She'd wished Jordy Zimms dead. And now, he was.

Izzy stared at the policeman sitting across from her at her kitchen table, his beige uniform camouflage in her dome's utilitarian décor. She hadn't been on-planet long enough to make the pop-up residence her own—fun and colourful, like the orange pyjamas she wore. Their gorgeous paisley, so vibrant against her dark skin, usually beautified her mundane world, but just twenty minutes in, her morning had got ugly.

Severed-head-in-a-paddock ugly.

Hands quivering on her polka-dotted breakfast mug, she recalled the awful breaking news that'd reeled across her datapad over her first cup of tea—then the knock on her door that'd followed. Her stomach lurched, but as a mirror empath, she didn't mistake the unease as hers alone.

Much of it belonged to the thin-lipped officer across from her.

His flint eyes didn't show it as he looked up from his handheld documenter. "Ms Lito—"

"Izzy, please." Her smile felt faintly desperate. "No need to be formal. We're all friends here." Weren't they? The horticultural colony on Gaia was known for its spirituality and warm hospitality, not just its fruit and grain fields. "It's Roy, isn't it? We chatted at last week's Greeting Festival for newbies like me. You said you liked Terran-style, real-hop beer, not the synthesised sort—and who doesn't?"

"It's Inspector Gabrielli," the officer corrected her. "This is an official interview, so I'll insist—"

"We stick to formalities," she agreed in a rush—cursed herself for interrupting again. "Yes, always best to be professional." She wanted to be, but the man and his unsmiling partner at her dome's door were fuelling jumping nerves. By the stars, she was actually scared. For the first time since arriving eight days ago, she was frightened for her safety.

And wasn't that a lie.

Her gut rolled. When she'd first stepped off the inter-colony shuttle onto Gaia's rich soil, hadn't she felt a darkness behind the smiles of the welcoming crowd? Gazes had held a little too long—watchful and ready to judge. Hugs had come readily, but without real warmth. As she'd accepted invitations to get-to-know-you drinks, she'd been struck by an uncharitable thought: that her new, laughing friends only cared about being seen as welcoming, leaving the truth of the sentiment unripe on the vine.

And then there'd been Jordy Zimms, the colony mayor's smirking, jet-bike–riding son, returned from off-world business. She hadn't wished he'd drive right off a cliff because he inspired 'pleasant' feelings.

And now, that bike and its rider lay in pieces. Not at the bottom of a cliff, but...

"Ms Lito," Roy—Inspector Gabrielli—started again. "You had an altercation with Mr Zimms yesterday afternoon, correct? Please detail what happened."

"Oh..." She rubbed palms on her paisley-covered thighs; offered an apologetic smile. "He, um, suggested he'd like us to 'socialise' in the preschool's garden shed. When I declined, he reiterated the invitation more, ah ... physically? So, I declined in similar fashion."

"You pushed him arse-first into a composter and, according to witnesses, told him to 'Go rot in Hell.' Is that correct?"

Izzy chewed her lip, debating how to answer. Far worse notions had spun through her mind in the moments before that pithy retort had left her tongue. Hadn't she considered dislocating the grease-stained fingers that'd force themselves under her shirt? Hadn't she pictured herself snatching the pruners from the man's belt and jamming them into a dark, leering eye? Anything to stop the depraved 'emotional sludge' that'd poured through her as he'd touched her. She shuddered, recalling the violation of both her personal space and empathic senses. Jordy Zimms had not been a good man. "I can't dispute those facts."

Gabrielli's lips thinned. "Where were you last evening, just prior to midnight?"

"Here. In bed. I've a morning shift at the preschool."

"Can anyone corroborate your whereabouts?"

Izzy's throat locked. Oh, stars. An alibi. She was actually being asked for an alibi—her, a pixie-short, empathic kindergarten teacher with a penchant for rom-coms and old-Earth showtunes. Nausea rising, she cursed herself again—this time for deeds not done. A good-looking supply runner on an overnight had offered her his personal 'delivery services' the evening before, but she'd turned him down—ironically because of Jordy Zimms. That and she'd suspected her fellow colonists would judge her unkindly. Formed out of a faith commune, the settlement still had a lot of rules about 'acceptable behaviour'. Jumping the lanky bones of Exler Donovan, a fiery-haired, planet-hopping rogue who unapologetically called the colony "a shit-ploughing morality cult", would have earned her a sea of hard glances.

"Corroborate?" She repeated the word as if she'd failed to understand it. "You want to confirm I slept here? Oh, ah—well, the dome's habitat sensors might give you a report on, ah, respiratory and bio gases. Those things measure right down to the methane of, um..." she blushed; lamented her idiot mouth again. "I'm sure you're familiar with the products of normal human digestion, Inspector."

Amusement overrode the unease she sensed. Rubbing his mouth to hide a smirk, Gabrielli signalled to his partner at the door. "McCone, check the habitat logs. Confirm overnight occupation."

As the other man headed for the control console by her bed, Izzy felt her shoulders loosen with the inspector's. After Jordy had scared her, she'd wished many a bad fate befall him. But on learning of his grisly death, regret had hit for the nasty thoughts she'd put into the universe. And boy, had she given fate some awful ideas, so bad she'd actually felt guilty when the officers had arrived, like somehow she was at fault.

"Inspector—" She had to clear her throat, guilt still a nagging tickle. "The morning bulletin said Jordy was riding his jet bike when a flyer lizard, um ... 'collided' with him." She couldn't bring herself to say what the carnivorous reptile had actually done. Jordy, apparently, had lost his head—or, more correctly, lost everything but his head. His body hadn't been found. "What does such an awful accident have to do with where—"

"Arrest the killer whore!" A tornado of frizzy grey curls and rage whirled through the door: Mayor Zimms, Jordy's mother—work boots clattering; garden fork jabbing. "You don't need no confession! We saw her threaten my son, and now, he's dead. She brain-hacked that lizard! She's one of them mind assassins sent by the government!"

