August 9th, 1999: a nine-month period of political and social upheaval strikes Canada after forty-four members of parliament are murdered, alongside any family and personnel staying with them in their homes or at their offices during times of death.

December 20th, 1999: famed psychic investigator Ernesto Reno brings attention to the possibility of a new form of psychic powers related to a spate of bodyguard and family member betrayals behind the deaths in both Canada and the United States. Restrictions on psychic powers and the rights of individual psychics are swiftly placed; many innocent psychics are incarcerated for questioning.

December 26th, 1999: another videotape arrives at Fox News headquarters. In it, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, visibly distressed, reads from a paper while dousing himself in gasoline. He reads that ‘the Brain Scythe’ will be in Mexico by the Spring of 2000 before lighting a match. Mexican border and air traffic security enhanced, psychics in Mexico are imprisoned en masse, and a political era known as ‘La Tumba de los Presidentes’ begins.

“Agent Cole?”

Zina raised a finger as she typed at her phone one-thumbed, amused at whatever she was doing. After a few more seconds, she set her phone down on her desk and looked up at Riley Harris, who was peering at her through his big square glasses from the door.

“What is it Riley?” Zina asked, leaning back in her big black chair.

“Aiden’s here with his team; they’ve been sent to conference room B whenever you can show up.”

“Good, thank you Riley.” Zina nodded at him and stood to pull on her suit jacket. “Oh, Riley?” The man paused before the door could close. “I’m not sure the mustache works.” She said with an apologetic smile, and Riley paused, rubbed his furred upper-lip thoughtfully, and shrugged.

“A lady would know. Thank you, ma’am.”

“You’re welcome.”

Riley shut the door and Zina picked up her phone again with a smile, replaying the video. Madeline, Taz, and Melodica sat at the edge of one of their beds, Taz and Melodica strumming imaginary guitars as the three sang one of Zina’s favorite songs – Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Can’t Stop – together during what looked like an early morning.

She sent as many hearts and happy faces as she could to her daughter when the video finished, then stood up from behind her desk. She had the honor of her own, private office with those tall, slat-like blinders that she usually kept closed early in the morning since the sun would otherwise glare off her computer. Her wooden desk was a nice, pricey one too, with its four box drawers, its one wide-yet-shallow drawer, and heavy enough to make Zina reach out for help whenever she needed to adjust it.

She walked out the door to her office and tested the lock before turning to face out over the floor, which was filled with desks staffed by government workers and suited agents, walking around with piles of paper, folders, binders, books, CDs, flash drives, and an attitude of general urgency.

“‘Scuse me.” A young lady brushed past Zina with a stack of records in her arms, and Zina took the opportunity to join the foot traffic on the way to the agency kitchen.

At home she wasn’t the sort to leave a guest waiting so she could go get some coffee, but agency meetings could run long in the tooth, and she thought it was more polite to arrive a few minutes late than it was to yawn in the face of your coworkers and guests just because somebody’s presentation had technical issues.

“Agent Cole.” A fellow man in black greeted her, and she returned it with a smile and a nod of her head as she futzed with the coffee maker.

She took her coffee pitch black at work, since the bitterness kept her from getting too comfortable in her chair, and she took her coffee towards the south-end of the agency. The blinders were down over conference room A’s windows, and she heard some low murmuring within; she was sure her bosses were dealing with something in there, she recognized that flat tone as belonging to Niel.

Conference room B wasn’t hidden behind closed curtains, so Zina wasn’t surprised to see who was there when she walked in.

“Agent Cole!” Aiden’s handsome smile lit up from the far side of the room, and he straightened up as the others in the room stood to greet the woman with a smile.

“Mr. Walsh,” Zina greeted back as she set her coffee on the table and walked around the room. Gillard, Bowie, Weinstein, Mercer, Stermer, and O'keeffe she recognized from work, Aiden she knew as well, but the other eight were ESP officers she’d only ever seen in files. “Sorry for making ya wait.”

“Nothing we’re upset over, I assure you.” Aiden walked around the long, ovular table to hold out his hand, which Zina shook with a pleased smile. “We have a lot to talk about today, but it has been a while, so before we jump down the rabbit hole, how’s life treating you, Zi?”

“One hit at a time.” Zina went over to an unoccupied chair and moved to sit as Aiden nodded.

“I think you’ll be pleased with my choices, so maybe that’ll convince life’s pulling its punches. Speaking of…” Aiden trailed off.

“Yeah?”

Aiden lowered his voice. “Has, uh, Anna mentioned anything about me?”

Zina nearly spat out her mouthful of coffee, and struggled mightily to keep it in her mouth. Part of her wanted to roll her eyes, another part wanted to call up Annie then and there and giggle about it with her.

After forcing the coffee down her throat, Zina shook her head and chuckled. “Sorry Aiden, if she’s thinking about anything other than Taz or her new dog, she hasn’t told me.”

“Well that’s alright.” Aiden pouted, and Zina was half-tempted to call him on his bullshit, but she wanted to be nice to the guy in front of his subordinates. “Her daughter made it onto campus alright though?”

