I'm angry. Angry with Arden for putting me to sleep when I should have stayed awake. Oz told me to watch over Johnny - though a quick peek into the singer's room had revealed the man to be right where Mac remembered him to be. It still doesn't make what she did right.

     He remembered her offer to teach him about blocking out thoughts and his anger cooled.

     A little.

     It did nothing for the wrath he now bore his father. For years he'd blamed Dr. Cooper for Maouri's death. Now Calen told him the entire capture attempt had not been engineered by him, but by Richard Cooper, his brother. For what purpose? And Richard was part of the Void Engineer Convention - so what could he have had on his mind? Why try and grab me? I've never done anything to the ass-wipe...except question his motives sometimes.

     During the last days of his mother's life Richard's hostility had heightened, and Mac had seen his brother and father caught in corners, their voices raised in intense argument. Always their words disappeared when Mac had neared, and always Richard had glared at him as if he could spit daggers into his younger brother's heart.

     So his father was not responsible for Maouri. But what about Mom? The Chorister tells me that the Progenitors hold the key to life and death. Some of their founders may yet still live, scoring years in to the thousands.

     A salve I smear into Calen's wounds healed him in two days.

     But Barbara Angela Cooper died from months of agonizing pain.

     A loud noise startled Mac, until he realized he'd slammed the brush against the porcelain sink. He held his anger in check as he strode from the bathroom back to his bedroom and dressed in a pair of khakis, white long sleeved shirt and tweed jacket. Irritated with his long bangs hanging over his eyes, Mac went back to the bathroom and pulled them back with gel.

     Still they hung over his eyes.

     Fury burned fast and hot. He turned and flung the tube of gel at the bathtub as he yelled. "You let her die!"

     The tube bounced against the tile wall, then slid to the tub's center. Mac gave a deep sigh, reeling his anger in as he shoved his hands into the jacket's pockets. He felt his laser pointer in the left pocket and before he could stop the foci from working, the tube began to bubble and melt as it transformed into...

     Nothing. There was no focus, no direction for the magic to go. Instead the plastic container became little more than a shapeless blob of synthetic goo and gel. He let go of the laser pointer and put his hands to his face. I have to calm down. I haven't pitched that sort of fit since I was three. Kinda reminded my self of Calen just then. All fury, no purpose.

     With a deep breath he turned to grab a towel from the rack to clean the mess from the bathtub. As he did so, his mind yearned in earnest for answer to his mother's pain, and as he thought of her, he cried out inside.

     Mother!

     The world around him blurred away as he was yanked into his VR. His IR opened and directed his Navigator outward. It was as it had been before with Mannis - Mac traveled fast through the darkness at a dizzying speed. And just as quickly as before, he stopped before the twenty-foot sigil of what Mannis declared was Iteration X.

     "Damn..." Mac checked his VR icon. He was in tact; despite the speed he'd left the RL. Something hummed all around him. He'd not noticed this noise before, nor did he know if it were new or not. The Adept looked up at the sigil and noticed it pulsed to the rhythm of the hum.

     And there as before, was a door, built into the sigil. Hidden. Seamless, save for the sparkle that danced around its edges.

     A back door...

     Of course! That had to be what this was. A back door into the Iteration systems. But why do thoughts of my mom bring me here like this? Mannis had panicked before - should he panic as well and back away? The dark surrounded him from all sides.

     Or should I step through that door? I feel like it's important. There is a reason I was brought here.

     Mac licked his lips and took a hesitant step to the door. He reached out to the door with a shaking left hand. He felt the static of the thrum around him, heard the electric beat of the sigil as it pulsed. Was this it? Would this door hold the answers he needed...answers to his past?

     The Adept touched the door's knob.

     Not today.

     Mac was immediately shoved backward - the door and the sigil becoming a receding dot in the darkness. This was nothing compared the physical force the recoil of touching the door did to his physical body. He felt the tiled wall behind him as the wind was knocked from his lungs on impact of being shoved bodily backward. He was wrenched back into RL as he lost his footing and fell to the cold, hard floor of the bathroom.

     What the fuck...

     He lay on the floor and shook his head. What had just happened? I touched the door, and was thrown back in VR and in RL. He had no idea what had done it - or how it was done.

     Why am I given access to a back door - and then knocked three feet when I try to open it? He sat up and did a quick check for broken bones. Nothing broken... He leaned his head to his right shoulder then his left. I'm going to be sore for a bit after that.

     Mac's mouth hung open when he turned and looked up at the bathroom wall. The tile was cracked, a definite impression where he'd struck it left in the dry-wall. How am I going to explain that to the hotel?

