Chapter 29

“Of course I’m not telekinetic,” Jibben said. “There must be another explanation.”

I said, “You’re a scientist. Are you gonna trust your assumption, or my tangible experience…of something that happened to me with a TK I used to know…a long, long time ago.”

Once we’d been informed that the ruckus in cold storage was nothing weirder than a safety valve activated by the rising temperature to let off a blast of pressurized gas, we could focus on something more important. Namely, the fact that my energy had leapt into Jibben. But, like most folks who’ve scored nil on umpteen psych tests, he figured that I was the one barking up the wrong tree.

“The simplest explanation is the most likely,” I reminded him. “My etheric power-ups don’t jump into NPs.”

“If I were telekinetic—theoretically—then all of the malfunctions could technically be my own reaction to the stress of everything that’s happened. But that’s a big if.”

Jacob said, “The stress could be forming a sort of feedback loop, with every instance cranking up the levels.”

“There are tests.” Jibben wheeled back until his chair bumped the wall and glanced down the dark hallway. “Two TKs are with the Program—a rarer talent than even mediums. We’re currently working toward development of their abilities, though since they’re so subtle, their application is more theoretical than practical. But all the equipment is computerized, so results can be measured to a high degree of accuracy. In other words, it’s all electronic. Useless without power to run it.”

Alisha was up and around now. She looked like hell, but the fluids had done their job and she was no longer on the verge of passing out. She crossed her arms and said, “Are y’all seriously gonna ignore the fact that you got a whole entire shipment of stuff from the Argus Institute on your hands?”

Jibben said, “Some of Dr. Hinman’s theories might have turned out to be correct, but his equipment is entirely unproven.”

The clicker hung heavy in my pocket. In the spirit of finding answers, I almost said something—but then quickly thought better of it, since its presence would expose Jacob.

“Still,” Jibben added, “if something from Argus can help us find answers, we should take a look, if only to put our minds at ease. But keep in mind, these are relics. Even if they worked at one time, they may not be functional now. What do you think, Agent Marks?”

Jacob cut his eyes to me and I gave him a subtle nod. He said, “It’s your area of expertise, Doctor. We’ll follow your lead.”

As Jibben wheeled into containment with Alisha following, I hung back, plucking at Jacob’s sleeve to get his attention. He paused, and I brushed the back of his hand with my fingertips. No zap. Every last bit of juice had either poured into Jibben or discharged into the atmosphere. “Whatever you do in there, Jacob, don’t flex.”

“Of course I won’t.”

Jacob was no dummy—but that wasn’t the point. “Not on purpose, maybe. But I mean the impulse stuff that happens before we even know we’re doing it. I’m talking about reflex.” Which, by definition, none of us could control…but he had to try. I grazed my knuckles down his jaw, and the two of us shared a look that encompassed everything we’d done, everything we were, everything we meant to each other. “Whatever your zen place is…you need to go there.”

“I will,” he said thickly. “I promise.”

And if anything registered that shouldn’t be public knowledge, I could always claim I’d somehow zapped it. Without a telepath present to call foul when I lied, it wasn’t like anyone there could confirm or deny my allegation. I gave Jacob’s shoulder a parting caress, and together, we headed into containment to face the telekinetic music.

With Jibben at the manifest, Alisha was working her way through another crate. “What are we looking for now?” I asked.

Jibben said, “It’s called the Galvanic Conductor.”

Alisha pulled out an object swaddled in umpteen layers of bubble wrap. “And here it is.”

Unwrapped, the Galvanic Conductor resembled the offspring of a cordless lava lamp and a gumball machine. The top was capped by a metallic sphere that might’ve been shiny once, but was now tarnished with age. Glass tubes spiraled down the center like a couple of silly-straws, and the heavy wooden base was dinged and scuffed. Frankly, it looked like it was destined for a stoner’s yard sale, not a lab.

But given that Hinman’s clicker did apparently work, I wasn’t gonna write it off just yet.

Jibben said, “The Galvanic Conductor was designed to respond to telekinetic energy. The idea was that a TK could focus their mental energy onto the device and excite the gas particles inside those tubes, without any need for electrical charge. But remember, it’s based on theory, not fact.”

Jibben set up the tube on the worktable and positioned himself in front of it. He placed a hand on either side of the sphere and focused.

Nothing happened.

