The waitress puts the cake, the ice cream and two cups of hot chocolate in front of us.

"What are we gonna do there?"
"I wanna see everything I missed the last time. The Winter Palace, the St. Isaac Cathedral, all the cultural thingies."
"Me too, the cultural thingies. But I also wanna go to some club or something..."
"I've been to a club last time I was there. That's why I didn't get to see any cultural thingies."
"A better club this time? Stop feeding your ice cream to your hair, it probably doesn't like it."
"Ice cream or hair?"
"Either."

I fish Timo's hair out of the ice cream and stick it (the hair, not the ice cream) behind his ear.

"Where is everyone?"
"Late as usual. Probably having wild monkey sex."
"What, all four of them? Without us?"
"Late, us? 'Punctuality' is our collective middle name," Rudy says from behind me and and sits down. Katie and Tarja linger for a while looking at the cakes under the glass, and then also sit down.
"Jamie is gonna be here soon, he just went to a club for a little while with some coworker," continues Rudy, "can't wait to see him, he went to a hairdresser today".
"He what? Did he lose some kind of a bet? What is he getting?"

AFAIK the only two times he had visited a hairdresser as an adult was to fix a home coloring disaster of truly epic proportions, which is what I suspect has happened to him again. Some people never learn. And some people will never be blond. And some people never learn that they are never gonna be blond.

"No, he went there quite voluntarily, though I wouldn't say 'happily'. He did not say exactly, but he did hint about a brave new color."
"I remember his last brave new color. He had to wear all his hair up under a ski cap for two weeks until he managed to get it fixed."
"I want cake," says Katie impatiently, obviously not very concerned with her husband's adventures in hair coloring.

The waitress comes to take their orders. At that moment Jamie appears, wearing a ski cap, pulls up a chair, and says "chocolate banana cake, please, a tea, and two scoops of chocolate ice cream," staring at the waitress with inhuman eyes of solid black. She recoils.

"Jamie, you moron, you forgot the contacts on," says Katie, but he has already figured it out, apologized to the waitress, and run off to the bathroom. I don't understand this fashion for flashy unnatural contacts on people who don't really need contacts of any kind.

Jamie comes back from the bathroom without the contacts, still wearing a ski cap, all his hair tucked under it. We demand to see the brave new color. He seems to be a little shy about it, but pulls the cap off and opens his ponytail. It is a bit of anticlimax, because I can't see any difference from what his hair usually looks like.

"Your brave new color resembles your brave old color in a very stylish and impressive way," says Timo diplomatically.
"You need more light to see it. The damn thing cost 150 euros and took 4 hours," answers Jamie defensively.

We go under a bright light. Wow. His natural color is blue black, which is normally the term for black with no visible brown in it. The color he has now is literally blue black, very dark but with visible blue in it. A beautiful color indeed, and not even particularly anime-like, but you really need bright light to see the difference. The coloring job is truly excellent, but I can imagine a man might be a bit miffed at paying 150 euro for the color that needs bright light to be noticeable. Oh well, serves him right.

The waitress returns with the cakes and ice creams and other goodies, and we go back to the table.

"So, has any of you been there before?" asks Katie, meaning St. Petersburg, even though she already knows the answers.
"I have," says Rudy. "Wouldn't wanna live there, but it's a very cool destination for a long weekend."
"Very, very cool," I say, "especially in March."
"I have too," says Timo, "and my liver is still crying every time it remembers that trip. I used to date an engineering student then, and went with them. It was the hangover of my life. And in the end we had to carry our group leader to the bus. And then we had to stick his head out of the window because we ran out of plastic bags."
"Did you get to see any museums?" asks Tarja.
"I wouldn't remember. I prefer to assume I did."
"I've been there once too," says Tarja, "with Suvi and Liisa. It was fun until Liisa fell into Neva and all her papers floated away."
"I promise not to get drunk this time," says Timo.
"Me too!" says Jamie, who doesn't drink.
"I can drink your share," suggests Rudy helpfully.
"Last time you got too drunk you almost got your dick bitten off," reminds him Tarja, wisely avoiding mentioning what transgressions led to that unfortunate event. Rudy blushes.

We are going on a long weekend to St. Petersburg tomorrow, all six of us. In principle we are supposed to discuss our plans tonight, but the plans are all rather clear already: overnight train there and back, an apartment that I found on the Net - a big, nice, not very expensive place on the corner of Nevsky and Liteiny - gorgeous museums by day - Katie has printed a huge list from somewhere - trendy little clubs by night, the works. The atavistic racial memory, or rather the stories of my mother's childhood and young adulthood, paints a different picture: huge supermarket lines, scary hooligans, and no toilet paper. I decide to take some Imodium with me, just in case.

"Should we call it a night?" asks Rudy at some point, "none of you have packed a single pant yet."
"I have packed almost everything!" Katie sounds outraged. Her "packing almost everything" usually involves giving about 5 seconds of thought to where the bag might possibly be.
"I haven't," says Tarja, "but the night is young. How about that little whisky place in Tapiola?"
"What whisky place?" you can actually see Rudy's ears perk up.
"Come, and you'll see."

We get out of Engel and walk to Kamppi, all the time cursing the obviously insufficient global warming. The bus is in 15 minutes, they really should have those buses more often when people want to drink.

"Mira and I found another cool whisky place last week," says Timo, "a tiny hole in the wall in Puotila, but it has more whisky than Heathrow."
"Wow! Can we go there next week?" asks Tarja.
"Anything you want, love," Rudy kisses her, "except that Junttikrouvi place in Kontula."
"They won't let us in anyway after the last time."
"You managed to get yourselves banned out of Junttikrouvi?" asks Timo. "I didn't think it was possible. What did you do, set the place on fire?"
"It was an accident," says Tarja, "and no, no fire."
"Oh, by the way, I saw Fazil," says Rudy, who has just come back from visiting his parents in Edinburgh and keeps sharing gossip of their old friends, some of whom I've met and most of whom I have only heard about. "He had a woman with him and was pushing a pram. With a real live baby. You know, Jamie, he has outdone you in the quest for the world's tallest woman."
"I'll have to do with the second tallest. What's up with him?"
"Somebody had dishonored his sister."
"Hold on, wasn't he the guy about whom you said last summer that somebody has dishonored his sister? What, did they do it again?" asks Timo, who has never met the man. Fazil is Rudy's old classmate and Jamie's old bandmate from The World's Worst Klezmer Band, a nice laid-back guy originally from one of Soviet Union's numerous Whateverstans.
"Fazil is a man of many sisters," explains Rudy.
"Six, to be exact," specifies Jamie. "But now the last one of those got dishonored, so he can stop with shotgun weddings."
"Eew," Tarja is horrified. "What does he do if the guy refuses to marry his sister, or the sister refuses to marry the guy?"
"It's their culture," explains Jamie. "And nobody has ever refused. Fazil usually waits till the sister and the evildoer have a house and a mortgage and at least a second kid on the way."
"Not very fast, is he?" laughs Tarja.
"Doing things with dignity and without any hurry is also part of their culture," Rudy grins.

A woman walking by stops and stares at us from about 5 meters away.

"Hey, did he..." starts Jamie, who is sitting on the floor with his back to the woman, but suddenly jumps up as if something bit him on the ass, and runs up to her. She looks scared but does not try to run away. They walk a few meters away from us and start talking. The conversation is very animated, cards are exchanged, and it seems like they are arguing. The woman is tall and blond, about 45, probably Finnish. I have never seen her before.

Eventually our bus comes, Jamie comes back, and the woman goes away.

"Who was that?" asks Katie.
"Elina. From Rovaniemi."
"And now for some actual information?"
"A Net acquaintance. I recognized her from her website picture. Never seen her in person before."

In the whisky place Tarja runs off to study the selection, Rudy continues his story about Edinburgh:

"I saw Brian MacDonald, too. And Ang."
"Hopefully not in the same place," comments Jamie. Those are his old climbing buddies, who no longer are on speaking terms with him or each other. I haven't seen either for years but from Rudy's stories I figured Brian is not on speaking terms with pretty much anyone.
"Brian was my first sexual experience," explains Katie to Timo, who has never heard about Brian. "I was 15 or so, and I passed out at some party and he tried to screw me, so I woke up, bit him on the nose and went to sleep again."
"The bastard," says Rudy, "I should kick his ass."
"Too late for that."
"It's still my duty as your brother. BTW, you guys are not gonna believe it: Ang had a woman with him too." He is right, I don't believe it. No woman would put up with a man whose one and only topic of conversation is mountaneering.
"Most surprising people sometimes do," comments Tarja dryly, returning to her place."Why is it too late to kick that Brian guy's ass?"
"He lost his hands and feet and nose and ears climbing some mountain," explain Katie.
"Ouch. Why do people go climbing mountains?" says Tarja.
"He still has his ass, though, and I can kick it," says Rudy.
"Insanity," suggests Jamie in answer to Tarja's question. He used to climb when he was young, in fact there were three years or so when he did every extreme sport in existence, including visiting a minor war somewhere, but later realized that therapy is safer and more effective. This realization was much helped by the moment when Ang and him had to search for lost and badly frostbitten Brian in a storm on Mount McKinley. "The mountains are cold and wet."
"So is Tapiola," sighs Katie, "they keep promising us global warming, and where is it?"
"You are not doing your share. Get yourself a car," suggests Rudy.

Oh God, oh God! We drank too much whisky and I ended up in Timo's place and now I am horribly hung over and have to go to work and still haven't packed a single pant.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Elina> OMG! I just met a new guy last night. In Helsinki. An incredible mind-reader.
<Sinikka> A new guy? In person? Who? When did he get the Skills? What are you gonna do?
<Elina> That's the thing, he says he's always had the Skills, and that he's always thought he was the only one. I don't think anyone has seen him before. Or Seen.
<Wei> I thought our scanning worked better than that.
<Elina> I just tried to scan him from here. He shows up as a normal at the distance. Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
<Lauri> Are you sure he actually has the Skills?
<Elina> Quite sure. His aura was visible from the other end of Kamppi terminal. And when I tried to read his mind he firewalled me right out.
<Sinikka> Firewalled YOU?
<Michael> Firewalled *you*?
<Lauri> Firewalled you?
<Hanne> FIREWALLED YOU?
<Peilin> Firewalled *you*?
<Elina> Michael, yeah. And he tried to break through my firewall, too. He doesn't have enough experience for that, but he does have the power.
<Michael> You mean he is as strong as Alicia or Dana or Diego?
<Elina> Michael, not sure, but he is definitely in the same class.
<Hanne> Just what we needed, a super-mind-reader who does not show up on scanning.
<Elina> He shows up on scanning like everyone else, you just can't see that he has the Skills. Yeah, and another thing: he does not have the Sight.
<Michael> Skills, but no Sight? Never seen that before. Are you sure? I don't think it's possible.
<Elina> Michael, hard to be sure with all the firewalling, but I asked him several questions about the Sight and he really sounded like he had no idea what I was talking about.
<Michael> Any Skills besides the mind-reading? At this level he should be capable of writing too, at least a little.
<Elina> Probably. He did not sound like he knew of any other Skills, and I did not think it was a good idea to ask.
<Sinikka> You were right.
<Elina> I am always right. Sinikka, Lauri, Hanne, Michael: I'll transmit you his ident for scanning, relay to whoever you can.
<Sinikka> Thanks. Who is the guy? Any info on him?
<Elina> He gave me a card and said a few words. Jamie Hallgrimsson, 34, married, Scottish, currently living in Helsinki. I scanned him later: he was hanging out in some bar in Tapiola with five people. I should have taken a better look at them in Kamppi, but I was so shocked... Anyway, he lives in Pasila with his wife and some other guy. The sign on the door says Goldberg and Hallgrimsson. Seem like regular urban middle-class somewhat-bohemian folks. Lots of computers in the apartment. Two dogs and a cat. There is quite a lot on him on the Net, too, a blog and a webpage. A system administrator; used to be a matematician; has some strong opinions on Microsoft, academic life, free speech and suchlike. Lots of pictures, too. I'll put all the info in the wiki.
<Lauri> Hallgrimsson doesn't seem a very Scottish name.
<Hanne> Come on, Lauri is not a very Swedish name either. Everyone moves around so much. Else's daughter got married to some Icelandic guy and they live in Scotland.
<Sinikka> Damn, could it be the same guy?
<Hanne> No, that guy is at least 60 and IIRC his name is Asgeir.
<Michael> Elina, did you convince him to come and sort things out?
<Elina> Michael, I tried to get him to come with me; he said he was going on vacation with friends and will be back sometime next week and will call me. This is kind of an emergency, this guy running around. We should alert all the northern Europe.
<Sinikka> Did he say where?
<Elina> No. We'll see. We should not have an untrained person of such power running around.
<Sinikka> Could you have forced him?
<Elina> Are you kidding?
<Michael> Chill out, folks. The man has been running around with unchecked Skills for 34 years, he is not gonna cause the end of the world over the weekend. Not even the long weekend.
<Elina> Better safe than sorry. He is probably not going very far away for the weekend, better alert our people in Sweden, Estonia and St. Petersburg. Sinikka and I got Finland covered.
<Lauri> Elina, "our people in Sweden" is me. A better question is what the fuck am I gonna do against a super-mind-reader if push comes to shove. And we don't have anyone in Estonia.
<Hanne> Can't we get Aldona to get her ass to Tallinn?
<Elina> Most days we can't even get her to get her ass to the computer. Forget Tallinn.
<Sinikka> I just tried to contact Borya, can't find him anywhere, what happened?
<Wei> He is on vacation in New Zealand.
<Sinikka> Wei, can you See that far?
<Wei> No, but I can see the IRC log from last Saturday. He said he was going to New Zealand for three weeks.
<Elina> Then we don't have Tallinn or St. Petersburg covered.
<Michael> Don't worry about the man. He'll probably get there and back without much trouble. Maybe reads a few minds on the way, who cares. I am more worried about the bigger picture. Do you realize what we have a guy whose Skills DO NOT SHOW UP ON SCAN? Who knows how many more of them are out there?
<Elina> Ugh. A lovely thought.
<Michael> Elina: are you ready to see him when he gets back? Are you scared? Do you need help?
<Elina> Michael, yes. He didn't seem hostile, just curious, and a bit suspicious, all the normal reactions. Seemed fairly nice and normal. He's probably quite ready to talk. I think I can try on my own.
<Michael> Good luck. Call me if you need help.
<Elina> OTOH with those powers would be strange if he couldn't make himself seem nice and normal.
<Lauri> Look, they are waking up! The wife is very hot BTW. Ooh, she is going to the shower!
<Sinikka> The other guy too! I mean hot, not in the shower.
<Hanne> Shame on you perverts! Using the Sight for that... :)
<Wei> Wife? Hot? I wanna see too! Somebody give me the visual.
<Hanne> Wei so needs a girlfriend...
<Michael> Considering that he is having trouble keeping his current three girlfriends from finding out about each other, I'd say definitely not. :P
<Wei> Do we have to spy on each other all day long?
<Sinikka> Where is Else? Haven't seen her for days.
<Hanne> Sailing in the harbor every day, the weather has been nice.
<Sinikka> This is so like her: we are having an emergency and she is sailing.
<Hanne> She is always sailing in spring.
<Wei> And we are always having some kind of an emergency. :)
<Elina> At that age they do whatever they damn well please. It's not like she can help anyway. We don't need anything set on fire or any planes dropped from the sky.
<Perv> Whee, a new guy! Do you think he'd come work for me?
<Wei> Perv, man, how have you been? Long time no see.
<Perv> This fucking job is killing me. Gonna burn out soon, and surrender myself to Elina's gentle ministrations. So, Elina, gonna introduce me to the new guy?
<Elina> Perv: don't even start.
<Perv> :(

The train is not as full as we expected, and looks pretty nice. The conductor, who looks even worse than I feel, greets us, promises us some tea (and coffee, when Tarja asks), and shows us to our compartments. Timo's and mine is number seven, and after putting all the luggage in their own compartments everyone gathers in ours.

We managed to pack our bags by some miraculous divine intervention. Rudy and Tarja packed theirs, too. Jamie and Katie seem to have failed big-time, and Katie says that the most important things are the passports, the credit cards, and the underwear, everything else can be bought.

"Open the door," sounds outside, and Rudy opens it. At that moment the conductor spills five cups of tea and one cup of coffee on his own pants. He says "oops, sorry" and goes back for more, leaving a big puddle in front of our door.

The second attempt at coffee and tea is better, and he manages to bring the cups to the table. The drinks are rather cold, which is understandable if the guy habitually spills them on himself, but still annoying. The pale yellow color of the tea suggests an entirely different kind of liquid.

"Look what I've got!" says Timo, opening his bag and taking out a spiral thingie with a cord. "A genuine Russian water-heating device."
"Probably banned by the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty," mutters Tarja.

His plan for heating up the tea is thwarted by the fact that there is no electrical outlet anywhere. Rudy takes out a bottle of Stroh and tries to improve the tea with it, with dismal results.

"You've been quiet today, and you are not even hung over," says Timo to Jamie.
"I've been thinking."
"Thinking? You? That would be the first," laughs Rudy.
"I try to think for at least an hour every Thursday night. It's good for the muscle tone."
"What about?" asks Katie, "I mean besides sex, chocolate and computer games."
"Tonight? Coffee, my new hair color, some things about geometry that you really don't wanna know, that I want a new video card... also about tsunamis and Timo's cat."
"What about my cat?"

We don't get to hear the answer, because Jamie's phone rings and he goes outside to talk. Rudy decides to go to the restaurant car to buy some drinkable drink for all of us, then decides to drag Tarja and me along on account of not having enough hands.

"Jamie has been weird lately," he says, "he's been swimming for like four hours every night last week, and unnaturally tired after that..."
"If he's been swimming that much, it's called 'naturally tired'," points out Tarja.
"I am just worried, is all."
"He seems fine. A bit preoccupied maybe," I say.
"Sometimes when I ask what he is thinking he says things about maths that are beyond my ken."
"An average six-grader can say things about math that are beyond your ken. No offense."
"Bitch."

WTF is eating him? Rudy, in spite of his best attempts to put on a nonchalant exterior, is a chronic worrier - except that he tends to worry about all the wrong things and miss about 98.5% of real dangers until they punch him in the nose - and every time something he does not want to talk or even think about is gnawing on his mind, he manifests it as high and highly misplaced concern for Jamie's health and well-being. This phenomenon is symbiotic in a way - Jamie just loves to collect totally unearned sympathy points and redeem them for backrubs and chocolate - but every time Rudy becomes too solicitous, Jamie also starts worrying about Rudy's own well-being, and generally with a very good reason.

We buy one coffee, one coke and four beers, and bring them back. The rest of the evening goes peacefully, discussing the grand plans for sightseeing and shopping, and occasionally getting some more drinks from the restaurant car.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Hanne> Heh. So now we at least know he doesn't have the Skill to heat up the tea.
<Nate> Probably wouldn't do it with his friends there even if he could.
<Hanne> True. :)
<Scott> Hi
<Hanne> Hi Scott
<Scott> Did you know that this Jamie had already been mentioned in our wiki? I mean before Elina met him.
<Hanne> ?
<Scott> Remember when we tried to find out what Kensemi Ltd. was all about and checked out all their top brass and their families? He was and remains the husband of Katie Goldberg, their Chief of Genetic Engineering.
<Nate> Wow! So hot scientist chicks are not just in the movies?
<Sarah> Now our guys can spy on naked *scientist* women, not just naked women.
<Jessica> Cool! Now with any luck we can have our own guy over there.
<Scott> Or they can have their own guy over here. :/
<Elina> Or both.
<Sarah> Any word on the housemate they live with?
<Olafur> No. I have a feeling that the young generation here is mostly concentrating on the hot wife and the gorgeous housemate, and is not watching our guy like they should.
<Jessica> He is with them all the time, and he is not doing anything special. I mean - how long can you watch a guy yawning in front of the computer or running around screaming "bugger, where did all the t-shirts go?".
<Olafur> The extra-beautiful wife and housemate - could it be some Skill?
<Elina> No, I saw them in Helsinki, they are normals.
<Else> Evening, everyone.
<Sarah> Hi Else, how was sailing?
<Else> Thanks, pretty good.
<Else> Elina, don't freak out about your guy. There is only so much damage a mind-reader can do.
<Elina> Never know what else they can do until you interview and examine them properly.
<Else> Few people do anything too horrible, except in the first moment.
<Olafur> You used to bring airplanes down.
<Nate> Else used to be Darth Else?
<Else> Else used to be a soldier.
<Jessica> How could you? It's not right to interfere with normals' wars. I mean, I understand that some people get drafted and might not have a choice, but you have probably volunteered.
<Else> Jessica, they are our wars, too.
<Else> Jessica, you can be a pacifist but you can't isolate yourself from normals' world. We can't live in our own Harry Potter-like world with Hogwarts, Ministry of Magic, our own wizard kids, etc. We are born of normals, marry them, give birth to them, etc. We know each other and call ourselves the Community and have this channel, but there is no real self-sustaining community of the Skilled, never has been and probably never will be. I've been married to a normal for over 60 years, and have 5 normal kids.
<Jessica> It's still not right. Aren't you sorry or something...
<Else> Not really. They were trying to bomb me, I made their planes drop and burned them alive as they were trying to parachute. That's what soldiers do. I was better at this than them, tough shit, end of story.
<Sarah> Not to intrude on your cheery conversation, but has there ever been a Skilled that had a Skilled child?
<Olafur> No. It's in the wiki.
<Elina> Not that we know of.
<Else> Anyway, that was 60 years ago. Our resident pacifists can go pester Perv, he is a general.
<Nate> Or Hardeep. He used to be a colonel until he retired last year.
<Jessica> A real general? I thought he was a young guy?
<Elina> I guess you weren't here when he was bragging about his grandchildren. :)
<Olafur> Nate, Hardeep got his Skills when he already was a colonel, you really can't expect a man to change his career at 50.
<Nate> Any two Skilled ever get married, or had sex? Does anyone knows what happens then? Something terrible, like with two garou?
<Else> WTF is a garou?
<Nate> Werewolves from WoD. I am afraid the cultural reference is lost on you.
<Nate> WoD=World of Darkness
<Elina> Married, no. Sex, yes. Nothing unusual happened.
<Sarah> Elina: can you Speak to Jamie? Did you try?
<Elina> We tried it in person, and yes, we can talk telepathically. I tried it from here, too, but he didn't answer. Doesn't necessarily mean he can't hear it. I'll send him an SMS if I really need him to know something.
<Hanne> Look, something is happening down there in the train!

* * *

A sharp knock on the door wakes me up. I jump up and grab the half-empty rum bottle that Rudy forgot in our compartment, trying to remember whether any of the stories about robberies in Russian trains concerned the Helsinki-St. Petersburg train and hoping that even if the bottle doesn't deter the intruders, the sight of a naked and disheveled madwoman might. Timo is already up and opening a pocket knife.

"Open up! Open up!"

I open the door, trying to keep the bottle out of sight. Our conductor is standing behind it, very drunk, and another drunk man in civilian clothes is standing next to him.

"Let the passenger in!"
"Hmm, why?"
"Why are there two of you? You are suppose to have a free berth here."
"It's our compartment, and no, we don't have any free space."
"Sorry," says the drunk passenger, looking apologetic. I nod to him.
"The gentleman has a ticket here," continues the conductor.
"So do we," says Timo, who has already put the knife down and armed himself with tickets, passports and other anti-bureaucracy weapons.
"Lemme see," I say, grabbing the drunk guy's ticket, "it says 8. This is 7. I think you should just go next door."
"You sure?" say the conductor and the passenger in unison, and try to look at the ticket simultaneusly, colliding with each other's foreheads.
"Positive."
"And this is 7?"

Timo silently points to the number on the door. The drunks apologize and proceed to the next door. I jump out of the compartment and grab the passenger's arm.

"No, no, that one is 6. 8 is the other way!"

We close the door and start giggling. In a few seconds some kind of yelling starts outside.

"Open up! Open up!" they are knocking on our door in about 30 seconds. I open the door, already with a towel on.

"You again?" they are astonished.
"Yeah, and the compartment is still 7," says Timo from behind. They bugger off, only to start a scandal somewhere else. I stick my head out the door. The are pestering the people in 9, who are yelling that they would like to sleep. I go outside, and drag them towards the number 8, ignoring their screams of "not her again!". They manage to get in there, and eventually the noise stops.

The morning is beautiful, sunny and bitterly cold. We get into two taxis and go to the address of the apartment we rented. The city is magnificent, if somewhat in need of restauration. The apartment is ready for us, despite the fact that it's only 8 in the morning. It's spacious and pretty, although the toilet keeps growling in an ominous horror-movie way. We drop our luggage off at the apartment and go outside.

"Breakfast?" suggests Tarja, and we walk down Nevsky, looking for breakfast and taking in the views. There is a little bridge with four statues of a naked guy trying to abuse a horse.

The breakfast we find is moderately evil and contains sausages that none of us dare to eat, Imodium nonwithstanding, but the views make up for it. After the breakfast we disperse to the cultural thingies, as Timo has put it, of our choice, and I end up going to the Hermitage with Rudy and Tarja. The building is amazing, but I get tired of the paintings at some point, excuse myself, and go check out the architecture on the other side of the river. There are two red columns there, and a number of museums I decide to leave for later. I take a tram to St. Isaac's cathedral, and run into Jamie and Katie at the cathedral's doors. They highly recommend the place, and I go inside. It's very impressive, even though it doesn't really fit my idea of a cathedral.

By 3 o'clock we reassemble near the monuments to the naked zoophile and his horse and start looking for dinner. The dinner, when found, is not particularly good but is much better than the breakfast. Afterwards Tarja suggests that we try to figure out which museums might still be open, but nobody else feels like it, and she doesn't feel like running around the museums on her own.

We move to another place for coffee and drinks, and sit there for a while, trying various local combinations, some of which are pretty foul. At some point Jamie wanders off to the department store across the street to check out the local electronics selection, looking rather pessimistic about it. The rest of us order more drinks and just sit there, looking at the street though the big glass wall. We should probably move our asses and go see some more local architecture, but it is quite cold. Besides, the architecture that we see out of the window is magnificent in itself.

Suddenly an explosion rips through the department store that Jamie just went to. A fireball shoots out of several second-floor windows. There is a lot of screaming, all around us and in the street. Katie jumps up and starts running towards the store, the rest of us following and yelling that this is a really bad idea.

The department store is still somewhat on fire, but not badly. By the time we get there even Katie realizes that there is no chance of getting in because of all the people trying to get out. Some of them are burned, some strangely wet, a lot are bleeding and most seem to be unharmed but terrified. We try to search the crowd for Jamie, but do not see him. We reach for the phones, all five of us simultaneously, and try to call him. A recording informs us that the phone is out of area or switched off. I start feeling sick.

This is really, really not good. He often forgets his phone on silent, but the phone is never off. I know something has happened to him. On the other hand phones are a lot more fragile than humans. Suddenly I get a very strong and quite irrational feeling that he is alive and not badly hurt. I think this is what they call wishful thinking.

Katie gets an SMS. She reads it and gets a "WTF" expression on her face. We look at her expectantly. "I got a message saying that he is more or less OK," she says. "Not from him, though. What country code is 45?"

We don't know. Rudy looks at the actual SMS and reads it out loud: "Don't worry, he is not badly hurt". Katie calls somebody, asking them to find out who the number belongs to, and where it is.

Lots of fire trucks, ambulances and police cars come, seal off the area and tell everyone to stay away. Nobody really goes away though, people just back off a little and keep looking. Ambulance crews start carrying the wounded out. There are dozens and dozens of them, and no way to see whether Jamie is among them.

Some guy in a suit addresses the crowd and tells us that they will put up a board with the names of the killed and the injured and the names of the hospitals they took the injured to. The crowd insults him and his ancestors.

Katie gets another SMS. Some Russian number, but signed 'Jamie'. He says that he only needs a few stitches but the line is very long, and gives us the address of the hospital.

It takes a lot of effort, but we manage to catch a cab. The cabbie does not want to fit five passengers in one car, but we give him an extra twenty and he agrees. In the car Katie tries to call the hospital, and after seven or eight attempts they answer.

She asks them about his condition, and seems to be relieved at their answer. Then she asks them about the specific nature of his injury, and suddenly becomes all quiet and round-eyed, thanks them quietly and hangs up.

"Are you gonna tell us anything or are you just gonna sit there?" growls Rudy before she even had time to hang up.
"He is gonna be OK," says Katie, "but either my Russian is failing me, or they just told me that he has a piranha up his ass."

This silences the rest of us for a second. My unruly brain is showing me the horrible visions of Islamic terrorists stuffing their bombs with toothy live piranhas and Jamie bending over in a very unfortunate moment.

"A live piranha or a dead piranha?" asks Timo.
"I don't think a piranha can survive in there for a very long time," answers Rudy.

Katie's friend calls back, telling her that the first message came from an unlisted number in Denmark. Not much help there.

In the hospital they tell us to look for Jamie in the hallway, among the lightly injured. The place is very crowded, people lying on the gurneys and sitting on the chairs. I scan the crowd for his face until I realize that a man who has just been injured in the butt is not likely to be lying on his back, much less sitting on a chair.

He sees us first and waves at us. We come over. He is lying on a gurney on his stomach, engaged in an animated conversation with a little old lady who is sitting in the row of chairs next to him and showing her middle finger to the world. His hair is dripping wet, and on a closer observation so are all his other parts. In one hand he has a big pickle jar with water and a few goldfish swimming in it. With the other hand he keeps absent-mindedly plucking seaweed out of his hair and putting it in the jar.

Katie's Russian has apparently failed her at least a little, because the piranha is not up his ass, but embedded in his buttock. It's rather big for a piranha, too. Jamie and the old lady are discussing various ways of baking fish in the oven in a rather difficult mix of English, Russian and German. There are several dead goldfish lying on the gurney in front of him.

"Hi, guys," he says, "this is Maria Yal... Yak..." he gives the old lady a "help me out here" look.
"...Yakovlevna," the old lady reminds, and nods to us all.
"...Yakovlevna, and she brought me some water for my goldfish," he concludes the introduction, pointing to the pickle jar.
"Where did you get the goldfish, anyway?" asks Katie.
"In my hair. The fucking explosion dumped the contents of several aquariums right on me. Amazing how long goldfish can survive in the hair if it is properly wet."
"Did the piranha also come from the aquariums?" asks Katie.
"Yeah. The poor thing probably just wanted to hold on to something before dying, but did it have to be my ass? Anyway, grab some chairs. It's gonna take a long time here."
"Can't we just pull the sushi out of Jamie's ass and go?" asks Rudy.
"No. I tried already. It really hurts."

We sit down and the fish recipe conversation continues, much enhanced by the fact that now three of us can actually speak both English and Russian. Maria Yakovlevna informs us that she is a retired teacher of math, and that she went to the store to buy a frying pan when the bomb exploded and injured her finger. However, as she proudly tells us, this gave her the opportunity to nick the frying pan without paying. She shows us the pan, and Rudy laughs and says that she is his kind of girl.

"If I were stealing a frying pan, I'd steal a better one," Timo tells me in Finnish.
"When the building is on fire you really don't have the time," I point out.
"Hey, do you want to keep the fish?" Jamie asks Maria Yakovlevna, "I don't think we will be taking them to Finland." Katie translates.
"No, they are too much trouble."
"I can take fishes if you don't want them," says a middle-aged guy on the opposite bench in passable English, and the jar with fish changes hands with a lot of mutual thanks.

After a couple of hours of waiting everyone is annoyed, and Jamie is clearly in need of a blanket and a cup of tea, neither of which is to be found anywhere.

"Argh, my ass is really sore," he says for a hundredth time.
"Remembers that Raid miniseries that we watched last month?" asks Timo.
"Yeah. It was fun."
"Remember that guy called Perse-Arska? 'Arska the ass'?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, if you don't stop the whining right now you are in serious danger of being called Perse-Jamie for the rest of your natural life."

Jamie does not look particularly scared. Soon after that some nurses come for him and wheel his gurney into some room. We all try to follow, and they wave us away.

"I am not going anywhere," declares Katie, "I am his wife. Besides, he does not speak Russian."

They concede the point and let her into the room. The rest of us just stick our heads in the door. A nurse tries to approach Jamie's butt with big scissors.

"Argh! What do you think you are gonna do with these?"
"We need to cut your pants to get to the wound," she says in Russian, either understanding his question in English or guessing its meaning.
"No fucking way!" he also understands her intention without a translation and grabs the scissors away from her, "These are the only trousers I have with me! Didn't have time to pack properly."
"This is me favorite shirt! This is me only shirt!" quips Rudy from the doorway.

A doctor mutters something about sedatives and starts approaching Jamie with a syringe. At the moment he seems to be well-attuned to the dangers of the world around him without any translations.

"If you try to stick me with that thing I'll kill you! And I'll sue you! Not necessarily in that order!"

Katie gestures for the doctor to back off for a second, and pats Jamie on the head.

"You are being unreasonable, love. Let the doctors do their job. I am sure they have trousers in Russia."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
"I can go and buy you new trousers while you are here," volunteers Timo.

Jamie relaxes, gives the nurse her scissors back and gestures for her to go ahead, says "sorry" in Russian and starts giving Timo instructions to buy sweatpants of the appropriate size. In the meanwhile the nurse cuts his jeans from the waist down to the fish and gives him a shot of some anesthetic in there.

"Try to choose a store without terrorists," I tell Timo.
"Also without piranhas", adds Jamie.

It takes doctors less than five minutes to remove the fish, wash the wound, put four stitches in it and some adhesive bandage on it, and give him some prescriptions for painkillers and antibiotics. Doctors refuse to give him the piranha, roll their eyes at his questions of whether the wound is going to leave a scar and tell us to go away.

I go to a pharmacy, and the rest of them stay in the waiting area awaiting Timo and the pants. When I come back with the drugs Timo is already there, and Jamie is wearing rather horrible-looking green sweatpants and berating himself for not asking Timo to buy some underwear too, although he has a few pairs in the apartment. Rudy assures him that he'll make it to the apartment without underwear, and off we go.

