The house is silent. Sean's out of the way for now, and Hodges said his other two roommates would be out until tonight.\n\nThe Agency is on its way. But you still have time to [[do a sweep of Hodges's room|room]] to make sure he didn't leave anything they can use to track him -- or you.

Chris Hodges is a dumb college kid with a gambling problem. His problem isn't that he bets on every local sporting event. His problem is that he never loses a bet on a game he attends.\n\nHe's pretty good with the telekinesis and getting better all the time. He'd be a great asset. But he's careless, cocky, and just begging to end up in an undisclosed detention center. If he appeared on your radar, you know it's just a matter of time before the the Psionic Enforcement Agency finds him too.\n\nCooper's been in touch with Hodges for weeks. He's explained how things are, and what'll happen if the kid doesn't get out now. Hodges says he's on board, but Cooper doesn't think he's totally convinced.\n\nCooper smiles at you and gestures towards the door.\n\n"Ladies first," he says, but you know what he means. He's keeping an eye on Hodges in case the kid changes his mind.\n\nYou're reaching for the doorknob when the [[vision|vision]] hits you.

You blink twice and stagger forward. Sean, to his credit, steps up to catch you. His fingers are moist on your skin.\n\n"Thanks, I..." You don't know how to finish the lie. So you flip the switch on the one-shot stunner bracelet that Tony makes you wear, pull back from Sean so you're not touching each other, and hit him with enough volts to drop him for five minutes.\n\nFive minutes later, Sean is in the basement, tied to a pole with extension cords. A dirty t-shirt (you couldn't find a clean one) is stuffed into his mouth.\n\n"Sorry about this," you say as he wakes up. "But it's easier this way for both of us. I've just saved you a long walk back into town."\n\nYou head back [[upstairs|frathouse3]]. You have work to do.

<<silently>>\n<<set $sean_field = "yes">>\n<<endsilently>>\nTwenty miles outside of town is a cornfield you've come to know almost as well as the safe house. When Tony took you in, he insisted you have a backup target, a secondary site you can jump to without thinking.\n\nYou thought of that one Twilight Zone episode and suggested the field. Tony smiled.\n\nClosing your eyes, you summon the image of the field around you. Smell it. Feel the sunlight on your skin.\n\n"What are you doing?" asks Sean from somewhere far away.\n\nYou focus on the corn stalk in front of you. It's still green. Behind the stalk you envision sweaty, nervous, pale-faced Sean. \n\n"What are you do--"\n\nHe finishes his sentence 20 miles outside of town, in a cornfield you know well.\n\nYou [[open your eyes|frathouse3]].

In your mind's eye, you see the two agents you glimpsed before, standing right where you are. One of them is scanning the room as if looking for cockroaches. The other is talking to Sean.\n\nSean's face is pale and moist.\n\n"There were two of them," Sean says. "A man and a woman. The dude -- the man -- was a white guy with light hair, like maybe 30 years old or something. And the woman? She was small, kind of skinny, with dark skin and long black hair -- pulled back in a ponytail, like this."\n\nHe pulls his own greasy locks back between his shoulders, doing his best impression of you. It's not flattering.\n\n"They just left. If you go now, you might catch 'em."\n\nYou've seen enough. You [[open your eyes|frathouse2]].

In your mind's eye, you see the two agents from your vision quietly walking through the house. One gestures towards the stairs. The other nods, and both make their way to the second floor.\n\n"You sure this is the place?"\n\n"That's what they said. He was meeting the gambler here."\n\n<<if $dude_field eq "yes">>The two search the house slowly, methodically. <<if $sean_field eq "yes">>They find nothing. One of them pulls out a phone. "We're at the address. No sign of Parker here."<<else>>In the basement, they find Sean and ungag him. They show him a picture of the man you know as "Dan" and ask if he's seen him. "Yeah. He was here yesterday to talk to Chris. But Chris took off with these freaks like an hour ago. One 'em tied me up here." The agent exchange a look. "Looks like Parker jumped," says one. The other nods.<<endif>><<else>>In Hodges's bedroom, one of the agents discovers the man sleeping under the bed. "I found Parker!" he calls. "But it looks like he's jumped!"<<endif>>\n\nParker! That's why "Dan" looked so familiar. He's [[Zach Parker|dude]], a ringleader with the Evolutionary Front.

