"Alright, let's summarize," I said to Jeeves as he sat on one end of the plush leather sofa. His appearance and posture still reminded me of a Victorian-age butler, even if his personality had changed. I was pacing. I always paced. I wasn't aware of any direct link between your legs' movement and the ability to think more clearly. Still, if I needed to unscramble my thoughts, I had to be moving. Jeeves' mildly amused smirk followed me around the bunker as I wandered. 

 

It was the morning after consultation, and, of course, the morning after Becky had… well… committed herself to me. The rush of new developments over those few hours had been a little overwhelming and still not quite as settled in my mind as well as I would have liked. It would be a while before my brain had acclimatized itself to its new way of processing information, but for now, I needed someone to talk to. So, with no other option available, I decided to talk to myself.

 

"The most obvious point," I continued, rounding the pedestal in the middle of the room and glancing at Jeeves, "Is that this isn't all in my head." I pointed at the ceiling and twirled my finger around, illustrating to Jeeves what I was talking about before quickly remembering the gesture's futility. I was literally talking to myself; he would get it… I would get it… whatever.

 

"Well, technically, this is in your head." He replied with no small amount of amusement. I cast him a narrow-eyed look. "But no, the physical manifestations of your abilities are difficult to overlook." He continued with a small smirk. "There is a considerable distinction between knowing you have these powers and seeing them at work."

 

Only my eyebrows, in a single bounce above my eyes, seemed capable of articulating that level of understatement. "Which brings us onto the next point." I went on broodingly, "This!" I swept my arms down my body, flicking my hands out as I did, gesturing to the miraculous levels of healing my body had achieved in the few short days since my awakening.

 

"Is almost completely healed." Jeeves finished for me. "Doc Matthews was right; we aren't all the way there yet, but I'd give it a few more days, and you will be back to full physical health." His smug grin was infectious, I could feel its mirror curl my own lips.

 

"And then there is Becky," I said, Jeeves' grin spreading wider. "I mean, I seemed to have missed a lot with her. This whole… err…"

 

"Submissive." Jeeves supplied the word that my train of thought had lost. “Asshole”

 

"Submissive thing." I continued with a nod. "How did I not see that coming? And how did I know what to do?"

 

"Well, to be fair," Jimmy replied with a shrug, "There were a few hints if you were paying attention. But her opening up to you like that is more an issue of trust than of attraction or personality. I'd recommend not questioning it and just go with it." A wry grin was the only thing distorting his otherwise formal appearance. "But as for knowing what she wanted, that's simple: she told you."

 

"She told me?" I asked with another narrow-eyed glance. "You mean, like, she thought it, and I kinda automatically knew…"

 

Jeeves gave a simple nod. "Handy trick, isn't it, sir?" His smug little smirk was almost infectious. "Perhaps you should consider a career in law enforcement." 

 

"So, in terms of health," I said, choosing not to give his suggestion more than a cursory amount of consideration. "When do you think I will be able to, you know, move around and stuff?"

 

"You are ready now, sir."

 

"Now?"

 

"Now." I stopped pacing and stared at him. We both knew that this was not the time for being vague. His grin spread a little. "You are already capable of full mobility, albeit with some very mild discomfort."

 

"How mild are we talking?" I asked.

 

"There will be a small amount of … aching", He said simply. "But nothing that you would consider painful." 

 

"So, if I was to get up now…"

 

"I wouldn't recommend it, Sir."

 

"Why not?"

 

"You are about to have visitors. Two of them."

 

A minute or so later, the door to my room swung open; Doctor Matthews walked in first, with Philippa close behind. My eyebrows dropped immediately as my brain started to process what was happening; Philippa was talking over her shoulder to someone who was following her into the room, someone who – at least as far as my powers were concerned – wasn't even there.

 

The woman who stepped into view behind Phillipa was a goddess!

 

Beauty is a strange concept, and the mantra that it is in the eye of the beholder is undoubtedly an accurate one. But there are some people who, despite differences in individual tastes, are objectively gorgeous. But even by those standards, the strawberry blonde-haired spectacle in front of me was the epitome of beauty. Stunning long and luxurious hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail that fell onto her shoulder blades. Her deep, molten brown eyes were fixed on some paperwork in her delicate hands. Everything about her screamed feminine magnificence, from her button nose and full pouting lips to the soft curve of her jawline and elegantly slender neck. I found myself staring at parts of her body that I had never noticed on another woman before. I mean seriously, how attracted can you be to a chin?

