by Mike Chen
OUT THERE, PEOPLE CALLED Jamie the Mind Robber. But in here, all of that was stripped away. Jamie looked at the faces, the eyes.
A sense of calm washed over him, something he hadn’t felt all day. He never talked at these things, but somehow just sitting there created a sense of ease. The other members of the group didn’t judge. They didn’t suspect. They simply brought empathy. But that always happened when he came. He’d justify and bargain and deny himself when the reminder appeared, but on the odd week he forced himself, it always wound up feeling right. Even if today was only because the police had come to his door.
And someday, he might even speak. Someday. For now, he listened.
“I’d like to welcome everyone to the San Delgado Memory Loss and Dementia Support Group. As always, we are sponsored by our friends at San Delgado General Hospital. Their guidance and medical support helps all of us. Whether you’re a caregiver, family member, friend or someone who experiences symptoms, you’re in good hands.”
Same speech as always. And soon, others would begin sharing their stories, either brain exercises they’d done to maintain the memory sharpness or the horror spawned from the chasm where thoughts and feelings used to exist. Sometimes during those stories, Jamie got the urge to blurt out, “But what if the memories were bad?” He never did, of course, yet the urge always danced on the periphery.
Jamie sat, reminded himself to keep moving forward, control only what he could.
“So, a few ground rules. My name is Ian Bradley and I’m the moderator, but that doesn’t mean that I’m the leader. I’m just directing the conversation and keeping things going. We have an open sharing forum for the first thirty minutes or however long you need, then we’ll discuss specific topics—this week’s is new research released on the latest in dementia prevention.”
In the room, a mix of people nodded. Jamie wondered who they were, whether they came because they faced growing pockets of missing memories or because they worked with people who dealt with that kind of mental reset on a daily basis—the kind of reset he’d experienced two years ago.
But really, what happened to him was unlike anyone else here. Amnesia, sure it happened, but coupling it with extraordinary abilities probably wasn’t in any textbook. Not for the senior citizens, some of whom sat with their adult children, and not the handful of people who showed up in hospital scrubs. And certainly not the Asian woman with slightly disheveled hair and deep bags under her eyes, seemingly decades of weariness on her despite probably being only in her late twenties. Jamie thought he’d seen her at a previous meeting, perhaps once or twice in passing, though he was pretty sure she’d never shared before.
She, like him, probably felt safer lurking. At least that’s what her posture said, her slumped shoulders and downward gaze more appropriate for a child in trouble than a medical support group.
“I see some new faces today. Remember, some people are caregivers and some are suffering from this disease. Because of this mix, I’d ask you to refrain from using last names. This anonymity allows us to be honest. It’s a safe space here.”
A safe space. The mere idea tickled Jamie in a way, igniting feelings that he...well, most people would have compared them to some sort of idyllic childhood or precious moment. Those didn’t exist for him. But it felt good. Around the dingy meeting hall of the San Delgado East Side YMCA, people opened themselves up, one by one. José, who was an Alzheimer’s researcher and explained how he had to counsel doctors on working with patients. Billie, who had lost four years of her memory following a car crash and battled depression despite the support of her husband and teenage son. Chung, who broke down while trying to explain that he had to introduce himself to his father every time he visited.
“Anyone else?” Ian looked around the room. The only response came in the form of the occasional cough and squeaking of chairs. “Last chance before we move on to our topic of the week.”
Across the room, the quiet woman flicked her eyes up. From Jamie’s angle, he could see her glance at the moderator before they met gazes. Jamie tried to offer a welcoming smile, but she dropped the connection, blending back into the harshness of the room made only bleaker by the fluorescent lighting. Everyone sat silent when the lights suddenly flickered; it went black for a good second or two, and Jamie swore he saw a bright blue flash before the lights came back on.
“Last call for shares. Going once? Going twice? And—”
“I’d like to say something,” the woman said. She shuffled in her chair, as if her coat would swallow her whole. “My name is Zoe. And I suffer from memory loss.”
“Hi, Zoe,” Ian said. “I’m sorry to hear that. Take as much time as you need.”
“Well, I...” Her voice was dry, the sound barely escaping, though her sigh filled the room. “I’m sorry, I just don’t talk about this. But I can’t remember much of my childhood. I can’t remember much of my life really.”
“Zoe, I have to tell you that we are a support group, not a diagnostic clinic. Most of us are caregivers or friends or family. We are all sympathetic to your situation, but we can’t offer medical advice. We are, though, here to listen.”
Zoe’s black hair swished back and forth as she nodded. “Right, right. It’s cool. I’m not, like, looking for a cure. It’s just...hard, you know. You feel like there’s something behind the curtain, something there, something holding you back. My memory, it’s like a black hole. It just sucks me in but it’s too strong and you can’t see anything. It’s just there.”
The description lingered in Jamie’s mind, short-circuiting his thoughts. That wasn’t how he’d describe his own memories; his felt the complete opposite. Not a black hole, but a supernova, exploding over the details and blinding out everything in existence.
