The Drafter

by Kim Harrison

  “Hey, I gave her a clean memory,” Jack said, and she hated him more than anyone in her life. “Do you know how hard it is to fragment an entire person? Make a realistic timeline from two?”

  Groaning, Peri tried to get away, but it was a trap of her own making, and Silas was failing. He couldn’t control it. Numb, Peri existed in a haze as images passed faster and furious. Silas couldn’t catch them, and it was going to drown her in insanity.

  But as she sat on the floor and shook, she didn’t think she cared anymore. Jack was dying on the floor and she couldn’t save him. Then it was her on the floor, Allen holding her head from the scratched boards, and she wanted Jack dead. She wanted him dead!

  “Make it stop!” Peri screamed, but nothing touched her ears. Silas’s arms around her jerked, and he looked up when the glass in the front door shattered. A dark hand snaked in, looking for the lock. Dazed, Peri stared at it, wondering if she was alive. She was on the floor. Silas was wrapped around her as if he could keep her from falling apart by his touch alone. He hadn’t known what to fragment, and now they were both there, two timelines fighting for supremacy, driving her insane.

  “Thank God you told me where you were,” Howard said as he tumbled in, the light gray in the parking lot behind him. “Opti is two minutes behind us.”

  She was hallucinating again. Howard couldn’t really be here.

  “Silas!” the imaginary man shouted as he rushed forward and grabbed Silas’s shoulder. “We have to go! Pick her up!”

  Peri’s breath came in with a heave when Silas stood, scooping her up in one move. “Where’s Taf?” Silas said raggedly.

  “We got a car. Another friend of hers. Come on!”

  Peri shook. They’d been interrupted mid-defrag, and she was dying. Howard held the door, and the flush of cool air struck Peri with the suddenness of a slap.

  “What happened?” Howard said, pacing beside them to the car.

  Silas’s lips pressed. “I tried to defragment something I shouldn’t have.”

  Peri’s chest hurt as she felt her breath come and go. Around and around the memories spun. There was nowhere to hide, and she shook, going into shock.

  “What’s wrong with Peri?” Taf said from behind the wheel as the two of them got Peri into the backseat.

  “Just go!” someone yelled, and the car lurched into motion, going too fast for even an empty parking lot. Dazed and unable to separate reality from memory, Peri breathed in the scent of Silas as he held her in the backseat. She looked at her hands, wondering where the blood was. The sky was gray. The ground was gray. She was gray, stuck between the two. She loved Jack. She’d killed Jack. Everything was all at once. Where there had been a hole in her memory, there was now overwhelming confusion and loss, married to images that made no sense. She couldn’t handle two realities. If she could, she’d be an anchor.

  “Is she going to be okay?” Howard addressed Silas worriedly.

  “I don’t know,” Silas said grimly. But as Peri tried to remember how to move her lungs in order to breathe, she doubted if okay was anything she would ever be again.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Silas watched Peri breathe, amazed her mind was still fighting even as it was fraying right before him. Both timelines held information they needed: who’d betrayed her and how deep the corruption went. He had fragmented almost nothing, believing he could hold it all until he had the entire two lines. But the memories had come too fast and adhered too quickly—and though the two timelines weren’t yet coherent, she had them both now. The more they fell into place, the more unstable she’d become. She was trembling, full into a memory overdraft, which was a nice way of saying he’d screwed up, leaving her mind to destroy itself.

  “Turn left,” Silas whispered, his voice just louder than the car’s engine. They’d been interrupted, and he didn’t know what to destroy, what to fix. And she was in agony. Damn you, Allen. I blame you. “It’s the third one up. Stone walkway,” he said.

  “I see it,” Taf said, and Silas held Peri closer to minimize the jostling as Taf drove them through the high-end subdivision. He could feel Peri’s thoughts circling as she tried to organize the memories he’d unearthed. Her pain and betrayal resonated in him as if they were his own. It was the pain that was keeping her sane right now, the desire for revenge. She couldn’t allow others to believe they wouldn’t be held accountable for what they’d done. But it was only a matter of time until Peri got everything in the right place. Grief wouldn’t be a strong enough emotion to hold her together then.

