Star Harbor Nights

Maxim Prather was the owner and founder of Hermes Pharmaceuticals, the largest privately held drug company in the United States. He was the sort of man who needed a lot of talking before he made up his mind. Allison knew the type... somebody who not only didn't trust his instincts, but didn't seem to have any. Everything had to be decided by careful deliberation. There had been many rounds of negotiations before he'd agreed to a face-to-face meeting. So many rounds of negotiations, in fact, that it hardly seemed like there would be anything left to hammer out face-to-face.

Yet, he insisted on sitting down with the head of the company before he was willing to sign anything.

Stan Glenn, of the eponymous Stan Glenn Images, had asked Allison to sit in, hoping she'd be able to wow him with her ideas. Prather had simply nodded at her when Stan introduced them, and then immediately launched into a rambling discourse about his company's history and the new product they wanted SGI to help them market: a non-addictive diet aid with supposedly very few side effects. Considering how many appetite suppressants and magic fat burning pills had been yanked off the market by the FDA lately, Prather perhaps had a good reason to tread carefully when it came to promoting the product.

That didn't make it any more interesting to listen to. Luckily, she wasn't expected or required to participate in the conversation, which mostly consisted of Prather speaking and Stan nodding and occasionally voicing his agreement. Allison had been in on meetings like this before. She knew Stan would let the monologue run its course until he sensed he'd sufficiently paid his dues and then he'd launch into his own spiel, which would probably involve calling on Allison to show off a little of her work. Sometimes she'd bring detailed drawings done up in advance, but he often told her to just bring her sketchpad, especially when dealing with the talkier or bossier clients.

Prather was the sort of person who liked to oversee every aspect of his operation from top to bottom. He would probably feel better about her drawings if he could see his ideas being incorporated into them on the fly. There had been a time when Stan would have to have explained this kind of reasoning to her, but she'd worked with him long enough to be able to figure these things out for herself now.

She sketched, half-listening to Prather droning on, trying to pick up the key words and concepts that would make for good visual hooks. As she got into it, she realized it was actually kind of relaxing. Meditative, even. As boring as Prather was, she always enjoyed sketching, and it was good to have something to focus on... anything to keep her mind from wandering to the oh-so-perplexing subject of her personal life.

So far, Allison had begged off her promised date with Valentine but she was running out of excuses... and it was harder to think up new ones when she wasn't even sure why she was still putting it off. He was handsome, charming, and enough of a gentleman that he hadn't pressured her too badly to make good yet.

Of course, if he had turned up the pressure, she could have used that as an excuse to get all indignant and break the date completely... something she didn't think she wanted to do, but... old habits died hard.

She hadn't had any more of crazy dreams, but that was mostly because every time she saw anything that might be a bright white space, it shocked her awake. She'd been compensating for her interrupted sleep schedule by going out as Mindfyre less often.

When Amy'd asked her about this, she said she was trying not to overdo things in the wake of her "big break." Amy had smiled and not pressed the issue further. The fact that Hollywood was crashing with them--and was not capable of going out and doing anything fun himself--gave her another excuse to stay in.

Plus, he really was a lot of fun.

Staying home with her safe, fun, gay friend... when a handsome, rich heterosexual man was practically knocking on her door. What was wrong with her?

Maybe there were reasons to keep a low profile, she thought. Geppetto was still out there somewhere, of course. He knew who she was... where she worked... and probably where she lived. It was hard to keep that in mind, considering that they'd "won"... it seemed wrong that the bad guy should still have any hold over her life after his plan was foiled and he was defeated. If her life were a cartoon, the fact that he'd seen her 4B files would probably never come up again.

Garrote was out there somewhere, too.

Garrote of the muscle shirt and heavily scarred arms... of the flexible wire appendage, and the flexible moral code. When Allison had woke up after the battle, her first thoughts had been of him. Why? Of everybody who'd popped up for the battle royale, she knew the least about him... well, not counting any mysterious Japanese warrior figures that she hadn't actually met.

Controlling the blaze that had destroyed Geppetto's headquarters had drained her so completely that she'd passed out, fallen from at least six feet up in the air with a concrete surface below her. She awoke two days later, tired but with out any cuts, scrapes, or bruises. She hadn't asked anyone, but she was sure that Garrote had caught her.

Why was she so sure?

Why did she care?

She pictured him, and saw his arms covered with twisted, puffy scars. She knew that her mind was exaggerating them. They had been noticeable, but not as bad as her memory was painting them. Very noticeable. He could have covered them easily enough. Anything with sleeves would do it. It had to have been a conscious choice for him to leave them exposed. If he was concerned with mobility, there was always the standard tights. If he wanted to preserve his badass image, he could wear a bomber jacket or a long leather duster. She pictured him in leather, but it wasn't just a jacket...

