LORENZ

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Lorenz took a deep breath.

It took him months to learn to shut out what he didn’t want to listen to. The level of focus necessary to zoom in on someone’s specific thoughts, or as in this case just create a safe space for his own thoughts, was unbelievable. Think about trying to read a book in the middle of a class of twenty hyperactive 5 years old children and you will have a basic idea.

Just avoiding crowded places was a valuable alternative at first, or at the very least it saved his mental sanity. But it was clearly not a solution in the long run, so he had taken the entire summer to master his attention, his faculty of focusing only on what he wanted. Clearly it still wasn’t perfect, and it was tiring as hell, which meant that once every few hours he needed to take a break and go to some quiet and isolated place.

Yet for some reason today he wasn’t feeling tired or stressed. It was early afternoon, and he was seated at the window of a very popular and crowded bar, with local employees and passers-by coming in and out continuously to get their coffee or cookie or whatever it was. But the twenty-two years old blond young man didn’t seem to be disturbed by all that noise, not even the one only he could hear inside his head. Instead, his emerald eyes stared intensely out of the window. Even as he took a sip of his mango smoothie he didn’t dare look away.

On the other side of the road, a tall and sober building stood pompous and stern. His façade seemed drown by a child, with big glass windows squaring one next to the other in ordered rows, and yellowish stone making up the flat surface between them. There really seemed to be nothing interesting or remotely worth staring at, about this building, perhaps with the exception of the big wood door at its entrance. Easily several meters tall, it was one of those historical doors, one of those you find in cathedrals. It even came with a long stone staircase that gave onto the street. But that really was the only remarkable thing about the construction, not even so remarkable considering that the several formally dressed employees that walked in and out didn’t bother to open that sumptuous door but just walked through a small rectangular opening in its left corner.

How long had he been looking at the door? “At least a couple of hours” he thought, slightly upset by the lack of results, as he took another sip of his drink. “I guess I should listen to Daniel and just walk in”. That friend of his gave terrible advice, yet for some unexplained mechanisms of the cosmos they usually turned out to be right. Nevertheless, for once his mind didn’t come up with some witty insult to tease him, the next time they would video call, but rather with a faint sense of nostalgia. After the all “Oh sh*t I can read minds!” deal, they had spent the remaining few weeks of the academic year playing around with his new powers. Acing exams, dazzling young ladies and making some cash at the poker table was a fun and entertaining way to forget about what still didn’t check out about that story. Yet after the graduation ceremony Daniel left to spend some time with his parents, before moving abroad for post graduate degree. From then on, their schedule didn’t allow the two friends to meet again, so they had to make up for it with a weekly update call.

Despite having decided not to proceed with his education, Lorenz’ schedule wasn’t freer than his friend’s. He had so much to think about, given his very peculiar situation. Indeed, his newly acquired mind-reading powers were probably a big factor behind deciding to pause his career prospects, much to the dismay of his parents. Even without revealing his gift though, he was convincing enough to let the issue settle down fairly quickly. As a matter of fact, trying to convince someone of something, once you know everything they think, is not that hard. Very complex, that is for sure: you’d have to talk while at the same time elaborating the real-time feedbacks of who’s in front of you. But once you get the gist of it, it is definitely an invaluable weapon.

“There we go!”. Lorenz jumped out of his armchair and quickly put on his jacket and bag. He just left $10 on the table, not sure how much the smoothie would cost, and sprinted out of the bar. A waiter tried to ask him something, but he was too busy cleaning his glasses to notice. Right, the glasses: he didn’t really need them, but he felt like they gave a tad more credibility to his journalist persona. Well, strictly speaking he really was a journalist, but his young age didn’t really work in his favour. Understandable, given how rare it was for someone his age to get hired so quickly and by such a major newspaper. Then again, with his very particular set of skills it was a piece of cake.

Why journalist, you ask? Well, there aren’t many jobs that get you so close to hot news and to very important people – with minds ready to be opened – without raising suspicion. He considered becoming a spy, but the training regimen wasn’t for him, and it would have taken too much time. “Although it would have been much easier in these kinds of situations” he thought, as he crossed to road to reach the stone staircase at the bottom of the building.

