much brighter than before. Katie's is dimmer. But whatever it was they have just redistributed between themselves, it has done them good. For the moment their minds are strongly shielded again, and Katie seems somewhat disoriented, but then the shield is up and she is OK.

"Come in," they call to me mentally, and I do.
"Did you guys get a car?" asks Katie.
"Yeah. An antique Russian car."
"Uh-oh."

Jamie gets up from the bed and hugs me. "Sorry" he says telepathically, radiating genuine regret, erects a mental shield around us, and penetrates my own mind-shield with all his force.

When he releases me from his embrace I look around. The bed seems badly damaged, most of the linen and mattress on one side eaten away. Jamie and Katie are up, though, and feeling much better than when they passed out. He is not tired anymore, she is not nearly as disturbed.

"What happened here, guys?"
"We had a little accident," explains Jamie, both his face and mind smiling. "I suppose the mattress is not such a big deal in comparison with the wall and all the other stuff that got damaged."
"Some accident, perverts. Put your clothes on and let's go."

He gets some clothes from his bag and puts them on, and I don't even wanna know what happened to the clothes he had on when he passed out.

We all get our stuff together and go out to the car, leaving Vyacheslav's money in the apartment.

"What in the bloody hell is that?" asks Rudy.
"Zaporozhets."
"I am not driving this thing!"
"Damn right you are not. I am. The rental papers list Tarja and me as drivers."
"How are we gonna fit in? Why did you rent it? What the fuck is it? Does it even run?"
"With difficulty, this was the only car they had, it's a ZAZ-966 and it does run, yes."
"You are loving every minute of it!" says Timo to me.
"Well, duh! For me driving such a car is like for you shooting an antique pistol."
"Shit," says Katie. "What's that in the trunk?"
"It's not a trunk, it's the engine. The trunk is in the front," I say, putting my luggage in it.
"Does this car run forwards or backwards?" Rudy is trying to be sarcastic.
"Both, actually. Now, Jamie goes in the front, the rest of you go in the back."
"I should go in the front. I have the longest legs," says Rudy.
"Jamie just had an accident that destroyed most of his bed," I say. "I am not having him sit on top of the gas tank."

A very alarmed "does she remember?" thought runs on the surface of Jamie's mind before he shields it. I immediately shield mine too. Remember what? And do I in fact remember? What the sight of his destroyed bed something I should have forgotten, or was there something else I really have forgotten? Is Jamie fucking with my mind?

As we start driving I share Else's advice and news with Katie and Jamie telepathically. The news of Michael's disappearance and his connection with Faye causes an unexpected pang of grief from Katie, and Jamie says "we are expecting a visit, then".
"What? Who?" asks Tarja, who hasn't even heard about Michael and his existence at all.
"Michael Hamilton, an upstanding member of the Skilled Community, turned out to be my late girlfriend Faye's cousin and admirer. I'd heard about him before, but didn't think anything about it till now, Michael Hamilton is not a rare name. But now that he turned out to have her picture, I suppose it's her Michael, and I think he will show up here eventually."
"Do you know what he looks like?" asks Timo.
"Never seen him live, but I remember the pictures," he shows us telepathically several pictures of a man of about thirty, tall, muscular, brown-haired with blond streaks. The pictures were all taken at some beach, and Jamie warns us that they are at least 15 years old. I am pretty sure I couldn't recognize the man from these pictures even if they were new.

