CUCKOOS ARE TERRITORIAL.
I think it has something to do with the static we create when we get too close to each other. It can get so loud that it becomes almost paralyzing, and when the shock of having someone shouting inside your brain passes, it’s usually replaced by rage. The sound grates on every nerve we have, making killing whatever’s causing it seem like the best idea anyone has ever had. Ever. Which is bad enough, except that most cuckoos won’t do their own dirty work. They use the resources they have available to them.
Which means they use humans. They dig into the minds of the humans around them, and they make murder seem like a totally awesome plan. Like it’s something that was always on the docket for today, but just got moved up a little bit. You know, between the dry cleaning and getting dinner into the oven. Every person around me had suddenly become a potential weapon, and unless I was willing to do the same—unless I was willing to force my own will on another sapient being for my own benefit, and force them to risk their skins to save mine—I was completely unprotected.
This was what Mom had been afraid of. That I’d go back out into the world, run into a threat, and freeze up, unable to decide on a course of action that would actually protect me. I tightened my hands on my backpack straps and started walking again, angling as quickly as I could for the nearest bathroom. Bathrooms tend to be safe places. It’s hard to seize control of someone when all they want to do is pee. I could catch my breath, try to figure out where the static was coming from, and make a new plan for getting out of the airport.
One thing was sure: I couldn’t go to the house. I’d know if another cuckoo was digging deeply enough into my mind to uncover an address, but I couldn’t protect that information once I gave it to my driver. If the cuckoo wanted to follow me, all they’d need to do is follow the person who dropped me off. Then they could crack the driver’s mind open like an egg, pull out whatever they needed, and attack at their leisure. I couldn’t risk my family’s security like that.
This wasn’t what I’d wanted when I’d said I was ready to go back into the world. This wasn’t what I’d wanted at all.
At least I knew that Mom would eventually call Evie and tell her I was in Portland, and why hadn’t she called yet with an update on my condition, did she want to worry her poor old mother. They’d come looking for me, and they’d start at my last known location. The airport.
Of course, I could be dead by then. Cuckoos don’t have many natural predators. We have to prey on each other. That’s how we keep our numbers in check.
The bathroom was empty. I made for the farthest stall and shut myself inside, climbing onto the toilet and crouching in on myself until I took up as little space as possible. Then I closed my eyes and began the slow, painful process of shutting off my awareness of the world around me.
For a non-telepath, the idea of going dark probably seems trivial. Why would bringing myself down to the level of the majority of the people around me be a problem? Humans get by just fine without psychic powers, and the media loves showing telepaths as monsters or martyrs, unable to block out the world around them, eventually consumed by the thoughts they just can’t. Stop. Hearing.
And I guess there’s some truth to that. Moving through a crowd is like walking through a living YouTube comments section. Even when people have the manners and good sense to keep their mouths shut, their minds are wide open, and in a non-telepathic society, no one bothers to learn how to control their thoughts. Why should they? I’ve heard things that make me really understand why most of my species thinks it’s more fun on the Dark Side. Sometimes I’ve felt half-convinced to go that way myself. I don’t, because it would hurt my family, and it would let my mother down, but wow, do I get the urge.
But at the same time . . . I don’t see faces the way humans do. I can’t tell people apart except by the very broadest of physical traits, hair color and skin color and height and weight. Even gender can be confusing, and I’ve learned never to use a pronoun for someone until I’ve heard them use it for themselves, out loud. I can usually tell what gender someone is by the way they think about themselves, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I know what gender someone has to pretend to be for social reasons. The world is complicated, and humans are judgmental, and I know more secrets than I should, just by virtue of being what I am.
Shut all that down, take all that away, and what do I have? I have eyes that don’t know how to process some of what they see. I have ears and a nose that work exactly as well as their human equivalents, which isn’t well enough to keep me safe from danger. I have two legs to run with and two lungs to scream with and those weren’t going to be enough if the cuckoo whose presence I could feel pushing down all around me decided to press the issue. I was unarmed. I was alone.
If I died in the process of trying to prove that I was well enough to rejoin the world, I was going to spend whatever afterlife waits for cuckoos laughing until I cried, because otherwise I was going to scream eternity down on my own head.
The static faded, like a radio being tuned, until everything was as close to silent as an airport could ever be. A sink dripped; the air-conditioning whirred; outside the bathroom, a distorted announcement was made over the intercom.
And footsteps, calm and precise, walked into the bathroom.
“I know you’re in here.” The voice sounded exactly like my mother’s, even down to the faint New England accent. “You’re hiding very well, but I still know you’re in here. I watched you disappear.”
I held my breath and didn’t move, grateful for my lack of a heart. If I’d been human, she would probably have been able to hear it racing.
“It’s cute how you think you can get away from me.”
The footsteps came closer. I shrugged out of my backpack as quietly as I could, preparing to swing. If there’s one weakness shared by virtually all cuckoos, it’s overconfidence. I could only hear one set of footsteps. She was alone, and she probably didn’t have a gun, or a knife, or any of the other things that would have guaranteed her victory in direct combat. She’d picked up on my fear—not hard—and decided that it meant I was easy prey. Amateur.
“You should really have done your homework before you decided to fly into Portland, little chick. I understand the impulse to flee the nest, but this is my place, and I don’t share.”
Of course she didn’t. Cuckoos are incredibly destructive, as a rule, and when you combine that with our natural dislike for each other, you come up with an equation that says one cuckoo for every million humans is about right. Portland couldn’t support two of us. Portland could probably only support one happily because of the airport, and its daily offerings of incoming and outgoing travelers from other places. There was no way she’d be willing to let me settle here.
The footsteps came closer still. She was right outside the door to my stall. If I was going to move, it needed to be now.