by Alex Hughes
He’d decided he would never be weak again. He’d find a way to be stronger than me, to do more than me, to take what I had. Years of research—and more of testing—to get to the point where he could steal the Ability he deserved, years where I was gone from the Guild and he was in control again. But he wasn’t surprised to see me here. It was right. I was the enemy, I was fighting him, of course I was fighting him. I always had. But he would win.
Nameless, faceless test subjects stretched out before me in a line. Dozens. Over years. People who were dead, people with no family, no one to report them missing. Subjects who’d finally given him what he deserved. But Neil was a fool; he washed the bodies and told the cops. No matter, Neil was dead now. Like I would be. Like the cop woman would be. And then Bradley could make it to New Orleans and his meeting with Garrett Fiske, the criminal boss, head of the Darkness in the Southeast. With blueprints in hand, Bradley would get everything he needed from Fiske—money, supplies, new machines, mechanics to build them. Give him a year—just a year—and Bradley would be back in business, only this time with buyers. Fiske said there were a lot of people willing to buy Ability, no questions asked. Bradley would finally get the recognition he deserved.
Go back to the victims. What were their names? I pushed. How many? Where in New Orleans?
Something popped inside my brain, and I lost the hold.
I woke up next to a student desk, with no memory of how I’d gotten there. Worse, Bradley was levitating me up and across the room like a bad student prank but much more ominous. I couldn’t move. Bands of force locked around my hands and feet, heavier than hundred-pound weights. I struggled against them….
“I said no,” Bradley barked, and threw me against the chalkboard.
I hit and saw stars, the impact so hard it broke the chalkboard. I screamed, pain radiating down my spine from the knot on my head. The area smelled of sulfuric acid reaction from the bubbling tile and ash, overwhelming ash.
I reached for Mindspace—and lost it. The pain was too great, and Bradley, like a huge suffocating pillow, overlaid everything; he blocked my every movement, my every struggle. I was going to die, I realized, pinned to a chalkboard like a bug on a collector’s card.
Too late, I thought to call Kara. He blocked me, pinning me down harder. Blood rushed down my face, and I struck out at his mind. I bounced off his shield. I scrabbled around the edges, but I had no power, no control.
He looked at me, head tilted to the side, and I had an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. We were in my vision.
Bradley held up a hand. He was so average, pasty skin, light brown hair, average height. Skinny. Harmless. This was the face of the man who was going to kill me, I thought with despair. A man I couldn’t even remember.
Behind him Cherabino sprawled unconscious, just like in the vision. She hadn’t been assaulted, not this time, but it seemed like that didn’t matter in the end. Overcome with despair, I tried to pull my hand off the board—and got slapped down.
Bradley started pressing down; impossible pressure inside and out—my mind, my body crushing. I felt the chalkboard crack again behind me.
He sneered. “Thought you were so smart, didn’t you? Thought you knew everything. Well, Golden Boy, who’s the smart one now? All the sniffing cops around my apartment, all the taunts and Guild guys crawling around, you didn’t find a shred of evidence. Not a shred, and the girl, thinking about you like a billboard. You think I would just let that one go? I grabbed her right from under your nose, and you couldn’t stop me. You can’t stop me, Golden Boy, not anymore. Now who’s too weak?”
I threw pain at him, and he shrugged it off like the buzzing of a fly.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am.” With nowhere to run, it was time to try something else. I knew I was an idiot back then—rejecting his application with two words was cruel. That much was true. I could be sorry for that, truly sorry. If it would save my life, and Cherabino’s life, I could be sorry.
“No you’re not,” Bradley said, and his eyes flashed hurt all of a sudden. “You know what? I’m tired of listening to your lies.” He pushed down, my bones grinding against the board, the eraser tray at the bottom of the board cutting painfully into my thighs.
And then the real pain started.
A hundred knives pierced my skull while light and dark changed places and danced on my neurons with vicious glee. White-hot pain radiated from my entire body. I forced myself to open my eyes, to look, to think of something, anything but the pain.