Jamie hands me his passport. "Here, I think my passport is safer with you than with me." I take it.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Elina> OK, now we are positive that Rudy and Katie have the Skills.
<Lauri> And that Jamie did have the capacity to burn those guys.
<Nate> What happened?
<Else> He just had a flashover. It's the accident that sometimes happens when you overuse some physical or chemical Skill. Like blowing up something really big or setting a lot of stuff on fire.
<Nate> I know, but what was he doing?
<Elina> I have no idea. He was just in bed with his wife.
<Nate> Now that's what I'd call explosive sex. :)
<Elina> They weren't having sex. In any case now we know that he has very high-powered physical skills in addition to mind-reading.
<Olafur> Ladies and gentlemen, we have us a new Dana.
<Elina> Although with better social skills than the old one.
<Nate> Come on, she is not that bad.
<Hanne> Speaking of the old Dana: where the hell is she?
<Sarah> Obviously not on the channel, and don't any of you assholes send her the logs.
<Elina> Seriouly, where is Dana? She is not in Tel Aviv or anywhere in Israel. Gilad? Yossi? Are you guys awake? Do you know anything?
<Yossi> She is not here, but I don't know anything.
<Jessica> What's the big deal? She might be on vacation or something.
<Elina> Jessica, Michael disappeared earlier today.
<Jessica> Where?
<Elina> I wish I knew.
<Jessica> Elina, at least you are here. Would be scary if all the really powerful people disappeared.
<Else> Maybe we should check if anyone else has?
<Jessica> OMG, where is Alicia? She is not home or anywhere.
<Elina> Shit. This is getting really scary.
<Lauri> We should probably rescan the whole world and find them.
<Nate> Your friendly neighborhood geek advice: before you scan the world, grep the IRC logs. Alicia is in Japan with her husband.
<Olafur> What is she doing there?
<Nate> Looking at cherry blossoms and eating sushi? Whatever the tourists do there.
<Olafur> Why are so many people on vacation in March? This is suspicious.
<Else> March is when they have the cherry blossoms in Japan.
<Sarah> Jamie's incident in Angola is really suspicious, too.
<Elina> Sarah, of course the incidents of horrible violence are awful as such, but I don't think it involved any foul play with Skills.
<Sarah> Not the thing itself, but afterwards. There were four survivors originally, but the other three died during the next couple of years.
<Yossi> Ugh. Do you think he did it?
<Sarah> I don't know, but foul play does come to mind.
<Elina> Else - any insights?
<Else> I don't think there was any foul play. These were people who went to places where people die often. One of them died in the Bosnian war and two died climbing the Everest. Jamie might be troubled and very powerful, but he is a good boy, and I am quite sure he did not start the Bosnian war. Or put up the Everest where it is.
<Nate> Can somebody really put up a mountain?
<Elina> It's possible in theory, but I think we have enough evidence that the Everest was there before Jamie. :)
<Olafur> BTW - anyone found out what Katie does at work?
<Nate> Not really - that place is very secretive.
<Olafur> Anything else about her?
<Hanne> Not much: she works, socializes and organizes LARPs. Sometimes also plays in other people's LARPs. Her blog is all about LARPs and music.
<Elina> BTW, I talked to Mira. She was very cautious but sounded sensible.
<Olafur> Good thing that at least somebody somewhere is sensible...
<Elina> We gotta find Michael and Dana. Now. Scan the whole world, whatever. It can't take too much time.
<Nate> Michael, obviously, but why Dana? She is never doing anything useful anyway. Anything useful for the Community in any case.
<Olafur> Because people shouldn't be disappearing into thin air.
<Yossi> I've always suspected some people can hide themselves from the Sight.
<Olafur> Michael says it's impossible.
<Yossi> Michael disappeared, didn't he? I'd also say it's impossible if I were the only guy who could do it. Especially if you all always considered everything I say as some kind of natural law. It's so funny how you always believe everything he says.
<Elina> Michael does know more about the Skills than any of us.
<Yossi> My point exactly. He knows more, and is not telling. For all I know he might be standing right behind me right now, without me seeing or Seeing or sensing him.
<Hanne> Yossi, you are fucking paranoid and always have been.
<Yossi> I might be paranoid, but how many of you have just turned around and looked behind you?
<Perv> Yossi, I think in your case invisible Dana standing behind you is more likely. It's only what, 20-minute drive from your home?
<Yossi> Ugh. Hope not. I am really afraid of her. At least Michael is not mental.
<Elina> Neither is she.
<Yossi> Yeah, right.

* * *