CHAPTER TWO — THE INTERFERENCE
On the walk home things went from worse to what the actual fuck.Faces — actual faces — started appearing on everything.
The side of mailboxes.
The hood of parked cars.And not hallucinations — the images burned into whatever surface she looked at.
Her eyes were burning images and her fingers were shaping clouds.
An imagination is one thing, but this was an entirely different animal, she thought to herself.This isn’t happening.
Somebody must have slipped me salts or some trippy new‑age hallucinant.
Yeah but who? I haven’t been anywhere and I don’t associate with anybody.The condensation on a store window dripped in formation.
Not cartoon faces — those are for babies.
Not illusions.Real expressions pressed into the world like someone had ironed them onto reality.
All staring at her like they were waiting for instructions.Sadie picked up her pace and was now speed‑walking as though the timer had started and she was running late. By the time she reached her garage, she was shaking — her entire body trembling so hard her keys rattled like she was trying to start a haunted lawnmower.She hit the light switch.
Hit it again.And froze in her tracks.The concrete floor was covered — covered — in chalk‑white silhouettes of archangels and human faces, layered over each other like a thousand people had tried to crawl out of the ground at once and failed so miserably they looked like they were smashed against a glass pane and she was standing over them.Sadie backed up so fast she slammed into the wall.“Nope. Absolutely not. I’m calling someone. Well who am I gonna call — the damn Ghostbusters? Oh‑my‑God, oh‑my‑God,” she kept repeating.She dialed her sister.The call didn’t ring — and even if it had, that bitch wouldn’t have answered. She never does when it’s time for her monthly visitor or in emergencies. That’s exactly why she removed Stella as her emergency contact. Tramp!It didn’t even try to ring.Instead, a calm voice she’d never heard before slid into her ear like it had been waiting behind her eardrum for the exact right moment:“Sadie Harper. Do not leave the property. Help is on the way.”“What? What help? Who is this?”But the line was already dead.Within minutes, black SUVs rolled up like she’d accidentally summoned the Men in Black. Photographers spilled out, snapping pictures of her garage like it was the Roswell crash site. Someone had already taped off her driveway.“What is this, an emergency taping? My God.”Someone else set up floodlights bright enough to tan a corpse.A woman in a navy suit approached her with the kind of smile people use when they’re trying not to panic or come off as what she looked — which was terrified.“Ms. Harper,” she said, “you’re trending worldwide. And we need to talk about what you just did to the sky.”Scene: The Telepathic InterrogationThey didn’t take Sadie to a police station.
They didn’t even take her to a government building — at least from what she could tell.They took her to a warehouse that looked abandoned from the outside — rusted sliding doors that didn’t look capable of keeping a ladybug out, broken windows, the whole “don’t go in there unless you want a tetanus shot” vibe.Inside, though, it was spotless.
Bright.
Too bright.The kind of bright that felt intentional, but knew they were wrong for.
Was someone trying to hear or see her thoughts before she even thought of thinking them?A long table sat in the center of the room.
There was very minimal furniture — so minimal it scared the shit almost right out of her. Literally.Oh, it was just a dry shart honking to get out.
I really need some Beano right now.And around it stood seven people, each glowing faintly like they’d swallowed a sunrise.“Who are you supposed to be? The Seven Dwarfs or something?” she said snidely.Sadie blinked a slow blink.“Okay. So this is either a cult that has tapped my phone or a very weird HOA meeting — which I can tell you right now I give two shits what you have to say. If you have a problem with my grass height then you pay somebody to mow it.”None of them laughed.
Not even a snicker.One stepped forward — a woman with silver hair neatly, flawlessly braided down her back. She placed something on the table.A gold coin.Then the next telepath stepped forward.
Another piece of gold — a ring.
Then another — a thin gold bar.
Then a locket.
Then a nugget.
Then a chain.
Then a tiny gold figurine shaped like a bird.Seven pieces.
Seven telepaths.
Seven glows.Sadie swallowed. “Is this… a bribe? Because if so, I accept.”The silver‑haired woman shook her head.“No, Sadie. This is tradition. When a Walker awakens, each telepath must bring a piece of gold to the table. Gold amplifies truth. It anchors the mind. It keeps us from… bleeding into each other.”“Bleeding,” Sadie repeated. “Great. Love that.”The woman continued, her voice remained calm but reverent.“You shaped a symbol in the sky that hasn’t appeared in two centuries. You triggered every telepath within five hundred miles. You opened the Veil. And now we must determine whether you are ready.”“Ready for what?”“For the arenas,” another telepath said.
“For the war,” said a third.
“For yourself,” whispered a fourth.Sadie stared at the gold pieces.
They hummed — softly, like tuning forks.The silver‑haired woman gestured to the chair at the head of the table.“Sit, Sadie Harper. Touch the gold. Let us see who you are.”Sadie hesitated but knew she didn’t have a choice.
She felt it in the depths of her deepest deep.The garage floor flashed in her mind — the archangels, the faces, the impossible symbol in the sky.Did she make it because she pictured it?
Or because something else pictured it through her?She sat.And the moment her fingers brushed the gold, every telepath in the room gasped.Because Sadie didn’t just touch the gold.She lit it up to a glowing state.The pieces glowed white‑hot, brighter than the telepaths themselves, and the symbol she’d made in the sky flickered across the table like a hologram.The silver‑haired woman whispered, almost afraid:“She’s not just a Walker.
She’s the one the arenas have been waiting for.