The Enlightened (Mind Dimensions #3)(39)

“I doubt he had a chance to begin with.”

“I guess we’ll have to wait for another flight,” Eugene says.

“Sorry about that. As soon as I land, if you haven’t gotten onto another flight already, I’ll get Bert to help you.”

“Thanks.

“Where’s your sister? I want to say goodbye.”

Without another word, Eugene briskly walks to the opposite side of the floor.

Standing by the ice cream shop, Mira is making a makeshift splint for her arm. Hillary is standing a little to the side of her. Eugene touches them in turn.

“Darren,” Mira says, concerned. “Your plane is already in motion.”

“I came back to check on you guys. What happened?”

“She tried to stop Caleb before the people I controlled got the chance to help,” Hillary says. “She’s lucky her arm is not broken.”

“That f*cking bastard,” I say. “To hit a girl...”

“Shut up,” Mira says and walks over to me. Without warning, she kisses me with a ferocity that surprises me. She doesn’t let go, and the kiss goes on for a while.

“Should we give you kids some privacy?” Hillary asks drily. “I can Split.”

“No,” Mira says, releasing me. “He needs to get to New York.”

“That was some crazy Guiding, Aunt,” I say. “As usual.”

“She’s dangerous,” Mira says with begrudging respect. “I’m glad she’s on our side.”

We say our goodbyes, and I make my way back onto the plane, which is a hell of a lot harder than getting off was. The evacuation slide was not designed for somebody to go up. I manage, though, and returning to my seat, I phase out.

“You’re here because your new girlfriend wished it,” I say in response to Bert’s earlier question. “She Pushed or Guided you. You can decide what term you prefer.”

I let him think about it as I finally go to the bathroom. On my way, I have to Guide a stewardess to stop her from bugging me with her safety mumbo jumbo. Then, as the turbulence shakes me, I realize they have those rules for a reason. It doesn’t matter, though; at this point, I’d gladly hit my head to relieve my poor bladder.

When I return to my seat, Bert still looks like he’s processing data, not unlike those computers he’s so good at abusing. Then he snaps out of it and says, “The last thing I remember is asking her to promise me she wouldn’t use her powers to make me do things.”

“That’s pretty ironic,” I say. “But trust me when I say she did it for your own good.” And then I tell him what happened at the airport.

When I’m done, he says, “All right, I can see why she did it. I’m grateful even.”

“Oh?” I buckle my seat belt. “I have to say, you’re taking this whole ‘my girlfriend can control my thoughts’ thing surprisingly well.”

“I guess so.” Bert shrugs. “I learned a few things from watching my parents over the years. Women get men to do what they want anyway. This way, Hillary and I get to skip the unpleasant guilting, and pouting, and fighting, and screaming, and all the general manipulation people use to get their way. So in a way, this might make our relationship go smoother.”

“Sure,” I say, and resist adding, “Keep telling yourself that.”

“I’ve been dying to ask you something,” Bert says as the plane takes off. “What was it like the first time you ‘phased into the Quiet’?”

“Remember how I told you I almost died falling off a bike?”

“Yeah, also from a roof and into a manhole.” He smirks.

“Well, I didn’t tell you the nitty-gritty details about those falls,” I say, ignoring the jibe. “Like how time slowed down as I somersaulted through the air off my bike.”

“Doesn’t time always seem to slow down in situations like that?”

“Maybe. But I imagine my experience was different from most normal people’s, because it got really slow. I’m talking like bullet mode from movies and video games. I was flying at an inch per second. It was terrifying.”

“And then?”

“And then, after I imagined what would happen when I hit the ground—from dying to becoming paralyzed—and reached a threshold of sorts, everything stopped entirely. I was on the ground looking at a copy of me still sailing through the air. Had I known about the concept of having a soul then, I probably would’ve thought that mine had left my body. As it was, I thought I was having a strange dream. When I walked over and touched my flying self to make sure he was real, I was back in the air, and shortly after that, on the ground and in agonizing pain that proved I wasn’t dreaming.”

“There are always two of you?” he asks.

“Yep.”

“And when Hillary does it, there’s two of her?”

“Correct.”

“Is that why she calls it Splitting?”

“I think it has more to do with the Split of reality, but hey, you have a point,” I say. “In any case, the first few times were like that. I experienced a severe slowing of time before phasing into a time-stopped mode. Later, the slow-down stage happened less and less until it went away altogether and everything just instantly stopped when I phased in.”