 

No sooner had she come into view, however, I quickly realized that this woman was the empty space in my ability to read minds that had puzzled me the previous day – the blank space that Philippa had been talking about me to. My powers seemed to be working fine on everyone else; Doc Matthews was trying to think of a gift for his wife on their anniversary, and Philippa was wondering if my dick really was as big as Becky had described, but this new woman was giving off nothing. It was like I was only able to see her mind as a void, conspicuous in its absence.

 

Another thing that became clearer as she stepped into the room was that she was making a concerted effort not to look at me. 

 

Err… Jeeves?

 

"On it, sir."

 

Doc Matthews was well inside the room by this point, idly checking his paperwork against the charts at the bottom of my bed while Phillipa and the mystery woman made their way towards the machinery at my side. My eyes followed them suspiciously as they came closer, Marco's words bouncing around my head.

 

Inquisitors have limited resistance to our powers. If you ever see one, you need to leave. Stop what you are doing, don't use your powers, stand up, and walk away... it's the only way of avoiding them safely

 

I could feel my palms getting sweaty, alarm bells, and literal sirens were starting to sound in my head. I could almost see the flashing red light in my bunker as Jeeves frantically tried to get a handle on the situation. 

 

I couldn't read her. I couldn't even feel her presence, it was like looking into a black hole; the only way of knowing it was there, was the absence of everything else. She was an inquisitor; it was the only explanation. The 'Red Alert' program of my powers was now in full swing; I was ready for a fight. 

 

I could feel my senses heighten. I became acutely aware of everything: the beads of sweat forming at my brow, the calluses on the doctor's fingers as he flicked through his paperwork, the perfectly applied nail varnish on Philippa's, the nervous flick of the mystery woman's eyes as she struggled to look anywhere other than me. The sounds of footsteps as people passed the still-open door to my room, and every mind within a few miles came into crystal clear and effortless focus. Every mind except the one standing to the side of my bed.

 

Every muscle of my body felt like it was on a hair-trigger, willing, and able to defend myself if the need arose. The telekinesis part of my power was ready to rock as well, I may not be able to read her mind, but I sure-as-shit could launch her ass through the window with little more than a thought. Five stories of thin air and gravity would be more than enough to offset her resistance to my powers. Becky and I were becoming close, Philippa and Becky were friends, so by association, I felt an almost protective instinct towards Philippa. If this Inquisitor tried anything violent that could jeopardize my nurse, I was ready to …

 

Philippa pulled me out of my thoughts. "And how are you today?" She asked with a smile. "Looking forward to your first therapy session?"

 

"Hmm?" I blinked a few times as I forced my concentration away from the mystery woman, "Oh, right. Yeah, I'm good. Just… err… you know, eager to get on with it." My eyes flicked instantly back to the intruder. 

 

Philippa didn't need to follow my eye line to know what I was looking at. "Men…" she giggled. "Put a beautiful woman anywhere near them, and they lose the ability to speak." She frowned for a second. "Wait, you two haven't met yet, have you?" I shook my head cautiously, my eyes still fixed on the threat as hers stayed rooted on Philippa. "Well, that would explain it. Pete, this is Charlotte, Charlotte, this is Pete." She leaned into Charlotte and said in a hushed, conspiratorial voice, "He is the one I was telling you about."

 

Charlotte smiled and nodded weakly, having no choice but to finally turn to look at me. As soon as our eyes met, I knew something was wrong. She was terrified.

 

This doesn't make any sense, why is she afraid? "Jeeves? Are you getting this?"

 

"I am Sir. But something else is bothering me."

 

"Well, don't leave me in suspense!" 

 

"Marco said that Inquisitors always work in teams. There are no other voids in the area, she is alone. He also said they would have a glowing 'aura' around her, there isn't one."

 

I looked up at Charlotte, trying to keep the confusion and suspicion out of my eyes. "It's nice to meet you, Charlotte," I said as calmly as possible. It was habit more than anything, maybe a little instinct, but I held my hand out to shake hers.

 

Her eyes flicked down to my outstretched hand in abject terror, she swallowed hard, seemed to resign herself to something and reached her hand out to meet mine.

 

As soon as our fingers touched, existence fell away.

 

********

 

I found myself in a meadow, the sun high in the sky, and a gentle breeze kissing the skin of my neck. Ankle-high grass and wildflowers bloomed in every direction as far as the eye could see. It was beautiful; no trees, no signs of civilization, and certainly no hospital—just me.

 

And Charlotte.

 

She crossed the few feet between us, her hand-rearing back and slapping me hard across the face. "What the fuck is wrong with you?!" My head shot to the side, my own hand instinctively coming up to cradle my burning cheek. "Why the hell were you blocking me?! I thought you were a fucking Inquisitor, you Asshole!"

