Chapter 8 #3
Burly looked back at his men. “Separate them,” he ordered. “I want to talk to Jonas privately, and then I’ll have a conversation with Wallace,” he shared, with a smile directed at him. “After that, we’ll see how cooperative everybody is as to what comes next.” He glared at Amy, as she stood up.
“If you hurt him,” she stated cheerfully, “I won’t help you at all.”
He laughed. “Do you really think that’s anything to threaten me with?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, “but you seem to want a lot of cooperation from this new team. How can you even begin to think that a team with gifts and morals would work under coercion? You would have to watch your back all the time,” she pointed out, with a headshake. “Is that really what you want?”
He just glared at her.
She sighed. “I’ve heard of some pretty stupid things in my life, but this one takes the cake.”
Burly snapped, “Don’t you ever shut up?”
She shrugged, looked back at Wallace, gave him a three-finger wave, and faced Burly once more. “Don’t forget about me.” She was taunting him, poking the bear, and it seemed to be working just fine. She gave a sly smirk in Terk’s direction.
And, with that, she was gone.
*
Wallace stared at the new room he had been led into.
It amazed him that this many “clean” rooms were down here.
Yet no doubt they were still in the sewer system, and it wasn’t exactly a room.
It was more of a space, a half hallway. He sat down on the single chair waiting for him, knowing that an interrogation was coming.
But he could really do or say only so much, and absolutely none of it would go the way Burly wanted.
Wallace couldn’t afford that to happen either.
This was way past delicate subject matter.
This was stuff that nobody should be allowed to even begin to think about.
Whether the boss man wanted his own team of psychics or not, he would have to find people who were willing, and Amy had pointed out the big fly in the ointment.
You couldn’t coerce a team. Maybe one individual. But a whole team of energy workers? No, the team had to be willing. They had to be on board every step of the way, particularly a gifted team like this. If you brought in psychics, you would have shit going on all over the place.
Wallace smiled at that concept because people just didn’t realize what it was like to have psychics all around you.
They knew everything. It didn’t matter what you shared with them at first, the psychics would know if something else was going on, would know if some other process was ongoing that they weren’t privy to, would know of other plans that involved them but which they hadn’t been informed of.
Then heads would roll—figuratively. Kinda like what Terk and Wallace and Amy were already doing, hoping to mess with their kidnappers’ minds.
The boss man would end up with a hell of a shit show in no time.
As far as Wallace was concerned, Jonas was completely correct in reading Dominic as being unstable.
Lots of psychics were, unfortunately. Terk seemed to do a decent job of weeding them out, but then he had a lot of people on board who could help him with that.
Everybody had impressions and insider information, but, when it came to energy-worker stuff, it was all about instincts and being able to read energy.
Lots of people on Terk’s team could see that energy.
Wallace didn’t need any looking glass to realize that Dominic was completely unstable.
Wallace saw his aura, saw the unsteady wavelengths as they shimmered around Dom.
He was probably quite talented, but he’d crossed the line into something bizarre in the meantime, and that would be what took him down.
Unfortunately Wallace didn’t want anything to do with hurting another psychic, but, if it came to that, there would be no choice. He watched and waited, and finally the boss man walked in, a disgruntled look on his face.
“I guess that didn’t go the way you wanted it to,” Wallace noted.
“No, it sure didn’t.” Burly glared at him. “Let’s hope the meeting with you goes better.”
Wallace shrugged. “No guarantees.”
“I’m totally serious and will beat the shit out of her,” Burly declared, “particularly on a day like today, when I’m not getting what I need from people all around.”
“What is it that you need?” Wallace asked curiously. “I don’t quite understand the draw for a team like this in the first place. I could possibly see it—if a group of people were good friends with you, people you could trust—but psychics aren’t exactly anything you want to play around with.”
“That’s exactly what I want to do,” he stated defiantly. “I want a team that’s solid and competent.”
“It’s not as if you can just put out an advertisement…” Thinking about what Terk had done, he added, “Or set up an alert and have qualified people just show up.”
Burly shrugged. “I’m not sure what other options there are because that’s what I need. Now, back to you. Do you have any talent or not?”
“Some,” he admitted, “but not necessarily anything you can utilize.”
“I can utilize anything,” Burly declared, staring at him with interest.
“I can see auras, no big deal,” he shared, “and I’m a precog. In a way, I get some intuitive abilities when things are about to happen, but it’s not as if you can train for this or can rely on this. It’s not something where you can say, Do it now . It comes and goes.”
Burly stared at him. “I did hear that happens sometimes.”
“Absolutely.”
“Don’t you think it’s something that would develop over time?”
“Maybe, but I’m not exactly young anymore, so I highly doubt that my abilities will change at this point.”
“Then why would MI6 consider you?”
