by Alex Hughes
PAYOFF
A Mindspace Investigations Novella
Alex Hughes
NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
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First E-Book Printing, March 2013
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
PAYOFF
Excerpt from SHARP
About the Author
Roc Books by Alex Hughes
“I appreciate you taking me all the way out here,” I said. “I know you’re overwhelmed with cases right now.”
“Why does Judge Datini want you to look into this anyway?” Homicide Detective Isabella Cherabino asked. She was my partner, maybe, if a telepath consultant like myself could even have a partner in the police force. She was also beautiful, with large breasts, dark hair, strong features, and a strong personality that made me want to be a better man. Even if half the time she didn’t notice me past my talents.
“I owe him,” I said, a little self-consciously. I was embarrassed about it, actually; it was tied up with past sins I’d rather her not know about. It wasn’t at all usual for judges to ask consultants for favors. We were at the university in North Druid Hills on an early September rainy morning. This part of Atlanta was full of trees, both natural trees and those bioengineered to absorb additional pollution and ash from the air. With the air quality so bad these days, we needed all the help we could get.
The university had largely escaped the macro-destruction of the Tech Wars sixty years ago, so the brick buildings were old and unenhanced. The quad around us looked much like it had a century ago or more when it was built. It was deserted, the soggy greenish grass and gray low-hanging clouds more than a little depressing. We walked quietly for a long moment before curiosity got the best of her.
“Why do you owe him?”
“I’d really rather not talk about—”
Distantly I felt the umbrella falling from my hand, my knees going rubbery-weak. And then the world dropped away, into one of my precognition visions, my oddly reliable future-sense. My brain was hit by blinding ice-pick pain. Ow. Ow!
Beneath the intense pain was deep surprise and relief. Since I’d burned out my telepathy a few weeks ago saving Cherabino’s life, I hadn’t had a glimmer of anything but static. Now the precognition was working! I’d take the pulsing, blinding pain. I’d take it gladly.
The world turned inside out like an Escher drawing and then I saw it, the vision in three dimensions and wavering color like an old-fashioned tube TV about to burn out. I saw it—I saw me.
Me, in the same clothes I was wearing, pulling myself up the side of an oversized bright-green construction dumpster. My feet scrambled, and I fell, hitting my chin against the lip of the dumpster, blood, blood everywhere. Cherabino behind me yelled something I couldn’t understand.
The view pulled out and I saw in the background the same huge orange crane and building we’d seen on our way to the university.
I found myself on my cheek in the soggy grass on the quad, Cherabino’s hand on the collar of my shirt, shaking me.
“. . . vision? Because if you don’t get back to reality in one more minute, I swear by all that is holy, Adam—”
“Mmph,” I mumbled intelligently. I felt like someone was taking a sledgehammer to my head over and over again.
“There you are.” Her eyes settled into slits as the pain hit her too. Right before overexerting my telepathy weeks ago, I’d accidentally Linked our minds. It was the only telepathic connection I had with the world now, the only thread of telepathy in a world that otherwise felt deaf and blind, but she hated it. Keep my hands and mind to myself was all she’d ever asked of me, and leaving me a tiny sliver of mental sensation, enough to keep me sane, was something she barely tolerated on a good day. Now, with reflected pain shooting into her mind, it was only making the situation worse.
I scrambled to shield on my end, but the mental bricks just slipped through my fingers. The pain reflected back at me suddenly; she’d gotten the brick-wall image up and settled in her own mind. As the mental pressure changed, I saw an intense series of light flashes overcome my field of vision, my injured brain not liking the difference. I’d taught her the shielding a little while ago; at least there was that. Even if it cost far too much on my end.
“I have my own migraines, you know. You don’t have to share yours,” she gritted.
Deep inside me, deeper than the pain, a small flame of real hope emerged. Maybe—maybe—if the precognition could come back, the telepathy would heal too. Nine times out of ten it healed on its own, I told myself for the hundredth time. But this time I actually started to believe it.
* * *
I trotted down the sidewalk to the edge of campus, the surface warm under my feet even through my shoes, its self-heating element running steadily to dry the ground in between rainstorms. Curls of fog drifted up from the concrete, moisture evaporating. The small bushes planted to one side had the red spots of plants bioengineered to absorb pollution, so I wasn’t all that worried about the contents of that fog.
I was walking as quickly as I could to what my internal compass said should be the parking lot where we’d come in and that orange crane from the vision. Cherabino followed behind me, reluctantly huddling under her own umbrella. She was still shielding, and my head still hurt something terrible. Worse was the worldsickness: reality coming in and out of focus over and over until I felt like I was going to throw up, and fatigue like a wet blanket smothering everything in sight. But I moved on in good spirits. Hope helps that way.
