Chapter 493
Chapter 493
“They?” Jake asked. “Who are they?”
“Didn’t you just look through my memories?” Mick asked.
“I did. But I didn’t see you talking to anybody other than Owen or the Commander.”
“You didn’t?” Mick looked at him with genuine surprise on his face.
“No.”
For a moment, they just stared at each other in silence. Then a crooked smile tugged at the corners of Mick’s lips.
“Oh, right,” he said, tapping his temple with a finger of his artificial hand. “Every time I spoke with them, it happened inside my mind. Your mind-reading ability only lets you view a person’s memories. It doesn’t let you know what they’re thinking now or what they were thinking at any specific moment inside those memories. Ain’t that right?”
“So you hear voices in your head, huh?” Jake asked.
“Yes. Not only do I hear them, but I also communicate with them. When I ask them questions, they answer. Well, not always, unfortunately… And sometimes they’re quite unclear. But let me assure you, there’s a particular reason for that.”
Jake just stared at him in silence, waiting for Mick to elaborate. Mick, however, must have misinterpreted his silence because he quickly added, “I know how it sounds. You must be thinking something along these lines: ‘This guy hears voices in his head? He must be nuts!’ Ain’t that right, Jake?”
Such a thought did cross his mind, but Jake chose to give Mick the benefit of the doubt. If Mick did hear voices in his head, then there was no way for his Mind Reader to hear them too when he used the ability on Mick.
He had viewed his memories, but he never saw Mick talking to someone who wasn’t near him. However, he did see several moments in his memories when Mick was busy doing something, like working on his control console, only to suddenly stop and stare off into space for several minutes. Could it be that, during those minutes, he was telepathically communicating with somebody? Or maybe he was just checking something in his stats?
Jake had no way of knowing which was the case, since the way Mind Reader worked, it only allowed him to see what a person saw with their eyes, not what was going on in their head.
“So what have you been talking about with… the voices?” Jake asked.
“I call them the Whisperers,” Mick clarified. “On account of how they always speak in low tones instead of talking normally.”
“Right.”
“I never figured out why they talk like that,” Mick added, lowering his own voice to a whisper. “It seems like it is intentional, like they are afraid somebody can be listening in on their conversation with me. Which actually may have been the case.”
Jake said nothing. Despite himself, he couldn’t help but think that Mick did sound and look a bit unhinged at that moment. He looked over his shoulder at Owen, who stood behind him. His counterpart had been watching Mick, but upon noticing Jake looking at him, he turned his head slightly to meet his gaze. Other than that, he remained completely still.
“Owen is aware of the Whisperers, by the way,” Mick said. “It isn’t news to him.”
“Can he hear them too?”
“What? No.” Mick frowned. “What a strange thought. Only I can hear them. They have chosen me to listen.”
Mick sounded crazier by the second. But was he actually crazy? Somehow, he was aware of Catalina’s people and Jake’s arrival at Dead City… unless, of course, he had lied about that. But why would he? Jake was confused. He wasn’t sure whether Mick was crazy or whether someone was actually talking to him.
“Do the Whisperers talk to you all the time?” he asked.
“Not all the time. Only when it matters.”
“Of course.”
“And…” Mick glanced around furtively, as if to make sure nobody was listening in on their conversation, even though there was clearly nobody in his entire base except the three of them.
“And what?”
Mick scuttled closer to Jake on his metal spider-like legs.
“The Whisperers are afraid. Terrified, even.”
“Of what? Or who?”
“They never told me much. They have to be careful with what they say. There are specific words they can’t use. If they do, they’ll be found immediately.”
“So there’s somebody after them?”
“Yes. Yes! That’s correct, Jake. You’re absolutely right!” Mick stopped whispering and was now almost shouting, no longer caring about being overheard. He seemed excited for some reason.
Jake couldn’t put a finger on what was going on in his head. He couldn’t seem to get rid of the suspicion that Mick was making all of this up as he went. But if that was the case, then to what end?
“They are in danger, Jake,” Mick said. “And they need help. That’s the reason they contacted me in the first place.”
“So they want you to save them or something?”
“They are not in immediate danger, mind you,” Mick clarified. “Currently, they are somewhere safe. But their safety is relative. Their enemies are always looking for them, searching everywhere. Their enemies have either incredible abilities or some tech that allows them to pick up certain words whenever they are said, either telepathically or out loud. For that reason, the Whisperers always have to be very careful when they communicate with me. Which is why they are always being vague, unable to reveal much to me.”
“So they warned you that I would arrive at Dead City at some point?”
“Yes, that’s correct, Jake.”
“Are they psychics?”
