“Carol, would you mind staying a few minutes after class?” asked Doctor Collins.
Carol stopped putting away her things and watched the other two students in her tutorial leave the office. She had an idea where this was going.
“So,” said her short, white-haired advisor, leaning back in his chair, “you’ve enrolled in Telepathy.”
“Yes,” said Carol. What would he think?
“They’ve told us not to bother any of you about it, but…” he trailed off, giving her a questioning look.
“We’re not supposed to talk about the class either,” Carol agreed.
Collins sighed. “This blasted thing’s going to bring down the whole college. Students forbidden to speak of their courses. Emily’s a fool.”
“I think they’re mainly trying to protect our identities,” said Carol.
“As if,” Collins scoffed. “Utterly naïve and stupid. Remember you always have the option to leave. I’d write you a great recommendation for anything.”
“Thank you, but it’s been fine, so far,” said Carol.
“Has it?” he asked. “I don’t suppose you’re a telepath already?”
“Um,” Carol squirmed, unsure whether she was allowed to answer. “Rose only said that we couldn’t talk about the class, I think.”
“So you can’t ask her right now?” he gathered. “What a relief. Miss Ward, you didn’t consult with me before dropping Doctor Tucker’s course—”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“—but please tell me you at least spoke with your family.”
Carol’s eyes dropped to the table. “No.”
“They have no idea, then?”
“No.”
She’d had several conversations with her parents over the past week, but she’d managed to skillfully avoid answering their questions truthfully without lying, so far at least. They hadn’t even questioned the fact that she was suddenly enrolled in a Spanish course despite taking two years of French in high school.
“Then you understand why I have to ask: have you been doing alright, Carol? Was this summer stressful for you?”
Over the past couple of years, Collins had grown somewhat close with Carol, their interests being so aligned. He had never before pried so deeply into her affairs outside the realm of psychology, but his eyes displayed a deep concern that Carol knew was genuine.
“No, I think I’m fine,” she said, her voice wavering. She winced inwardly, imagining what he might make of her tone.
“What you did was incredibly reckless,” he said. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
Carol wanted to remark that Emily was the reckless one, that Rose could have easily infected the entire college if she pleased, but she kept her mouth shut.
“Yes, but I’d already met Rose,” she said. “She lives next to me.” She knew it was a weak argument, and found herself questioning her own actions once again. Had it been entirely peer pressure?
Collins studied Carol’s face for a minute.
“You know as well as I do that anything out of her, er, William Statton’s mouth proves nothing.”
“She was raised by humans,” said Carol.
“So they claim. Some humans raise snakes, but I would never put a tamed boa constrictor around my own throat!” He threw up his hands as though struggling to put words to a concept, but promptly gave up and gave Carol a questioning, desperate look.
Snakes… “Do you believe that stuff?”
“What?”
“The religious stuff: the Beast and whatever,” she said.
“Good God, no,” he said. “Seven-headed dragon, bah! Although I do find myself wondering, from time to time. She looks more like a gecko than a snake, anyway. Or an iguana.”
“I’m… in the same boat,” Carol admitted. “Have you met her?”
“Only briefly. Seems nice enough.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got to be going, but Carol, please consider going to counseling.”
“I’ll… think about it.”
“And I don’t want to be the paranoid type, but please keep your eyes open around Rose,” he said. “If that gecko does anything a shade suspicious, remember you can just leave.”
“Alright, I will,” she said, grateful the post-lecture lecturing was coming to an end.
“I’m glad we got to have this talk before you became a telepath. There are things I otherwise might not have said.”
“Actually,” said Carol, making him pause. “I am a telepath, as of a couple hours ago.”
“Oh?”
“It’s weird, I…” she tried to make it clear that she hadn’t lied earlier. “I can’t even communicate except with Morse right now, and I don’t know Morse.”
“It’s binary, then?” he asked, studying her face with renewed intensity. “It starts with one bit of bandwidth, and grows over time?”
She listened to the gentle breeze that was her brain’s expression of her telepathic connection with Rose. “Not really, but… I’m not sure what I can say.”
“Then by all means ask, and please get back to me as soon as you get an answer. Wouldn’t you rather make something of this than your Developmental tutorial? Have you been making note of side effects?”
Could increased loneliness be a side effect of telepathy? she wondered. Side effects hadn't been properly measured, but the telepaths all claimed they were negligible. Claims like that, Carol now knew, might be driven by an ulterior motive. Telepathy was essentially a permanent extension of the brain. Of course there would be side effects. She couldn’t even write about her experience, valuable as a record of introspection would be.