Hodges -- or Parker, as you keep reminding yourself -- is already in the brig when you and Cooper arrive. Tabby Lee is conscious, but in the drug-induced stupor that keeps her from using her abilities. Hodges/Parker is leaning over her, unlocking the handcuffs that bind her to the bed.\n\n"Back off," says Cooper. "We know who you are, Zach."\n\n"Then you know I'll use this."\n\nHodges/Parker straightens up, a pistol in his hand. It's pointed at Cooper's chest. It doesn't waver.\n\n"I'm walking out of here with her. If you try to stop me, I'll shoot you. And then I'll shoot this meat-suit I'm wearing."\n\nThe thought of sending Hodges into the field flashes through your mind, but you immediately dismiss it. Parker would probably kill his host to cover his tracks -- and out of spite.\n\nOf course, you could [[teleport the gun|tp_gun]] instead, or [[send Tabby|tp_girl]] into your own quarters (since letting her out of the building would defeat the purpose).

<<silently>>\n<<set $dude_field = "yes">>\n<<endsilently>>\n\n<<if $sean_field eq "yes">>Once again you focus your psychic attention on the cornfield outside of town. This time, you're not sending anyone: you're taking someone -- "Dan" the sleeping man.\n\nWhen you open your eyes, you're in the field. Sean is staring at you and the unconcious man at your feet. "You killed him," he whispers. You silence him with a glare.<<else>>Twenty miles outside of town is a cornfield you've come to know almost as well as the safe house. When Tony took you in, he insisted you have a backup target, a secondary site you can jump to without thinking.\n\nYou thought of that one Twilight Zone episode and suggested the field. Tony smiled.\n\nClosing your eyes, you summon the image of the field around you. Smell it. Feel the sunlight on your skin. You try not to think of the agents at the door downstairs.\n\nWhen you open your eyes, you're in the field, the sleeping man who calls himself "Dan" slumped at your feet.<<endif>>\n\nYou concentrate on Hodges's house. You home in on the smell. As you feel the odor of the place wash over you, your psychic eyes [[slide open|spy_agency]], revealing what's happening there now.

You've handled a gun before. Tony made sure you got a crash-course when you got here. You know the surprising weight of the thing, the cool metal of the handle, the hint of oil on your hand. \n\nThe pistol in Hodges's hand disappears from his hand and appears in yours.\n\nIt's a small distraction, but it's the opening that Cooper needs.\n\nHe and Hodges freeze in place. You can sense the mental battle going on between them.\n\nHodges collapses. He looks up at you and Cooper, rubbing his eyes.\n\n"Where am I?" he asks. There's something different about his voice. An accent maybe. You can't put your figure on it, but you can tell that [[Parker is gone|resolution]].

<<if $sean_field eq "yes">>Once again you focus your psychic attention on the cornfield outside of town. This time, you're not sending anyone: you're making the trip yourself.\n\nWhen you open your eyes, you're in the field and Sean is staring at you. "You're a freak," he whispers. You silence him with a glare.<<else>>Twenty miles outside of town is a cornfield you've come to know almost as well as the safe house. When Tony took you in, he insisted you have a backup target, a secondary site you can jump to without thinking.\n\nYou thought of that one Twilight Zone episode and suggested the field. Tony smiled.\n\nClosing your eyes, you summon the image of the field around you. Smell it. Feel the sunlight on your skin. You try not to think of the agents at the door downstairs.\n\nWhen you open your eyes, you're surrounded by corn stalks.<<endif>>\n\nYou concentrate on Hodges's house. You home in on the smell. As you feel the odor of the place wash over you, your psychic eyes [[slide open|spy_agency]], revealing what's happening there now.