"...you show us what you've got," Stan said, making the image evaporate.

"Hmm?" Allison said, suddenly very aware that the two men were looking expectantly at her. "Oh, I've just been scribbling some... rough notes and things." She looked down at her sketchpad and found that, in the time since she'd stopped listening, she had actually sketched out more or less a pair of entire two-page spreads, complete with specific claims about the drug that, as far as she knew, had not even come up. She hurriedly turned the page over in her sketchpad. while throwing up the tightest shields she could manage to stop the leakage, or whatever it was that had happened "It's really nothing worth seeing. I'll need some time to work it up."

"Oh, come on... you were doodling awfully hard this whole time, you must have something to show for it," the man said, beckoning towards the pad. "Let's see."

Allison looked at Stan for support, but as the only way she could possibly communicate his dilemma to him would be to out herself as a telepath anyway, he only smiled and half-nodded, half-jerked his head in the direction of the prospective client.

Not sure what kind of reaction to expect, Allison handed the sketches over.

Stony silence reigned around the table.

"Allison is one of our top people," Stan said hopefully.

"I can see that. Her talents are very obvious," the man said frostily. "Which makes it all the more puzzling why you would go through such lengths to try to impress me."

"Excuse me?" Stan asked, genuinely puzzled.

Prather held up the sketchpad, showing the ads Allison had drawn. The confusion on Stan's face only deepened, but the affronted man failed to notice it.

"You've evidently gone through some lengths to give your company an edge, Mr. Glenn. These trial results have yet to be made public," he said. "As for the mock-up of the ads themselves, I don't remember doing more than jotting these ideas down on a napkin, and yet, you still managed to dig them up."

"Mr. Prather, I assure you, we..."

"Say no more, Glenn. These drawings speak for themselves. A company that will resort to espionage to get an edge is not the company I want to entrust with the image of Hermes Pharmaceuticals," Prather said, rising to his feet. "Good day," he said, walking very stiffly out of the room.

Allison felt the need to explain. Stan Glenn certainly knew that he hadn't engaged in any industrial espionage, and he certainly wouldn't think that she was capable of such... but there was no way he could possibly guess the truth.

"Stan, I can..." Allison began, but he held up a hand to cut her off.

"There's no law that says you have to tell your employer you're telepathic," Stan said. "Not in this industry. To my knowledge, you've never done anything like this before, so I'm going to assume it was an accident rather than an incredibly stupid idea."

"It was an accident, I..."

"But you can see how an uncontrolled mental power in the workplace is hardly any better than the willful misuse of one," he continued, as if she hadn't spoken.

"It won't happen again," she said. "I promise."

"If I'd known you were psychic yesterday, and I'd asked you if such a thing would ever happen, what would you have said?" Stan said calmly. "I have some pills in my desk, Allison. Blues. You know what blues do?"

"What do you have blues for?" Allison asked, a sudden surge of curiosity overwhelming her urge to be offended by her boss's tone. "Blues" were the nickname for a broad-spectrum psi-blocker.

"Never mind what I have them for," he said. "You can borrow some of them, but I want to see a prescription slip with your name on it within the week, okay? And I don't want to hear that you're not taking them."

"What?" Allison said, outraged. "You can't make somebody take..."

"Listen very carefully: I want to see a prescription slip," Stan said. "I don't want to hear that you're not taking them. And I don't want another incident like this. Are we clear?"

Allison bit her lip. She'd been about to ask if he was expecting her to take the psi-blockers but covering himself against any allegations that he'd coerced her by not actually saying she had to, or if he was expecting her to not take them but covering himself against any allegations of psychic impropriety on her part by acting like he'd done something. The answer to that question was important to her, but she realized on a practical level it didn't matter... either way she could show him a prescription slip and keep her job... and asking him outright would blow it, either way.

"We're clear," she said.

"Good," he said. "I'm going to see if I can't smooth things over with Prather. I think we've lost our shot at the account, but if I can keep him from badmouthing us all over creation, I'll count that as a win. It'd be easier if you'd consent to me telling him you had an accidental telepathic contact." He looked at her questioningly.

"I can't... sorry," Allison said, shaking her head. "I can't let you do that."

"Fine," Stan said. "Well, we've wasted enough of the day now... you've got work to do, I'm sure."

"I'm sorry," Allison said again.

"No worries," Stan said, flashing a smile. "Remember rule number one: we spend no time on the jobs we don't get."

Allison returned the smile weakly, then headed back down to her desk. She wondered what Stan needed psi-blockers for. She wondered what he'd meant with his veiled half-instructions. She wondered if life would be easier if everybody were telepathic, and there were no secrets between people and no deceptions, and everybody knew what everybody else was feeling all the time.

Probably not, she decided. Knowing everything that she herself thought and felt only seemed to make things more complicated.