One of the best methods to destabilize a small, centralized government was to empower local, radical anti-political groups. Give a loud, blood-thirsty collective of wannabe vigilantes guns and money, and they can easily be convinced of their invincibility and the righteousness of their cause.

That was why Anna started in a place Zi may not have considered: who were the loudest anti-psi groups in the state? Who was suddenly marching and demonstrating, protesting and counter-protesting with greater frequency, numbers, and equipment? Pull attention to the loud and violent bodies, and the more subtle ones could operate beneath notice.

The Wise Men compound wasn’t hard to find, but Anna had done her research well in advance to make sure she knew precisely what to expect.

It was three or so buildings surrounded by what looked like a prison yard fence, razor wire and all. The buildings were pretty varied as well; one was a conglomeration of boxy shapes around a much bigger building, another was a big two-door garage with open doors, letting a big, lifted truck drive inside, and the last building was much smaller, but much more fortified; it looked like a bunker made of solid concrete, and from where Anna was, she could see the heavy metal door installed.

She guessed that was the armory.

Watching through her binoculars in a light jacket, baggy pants, and big boots, she didn’t see anybody around the assumed armory, but the front gate was busy. Vehicles – mainly trucks – pulled up, and a man with a shotgun slung over his shoulders shouted at the drivers and let them through.

Anna didn’t see anybody get turned away, so she assumed anybody arriving was somebody in the know. She counted approximately twenty vehicles going in since she’d started watching, usually bringing in one to two pairs of people.

Some parked in the garage, most found space in the open lot in front of the big central building, packing their vehicles together like sardines where they could.

They were also armed. Some openly wore pistol holsters, others walked around with their rifles held in relaxed positions, quite a few had shotguns. It seemed like none of the Wise Men arrived without some kind of weapon in hand, and oftentimes more than one.

Anna wasn’t surprised. A little intimidated, maybe, but guys like this would appreciate a woman who walked around with her own protection; she’d assumed so, at least.

She put her binoculars in her duffel bag and walked away from the shrub she had been using for cover, back towards her little blue Outback driven off road and out of sight. In her car, she used a towel to wipe off some of the sweat that had collected on her face, and in the mirror, she redid her makeup, brushed her hair, and made herself perfect again.

The big boots she’d been wearing were tossed into the bag with her binoculars, as was her protective jacket and pants, giving her the chance to smooth out her dress once more and pull her heels on.

She looked a little rougher than she had a few hours ago when she’d gotten pretty in the mirror back home, but she could always excuse the dusty wind hitting Globe right now.

She had to carefully maneuver her car over uneven terrain before getting back on the stretch of road that wound through the high hills that rolled outwards from the city of Globe.

Anna breathed deeply, and put herself back into the mindset of Jennifer Whitman.

The Outback turned into the entrance of the Wise Men compound, and she rolled down her window and looked up to meet the eyes of a man standing on the other side, looking sun-baked and sweaty in little more than a dirty tank top and jeans, but with a beer in one hand, gun in the other, he seemed more confident than exhausted, though staring at her suspiciously.

“Wise Men see all!” She called out to him, and his suspicion turned to surprise.

“What did you see today, sister?!” He called back.

“Devils on the street!” She shouted.

The man chugged his beer and tossed the can towards a pile of similar refuse collecting around an ice chest, and he pulled the gate open, letting her drive in. Her eyes met his. He seemed shocked now that he got a better look at her up close as she rolled on by, but she wasn’t surprised to see that he looked like any other gun-toting dullard she might find in a trailer park.

She looked for a parking spot closest to the gate and, as she climbed out, gave the gate a good look. It had a big, thick chain and padlock for keeping the gate secured tight, but other than that it was a wire fence. These men didn’t expect people a break in, or at least they expected the razor wire and big padlock to ward off any trespassers or invading force.

A bit off to the right of the gate, she slid her vehicle in next to a white suburban van that needed a wash and climbed out. The guy by the gate was staring right at her as she pulled her purse over her shoulder, and took her gun holster out of her trunk and strapped it to her thigh under her dress.

He hardly looked at anything else until a car honk made him jump and turn to yell a profanity at the driver wanting in, and Anna followed a distant pair of men walking into the main compound along with a few other folk.

It was time to turn on the charm.

Anna took a deep breath, and Jennifer Whitman walked up to the door, held open by an older gentleman in a well-worn stetson with a thick, white mustache and beard.