"Argh," says Jamie when we are finally there, scratching furiously, "someone must have put itchy powder in these."
"Probably the same terrorists that blew up the store," smiles Katie.
"I don't think those were terrorists," says Jamie.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," growls Rudy, "now you don't believe in Islamic terrorists, next thing you are gonna be voting for Livingstone. They said it was Islamic suicide bombers on the radio when we were in the cab."
"I do believe in Islamic terrorists. It's just that they are, like, ferocious-looking guys with big beards who want 72 virgins. I saw the guy who did it, and he did not look very Islamic to me, no beard, no virgins, no nothing."
"They only get the virgins after the bombing," points out Timo.
"You saw the bomber?" Tarja is incredulous, "Why didn't you talk to the authorities?"
"I suspect it was the authorities."
"Paranoid much?"
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean that they didn't do it."
"You should probably go to bed and rest," says Rudy, "lie down, I'll make you some tea."
"Yes, tea, thanks," answers Jamie, pulling his almost-dry t-shirt off and revealing some very large bruises, "but I don't feel like resting. Timo, do you have any non-itchy trousers I can borrow? I wanna buy a new pair or jeans, and then I want some bread and circus. But first a shower and some tea."
"Yeah," nods Timo, going to our room to look for pants.
"What kind of bread and circus?" asks Tarja.
"Creamy pastries and WLAN should do."

After the bomb and the piranha we don't feel like arguing with him, and stroll down the Nevsky again. We find jeans and a liquor store, of which many of us are in sore need. After a little while we also find a little place with delicious pastries, atrocious coffee and tolerable WLAN. We eat some pastries there, and take some more home.

At home we make better coffee, drink and watch TV. The bombing is the big news of the day, of course. 14 killed, 136 wounded, of which 41 seriously. Chechen terrorists suspected. We have some drinks, and then some more drinks, and feel better, or at least I do. Nobody wants to discuss plans for tomorrow.

I decide to go to bed early, and Timo follows right after me. The others look rather subdued too: Katie is watching TV, Jamie is curled up on the sofa with his laptop, and Rudy and Tarja are whispering something to each other on the other sofa. Timo and I go to bed, but not to sleep.

"What are we gonna do tomorrow?" he asks.
"Don't know. Something. Not shopping."
"Not in that store anyway. I wish we were home already."
"Yeah, me too."
"Some vacation."
"Blame the terrorists. If they are the terrorists."
"We really should tell somebody if Jamie saw something."
"Dunno. If he is lying or mistaken, there is no point. And if he is telling the truth, who are you gonna tell? What are you doing? I am not in the mood."
"Me neither, but it might make us feel better."
"Yeah, very romantic, thanks."
"We aim to please," he says in English.
"That would make a good slogan for a shooting range."

There are very few bad moods in the world that an appropriate touch in he right place cannot cure. When we are done I am feeling a lot more cheerful until I think of tomorrow. Oh well, we can always come back early.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Sarah> Hi
<Sarah> What's going on? The backlog is huge.
<Elina> Jamie was in that bombed store in St. Petersburg; he is not seriously hurt.
<Nate> You wouldn't believe it: a big fish hit him right on the ass and got stuck there. Doctors had to pull its teeth out with pliers.
<Sarah> LOL
<Hanne> Did anyone actually see the moment of the bombing?
<Else> No, but I saw a few seconds later: it was dark and he was lying on a huge pile of clothes and trying to feel his butt with his hands. There were several big aquariums on the second floor, and lots of people on the first got hit by aquarium debris.
<Diego> Hi
<Diego> LOL (the fish)
<Diego> Do you think he did it?
<Hanne> Unlikely. The police found RDX there, so it was probably natural.
<Diego> I kind of resent the use of the word "natural" to mean everything that is not related to the Skills. What are we, unnatural?
<Hanne> Sorry but you know what I mean.
<Sarah> In any case there are people who can make explosives. Using the Skills, I mean.
<Elina> This is a very rare Skill. About 70 of us can use the Skills to blow things up, but there are only 5 people who have enough chemical Skills to actually generate RDX. Terrorists are a lot more common.
<Sarah> He is a weird-looking guy, BTW.
<Hanne> Weird? Looks like a fairly normal Scandinavian face to me.
<Sarah> Yeah, but the combination of that and really dark eyes and hair. Do Scandinavian people ever come naturally in this color?
<Hanne> They sure do, even though it's not too common. You should've seen Else before she went gray.
<Else> His hair seems a little bluish, so it's dyed anyway.
<Sarah> Where is he now?
<Elina> In that apartment, reading something on his laptop.
<Diego> Anyone try to break into his computer?
<Nate> Wei and I tried. We can't.
<Diego> I thought you were a computer genius.
<Nate> He is not even online right now.
<Nate> Diego, breaking into people's computers is much harder than in the movies. There is a Skill for almost everything, but not for decrypting a good encryption.
<Nate> And this guy is a pro. *You* go and try to break into BOFH's computer.
<Diego> Ok, ok.
<Nate> Our best bet is to look at the keyboard when he is typing the password. What is he doing now?
<Hanne> OMG, he is reading this channel!
<Nate> Impossible. Real-time?
<Diego> Ahaa, "can't break in"...
<Hanne> Nate: what do you mean?
<Nate> Hanne: is he reading what we are writing right now?
<Hanne> No, it's from a few hours ago.
<Diego> How did he get in?
<Elina> I did not even tell him we had a channel.
<Sarah> He can be any one of us.
<Nate> Or any of the lurkers, there is like a hundred of them.
<Hanne> Yeah, but was he one of us all along or did he replace somebody and what happened to them?
<Diego> We all need to See each other with Sight, now.
<Nate> That was a relief, but how do we know about the lurkers?
<Elina> I think it's much simpler, and one of us is sending him the logs. One or more of us.
<Else> Elina, you are cynical.
<Elina> I prefer the term "experienced".
<Sarah> Should we try to find out more about his family? I mean, parents and siblings?
<Else> At this age there is not a lot of point in it. But it would be nice to find out about the wife. It's hard though, we tried already. She has a blog but never says anything useful there.

* * *

We wake up when the lights go out, after having fallen asleep with the lights on. It's not the whole block, because there are some lights in the street. We try to search for our clothes on the floor, decide to forget it, and go to look for the fuse.

The living room is much darker than the bedroom. There are only two little greenish-blue lights on the wall across from us, like two eyes. Either this room has electricity, or those work on batteries. Except that they don't look like LEDs, they look like actual eyes, sort of like a cat's, but a little brighter, and their light does not seem to be reflected from anywhere.

"Look," I whisper to Timo, "those look just like eyes!"

The lights blink.

"Hey guys, do you remember where the fuses are?" asks Jamie from the darkness. "My bad, I thought this grid here could withstand the dishwasher and the kettle simultaneously, but guess not... Hope these are automatic fuses. This darkness is scary."
"Get over here right now," Timo whispers. "There is something glowing on the wall next to you, looks like eyes."
"Where?"
"You probably can't see it from there, get over here!"

He comes up to us.

"Eyes? Where?"
"On your face, Jamie. On your face. Blue. Glowing."
"Oh. Bugger."
"Who are you and what did you do to our Jamie?" asks Timo. Under the circumstances it's really not funny, especially since his voice is trembling.
"Not funny. There has been really weird shit happening. But glowy eyes is a new one."

For a second I consider telling Timo to run, and wonder for how many seconds I can stop glowy-eyed Jamie if he decides to give chase. Kind of hopeless, really, considering that I couldn't even stop him on a normal day. For another second I look around for weapons, just in case. The next moment I feel deeply ashamed: one of my oldest friends, who is also sort of family, is clearly having a problem - I am sure that eyes that glow in the dark qualify as such - and my first reaction is to assume is that he became some kind of an evil alien creature. I hug him, trying to comfort him, at the same time aware of the possibility that he is indeed an evil alien creature. Timo is apparently thinking along the same lines, because at first he recoils and then pats Jamie on the back.

We make out way to the bathroom and the bathroom mirror, so he can get a look at himself. Only the irises are glowing, and the glow is neither very strong nor constant, getting stronger and weaker.

"Bugger," he repeats. "Let's go find the fuses."

I find the fuse, and it is automatic. In the bright light things don't look as scary, even though the fact that Jamie has clothes on and Timo and I are naked becomes a lot more obvious. At least his eyes don't glow anymore.

He is less shocked than I would be if I were him, and he turns the dishwasher off and the kettle on, and sits down on the sofa. We come really close and stare at him, which probably looks pretty comical.

All kinds of ideas about evil demons, posessions, clones, aliens and similar creatures come to my mind. Also bites by radioactive spiders, or, more appropriately, radioactive piranhas. I stare at him harder, cursing in my mind every sci-fi and fantasy movie I've ever seen. There are scars on his cheeks that, after some pretty good plastic surgery and 14 years, are only really visible to people who know where they used to be and where to look. They are still there, and I assume that anyone who'd make such a perfect clone would make sure to make normal non-glowy eyes, too. Argh, damn all the sci-fi to hell, what am I thinking...

"Looking for the scars?" he grins, "Yeah, they are still there."
"Take your contacts off," says Timo.
"Need a mirror," says Jamie, gets up, and goes to the bathroom, "come on in".

He takes the brown contacts off - his eyes are, or rather used to be, dark brown - and looks at us with blue-black eyes, approximately the same color as his hair. This is extremely disturbing, although not quite as disturbing as some of his funkier contacts. He sighs and puts his contacts back in.

"How long has this been going on?" I ask, "have you been to a doctor or something? Did you hair also start turning that color? Is that why you dyed it?"
"About five weeks. Yes, I have been to a doctor, and he said something along the lines of 'holy shit', took some hair, blood and piss for tests, wrote a diagnosis that basically said 'the man's hair and eyes are turning blue for no reason, now that's really weird', and told me that I am pretty much ok otherwise. And yes, my hair started turning that color."
"All over your body?" Timo is curious.
"Hmm, everywhere where I used to have black hair. The blond hairs," he runs a finger over the blond hairs on his arm, "remained blond, though I half-expected them to become sky-blue. But the glowing eyes are a new development."
"Could it have something to do with the piranha? Are you scared?"
"I was, but then I ran into some people who know that this has happened to a few dozens more people and nothing dramatically bad came out of it. So now I am just sort of concerned. About the social and cosmetic implications, too. I don't think the piranha has anything to do with it."
"It's a beautiful hair color, and a lot of people have funky colors nowadays."
"Yeah, but it's a pretty awful eye color. Hey, the tea is ready."

Timo and I grab some towels for the sake of public decency, and we have some tea. At some point Katie comes out of their room, sleepy and wrapped in a towel.

"Why are you all drinking tea in the middle of the night? Is there any left?" she pours herself a cup and sits down with us, "Damn, who ate all the biscuits?"
"There are still some cream puffs left," points out Jamie.

Katie gives him a hairy eyeball that makes it perfecly clear what she thinks about the husbands who eat all the chocolate cookies during the night and offer their wives some unworthy cream puffs. I wonder whether I should tell Katie anything about Jamie's problems. On one hand, it's his own business. On the other hand, she sort of deserves to know, and he more likely than not decided not to worry her. But than again this kind of things is hard to conceal from one's own spouse.

"My eyes started glowing in the dark," Jamie tells her.
"Oh. Bugger. Show me," she certainly sounds like she already knows about the other problems.

They go to the bathroom for a minute, then come back. We all finish our tea and go to our respective beds.

"Wow," says Timo, "I thought this kind of thing only happened in the movies."
"Me too. I kept thinking about evil aliens and demons and suchlike. But it is after all just our Jamie with glowing eyes."
"You've watched too much Buffy. If there is such a thing as too much Buffy. Maybe he is a special cookie-eating demon?"
"Not funny. Hope he is gonna be OK."
"I hope so too. Do you know what Katie does for a living?"
"Some kind of biological research. Why?"
"That much I know, but do you know what exactly?"
"She never talks about it. Are you asking whether she has anything to do with it? She would never..."
"Not even if he asked her very nicely?"
"Not even then. Shit, what if this thing is contagious?"
"Eek."

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.

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.

The car is really fun to drive. It has a rear-wheel drive and makes very manly sounds, probably due to the air cooling, which elicits the same surface thought in everybody present simultaneously "the damn thing is broken!". It isn't, however, and it is quite capable of the 100 km/h that its manual promises. I wonder if I can make it go even faster with Skills...

"Mira? It's Elina again."
"Whassup?" I shield my mind from my friends the best I can.
"Not to worry you, but people have started disappearing. Our people. Please call me if they show up there."
"All right. Can't you see for yourself?"
"I'd think so, but lately a lot of things happened that I should have seen but didn't."
"Like us?"
"Like you. Do you all have the Skills now? We know about everyone except Tarja."
"Ask her. Here's the number." I give her the phone number.
"OK, I understand."
"Elina - how come you guys call them Skills and not superpowers?"
"Everyone agreed that superpowers would be too tacky and too sci-fi."
"But this is sci-fi stuff."
"It still feels tacky. Mira - there is one more thing."
"Yeah?"
"That flashover that Jamie had - it causes brain damage. Not permanent and not severe, but still... Most likely this will just feel like a headache to him, but he might start behaving irrationally."
"More irrationally that usual? I'll keep this in mind. Not that I can subdue him or anything... Hold on, what flashover?"
"The one you saw in their bedroom. You have mind-sense, so to you it must have looked like a flash of black fire."
"You mean like the one inside... I did not see any flashover! I just went straight in there and saw that the bed was ruined. Was that it?"
"You waited at their door for a minute and looked like you were watching them through it. That's when it happened and then you went in. You don't remember? But you did see the black fire somewhere? Mira, if any of your party has the black fire constantly in them, this is a very serious problem! Please tell me!"
"I've seen it. No, not constantly," I lie.
"Are you sure? Because it is very dangerous. What you see as the black fire is the energy used for the physical and chemical Skills. When everything is OK it seems to dissipate into the person's body and reappear when the person is using the Skill. If it looks like the fire is constantly there, it means the Skills has not properly integrated with the person's conscious mind. Very dangerous for themselves and others."
"What... what can be done about it? Can it be integrated? Or removed, or transferred somewhere?"
"Yes, it can be integrated, but that needs professional intervention. I can do it. But it cannot be removed or transferred from person to person."
"OK. Another thing: how do I know if somebody is changing my memories?"
"If they are old memories, trivially," she shows me a complex image, "and if they are new memories, under a few hours old, you cannot. Fresh memories can be erased without a trace, but it has to be within four hours max. But if the erased memory is long enough, there will be sort of an empty space where it used to be. This one wasn't nearly long enough though."
"Thanks for telling me all this."
"Anyway, I am planning on getting down south tomorrow. It would be nice if you could all stay together somewhere on the Finnish side. If you can make it to Lappeenranta, there is another woman with Skills there, Sinikka. She is not very powerful and I don't think it would be wise for her to approach you, but you can call on her in an emergency. Or otherwise."
"I'll see what I can do. I still don't really trust you, but it looks like I can't trust anyone anymore anyway."
"Mira, these people are still your friends and your boyfriend. They are just shocked and traumatized. Like you are."
"I know. I am just pissed."

Mind-shield still up, I grab Jamie by the hair and turn his face towards me, still keeping my own eyes on the road.

"Jamie. I am not loving the new you. I know you are a very powerful critter nowadays, and probably always were, but if I catch you altering my memories ever again, I swear you won't be able to sit on that ass of yours for a week."

This gets his attention, and everyone else's.

"I am sorry," he says. "I really couldn't let you remember that thing. I am sorry for making you forget it, and I am sorry for keeping some of the information from the rest of you. There are some things we should really keep private. And when those Community people will start to interrogate us - and that's a 'when', not a 'if' - I can keep our secrets and the rest of you can't."
"If you are the only one keeping them, they are your secrets, not ours," points out Timo.
"Trust me, it's better this way."
"Problem is, I don't see any reasons to trust you at the moment," I say. "You keep reading our minds, and editing them to your convenience. I am sure you do it with the best of intentions, and according to your better judgement. Problem is, I want to use my own judgement, even if yours really is better."
"Jamie can read minds?" Rudy is shocked.
"Hello, where have you been for the last three hours?" says Katie.

I think we are losing track of who knows what about whom. I am losing track, anyway. In any case the wave of hatred, fear and shame coming from Rudy is so palpable that it doesn't require any active reading, in fact it's difficult to shut it out of my mind. I try to concentrate on the road.

"Love," says Katie, "just tell us those things we are not supposed to know. If we decide we'd rather not know them, you can wipe them out from our minds again."
"I'll think about it, OK? I think it's better you read the Community wiki first. I have downloaded it, it's in my laptop."

Katie gets the laptop, finds the stuff and starts reading out loud. Timo, Tarja and myself are listening. Jamie and Rudy are having a telepathic fight of epic proportions. The details are shielded from the rest of us, but the emotions run so high and so obvious that I feel like opening the windows.

The Community, or some sort of a community of people who have the Skills, has existed forever, or at least longer than the records have been kept. The records, incidentally, have been kept for about 200 years now and are now online. There are 607 of them; we are listed as tentative future members 608-612.

They believe, but are not sure, that there has always been about 1 of them per 10 million of normal population, but they are not evenly distributed. The distribution seems to depends both on the ethnicity and the location in complicated ways. About half of them were born with the Skills; about half were so-called potentials who have acquired the Skills later in life.

The potentials are born with the potential, and nobody knows why. The acquisition of the Skills often happens under a high stress, but often for no known reason.

The Skills vary. Everyone can communicate telepathically, and everyone has the Sight, or so they believed until they met Jamie. Now that they have 4 instances of people without the Sight but with other Skills, they are speculating whether or not the Skills-aura they can perceive by Sight is in fact Sight-aura, and whether there are many other Sightless Skilled people running around. They are not happy about the idea.

Reading minds is a common Skill, but they think Jamie is uncommonly powerful at it. Powerful mind-readers can also make permanent changes, for example erase memories. The Skill that I used on the evil henchman leader, where I made him obey my orders, is called coercion, and is considered a different Skill. Its effects disappear when the person is gone.

There is no exhausive list of Skills there; many are listed, and they are just grouped into mental, physical, chemical, etc. There is also a medical Skill, healing. Some degree of it is common, but being really good at it is rare. There are also elemental Skills, an increased ability to manipulate some particular element or chemical, also rare. There is a list of people who have this Skills, and what they can do. Katie, being a longtime player of Exalted, wonders whether fire, water, earth, air and tree are on the list, but of course they aren't. The water probably could be, though.

There are several people who can rejuvenate themselves, and a ferocious debate of whether this means they can live forever. On one hand, nobody sees why not, an the other hand, they are all human-aged now. Is this a new Skill, and if not, what happened to the people who used to rejuvenate before? And if yes, how did it appear?

There are also many ways of spinning illusions, some of which are considered mental Skills and some physical.

Their main concern seems to be newbies who panic and misuse their Skills in gross ways. Their second concern seems to be studying the Skills scientifically, which some of them seem to do for a living.

There are lots of instructions of how to deal with the newbies, but none on how to deal with the normal people. Not even "please don't describe your Skills to the tabloids".

Nothing on the black fire that Elina hasn't told me already.

A list of names, and we look for celebrities. Two third-world dictators, two famous athletes, three famous musicians and one actress. Heh.

"Do we want to go back to Helsinki today?" I ask. "The weekend is young, let's rent a cottage somewhere and try to work this stuff out."
"As long as it's in Finland," says Tarja.
"Of course."
"You do realize that the Community will find us anywhere, right?" says Jamie, who doesn't seem to like the idea.
"Yeah, but nobody else will. And I don't feel like going home."

Everyone agrees, as long as the cottage had inner plumbing, Internet and a proper lakeside sauna.

We return the car in Viipuri and rent another one, now in Katie's name. Crossing the border is surprisingly easy, even though I am ready to tell the border guards "these are not the droids you are looking for". We arrive in Lappeenranta, find an Internet cafe, and search for a cottage on the Net. While Timo is looking for a cottage, I order myself a pyttipannu and a Coke, and it sure feels good to finally have a peaceful lunch away from the Russian mafia. Katie, Timo and Tarja follow my example. Rudy buys himself a drink instead, and then another. Jamie buys a yogurt and sits down, looking at it like Bin Laden at a pork chop, and occasionally staring wistfully at our food. His stomach is really sore, which in conjunction with Elina's earlier warning about the brain damage makes me wonder where his brain is located. Although he has a headache, too.

Jamie - or somebody - is still shielding Rudy's mind from my reading, but the anger, the fear, the guilt and the shame seep through. Rudy seems to be very deep in his own personal hell.

Katie's black fire has grown again, and is growing further. So is her pain and guilt. I am almost convinced she killed the four evil henchmen, but if so, what's Rudy's problem? Or did they do it together?

Tarja is bracing herself for the imminent end of the relationship, but is determined to preserve friendships.

Timo is taking the whole thing the easiest, looking forwards to playing with the Skills and meeting the Community people, and only occasionally shuddering at the thought of the dead bodies we left behind. He rubs his cheek against mine, and although at this point I am quite sure he cannot affect my mind directly, it does make me feel better.

"Can you shield both our minds from reading?" he asks.
"Yeah. Jamie can get through the shielding, but I'd notice. Unless, of course, he erases the memory of it."
"Are you sure he erased some memory from your mind?"
"Back in the apartment, when I came back with the car, did I stand in front of their bedroom doors for a while?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Well, I don't remember it. And after that in the car I said something and he started thinking 'eek, does she remember?'."
"What was it?"
"Something about their burnt bed. I guess I am not supposed to remember how it came to be that way. And I don't."
"Do you know how the memory erasing thing works?"
"Elina says it has to be done within 4 hours max for it to work properly. I don't know anything else."
"Well, it's something."
"Do you think Elina is trustworthy?"
"How should I know?" He adds as an aside "I don't even know if you are trustworthy", without realizing that I can hear his thoughts, and not only whatever he tries to communicate to me.
"I can hear that. I can read your mind," I say, and immediately regret it. "I'll try not to, but it's hard."
"Have you tried to write it, too?"
"No, but the temptation is sometimes strong."
"I can imagine."

"We probably need to buy some food on the way to the cottage," I say.
"And drink," adds Rudy.
"We... I need to visit some forest for a second. Preferably with a lake," says Jamie.
"What do you need a lake for?"
"A little experiment. Same kind that destroyed my clothes, but this time I don't want to damage anything, OK?"
"OK, but we should buy you some new clothes first, just in case," says Katie.
"You don't have any faith in me, do you?"
"No," reply all five of us simultaneously.
"OK, let's get some clothes," he answers amiably, apparently relieved by our lack of faith.

We download some maps of the area and go shopping. After buying some new clothes and a paper map "just in case", we drive to one of the small lakes. The road ends about 300 meters from the lake. There doesn't seem to be anyone around, and my Sight and mind-sense don't find anyone either. Jamie is also searching for people with his mind-sense, and not finding any. Katie is not using hers.

"This should be OK," Jamie says. "Wait for us in the car."
"Elina says that the thing you were doing causes some brain damage," I say.
"What does she know about it?" His question is not rhetorical.
"She saw the flashover. The one that burned the bed."
"Does she know what caused it?"
"Some misuse of the Skills. Anyway, you are pretty sore already. Be careful."
"I think all the damage I could do to myself is already done. Killed all the bacteria that's supposed to be in the digestive tract, for one thing."
"I'll add a pharmacy to our shopping list," says Tarja.
"Did you destroy everything around you that's not part of you?" I ask. "Then your stitches from yesterday are gone, too. Thank your lucky stars it wasn't a bigger wound."
"I am thanking my lucky stars I don't have any dental fillings. Now that would have hurt. But don't worry. Everything is gonna be OK, except maybe two square meters of the beach."

He takes Katie by the hand, and they start walking towards the lake. She is all broken inside and full of black fire again.

"Wait in the car my ass!" says Rudy and gets out. The rest of us get out too.

"I'll follow them," I say. "See what they are up to."
"We should all go," says Rudy.
"I can do it without being seen. The rest of you can't."

I follow them, watching them with my Sight. I could do it from the car, of course, or from Sweden, but somehow it seems to be better to follow them. I an trying to stay out of the mind-sense range.

There are two small hills between the car and the lake. After they pass the first one, Jamie takes all his clothes and accessories off, puts them down, says "brr", and goes on naked.

After they are over the second hill, I pass the first one, but as soon as I try to go up the second one, Jamie's voice appears in my mind:

"This is close enough. Stop right here."
"Oh, fuck."
"And since you've followed us, do us a favor: check if there is anyone around."
"Too late, they've already gone blind."
"I am serious."
"No, there isn't anybody except us."
"Lie down now. Just in case something happens. You can watch us through the hill with your Sight, but don't get into the line of sight, I mean the regular eyesight. It might be a bit bright. Close your ears, too, just in case."
"Oh, fuck off..." I start, but then give up and close my eyes.

They have a telepathic conversation which I cannot hear, but I can see that she is scared, and he is trying to reassure her, but is quite scared himself. She lifts a stick, turns away from him, brings it within a couple of centimeters of her lips and blows on it. A five-meter flame comes out of her mouth.

"Whoa! Behave yourself! We don't need a fire here!"
"It's raining like hell."
"OK, let's do it."

She lies down on the shore right near the water, and he lies down right in the water, swearing both mentally and audibly. The water is probably just a couple degrees above freezing and his Skills obviously don't include warming it up.

Tentacles of black fire come out of her and enter his body at many points. I try to check what it feels like and recoil, swearing, because at the same time I feel the cold water that he is lying in. "Not a good idea," he comments dryly.

The tentacles start pumping black fire into him, and I don't need to connect to any part of his sensory input to see that this hurts. His mind, which is not shielded from reading at the moment, is trying to keep this up for as long as possible in spite of the pain. He manages to hold out for a bit over a minute before he cuts it off. The tentacles withdraw, and then he realizes that something has gone wrong, and mentally screams "run! get down! don't look!" to all of us, especially Katie.

She runs over the hill and towards me. I am already lying down and not looking, so I figure that running would be superfluous, but I relay his screams to Timo and Rudy behind me, who immediately hit the ground and take Tarja with them.

Katie throws herself on the ground right next to me and hugs me. Jamie is engulfed in a flash of black fire that boils the water all around him. His mind screams "oh, shit!" but it doesn't sound or feel like a last scream of a person expecting imminent death, more like the regular "oh, shit!" when he realizes he just fucked something up.

The water is carrying him towards the center of the lake really fast, but he is still within the range of my mind-sense. The black fire subsides, but he keeps expecting something bad and urging us to take cover and not look. Katie and I have our eyes closed and our hands over our ears, but I can see everything with Sight and relay it to her.

An explosion makes it feel like the hill just dropped down half a meter, but I am not sure it has, and a huge flame comes out of Jamie. It is not killing him, or even hurting him as much as the black fire did, but it is enormous, several kilometers high and impossibly bright, and it keeps burning.

I check on everyone with my mind-sense, and nobody seems to be injured. I am still scared shitless, because a flame that size cannot be good. I can feel Jamie's mind check on us all, too. After realizing that he is not injured, we are not injured, and innocent bystanders are not injured or indeed present he relaxes a bit, thinking about all this power running through him and regretting that it cannot be his, or even be put to some practical use, but instead has to dissipate like that. Suddenly I realize that since he is not using his physical senses and does not have the Sight, he has no idea about the kilometers-high flame, or the fact that the lake has become a mushroom cloud. Right now might not be the best moment to tell him, either.

"Your mind-sense doesn't include animals, does it?" asks Katie.
"No."
"Neither does his. But I could feel all the fish die. And birds. And a moose."
"Fuck the moose," mentally comments Jamie.

The fire disappears and everything is very silent. All that's left of the lake is a cloud of vapor, the empty lakebed, and a pit about 50 meters deep and 100 meters in diameter. From the bottom of the pit comes an infinitely embarassed "oh, bugger".

"Is it safe now?" I ask.
"Yeah. Help me out of here."

Timo, Rudy and Tarja are running towards us. We pick up Jamie's clothes and come to the edge of the pit.

"You all right?" asks Rudy. "Told ya not to eat the Russian beans."
"The exact answer would be 'not permanently injured, and probably not in need of medical help'," answers Jamie. "Where did the lake go?"
"Right over there," says Timo, pointing up at the vapor cloud.
"Oh. What happened?"
"You are asking us?" - says Tarja.
"I think our vacation wasn't supposed to rate quite as high on the Richter scale," says Timo, "but there was an explosion and the ground shook and there was some bright flame and the lake evaporated and its bottom got damaged a bit. But don't worry, dude, we are the country of 49999 lakes, we can afford it."
"Oh. Shit."
"The flame was at least a few kilometers high," I add.
"And all the fish died," says Katie.
"Next time you decide to keep a low profile," says Rudy, "remember the first rule of the low-profile folks everywhere: 'try not to do anyting that would be seen from the moon with a naked eye'."
"I didn't think it would be that bad!"
"That's right. You never think," says Rudy.
"We gotta get out of here," reminds us Tarja. "Before anyone else comes. Do you think anyone has noticed?"
"Everyone has noticed," answers Timo. "Even the astronauts."

Jamie keeps trying to climb out, but the walls of the pit are not strong enough to hold him, and he slides down every time.

"OK, stand back, everybody," says Rudy. "I am gonna get the fucker out of there."

He concentrates for a few seconds, and levitates Jamie out of the pit. Instead of putting him down, he rotates him in the midair ass-up and grabs his clothes from Katie.

"Here is what I've wanted to do all day," he says, picks out the belt, and hits Jamie several times on the butt. He is not pulling his punches, so to say; instead he is trying to make it hurt, and it does, but the whole situation is so comical that we all laugh, including Jamie.

The really interesting thing is that yesterday's wound on his ass has healed without a trace.

Rudy puts him down in the standing position.

"You'll be getting the rest of it in the evening. For now get your clothes on and let's get out of here."

"Keep shielding my mind," reminds me Timo, as we go towards the car.

I suppress my desire to speed as we pull out of there. We are well on the highway and on the way to the town when we see several police cars and fire trucks going the other way.

"Pull over," orders Timo as we see a gas station, a cafe and a bus stop.

I pull over. He gets out of the car.

"You go on. I'll see you at the cottage."
"Timo, where are you going?" asks Katie.
"Doesn't matter. Out of here. You can only erase memories during the first four hours after they are formed. See you in four hours."
"I won't be erasing your memories!" says Jamie, hurt by the mistrust and at the same time aware that he has deserved it.
"Damn right you won't, not now," answers Timo with a smile, not really in a mean way. "You probably won't erase the others' memories either now that you can't erase mine."
"Write everything that happened just now in a file, encrypt it, and send to somebody who doesn't live in Europe," I tell Timo telepathically. "Do you have Sam's email address? Or my parents'?" Sam is my little brother, who lives in Hong Kong.
"Good idea, I'll do that."
"Take care," says Katie, "and keep your phone on."

Jamie extends a tentacle of black fire towards Timo. I hit him on the back of the head.

"Keep your tentacles to yourself!"
"Jamie has tentacles?" asks Tarja incredulously as the tentacle withdraws and Timo hastily departs.
"He can produce tentacles of black fire that are only visible to the mind-sense," I explain, seeing him cringe and enjoying it.
"No, he can't, he has just borrowed mine," thinks Katie, not with any intent to communicate telepathically, but loudly enough for Jamie and myself to hear. He cringes again.
"What in the name of holy fuck were you trying to do?" asks Rudy, but gets no answer.

I don't need to ask. He tried to heal the disruption in Katie's mind, and he managed to do it, too. He has clearly drained most of the black fire out of her, and this was probably a good thing. Except for the earthquake and the fire and the destroyed lake and the fact that we are probably gonna be the biggest news on CNN tonight, and certainly the biggest local news. And except for the fact that Elina said it could not be done. And the fact that Katie is already starting to generate more black fire.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Elina> Holy shit!
<Else> This is gonna be all over CNN and BBC in an hour or so.
<Sinikka> They already have police and army and tv crews there. I should probably put up an appearance in the name of the city council.
<Elina> Be careful. And for God's sake don't approach them in person.
<Sinikka> What am I, crazy?
<Lauri> Uh, yeah? :)
<Hanne> Where is Michael when you really need him?
<Elina> I am afraid he's gonna appear here in Finland to see Jamie about a woman.
<Lauri> That woman who died 15 years ago? Don't be silly.
<Elina> Why not? Everyone else is.
<Else> Lauri, "that woman who died 15 years ago" had a name. Faye McGrady. She wrote funny little poems, liked to eat marsipan with beer, and waved her hands all over while discussing mountaineering gear...
<Lauri> Sorry, Else, I should have remembered you knew her in person. But still I can't imagine them fighting over her right now. Life moves on. Jamie is a married man.
<Elina> Michael isn't.
<Nate> Come on, they are two adults, they are not gonna fight about it. We'd better think about what to do with evaporating lakes and huge flames.
<Elina> At least they got away from people.
<Sinikka> Next time they might not have a chance.
<Lauri> There mustn't be a next time. Not even if we have to kill them all.
<Else> Lauri, it's my grandson we are talking about!
<Lauri> I have no idea what they are doing, but it's growing fast. First the bed, then the lake and the flame. What next, the whole Europe?
<Else> Lauri, if you as much as move in that direction, Europe might survive but you certainly won't.
<Diego> I love the smell of death threats on IRC in the morning.
<Elina> For fuck's sake, stop talking about killing people. They are already fighting among themselves. I'll try to get them to put Jamie to sleep, and I'll get there tomorrow.
<Diego> Do they trust you?
<Elina> Not really, but they sound like they want to.

The mood in the car is grim. Jamie's mind is partially shielded, so that I can't read his secrets, but his emotions are plainly visible. Despite the Russian mafia, the Community, and giant flames he seems to be primarily concerned with our anger at him. He is in general deeply uncomfortable both with important secrets and with leadership, and would like us to know he is not doing all this just for fun. He is also starting to realize that Katie's ability to grow the black fire is growing at a higher rate than his ability to absorb or dissipate it, but when I try to read deeper into it, he shuts me out. His mind keeps touching our minds in several-second intervals, asking for physical touch. I feel like yelling at him for that too, but then realize that he doesn't even know it, and pat him on the head absent-mindedly.

Katie is also thinking about the black fire and what to do with it. The actual plans, if any, are concealed from me, but she is very grim about it. The basic idea is that she is not intending to let Jamie repeat this performance, but doesn't have better ideas either. She feels very guilty, and afraid of the Community, and worried about Jamie. Her worries are very morbid, along the lines of "what will happen to him when I die?" and "what will happen to all of us if I go totally insane?". She also keeps thinking about the dead people we left behind, in very gruesome detail. Strangely enough, at the same time she manages to think about work. Some visualized chemical formulas come to her mind, and she thinks about concentrations of some chemicals somewhere, and what dissolves in water and what doesn't...