Though Zoe was a stranger, something about her seemed so familiar it pulled on his curiosity. Jamie scanned his own memories to see if he could place her, but nothing came up. Yet, a certainty tugged at him, a knowing that they’d encountered each other before.
Despite a sea of heads in his view, he could tell her eyes stared ahead with a palpable intensity. The chair beneath him squeaked as he leaned forward to hear her better, as if the extra few inches could explain why she drew him into her orbit.
Was she from one of his bank robberies?
“Really, most of my memories start from about two years ago.”
Two years ago?
Those few words turned curiosity into urgency.
It couldn’t be a coincidence.
For nearly two years, Jamie had purposefully not sought out his other life. Every time the thought appeared, something ran interference, telling him to stay ahead of it, to keep going.
But he’d never been this close to it before. To even the remote possibility of it.
Zoe took in a breath and the group waited for her to gather herself. Jamie went down the rabbit hole of his own memories, but nothing placed her face. Instead, a rapid-fire punching of what-ifs hounded him, demanding an answer.
He’d vowed repeatedly to never use his abilities when he was off the clock. Being the Mind Robber, dealing with banks, that was work. Reading memories, that was a skilled task. Using it in real life would be a violation, make him a true villain rather than an act he put on.
Yet given the circumstances, the decision came with surprising ease.
Just this once.
“I live my life. I have a job, a home.” Zoe hesitated, took in a sharp breath, paused to scratch the back of her head. “But I just wonder, is this it? Is this what I was meant to be? Shouldn’t there be more? And it feels like all the answers are hidden behind this...” Creases formed across her face, mouth twisting into a frown. “This wall. And I don’t know how to break it.” After about thirty seconds, he locked in, and a flood of images transmitted from her brain to his. A different kind of guilt came to him, not the mystery one that arrived with his missing
past, but the sense that he was violating the most personal of private spaces by doing this.
The images were neatly stacked, thumbnails in a filmstrip speeding by: a nearly empty studio apartment, a view from the roof, a hallway with even worse lighting than the meeting space.
“It’s funny, because I listen to people when they’re stressed or need help. I guess you could say I’m a therapist of sorts.”
As Zoe began diving into her share, her emotions turned up and her guard went down. The pictures slowed, became brighter, sharper, bigger, more focused.
“Sometimes, I can help them.”
She took in a breath, and a single image appeared, most likely the active memory she currently pictured in her mind’s eye. An older man in a business suit stood in an alley, tufts of silver hair on the side, glasses slipping off the bridge of his dark brown nose.
Whoever this man was, it was clear that something was very wrong. His eyes were wide, his mouth was open, his hands were up. And his image, a weird outline kept obscuring him, like someone scribbled a highlighter of pulsating red, the intensity fading in and out.
“I help them through it. Which is part of the problem, isn’t it? If you’re the one everyone relies on, if you take on people’s burdens, sometimes there’s just not that much left of you.”
Zoe’s view whipped around back past the frightened man until centering on a blurry figure with a similarly fuzzy outline. It gradually sharpened into a bulky male silhouette.
Gloved hands. Fingers curled around...something. A handle of some sort. Zoe’s memory camera pulled back, and the rest of the object came into focus.
A knife.
“Especially when you don’t know who you are. Then you do stupid things. Like drinking before work.”
Things snapped into real time, though her own movements felt like fast-forward. From her perspective, she whipped around. One dodge of the knife. Then another swipe and miss. A second mugger appeared, a similar stance and a similar weapon. They stepped forward and Zoe immediately darted to the left and leaped against the wall, faster than seemingly possible, legs compressing in before propelling her sideways. Then another jump. Then she was behind the duo. Emotions didn’t normally transmit to Jamie, but a palpable thrill rippled in this memory.
In one move, Zoe slid between the two. Thwack. Her forearms hit the backs of their legs, buckling and staggering the muggers. Crunch. Zoe’s fist flew up and slammed both men in the jaw, and she stood. Whoosh. Her leg whirled around with a roundhouse kick, boot connecting from one head to the next. Euphoria washed over her, so strong that it made Jamie cringe. “That sense of self I’m missing. Even when I’m helping people. No matter what I do, I just wonder if it’s enough. If it’s who I’m meant to be.”
The muggers slumped down, the colors over them dissolving. Behind her, the old man rushed up and grabbed her by the shoulder. Zoe turned to find an ear-to-ear grin. “The Throwing Star,” he said, “I can’t believe it’s you.”
Jamie pulled out of her memories and returned to the YMCA, though he couldn’t fight the pit in his gut. Zoe looked up and once again they locked eyes, but unlike before, she lingered on him.
“I think that’s it,” she finally said. “Thank you for listening to me. I feel...” For the first time since arriving, a small smile crept onto her face. “I feel a little better. It’s nice knowing that people care.”
But she wasn’t just Zoe. Jamie sat silently, horrified at himself for breaking the sanctity of the group. As the moderator thanked her, the lights flickered again.
* * *
Some ten minutes later, Jamie stood in the break room struggling with the coffee machine. He considered probing the mind of the moderator for any inkling of how to use the damn thing, but opted against it—not just because he was talking about the latest in dementia-related research or due to the sanctity of the group, but poking away at needlessly complicated coffee makers took his mind off of Zoe.
