247: Fear

By Lt. (jg) Rada Dengar
80403.2350
Hours After Sacrifices


-= Melbourne , Victoria , Earth=-


Rada and Wren had made their way to a tiny little back street, the type of place which could only be found by those who’d been there before or by a lucky few who were lost. Wren was of course leading the way, whilst Rada was hiding his emotions from her and keeping his thoughts as quiet as possible she knew him well enough to know that he was apprehensive about this place. She still wanted him to come here though; this was her community after all.

“You don’t need to worry about this place, there have only been two stabbings in the entire time I’ve been here” she explained with a wink.

Rada knew enough about Wren to realise that she was probably joking; he was also aware however that Wren was the type of person that just when you thought you had a handle on her would be completely unpredictable just so you’d fall in love with her all over again. Rada realised that his feelings now were as strong as ever, he loved this woman regardless of whatever she’d done.

“How many times have you been here?” he asked, hoping to whatever higher power spent their time watching over cold, windswept back streets for the answer she was about to give.

“Twice,” she replied, he was relieved, now he knew it was a joke. You didn’t have to be an empath to realise how much she loved her child and that she would never endanger her own life in a place with a ‘stab a visit’ policy and risk leaving that child all alone.

Rada had left the school before Wren had fetched Tam. Both he and Wren had decided that there would have been too many questions; ‘Who are you?’ would have been a particularly tricky one to answer. Rada either had to lie to Tam about his name to avoid him noticing the similarity to his ‘father’s’ or he would have had to tell him the truth which would have opened a whole other can, no make that barrel of worms.

That’s why Wren had left Tam in the care of a woefully bloody-minded neighbour who was basically extorting money from her because she knew that Wren knew know one else available at such short notice and willing to look after a child with empathic abilities. You already had to be careful enough with a child’s impeccable ability to repeat verbatim all of the things which you shouldn’t have said around them to begin with, without also worrying about their repetition of stray emotions. Wren’s neighbour didn’t face this problem as was the type of person who was not shy about expressing their opinion; the type of person who would if she noticed an uneven tile on public walkway immediately start work on a letter to the council, only to have it turn into an angry letter to her local state representative, only to have it turn into an furious subspace transmission to the nearest Federation Council member, only to decide to barge in during the middle of a lunch meeting of their most senior members and to demand something be done about it but to end up not doing anything when she noticed on her way to the transporter hub that the tile was actually even after all.

Rada smiled at Wren, it was nice to see this side of her returning, and he could tell that she thought so too. Even though her life was probably more complicated now than it had been in a long time, she was still like a woman with the weight of the world lifted off her shoulders. Over the years she had considered that she had contemplated many things about a reunion with Rada, mostly that it would never happen and yet here he stood. She had been so terrified that he would stare at her with eyes full of hatred or worse of bitter disappointment but his eyes were nothing but warm. They could have a future now.

She led him by the hand through the doorway into a place decorated in a type of archaic post-modernism; the walls were formed from geometric shapes beginning as rectangles and with an increasing number of vertices eventually warping into perfect circles. From an Engineering standpoint it was atrocious, Rada didn’t know much about architecture but he assumed that it was atrocious from that standpoint as well. He didn’t care though, he was happy to be anywhere with her.

This place had been eerily quiet even before they’d stepped in and was now dead silent with everyone staring at Rada. A quick observation a high number of people with pale skin, distinctive forehead markings or a forehead ridge shaped like some kind of leaf and he realised that it was exactly as he feared. Everyone in this bar was at least an empath if not a telepath to boot and all of their eyes and undoubtedly their minds were fixed on him. He had never felt so uncomfortable in his life. Their grubby little mental fingers rummaging around in his mind looking for that stray thought he forgot to clean up.

He looked around for where to order a drink from but realised that no such facility existed. He had read about these places and knew that the drink ordering was empathic too. He was almost frozen and he actually wished he was back at the Golden Goose Bar, he longed for simpler times when all he had to worry about was decapitation, not some kind of mental invasion.