“Thank you.” She told him, a friendly smile forming naturally across her face as the man opened his mouth, hardly a word escaping him as his eyes followed her.

“Dios mio…” She heard behind her.

She hid a smirk.

The door lead straight into a large, air-conditioned lobby, where Anna estimated fifty or so people gathered around, standing in a large cluster, or sitting in one of the provided folding chairs set up to attend a big, crudely constructed performing stage that Anna had seen a handful of times when she’d go to one of Robbie’s concerts.

The people here, Anna noted, were mostly the sorts she expected: a combination of young and middle-aged men with some spouses. They were salt of the Earth folk, born from clay and likely built up on patriotic values and a strong family core, likely only a handful of them worked in a sprawling open-concept office or cubicle farm, the majority more likely working in manual labor jobs, or some form of retail and management.

They weren’t the elite, but they weren’t all knuckle-draggers like the poor sap watching the gate. There was a mixture of T-shirts and button-ups, jeans and slacks, boots and sneakers, hats and spectacles, a good number of American flags, and enough guns that Anna could almost feel Zina by her side, murmuring exit routes in the event of an emergency.

One man turned to look at her, big and rotund, well-groomed with round glasses; he almost looked like a professor in his tweed coat and loose slacks.

“Good afternoon!” He called with a beckoning wave, but it was only when the door closed and Anna wasn’t framed by the Arizona sunlight did he get a good look at her as she strode closer, and his eyes widened.

“Thank you, sir.” Anna smiled softly at him, making sure every step she took was accompanied by a little roll of her hips. “I was afraid I was going to be late, but this wasn’t all that hard to find.”

“No! No no, no, it’s really convenient.” The man was all smiles as he held out a hand, and Anna let him take it. He certainly seemed like he wanted to be the gentleman as he kissed her fingers, and more heads turned to stare at Anna. “Are—are you joining our cause, miss…?”

“Whitman.” Anna said in a practiced tone. “Though everyone calls me Jenny back home. I can’t say I’m a-hundred percent committed, but I’m interested.”

“How’d you come about this place, Jenny?” A girl asked, her big brown hair falling around her face in wavy tresses, her eyes bouncing between her and the blankly staring man standing next to her.

“Devin told me about y’all.”

“Devin did?” The big, bespectacled man asked. “Devin Trent?”

“I hadn’t got his last name, I’m afraid. He owned a bar a little north of Globe?” Anna offered up, and the man nodded eagerly.

“That’s Devin Trent! Devin!” The man turned to shout over the crowd. “Devin, there’s a woman here who knows ya!”

The crowd quieted down a little, now everyone turned to glance at the newcomer. The initial, mild interest suddenly turned to surprise and a growing warmth as cheeks blushed, eyes widened, and all but the minority of women present found themselves completely focused on Anna.

The mood had shifted from anticipation to something more heated.

Slowly a familiar, well-built figure pushed through the crowd. Anna certainly recognized that too-charming smile, which told her that he was simultaneously the man with the answers as well as a supreme lover.

Anna was familiar with that type of smile, and allowed it to ease her posture and give him a fey little wave.

“Hello Devin, I hope you remember me?” She asked.

“How could I forget an angel like you?” He asked, striding up to her and instantly moving around to her side. She suppressed the impulse to tense up as his arm wrapped around her shoulders. “I was hoping you’d arrive; we got something cooking up I think you’ll love.”

“Oh?” Anna quirked an eyebrow, and he gave a quick, reaffirming nod.

“We can get to that after introductions! We ain’t in a rush here, and I want everyone here to hear what happened to you.” He gestured broadly at the crowd of twitterpated smiles and bobbing heads, Anna spotting a few squints of jealousy amidst them. “Everyone here has a story about those psycho-freaks, and how society, the government, even our own families let us down.”

He glanced around at the crowd, which murmured in agreement, a low simmer filling the room.

“So we want everyone to share their stories. You aren’t alone here, Jenny. C’mon.” He offered, walking her up towards the stage as a curious murmur started in the crowd as people watched her.

It was impossible to ignore that so many eyes were on her at once. Zi liked to tease her about her beauty, but Anna liked keeping herself at her peak for good reasons, and plummeting the collective IQ of an armed and dangerous crowd was one of them.

