by Laura Lam
Aliyah orders glasses from the replicator, as the cupboards are completely empty.
‘I didn’t send anything that would implicate either of you – or Mark,’ Carina says, hoping to put them at ease. ‘Mark wanted me to contact Nettie’s family. Pass along his apology. His last, last request.’
Kim sighs, takes a slug of bourbon right from the bottle. ‘I was ready to face the consequences of my actions. Still am, if it comes to that, sweetpea. I never felt right about it, but I did it anyway.’
‘Same here,’ Aliyah says, passing glasses around.
‘I felt no compunctions. If my programming hadn’t broken down, I’d have followed Roz straight to hell,’ Carina says.
‘But you didn’t,’ Kim says, passing her the alcohol. Carina downs it in one burning gulp.
‘What do we do now? Where do we go from here?’ she asks, hating how forlorn she feels.
‘Now we pick up the pieces,’ Dax says, clinking his glass against hers.
The Trust drink until the bottle is empty. Kim produces another bottle, and they drink that down, too. Kivon curls up next to Raf, closing his eyes. Their hacker is stable, the internal bleeding stopped. It’ll take him a few weeks to heal, but he should be all right. Charlie leans against the corner of the room, either sleeping or pretending quite well. Kim and Aliyah return to their own homes, promising to come back tomorrow with more blankets and some basic furniture.
Carina can’t sleep. Every time she closes her eyes she sees those few drops of blood welling up beneath Roz’s eye. Those weeping bandages. Part of her desperately wishes she hadn’t left her there, that she’d claimed the kill that was so deserved. Too late now.
Near dawn, she goes back out to the patio. The sirens throughout San Francisco have quieted. The wallscreens in other houses have darkened. It’s quiet and peaceful.
She turns at a rustle behind her. Dax comes out, bearing two mugs of coffee from the replicator. She accepts one gratefully, and he sits down beside her.
‘How are you?’ he asks.
Somehow, she laughs. ‘Fuck knows. Still trying to process everything. I feel like I should be dead, yet here I am.’
‘I know the feeling.’
‘What are we going to do now?’ she asks.
‘I suppose we’ll all have our own personal goals. I want to see if we can wake up Tam.’ A pause, a flick of his eyes.
‘I’ll try to help with that. Kim and Aliyah, too, I’m sure. We need medical-grade equipment, but we’ll find a way. Kim probably has a lab stashed away somewhere.’
He lets out a careful breath. ‘I can’t get my hopes up too much. What if even after all this, I can’t help her?’
Carina thinks. ‘Then you’ve done your best. She wouldn’t begrudge you that.’ She sips her coffee. ‘After you two wake up, will you return home?’
‘To Timbisha? I wish we could. It wouldn’t be safe to go back. My tribe would give us asylum, I’m sure, and I’d love to see my family, but I don’t want to put that pressure on them. Maybe one day, if we can stop running.’
She hasn’t thought about it. ‘This isn’t the end. We still have to tiptoe around the law, stay hidden.’ Her head bows. She’d hoped that if they could unpick Roz’s mess and she could fix her own brain, there could be a semblance of a normal life for her. She’s never had that. Something like grief wells up in her, then passes. She was never one for normal.
The idea of a future is still strange. Just a few weeks ago, she’d been so ready to throw it away. If Mark hadn’t sent her that information, if she hadn’t kicked Zeal, she’d be well on her way to being dead by now. She didn’t expect to fight for life. To want to live.
‘Maybe Pacifica will give us a pardon,’ Dax says.
‘Hell will probably freeze over first. Even if we did the right thing, we broke several dozen laws in the process.’
Dax shrugs. ‘A few months ago, I thought hell would freeze over before Sudice could fall.’
‘It hasn’t crashed yet. We’ve only given it a push. I don’t think we changed the world tonight.’ Out here, in the quiet, the world seems relatively peaceful.
‘No. But we gave the world the tools to try and right a wrong. Hopefully they take it.’ He sighs. ‘I wish we could have told Nettie’s family before all this went down. They’re going to wake up and see the murder of their child, if they haven’t already. Hope someone else sees it first and braces them for it.’