My telepathy was everything—literally everything. I’d only been hired in the first place because of my telepathy, and after falling off the wagon they’d hired me again because of that same telepathy. Most normals didn’t like telepaths and didn’t trust telepaths, but the DeKalb County Police had seen the benefit in having one on staff. The one advantage to my history of drug use, to them, was that it meant I came without Guild ties. The Telepath’s Guild, who charged ridiculous amounts for even limited telepathic consulting, had kicked me out years ago. They still weren’t my favorite people, but if the telepathy didn’t eventually come back on its own—which it would, I told myself—I’d have to go back to them and beg for help. I’d rather have a root canal.
I am a Level Eight telepath, incredibly strong, able to pick up the waves of the quietest minds in Mindspace through training, skill, and power. I’d been able to read crime scenes from
hours and days ago, telling you exactly who did what and where. I’d been able to read suspects in interviews. I’d been able to be me. The telepathy was all I was, all I had left from the old days, the old me, when I’d been a professor for the Guild and when I could look myself in the mirror and still be proud. Before they’d kicked me out, before the drugs, before everything I wouldn’t talk about. The thought of losing that piece—of losing the telepathy forever—well, I’d crawl to the Guild on my hands and knees over broken glass if I had to. If I had to. Life without telepathy was unthinkable.
And yet here I was.
The drizzly rain had picked up, and the sidewalks in places were over an inch underwater. Gray sky, gray clouds, even the grass seemed grayer and nasty, full of puddles and unknown pollutants far away from any filters. Then the wind picked up, and I fought with the umbrella as the harder rain tried to take it from me.
“Tell me what you saw,” Cherabino demanded for the tenth time.
I didn’t answer, preferring to focus on putting one foot in front of the other in the correct direction. I took another turn, and we arrived on a narrow stained sidewalk next to an open construction area. That huge orange metal crane poised overhead like a vengeful angel. Red, sodden dirt mounded like the surface of Mars for fifty feet in every direction. Wooden and metal pieces like bones poked out of the soil, placed to hold concrete that would never set in this weather. A covered dumpster dripped water on the furrowing dirt ten feet ahead. A green dumpster. As we got closer, my eyes ran over the troughs caused by the runoff, like blood vessels carved into the red earth.
“Now are you going to tell me what you saw?”
“If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.” I looked around for a place to put the umbrella, and then, sighing, handed it to Cherabino. I was going to end up soaked to the skin if I was here for long, but that was the least of my worries. I’d try to avoid the split chin, I could do that much, but I never had a vision without a reason for it. And if I was having a vision now, with the telepathy down, it had to be important. I had to find out why. Even if I ended up breaking my chin open in the process.
“You going up there?”
I stared at it, as it expanded and contracted with the worldsickness. “I have to.”
I wobbled through the dirt, shoes nearly sucked off my feet by the clay, and carefully pushed the heavy cover of the dumpster two feet to the side. The nasty, oily smell of decomposition wafted out. I pushed harder, hands struggling on the rough wooden cover, already bloated from the rain. When it gaped more than a yard open, I grabbed the lip of the dumpster, set a foot, and pulled myself up, muscles protesting the sudden movement in this cloying cold wet rain.
My shoe slipped—
And my chin hit my carefully-placed hand. I saw stars, and half-fell, half-lowered back to the ground.
I took three breaths, and went back up.
My head screamed, my stomach protested—and then I saw it.
A foot—a swollen foot covered in a dirty sock, ankle with a dark complexion and sloughing skin, poked out from a huge pile of construction debris. I shifted to the right, my hands protesting the sharp metal lip I was hanging on, my head protesting all the exertion as the world wobbled again with indescribable pain. Just another minute, I told myself. Just another . . .
From the new angle, I could dimly see the rest of a body, jeans and the brightly-colored small-thread flannel shirt. A low, lumpy form at the end. And a reddish cloud against the side of the dumpster, small bits and clumps of something decorating its side. In a fast food dumpster, those could be anything, but in construction . . . well I didn’t think they were concrete. Skin and bone and darker things, probably, mixing in with the blood.
I dropped back down immediately, my hands filthy and hurting, and breathed a bit until the world steadied.
“What?” Cherabino prompted, holding on to the umbrella too tightly.
I took another breath.
“What is it, damn it?”
“I’m guessing it’s Raymond,” I said, “the judge’s grandson.”
* * *
I sat on a tarp over a pile of boards a few feet away from the crime scene.. Exhaustion and guilt were sitting on my chest like steel weights.
Crime scene technicians swarmed all over the scene like bees on a hive, piled up nearly three deep in the dumpster for the final pictures before they brought Raymond out. For a judge’s grandson, they’d even brought the holocameras, three dimensions of disturbing crime scene to play for a jury in all its detailed glory.