It was clear that they didn’t like Rada’s little mental brick wall and were going to keep trying to break through as long as they had to. Wren grabbed Rada’s hand for support as she listened to the intense chatter within the group.

Some discernable comments were: *What’s he doing here?*, *He’s not allowed here* and of course *I can’t read him, what is he? Some kind of mutated Ferengi?*

Rada realised that whilst some patrons might simply not like the idea of a man who wasn’t even a telepath invading their personal space, a concept which he found quite ironic considering their scans of him, other patrons, especially those with stronger abilities were probably quite annoyed that this arrogant little creature which they can only assume is Terran thinks that he can hide from them.

Under normal circumstances he would have raised some emotional façade for those around to view but he hated to lie to Wren so he had kept his emotions simply neutral.

Rada had to break the incredible silence from his point of view and Wren was glad because she hated all the noise from hers. He observed the casual yet commanding lean of one patron on what was clearly the most valued stool and decided that he was the first domino. Rada couldn’t identify his species but he looked almost Terran.

Rada released Wren’s hand and sauntered up to him, grabbed a romal from his pocket, threw it in his mouth and began to chew. The Captain had been quite right about them being sweet, he was worried that if this went wrong he may lose his teeth from a beating by a frustrated empath and if this went right that he could still lose them to Bajor’s answer to toffees.

“My....” he started out but was immediately cut off by the overweight gentleman’s booming voice.

“Look, this isn’t your fault but you’ve made a mistake. This place is not for the…” he pretended to search for the words “mentally inferior.”

Rada just put on a boisterous laugh and asked “What pray tell makes you think I’m mentally inferior to you?”

“You’ll understand in a few millennia when your species evolves beyond non-verbal contact,” he explained arrogantly.

“What makes you so sure we haven’t? You don’t even know which species I am because you can’t read me, can you?” Rada laughed.

“You are a dishonest creature,” the man scoffed then dared “Alright then, tell me what I’m thinking right now.”

“He’ll never do this,” answered Rada, placing his hands behind his back and leaning in with a smile.

“What?” the man asked.

“You’re thinking that I’ll never be able to read your mind.” Rada elaborated.

The man had been thinking that but wanted to catch Rada out so replied “No, I wasn’t.”

“You weren’t thinking that I couldn’t read your mind?” asked Rada.

“That’s correct,” replied the man casually.

“Never have?” asked Rada

“That’s correct,” the man replied again.

“So you’ve never thought that I couldn’t read your mind. Then I fail to see the problem.” Rada added with a false smugness.

The man was clearly annoyed that Rada had caught him out. There was laughter in the background. Being an empath bar meant that even those intimidated by the man knew there was no point in hiding their amusement.

“That’s not…”

This time Rada cut him off. “Actually you’re quite correct. I’m not a telepath or even an empath but I would place my mental abilities against yours any day”

“Look, this mental blocking thing which is natural to your species is very….nice, but I hardly think you have any way to challenge me.”

Rada was terrified at this moment as he realised he’d look like a moron if this didn’t work.

“We’ll have someone here guess a number between one and ten. Then the first one of us to guess it correctly wins.”

The man just laughed. “Very well then” and pointed towards a Napean man “You go ahead.”

At this time Rada began to look absolutely terrified and his eyes kept darting backwards and forwards. Everyone in the room felt an icy chill in his very bones. Everyone in the room suddenly began to panic about what had Rada so terrified. It felt like Rada was in agonising pain. Suddenly he blurted out “10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1.”

Suddenly there was no more fear to be sensed from Rada, all that remained was smugness and suddenly it hit people. A proud grin developed on Wren’s lips. Rada had tricked them. Created a series of false emotions then guessed the number while everyone was distracted.

There were some reluctant impressed murmurs before the overweight gentleman leaned in and begrudgingly said, “Well done.”

Lt. (jg) Rada Dengar
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012