Hey Jude

I woke up when the car pulled to a stop and blinked around in confusion. Somehow we were outside Mikey's house. "How...?"

"Ten seconds is enough to extract directions from you without having to wake you." Wiley opened his car door, then paused halfway out and clicked his fingers at me when I didn’t move. "Come on, sleepy face. I doubt he'll give me cupcakes if I show up without you."

I reluctantly dragged myself from the car. I was kind of regretting deciding to do the talking to Mikey thing today. I really just wanted to go home. But we were there now so I supposed we might as well ruin another one of Mikey's parties with my grumpiness and some added drama.

I knocked on the front door for once instead of just strolling into Mikey's house. Mikey and his mum had always encouraged me to see their home as my own, but I wasn't about to casually drag in strangers.

"Mum, door!" I heard Mikey shout from inside. He never answered the door himself when his mum was home. They'd had to have a peep hole installed so he could check who was there if she was out after she'd forgotten her key one time and he'd fearfully ignored her knocking on the door for half an hour before figuring out it was her.

The smile Mikey's mum answered the door with slowly dropped off her face at the sight of Wiley and Sal, replaced by a look of confusion. "Jude...?"

Her eyes lingered on Wiley especially, and I didn't blame her. Even with his eyes obscured by dark sunglasses his appearance was rather unusual. Obviously he liked the attention. There was no other excuse for hair like that on an otherwise practical guy. Even the women I’d seen on base tended to keep theirs short or at least tied back.

Wiley gave her a smile. "Cupcakes?"

Sal elbowed him in the side and stepped forward. She offered Mikey's mum her hand to shake. "Hi, I'm Sal and this is Wiley. We work with Jude. You're Mikey's mum, right?"

"Um, yes," she said, cautiously taking Sal's hand. "You're with the Parks and Wildlife Service?"

"Oh, uh, I got a new job. With the military," I told her.

Her eyebrows shot up. "Oh, I see."

The smile Sal gave Mikey's mum was convincingly reassuring. By this point I knew Sal well enough to know that she could hold her own against Wiley when it came to callousness and snark, but when she wanted to she sure could pull off ‘mature professional’ just as well. I wasn’t so sure Wiley could, or that he even cared to try, so I was hoping he would continue to let Sal do most of the talking.

"I'm a doctor," Sal told her. "Jude told me your son has an... interesting problem, and I thought I might be able to offer some insight. May we come in?"

Mikey's mum gave me a curious look before stepping back to let us inside. "Of course. He probably won't want anything to do with it, though. He's had some bad experiences with doctors and has refused to cooperate with anything more for years, but if Jude thinks it might be a good idea... Well, if I'm honest I think he knows Mikey better than I do."

She led us to the kitchen where Mikey and Finn were sitting at the kitchen counter, a few empty stools between them. Finn looked uncomfortable, as he always did when inside Mikey's house.

"What's going on?" Mikey asked when we walked in, and he actually looked a little scared as his eyes darted between me, Wiley, and Sal.

I went over to him and put my hand on his arm, doing my best to reassure him with touch. It felt a little awkward with Sal and Wiley watching, but fuck it, Mikey needed it. "You can see them, yeah?"

Mikey nodded, and I heard his mum gasp.

"Did you know he'd be able to see you?" she asked Sal.

"Suspected," Sal replied. "It's an unusual incidence, even within my particular area of expertise, so I can rely only on conjecture. It's a genetic... difference, I suppose you'd call it. An obvious impairment in some areas, but I think he might possess a valuable skill few others do."

Mikey was leaning heavily against my side now and his hands had bunched tightly in his shirt. I wrapped an arm around him protectively and murmured in his ear. "It's okay, these are good people, you're safe. Nothing you don't want."

Ever so slightly, Mikey relaxed. That was the best I could do for now.

"Perhaps I could speak to him alone for a while...?" Sal suggested. "If he wants, of course."

Mikey took hold of my hand. "With Jude too."

Sal smiled at him. "Yes, that might be better."

"Jude," Finn hissed at me as I helped Mikey off his stool. "What's going on? Who are these people?"

I shook my head at him. "Later."

And by 'later' I meant most likely literally never. He did tend to get left out when it came to these things. Maybe that made him lucky, but I doubted he would have seen it that way. In truth, I supposed I wouldn’t have wanted to be left out of the loop either. Not when all this involved my friends.

Wiley strolled further into the room. "So, where are the cupcakes?"

Apparently he wasn't coming in with us to speak to Mikey, then. Good. This conversation probably wouldn't have benefited from Wiley's brand of dickery.