Bradley was focused, angry, watching me like a boy pulling the wings off a bug. Behind him, Cherabino’s body started to twitch. Her arms and legs jumped like a seizure, over and over, as my pain echoed through the link. I felt her mind, dark with the red pain of a concussion sharing space with my sharper torture—she was struggling up.
It occurred to me like a silent movie that Bradley was talking again. And déjà vu descended like a cloud of pain-touched perfume.
Bradley’s anger built, and he clamped down with all the force he was capable of, closing my airway until I literally couldn’t breathe. Until not one iota of air could come down the pipeway.
I told myself not to panic, don’t panic, panicking just used up the oxygen faster.
Bradley watched my face, hard, waiting for me to pass out and then to die, with all of his anger filling the room. “I told Neil at the beginning this was a messy business, but he couldn’t take it. They couldn’t take it. So I found someone who can. Who’ll pay me what I’m worth. And you—you wanted me to stop. Well, I won’t. And you’ll be rotting garbage while I’m rich. Respected. While I have whatever I want. I want you to know that, as you die. I want you to remember. I want you to know this is your fault.”
My vision was graying quickly. Don’t panic, don’t panic! My heart ignored me and doubled its beating. I tried to move, tried to move—but I couldn’t. I couldn’t, and my vision was graying out. Suddenly I smelled chalk dust, strongly, and felt dark red-lined pain, my ankle bones rasping against one another.
Cherabino’s knife plunged down into Bradley’s shoulder.
His mental hold released, all at once. I fell to the ground, jarring impact. I gasped, the air rushing into my lungs. And the pain stopped. I looked up.
Bradley turned to kill Cherabino, his decision so strong, I could taste it—and for one precious second he was distracted. Shields totally down. Adrenaline was running through my system so strongly, I shook with it—I had one, final, rush of energy.
I took my moment. Pushed into his mind, knowing exactly what I was looking for. Before he could react, I made my mind a blade, and cut. Sliced the central processor, destroyed the quantum gating array. And, right there, and there, I ripped, as hard as I possibly could, stars appearing in my vision as I strained.
It was enough, barely enough.
His arm halfway out, the knife sticking out behind him, Bradley collapsed.
I stared at his lax face, two feet away on the floor, and watched the hill that was his mind flatten and lose most of its mass, like a balloon leaking helium. Blood seeped slowly from the knife still in his collarbone. His back rose, slightly, with a small, shallow breath.
I gasped, breathing hard, almost hyperventilating. My body shook uncontrollably. I had killed his mind. I had destroyed him—the one thing I said I’d never do, not to anyone. I huddled against the white-tiled floor and shook. Mindspace started to flash in and out, wobbly like the worst Satin high with no payoff.
Across the room, Cherabino sat down on the floor, the pain of her foot echoing dimly through our link. “Stop breathing like that,” she said tiredly. “You’ll only make yourself pass out.”
I pushed up carefully, past the shaking, putting my knees in front of my chest and my forehead on them. I concentrated on slowing down my breathing. I did that for maybe five minutes, while the adrenaline settled and I adjusted to the fact that I was going to live. Tried with all my might not to throw up on the already nasty tile.
I had killed him.
CHAPTER 29
The precog flashed, but too late. Kara grabbed. Hurricane force rippled at my mind from every direction.
With an explosion of air, Kara appeared. She said something to Cherabino, but the words turned into useless mush, and darkness overtook me.
My head hurt. The bump on my head hurt like a son of a bitch; the throbbing pain was forcing me slowly into consciousness. My ears rang, my mind struggled to put together thoughts, and my head felt like a gong someone was hitting, over and over.
I raised my head. The tile under my hands was warm.
“Hold on, I’m coming,” Cherabino’s voice came from close by. “Are you okay?” I heard the sound of shuffling, and a pain sound. Then her scuffed boots appeared. “You passed out when Kara showed up. She looked pretty worried, said there was something seriously wrong. She left again quickly.”