 

I could only blink a few times before my tongue remembered its role. "Err… what?"

 

"What do you mean, what?" She screamed back, her fear melting into burning fury as she started pacing back and forth in front of me, her eyes blazing in anger. "What the fuck is your problem?!"

 

"Jeeves? What the hell is she talking about?"

 

"I have no idea, Sir."

 

"Excellent, thanks for the help." I turned my head back and looked back at the fair-haired beauty. "Do you mind if we start at the beginning?" I said, letting my hand drop from my cheek, "Because I don't have the slightest clue what you are talking about."

 

Her pacing stopped. "It's a simple question." She said, her eyes boring into me, "Why – were – you – blocking – me?"

 

I took a deep breath, I don't know why, but Charlotte was starting to piss me off. "What – the – fuck – is – blocking?"

 

"Jesus fucking Christ! Did you awaken yesterday?" She blurted in frustration; her fists clenched at her sides.

 

"No, Wednesday," I answered sharply.

 

My reply seemed to knock her off her stride. She blinked a few times before her eyebrows dropped into a deep frown. "Wednesday?" She paused for a second to watch me nod, an arched eyebrow on my face. It took a few more moments, but her eyes suddenly widened in realization. "It's you! You are the guy who came into his powers in adulthood!" Her speech had quickened dramatically.

 

"Wednesday," I confirmed again.

 

"I'd heard some whispers about you, but…" her pacing had stopped by now, and she looked at me the same way a scientist would look at a new species of frog. "That doesn't explain why you were block… ah, let me guess. Marco." She threw her hands up and went back to pacing.

 

"You know Marco?"

 

She nodded with a derisive snort. "Oh yeah, I know Marco. The guy is fucking useless! You were dueling me."

 

Normally I'd consider myself a pretty patient guy. Still, this woman seemed to be stamping on every last one of my nerves. "Look. We are going to need to take a big fucking step back here because I don't have the first God damned idea what you are talking about. What the hell is dueling?"

 

Charlotte was still pacing, another snort of contemptuous laughter escaping her lips. "Yup, that's Marco. He hasn't taught you anything. Let me guess, he appeared in the middle of the night, unlocked your room, told you how great his Library is, gave you some cryptic warning about the inquisitors, and then Fucked off!"

 

"Err… yeah, actually. He said that…"

 

"You didn't have anything else to learn? Yeah, he says that to everyone. Like I said, fucking useless!" She stopped her pacing again and turned to face me. "Well, if you want something done right…" A deck chair appeared on the ground next to her, and she dropped herself elegantly into it. She looked at me, expectantly for a few seconds before rolling her eyes. "We are inside our minds," She waved her hand around the field. "Normal rules of physics don't apply. Think of something you want, and you get it."

 

I scrunched my eyebrows, shrugged, thought for a second, and a deck chair – identical to Charlotte's – appeared on the ground in front of me. "A quick learner." Charlotte nodded as I dropped into it. Her face was already infinitely more relaxed than it had been a few moments ago, "But you lose points for poor imagination." She finished with a teasing grin, looking at my new piece of furniture. It was the first time I had seen her smile; she was dazzling. With a wry grin spreading across my face, I concentrated again, and a beer appeared in my hand. Charlotte's smile widened, "A very quick learner." She finished with a nod.

 

She crossed one of her legs over the other, flashing the skin on her low-cut red summer dress, one that she definitely wasn't wearing in the hospital. The thin straps draped off her shoulders in a way that managed to completely please the eye, the plunging neckline leaving barely enough of her skin covered to still be considered elegant. The material ended close enough to her knee to be called proper, but far enough away to still be interesting. I arched an eyebrow and looked down at my own body, surprised to find myself dressed in a pair of smart-looking dark blue jeans and a tight white polo shirt. I didn't even have time to form the question before Charlotte started to speak.

 

"Right, the first thing you should know is that I'm not part of the 'club.'" She bounced two fingers in air quotes on either side of her head to illustrate the last word. "And I'd prefer to keep it that way. If Marco or anyone else asks about me, your only acceptable answer is 'Charlotte who?'" 

 

“The Club?” I asked with a frown.

 

Charlotte seemed to be a little taken aback by my question, as if she had expected that nugget of information to pass unnoticed. Hey eyebrows dropped into a slight frown and her tongue dated out to nervously wet her lips. “Okay, that’s a very long and complicated story that we will definitely get back to another day. But, in short, many of our kind are part of their own little society. There are rules and a class structure and all this other stuff that resembles the middle ages. ‘The club’ is what we call them.”

 

“We?”