Wallace shrugged. “Hard to find people like us, qualified and gifted.”
“So why do you think you didn’t make the cut for the MI6 team?”
“Because frankly, I didn’t like the intrusive questions, and I generally don’t like leadership in the first place,” he said, smirking.
“I don’t handle it well when people tell me what to do, and I definitely don’t handle threats well,” he added, giving Burly a hard look.
“I have no intention of utilizing any ability for shit jobs. I’ve been asked to do that before, and the answer’s always been no. ”
“Interesting,” Burly murmured. “Why is it that the psychics I’m finding all seem to have some moral code?”
“It goes along with the job,” Wallace stated, “which is more evidence that Dominic isn’t truly psychic and is unstable.
He’ll do anything for a dollar, and, sure, you’ll always get people like that, but is that really who you want, or do you just want people out there because they can do shit?
Dom may also be out for your job, if he sees that it suits him or pays better. ”
“Dominic, I can handle. As to your other question, I want both, people with gifts who can be bought,” he declared. “At least if they’re driven by money, I know how to control them, because if they’re not, it’s pretty hard to get them to do anything you want them to do.”
“Exactly. That’s the problem with psychics, true psychics.
You can get some who know some things some of the time, but it’s not as if it’s ever anything you can count on.
Some psychics out there can predict an earthquake, but, just because they can predict it once, that doesn’t mean that they’ll predict it every other time.
Other psychics have other areas where their predictions are focused.
In other words, psychics are specialized.
If it were that simple to find us, teams of people all over the world would be doing this shit. ”
At that, the boss man stared out into the distance.
Wallace continued. “I understand that’s not what you want to hear,” he added, “but you also have to counter whatever we’re telling you with Dominic’s chatter.”
“Dominic has been telling me a lot, but I have also done quite a bit of research. The CIA did a lot of remote viewing, and I’ve heard of healers who can do all kinds of stuff,” Burly shared.
“We will need healers because, if we’ll be doing this work, then, chances are, we’ll need to have them on hand as well. ”
“Do you have anybody yet?”
“I’ve just started this process,” Burly shared, “and I have to admit it’s not going the way I wanted it to.”
“That’s because you’re using brute force. If you could find real psychics who want to do what you’re doing for large sums of money, that’s a different story, but to do it because they’re forced to?… I can’t imagine that their abilities would even work.”
At that, the boss glared at him. “You need to explain that.”
“Abilities are based on our senses being calm, centered, and balanced,” Wallace clarified.
“So, threats won’t make them work at all.
People will give you information, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be honest and real.
It’s more likely to be whatever you need, based on your orders.
So, they may sometimes give you bad info just to get you off their backs,” he added. “That’ll be your problem with Dominic.”
“It already is a problem with Dominic,” he snapped. “I just don’t want to believe that he’s as unstable as you guys are making him out to be.”
“I’m not sure how unstable he is, but definitely something is wrong there,” Wallace pointed out. “Something odd, something that I wouldn’t want to work with. Ever .”
“If Dominic wasn’t in the picture, would you work with me?”
“No, because the work that you want to do isn’t work that I want to do,” Wallace stated.
“You don’t know anything about the work I’m doing.”
“No, but you used force to get me here. You kidnapped and threatened my girlfriend’s life in order to keep me in line. So already I know you don’t care about human life and free will. So there is absolutely no work that you will be doing that will fit into my ethical and moral code.”
“If ethics weren’t involved?” he asked, staring at him intently.
“That’s a problem for me. Ethics are always involved.”
“So then why is the thought that I might just kill her not enough to keep you in line?” he asked, puzzled. And it seemed as if he was sincerely asking.
“Because, at some point in time, every prisoner revolts,” Wallace replied.
“ Everyone . They can only handle so much, and there always—and I mean always —comes a point where they will break. That’s exactly what will happen,” he stated.
“So, you’re better off to find willing psychics, maybe someone over in Russia or in third-world countries, where people don’t have as many opportunities to go out in the world and won’t have a clue about true freedom, maybe are used to having somebody like you as their leader. ”
“How do you find people like that?” Burly asked, a curious note in his tone.
Wallace stared at him, nonplussed. “A bunch of gangs are out there in the world. I don’t know that they’re worth contacting, but it would be a place to start.”
He nodded absentmindedly. “I’ll think about it.” He got up and headed to the doorway. “Don’t make any plans to leave anytime soon.”
Wallace frowned at him. “At the moment, you’ve got all your henchmen here, all that I know about anyway.
Five of you to guard the four of us. You’ve already threatened to kill a man you put in the hospital, who did absolutely nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Plus, you’ve threatened to kill my girlfriend. What is it you think I’ll do?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered. “I’ll have to give this some more thought.”
And, with that, he turned and walked out.