I looked over, down the line of student desks. Bradley, closer, was still down, his chest rising and falling slowly while the knife still stuck out of his back. Legally, he wasn’t dead, but ethically, morally—I’d killed him. I pushed myself up to sitting position, the world swimming. “What happened? Why did she come back?”
With a pained expression and a hand on her ribs, Cherabino slowly lowered herself down to my level.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I think a rib’s broken,” she said, her tone very matter-of-fact. “Our guys will be here in an hour, plus the Tennessee state troopers are on their way and are going to come in shooting. Kara wanted to make sure we kept our heads down, inside this wing, out of the fight. I told her we weren’t going anywhere any time soon. She went to coordinate details.”
I tried to reach out in Mindspace—and nearly fell over. Mind pounding, I swallowed bile, and swore.
“What’s wrong with you?” Cherabino asked.
“I can’t find Mindspace, that’s what’s wrong with me!” I barked, and had to hold my head. “I’m broken. Kara broke me.”
Cherabino was silent, and it tortured me that I didn’t know what she was thinking. That I couldn’t know what she was thinking.
Was it going to come back? Let it come back, I prayed, as I found a way to lean against the table leg, huddling over my knees like a child. Let it come back.
I shook, unable to imagine a world without Mindspace, without telepathy, without the very things that made me me.
“Where are they?” I barked at Cherabino for about the tenth time.
“They’ll get here when they get here,” she said. She wasn’t looking good, the circles under her eyes getting even darker. And she was coughing, a lot, far more than I thought was good for her.
She coughed again, stopped, made a choked sound.
“Anything I can do?” I offered. “Help you stand up maybe?”
She paused for a long time before talking. Finally she said, “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not move. I think one of the ribs is broken pretty bad.” She didn’t say she’d like to keep her lung, but I knew her well enough to know that was what was on her mind. Even if I couldn’t read it—and the thought pierced me like a knife in the gut.
I paused. “You sure they’re coming?” I asked.
She half laughed and then stopped. Immediately. After a deep breath, she said, “You really think Branen’s going to sit on his ass while we have all the fun? Clearly you don’t know him that well. Screw the Tennessee cops. Our guys will be here.”
I subsided, then went back to panicking about Mindspace. I pushed at it over and over, like poking at the empty place a tooth had been with my tongue, painful as hell but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t. I had to get the telepathy back. I had to. My head hurt so bad, on so many levels….
“I’d kill for an aspirin right about now,” Cherabino said.
I looked up then. “An aspirin? You want an aspirin?”
“Why? You have one in your back pocket?” she asked.
“No. But this is damn Toppenguild. I know where everything is—infirmary, everything. It’s even in the wing, so we won’t get shot or anything.”
“You didn’t know where the fireproof room was.” She shifted her head, turning it more toward me. “For all we know, that nurse is still wandering around. Plus that Tina lady—she has a gun, and I don’t think she’s going to hesitate.”
“So what?” I said, not quite able to get the desperation out of my tone. “I need to walk. Aspirin’s as good an excuse as any. If I get lost, I get lost. You still have that knife?”
“No.” She was quiet, looking down. “Get me some water too, okay? A decent brand of bottled.”
“You got it.” I hesitated, then finally went for it, stroking her hair back from her face. I felt a glimmer of shadow-pain; maybe it was coming back. Maybe I was fooling myself. I held her face a little longer, and like a dim light far away, I saw annoyance.
“Stop fondling my cheek,” she said. “You promised me aspirin; you’d better deliver.”
I dropped my hand. Inside, though, I had a glimmer of hope.
Ding, the elevator said as it arrived. I felt like I had been through a war. My head was still pounding, my clothes torn and dirty and smelling of smoke. I was limping, exhausted, and running on empty.