“Jenny, this is my uncle.” Devin gestured to the tweed-coated man walking with them up towards the stage.

“Nathaniel Trent; call me Nate.” The bespectacled man smiled at her comfortingly as he walked with them.

“Nice to meet you, Nate.” Anna smiled back.

Nate headed around to the stairs to climb the stage, while Devin just jumped and held a hand down to Anna to help her climb up.

She stood over the crowd and instantly felt uncomfortable, but through carefully practiced emotional suppression, she ignored the knot that had formed in her belly and swallowed her discomfort as Devin presented her to the crowd like a prized steer.

She quickly took note of the various doors leading to other parts of the building, though her eyes settled on the large, sheet-covered thing she now shared a stage with.

“Wise Men, Wise women, gather ‘round, gather ‘round!” Devin ordered, gesturing to the seats with a cocky smile. “Will somebody go get Evan from the gate?”

“Dev, Ben ain’t here yet!”

“Ben shouldn’t be late!” Devin called back, to a small round of snickers as somebody exited the building, and soon after, came back in with the grungy looking guy that had let Anna in the compound. “Everyday the parasites on society worm their way deeper into America’s core, and we’re told everytime we complain to avert our eyes when they do.”

Anna stood a bit off to the side as Devin spoke to a nodding crowd, grunting their affirmation and frustration.

“Did anyone catch the news this week? Catch the statement from Governor Loftin?” He asked, and got a wave of noise that was hard to pick apart. “That bitch in charge is calling us bigots because we don’t want these bigheads taking over our lives!”

A round of booing came from the crowd, with one even yelling out: “Hang the bitch!”

“Just a month ago, the Catfish Distillery hired three of those headcases for ‘quality assurance.’” Further growls and groans of anger from the crowd, and Anna made sure to look appropriately annoyed with the information. “Can anybody tell me what a psycho could tell you that a bar of happy customers wouldn’t? Anybody?” Devin asked, now pacing the stage.

Shaking heads, boos, somebody shouting: “They’ll sell diversity in a bottle!” to some laughter.

“That’s what I thought!” Devin bobbed his head. “Why do we need psychics helping make our beer?! Beer’s been an artform perfected by humans for thousands of years, what do we need psychics for? They want to control you: what you can say about them, what goes on TV, what your kid learns, what you drink; there are scientists out there saying psychics are the future of humanity, what our kids will all one day be! Well what about us right now? Why are we kowtowing to a buncha folk who spent years destroying our lives, or our democracy? There wouldn’t have been a Cold War if it weren’t for psychics!”

Now the crowd was nodding, booing psychics and cheering for Devin in equal measure, a wall of outraged noise and hooting.

“They think they’re better than us, that they can have what we rightfully earned for ourselves, that they can force themselves onto our lives and our businesses and demand that we accept that! Jenny!” Anna flinched when he gestured to her, and beckoned her forward. “Jenny, tell these folk what happened to you.”

Anna reluctantly took a step forward, the center of the crowd’s attention again; already worked up, their eagerness was readily apparent in their eyes, but they weren’t lusting after her body now. She knew this sort of crowd well; they didn’t want facts, they wanted the catharsis of having an enemy.

As she stood before them, a bitter irony fell into her stomach; she didn’t disagree. She didn’t want psychics in charge any more than the rest of them, but this wasn’t a calm gathering to debate facts and figures… if Tasha was here with her, they would want to eat her alive.

She pushed that knowledge out of her head for the moment, and relaxed her shoulders and her stance, giving the crowd a small frown.

“Well… I don’t know where to start.” She said unevenly, the crowd watching in anticipation as she hid her internal struggle over ethics with an external struggle to tell a story.

“Tell ‘em what you told me, Jenny. Tell ‘em about the psi-fag.” Devin offered up helpfully, patting her shoulder.

Nate, however, touched her other shoulder, and leaned forward to say: “I can start if you’d like, Jenny.”

Anna thought about it for a moment, but gave Nate a nod, and deferred attention to him, stepping back.

The big man stepped forward, staring over the crowd with a frown on his face, and he cleared his throat. “Well…” He began slowly. “Well, most everyone here knows this story, but you know how PTSD is; I was up with it all last night.” He told the crowd, swallowing thickly, taking a deep breath as the crowd quieted down.

“It’s okay, Nate!” Somebody yelled, and Nate gave a small nod.

