Page 77 of Shielding Instinct

“Wait.” Hawkeye was learning what he might expect from a conversation when speaking to Petra, and the bend that things took were not one and the same. “A demon?” He grinned. “What now?”

He was grinning a lot when he was around her.

His face wasn’t used to it.

“True story. I had just got my new title. Before my current position, I had a job similar to Rowan Kennedy’s. My field was mainly in the United States, where I tracked cults and their financial implications on finances. Track, not intervene. I was a fact-finder, not a taker-downer of dangerous felons.”

“Criminal implications on finances?”

“Right,” Petra said.

“But what did this have to do with the plane?”

“I was tracking a true believer who was going to see ‘the guru.’ I wanted the name and location of said guru. Up until that point, we couldn’t find the charismatic. Imagine a beehive where all the worker bees are doing their job, and each of them serves the queen bee.”

“Got it. You were looking for the queen. Did you find the leader?”

“I should add here that my focus was on monitoring doomsday cults. This particular cult believed that their guru could see the devil’s minions amongst the humans. The guru would instruct the followers on how to act to avoid the various entities visiting the Earth's surface—sort of like taking little mini vacations from Hell. Only when the entities were here, they tried to find a body to steal.”

“Soul to steal?” Hawkeye asked.

“Nope, whole body. The entity would just crawl into a body like it was putting on a new suit. And then the person lost their free will and had to walk around doing whatever heinous thing the demon wanted them to do.”

“That’s,” Hawkeye paused, “something. I mean, people who weren’t on drugs actually think that happens?”

“Absolutely. And as they follow what the guru tells them, they earn the right to be closer to the inner circle. With each step they took, the guru would perform rituals that would eventuallyopen the third eye, allowing them to easily see and avoid these demons. It’s in the newspaper. You can read all about the cult.”

“That’s all right, I’m good,” Hawkeye said. “But tell me this, the belief is that once you can see them, you can avoid them.”

“In theory.”

“Is any of that against the law?” Hawkeye asked. “Fraud, maybe?”

“Could you prove it’s fraud in court? I mean, I can’t see the demons. But could I scientifically prove that they don’t exist?” Petra shrugged. “Usually, with cults, it’s a matter of free will. If a believer wants to surrender all their worldly possessions to become enlightened, so be it. It’s when it crosses over into federal law that we get aggressively involved.”

“And this group was?”

“Money laundering, drug running, human trafficking, and in that case on that day—"

“Your last trip in that position?” Hawkeye clarified.

“Yes, the funding finally came through for my research. Anyway, yes, on my last trip in that position, I was trying to find the queen bee—and I’ll stop to tell you that I love bees, and I don’t love that analogy—”

“But it’s the one that works.” Hawkeye absolutely recognized that Petra’s mind was firing fast and furious, and she was struggling to keep her thoughts linear in order to have this conversation with him.

He had a micro-amygdala, and apparently, too much neural pruning had gone on, leaving him with a neurotypical brain. As Cora liked to explain it, her software was faster and more robust, but since she was trying to run it on weaker hardware, she glitched.

Cora struggled to slow down to get words and thoughts in line.

Hawkeye had learned to be patient and insert leading questions.

He always thought that being in Cora’s brain must be damned exhausting.

“Sadly true,” Petra said.

And Hawkeye wasn’t sure if she was responding to his comment about being the metaphor that worked or if she’d somehow read his mind and knew what he’d thought about her exhaustion.

“I’m on the plane following this woman,” Petra continued. “I’m in the same row in the window seat. Me, then an older woman who looked just like my mark—mother probably—then this gal on the aisle. Imagine her. She’s big for a woman. Not you big, but big, nonetheless. Not just height but all of her.”

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