Sharp: A Mindspace Investigations Novel

by Alex Hughes

  “Do they know he smokes?” Smoked, I guess, but he’d only quit a few months ago. My brain kept grabbing onto details—him smoking, the ashen gray color he was turning on the floor, Raquel’s faux-blond hair against her chestnut skin.

  “We told the ambulance crew, but you’d better make sure they have the information. Better go now.”

  I pulled off my seat belt with numb fingers and fumbled with the latch of the door. She reached over past me and unlocked it, pushing my arm to encourage me to go.

  I wasn’t expecting the skin-to-skin contact; her brain hit me like a tidal wave, all force—and then gone. I sat, blinking.

  “They’re flagging me to move. Now would be a good time.”

  I staggered out of the car. Everywhere around me were screaming people, crying people, people terrified about injury and sickness and emergencies of all kinds. Police waved at Raquel’s car again, and she pulled out with a lurch to be replaced by another car.

  Three women piled out of the car, screaming at the tops of their lungs, while one of them clutched a bloody limb wrapped with gauze; her pain hit me like a club in Mindspace and I staggered back—Only to run into a woman literally foaming at the mouth, her mind spitting blocks of razor blades through my brain. I screamed, and ran—straight into the mouth of the waiting doors, a burst of air pressure hitting me as I passed the threshold.

  A full room of worried patients filled the air with the strong scent of despair, long rows of antiseptic chairs in faded patterns filled with people of every kind, blood seeping from various wounds into gauze, a child crying softly in the corner. A male nurse in blue scrubs and ugly white shoes stood to one side, giving court in front of a massive array of air filters, the whole right side of which was color-coded as antimicrobial. A steady stream of air pushed out from them into the waiting room; another, smaller set of fans pushed used air out through the doors to make the air pressure I’d felt.

  He gave me a tired glance. “If you’re here for psychiatric admittance, it’s two doors down.”

  “No, my friend—”

  He looked up then. “Is he—”

  “The ambulance should be here already. I need to see him. . . .”

  “Hold on, buddy. Hold on.” The nurse grabbed a board from an open window to one side of the room. “Okay, who is he and what was his complaint?”

  “He collapsed,” I said, suddenly everything rushing in all at once. “He couldn’t breathe. He was holding his chest. The ambulance . . .” It was like my throat closed up, and I couldn’t move again.

  The nurse grabbed my arm, and another mind was jabbed forcibly onto mine. I pulled away, raw and aching. Something about triage, overloaded staff, who would die and who would not.

  And the information I needed, including a detailed mental map of the hospital and my next steps: “He’ll be in Cardiology, next wing, first floor. Check in with the nurses’ station in Intake at the front of the hospital, six doors on the left, one turn past the probiotic aerators. Anything else I need to know? Any place I can’t go?”

  He backed up like he’d been stung. “What . . .”

  “Telepath. Sorry, no badge today. Yeah. I’ll find it.” I’d hardly noticed the telepathy actually working on time, perfectly, the first time. In the evening, no less.

  His mouth twisted. “Leave the patients alone.”

  I ignored his fear, though it tried to grip me like my own panic, the panic of Swartz on the floor like a fish. I walked, ignoring the commotion to my right as more nurses and doctors struggled to save someone dying. The soul was already Falling In, making a ripple in the fabric of Mindspace I could feel from here. I held on to my sanity with white-knuckled hands, wanting my drug with every fiber of my being, knowing I needed to find Swartz. Now. No matter what this damn hospital cost me, or how much damage I did to myself just by being here.

  * * *

  In the waiting room, my numb panic merging with the exhausted despair of everyone else waiting for loved ones, everyone else waiting for someone to pass between life and death—or make it back out, somehow, to come back to them. Waves of distress hit me from all sides, and I sat, struggling to breathe, to think, to do anything but endure. It was like my final test before I’d gotten my certification, my final control test as a telepath, all over again.