     The clock on his Navigator said eight twenty nine when Mac exited his suite. The hotel maintenance never asked a question as to how the tile had been damaged, only requested that he give them a few days to repair it. Mac considered himself lucky he hadn't been blown backward through the wall.

     He had also calmed down since his initial awakening. A shove into a tiled wall can sort of put things into perspective. It took his attention from his mother's suffering and his father's apparent apathetic desire to cure her. Instead his thoughts, most of them, centered on figuring out what had just happened. He wanted to ask Huang - to bring her into VR and show her what had happened.

     Only now that he stood outside Arden's door...it didn't seem like such a good idea anymore.

     He held his hand up, paused, and then knocked on the door.

     "Come on in, Mac and sit down. I'll be right out."

     His jaw tensed. She was in his head again. Damnit. He tried the door and found it unlocked. The aroma of soap and shampoo greeted him as he entered the suite's living area. He groaned inwardly. Why am I always greeting Arden when...

     "Well don't you just look like something that stirred up the ant bed?" the Verbena walked from the bathroom, completely nude. Her body glistened with droplets of water like small diamonds. Her form was as firmly toned and artful in motion as it had been still that night in Paris. Her dark wet hair hung just to the tops of her breasts. She gave him a half smile as she stopped at the center couch and retrieved a white, terrycloth robe.

     ...she's naked.

     "Arden..." he began and his tone was harsher than he intended. Too much has happened to me in too little time. I'm going to fall apart if I don't learn to control...

     A sweet, slow melody came from the Verbena. She was humming as she cinched the robe tight around her small waist. Instantly he felt calmer - the stresses of he morning seemed less important and he was overcome with the need to sit and relax on the couch in front of her.

     Mac did just that, sitting directly in front of the Verbena. Once he leaned back, he felt her hands on his shoulders.

     "There, that's much better," her voice echoed inside his mind as her fingers slowly worked the stiffness from his neck and shoulders. "Would you care for some tea? It's not good old southern tea, mind you, but this is Vienna." She removed her hands and moved away.

     Mac shook his head, the witch's tune still lingering in his head. "No...no. Really. I'm here about last night."

     The Verbena had moved around the left couch and stood in front of the coffee table. She paused, her full attention riveted to Mac. Her dark, delicate eyebrow arched up. "Last night?"

     He sat forward. Something nagged at him, much like a list of things to do, only now he couldn't remember what the most important thing was. "Yeah...the lullaby? What...how did you..." before he could finish, the list came clear to him.

     He'd wanted to know what the witch had done to him - how she'd been able to put him to sleep so easily. She'd controlled his mind, much like the intrusion clones had done. And now...he found she'd done it again. "You sang me to sleep - just like you calmed my nerves just now when I came in."

     Arden appeared to relax, as if he'd given a more preferred answer to an uncomfortable question.

     Mac narrowed his eyes. "What did you think I was asking about last night?"

     The Verbena smiled, though she didn't seem as at ease as she had before. "Putting you to sleep was easy shugah. So was calming that clamoring mind of yours just now." She sat down on the couch to Mac's left. "As for what I was thinking, that is just a woman's secret that I can't share just yet."

     "Secret you can't share just yet?" It was Mac's turn to give Arden a slow smile. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you'd been up to something."

     She returned his smile. "Hon, did you not see the patterns about you when I answered your call last night?"

     It was a subject change, but Mac allowed it. "Patterns...." he remembered the lights he'd seen around the people he and the Chorister had passed in his dream.

     "Mac, I know you've used Correspondence - you're an Adept. You used it on Nicholas to save his life. When you teleport, do you see the patterns?"

     "There is something - a haze that moves quickly when I teleport. I know when another Adept has teleported recently - sometimes up to three hours - because I see this haze."

     "Well, not having power in the Sphere of Correspondence myself, I'm not sure. But that sounds right. You do possess a bit of Mind - of that I'm sure because I can hear you plainly even when you don't intend for me too."

     Mac shook his head. "But how can I stop you from hearing me? I have all sorts of protocols set up on my Navigator to prevent anyone from getting in and out of my Port.."

     The Verbena began to laugh. "No, no...Adept. Listen to me. I'm not talking about your hardware, I'm talking about your mind. It's not that I have some special gift for influencing others....well, I do, but that's not the point. What happened is that you're not guarded against any influence."

     There was a knock at the door and Arden stood to answer it. She paused with her hand on the doorknob. "Let me demonstrate. This man - the one with my breakfast - is a sleeper. He's unguarded - his mind open." She pulled the door wide to allow the hotel staff member to push the cart burdened with food inside.

     Once the door was closed, the witch moved behind the waiter until he turned around. She was directly in front of him, her breasts thrust high, her eyes on his. She hummed again but this time the tone did not have the same hypnotic effect on Mac as it had before. He recognized the tune as "Lady Marmalade".