“No,” she answered his last question first. “I don’t think we can publish anything without permission at least, but I would like to make something of it. Will Developmental be—”
“You’re not to worry about Developmental. You just see what we can do, and we’ll continue from there.”
Carol went to her room that night right after dinner, a little disappointed. That morning, she had made a small breakthrough in the use of a metaphor of turbulent fluids — like storms or waterfalls — to explain the white noise, but for the rest of the day she had failed to make noticeable progress in discerning the meaning of her newfound sense. There were now two sources of the noise, identical but for their relative strengths. Carol suspected that Rose’s connection was stronger not because it was better developed, but because Rose was actively making it stronger. Human and dragon minds didn’t feel different at all, at least according to Carol’s current abilities.
The sensation wasn’t annoying. A connection usually begged about as much attention as one of her toes; maintaining twenty of them wouldn’t be a problem at all, at least if they were all quiet. When Carol blocked a connection, it tended to stay dim until she manually unblocked it. That gave her some relief, as she would prefer keeping her thoughts to herself in her sleep. The fact that Rose had told the truth so far was becoming less surprising.
It was still light outside when dinner began, but Carol was already harboring a deep exhaustion behind her eyes, the result of her early morning discussion with Rose. She recalled the first day Will had arrived in England: he had wanted to force himself to stay awake until a normal time, but Rose convinced him to sleep through the day. Once in her room, Carol faced the same dilemma: if she slept, she ran the risk of the same thing happening the following morning. Rose might now know the moment Carol awoke, depending on how telepathy worked, and the sleepless alien had seemed so happy to have company the previous morning. Would tea in Carol’s dorm become a daily tradition? Carol imagined Rose knocking on her door the moment she opened her eyes, and sighed. She should have bought cream.
She wasted no time in getting into her pajamas and brushing her teeth. Left alone for the first time all day, Carol's mind descended into places that she had been avoiding. All her friends now had at least one working connection, and she had been able to lose herself in their shared experiences detailed before dinner over a couple games of Texas Hold’em, but now Carol found herself in the uncomfortable position of being separated from the alien by only her sheets and a single wall of sheetrock. She wished she could confide in someone else about what was happening, someone outside the school, but the class’s strict non-disclosure policy forbade it.
Carol turned over in bed, tried to clear her mind. She focused on breathing, as in class, and it was only a few minutes before sleep began to take hold. On a whim, she briefly reopened her connections.
Good-night, Rose, she said, enunciating each syllable with a gentle pulse. Goodnight, William.
After a short pause, both neighbors replied with four pulses in kind. It seemed like they understood. The two responses were simultaneous yet subtly different, like two counterpoint melodies, and it was in pondering their differences that Carol found herself falling asleep.
The early-to-bed strategy didn’t work as intended: Carol once again found herself up before the sun, and she had no hope of sleeping after the adrenaline rush that accompanied recalling her new telepathic abilities.
She checked both connections. Will’s felt the same as earlier, so she couldn’t tell if he was awake.
Hello, she said to Rose.
Both Rose and Will responded with long strings that had to be complete sentences. The messages were slightly altered from the night before, less like white noise, and more concentrated, like — was music a better metaphor? The pulses all felt different, but they might as well have represented words in a foreign language.
What? she asked, without the slightest idea whether they might understand the single pulse. Rose probably did, knowing her.
After a minute, there was a gentle rapping on her door.
“Just a—just a second,” she said, stretching her feet.
After fumbling with the door, Carol was startled to see—not Rose on the other side, but Will. She flushed in embarrassment at being seen in her pajamas.
“Hey,” he said. “We got this kettle and, uh, were wondering if you would like to have some tea, if you weren't planning on going back to sleep.”
Carol wondered at her reaction. I was prepared for Rose to see me like this, but not Will? Is it because I think of her as a girl, or as a non-human?
After getting dressed, Carol found herself back in the Lair, or rather what it had become.
“Wow,” she said.
The front room now had a half sofa and a recliner. A large TV dominated a wall, with expensive-looking speakers on either side. Twin desktop computers glowed blue and red under a long desk, a chair on one side and a metal T-shaped perch on the other. The top bar of the perch was covered in dark leather and capped with brass knobs on either side.
