i 13e44e81ff362920 by T L Page A

it?”
    “Enormous.” She turned back to the screen. “Thank you.” I found Selena and Derrick sitting across from each other in the interrogation chamber. The room was sealed, but I could watch them through the two-way glass. Selena had two decks of cards in front of her, which she kept behind a raised metal partition. Derrick sat with both of his hands palm-downward on the table, staring straight ahead. Selena shuffled the cards.
    I concentrated for a moment, channeling a bit of earth materia, which tingled on my fingertips. I let the strand of materia flow into the two-way glass, willing it to change its composition, but only slightly. All I had to do was nudge the atoms in the sheet of glass, convincing them to spread out just a tiny bit in order to allow the sound waves to pass through more efficiently. The air in front of the glass rippled slightly, and then I could hear their voices, which had a slightly a metallic cast. It was like listening to a cell with bad reception, but it worked.
    I smiled. Meredith Silver, my old teacher, had taught me that trick. Just remember, she’d told me.
    Only eavesdrop if you don’t mind hearing people say the most beastly things about you. That’s the price of listening.
    I missed her. She’d died well before her time.
    “Ready?” Selena asked.
    Derrick nodded.
    She turned over the first card. It bore the picture of a red star.
    “Okay. What’s on the card? Be as specific as possible.” Derrick kept eye contact with her for a few seconds, unmoving. Then he relaxed slightly and smiled. “Star.”
    “Good. What color?”
    “Red.”
    “Excellent.” She flipped over the next card. It had a yellow square with a purple triangle inside of it.
    “Okay. This time, I’m going to use a shielding exercise. I’m no telepath, but I have enough training to block out some rudimentary psychic invasions. Let’s see if you can break through my defenses.”
    He nodded.
    Selena’s eyes hardened. “Okay. Go for it.”
    Derrick’s brow furrowed. Just for a second, I felt something like a tremor pass through the air, disturbing the equilibrium of the materia flows within the room. It raised the hairs on the back of my neck. That was about as close as I ever got to detecting raw dendrite materia, the energy that psychics channeled.
    Derrick blinked. “A square?”
    “Be more confident. Is that your final answer?”
    “Yes. It’s a square.”
    “Good. What color?”
    He frowned. “Sort of a buttercream?”
    Selena sighed. “We’d also accept yellow. Anything else?”
    “There’s a triangle inside the square. It’s purple.”
    “You sure it’s not mauve?”
    He grinned slightly. “I was going to say amethyst.” “Right.” She picked up a card from the second pile.
    “Okay, this is a remote empathy exercise. Each of these cards has an image on it that’s designed to elicit a strong affective response. I want you to try to read what I’m feeling. It’s different from just picking an image out of my brain. It requires more finesse.”
    “I’ve got finesse.”
    “I’ll just bet you do.” Selena gave him a small smile. Then she flipped over the card on the top of the deck. There was a picture of a steaming cup of coffee.
    I instantly felt content. The test worked.
    Derrick frowned. He almost looked like he was on the verge of sneezing. Then he suddenly broke into a wide smile.
    “You’re happy!”
    She nodded. Her expression hadn’t changed at all. With Selena, “happy” was a matter of extreme subtlety.
    “Right. Next.” She flipped it over. There was a picture of a Glock 9mm pistol.
    What emotion was this supposed to draw from my supervisor, who carried a gun in a shoulder-holster every day? Irritability? Anger? Maybe it was like showing Becka a picture of a wireless mo-dem.
    Her face was set in stone. “What am I feeling?”
    Derrick frowned again. His eyes seemed to go distant. I felt that faint charge of dendrite energy in the air again. If I relaxed my