[That's a wide combo Sam, and I think we know where to go next] Bean said mentally, commenting on the new figurine that had joined the metal tree.
As Samori walked back to meet Bean on the bench, Bean enjoyed listening to Samori's thoughts. He was evaluating how long it would take the wide man to die and whether his suffering would be an equal exchange for his intent to kill Samori and her. He settled on ten days, the man's body would begin to fail him after the dehydration and malnutrition set in. By then the next tide cycle would reach him first, but the combo external should allow him to survive that initial flooding.
To Bean, Samori's mind felt like music. Like what came from the little ear plugs Chan, their mother, sometimes played for them before the raids. Everything made sense and added up in just the right way, harmonious and deliberate. Other people's minds were cloudy, ambiguous, unrealized, and aloof places. Reading them felt like wearing someone else's favorite hand-me-downs after they had doodled random thoughts on the fabric for years. Just scattered noise.
Honestly, Bean had never thought of her potential as simply reading minds. What she was doing was far more complex than the government's classification system would suggest. In fact, if she had been just reading minds, that would have made her life easier and far less dangerous. A better comparison for what she did when using her potential was Chan's old pocket music player that connected to the headphones. Bean could establish psychic links to anybody within her radius usually about fifty meters in Howl's cramped quartersand she could fully embody their consciousness.
The risk was enormous. In theory, Samori had warned Bean long ago that others should be able to read her in detail if she maintained their connection too long. It was like leaving doors open in both directions. Samori never confirmed or denied whether he could access her thoughts, though his mind felt like the lavish Upper Cities Chan had described in her stories. Clean streets lined with bioluminescent panels, houses built from different materials—real wood, not just scavenged metal—people wearing clothes in all types of colors instead of Howl's standard grays and browns, food that wasn't rationed or synthetic. And the one thing Bean secretly desired more than anything else: natural sunlight, not the artificial UV strips that barely kept them alive.
She had thought that the murder he had just participated in would create some cracks in his mental landscape, but Samori made sense of it with frightening clarity. To him, the stranger's life was just another missing star in Howl's artificial sky—well, the cave ceiling painted with phosphorescent dots to simulate night cycles. For him it was simple vengeance for his family's murder and it wasn't his first kill.
People in Howl weren't supposed to know about their Potentials. The government had constructed an elaborate lie, claiming that natural sunlight was required for the manifestation of Potentials and Distortions. They told the underground dwellers that only the Surface Cities had access to these abilities, keeping Howl's population docile and manageable. But Chan had known better.
The Potential suppression wasn't just psychological control, it was systematic genocide. Every person born in Howl possessed latent abilities, but the government's cocktail of synthetic vitamins, artificial light cycles, and emotional dampening drugs in the water supply kept most people disconnected from their gifts. Those who managed to break through anyway disappeared during the monthly "health inspections."
Seven Years Ago - The Hotel Room
Chan had been different from other Howl parents. Where most adults moved through their days in numbed compliance, she blazed with dangerous awareness. Her Potential, seeing the true nature of people, their best and worst possibilities made her a target the moment she started teaching Samori and Bean about their gifts.
"You're a Gifter, Sammy, our gifter," Chan had said as she prepared her needle, the one thing that let her mind travel beyond Howl's oppressive barriers. "Your Potential is gifter you can give endlessly and receive, share abilities, even pass distortions between people. But remember, you can never truly be alone. Every gift creates a connection."
As the drugs took hold, her eyes had rolled back and she fell onto the salvaged mattress they'd dragged into the abandoned hotel room, one of dozens of temporary shelters they'd cycled through to avoid the government sweeps.
The synthetic opiates weren't just escapism for Chan. Bean had discovered that her mother's drug-induced visions were actually glimpses of other levels of Howl, other underground cities, sometimes even fragments of the Surface Cities. Chan's Potential grew stronger under chemical influence, allowing her consciousness to breach the psychic dampening fields the government maintained.
"And Beannette," Chan had continued, her voice distant as she rode the chemical tide, "you're a Reader, baby. But not just thoughts you read realities themselves. Head so deep in the consciousness of others that no one can ever see your true face. You can't touch just one reality anymore, but all realities and perceptions. The only limit you have is learning to set boundaries for yourself."
Bean had clapped and laughed, not understanding the weight of what she was being told. She loved when Chan took her journeys because Bean's developing Potential let her follow along. She experienced Chan's visions of the sweet yesterdays and the possible todays that existed in seemingly dimensions. She saw random faces from the above, colors that seemed otherworldly because they existed only in places where natural light still existed.
Samori had shaken his head even then, understanding that each of Chan's revelations brought the government's attention closer to their door.
The Crash - Later That Night
An hour after Chan's high peaked, Bean and Samori had huddled in the bathroom tub while the inevitable crash began outside. The sound of Chan's fists against the bathroom door mixed with her agonized screams.
Chan's Distortion, the dark side of her truth-seeing Potential manifested during withdrawal. She would see not just people's possibilities, but hypothetical worst-case scenarios playing out in vivid, inescapable detail. Every person became a walking nightmare of their potential for evil.
"You ain't gonna treat me like I'm not somebody, Zing! Don't leave me down here! I know you hear me, take me with you!" Chan had wailed from outside the bathroom, her voice raw with desperation.
Zing, a name that haunted Chan's crashes. Bean had never been able to read clearly through the chaos of her mother's withdrawal episodes, but she caught fragments. Zing was connected to the Surface Cities, to the government facilities, to the reason Chan's family had been cast down to Howl generations ago.
Who is Zing? Samori had thought to Bean.
Bean's entire body had shaken as she tried to process the emotional hurricane emanating from Chan's mind. Between the bangs and thumps against the door came her whispered response:
[She… loves them,] Bean had managed, her mental voice barely audible between shivers. [That's all I can read clearly. The rest is just... pain and betrayal and falling... falling down from somewhere bright.]
Back to Present
Bean pulled her knees to her chest on the bench, watching Samori's profile as he stared at the metal tree. The new figurine caught what little light filtered down from the UV strips above, casting twisted shadows that reminded her of Chan's final night in the hotel room.
[Sam] she whispered, using their mental link. [What if we're becoming like her?]
Samori's jaw tightened. Through their connection, Bean felt his thoughts shift—not the clean, musical patterns she usually enjoyed, but something jagged. Desperate.
'Then we crash,' he said finally, his mental voice small. 'But we crash on our own terms.'
Bean nodded, understanding. They weren't just surviving anymore. They were choosing how to burn unlike their family members bodies.
In the depths below, the wide man would spend his first night learning what real frozen darkness felt like. And somewhere in the maze of Howl's tunnels, other people moved through their dampened sleepy lives, never knowing that two children sat in the outside grieving but also burning, holding the weight of their mother's impossible gift and the terrible clarity it brought.
[Ready for the next step?] Bean asked through their link, though she already knew Samori's answer from the way his fingers twitched toward his pocket.
The metal tree waited and watched, patiend as death, under the painted sky.