Izzy jerked back from the pitchfork and accusation. Her pulse scrambled, the emotions in the room blasting past uneasy straight to hysterical. "Mayor Zimms, I was sent to teach four-year-olds."

"Indoctrinate them! Take over their minds!" Eyes wild, the mayor closed in, stabbing the air. "You used mind control, didn't you? Set that lizard on my Jordy! Inspector, incapacitate her before she murders us with her psi-assassin powers!"

"Psi assassin?" Izzy paled. The accusation somewhat misrepresented her mild case of empathic intuition. "Mayor Zimms, I don't have the ability to—" What? Take over a reptile's brain? Force it to rip off a person's head and fly away with the rest? "The whole 'government psi-operative' thing's a conspiracy theory that came up during the last Tri-Galactic Governor race. One of the candidates tried to excuse his participation in an arms dealer's private orgy by claiming—"

"Slander!" the mayor roared. "Representative Thekkon is a fine family man! Some government mind-spy like you made him do those things to ruin his re-election!"

Gabrielli rose, one hand dropping to the stun weapon at his hip. "I've seen the evidence the government didn't want us to see, and the truth is no one's done more for the colonies than Thekkon. He's a strong, moral man who respects honest labour."

Izzy's stomach plummeted. The officer's sincerity, the mayor's words—all rode waves of irrational resentment. The truth hit, sending her head spinning. She'd gone and moved to a planet full of Thekkon supporters! No wonder she'd felt uneasy; such fanatics lived in an alternate reality. They'd turned paranoid denialism into an art form—no, worse, a religion.

All hope of polite, rational due process died as the mayor yelled, "Shoot her before she makes you shoot each other!" 

Gabrielli and his partner jerked their stunners up to—

Izzy dove for the door—as her world flashed hot, brilliant white.

She fell, blinded, her retinas overloaded by the stun blasts. Flinging arms out, she saved herself from a hard faceplant into dusty earth. Her shocked brain reeled, realising she'd made it outside and her nervous system still functioned. The officers' paralysing bolts had missed. But their next ones—

Pulse a roar, she flung herself sideways just as everything again blazed electric white. Nearly blind, she scrambled to her feet—ran. A blur of sun-bleached domes, commuters, and delivery vehicles whirled past. Shouts rose: Gabrielli yelling for her to stop; the mayor screaming, "Get the government mind assassin!"

People-shaped blurs started coming at her, hands grabbing, voices raised—

She crashed into a solid body. Strong hands caught her. Flailing and clawing, she tried to break free—got yanked off her feet.

A second of weightlessness ... then she slammed down into darkness, her back connecting with a surface that rang like metal. Dim walls and piled cargo reared around her, unfocused and reeling. The clang of a shuttle ramp closing drowned her scream as her assailant pinned her. Fear threatened to explode her skull. She fought to hold her sanity, desperation turning to—

Amusement, cynical and wry.

Izzy froze, her pulse stumbling. She fought to orient herself, but fresh panic hit as a wild clattering broke out all around her: impacts on the outside of the delivery vehicle she'd been thrown into. A crowd's violent emotions hammered her, all fear and righteous rage. But the individual pinning her...

A bemused snort sounded by her ear. "Izzabella, what terrible sin have you committed against the local lunatics?"

Izzy's head went light. "Donovan?" Relief hit as she recognised the irreverent supply runner who'd chatted her up the evening before. Exler Donovan wasn't one of the local lunatics. "The mayor thinks I killed her son—with a winged lizard and my brain."

"Ahh—shit." Exler rolled off her; dove between stacks of undelivered cargo to reach his shuttle's pilot seat. Morning light sliced through the windshield, putting fire in his ice-blue eyes and red hair. "There's no crazy too stupid for these people."

Izzy scrambled for the co-pilot seat, horror squeezing her chest as fists and tools battered the supply runner's shuttle. "Exler, I'm so sorry." Her hands shook as she strapped herself in, her wide gaze on the mass of screaming people beyond the windshield. "They think I'm a hired psi assassin."

Exler slapped his controls, setting ground thrusters roaring. Dust blasted over the rabid crowd, driving them back. "Don't apologise." He flashed her a taut smile. "Any sane person would know that if you could control minds, we'd all be baking biscuits and singing showtunes."

"This isn't funny." She stifled a shriek as launch thrusters fired, ramming her back in her seat. All air left her lungs as golden, dawn-lit domes and fields rapidly turned to unadulterated blue—soon to turn into the black of space. The enormity of her situation hit her. "Oh, stars. I'm a wanted fugitive."

"Nope, that was Zimms." Exler punched main engines, slamming the ship to bone-rattling escape velocity. "Wanted in five sectors for anti-gov terrorism. Three-million-credit bounty, payable to whoever crosses off the treasonous bastard."

Izzy gasped, dark satisfaction pouring through her—Exler's. "Oh, sh—" Her teacher reflexes cut off her shocked curse. "You killed him."

"Izzabella, please." Exler winced—but his eyes danced. "We both know there's no such thing as a mind-hijacking psi-assassin." His grin came sharp and fast. "Or do I need to 'convince' you otherwise?"

Izzy's gut dove, the last of her small sunlit world vanishing beneath her, about to give way to a vast, dark universe. "Oh, f—fudge."

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This ≤2000-word story was written for a writing challenge with the prompt of "synchronicity", i.e., when people interpret two separate, seemingly unrelated experiences as being meaningfully connected, even though there's no evidence to show they are.