Mind Strike: Out of Sight

The safehouse is a warehouse in an industrial neighborhood that's seen better days. The first floor is storage. The second used to be all offices, but now it's got living areas, a kitchen... and a reinforced room they call the "brig."\n\nYou appear in the kitchen. Kat, one of the regulars, looks up from her bowl of ramen. "Hey."\n\n"Where's Cooper?" you ask. "He brought someone in?"\n\n"Tony's office. Something wrong?"\n\nYou don't stop to explain, but bolt down the hall. You see Cooper inside the office, but not Hodges.\n\n"Whoa," says Cooper. "What's the rush? Everything turn --"\n\n"Where's Hodges?"\n\n"Around here somewhere. I told --"\n\n"It's not him," you say. The room spins a little as teleporting takes its toll. You lean against the doorframe.\n\n"It's Zach Parker, riding him. He's a Trojan horse."\n\nCooper frowns, then groans. "Tabby Lee!"\n\nYou nod. "He's here to get her. And [[we've got to stop him|hq2]]."

Cooper ushers Hodges out onto the porch towards the car. You hear the kid ask "What's she doing?" but Cooper shushes him with a smile.\n\nYou close the door behind them and turn around. Sean, one of Hodges's roommates, is watching you. He bites his lip and wrings his hands. His forehead glistens beneath a pile of unwashed hair.\n\n"What -- What's going on?" he asks. "Who are you people?"\n\nHe seems decent. Hodges trusts him. Maybe you can [[explain|talk_sean]] how you're trying to save his buddy's life. Or maybe sneak a [[peek|sean]] at his future and see how his chat with the agents from the PEA might play out.

In your room is a bed. On that bed is quilt, the last your grandmother made and the only thing you took with you when you escaped the hospital. The quilt contains squares of red flannel from your father's favorite shirt.\n\nYou push with your mind.\n\nAnd onto those squares, onto that quilt, onto your bed falls Tabby Lee. If she had the the capacity for thought, she'd be confused. She drools on your quilt.\n\n"Who are you leaving with exactly?" asks Cooper.\n\nHodges/Parker glances to where, a moment earlier, Tabby had sat beside him. It's a small distraction, but it's the opening that Cooper needs.\n\nHe and Hodges freeze in place. You can sense the mental battle going on between them. Sliding between them, you pluck the gun from Hodges's hand.\n\nHodges collapses. He looks up at you and Cooper, rubbing his eyes.\n\n"Where am I?" he asks. There's something different about his voice. An accent maybe. You can't put your figure on it, but you can tell that [[Parker is gone|resolution]].

You shake the man under bed. He doesn't respond. His breathing and pulse are slow, but he's alive.\n\nYou slide him out from under the bed. You'd place his age somewhere around 35. He's wearing slacks and a short-sleeved shirt with a collar and buttons. No tie. No wallet or ID. His lined face and short black hair strike a memory somewhere deep inside, like you've seen him in a movie or on TV.\n\nYou consider [[reading the past|postcog_dude]] to see what happened here. \n\nOn the other hand, the Agency is on its way. The agents could be here any minute. You could leave the guy under the bed, [[telport to safety|hide_dude]], and come back for him when they're gone. Or -- though it would drain you quite a bit -- you could [[teleport with the sleeper|tp_dude]] until the agents are gone.

You hear a car's engine outside. It slows, stops, and shuts off.\n\nThe Agency is here.\n\nYou can't let the agents catch you here, but need to see what they're up to. Your clairvoyance will come in handy for that, but the question remains: do you [[teleport away|hide_dude]], leaving "Dan" under the bed; or do you [[take the sleeping man with you|tp_dude]] and hope he doesn't wake up?