“I don’t know, Jake. I don’t know how, but they did know beforehand that Catalina’s people would arrive here at some point and that you would come soon after. They told me about that a couple of days before it actually happened. I think they are not psychics, they are just capable of monitoring what’s going on in different parts of our world.”
Jake just watched him in silence for a moment, trying to figure out whether he should believe him or not.
“I can feel that you’re not quite believing me, Jake.”
“I’m just trying to make sense of it all,” he said. “Can you tell me everything from the beginning? Who are those Whisperers, why did they contact you in the first place, what do they want, and all that jazz?”
“Of course, Jake. You’re absolutely right, I should’ve started from the very beginning. I’ll tell you everything I know about the Whisperers and what they want.”
“I’m all ears.”
“They first contacted me many months ago, long before the Ravage overran our city. You may even have seen that memory. I was clearing out a building where I planned to spend the night when I suddenly heard voices in my head. It was the first time the Whisperers ever spoke to me, and I freaked out a little. At first, I didn’t even realize the voices were in my head. I thought someone was setting up an ambush.”
Jake did see such a moment in Mick’s memories, but he hadn’t paid it much attention. He saw Mick swing the barrel of his shotgun back and forth, as if searching for threats. But there was nobody around him. Not long after that, Mick seemed to calm down and went on slaying the mutants in the building.
“They didn’t tell me much at that point,” Mick went on. “They only told me that they needed my help and that they would get in touch with me again later. They also said that they would give me something no other survivor had, and after that, they went completely silent. At first, I convinced myself I was just exhausted. I didn’t want to believe I was losing my mind.”
Jake listened to his story without saying anything.
“I didn’t hear from the Whisperers for the next several days and almost forgot all about them,” Mick continued. “And then they contacted me again. They told me they had tweaked a certain mission and suggested I accept it because it would reward me with a unique skill called Fabrication that nobody else had. And sure enough, upon completing the mission, I received the skill they told me about. That’s when I knew that I wasn’t going crazy at all. Instead, some people were actually communicating with me.”
Mick went silent as if waiting for a comment from Jake. But Jake said nothing, and after a moment, Mick continued.
“I think you already know how things went after that,” he said. “I was busy advancing the skill I was gifted with, building my base, and all that. Then, as you know, the Ravage appeared in our city. So every now and then, the Whisperers contacted me. But every conversation had to be very short, no longer than just a couple of minutes.”
“Let me guess,” Jake said. “That’s because the longer the connection stayed open, the higher the chance their enemies could trace it.”
“Exactly,” Mick said. “They also couldn’t contact me too often for the same reason. Every time they contacted me, they gave me a new piece of information before severing the telepathic link with me. And as I told you before, they couldn’t speak openly. They had to avoid certain words because they would immediately alert their enemies to their presence. Whoever their enemies are, they must be extremely powerful.”
He drew a breath before going on with his story.
“So, between all the brief conversations I had with the Whisperers and their vague explanations, this is what I pieced together. They are a group of individuals who were awakened by the system a very long time ago. Since then, they’ve learned how to manipulate it in small ways, gaining certain advantages. That’s how they gave me Fabrication. Maybe they created that skill tree from scratch. Or maybe it was some hidden feature the system never really meant survivors to access, and they found a way to uncover it.”
Jake listened without saying anything. Mick took a moment to catch his breath before continuing.
“So the Whisperers told me that sooner or later, the war against their enemies would commence. There was just no way around it. However, they told me that to win, they needed all the help, every ally they could get. They hoped I would stand with them when the battle began. I told them I would. They said I needed to max out Fabrication before then. Only after doing that would I be able to help them in the way they needed. After that, they stopped contacting me for a while.”
Mick paused again, looking at Jake intently.
“The next time they reached out was when the Commander turned Owen into a morphus. From their reaction, I realized they were just as surprised by the Dark Void anomaly and what it could do as the Spartans and I were. They had never seen anything like it. They told me it gave them an idea. So they needed time to look into it, and they’d contact me again once they achieved the result they wanted.”
Mick took a step closer to Jake, his metal spider-like legs clacking against the floor.
“After that, there was radio silence from the Whisperers for several long months. At some point, I even started to believe I would never hear from them again. And then, after a long wait, they finally spoke to me again. They told me they had been able to learn how the Dark Void worked and how to tamper with it. Then they told me people from another city would soon arrive by helicopter, followed shortly after by another being like Owen. Someone I was meant to join forces with.”
“Wait,” Jake said as realization hit him. “You don’t mean…”
“Yes, Jake,” Mick said before he could finish. “You guessed right. You were supposed to die in the Dark Void anomaly that sucked you in. But the Whisperers intervened. They altered it, increasing your odds of surviving the transformation. It’s thanks to the Whisperers that you lived through the Dark Void and became a morphus.”