Sharp: A Mindspace Investigations Novel

by Alex Hughes

  I closed the car door behind me, and the smell of fuel and oil, sun and grass, metal parts and sun-cooked metal siding was overwhelming. It had been raining for weeks, and this much sunlight was nice, like a strong cheerful slap on the back from the fusion-powered star above us.

  I needed to find confirmation here—a clue or two that would crack the case wide open—and get back to either Morris or Paulsen, or both, to finish up the job. If I was right—and I could prove it—we would close two cases. And maybe, just maybe, I would have earned my spot in the department for good.

  I walked forward, around the circumference of the huge hangar in front of us. Corrugated metal sheeting made up its sides, relatively new sheeting by the looks of things, and the white paint bent the light oddly, like small oases in the afternoon air. Some kind of supermaterial, maybe. The side soared up maybe three stories above us, straight up, a boxy and hard-cornered shape.

  The front of the hangar was a huge, rolling door—probably on hydraulics, by the look of its heaviness—currently closed. A smaller door to the right side was open.

  I told Bellury to follow me with a gesture and went through the door, on high alert but not really expecting anything. The telepathy was much more reliable lately, and it was early enough in the day that I was sure I could handle any bad guys long enough for Bellury to bring out the gun.

  The inside of the hangar was about what you’d expect; a few high windows cast long dust-filled lines of sunlight down onto the planes. Specifically, four small aerobatic planes in bright colors nearer the door, and farther back, a mammoth thick-necked jet with wide bulges along the side for anti-grav and extra room for cargo—the wingspan took up practically the whole of the hangar. It had a plain gray paint job, which was odd. Even the serial number on the tail was small.

  “Hello?” a rough man’s voice called out. A high scraping sound came suddenly, like a metal piece scraping hard against concrete. Then a few seconds later, a guy in mechanics’ coveralls came out, rubbing his hands with a rag.

  “Can I help you?” he asked me.

  I paused. Oh, crap. I didn’t have either a cover story or a badge. My mind raced . . .

  Bellury stepped forward. “The kid here is thinking about buying an airplane and wants to know what the storage fees are in your little operation. How much access will he have to the plane on, say, holidays and weekends?”

  The mechanic named a number for hangar rental, which I had no idea whether it was too high or not. Then he added that all rental folks had their own keys and had to pass a background check. He gave me a sideways look, suspicion in every line of his body.

  I straightened a bit, staying absolutely relaxed. If there was one thing you learned by working for the Guild, you could never tell who—or what organization—really had money. The most seemingly simple people in the world had major purse strings. On the other hand, you could tell who didn’t have money: the ones who blustered and tried to impress everyone in sight. People with money—real money—didn’t really care what you thought of them, if you were the help. They also didn’t particularly care about price tags as long as they got what they wanted.

  So, with body language absolutely relaxed, I asked, “You available to do annual flight checks? Or am I going to have to pull the thing out every year and have it shipped to another shop?”

  He blinked, and I could see that he bought it. A short conversation later, I’d managed to talk him into letting us wander around, “see the facilities on a spot check. I’ve found the average day is much better represented if I don’t give warning, I’m sure you understand.”

  The mechanic shrugged. “We do have cameras on the facility. We have permits for them all, and signs posted, but it bothers some people.”

  Bellury got tense next to me.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. Odd that they had cameras. Private businesses didn’t usually have them, not the least of which because it was hard—and expensive—to get around the privacy laws. It also could cost them significant business, as most normals didn’t want to be recorded anymore, not since the data piracy of the Tech Wars had made it all too easy to find out everything about everyone. The only places you saw cameras anymore were multimillion-ROC jewelry stores, larger banks, courthouses, and the interview rooms at the station. Pretty much anything else was hamstrung by the cost, the laws, or the prevailing public opinion.

  The mechanic nodded. “Keep out of the back building. That’s the owner’s office, among other things, and he gets real testy if you interrupt him. He certainly won’t approve your rental if you bother him.”

  “Understood.”

