Three: Part 4
"Let's do it this afternoon," Alex said.
"Seriously?" I said. "We're not prepared. I'm not, that's for sure. Also, I mean, we don't even have any sense of when the best time would be."
"Nah. We got all that stuff from Carlos, you know, Technomage's kid. Brooke, show him."
Brooke reached across the table and touched my hand, putting us into mental contact.
It felt different than when Daniel did it. I'm not sure how best to describe it. With as many years as Daniel and I had been friends, the mental contact itself felt natural, but we'd connected so often I barely thought about it.
With Brooke, I immediately felt a strong sense of her surprise.
Brooke: You're sure you're not a telepath? Because if you aren't, somebody's put a lot of work into your head.
Me: I'm not, but I'd bet I've spent more time talking mind to mind than most people.
Brooke: You've got the rudiments of a shield. Many people who know telepaths do. But behind the shield is something else again. Whoever created it was preparing for all out telepathic war. I'm not even sure I should be in here.
Pause.
Brooke: Wait. I can do this. As long as you deliberately accept what I'm giving you, it shouldn't trigger anything.
Me: I'm ready.
I sensed another mind. Not a mind that was there. More of a recording. Carlos' mind, I guessed -- and not all of it, just one very specific memory.
I sensed streams of data. An address. A building. The roads around it. The average number of cars on those roads at any given time of the day. The number of people that entered that building. The time of entry. The number of vehicles that exited that building. Their make. Their model. Their year. Then I had security camera footage from inside the building. Satellite footage of the outside. Building plans...
Aloud, Brooke said, "See?"
She'd withdrawn her hand.
"That was amazing. What else can that kid do?"
"He's got the same powers as his dad," she said.
"Right," Alex said, "I'd say we've got all in the information we need. You've got your equipment and we can grab ours. This is going to be great."