  I’d called Selah, Swartz’s wife, who would be here in a few moments. Cherabino was in the hallway, on the phone, taking care of department business. The emotion ghosts across the way sat in chairs too, generations of people sitting, waiting for surgeons, waiting for news. The air was bitter, the strong taste of neutral bacteria aerated in the air to crowd out anything that would possibly make us sick. I coughed; they claimed the stuff wouldn’t affect you, but I could almost feel it coating the inside of my lungs.

  Cherabino walked into the room like a pool of crisp water in the middle of a muddy maelstrom. I latched onto her, the anchor I needed. Instead of blocking me out with bricks upon bricks of defenses, she held out a mental hand.

  I grabbed onto it, gentling, and she sat. We waited a long, long time.

  * * *

  The surgeon was a short, fat man with sweat-drenched hair flattened in the shape of a headband. He was standing like his back hurt, slumped like he was exhausted. I was shielding too hard here in the hospital to know for sure, but I was betting he’d just been through the fight of his life. He did, however, meet Selah’s eyes squarely and without apology.

  “I’m Dr. Carver.” He held out a hand utterly without apology for the name. “You must be Mrs. Swartz.”

  “That’s right,” Selah said in a small voice, and took his hand. “Is my husband okay?”

  “Your husband had a myocardial infarction,” the surgeon said gently. “A heart attack. A very serious heart attack. Even with surgery, there are complications.”

  “Will he live?” I demanded.

  “There was some real damage. His brain seems okay, and the patch we put on the artery seems to be holding. He’s stable for now, and I’m having him moved down to Intensive Care; he should be reasonably stable for the next day or so. But after that . . . You have to understand, Mrs. Swartz, that the damage was extremely extensive. I can’t just put in an artificial heart; the tissue in that area is just too fragile.”

  “What does that mean?” Selah asked in a terrified voice.

  “We got him through the immediate danger. He’ll likely wake up in the next day or two. You’ll have some time with him. But unless something dramatic changes, I’m sorry, Mrs. Swartz, but this is almost certainly fatal. I’ve bought you some time with him. I’m sorry, but that’s all I can do.”

  My insides felt . . . empty, like someone had scooped me out with a spoon. This was Swartz. Swartz—the man who’d stood by me no matter what, who’d cared enough to show up with cookies to rehab after a major fall off the wagon, who believed I could do something, that I could still make it despite the huge crushing weight of failure that dogged my every step. Who took my calls no matter what. Who dropped everything to drive me to a meeting, or to show up at my apartment and just sit. Who would yell at me or praise me, make me work and make me think. This was Swartz.

  “How long?” Selah asked.

  He stood up straighter, and yet somehow seemed more exhausted. “A week. Maybe less. I’m sorry, Mrs. Swartz. I genuinely am.”

  Selah nodded mutely, and the doctor bid her good-bye. I just stood there, literally unable to think, unable to process. Despair was crashing in on me, and the emotion ghosts around me felt like attacking bees, constant stinging, constant despair.

  “Would you wait with me?” Selah asked.

  Hospitals were horrible, horrible things to telepaths. But I heard myself saying, “Yes, of course.”

  * * *

  Hours later, I was feeling as mind-sick as I ever had felt in my life, almost burned completely out from the relentless pressure of the minds and death around me. Death, attacking me like a tangible force.

  But another thought was pullin
g at me, and I couldn’t let it go. With all the people around me—with the FBI and the Guild and a known killer targeting me—had I caused this? Had something happened to Swartz because I had pissed somebody off?

  I went to find the nurse, hands shaking so hard she asked what I was on.

  “Nothing. I’m a telepath.”

  She replaced a panel on the aerator, the white-dotted sludge inside a stronger-smelling version of the bitter taste to the air. Engineered microbes; they seemed ominous somehow, for all they were used in every hospital in the country.

  “What do you need?” the nurse asked me, looking sympathetic.

  I explained my suspicions. She, God bless her, went to find the doctor immediately, sitting me down in a chair in the middle of the hall.

  When the doctor arrived, I asked him the same terrible question.

  “No, no, that I can say for sure,” Dr. Carver said. “It was obvious during the surgery. This has been building for years. With his medical history—well, there’s a lot of damage.”

