Alison gave me such a sad smile. Her eyes swam with liquid emotion. She looked away, clearing her throat. Then she picked up the package and pulled it onto her lap. She stroked the cardboard, brushing the packing tape sealing it closed.
“It’s so unusual,” she said after a moment, her voice strained, tight. “There’s no return address on here. No shipping labels. Just your name.”
“Weird,” I grunted, wanting to hug her, but that meant moving. And the ice pack felt so amazing, the cold seeping through my back, driving back the heat.
“Well, let’s see what it is,” my sister said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alex smiled as the feed on his mother’s computer appeared. The drone’s had installed the spy cameras through the new god’s house. Alexis took his hand, giving it a squeeze, the fraternal twins eager to see what their new god had to teach.
Their mother sat, gingerly, at her computer, manipulating the cameras. She cycled it through the house, new security camera feeds flashing across the screen. A man with a beer gut snored on a recliner appeared in one, the TV playing before him. A eighteen-year-old girl lay on her back, texting on her phone in the next. Then an older girl, twenty with big tits and bleached-blonde hair, walked out the front door.
“There he is,” Deidre Icke said on the next shift. She pointed at the god lying on his stomach on his bad, an ice pack on his back. A girl his age, both nineteen or twenty, sat beside him. “Randy Lyon and his middle sister, Alison.”
“He has a sister?” Alexis said.
“Three,” their mother answered.
“Well, let’s see what it is,” Alison said, her words sounding tinny through the cheap computer speakers. She ran her hands across the box the Institute sent Randy, holding it on her lap.
“Please, please, reveal it,” prayed the naked Alexis, making her young, firm breasts jiggle.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“It’s a mind control device,” I said, remembering what the text message said as my sister pried at the tape sealing the strange package closed.
“Uh-huh. Been ordering dumb stuff off the back of a comic book again?” The tape ripped, taking strips of cardboard with it. “Like those X-ray glasses.”
“I was ten,” I said with a flush. Mom was still alive then and Dad still worked. “I wouldn’t waste money on something like that now.”
“Yeah, it’s not a video game,” she said, amusement in her voice.
My cheeks warmed more. I shifted and pushed down the twisting guilt. I worked a lot of overtime to buy my PlayStation 4.
“Well, if you didn’t order it,” she said, pulling out a piece of Styrofoam and setting it aside, “then how do you know what this is?”
“Text message. A weird one. I thought it was a prank from one of my friends.”
“Right, a prank,” she said, pulling out a gold ring that looked like a circlet, sized big enough to fit my head. She furrowed her brow, staring at it. “Do you think I’m that gullible, Randy?”
“Well, you did believe me when I told you that the X-ray glasses worked but couldn’t see through metal.”
She smiled. “I was nine. And I didn’t want you to see my panties.”
“Mom did not appreciate you running around with her baking sheets covering your body.”
My sister giggled for a moment, twisting the golden ring between her fingers. “No, she did not.”
“So you’re gullible.”
“I was nine,” she said, giving me a direct look. “You’re the one that bought them. And since you’re eleven months older than me, you should have known better.” Then, before I could object, she placed the golden ring on my head.
I gasped at the heat swelling about my head. Alison gave a shriek and thru herself back so hard that she fell off my bed. The band prickled about my skull. My brain fuzzed for a moment. My entire body shook and the pain… The throbbing, aching, pulsing bruises across my body, the ones not numbed by the ice pack, faded away. The soreness vanished.
“I-it melted,” she gasped. “It melted into your head.”
“What?” My thoughts prickled.
“It just glowed for a moment and then… dissolved into your head.”
I sat up, the ice pack falling off my back. I grabbed my head, running my hands through my hair, searching for the gold ring. I felt her set it on me. And… Nothing. My fingers stroked through my short, dark hair. Frown, I looked around on the bed for it. it must have fallen off. It couldn’t have melted into me.
“Stop trying to prank me,” I said, the prickles rippling across my mind. “Where did it go?”
“I’m not pranking you,” my sister said, her voice tight. “It melted into your head.” She grabbed her own temples. “How are you making me talk. I can feel you… In my head!”
“What?” Prickling thoughts.
“You’re… making me speak,” she said.
I frowned at her then shook my head. “Right, right, the mind-control. How far are you going to commit to this?” I rubbed my head, these fuzzing tingles were getting annoying.
“I don’t have a choice,” she said, sitting up. “Who sent this to you?” She grabbed the box and pulled out an instruction manual. “The Institute of Apotheosis? What is that?”
“Apotheosis means falling towards divinity,” I said. “It’s a Greek term for something becoming a god.”
“You are such a nerd,” Alison said, her eyes flicking to a bookshelf covered in Brandon Sanderson, Steven Erikson, R.A. Salvatore, Kevin J. Anderson, Robert Jordan, R. Scott Bakker, and Terry Goodkind books. Then she opened the manual and flipped through it, her eyebrows furrowing.
“What?” I asked her, a tiny prickle dancing on my thoughts, not as bad as the last ones.
“It says the halo contained nanomachines that have bonded with your mind. It gives you the power to project your brainwaves onto another person and control them.” She looked up at me. “Why would they send this to you? I mean, you’re my brother. You’re nothing special or important.”
“Because I’m a nerd,” I said, shrugging. What game was she up to? How far would she take this? I had to find out. “Stand on one foot.”
My thoughts buzzed worse.
She hopped up to her feet and then put all her weight on her right, shifting around as she clutched the manual. She balanced, staring at me, her face a weird mix of emotions, almost fear and almost… awe.
“I didn’t even have a choice,” she said, lowering her left foot to the ground. “I just had to do it.”
“And yet you stopped balancing on one foot,” I pointed out, knowing I had her now.
“Well, you didn’t tell me I had to stand like that forever,” she said defensively.
“Fine, stand on one foot until I tell you otherwise.” My forehead creased against the prickling. That was damned annoying.
Alison balanced on her right leg again, giving me such an annoyed look. “You have the power to control my body, and this is what you want to do with it?”
I gave her such a weird look. “Why, what would you want me to do with it?”
Needles stabbed into my brain. Sweat broke out across my head. I grabbed my temple, groaning.
At the same time, my sister said, “To force me to tell all my secrets that I’ve been hiding from you.”
I blinked at that. What was going on here? Bracing myself against the sensations assaulting my thoughts, I asked, “If you don’t want me to know about your secrets, why did you just answer the question that way?”