NSFW Author

The lobby of the building was absolutely breathtaking. Marble floors, stone columns, giant paintings and wonderful chandelier on the 3 floor high ceiling dropping on long chains of different heights gave an impression of agoraphobia while standing still in the room.

The two curved staircases allowing to reach the 2 mezzanines on the second and third floor added to the majestic feeling thanks to their bronze handrails which were obviously hand carved.

I could hear multiple conversations in my head but oddly enough, there wasn’t anyone in the room.

Companies typically have a receptionist desk in the lobby to welcome visitors but even thought the front door was unlocked, there was no welcome party to tell me if I was even allowed in this hallway.

I slowly walked across the lobby. I didn’t dare to go upstairs yet. Giant tapestries were laid between paintings on the walls and for some obscure reason, I knew there were doors hidden behind them without even having to push any aside.

At the opposite end of the lobby was an ornate double wooden door with a pair of gold handles. I pulled the right one toward me and entered a huge conference room filled with state of the art equipment such a conference room speaker phones and drive mounted cameras.

The leather chairs were obviously of good quality.

Motivational posters adorned the walls citing leadership, team work and decision making examples.

But the most interesting thing on the wall was a chart of “abilities”, including Mind reading, thought listening, personality shaping which were set opposite to passive abilities like “Obfuscation”, “Thought blocking” and “Personality Anchor”.

With a marker, someone scribbled a number next to each of the abilities. Personality Anchor for example had “29” noted while it’s opposite, “Personality shaping”, had “37”.

As I was reading the chart and trying to memorize it, I heard the door open behind me. I turned my head and saw 4 men enter the room, two of which were holding guns pointed at me. They stayed on either sides of the door while the remaining two men, Kyle and Frank, I realized, walked toward me.

“Hello sir, please don’t be alarmed. We think you are in the right place. These guards are just in case you decide to attack one of us.”, calmly explained Kyle.

I could sense he was trying to appear as if he was the leader of the group, but I knew Frank was actually in charge. I don’t know why, I just did.

I decided to speak directly to him…

“Tell me Frank, what is this place exactly.”

Frank showed some surprise, but before answering, he pulled a chair and sat down, relaxed. Kyle sat a little further away.

Frank, without moving his lips, told me to sit down, so I decided to oblige.

“You did hear me inside your head, didn’t you?”, he added, this time with his mouth.

“Yes, I did.”

“But you have no clear idea of who I am, isn’t it?”

“I vaguely know your name and that you are in charge, but that’s it. Can you explain what’s going on?”

“Might I know your name?”

“Phil”

“Great, thank you Phil. This is the Enclave. An association of people with special mental abilities. That chart you were looking when we came in is a list of such abilities, like telepathy, mind control, personality shaping, etc… Each member of the Enclave has one or many of such gifts and we pool our resources together to increase our power, our money, our resources while making sure that the general population remains unaware of our talents.”

“But now I know.”

“We believe, Phil, that you have at least one of these talents. This building is protected by a powerful telepathic shield which makes it invisible to normal people. When you came in, we tried to scan your mind to understand who you were, but even our most powerful mind readers and thoughts listener were unable to pierce your shields. At a minimum, you are very gifted in defensive abilities, mostly likely intuitively.”

“Is that good?”

“It’s amazing. The numbers you saw on the chart are the highest levels known in each of the abilities. In some of them, you seem to exceed the current records.”

“I could hear people in my mind while in the lobby.”

“You overheard telepathic conversations. That’s normal for a beginner. We’ll train you to avoid it and how to have your own conversations.”

“So I am a telepath?”

“Well, we’re not sure exactly what your abilities are, but just with your blocking capacities, you would fit right in with us. We’d like to officially invite you to join the enclave”