"Stop reading my mind!"
"Sorry. My own mind is wandering around, I guess."
"OK. Just try not to," she says.
"Do you think we should trust Elina with the info about your black fire? She asked about it. Said it was very dangerous."
"What other options do we have?"
"I feel like telling her, but I am afraid that they might hurt you if they don't manage to fix this problem."
"Heh. You thought 'kill' but said 'hurt'. But at this point I think I'll die if it doesn't get fixed. Or Jamie will die trying to fix it. Or we all. But I don't really think they can do anything about it."
"Elina says she can. Tell her."
"You tell her. Jamie won't let me," she says.
"What is he gonna do?"
"He told me he was gonna make me fall asleep if I even try."
"Shield your mind. I can help."
"For fuck's sake, I'd have to talk to her on the phone. He might be crazy, but he ain't deaf."
"OK, I'll tell her telepathically but you'd have to talk to her anyway. We should do something about Jamie. He is totally out of control."
"I was thinking the same thing," she says.
"The worst part of it is that he might also be right. About the things we have to keep from the Community."
"Yeah, but we need their help anyway."

"Hi. It's Elina again."
"Siinä paha missä mainitaan," I say. ("Speak of the devil...")
"Listen - this is getting very dangerous. You'll need to put Jamie to sleep. I'll tell you what pharmacy to go to and what to get, and the prescription will be waiting for you there. Have you ever injected anyone with anything?"
"No. And I am not about to start," I hesitate. "No offense, but I won't be injecting a friend with something a stranger gives me, no matter how helpful she is."
"I understand, but this might save his life, and yours."
"I'll try to put him to sleep using the Skills."
"You are not powerful enough."
"I'll try. And if I fail, I'll ask you what to get and how much, and check it on the Net, and choose my own pharmacy. I am sure I can convince them to sell without a prescription."
"OK, I understand. Be careful."
"Elina, Katie has the black fire problem. It's growing inside her and not integrating. Can you do somethin?"
"I'll try to change my flight for tonight, but I am not sure I can. In any case I am coming tomorrow, can you hold out till then?"
"We'll see. I am sorry. For everything."
"Never mind, just let's try to work this out."

Katie's phone rings, and apparently Elina is trying to propose the same thing with drugs to Katie, with the same results. In the meanwhile I try to make Jamie fall asleep. He just laughs.

Rudy is also grim and scared. He is trying to recite poetry in his mind to prevent surface thoughts from being visible, but I can see that he feels horribly betrayed by the very fact that his best friend has always been able to read his thoughts and see his secrets. I also get the impression that this is not just a privacy issue, but he actually has some secrets to keep. I try to read deeper and suddenly he stares at me hatefully. Did he notice it? There is so much suppressed violence in him, it's scary.

At the same time he awfully misses his cat. One of his uppermost surface emotions is the wish to have Tiger in his lap, stroke his fur and hear him purr. Rudy visualizes the kitten - I am not sure "visualize" is the right word for also imagining the feel and the sound - with such intensity that it is contagious, and now I want to have Tiger in my lap too. Are Rudy's emotions generally contagious? Ugh.

Jamie's mind cries out in panic. He is under some kind of mental attack that he is unable to shield himself from in the regular way, and he tries to warn us all. "It's just me," says Katie telepathically so that it's audible to all of us.

Gratitude and relief are the last things that flood Jamie's mind as he passes out. Katie reaches out from the back seat and strokes his cheek.

"How did you do it?" I ask.
"I can generate quite a lot of chemicals. So I synthesized a nice drug cocktail right in his bloodstream. Much easier than fucking around with pharmacies and syringes."
"Are you sure it's safe?"
"Safer than explosions and giant fires. Of course there is always a risk involved with medication. I tried my best, and everything seems fine."
"Should have done it hours ago," mutters Rudy. "He is much nicer when asleep."
"I should take his contacts off," says Katie.
"Wait till we are parked somewhere."
"He needs some rest," she offers an explanation, although nobody has asked her for any, "and besides, I need some time without anyone reading my mind," she looks pointedly at me.
"Point taken," I nod.
"Jamie's been an asshole, so he gets rewarded with intravenous hard drugs," sighs Rudy. "Nice guys always finish last."

Damn. I realize that we still have Timo's bag with six pistols in it, and the only person who can make them look like something other than pistols is asleep. Oh well, I can probably order the police not to look there, and why would the police want to anyway?

We drive to the nearest shopping center. Jamie's mind, though asleep, keeps touching all of ours, and I start wondering whether the mind-sense is always somewhat awake and capable of reacting to stimuli, just like sight and hearing, and whether this constant mind-polling is the way it does it. In any case I don't want to say anything secret in his presence even when he is asleep.

Katie takes his contacts out, much to Rudy's and Tarja's surprise, and with practiced ease. She doesn't feel like leaving him alone in the car, but she needs to talk to Elina away from him, and we convince her that not many people would want to steal a car with a sleeping guy in it. Before leaving the car I touch Jamie's face and try to read his mind. He is really asleep and there is not a lot to read, but I am pretty sure the mind-sense registers the touch and identifies me as its source. Interesting.

As soon as we try to leave Jamie reaches out to Katie's mind and stops her. Without waking up.

"You go ahead, guys," she says. "I'll stay here."
"Are you sure?" I ask. "Don't you realize that he..."
"Yeah, I noticed it too. It's OK, if he wants me here so much..."
"Are you sure? This is not right," I say, tugging on her sleeve, trying to edge away from Jamie, and at the same time shielding my mind, so that my distress doesn't attract his attention or make him more alert.
"Yes, I am sure," she frees her sleeve. "I absolutely trust you three to buy food and drinks." She is much calmer than myself, but the black fire inside her is growing again. "I can make the phone call from here, he is not awake enough to stop me,", she adds telepathically.

What makes her so sure? In any case, she takes her phone out and starts dialing, and he does not stop her.

"I am starting to be really afraid of Jamie," says Tarja as soon as we walk into the shopping center.
"I am just really pissed off," answers Rudy.

I am occasionally afraid, but mostly pissed off too. I just know him too well to be really afraid, but at the same time keep needing to remind myself all the time that, unlike the rest of us, he has had the Skills all his life without anything terrible happening. In a way, this is not a reassuring thought. What had he read in my mind all those years - or written? Could he have stopped me when I decided to leave him? Was I voluntarily with him in the first place? Did Katie marry him out of her own free will, really? He is attractive, intelligent and socially pleasant, but all of that is usually not nearly enough to rate a woman who looks like a model and earns an unusually good salary.

And an even grimmer thought: were the events in Angola 15 years ago his fault after all? He used to have moments of intense self-loathing at the time - did he somehow attract that band of outlaws to himself and his friends there, lured them possibly without knowing?

And what is Rudy so angry about anyway? He didn't date Jamie, after all, thank God for small favors. I try to read his mind cautiously. Oh, Rudy... I guess he is not as 100% heterosexual as he wants to be after all. Always thought he did protest too much. This certainly feels like an appropriately guilty secret, but on a deeper reading it cannot be, because he'd already told Jamie about it anyway. Which was really brave of him, BTW, considering how touchy he is on the subject.

Rudy slowly turns towards me and glares at me malevolently. Can he tell when I am reading him? I suppress my impulse to immediately withdraw, give him as innocent a look as I can under the circumstances and continue reading. Yes, he can feel something, but he is not 100% sure it's me.

He starts reading poetry in his mind to prevent me from reading, just in case, but he is not terribly good at it, and the two thoughts that he wants to suppress are "Debbie" and "Rebecca". What the hell? Has he been in contact with his ex-wives? Both of them? Do I even want to know more?

I firmly decide to leave reading Rudy's mind to Jamie, whenever he wakes up and feels like it. Maybe I should take his advice and concentrate on strangers.

"What in the bloody hell is that?" suddenly asks Rudy.
"A shopping center," explains Tarja in an even tone.
"No, that!" he points.
"Alko."
"Why is it closed? It's fucking Saturday!"
"It's not fucking Saturday, honey. It's Easter Saturday."

Rudy sighs and rolls his eyes. We walk into a supermarket.

"Can you guys shop on my behalf too?" I ask. "I want to send a message to Timo."
"Sure, what do you want?"
"Beer, sausage, bread, tea, chocolate. The sausage should have actual meat in it."
"OK."

I send Timo a message saying that we have put Jamie to sleep and are coming the the cottage right after the shopping. He answers that he is OK and is probably gonna make it to the cottage before us, and also wants beer and sausage and chocolate. I try to See him. He is in some downtown cafe with a piece of cake and a smoothie, looking fairly content.

Twenty minutes later Rudy and Tarja appear with a grocery cart containing what is, under the circumstances, an extremely good selection of beer and food.

For a minute I don't bother to use any of my new senses, and so I realize that the car is gone only when we come to the place where it used to be and silently stare at the spot.

"Kääk," says Tarja after a few seconds.
"Shit," I say.
"Where the hell did my sister go?" Rudy is more articulate than either of us.
"I'll tell you where they are if you promise not to hurt anyone," says Elina's voice in my head.
"Sure, whatever."
"That Sinikka that I mentioned earlier, she kidnapped them. I don't think she wants to do anything bad, probably just wants to talk to them in private. I'll give you the address, but please don't hurt her."
"OK, give me the address."
"You can see them by Sight," she reminds me, and gives me the address.

We load the groceries into a cab with appropriate curses, inform Timo about the change of plans, and give the driver the address. In the meanwhile I find the place by Sight.

Sinikka turns out to be a tall woman of about sixty, in a pant suit and with a hairstyle reminiscent of Hillary Clinton. She obviously has some strength-enhancing Skill, because she carries sleeping Katie into her house by herself and lays her down on a bed. She then carries Jamie and puts him down on a sofa in the living room.

She moves a lamp close to the sofa, sits down, takes some of his hair in her hands and starts inspecting it. She continues by looking at his scalp, eyebrows, eyelashes, and very carefully opens his fly to look at the hair there, looking rather comically disappointed at the fact that this particular area is shaved. Then she closes his pants just as carefully, gets a thermometer out of a drawer, and sticks it under his arm. Still taking care not to wake him up, she gently pulls on his head hair to get a few shed hairs, which she puts in an envelope and in a drawer after staring at them intensely for a while. She then sits down in front of her computer.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Sinikka> I got Jamie and Katie in my place.
<Elina> No, you idiot: after they wake up, *they* have got *you* in your place. Not to mention that Mira, Rudy and Tarja are coming.
<Sinikka> Shit, when?
<Elina> 20 minutes or so.
<Sinikka> OK, I'll tell you what I found: Katie has immensely powerful chemical Skills, unintegrated.
<Lauri> So, Sinikka, how does it feel to have an active volcano in your bedroom? :)
<Else> Lauri, shut up.
<Elina> Sinikka, we know already, she called me and told me.
<Sinikka> Huh?
<Nate> Heh
<Sinikka> Jamie does not seem to have physical Skills in significant amounts, or chemical Skills at all. I think the only possible explanation for the fire is that he can channel his wife's Skills in some way.
<Diego> Holy shit. Do you know whether he can channel anyone's Skills, or just hers?
<Sinikka> No idea. Also, his hair has been dyed very dark blue a few days ago, but I took a sample of shed hairs and it looks like it's also growing naturally in that color. It's probably too early to know if he is getting some elemental Skills. Also, he seems to have some runaway healing process all over his body. He does have some self-healing Skill, but nowhere enough to have caused this, and Katie has about the same amount.
<Elina> Can you see what and where and how bad?
<Sinikka> It's hard to say what it is doing, but it's in various spots in cheeks, hands, chest, genitals and butt. He is also running a fever. 38.4.
<Else> These are sites of old injuries.
<Elina> Then he is just rehealing old wounds, it's a healing screwup that happens sometimes. Not very dangerous, but quite draining.
<Sinikka> Should I do something? I am not sure I am good enough at that. And where the hell did the healing come from in the first place? His own Skill would have taken many weeks to do all that, but this is happening in hours.
<Elina> Hard to say without seeing him, but if this is just a rehealing then rest and fluids and aspirin should do. Also food if he can keep it down.
<Sinikka> Elina, most importantly: he feeds on people.
<Lauri> He what?
<Else> Huh? There is no such thing as feeding on people.
<Nate> We got ourselves a real live vampire? Cool!
<Hanne> Nate, there is no such thing, idiot.
<Diego> I can't believe it.
<Perv> I second Nate.
<Sinikka> He feeds on people's minds - mental energy - all the time, every few seconds, while asleep. Doesn't take any dangerous or even noticeable amounts, but it's still scary.
<Elina> Are you sure?
<Sinikka> Absolutely. He's been feeding on Katie and myself ever since I got into their car.
<Elina> Are you OK?
<Sinikka> Yes, I said he is not taking much at a time. Just like taking a sip of water out of a lake, it doesn't really hurt anyone. The problem is how much energy can he suck out of a person if he wants to?
<Elina> Sinikka, for Christ's sake don't experiment.
<Sinikka> I'll try to wake him up and talk to him.
<Nate> Famous last words?
<Sinikka> Nate, I talk to politicians and lawyers every day, don't worry about me.
<Sinikka> Elina, when can you be here? Katie really needs an integration as soon as possible and I haven't got the Skill.
<Elina> My plane arrives tomorrow at 11. Sorry, should've told you. Be careful.

While I am trying to digest the news of Jamie feeding on people, in addition to Katie being referred to as "active volcano", Sinikka tries to wake him up. Shaking doesn't quite achieve this goal, so she takes a glass of water and throws it in his face. He wakes up screaming, throws her on the floor and runs to the bathroom to rinse his face. For a moment I wonder whether she'd used very hot water, but it doesn't seem like there is any visible burn. He looks normal, apart from having no contacts in his eyes. It's weird how a change from very dark brown eyes to very dark blue changes a person's looks, although probably not surprising considering that dark brown is a natural human eye color and dark blue isn't.

"What have you done to me?" he howls.
"Nothing!"
"Why does it hurt all over?"
"It's some kind of healing process, I thought you knew about it. Did you attempt any healing on yourself? Did anyone else?"
"Not that I know of. Can I do healing?"
"As far as I can see, only on yourself and only very slowly. This doesn't look like you did it. And by the way, forcing your way into others' mind is considered very rude."
"As opposed to kidnapping people?" he grins.
"OK, you have a point. How are you feeling?"
"It felt like my face was burning, but now it just itches. It hurts here, though," he points to the outer edges of his cheeks, "probably somewhere inside my mouth, hard to say. Is this dangerous? What exactly is it healing?"
"A botched healing sometimes reheals old scars, replacing scar tissue with whatever tissue is supposed to be there. I think that's what it is doing now. I can't say what was the original intent. It's not really dangerous, but any healing takes away some of your strength and replaces it with health, and as far as I can see you are already quite healthy and fairly weak."

He walks into the bedroom and sits down next to sleeping Katie.

"Shit."
"Exactly."

A few seconds of silence.

"We already know you can channel her energy and Skills, you don't need to keep it a secret anymore."
"I noticed when I read your mind. I'd still rather channel it somewhere far away from innocent bystanders."
"Don't! You need help. She needs help. She keeps producing more and more energy, she can't integrate it, you can't hold it, you can't pump it all out through yourself. Elina can help if she gets here in time."
"I'll call her."

Sinikka calls Elina instead, and in the meanwhile Jamie looks through the pile of mail on her table, and sends Rudy an SMS with the address and a short explanation of the situation. Sinikka explains the situation and the need to do something before Elina gets here next morning. Elina has some kind of an idea, but they decide to wait till our arrival. Then Sinikka hangs up and sits down, and it looks like Jamie and her are having some telepathic conversation. Why did she call Elina on the phone anyway? She could have had a telepathic conversation with her as well.

The taxi stops, and we get out and move our numerous groceries from the taxi to our rental car, which stands unlocked in Sinikka's yard. She is waiting for us on the porch, fear and desperation as intense as if she is facing an imminent death. Maybe she is.

"Did you follow what was happening here?" she asks me, with just a nod for a greeting.
"Yes."
"Good."
"Yeah, don't bother telling us," says Tarja.
"It's a long story," answers Sinikka and reaches out towards Tarja's mind, a move that I block.
"In short: Katie is producing huge amounts of some dangerous energy, the cavalry is not gonna get here in time but we might be able to do something, if not we are all fucked, there is something physically wrong with Jamie but it's not very dangerous, and he feeds on people," I explain as we walk into the house. "Yeah, and Community knows all his secrets."
"What do you mean, 'feeds on people'? I haven't fed on anyone for hours!" sounds from the bedroom in a comically outraged tone.
"You feed on people every few seconds," says Sinikka. "I thought you knew that."
"What do you mean, 'feeds on people'?" Rudy also wants to know.
"He feeds on their mental energies," explains Sinikka, pointing out telepathically how every time he routinely touches people's minds he sucks out a little bit of energy.
"Ugh, I didn't know that," says Jamie, somewhat annoyed by the fact that he does it without knowing, and considerably more annoyed by the fact that the matter came out.
"But I suppose you can also do it on purpose, and you knew that?" asks Sinikka.
"Yeah."
"And you can consume both energy and Skills, so that you can use others' Skills?"

He hesitates before answering. "Yeah."
"Can you take others' Skills permanently? Make them a part of yourself, make the other person lose them?"
"Never tried, and am not planning to."
"Why not?" asks Rudy.
"I am pretty sure it would kill the original owner, and am not sure what it would do to me." Jamie is genuinely shocked at the question. I am shocked at the sudden realization that if Rudy could do that, he would at least try.
"What happens if you don't feed all the time?" asks Sinikka.
"I don't know, I didn't even know I feed all the time up until now."
"Let me rephrase: what happens when there are no people within the range of your mind-sense? Has that ever happened?"
"Yes, once, when I was climbing. I got uncomfortable and eventually went to look for people."
"How fast?"
"I got uncomfortable within a minute or so, but went looking for people only the next day. Would've gone faster but I really needed rest."
"How much energy can you take while feeding?" I ask.
"As much as I want, except that the last experiment showed that I can't always hold it all. I can also feed my own energy into other people."
"What kind of energy is it? Where does it come from? We are not talking about the regular energy that the human body uses, right?" I ask Sinikka.
"It's a form of energy used for Skills, but normals have it too. We are not sure exactly what it is, but yes, ultimately it comes from eating and normal human metabolism. Jamie - can you convert the mental energy into the regular bodily energy? For example synthesize glucose out of it?"
"Not that I know of. Why?"
"Because you need it. Have some sweet tea at least, and eat something."

The suggestion is met with general enthusiasm, and we all have tea, although Jamie refuses any solid food. I didn't think I'd live to see the day. I sip my tea and inspect the monitor of Sinikka's computer with my Sight.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Elina> I can't believe it, we have another newbie with Skills here in Finland.
<Diego> Tarja?
<Elina> No, a man. At least I don't recognize him. He is driving a rental car out of the Helsinki-Vantaa airport right now. Look at him, does anybody recognize him? He does have the Sight. Can everyone within the Sight range check him out?
<Lauri> I don't know him.
<Else> No.
<Hanne> No.
<Perv> Out of range.
<Nate> No.
<Diego> What does he look like?
<Elina> White, about 30, brown hair, blue eyes.
<Diego> That really narrows it, I am sure. Did you try to Speak to him?
<Elina> He doesn't answer. Gotta go now, gonna try to get Jamie and Sinikka to integrate Katie's Skills.
<Diego> WTF? Is that wise?
<Nate> Can you do it?
<Elina> Gotta try, or else it's good-bye, Lappeenranta. Or at least a few blocks.
<Perv> Wouldn't it be easier to take her out of town and let her die?
<Diego> No.
<Nate> Perv, would you like to explain that afterwards to the husband who can literally eat people, or the brother who merely breaks walls with their heads and seems a bit short-tempered?
<Perv> I live far away and can afford bodyguards. :)
<Nate> Perv, would you prefer to deal with her cousin, who can take command of your bodyguards and can melt metal, or with the cousin's boyfriend, who was a very good shot even before he got the Skills and obviously can fly?
<Perv> Hey, it was just a suggestion.
<Diego> There shouldn't be so much power in one place.
<Hanne> Unless I get to be the leader. :)

WTF? I try to See Timo and indeed do See him, happily flying around Lappeenranta on a plastic blue mop, which, according to the still-attached tag, has been purchased in Anttila. The mop obviously has no lifting power of its own and has been bought purely for style, so couldn't he at least buy a broom? Sheesh. I really wish he were here, in a way, but it seems kind of dangerous, so I suppress the impulse to call him. I look around him to see if anybody notices, but either the locals never look up or the people who have seen the huge flame pay no attention to a guy on a blue mop.

"Eat something," - says Sinikka to Jamie. "Trust me, you need it."
"I cannot. Biting and chewing hurts too much."
"That's not good."
"No shit? We'll deal with this later. What do we need... for Katie?"
"Hold on a second."

Sinikka talks telepathically to Elina for a minute.

"You'll have to do it," she tells Jamie, "and Elina is gonna show you how. She needs direct telepathic contact to your mind, and to Katie's. Mira and I can provide it. If you don't mind?" she asks me.

In fact I kind of do mind being in some big psychic configuration with two Community people whose motives are not completely clear, Katie who apparently can explode in a huge fireball any second, and Jamie whose motives are more trustworthy, but whose methods certainly aren't. But it's not like I've got a lot of choice here, is it?

The idea is that Sinikka and I open our minds to Elina, Jamie opens his mind to me and somehow makes Katie open her mind to both Sinikka and himself. I guess only Jamie and Elina will be doing any real work, Sinikka's and my job is just to relay telepathic messages and look at whatever Elina wants us to look at.

"Gotta warn you, I am pretty fucked-up," says Jamie.
"Tell me something I don't know."
"Before you start browsing through my sex life, remember that all people seem normal until you get to know what they do in bed."
"Except you. Don't worry, I have stuck a purple didlo with flashing eyes up your ass before, there is nothing that can shock me."
"You'll be surprised."
"I did not need to hear that," says Rudy.
"Where did you buy it?" asks Tarja.
"42d street, between the 7th and the 8th," Jamie and I reply simultaneously. He gives me a high five.
"Maybe you guys shouldn't be here?" I ask Rudy and Tarja. "It might be dangerous, maybe you better go to the cottage now?"
"She is right, Tarja," says Rudy. "Why don't you go, I'll stick around here."
"Shut up."

We all go to the bedroom where Katie is asleep on the bed, her mind disrupted, more black fire that ever. Jamie lies down next to her, Sinikka and I sit down on the floor. Rudy and Tarja stand in the doorway.

Jamie opens his mind to me, and I look around curiously. I have always wondered whether all his mental problems stem from the rape and torture in Angola when he was 20, and to what extent his usually manically cheerful disposition is a mask. I'd known him for 7 years or so before Angola, but I was too young then to assess anyone's mental health, even my own.

Wow. What I see is stranger than anything I imagined. I mean, I suspected that at least some of his anxiety disorders might be congenital, but I could never imagine what it does to a young child to be able to order his parents around as he pleases. Especially a child who was suffering from anxiety disorders in a way that made him wish for more outside control over him. And especially with having Karen as his sister, and for some reason being unable to order her around.

No sexual perversion can probably compare with the weirdness of having Karen for one's only parental figure, especially since there were two real more or less normal parents in the family, and especially since Karen was only two years older than Jamie. Except that... eew, I really didn't wanna know...

"Told ya. Stop being so shocked and open your mind to Elina."
"Jamie... I am so sorry." I open my mind to Elina and she establishes contact.
"That's OK."
"That's so totally not OK. Especially since now she is expecting a child of her own."
"Don't worry, it's gonna be OK. The memory that horrified you so much was from when she was 7. She's learned quite a lot in the 30 years since then."
"Does it bother you when I look through your mind like that?"
"No, it feels warm."

Considering what we have to do right now, my concern about Karen's future kid is indeed more than a little misplaced. I watch as Jamie gets Katie to open to him and then to Sinikka. She is semiconscious in some kind of trance. Elina gives him orders through me; I don't quite understand what they mean and can see only some of what he does in Katie's mind.

I can see bits and pieces of her mind though - Elina encourages me to look there - and they are quite surprising too. I'd never had Katie for a hero-worshipping type, but the central figure in her mind is, quite literally, a larger-than-life shining hero on a white horse - her father. At some point in her life she realized that she doesn't need her man to measure up the that shining hero-image - hence Jamie - but she still doesn't understand that she doesn't need to measure up to it herself, either. This is really very hard on her, but the idea of uncle Leo in shining armor makes me laugh. In real life he is a gynecologist and a nice enough guy. I think the closest he'd ever got to horses, white or of any other color, was when he drove Katie to her riding lessons when she was a kid.

When she was very young she'd always changed her men like gloves and never showed any emotional attachment to them, and I'd always thought that Jamie managed to earn a permanent place in her bed and become her first love by the sheer awesome power of his willingness to let her experiment sexually as she pleases, and his ability to make really good lasagna and Thai curry, but in fact he is her second love. Her first love was Faye, and it was totally unrequited. Heh, I never knew she liked girls. Is everybody really bisexual? I have always thought this was propaganda.

I check Jamie's mind on this subject. No real bisexuality here. Bi-curious, though, and tried it twice voluntarily with a man, without getting any real sexual satisfaction from it. Gaah, both cases were with my cousin Lior! Now that's something I really didn't want to know! I'd always known that Lior is bisexual, but I really, really didn't need the visual image.

"Me neither," comments Elina.

The most amazing thing is that he is quite happy (Jamie, not Lior, although now that I think about it, probably Lior too), fucked-up childhood and all the other horrors and permanent traumas nonwithstanding. Or at least usually happy and generally satisfied with life, at the moments when people are not trying to kill him and his wife is not going insane and his jaws are not sore and his friends are not pissed off.

Back to Katie's mind: she really has killed those four evil henchmen, and is having trouble reconciling herself with it. Unlike myself, she cannot console herself that she did not know what would really happen; deep inside, some part of her truly believes that wicked thoughts cause evil in the real world, and that thinking it was sort of like doing it intentionally to begin with. I think most people are prone to this kind of superstitious thinking to some extent; in her it is much stronger than in most people.

This is what Jamie is trying to fix, with Elina's instructions. The work is quite intricate and takes a lot of energy. Of which he doesn't have much.

"May I feed?" he asks.
"Don't feed on Katie. You can feed on everybody else," says Elina from the safety of her home in Rovaniemi. I flip her a telepathic middle finger.
"You can feed on me if you have to. Just don't eat all of me, you know," I say.
"When have I ever eaten you? Uhmm..." He feeds on me without any visible effort or pain on either side. I just feel weaker, and his mind feels stronger. I can see him feed on Sinikka too, and continue his work. There is a very strong sense of urgency in his feeding.

Elina tells me every once in a while to look at some particular memories of Katie in Jamie's mind, and in my own, and I get a feeling that she is comparing those with some points of Katie's mind that Sinikka shows her. I can't remember the first time I saw her, and Jamie helps me with the memory retrieval: it was when she was 4 and I was 3 and her parents were visiting my parents in New York. We had an argument on whether we should play with Legos or with a toy truck. I am not sure how this is helpful to the task at hand, but then I am not a psychiatrist.

Katie's and Jamie's first meeting is much easier to retrieve; they shared a desk in the third grade. Katie's heavy metal hobby, and do I really have to go through all the songs she is fond of? Her relationship with her parents, through my eyes and Jamie's. Her feelings for Faye. Her fiery jealousy when Jamie got Faye and she didn't. Extremely deep-seated guilt about Faye's death, and about wishing death on Jamie at the time. Not because she really had anything to do with it, but because something in her, again, is having trouble distinguishing between wishing evil and doing evil. Shit, is she gonna hate me for knowing it all now? Are we all gonna hate each other? Is there any privacy anymore?

"We are done for now," says Elina after a while. "She'll need a more professional job later, but this is not an emergency anymore. You can all relax now, and somebody bring Jamie some sugar."

I close my mind to everyone, and see Katie sitting up and gasping in alarm. Jamie is lying on the bed, silent and motionless, his eyes dilated to the point that there is no visible irises of any color, just huge black pupils, glazed, his skin very pale and sweaty.

"Sugar," say several telepathic voices simultaneouly, one of those Jamie's own. Rudy is in a total panic mode, and Katie, Sinikka and I simultaneously request sugar and water, which Rudy and Tarja run and get from the kitchen.

Against my expectations getting Jamie to swallow presents no difficulty at all, and he immediately returns to the land of the people who have visible irises and can speak with their mouths. Which he uses to ask for more sugar.

"You don't have any real problem with sugar metabolism, do you?" asks Sinikka as Katie feeds him the sugar and the water.
"Not that I know of. What the hell was this?"
"Using Skills in energy-intensive ways also uses up your body's energy in ways that cannot be easily replentished by feeding on mind-energy," explains Sinikka.
"Can't my body burn fat or something?"
"Have you ever even looked at yourself in the mirror?" This is an exaggeration, he is thin but certainly not zero-fat thin. "Anyway, you can't burn fat as fast as you need to for this. The people who genuinely have physical and chemical Skills also have the metabolism that can provide the energy. You don't. Remember that the next time you decide to borrow something."

He nods weakly.

"Do we need to get him to a hospital?" asks Rudy. "Or some kind of a healer with Skills? Where is the nearest one?"
"The nearest one is Elina. He doesn't need a Healer, he needs a damn pizza."

At the sound of this magic word Jamie's mind perks up and conjures an image of a big pizza with cartoonish amounts of ham, shrimps, pineapple and garlic.

"I still can't chew anything," he sighs.
"Have some more tea," says Sinikka. "If you can get up, we can all go to the living room and have tea there."
"Do you have honey? And milk?"
"I have honey, and milk is not recommended in your current delicate state. Yoghurt might do you good, although you are probably gonna have a diarrhea no matter what."
"Just what I needed at the end of this lovely day."
"Hope Timo found us a cottage with two toilets," says Rudy.

I try to See Timo. He is in the cottage already, making himself some coffee. A quick look around the cottage shows only one toilet, but I better not share this information with Rudy.

I decide to see for myself how Jamie is feeling. There is a bit of that sick feeling that you get when you go exercising on an empty stomach, a somewhat sore feeling in said stomach, and really sore jaws. I try to check how Katie is feeling, too, but she doesn't let me. There is no black fire, though, and that's what counts.

She hugs me and says thanks. We all move to the living room, and Sinikka brings us tea. After mixing three banana yoghurts with honey and eating them, a combination that in my opinion should make even a perfectly healthy person sick, Jamie suggests we should call Elina.

"Hi, and thank you," he says, putting her on speakerphone.
"Glad I could help. Are you OK yourself?"
"Uhm, no. Most sore places are better now, but my face hurts pretty bad. What is this rehealing thing? Is it dangerous?"
"It is a common accident of Healing, and a not-so-common accident of misusing elemental powers. Basically, just heals old wounds to their pre-wound state. Not dangerous, usually, just annoying."
"Usually?" asks Katie suspiciously.
"It can be dangerous to a person who is missing really big parts of their body, like an arm or a leg. Because the body uses the rest of itself to grow it. But Jamie is not missing any big parts, or even small ones as far as I can see."
"Isn't it a good thing to heal the old scars perfectly?" asks Jamie excitedly, looking for old scars on his hands and not finding any.
"Not always. First of all if you have some new wounds you might want to do them first. A sensible Healing of old scars usually involves doing it slowly enough that it does not make you sore or sick. Besides, there are things that you might not want as they naturally were."
"What exactly does it regrow? Does it regrow tumors?"
"Not unless one had them as a small child. Those accidental Healing processes also don't regrow any sexual things that one properly acquires as an adult, such as breasts or beard follicles, but they can be regrown by a purposeful Healing. However, Jamie - if you had your tonsils or appendix out, they are now back in."
"Oh, shit!" groans Jamie. "Now I know what this is. I am growing wisdom teeth. Four of them."

He is not amused, but the rest of us are.

"Do take some calcium supplement for the next few weeks," says Elina.
"Is it forever now? I mean, if I have them pulled, will I grow new ones tomorrow?"
"Not until you screw up a Healing again."
"I didn't do it! I didn't know I could!"
"He doesn't have enough Healing Skill for such a major screwup," comments Sinikka.
"Can I really heal people? Even grow out severed limbs and stuff like that?"
"Only yourself, really - and maybe others just a little bit - and only much slower than this. Mira and Katie have this Skill too, by the way," Sinikka adds for Elina's benefit. "This is a rather common Skill. Being able to heal others properly or to heal oneself fast is quite rare."
"Can you see all the Skills in people?" asks Rudy.
"No," answers Sinikka, "but I can see you'll be able to fly. Don't start practicing anywhere too high, though. You might be able to fly too, Mira," she tells me, "but not as well as him."

A fat white cat crawls out from under the sofa and climbs in Katie's lap. Rudy is annoyed that the cat didn't choose him.

"By the way, boys and girls," says Elina, "growing out a new limb takes 6 to 8 months, and also takes all your strength during that time, so try not to lose any limbs. And if you do, reattachment is a much better choice, you can make a reattached limb work properly in a couple of weeks."
"I'll write it down in my calendar," says Jamie. "Try not to lose any limbs. Why is my stomach sore, by the way, and how can I heal it?"
"That's what always happens when you screw up with the chemical Skills, you kill the digestive bacteria. It can't be healed with Skills, it will get better by itself. You do realize that you can avoid pain by shutting down input from the affected nerves, right?"
"Yeah, I just didn't do it because I wanted to know if something new happened."
"I think for now it's quite safe to do it," says Sinikka.
"Can I use the healing Skill to fix the weird eye color?"
"Yes," says Elina, "but it will take a few weeks, and wait until you regain your strength. You can fix the hair color, too, but of course only the new growth. You can make it grow very fast, too, but do eat enough protein if you choose to do it."
"I think I'll keep the hair blue for a while. Why did it turn blue, anyway? The wiki says it might have something to do with elemental Skills."
"Are you getting some elemental Skill?"
"Not that I know of. How should I know?"
"You'll notice. In any case people sometimes get weird color changes without elemental Skills, and the other way around. Both are rare."
"OK. I really want my normal eye color back."
"For fuck's sake," sighs Sinikka, "you have the glamour Skill, you can pretend to be a giant wolf, you can have whatever damn eye color you please."
"Won't be real, though," points out Jamie, but changes his eyes to brown that very instant.
"One more thing," says Elina. "I need a telepathic connection to all of you for a sec, to show you one guy."