  “Peri?” he whispered when he realized her shaking had stopped. “Stay with me.”

  “Is she okay?” Howard said from up front, and her eyelids flickered.

  “No.” Silas’s voice was ragged as his thumb brushed the hair from her cheek. “Peri, can you hear me?”

  Her breath came in as a wheezing, pained sound, and he fastened on it. She could hear him, even lost in the twin timelines her mind was stuck on. If he could mute them both to where the present was stronger than the past, he might be able to stave off the inevitable. But for how long? “Hang on,” he whispered, seeing Karley’s two-story home, gray in the snow and porch lights. “Concentrate on what you hear. I’m not letting you go.”

  His heart leapt when her narrow chin quivered. She’d heard him, and he held her tighter. My God, she was stronger than he’d ever given her credit for.

  “Drop me at the curb,” Silas said, scooting to the door with Peri still in his arms. “I don’t want a second tire track in the drive. Ditch the car and come back. Karley will be more likely to let me in if you’re not with me.”

  What am I doing, bringing Peri here? But he had no choice, ex-wife or not.

  “Silas . . . ,” Howard protested, even as he got out to help.

  The sudden cold was bitter. Lurching, he got out with her in his arms, her weight hardly anything. Pale and fragile-looking, she opened her eyes, but he could tell she wasn’t seeing the gray and white snow above them.

  “Stay with Taf,” Silas said, and Howard reluctantly dropped back. “Karley will help me. She doesn’t like me, but she’ll help me, if only to tell me how stupid I am.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  He nodded, his desperation growing. Not knowing what to do, he started up the steep drive, staying within the tire track to minimize evidence of his presence. Howard got back into the car, but they didn’t drive away, and Silas frowned as he used his elbow to ring the doorbell. She had to be home. There was only one set of tracks in the light snow.

  “I can fix this, Peri,” he whispered. “Hang on just a little more. I’ll make it go away.” His fear began to shift to anger. Jack had used her, used her love to blind her, the very man who’d once held her sanity and soul. She’d been right to shoot him.

  Her eyes fluttered, unseeing as the door swung in and light spilled over them.

  “Karley,” Silas said to the late-thirties woman standing in the glow from inside the cavernous, ostentatious house. She was still dressed from an early dinner out, lipstick faded from the glass of whatever she’d been drinking, heels off, purse on the table by the door. Frowning, she put a manicured hand on her cocked hip, showing off her legs under her professional suit dress. Her brown hair was pulled back in a clip that made her look both severe and elegant. “I need your help,” Silas said when Karley leaned to look past him to the car running at the curb.

  “Of course you do,” she said, eyes coming back to Peri.

  “They’re not staying,” Silas added, and Karley laughed bitterly.

  “Neither are you. Opti has already been here looking for you. I’m not doing this again.”

  “This isn’t about me!” he said as the door began to close. “I tried to defragment something and it got out of control. We were interrupted, and she’s in overdraft. I can’t take her to Emergency. Opti wants to wipe her, and she’s got the end to this buried in her mind. It’s not too late to pull her out. I just
need a quiet room.”

  Guilt kept his eyes firmly on hers. He’d learned the knack of lying to the women he loved early on. There had to be a way to save both Peri and the memories she held. He just didn’t know how to do it yet.

  “Why do you do this to me?” Karley leaned closer, moved by Peri’s dire appearance, if not by his words.

  “Please,” he said again, begging. “This isn’t about me. She needs help.”

  Karley made an ugly sound, but the door was still open. “All right. Hurry up,” she finally said, looking past him at the car and waving it off. “Get in here. How confident are you that you weren’t followed? Are you clean?”

  The warmth and muffled sound of a well-furnished home enfolded him, pushing aside the images of blood and hard yellow floor that were leaking into his awareness. Peri was trying. She was fighting for her sanity even if her eyes were shut and she shook as if she’d been beaten.