“Took some poking and prodding but Annie eventually made the right choice.”

“Good! She’ll be just fine under the care of the ESP I’ve left behind.”

“And she might draw Annie on campus so you can watch her butt wherever she walks again.” Zina mumbled into her coffee, and didn’t need to read the man’s mind to know he was suddenly distracted.

“Right. Anyways.” Aiden cleared his throat and walked back towards the head of the table, where he stood. “Agent Cole, I want to thank you for this opportunity; it means a lot to the ESP, to Phoenix Academy, and to psychics the world over that you are giving us the chance to help in protecting our own.”

Zina set her coffee on the table and leaned back in her chair as the mood turned ‘official’, and she offered him a small nod. “You can thank Rickard for that, all I did was talk him into it.”

“Director Rickard has our appreciation of course,” Aiden held up his hand, “but it is your influence that helped sway his opinion. We never would have even thought the FBI would want our help.” He nodded Zina’s way. “Agent Cole, these are my eight selections to join the team.”

He turned to gesture from the far end, starting with a young asian woman in her ESP uniform. “Ai Letterman, DaQuan Fox, Marvin Keller, Constance Jonz, Corey Burns, Leland McCormick, Peter Gabriel – no relation – and Felicia Swan.” Each person straightened up as their name was called, ending on a muscular, bald woman that Zina bet spent her free time in a military bar arm wrestling recruits and sharing her literal thoughts.

“Well, it is a pleasure to meet the eight of you.” Zina leaned forward and gave them each a dutiful look. “I trust Aiden’s word that you’re his very best, and from the moment that door shut, you became a part of Operation Fremen. The Psionic Defense Task Force constantly needs fresh blood, and with the times and threats changing, the men up top have finally decided we can’t get left behind. Our first co-psionic team needs to leave an impression, and I think stopping Brain Scythe is going to be a good first step in showing our bosses just that. Bowie?”

Bowie, an older man, bald like many of his agency contemporaries, but with a nicely trimmed halo of grey hair around his mouth, stood. “As members of Operation Fremen, you will be made privy to classified information. You’ll find this information in the files I’ll be passing out to you, mainly covering what we know in the meantime.”

Bowie walked around the table, handing the files to the nine ESP members. They immediately began perusing the papers within.

“We are narrowing down areas of potential operation based on sites with the most missing psychics; as you can imagine, we believe their primary operation is centered in Phoenix.”

One of the ESP, DaQuan, awkwardly raised a hand, and Zina nodded his way. “My apologies if I am out of line, but this is hardly anything!” He held up the three pages within each folder.

“Primary areas of abduction, names of victims, theorized ability usage…” Ai said, looking confused.

“Is there more that we aren’t allowed to see?” Corey asked, giving Zina a suspicious look, only for it to turn to surprise when Zina shook her head.

“Brain Scythe is working in ways the FBI isn’t used to, much less prepared for.” Zina said in a calm, but serious tone. “The PDTF has dealt with organized psychics before, but most of these organizations were twenty people on average. Abductions are happening across the state in a deliberate fashion, splitting our attention and slowing us down.”

Agent Stermer gave a small, grumbling growl. “The rest of the FBI is being wrangled in to assist. We have agents moving across the state, but if we ever find witnesses, they’re incoherent. Security footage is nothing but static or wiped clean, fingerprints or signs of a struggle are rarely there, there’s never a usage of a weapon.”

“What about vehicles?” Peter asked.

“We’ve found tire prints and video evidence of vehicles stationed at potential abduction sites before and after the abductee was reported missing, but the vehicles are inconsistent; everything from plumber vans to classic mustangs.”

“How do we even know this is the work of an organization called Brain Scythe? What evidence have they left behind?” Peter asked, and Zina turned to face O’keeffe. The tall, broad, and powerful looking man gestured to a videotape sitting at the head of the table in front of Aiden, tagged as evidence, and he sank back into his chair.

“You’re familiar with the Brain Scythe tapes of ‘99?” He asked in a floor-shaking bass. The ESP squad tentatively nodded, staring between him and the tape. “This was sent into ABC15 headquarters late October last year. I believe it was an intern of theirs that snuck it to us before they had a chance to air it.”

“May we watch the tape?” Aiden asked.

The chairs around the table turned towards the large screen at one end of the room and watched as a film reel countdown started at five before it showed a young woman. She looked indigenous, with straight black hair and black eyes with browned flesh. Tears were pouring down her cheeks as she spoke into the camera, sitting in front of a green screen.

“G-good morning Arizona, my name is Cinderella Truckee.”

The nine ESP opened their files and confirmed the name at the very top of the list of the missing persons.

“I’m s-speaking on behalf of…” She swallowed loudly, only for her face to contort in pain and writhe. The ESP straightened up with startled expressions before she settled down, her face darkened as blood rushed to fill her cheeks. “Buh-... Brain Scythe has ch-chosen me to announce th-their place i-in Arizona. They a-are many, and powerful, b-beyond the grasp of p-puny men.”

