Chapter Text
“Extraordinary” was not a word that an experienced psychonaut tended to throw around lightly. Delve into enough minds, match wits with enough psychic supervillains, and after a while your definition of what counted as “ordinary” inevitably changed. Out in the field, an agent was forever confronted with new paranormal mysteries and mutations - things that would terrify the wider world and flummox the mainstream scientific community. Yet with enough missions under their belt and a solid understanding of the workings of the mind, there was very little that could truly throw a seasoned psychonaut for a loop. A novel experience in the field could be intriguing, astonishing, even shocking - but rarely extraordinary.
This, however, was one occasion when that word seemed entirely appropriate.
A curious psychic energy was flowing through the Hospital Santo Jude. On the way over to the secluded hospital, traces of it had started to show up as much as two miles away, albeit only faintly. Once inside, though, there was no getting away from it. Wherever you went it was there, drifting down every corridor and across every ward, inescapable and unremitting.
At first, this unfamiliar energy manifested itself as nothing more than a continuous quiet pulsing, as gentle and rhythmic as calm ocean waves lapping softly against the shore. Only the keenest of minds would be able to distinguish it from the hustle and bustle of a busy hospital. But the longer one stayed in that place, what began as a few tiny ripples steadily swelled into a roiling tsunami of psychic waves. Surrounded by those turbulent energies, it was hard to imagine that any visitor - even someone without any powers of extrasensory perception - wouldn’t have felt a little nauseous, at the very least. If that was the worst that a non-psychic experienced, they were lucky; to an unprepared telepathic mind, the same sensation would have been absolutely excruciating.
Special Agent Sasha Nein, meanwhile, popped a couple of aspirin and reflected on what an interesting change this little outing made from wrangling psychic sea creatures.
It had been a long time since he’d received an assignment like this one. For months now, Sasha’s missions had consisted almost exclusively of hunting down dangerous criminals and rogue U.P.E.s. In the past week alone he’d apprehended two self-proclaimed “masters of mind control”. And it was only two days earlier that he had captured a surprisingly elusive teleporting whale, moments before it could crash-land on top of a Psychonaut desert outpost from 2,000 feet in the air. All in all, it had been a pretty average week. Jobs like these were standard fare for a newly promoted Special Agent. Plenty of his peers regularly took on similar missions with their partners, or as part of a larger team. Unlike them, however, Agent Nein was permitted - and even encouraged - to carry out his assignments alone.
That arrangement suited Sasha just fine. He liked being able to handle things his own way. Working solo meant he had control over almost every aspect of his cases, from gathering intel to deciding strategy. Gone were the days of dealing with the delays caused by disagreements over tactics or other agents’ squeamishness about the experimental gadgets he occasionally brought into the field. Now he could get straight down to business, in exactly the way that he judged best. It was very freeing. It was also deeply gratifying to think that the Psychonauts regarded his skills so highly that they were prepared to let him tackle such challenging missions by himself, especially so soon after his promotion.
More recently, however, Sasha had started to suspect that there were other motives at play.
Not long ago, one of the Motherlobe’s PR people had visited his lab to offer him what she called “the opportunity of a lifetime”. Cunningly, the woman chose to drop by while Sasha was distracted with fixing a malfunctioning mental cobweb detangler. It was a suspiciously shrewd bit of timing. Repairing a gunked-up detangler was one of those chores where once you started, you couldn’t back out - literally. As soon as those purple webs wrapped themselves around your upper body you were pretty much stuck fast for the duration. In hindsight, it was hard to imagine a better opportunity for a sneak attack.
Buried headfirst in the detangler’s sticky innards, Sasha couldn’t hear his visitor all that clearly. But what he could make out greatly intrigued him. From the sound of things, it seemed that the woman was asking him to agree to an interview for a magazine. And not just any magazine either, but the esteemed academic journal Review of Psychic Technology.
Agent Nein prided himself on his emotional restraint. At that moment, though, one wouldn’t have needed to peer too far into his head to see that he was inwardly whooping with glee. “The opportunity of a lifetime” indeed: only the finest minds in psionics earned themselves an article in Review of Psychic Tech. Over the last few years Sasha had tried on and off to put together a research paper that he considered worthy of it, but he’d yet to find the courage to actually send something in. Of course, he knew there were other ways for someone with his connections - indeed, Otto Mentallis had already offered several times to put in a good word for him with the editors. But Sasha insisted that if he ever made it in there, it would be down to his own efforts. Now, after years of hard work, the moment had finally arrived. He hadn’t even needed to submit anything; they had reached out to him.