Carina’s emotions stutter. After feeling so much, she has nothing left for strangers. ‘At least now they know, I suppose. Maybe they can find closure. I’m going to send them Mark’s apology, as soon as I can figure out how to do it safely. I don’t know if it’ll help.’
‘It might.’ He drains his cup, then changes the topic. ‘Charlie still has more money than she knows what to do with. She’s setting each of us up. It won’t last us forever, but it should buy us time to ride out the worst of it.’
‘Charlie’s the most generous rich person in existence, I’m pretty sure. Rarer than a unicorn,’ Carina says. She drinks her wine. ‘Is the Trust splitting up?’
‘Some of us. Charlie’s probably going to lie low with Clavell. Kivon and Raf will probably peel off on their own. I’ll definitely stick with Tam. So. Where do we go from here?’ Dax asks.
‘Go into hiding . . . like you said.’ She trails off as he shakes his head and gives her a meaningful look. Time to stop dancing around it. ‘You mean me and you?’
He nods.
She takes a moment to think through her words. ‘I don’t know. I’m still pretty messed up. I don’t know how to begin to unravel all that Roz did to me. I killed my father, even if my emotions were walled up, so I never processed that. For years, I could never develop friendships, much less relationships. I’ll probably end up hurting you, either mentally or physically. I can understand if you don’t want to sign up for that.’
Dax smiles at her, softly. ‘I’m willing to take the risk if you are. What do you actually want, Carina?’
She tries to empty out her mind, the swirl of confusing emotions that can still overwhelm her. She looks at Dax and doesn’t case him as a potential victim. Does not focus on the pulse of blood at his neck, whether she could surprise and overpower him. She does not want to hurt him, and that is still a strange and precious feeling.
There are no words. So she stands, sits on his lap, facing him. He looks up at her. Unguarded, open. She presses her lips to his, and his arms come round her. She forces herself to keep the kiss gentle, sweet.
Tears form behind her eyes but do not fall. It’s the first time she’s cried since her mother died. She kisses him as the sun rises.
EPILOGUE
CARINA
The Apex, above Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, Pacifica
The Trust camp out in Kim’s empty house for a few days, and then take a hovercar back to Isaac Clavell’s mansion in the Apex. Kim and Aliyah had left crumbling Sudice and come with them, swapping out their VeriChips for new identities. No one’s come after them yet, but if they do, Kim thinks it only prudent to be one step ahead. She hopes she can go back to her true identity soon.
‘I have people I don’t want to lose touch with,’ she says sadly. ‘Even if they don’t particularly want to talk to me.’ Carina presses her for answers, but Kim simply evades them. Carina knows that Kim has a somewhat estranged daughter she rarely speaks to, though she always holds out hope that they’ll find their way back to each other.
Clavell greets them in his grand foyer, exclaiming that he’s only too delighted to have them back, but Carina does not think she can ever grow comfortable in these cold, pale hallways.
Dax, Carina, Kim and Aliyah work for two weeks on waking up Tam and perfecting Carina’s brain code. Raf helps a little, but he’s still weak.
‘You’ve all got it covered, and I’m useless at human systems anyway,’ he says with a half-smile, alluding to Carina’s words not long after she first joined the Trust.
Onc
e reports show Carina has not, in fact, murdered Roz, the Trust relax slightly around her. Carina sends an encoded message to Nettie’s parents, but does not hear anything back.
Kivon tends to work out a lot. He’s bored and doesn’t know what to do next. He’s been a cop since he was sixteen. He’ll figure it out. They all will, or so Carina hopes.
They finish both Tam’s and Carina’s sets of code at almost the same time.
‘Who first?’ Kim asks, rubbing her hands together.
The last two weeks have been difficult for Carina. Not that it’s been a picnic for any of them – all of the Trust have symptoms of PTSD, and Aliyah has been treating them individually, keeping track of their mental health and helping them heal.
Carina’s emotions still surge, and going through withdrawal and kicking Zeal addiction once again has not been fun. She has nightmares and her moods swing wildly, even with mood stabilizers. Whatever Roz has done to Carina, her brain has shorted many of its serotonin receptors; hopefully, the code will restart them and make her moods easier to treat.
