Stapp and Borey

Ethan Stapp and Elinor Borey were the perfect couple. Charming. Elegant. They never fought, yet never gave the impression that one or the other was dominating the relationship. They were so perfect that it didn't seem humanly possible - and in a sense, it wasn't.

Stapp and Borey were telepathic agents of the Company, unflinchingly loyal and extraordinarily capable. Elinor worked as a frontline agent, reading the minds of enemy agents without their ever being aware of it. Ethan was a psychic interrogator, adept at cracking through psychic defenses and purloining secrets without damaging to the subject's conscious mind - leaving the enemy agent ideal for turning. In the course of their service, they provided untold services to the Company. But the relationship they struck up after they were both assigned to the Criswell Affair had the potential to be the greatest service either would provide

Most telepaths avoid each other because they find the experience of being scanned disorienting and uncomfortable - the feedback loop of reading your own thoughts at one remove can even cause neural damage or psychic burnout. Ethan and Elinor didn't experience that feedback, or if they did, they didn't find it at all painful. That they were both powerful and well-disciplined may have helped; likewise their mutual attraction. They were delighted by each other - Elinor told other agents she had never felt anything like the comfort she felt with Ethan, and Ethan presumably felt the same, though he wasn't the type to declare it. Their relationship led to a pregnancy, and the Company watched with interest - their daughter would provide unmatchable insight into the genetic basis for psi, as well as being (it was hoped) a powerful psychic in her own right.

In a burst of excess enthusiasm, one researcher who had become friendly with and fascinated by the couple, Professor Heisler, proposed trials to determine the nature of Ethan and Elinor's "mutuality", and whether it could be induced in other telepaths. Despite his protestations that he was merely trying to help the Company's perpetually lonely mind-readers, the proposal was interpreted, and savaged, as the first step towards a psychic breeding program. The usual rumours suggest that Heisler wasn't given stick for suggesting a eugenics program, but for making the idea public.

Regardless, the Company's idyllic scheme was shattered yesterday. Stapp and Borey were found dead in their apartment following a report of gunfire at 3 AM. Stapp was shot in the chest twice at point-blank range and died almost instantly; Borey was found holding a pistol matched to the bullets that killed Stapp, without a mark on her. Telepaths are usually extremely pacifistic, as they experience pain they inflict almost as if it were their own: Current thinking is that the pair's telepathic link was so strong that Stapp's death killed Borey as well. Postcognition confirmed that, nevertheless, she shot him without warning. The question now on everyone's mind is, why? Even if she hadn't known that the telepathic link would kill her, what could have driven her to such an act - and how could she have hidden her intent from him? The possibility of outside psi-manipulation has been advanced, but the Company's continuing faith in Borey makes them doubt it - As does their unwillingness to believe that any rival has a dominator that powerful.

("The Company" here refers to any clandestine paranormal organization - May combine this scenario w/ the Wizard previously mentioned, or leave it as is. Need to fill out details - the couple's friends, their relationship w/ Professor Heisler, whodunnit and how.)

Current possibilities: A psi virus of unusual power, dormant in Borey for months, finally comes out and forces self-destruction (variant: First wave of a general burst of insanity among psis - Stapp and Borey affected earlier because their shared consciousness is doubly vulnerable); Stapp was a double agent, hiding it behind a mental partition, Borey killed him as much out of betrayal as loyalty to the Co.; Both killed and framed with fake psi signatures to allow enemies (or even the Company itself, if we want to get proper trust-no-one) to steal the foetus.