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  “Just like that, Jeff? You'd just let me go?”

  “Maybe. All you'd have to do is find those individuals out there who can portal jump without the portals. Once you locate them, I could let you go.”

  “Right, just turn over the names to you, and you seem to think I actually could find these supposed people, who may or may not even exist.”

  “The alternative, Charles, is that I leave you in this cell to rot, until I decide what to do with you. I told you before that we had a punishment here of banishment, and I wasn't lying about that. It's possible to just have one of my agents open up a portal to nowhere and send you there. And without your abilities, well...I don't think it would be particularly pleasant. No one even knows what it's like in that...environment. Could be a quick death, could be a very slow death. That you'd die there is a fact, it's just a matter of how long it would take.”

  “Sounds like a pretty simple solution, Jeff. I don't know anything, so I guess you'll just have to banish me. Even if I could tell you where these people you're looking for are, I wouldn't do it.”

  Thomas nodded, as if that was the reaction he was expecting. “Very well, Charles. I'll give you some time to think about it. I'm pretty close to making my own decision.”

  “That's fine, Jeff, I'm sure you'll do what you need to do.”

  He smiled. “I will, indeed.”

  * * *

  I was left alone again for an unknown period of time – my internal clock wasn't working, so I had no idea how long it was.

  In that time, my meals were reduced to one a day, and then just the old movie cliche of bread and water.

  There wasn't much to do but lay down and think; I kept visualizing that dark room (now it was more like a darkened city) with a single door that led out into the light.

  I was getting very close to that door.

  Right before I did, Melissa came to visit.

  “Hello, Charles,” she said, entering the cell. I had been deep in thought when she did; I didn't acknowledge her when she came in.

  “Jeff says you're not cooperating,” she continued, undeterred. “He says you're not giving up the information he wanted.”

  “I don't have any information to give him, anyway,” I said, without getting up from my bunk. “He seems to think I have some kind of pipeline to super-powered individuals, and that I'd be a good Nazi and tell him where to track these people down.”

  “We both know you can,” Melissa replied. “I don't know why you're making it so hard on yourself. He's going to banish you, and you don't want that.”

  I slowly got up (I was pretty weak from lack of food) and turned to face Melissa. “I see you're a good Nazi, you and your sister. I'm surprised.”

  “He's right, you know. We regulate things like automatic weapons in this country to keep people safe. People aren't allowed to run around with grenades or nuclear weapons for a reason. And people like you can't wander around with all of that power in your head, free to cause death and destruction.”

  “Seems like I'm the only person here who hasn't done something to put the safety and well-being of people into jeopardy.”

  “There's no point in holding out, Charles. We can cut off the gas to this cell, and I could force you to use your abilities,” Melissa said.

  “Could you?” I asked. “I don't think you could, but you're welcome to try.”

  In my mind, the door was in sight; I walked to it and opened it. Suddenly, my mind was filled with an incredible sensation of power; there wasn't a better way to describe it. It was like sitting behind the wheel of a muscle car, the engine rumbling, knowing how fast you'd go by pressing down on the gas pedal.

  Melissa seemed to sense this explosion of power; she took a step back and frowned, pressing her fingers to her head. In my weakened state I wasn't exactly connecting the dots, so it didn't occur to me at that moment that something had happened to me.

  “What was that?” she cried, rubbing her temples. “Something happened in your mind...”

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” I said. “Look, just tell Thomas to go ahead and banish me, or whatever.” I had been looking up at the ceiling when I said this; looking Melissa in the eye, I added, “And could you do something about my food? You try living on bread and water.”

  Her eyes seemed to cloud and her face went blank; after a second she smiled. “Sure, Charles, right away, I'll get you something to eat.” With that she turned and left the cell; she seemed to have difficulty with walking at first, but after a few seconds regained her balance.

  What was that?

  I didn't know, but a short period of time later, a tray of food and a bottle of water was pushed through the slot in my door.

  I ate my meal and wondered how long it would be before I was sent off to my fate.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It wasn't a very long wait. I was feeling like I had a better grasp on the passing of time, and it was about two days after I had spoke with Melissa before Thomas showed up again.

  He brought quite the entourage with him; in addition to Melissa and Lynne (and Melissa looked particularly glassy-eyed), he also had three armed guards with him, each carrying a shotgun.

  “Get up, Charles, it's time,” was all Thomas said.

  “Is it?” I replied. I climbed out of my bunk. “Fine. Let's get this over with.”

  Melissa grabbed my arm; one of the guards poked me in the back with his shotgun. Actually, he did more than poke me, he jabbed me pretty hard; when he did, I exclaimed, “Hey, let up, you ass!”

  He stopped; even Melissa released her grip on me.

  I wasn't connecting the dots, obviously, that I seemed to have the use of my abilities again; being locked up for a couple of weeks (and it could have been longer) had messed me up.