Behind her, the green screen changed to a video that many were familiar with: the fuzzy recording of a frazzled and dirty looking Albert Gore, the first hint to the world that the Brain Scythe existed.

“Y-you will see people like me disappear. Just as y-your governor has always w-wanted, my kind will be forced underground by our h-hand, b-but just when you believe you are free of what I can d-do, I-I-I-I—” She thrashed, screaming, crying, her hair flying about her face as her voice raised in a rising squeal. “Let me go! Please let me go!”

She went unanswered as she lowered her head, panting heavily towards her lap as the itinerant Gore spoke behind her.

“—speaking for the Brain Scythe. Nobody in this country, from the bum on the street to the rich man in his private plane, is safe any longer, as I have come to—”

The woman eventually picked her head up to wordlessly plead to the camera, before she suddenly froze, stock still. Her blurred eyes suddenly cleared, her expression sagged, the line of her mouth flattened, and she silently sat up straight, her freed hands pulling strands of her out of her face and wiping the tears off her cheeks.

“—killed. I am not an instrument of God, Satan, or the many regimes you are responsible for across the seas, I have come to destroy you for reasons you will only come to know when it is too late.”

Cinderella spoke, her tone disquietingly flat, her panting lessened into soft breaths to calm her burning lungs. “When you believe you are free of what I can do, we will return to bury the dregs of humanity under a wave of enlightenment brought forth by a revolution of minds working in tandem. We,” she gestured to herself, “Brain Scythe, want you to prepare yourselves. We want you to know that no amount of guns, patriotism, religious fervor, or political clout will protect you from what is about to come.”

“—worried about your menial lives, as so many of you are beneath my notice, but those I deem fit for my wrath shall see no mercy, no safety, and no future.”

Cinderella, suddenly, smiled the smile of a woman too drugged out of her mind to understand the world around her. “We sincerely wish you the best of luck in finding us; we relish the clashing of minds.”

A gunshot made the nine ESP jump, but Cinderella simply stood up, unharmed, and walked off camera. Behind her, the green screen displayed a blood splatter across the stone wall Albert Gore had been recorded in front of, a single bullet hole in the midst of it.

The video came to an end, the lights flicked on, and the nine ESP looked between themselves, some leaning forward to hold their faces in thought or concern.

Zina simply sipped her coffee. She’d seen the tape too many times to be shaken up by it now, but when she’d first watched it, it took absolutely every single ounce of strength within her to not grab her daughter, grab her son, grab Taz, grab everyone and cart them to safety.

She wasn’t totally immune, however; she squeezed the silver locket hanging off of her neck for a brief moment.

“Question.” Felicia suddenly asked, her face stonier than before. “How do we know the Brain Scythe – the real one – isn’t behind this operation?”

“Domination was their specialty, and by the sounds of it, they accomplished nearly all of their abductions with domination.” Constance added.

“That is because, and this is unknown to the public for the time being, the Brain Scythe is accounted for.” Zina said calmly.

“What?”

It wasn’t one single person who had asked the question, but the loudest among them was Aiden Walsh, who was staring at Zina with an expression dripping with disbelief.

“Wait, hold on, the Brain Scythe is accounted for?!” He pressed.

“The Brain Scythe is incapable of committing these crimes and is being held at a secure location. He has provided us with significant details in the field of anti-psionics and psionic-terrorism.” Agent Mercer said, and all nine ESP agents looked between each other, beyond belief with the information.

“Before you ask the obvious question,” Bowie cut in, “the reason this knowledge isn’t public is because we’d be pressured for a stronger sentence for him. Other countries would be baying for his blood.”

“Discretion is required in this matter.” Gillard added, drawing a few uncertain nods. “The Brain Scythe, for all the evils he has committed, has advanced government knowledge of psionics in incalculable ways.”

“Nothing they have provided has helped with the current Brain Scythe group?” DaQuan asked, and got a shake of the head in response.

“The current Brain Scythe group is widespread, and very calculated. That is why we need a team focused around divining for details, clearing scrambled minds, resisting domination impulses, and keeping a solid low profile.”

There were some gentle nods as the group of ESP officers found a new weight on their shoulders. Aiden, however, cleared his throat, and glanced towards Zina with a tightened brow.

“Can I ask one more question related to the Brain Scythe?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Zina nodded.

“How was he caught?” Aiden frowned. “He was the singularly most powerful psychic in the world, as far as I knew. Was it another psychic?”

“No.” Agent Weinstein answered firmly. “Agent Cole captured him alongside her partner fifteen years ago. Further details involved are classified beyond Operation Fremen.”

Aiden turned to give Zina a wide-eyed stare as she sipped at her coffee, ignoring the curiosity now palpably buzzing from the nine present psychics.

“With that question answered,” Zina started up after swallowing her coffee, “it’s time to move onto mission details. There was an abduction today in Tucson; male, plumber by the name of Antonio Sanderson. His wife reported him missing after he took a short drive to a nearby gas station to buy some beer.”