Sinikka provides the connection, and we see a man driving a car. About thirty, brown hair, blue eyes, British-looking if I absolutely had to guess but could be from anywhere in Central or Northern Europe, driving a car.

"Do any of you know him?"

A chorus of "no".

"Hold on, I'll ask Tarja too," says Jamie and conjures a visible illusion of the man's face. Tarja is highly amused, but doesn't know him either.

"He is a guy with Skills and apparently with Sight that none of us have seen before. He arrived to Helsinki-Vantaa airport about an hour ago and is now driving eastwards. I suspects that he wants to see you guys."
"We'll see when he arrives," says Rudy.
"Do you think he is dangerous?" asks Tarja.
"All we know is that he appeared out of the blue and does not respond to us."
"This probably doesn't mean hugs and puppies," I say.
"Might be one of the people who gave me the offers of world domination," suggests Jamie.
"I think we know all of those," says Elina. "Just for curiosity's sake, what did you tell them?"
"That if I decide to go for it I'll assemble my own team."
"Good man. Anyway, let's keep tabs on the guy. If it seems like he is going for Sinikka's place, it would be probably better that Sinikka joins you guys in your cottage, OK?"
"Sure," agrees Katie.

After proper goodbyes we finally leave. In the car I hand Jamie an envelope.

"Here's a hair sample Sinikka got from you, I stole it from her desk."
"Heh. Thanks."
"She can probably get DNA samples from the cups we used, if she wants," say Rudy.
"Why do you think I decided to help her with the dishes? Loaded them all in the dishwasher and pressed the button," grins Tarja.
"Right! I was wondering what's with the sudden attack of domesticity," Rudy hugs her. "That's my girl!"

After a visit to a drugstore we finally get to the cottage. It's quite dark already. Timo greets us from the air on his mop, flying just over our heads as we get out of the car.

"Whee!"

Damn, I forgot to tell the others. I greet him, jumping up, and trying to stay in the air. It sort of works, in the way that I come down slowly, not like in a regular jump. Rudy has considerably better luck. Jamie and Katie jump up and down without any unusual results whatsoever.

"Can we unload the groceries first?" asks Tarja.
"Women," sighs Rudy.

We bring the groceries inside.

"The tea is hot," says Timo, floating in the air in the middle of the kitchen. Rudy grabs a beer, and Katie pours tea for the rest of us. Timo lands on the sofa next to me and wraps his arm around my shoulders.

"Look what I can do!" exclaims Rudy, pointing his finger at my cup. The tea turns to brown ice.

"Cool. Now heat it back up."
"Hmm...microwave?"
"Moron."
"Bitch."

I try to heat up the tea by wishing it hot, but it remains very firmly iced, which makes me wonder how I managed to melt that gun. Katie takes my cup and immediately returns it hot. The firewood stacked on the floor jumps into the fireplace by itself and catches fire, and a package of sausages opens itself and the sausages fly one by one and hover above the fire. Katie grins.

"Well," says Timo to Jamie. "Are you gonna tell us what's going on?"
"Yeah, the Community already knows anyway. I can use other people's Skills, and take some of their energy. Can transfer the energy from myself to other people, too, not sure about the Skills. So when Katie started producing huge amounts of energy I figured I'd just take some of it. Except that I couldn't hold it, so now Finland has one lake less."
"Why was this such a secret? I mean, you obviously meant well."
"Are you kidding?" asks Rudy. "How do you expect a group of people with Skills to relate to someone who can use the Skills of others? It's probably like the ultimate boogeyman for them. Besides, he feeds on everyone around him all the time."
"Really? I've never felt eaten," says Timo.
"I don't eat enough to hurt people, but there is the whole consent issue here, not to mention the squick issue," explains Jamie.
"Why do you do it?" I ask.
"I don't know. I didn't even know I do it all the time. It's kind of like breathing, I guess."
"But you did know you could do it on purpose, right?"
"Yes."
"I've always considered Jamie some kind of a humanitarian," says Tarja, "but I didn't mean it quite so literally."
"You can probably kill people with your brain!" says Rudy to Jamie.
"I think so."
"So why didn't you do it to those thugs? Why didn't you see them coming anyway?"
"I don't read everyone's minds all the time, and I was sort of hoping to convince them to go away and maybe get some information out of them."
"We can see how well that worked out," sighs Rudy.
"About as well as trying to kick six guys' asses in the apartment?"
"Well, nobody died in the apartment!"
"No thanks to you!"
"Tell me more," says Timo. "How do you use others' Skills? Can you take them for yourself forever?"
"I can use Skills through their real owner, sort of channelling them, and it would use up their energy and not mine, but it's kind of hard if the real owner resists. I can also consume them with some energy, and use them for some time after that, and the real owner's Skills would be weakened for a while, but I don't need to struggle with them for control. I think I'd need to kill somebody and consume all their energy to use their Skills forever, and I am not planning to do that. Elina take note!" he waves to the ceiling.
"How do you know all this?" asks Katie. "You said that until three days ago you had no idea there are other people with Skills in the world."

He looks like he is about to get his ass kicked, and probably is.

"I can do the same with potentials' Skills. Been using yours and Mira's for years. I am sorry."
"You what? You knew!"
"I could see some of your Skills and that you cannot use them for some reason, so I used them myself and sometimes channeled them for you. There in the warehouse I opened my mind to channel everyone's Skills, and I have no idea why you can all use them now. Except Tarja."
"Maybe I am not a potential?" asks Tarja.
"Sinikka thinks you are."
"You didn't use my Skills?" asks Rudy. "Or Timo's?"
"Didn't know you had them. The mental Skills are easy to see. I had no experience in seeing physical ones, or known that they exist. I didn't know that Katie could make fire, for example."
"So what did you use? Your mind-sense and coercion are better than mine," asks Katie.
"Generally, yeah, except that you can order animals around and I cannot. I always use your coercion when telling something to the dogs. The damn beasts never listen to me otherwise."
"That's because you spoil them all the time!"
"No, I don't!"
"Yes, you do! Who let them sit on the sofa and eat from your plate the other day?"
"What did you use from me?" I ask, trying to turn the conversation away from the dog-raising track.
"Your coercion is better than mine. You know, the Skill where you give direct orders and people obey while you are there."
"That's good to know."
"Tell us more about what you can do, and when you found out," says Timo.
"I've always had mind-sense, far as I remember," Jamie starts listing, "and coercion. Was 19 or so when I realised I could use others' Skills, but I knew I could consume energy before that, and also give it out. Never knew I could produce illusions before today, but probably could do it all along. I can influence emotions but it never occurred to me to scare people shitless before today. Yeah, and I can use other people's bodies."
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"This." My fist opens and closes without any input from me.
"You can possess people?" Rudy is shocked for some reason.
"Yes. It's not as useful as you think, I almost never do it. It's much easier to make them want to do something, or to do it myself. And I am definitely not a disembodied spirit so when I want to possess somebody I have to take my own body along and control both of them, very inconvenient."
"Have you actually done that to any of us?" Katie asks. The generalized anger and sense of violation in the room in palpable.
"No. I did this only once, to Ang, on McKinley. It was an emergency. I returned his body an hour later in mint condition, but he was kind of pissed off."
"Who would have thought?" says Timo.
"Sinikka says I can also heal myself, including some things that normally don't heal, but it usually takes a long time. Wish I knew it years ago, would have saved myself a lot of surgery."
"Better late than never," says Tarja.

While this conversation is going on, I follow Jamie's feeding. He keeps touching our minds all the time, making us touch him physically, generating our concern for himself and feeding on the concern and the touch. He doesn't seem to be aware of it. He also tries to make us feel less violated, and he is well aware of that, and quite deliberate.

I shield my mind from him, and try to digest the fact that my old friend, ex-boyfriend and sort-of relative is, in fact, a mind-altering soul-eating monster. After struggling with this concept for a minute I give up, reach out and scratch the soul-eating monster's back. The soul-eating monster smiles at me and rubs his cheek on the middle finger that I show him.

His mind is open and he is scared of us, or rather afraid that we won't like him anymore.

"You seem freaked out," says Timo telepathically.
"No shit! Jamie is a soul-eating monster! Has been all these years!"
"Come on, he is a fairly nice guy for a soul-eating monster."
"He is. But still."
"You have worse soul-eating monsters in your family," consoles me Timo. "Think about uncle Isaac for example."
"I love it how you always manage to remind me of worse things in life. But yeah. I don't think Jamie is evil, just lacking in moral fiber."

"Have you ever made a woman have sex with you?" Katie asks, her mind closed.
"No."
"Why not?" asks Rudy. Everybody looks at him. He gives us a "I didn't mean this that way" look.
"Why should I? Getting women is easy if you can read their mind. I can always see when a woman is sexually interested in me, so I just have to come up to her and flirt a little."
"Why haven't you told me when women were interested in me?" asks Rudy.
"I have."
"Yeah, but I never believed you!"
"You mean all the social advice that you have ever given any of us has always been based on actual knowledge?" asks Timo.
"Of course."
"Damn, should have listened to you more often."
"Why didn't you make me believe?" asks Rudy.
"I can't believe it. First everyone is understandably mad at me for messing with their minds, and now you start chewing me out for not messing with your mind? Can we talk about something else for a while? Or somebody else? How have you been, Timo?"
"Learned to fly." Timo gets up from the sofa and flies around the room a few times. Rudy also gets up and flies after him. I jump up in the air and manage to remain there, then try to fly ahead and collide with the ceiling lamp.

"Oops!" I try to stabilize the lamp, make a wrong move and collide with Rudy.

"Bloody hell! Watch where you are flying!"
"Rudy, don't wave your hands like that, it doesn't help," advises Timo. "Mira, don't try to rotate your butt like that, it's not a propeller. It takes a bit of practice, and it's better to practice outside tomorrow when it's light."

"I can also heal really fast," says Timo after we have all settled down. "I noticed it the first time I flew into a tree."
"Can you also heal other people?" asks Jamie.
"Maybe, haven't tried. Possibly. I can sort of see inside people's bodies if I try very hard."
"Can you see inside mine?"
"You have wisdom teeth growing really fast, and a very low blood pressure. But I don't know what that means."
"The blood pressure is just a chronic thing, doesn't usually cause much trouble. The teeth are supposed to be some Healing accident, did you have anything to do with that?"
"No, or not that I know of anyway. So, what can the rest of you do?"

Rudy demonstrates all kinds of telekinetic tricks, from making the table dance to making kitchen knives fly through the air with considerable speed. He seems to have a lot more telekinetic power when he touches the object in question than when he doesn't. He is very graceful with it, too: the amazing dance of grilled sausages in the air is perfectly Disney-worthy.

"Katie?" asks Timo.
"I think we have already seen a very good demonstration of my powers. And so did CNN, BBC, Yle, and most of the astronauts."
"You can also make drugs," reminds her Jamie.
"Can you make just a little bit of cocaine?" perks up Rudy.
"I'll show you fucking cocaine." She tries to sound threatening but her heart clearly isn't in it.
"Can you make illusions?" asks Jamie.

Katie gets up from the sofa, concentrates, and turns into another copy of Rudy, who is sticking his tongue out at the real thing. The real thing gives her a finger. Tarja takes a picture of them both.

"Hey, you can fool a camera!" she says, when Katie turns back into herself, but the picture keeps showing her as Rudy.

I try an illusion too, but I am not as good as Jamie and Katie. I only succeed in producing various recognizable versions of myself in different colors, and I certainly cannot fool a camera. I can do a bit of unimpressive telekinesis, too.

"You should be able to heat stuff," says Timo. "You melted that gun."

Heating stuff doesn't work until I try it on the cast-iron frying pan, which heats up at once. It's also much easier to get in the air than other objects, and I melt it and reshape it as I please. Finally I get up and try to touch it.

"What are you doing?" says pretty much everyone in chorus.
"I don't think that this or anything iron can hurt me. I wonder if that's what those elemental powers are."

The almost-melting pan feels hot but not painfully so; I hold it without any visible harm to myself. I can also manipulate any other iron object every which way.

"You can make me a katana!" joyfully squeals Rudy.
"What for?"
"Uhm... to defend ourselves from the mystery man in a car who is coming here?"
"We can do it without a sword. I think a sword would be quite useless."
"Please! Please-please-please!"
"OK," I sigh.
"Can I have a dao?" asks Jamie, not even trying to conceal that he just wants a new toy.
"If you explain to me what a dao is."
"I'd like a sword too," says Timo.
"What for? You don't know how to use it, and besides you have six pistols."
"For the sake of coolness."
"Can I have a European broadsword?" asks Tarja.
"You?" Rudy is suprised. "Do you know how to use a sword? I didn't teach you."
"There's one British guy that teaches European broadswords in Jakomäki."
"I've heard about him, they say he is very good," Rudy concedes. He doesn't add that he thinks that a katana is the one and only proper sword, but you don't need to be a mind-reader to see his thoughts on the subject.
"OK, everybody: if you find me a proper iron supply and tell me what exactly all those things are supposed to be, I'll do it."

Rudy goes out and soon comes back carrying a rail telekinetically.

"Rudy!"
"It wasn't a part of any actual railway. Seriously."

I check this from his mind, and he starts giving me instructions on how to make all the aforementioned swords. He is very curious of whether the swords created with my Skill would be as good as the real thing. Jamie and Tarja just want a new toy each, and Timo has given up and is checking out his pistols.

"Can you shoot?" he asks Katie.
"Like an Imperial Stormtrooper," she sighs.

We make some more tea.

"Are we the most powerful people on Earth?" wonders Rudy.
"I don't think any of us are," answers Jamie. "Katie might have the most powerful firemaking Skill, but I am not sure. From their IRC channel I have at least figured there are a few mind-readers stronger than myself. But I think that together we are the biggest cluster of power. All the rest of them work alone most of the time, or at least don't see each other in person much."
"Why?" asks Tarja.
"They don't trust each other?" I suggest.
"And we do?"
"To a higher extent, yes," says Jamie, who has done nothing to improve this trust today.
"Why don't you use your powers?" ask him Rudy.
"I use them all the time and you guys keep complaining," points out Jamie.
"No, I meant serious use, and not just to get us to massage your shoulders."
"Like what?"
"Save the world?"
"From whom?"
"Terrorists? George Bush? Global warming? The return of the Eighties' fashions?"

Jamie makes a rude sound.

"We could at least have punished those Russian gangsters," continues Rudy.
"That's what the police and the courts are for."
"We'd be more efficient."
"I am sure we would, but it's still the matter for the police and courts."
"Since when don't you believe in vigilante justice?" Years ago Jamie has dispensed some well-deserved but surprisingly brutal vigilante justice to Rudy's first wife Debbie. Rudy is still a bit sore about it.
"I do believe that vigilante justice has its place, for example when somebody is threatening you and the police cannot protect you. After the crime it's still the matter for the courts."
"Man, you were raised by wolves and lawyers. Don't you want to bring more justice to this world?"
"Rudy, I think that if I start doing that, pretty soon I'll be the one that the world needs saved from. I'd be the Big Bad, the Ultimate Evil." He is kidding - he considers himself pretty nice, and in fact usually is - but he is also sort of serious about the thought that if he starts bending too much of the world to his will, he might become evil, or cause something bad.

Rudy jumps up, throws Jamie on the floor, twists his arm and sits down on top of him, tickling him mercilessly.

"Hey, I have captured the Ultimate Evil! And now the Ultimate Evil is paying for the pizza! Somebody get me one of those!" Rudy points at the several pizzeria ad flyers on the kitchen counter.
"Eek! The Ultimate Evil doesn't have his wallet! Argh! I burned it with my jeans back in the apartment."
"I think Jamie will need some more practice with evil overlording," suggests Timo.

We order the pizza, Timo and Jamie go to the sauna, and the rest of us turn the TV on. We are the biggest news on all the channels, or at least the fire is. A whole bunch of scientists from different countries wonder what made a kilometers-high flame erupt from a lake.

"Wanna try flying?" asks me Rudy. "Let's go outside, but try not to read my mind."
"I'll try. It's kind of hard."

As soon as we go outside he rises gracefully in the air. It takes me a couple of attempts, some swearing and two sore buttocks to do the same. We start flying together around the cottage.

"Mira. What you saw in my mind there was not a big deal. I understand I probably deserve to be laughed at, for all the stuff I've said about homosexuals, but yes, I sometimes have sexual thoughts about men, but I've never had sex with a man and not planning to and Jamie knows everything, we talked about it, and I know that he doesn't swing that way and everything is OK with both of us and our friendship is certainly not based on this."
"I know."
"I just don't want you to think about that every time you see us touch each other. He just is touchy-feely, you know him."
"I know him. I totally believe you guys have worked this thing out years ago. Now tell me what you've been up to with Debbie and Rebecca."

He flies into a tree with a loud "oh, shit!".

"Nothing! I've been just talking to them on IRC."
"There is no such thing as 'just talking'."
"You keep talking to all your exes all the time! You have one of them right here!"
"That's what happens when you part as friends. 'Mortal enemies' is a somewhat different arrangement."
"I miss them!"
"Try to work on your marksmanship."
"I am serious."
"Me too. You can't do this to Tarja. She senses something."
"I love Tarja, I just miss Deb and Rebecca. Tarja and I are doing great, but sometimes I just need something more..." he thinks "fiery" but rejects it as an unfortunate choice of word. Debbie has actually tried to set him on fire.
"Either you stop talking to those psychos, or you'll have to renegotiate your relationship as an open one. And remember, if you break her heart I'll make you propose to Paavo Väyrynen in a public place."

He is somewhat annoyed, but the image I conjure for him is so funny that he laughs and hugs me, and we fly inside.

Katie and Tarja have been talking about men, but still pretend to watch our exploits on CNN. I try to See into the sauna, and there Jamie seems to have convinced Timo to pull his wisdom teeth out. It seems to be going successfully and painlessly, but is still kind of disgusting.

The pizza still hasn't arrived.

"Mira, there is a man coming there," says a man's voice in my head.
"We ordered pizza."
"He ain't bringing any. He has a gun, duck!"

"Everybody down!" I scream and hit the floor as several bullets pierce the lock and a man walks in. I recognize him as the man who was putting bugs in our luggage. The bomber?

"Where is he?" he screams in English, brandishing an assault rifle. "The guy with long hair arrgghh!" The question turns to howling as I melt his gun in his hands, talking care not to spill any on the floor.

Rudy waves his hand at him and he flies out the door. Rudy follows, and so do Tarja, Katie and I.

"We have two guys with long hair," says Rudy helpfully, "would you like to see the blond one or the dark-haired one? Also, your gun seems to have melted."

The man is not scared of us, which is amazing under the circumstances, especially since Katie casually passes meter-long flames out of her mouth, the same way some people pass rings of smoke. There is something wrong with him. It's as if he is unable to get scared. There is something else wrong with his mind, but I am not a psychiatrist. I am not sure whether I want to kill him or to make him run away so I don't have to, and I have a feeling I will regret it either way. He is not the kind of guy that'd give up. He is, in fact, Anton the bomber, except that his real name is Yury.

"He is dangerous," says Katie, letting out another of her flames. "I think I'll burn him."
"No, please don't," I say. "We don't know what that'll do to you. I better shoot him and then you'll burn the body."

Timo and Jamie appear at the door, stark naked from the sauna. They are both quite fair-skinned, and look very eerie in the moonlight. The impression is reinforced by the blood on Jamie's lips, although it's also somewhat spoiled by the fact that they are carrying a sauna bucket with water.

"Who are you? What are you?" asks Anton-Yury, still unafraid - almost.
"My name is Jamie. I am a system administrator, and I eat souls."
"They all do," Timo slanders the sysadmin profession telepathically.
"I think you better go away," says Jamie to the bomber. "Right now, and don't ever come back."
"I'll find you!" the man answers, enraged and showing emotion for the first time.
"You have found me," gently points out Jamie. "Now go away."
"I'll find you off your guard, and then I'll kill you, your girlfriend, all your family and friends," the man really means it. "I never give up."
"OK. I stand convinced."

Jamie doesn't move, but does something very violent that I can feel with my mind-sense, and the man falls dead.

Jamie silently turns back to go inside, and manages to walk about three steps before throwing up in the bushes. This turns out to be unfortunately contagious and we all follow suit.

"You know that you did what had to be done," says Katie after she is done throwing up.
"I know. It doesn't make this any less horrible."
"Did you eat him?" asks Tarja, cringing at the question but unable to contain her curiousity.
"God, no. That would have been really disgusting. I stopped his heart."
"Can you drink human blood?"
"Anyone can drink blood. But I prefer hot chocolate, if you don't mind. The blood on my lips was just from some improvised dentistry."
"I'll make you some." She goes inside.
"Thanks."
"You didn't have to kill him," I say, my mind closed.
"I did. He really meant it about coming back, and you know it."
"It probably had to be done, but you didn't have to do it. I could have done it. Or any one of us. You are traumatized enough for today."
"You were gonna shoot him, for fuck's sake! I think that in this case making the death appear natural was more improtant than my traumas." He is also thinking that killing people probably shouldn't be left to the people who can get over it easily. I am not sure he is right.
"What are we gonna do with the body?" I ask.
"Jamie. Timo. Inside. Now. Take a hot shower and put your clothes on," says Katie. Timo resents taking orders from her, but they both comply.

"Can you look around and see if there are more of them?" asks me Katie.

My Sight reveals no accomplices or witnesses. I also try to See whether the mysterious stranger driving towards us has reacted to the events in some way. He hasn't, but then it's probably hard to use the Sight while driving.

I then look into the late bomber's car. Explosives, guns, a whole arsenal.

"Do you think we should just destroy the body and the car, or call the police?" asks Katie. "Maybe we better ask Jamie."
"Since when do you take orders from him?"
"Since about 10am today. He's been at it for 34 years and I for about 10 hours, so I kinda want the benefit of his experience."
"I think we should call the police if we can do it safely, and destroy the body otherwise."

Rudy doesn't say anything, he just stands next to us staring at the body.

Tarja, Timo and Jamie come out with steaming cups of hot chocolate.

"I think we should call the police," says Jamie. "The man died of a heart failure, he was the bomber in yesterday's attack, he came after us because I was a witness. The only part hard to explain would be the melted gun."
"We have a lot of weapons ourselves. Can you conceal them if the police searches the place?"
"Sure can."
"What about the melted gun?" I ask. "I can melt down the rest of it, but the burns on the body will remain."
"Leave it as it is," says Katie. "Let the police wonder about it."

This seems vaguely wrong, but I don't have any better ideas, and after discussing the details Timo calls the cops and we go inside. We look shaken enough and don't have to pretend much, I think.

Rudy makes us some tea. The pizza is still not here, which is a good thing, because a pizza delivery man probably wouldn't enjoy seeing a dead body in front of the cottage.

Jamie curls up on one of the sofas. "Is this a good look for talking to the police?" he asks.

The illusion that he has conjured is very much recognizable as himself, but a very ethereal version of him. The real him, in spite of being shorter and thinner than an average guy and having fairly delicate features, is pretty much the polar opposite of ethereal. Some people just always look fresh, cheerful and well-fed, no matter how thin or hungry they are and how little sleep they have had last night.

The illusion is much paler than the real thing, has sad, feverishly shiny eyes a little bigger than his regular eyes, a somewhat more delicate nose and hollow cheeks, and looks like somebody who feeds exclusively on poetry and might die at the slighest shock. It is a bit over the top, but with a right kind of mental nudge it will elicit as much protectiveness as can be possibly accorded to a grown man in our culture.

Katie and I look at this infinitely delicate creature and burst out laughing, because underneath this ethereal facade Jamie, though still shocked and upset about having killed the bomber, can't help thinking about the pizza, whether the cottage's Internet connection is sufficient to play EVE Online, whether he'd have time for it tonight, whether we'd remembered to buy chocolate, and whether there is a new Battlestar Galactica episode coming next week. He is quite ashamed of this all, which makes it even funnier.

"Share the joke with us?" asks Rudy, but then I shush him, because the police car is coming.

The cops ask us all together for our story, and don't seem very interested in interrogating us separately. Our story is quite simple: the man came in shooting and threatening us, then his gun started melting by itself, he backed out of the cottage and expired in front of it. The cops search the grounds, but don't try to search the cottage. They ask Jamie a few questions about what he saw during the bombing in St. Petersburg. In the middle of all these proceedings a middle eastern man appears, shocked at the sight of the dead body and the cops, but absolutely determined to deliver the pizza. I make a mental note to tell Jamie that the world really does need people who never forget about the pizza in love and war and any other disaster.

The appearance of the pizza delivery man seems to have a good influence on the cops, who assume that real evildoers don't usually order pizza before committing a gruesome murder. The search the area for a while, and then take the car and the body away.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Lauri> We have a new problem: somebody logged onto the wiki as Sinikka from Lappeenranta.
<Nate> You mean that that person is not in fact Sinikka? Could it be the usual suspects?
<Lauri> Sinikka is enjoying a smoke on her porch. Jamie and friends are enjoying pizza in front of their fireplace. Our mysterious stranger is enjoying his attempts to find the highway after getting lost in Kouvola. None of them are in front of a computer.
<Nate> I could never understand how a person with Sight can get lost. It's like always having a map with you.
<Lauri> Easily. Some people suck at reading maps.
<Sarah> Hi.
<Nate> Hi Sarah.
<Sarah> What's new?
<Lauri> Short story: Sinikka had them over, except Timo, Elina somehow managed to fix Katie's mind long-distance, Sinikka says Tarja is a potential and Jamie, Katie and Rudy are all a bit fucked in the head but not dangerously so, and yesterday's bomber tried to shoot them in their cottage but Jamie killed him. Also Mira seems to have elemental Skill of iron. Yeah, and there is a new guy with Skills and probably with Sight who doesn't answer any communications and is driving towards Lappeenranta right now.
<Sarah> Did you guys find Michael and Dana?
<Nate> No.
<Lauri> Yeah, and somebody is logged into our wiki from Lappeenranta using Sinikka's password. Not Sinikka, not Jamie or his friends. There is nobody else there.
<Sarah> Except like thousands of normals? I heard some of them know how to use the Net. :)
<Nate> Could also be somebody from somewhere else who'd broken into a computer in Lappeenranta.
<Lauri> Heh, Else just called Jamie with some grandmotherly advice: "don't worry, dear child, I've killed a lot of people in my time, you get used to it". He doesn't look like he appreciated that.
<Sarah> I think it's a good thing that he didn't appreciate.
<Lauri> I wonder what the police will make out of it?
<Sarah> They called the police?
<Lauri> Yeah, and the police was "WTF, a gun melted in the guy's hands."
<Sarah> Morons.
<Nate> Police or Jamie & Co?
<Sarah> Both.

"We should be prepared," says Rudy, taking his new katana and threatening an invisible enemy.
"You do realize that the guy with the Sight can see our preparations, right?" I ask.
"Can't a man have fun around here?"
"I can understand the Fight Club where guys who'd never fought in their lives are trying it out, but you are a karate champion, what's your problem?" asks Katie. "You beat people up five days a week and get paid for it!"
"Rudy's work morale puts us all to shame," says Timo solemnly.
"I am not a champion! I only got bronze twice!"
"That's hardly a reason to attack people with swords," says Jamie, devouring the last pizza slice.
"I just got Skills today, I wanna have fun! And unlike yours, mine are proper superhero superpowers." Rudy smiles. "I don't really wanna hurt anyone. Come on, let's have fun! Let our hair down... so to speak," he adds, as everyone with hair long enough for 'up' and 'down' to be a meaningful concept is actually putting their hair up.

Rudy sighs.

"Come on," he tells Jamie, who is the one and only person in the world who bothers listening to his fashion rants before completely disregarding them. "The whole idea of long hair tied back is that it comes open during the fight, looks cool, all women go 'squee!'. Not putting it up in a tight bun like some librarian."
"And then the opponent drags me by the hair, I go 'squee!', and my scalp is sore for two days," says Jamie, who's had long hair for all his adult life, practiced martial arts for much longer than that and is generally well aware of the problems of combining the former and the latter.
"You really should get in touch with your inner femininity."
"He is in touch with his inner femininity, honey," says Tarja. "It's just that his inner female is Granny Weatherwax."
"I thought he was more of a Nanny Ogg kind of guy," says Timo.
"At least take your swords, assholes," sighs Rudy. "Tarja, take the living room window. I'll take the door. Jamie..."
"...I'll take some tea," answers Jamie, laughing.
"You are aware that the guy just left Kouvola and is not gonna be here for a while, right?" I tell Rudy, but he is on a roll.
"Jamie, can I borrow your sword?" asks Timo.
"Be my guest."

After a few seconds fully equipped Timo salutes Rudy.

"My captain. Sir. If we are really getting medieval I feel I should be fully prepared, shield and sword and helmet and all."
"For fuck's sake. Put the wok down and take the saucepan off. Can't you guys take anything seriously?" From the way Rudy is doubled over, I figure he lost his capacity for taking anything seriously as well.

He takes a sip from a bottle of Koskenkorva, which he has gotten from Sinikka after making cute eyes at her. Timo takes some too. I pour a bit in my tea.

Katie makes a lot of little flames come out of her right hand and forearm and starts playing with them. She finds out that the fire doesn't hurt her and seems to protect her from the regular fire, but otherwise behaves like the regular fire. She opens a bag of marshmallows - where did Rudy find those in the middle of Lappeenranta? - and also finds out that she is almost as clumsy at roasting them on a Skills-generated fire as on a regular one.

Jamie borrows some of her fire and starts playing with it too. This leads to some bickering over whether he has regained enough strength to use energy like that, whether he should ask permission first, and who is worse at roasting marshmallows, during which I confiscate the marshmallows for their own good. After that they find out that they can't hurt each other with the fire, either, and wonder whether it has anything to do with the fact the both fires ultimately come from Katie. Jamie also finds out that scratching one's stomach with a fiery hand is a bad idea unless one wants holes in one's t-shirt.

Tarja asks Jamie to look for her potential Skills. He still doesn't know how to see them, but he tries to use them blind, by guessing, and finds telekinesis. Timo tells them to make themselves useful and get him a beer from the fridge, and they do.

Jamie's mind feels weird. One would expect that a person would feel guilty after killing somebody like that, or the opposite, bloodthurstily triumphant, if they are so inclined, which Jamie usually isn't. There is no guilt whatsoever in his mind, nor barbarian sense of triumph, just somewhat belated and highly misplaced compassion for the bomber. Weird. If I had killed that store-bombing asshole I'd probably feel guilty, but not sorry for him at all.

Rudy decides to give another inspirational speech:

"People! There is that guy coming over, and we don't know what the hell he wants, and it looks like the Community doesn't either. How do we know that he is not coming to kill us all? We have met a lot of new people today, and most of them weren't exactly bringing us flowers. We can take the fight to him, we can fly there and... Jamie! You set yourself on fire one more time and you'll be spending the night in the shithouse! Timo! Is there a shithouse somewhere around here? Good. We fly there...no, Mira, to the highway, not to the shithouse, and we set his car on fire..."
"...and then we ask questions from the corpse!" cheerfully continues Timo.
"No, we just set the car on fire and then ask questions from him when he gets out of there."
"Unless he sets us on fire in response," comments Tarja.
"Nobody is setting anyone on fire until I tell you to," says Katie. "Jamie, that includes you. Now look what you've done!" She points at a hole in his t-shirt. "We monitor the situation, if he becomes hostile, we attack."

Right. I am the only one who actually can monitor the situation.

"You said you could give the energy, too, and maybe Skills," I tell Jamie. "Now is the time to try this out. I want some of Katie's fire."
"Not the third arsonist in the house!" groans Rudy.

The feeling is unpleasant but not really painful, I don't think he has given me much. I wish a little flame to come out of my left index finger, and it does. Feels warm. I start roasting the marshmallows.

The man is still driving, close to entering Lappeenranta. I tell them as much. Five pairs of eyes are all around me looking at my properly roasted marshmallows with a puppylike expression.

"All right, all right," I say, and share the marshmallows.

Suddenly my Sight fades. Can't really See the man in the car, or anything around him. This happens just maybe for 20 seconds or so, and then I See him again. He is still driving towards us and looking around in a somewhat bewildered way, as if he has also sensed some disturbance in the Force. I look at the place he just passed, and I still can't See it. This is strange, because the wiki was very explicit about the fact that there is no place hidden from the Sight, but there seems to be. At least from my Sight. I wonder for a second whether to follow the Sight disturbance or tell somebody about it, then decide that the man who's gonna be here in about five minutes is a much higher priority.

"Tarja," I say. "I am sorry. There might be some things I'll have to say telepathically. He is parking at the entrance parking now, about 500 meters from here, and now that he is not driving he is surely looking at us."
"OK."

He is walking towards us.

"I am getting a really strange vibe from him now," I say, forgetting all about discretion and telepathic communication. "It's getting stronger and stronger!"
"Like what?" asks Timo.
"Like he is not real! Not from this world! Doesn't belong here!"
"That's some science fiction bullshit," starts Rudy. "Uhm..." he shuts up under the withering glances of pretty much everybody else.
"300 meters," I say. The unreal feeling grows.

"Feels real enough to me," says Jamie after a few seconds.
"Your mind-sense extends that far?"
"Yeah, and there is a real human being walking down that road." And then he adds telepathically: "She doesn't match the image Sinikka has shown us, though, and she is most certainly not a man."

Now I can see the intruder with my mind-sense, too. The Sight sees the eerie man, the mind-sense a somewhat weird young woman. I move towards the door to peek outside and find out what my physical eyes would see, but Timo grabs my hand and I think better of it.

The door opens without any knocking, and the person comes in. My Sight still sees a tall brown-haired man of about thirty. My eyes, corroborated by the mind-sense, see a very young woman, short, thin and with a Middle-Eastern look, black hair, brown eyes and tanned skin.

Whatever the creature is, it likes men and is very horny. The eyes stare in frank appreciation at Jamie's almost-flawless skin and shiny hair, then turn to the muscles on Timo's arms, his sharp cheekbones and blue eyes - she or it seems to have a thing for blue eyes, and then stop at Rudy, in total delight and rapture, the woman's mind open and very sincere about what it is exactly that she'd like to do with Rudy right here on the table. Jamie and Katie make a heroic but insufficient effort to maintain straight faces and shielded minds.

"She can't be more than eighteen," I think, rather irrelevantly.
"Twenty-one," comes the telepathic correction. I close my mind, although I am pretty sure that won't really help if she wants to read it. Jamie was wrong about us being the biggest concentration of power. The real power has just walked in.