“You like it?” asked Rose, jumping onto the perch.
“Yeah, it's completely different. Very cozy.”
Everything looked brand new and expensive. The walls featured several framed portraits of the beach, presumably from Jacksonville, and a carpet covered the floor. A plant grew in the desk's window, which had a protective screen like Carol's.
“Good thing we bought almost everything here, isn't it?” Rose asked.
“So that's what I kept hearing while you were gone,” Carol realized.
“Yeah, we didn't really do any of the work,” said Will. “I don't even know where these pictures are from.”
Carol wondered where their money came from, but she decided it was too rude to ask. The guards stationed all around the school were American, but did the United States government pay the Stattons' salaries, as ambassadors perhaps? Was the college paying for all this? Or the United Kingdom?
She sat down in the recliner while Will went about filling the kettle with water from a filter. Rose jumped onto the couch and wrapped herself in a blanket with a surprising amount of energy.
“So what do you think of our plan?” Will asked.
“No, not good,” Rose interjected before Carol could respond. “Carol would much rather we have some fun with telepathy, wouldn’t you? Did you understand what we were trying to say earlier?”
Carol stared at her blankly, mind still somewhat groggy, until—
Pulse pulse pulsity pulse pulse-pulse.
“Oh, God no,” she replied. “Can you understand me?” She switched to broadcasting telepathically: Hello, my name is Carol Ward. Broadcasting to two connections at once, she noticed, was trivially easy.
“I can tell the first word was ‘hello’,” said Will. “But Rose got it. ‘My name is Carol Ward.’ But that's mostly just her being a dragon. She didn't really understand it at first.”
He broadcasted telepathically as he spoke, which didn't really help. Carol had difficulty paying attention to both streams of information at once.
“How did you get ‘hello’?” asked Carol. “I don't hear words at all.”
“We don't either. We made note of your messages earlier. It’s easier than you think, and you get better at it with practice.”
“Does it sound like static to you?”
“You think of it as sound?” Rose asked. “Would you say you're a very verbal thinker? People usually find it easier to rely upon either words or images.”
She, too, broadcasted gibberish along with her words. Carol realized that the gibberish she was hearing was likely the same stream of information Will heard when he spoke for Rose. It didn’t seem helpful, but at the very least it made it absolutely unambiguous who was doing the talking. Never again would she need to pay careful attention to determine whom to face whenever Will spoke. Carol tried to make note of how each word felt, but they came too quickly.
“That's surprisingly relevant to what I was researching this summer with the imagery stuff,” Carol remarked.
“I know,” Rose said with an impatient air. “So have you tried imagery instead of sound?”
“Only a little,” Carol said. “I was using this wind metaphor that seemed to work earlier, but only when you weren't speaking.”
“Interesting. Everyone is different, so I can't give you too much advice except to experiment. And please broadcast to Will and me when you talk, too.”
“Oh, sorry,” Carol apologized, broadening her connection and allowing the words to resonate in that specific corner of her mind. “I didn't realize learning it would be so asymmetrical.”
“It might not be, we're not really sure,” said Will. “Attention from either side seems to help.”
“Aren't the metaphors pointless then, if the network will eventually do all the translating for us?”
“Eventually, yes,” said Rose. “But for the language-only phase, you have to do a lot of the work yourself.”
“That's how you were able to speak with Amber so quickly, then,” Carol suggested. “Makes sense.”
Rose nodded and pulsed.
“Yes?” Carol asked.
Yes, said Rose, nodding again. Then she shook her head and broadcasted, no.
The kettle announced that the water was boiling, and Will got up to silence it.
“Milk?” he asked as he divided the steaming water into three mugs.
“Sure,” Carol said. She eyed the amount he had already begun pouring into the first mug, presumably Rose’s. “Not that much though.”
“That’s for the lizard,” Will said.
The next pour was much more measured, and the mug actually ended up with more tea than milk.
Rose began a vocabulary lesson while waiting for Will to distribute the tea. She pointed at herself, at Will, and at Carol, and sent pulses with each motion. It would have been easy to master such a small vocabulary if Will didn’t send his own pulses at the same time in his own mental language, and Carol told them as such.
“We’re going to do this same exercise in class today,” Will explained. “Later, we’ll repeat it in groups until everyone is connected. You get better at it.”
“Why do I get special treatment?” asked Carol.
Will shrugged. “You’re our alpha tester. The class is beta.” He looked at Rose, concerned. “Have you not told her that?”