“Internal Affairs”, read one of the signs at the entrance. But that wasn’t the truth, not all of it at least. The big and dull building, with his hundreds of offices, wings, upper and lower floors and monotonous architecture, was quite the perfect place to put a few Intelligence divisions here and there. Very few people would think of checking out some remote wing in such an old and apparently unceremonious bureaucratic building. In fact, even knowing of the existence of what Lorenz’ was investigating took him months of work.

From Secret Services to Homeland Security, he had used press conferences and public meetings to get close to the most outstanding members of the intelligence community. After all, he thought that if someone knew something about supernatural powers popping out of nowhere, it had to be the intelligence community, right? Wasn’t that their job? That’s what movies would make you believe.

To say that the results were disappointing would be an understatement. He found out state secrets and undercover black sites, but not a mention of anything paranormal or of the sort. From one side that was good news. It meant that nobody knew about him either. But at this point was there really any sense in keeping up the “investigation”? That was what he was thinking when he first overheard (or is it overthought?) the mention of “Division X”. A quick followed up sparked a renewed hope for some answers.

The proper name of Division X was “Division for the Investigation of Extraordinary Individuals and Events”. Apparently, someone didn’t like “D.I.X.I.E.” as a short-hand, or maybe they felt like it was a good time to show off their X-Men fandom. In any case the more evocative “Division X” became the official designation of a team of about a dozen individuals tasked with investigating rapports of supernatural events and individuals who displayed extraordinary abilities. The fact that it had been established in the past few weeks confirmed to Lorenz that most likely they were the subjects of this group investigation. Too bad he couldn’t meet any of the members, so he still couldn’t tell what this group knew or didn’t know about the Players, the powers and the butterfly card. That was also why he had decided to wait outside of the building – Daniel’s advice be damned – and avoid attracting unnecessary attention. Now that he knew that they were in fact investigating them, he had to be extra careful.

But here came his chance. William P. Marnus, 46, taller than average, with carrot coloured hair and moustaches and thick glasses framing his round face. He was one of the four members of X that Lorenz had managed to identify, through a strenuous work of memory-reading tens of employees of the Internal Affairs building. Mr. Marnus was the lucky first that he had seen come out of the building, down the staircase.

« Mr. Marnus is that you? So nice to see you again! » he quickly approached the man just below the stairs. That was another trick he had learned in the past few months. Rather than asking questions or information, the best way to stall someone was to invent something about them and let them try to wrap their brains around it. Do I know this guy? Have we met before? The uncertainty would make Lorenz gain valuable time to gaze into their eyes and, as a consequence, into their precious memories.

« Oh, hey! Nice to see you too! »

What??

Lorenz didn’t think too much at the smiley response of the man, nor to the fact that his outer and inner voice didn’t match at all. Later on, he would curse his carelessness. But he had been waiting too long and was just too eager to lock his eyes with the man and binge on the treasure of his memories.

…

« WHAT THE F*CK! »

Lorenz screamed, taking a sudden step back and tripping over the last step of the stairs. His head was moving frantically from one side to the other, trying to shake the images he had just seen. It took him a few seconds to gain back that minimum rationality to hear the thought of those around him, looking at him as if he was the crazy one.

« Are you alright kid? »

That same voice. Lorenz looked at the shoes of the William Marnus coming towards him, before a hand extended to offer him help. He stood up on his own, as quick as he could.

« Yes yes, I am alright. I just felt a sudden pain in my leg, nothing serious. And I am sorry but I think I have the wrong person. ».

Nothing of what he was saying made any sense, as he moved his gaze anywhere that wasn’t that man’s face. It didn’t matter. He just wanted to get as far away from him as he could.

Without another word he turned his back and rapidly walked away. As he passed the left corner of the first available turn, he started running.

That person was not William Marnus.

“No, that was not a person. That was a Monster”.