Chapter 15 Training Station #2
“Is there any way someone could watch him while I’m at the appointment?” she asks, her tone low. “Sorry. I’m Lauren. This is my beautiful boy, Jason. I don’t want to scare him.”
“Not usually, but… maybe I could sit with him in the waiting room, if that works?”
There aren’t many patients left for the day, so I think it will be all right.
Jason and I play hand-clapping games and I Spy.
He tells me about his mom and clams up about his dad, so I have a good guess as to what’s going on.
He’s all the way from Texas and has never been to Illinois, but tomorrow his mom is taking him to the zoo.
It feels good to tell him about the monkey enclosure at the Lincoln Park Zoo, and add that he might be able to see penguins.
It feels good to lose our games on purpose to see him smile.
It reminds me, for a moment, that there’s so much more out there that is touched by our clinic.
Muya meets me on the platform, as promised, dressed in a stylish wool coat.
“Are we stopping another train?” I ask.
“I’m going to teach you how to stay alive.”
“Hard task,” I mutter.
“It is astounding that you’ve made it this far,” he says. “But you lived. So even though you seem to be limping through life, you must have some little bit of fire in you. And now you have my power.”
“So you’ve changed your tune?”
“No, I’ve realized that your particularly feeble mind requires some attempt at kindness to accomplish our goals.”
Before I can parse that, Muya seizes my hand.
“This is all moving a bit fast for me,” I quip.
“Just shut up and feel.”
Warmth suffuses me where Muya’s fingers touch mine. The heat carries through my palm and into my elbow, and with it, understanding. Muya’s power holds instruction, knowledge. I shudder and instinctively pull my hand away, but Muya’s grip is too tight.
Be patient, he warns.
This is how it felt, when Asmodeus spoke to me. A voice inside my head that almost sounded like myself.
It’s just a different form of communication. He couldn’t read your thoughts, if that’s what worries you.
You read my thoughts.
I felt my own power.
I look over at him, ensuring that he can see me roll my eyes. I concentrate once more on the tendrils connecting us.
Ignorance and knowledge are fundamentally connected, and knowledge is about memory.
It is not innate, it is learned. If you’re in a fight, you probably can’t make someone forget how to fight.
But you can make them forget why they’re fighting.
See that woman? I look over to see a woman climbing up the steps to the L platform.
Reach out, lightly, and make her forget why she’s here.
She might be in a rush!
The next train isn’t for five minutes. You’re going to use restraint, and only influence her for half a minute, at most.
I reach out toward her, channeling the brightness I feel inside me.
I thought ignorance would feel dark.
That’s because you’re ignor—TOO MUCH! Muya stops me, and I recoil, drawing back into myself. Too much, you’re going to need far more subtlety to get by. Concentrate on the duration of time you want to affect.
This time, I deliberately try to use only a small bead of magic.
You don’t know why you’re here. You won’t know until you get to the bottom of the stairs and remember again.
This time, Muya doesn’t stop me. We watch her stand at the top of the platform, blink dazedly, look at her phone, and head back down the stairs.
The real test will be if she comes back. In the meantime—
“Hey, get a room!” A crowd of clearly drunk college-aged boys has just reached the top of the platform and decided to jeer at our intertwined fingers.
Good opportunity for crowd control. Make them forget we exist.
They’ll just see us again.
The brain is a funny thing. Instead of trying to use your power on them, think of the power cloaking us. Make us immune to observation; make their brains unable to process the sight of us.
We are invisible.
Not invisible. That’s different. Just… unknowable.
We are unknowable.
I have no idea what I’m doing, and though I try to shape the power, it falls apart. I can hear Muya sigh in my head.
I will do it to you first, so you can observe.
The power pulses from him easily, a thin matrix that covers me in a gossamer film.
I glance toward the boys, and though they look in my direction, their eyes see through me like I am part of the station.
The woman from before is back, looking mildly annoyed, and she too doesn’t seem to see me.
Muya has made me resistant to cataloguing, resistant to memory.
I try to replicate it on him, spinning out the same net over his form.
Clumsy, but yes, that’s the idea.
Would it kill you to say “good job”?
“Good job,” Muya says aloud, then clutches his chest. “Oh, my heart!”
“Asshole,” I mutter, though I can’t help but laugh.
“Your train is coming. This is where I leave you.”
“You taught me how to do two things.”
“So you’re two hundred percent more competent than you were before,” he snarks, letting go of my hand. “I’ll keep poking around, but at least now every time I leave I won’t have to worry about you dying and taking all my power with you.”
The train arrives, and people stream out. Normally I’d run right in, but I realize I’m reluctant to go. I’m actually enjoying spending time with Muya, a demon who hates humans and thinks I’m incompetent, who is only here to take away my power.
“What’s wrong?” Muya asks.
“Just worried that you’ll be lonely without your only friend,” I say.
“Projecting, are we?”
I board the train just as the doors close. When I look back at him, though, he’s waving.