Mikey led me and Sal up to his room in silence, the muscles in his back tense. I felt bad for putting him through this, but there had to come a point where he faced up to his issues. Not that I would have tried to force him to if he'd resisted, but this was a good opportunity for him and I was sure as hell going to encourage him.

When we reached his room Mikey took hold of my hand and led me over to sit on his bed. Sal perched on the edge of a low table that sat across from the bed in the middle of the room, careful to avoid disturbing the half finished puzzle that lay on its surface.

"I heard you talking to my mum," Mikey said, then turned to me and made a face. "You're working for the military now? And they know about... about all this?"

My expression automatically mimicked his. "It's kind of complicated, but yeah. These people, though, Wiley and Sal, they're good. You can trust them. They're my friends and they want to help you."

"Good intentions and good ideas aren't the same thing," Mikey told me.

"I won't lie and tell you that Jude won't be in any danger with us," Sal told Mikey, "but I promise that we will do our best to protect him. In the long term, he's actually safer with us."

I should have been doing all I could to reassure Mikey, but I couldn't help but ask, "How do you figure that one?"

"Sorry, can't tell you yet. The important thing is you know I'm telling the truth."

I wrinkled my nose at her, but I didn’t argue. I didn’t like the idea of more secrets, but she was right. I did know she was being honest, and if there were things she genuinely couldn’t tell me yet there wasn’t much point in fighting her on it.

Mikey let out a long sigh. "Okay, what do you want to know?"

"Jude told us you can only see some people. Do you see anything in place of the people you can't see?"

Mikey bunched his hands in his bedspread and tugged at it. His eyes were on the floor when he answered. "Yes."

The news that he didn't actually see nothing at all as he had always claimed wasn't shocking. I knew that was bullshit. That he was admitting it, though, that was new.

"What do you see?" Sal asked.

Mikey's head stayed lowered, but his eyes flicked up to gaze at Sal, watching her carefully as he spoke. "Colours. Swirling, churning colours, like liquid light. The people I can see have them too."

Okay, that was definitely new information. And, though I knew mutually accepted dishonesty was the very core of our relationship, I felt a little hurt that he'd never told me. That wasn't fair, though. There was fear worked into all of this for him that I didn't fully understand.

"That sounds pretty," Sal said, giving him a gentle smile. She didn't sound at all surprised. "Do the colours represent anything?"

"Feelings." Mikey kicked at the ground. "Emotions. Things about what kind of person someone is."

I'd been keeping quiet so that I didn't disrupt the conversation, but I had to comment on that. "Really? You can just look at people and tell what they're feeling from swirly colours?"

Mikey nodded and shrugged.

"An empath," Sal contributed. "I always thought seeing emotions sounded like the most fun, but it's an ability that can manifest through any of the senses. I once met a man who could taste emotions. It sounded unpleasant."

"I used to have a psychiatrist who could feel emotions. Not like touch, but like... feel. In his feelings." Mikey scrunched up his face. "Maybe I shouldn't have told you that. It was a secret."

"Well, perhaps if you can see things about people in their colours you can see that I'm being honest when I tell you that I promise to keep both your secrets and his," Sal told Mikey.

I hesitated for only a second before saying, "Or, uh, I could tell you. That's she's telling the truth, I mean. That's a thing I found out I could do today, that I can detect when someone's lying. We think that's why you can see me, and everyone else you can see. Because we have something special about us."

Mikey tapped his fingers against the bed. "Yeah... I knew that already. All those things."

For a long moment I just stared at him, mouth slightly agape. "You knew? About my thing too?"

Mikey winced and nodded. "I knew before I met you that everyone I could see was special somehow, so I knew right away there had to be something. It took me about a year to figure out what."

"And you didn't think to tell me?" I asked. Not telling me about himself was one thing, but knowing I had a fairly unimpressive superpower and not telling me was another thing entirely.

Mikey stared down at his shoes. "Wasn't it easier, though? When you didn't know about any of this? If you hadn't gotten involved in all of this you would have been better off not knowing."

"That wasn't up to you to decide." I buried my face in my hands for a moment and rubbed my eyes. "Okay. All right, whatever, I'm over it. We can move on."

Mikey leant on my so heavily that I had to wrap my arms around him to keep him from falling over. "Can you fix me?" he asked Sal.

The look Sal gave Mikey was one of genuine sympathy. "I'm sorry, but no. I'm a healer; if you have a physical injury I can heal you with a touch. But this... I really am sorry."

Mikey let out a huff of breath. "What about fixing someone else so I can see them. Just one person. Can you do that?"

Sal shook her head. "I'm sorry."

I could make a guess at who the one person Mikey would like to be able to see was. He never would have admitted it in the past, but I wondered if he would now. I decided not to ask, though. He'd been honest enough for one day.