“It’s over now, but last night while in the shower, the hot water hitting my back, it reminded me of Mr. Treller.” He glanced over at Anna. Anna was staring at him attentively, looking intrigued, but reserved in her interest; she cocked her head at him to continue. “When I was a teenager, I wasn’t the smartest boy.”

Nate went on. “I could hit a baseball like it owed me money,” he stopped, chuckling nervously, “but my grades weren’t the best. I had to do some makeup classes, which is where I met Mr. Treller. If you’d asked me then what I thought of Mr. Treller, I would have told you he was a stand-up guy, best man in the whole school; he cared about my role on the baseball team, and he’d telepathically send me answers to tests I was struggling with. I just thought he was the coolest.”

Nate paused again, but there was no chuckle this time. His voice cracked when he tried to speak again. “He asked me to stay behind in class one day, and I thought it was to talk about baseball again, or so he could show me a game he went to when he was a boy; I was jealous of his powers at the time, I thought how great it would be to share those moments with my kids. But when I stayed behind that day, when he bridged our minds together…” Nate sucked in a deep breath. “He made a bitch out of me that day. I couldn’t fight it, I’d let him in and he took advantage.”

The crowd’s jeering was low and even more aggravated, the heat a vicious, burning simmer that threatened and spat more like a cornered snake than a charging dog. Anna felt her breath hitch in her breast, and let it out slowly.

“He thought I was a… a beautiful boy.” Nate lifted his glasses to wipe his eyes. “And I heard his words in my head while I was in the shower last night. ‘Doesn’t it feel good? It’s just some locker room stuff. Don’t cry, you ain’t a girl.’ Well he treated me like one, and I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t fight back; I was a zombie in my own body, and when it was over, he told me that he put a trigger in my head to kill my own family if I ever told anyone.” Nate’s breathing was haggard and painful now, but he took a deep breath. “This went on… for a month, and I was terrified. I couldn’t do a damn thing until the janitor walked in on us, and Mr. Treller took his life before he could face justice.”

Devin walked up and put his arm around his uncle’s shoulders, and let the older man lean on him. Devin lifted his chin to the aggravated crowd to speak: “What if this happens to our kids? Letting these freaks of nature in our schools, in our governments? What if this man was your employee, or some schlub on the street? If Treller hadn’t been caught, I might not have an uncle, he might not have a family!”

“Just neuter ‘em all!” A voice from the crowd, loud and infuriated.

Anna took a deep breath, and tried to imagine what her daughter would do if somebody took her powers from her… what she’d do if somebody forced their power, their body onto her…

“That’s right! Neuter ‘em all! Put ‘em all on our level, and let’s see how strong and smart they really are!” Devin shouted, the crowd stirring excitedly. “Across all of America, across the world! Wise Men, wise up!” He shouted, getting cheers from the crowd, repeating the phrase. He turned to face Anna with a grin, one a bit too smug for her tastes, and beckoned her forward. “Now let’s hear Jenny’s story.”

Anna slowly made her way forward. Her hand subtly reached out to squeeze Nate’s pinkie, and she could see behind that grateful smile that the older man was still in pain from what had happened to him.

Years and years ago, Anna could have smiled her way through a bald-faced lie and felt nothing but giddy at having an audience clinging to her every shadowed word. But as she opened her mouth to tell a story about a man who didn’t exist getting mind-controlled into a relationship with an imaginary villain, she could feel the bile rising in her stomach.

She threw out a few slurs here and there where she felt it really punctuated her fake anger and grief. It came out in choked up burbles at times, lending credence to the difficult emotions she was acting out for this ravenous crowd, but following Nate’s story with her lie left a weight in her chest.

What was she doing here?

Why was she doing this? Why didn’t she trust Zi?

She could have been at home with her dog, she could have been baking those s’more brownies she’d looked up on YouTube.

She swallowed her questions and her regrets, and put Tasha back in her mind… and Brain Scythe as well.

Her lip quivered and she buried her face into her hands as she finished the story, giving a single, loud sob that drew Devin’s arm around her shoulder and outrage from the crowd. The men were furious that a straight, family man had been turned into a responsibility-abandoning queer, the women were furious that one of their own had been stolen from, all of it by a fake psychic.

Anna took a step back and let Devin step forward.

“Any stranger could walk into your life and steal your husband, steal your wife, steal your kids, or steal you from your happy home!”