She turns her eyes away from Rudy with a bit of difficulty, and addresses all of us:

"My name is Dana Kahan. I am here to rescue you."

Her mind is fully open, but most of what she is thinking is in Hebrew, which makes it a lot more difficult to read. I do my best to switch my own thinking to Finnish, and be as verbal as possible in my thoughts. I am sure Jamie is doing the same in Icelandic.

"From whom?" asks Katie.
"From the Community. They are not what they seem." Dana sounds like this should be obvious.

I take a very deep breath before addressing her. It's easy to stand up to Jamie or Katie or somebody else extremely powerful whom you'd known for years; it's a totally different thing to mouth off to some weird horny girl who'd just walked in and probably can destroy half the city with one fart.

"Speaking about things that aren't what they seem, why is my Sight seeing you as a man? And I suppose everyone else's Sight, too."
"I can make illusions for the Sight," the girl shrugs and rolls her eyes.
"The wiki says this cannot be done."
"There's a lot of things wiki says cannot be done. People with rare and unique Skills often don't mention them to others, and you shouldn't have either," she tells Jamie. "Which is one of the things that's wrong with the Community."
"I suppose the people who are watching us right now are hearing a totally different conversation?" asks Tarja.
"Naturally. My illusory papers are in the name of Matthew Adams. When I am here and awake, I can make an illusion for anyone who wants to See us. When I am away or asleep you will refer to me as Matt."
"Are you the only one who can do that?" asks Tarja.
"I wouldn't know, would I?" She rolls her eyes again.
"I am sure everyone who can hide themselves from the Sight in any way will show up here in the next 24 hours," says Jamie.

Dana turns towards him. "You are not what I expected." She sounds very disappointed.
"Sorry about that."
"You are so..." she stops here, and the word she thinks but doesn't say is "adult".
"Dana, since I've been the main topic of discussion on your IRC channel since Wednesday you must have known that I'll be 35 next Friday."
"Yes, but you didn't seem that way. Why do you behave like a teenage girl most of the time if you are an adult man? You read manga and play computer games and spend half your time wagging your tongue..."
"My dear child, what do you think adults do most of the time? Talk about blood pressure and income taxes?"
"Don't you call me a child! I am an officer in real life, and you are spending your time flying spaceships in an online game!"
"No, you are currently a first-year student of computer science, who is a bit young for her age and whose development wasn't helped much by having spent time in the army. I, on the other hand, am a real adult with a wife, a job, an income, a degree, an apartment and so on, and I don't need to pretend to only like serious things in order to be considered an adult anymore. Tried that for about a week when I was 17, by the way. Didn't work out even then."

The girl, somewhat deflated, snarls and opens her mouth, but Rudy interrupts her:

"Would you like some tea? Or maybe coffee?"
"Coffee, please." She inhales while talking, the way some Finns often do. "Do you have milk and sugar?"

I consider reading his mind, but then think better of it. The fact that he is really glad to meet her is obvious from looking at the strategic point on his trousers. I can see Tarja looking in the same direction.

"Remember what I told you about making you propose to Paavo Väyrynen?" I ask him telepathically.
"Oh, for fuck's sake!"
"I meant it literally."

"Oh, thank god," says Dana after tasting the coffee. "That British Airways stuff was totally horrible."
"You can't fly by yourself?" asks her Timo.
"Of course I can."
"Why British Airways, then?"

She rolls her eyes again. Must be her favorite gesture. Or expression, or whatever it is.

"You can walk, right? But you probably wouldn't wanna walk all the way to Israel, even if Syria weren't in between."
"Did it cost a lot on such a short notice?"
"You don't imagine that I paid for the ticket, do you?". Another eye roll.

"But please continue. What's wrong with the Community, and how do you intend to rescue us?" asks Jamie.

The girl looks at him suspiciously, like a child at an adult from whom she expects some dirty trick.

"They are all fake. Like you. They pretend to work for the common good, and each one of them only works for himself."
"I am shocked," says Tarja dryly. Dana glares at her.
"As you know, we are not a hierarchical organization and are not supposed to have a leader, and Michael Hamilton is that leader that we are not supposed to have. He'd sell his grandmother for an interesting scientific experiment, and probably has."
"What is the basis of his leadership?" asks Katie. "Is he the one with most powerful Skills?"
"No, that would be me," thinks Dana, but she says "It's hard to measure who is the most powerful in general, because you'd have to compare different Skills, you know. But the usual measure of the dick length in the Community is the range of one's Sight, and Michael has the Sight that can see anywhere on Earth. How far can you See?" she asks me.

I extend my Sight westwards. I can see London clearly, and a very hazy outline of Dublin. Nothing beyond that.

"I can almost see western Sweden!" I say proudly, shielding my mind. Dana believes me.

"I can see Israel," she says, even more proudly. "And most of North Africa, too."
"Is seeing the penguins in Antarctica enough to make one a leader?" asks Katie.
"No, Michael has other things working for him. He has a wide range of other Skills, and he has his own lab outside of Sidney, and a research grant, and is studying Skills there, even though the grant is for something else, so everyone thinks he knows more about the Skills than anyone else. He thinks he is really smart," she says with contempt.
"People who have their own labs usually are," says Katie, who does have her own lab as well. "And he really might know more about Skills than anyone else."
"Yeah, but he never tells anything useful to anyone else."
"Is there any status attached to being born with Skills, as opposed to acquiring them later?" asks Katie.
"You mean like being wizard-born and muggle-born in Harry Potter?" asks Dana and suddenly stops, blushes and puts her hand to her mouth.
"Go on, we have all read Harry Potter," Jamie smiles encouragingly and actually does something to her mind to put her at ease.
"Well, no, there is no status attached to being born with Skills, but there is some to having had Skills for a long time as opposed to having just acquired them. Knowing stuff about the Skills also gives you status, and Michael probably does know something, but he is not saying, or is lying anyway when he does say things. He just likes being considered a great authority, that's all. Elina, on the other hand, doesn't care at all for being considered a leader, or status, or any of that, as long as everyone is doing whatever she wants them to do. She generally wants peace at any price, especially if somebody else is paying."

Everybody is trying not to smile, but Dana continues without checking for reactions:

"Else is an old fox who doesn't give a shit about anyone or anything and spends all her time sailing. She actually set Michael on fire when he came to talk to her. Although knowing Michael I can understand her," Dana adds. "She is the kind of person who could do a lot for the Skill research, but doesn't want to. Perv is a real warlord, with an army and all, who wants to own all of the Central Asia."
"What did he offer you?" asks Jamie.
"What makes you think he offered anything?"
"He offered me a lot of money, a palace, and ten nuclear warheads. You are quite a bit more valuable."

What? Nuclear warheads? He never told us!

"Asshole! He offered me only five! Men always get better offers! I should ask for fifteen!" rages Dana mentally.

"I take it you are still thinking his offer over?" asks Jamie.
"And you are not?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I already have enough money, I can always get more without becoming a Central Asian warlord, I don't like the palace's location and I can't think of any personal use for the nuclear warheads, especially ones mounted in Pakistan. What am I gonna do, point them at Delhi and tell them 'bring me your best curry or else'?"
"You could transport them here."
"And keep them in our flat in Pasila? Damn, and here I thought Katie is annoyed enough by all the other martial art supplies under our bed. What do you need them for?"
"For my country."
"I think your country already has some. Are you gonna contact your high command and tell them 'hey, I got us a few nuclear warheads'?"

Dana, who has clearly intended no such thing, blushes intensely.

"Anyway," she continues. "Wei would like to be the emperor of China, but is currently having troubles sorting out his mom, sister, three girlfriends and employer. Alicia is mostly into making money, nobody knows how. She becomes quite aggressive if you ask her. Diego is sort of OK, I guess, except for being really old and really hypocritical, but at least he tries to be nice."
"How old is he?" asks Tarja.
"Forty," answers Dana, then looks at Rudy and blushes and covers her mouth again, obviously remembering that he is thirty-six. Jamie puts her at ease again, rather forcefully, and she doesn't resist.
"Sinikka is all into politics and would do anything to get elected," continues the girl, and goes on to describe various faults of the other members of the Community, from Gilad the sex maniac to Olafur the prudish hypocrite, from Jessica the stupid American cheerleader cow to Paul the Liberian war criminal.

"Sorry," says Katie in the end. "They sound like, uhm, people. Except for a couple of them, anyway."
"But they keep lying! And pretending! And hiding stuff from each other"
"That's what people do," points out Jamie. "You surely must have noticed. Matthew."

The girl sighs and concedes the point. I concentrate on following the illusion that she is creating for the Sight. In the illusion the adult and male "Matthew" is talking with us about the weather. Oh, dear...

"Are there any nice people in the Community?" asks Jamie.
"Yeah... I guess... Sarah Morelli, Nate, Peilin, Sachiko, Xiulian, John Russell, Jacqueline, Mary O'Connor, Inez, Siu-Kwong, Renate, Mark Henderson, Sophie... Hanne is not bad either, even though she is a bit of a wet hen..."
"You've just given me a list of the active and semi-active Community channel users who are about your own age. With the notable exceptions of Yossi, whom you've met in person, and Wei, who keeps trying to flirt with you."

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Lauri> What the fuck is going on? This doesn't make any sense at all.
<Jessica> Are they still talking about the weather?
<Lauri> No, they switched to Manchester United, and they keep getting it all wrong.
<Nate> I'd get it all wrong too, if I were talking about Manchester United.
<Lauri> Yes, but Rudy and Jamie were talking about it yesterday morning, too, and then they knew what they were talking about, or at least Rudy did.
<Elina> Maybe we found a new Skill: making people stupid.
<Sarah> Or making them forget everything they know about soccer, cool!
<Lauri> Oh, shut up...
<Sarah> What does this Matthew guy want?
<Elina> World peace and a lot of money.
<Sarah> Now I have Coke in my nose and in my keyboard. Thanks a lot.
<Else> Come on, I also want world peace and a lot of money.
<Yossi> I'd take local peace and a small raise, too.
<Elina> A better question is where this Matthew came from. He doesn't sound like Skills are a new thing to him, but nobody's seen him before.
<Nate> Maybe he'd had Skills for a while, but just got the Sight recently?
<Else> That would explain it.
<Sarah> What have they been talking about? I mean, about Skills, Sight and stuff like that?
<Hanne> They haven't.
<Lauri> Let's see: the man acquired the Sight, Saw another person with the Sight, flew there, drove there, and is not talking about it?
<Sarah> They have probably been talking about it telepathically, and the whole spoken conversation is just a decoy.
<Lauri> A pretty pathetic decoy if you ask me.
<Jessica> I guess they didn't ask you. :)
<Sarah> Or did not expect an MU fan watching them.
<Elina> The fake Sinikka is still reading the wiki.
<Else> Are you sure it's not the real Sinikka?
<Elina> Positive.
<Else> Any trace of Michael and Dana?
<Nate> None whatsoever. Could they have gone somewhere together?
<Elina> Where, the moon?
<Nate> How deep can the Sight see through the Earth?

"I'll make more tea and some sausages," says Jamie. "Sorry they are not kosher, but they are pretty good."
"I don't care about fucking kosher," says Dana aggressively.
"Better manners would serve you well," he points out.
"We Israelis have no use for manners."
"I've been to Israel many times and people there have as much use for manners as everyone else. They have little use for formality, but this is not the same thing. For example most Israelis I know would have expressed disdain for kosher rules with pretty much the same words, but in a totally different tone. 'I don't care about fucking kosher,'" he makes a fairly good imitation of my cousin Lior. "Here 'fucking' is used to indicate a sort of laid-back attitude and familiarity. The way you use it is 'how dare you imply that I might want something kosher'. You meant it that way, too."

She stares at him incredulously.

"So what if I did?"
"First of all, it's unwarranted, since we have no idea about your possible relationship with kashrut," answers Katie for him. "Second, it makes people think worse of you. Third, it elicits lectures on the appropriate use of the word 'fucking'."
"I think the people who pay attention to such things are fucking fucked in the head."
"As opposed to people who ignore the reality in favor of how things should be?" asks Katie.
"Leave her in peace," sighs Rudy, struggling with an erection and blushing.
"Dana," says Jamie, in a fairly friendly tone, "you are not very good at it, but you can learn."
"I obviously cannot."
"Of course you can. It was always harder for you than for most people, so you figured it must be a useless skill. I understand. I feel the same way about driving."
"One thing, though," I say, "you apparently can't read expressions or voice tone or body language well, but you have had your Skills for a couple of years now, so you can see the feedback directly when you are talking to someone. Why don't you learn from that?"

She starts crying.

"Because it's absolutely horrible! People keep lying and lying and never say what they mean, and hide stuff from each other all the time! I try not to read people's minds if I can help it."
"You are right. People need their privacy. But since you can't read their reactions to whatever you are doing in their faces, it would make some sense to read them from their minds," says Jamie.
"Don't encourage her to read our minds," I hiss at him telepathically.
"Privacy is just for people who want to hide the horrible things they do! Decent people don't need privacy if they have nothing to be ashamed of! You only need privacy because you are a pervert and do unspeakable things in bed!"
"Very loud ones, too!" adds Rudy, grinning. Tarja elbows him.
"They are fairly enjoyable unspeakable things," says Jamie, "and you did not read about them in my mind now, you read about them in a BDSM forum where I post under my own name. Which should have probably told you how private a topic that is for me."
"You want private and shameful? How about that your sister used to fuck you when you were a little kid?"

This is apparently rather shocking news to everyone except Katie and me.

"This was private, yes, and you shouldn't have said it," says Jamie coldly. "This isn't shameful, not for me personally. For my sister, yes, and I am sure she'll thank you if our grandmother was listening in on this."
"She wasn't," reminds him Timo. "Sight illusion."
"Good. And speaking about non-consentual sex and shameful things, the only time you had sex in your life was last year, just to see what it was like, with a guy named Yuval, while being his commanding officer. He only agreed because he was afraid of you, and you know it."

Dana starts sobbing again and lets her mental shield, which was not very good to begin with, down. Among the many images that are on the surface is as image of herself as a bride in a western-style wedding. Given out by Jamie. To Rudy.

"I need to talk to you!" hisses Rudy, and drags Jamie outside.

"Dana," says Katie. "No offense, but if you lay one single finger on my brother, I'll kill you."
"You meant your husband, right?"
"I meant what I said. My husband, despite all the appearances that he likes to cultivate to the contrary, is perfectly able to take care of himself. My brother, on the other hand, and also despite all the appearances to the contrary, is a fairly fragile person recovering from a serious depression. He really doesn't need more excitement in his life right now."
"I don't know if you can read my mind now, but thanks for saying this, even though it won't help," thinks Tarja.
"But we are made for each other!" thinks Dana. "Does this warning mean that I actually have a chance?" She cheers up.

"Your warning has been just taken as an encouragement," I tell Katie silently.
"Shit. You don't think we can talk sense into her, can we?"
"Don't know. Try. Jamie might. She is thinking of him as some kind of a father figure. But please don't kill her."
"Wasn't thinking of it. But it's gonna be hard. You have surely noticed that Rudy is attracted to power, and she is power."

I try to follow the conversation outside all the time. I am using my Sight, but they are almost loud enough to be heard without it.

"What are you doing?" hisses Rudy! "You are not her father!"
"Whoever is her father is clearly not doing his job!"
"It's not up to you to decide! You let your real daughter be raised as an Irishwoman!"
"Megan is not my daughter and you know it!"

Rudy is just being mean. Megan is a girl who was born to Jamie's ex-girlfriend Diane about 9 months after their break-up, and whose facial features bear very strong resemblance to Jamie's own, and Diane understandably tried to name him as a father. He maintainted that he wasn't, and a DNA test confirmed that he wasn't. He tends to get angry when the issue is raised.

"Anyway," says Rudy, "I am really falling in love with her." I assume he means Dana and not Megan. "Please don't get in the way."
"First of all, you are hurting Tarja. Second, you will end up hurting Dana. Third, she will hurt you. She is very young, very powerful and very inexperienced. With all due respect, a young girl's first experience of a relationship shouldn't be you."
"And anyone's experience of a father figure definitely shouldn't be you. I love her. Do you know what the word means?"
"Yes, I do. You love Dana, you love me, you loved Debbie and Rebecca, you love anyone who has a lot of power."
"Uhm. Speaking about Debbie. She might show up in Helsinki."
"What? You summonned the Chaotic Evil? Why the hell?" Debbie was Rudy's first wife. 'Chaotic Evil' is a very appropriate name for her.
"We were talking on IRC, and I told her we were going to St. Petersburg, and she told me she was gonna be there too during the weekend, and we agreed to see each other. And now we are not there, and I told her I can't see her after all, so she said she wants to see me anyway and is coming to Helsinki."
"Rudy. Last time I saw her I said that next time I'll kill her. It was not a figure of speech."
"Do you have to scare away all my women?"
"Only dangerous ones."
"You don't have to see Deb."
"You better pray I don't."
"I think she is afraid of you."
"She is not afraid of anyone. Rudy, don't start it with Dana either. It will be a disaster."
"OK, I won't."
"You are lying."
"Of course I am." Rudy smiles, hugs Jamie, and goes back inside. Jamie sighs and follows.

We are still drinking and eating inside. Dana doesn't touch the sausage, for whatever reason. After the meal she starts to recite Birkat Hamazon, the after-meal blessing, silently.

I start the prayer out loud, but she snarls at me.
"Shut up! Why are you saying it? You don't even believe in God!"
"I find it a socially pleasant habit."
"Well, I don't!"
"Do you believe in God?"
"No."

Whatever. I shrug. Rudy draws Dana's attention away from me, for which I am thankful.

"Can you help me decipher the religious and patriotic subtexts?" asks Jamie telepathically. "All I understand is that she was raised in a religious family, that she resents it, and that she is a lot more proud of her army service than most Israelis are."
"I am not sure I understood the religious subtext myself, and I am afraid to read her. But she comes from the part of Israeli society that does not normally serve in the army, that's why she is so proud of it. Act of rebellion, you know."
"Here is what I've read, but I don't fully understand it." He shows me some of her mind from memory.
"She was born to two very religious people from two very different religious communities, Lubavicher and Baladi Yemenite. I am not sure how her parents happened to get married, but it has probably caused uproar in both families. She used Lubavicher liturgy right now, but thinks of herself as a Baladi, except that she really would like to think of herself as an atheist but there is a lot of residual religion there."
"She has a very strong picture of romantic love in adversity as a norm."
"She would," I sigh audibly, which I probably shouldn't have.
"I'll try to do something."
"I don't think you can. Don't piss her off, she is more powerful than you."

Jamie makes some coffee and invites Dana to the sofa in the corner, and she comes quite eagerly, especially considering that she'd much rather have sex with Rudy. They talk about life, and I see her opening to him, smiling, even playful. She even lets him try to borrow some of her Skills, and together they figure out that shielding her mind from his reading also works to shield her from his attempts to borrow her Skills and consume her energy. At some point she opens, though, and he borrows some of her flying Skill and promptly flies his ass into the ceiling lamp, without much damage to either.

After that they become more serious and start talking about sex and relationships. Jamie actually gives her a lot of pretty good advice. Dana listens to him, is overjoyed at both the attention and the advice, files it for future reference, and has no intention whatsoever to follow it in this particular case.

"I can take care of myself," she says.
"You think so, but you can't. The difference in power is too great."
"You don't seem the type who thinks women are much weaker than men."
"I don't. The power doesn't come from gender, of from some authority of an older person, but from experience. He has seen a lot of young women in his life; you have a lot less experience with middle-aged men. Or any men, for that matter."
"How do I gain the experience if I never do anything?"
"First you either need to become comfortable with a particular man, or comfortable with the idea of casual sex. You are neither, so far. You also need to learn how to have fun. Young people are so serious, and you are more serious than most."
"Were you serious at my age?"
"Not as serious as you, but a lot more serious than nowadays."

She really is very touched by his concern, but at the same time she is shamelessly flirting with Rudy telepathically. Rudy has that expession on his face from which you usually know that a man has an erection without looking at his trousers. I suddenly feel like doing something very undignified to him, like throwing whipped cream in his face. Fortunately - or maybe unfortunately, I need some kind of a release - unlike Jamie, I have no illusions that I can stop two horny people from fucking each other.

Tarja and Katie seem very annoyed, but Tarja is taking this much better than I expected. She believes that old age and guile beat youth and enthusiasm.

"I'll go for a walk," I say and get up.
"There is nothing here," says Katie.
"Yeah. I know. I just need to have a little time by myself." I have actually checked that there is nobody in the little forest between the holiday cottages and the nearest residential neighborhood.
"I'll go with you!" says Timo enthusiastically.
"The words 'by myself' mean that I want to go alone, honey. But if you want to go for a walk with me, we can do that when I get back. I won't be long."
"At least take the girl's best friends with you," he takes two pistols, checks that both are fully loaded, and hands them to me.
"There is nobody there. I checked." I take the pistols for his peace of mind. "I can read minds. And see very, very far," I remind him as I go out.

Weird. We've known each other for eight years, and Timo has always been a gun enthusiast and visited a shooting range at least once a week. In all that time, I have never heard him refer to guns as means of self-defense, only as the equipment used for his favorite sport. On the other hand it's not suprising that he is paranoid, considering the today's events.

The forest is small and boring, but not scary at all. It smells of early spring. There are no people in the forest or in the other cottages. No large animals, either.

I am not trying to use my Sight for anything, but I notice at once when it is suddenly extinguished. WTF? I've only had this sense for a few hours now, but it feels weird and blind without it. Mind-sense feels like it probably still works, but there is nobody within its range.

Except that now there is. A figure is standing about 30 meters from me, probably a man but might be an illusion. He (or she?) is shielding his mind and at the same time preventing me from seing him physically properly, so I only see a large dark silhouette. I shield my mind, and the illusion dissipates, but it's still to dark to make out anything.

I try to reach out with my mind-sense to Jamie's but it's too far. I am on my own, and I back down from the figure, all the time screaming for help telepathically and realizing that my telepathy only works within the mind-sense range too.

The dark figure charges me physically, lunges, trying to get a hold of me. I grab a gun and put four bullets in the center of the attacker's mass. He (she? it?) is at least woundable, the shielded mind cries out in pain, and disappears, together with the body.

My Sight is instantly back to normal. From our cottage I see Dana flying towards me, followed closely by Timo with another two guns and Rudy with a sword. Jamie, Katie and Tarja and all running down the road, armed with a sword, knives and frying pan. I smile at the thought of Katie, who can make lakes evaporate and people combust, grabbing a frying pan as weapon.

"What happened? Are you OK?" everybody is yelling.
"Somebody appeared out of nowhere and attacked me. I shot them, and they disappeared. They did something to my Sight, too. I couldn't See anything. I mean the Sight that I got today, not my eyes."
"What did they look like?" asks Rudy.
"Looked like a big guy, but might have been an illusion. I didn't see the face, and the mind was shielded too. The attack was purely physical, though. He just jumped at me."
"What did he want?" asks Katie.
"He didn't say, I didn't ask."

Dana is silent, the look of intense concentration on her face. I realize that she is searcing the area with her Sight.

"Nothing here," she says. "And nobody. The nearest person with Skills is Sinikka and she is at home."
"Except if there are people with Skills who cannot be seen as such," reminds her Katie. "Like us."
"Did you notice a place where the Sight doesn't work when you were driving into town?" I ask Dana. "I was, uhm, following your progress, and at some point I lost you for a second, and when I found you again you looked like you noticed something weird."
"Yeah. I thought it was some glitch in my own mind, but I just looked there now and the spot was still there."
"Maybe we should go check it out?" I ask, and fail to see enthusiatic support of this idea on anyone's face.
"Haven't you watched any horror movies?" asks Rudy. "A bunch of daft people go to check out something scary and get eaten."
"Can we wait till Elina is here?" asks Katie.
"The neighbors have probably called the police," says Jamie. "Maybe we should go home. Maybe we should call the police too."

Tarja calls the police and tells them that we heard something that sounded like shots. "It's probably nothing, but there was one guy shooting here today already, so we are understandably scared, sorry about that." After that we probably have to pretend to be scared, which in my case isn't very difficult, and go back to the cottage and hide the guns.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Elina> Holy shit!
<Diego> What happened?
<Elina> A whole area of about 50-meter radius was invisible to the Sight.
<Lauri> This shouldn't be possible.
<Elina> And the prize for stating the obvious goes to...
<Diego> What's happening? What are they talking about?
<Elina> Somebody who can block or divert the Sight appeared and attacked Mira, she shot him or her, and the person disappeared.
<Diego> Ugh.
<Elina> Now they are wondering what happened, and they say that there is a spot somewhere in town that you can't see by Sight.
<Sinikka> I found it! I am gonna go check it out.
<Elina> Sinikka, don't.
<Diego> Or at least take some of the others with you.
<Elina> She ran off. Bloody Rambo. I'll try to talk sense into her.
<Diego> What is this Matthew guy doing?
<Lauri> He'd been talking with Jamie about computers.
<Diego> Does he actually know anything about them?
<Lauri> Hard to say, without any of the computer people present.
<Elina> After Matthew arrived all the conversation there seems a bit psychedelic, I think they are really just talking telepathically about anything improtant.

The police come in less than five minutes, visit the cottage briefly, realize that we haven't seen anything, and search the little forest with no results. They return to the cottage, tell us to call them if we see or hear anything more, and go away.

Everyone wants to know if I am all right, and I sort of am, for a person who just shot somebody, anyway. A very creepy somebody.

Rudy promptly hands me the remains of his booze, saying that I need it more than he does. Love Rudy. Dear cousin.

Dana thinks we should post some kind of guard, and volunteers for the first shift. Nobody is very enthusiastic at the idea, partly because everyone wants to sleep, party because they find Dana more suspicious than whatever can come from outside - although after the appearance of the Sight-extinguishing person I beg to differ, but on the other hand I did shoot him four times, so he probably has other stuff to do now - partly because we know we are being watched 24/7 anyway, and partly because even Dana herself is not taking her watch too seriously, but instead has a cunning plan to commandeer Jamie's laptop and all the episodes of Firefly contained therein and spend her watch watching Firefly instead of the mysterious attackers. Tarja pretends to volunteer for the second guard shift, and Dana pretends to promise to wake her up.

Jamie starts to snore, and Katie orders him to bed, and also goes to their room herself. He seems to have some trouble undressing and falling asleep, or at least figuring out the proper order of those two actions, and she helps him out. He opens one glowing eye at her.

"Now that the scars in my ass have miraculously healed, do you think we should try one of those unspeakable things tonight?" he asks sleepily but hopefully.

Katie's response to that is eminently speakable but totally unprintable, and a minute later they are both fast asleep.

Rudy is still sitting in front of the table with his erection face on. Tarja is glowering at him. Dana is looking hopeful.

"You guys can go to bed," thinks Tarja, who has finally figured out that she can do the telepathic communication at least one-way with anyone who has mind-sense.
"You sure?" I try to convey with a facial expression.

She makes a gesture that means sleeping and points to the two of us.

"I think we should go to bed," I tell Timo.
"But I am not sleepy!" he lies.
"Good. Then we are gonna do unspeakable things."

We are not really in the mood for any unspeakable things, or at least I am not, and Timo doesn't insist.

"Are you sure it was a good idea to leave those three alone?" he asks me.
"I asked Tarja, and she thinks it is."
"We should get rid of the little sociopath."
"She is not a sociopath, she is a teenager."
"Is there a difference?"

I hug him, and he buries his cute pointy nose in my neck, his soft blond hair tickling my breasts. He falls asleep almost immediately, and a whole three seconds later I fall asleep with his buttock in my hand.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Sinikka> Hi.
<Hanne> Sinikka, are you OK?
<Elina> Sinikka, I told you not to go there!
<Sinikka> What's the big deal, the spot just disappeared when I got there.
<Wei> Good morning everyone!

The stupid sunrise wakes me up, and is followed by a diffuse sense of panic. I release the buttock I am still holding, and gently crawl from under Timo's head, trying not to wake him up. There are only three of us in the house, Timo and me and Katie. Where the hell is everyone?

Trying not to panic too much I extend my Sight to look for everyone. The first thing I notice is that both cars are gone, ours and Dana's. The second thing I notice is Jamie at the bottom of a nearby lake. Naked. Reading some magazine about online computer games by the light of his own extremely glowing eyes, drinking something that appears to be a cup of tea and in total violation of the laws of physics is not mixing with the water all around it, and absent-mindedly shooing away the curious fish. He doesn't appear to be bothered by the lack of air, or by the fact that the water is just above freezing. Usually Jamie dislikes cold water with about the same intensity with which Saddam disliked the American invasion of Iraq. He seems to be breathing, too, or at least his ribcage is going through the motions.

I am not sure what it's all about, but I think I need to yell at him for unseemly behavior. It's hard to define in which way it's unseemly but I am quite sure it is.

There are no clothes or towel on the wooden pier by the lake, so I put my clothes on, take a towel with me, and slip out of the house. On the way to the lake I scan more area for the rest of them. Rudy and Dana are about 60 km away and driving towards Helsinki. The way they are kissing in a car, they will never make it, and it looks quite disturbing, now that Dana looks like a man to the Sight.

Tarja is about 30 km behind them, in hot pursuit.

I take out my phone to call her, and then notice a Sight-free spot about 600 meters from me, moving closer and closer towards the lake and Jamie. Shit! And I don't have a gun or anything, and Jamie is out of my mind-sense range. Screaming a mind-sense alarm to everyone who can hear, and hitting sleeping Katie's mind back in the cottage with my mind-sense as violently as possible, I start running towards the lake, trying not to be easily perceived by the regular human senses of whoever might be watching. The mind-violence has paid off, and back in the cottage Katie and Timo are scrambling for clothes and weapons.

The Sight-free spot appears on the road, centered around a man, whom I can now see with my own two eyes. He is tall and broad-shouldered, very tanned, brown hair and light eyes - the exact color is hard to make out at that distance. Mid-forties, maybe, hard to say. He is smiling and going down to the lake.

Jamie comes up from the bottom and sits on water in the pose of Copenhagen's Little Mermaid statue. The impression is somewhat spoiled by the fact that he has a cup of tea in his hand, but the pose is surprisingly feminine and seductive.

The stranger - Michael? - comes to the pier and recoils.

"That's not nice," he says. I get closer to make sure I hear everything. Jamie acknowledges my presense. The stranger doesn't, and I don't feel him touch my mind in any way. Katie and Timo are way behind me, and I signal them to stop.

"Could you, hmm, be yourself again?" the man asks. Jamie nods and sits up in a much less pornographic pose. I can't see what kind of illusion he showed to the man.

"That's better," the man smiles. "I am Michael Hamilton. You have probably heard about me. Nice to meet you." He extends his hand.
"Jamie Hallgrimsson. Yes, I've heard about you, nice to meet you too," Jamie shakes his hand.

Jamie, Michael and the lake disappear into thin air, leaving the empty lakebed. Shit. I start running towards the place where the lake used to be, I don't know why.

A few seconds later the lake reappears, pouring down from nowhere at an altitude of about two meters above its normal surface, causing a tiny lake tsunami. From the same hole in the fabric of reality falls out Jamie, ass-first and screaming "fucking moron", something black-and-white attached to his stomach. He is followed by Michael who falls right on top of him with an "oops", and seven penguins who are screeching whatever sounds of outrage a penguin is capable of producing. The black-and-white thing riding on Jamie turns out to be another penguin.

This all happens very fast. The last thing to come through is a huge piece of ice. It's coming down right on Michael's neck in the manner of a guillotine, but Jamie waves a hand at it and it melts instantaneously in midair, showering Michael with icy water.

"Fucking moron!" Jamie repeats himself. "What the fuck do you think you are doing?"
"Ugh," says Michael sheepishly. "You have my apologies. I did not mean to... What are we gonna do about the penguins?"
"Not my problem." Unfortunately just at that moment a penguin tries to climb on him, making it his problem.

"Mira, what the hell is going on?" asks Elina's voice in my head.
"What can you See?"
"Part of that lake is hidden from the Sight, but I just saw the lake disappear and reappear. You are sitting on the ground in the bushes very close to the blind spot. Katie and Timo have assumed what they think are good shooting positions some 100 meters from the blind spot on higher ground. Jamie is probably in the blind spot. Rudy and Matthew are approaching Kouvola and doing unheterosexual things in the car. Tarja is driving in the same direction, behind them."
"A man just came, and he introduced himself to Jamie as Michael Hamilton. The Sight-blind spot is centered on him. He disappeared together with Jamie and the lake. They came back a few seconds later, and eight penguins with them. Any good advice?" I am not sure I should have told her all of this, or any of this, but right now I don't really care.
"I'll be there after eleven and sort everything out. Be careful and try not to kill anyone."
"Would never have figured that out by myself."
"No need to be sarcastic."
"Makes me feel better."

Michael has managed to climb onto the pier, where he stands up, spreads his legs and arms and concentrates for a second. His clothes and hair become instantly dry. Jamie is standing right on the surface of the lake in front of the pier. He bends down, grabs some water, and it instantly solidifies into an ice sword. He would look very cool, standing there on the water with an ice sword, but the perfect coolness of this sight is much spoiled by the fact that a penguin is standing on the water right behind him and is trying to peck him on the bottom. He sighs and waves his sword behind him to scare the bird off.

"Faye was right," says Michael. "You are a bit ridiculous. She did not mean it in a bad way, and neither do I."

"I came to talk to you," he adds after a pause. Jamie looks at him questioningly. I crawl up much closer, keeping my mind firmly closed. If anyone notices me, they don't let on.