Naturally, Sasha accepted the offer right away.
As he cut away at the purple cobwebs coating the detangler’s gears, Agent Nein briefly allowed his imagination to run wild. Which aspects of his work would Review of Psychic Tech ask about, he wondered. Would they want to hear about his use of new technologies in the field? His exploration of the Brain Tumbler’s possible applications for psycho-interrogation? Come to think of it, what exactly had led the journal to approach him now? Surely it couldn’t be connected to any of his current engineering projects; with all of these big missions occupying his time lately he’d barely had a spare minute to work on anything else. Whatever had prompted it, though, one thing was certain: this magazine appearance would mean big things for his experiments, his access to funding - perhaps even his entire career.
The PR lady was excited too, but for a very different reason: “Oh, the kids are gonna love this!”
“The what?”
It wasn’t until he’d detangled his own head from the machine’s loom mechanisms that Sasha learned he had misheard the woman completely. She wasn’t talking about Review of Psychic Tech at all. In actual fact, what Sasha had accidentally agreed to was a regular appearance in True Psychic Tales.
Although he was quietly disappointed about the journal, Sasha neither knew nor cared enough about the other magazine to raise any objections. He had far more important things to concern himself with than whatever fluff got published in a children’s comic book. Besides, based on what little he had heard about it, he doubted it would interfere with him or his work. Despite its name, True Psychic Tales was well-known for bending the facts, but no one had ever accused it of snooping or libel. At worst, the magazine was a shameless tool for luring in future young recruits. But it seemed fundamentally harmless.
Sasha fully expected that his conversation with the PR rep would be the last he’d hear about the matter. After all, nobody actually read those ridiculous comics … did they?
According to the ecstatic memo that the editors sent Sasha several months later, quite a lot of people did - even more, now that his face kept showing up on the cover. Apparently he was everything that True Psychic Tales’ thousands of readers wanted in a hero. A brilliant young prodigy plucked from obscurity. An astral warrior who never lost his cool, even as he tackled people’s most terrifying personal demons. A self-reliant, sharpshooting superspy whose sole passions were the pursuit of justice and the advancement of psychic science. From the moment Agent Nein graduated from occasional cameos to a lead role, the magazine’s readership figures had skyrocketed. Tellingly, the only dip came during a misguided attempt to introduce a (completely fictitious) sidekick. It seemed that kids dug their idol’s lone wolf persona too much to accept that he would ever need a partner to back him up. The writers quickly realised the error of their ways, and three issues later “Iggy the Intrepid Intern” was devoured by an invisible tiger. The comic’s sales instantly bounced back.
Every week the Motherlobe’s mailroom was flooded with letters from children the world over, all demanding only one thing: “More Agent Nein.” (It was probably no coincidence that around the same time, Clerk Cruller also began demanding one thing: “Some help shifting all these dang mailbags before I throw my back out!”) Watching the money roll in like never before, the magazine’s editors were more than happy to oblige, at least when it came to the former. As he read their memo, Sasha had to wonder if his recent run of high-stakes solo missions was less a reflection of the agency’s respect for his skills, and more just a convenient way of supplying True Psychic Tales’ writers with new story material.
There was no way they’d be crafting a comic strip out of this latest outing, though. The assignment that had brought Agent Nein to the Hospital Santo Jude was strictly confidential. The Motherlobe had just learned of a young woman whose telepathic abilities had emerged under extremely distressing circumstances. It was now Sasha’s job to bring her to headquarters for treatment and, perhaps, recruitment.
Compared to his other recent missions, this would be a fairly straightforward task. There’d be no deadly psycho-conspiracies or invisible assassins to thwart today. Nor was he likely to find himself in a race against time to save the world from an attempted mass hypnotism. When viewed alongside threats of that magnitude, Camilla Vodello’s case would seem to present no significant risks at all. And yet, for some reason, Truman Zanotto himself had raced over to Sasha’s lab to brief the Special Agent personally before he left for Brazil.