 

Charlotte gritted her teeth a little, again seemingly surprised that I was following all this. “A few hundred years ago, a sect broke away from the main body. Much more progressive and liberal in their ideas, but utterly condemned by ‘The Club’. My parents were part of this sect. We aren’t so much in hiding as we were back then, but we don’t really associate with them, and if we find new members before they do, we bring them into the fold. It’s all very complicated and we really don’t have time for that now.”

 

I simply nodded, letting the issue slide.

 

"Now, the first thing you have to think about, when it comes to blocking and dueling, is murder."

 

I blinked. "Sorry?"

 

"I'm sure that you've had time to think about your powers, and one of the first things that almost everyone adds is a way to defend themselves." She started, sipping from a drink of her own as it appeared in her hand. My mind quickly thought back to all the martial arts I had added, not to mention the telekinesis and 'red alert' program "There is only a finite number of martial arts out there so if one of us was to try to attack another one, more often than not, they would end up fighting someone with the same amount of skill that they have. Then there is the issue of healing, which I'm sure you are more than aware of now. It takes a hell of a lot of damage to actually kill one of us outright. You following me?"

 

"I think so."

 

"So, the only way to do it is to sneak up on them." She continued with a nod. "But if someone can read the minds of anyone around them, then sneaking up on them becomes impossible. The only way around that is to block them. That is what you were doing to me, you were blocking my ability to read you. There are only ever two reasons for someone to block you, either they are a high-born inquisitor…" she held her hand up to cut off my question before it was asked, "and we will get to them later, or an Evo who means you harm."

 

"Evo?"

 

"Oh, yeah. Evo, that's what we call ourselves. Evolution, Evo, genius, right?" Charlotte shook her head with a roll of her eyes. "Anyway, so if one Evo wants to hurt another, it must be done in their mind. You try to block the person you are targeting; then try to get into their minds to do the damage. If the target detects you, they can gauge your intent and stand their ground – if they think they can win – or escape. It's also a way for the attacker to size up the target, they can still read them even though they are blocking them at the same time."

 

My understanding nod was interrupted by a thought, one doubtless provided by Jeeves. "Wait. If that's the case and I was blocking you, why couldn't I read you?"

 

Charlotte's brows furrowed almost immediately. "You couldn't read me either?"

 

"No. You were just a… void." I shrugged, struggling to find the last word.

 

Charlotte sat in silence for a minute, her eyes fixed on an invisible point on the ground between us, her brows locked in thought. "… shit." 

 

"What?"

 

"I need you to think." She said slowly. "How did Marco react when you first came out of your room after your awakening? You remember that sudden surge of power? How did he act?"

 

I cast my mind back before answering. "Actually, now that I think about it, he was a little freaked out. I had to calm him down, he looked like he was ready to bolt."

 

Charlotte's face lit up in a dazzlingly lyrical giggle; it was like every feature was bathed in light. Her eyes danced, and her full lips parted and bounced as she laughed. In that moment, not Venus, Aphrodite, nor Helen of Troy could have held a candle to Charlotte's beauty. I was stunned into awed silence. 

 

"Hooo," she panted as her laughter finally died down, a hand coming up to dab underneath one of her eyes, "What I would've given to have seen that." She chuckled again before calming herself. "Ok, so the only explanation is that you are ridiculously powerful."

 

I could only squint in confused silence as she continued.

 

"A mind isn't just a room, and there is no way it can be represented as one." She explained slowly. "What Marco called his Library is just a way for us to access our abilities. The mind, in its entirety, is infinitely more complex than that. It is a hive of activity. It contains everything from controlling our breathing, heartbeat, and nervous system, directing our physical movements to storing and accessing memories. From understanding the relationships with the people in our lives, processing knowledge, to processing our understanding of concepts fundamental to life, like financial value and the passage of time. There are so many facets that it cannot be manifested in a single room. Instead, it creates a city. If the room is our mind's manifestation of our abilities, the city is its manifestation of itself."

 

I would be lying if I said I was following any of this at this point. The look on my face was obviously giving it away.

 

"Each city has a city wall to defend itself from attack." She explained after a short but amused pause. "Some small and weak, others are tall and impenetrable." Somehow my mind flashed back to the palisade of stacked twigs that guarded Marco's mind against mine when my powers were first awakened. "The size of your wall depends on the strength of your ability. So, in our case, the only explanation is that your walls were too strong for me to breach and read you without you letting me, and you couldn't read me because you don't know how."

 

“Jeeves, are you following any of this?”

 

"In a manner of speaking, yes, Sir. I can't tell you if what she is saying is true or not, but there is a certain logic to it."