  “Howard brought us,” Silas said as the door clicked shut. “We’re clean. As for being followed? Who knows.”

  “You are a bundle of good news, Silas. Nothing’s changed there. Put her on the couch.”

  He knelt before the couch in the lavish living room, his chest clenching when Peri reached for him as she felt herself drop. She wasn’t as lost as he thought, and his indecision became almost unbearable. The hell with the information. He had to save her. Fingers trembling, he folded her hands over her chest, never letting go as he pushed the hair from her eyes.

  Karley leaned close over them both, her lips pressed into a thin line as she professionally evaluated Peri’s state. The smell of hairspray grew strong, and he held his breath, praying Karley wouldn’t say it was too late. She’d always given up too easily. On everything.

  “How long ago did it happen?” she asked, her tone holding that cold lilt he hated.

  “Twenty minutes.” Karley straightened up, and he breathed easier.

  “I meant, how long ago was the draft you tried to render?” she asked pointedly.

  “Four days.” Guilt sank its teeth in another inch, and he tugged the TV blanket up over her. “She was starting to hallucinate. I thought it was worth the risk.”

  “She was hallucinating within four days?” Karley’s voice was raised in anger. “Are you blind or intentionally being an idiot? It must have been highly traumatic to cause hallucinations after only four days. Where’s her anchor?”

  Silas glared up at her, wanting to stand but unwilling to let go of Peri. “She killed him,” he said drily.

  Head shaking, Karley picked up her short glass of ice and something clear. Hand on one hip, she stood before the oversize flat screen currently displaying the house’s security. “That was the memory you tried to defragment? Her killing her anchor?”

  Frustrated, he fixed the blanket tighter under Peri’s chin. “Part of it.”

  “And you wonder why you lost control?” Karley’s professional outrage began to show. “No wonder Opti threw you out. What could she possibly know worth risking her mental stability for?”

  “Opti didn’t throw me out. I quit.” He stood, bitter and not wanting to add to Peri’s already swirling emotions. “There’s no way I could’ve kept control of what I unearthed. The rewrite was intertwined with the original like hair in a dreadlock.”

  Karley pointed at him with her glass, ice clinking. “What does she know that’s worth risking her sanity for?”

  He stiffened. “I need a quiet place to piece her back together. Are you going to help me, or should I go to a Motel 6?”

  “You left her with two timelines, didn’t you?” Setting her glass on the mantel, Karley waited, anger pulling her eyebrows together when he said nothing. “You are an idiot. Drafters can’t handle two timelines. That’s why they forget them! And you left them there?”

  “I’m trying to help her,” Silas snapped, slumping when Karley made a frustrated Well? gesture. “Peri has information about the corruption in Opti. It goes deeper than Bill. I didn’t fragment anything yet because both timelines hold the proof.”

  “Oh, my God. Bill?” Karley sat down, her anger replaced by shock. “Isn’t he her handler?”

  Silas nodded. “It gets better. He was the one tasked with finding the corruption. He sent Peri and her anchor to get a list of bad agents so he could modify it before reporting them. Peri found out, killed her anchor. But the original list is still live somewhere. If we can find it before Bill does, we can end this.”

  And if not, everything lost will have been for nothing, he thought. “Peri and I have a good working connection,” he said, and Karley’s head snapped up, eyes bright in warning. “I successfully untangled a memory knot created by Allen’s wipe.”

  “Damn it, Silas, those things are dangerous,” Karley said in exasperation.

  “No they’re not,” he said, his frustration at an old argument getting the best of him. “Opti uses fear to control drafters. Fear that unresolved timelines will cause madness. Fear of being alone so their leash holders are always there. Fear that they can’t do without anchors when they can. They filled her head with lies to make her helpless.”

  Karley shook her head. “Even the best drafter will go insane with twin timelines.”

  His pulse quickened at the truth of that. “I can hide them under enough distractions that she can live with it. We’d have our proof.”

  “Silas.”