  * * *

  After a cursory look around the rest of the airport, we approached the shorter building toward the back, where a small white van was parked.

  I tried the door—which was open—and stepped through.

  A small air-conditioned office had a hip-high pile of boxes next to the large desk, boxes with labels on the side saying ELECTRONICS COMPONENTS. The permits and bills of sale were attached to each box in brightly colored papers and seals; legitimate, so far as it looked.

  And on the other side of the room, coming through a door there, was a middling-height bald man with a military bearing, carrying a small cube-shaped machine covered in wires, with a small blinking light on top.

  “You must be Adam,” the man said, in a lower-class London accent. “You see, this is why I thought we should cut ties with the airport after the termination decision. All too easy to trace our involvement backwards. But I was overruled. Fortunately, you two look like you’re alone.”

  “Who are you?” I asked, suddenly worried. “What’s that thing in your hand?” With the missing Tech, and blueprints, and sketches, unidentified machines seemed ominous. And his words . . .

  “That’s not important,” he said calmly. He seemed to be staring at Bellury intently, and something felt odd. “You can do as I say. Pick up two boxes, exit the building, and climb into my white van parked on the curb.”

  “Okay.” Bellury picked up the boxes.

  What the . . . ?

  “Hold on.” I dropped shallowly into Mindspace to see what I was up against.

  I saw a strange bent-light effect around the box, and the traces of waves it had just let out, odd waves. And behind it—the sharp mind whom I’d seen before at the crime scenes. The strangler. Sibley. The bottom fell out of my world. I had just been crazy, monumentally stupid. He was right—we were alone.

  I reached out with my mind to disable him—but before I could, he pushed a button and the thing he held lit up with a second light. A strange compulsion hit me, enough to break my concentration. I stared at Sibley. He was fascinating in that moment, like a cobra with its hood spread, his every movement mesmerizing. That square-jawed face, the bald head, the broken nose, the little burn scar near his ear—fascinating.

  “And you, my dear Adam. You want desperately to follow my instructions.”

  “That’s right,” I heard myself say, unable to take my eyes away. In the back of my mind, I tried to pull away, to figure something . . . this wasn’t right, but I couldn’t figure out why. I had to follow his instructions.

  “You want to follow your friend down to the van, but don’t forget an armful of the boxes yourself. We’re going to load the van. But don’t get too far away from me, now.”

  “That would be bad,” I said as I did what he asked. It was important I stayed close to him.

  My training was starting to kick in. I slowly parsed out this weird feeling, this . . . force coming at me through Mindspace. Like clouds hitting my brain obliquely, like another dimension, something was changing the shape of my mind . . . or more accurately, getting me to change it. But knowledge wasn’t mastery; I could no more stop walking in the direction he wanted, I could no more fight this mesmerizing fascination than I could fly.

  Bellury, ahead of me, slowed down, to look around, and Sibley moved faster to stand in front of him as we made the transition back
outside.

  “What . . . ?” Bellury mumbled, and shifted the boxes in his hand so he could reach for his gun.

  “Give me the gun,” Sibley said firmly, and then accepted it. “Open the door and set the boxes in. It’s unlocked.” Then to me: “You too. Go quickly and carefully and don’t fight me.”

  “You got it,” I said, despite myself.

  * * *

  After loading was done, we piled onto the long bench seat in the center of the van, and Sibley put the blinking machine on the floorboards while he put handcuffs on us. All the time that mesmerizing force stayed steady in my brain, and my eyes settled on the grapefruit-sized cube like it was the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen. When Sibley spoke, I obeyed. Was this why none of the victims had struggled? Even Emily . . . had the shape of her mind protected her some?

  What would it have been like to sit there while Sibley strangled you to death, unable to lift a finger in your own defense? Was I about to find out?

  The seeds of true fear began to grow inside me.

  We waited for a long moment; then Sibley turned all the way around to look at us. “Bellury, forget the last few minutes, as much as you can. And fall asleep.”

  Bellury slumped over.

