“Yes. Imagine if we could all fight like him. Category-three monsters can soak up a lot of damage, even from category-three bullets. He’s clearly more reliant on powers than weapons, which is what we need at the high end. Thus far, we’ve basically been throwing money at the problem. We may as well be using gold bullets.”
They continued to clear the space around the aperture to secure their beachhead, as exploring the kilometres of space within would take considerable time. They encountered Asano as he was on his way back to the aperture, calling out ahead to avoid friendly fire.
“You found her,” Espinoza said. “That’s mission accomplished for you. Thanks for doing most of ours along the way.”
“I was in the neighbourhood,” Jason said.
“De Lange will want to debrief her,” Espinoza said.
“I don’t much care, to be honest,” Jason said. “She’s done being beholden to Network personnel.”
Farrah’s eyes took in everything as Shade drove them through Lyon.
“The magical carriages here are better than the ones back home,” she said. “The ones that don’t fly anyway. And these don’t use magic. You know, we all thought you were talking nonsense about your world and what could be done without magic.”
“Wait until you see the plane,” Jason said.
She turned to look at him. “Can I use a power on you?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Don’t you want to know what it is before accepting?”
“It’s you,” Jason said. “I don’t need to.”
She looked at him in silence for a long time.
“You’ve changed,” she said. “You were so skittish back then. You hid it well but scratch the surface and there was the fear.”
“We have a mythical warrior in my world who uses his fear as a weapon, turning it on his enemies.”
“What kind of warrior?” Farrah asked.
“He’s this super-rich guy that dresses up like a bat and goes around punching poor people.”
“That sounds like a terrible myth.”
“He has special boomerangs.”
“I don’t see how that matters.”
“Well, if you take this stance with Batman, I am not going to try explaining Zatanna’s pants situation.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Farrah said happily, leaning into his arm. “How tragically familiar.”
Jason grinned, inwardly crowing as he kept her from dwelling on her ordeal. He’d essentially blasted through the Network, demanding a plane from Hector before dramatically driving away in Shade. His goal was to lean into the strangeness of a world that was new to her, distracting her at least until they were on the plane. Then, she would have time to sit with what she’d been through, and hopefully get some sleep.
“So, about that power,” she said.
“Go for it. Shade’s the one driving.”
“I’ve never used this before,” she said.
[Farrah Hurin] is attempting to use ability [Power Bond] on you.
[Power Bond] will enhance some of your abilities for the duration of the bond and give [Farrah Hurin] access to your knowledge. This is restricted to your knowledge of concepts external to yourself. This ability cannot read your thoughts or access your knowledge of yourself.
[Power Bond] can be rejected or ended at any time by you.
If you do not implicitly trust [Farrah Hurin], this ability will fail. Subconscious distrust will prevent this power from working.
Jason was extremely curious about the new outworlder powers replacing Farrah’s human abilities but was wary of conversation drifting in a traumatic direction. He had his own strange new power to worry about, as well.
You have been affected by [Power Bond], connecting you to [Farrah Hurin]. You may end this connection at any time.
“So, that power lets you gain knowledge?”
“Yes,” she said. “It should glean certain amounts of knowledge from someone, based on what they are thinking about, but not their actual thoughts.”
“How does it work?”
“I’m just going by instinct, here,” Farrah said. “I’m thinking back to when we met you and learned you were an outworlder. Rufus said that every outworlder gets a power that acts as a guide to their new world. I think this is mine, tapping into the knowledge of someone I trust and turning them into my guide. Try focusing your thoughts on a topic. Any topic; it doesn’t matter what.”
“I can do that,” Jason said. He considered for a moment, thinking of common aspects of his world. After looking around, he picked cars. He concentrated on the idea of cars and Farrah’s eyes immediately went wide and she jolted in her seat for a few seconds.
“Are you alright?” Jason asked as the fit passed.
“I am,” she said, although she looked exhausted.
“So, do you know about cars now?”
“I do,” she said.
“Think you could drive one?”
“No,” she said. “I think the ability operates similarly to a skill book, although I can’t be sure, having never used one. The difference seems to be that a skill book gives specific and specialised knowledge, even skills, while this ability gives more of an overview. I understand what cars are and how they operate, more or less. There’s a lot of peripheral information that didn’t make sense to me, and won’t until I get a lot more knowledge.”
“There is a lot to learn,” Jason said, concentrating again.
Once more Farrah was jolted in her seat.
“That’s exhausting,” she said unsteadily. “I should be judicious in what I want to learn, because I can only do that so often.”
“Agreed,” Jason said. “Essentials first.”
“Do you really consider Magnum P.I. to be essential?” Farrah asked. “I’m not even clear on what television is, exactly.”
“Oh, it’s essential,” Jason said. “It’s going to come up a lot.”
Farrah was astounded by the plane, promptly learning about them from Jason. It left him worried about his own rather sketchy understanding of aerodynamics. If she was going to be learning about his world from him, she might end up with some strange ideas.
Following her initial outburst of emotion when they first met, Farrah had shown almost no signs of distress over what she had gone through. This started to worry Jason as they boarded the private plane and took to the skies. It was just the two of them, plus the pilot, co-pilot and one attendant who had apparently been instructed to be as non-intrusive as possible. After the plane settled into its flight, Farrah took Jason’s advice and went into the sleeping cabin.
Unguarded in her slumber, Jason felt the brutal nightmares through her aura.
55
FULL HOUSEBOAT
Jason had his own unfortunate experiences with how essence users dealt with extreme trauma following periods of captivity. In the time he had spent recovering, he had learned a lot from the priest of the Healer and Rufus's mother, Arabelle Remore. In the weeks he had spent receiving their care, they had elucidated how the response and recovery of essence users tended to go.