The little dragon didn't respond aloud, but stared at Carol with an amused expression.
“How is it?” Will asked.
“Good, it just needs to steep a little,” she answered. “Is this going to become a thing?”
“If you want,” said Rose. “Will shouldn’t usually get up this early, so it would be just us like yesterday, at your place. You could invite your friends, too.”
“I’d need cream, wouldn’t I?” Carol asked. “I need to stop by the grocery anyway, haven’t been in a while.”
She almost recommended a restaurant for brunch before she shut up, not wanting to brag about being able to walk outside in front of Rose. She sipped at her tea and suddenly realized how long she now had to sit with the present company, who were looking at each other, presumably speaking telepathically. Out of good ideas for light conversation, she almost resorted to asking them how they were liking Oxford when Rose spoke up.
“Want to know a benefit of telepathy that we haven’t really talked about?”
“What?” asked Carol.
“Communicating quantities,” Will answered with a smile, as though it were a joke.
Carol thought for a moment, but could see no obvious trap.
“Quantities?” she asked.
Will looked at Rose.
“Quantities, intensities. Here, open your mind to me,” said Rose, her voice almost motherly despite its masculine tambre.
“It’s already open.”
“I’m sure you can get it several times wider than that,” Rose argued, cocking her head. “You’ve been holding back ever since you learned to block.”
Making note of Rose’s use of ‘wider’, a metaphor which seemed to definitely not accomplish anything, Carol tentatively removed the two blocks in her mind, surprised at how strong they had been the entire time. Rose and Will’s connections both increased in volume, becoming impossible to ignore, and then louder still. They certainly hadn’t been so loud the day before.
“Good,” said Rose. “Now, don’t panic. This is going to feel strange.”
“Um,” said Carol. Rose watched her with interest. Whatever you’re doing, you’ve already predicted how I’ll respond. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to broadcast a feeling,” said Rose. “At full capacity.”
Quantities meant feelings? “What feeling?”
“See if you can tell.”
Rose continued watching her before Carol realized she was waiting.
“Okay,” said Carol.
Immediately, Rose broadcasted a Pulse, but instead of plateauing and tapering off, the intensity of the static rose and rose and rose, with no end in sight. Carol was seized by vertigo: the feeling would just climb forever, until her mind was gone and only static remained. She instinctively called forth the blanket of silence that was her shield against the feeling, and it was gone.
“Hey!” Rose protested.
Carol opened her eyes to realize that a) her eyes had been closed, b) she was still alive, and c), she somehow managed to avoid spilling tea all over herself.
“Hey?” she asked. “What was that, an attack?” Her first lesson in mental combat, she guessed. It hadn’t been painful, now that she considered it. Only bizarre and unexpected. The option to close the connection had been available the whole time, just as advertised.
“No,” said Rose. “I was just showing you… can we try again?”
“Are you sleeping?” Carol asked, cracking a smile to show that she was alright. She realized that she was still blocking Rose and tentatively removed the buffer.
“No,” Rose answered. “I do make mistakes when I’m fully awake, you know.”
“Okay, I'm ready,” Carol said, steadying herself. If it became too intense, she could always block again.
This time there was no buildup. With a Woosh, Rose's connection was like the sun, constant and bright. After overcoming the impulse to shield herself, Carol allowed the static to consume her mind. Its intensity was certainly bearable, but it couldn’t help but escape the confines of Carol’s mental space, flowing over her body.
“It's tactile,” Carol remarked.
“Yes,” said Rose. The sensation wavered and dimmed in Carol's chest. “You are progressing well. Can you tell what it is?”
“No,” said Carol, although she had a hunch that she was unwilling to say aloud. “Is the strength really the same as what you're feeling? Can't you control it?”
“You can, but she was, um, opening a window, but not pushing anything out,” Will explained.
“We have a shortage of adequate metaphors,” Rose commented. “Showing rather than telling?”
“Eh,” said Will, making a so-so motion with his hand.
“Do you want to try?” Rose asked Carol. “Or later if you’d prefer. We won’t get that far in class today.”
Carol enumerated a few of the emotions she might call forth and briefly met Rose's yellow eyes.
“Maybe later,” she said. “No offense.”
If her privacy was going to be robbed, it was going to happen slowly, when she was better at telepathy. Unless they were going to do it in class, in which case she was just delaying the inevitable.