Had he been a little slower today, things would have been completely different. She would have caught him, he may have tried to erase her mind in self-defense, and who knows what would have happened from there. Broken bones for him, a disabled brain for her, or something in between.
Instead, here they were, under crappy lighting with a coffee machine that was seemingly smarter than everyone in the building.
“Oh good,” a female voice said with a laugh. “You’re here.”
Jamie turned to see Zoe blocking the exit.
His body tensed, alerts and warnings telling him that she could overpower him in a blink. Instead, there was only one route to go. Jamie rubbed his chin, the subtlest way he could think of to get his fingers in position to do their work. His mind reached out, invisible threads locking into her brain, though it needed a good thirty seconds or so. Sometimes more.
Especially under duress.
“I’ve been looking for somebody who knows how to work this stupid coffee maker.” She laughed at her own admission, and then pointed at the giant black-and-brown technological behemoth on the counter. “Here are the packs—” she gestured to the box next to it “—but where do you put it? There are three slots.”
Jamie’s hand dropped, and he let out a sigh that prompted a curious look from her.
“I think this one.” He pointed to the slot on the left. “But then I’m not sure what to do. I use a carafe for pour-over coffee. It tastes better. It’s worth the wait.”
“Mine is so much easier. Put a pod in, push a button, that’s it,” she said.
She tapped through the touch screen menu, going through the options for hot water and espresso and bold. As Jamie watched, curiosity crept in.
What were those powers of hers? And how did she get them?
Did she remember anything?
Once again, Jamie’s mind reached out, plugging in and connecting with hers. His hands stayed at his side—there wouldn’t be any defensive surgery going on here, just reading—while she stared at the coffee machine, scratching the back of her head. A minute later Jamie was sifting through thoughts and memories like randomly sampling files on a laptop.
The strength, the speed, something happened a few years back, but she didn’t recall what or how or why. She just knew that her body went far beyond normal human physicality. The fighting skills, those came from practicing to free “cardio kickboxing for moms” videos on her phone. Which probably didn’t make for technically sound martial arts but being stronger and faster clearly helped.
Beyond that, she couldn’t remember.
Also, there wasn’t a clue regarding how she did the cool hovering thing.
But the colors in her mind’s eye, that gave another advantage: a type of thermal vision that helped her track down her foes at a distance, especially when combined with heightened hearing.
Like a bank robber escaping down the street.
“Yes!” she shouted. The machine whirred and churned, and out poured steaming hot coffee into the paper cup. She turned to high-five Jamie.
Smack. Her palm slapped his, and he stifled a grimace, his hand stinging as if it had smashed into the bumper of a moving car. A single thought entered his head as he noticed a blush come over her cheeks.
She could destroy me without even trying.
Her speed. Her strength. Her ability to track. She could hunt down the Mind Robber—him, Jamie—win the battle in a single move and probably with a brutal swiftness before his probing could even start.
He sighed again, this time with the realization that his only hope against her ever would be to erase her mind before she could strike first. It wasn’t the police or some do-gooder at a bank, someone who could be swatted away with strategic use of his own powers. She was too fast, too powerful for that. She could freaking fly over him and drop him with a swift kick he’d never see coming. This woman, Zoe, who had needed compassion but also nearly crushed h
im earlier that afternoon, really was the biggest threat to his simple goal of retiring to the Caribbean with his cat.
6
SOMETHING TICKLED THE BACK of Zoe’s head. She scratched at it, an involuntary gesture at first, but soon she realized her fingernails rubbed against scalp—right when she noticed Jamie looking at her with a strange unblinking gaze. Not quite staring, but something was definitely off.
She scanned him up and down despite her fatigue and hangover dulling everything. The longer she did it, the more his heat signature intensified. In that short span, his entire presence changed: shoulders tensed, lips pursed and body temperature rising.
His height—medium stature. His build—slight but not unhealthy. His face—beady, intense eyes, and a wide chin framed by pale skin and gaunt cheekbones.
It couldn’t be.
This man spoke with a gentle British accent but those videos...
The Mind Robber’s voice on the security footage from social media, she thought of the dozens of times she’d watched them, and there was always something slightly off about how he talked. Then she pictured him with a cheesy eye mask and a hood over his head.
Suddenly everything locked into place.
The scratching. It wasn’t an itch or dandruff or an allergy. She felt him breaking in. Was he looking in there now, sifting through her memories? Trying to eradicate her mind for hunting him?
Questions swirled in Zoe’s mind, though they all landed on one thought:
He could destroy me without even trying.
The coffee machine stopped its whirring and beeped to announce that the drink was ready. Neither Zoe nor Jamie moved. Instead, their eyes locked. She didn’t want to look away. She couldn’t, otherwise he might strike first.
Did he worry about the same thing?
They stepped back in unison. Her arms rose to a fighting posture. His hands went up, presumably to do his mind-robbing thing, but maybe just to look cool.
The lights flickered, as they’d done all night. It didn’t distract Jamie; he stayed fully focused on her. She mirrored his intensity.