Truman’s visit was a welcome but puzzling surprise. He’d had virtually nothing to do with Sasha’s recent assignments, most of which came directly from the Nerve Center’s dispatchers. As a matter of fact, nobody had seen much of the Grand Head lately. It was common knowledge that Truman was currently juggling Psychonauts business with several dilemmas of a more personal nature. On the one hand, he was having trouble finding a childminder for his infant daughter. Her emergent powers were proving too hot for most babysitters to handle, and Truman was running out of volunteers. At the same time, the long-deteriorating situation with his uncle was rapidly coming to a head. Bob Zanotto’s behaviour had grown increasingly unpredictable. Any more slip-ups, and Truman knew he’d have to issue a very painful ultimatum: agree to get help, or get out altogether.
Between tending to two generations of his family, it was unusual for Truman to find the time to call in on individual agents. And it was completely unheard of for him to hand-deliver the details of a simple routine errand. Judging by the urgency in his voice as he briefed Sasha, though, it was obvious that the Grand Head cared far more about this particular routine errand than any of Agent Nein’s more perilous assignments.
Sitting in the hospital director’s office a few hours later, Sasha was starting to get a sense of why Truman had been so worried. It wasn’t just the unusual psychic energies pulsing through the air that were unsettling, but the details of the case too.
“So when you picked her up, she said she could hear the children inside her head?”
“She was screaming about it, Agent Nein.”
The man on the other side of the desk - one Dr. Hugo Gomes Pereira - looked ten years older than he probably was. The hospital director’s bloodshot eyes suggested that most of that ageing had happened very recently.
“The way the ambulance crew tells it, it sounds like the voices distressed her almost as much as the fire.” The director’s voice grew softer. “...I gather you’ve been told what happened.”
“Yes,” Sasha said quietly. “I have.”
“Meu Deus. Those poor children. Some of the other staff were caught in it too. The whole village is in shock. But Ms. Vodello is…” Dr. Pereira trailed off. His eyes flitted around the wall behind Sasha as he grasped for the right words. “Of course, to go through something like that - it would be devastating for anybody. But I’ve never seen symptoms like these before.”
The hospital director pushed a thick folder of case notes across the desk. Even before he opened it, Sasha knew exactly what kind of story it would tell. Nodding his thanks to the director, he picked up the file and began leafing through. His eyes skimmed over the inevitable slew of notes on treatments attempted and abandoned. Behind their clinical language, Sasha could sense the doctors’ desperation and bewilderment growing with each page.
He had just started to read through a more comprehensive description of Milla’s symptoms when the director spoke up again.
“We’ve tried everything we can here. None of it seems to help.” Dr. Pereira raked his fingers through his unkempt hair. “Most of the doctors want to transfer Ms. Vodello out to a psychiatric facility. Given some of the … particulars of her condition, I don’t think that would be wise. But we’re running out of alternatives. Right now, it looks like my only other options are you, or Dr. Honeysuckle.”
Sasha glanced up from the file. He raised his eyebrows. “Dr. Honeysuckle?”
“Yes. He’s an old college acquaintance of one of my surgeons. He reached out to me just before I got the call from your, uh, ‘organisation’. American gentleman. Very enthusiastic.” It was obvious the director had opted for a more polite word there than he might have ordinarily used. He quickly moved on. “Perhaps you know him? I’d imagine the two of you move in the same circles-”
Sasha’s unchanged expression told him they did not. Dr. Pereira shifted awkwardly in his chair.
“Ah. Well, his name’s not familiar to me either, but he said that he specialises in curing cases like this. I was going to meet with him last week, actually. But your boss - Mr. Zanatto, was it? - he seemed to think that was a bad idea. He insisted I let you speak with Ms. Vodello first.”
The hospital director knitted his brows as he thought back to the two, very different phone calls he’d had with each man. The head of the Psychonauts had made it sound like Dr. Pereira would be doing them a tremendous favour by entrusting Milla to their care. Talking to Dr. Honeysuckle, meanwhile, felt more like being on the receiving end of a rather aggressive sales pitch. The director had barely managed to get a word in edgewise, much less a question about Honeysuckle’s methods.
“Admittedly, that man didn’t go into much detail about how he cures people…” Pereira murmured.