  “What are you doing? What are you . . .” I trailed off.

  Sibley’s attention turned to me, that sharp, calm attention like a small cruel child staring at a bug. “Quiet now.”

  I fell silent despite myself. My heart fluttered in my chest like a bird trapped in a tiny cage, frantic, frantic to get out. I tried to talk, but I couldn’t. . . .

  “Keep your thoughts to yourself. Calm down now.”

  And despite every bone in my body, despite all my panicked effort, I did. My mind settled into smaller, calmer analytical circles, but my heart . . . my heart kept that frantic movement in my chest.

  Sibley turned around, humming to himself, and took the car out of park. Outside, like tears, the sky began to rain.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, we were turning into an old office park in a wooded area off North Druid Hills Road. About the time I’d recover my will enough to struggle with the handcuffs—maybe once every three or four minutes—Sibley would find me through the rearview mirror and order me back down, back to silence and calm. It should have been terrifying, frustrating, horrifying. But I couldn’t feel anything or think anything without an artificial, disturbing calm lying on top of it like a heavy pillow cutting off my air.

  Bellury was still sleeping to my right; Sibley had sent him back as soon as he began to stir. I was behind Sibley, on the left of the bench seat, watching the cube’s lights turn on and off.

  The car pulled into a parking lot and moved to a front door of an office building. A woman stood at the door, an overweight woman huddled under an umbrella that shielded her face.

  We stopped, and she opened the passenger door, shaking out the umbrella.

  “Hello, Adam,” Tamika said, and got in the car. “Thank you, Sibley.”

  The last piece of the puzzle clicked into place, but it was too late.

  * * *

  The van was being raised by a hydraulic lift, a slow, heavy lift with a square concrete floor currently climbing the floors of the parking garage, like the main arm on a soda machine. As another floor went by, through the open space between them I could see pine trees below, nearly endless pine trees yellowed with pollution.

  The lift drew even with a floor perhaps ten stories above ground level, its concrete edge lining up with the edge of the permanent floor. Ahead, through maybe a hundred feet of textured reinforced concrete, a large wide door stood open under a sign that said DYMANI SYSTEMS, BUILDING 4, LOADING.

  Tamika twisted around in the passenger seat, and Sibley brought up Bellury’s gun. The car doors were locked and the lock next to me was busted off, so that the only way to get out was through one of them. The mesmerizing force from Sibley was starting to wear off, and I could speak again.

  “I have one question,” I said to Tamika, ignoring Sibley by sheer force of will. “Why Emily? Did you plan her death from the beginning?”

  “No,” Tamika said. She paused for a moment, like she was considering whether to speak to me. Finally she shrugged. “No, I really did think she hated the Guild and the normals as much as she was pretending. But all she wanted was the money, and then she wanted to do the right thing.” She laughed, a sound entirely devoid of mirth. “I guess she got that from you, Professor. You’d think she would have learned better.”

  I sat up, ready to extend my—

  “Settle down, don’t use your telepathy, and don’t fight this,” Sibley told me, that hateful blinking cube in his hands. The cube—I realized all at once that this must be Tamika’s machine. The machine she built from that sketch. From Dane’s teaching.

  “You created a brain wave compulsion machine. To make up for your lack of Ability.”

  “The Ability you stole from me!” her voice snapped.

  And then Tamika, the sweet girl I’d taught for years, the quiet, nice, polite woman I’d known, grabbed Sibley’s gun. She settled herself against the back of the passenger-side seat and shot one bullet before I could react. I winced, braced for pain—but there was none.

  Next to me, Bellury cried out and was suddenly awake and clutching his shoulder. A steady litany of cursing while he went for a gun at his side, a gun that wasn’t there, his hands clumsy in the cuffs.

  Three more shots, deafening in the small space. Boom. Boom. Crack.

  The warmth of blood hit my face—warm, sticky blood—and that horrible, horrible calm imploded.

  In Mindspace, the world sucked in in a burst, a black hole of death realized. I fought my way away, away, anything to keep from being sucked in . . . and finally succeeded.