  “I can do this!” he said loudly, then glanced at Peri and lowered his voice. She’d regained enough motor control to curl into a fetal position, and guilt made him feel ill. If he didn’t hide the twin lines well enough, she’d ferret them out and go mad before his eyes. He couldn’t watch another drafter go mad like that. Not again.

  Karley rose fast, her indecision obvious. They’d been married for three years, and hiding his fear from her was impossible. “It can’t be done,” she said, touching his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  “All I need is a quiet room,” he said pointedly, and Peri flinched. But that was a good sign, even as he sensed the memories in her tumbling over themselves. “I can’t leave her like this, and I can’t fragment everything she worked so hard to uncover. But I can get the information and keep her sane.”

  His jaw clenched at the pity in his ex-wife’s eyes. “It’s one or the other. She’s not Summer. You can’t save her.”

  Silas’s gut twisted as Peri picked up on his sudden grief and moaned. “Summer is gone,” Silas said. “I know I can do both. Are you going to help me or not?”

  Brow furrowed, Karley strode to the fireplace. She took a drink, ice clinking. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said, angry at herself as she gave in. “You can stay until morning. Then you’re gone, whether she’s conscious or not. Sane or dead. You understand? So you’d better impress the hell out of me and fix this, Doctor.”

  His breath came fast and he dropped to a kneel to gather Peri to him. She was so light, hardly there, and he found his feet with a new determination even as his fear shook itself and became that much stronger. “Thank you,” he said, and Peri’s eyes opened, scanning the ceiling before she choked and closed them. The fear of being left alone shocked through him—Peri’s emotion was resonating in him.

  “Upstairs,” Karley was saying over her shoulder as she walked to the stairway between the living room and kitchen. “You don’t happen to know her safe place, do you?”

  He tried to smile when Peri’s wandering, unseeing eyes found his, and his hope leapt when she clutched at his arm. “Don’t leave me alone,” she slurred.

  It was a clear, coherent thought, and his heart soared as he followed Karley. “Thank God you’re still here,” he whispered, eyes on hers. “It’s going to be okay. I won’t leave you until there’s somewhere safe beyond the confusion.”

  Her breath came in a heave. Tears were spilling from her as she nodded, and her eyes closed again as if the sights and colors hurt. “Please hurry.”

  “She’s still cognizant,” Silas whispered as Karley opened a d
oor at the top of the stairs, and he watched Peri’s face for any sign of pain when he lowered her gently to the bed. Her long lashes rested on her pale cheeks, making her look lost among the faded colors of the room. Gently he brushed back her black hair making stark lines on the white pillow, and she shook, feeling it. “I need coffee. Can you get me some coffee?”

  Karley nodded, lips pursed in disapproval as she left and shut the door behind her.

  “Silas!” Peri cried out at the soft click, and he took her hand as he knelt beside the bed to put his face near hers. Her eyes opened, but he knew she wasn’t seeing him. She was seeing Jack, and an unknown horror sheened her eyes as she moaned and closed them. She was sliding back into the chaos of memories Silas had unearthed.

  There was no way to separate them, but he didn’t have to. Steeling himself against the grief and betrayal, he opened his mind again, reliving everything with her, studying it in detail as she cried, shaking between the covers. But he wouldn’t let her relive them alone, and as he shuffled and aligned, piecing everything together by using the fall of shadows and tiny details that she’d never focused on, he realized how he was going to hide her twin memories in plain sight. When he was done, she’d be able to rest her mind from the horror in the scent of polish, the darkness of the beams, the glint of the Juke’sBox, and the almost-subliminal hum of the bar’s gaming lounge.

  Slowly he shifted the memory of Jack dying, blurring it until the only thing that mattered was the shine on the floor. He tweaked Peri’s savage rage while shooting Jack, down to the glint of light on a nearby shot glass. He blurred the voices until the hum of the floor cleaner was all she heard. Allen restraining her as she sold her memory for the chance to kill Jack became less important than the pinch of her boot, something she’d never noticed.

  He fragmented what he could, but the twin lines were there still, muted until they and the incongruities they fostered wouldn’t be noticed, blurring everything into a monochrome that would let her sleep.