“That's alright,” said Will. “This is why we need a beta tester.”
“Alpha,” Rose corrected.
At breakfast with Hannah, Gina, and Sam, Carol gave her friends the short version of her second early morning with the alien. She didn't want to brag, but also couldn't lie by omission. She told them about the intensity exercise, and about broadcasting language while speaking, but downplayed just how proficient she had gotten after a few hours,just in case their progress was stunted due to their professor's divided attention.
In truth, learning the ‘language’ of mental English came unexpectedly naturally, and Carol could already distinguish the most common words. She wasn't ready to discuss politics or science over telepathy, but after a couple hours in the Lair, the pulses of both Rose and Will had evolved beyond gibberish. Carol usually wasn’t so good at memorization; she suspected that there was more going on. The words were somehow coming through, though it wasn’t clear if it was their auditory components or their meanings. They still sounded like white noise, as much as Carol would have preferred voices.
“I wish I could show you,” said Carol. “We could all practice talking.”
“Why don’t any of our connections work yet?” asked Sam. “What if we did it wrong?”
“There’s no way to tell, is there?” asked Hannah.
Carol shrugged. “I don’t even know how they figured out the ritual to begin with. Rose must have done it by accident, right?”
“Maybe they engineered her with a compulsion to do it,” Sam suggested.
The three girls looked at him.
“According to Rose, the only reason the initial seeds took so long to grow was that there were over twenty of them per instructor,” said Gina, returning to the topic at hand. “If that’s the case, our connections with each other should be growing faster, right?”
“Yeah,” said Carol. “Maybe experience from either side helps.”
“Wouldn’t they have told us about that, then?” asked Hannah.
“They wouldn’t know,” said Carol. “Every other telepath was seeded by an experienced telepath.”
“No,” said Gina.
They all looked at her for an explanation, but she was swallowing a mouthful of food.
“Who didn’t?” asked Sam.
“The Stattons,” said Gina. “When Rose hatched.”
“Does that really count?” asked Hannah. “She already had telepathy… somehow.”
“If you have one connection that gets cut off, do you still keep the ability?” asked Sam. “Maybe someone seeded her as an egg, and then ended it.”
“How, by dying?” asked Gina. “It’s not like we have the power to end it ourselves now, right?”
Hannah chimed up. “Or maybe there’s a barrier around the planet that’s blocking it. That would explain the isolation better, right?”
Nic arrived at the table with a tray full of food. “You don’t need a barrier to explain isolation,” he said. “We’re isolated either way.”
Carol recalled the first news interview with Rose that she had first seen live, two years before. I lost communication with Amber around five minutes after I was returned home, she had recounted, devoid of emotion.
“Hey Nic, what’s up?” Carol asked, hoping for a change of topic in case ‘til death do us part’ actually was the correct answer to their current question.
“Not much, only I hear I’m dating a teacher’s pet?”
“As if I’m the suck-up here,” she retorted.
“You should ask to get paid as a TA if they’re experimenting on you. You’re already an expert telepath, aren’t you?” he asked. “How much can you do?”
Carol tried again not to brag. “I don’t know, I can distinguish some words here and there.”
Nic shook his head at the others at the table. “Can you believe this? Carol’s trying to convince us she can’t speak with Rose and Will fluently right now.”
“I can’t,” she insisted.
“God, how are you both so together?” asked Hannah.
“You think I’m together?” asked Carol.
“Sorry, we had this talk, last night after you went to bed, about how anxious we’ve all been,” Gina explained. “And now you’ve been telling us about casually hanging out with William and Rose Statton, and you seem fine.”
“I’m…” Carol struggled with words. “I think I’m okay. I don’t know.” She redirected her attention towards Nic. “How are you so together?”
“You think I’m not anxious?” he asked.
“I’ve seen you anxious,” she responded. “This isn’t it.”
“You should see my room,” he said. “It’s a mess.”
Carol realized she hadn’t visited Nic’s dorm since before the Stattons had arrived. Entering and exiting campus was such a hassle now, with both security and the crowd of tourists on Turl Street. Was Nic just putting on a calm face whenever he went to Lincoln for her sake?
“If I visit you’ll just make me clean up, won’t you,” she complained.
“Among other things.”
“So what did you talk about, you know, after doing the telepathy stuff?” asked Sam.
Before she could answer, Carol’s phone buzzed.
“Oh, not much. Just classes and things,” said Carol. “Did you know Rose doesn’t know how to read sheet music?”