  I took a breath. A long, cleansing breath. “The drugs? It was all the drugs he took and the cigarettes.”

  His eyes were kind. “That would be my guess as to cause. There’s no family history. I’m sorry. This is a bad situation. But you had nothing—nothing—to do with it.”

  I went back to sit in the waiting room, Mindspace crowding in on me in terrible pressure, relief there too.

  But an hour later while Selah tried to hide her tears and Cherabino and I pretended we didn’t notice, it occurred to me. Had I done to my body what Swartz had done to his?

  Would I die in a hospital, surrounded by dying memories in Mindspace? The Guild facility wouldn’t take me, not anymore. Was I going to die like this?

  As my brain started to overload from all the pressure, my vision started to tunnel in, slowly, blackness curling in around the edges of my vision.

  “What’s wrong?” Cherabino asked me, her face screwed up like she had a migraine. “Adam, tell me what’s wrong.”

  * * *

  At four a.m. Cherabino bodily pulled me out of the hospital. I was nearly seizuring, and barely able to walk, even with support.

  She pushed me in her car and it was too much.

  I threw up. In Cherabino’s car. Shame drenched me like the vomit.

  She breathed, outside. “Well, that was attractive.” But that was it. She got towels from the trunk and handed them to me, and didn’t say another word.

  “I need to go be with Selah,” I kept repeating. I couldn’t think. I held the towel in front of me. “I need to sit with Selah. Is she okay?”

  Cherabino got in the car, grabbed the towel, and started patting me down. “I called the NA chapter. I called her son,” Cherabino said again and again until I believed her. “I called her neighbors. I even woke up Bellury. I’m a cop. We can do this. People will be there. Someone will be there, Adam. I promise you someone will be there.”

  It was then and only then that I let her shut the car door. Only then did I let her take me back to the apartment and push me into the shower. She waited outside while the warm water rushed over me, more water dripping from my eyes as my insides screamed and screamed like they would never stop.

  Cherabino stayed that night, on my couch. She didn’t leave. She didn’t leave even when I asked her to, when I begged her to, when the water came streaming down from my eyes again. And in the morning, right before dawn, when the phone rang to call her in to a murder scene, I had somehow fallen asleep with my head in her lap, her arms around me.

  She kissed me, lightly, before she left, and only then built back brick by brick the shield between us.

  CHAPTER 15

  After the door closed behind her, I couldn’t get the doctor’s words out of my head. Swartz might die today.

  I caught the first bus of the day, the early Friday special. The commuters in the morning shied away from me, perhaps reading my mood. Swartz’s life hung in the balance, and I could no more go back to that hospital today than I could fly; trying either one would have painful—and deadly—consequences. But this was Swartz.

  Two bus changes, and I found myself in north Fulton County, the Buckhead business district. Then three blocks on foot to get to where I needed to go. I kept moving, urgency like a ticking time bomb in my head.

  The Guild campus towered above, four fragile-looking glass-and-chrome boxes, one a tall skyscraper, like an impossibly heavy trophy set in concrete. Most of the other skyscrapers in the area had the aggressive boxy defensive postwar look of anti-gravity supports, reinforced steel, and antimissile turrets; this area had been flattened by the Tech Wars sixty years ago, after all. The Guild was the only one dumb enough—or arrogant enough—to build back with the old glass and chrome, the only one willing to be so open to the sunlight and so vulnerable to attack. But then again the Guild didn’t need walls to defend them.

  Inside, through the huge glass-paneled doors, was the small guard’s desk, done in chrome. The foyer itself was a huge circular room topped by an impressive glass dome; weighty marble columns ringed the room above a flawless marble floor polished until you could see the blue of the sky. Small statues of Guild founders and heroes looked down from alcoves along the paneled walls. I’d been impressed, back when I’d walked through the doors as a kid. I’d been proud, working here, teaching here as a professor. Now it just seemed like a waste of space—a waste without even the dignity of a few chairs to wait in.

  I told the guard what I wanted.