 

"So, just to make sure I'm getting this," I said with a skeptical frown. "There is an entire city in your head and one in mine too."

 

"Well, we are in our heads, so technically our cities are here. But yes." She said with a smirk. I made an exaggerated gesture of looking around with a dramatically confused look on my face, turning in my chair to peer over my shoulder before facing Charlotte again.

 

"Are they, like, far away or something?" I asked in humorous sarcasm.

 

"Actually, mine is right behind me. You can't see it because I'm still blocking you. I'm assuming yours is somewhere behind you as well."

 

"Ah." I looked back over my shoulder.

There was a long pause as I turned back to face the grinning beauty in front of me. With her legs crossed in the deck chair, her arms laid out on the rests, and the martini glass balanced between her delicate fingers. She gave off an air of unquantifiable confidence, maybe even arrogance. The shit-eating grin on her face was doing nothing to assuage the look. However, her eyes were staring back into mine with ferocious intensity, totally at odds with the curl of her wet and shining lips.

 

"Ok. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and trust you." She said as face grew more serious. "Allowing someone into your city is an incredibly intimate act for an Evo; you are literally letting someone into your mind. It is far more intimate than sex. But you could have done some god-awful things to Becky and Philippa, and you didn't, I checked. So, I'm going to trust you. But remember, I am a nurse. Fuck me over, and I will castrate you and make it look like an accident." Her threat was accompanied by a playful, albeit nervous smile as she stood from her seat, silently waiting for me to do the same and stepping towards me when I was upright. She reached out her hand for mine. "Physical touch for Evos is kind of a gateway. I don't mean like an accident brush, but a conscious, willing touch is basically a way for us to…" she seemed to be struggling to find the words "… I don't know, accept that we are the same, and mean each other no harm."

 

Our fingers brushed together. A spark of something, a warm tingle, emanated from my hand and up my arm to my very core. It wasn't like Marco, where I could see every aspect of his life, but I instinctively and instantly knew that Charlotte was a friend. She was more than capable of inflicting both physical and mental harm upon me but was utterly devoid of the will. It was like someone putting a gun to your head but knowing – absolutely knowing ­– that they had no intention of pulling the trigger.

 

Judging by how her body and expression seemed to relax, she knew the same was true for me. We both let out a contented and relieved sigh as a medieval city, complete with high curtain walls, shimmered into existence behind her. She stepped beside me and turned to face it, both of us staring, only one of us trying to reset their jaws from its new home next to my feet.

 

It was beautiful, as far as a city could be, like something out of a movie. I knew enough about history to know that medieval cities were dank, odorous, and dangerous places in reality. But this was more like the idealized version you would see in movies such as The Lord of the Rings. It looked warm, friendly, and almost inviting. Faded grey stones made up the 20 ft high walls, beyond which, the tops of stone buildings could be made out above the ramparts and plumes of chimney smoke punctuated the clear blue sky. But dominating the skyline was the top of a mighty looking castle, its towers piercing the heavens at each of the four corners and a single, taller tower jutting up in the center. It looked like an off-grey version of the Disney castle I had seen in so many movies as a child. There was something distinctly fairytale about it all. It suited Charlotte perfectly, although I couldn't come up with a single reason why I thought that.

 

Her fingers curled around mine, snapping me out of my reverie. "C'mon." She said with a warm smile. "I'll show you around. It's been a while since I've had a man inside me." She finished with a wink and led me towards the small gatehouse and into her city.

 

I'm not going to pretend to be able to remember all the intricacies of the conversation that flowed over the course of the next few hours. Charlotte explaining – and in many cases, re-explaining – how the city worked with a degree of patience that would make Mother Teresa blush in embarrassment. However, for the sake of expediency, I will try to summarize what I learned without the bumbling confusion that plagued those sun-filled and fondly remembered hours.

 

The tour of the city was an education in metaphors; every single building in the town had a purpose, a purpose that roughly translated into a function of the mind. The city clinic, a small, squat, thatched building nestled up against the walls on the western edge of town, was responsible for the body's ability to register pain and heal itself. The bank aided the understanding of value, risk, and reward. The forge was where the mind stored its knowledge on how to do manual tasks. Everything from changing a car tire to tying your shoelaces and the Library, an enormous building close to the center of town, housed all of Charlotte's knowledge. The school next door was where that knowledge was put into practical use. Training as a nurse for all those years was all well and good, but knowing how to do something and being able to actually do it were, apparently, two very different things. 