So of course, when I opened the infirmary door, there stood Tina Novachavich, a forty-something Guild secretary from the research department and Bradley’s accomplice. She had liked lemon meringue cookies, my brain informed me, and would flirt with Dane if she was in a good mood. She looked about twenty pounds thinner than she had, infinitely older, with a gun holstered at her hip.
She looked up at my entrance, dropping half the papers in her hands, a mishmash of loose papers, files, and a few long tubes that looked like blueprints. She cursed, her hand going to the gun.
I was out of juice, likely with a concussion, with no weapons. “Let’s not do this,” I said, holding my hands up.
She eased her hand away, looking me in the eye as she slowly knelt. She grabbed most of the papers, paused over one file. After a second, she tossed it to me. “You deserve to know,” she said. “But don’t follow me, or I will kill you.”
Then, between one breath and the next, she was gone. Air whooshed into the gap.
“Great,” I mumbled. I hadn’t realized she was a teleporter, damn it. Was she enhanced with the machine, or was I that out of touch?
I limped forward, finally getting my first good look at the room. White cabinets lined the back wall, chairs sat close to me, and through a door on the back wall I could see an exam table. A long metal countertop sat on the back wall, and another, a movable one like an island on wheels, took up the center of the room. It was covered in boxes and boxes of syringes, two small glass bottles out on the table with a sheaf of papers.
The file she’d thrown sat on the tile floor a foot in front of me.
I looked around, listened. As near as I could tell, I was alone. I reached down to pick up the file—and found it labeled with my name.
I set it down on the metal countertop in the center of the room, paged through with a sense of apprehension. This wasn’t my Guild file, the account of my education or my classes or even the reasons I’d been thrown out.
No, this was Stewart’s file, the file of the crazy son of a bitch whose research had introduced me to my drug. It was an account of the effects of Satin on the brain—my brain—and how it loosened the hold of the mind on the body. Stewart’s typewritten comments had the drug as therefore useless, at least to him. But it wasn’t useless to someone else; in the margins of the file, careful handwritten notes said this, this was what was needed for the machine. To separate the Ability from a subject. This was the key.
I felt sick. My drug, my addiction, had played a part in this. I had helped Bradley kill all those people.
I leaned over the table, my hand hitting the closest box. My eyes focused on it, on the chemical formula handwritten on the side of the box in a larger, blocky scrawl. I knew that formula. I�
�d have known that formula anywhere.
Three boxes of syringes, two more of small glass bottles—I was surrounded by Satin, by pure, high-grade Satin.
I sat down on the short lab stool and stared. My fuzzy mind just looked at them, at the bounty, all the highs, just sitting there. Just sitting there.
I could do it. I could pick up a syringe, and shoot up, and fall into the cloud-coated rush—no one would ever have to know. Ever.
Cherabino wasn’t here. Swartz wasn’t here.
But the file in front of me stared, the careful writing like a brand. This wasn’t for me, wasn’t for fun or need or anything else. It was made, kept, used to steal Ability. To let Bradley take what wasn’t his. These containers of helpfully labeled drugs were here to let him mind-rape—and then kill—probably hundreds of people. All in pretty little bottles. All because of me.
The boxes around me suddenly seemed like poison, like the poison Swartz said it was.
Did I really want to throw away the last two years and seven months of fighting my poison for a two-hour rush? Start over from scratch? Realistically, sooner or later Bellury or Cherabino or Paulsen—or worse, Swartz—would find the bottles and drag me back to rehab. I hated rehab.
And there was always the chance they wouldn’t forgive me this time. That everything I’d worked to build—that Cherabino had worked to build—would go away if I gave in. My life sucked, but it was a lot better than it had been. And it couldn’t exist with Satin in it. That much everybody had made clear.
If I went back on Satin, I’d probably never have Cherabino falling asleep on my shoulder again. Never again have Paulsen’s respect. And I would have to wait years—years more—to hear Swartz say, “Good job.” Assuming he was still in this. Which could not be taken for granted forever. He was getting old, and testy. And tired of newbies; he’d said it several times.