Others came up to tell stories of their own. One man’s business was burnt to the ground by a disgruntled teenage employee who’d responded to getting fired with pyrokinesis; one girl’s bullies in middle school were a pack of psychics who would pin her to the ceiling and drop her, catching her later and later until she eventually broke her nose; another woman ended up with bipolar I disorder when her psionic mother tried to forcibly fix her childhood ADD with untrained dividualism.

Some of these people had legitimate grievances and difficult encounters; some sought help, others still suffered years afterwards. But, as people stopped volunteering to come up, Anna took note that a majority of people in the crowd had no story to tell… some were just here for other grievances she supposed.

“We have our next mission.” Devin told everyone, walking over to the cloth-covered object on the stage and pulled the sheet to the floor, revealing a marker board set up on a stand, a map of Globe clipped on. “A bunch of those bigheads are hosting a big rally on East Mesquite Street on the 28th. They want to gather together to protest the removal of their teaching tools from school libraries and public libraries.”

“Screw ‘em!” A man in the crowd shouted.

“Exactly!” Devin threw a fist out to the crowd. “They’re meeting at the west end at 1:00 pm and marching east; I say we gather at the other end and meet ‘em halfway. We don’t want their books, we don’t want them ‘practicing’ their juju, we don’t want them in Globe!”

“We’ll make it a truck convoy!” Nate brought up with an excited grin. “They’ll be marching, we’ll be rolling. They want past us, we roll right over ‘em!”

“If we’re real lucky, we might have a few cases for self-defense!” Devin grinned promisingly, drawing some claps and cheers. “Jess, you gonna be there?” Devin asked her in a lowered voice, addressing her in particular as she examined the map.

Anna turned to give him a small, excited smile, and gave a small nod. “Not like I have anywhere else to be with an empty house.”

He strode closer, his tall, well-built form shadowing her. He kind of reminded her of someone she’d met recently… that’s right, Dean Davis, just on the very far side of the line Davis stood.

“Ever shot a gun before?” He asked.

Anna hesitantly nodded her head, and reached beneath her dress to draw her pistol. He eyed the pearl-handled 1911, and held his hand out. She obliged, passing it over. “I bought this for self-defense with my husband gone. I shot it once at the range, but haven’t gone back.”

“Well it’s a pretty little piece for a pretty woman, I gotta say.” Devin smirked before handing it back, grip first; at least he had gun etiquette. “Ever wanted to shoot something bigger?”

Anna gave him a blank stare. “Like what?” She asked, immediately glancing into the crowd, at a nearby woman cradling a twelve-gauge shotgun under one arm. “Like that?”

“Sure! We also have some of your pretty standard hunting rifles; works as well on a bighead as it does a deer.”

“Do you really want to go on a killing spree at this rally?” Anna asked in concern, more genuine this time. “Won’t the police get involved?”

“Tch.” Devin grunted, his brow furrowing. “War’s been a long time coming with these freaks. I’m ready to get fighting. If you ask me, Brain Scythe ain’t moving fast enough getting rid of all these creeps. Anyways…” He shrugged off his suddenly dour mood. “We’ve got plenty of guns in the bunker we could train you with. A pistol’ll scare off a few, but you want something big to get the whole pack; a few shells of buckshot’ll knock out a few at a time, all you gotta do is brace yourself for the impact.”

“A whole bunker?” Anna asked curiously. “Where’d you get so many guns?”

“Let’s just say,” Devin smirked, “I’ve got friends in high places interested in seeing those psychos put down. I can take you to a good shooting range before the 28th so you can get a handle on a shotgun, maybe grab some dinner after?” He asked with a quirk of his handsome brow.

The flood of revulsion that filled Anna’s belly was not matched by her small, interested smile. “Dinner sounds nice.”

Devin’s grin only grew, then turned into a curious glance as she flinched. Anna quickly slid her hand into her purse to pull out her phone, one glance telling her Tasha was calling… during the mid-afternoon on a Friday.

Hmm.

“Sorry Devin, but it’s my daughter, I need to take this.” Anna gave him an apologetic bat of her eyes, and he nodded.

“No worries, angel, we’ll be here all afternoon strategizing.”

“Thank you. Where’s your bathrooms?” She asked, and he pointed towards the hallway on the left side of the room. Anna gave a nod and quickly scampered off the stage, phone in hand, gun tucked back in its holster.