Outside, he lit another cigarette. Turned his head at the neighbouring door. The girl Aine, his sister's age. He remembered her face, not the smiling ones but the pale, choked one. And true to his sister’s accusation, he had done nothing. Not due to apathy, but rather due to necessity and for the following consequence.

  Portman Logistics—The company that Talos' father owed debt to as a penalty for damaging high grade goods. The employee contract given to C-class citizens bordered on slavery. A petty act of vengeance did nothing to the overall situation. The rules of the world are set, and ordinary people can’t change them. They can only abide by it and wiggle between them to suit their needs. Rules are not meant to be broken; only twist them like a change in perspective. And the fact that this social truth was also the truth of magic was layered irony.

  Talos stood outside in contemplation. He needed money. 10,000 creds, equivalent to Talos' yearly wage as a statistician. To raise the stakes, the deadline was tomorrow. A one-day notice period should have been illegal, yet these rules can be twisted with contracts. According to Clause Zero, established in the year 1142 AR, "Pacts transcend statutes; what is sworn must stand," was implemented to smoothen Xeno diplomacy.

  Talos took out his phone and dialed Calvin— Talos's broker. It took two tries to reach him.

  “Talos! My friend, how sweet of you to call me at this hour”, Calvin said. Calvin was in a bar, if the background noise was any indication and probably drunk.

  “Listen”, Talos said as he wetted his lips, “ Those two on the run, what's their bounty?”

  “What?” came the reply, his voice sober instantly, “I don’t know what you're talking about. Ok, maybe there are. But come on, there are always people on the run, either from Metro guard, gangs, or from their wives. But none worth our time, if it's about you finally about taking on death contracts, then yes there are aplenty ”

  “How much”

  “ Talos there—”

  “How much?” Talos demanded.

  There was silence between them then, for a good minute.

  “8 for the man, the woman’s just extra”, Calvin said as if something gross rolled off his tongue.

  Silence stretched again, when Talos thought to cut the call, Calvin spoke again.

  “It’s not worth it man”, he advised “They are, you know—”

  “I know”, Talos interjected sharply.

  Talos heard Calvin take a deep breath and say intonelessly, “It always amazed me. Those eyes and brain of yours, to catch things where others miss and predict impossible things. It’s —”

  “Calvin, listen—”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  “No, damit!” Calvin’s voice was a sudden snarl, “It’s the devil’s gift for you, and may you burn in hell with him”. With that, the call ended, leaving Talos to his contemplation once again.

  The streets looked no less sparse than before, if only more riotous. Talos chose to walk here to distract himself from accusations of Calivin, his sister Lisa and more desperately his darkening mind. The mind has a plethora of memories, of regrets and sins. When you see one of them, the mind hunts for the next.

  So he was here, to let his mind occupy other compulsions— the desperate need to put things in place, to make the world sensible, to derive some meaning from chaos and thus placate his mind. The Mentate’s first lesson was to break the world into smaller pieces and not let memory and prior conclusions of an object affect the present analysis. A bread cannot be labeled as food at first glance, you look at the fundamentals of what made it and how, all leading to the present condition and yet you do not conclude it's food; instead, you look at its potential, its uses. The bread can pass hands from one place to another, with a guided pull, it can reach where you want, to a desired victim who will choke on poison.

  This particular exercise was not taught, yet Talos's own perspective. Some extraordinarily rare people can execute it in practice, but those people were more machines than people. The fact that the mentates were a dead breed and the preference for actual machines delighted Talos.

  Talos's inborn skill was a blessing, and as Calvin rightly pointed out, it was a devil’s gift. It helped him gain admission to pre-university in a niche psychology course, which was a mentate training. An experiment of sorts, to revive the branch. And for the world’s sake, it was a failure.

  Heightening. That was the name of his ability, to heighten or charge any bodily function. Talos used it as a power enhancer, it helped him work at his father’s job— to haul things. A cheap ability, yet it was recognized in an unexpected place, granting him a scholarship in return for participating in psychic experiments.

  In retrospect, he should have never agreed to it. They helped him learn to tap into specific parts of the brain, to trigger hormones without any external drugs. To enhance the mind’s capabilities, combining the system’s and conditioning of a machine resulted in mind acceleration.

  It was laughable since the very same could be achieved through magical means, with less time and resources.

  After the desultory walk, Talos found himself near the border between the Olivan sector and the Nova Echelon. Nothing of a gate or a toll separated them, only a small stair. Yet for those below B-class citizen’s the tax increased exponentially in Nova Echelon.

  The soft thumps of boots announced his target's arrival. The affliction of spontaneous calculation’s which Talos called visions, informed him of key conjectures of possibilities, variations of the future. The more the data and the less the impact of an event, the smaller the error margin. Calvin termed it Divination, a ridiculous interpretation but apt in its function. And Talos had divined the future of these two.

  The man noticed Talos first and shielded the woman. Talos applied Heightening on his brain functions. He perceived the world differently then. Talos couldn’t move, the world slowed, and he heard the strong thud of his heart, the flow of blood through his veins and the twitches of his muscles as they readied for violence. The man was a pure mage. Talos watched the man’s right hand raise slowly, a potent spell in making, but he never finished it. Talos’s hand blurred, and in the next moment, a gunshot rang. The blood from the mage’s hand plastered on the shocked woman. Then another bullet that wasted the other hand of the man.

  The woman stood there motionless and mute as Talos walked away, dragging the man. Her face spoke to Talos, her eyes condemned him, and Calvin’s eyes condemned him, for his lover who was murdered. Guilt and shame constantly tripped Talos along the way.

  Yet, a man faced with necessity would commit any heinous crime. Talos wondered then, was it the necessity that drove him or the surrender of hope to think any alternative? Is it bleak cynicism that blinded him to any other possibilities? His own pessimistic mind finding expression in reality?