As desperate as she is to finally try and undo Roz’s mess, she’s afraid, and only too happy to try and wake Tam up first. Dax is absolutely desperate to see his sister again.
Clavell has hidden Tam’s stasis facility well within the depths of the mansion. It’s in an empty, chilled room. The stasis pod is like an elongated silver egg, the front of the pod clear blue glass. Carina’s never seen a pod up close before Tam’s. It’s a sobering reminder that she and the others could be frozen in one of these, just now, if they hadn’t escaped. That they still could be, if they’re captured. Tam is inside, vertical, eyes closed, skin glowing blue in the light of the pod. It’s hard to tell what she looks like – her face is mostly hidden by tubes – but Carina guesses she looks a lot like Dax.
They begin by bringing Tam out of cryo. They rotate the pod until it’s horizontal. The machine does it all automatically – within an hour, she’s almost ready to be woken. They keep the breathing tube covering her face, the tubes like snakes.
Kim and Aliyah prep the code, attaching electrodes to Tam’s temples. They’ve done it more recently than Carina, and their hands are steadier. Carina’s can still tremble sometimes, especially when she’s nervous.
‘Are you ready?’ Kim asks Dax.
‘Yeah,’ he says. He reaches out and strokes Tam’s cheek. They’ve gone over the risks together, several times. She may not wake up. Her body may live, but her mind may still be somewhere unreachable. Carina had asked Dax what he’d do then. He wasn’t sure. Killing her body seemed cruel, but was keeping her body frozen indefinitely any better? Carina hopes he does not have to make the choice.
‘OK, sleeping beauty, let’s wake you up,’ Kim says, and sends it through.
Tam’s body jerks, then releases. It only takes a few seconds for the code to settle into her brain, but it’ll take a few minutes for the full effect. With luck, Tam’s cortex and brain stem should be repairing the damage inflicted by the Wasp attack in VR. The cause of Tam’s coma was complex – the attack made the Zeal in her system surge into almost overdose-like systems, although it’s meant to be impossible to OD on Zeal. The shock resulted in a lack of oxygen and – voilà – a coma. A very stubborn one.
Tam’s eyes begin to flicker. Her head moves from side to side. Her eyes open wide, the whites around the irises stark, and she claws at the breathing tube.
‘She’s going to be confused,’ Kim says. ‘I’ve given her a light sedative, but it’ll still take a while for things to settle. Don’t be alarmed if she doesn’t recognize you right away. That’s normal.’
Dax swallows hard. ‘Get that thing off of her.’
‘Tam,’ Kim says. ‘I’m removing the breathing tube. Try to stay calm.’
Tam keeps scrabbling at Kim’s hands. Her eyelids droop. When the breathing tubes are removed, she sucks in great, uneven breaths. Her fingers reach out. Dax takes her hands.
‘Tam,’ Dax says, his voice breaking. ‘It’s me, sleepyhead. It’s Dax. You might not remember me yet, but I’m your brother. We’re twins.’
She blinks at him, frowning. She opens her mouth, closes it. Without the breathing tubes, the resemblance between Tam and her brother is clear.
Carina stays out of the way, watching it all. There’s so much emotion in the room, it’s still difficult to handle. And what if Tam doesn’t recover properly? Her eyes are open, but that doesn’t mean she’s aware. What if she does recover, and hates Carina? That’ll be awkward.
Carina leaves Dax to his moment, feeling as though she’s intruding. Going to the gardens, she stares at the misty clouds beyond the temperature-controlled perimeter of the floating island. Down below them is Hollywood and the endless sprawl of Los Angeles. The city she’d run away to, that now might be something resembling a home.
Carina’s fears turn out to be baseless. Tam recovers well, and the next day when they meet, she lurches waveringly towards Carina and gives her a shaking hug. Carina returns it, a little stiffly. Tam’s memories are fractured, and her short-term memory is still settling. She’ll ask a question, nod and seem to understand the answer, only to ask it again a few moments later. Kim says it’ll pass, but Dax is still worried. Tam slips back into the weave of the Trust and makes fast friends with Kim and Aliyah. Carina largely keeps to herself. It’s easy in the maze of Clavell’s house.