She tried to recall more details she might sate her friends’ hunger with, but Hannah held up her finger, cell phone in her other hand.
“Look at this,” Hannah said.
Carol pulled out her own phone instead of waiting on Hannah’s, which was now in Gina’s hands.
[Hello,
In the past hour, an article with the potential to endanger the safety of our students has been published. An investigation into this matter is currently underway. As a precautionary measure, we will be barring all traffic to and from the school until further notice. The security of our students is and always will be our greatest concern. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you over the coming days.
-LE
Professor Lane Emily FBA, Rector, Lincoln College]
“What the hell?” asked Carol as soon as she was done. She handed her phone to Nic, who hadn’t gotten the email. “They can’t do that, can they? You don’t even live here.”
“Hold on,” said Nic, eyes still tracking back and forth over the message.
“What is the article?” asked Gina. Carol shrugged at her, and Hannah craned her neck to see her own phone in Gina’s hands.
“It won’t load,” said Sam.
“Get off the wifi,” Nic advised, handing Carol her phone.
Finally, she managed to find the headline, from a prominent English news outlet:
[Rose Statton teaching Secret Telepathy Course at Oxford, listed as Spanish Lit]
“Oh shit,” she said.
Their table, and the entire Hall, scrolled through the article in silence, dreading whatever information it may have contained. The piece didn’t provide very much information, other than that the class existed and that multiple sources from within Lincoln College confirmed the details independently. The author managed to avoid speculation, instead opting to leave that to the readers.
“Can they find out our identities?” asked Gina.
“I’m sure they can’t,” said Hannah. “The class isn’t online, is it?”
“No, not even the entire enrollment of the school is public,” said Nic, “but I’m sure someone in Administration could find it.”
“They’ll just get more guards, right?” asked Gina.
Terrorism had been a concern that followed Rose around, but Carol had a sudden realization. I’m not just with the enemy anymore, I am the enemy. Lincoln College itself was a wall that might protect its students, but what of their families, should the students’ identities be found?
“People at Lincoln might have tweeted about it, or something,” said Sam, silencing the table.
“We need to do something,” said Carol. “I’ll ask Rose if—”
“She’s probably busy right now,” Gina protested. “Let’s just wait.”
Carol looked at the others to survey their opinions. Any one of them could have communicated with Rose or Will, even if they couldn’t yet speak English. Sam looked ambivalent, but Hannah and Nic were in assent.
“Do it,” said Hannah. “Can’t hurt to ask.”
Carol tentatively prodded her connection to see if Rose would react. After a few seconds it opened substantially but paused, as if waiting.
Do you need help with anything? Carol asked, praying Rose understood all the words.
The reply was only one word: Come.
Carol was overcome by a feeling of helplessness, but part of her had a deep, almost sadistic interest in witnessing an alien going through an anxiety attack. Rose paced back and forth across the room, over and over. Sometimes she gracefully leapt onto her perch, paused as though she might finally settle down, and then hopped back onto the floor to resume pacing. Carol and the rest of the party had already offered assistance, but Rose was apparently focusing on communications with Will and whomever he was with, elsewhere.
“If there's anything—”
No, Rose cut her off the second time, holding up a finger.
Since Will was gone, Carol guessed her duty was to be there in case of another one of Rose’s shaking attacks, which she feared might happen at any moment. She hadn’t actually told Rose that her friends were with her, but the dragon had welcomed all of them into the dorm and made them sit.
They all watched Rose with curiosity, but she ignored them. After several long minutes, she hopped onto her perch and began furiously typing away at her computer. Carol couldn’t help but admire the speed at which Rose was able to operate the machine. Webpages were visited and scrolled through before Carol could read the headlines. At least six emails were drafted and sent off in the course of a few minutes.
Finally, Rose did a weird little hop and managed to turn herself a hundred and eighty degrees around on her perch without rocking it in the slightest, her tail quickly re-wrapping itself around the metal pole to stabilize her body.
“And?” Carol asked.
Rose shrugged.
All is well, she said, and Carol translated unconvincingly. Her friends stared at her, and she realized what she had done.
“Should I have used an accent?” she asked, remembering to broadcast simultaneously.
Rose shook her head, No.
“What are we doing? Do you need help with anything?” asked Nic.