  “Is she expecting you?” the guard asked. He was a short man, skinny and pale, with the too-bright follicles of artificial hair implants. He looked harmless, but he was security for the Guild; whatever it was he could do, he wasn’t harmless.

  “No,” I said. “Page her anyway.” My emotions got away from me and desperation, despair, and Swartz’s crisis leaked out into the air between us.

  He shook his head, but he dialed.

  And I tried to put my world in a box and sit on it, sit hard on everything that meant anything, so I’d be acceptable in the public space of telepaths.

  * * *

  In response to some cue I couldn’t see, the guard cleared his throat. He held out a lapel clip, a plain white square.

  “What is that?”

  “New recorder.” The guard held out the square again. “Standard procedure.”

  “I’m not wearing that,” I said. The little square seemed suddenly dangerous, like a cobra in a plain box. No way was I going to consent to brain wave recording. No way. Not on a good day, and today . . .

  “It’s all right, Tristan,” a woman’s voice said from behind me. “A plain locator should accomplish the goal here. I’ll vouch for him.”

  I turned. Walking down the marble floor in quiet shoes was a woman, late fifties, small and unassuming with white, white hair pulled back in a chignon. Yes, a chignon; she insisted on the term. Despite her small size, delicate features, and obvious age, she carried herself with confidence. Well, maybe “confidence” wasn’t the right word. The attitude of a woman carrying a big, crass, brightly painted grenade launcher, with an antiaircraft laser attachment for good measure? That. With a string of pearls. Let’s just say she got what she wanted more often than she didn’t, one way or the other.

  Jamie wasn’t flashy; she didn’t go out of her way to weigh Mindspace, to loom over the minds around her. In fact, she did the opposite, holding herself back, still, quiet. But the wake her mind made even so . . . The ripples altered the feel of the room in subtle ways, no matter how still she stood. Jamie was a Level Ten telepath, one of two in the world, and the strongest telepath I’d ever met. Strong enough to crush me like a soap bubble, if she caught me unaware. She was also—or had been—my mentor, the one who’d taught me what it meant to be a telepath, what it meant to be a responsible, ethical professional in a sea of pretenders. Other than the short moment at the funeral, I hadn’t seen her since rehab.

  “If you’re sure, Ms. Skelton,” the guard
said.

  She nodded to him. “I assume you’re here to see Kara?”

  I nodded, most of my energy spent on not broadcasting my turmoil. . . .

  Apparently some of it leaked out anyway, because she looked sad. “Her office is at the end of the new wing. I’ll take you there.”

  “Thanks.” I held myself as tightly as I could, like a tuning fork against a chair. Finally: It’s good to see you too. I—

  I’m glad you came back, she returned, with a wave of warmth and cautious affection. Her mental voice, as always, felt like lemonade on a hot day, blowing grass under a blazing sun. I always . . . well, I’d hoped you would find your way back. Back to the Guild, she meant. But more, back to real life. I felt her decide not to mention the current state of my mind. I was clean, she could tell that much, and that was enough.

  “This is just a visit,” I clarified. “I’m not coming back to the Guild.”

  A small dot of concern and curiosity; then she pulled them back from the air. “Well, even so,” she said out loud. It’s good to see you.

  “It’s good to see you too.”

  She held out a hand, wordlessly offering a little strength, free of charge. She could see how empty I was running.

  I looked at her for a long moment, and I then I took her hand, and the strength, a small stream of raw mental power scented with her sunshine-and-ozone self. It was over nearly before it began.

  She lowered the hand and kept walking, without comment. She hadn’t taken anything—even information—from me in return.

  I realized all at once there were things I missed about the Guild.

  Thank you.

  * * *

  I knocked on the doorframe as Jamie’s mind moved away behind me.

  Kara was seated behind a curved white glass desk, a small pencil cup and a picture frame the only things on the surface besides the papers she was working on. She looked good today, with a recent haircut, precise makeup, and a poufy ivory blouse.

  She looked up. “Adam. Look, I’m sorry, your certi-

  fication will definitely not be renewed, not even if the watcher certifies you as trustworthy. I don’t know what you heard—”