  Thomas turned and frowned at Melissa; she grabbed my arm again.

  Thomas led us out of the cell and down a hall. Some agents stopped and watched us proceed. After a few moments we reached what turned out to be an unmarked elevator; Thomas held his hand to a scanner, and after a moment the elevator door slid open.

  It was a rather small elevator, and we all jammed in. Thomas pressed a button and the elevator descended.

  We must have gone fairly deep under the building, as it took several seconds to reach our destination.

  It was a small room, empty aside from two tables on either side of the room; at each table sat three individuals; table one had two men and a woman, while table two had three women. They were of various ages from probably late 20s to late 50s, dressed in conservative suits and dresses.

  At the end of the room was what looked like one of those metal detector stations you see at airports, and beyond that a shimmering portal.

  Thomas and the guards led me up to the portal station; they stopped, and Thomas addressed the six men and women.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. This man, Charles Matheson, has been found guilty of desertion: namely for being absent without leave during a time of war, and for that, his punishment is banishment. Do you have any last words, prisoner?”

  I looked at Thomas and caught the eyes of the men and women at the tables. “He's lying,” is all I said.

  Immediate reaction by the witnesses at the tables in the form of excited conversation; they were looking at Thomas.

  Thomas nodded as if he had expected such a response, although there was some confusion in his eyes over the reaction.

  “So be it, the punishment is carried out by the authority granted to me by the United States of Canada.”

  He nodded at the guards. One of them barked, “Step forward!”

  Again with the jamming of the shotgun into my back.

  I did, and approached the portal.

  “Step through!” the guard barked.

  I did.

  * * *

  I emerged into a kind of nothingness filled with bright light.

  I was falling, which was disconcerting enough; there also appeared to be a limited amount of oxygen,
because I started to feel like I was going to pass out.

  Aside from the brightness, there was nothing else; I couldn't make out any shapes or get any kind of sense of where I was.

  What I was able to sense, though, was the fact that I wasn't alone here; in fact, after a moment, although faint, I could hear screams.

  Panic had enveloped my mind; there was no way of knowing if my descent would be stopped by my body smashing into something.

  The lack of oxygen was making it difficult to think.

  Despite the panic (well, maybe “terror” was a better word) filling my mind, I tried to clear it and think about my home.

  It was difficult at first, but after a few moments I started to get a clear image in my mind of my home.

  Right at the moment my fall was broken.

  And not by something that would shatter every bone in my body; it was the comfortable couch in my home.

  I didn't slam into it, but it felt like I had been dropped onto it from several feet in the air.

  My heart continued to pound, and as I lay there I gasped for breath. It hadn't quite registered yet that I was no longer falling, or suffocating.

  After a moment I opened my eyes; I touched the couch with my hands and scanned the room.

  Finally, I was able to breath normally. I was home. My abilities had returned.

  After a few moments it occurred to me that my abilities had returned back in that cell, and I thought of how Melissa, and the guards, had responded when I had told them to let up on me.

  And Melissa, two days before that, suddenly leaving the cell and bringing me food after I had asked for it.

  I cursed myself for not putting the pieces together sooner. Still, I was alive, and now had a huge advantage:

  Thomas, and everyone else, would believe I was in that horrible world with the other banished people, existing in a nightmarish living death.

  Could someone like Melissa sense that I wasn't actually there?

  I had a sense of her in my mind, and I knew that she wasn't aware that I was back in my own world.

  The element of surprise would come in handy.

  I'd have to take down Jeff and his entire operation, and this time do so without any kind of moral quandaries or conflicts.

  He was going to have to pay for what he had done to me, and to everyone else experiencing that living death in the banished world, whatever it was.

  And for killing my Melissa.

  But before I could do anything else, I had to put a stop to the endless death those poor souls were experiencing in that banished portal.

  The biggest obstacle was going to be getting there; I had never actually transported myself into a portal, much less one opened by a machine.

  It did occur to me that there might have been people there who had committed horrible crimes in their world, and releasing them back to it would probably not be a good idea.

  I could possibly re-direct this portal so that it did open somewhere where the people would at least have the opportunity to start a new life, and I thought it was also possible I could sort out the violent criminals from the people there whose only crime was being able to portal jump.

  A lot of ifs, a lot of maybes; could I pull it off? It was time to try.

  I decided to concentrate first on the portal jumpers who were there, because try as I might to find the portal itself, I wasn't having any luck, but I could get there through a back door.

  Closing my eyes, I reached my mind out, and suddenly it was filled with an overwhelming amount of sound, and voices, and thoughts; I seemed to be picking up everyone in the world, and needless to say it made it difficult to focus.

  After a few moments I discovered I could navigate through all of these voices and thoughts, and what I started to hone in on was a kind of screaming panic. And when I did, I found I could see that banishment portal, through the eyes of the people trapped there.

  With that, it was simple to send myself there.