"Am I right in assuming you haven't told your mum about your special ability?" Sal asked.

Mikey made a face and shook his head, his hair brushing against the underside of my neck.

"I won't go into specifics with her, then, but I would like to tell her a little bit. There are a lot of things that have to remain a secret from her for now because they're classified, but I expect we will explain the bigger picture to her in detail eventually. Jude, as Mikey is personally involved in this you're free to share whatever information with him you like. I'm sure we don't have to worry about his ability to keep a secret."

Mikey nodded. "I promise."

Sal seemed satisfied, so I hauled Mikey off of me and to his feet. "Let's go talk to your mum."

When we returned to the kitchen Wiley was the only one sitting at the kitchen counter, an empty cupcake wrapper in front of him and a second cupcake in his mouth. He waggled his fingers at us. Mikey's mum, who had been halfway through making coffee, looked up when we walked in. She looked relieved to see us, though whether that had more to do with her son or Wiley's company I didn't know.

"Where's Finn?" I asked.

"I sent him home," Wiley said around a mouthful of cupcake. "He was admirably resistant, but he's pretty much a mess of vulnerabilities when it comes to that kid." He gestured vaguely in Mikey's direction. "Not exactly hard to get him to storm off in a huff."

"You could have been nicer about it," Mikey's mum scolded. I got the general feeling that she felt a bit sorry for Finn.

"Yes, I'm sorry about Wiley’s behaviour," Sal told her. "You'll have to excuse him, he's had a bit of a rough day."

Wiley was an ass every day so that was a pretty bullshit excuse, but I supposed Mikey’s mum didn't know that. Wiley didn't deign to comment, so Sal continued. "It's good Finn has left, though, because as he isn't family I'm able to share less information with him."

"Would you like some coffee?" Mikey's mum asked.

"Yes please."

Mikey's mum poured some of the coffee from the carafe into a mug and handed it to Sal. "I have to admit, I'm quite nervous about this whole thing. I mean, I always knew something was strange about Mikey, but military secrets? What is this, some experiment gone wrong?"

Sal took a sip of her coffee before responding. "While we don't fully understand the original source of the genetic abnormalities in your son and others, I can assure you that nobody alive today is responsible for them. This is more a matter of... Well, your son is different in a certain way that's rather harmless, but others have differences that can be dangerous. It's not so much that we think there would be panic if this went public, though there is that. The main issue is that these dangerous parties would prefer to remain a secret and to do that they must show a certain restraint in the harm that they do. If remaining secretive was no longer an issue they would no longer need to show any such restraint. Do you see?"

Slowly, Mikey's mum nodded. "That makes sense... in theory. But there was a man a couple of years ago, was he with you...? Anyway, he said one of Mikey's friends was dangerous. Did that have something to do with this? Was that why Mikey could see him? But... I find it hard to believe that that boy would have hurt anyone."

"Ah, yes... he is with us, but we don't exactly see eye to eye," Sal explained. "I honestly don't know the full story with that boy, but I suspect you were lied to about him. Jude...?"

I shook my head. "That man is far more dangerous than Zion ever was. We're going to do something about him, though. He won't be working with us much longer."

"But as he is dangerous and we have him to contend with for now, I would of course never suggest bringing your son into any situation involving him," Sal told Mikey's mum. "Maybe after he's gone, though, Mikey might be interested in taking on a position with us. Not anything that would threaten his safety, of course, but I understand that finding a job elsewhere would be particularly challenging for someone with his unusual impairment. We, however, could make use of his skills."

"You keep saying 'skills'. His impairment is obvious, but I can't think of any skills he has that the military could use."

"He's rather full of secrets, and I'm sorry, but he's old enough that it's up to him to share or not share that information with you. I would hope he does decide to, and it will likely necessarily be revealed to you eventually, but for now I've said all I can."

Mikey's mum chewed at her thumbnail for a few seconds while she thought. "Then I suppose it's up to him to decide whether he wants to work for you. And Jude, of course. You seem very nice and you seem to genuinely care about my son, but I've known Jude for a long time now so it's his judgement of the situation that will decide my position."

"I know for a fact that everything Sal's told you is true," I assured her. Now that I knew I could reliably pick lies, I could be sure of even the things she'd said that I had no personal evidence of.

Mikey's mum nodded, satisfied. "I'll have to talk to Mikey about it."

Sal drained the last of her coffee. "Thank you for being so good about this. I understand it must be difficult not to have all the information when it concerns someone you care about so much. We'd better get going now. Jude, are we driving you home?"

"No, I'll stay. I think I should talk to Mikey some more." I turned to Wiley. "Can you pick me up from here in the morning?"