Raf and Kivon leave, deciding to stay with some of Raf’s friends in Chile. Saying goodbye to them both is strange. Carina forces herself to dole out more hugs.
‘You can reach me if you need to,’ Raf says. ‘Take care of yourselves, all right? We’ve had enough bullets thrown our way to last a lifetime.’
No one else is in a hurry to leave, and for such a reclusive man, Clavell seems to love having extra people around.
The day after Kivon and Raf leave, Dax comes to Carina.
‘The code’s been ready for almost a week now, but you haven’t asked us to use it. Are you having second thoughts?’
He sits next to her. She takes his hand. ‘Of course. I’m worried I’ll be changed. Silly, though. Isn’t that the point? To even me out, make it a little easier to exist in this brain.’ She taps her temple. ‘It’s been through a lot. I wanted to leave it alone for a little while.’
‘Do you think you need it?’
‘I don’t think it’s a question of needing. I think I can function like this, but it’s harder.’
Dax nods. ‘I’d hoped you’d say that. Look at it more like a myopic person having laser eye surgery, or someone depressed evening out their brain chemistry.’
‘We don’t even know if this code will hold. Aliyah thinks it will, but there are no guarantees. At least she’s almost certain it won’t completely cook my brain, so that’s reassuring. Sort of.’
‘Nothing’s a guarantee.’
Carina stands. ‘Let’s do this, then.’
Kim attaches the electrodes to Carina’s temple, settles her into the Chair. The restraints fall over her wrists and ankles, in case she lashes out when she’s under. If she closes her eyes, Roz looms above her. She knows Roz is frozen in stasis, convicted of her crimes, but that does nothing to quell the spike of fear.
‘No. No, no. Take these off.’
Dax understands, and immediately removes the bonds. Carina tries to slow her breathing.
‘Sorry,’ Kim says. ‘I didn’t think.’
Carina waves it away. ‘I’ll be fine. Let’s do this.’
She lies back on the Chair. Dax takes her hand, holding it tight. Aliyah and Kim take a last scroll through all the numbers and symbols that will help unpick the web Roz wove. Time to break free and discover who she’ll become.
Carina closes her eyes. She’s looking forward to waking up.
SHATTERED MINDS
Laura Lam was raised near San Francisco, California, by two former Haight-Ashbury hippies. Both of them encouraged her to finger-paint to her heart’s desire, colour outside the lines, and conside
r the library a second home. This led to an overabundance of daydreams. She relocated to Scotland to be with her husband, whom she met on the internet when he insulted her taste in books. She almost blocked him but is glad she didn’t. At times she misses the sunshine.
Lauralam.co.uk
@LR_Lam
BY LAURA LAM
The Micah Grey Trilogy
Pantomime
Shadowplay
Masquerade
False Hearts
Shattered Minds
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A gigantic thank you to all the friends and colleagues who helped bring another book on to the shelves. This was a challenging book, but I’m proud of the end product. It would not be the book it is today without the help of my usual beta reader suspects: my mom, Sally, Erica, Shawn, Lorna, Katharine and Mike. Thank you to April, Darrel, Lewis, Jordan, Rafe, Frey, Stella, Jules, Rafael and Kai for answering questions and providing sensitivity feedback. Many thanks to my cousin, Jason, for answering my tech questions. Hugs to my aunt and uncle, Debby and Kurt, for hosting me on my research trip to Los Angeles (with a side trip to Disneyland). Thank you to my husband Craig, for listening to me go on (and on) about various plot problems, and to my agent Juliet Mushens for her continued championship and possible superhero powers. As ever, merci beaucoup to everyone at Pan Macmillan on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean: editors and publicists and everyone there work magic. Last but not least, my everlasting thank you to booksellers, librarians, bloggers and every reader that took a chance on my words.
First published 2017 by Macmillan
This electronic edition published 2017 by Macmillan
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-4472-8689-9
Copyright © Laura Lam 2017
Design and Art Direction by Neil Lang
