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“Y ou know how absolutely bizarre all of this sounds, don’t you?” Sadie asked Terk.

“Yes, I do,” Terk admitted. “This is the world I live in. I understand how it sounds. Give me a minute. I’ll see if I can track it.”

“You?” she asked.

He laughed. “Yes, I’m a receiver and a transmitter, so give me a few minutes.” And, with that, the cell phone connection went fuzzy.

She stared down at it, then looked over at Morrison. “Can he do that?”

“Can he do what?” he asked, with a wry look.

“With Terkel the reality is not a whole lot he can’t do.

He could have made that call without even involving a phone.

That’s one of the things about him, and, as I understand it, his skills, as well as those of the others on his team, are only getting stronger and stronger as they’re all together. ”

“Together?”

“Terk and his team.” Morrison nodded. “They have a compound where they all live together and where their headquarters are based for the work they do. They can all live and work there at the same time.”

“I suppose that, if you’re around people all the time who can do this,” she conceded, fascinated, “it would be a big community, full of people with lots of abilities.”

“Sure, and staying together has opened new doors for them, and it makes sense in a way. Your abilities would naturally strengthen as you learn from each other and develop and do things you didn’t even know you could do,” Morrison shared, “which is why I gather Terk has a large collection of people now on his team or in his group. I don’t even know what to call it. ”

“A cult,” she teased, with a note of laughter.

“I don’t think a cult would be well received by anybody,” Morrison declared, “but I can understand why some people would consider utilizing that term. However, in this case, they work for governments all over the world, helping out.”

“I guess it’s such a specialized field,” she murmured, “that they offer skills that nobody else can.”

“Until we get into something like this case, where it would appear that the bad people have energy skills, choosing to operate outside of the law.”

“Right, so in order to fight fire…”

“You need fire,” he added immediately. “Exactly.”

She sighed. “It’s really sad to think that my family members could have found another outlet and yet didn’t.”

“Don’t judge them for it,” Morrison reminded her, “at least not at this stage. When you have a chance to talk to them and to sort it out, that’s a different story.”

His phone buzzed again, and he looked down to see Terkel calling back. “What did you find?”

“It’s coming from the hospital,” he said briskly. “I suspect it’s Don, your injured twin brother, and he is out on the ethers, feeling alone and calling out for help.”

“And yet it wasn’t a call for help.”

“No, he’s seeking someone in particular, while still unconscious, probably not even aware of what he’s doing. He’s most likely calling out for his brother.”

“Or for anybody who can answer,” she stated immediately.

Terk hesitated. “Yes, that’s another possibility.”

“Can’t I talk to him? It just feels so wrong to leave him out there.”

“I’ll talk to him first,” Terk replied cautiously, “to see if we can get him to come back to this earthly plane. I also phoned the hospital to check up on him, and he’s not awake.

So, if I can get him to wake up, that would move all this forward quite nicely.

So, give me… at least half an hour.” And, with that, he ended the call.

Sadie stared down on the phone in shock. “My brother is out on the ethers,” she repeated, staring at Morrison as if that would give her all the answers she needed.

“In other words, he’s unconscious, doing whatever it is he’s trying to do, because basically he’s lost. You’re not allowed to think of that as him calling out for you.”

“How else can I think of it?” she asked, trying not to get upset. “Especially when I know that he’s injured and lost.”

“What we don’t know is who he’s calling for. It could be you. It could be that part of him knows he has a twin. Or it could be that he’s calling for his brother or your sister.”

She nodded. “What will Terkel do?”

“He’ll connect with Don and try and bring him in enough so that he wakes up. Now Terk didn’t mention it, but I’ve heard that Terk has some amazing healers as part of his team,” he shared, “so, if anybody can do anything for Don, it’ll be him and his healers.”

“Right, so in other words, as usual, I sit here and wait,” she grumbled, trying to keep the bitterness out of her tone.

“Yes, and I know it’s hard, and it’s getting harder as you hear more and more of what’s going on, but it is what we need to do right now.”