"Will there be cupcakes left?"

I glanced at the containers with them in on the counter. There were still about a dozen left. "Yes, but I'm not sure Mikey'll give you any more after you were mean to Finn."

Mikey hunched in on himself and squirmed slightly. "He can have more because he's sad and they make him happy. Maybe he'll be nicer if he's happy."

"Yeah, that could totally happen." Wiley made a grasping motion with his hand in the direction of the cupcakes. "One for the road?"

After Wiley and Sal had left, me and Mikey went back to his room and curled up together on his bed. I supposed to an outside viewer our position would have made us look like lovers, but there were no outside viewers and of that I was glad.

We talked for hours about all the new things I'd learnt and all the old things he'd never told me. About the girl he'd known when he was little, and how he'd never seen her again after her parents found out he knew she could turn water into ice. About his psychiatrist who had been his best friend before his mother had caught Mikey cuddling up to him, gotten the wrong idea, and moved Mikey to a new town. It had been after that that I'd met him, when he'd started school with me.

Some of the things I'd only just learnt were some he'd already known. He'd known that humanoid demons existed, though only as people he'd seen who he'd been able to tell were bad. He hadn't known what they were, or how they connected to Zion. I told him about McCartnnon, and about the kids, hoping he could understand why I had to take the risks I was taking. He didn't like me putting myself in danger, but after he knew what the stakes were he agreed that those risks were necessary.

Mikey cried when we talked about Zion, and I felt a little like crying too. He should have been there, been a part of this, but instead we didn't even know where he was. Delphi had assured me he was okay, though, and that leant us both some reassurance. When all of this crap with McCartnnon was over, I promised myself, I would do whatever I could to find Zion.

If Mikey's mum made dinner she didn't come up and disturb us to offer us any, and neither of us had enough of an appetite to motivate us to move. Eventually we fell asleep like that, arms around each other as if to protect each other from the world. We hadn't done that in a long time.

#

As promised Wiley came to pick me up from Mikey's the next morning, and as promised Mikey gave him more cupcakes. As soon as we were in the car, Wiley tossed his sunglasses into the glove compartment. He held one of the cupcakes in his mouth as he pulled away from the curb.

Once we had finished winding through suburban streets and were out on the highway, Wiley focussed on eating his first cupcake. It was incredibly disconcerting to see him giving more attention to picking crumbs off his shirt than the road.

"I'm confiscating the rest of the cupcakes until we get there," I told him, reaching for the container. "I know you can see the future and all, but we're going a hundred kilometres an hour and you not having your eyes on the road is freaking me out."

"You know what would freak you out more? My ignoring the road to wrestle that away from you. Put it back."

I considered that a moment, then put the container back. He would probably have done it, possibly specifically to scare me. "How do you even pay attention to the future and the present at the same time, anyway? I mean I can kind of understand with driving, since people multitask on that all the time and if you crash it's probably going to be pretty obvious, but I've seen you do it during conversations without pause. How does that work?"

"Hmm... have you ever been somewhere with multiple groups of people having different conversations, and been listening to one when suddenly you hear someone say 'my sister's really into anal' in a different conversation?"

"Not that specific line, no, but I get your general point."

"That's the cocktail party effect. Your brain's always paying attention to what's going on around you even if you're not paying attention to it consciously. I mean, you might even expect the word anal to get your attention, but you heard the whole sentence even though the taboo word was the last one in it. Your brain was taking in and processing all the conversations around you and decided you'd probably like to know about some dude's sister being into anal."

"That sounds like the exact opposite of a thing I'd want to know, but again I get your point. It doesn't seem to be subconscious for you, though."

Wiley fished another cupcake out of the container. "No, I was getting to that. The difference between you and me, or me and any other normal person, is that I can process two things at once consciously. It's extremely useful and pretty much necessary for my ability to be even remotely functional, but as I was trying to explain not really all that different to how a regular person's brain functions."

"That's pretty cool," I admitted. "So, what manner of torture do you have planned for me today?"

"No torture, actually, which will make a nice change." Wiley bit into his cupcake, chewed, swallowed. "Well, a nice change for you. I was having plenty of fun."

"I noticed."

"Today we're going to talk to Vance, Mace, and Ethan about joining us in our quest to fuck McCartnnon over and save those kids. I don't have any doubt that they'll say yes, but first we have to make sure McCartnnon hasn't gotten his claws into them in any way that might pose a threat. That's where you come in. I ask the questions, you tell me if they're answering truthfully."

"Okay, that sounds easy enough. It won't take all day, though."

"Maybe I'll spend the rest of the day beating you with sticks. Maybe I'll let you leave early. Who really knows?"

"I hate you."