Sasha’s jaw twitched. Every agent knew about the “cures” some so-called specialist surgeons inflicted on young psychics. When it came to persuading otherwise scrupulous institutions to release patients into their greedy hands, they could be very sneaky about spreading disinformation and exploiting desperation. Clearly Truman had gotten through to the hospital just in the nick of time.
“Doctor,” Sasha began, “I’d like to extend the Psychonauts’ sincere thanks for your cooperation in this matter. My superiors are very relieved that you agreed to our offer of help, and-”
“Agent Nein, I’ll be frank,” Pereira interjected. “I really don’t know what to make of this. I still don’t know how your people found out what’s been happening here. We certainly didn’t leak anything about Ms. Vodello’s condition to the press.”
They didn’t need to, thought Sasha. The advanced monitoring apparatus in the Nerve Center would have had no difficulty detecting a psychic signal as powerful as the one inside this hospital. Paired with a search of recent local news about the fire, that had surely given the Motherlobe more than enough information to conclude that this situation urgently required the Psychonauts’ attention.
Dr. Pereira shook his head. “If it weren’t for the things I’ve seen around the hospital lately, I never would have considered agreeing to something like this. Not in a million years. I mean, psychic secret agents? Psychic secret agents who double as therapists, no less - it’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!” He paused. “Uhh, no offence.”
Sasha raised a palm, calmly signalling that such back-pedalling was unnecessary. As sceptics went, this man was easily one of the more polite ones he’d met.
“I can assure you,” he said, “everything the Psychonauts do is grounded in thorough scientific research.”
The director seemed unconvinced. “Yes, well… I’d certainly like to know what branch of science can explain a ward of patients having the same nightmare as a woman halfway across the building.”
Sasha sat up straight (straighter than usual, anyway; he never slouched). Truman definitely hadn’t mentioned that in his mission briefing.
“She’s been transmitting?” he said.
“Transmitting?”
“Telepathically projecting her distress into another person’s mind,” Sasha explained cursorily. He looked back at the case file. The doctors’ account of Milla Vodello’s symptoms certainly supported his theory. No wonder the psychic waves inside the hospital felt so intense.
“‘Telepathically projecting’...” The director’s eyes bulged. “Hold on. You’re not suggesting she’s doing this intentionally, are you?”
“Not at all. If anything, she’s probably trying to stop it happening. But psychic contamination of this nature is very difficult to control without the proper training-”
Sasha broke off. He reflected on his words. “Control.” Of course. So that’s why Truman wants me to handle her case.
“Fortunately,” he continued aloud, “I have that training. Psychic self-regulation is one of my principal areas of expertise.”
“So you’ve dealt with this kind of situation before?” the director asked, in a voice that was half-hopeful and half-incredulous.
“Yes. And no.” Sasha stroked his chin and carried on talking, mainly to himself: “Transmitting a nightmare into multiple minds at that range, without the aid of psitanium - that really is quite remarkable.” As the agent stared off into space, an annoying thought occurred to him. He clicked his tongue. “Ach, I wish I’d brought my Esperiometer with me. The Myers readings alone must be off the charts in here…”
Dr. Pereira was less impressed.
“Look,” he began sternly.
The director’s stern tone of voice brought an abrupt halt to Sasha’s academic musings. The agent looked back at him again.
“My staff are doing their best,” Pereira went on, “and we all want to help Ms. Vodello. Of course we do. But we’re not trained for this kind of situation. And we have a responsibility to all of our patients. We simply aren’t equipped to deal with them waking up screaming every night because someone else is ‘transmitting’ her trauma into their heads.” The hospital director reached his palms up in a gesture of supplication. “Please, I just want to know if you can help her.”
Sasha closed Milla’s case file. “I can.”
Pereira slumped forward with a relieved groan.
“As for the other affected patients, I must admit that group therapy isn’t my specialism. But I’ll see that they get the help they need once I’ve spoken with Ms. Vodello. I can recommend some excellent agents who-”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Agent Nein.” The director sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You still have to convince me that there’s really something to all this … ‘psychic psychotherapy’ business. And more importantly, you still have to convince her.”
Dr. Pereira looked up. Sasha was already on his feet.
“Well then,” said the psychonaut. “There’s no time like the present.”