Thirty-Two
“I’m still not sure about this,” Mikaela said.
“This about me driving a bus, or?” Tucker trailed off while taking a turn too wide, jumping the curb and nearly smacking into a stop sign.
“Also that, yeah,” Mikaela said. “But more the us meeting clandestinely smuggled quasi-refugees.”
“To be fair, what ABC did was more human trafficking than smuggling, and it’s more like we rescued them from kidnappers.”
“That certainly sounds more heroic. I guess I also assumed Bellingham’s airport would be more… podunk. It’s a tiny town. Why does it have a massive airport- an international airport? And apparently the third biggest in the state. I was expecting a single airstrip, with one of those old-fashioned windsocks, and probably a bored cow doing the air traffic controlling.”
“It’s the proximity to Vancouver. It gets a lot of traffic from there, because it’s cheaper than flying out of their international airport.”
“Guess that makes sense. You know where we’re going?”
“The Dean just pinged me. He’s walking them through the front doors.”
“I hate telepaths.”
“We dated for a long time… oh, right. That’s why.”
“Not the only reason,” Mikaela smiled slyly. “But it’s probably controlling.”
Tucker pulled the bus to a stop in front of the airport’s revolving front door, and the Dean stepped inside. “I told you I could manage the bus,” Tucker said.
“I wouldn’t brag too much; I can feel the anxiety dripping off Mikaela without poking into her head.”
“How’d it go?” Mikaeala asked, as a stream of young people, mostly children, flowed past them into the seats.
“It was a little depressingly simple to walk them through the airport.”
“In fairness, you can make security and anyone else see whatever you need them to- including nothing.”
“Still. There are a lot more telepaths around today than there were. It’s only a matter of time before someone abuses the privilege for more sinister means.”
“That depends,” Mikaela said, “if you’re counting the government using them against the rest of us. We know they’ve been pressing technopaths to work for the NSA. Why not recruit telepaths into the FBI?”
“That’s a chilling thought,” he said. “Though not as chilling as the thought of letting Tucker drive us all back to the school. You’re a passenger for the trip home.”
“Aw, man,” Tucker said. “I read that raccoon I hit; didn’t have a family, and I’m pretty sure he wanted to die.”
“That’s not funny,” Kean said.
“It was, a little,” Mikaela said, stifling a laugh.