No, Rose said again. She made a show of inspecting the clock in the corner of her computer screen. We have — She tapped her wrist, and Carol realized they hadn’t yet gone over numbers. — Ten minutes until class. Rose fished a whiteboard out of a drawer in the desk. [Could one of you run to the printer?] She even made the effort to read the words on the whiteboard aloud into Carol’s head.
“Huh?” Carol asked before anyone else could speak. “We’re still having class?”
[All is well.] Rose repeated. [This is a hiccup. Thank you, Nic. They should be printing now.]
Carol and company made it to class just on time, passing a herd of staring Lincolnites along the way. Nic joined them at the entrance to the building carrying a stack of papers. The classroom was surprisingly full despite the recent commotion; Carol might have guessed that there were zero absences.
[We were going to tell you a long story today,] Rose announced via word document on a projector screen, [but Rose is busy, so we’ll mainly be doing poker...]
It took a second for Carol to comprehend what she had read, and she found herself staring at the dragon perched at the base of the classroom. It met her eyes and its face displayed the reptilian equivalent of a wry smile, exactly as Rose might have done. She studied the body's mannerisms as it continued typing, but could find no tells that would have indicated that the dragon was being possessed by Will instead of Rose.
Will spent some time reassuring the class that they were safe, and their identities were secure, and everything was being taken care of. Their only telepathy-related activity was to have seeded at least five classmates, with which Carol had already been four-fifths done. After that, they were going to spend the rest of the time playing poker amongst themselves. The lesson to be learned, apparently, was not to become better liars, but to know when to share information. Will didn't waste any time asking who had done the homework. Carol wondered if he gained Rose’s powers of intuition by possessing her body.
[One final thing.] Will typed. [We’re changing the classroom policy on secrecy. You may now tell people if you’re in the class. You may even tell them about some of the things we’re doing. But you may not mention the names of any students besides yourself. Ever. If someone asks whether another person is in this class, your response is that you cannot say. If they ask whether the Queen is in this class, your response is that you cannot say. And if we tell you, in this class, that something is secret, you must obey. Could somebody come get these and distribute them?]
Carol received her paper with bewilderment. As Will had gone on to detail, it was a very lightweight non-disclosure agreement, apparently written before today’s fiasco. How much of it was revised since then? she wondered.
The terms were transparent enough, and it wasn’t nearly as binding as the previous class rule, so Carol found herself signing her name. Hannah was taking a picture of hers with her phone, as if she might need proof against tampering one day.
Soon after, the class devolved into the chaos of desks sliding around and cliques rushing to join together. The room was amphitheater style, so forming tables out of desks was awkward. The college had a couple of alternate rooms that could fit the class, but they were on the second floor. Carol guessed that they weren't deemed secure, with their large windows.
“I fold,” said Carol, abandoning the pool to Hannah and Nic. She knew the basics of poker, but the two games she had played in the last twenty-four hours weren't enough to really get a feeling for it.
“Couldn't you just speak for Rose, er, the professor?” Hannah murmured. “It's not like you don't know what to say.”
Carol eyed their professor. She — or rather he — was sitting on the perch, sometimes looking at the class, and sometimes his phone. Presumably, he could hear everything anyone said, including Hannah's hushed tone. He blinked at Carol.
“I don't think I would be able to do it justice,” said Carol. “It wouldn't be very good if I said anything wrong.”
“Does he get Rose’s empathetic abilities?” asked Gina.
“Ask him yourself,” said Nic.
Carol glanced at the dragon again, unwilling to make a scene in front of the class. All the other groups were just as hushed as theirs, as though they too hoped to avoid Will’s eavesdropping.
She turned back to the table and kept her face neutral as if she were still playing a hand.
Well, do you? she asked.
No.
Carol stared at her phone, waiting on a response. It had been ten minutes since she sent the text, but she needed to be ready whenever the reply came. The clock read 12:57 pm. In America, it was 6:57 am.
The sky was turning ominously dark, but this needed to be a private conversation, so she was pacing squares around the Chapel Quad. Nic was in her room, but it wasn’t his ears that concerned her most. There were a couple security guys strolling around campus, but she ignored them every time they came by.
Finally, her phone’s screen lit up with an incoming call.
“Hello?” she said.
“Carol? What’s wrong?” The sound of her mother’s concerned voice made her feel a burst of unexpected emotion, followed by relief. She didn’t know yet.
Carol struggled to reply over the lump in her throat: “Hey. Is dad there? There’s something I need to tell you.”
