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Chapter 9

While Eddie and Ringer had chased after the monster, Tonya went after Ferguson. Richard had vanished through the bedroom wall like some kind of apparition or ghost, as if the wall wasn’t even there. Tonya couldn’t read his thoughts. They were still too distorted, but now she believed she knew why they were. Richard appeared to either be out of phase with physical reality, or his atoms were dispersed to the point he was no longer solid. Whichever it was didn’t matter. His ghost-like state prevented her from accessing his mind. She could and did lock onto it, though. Following the shreds of Richard’s thoughts she could detect, Tonya raced out of the bedroom. Richard had bolted out of the house into the air beyond its second floor, only to turn about and re-enter the house a few rooms down from the one he had fled out of.

The room she found him in looked to be a guest bedroom. The place, like everywhere else in the house, was littered with toys and comics. She found Richard curled up on the far side of the room’s bed, cowering behind it.

“It’s okay,” Tonya told him. “You’re safe now.”

Richard apparently hadn’t seen or heard her enter the room over the sounds of his sobbing; he also had his head buried in his hands which wouldn’t have helped. He looked up at her with tear-filled eyes. “Who…who are you people?”

“My name is Tonya, Mr. Ferguson.” She moved closer to where he sat on the floor behind the bed. “We’re from a company called Psi-Mechs, Inc.”

The word mech seemed to catch his attention. It didn’t fully calm him down, but it certainly brought his focus onto her. “Mechs?” Richard asked.

Tonya didn’t really know what to make of his response, but from the looks of the collection of stuff strewn through his entire house, she figured he was a hardcore geek and a fan of mecha.

Tonya nodded. “Our company uses real life mecha to hunt down and destroy monsters like the thing that was after you.”

“For real?” Richard’s eyes beamed with excitement through his tears.

“Yes,” Tonya said. “Real life mecha. We call them Psi-mechs. One of our people invented them and the power source that runs them.”

Richard didn’t balk as she got close enough to offer him a hand up. He accepted her hand and allowed Tonya to help him to his feet.

“And…” he stammered, “you have psychics too?”

“We do,” Tonya assured him. “I’m a telepath. The men that fought the monster that was after you, well, one’s a telekinetic and the other’s a psycho-porter.”

Richard’s tears were gone and he was smiling. “And you came here for me? To recruit me?”

“We did,” Tonya confirmed. “We didn’t know that thing would be here, or we’d likely have brought a squad of Psi-mechs with us.”

“I have to be dreaming,” Richard commented, more to himself than her.

“You’re not, Mr. Ferguson,” Tonya said. “We seek out people with psionic powers and recruit them all the time. In fact, that’s our job with the company.”

“How did you find me?” Richard asked point blank. “No one really knows what I can do.”

“Ringer used to be a detective, and I’m a telepath,” she explained. “No matter how careful folks with powers are, they’re never fully hidden. I can’t say any more than that.”

“I get it!” Richard laughed. “This is awesome! Where do I sign?”

“Look, Mr. Ferguson, there’s a lot you still don’t know about us and what we do. Our work is dangerous. We put our lives on the line almost every day,” Tonya cautioned him.

“You saw what I can do, right?” Richard stared at her. “What do you really think can hurt me when I’m like that?”

“You…” Tonya struggled to remember the word that kept popping up in the bits of his thoughts she’d been able to read since he’d become solid again. “You call it wraithing?”

Richard nodded excitedly. “It’s my superpower. Pretty cool name for it, huh?”

Tonya sighed. “I know this all a lot to take in, but I promise you, it’s nothing at all like the comics and movies you appear to love so much.”

“Dang well close enough!” Richard laughed. “I’m in, so take me to your leader.”

Tonya couldn’t help but laugh herself. Katherine Grimm was going to have her hands full with this one.

Ringer and Eddie appeared at the door of the bedroom.

“See?” Eddie elbowed Ringer. “I told you Tonya would find him.”

“Mr. Ferguson has agreed to go with us,” she told them. “He’s actually rather excited about doing so.”

“Call me Richard, okay? There’s no need to be so formal. You guys just saved my life, after all,” Richard said. “That thing seemed pretty determined to get its worms inside of me. If you hadn’t come along, God only knows what would have happened.”

“I thought you just said nothing could hurt you while you were wraithing?” Tonya reminded him.

“That’s true,” Richard nodded, “at least nothing I’ve ever encountered before. That thing though…it was trying to get inside my head. I could feel it calling to me somehow. That’s why I ran. I wasn’t sure I could resist giving into it.”

“What do you mean, calling to you?” Eddie lit up a cigar and started puffing on it. If Richard had any issue with him smoking in his home, he didn’t say anything.

“I don’t know how to explain it.” Richard sighed. “It was like I…I just wanted to do whatever it told me to.”

Ringer looked over at Tonya. “Do you think that thing is telepathic, too?”

Tonya shrugged. “I didn’t get that vibe from it, but its mind was so alien, I can’t say for sure.”

“Just how many powers does that thing have?” Eddie snorted. “I mean, come on!”

“We clearly have no idea what we’re dealing with here,” Ringer told them as the sound of sirens grew closer in the distance. Between their display on the street and the wreck, the place was about to be crawling with cops. “But we’ll have to figure that out later. It’s time for us to go.”

Eddie opened a portal. Richard gawked at the shimmering doorway in awe.

“Is that thing safe?” Richard asked.

“How do you think we got here?” Eddie laughed.

“Come on!” Ringer ordered and the four of them stepped into the portal.



* * * * *


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Framed