  In reality, in the car, the strong, acrid smell of urine filled the air, and the side of my leg next to Bellury was wet. His body slumped toward me, his head hitting my shoulder with a thud.

  I pushed him away, frantically. Bellury was . . . Bellury was . . .

  The van’s sliding door on the right side away from me opened, and Tamika’s arm pulled Bellury away, down, with gravity, until he slumped on the ground outside the car. Then she shot him again, standing over him.

  She turned back to me, meeting my eyes, and suddenly the nice girl I’d known was gone.

  “You should have died in the gutter. You should have lost everything—like I did. And since you didn’t—I’ll take my justice from you.”

  CHAPTER 26

  “Keep your thoughts to yourself and stay put,” Sibley told me, and that mesmerizing compulsion spread over me again until I couldn’t—I couldn’t think about moving. I stared at him, unable to help myself, as he walked around the car to Tamika.

  He walked down to the huge doors to our left, box still in hand, and as he walked I realized the doors were much bigger than I’d thought. And the company name—Dynami Systems, the same company that Emily had worked for. My eyes continued to follow Sibley as he walked, this fascination almost—almost but not quite—keeping me from thinking about Emily, who I’d failed. Tamika, who I’d failed just as badly. Bellury, who . . . my mind shied away.

  “We need to go,” Sibley said as two guys with guns came out of the entrance. He gestured for them to go toward the van. “Unload this thing—fast this time. Watch the electronics—they’re delicate. And you, miss, you’ll need to check in with the boss.” He projected his voice loudly enough to echo off the sides of the specialty material that made up the walls of the garage.

  “Why are these two here? And why are you running so late?” Tamika asked. “This is not what we agreed on. Fiske said you’d—”

  “I’d do the job and do it well. But you keep hamstringing me with requests. I specifically warned you the risks went up if we kept the association with the airport. You knew the smuggling was risky.”

  Tamika moved toward him. “And you were supposed to kill him last week anyway!”

&n
bsp; “It was too early, I told you that.” And they degenerated into an argument while I fought the compulsion, slowly, slowly, trying to wiggle out of a too-tight straitjacket.

  Bellury lying there, just lying there, only fueled the anger that let me fight.

  Finally it occurred to me—I didn’t have to move. Not outwardly. I didn’t even have to call for help; thinking that thought still hurt, actually hurt. I could no more call for help than I could run a marathon in the next two seconds. But I didn’t have to.

  As Sibley walked down to talk to one of the guards, I took a breath and poked at the watcher’s tracker in my head, poked hard—the one thing Cherabino had forbidden me to do. I poked harder, searing pain washing over me, pain like an ice pick to the brain—but I couldn’t move.

  Pain. Pain. Pain. Like a beacon, almost, or a nasty lighthouse run by a madman, shooting lasers instead of plain simple light. Pain. Only then did I stop poking at it. Only then . . .

  And in the quiet afterward, while I was trying to catch my breath, came the smell and the taste of Cherabino. Beautiful, annoyed, competent, angry Cherabino.

  What the hell are you doing? she asked me mind to mind. I told you to stop it with the moods! And the pain, that’s just . . . She thought of kicking my ass, literally, figuratively, and then flipping me over onto my face on the concrete while her knee went in my back and she gave me a long, detailed lecture about how she needed to work.

  I stared at the carpeted car floor for a long moment, trying to catch up. The compulsion didn’t apply to this, I told myself. It was a Link, not telepathy. Not telepathy. I made myself believe it. Cherabino!

  What, asshole?

  I found Tamika and Sibley—but he has this thing. It’s a compulsion machine. I think she made it—she used to work for Dane. She has the skills. I don’t know. They took us to a small office park on North Druid Hills, in a Dymani Systems building. I can see armed men over by the entrance, but I can’t move. I need help. Please. Now. Bellury’s alarm thing went off, but they shut it down. And then, with panic I couldn’t suppress, They killed him. He’s dead. They killed him.