You open the door, check the sun.\n\n"Agency's coming," you say to Cooper. "An hour. Maybe less."\n\nCooper nods. He turns to Hodges.\n\n"We have to get out of here. Now. You don't have anything here that can link us to you, do you?"\n\nHodges shrugs.\n\n"I dunno. Probably not. Sean might say something, but..."\n\nCooper shoots you a meaningful look.\n\n"You want to...?"\n\n"Yeah," you say. "I'll take care of it. You go. I'll [[meet you|exp_teleport]] at the safe house."

Maybe it's your clairvoyance that led to your ability to teleport. Maybe it's the other way around. It could just be a coincidence; you've heard of peole who have one ability but not the other.\n\nIn any case, you can instantly move from where you are to anywhere else -- especially if it's a place you can see, or one you know quite well. \n\nAfter spending last summer hiding out from Portia and her goons, you know the safe house better than the apartment you grew up in. You could teleport there in your sleep. Someday, you may have to.\n\nRight now, you have a [[job to do|frathouse]].

Hodge's room is upstairs. The floor is carpeted with dirty laundry. A stale yet moldy funk fills the air. You resist the urge to crack the window.\n\nYou start digging.\n\nA back-up hard drive? Yes, you should take that. A notebook of basketball stats and betting records? Probably that too, just to make sure the cops don't get involved.\n\nWith a shudder, you kneel on the floor to look under the bed. You don't know what to expect, but it certainly wasn't a [[sleeping man|room2]].

<<silently>>\n<<set $time = 0>>\n<<set $psi = 0>>\n<<endsilently>>\n\nIt's not a frat house. Not really. There's no fraternity, but four college guys splitting rent on a shabby two-story house a mile from campus. It smells like stale beer, sweat, and pizza boxes that should have been tossed days ago.\n\nYou'll be glad to see the last of this place.\n\n[[Cooper|exp_cooper]] smiles at you and gestures towards the door.\n\n"Ladies first," he says, but you know what he means. He's keeping an eye on Hodges in case the kid changes his mind.\n\nYou're reaching for the doorknob when the vision hits you.

Cooper is what the others call a "collector."\n\nYes, it's mostly because he's the one they send around to collect stray psychics before the Agency finds them, but there's more to it than that. He collects people. Allies. Friends.\n\nPeople love Cooper and he adds them to his collection.\n\nPart of it's his telepathy. He knows what they're thinking, what to say, what they really want to hear. But his lopsided smile? The one that make him look ten years younger and more trustworthy than he truly is? Nothing psychic there. It's all Cooper. And sometimes you hate him for it.\n\nCooper smiles at you and gestures towards the door.\n\n"Ladies first," he says, but you know what he means. He's keeping an eye on [[Hodges|exp_hodges]] in case the kid changes his mind.\n\nYou're reaching for the doorknob when the vision hits you.

"You know your friend Chris is... different, right?"\n\nYou're so bad at this. Cooper's the talker, not you. What were you thinking?\n\nSean nods. "Yeah. He's got that mind-over-matter thing. But it's a secret."\n\n"Right. A secret. Because if the government finds out, they'll pump him full of drugs. Or vanish him. That's actually more likely, seeing what he's been doing."\n\nSean's eyes go wide. "Vanish him?"\n\nGreat. Now you're panicking him.\n\n"Don't worry about it. He's with us now, right? So they can't get him."\n\n"Who are you?"\n\n"We're... We're friends. Friends of Chris and... all the psychics." \n\nKeep talking, before he realizes how lame that sounds.\n\n"But yeah, it's a secret. We're a secret too. And we're taking him somewhere secret where he'll be safe. But -- and this is really important, Sean -- he'll only be safe if you keep your mouth shut."\n\nHis eyes go even wider. He gulps.\n\n"What? Why?"\n\n"If anyone asks where Chris is, tell them you don't know. That's true, right? He just vanished one day. Can you do that?"\n\n"Yeah...? I guess so."\n\nSean isn't filling you with confidence. You sigh, then close your eyes and reach toward him [[with your mind|sean]].