 

The buildings in each person's city, according to Charlotte, changed depending on that person's life and needs. An engineer or a manual laborer, for example, would have a much higher dependency on the forge, meaning that the building would be larger and closer to the center of town. A person who had spent their whole lives dealing with chronic illness would require a larger clinic. But there were three buildings which, if I understood them correctly, were essential and central in everyone: The Market, the Palace, and the Well.

 

The Market, with the exchanging of goods and commodities, dealt with the body's core functions: breathing, heartbeat, dictating the intake of food, and so on. It was a bustling hive of activity with countless people carting goods between one store and another. Charlotte would explain that those people were representations of actual people in her life, a shadow – if you will – of the impression that person had left on her life and her mind. Everyone from vaguely remembered classmates, through the teachers and friends who had shaped her formative years, right up to the closest friends and family. All of them were represented as people inhabiting her city. None of them had any real purpose, but their presence brought life to the town in the same way that their presence had given meaning and value to Charlotte's life.

 

The Palace, the next of the three core buildings, was essentially the home of the conscious and subconscious mind. This governing facility monitored and controlled all aspects of the city. According to Charlotte, if I spent enough time wandering around in my own version of it, I would eventually find my bunker. It was another one of those buildings that was more of a fairytale representation of what a medieval fortress would have looked like- meant to look beautiful rather than to fill any real military or defensive purpose. Its five tall towers jutted into the sky like elegant fingers grasping at the heavens, almost silver in the bright sunlight. A large, marble-like staircase led to the main door. However, I got the impression from Charlotte's demeanor that going inside was a step too far for today's tour.

 

I was starting to see what Charlotte had meant when she talked about the intimacy of being inside her city. In a very literal sense, I was walking around the deepest recesses of her mind. She may have been friends with Becky and Philippa for years, but an hour of walking around her city would allow me to know her on a much deeper level than even her closest family. It was a staggering amount of trust to put into someone. For a normal person, sex was about as intimate as a physical activity could get; one person being inside another, sharing DNA, it was the closest they could be to being a single entity. This was so much more. Her entire being was open to me. It was only her trust in me that told her that I would not use that information to my own advantage, or worse, do anything that could, literally, damage her mind. The Palace was the physical manifestation of that and was, at this point, off-limits.

 

The last of the three buildings was the Well. The Well represents an Evo's power. The depth of the Well determined the strength of one's abilities, it was from this Well that all the gifts and abilities that our powers gave us, drew their strength. Charlotte, Marco, and, I assumed, all of the other adult Evo's had been used to their powers for the majority of their lives. On the other hand, I was still getting used to the differences between my old life and my new one. So, I was surprised beyond my ability to describe, when the Well turned out to be just that: a small stone circle, descending into darkness. I got the metaphor, a place from which her power was drawn, but for such a drastic difference it made to a person's life, I guess I expected more.

 

All of these buildings came into play when you looked at it from the perspective of dueling. The purpose of a duel was to gain access into someone's city, either through brute force and literally going through the walls, or through some form of subterfuge, going over them, under them, convincing the person to grant you entrance and then betraying them, and so on. Although dueling was done as a sport amongst 'the club' – as Charlotte called them – in a hostile attack, that person could do a hell of a lot of damage depending on what buildings they chose to focus on. 

 

She told me the story of someone who was dueling for sport. The participants got a little too carried away, a fire was started, which quickly consumed the city's mustering field, and that person lost the ability to walk. If an attacker targeted the Well, they could drain a victim of their powers, attack the Palace and you could shut the mind off from the body and leave the victim in a 'locked-in' vegetative state. The destruction of the Market would kill a person outright; they would literally forget how to breathe. The Library could be raided for knowledge or memories. The school could be damaged to stop a victim from being able to use the knowledge they had gained and, in an attack which sounded very personal to me, new inhabitants could be added to the city, shadows of people whose only purpose was to cause mayhem. The literal definition of a mental illness. 

 

If physically attacking an Evo in the real world was impossible for another, an attack on their mind was more than capable of causing unimaginable levels of harm. I was starting to understand why Charlotte had been so terrified when she first met me. The prospect of what could be done was certainly a sobering thought.

 

I couldn't tell you how long we wandered around her city, but a large portion of it was spent with our hands locked into each other's, fingers curled together. For an expression usually reserved for open lovers, it seemed like such a simple and unimportant act compared with the surroundings we found ourselves in. I wasn't the first who had been inside her city; there had been people who had beaten her at dueling for sport and entered her city in triumph, despite Charlotte's apparent disdain for 'the club,' it was clear that this hadn't always been the case. She had fought them every step of the way, they had breached her walls, but none of them had been invited. I was the first. There was something indescribably flattering about that. There was one problem, though.