     Instead, the waiter seemed more affected by it as he stepped forward to Arden and placed a hand on her shoulder. To Mac's surprise, the Verbena let her robe fall from her shoulders, exposing her rounded breasts.

     The Adept gasped as the man began to kiss her neck and her breasts. Arden laid her head back and turned her dark eyes on Mac. "It's not that I have the power shugah, it's that he doesn't."

     As if to emphasize her meaning, the waiter abruptly pulled away from Arden, now aware of what he had been doing. He fumbled with excuses in German then left the room in a hurry, his face blanching a bright red.

     Arden retied her robe and began looking under the domes of silver at her order. Mac smelled bacon and eggs as well as coffee and orange juice. His own stomach growled as he realized he'd not eaten since yesterday morning.

     "Do you understand what I'm saying? If you had your thoughts closed, wards up on your mind, then I could never have heard your cries for help last night, nor could I have lulled you to sleep so easily." She plucked a piece of bacon from a plate and crunched on it, reminding him of Calen that morning in Paris. "Same as when you entered my suite a moment ago. I knew you were upset - I don't know why you woke in such a foul mood as my sleeps are always filled with pleasant dreams - only that you were."

     What she said made sense and he nodded. "So then all I have to do is figure out how to close my mind."

     "Exactly. What's your foci for Mind?"

     "Oh," the Adept shrugged. "Nothing I suppose. Most of this might be that my foci have changed since my ... uhm... operation."

     "Then we'll choose something else. My focus is music, in case you haven't noticed."

     He nodded. Music seemed right, felt right. Perhaps he should try that as a foci as well. Mac logged into his Powerbook's hard drive and coped over a few mp3s he owned of his favorite tunes. He chose Linkin Park's "My December" first, given its visions of cold winters spent alone.

     The tune began in his mind and he envisioned an ice wall around him, around his Navigator - not something solid that would interfere with his system's workings, but something that would work in tandem.

     It felt like the protection was there, but he wasn't sure. "Arden...how do you know when someone's trying to thrust into your thoughts? Last night..." he shook his head. Last night he'd had no inkling that those women were inside his mind.

     "You're weren't scanning for Mind patterns last night. You were like a sleeper because you didn't have your defenses up - so you couldn't have defended against the clones' ..."

     Mac caught the slip just as the witch had. Arden smiled and continued her inventory of the room service table. He narrowed his eyes at Arden. "Arden...how did you know about the clones? I haven't told you what happened." He stood and moved around the coffee table to the back of the room where the room service table was. Arden stood beside it, holding a piece of bacon to her lips.

     "Your surface thoughts just told me...and Oz told me last night."

     "You didn't go to the Opera last night."

     "Would you like some orange juice? It's very good."

     "Arden, why did you need me to go to sleep last night?" The mp3 inside his head switched and he heard a different Linkin Park. "Numb" began as he pressed the issue with the Verbena.

     She's hiding something. And Mac knew he wasn't going to get any answers from her by any means save her own acquiescence. And that wasn't going to happen. Arden picked up a hand full of grapes and smiled as she slid them one at a time into his mouth.

     He sensed something now, intrusions, and saw them as small whiffs of something that snaked about in the air at him. He continued the mp3 and automatically reinforced the ice-wall he'd created. He watched as the intrusions dispersed like so much smoke as they came near him. Arden had tried to influence him again - only this time she hadn't gotten in.

     Arden's smile broadened. "You learn quick."

     He gave her a sardonic smile. "You're not going to tell me about your night, are you?"

     She returned the expression. "Well, actually I have to get dressed, and you watching, though an interesting idea, just wouldn't be proper."

     Mac smiled for the first time that morning. He wasn't sure he was fully prepared to defend himself against another assault of intrusion clones - but at least he felt he now had a better grasp of what Doc and Oz had meant.

     He nodded to Arden and turned to the door. It would soon be time for the group to meet.

     "Mac, work with the patterns. Try and see them. The more you do, the more the gift will come natural to you." She laughed. "And then I can show you some tricks."

     He stopped and turned. "Tricks?"

     "You didn't think that waiter kissed me because I'm beautiful, did you?"

     Mac shook his head. "No Arden, I didn't. But I'll have to pass on the tricks. I'm afraid that kind of attention isn't what's in my heart. I need the real thing, not a trick of the mind." He nodded again and turned back to the door.

     But he heard Arden's parting words clearly. "Mac dear, most times the real thing is what causes the most pain, thus showing you're alive, if you can keep from building walls around your heart."

     He closed the door and switched the mp3 in his head again. This time he heard Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers" and cranked up the volume, sure not to let Arden sense his surface thoughts so that she wouldn't know how close to the truth about his own heart she had been.

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