The Enlightened (Mind Dimensions #3)(69)

I run toward the stage.

Maybe the bullet hasn’t hit Kyle yet. If I can Read him before the bullet does its job, all will be well. I don’t actually care whether the f*cker lives. Quite the contrary. I just need information from him, which I can only get if Kyle is still alive.

Getting closer, my heart sinks as I see that the irreversible has already happened.

Kyle’s head is in the process of blowing up.

Victor has lived up to his reputation as a marksman. The bullet hit Kyle right between the eyes.





Chapter 25





As I stand there, looking at my dead enemy, my feelings fluctuate between elation and defeat. Kyle got what he deserved, but I’m too late to get the last piece of information that I need from the bastard.

I sit down on the ground to absorb it all.

I finally understand where that nagging feeling was coming from. I recognize what was familiar about Kyle’s intense focus. As he was thinking about getting rid of these scientists, his thought pattern was nearly identical to that of his victims’. He had the telltale signs of someone being Guided, signs I kept seeing inside the minds of the very people he had Pushed.

I didn’t recognize it for what it was because I’d been running on my outdated assumptions about the world. Assumptions like ‘you can’t Push a Pusher.’ Only, as evidenced by Kyle following my instructions and getting himself killed, that old adage no longer applies. You can Guide a Guide. You just have to do it from Level 2. If I did it, someone else could’ve done it too. I wanted to delay Kyle’s death long enough for me to Read him and corroborate my suspicions, or better yet, prove myself paranoid, but now it’s too late.

I forgot something else while in the heat of the moment. Even if Kyle were alive, it’s not like I can reach Level 2 at will. This cheers me up a little, and I start walking back to my body.

As I walk, other questions pertaining to this strange new possibility swirl through my mind.

If someone did Push Kyle, who was it? And why? It’s clear Kyle was acting like a bastard on his own most of the time. But something tells me that in this case, he might’ve been unwilling to carry out his mission in this manner. A big public shooting wasn’t Kyle’s usual MO, as Bert would put it. My ‘uncle’ was usually more careful. Prior to today, he’d made sure he was never at the actual scene of the crime and was always careful about concealing his identity when Pushing people.

Then something else dawns on me. If Kyle was influenced, did he deserve to be executed? Was he as guilty as the guy who stabbed me with a pencil? If he was someone’s tool, then he might’ve been innocent.

The thought makes my heart sink.

No, I realize after a moment. This theory doesn’t hold up. Kyle clearly tried to kill Lucy on his own. He didn’t have the signature zealot-like thinking there. Quite the opposite. He felt regret, which he wouldn’t have felt had he been Guided to kill her. Not to mention, when he committed all those other atrocities, he’d had very personal motives, such as love/lust. Motives that only benefitted him. Which means he was guilty enough to get exactly what he received. If anything, justice might’ve been too swift for my taste.

I put the theory of Kyle being Pushed out of my mind. So what if someone forced him to start this massacre? What business is it of mine? It’s not like I’ve been chosen as the protector of the scientific community. Besides, I stopped the shooting, didn’t I? But by stopping this mess, did I make a new enemy? Assuming someone was nudging Kyle to do his dirty work, am I already his enemy? Seems likely, but I have no way to know for sure.

My gaze falls onto my frozen self. There’s a light of realization in his glazed eyes.

“I know, buddy,” I say to myself. “But you were too late.”

I touch my frozen self on the neck and return to the real world.

The dead silence of the Quiet is a stark contrast with the screams of frightened scientists.

Nothing energizes a crowd to move more than the sound of a gunshot.

Everyone scrambles for the exits.

I debate phasing in to calm the crowd, but the commotion will let Thomas and me leave without drawing any attention to ourselves.

I look his way. He abandoned his idea of tackling Victor and is walking along with the frightened stream of conference attendees. I follow his lead and let the wave of people carry me to the exit.

Eventually, I reach Thomas’s car, and he joins me a few minutes later.

“Get in,” he says. “We need to get out of here.”

He doesn’t need to ask me twice. I get in the car, and we pull out of the parking lot.

After we exit the campus, we drive in silence for a while.

“What the hell happened?” Thomas asks. “The knife never made it into your body.”

“So you noticed that?”

“It was hard not to. Also, I don’t think my bullet made Kyle Inert.”

“I don’t think it did either,” I say.

I don’t know how to proceed. I want to tell Thomas everything, but I’m not sure how much I can share about Kyle’s demise. Thomas is his son, after all.

“So?” Thomas presses me. “Are you going to give me an explanation?”

“Yes,” I say, making a quick decision. “I was able to Split, as you would put it, while I was already in the Mind Dimension.”