“Yes. He can,” Jyen said defiantly.
“Fine. Let’s see it. Not at me.”
I crossed my arms and waited for the show. I wasn’t entirely sure what Jyen was getting at. She was a strange bird alright. I couldn’t figure out her angle.
She went over and crouched by her brother and began whispering to him. She had her arm around him and seemed to be cajoling.
Jyen reached over to a pair of shoes along the wall and pulled something from inside it. She handed it to Jyonal. From my experiences in Deadsouth, I knew it to be a drug whose name escaped me.
Jyonal then took the drug injection and applied it to his arm. After using it, he sat bolt upright.
“You’re kidding?” I said. Of course he thinks he can do anything when he’s high. What was this?
And then Jyonal’s eyes glowed.
Not like bulbs, but like spotlights. And he was on his feet though I hadn’t seen him stand.
Then the room changed, the bare surfaces inexplicably gone. It was now carpeted with lush fabric. There were shimmering works of art on the walls. The ceiling had a chandelier.
But I noticed this all took place in kind of a fish-eye perspective. The center of the eye was gorgeous and new, at the edges it started to blur, while outside it, the old room with exposed metal was everywhere.
Then I realized the fish-eye was centered where Jyonal was looking at the time. As he moved his head, the room morphed.
“It’s an illusion,” I said. “A mental—a mental thing.” I wasn’t sure of the term, but I had heard of mutants being able to make you see things. He had to be in my head. Or warping light around.
“No, it’s not,” said Jyen, standing next to me now, and she held my hand as if to prove it.
“Jyonal,” she said. “Show him.”
And the thing that was once her brother howled. A booming wail that made me cover my ears. The floor began shaking and I was thrown to the ground off balance.
As I was wondering if the building would collapse, Jyen rushed to her brother, whose eyes were like laser beams, and soothed him, stroked him, and gradually his eyes dimmed. The shaking stopped and the walls ceased undulating.
But even after it was done, I was still lying on carpet, the carpet that hadn’t existed when I came in. I could feel it. Pluck at it. The walls were painted and held artwork—albeit amateur ones. The chandelier was there, but half-fused and twisted. The fish-eye effect remained. It was frozen into the apartment.
I got up and touched the walls at the edge of it. The very metal held ripples on its surface; the color bled and faded as you moved further out.
It wasn’t the Dredel Led who had messed with the station, it was this guy, this druggie. He had shaken all of Belvaille with just his mind, or his spleen, or whatever he used. I couldn’t imagine how much energy that took. Thousands of buildings. An entire city. And it came from one man! After soaking all this in I finally spoke.
“Why…,” I began weakly. “Why the drugs?”
“It’s what he needs for his mutation,” Jyen said as she stood over her brother, who was now resting on the floor. “If he believes it, it exists. Anything.”
My tele went off and with trembling hands I took it out of my pocket. I saw it was Garm. I was about to answer when I looked up and saw Jyen coated in her patina of crackling electricity.
I dropped my tele as my forearm and hand were scorched.
“Hey, what are you doing?” I yelled.
“I asked if we could trust you,” she said, now only mildly charged. “You can’t tell anyone about this.”
“Why?” I said, spitting on my sizzling hand. “Don’t you know what he can do for us?”
“That’s what everyone says. That’s what the government said. But they just wanted to use Jyonal as a weapon.”
“Well…yeah,” I answered.
“He can do anything. Do you think the Colmarian Confederation is going to let him be just a regular citizen? This is him in recovery,” she said, pointing at the man lying on the floor.
“With a new body he had to create for himself after they practically destroyed his natural one.”
So that’s why these siblings looked so different.
“Why did you come to me? You don’t need me to stand up to a destroyer, you can just have your brother think it away.”
“He might be able to do that. But he can’t forever and they’ll keep looking for him. The drugs will eventually kill him, you know that. We just want to be left alone. Like you.”
I looked around the room and weighed what Jyen had just said. If I was a boss, like a galactic one, and there was a tool that could unmake everything I had done, I could see not wanting anyone to have it. And definitely not wanting it to have its own free will and decision-making ability.