“Come on, Doc, you got this,” Alisha urged.

Seconds ticked by. One minute. Two. Jibben’s brow furrowed deeply, his entire body tensed with effort.

Still nothing.

With a sigh, Jibben dropped his hands. “I’m no telekinetic. Surely you can’t expect anything to happen.”

“Not with that attitude,” Alisha said. “Think of all the folks who struggled and searched, dedicating their lives to proving psych was real, even when the rest of the scientific world was calling ’em a bunch of frauds. I’ll bet they spent more than a few minutes trying to get results. How many spent their whole lives trying to prove something they believed in? Y’all wouldn’t even be here, fooling around in your fancy top-secret lab, if it weren’t for the visionaries like Luther Hinman—”

A crash made us all jump—but it was just the lid of a shipping crate falling over.

Or was it? My flashlight flickered…and suddenly I wasn’t so sure.

Alisha swung around and looked at me. “You know what we need,” she said.

“Yeah? What’s that?” I asked.

“A seance.”

“That’s not really…a thing I…do.”

“Then what in the hell kind of medium are you?”

“Ma’am,” Jacob said sternly—and his tone said watch your step.

Alisha threw her hands up in surrender. “If Luther Hinman’s mad at you for going through his stuff, maybe you need to apologize. All I’m sayin’.”

“If Luther Hinman were here,” I said, “then all we’d have to do was say the words, ‘I’m sorry.’ We wouldn’t need a bunch of silly incantations or hand-holding around a table. But he’s not here. And besides, ghosts can’t move things.”

Though most telekinetics couldn’t, either—at least, nothing any bigger than a bottle cap.

It must’ve said something about me that I wasn’t afraid of Luther Hinman’s ghost. Maybe it was the sideburns. Or, more likely, the fact that he’d appeared on so many dumb TV shows. And while it was entirely possible there was something dark lurking behind his public fa?ade, people like Luther Hinman would actually want their inventions to keep going long after they were gone. I’d learned the hard way how obsessive researchers could be about getting credit for their contributions. But having his work validated by the FPMP would only enhance Hinman’s legacy.

“You know,” Jibben said, “the Galvanic Conductor may not even be functional any longer. It relies on sealed argon. It’s quite possible that after all these years, the gasses have escaped. But the metallic amplifiers in the device don’t require any power or gas. Maybe infrared will reveal something the device itself can’t.”

“Might as well try.” I pulled out my phone, and Jacob shut off the lantern. Darkness enveloped the room, save for the pale glow of my phone screen, which showed the room in shades of gray. “Okay, go.”

I pressed the record button and the counter began ticking off seconds. Jibben, a specter of ghostly white on my screen, placed his hands back onto the Galvanic Conductor. His body tensed, the blobs of gray on my screen moving around, yet the Conductor remained dark, completely unaffected.

The room was dead silent, save for the sound of four people trying not to breathe too loud. After several long minutes, Jibben’s hands fell to his sides and he sat back in the office chair with a creak. His body heat had risen a bit, probably just from the effort, but the Conductor remained a lifeless monochromatic prop.

“Sorry, guys,” I said. “That proved nothing.”

As we all flicked on our flashlights, Jibben said, “I beg to differ. While not exhaustive by any means, it does support the fact that I’ve tested NP many times over. And also that thermal energy isn’t necessarily tied to telekinesis.”

While Jibben reviewed my recording, Jacob looked like he was hoping for a lava lamp for his birthday. I was just relieved he’d kept out of the frame.

Jibben finished watching and handed my phone back to me. “Your battery is very low, Agent. I recommend you shut down your phone.”

I glanced at the battery icon. It had definitely seen worse, after a marathon session of Mood Blaster followed by a bunch of mindless YouTube. But that was within spitting distance of a charger, so I hadn’t been too concerned.

When I flicked up the screen to get to my settings and shut it down, I accidentally jumped back to the previous video: a bunch of gray-looking papers on a gray-looking work table. Hardly riveting entertainment.

Then I noticed something I hadn’t spotted before because I’d been watching those papers so hard: the weird fan in the background (a.k.a. the Rotational Indicator) was moving. Slowly—so slowly that when I blinked, I wondered if I was imagining the whole thing.

But when I put the playback on 4x, it most definitely spun.

The question being…was Jibben doing the spinning? Or someone—something—else?