Evergreen: Trace Contact by Kevin Tumlinson

Author:Kevin Tumlinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Happy Pants Books

* * *

Elliot led me through the San Francisco streets, staying just ahead of me, until we reached a building with several shops and a Chinese restaurant at the street level. Upstairs, according to a sign, was a palm reader.

I followed him in through the ground-floor door, up the stairs, and finally in through a door he held open to me.

“Palm reader,” I said.

“It’s a living,” he replied, though his tone was sharp.

[If he has your ability,] Henry said, [he is a palm reader indeed.]

Elliot locked the door, and pointed me to a seat at a round table. There was an arcane looking cloth spread over it, with patterns made from woven gold threads. I gave a quick shake of my head. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

[Go easy,] Kirsten said. [You don’t know what kind of life he’s had.]

[And you’ve done some grifting yourself, right?] Jacob asked.

“Nothing,” I smiled, and took a seat.

I noticed for the first time that Elliot shared at least one of my habits—he wore long sleeves and a pair of gloves.

He sat down across from me, gave me a hard look, then said, “Ok, talk.”

I nodded, and then I started telling him most of the story.

I left out certain key bits. I didn’t tell him the names of the twins, for example. We could introduce ourselves later. I also didn’t tell him quite everything about what I could do. I wanted to tease a little more info out of him first. After all, the twins had a different ability than I had, and only the skin-to-skin contact thing was similar.

What if Elliot’s ability was different in some way, too?

When I got to the part about Victor and the secret base, Elliot’s look went from skeptical to out-and-out disbelief.

“So you’re saying you flew here in a helicopter.”

“No,” I said. “Not here. Just out of the base. And it was totally Airwolf.”

“What’s Airwolf?”

“Why does nobody remember Airwolf?” I shook my head.

“So you’re a pilot?”

“No,” I said. I inhaled and let it out slowly. “But one of the guests in my head is.”

I watched him. This was the moment. This was when I’d know whether he was really like me.

“Guests in your head?” he asked, and suddenly he had a very different expression. A “what kind of crazy did I let into my place” expression.

My heart sank.

“Ok, so…” I started.

“I think you’d better leave,” he said.

“Wait,” I said, holding up my hands. “Back in the park, I told you I knew about you. About what you can do. I’m just gambling here… you have an ability, right? One that happens when you touch someone? Skin to skin?”

He was watching me, but said nothing.

“That’s me, too. Although maybe mine is different from yours. When I touch someone… when I make skin-to-skin contact… my brain makes a copy of their memories and personality. Or… well, the technical sciencey term is ‘memory engram.’ Basically, everything they know, everything they think, all their skills, I get a copy of all of it. For 30 minutes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.