Yesterday (Part Three - Chapters 43 & 44) (Patreon)

CHAPTER 43

Raindrops crashed against the splashing waves. The storm surprised them near Antibes. A solitary candle was sulkily waving on the porthole leading to the narrow cabin.

—They are asleep now, — whispered Sophie relieved, groping her way along the deck of the yacht, trying not to slip.

—Whew! —gasped Gabriel as he tried to steer the helm, —do you think they’ll be all right?

—It’s too early to tell, but I think they will, —said Sophie, standing next to him, dodging the boom. —I don’t know to what extent they were exposed to radiation, but the intense corticosteroid and iodine treatment they were given will protect them. I have left precise instructions in writing just in case.

—Do you really think they are still following us? I doubt they'll be able to find us.

—I don’t trust them, Gabriel. We saw incredible things at Olympos. May I remind you of the long treatments they subjected ourselves to for conditioning?

—I hope you are wrong, —he said, straining to keep the helm on course, —and that this storm doesn’t kill us.

CHAPTER 44

Laura took advantage of those relatively quiet days to continue discreetly researching on her own.

She made a list of what she knew so far and then expanded it with point-by-point web searches, until she had a general idea of what she was dealing with. Using a very useful program she installed on her laptop, she filled a folder with the articles and related pages she found. Some of them she read over and others saved for later, just in case there was a connection between them at some point.

She knew from experience that there was very little serious information on the Internet about the unusual psychic abilities she shared with her brother, so she didn’t bother digging into the subject again.

Instead, she searched the web for information about Walter W. Hebert.

Little was available. No social media profiles or personal pages. She found a brief reference on the Sophia Antipolis University website to his chairmanship and some summer courses he had taught, and a text file with a transcript of a lecture on bipolar disorder. No biography or previous entries, in fact, she discovered very few people with the same name overall, which was unusual.

Neither did she find any photos.

What an inconspicuous persona for such an “eminent” man, she thought to herself.

Then it was Aminarti’s turn.

No results, which was not unusual for a churchman with his profile. But she found the Indonesian ancestry of his surname curious. Nothing in the priest’s appearance in the video his father showed her revealed any Asian features. He might have passed for Greek or Italian, but definitely Western.

She needed more data, pieces with which she could put together a more useful report, but didn't dare call her father yet.

Improvising, she went with her instincts. It was time to use her “antenna”.

Discovering the truth about her past and her brother gave her the confidence to dare to explore within herself. Her “powers” were no longer something mystical or crazy, they were real perceptions that many other people had taken very seriously before. She forced herself to have faith in herself, she had to venture out and not be afraid to face her true limits.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on the past, imagining the doors of her subconscious opening. She pictured herself entering it and cast a wish, searching for something that would connect her to her biological parents.

“French”, was the first thing that came to her mind. She pictured them young. She accepted that fact and didn’t stop to question it. She must trust in herself.

She turned her mind blank and imagined a vast tunnel. Then steadied her breathing and abstracted herself from her surroundings, entering into the depths of that deep emptiness.

Little by little the misty tunnel formed in her imagination. She could almost see it. She propelled herself with her attention inward and imagined she was flying through it, faster and faster.

To her surprise, large rings of light began to flash around her. Blurry images tried to form here and there but they were like clouds and would dissolve without ever becoming solid when she tried to fix her attention on them. She frowned and pushed herself further in with determination. She didn’t have to use her eyes, she had to escape her body and let her instinct take over.

She started to hear heavy breathing around her. Decided not to pay attention to it. The tunnel was filled with very elongated images, distorted in the distance, but it was still impossible for her to focus her attention on them. They faded away if she tried to do so.

She sensed somehow that she was approaching the center of the tunnel and it suddenly expanded, surrounding her. An astonishing image remained sharp for a few moments, like an old moving slide.

A pretty red-haired girl was smiling flirtatiously at a boy with brown hair and long sideburns. She was carrying some folders across her chest and he was smoking.

Students?

The image faded instantly and Laura came out of her trance startled. The attempt to reason about the vision brought her back to reality with a jolt. She reached for her pen and hurriedly wrote down as many details as she could remember.

The girl’s appearance stuck in her memory, her eyes a spectacular blue, and her perfect teeth visible behind her wide smile, her reddish hair long and wavy. Something in that memory comforted her.

Could it be her mother?

The memory made her feel good again. She felt a rush of inner happiness she had never felt before and closed her eyes again, she needed to preserve that moment.

A minute later, Laura reviewed the sheet of paper in front of her laptop. She had not achieved much through the “normal” channels, she told herself.

Next to it was a napkin with the number her brother had written on the video.

She reached for her cell phone.

However, no. She stopped.

Not yet. She needed to feel the terrain a little more. She felt a great curiosity for that brother, but on the other hand something about him frightened her. To open that door was to enter a world totally unknown to her. She was still not able to visualize herself next to him, or talking to him. He was still an elusive figure in her consciousness. The time would come when she would be ready, she told herself.

She felt the urge to do research on Aminarti again, but this time using her mind. She was not going to give up so easily. Common sense dictated that someone who had cared for her brother for so many years should be an excellent starting point for understanding him.

She closed her eyes and refocused, abstracting herself from her surroundings. She realized that as she gained confidence, the process became easier and faster. She wanted to know more about the man.

She remembered the priest in the video and let her thoughts wander, launching a probe, hoping for an image or a detail that would help her understand him better. She needed to find out something about him, something important. Something she could push him with when the time came... a half-truth... something useful to comfort him…

She saw a logo.

H… P… R…

A new scene formed in her mind. Aminarti was picking up a padded envelope from the hands of a stranger hidden in the shadows of two large stone pillars. The two men were whispering sheltered by the colonnade. Aminarti suddenly raised his voice, he was upset and brandished the envelope threatening his interlocutor.

She tried to lock her attention, focus on the scene, get closer.

She thought she heard a word.

Olimpo?

The vision faded.

She opened her eyes and wrote down the word, but what could it mean?