“ Great ,” she muttered. She stared at the television. “I don’t know that I can bear to watch this another minute, and I’m sure you really want to get back to your laptop.” She sighed. “You don’t need to babysit me.”

“I just don’t want you to get so upset that you go off and do something stupid.”

She frowned at him. “What do you consider stupid ?” He hesitated, and her eyebrows shot up.

“You think I’ll contact him ? I don’t even know how,” she cried out in frustration.

“I don’t even know what all this is even about or how to do any of it, and the sense of helplessness is absolutely crippling,” she wailed.

“I mean, if I could help Don, I just might, but I don’t know how. I don’t even know what’s involved.”

He nodded, then gently rubbed her shoulders, while she glared up at him.

Really she only wanted to sob. “I’m an absolute mess,” she muttered.

“For someone who has energy skills that she has no idea how to use, you’re doing great. Don’t forget that.”

“How can you even say that?” she asked. “I’m not doing anything the least bit helpful. It feels as if I’m on this never-ending treadmill, and I don’t know how to get off.”

“And getting off will happen, but maybe not as fast as you want it to,” he pointed out.

She let out her breath in a hard gust and muttered, “Fine, in that case, I found a deck of cards, so let’s see if you can beat me.”

He burst out laughing. “I’ve never played cards much, so you will beat me.”

She looked at him in surprise and then in delight. “Seriously? That’ll be a first. I generally suck at card games.”

“That would make two of us then,” he stated comfortably, “so let’s see who will be the worst.”

*

Sadie woke the next morning with an odd stillness to the air, suddenly aware of that same pinging sound again.

Not the cry that she had heard earlier, but this time really a ping , as if somebody were sending out messages.

What was it Morrison had mentioned last night?

Something about cell towers, looking to see if anybody out there was receiving.

For the first time, she wondered if she should avoid having anything to do with this.

If it was just this broadband thing, it wanted to pick up anybody and anything, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to get involved in that at all.

Working with Terkel and learning a few things would be interesting, but interacting with random strangers?

No way. She didn’t know that she had that much trust in her soul to let just anybody into her psyche like that.

Almost immediately she felt a wash of approval sliding through her. She frowned at that and exclaimed, “What is that, for crying out loud?”

Her phone rang beside her. She snatched it up to find Terkel on the other end. “That was me,” he admitted. “I was tracking the pinging that you noticed.”

“Did you find out who it is?” she asked, deliberately avoiding his words that pertained to her.

“I got a location, and that’s part of the puzzle,” he noted. “I’m still figuring out who is doing this and what they are trying to do.”

“I guess in your world they’re always doing something wrong, aren’t they?”

“No. We do find a lot of people who have abilities are quite lonely in life, and they have a tendency to just cry out, hoping they can talk to somebody out there. It doesn’t always work out the way they want,” he noted sadly.

“Unfortunately a lot of people with abilities have issues and have turned to drugs or alcohol abuse to deal with them.”

She sucked in a sharp breath.

“But definitely some are calling out because they’re lonely,” Terk repeated, “and that’s why I was happy with what you told yourself about not being sure you were ready to open up and trust all these unknown people.

You can’t trust everybody, and just because someone might work with energy doesn’t make them trustworthy.

I wish I could tell you that everybody who does this is honorable and good and real,” he noted in a consoling tone, “but I already know to my own detriment that it’s not true. ”

She winced because such a harshness filled his tone, as in a been there, done that thing, and she realized Terk really had experienced some of the worst of what humanity had to offer, experiencing a serious betrayal of some sort. “I’m sorry. That can’t have been easy.”

“Nope, it wasn’t, but the position I’m in now is way better than where I was, so I can find it in myself to thank those who put us here,” he shared, with a note of laughter.

“It’s not what they expected, but when you are committed to doing good work, I prefer to think that some semblance of goodness always comes back to you,” he murmured.

“And, in my experience, as long as you do the best you can in difficult situations to help those with abilities, their abilities continue to grow. They continue to do more than you could even imagine,” he shared.

“You’re welcome to come and spend some time with us and see for yourself. ”

Delighted at his offer, she asked, “Seriously?”