"It's great to see you alive, in a manner of speaking. I've always wondered what happened to you afterwards..." starts Michael.
"'In a manner of speaking?' In any case, we have that thing called Google, you could have satisfied your curiosity long ago."
"You are aware that you are really dead, right?"
"No, it's news to me. Man, I've dropped some acid myself when I was young... but you have sure overdone it."
"You don't believe me?"
"That much acid I haven't dropped."
"You have died on May 24, thirteen years ago, in Nepal, while trying to get down from Mount Everest." The date gets some kind of a reaction from Jamie, and is vaguely familiar to me too, but I can't place it.
"On May 24th thirteen years ago I was in El Paso, Texas, checking out the local museums and tex-mex food." Now that Jamie said it, I remember that trip to El Paso and recognize the date. That was when two of his friends really did die climbing Everest. He had stopped climbing two years before that.
"No, Jamie, you were on Mount Everest and died there. That's why you need to feed on other people and don't need to breathe. You are dead."
"I am breathing, and I am standing here arguing with you. I think the technical term you are looking for is 'alive'. But I am sure you didn't come here to argue metaphysics."
"No, I just need to ask you some things. Can you tell me what happened on the summit of McKinley when you were there?"
"Err, no." Jamie is clearly surprised by the question. "I wasn't there, either."
"What do you mean you weren't there?"
"I mean I wasn't there. Physically."
"Why? Where were you?"
"At a camp at about 4500 meters. Not everyone who goes climbing a mountain reaches the summit. I didn't."
"Do you know anything that happened up there? How did the whole trip go?"
"It sucked from the beginning to the end. Everyone was fighting, I was in no condition to climb, and it was bloody cold."
"Tell me everything from the beginning to the end."
"We were rather ill-prepared, and there was a lot of badly compatible personal chemistry involved. I think the whole thing would have fallen apart before starting if I hadn't kept it together with the Skills. And then I didn't pass the medical clearance, so I figured it was a bright idea to do some blood-doping and make Molly think she cleared me. The result was that I needed suplementary oxygen at 4500 meters, and they had to leave me in a camp. They left Ang and Meiko in the next camp, and continued climbing. I got some rest, joined Ang and Meiko, and together we waited for the rest of the team to come down."
"Go on."
"That's pretty much it. They had some fight on the summit, split up, then there was some freak storm. Ang and I went out in the storm and found half-frozen Brian. After that we had to call the park rangers to the rescue because we couldn't get him down by ourselves. Faye, Sean and Molly were above the storm and got down safely by themselves."
"OK, I'll tell you what I am getting at: could Faye cause storms at will?"
"I don't know. I've wondered myself. I think you'd be in a better position to know."
"I knew she was a potential."
"She never told me."
"I never told her." Michael looks like he regrets it now.
"Why do you wanna know it now?"
"I think we can find whoever killed her."
"Some Angolan gangsters."
"It wasn't random violence. It was a contract murder. Of Faye, specifically. The rest of you were collateral damage."
"Have you talked to the police, then?"
"Don't you want to find the killer yourself? Or rather ourselves?"
"No."

Michael clearly didn't expect this answer.

"Don't you want to avenge her death?"
"I do, and that's what the courts and the police are for."
"We have enough power between the two of us to go after him ourselves."
"You'll have to do it without me, then. Personal revenge is not my thing."
"Why? Don't give me any bullshit about being a good citizen."
"A lot of people find personal revenge satisfying. It gives them some sense of closure. Me, it just makes me feel hollow and sick. What's the point of committing murder if you get nothing useful from it, and no satisfaction?"
"Punishment has a very useful social function."
"Yeah, I am all for punishment when inflicted by somebody else."
"All right," sighs Michael. "I see. I'll find myself another avenger," he adds meaningfully.
"If you approach her with that idea, I'll eat you."
"Says the man who doesn't believe in revenge."
"I am not doing it as revenge. I am just making a credible threat."
"In light of our conversation it's not very credible."
"Do you know what happened to the last guy who threatened my wife and friends?"
"But I am not threatening anyone! I am sure that your wife and some of your friends would be overjoyed to hear my suggestions."

Michael is right, too. The thought of catching the people who killed Faye doesn't feel half bad.

"Jamie," says Michael softly. "What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing," answers Jamie, still standing on water and shooing the penguins away with an ice sword.
"You have so much power, why don't you use it?"
"I use it all the time."
"I mean for something real."
"This conversation is so deja vu."
"You know that enlightened despotism is the best form of government."
"I know no such thing, but feel free to try."
"What about you?"
"Me? I don't feel particularly enlightened."
"This can be fixed."
"By you? I am sure."
"You could have anything you want."
"I already have everything I want."
"I can't believe it," sighs Michael. "I though they only have people like that in the movies. You know, the ones who get the most amazing superpowers and then all they do is whine 'I just wanna have a normal life!'."

The illusion that Jamie conjures in response to that is of himself about four times the natural size, glowing impossibly brightly, with some complicated even-brighter symbols on his skin, probably copied from some of the cooler supplementary Exalted books.

"I don't just wanna have a normal life. I do have a normal life, I want it to remain so, and I have enough power to enforce that!" His ice sword, now also four times its real size, glows blue.

"Ok, ok, point taken," says Michael.

The illusion disappears and Jamie returns to whatever he considers his normal life, standing naked on the lake's surface and threatening a penguin with an ice sword.

"Seriously, Michael. I have a life, a wife and a butt, and I am just trying to live the life in such a way that the wife wouldn't kick the butt too often."
"I see. I respect that."
"Would you like some teaaaargh!" Jamie asks, as the penguin behind him finally manages to peck him.
"Yes, thanks."

Jamie throws away the sword, summons his teacup and his magazine, and grabs the penguin, no small feat considering that the huge bird weighs at least half as much as him.

"Now who is gonna be penguin curry?"

The penguin screeches and puts up a good fight.

They start walking up the road towards the house, Jamie whistling a song that Faye used to whistle all the time. This is some kind of a challenge, just to rub Michael the wrong way. His nudity is also some kind of a challenge, although at this point he doesn't have much choice except an illusion of clothes. He chooses not to bother with illusory clothes and just sort of radiates the unshakeable conviction that his body is a lot better than that of the other guy.

This is not in fact the case, at least if Michael's body looks half as good naked as it does dressed. It's not that he is very handsome, but he is the kind of man you notice, and he does have a really great body. The face is not bad either, but not my type, and his skin is too damaged by age and sun.

As they come closer to where I am sitting I step out of the bushes.

"Good morning. Would you like a towel?"
"Yes, thanks, good thinking." Jamie makes himself instantly dry and reaches for the towel, trying not to let the penguin go or peck him.
"Let me hold your bird," Michael takes hold of the penguin and is rewarded with a mighty peck in the shoulder.
"My apologies, ma'am," he tells me. "Didn't mean to scare you yesterday. Didn't mean to escalate the violence, either."
"But of course you didn't. I did." I think, but decide not to say.

I touch Jamie's shoulder, and it feels unnaturally warm, or rather what would have been naturally warm for a person in a room, but not for a person who just got out from a cold lake. Whatever was keeping him warm in the lake isn't working anymore, though, and for all his naked bravado he is getting cold and wishing for warm clothes. His mind is mostly shielded, but the uppermost thing leaking from it is the excitement at the idea of diving without the scuba gear, using his new Skill, and plans of a possible diving vacation in Thailand. Fucking Jamie, can't think of anything serious at all. Come the end of the world, hellfire and brimstone, and he'll show up late, and with a bag of marshmallows.

He is wearing an illusion of brown eyes. His real eyes are glowing blue under it, very strongly, but the glow is subsiding.

Ahead of us Katie and Timo step out of a bush, pistols in their hands. Jamie starts shielding their minds from Michael's prying.

"What the hell are you doing with the penguin?" asks Katie.
"Penguin curry."
"Don't be a moron."
"It pecked me on the ass."
"It shits on the floor, you are cleaning it up."

Jamie considers this for a second.

"OK, let it go." Michael releases the penguin and it buggers off in the wrong direction.

"Hi everybody, this is Michael," says Jamie in the way of introduction. "Don't shake his hand, he teleports people to some dungeon dimension that's cold and full of penguins. I had to take some of his power to teleport us back."
"It's called Antarctica," Michael smiles, "and I didn't mean to do it." He holds out his hand.
"Hi, I am Timo," says Timo in a friendly tone, but doesn't take the hand.
"Let me make one thing clear," says Katie. "Jamie here is a daft bugger who is too soft for his own good. If you try the teleporting thing with me, I will set you on fire, even if it means that I have to fly all the way back across the world on Qantas in the economy class."

She shakes Michael's hand, simultaneously exhaling a five-meter tongue of flame away from us, setting on fire a nearby tree and nearly hitting the penguin. "Oops," she says.
"Whoa, whoa," says Michael. "The tree is quite innocent and didn't try to teleport you anywhere."
"Where is everybody else?" asks Timo. "Tarja and Rudy and Matt?"
"They are not in the house? They were there when I went for a swim." Jamie looks surprised. Michael looks even more surprised.
"Rudy and Matt," I say a bit more sourly than I meant to, "are making out in a hotel in Kouvola. Tarja is still driving there."
"Oh."

"Tea or coffee?" asks Jamie when we reach the cottage, pulling his clothes on.
"Coffee, please. You really are very nice."
"What do you want?" asks Katie.
"To avenge Faye's death, to find out whether she had Skills, and to rule the world," answers Jamie for him.
"I wouldn't put it that way," says Michael, somewhat taken aback.
"To become a global leader?" grins Timo, who has played company meeting bingo too many times. "Do you also have a mission and a vision?"
"I am serious."
"Me too," says Jamie. "But I seriously don't know whether she had Skills. Bad weather did seem to happen when she was angry, but then we did live in Edinburgh and London."
"Would you let me see your memories of her death?"
"Yes, but you'll be disappointed. I don't remember much."

Jamie carefully opens one segment of his memory. I gotta ask him how to do that. Like the rest of his memories, this one is very precise and vivid. Eighteen people sitting around a campfire, tents around them, the grilling, the beer, the laughter, the plans for the next day. Empty space. Static. Hospital in London.

"You don't remember a shit!"
"No."
"How did they manage to overpower you?"
"Good question."
"Do you know who those attackers were and where to find them?" asks Katie.
"Katie, I need to talk to you in private," says Jamie and takes her to the bedroom. I take over shielding Timo's mind.

"Those two probably won't go with you," I say. "But I will. I have no problems with revenge."

Michael looks disappointed.

"Not good enough, am I? Why does everyone want Jamie?" I ask him.
"Some people obviously want Rudy," he thinks, clearly taking that personally. "He is very powerful," he answers.
"He has a very powerful mind-sense, but how much do you need against normal people? I have enough, and for that matter so do you. The point is, Jamie doesn't want to do it, and I do. But by all means, try to convince him. I am coming with you, whether he is coming or not."
"I am not taking you with us. I don't want you to get hurt."
"What did you want from me yesterday?"
"To talk with you in private."
"Here's your chance."
"In private." Michael points at Timo with his eyes.
"I'll tell him anything you'd tell me, so you can just as well talk in his presense."
"Even if I told you that somebody might want to kill him for knowing it?"
"Especially if you told me that somebody might want to kill him for knowing it."
"Even if I told you how to get Jamie back?" Michael switches to telepathic communication.
"Back where?"
"Back together with you. You could get Timo to stop fucking women on the side, too."
"Read up something on open relationships, will you? And if I wanted to be with Jamie I wouldn't have broken up with him in the first place."
"Don't the Skills make him sexier?"
"Not unless he uses his newfound healing Skill to grow more muscle in some places."
"Women are strange."
"Have you had one of a non-inflatable kind?"
"I used to date a coworker. Why are you so hostile?"
"Because I don't understand what you want from us, because you are looking for fault lines in our relationships, and because you have already found the one fault line that existed. You sent that girl here."
"I did not send her here for that! It was her own idea!"
"What did you send her here for? And how do you pay her?"
"To help me be persuasive when I get here. I don't pay her, I just told her it's very important for my research, and promised to share the results".
"And is it?"
"Is it what?"
"Important for your research."
"Yes. Very."
"Excuse me. I need to make a phone call."

"I gotta make a phone call," I tell Timo. "Come outside with me, I can't leave you here with Faust."
"You surely meant Mephistopheles," laughs Michael.
"No, I am pretty sure I meant Faust."

We go outside and I start dialing Tarja's number, then try to See Rudy and Dana, who are in bed, and doing the kinds of things that can only be described as unimaginable. I send Rudy an SMS saying "conjure a better illusion, guys, your sex antics look horrible", and then call Tarja.

"Hi."
"Hi, what are you doing?"
"Following Rudy and Matt."
"Don't do anything stupid, it's not worth it."
"I just wanna talk with him."
"Not sure it's a good idea."
"It might be. Remember how it was when you broke up with my brother?"

I didn't break up with her brother, I didn't date her brother, and she doesn't even have a brother, but I am not sure what she is trying to say except "something is not as it seems".

"Is there any way I can help you?" I ask.
"Not right now, no. But I might ask for help."
"Be careful. Don't do anything I wouldn't do. And especially don't do anything I would do."
"Heh. Bye."

Michael appears in the doorway.

"There is something else really important I gotta tell you," he says.
"I am all ears."
"Jamie is very dangerous."
"Not really, but he will be if you keep getting on his nerves."
"You don't realize how powerful he is, and how unstable. He is our world's equivalent of a madman with a nuke."
"'Our world' like 'Community'?"
"Yeah."
"No, he is your world's equivalent of a madman with the world's only nuke, and you just want the nuke for yourself."
"Madman. Nuke. Pissing off. Bad idea. Just a thought," contributes Timo.
"I can see the future," says Michael.
"Good for you." Can he? Wiki says that nobody can, but he probably wrote that entry himself.
"Jamie will kill you. Next week."
"How well can you see it?" Shit, this can't possibly be true.
"Well enough."
"I mean, how much of the future do you see, and is it changeable or not?"

The sound of a pistol slide chambering a round.

"Have you predicted your death today?" asks Timo, pointing a pistol at Michael's head. I don't know whether he'd shoot, and neither does he.
"No," says Michael, and Timo flies about fifteen meters into a tree, somehow managing not to discharge the gun in the process. I hear the sound of breaking bones and run there, ordering Michael to kill himself and meaning it.

"You are pretty good, but not good enough," he laughs from behind me. "And don't get so worked up, he can heal almost instantaneously, just like me."

Timo is indeed getting up and swearing. After a few seconds he seems no worse for the wear.

"Shouldn't have tried to shoot him," I tell him. "I shot him four times in the center of mass yesterday, and here he is."
"Oh. Yeah. Shit."
"Word of advice, Mira," says Michael. "If you want to shoot a man my size in the center of mass, you gotta aim higher than yesterday."
"Did I shoot you in the nuts? Heh. Thanks, I'll keep this in mind."

"Hey", says Jamie from the doorway. I did not notice when he and Katie appeared there. "Do you realize that if my wife decides to set you on fire, they only thing I'd be able to do is waving my hands and screaming 'honey, please don't!'? I am pretty good at it but it won't help much."
"Don't worry, I'll be OK."
"Could you stop being an asshole? In an hour you've told us more bullshit than the British government since New Labor got elected."
"Jamie is a fairly nice guy, but every person has a beast inside just waiting to be unleashed," says Timo, deliberately overdramatic.

Michael shows us a telepathic image of the beast he thinks Jamie has inside him. It's a white and fluffy samoyed puppy with cute pointy ears, and I must say he has a point. Jamie laughs, and responds with a telepathic image of the puppy morphing into a huge and furry gray wolf, who chases Michael comically around the house.

"Seriously. Stop throwing my friends around. Did you see all the things I did in the lake? If this is indeed what the water elemental Skill looks like, then I am for all effects and purposes the god of water. You, on the other hand, are water. Be nice."
"OK. He is no worse for the wear, and he did try to shoot me in the head," Michael points at Timo. "Besides, water Skill or not, you can't kill me. I can't be killed, and neither can he," Michael points at Timo again.

This is enough to shock even Timo.

"You mean we are... immortal?"
"No, just invulnerable.We can die from old age eventually. Not from injury or disease, though. Mind you, I don't know what happens if you stand in the center of a nuclear explosion or something like that, but regular things like bullets, knives, falls, burns, etc., can't kill you. Or any person with the high healing Skill."
"Sunlight? Garlic?" asks Katie hopefully.
"I surf all the time," Michael runs a finger along his tanned forearm, "hasn't killed me yet."
"What about them?" asks Timo, pointing at the three of us with his eyes.
"Oh, they can heal their own diseases, but it takes a lot more time and conscious effort than for us. They are perfectly killable though. They have a little edge on the normals, a couple more minutes to bring them to a hospital, that sort of thing. But not much." I am not sure if I am hearing a threat in his words.
"No, you aren't. He doesn't mean to threaten right now," comments Jamie telepathically.
"Have I been thinking out loud? Did he hear me?"
"No."
"Do you think the coffee is ready?" asks Michael.

"Tell me more about the McKinley summit," he asks Jamie while stirring sugar into his black coffee.
"I don't know anything else. Out of the people who were there only Brian MacDonald is alive, you might want to ask him."
"I tried. Mr. MacDonald told me he was gonna shoot me with a shotgun if I come anywhere near him."
"What a coincidence. That's exactly what he told me, too."
"How many people know about you, Jamie?"
"You mean apart from the Community and everyone who picked a fight with us during the last two days?"
"Yeah."
"Quite a few, now that I think about it."
"How could you let that happen?"
"When you have one teammate freezing to death 200 meters from you and another whom you need to convince that you really can find the way there and back in spite of zero visibility, privacy is not the first thing on your mind."
"And you didn't wipe their minds?"
"Didn't know how to do it."
"Damn teenagers."
"What is it all about?" asks Katie.
"Just trying to teach Jamie the ethics of dealing with the normals."

Timo snorts and inhales his coffee.

"Anyway - would you guys help us with the research? I just need to ask you some questions. Could have asked by IRC, but since I am here already..."
"Depends on the questions," asks Katie, takes Jamie's laptop and boots it.
"Just the kind that we ask from everyone. I am trying to find out how Skills happen to people, and why. Where were you born, where did you grow up?"
"New York," I say.
"Edinburgh," says Katie. "Jamie, Rudy and me."
"Born in Espoo," says Timo. "Grew up in Helsinki. You look disappointed."
"I am. Almost everyone with the Skills is born and raised within 50 km of some sea coast. An exception would have been exciting, but no such luck."
"How rare are the exceptions?" asks Katie, scientific interest rising.
"There were 26 in all recorded history. 17 of them born in eastern Switzerland or western Austria, 9 in the Baghdad area."
"Interesting."
"Tell me about your families. You first," Michael nods at Timo.
"Family? I am an only child, and my mom is a meteoroligst and my dad..."
"I wouldn't tell him about the living relatives," growls Katie suspiciously.
"I meant genealogy," says Michael.
"Huh! How am I supposed to know? My father's father was from Viipuri and his last name was Nurminen and my father's mother was also from Viipuri and her last name was Laine, and my mother's father was from Helsinki, his last name was Lehtola, I think his family came from around Kuopio but I am not sure, and my mother's mother was from Rauma and I have no idea what her maiden name was. I don't know much about the greatgrandparents."
"Pity."

Katie is looking at the Community's wiki, Michael's own page. There is indeed quite a lot about his ancestry and family here (mostly Scottish and English with a bit of Irish, some of those with long roots in Australia, some recent immigrants). She looks through a few more. Elina Lindroos, a long list of ancestors from various parts of Pohjanmaa and Lapland. So probably Michael's questions are legitimate, although I wish he were asking them from Australia on IRC. In any case with his powers he can probably find all the living relatives just by watching us.

I look at his page again. There is a mention of Faye there, her mother was his father's sister. Probably still is. Haven't seen her since Faye's funeral, which is probably bad of me.

"She is all right," says Michael. "Still living in Edinburgh."

Argh, have I forgotten to shield my mind?

"You?" asks me Michael.
"Me what? Why are you asking this? Do the Skills run in families or something?"
"Not very much, but the Skilled are distantly related to each other every once in a while. More often than randomly taken people, anyway."
"How distantly?" Katie is curious.
"Usually very distantly, 5th or 7th cousins or something. Jamie and his grandmother are the closest related pair that we know of. Or rather were until yesterday, now of course we also have you and your brother. Where is he, by the way?"
"Out in the world," shrugs Katie, "following the call of his dick. You should know better, you sent that girl here to lure him away."
"I didn't! I already told Mira! It was her own idea!"
"He just wanted her to be here to help him against us," says Jamie.
"That's what I told her," says Michael. "Really I sent her here for you," he means Jamie.
"Why, thanks, but it did not work. I am too old for the teenage silliness and too young for midlife silliness, and she is not my type. Should she gain extra thirty or so centimeters of height, please send her again."
"I didn't mean for sex! I meant... to feed on."
"What the fuck are you taking me for?" Jamie is horrified.
"A man who feeds on others' energy and Skills?"
"Yeah, but I don't eat people!"
"I didn't mean for you to eat her completely! I just wanted to see you feed a bit on her Skills - it doesn't leave any permanent damage, right?" He is lying. I know it and Jamie knows it. Katie and Timo at least suspect it.
"Michael," says Jamie. "Have you at least considered becoming an honest man?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"If I were as bad at lying as you are, I would certainly at least give honesty a try."
"You are as bad at lying as he is," Katie points out disloyally.
"No, I am not! You are just accustommed to me."
"How bad am I?" asks Michael, smiling.
"Very. First of all, telling people that they are dead does not inspire much trust. What on earth has posessed you to do that?"
"I figured that with your psychological profile, your fondness of fantasy and the amount of stress on you now you are bound to be quite superstitious."
"Very few people are that superstitious. I mostly just felt like calling a psychiatrist."

Michael's face darkens a bit, mind-shield thickens.

"Did you?"
"Did I what?"
"Call a psychiatrist?"
"No. Should I have?"

Michael gets up and pours himself some coffee.

"In addition to trying to convince me that I was dead, you also asked me to join you in hunting down the people whom you have killed 14 years ago. I guess there would be some fantasy logic to that, if I were really dead and were able to hunt them down in the underworld..."
"How did you know?"
"I went there to do it myself a year later, and found out that the job was already done. And by who."
"I thought you didn't believe in revenge?"
"The relief that I felt upon finding out that I wouldn't have to do it myself made me think I shouldn't believe in revenge. By the way - thanks."
"Anytime," Michael smiles.
"I also know that I am not the first person with the Skills and without the Sight that you have seen."
"How do you know that?" Michael smiles even wider. "Did the villagers in Angola tell that to you too?"
"No, you are just leaking."
"What happened to that person?" asks Timo.
"Whatever would have happened to me if Michael had managed to drag me to wherever he was trying to drag me," suggests Jamie.
"Not at all," says Michael. "Of course I wanted to get you to my lab. You are very special. Most of my measurement equipment requires a willing subject, though."
"Which is hard to get with your natural power of persuasion."
"I was thinking of offering you a trip to the Great Barrier Reef."
"Mmm, Great Barrier Reef. Should have started with that..."

Michael is still blocking the Sight, and I get up to go outside.

"Wouldn't you share your genealogy with us?" stops me Michael.
"I need to make some calls. Katie can do it for me, our mothers are sisters. My father's last name is Levy, and his father's family lived in Paris for many generations. His mother's last name was Eisenberg, and she was from Antwerp. Her own mom was from somewhere in Poland, I have no idea."
"Eisenberg from Antwrep? Not a descendant of the rabbi Eisenberg?"
"She was his granddaughter, why?"

Michael looks at me like a cat that has just found a mouse. I resolve to look up who else on the Community's list is the descendant of the rabbi Eisenberg and go outside.

It is a relief to get my Sight back. I try to contact Elina, who is sitting in an airplane and giving a nasty look to a sandwich that has seen better days and possibly weeks.

"Hey, Mira!" She greets me first.
"Hi. Michael is still in our cottage and full of shit."
"Don't believe a word he says."
"He is asking about our ancestry."
"This is a standard operating procedure. He probably wants something else, though. By the way - he really means all he says about science, even though he is full of manure otherwise."
"Elina, how do I find a person? With the Sight, I mean. What are those idents wiki is talking about? It's not clear."
"If you have seen them in person, you can home in on them with the Sight as long as they are in range, as you have probably already noticed. If they have the Sight, you can home in on them in any case. Ident is a part of the aura that the Sight sees, even in normals, big enough to be a unique identifier. It's just a convention - you can home in on any part of the aura, but if you use an ident you can also show the other people what to look for." She demonstrates it to me, showing me an ident. I try to search for it with the Sight and find a thin blond girl whose trousers are falling off.
"Who's that?"
"Hanne from the IRC channel."
"Cool. Thanks. Can I home in on someone I have seen before I got the Sight?"
"No. Sorry. You can search for them if you know even approximately where they are."
"Thanks. See you."

I try to home in on Sinikka and find her at home with some papers and coffee.

I take my phone out and look for Rudy and Dana. Rudy is naked, gathering up his clothes and obviously preparing to sneak out of his hotel room. Dana is asleep and still pretending to be a guy (how does she manage it while asleep?). I figure it would be a bad moment to call Rudy.

He gets into the bathroom, gets dressed, and gets out. Downstairs he pays for the last night and the next, and tells them not to disturb her under any circumstances.

Tarja is waiting for him outside, flipping the car keys impatiently, and they get into the car. Now might be a good moment to call.

"What the fuck!" I start politely.
"And how are you this morning?" he smiles.
"What were you doing there with, err, Matt?"
"I needed to lure him away."
"And what a great bait you used..."
"Stop it, please! We are coming back to the cottage now. Is everything OK?"
"This Michael guy is here. He is totally fucked in the head, but seems to have calmed down."
"Cool."
"What do you think will happen when Matt wakes up?"
"Don't know. We'll see." Rudy hangs up.

I go back inside. Everyone except Michael has moved to the sofa. Katie, who does genealogy for a hobby, has just finished torturing Michael with the endless tale of her ancestors and mine, and is brushing Jamie's hair. Timo is having a beer.

"Your turn," Michael tells Jamie.
"There is a long list of ancestors on my mother's side, but I have never bothered to read it..."
"Your maternal ancestry is well known to us. What about your father? Why is your last name Hallgrimsson if his name is Asgeir? Can Icelandic people use any of their father's given names?"
"As a matter of fact, they can, and any of their mother's given names, too. But in our case they just gave my father's patronymic to the kids like it were a normal British last name. Grandpa was Hallgrimur."
"Icelandic gelealogy is such a pain in the ass. Did anyone in your family have a real last name?"
"My father's mother's mother was from Sweden, and must have had some sort of a last name, but I don't know it. I just knew her as Eva."
"Damn. Where did all these people come from?"

In response Michael gets a short list of Icelandic fishing villages with unpronounceable names. He looks at his watch.

"I think I should go now. Are you guys sure you don't want to visit my lab? You can see some of Australia while we are at it."
"Some other time," says Katie.
"Sorry I've been such a pain in the ass. I think you better not tell anyone about teleporting."
"Dana doesn't know?" asks Katie.
"No. Can I at least visit and talk some more sometime later?"
"If you behave yourself," says Jamie. Timo looks like he wants to say "no".
"I think I should round up the penguins first, and teleport them to Antarctica. Can you guys give me a hand?"

Outside, Katie just concentrates and four penguins come running. The rest is out of her range and Michael goes deeper into the forest to look for them.

"Look out! Everybody down!" suddenly yells Timo, hitting the ground. Before I drop I hear a shot and see Michael some distance away, lowering a rifle. Katie remains standing. Jamie falls down with a shriek, some kind of syringe-like thing protruding from his thigh.

Jamie pulls the thing out of his leg immediately, but whatever drug it was carrying is already inside him. He gets up, though, and starts running towards Michael, who also starts running towards him, reaching out with his hands as if to grab him.

"Jamie, no!" we scream, starting after him. He is faster, though, and covers the remaining distance in one leap, falling limply in triumphant Michael's arms, his own arm holding on to Michael's shoulder. Suddenly Jamie pulls Michael's head to his face, grabs his ear with his teeth, knees him in the groin hard, twice, without releasing the ear, then lets the bloody ear out of his mouth and follows up with a couple of really good kicks to the same place, before finally falling down.

When we reach them a couple of seconds later Jamie is lying on his back silently, trying to struggle against the impending sleep, and Michael is curled up in a ball, howling and holding on to his family jewels.

"Stay away from me," says Jamie telepathically. We reach out to touch him anyway, and he unexpectedly pushes us away telekinetically. "Stay away. Fire."

After a flash of black fire a 30-meter-high regular flame erupts from him. He doesn't seem to be bothered by it at all, and is pretty much asleep already. It feels really strange to watch his clothes burn off him, turning to ashes and then to nothingness. "This t-shirt was full of holes anyway," is an absurd thought that comes to my mind. A few meters away Michael is moaning in pain.

"Stop! They have set a man on fire!" sounds from the direction of the road, in Finnish, as two cops are running towards us. One of them is summoning help: "three people, one man and two women, and there is another man lying on the ground..."

By the time they reach us the fire has stopped. Katie grabs Jamie and lifts him from the ground, far too quickly to look natural. He is not only unharmed, but even fairly clean, and she is showing him to the officers. "See? He is just fine! We didn't set him on fire! There was no fire!"

The cops stare, moving their eyes from the human-shaped burned spot on the ground to the peacefully sleeping Jamie, and back. "Er," says one of them in English, "the fire... and what about him?" he points at still-moaning Michael.

"There was no fire! It was a little campfire! My husband had a bit to drink and passed out next to it. And this is our friend who fell on his balls..."

I am trying to make the cops believe Katie's pathetic lies, but at that moment Jamie farts a stream of flame and sets one of the cops on fire. They start running. I run after them, screaming "don't let them get away!", and finally remembering that I have coercion. "You two! Stop! Roll on the ground! Don't even fucking think of calling anybody or doing anything!"

When I reach them the fire is gone. One of them is unharmed, but the other one has a deep burn all over the front of one leg, from the hip to the ankle.

"Call everybody off," I order the unharmed one. He is terrified but obeys.

Katie and Timo have caught up with me, and Katie is still holding Jamie, which scares the cops even more.

"Katie," I say, "please get your flamethrower away from here. And don't point his ass at anything flammable. Timo, do you think you can heal this guy?"
"I can try," says Timo, and Katie steps a couple of meters away, making calming sounds at Jamie who seems calm enough already to me, and says "shh, love, come on, don't do that again, you are not a very ergonomical weapon".

I try to calm down the cops, with moderate success, as Timo heals the injured cop's leg. The burn heals without a trace. I am still keeping the cops immobile. I should probably make them forget the whole thing, except that one of them is missing half his pants.

"What are we gonna do about the pants?" I ask Timo.
"I have no idea. I am an engineer, not a seamstress...seamster...seamer?"
"Taylor."
"Yeah. Of course. I still have no idea."

I wipe the whole episode out of the cops' mind, simultaneously trying to block them from noticing the pants. Luckily one of the penguins has just walked by towards the road.

"See, officers!" I say. "A penguin!" With that I send them off to chase it.

We retreat towards the cottage, passing Michael on the way. He is still in pain.

"Why aren't you healing?" asks Timo, "And why are you still here?"
"The fucker consumed all my Skills... In the meanwhile, can you help me with that?" He points at his balls.
"Heh. So you are not invulnerable anymore, at least for a while?" Timo grins in a very evil way, and so does Katie.

Now Michael really is scared.

"I am not gonna heal you," says Timo. "In fact I feel like kicking you a bit more, but not gonna do that either. But I think a taste of vulnerability would be good for you. Are you familiar with pain?"
"Yes, of course, but it doesn't normally last for minutes! Ouch!"
"There is something wrong with him," says Katie.
"He is a fucking insane sociopath!" suggests Timo.
"I mean Jamie."
"Me too. Just kidding."
"What was in the dart?" asks Katie, and Michael responds with three long chemical names.
"His blood pressure is very low now," says Timo.
"Lower than before?"
"Yeah. But not really dangerous or anything."

Can I try to feel what Jamie's body feels even though his mind is asleep? Ugh. He is in the condition where people usually go lie down in order not to faint. Not that is bothers him, but still...

"It wasn't supposed to bring blood pressure very low," says Michael.
"His is very low as it is," says Katie, "he shouldn't be using stuff that brings it even lower."
"How was I supposed to know?"
"That's why we don't shoot tranquilizer darts at people without taking their medical history first."
"What does it matter? He is asleep and can't feel anything. Besides, he has consumed my healing Skill and is invulnerable, and he would be in no danger even if he weren't. And he kicked me in the balls like a common thug."
"I feel like doing the same, just for what you just said," remarks Katie.
"Well, you are a common thug."
"Watch your mouth."
"Anyway," Michael addresses Timo, "you can bring his blood pressure up with your Skills." He seems to explain telepathically how, and Timo does it.

Katie tries to carry Jamie into the cottage.

"You are not serious?" asks Timo. "One fart and the cottage goes up in flames. And it was rented in my name. And I'd rather not have third-degree burns even if I can heal them in a minute."
"We can't leave him outside!"
"Yes, we can," I say, running up the porch and dragging the big wooden porch table down. "Timo, bring all the blankets you can find in the house."

Timo brings a pile of blankets, and we arrange the table, the blankets and Jamie in an appropriate way. He burrows under the blankets with his head and seems comfortable enough.

"Isn't he gonna be cold?" asks Katie. "It's just 5 degrees or so."
"Finnish people leave their babies to sleep outside in winter," says Timo, "and he is an adult man, and a very healthy one at that."
"I don't think we should leave him out here alone and helpless," insists Katie.
"For fuck's sake, Katie," I say, "calm down. Nobody is gonna kidnap your sweet little fire-breathing dragon."
"How do you know?"
"Because he breathes fire!"
"Farts fire," corrects Timo.
"Gives a whole new meaning to the concept of flaming asshole," comments Michael grimly.

Sleeping Jamie keeps touching our minds like he usually does, demanding that we touch him. We all do, except that when Michael tries to, Katie gives him such a glare that he withdraws his hand immediately and looks apologetic.

"Let's go inside," says Timo.
"Yeah," says Michael.
"We are not taking you inside," growls Katie.
"You sure you wanna leave him out here with Jamie?" asks Timo.
"OK," sighs Katie. "Come on in."

As soon as I turn around and try to get to the house a huge tentacle appears around my waist and drags me back. Where Jamie was lying a second ago there is now a big pink octopus, and its other tentacles are pulling the others towards it. I can see that the octopus is illusory, but the telekinesis pulling on us is real.

He is just having some kind of a vivid nightmare about being an octopus, and is playing it out. Judging from the force of it, Michael used to have quite a lot of telekinesis.

"What the hell?" screams Timo.
"These drugs sometimes cause very vivid dreams," explains Michael, struggling with his own tentacle.
"Let me see: half an hour ago you called him a madman with a nuke, and then your solution to the madman with a nuke was to provide him with drugs and more weapons? Well, extra points for thinking out of the box, homeopath!"
"It wasn't supposed to go this way!"
"Now where have I heard that before?"

I try to end Jamie's dream, with no result.