 

I had absolutely no idea how to return the gesture. 

 

We had wandered back out of her city and found ourselves, once again, standing in the picturesque meadow where we had first arrived. With the exception of Charlotte's city – and I had no real way of knowing which side of the town we had left – there were no landscape markers to judge where we were in the meadow. Yet, I somehow instinctively knew that this was the place where we had been sat a few hours earlier. I was so convinced that I found myself looking around for the lawn chairs we had sat on.

 

Now that I understood how the cities worked, I sort of knew, roughly, where mine should be, but instead, we found ourselves staring out at the vacant meadow. "Why can't we see it?" I asked simply as my eyes gave up wandering the wilderness and instead looked down at Charlotte's fingers still curled around mine.

 

"Honestly, I have no idea." She said, a concerned look painted over her exquisite features. "But I do have a theory."

 

"Care to share?"

 

There was a long pause, her eyes, like mine, fixed on our entwined fingers. "You're not a very trusting person, are you?"

 

I licked at my suddenly dry lips. The simple answer was no. My parents had taught me the folly of placing my trust in anyone. Only Jimmy had managed to fully ingratiate himself to me, and I still couldn't work out how he had managed to do that. I shook my head softly.

 

Charlotte nodded, a gentle but reassuring smile pulling at her lips. "You don't let people in," she said in a voice barely above a whisper. "In this case, that is manifested literally. Whether it is conscious or not, you are hiding your mind from me, not letting me in."

 

"I'm… I'm not doing it intentionally," I said weakly, giving her hand a soft squeeze.

 

"Oh, I know." She said warmly. "Our minds can come up with some pretty elaborate ways to protect us from harm, none of which we have any real control over." There was a pause as she turned to face me, I took a step to the side to meet her too. "I want you to kiss me."

 

"Sorry?"

 

"Just… Trust me."

 

The inches between us could have been miles for the intensity that suddenly filled each one. I could feel her heartbeat above the pounding of my own, my face struggling to suppress the shock as they gradually started to beat in sync, to beat as one. She leaned a little closer as I mirrored her movements, edging nearer to her as her eyes dropped closed, and her warm breath caressed the skin around my lips.

 

The first touch was soft, barely a touch at all, a brushing of her full lips against my dry ones. It was delicate, like the beat of a butterfly's wings, just long enough to inhale her breath and feel the warmth of her skin.

 

There was a pause. Then we melted into each other.

 

The second touch was not soft. It was passion, it was heat, her lips pressed into mine with the force of a long-lost lover, starved of intimacy since before she could remember. Her head tilted to one side as mine leaned to the other, pressing deeper into the kiss as our lips opened and our tongues met in that timeless dance.

 

This wasn't a simple kiss. I knew instinctively that this was not a kiss I would ever share with Becky. It was a melding of souls; I could feel her energy pouring into me, like an almost imperceptible tingle under the skin. I felt something open in me, and my energy flowed back into her. A soft, almost whimpered moan pushed past her tongue and out to my ears. My hand reached up to cup her cheek, my fingers teasing the skin on the hairline at the back of her neck, tangling in her hair as my thumb softly stroked the warm skin of her face. I poured myself into her, and she did the same to me. This was so much more than a kiss; it took the gateway of our touch from earlier to a whole new level. Her life, her character, her pride, her flaws, her insecurities, her very soul; I could see it all. At that moment, I loved her. I loved her more than I imagined it was possible for one person to love another. She knew everything there was to know about me and accepted me completely. I knew this without a word needing to be said. I knew just as much about her, and as our kiss pressed our bodies, minds, and souls together, she knew that she had all of me.

 

A single tear slowly trickled down her cheek as, out of nowhere, my city slowly faded into existence behind us.

 

She broke away, her hand moving up to run her fingers through my hair, her eyes never leaving mine as my thumb brushed away the tear from her cheek before we both turned to look at my city.

 

"Well…" she finally said as we stared up at the solid white Marble walls stretching hundreds of feet above our heads. "… that explains a lot."

 

Size is all about perception. Nothing is really big or small until it is compared to something else or looked at from a specific perspective. The Pyramids are pretty big compared to a pizza box, but they are infinitesimally small compared to, say, the sun. Her walls were high; mine were enormous, almost unendingly tall. It was like what I’d imagine a mouse would feel looking up at the Empire State Building. Her walls were strong; large stone blocks fitted together to give it an unarguable strength. Mine seemed to be made out of a single piece of solid pale white marble, not a crack or crevasse to be seen. The only word I could find to describe their apparent strength was… eternal. I couldn’t imagine anything breaching those walls. Charlotte’s awe-struck face was telling me that she was thinking the same. Even looking from side to side, the walls seemed to stretch out forever, dwarfing not only Charlotte’s walls, but her entire city. 

