“Nope. Pretty sure I didn’t.”

Thresha sighed. “Alastor’s gift grows with time,” she replied. “Right now it’s like a bad radio connection with a far-off Fulcrum station. It comes and goes. In and out of focus.”

“You’ve been inside my mind before, haven’t you?” Letho asked.

She looked at him in surprise, and then shrugged. “It’s not something I can control. I mean, I don’t want to get inside people’s minds. First of all, it’s not very polite, and second, well, people’s minds are a mess. You don’t realize what a bizarre circus your own mind is until you step into someone else’s.” Letho blushed. “And then there’s all that stuff that people want to say but can’t. Look, Letho, you’re a great guy, but…” Thresha made an emphatic, two-handed halt gesture that dissolved into a twirling movement with both hands. “I mean, what can I even say? What’s the point? We’re all going to be dead soon.”

Letho’s heart leapt like a suicidal man and splattered on the pavement of gross disappointment.

“So can you hear their thoughts too?” Letho asked, thinking of Abraxas and Alastor as he looked upon her with narrowed eyes. His spirit was pulverized and the shock of rejection seemed to be manifesting itself in physical symptoms. He didn’t know whether he wanted to vomit or cry. But he fought with all his might to keep his facial expression the same. Which was silly, since the woman before him could read his mind. His feelings for her clouded everything. She could be his greatest asset in the fight against Abraxas and Alastor, or she could undo everything and lead the entire human race to unending subjugation.

“Yes. Sometimes,” she said.

“Can either of them hear you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? Probably.”

“So what do we do?”

“I don’t know, Letho. That’s not my job to figure out. You’re the savior, right? You’re the guy with the plan, or at least that’s what everyone seems to think.”

Letho began to pace, his thoughts racing. He couldn’t get them to stop, they just kept coming like a series of trains, derailing and piling atop one another. Why did anyone expect him to have the right answer to anything? Because he was good with a sword and could run really fast?

Well, you seem pretty impervious to bullet wounds.

He wasn’t sure if the voice in his mind was Thresha or his copilot, the reptilian master of sarcasm that lived in his mind and was the personification of his fear of rejection by people like Thresha.

“I don’t know why people keep looking to me for answers, Thresha. As if my ability to get shot and not die somehow makes me able to lead people. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, I don’t know what to tell them.”

Letho was acutely aware that he was standing directly in front of her, and if he moved his face just inches forward, they would be kissing. Time slowed, and the motes of dust that danced in the air seemed to amble about their chaotic trajectories for days. He wrapped his hand around one of the steel bars. The corroded surface was cold, so he placed his head upon it so that it might douse the fire he felt in his brow.

Thresha’s hand encircled his. It, too, was cold, like a catacomb caress, but it comforted him nonetheless. From somewhere, perhaps a galaxy away, he heard her sigh. Her breath cooled his sweat-dappled brow, though it carried with it a faint trace of carrion.

“Finally, you’re being honest,” she said. “But you know, you are always berating yourself, and I… I’m sorry to say that I have berated you as well. I mean, you’ve screwed up pretty bad a few times, but look. We’re still alive. That thing you did back at the school was pretty damn brave. We would all be dead if you hadn’t done that. That’s something. Maybe if you believed in yourself just a little, others might too.”

There was a sudden shared awareness of their proximity to one another. Like two magnetic fields repelling each other with inexplicable force, they both pulled back—but who was faster in their reaction?

“Thanks, Thresha. It means a lot to me.”

There was nothing more to say. She had retired to the corner of her cell. She turned her head, over her shoulder, and smiled at him, but her eyes were now distant, vacant. As if on cue, or a merciful segue sent by a benevolent force, the crackle of a walkie-talkie drew Letho’s attention. There was a knock on the door and Zedock entered, looking mildly flustered.

“Saul needs us in the meeting room up top, right now. Whole complex is in a tizzy.”

EIGHT - Guerrilla Tactics

“Okay, Saul, just what in the hell has been going on? I’m gone for five minutes and all hell breaks loose!” Zedock shouted, pounding his fist on the oak table. Thankfully, it was built to withstand even Zedock’s temper.

“Well, Dad, if I can even still call you that,” Saul said, pausing for effect. The way his face reddened, the timbre of his voice—they were so similar to Zedock. How could they not be blood relatives?

Nature versus nurture, Letho supposed.

“Now don’t start in on me with that horse manure, son. Ain’t a damn thing changed between you and me,” Zedock said.

Neither Letho nor Saul needed Thresha’s mind-reading abilities to see that this was untrue. Blood always trumped any sort of political or word bond between people. It had been so since the dawn of Letho’s race, and would always be.

Saul glared at Letho, who only shrugged. He was doing a lot of shrugging these days. The mark of a true leader.

“Well, if I could continue, good sir,” Saul said, casting his laser gaze at Zedock, “people are a little pissed that you brought a Mendraga in, regardless of her special relationship to your blood relative. They aren’t rioting yet, but they might be soon. We have to do something to calm them down or distract them.” Saul laughed, scratching his chin. It was a tell, a madman’s tic. “I mean, what the hell did you think was gonna happen when you brought her in, exactly?”

“Look, boy, like I said before, I’m about done with your back talk,” Zedock said, refusing to advance his gameboard pieces forward and instead sticking to this archaic expectation of deference to authority.

“If I might interject?” Letho said. “The Mendraga in question has been successfully detained, and unless they have evolved the ability to transform into a mist or something, she should be pretty well detained for the foreseeable future. So what’s the problem here?”

“It’s not a question of the Mendraga’s security, Letho,” Saul retorted. “We stand against the Mendraga, their values, and their way of life. How can we bring one of their own into our safe place, and expect no one to get pissed off?”

“What would it take to get you to trust her, Saul? Besides me telling you that she saved my life, and that she’s definitely on our side?”

Is she really, Letho? Are you sure?

Shut up!

Letho was thankful that he had not actually addressed the copilot out loud this time.

Saul said nothing, just stared at the floor with a look in his eyes that was rather unsettling. It looked simultaneously angry and empty. Worst of all, he was smiling. After a few beats he looked up at Letho, still smiling, his eyes piercing yet vacant, his grin much like that of a dog baring its teeth.

“I need to see it for myself. Bring her on a raid with us,” he said.

“Fine!” Letho said, slamming his hand down on the table, holding back just enough to get his point across without shattering the table. It was a very nice table, after all. “What’s a raid?”

“You know, that’s actually not a bad idea,” Zedock said. “It would go a long way to making the people feel a little bit better about her being here. I know it would make me feel a damn sight better.”

Saul grinned triumphantly. “Recently Abraxas has started setting up communities outside of Hastrom City and connecting with the few settlements that have sprung up on their own. He calls them ‘settlers,’ but they’re really prisoners, sent out into very unforgiving country crawling with mutants to reclaim small towns and communities, usually with just a few of Abraxas’s men on security. Some of ’em have actually succeeded, and they grow stuff as best they can. Most of ’em die though. Most of ’em are people that have committed crimes or lost favor with Abraxas.”