"Jamie!" roars Katie. "Keep your fucking tentacles to yourself!"

He immediately withdraws the tentacles and pulls them under himself, looking very much like a dog with its tail between its legs. A second later the octopus image disappears, and he is again just a guy.

"I am sorry," says Michael sheepishly when we get inside. "I'll make coffee."
"Sit down," orders Katie. "You are not gonna make anything we drink, or we are not gonna drink anything you make. You better teleport away."
"I can't, he ate all my Skills," reminds her Michael. "How fast do they return?"
"I have no clue. They have taxis."
"To Australia?"

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Sinikka> Told you he could teleport!
<Else> Told you he is an asshole.
<Wei> What the hell is going on? What just happened?
<Lauri> Some kind of an illusion, hard to see from here. They were speaking about tentacles.
<Wei> Whee, tentacle porn!
<Lauri> Anyway, they left Jamie asleep outside on the table and went into the house. And the area is full of police and penguins chasing each other.
<Olafur> So Michael can teleport and block the Sight. Figures...
<Yossi> Told ya. :)
<Wei> Where is Dana?
<Olafur> Probably can block the Sight too. Or teleport. Or something.
<Hanne> Hi
<Else> Hi Hanne
<Hanne> What's going on?
<Else> Michael teleported to Lappeenranta, blocked the Sight and went to visit them.
<Hanne> Wow.
<Sinikka> And Jamie has apparently got the water elemental Skill, but we are not sure yet. He can breathe underwater, anyway.
<Lauri> And there are penguins running around for some reason. Huge ones.
<Else> Anyway: the Sight block ended a minute ago, Michael appears powerless and Jamie drugged and asleep, he set a cop on fire by accident but they fixed it the best they could, and Michael just admitted teleporting. Rudy and Tarja seem to be coming back there.
<Wei> Is Elina gonna be there sometime soon?
<Sinikka> Yes.
<Wei> Good.

Katie is playing with Jamie's laptop, and I borrow it for a second to check who might be related to me. Dana. Should've guessed.

"Maybe I should go," says Michael after several cups of coffee, glancing at his watch.
"Maybe you should," I say. "Should I call you a cab?"
"I'll walk to the bus. Thanks. And sorry. And you are all welcome to visit if you come to Sydney. And I really hope that you'd help me with my research."
"We'll think about it," says Katie, her mind shielded.
"And please - don't tell anyone."
"About what?"
"About anything."

With those words he hugs Katie and disappears with her.

"Shit," says Timo after a couple of seconds. "What are we gonna do? Where did he go?"
"Sydney?" I ask.
"Can you look for an empty Sight spot around there?"
"I can't see that far."
"What are we gonna do? Can we wake Jamie up? Should we? When are Rudy and Tarja coming? Is Elina gonna help?"
"They'll be here in 20 minutes or so. I don't think he'll wake up before the drug wears off. Did you remember what it was?"
"No."
"Shit. Me neither."

I look at my watch.

"It took him 25 minutes to regain the teleporting Skill. Unless he was lying all along."

Timo turns the TV on.

"What are you doing?"
"Seeing if there is a huge fire anywhere."
"Net is faster, though."

I grab the laptop with Google News in mind, but a Yle page is open, and I refresh it, just in case. Breaking news: an explosion in a hotel in Kouvola.

I try to home in on Dana, and there she is, driving towards Lappeenranta. She is still wearing her "Matt" look, so that the extent of damage is unclear. I try to contact her.

"Dana, are you OK?"
"What the hell is going on?"
"I was gonna ask the same thing. Why did your room blow up? What were you doing?"
"I was asleep. Suddenly Michael appeared and woke me up and started screaming that I'd betrayed him. He had Katie with him, and she was unconscious. We fought and the room got damaged and he disappeared together with Katie. But why is Rudy gone?"
"You better ask him. Are you hurt?"
"Nothing that wouldn't heal... eventually."
"Are you one of the people who can heal anything eventually?"
"Yeah."
"I'll tell you more when I see you in person. By the way: we are related."
"Great. More relatives is all I need."

Timo goes out to check on Jamie. I find the address of the IRC server in the wiki and join the channel.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Mira> Hi
<Sinikka> Mira, hi and welcome. What's going on?
<Mira> Michael has kidnapped Katie. He can teleport and shield himself from the Sight and we need to find him. Jamie is asleep, drugged.
<Else> We know. We also know that Michael was working with Dana and she changed her mind, and that he wanted to feed her to Jamie. That was all in the video.
<Mira> Which video?
<Hanne> The video one of you sent to the Community mailing list 15 minutes ago.
<Mira> Wasn't me. How do I find him?
<Sinikka> He is probably in Australia. Our people there are searching for a Sight-free spot but it takes time. Do you know how much of his Skills Jamie managed to consume?
<Mira> Michael said he consumed all of it, and he definitely consumed some, but I am not sure. He was able to teleport 25 minutes later though. What is he gonna do? What does he want?
<Else> Nothing good.
<Lauri> He likes to experiment.
<Mira> You mean that you have a Dr. Mengele in your midst?
<Lauri> It's not like he killed or permanently injured anyone.
<Else> ...that we know of. Mira, watch out!
<Lauri> Behind you!

Something hits me on the head, and I pass out. When I regain consciousness Timo is sitting next to me and doing something to my head. The pain disappears pretty quickly.

"It was a sort of concussion but it's all right now," he says.
"What happened?"
"I don't know. Some woman came in and attacked you. I punched her a few times and tied her down in the bathroom. Wanna take a look?"

In the bathroom a blond woman with blood-smeared face glares at me.

"You know her?"
"Oh yeah. Series "Rudy's psychotic ex-wives", exhibit one, Debbie Anderson."
"Captain Debbie Anderson!" she snarls, and doesn't understand why we burst out laughing.
"Also known as Chaotic Evil," I say.
"Captain?" asks Timo incredulously. "You mean somebody has entrusted a ship to that?"
"An airplane, I am afraid. Air Force captain. Last time I saw her she was a lieutenant."
"Flight lieutenant," she corrects me in the same snarling tone as before.
"Whatever." I can see in her mind that she got kicked out of the Air Force and is the captain of some civilian cargo plane nowadays.
"What are we gonna do with her?"
"Gotta get rid of her before anyone else comes. How did you find here? Did Rudy give you this address?"
"No, some bloke called me." I read her memory, and it was Michael.
"Will you just go away if we let you? Rudy is not here." asks Timo.
"Yes," she lies.
"I don't believe her. We can't have her running around. First of all she hits people on the head, second of all Jamie will kill her when he sees her."
"Jamie would never..." starts Timo, and stops.
"Wanna bet?" I bluff. I don't think he really would.
"What are we gonna do with her?"
"Let's chain her to the shithouse."

Debbie's eyes become big and round.

"What if he decides to use the shithouse?" she asks.
"We got a toilet inside."

Debbie's eyes follow me nervously as I pick up the remains of the rail that Rudy brought yesterday. I have always suspected that she is not as insane as she pretends to be, and in fact tends to modify her behavior on the basis of the expected punishment. I feel like punching her in the face, hard, but I have felt so ever since I met het 15 years ago, and now is not the time for it.

We let her wash her face and take her clothes, and lead her to the shithouse, where I make a chain and handcuffs out of the rail, and fasten her to the building securely enough. Then I wipe her mind for the last half an hour or so, and we leave her there and go, followed by the most horrible if somewhat confused cursing.

When we get back to the cottage we see a tall blond woman standing next to sleeping Jamie and touching him. My first impulse is to attack her but then I realize that this is Elina.

"Hi! What are you doing? Michael kidnapped Katie!"
"I know. I am trying to wake Jamie up."
"Can you?"
"It's not rocket science."

She shakes our hands and continues with whatever she was doing.

"We need him," she says. "Besides, he is having a nightmare. See?" She shows me how to look for dreams. "Other than that, it would have been better to let him sleep. He needs rest."
"Be careful," I say. "He had fire coming out of his ass when he fell asleep."
"Don't worry, not anymore. Who was the unpleasant young woman you have just dragged to the outhouse?"
"Rudy's first wife."
"Pity. Such a handsome man should be able to do better."
"He's been trying to. All morning," I say dryly.
"They are gonna be here really soon", she says, meaning Rudy and Tarja.

She has been touching Jamie's head and back under the blankets. Now she pulls the blankets away from his head and shoulders, and he makes a pitiful sound and tries to crawl back under the covers, but she grabs him by the ear and doesn't let him. Finally he opens his eyes, which are now dark blue but not glowing, and are focused somewhere very far.

"Hi. Am I still asleep?"
"No."
"Then why is there a shithouse running down that road?"
"Shit!" Timo and I exclaim simultaneously, as the shithouse rounds the corner near the parking lot and disappears from sight.
"Where is Katie?"
"Michael kidnapped her, we don't know where, and on the way he attacked Dana," I say. No point in trying to soften the blow.
"I have a couple of friends in Australia trying to find out where she might be," adds Elina.
"If she is in Australia. Shit. Should've killed him when I had a chance," says Jamie.
"Don't say that," says Elina reproachfully.
"Should've done that. Gonna correct that mistake."
"You are in no condition to fight him."
"We'll see about that. What's wrong with me?"
"You've done quite a bit of damage to yourself with those flashovers."
"Probably gonna do some more before the day is over."
"Your body is really not designed to handle the chemical Skills properly, you'll get a flashover every time you consume a significant amount of them, and every time you have a flashover you'll lose a kilo or two of your own weight."
"Whee! A perfect diet!" He is kidding, and is concerned.
"And besides, to be quite blunt, you need psychiatric help."
"That's what my psychiatrist always used to tell me," says Jamie, pulling on the clothes that Timo has just brought him. "Seriously, though - all that can wait till we get Katie back."

A car - our car - pulls into the parking, and Rudy and Tarja start walking towards us. I gesture to them to move faster.

"You wouldn't believe it," Rudy says when they are finally here. "We saw a shithouse running down the road when we were driving here." We nod.
"And when we got here we realized that this was the shithouse from near the parking lot," adds Tarja. "There is only the seat left. Did you guys chain Michael to it or something?"
"No," says Timo, more vehemently than he should.
"Michael kindnapped Katie and teleported away," I say.
"What the hell were you doing with Dana?" asks Jamie.
"I realized she must have been sent by someone and got her away from here," says Rudy. "I was just protecting you."
"Yes, she was sent by Michael, I knew, she told me yesterday, and you didn't have to be an asshole, except that you are. And now she is probably gonna rip your nuts off and I can't blame her."
"She is back at the hotel room, sleeping."
"There is no hotel room anymore, she was attacked by Michael in her sleep, she is injured and coming here in about ten minutes," I say.
"Shit!" groans Rudy. "Let's get out of here!"
"No," says Tarja. "We need to help her, we might also need help from her, and you owe her an apology."
"You are absolutely right, but what if she rips my nuts off?"
"Then we'll have to sew them back on," says Timo. Easy for him to say, invulnerability and all.

Elina gets a phone call, and turns even more serious than she was before. So do we, considering that she asks "how big" and none of us make a double-entendre joke about it.

"Do you know if Michael can See with his own Sight when be blocks others' Sight?" she asks us.
"Don't know if he can but I am pretty sure he didn't, and was frustrated about it," says Jamie.
"Don't know about him," I say, "but I couldn't see out of the Sight-free zone, or anywhere within it."
"My Australian friends just found the Sight-free zone outside of Sydney," says Elina. "It's much bigger than it was here, and it's not round."
"What is that supposed to mean?" asks Rudy.
"That there is some other person or device shielding him from the Sight there. Probably more than one," answers Elina.
"Shit!" says Rudy, with feeling. The rest of us add our expletives in English and Finnish.
"Hey," says Elina. "Could you guys swear a bit less? I mean, I don't expect you to be on your best behavior here, but if you say 'fuck' every third word, as opposed to every second one, I'll consider it a victory for civilization."
"All right," I say.
"OK," she continues, "I need to know whether you" - she nods at Jamie - "can teleport, I need to know the stuff that you can do with water, I need to know anything useful that you guys can tell me."
"Yes, I sucked enough of the teleporting Skill out of Michael to teleport all day, and tomorrow, too, and carry people with me, but I am not very good with finding the right location yet. The water Skill, I don't know. I sort of only got it several hours ago. I can breathe underwater and make it do things... like make it liquid or solid or move in the ways I want. When Michael tried to kidnap me I tried to hold on to the lake and the lake came with us."
"What did teleporting feel like?" I ask.
"He just grabbed me and pulled me somewhere that was a bit dizzying and then there was this other place, like a yard or something. I took control of his teleporting Skill, tried to pull myself back from there, realized too late that I need to see where I am going, and before I could do anything we ended on some ice with penguins, with the lake like a huge ball of water in my hand. By the time I figured out how to come back here he grabbed the ice and it came with us, and the penguins with it. They didn't appreciate."

While this conversation is going on Timo is filling Tarja and Rudy in on the events. Tarja is getting visibly anrgy. Rudy is nervous and is afraid of Dana, who is gonna be here real soon now. I notice that Timo wisely omits the whole episode with Debbie and the shithouse. Should I make them forget to ask about it? Fortunately I don't have to make this decision, they forget about it all by themselves.

"One more thing," says Jamie. "I am quite sure I am not the first person with the Skills and without the Sight that Michael has seen. He let it slip telepathically several times. The people who attacked me and my friends in Angola, at least one of them must have had mind-sense, and I think that he wiped my memories of the event right after that. Michael came after those people and killed them, but he must have seen that guy before killing him."
"Unless he wiped your memories himself for some reason," points out Elina.
"He didn't. Do you think he'd have left me in peace for 14 years if he knew about me?"
"You have a point."
"This is all so unnatural," I tell Elina. Timo, Rudy and Tarja turn to listen.
"It's normal for the newly Skilled to think this way," she taps me on the shoulder. "It will pass."
"No, it's unnatural even in the context of Skills. I mean, OK, there is one Skilled person per ten million. OK, Jamie won that lottery. OK, he has an unique Skill in addition to the water elemental Skill which is unique by itself. Even: OK, something is wrong and he does not have the Sight. But where it really starts being weird is us. How many potentials are there?"
"About eight times the number of the Skilled."
"One per one and a quarter of a million, then. What are the chances of five such people knowing each other and Jamie, four of them getting the Skills simultaneously and three of those not having the Sight? Something doesn't compute here."
"What are you suggesting?" asks Elina.
"I am not suggesting anything, I am just asking. Are there more where Jamie came from?"
"Edinburgh?" asks Rudy.
"Don't you get all literal on me."
"Oh yeah? You get literal on me all the time!"
"Do you mean the people with the Skills but without the Sight?" asks me Elina.
"Among other things."
"This would be bad news indeed. Any Skilled people not discovered by the Community are bad news."
"Why? Jamie has lived a normal life all these years and never hurt anyone."
"Until yesterday," corrects me Rudy. Tarja elbows him.
"You call that a normal life?" asks Elina telepathically and says "Skilled children need to have contact with Skilled adults. Preferably telepathic in person, but telepathic at a distance would do. Otherwise they grow up with anxiety disorders or worse. That's why Jamie - no offence - has an anxiety disorder, is constantly in need of human contact and is generally in need of psychiatric help."
"Michael kidnaps people, and Jamie is in need of help?" I did not know Tarja could get so much sarcasm into her voice.
"There is a difference between being in need of psychiatric help and being an asshole," points out Elina. "Although in Michael's case it can be both."

A car pulls up to the parking lot with Dana in it, still in Sight-disguise. She gets out of the car with difficulty and flies towards us, not giving a damn about being possibly seen by people driving by.

She is really badly hurt. One of her legs is broken, most of her chest and all of her stomach is one big burn, and her face is bruised and bleeding. None of the words that she is saying, in either English and Hebrew, are even remotely printable.

"What happened? Lie down," Jamie gestures her to the table with blankets.
"Fucking Rudy fucking fucked me, drugged me and left me in the room! I am so gonna fucking kill him! Next thing I know, I am on fire and Michael is there with unconscious Katie."
"Could you make him pass out?" I ask.
"Maybe, but I was distracted by being on fire. I put it out and hit him on the face with a chair, and they disappeared and blew the fucking room up."
"Are you OK?" asks Rudy.
"Are you stupid?"
"Yes, probably, but this doesn't answer my question."
"Of course I am not OK, you fucking moron!" She tries to hit him and he steps out of the range of her arm.
"Did you manage to hurt Michael?" I ask Dana.
"Couldn't set him on fire because of Katie, but I think I broke his nose," she says. "But he can heal very fast. And one of his ears was bleeding, I don't know what happened."
"He got bitten," explains Timo.
"By what?"
"By Jamie."
"Oh."
"He bit me on the finger once when we were kids," contributes Rudy cheerfully, showing us his right index finger without any traces of an ancient bite.
"Mother-fucking-Theresa would bite you," comments Dana grimly.
"Well, that old witch would bite anyone, but Jamie is my friend! Is Michael crazy?" he changes the subject.
"Probably," I say, "Why?"
"Didn't he see what happens to people who fuck with us?"
"He figured Jamie doesn't believe in revenge."
"Yeah, right, he is much more into preemptive strikes."

Dana sighs and lets Elina and Timo heal her. Elina is showing Timo how to go about it properly. It's probably not polite to watch, but it's hard not to look at the way the new skin is growing right in front of my eyes. Dana scowls, but calms down a bit.

"Why were you thinking 'huh, he is a real man' when you were trying to wake me up?" Jamie asks Elina. Heh. I don't think anybody has ever called him a real man before.
"Because you are really brave, and don't panic in tight spots," she says unconvincingly.
"Huh? I get scared easily and panic all the time. Besides, you are not a very good liar. And you meant a real man the way half of the population are real men."

She sighs. "I wasn't sure if you really were a man. I mean, born a man. I thought you were transgendered." Weird. I sort of understand why Rudy sometimes yells at Jamie for being girly, but there is nothing about him that can actually suggest that he is or has ever been a real girl.
"Why? If I were a woman I would have done a much better job of being manly."
"Good point," she smiles but doesn't answer the question.

"Let's go and pack our stuff," I tell Timo. Rudy and Tarja have already packed theirs during the night.
"Shit," says Jamie, still under the impression of his recent nightmare. "What if I am not really a man, but a monster? With tentacles? And this is all," he point to himself, "just an illusion?"
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" asks Rudy.
"We need to pack, Jamie," I say, "so would you come in and give us a tentacle with that? Or whatever other appendages you happen to have. Upper-body appendages."
"Relax, dude, we all know you really are a little furry creature from Alpha Centauri," says Timo from the porch.

Teleporting feels a bit disorienting, but is not painful or anything, and produces no visual effects. We all hold on to each other, and after a moment of dizziness I notice that we are in a big warm park. There is a car parked next to us, with two men sitting on the hood.

"Cool," says the younger man.
"Hi," says the older one. "Long time no see," he tells Elina. "Hardeep Singh," he introduces himself to the rest of us.

Hardeep is in his fifties, tall, with a beard that would make Osama green with envy, and a turban on his head. His back is very straight, as if he has a pole up his ass. I immediately shield my mind from reading. He doesn't notice anything anyway, because he is busy shielding his own.

"Brendan Donovan," says the younger man. He is maybe a few years younger than us, short and slightly overweight, with brown hair which the sun has bleached to almost-blond in places.

"Let's go to my place and make some plans," says Hardeep after we introduce ourselves.
"Don't you already have a plan?" asks Elina.
"No plan survives an encounter with the enemy, and mine didn't even survive the encounter with the allies," he says dryly.
"I have a plan," says Jamie. "We call Michael and ask him to return Katie, nicely."
"Can't hurt, but won't work," says Brendan.

Hardeep's home turns out to be a very nice big house in the suburbs.

"What do you do for a living?" asks Rudy, earning another elbow from Tarja.
"I am retired now. Used to be in the special forces. My wife is the chief of surgery in a fairly big hospital," Hardeep says, pointing around us as if to say that his wife has earned most of the house.
"I see," says Dana. "All the men with mind-sense are married to rich women."
"I'd been married to her for 25 years before I got the Skills," says Hardeep gently. Dana blushes.
"Anybody has Michael's phone number?" asks Jamie.

Elina, Hardeep and Brendan say it simultaneously. Jamie dials and, much to my surprise, gets an answer.

"Hi... Where is my wife? I want her back... I'll think about it, but first I need to talk to her, to see that she is really there and alive." Long pause.

"Hi, honey! Are you OK? Remember what we were talking about last night just before going to bed?...You do great voice imitation, honey, but I'd rather talk with the real Katie... OK, let me talk to Michael again... Listen, asshole, if anything happens to my wife, I will..."
"...cut your balls off and shove them up your ass till they come out of your mouth..." prompts Rudy telepathically, for all of us to hear.
"...cut your balls off and shove them up your ass till they come out of your mouth..."
"...and then I shall take away your healing Skill and then push you slowly through a meat grinder,".
"...and then I will take away your healing Skill and then push you slowly through a meat grinder." Jamie hangs up.
"Good man," approves Rudy, suppresing his desire to scold Jamie on the use of 'will' instead of 'shall'.

"And now that you've asked nicely," says Brendan, "we need to make plans for the attack."
"Shouldn't you guys be doing that telepathically?" asks Tarja. "Don't worry about me."
"Either they can See from that building, girl," shrugs Hardeep, "in which case they'll See our plans anyway, or they can't, in which case they can't hear us."
"Uhm. I think I can do something about that," says Dana. "What do you want them too see, in case they are looking?"
"Whee!" Brendan approves.
"That we are gonna attack the building from a helicopter," says Hardeep.
"Michael knows I can fool the Sight," says Dana. The two men nod.

"OK," says Hardeep. "We have a building. Four-story, rectangular, about 60-by-60 meters. Concrete fence with barbed wire on top, electrified. 6 armed guards between the building and the fence when we looked. The building, the premises and the area immediately around them cannot be seen by Sight. We don't know how many people there are, or who they are, apart from Michael and Katie. We do know that the guards treat Michael as their boss. We assume everyone is armed. It's a pretty difficult mission we have there, kids."
"If I had a mission there," comments Jamie, "I'd be running in the opposite direction, screaming. Unfortunately, instead of a mission I have a wife, and cannot run away. Which brings me to the question: why are you helping us? Not that I am not grateful or anything..."
"I think he is up to something bad, have been thinking that for a while. Now with you here we have a chance to nail the bastard," says Hardeep.
"Kidnapping a family member is considered to be very bad tone, and a cause for immediate Community intervention," says Elina.
"I asked my wife and daughters to take a vacation as soon as I heard," adds Hardeep.

Brendan just nods, but the sudden wave of hatred from him reveals that he has some more personal motive.

"Boy," says Hardeep to Jamie. "I know you can break into my mind, but this is considered to be rude."
"Sorry." Jamie has the grace to look embarassed.

"Does Michael have a family?" asks Rudy.
"Don't even think of it, son," says Hardeep.
"Easy for you to say. My baby sister is in there, unconscious and defenseless!"
"No, he doesn't." answers Brendan.

"Elina, girl," says Hardeep, "I can see your prophecy didn't work out somehow, but will you tell me what the hell it was all about?"
"Prophecy?" I ask.
"You are not supposed to know about it," she says icily, either to him, or to the rest of us.
"My girl, it's my job to know things I am not supposed to know."
"Then you don't need an explanation."
"But we do," Jamie looks up.
"There ain't much I know, my dear child," says Hardeep. "The official Community maintains that nobody can predict future, but there used to be such a person. Her name was Marianne Leitner, and her predictions were not 100%, but she did occasionally predict future. At any given time a few people know about her predictions, and our Elina is one of those. And now some prediction is supposed to come true. Or was supposed to, and failed."

Jamie turns his face towards Elina.

"OK. The prediction was that a destroyer - that's the word she used - of great Skill power will rise sometime this year somewhere in the North. The destroyer will be a descendant of Marianne herself - which you are - and Vikings. With eyes and hair dark as midnight."
"Does this prophecy also have Jamie's name and social security number?" inquires Rudy.
"No. Not at all. In fact it's not talking about him at all. Marianne was very specific about the destroyer being a woman. And now I must ask you, Jamie: do you, or do you not, have a daughter?"
"I don't."
"You sure? Rudy thinks otherwise."
"He is wrong. The person he is thinking about is blond, blue-eyed, and not my daughter."
"What about chance encounters with strangers?"
"I haven't had any."
"You sure?" Elina doesn't believe him.
"Absolutely."
"You don't seem like a monk," Elina radiates belief that all men would have sex anytime when offered. I wonder what her own sex life is like.
"I am not. I just happen to know everybody I've had sex with. Except for those Angolan rapists, but I am quite sure I didn't get pregnant after that."
"Are you sure they didn't, either? That they were all male?"

He rolls his eyes.

Rudy and I are trying to suppress one thought: "Karen". Jamie's sister, who fits the description and whom I can easily imagine as a destroyer.

"No, she was the first thing we checked," comments Elina telepathically. "She is normal."

He has several cousins that fit the description, too, but I suppress the thought.

"I don't believe this shit," says Jamie.
"How many people fit the description? When did that Marianne live?" asks Timo.
"She was born around 1580 and died in 1624," says Elina. "Unfortunately she has quite a lot of Scandinavian descendants. Her second son, Johannes, moved to Stockholm and fathered nine children there."
"How inconsiderate of him," says Tarja.
"This whole prediction stuff scores 10 out of 10 on my bullshitometer," says Jamie, "and yet you," he addresses Elina, "seem to believe in it".
"It's true enough," says Elina. "She predicted Titanic, World War II, invention of the airplane..."
"All after the fact?"
"Before. Way before."
"I mean you found out about the predictions after the fact."
"We can talk about prophecies later," says Hardeep. "Do any of you have any military experience?"
"Yes," says Dana reluctantly.
"Timo plays WoW a lot," volunteers Rudy.
"I shoot a lot," says Timo, "real guns, but no military experience."

The rest of us shake our heads.

"Anyone else can shoot?"

I nod.

"Mira and Timo took me shooting skeet twice," says Tarja.
"I have a sword and I know how to use it," adds Rudy.

Hardeep sighs.

"Hold on," says Jamie. "You mean we are attacking that building? With real weapons? We might hit somebody!"
"That's the idea, son."
"Who is in there? Do you even know? How many? How many of those are bad guys?"
"We have no idea. We know that the place belongs to Michael and the people are his employees. They are probably not all bad guys, and we probably shouldn't kill them unless they are trying to kill us."

We try to digest this. In the meanwhile Hardeep opens his closet.

"This is for you, girls," he hands Dana and me two huge guns. Eek. I usually shoot a .22 Ruger and have been shooting a 9-millimeter once for my birthday. I found it too loud.

"It's a G36K. German special forces use this, girls," Hardeep beams at us and pulls some more weaponry out. "Kalashnikovs for you," he hands them to Rudy and Tarja. "Here's for you," he hands another gun to Brendan, who looks almost as surprised as the rest of us. "Here's for you just in case, but you better spend your time reading minds," he gives another one to Jamie. "And this one is for me."

Timo starts thinking technical things about the weapons and I shield his mind from the others, just in case.

"Don't I get one?" he asks.
"No, Elina and you will stay in the car, in case somebody needs healing."
"I am not staying in the car."
"Yes, you are," says Hardeep.
"I am going right in with the rest of you. Somebody might need healing right there. I am not gonna let my girlfriend shoot people without me. Uh. I didn't mean it quite the way it sounded."

I open my mouth to protest, then realize that the whole thing is much safer for Timo than for the rest of us, and going into battle is a lot less scary when you have your own almost-instant healer with you. Besides, Timo is a really good shot. Unlike, I might add, myself.

Eek! Battle! These are real weapons! This is gonna be a real battle, like in the movies! Oh God. I am about to commit an act of war on Australian soil.

The rest of the guys are thinking pretty much the same kind of thoughts, except for Elina who is not going into battle, Dana who has been in a real battle and is therefore exceptionally grim, even in comparison to her usual disposition, and Rudy who tries to put all the bad thoughts out of his mind. I guess the rest of us are trying to put all the bad thoughts out of our minds, too. Jamie is thinking about everything that can go wrong, and turns out to have a much more vivid imagination than I have ever credited him with. Tarja is just angry - I didn't know she could be that angry, and it doesn't show on her face. Timo keeps cycling between retreating into thinking about this all as a game, or a movie, reminding himself that this is horribly real, and retreating into the game/movie thing again. I don't dare check out Hardeep's and Brendan's minds.

"Come inside with us," Timo tells Elina. "You are one of the invulnerable people, right? Aren't all healers?"
"I am. They are," she recoils from him, terrified. "I am not going in there."
"She is affected by the pain around her," says Brendan. "She better not come inside."
"So I am not the only one?" asks Jamie. "I can sort of keep it out when I concentrate."
"About one-fourth of people with mind-sense are afflicted that way," says Hardeep. "Most of them can keep it out for the most part, but some can't."
"Oh my God," says Rudy, "You mean you actually felt it, in the warehouse, when we..."
"Only the first guy," says Jamie. "I managed to close my mind right after that. Wasn't fun."
"Are you sure you should be there at all?" Rudy is concerned.
"Yeah. It doesn't hurt when I am ready for it. Unless I kill somebody directly with my mind, in which case I get to share the pleasure..."
"Can you shield yourself from that?"
"I've done it only once, and I am not experimenting again unless I totally have to."
"Don't use other people's physical or chemical Skills, unless you totally have to, either," says Elina. "And, by the way, people: try not to set the place on fire. Fire in an enclosed space is a really bad idea even if it's Skill-generated fire and it doesn't burn you. You can still be killed by falling roofs, smoke inhalation, lack of oxygen - you get the idea. Unless you have really high chemical Skills, which you don't."

Hardeep puts a few more guns in a bag, just in case.

"You have a whole arsenal in here," says Tarja.
"Do you have a tank?" says Timo, sarcastically.

Hardeep beams like a child showing his new toy.

"Son, you'll be surprised."

He leads us to the garage and shows us the tank. Elina just raises her eyebrows.

"Where'd you get those things?" asks Timo, amazed.
"Job benefits, when retiring from the army," Hardeep is not expecting to be believed.
"We are so gonna get a ticket," whispers Jamie, trying to hold on to some illusion of normality.
"No, it doesn't have a license plate," answers Rudy.

"Anyway," says Hardeep. "The idea is that you three," he points at Rudy, Tarja and Dana, "go there in a tank and break the front wall and make noise, and you three", he points at Brendan, Timo and me, "fly to the roof and attack from there, and we two," he points at Jamie and himself, "go through the maintenance tunnels and actually get her. You lead the roof team," he points to Timo, "you lead the tank team," he points to Tarja, "and I'll lead the maintenance tunnel team. Elina waits in the car in case somebody needs healing."

"How well can you heal?" asks Tarja, who is keenly aware of her own vulnerability and lack of Skills. "Can you also heal regular people like myself?"
"Yes," answers Elina. "Timo - I still need to show him some tricks - and I can heal a wound in a few minutes. There are some limitations. If you die before you get to us, we can't do anything. Also, the way this healing works, we replace the destroyed bits with your own tissue. We can't really grow new tissue very fast, except for ourselves. So if you lose big bits we can only stabilize you and work on regrowing them for the next few days. Even many gunshot wounds, especially if they bleed hard, might be impossible to fix immediately. So, basically, a death will kill you and a major tissue loss will put you out of circulation. Be careful."

Elina wants to take a deeper look at Jamie's mind. He tells her that he'd let her if she also opens her mind to him. They get to inspect each other's minds to the mutual satisfaction.

Her phone rings. It's Michael.

"Hi... I think it will be better for everyone if you just return the woman and we forget the whole thing..." Hardeep and Brendan scowl at the idea. "I don't think you really want him... Listen, idiot, when people start talking about a Jewish conspiracy you know they need a psychiatrist... No, don't even think of it! Jewish, Mossad, whatever! Don't be an idiot... Although I suppose you can't help it."

She hangs up.

"He really wants you," she tells Jamie. "It might be unwise for you to come."
"My wife is in there. What was it about the Jewish conspiracy?"
"Michael thinks one of us is a Mossad agent."
"Mossad his ass," comments Dana, sure that we are about to suspect her, although I would like to think that Mossad hires more stable individuals, and Michael is just trying to sow confusion.
"You are not in a very good shape," Elina tells Jamie. "Not much strength left."
"I feel fine."
"It's adrenaline. There is a limit to how far it can get you."

Elina says that we all need to eat something, especially Jamie and Dana, on account of him misusing the Skills in energy-consuming ways and her having been recently injured and healed. Rudy thinks we all need sunscreen, which is a pretty good bit of thinking, and we get some and put it on. Hardeep eyes Jamie sceptically.

"Well, son, there is probably no way to make a properly military-looking guy out if you, and there is no point in even trying, but the bright yellow nightgown featuring blue hippos performing unnatural acts is a bit pushing it."
"It's not a nightgown, it's a t-shirt," says Jamie defensively, "they only had XXXL in Tarjoustalo and we had no time to run anywhere else."
"And those are not hippos, they are muumi," adds Timo proudly.
"And giving flowers to each other is not an unnatural act," says Brendan.
"Yes it is, when done by hippos. Son, do you have any other clothes?"
"Only this, but this is even brighter," Jamie pulls out a red t-shirt with hattivatti.
"Penises with hands are definitely not an improvement. I'll see if my daughters have something."
"Heh, you are going there wearing pink lace," teases Rudy.
"Probably beats bright yellow."

Hardeep comes back with a t-shirt that's gray and size-appropriate, and we continue packing. The damn ammo is heavy, and so is the gun. I envy the people in the tank.

Dana thinks for just a moment that this would be a good opportunity to get rid of Tarja, then immediately rejects the thought as evil. Tarja thinks the same, also rejecting the thought as evil. Jamie, Elina and Hardeep exchange a simultaneous glance.

"On the second thought, girl, I think you better fly to the roof," Hardeep tells Dana. "Those two can drive the tank all by themselves."

The drawback to that plan is that there is nobody with mind-sense in the tank, but Rudy says that he prefers it that way.

"How are we gonna get the tank over there?" I ask. "Wouldn't somebody stop us or something?"
"We'll mask it with mind-sense and illusions," says Hardeep.
"What about cameras and suchlike?"
"Won't be a problem," Brendan smiles.