You take a deep breath and dive into the past...\n\nMusic. Hodges's radio is playing. He's sitting at his desk, writing in a notebook.\n\n"Hey, Chris?"\n\nHe looks up. You follow his gaze to the doorway, where the man in black hair is standing awkwardly. He looks out of place here: too old, too corporate.\n\n"I'm Dan? From the e-mail?"\n\n"Oh. Hey, Dan. Cool."\n\nHodges waves him in. Dan closes the door behind him.\n\n"You say you got a big chunk to put on Saturday's game?" asks Hodges. "Cool, but why come to me?"\n\n"Oh, I think you'll figure it out," says Dan.\n\nThen Hodges is on the floor. Dan's on top of him, a hand pressed against his mouth.\n\n"Just relax," Dan hisses. He gestures to his eyes with his free hand. "Relax and look right here. It'll all be over in a minute."\n\nHodges stops struggling. He whimpers once... then Dan's body goes limp.\n\nHodges gently pushes the unconscious body off of him and under the bed. He stands and stretches out his limbs as if seeing them for the first time. He turns to a mirror.\n\n"I'm Chris Hodges," he says. Then again, slower: "Chris. Hodges."\n\nYou [[open your eyes|room3]] and the man who called himself Dan still lies at your feet.

Sean is staring at you.\n\n"What?" he asks.\n\nHe's a liability. If Cooper were here, he could tweak the kid's memories to cover your tracks, or even force him to say whatever you wanted.\n\nBut Cooper's not here. You are.\n\n"What are you looking at?"\n\nYou could [[send him somewhere far away|tp_sean]]. But teleporting a person is draining.\n\nOn the other hand, you could [[tie him up in the basement|tie_sean]]. A small, petty part of you would enjoy the opportunity to rough him up.\n\n"Are you crazy, lady?"

When people think of psi-terrorists, they think of groups like the Evolutionary Front: powermad anarchists who use their psionic abilities to kill and destroy for no reason other than they can.\n\nZach Parker is one of the highest-profile members of the Front. Cooper caught another, Tabby Lee, trying to mind-wipe the city council last week. She's drugged and locked up in the safe house until Tony decides what to do with her.\n\nSuddenly, it all makes sense. A chill washes over you.\n\nParker is a body-jumper: he can override someone's consciousness with his own. He's not asleep. He's jumped into another body.\n\nHodges's body.\n\nYou have to warn Cooper. He's probably [[at the safe house|hq]] by now.

Darrell Hardy

"Where's Parker?" you ask.\n\n"I evicted him," says Cooper. "He's back in his own body, where ever that is."\n\n<<if $dude_field eq "yes">>"He's in the cornfield," you say. "He's got a long walk back to town."<<else>>"The Agency has his body in custody," you say. "I think they might be able to handle him."<<endif>>\n\n"I don't know," says Cooper. "He's a telepath with some powerful friends. I'm sure one of them wouldn't mind swinging by and picking him up."\n\n"We going to have to move again?" you ask. "He knows where we are now."\n\nCooper shakes his head. He smiles. "Nah. That was the first thing I did when I went in there -- wiped our secrets."\n\nFrom the floor, Hodges groans.\n\n"Besides, we can't move now," says Cooper. "We've got a new telekinetic to break in!"\n\nTHE END

You can see the future.\n\nNot often. Not clearly. The future's much murkier than the past -- or even the present, which you can see no matter how far away. They say you're clairvoyant, with a touch of precognition. You prefer to say nothing at all.\n\nYou see the future now, and in it two men in suits are standing in the doorway of the house that's not a frat house, flashing badges and asking questions. Out of habit you glance over their shoulders to judge the angle of the sun.\n\nNow Cooper and Hodges are looking at you.\n\n"You okay?" asks Hodges.\n\n"[[No|vision2]]."\n\n\n\n