 

Charlotte’s eyes flicked up, craning her neck and squinting her eyes against the sun as she looked up to the top of my walls, the summit scratching against the clouds. She looked to her right, along the curvature of the wall as it stretched off into the distance, then leaned forward, looking past me to follow the wall to the left. Her eyes finally met mine. Her expression was one of abject astonishment.

 

“Not what you were expecting?” I asked in puzzlement.

 

“Err... no”, she said, as if the answer should be obvious. “No, it is not.” 

 

I nodded slowly, my eyes scanning the walls, it seemed that the question dawned on Charlotte at the same time as me. “How do we get in?” she asked carefully. “I can’t see a gate, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna try to walk around this thing looking for one.”

 

“Jeeves? Little help?”

 

“Take her hand, sir.” The disembodied voice sounded in my head.

 

I took Charlotte’s hand again, unsure of when I had let it go. Her eyes flicked down from mine as she let our fingers curl together. “Now, ‘will’ yourself to the top of the wall.”

 

“Will myself? Jeeves, this isn’t the 60s, the power of the mind is not… Woah!” There was a whooshing sensation of indescribable movement, accompanied by a surprised squeak from my companion and suddenly, we were on top of the wall.

 

“How did you do tha…. Oh my god!” Charlotte’s eyes had turned from mine and out over my city, her jaw hanging loose, and an expression of wonder painted across her dazzling face. As soon as my gaze followed hers, I understood why. “It’s… beautiful.” She said, barely above a whisper.

 

If Charlotte’s city was fashioned after a medieval town, mine was like the city out of Tron. A sprawling metropolis of towering skyscrapers and elaborate monoliths stretching as far as the eye could see, each building was bathed in beams of colored light. The scale and position of each building in Charlotte’s city was dependent on their importance to the mind, mine seemed to be spread over the city, interspersed with monuments and residential structures- something that was distinctly lacking in my companion’s city – and each of them seemed to be massive. My clinic was a hospital, my forge was a factory, my marketplace was a sprawling transport hub, and my Palace was an immense monolith that dwarfed every other building in sight. There seemed to be no differentiation between them in terms of importance. If a building was present, it was massive.

 

Even from our place on the lofty walls, I instinctively knew what each building and monument represented. Statues and parks memorialized moments and people from my life; there was a statue of Stacy Granger, another of her sister. My parents, I knew, had their own likenesses out there as well, as did the many well remembered and formative examples of their discipline. Jimmy held a place of importance, so did Becky and a few others, and somewhere out in the sprawling metropolis, I knew that a dedication to Charlotte was being constructed.  

 

Everything was bathed in an eerie blue-white glow, bolts of white light flashing up and down the sparsely populated streets, each one representing a thought, an idea, an emotion, or an impulse. My ‘shadows’ – being a socially introverted and secluded man – were few and far between, but they were there. They wandered around the maze of streets, gathering in parks and plazas as my mind wandered from thought to thought. Despite being sparse in numbers, they contributed to the whole, and that whole made the city buzz with life and energy.

 

The most startling difference between Charlotte’s city and mine, however, was the well. Whereas hers was a small stone circle in the center of town, mine was a series of enormous power plants dotted around the city, not only capable of producing vast and seemingly endless supplies of power but almost impossible to attack effectively. As I looked more carefully, the mental defenses I had developed from childhood to protect me from the abuse of my parents became clearer. Everything was compartmentalized. If someone managed to breach the colossal walls somehow, they were by no means guaranteed to get any further, smaller inner walls crisscrossed the city, each building was locked and secured, I was almost totally impenetrable to the outside.

 

The thought of that – and what it meant – made me sad.

 

Charlotte, on the other hand, was still staring out at the city in wide-eyed wonder. Her eyes followed the bolts of light through the streets; they traced the outlines of soaring structures, squinted at the statues and plazas, and occasionally flicked back to me in abject awe. “I have never seen anything like this,” she said eventually. “I have been inside my fair share of cities, but this…” her words trailed off as her train of thought left the station without her. Asshole

 

“Why is it so different?” I asked slowly after it became clear she was saying no more.

 

Her mouth opened and closed a few times, her mind scrambling to think of an answer to the question she had been asking herself as well. “I can’t even begin to guess.” She finally conceded. “But what I can say is that we don’t have anywhere near enough time to explore this properly.” She finished with a nod toward the urban sprawl, “We’re about to start looking… odd. We’ve gotta go back.”