"We've broken so many laws already," sighs Timo.
"I think we are outside the law territory," Elina taps him on the shoulder.
"Yeah, and I am uncomfortable there."
"We all are."
"How about I go there alone and kick Michael's ass?" asks Jamie.
"Bad idea, son. He has you at a disadvantage."
"Because he is an asshole?"
"Yeah. And because it's his turf and his henchmen."
"I have a bad feeling about this," sighs Jamie.
"Try to imagine yourself as a movie character, it helps," says Timo. "Imagine for example that we are the Fellowship of the Ring and going to attack Mordor."
"Now that's a happy idea. Especially since my role would be the One Ring."
"Ugh. Right. Bad movie, bad. Pick another one."
"Right now I'd prefer a romanitic comedy about nerds where the sysadmin gets the girl and goes on a diving vacation and lives happily ever after."
"Don't be silly, they don't make those."

Hardeep shows us how to handle our weapons, and we finish packing.

The one-hour trip to the place passes uneventfully. We take two cars and the tank. "This is not some army cast-off! This is a brand-new Merkava, they only started making this model last year," comments Timo to me. We are in Brendan's car. He is thinking of revenge, gleefully, but is also scared. I don't dare try to find out what this is about. Timo is trying very hard to think about all this as a very hardcore LARP, and almost succeeding. He also decides to shoot as few people as possible. I am sort of ashamed that this idea hasn't occurred to me. Although, of course, it's not like I was planning to shoot everything that moves.

Every once in a while I try to See into the tank or the other car. Rudy and Tarja are having a pretty good time considering the circumstances. In the other car Hardeep and Elina seem to be talking telepathically and Jamie and Dana are having a nap in the back seat.

The tank looks like a big truck both for human eyes and cameras - some kind of visual illusion produced by Brendan.

We park the car by the building - thank God there are no other buildings around - and I can feel the six guards in the yard fall asleep. Jamie grins.

"If I can put the rest of the building asleep as easily, we probably don't need a tank."
"Don't count on it, son."
"You call me 'son' once again and I'll sue you for 18 years of back child support."
"I got a lawyer on retainer."

They laugh nervously.

I almost feel relieved when we finally move in. Jamie and Hardeep disappear into some manhole, Rudy and Tarja drive into the yard, and Timo, Brendan, Dana and I fly to the roof.

Against our expectations the roof is not full of imperial stormtroopers or anyone else. It has some garden furniture that has seen better times, and a locked door. Nobody hiding behind it, either.

Brendan pulls on the door. Nothing happens. I wave him away and melt the lock. We get in and stop, trying to assess to situation.

At first the place feels like a research center, or at least like a research center that has just had a tank drive into its lobby. People screaming, running, hiding, carrying their stuff.

After a second I realize that something is wrong... wronger. It takes me one more second to realize what it is, but Dana is faster:

"Holy shit! They are all Skilled!"

Right. We just walked into a place with at least 70 Skilled people. Eight of us. Talk about homeopathic warfare. We can still retreat to the roof and fly away, but what about the rest of them?

Five armed guards are running towards us. The good thing is that, Skilled or not, everyone else who is aware of our presense is trying to get away from us.

I melt the iron parts of their weapons, trying to keep the liquid iron cold and, much to my surprise, succeeding. In reponse we get a mind-sense attack that is not even powerful enough to get through me, let alone Dana.

Everyone has taken cover. One guard manages to get Brendan's gun by telekinesis, and I melt it too.

"Just go away!" screams one of the guards. "We are armed and there are more of us!"
"We want our Katie back!" screams Timo.
"Your what back?"
"Katie!"

The guards are even more afraid of us than we of them. They don't seem to know who we are talking about. Timo finds a sofa, flies it to where three of the gurads are, and makes it hover above them.

"Go away! Or else I am gonna beat you to death with a sofa! We are also armed!"

The guards, totally devoid of evil henchman morale, decide to retreat. Timo makes the sofa dance and kick them on the ass a little for additional speed.

"Err," I say, "I think we were supposed to engage them here to distract them from elsewhere."
"Argh, you are right. Hey, you, come back!"
"Fucking circus," says Dana, apparently meaning us. "There is nobody armed on this floor anymore. We should probably search it. Be careful, they can still be armed with Skills."

We split, just like horror movies warn people from doing, and do a room-by-room search. It's uneventful - empty labs and offices, hastily abandoned, and no trace of Katie.

In one room I find an Asian man of about fifty, terrified to death. I read his mind and see myself through his eyes: a barbarian with a gun, about to kill or maim him.

"Please!" he says, "Please! I have three children at home!" He really does have three children, all of them adult by now.
"That's good." I say. "You should probably go and see them right now. There is a bit of, uhm, armed conflict here. I think you better go home for the day. Because people are shooting."
"Yeah, you," he thinks sourly, but calms down a bit. Then he thinks about his research, and decides that he has a copy of everything important at home and that it won't be a big deal if I get a copy for myself.

"And before you go, make a copy for me," I hand him a still-unopened USB stick from a shelf. "I'll know if you copied all the important stuff."

He does, and I let him go. I pick up a whole pile of the sticks, just in case.

I try to check on my friends downstairs with my mind-sense, but they are too far away. I start going down the stairs, all the time aware of my increasing distance from Timo, and feeling very vulnerable, even though there is nobody about to attack me within the immediate range of my mind-sense.

In the second-floor lobby, which was deserted when I walked in, an ass appears. The ass is wearing white shorts and is followed by the rest of the woman, followed by a man and some device the two of them are carrying.

"Sandra!" screams the man, terrified. "Behind you!"

Sandra turns around without putting the device down and gets ready to produce some Skill-flame.

"I wouldn't do it if I were you," I say, putting the weight of my coercion Skill behind it.

She stops, the fire still in her mouth but not coming out.

"And why not?" she says defiantly, wishing she could actually do it.
"Because I have a gun and you don't," I point out.
"I know, that's all you can do. Michael has told us everything about you people," she says defiantly, sure that she is about to die.
"Just take your thing and bugger off," I say, simultaneouly cold-melting the buckle of her belt into one monolithic piece of steel. Next time the defiant Sandra goes to the bathroom, she is in for a surprise.

Sandra and the man run towards the exit, as fast as they can with the device. I find Timo with my mind-sense. He is still searching the top floor.

"There are two people with some device running out of the building. I have a hunch that it might be important. Can you grab it from the air? Be careful, the woman breathes fire."
"No problem."

A second later I see him flying by the window. Two seconds later I am terrified. Three seconds later I start wondering where he puts it after he gets it.

The most logical idea would be to give it to Elina. Argh! Elina! We left her in the car outside with all those people running out of the building! They can take her a hostage or worse!

I run downstairs, barely registering the crash from upstairs and Timo flying back into the building with the device. This might be the best place, but it also causes some more people to run inside.

Rudy and Tarja have gotten out of their tank and are searching the first floor. I can see them from the gallery of the second floor and wave at Rudy, who waves back.

Suddenly Tarja points her gun at his head. He is not even raising his gun or sword or trying to run, just looking at her and saying "honey, please don't, I am sorry".

"Shit! No time to run! Can I jump or am I gonna kill myself?" runs through my mind before I remember that I can fly. I jump and sumultaneouly try to get hold of Tarja's mind. The flying doesn't work out very well, and I land on my ass, but the spell on Tarja is broken. The person who'd tried to make her shoot Rudy, the young female guard hiding behind a column, is cursing silently.

Tarja looks at me with empty eyes.

"Where?"

I point at the column and try to run there after her, shielding her mind and Rudy's all the time. The guard tries to sneak out from behind the column, but there is nowhere to run.

Tarja fires right in her face for about a second or two. There is nothing left of the woman's head, just bits of blood and bone and hair and brain matter all around.

I feel like screaming "What have you done!" What comes out of my mouth instead is "You didn't need to use a sustained burst, two to the chest and one to the head would've been enough."
"Uh-uh," she agrees noncommittally.
"Although what do we need to conserve Hardeep's ammo for? We have lots, and he probably has a basement full of it."
"Uh-uh."

I suddenly feel terribly ashamed about Sandra whose belt buckle I have melted. Did I have to play a stupid practical joke on the brave woman who stood up to me?

Rudy is still standing where he was. "I am sorry," he repeats.
"For what?" I ask. "Never mind, you surely have things to be sorry for. But now there are more guards coming. From there."

Rudy draws his sword.

"Stick it up your ass," I say. "You have an assault rifle."
"Doesn't work."
"That's because you put the magazine in the wrong way."

God, how did he even manage it? Talk about the unnatural acts. It takes some use of the iron Skill to pull the magazine out, fix the damaged parts and put it back in.

"Thanks, Mira. You are like MacGyver. You are better than MacGyver."

In the meanwhile Hardeep and Jamie are in real trouble in the basement. They have run into some kind of shooting machines, both have already taken several bullets and they are trying to retreat using Hardeep's telekinesis, because neither is in any condition to walk.

The only way I can see what happening to them is by mind-sense, I am in their range and they are in mine, but after a few seconds Hardeeps mind-sense is extinguished. Dead? I start feeling cold and sick, even though I just met the man a few hours ago and he has an annoying habit of calling everyone "girl", "boy" or "son".

"He's alive," comments Jamie telepathically. "Just unconscious...gotta get out of here...gonna try to use his telekinesis to fly us out...shot in the hip, can't walk...the automatic shooting was directed below the waist and ended as soon as we fell down..." At the same time he radiates total panic. Hardeep has been shot through the femoral artery and won't live much longer if they don't get out immediately. I try to run to the basement to help them, but before I manage to open the door they make it out of the building.

The guards run into the lobby and start shooting. They have clearly been educated in the School of Imperial Stormtroopers. Unfortunately, so have we. I am not sure that anyone is really shooting to kill.

I desperately want to know what is happening upstairs, but my mind-sense doesn't extend that far. There is shooting. I console myself with the thought that Timo is definitely alive, and that I will somehow survive without Dana and Brendan, if something happens to them. If I survive. Ugh.

Suddenly Tarja gets up from our cover. Rudy and I grab her before the guards have time to shoot.

"What the hell?"
"Look, Michael!"
"Leave him to Katie, she prob..."
"I'll apologize to her later," she says, but I can only hear it with mind-sense, because she is shooting at Michael, who has just appeared on the second-floor gallery and is trying to get from one room to another. Some of the bullets hit, but this doesn't stop him.

The guards move to cut us off from the stairs to the second floor. They plan to push us towards the exit, but are in no hurry.

I really need some kind of connection to Timo, and finally remember that I have a cell phone. I send the message "Rudy, Tarja and me OK, first floor, six guards. Jamie and Hardeep wounded, left. Michael on the 2d floor. No sign of Katie." After an eternal minute I get an answer: "We are OK. Searching 3d floor, everything locked. Brendan is going after Michael. Device might be Sight-block."

Hardeep gets back into the basement, crawling. The basement weapons are silent. Jamie climbs into some basement window on the other side. I ask them telepathically, and both assure that they are OK, Hardeep planning to disable the weapon systems and Jamie to look for Katie. We continue our pointless shootout with the guards.

A mental cry of triumph from Hardeep, followed by a cry of dismay. He has managed to disable the weapons, but something has locked him in the weapon control room, and he can't get out.

"Are you guys gonna be OK here?" I ask. "I gotta go to the basement and help Hardeep."
"We'll be OK. But maybe we should all go?" says Rudy.
"No!" protests Hardeep from the basement telepathically. "Somebody gotta stay and secure the first floor. I am no immediate danger, one person is enough."

I run to the basement door, Rudy and Tarja covering me with lots of shooting and obscenities. The cover turns out to be useful, because the door is locked and massive.

As soon as I get downstairs I hear a telepathic cry of distress from Jamie. He has also walked into some self-locking room, and into some net, like a fish. This damn place is full of traps.

As soon as I think about it, a door closes right in front of me, and another one behind me. The doors have so much iron that I can get through them, but it takes time. I decide that Jamie is a higher priority than Hardeep and start melting the door that goes his way.

I check the cell phone. It doesn't work here.

By the time I have melted the door, I see another one in front of me. In the room where Jamie is struggling in the net like a big angry octopus he is not alone anymore. Michael and a woman are there, lookign happy and victorious. I can't understand why he doesn't just make him let him go, or teleport somewhere else.

"Didn't know you can't teleport from enclosed spaces, did you?" asks Michael. "OK, Sophie, let's get him on the table."

The room is really strange: half of it is a prison cage, the other half looks like a fairly civilized lab. They put him down on the lab table, and tie his legs and arms to the corners.

He is in a total panic mode now. He has a lot of phobias, but the strongest of them is the fear of being physically tied up.

"Why don't you just make them go away or eat them or something?" I try to get through to him.
"Her mind-sense is strong enough that I can't get in, and she is shielding Michael, too. Don't come in here, it's a trap!"
"I'll think of something."

Good. At least he is coherent. He maintains constant telepathic contact now, mostly for comfort.

Sophie takes scissors and cuts two holes in his pants, one in the front and one in the back, all the time chatting with Michael about some lab results. Somehow this seems more obscene than if they had just pulled the damn pants off. She takes something that looks like a torture device and starts shoving it up his ass.

"Careful," says Michael. "Try not to hurt him too much."
"Why?"
"It's not nice. We try not to hurt rats unless we have to, and he is sort of a human being."
"Whatevargh!"
"Yeah, and he also bites."
"You could have started with that!" Sophie stops for a second to disinfect her forearm. She also wraps Jamie's head and upper body in a blanket in a way that makes me wonder whether she wants to strangle him. The way he is screaming, however, suggests than his air intake is not obstructed in any way.

He is not in much physical pain, but screaming makes him feel better for some reason. He registers the device in his ass as an offense against his person, but at the moment the restraints upset him a lot more.

The device turns out to be some contraption for eliciting a sperm sample. It's over pretty fast, before I get through the second door. They also take a blood sample. They stick him into the prison sell, hadcuffed, wrapped in a blanket and tied with some leather straps over the blanket. Michael takes the samples and some other stuff from the lab, and heads for the door.

"I'll see if we can take him with us. If not, at least we got these."
"What are we gonna do with him if we can't take him?"
"Just leave him here."
"What, alive?" Sophie is disappointed.
"He is too precious to waste."
"What about the wife?"
"Carlos is watching her."
"Carlos?" Sophie is taken aback.
"Yes. He..." Michael walks out without finishing the sentence. Sophie grunts. I start working on the third door. How many more are there?

"Can you do something about these handcuffs from where you are?" asks Jamie.
"Let's see."

He maintains the perfect illusion of total panic as I cold-melt the handcuffs and make a knife out of them. I also destroy the buckles on the leather straps that are wrapped around him, and try to melt the bars and lock of his cage, but they are made of some other metal. I give up and continue working on the door.

"Stop screaming," says Sophie, leaning on the bars of the cage. "You can't get into my mind."
"Don't need to," he answers, rolling out of the blanket, grabbing her with one hand and breaking her cheekbone with a punch. "Open the door."
"Don't even dream of it!"

His second punch breaks her nose.

"Open the door. I have asked you nicely twice, cunt. Do I need to ask again?"

She opens the door, sobbing and angry, and realizes that she is alone in a room with an adversary whose mind she can't control. An adversary who is a few centimeters taller than her, a few years younger, male, and apparently has no compunction about hurting women.

I finish with the third door. There is a flight of stairs and a fourth one, but it's unlocked. By the time I run inside Sophie is on the floor and Jamie is approaching her with the knife.

"What are you doing!"
"Gonna teach the bitch some empathy. Don't worry, the knife is just for cutting her trousers."
"Don't! You can use them! Your own are ruined."
"That's a pretty good idea."

Sophie hurriedly pulls her pants off and Jamie pulls them on. They are not a good fit, but ok with belt.

"I still think she needs a lesson on why people don't like it when other people stick things up their ass without their permission."
"Don't be silly."
"I didn't do it... for... sexual satisfaction..." sobs Sophie.
"Neither am I," reasonably points out Jamie.

His heart, however, is not really in it, and neither are his other parts.

"Cactus," I think, since he is really not doing this for sex. Before I manage to shield my mind from him, he picks up the idea and grabs the lone phallic cactus from under a plant lamp. I lunge after him and we fall on the floor right next to the wide-eyed terrified Sophie.

I am probably fighting the most powerful being in the world. Physically. On the floor. For a cactus.

This realization makes me double over, and he grabs the plant. At this moment I figure out that I don't need to get hold of the cactus in order to win, rip the cactus to shreds with telekinesis, grab Jamie, sling him over my shoulder and walk out of the room. He offers only nominal resistance.

"Baruch ata adonai eloheinu melech ha'olam..." I start as I walk up the stair, Jamie's butt on my shoulder.
"What?"
"I am trying to thank the Lord for giving me telekinesis, so I can carry your stupid ass out of there without straining my muscles too much. What the fuck has come into you?"
"Sorry."

He removes himself from my shoulder with a really amazing feat of agility, considering that he is not using any Skill for that, and we collide with Michael, who is very pale and very angry.

"What have you done to her! Coward! To hit a woman..." we don't get to hear the end because Jamie hits him in the solar plexus. "I thought you didn't believe in revenge..." Michael croaks.
"Consider this a preemptive strike," hisses Jamie, kicking Michael in the balls, throwing him down the stairs and jumping after him.

I try to follow, but he screams "stay out, fire" and slams the door in my face. I run to the upper basement and close whatever remains of the third door. I have half-expected the doors to heal miraculously after me, but now I note with satisfaction that this one stayed broken.

There is an explosion downstairs, fire, and Jamie appears, all his clothes burned off as usual. We start walking back to the stairs.

"They alive?"
"Yeah. Didn't have the heart."
"We gotta find you some new clothes."
"Fuck that. They'll just burn again anyway. I am gonna be like that guy who fought naked and ate people in Africa, what's his name..."
"General Butt Naked."
"Right."
"We need to find you at least a pair of shoes. There's glass everywhere. Even General Butt Naked always wore boots to battle."
"He did?"
"Definitely."
"Whee!" He sees somebody's abandoned gym bag lying on the floor. Luckily it turns out to contain reasonably approriate-sized gym clothes and shoes. Jamie wearily curses the erstwhile owner for failing to include the underpants.

"Go find Katie," I say. "I'll go rescue Hardeep."

Hardeep is already within the range of my mind-sense, and a bit frustrated. I destroy another door.

"About time, girl. I thought I'd die of old age in here."
"Shut up, it was like five minutes."
"Is that the way to talk to your commanding officer?"
"Yeah."
"The kids nowadays. Check this out."

Wow. In the last five minutes Hardeep has completely dismantled what looks like a very complicated weapon system and cannibalized all the interesting-looking hardware from there.

"Were you some kind of a weapon specialist in the special forces?"
"Bright girl. Here, take this," he gives me an impressive gun. "Soon as we find Katie and all our people we'll raid the armory."
"What is this, then, if not a raid?"
"A minor appropriation. Let's go now."

On the first floor Rudy and Tarja are standing triumphantly, with no guards in evidence.

"Hi! What happened!"
"The guards saw Jamie and ran away."
"I told him to put clothes on."
"He had. He said he knows where Katie is and ran upstairs just a second ago. He said they have some rapist guarding her. My little sister, completely defenseless..."

A horrible scream comes from the second floor. A door on the second floor opens, and a tall black man runs out, screaming. He is on fire, and running doesn't help.

"Hey, drop and roll!" screams Rudy.

The man is followed by a five-meter tongue of flame. Out of the same door runs Rudy's defenseless little sister, passing huge tongues of flame out of her mouth and waving an axe. The man is a good runner and normally Katie would have no chance to catch up, but being on fire tends to slow one down.

"Katie, love, please don't!" screams Jamie from across the gallery, but she swings her axe, and the man's head falls to the first floor and stops at Rudy's feet. He just stands there in the same pose as Judith with Holofernes's head in Giorgione's painting, and with the same pensive expression, torn between the feelings that can be briefly expressed as "gross" and "cool".

"Katie, honey, put the axe down!" shouts Jamie, running towards her.
"The handle is ruined anyway!" adds Rudy.

Katie turns and runs somewhere.

Screams and swearing from upstairs.

"Help!" screams Timo. "We are out of ammo and they got Dana!"

I run to the third floor and collide with six guards running down. They seem to have run out of ammo too, and they don't pick a fight with me. Rudy, who is one stair flight behind me, decides to hit them with the first heavy object he manages to grab, which turns out to be another guard, but this only encourages them to run away faster.

When I reach the third floor there is nobody there. Just an open window and Timo flying away, Brendan sitting on his back.

I follow them. Flying out of the third-floor window is really scary.

They come to a small house, where Brendan dismounts from Timo's back and immediately runs inside. "Idiot, they are armed!" screams Timo and follows him. "Timo, don't!" I try to stop him before remembering that he is indeed invulnerable.

The house is full of gunfire and truly horrible things, monsters and orcs and smoke and devils. It takes me a few seconds and one bullet wound to realize that the whole monster squad with fire and brimstone was conjured by Brendan, and I slide to the floor.

On the floor I realize that the wound is just a scratch, and that I am about to get more serious ones if I don't leave the premises immediately. I crawl outside and reach in with my mind-sense. There are three kidnappers, one of them wounded. Brendan is wounded too, but it doesn't stop him.

I sit outside and try to make the kidnappers give up. One of them does. Brendan manages to shoot another one in the head, and Timo drops a bookcase on the third one.

Brendan carries Dana out in his arms and collapses on the ground right next to me.

"You OK?" asks Timo.
"Yeah. Just a little wound. Maybe you should check them out first."
"You are my girlfriend and they aren't," he whispers, healing a deep scratch in my side and then turning to Brendan. I am glad he did. In the movies a flesh wound is nothing to worry about, but in the real life it hurts like hell when I move my arm, and the fact that it's not dangerous and is gonna heal is not much of a consolation.

"Ladies first," says Brendan as soon as he is healed enough to talk.
"I am not a fucking lady," protests Dana. He hugs her. She sneers but hugs him back, and then the rest of us.
"We gotta get back before Katie kills everyone," I say.
"It's much better to get back after she kills everyone," points out Timo. "I for one don't wanna watch."

When we get back Michael's building is completely on fire. Elina and Tarja are running back and forth.

"What happened?"
"Jamie passed out somewhere in the building, and Rudy went to find him, and Katie went to find them, and God only knows where Hardeep is," explains Elina, terrified.

"Hardeep accounted for," points out Timo, as Hardeep runs out of the burning building, coughing and carrying a huge load of weaponry.
"Hardeep!" I scream, "We have three people in the building!"
"Shit! At least Katie can't die in the fire."
"Hey," I suddenly realize. "I can see them all with the Sight!"

The sight is not reassuring. Jamie is unconscious, and horribly burnt and injured but still-barely-conscious Rudy is trying to pull him out of the building with telekinesis. He can't even touch him physically because Jamie's body emits its own fire, or rather Skill-fire borrowed from someone else. They are completely cut off and will probably soon run out of oxygen. Katie is running around looking for them. She is completely engulfed by fire, which does not seem to bother her.

I start running towards the building. Timo overtakes me flying.

"Don't! You'll die there! I'll go in, I can't die."
"I am not trying to go in, I wanna show them the way out."

I try to make telepathic contact with Katie and fail. Dana puts her hand on my shoulder.

"What are you trying to do?"
"Tell her 'at your two o'clock, twenty meters'".
"OK."

Katie's mind-sense is not enough to notice unconscious Jamie or barely-conscious Rudy, and she can neither see in the smoke nor See with the Sight, but she does find the right place. When she comes into the room, she makes the fire disappear, except for the fire that comes out of herself and Jamie.

She lifts Jamie, and wants to lift Rudy, but she can't do that without burning him even more. He manages to get himself airborne. She walks out, clearing their path in the fire, Rudy flying uncertainly in her wake.

Timo and Elina are already at the exit when they emerge, immediately grabbing Rudy with telekinesis and starting working on him. I try not to get in their way, but their expressions are alarming - it looks like there is no time to lose, anyway. Apart from the horrible burns, he has some serious internal injuries and is bleeding inside.

Elina gives one look to Jamie and says "can wait".

He is regaining consciousness, and looks somewhat injured, but that's not what's wrong with him. He is incredibly weak and cold. Katie is sitting on the ground with his head in her lap and crying, radiating the sense of enormous guilt for failing to protect him.

Dana comes up and clumsily tries to comfort her.

"Don't cry... He is gonna be just fine. Rudy is gonna be just fine, too," she adds, less sure.
"She'll be OK," answers Jamie telepathically. "It's not really about me."

I go and hug Tarja. She hugs me tight and doesn't say anything, but relaxes visibly when it starts looking like Rudy is gonna make it.

"Give him a Coke," says Elina to Katie, without turning or stopping her work on Rudy. "There is some in the car. If he can't drink it, try the other end. He really needs fluids and sugar."

The threat of a Coke enema gives Jamie enough strength to drink it up.

Timo starts working on Rudy's face.

"Maybe you should take a look at Jamie before you start doing cosmetic things," says Rudy. It takes him quite an effort. The very idea of his face horribly burned is devastating to him, even if he knows it can be fixed within minutes.
"No, I'll be fine. Let's fix your face and hair first. Somebody give me more Coke," answers Jamie, too weak to actually speak with his mouth.

They finish with Rudy's face, and Elina moves on to Jamie while Timo is making Rudy's hair grow back.

"Mirror?" asks Rudy hopefully. Tarja has one ready.
"Argh! My hair is all wrong! Wrong color, too! Can't you do something about it?"
"I grew your hair a couple of centimeters longer than it was, so you can easily fix it at a barber. Can't do anything about the color. Dark brown is your natural color, and I can't just generate the hair dye. Can't reproduce your ten styling products, either."
"Six. Oh, that's no problem, I have them with me. But the color..."
"L'Oreal," Tarja quotes some ad. "Because I'm worth it."
"That's so unfair," says Rudy. "People teleport and bring penguins and fly and read minds, and nobody's got a hair-dyeing Skill."
"Life is hard," says Dana.

Rudy sighs.

Elina heals Jamie's injuries with much less drama, partly because he is much less injured, partly because his hair needs a shampoo rather than a healer, and mostly because he is still too exhausted for drama. Katie, on the other hand, is in a very dramatic mood, even though she only has bruises, but she has no words to express it. All I manage to read from her mind is that Carlos - the man she killed with an axe - was one of the people who killed Faye, and that she is not sorry, but she still feels like shit. Jamie is doing the mind-sense equivalent of patting her on the head. Brendan brings blankets for both of them.

Only now I notice that Rudy's hands are cupped together and there is something in there.

"I rescued a monster," he says.
"I am not a monster," feebly protests Jamie.
"Oh yeah, almost forgot, I also rescued a moron. Here's the monster. Careful, it's so tiny..."

He makes a gap between two fingers. A tiny, spectacularly ugly face sticks out of there, looks around with blind eyes, and says "meep" questioningly.

"Ooh!" Katie is almost breathless, "Oh! It's adorable!"

The rest of us think "now that's one ugly motherfucker" in surprising and touching unity.

"What is it?" asks Rudy.
"It's a dog, idiot! Tiny adorable puppy!"
"Look at what those people did to a dog! Don't they have animal protection services here?" Tarja is outraged.
"I think it's supposed to look this way. My best guess would be a mix of pug and Chinese crested. So young, hard to tell," says Katie.
"You mean it's supposed to look like that?" I ask.
"Great," says Rudy. "Now it excused itself on my shirt."
"The shirt was ruined anyway," points out Tarja.
"Where is Hardeep?" I ask.

Hardeep and the hardware are nowhere to be seen. There is a note under Brendan's windshield wiper.

"Please don't look for me or my family. I helped you get what you wanted, and I got what I wanted. Best of luck. Hardeep."

"What'd he get?" asks Elina.
"The device that blocks out the Sight," answers Brendan. "And some other gadgets."
"Shit."
"We have another one," Timo runs to the nearest bushes and carries it here.
"Yeah, but where did the first one go to?"
"Mossad?" asks Rudy.
"He is not even Jewish, he is Sikh," says Brendan.
"Maybe Mossad is an equal opportunity employer," I say.
"Anyway, where are the people from the building?" asks Timo.
"I talked to them about the Community and made a list of them and invited them to the IRC channel," says Elina. "Some just ran away. Looks like Michael was running his own shadow Community in here, which consisted of Sightless Skilled people he found. They don't really know how he found them, just that every once in a while he brought a new one. He didn't tell them about the real Community."
"What happened to Michael?" asks Rudy.
"I shot him many times, but he got away," sighs Brendan. "And some woman with him."
"They took a sperm sample from me by force," adds Jamie.

Elina gasps.

"A sperm sample! Why didn't you say? Shit!"
"A whole lot of good that's gonna do them. I am sterilized."
"Not as of yesterday, you aren't. I did ask you about body modifications."

A second of silence.

"Shit!" groans Jamie. "I am the king of morons and the supreme overlord of total idiots."
"And so nine months from now a destroyer is born," says Rudy. "And she can sue you for child support."
"Do you have to rub it in?"
"What are we gonna do?" sighs Elina.
"I wanna go home," says Brendan. "Can give you a ride somewhere if you want".
"I have a better idea," suggests Jamie. "Why don't we teleport to a beach?"
"You need serious rest," says Elina.
"I can rest there. With a pink non-alcoholic drink with a little umbrella in it, and all of you for company."
"I really need to get home," says Brendan. "And you need to clear our of here before that. As soon as I am gone the Powers that Be will notice the fire."
"So it's you?" exclaims Tarja. "I was wondering when the firefighters would show up."
"Are you sure you are up to teleporting?" Elina asks Jamie.
"Takes very little energy."

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Else> Anyone heard of them yet?
<Olafur> You have asked at least twenty times already.
<Wei> We can't find Susan or John.
<Else> Maybe something happened to them? Susan and John, I mean.
<Lauri> Nothing has happened to them. They are just very far away, it's Sunday evening there, and they might be busy doing something.
<Sinikka> Just got an SMS from Elina. Everybody is alive, Michael had been keeping a whole compound of Sightless Skilled and had some devices to block the Sight, they attacked and destroyed the compound, Michael ran away with Jamie's sperm, Hardeep ran away with one of the devices, and we are gonna get 70+ newbies real soon now.
<Perv> Do you think any of them might be looking for a job?
<Olafur> Shut up, Perv.
Sandra(~sandra@unknown) has joined #Community
<Sandra> Hi. Are you the Community?
<Else> Sandra, yes. I suppose you are one of Michael's people? Welcome.
<Sandra> Yes. What is going on?
<Olafur> That's what we are trying to find out. We hadn't heard of you before today.
<Sandra> You killed several of my colleagues.
<Sinikka> We are really sorry. Must have been a misunderstanding.
<Sandra> Some misunderstanding!
<Wei> Sandra, did Michael say anything about us?
<Sandra> He said that there are a few Skilled people somewhere who were spying on us. Today he said that a group of them was going to attack us, and they did.
<Hanne> That's because he kidnapped one of us today. Just grabbed a woman and teleported with her.
<Sandra> Teleported?
<Sinikka> You didn't know he could do that?
<Sandra> I don't believe you.
<Sinikka> How about we tell you what we know, and then you tell us what you know?

* * *

The beach is very nice, if somewhat crowded. This is the biggest touristy town of the Great Barrier Reef.

We have rented a huge umbrella, which turned out to be a great investment in this heat, and Rudy has bought a bucketful of industrial-strength sunscreen.

In spite of the heat Jamie is still feeling cold. Usually he avoids direct sunlight, but now he has poured half of the sunscreen bucket over himself and crawled out from under the umbrella in order to lie in the sun. He is feeling better after two strawberry smoothies; every once in a while he wakes up without opening his eyes, gives serious consideration to a third smoothie, and falls back asleep without reaching a definite conclusion.

Katie is lying next to him, constantly spreading the sunscreen on him and some suntan oil on herself. She doesn't say much, and her mood oscillates very quicky between triumph and remorse, between "how could I kill that man?" and "why did I kill him, now I can't find out if there are others!". She knows that the man's name was Carlos, but never refers to him by name even in her mind. One word sneakily makes its way into this cycle of remorse and barbarian triumph, and the word is "ice cream". Well, that's two words.

Timo appears with a whole box of ice cream cones. He gives the first one to me, then hands them out to the others and takes one himself, sits down and puts his head on my shoulder.

"Feeling better?" he asks me in Finnish.
"Yeah. Still can't believe I threw up among the cute little fish."
"You threw up on the cute little fish."
"Thanks for the correction."
"How about we go for a swim again after the ice cream?"
"You've managed to talk me into it. Hard, wasn't it?"
"I understood that!" says Katie, whose Finnish is not enough to understand the conversation but who has been reading our minds. "You were talking about swimming and throwing up on the fish. I am not sure why you wanna do something like that."
"The swimming is in the future, throwing up on the fish is in the past," explains Timo. "Although swimming is also in the past, and throwing up on the fish is probably also in the future."
"You are so cute when you are explaining Finnish tenses."

Rudy and Tarja are sitting up in the shade, looking like a virtuous young couple with a newborn. They have bought a baby bottle and some milk, and are trying to feed the puppy that everyone seems to have nicknamed One Ugly Bastard. The Ugly Bastard seems to have a good appetite and a tendency to piss all the time. It's completely bald, except a for a huge tuft on the head, and had a face like it has run into a wall at a high speed. Tarja keeps idly wondering about the fact that such a creature can probably interbreed with a wolf. Rudy is just happy none of his women have killed him yet. Occasionally he thinks about putting his woman affairs in order, but then decides that if he hasn't managed to do that in the last 36 years, it's probably too late to start now. He also wonders what happened to Debbie. I decide that what he doesn't know can't hurt him.

The big TV screen in the nearby beach cafe is showing news about a big fire in a research facility near Sydney.

"Poor thing," says Dana to Elina, pointing at Jamie. "He wanted to go diving so much, and now all he can do is sleep."
"Tomorrow is a new day."
"Will he be OK by tomorrow?"
"Not yet, but he'll be well enough to go diving. It's not like he can drown."
"We gotta get home tomorrow," sighs Tarja. "Have work Tuesday. I wish we could stay here longer."

Elina grins.

"Hey, I am a doctor. How about I write you all sick leave for the rest of the week?"

The suggestion is met with great enthusiasm, and Katie immediately makes some new arrangement for the dogs, who are staying in some dog hotel in Espoo. Timo just sends his parents an SMS and asks them to keep the cat for a few more days.

"Sorry I can't write you sick leave," Elina says to Dana. "Finnish sick leave is porbably not accepted in Israel."

Dana looks at the rest of us with the expression of infinite superiority.

"I don't need sick leave, wage-slaves. I am a student."