  Once there, the panic threatened to overtake me as I myself started that endless descent, but after a moment I was able to stop it.

  I was hovering in place, which amazed me, but I didn't have time to think about that.

  I thought the lack of oxygen would be a problem, but I was breathing normally.

  Even though I wasn't falling, this portal was disconcerting, with no features except for this blinding light.

  I pushed my thoughts out again, touching each person within this portal, and in doing so I was able to determine that everyone in here was only guilty of portal jumping; I couldn't sense any dangerous criminals, and looking into each mind I was able to access their memories.

  Over and over, I kept seeing images of Jeff Thomas and his agents capturing these people, putting them into holding cells, even torturing them in some cases.

  Taken from family and friends in the middle of the night, many of them only vaguely aware of their ability and how to use it.

  I had to find a place to put these people, and I couldn't send them back to their world, at least not until I dealt with Thomas.

  And as I accessed all of these minds, I was able to communicate with them, and reassure them I was going to do something about this.

  I wondered: could I return them to their world and hide them in plain sight?

  I thought I could. Doing so would require shutting off the tracking chips in their brains, which I did with a thought.

  The next thing would be to return them to their world, which I was able to do with another thought; I simply moved the portal back to their world and closed it.

  When it closed, I was surrounded by a dozen individuals, men and women, all of them gaping at me, trying to see in all directions, touching themselves in disbelief that they were no longer in a living death.

  “You're safe now,” I told them. “Your tracking chips have been turned off. I'd suggest you return home and keep a low profile until I can deal with Jeff Thomas.”

  One of the survivors, an older man in his 60s, approached me and took my hand; he shook it. “Thank you. How...how did you do that?”

  “It doesn't matter,” I told him. “Your family and friends are going to want to know what happened to you. They can't know anything right now, because if Thomas gets wind of what's happened, he's going to come after you and possibly do more than just banish you. Tell them something, but not the whole truth, at least not right now. Can you do that?”

  They all nodded at me, the relief spreading on their faces.

  “Can you all make it home? If you need help I can take you there.”

  No one did. I could read in their minds that they all could in the very least portal jump home. I worried for a moment that doing so would alert someone like Lynne or Melissa; that certainly was a possibility. After a moment I simply reached out to their minds and created a kind of white noise that would block out any kind of signal that someone could pick up on.

  “Okay, you all should be fine. Get back to your loved ones. This will all be over soon.”

  They nodded in gratitude, and after a few moments, several of them opened up portals and disappeared; the rest left on foot, whether it was because they lived nearby or simply didn't want to do the thing that had gotten them in trouble in the first place. I reached out to those individuals and told them they didn't have anything to worry about.

  With this taken care of, I closed my eyes and returned to my home. It was time to come up with a plan to stop Thomas, and his agents. It seemed a tad overwhelming; could I stop him and his agents, all by myself?

  I'd soon find out.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I had the element of surprise on my side – I hoped I did, at any rate. I had no idea if the people sentenced to banishment were somehow tracked while in that world, or even if that was possible.

  So far, no one had come after me, and I took that to be a good sign.

  I didn't know what I was going to going up against, so I'd have to be careful; I also was going to be doing this on my ow
n, so I also had to be smart.

  It seemed the most effective tactic would be to find all of the agents on Thomas' team who had portal jumping powers – or if there were any others like Melissa, who could do what I could do.

  I sent my mind out to try and find these individuals; locating the portal jumpers was easy, as they couldn't tell their thoughts were being probed.

  I had a sense of six individuals, including Melissa, who seemed to have the same ability I had, and honing in on them would be more of a challenge; each time I attempted to connect to their thoughts, I was immediate aware of the fact that they could sense me, and I hoped I had withdrew from their minds as quick as I could before they got a clear sense of what I was doing, and where I was.

  Further probing of the portal jumpers showed that a large number of them did work for Thomas; his face came through clearly in their thoughts. There were two dozen of these individuals, but I didn't consider them a threat.

  I figured they could lead me to the more powerful individuals on Thomas' team.

  At the moment, Thomas' portal jumpers were all in the same area, which I took to mean they were all at work, or all doing something with Thomas, so I'd have to wait until one of them was alone before taking action.

  It didn't end up being a very long wait, thankfully, and the person I'd get to speak with was an old friend.

  * * *

  I watched Lynne leave the building she and Thomas worked in (a bit of a risk maybe for me to appear so close to it, but I kept a prudent distance away and as far as I could tell there were no cameras on the street, although I had seen cameras in other locations) and walk through the parking lot and then out towards the sidewalk; I was across the street from her, at a bus stop, sitting on a bench. I was holding a newspaper in front of me (they still sold paper versions, thankfully, although everyone else seemed to have e-readers) and catching peeks of Lynne over the top of it.

  As far as I could tell, she was actually headed to this very bus stop, which surprised me; I would have thought she'd just portal jump to whatever destination she had in mind.