How was I supposed to tell Judge Datini that his grandson was dead? How would this pay him back for my sins? It didn’t, and part of me, the cynical part, thought he’d probably try to send me to jail out of spite for the news. There was a reason they told you not to shoot the messenger—it was human nature, and maybe I’d deserve it.
Judge Datini had adjudicated most of my drug charges back in the day. I’d been high then. High and uninterested in anything other than me. For the court appearances, I’d timed my doses of Satin, my drug; Satin messed with the mind, making telepathy unreliable, and I’d had to be careful to time it correctly so I’d have some use of it. Against every code of ethics the Guild believed in—and I believed in—I’d influenced the judge’s mind to make him drop charges and give me lighter sentences. He hadn’t been a mental pushover and I’d told myself that made it okay. That if it was really important to him he’d overrule my suggestions. But I knew, even then, even high as a cloud, that what I was doing was wrong. Against everything I held sacred and everything I’d ever taught my students. To this day, years later, after I’d been through rehab multiple times and had a solid three-year stint on the wagon, I regretted my actions toward this guy. I was a better telepath than that. I was a better guy than that. Or at least I was trying to be.
A telepath—well, right now I wasn’t a telepath and wouldn’t be until I healed. My ability needed time, rest, exercises, hard work, and patience. I’d helped students through it more than once. It would be okay, I told myself. But right now the only thing I heard was the inside of my own head, deaf and dumb and blind and panicky without the small scraps of Cherabino’s mind she’d share. I’d lived half in Mindspace my whole life. And now I was cut off from it. The telepathy had to heal. It had to. I could keep up the façade with the cops for now, I could lie my butt off for awhile, but eventually it would come out. Eventually I’d have to do the job or get fired.
“Give me your shoes,” someone said.
I looked up.
It was Jamal, a tall crime scene technician with short dreads, a standard jumpsuit uniform, and a scowl. He didn’t like telepaths, but I couldn’t hear him think it. It bothered me that I couldn’t hear him think it.
“I need your shoes. To make a cast with. I need to eliminate your footprints,” he said.
“You realize it’s solid mud out here.”
“You’re covered in it already,” he said back pragmatically. “Go stand on the sidewalk if you really need to.”
I looked over at the sidewalk ten feet away. In this section it was caked red with Georgia clay, the clay slowly being baked by the heating element. Without shoes that would be too warm. “I’ll stay here, thanks.” I took off my shoes, my socks squelching deep in the mud. I consoled myself with the fact that they were probably ruined anyway. My one decent pair of work shoes. And I’d have to get Bellury to take me shopping for more, because the department didn’t trust me with my own money. But if it had to be done, it had to be done.
The sky had opened up with a slow rain, and I was getting soaked, but the team—with much swearing—had just managed to put up the tent to shield the evidence, so that was okay. I wasn’t going to catch cold, not in a warmish September rain, and maybe it would get the worst of the mud off the back of my neck and shirt.
Above us, that ridiculous huge orange crane loomed. Behind it, several campus buildings stood against the sky, including a huge airflyer deck, the top floor of which held brightly-color
ed sports flyers from the richer students. I’d met a few of those, back in my time. Didn’t make any sense, in my opinion, to give an eighteen year old a half million ROCs to wreck—or to hurt someone else with—but no one asked me.
My focus was going again, my brain jumping from one half-formed idea to the next without reason.
The head of the crime scene team scowled at me, so I closed my eyes and pretended to be useful, to read the crime scene like I would if things were still working. Little pieces of Cherabino’s thoughts peppered across the Link, mostly things she was noting about the scene. She was soaked too, and worried about her other cases. What should have been a two-hour errand was turning into her entire day—and she had other pressing cases, other victims to worry about.
Stay out of my head, she told me mind-to-mind when she caught me listening. And threw up a strong shield. I took a deep breath, rode out the strong pain and flashes of light across my vision, and waited for the world to stop spinning.
My brain was not happy with me today.
I opened up my eyes.
“Anything?” Freeman, the other local detective, asked. He was standing right there. Right there. I hadn’t felt him getting so close.
Exhaustion helped me suppress any reaction. “Not much,” I said, an almost-truth. “From the looks of things, it’s been awhile.” I’d been avoiding crime scenes for weeks for exactly this reason, focusing all my energies on suspect interviews and interrogations—where I could get by with just intuition and bluffs—and suddenly I was tired.
He put his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. Raining for days. Probably whoever did this was counting on the construction crew emptying that container before the smell started, but then it started raining.”
“You’re thinking time of death is right before the rain?”
“Seems logical, doesn’t it?”
They’d pulled the body out of the dumpster, now, to one side, and were currently casting footprints on the other side. As I got closer, I swallowed, and fought down nausea. It looked like the pictures you saw of the victims from the Tech War river floodings, when the computers had turned the locks backwards and put whole apartment buildings under water, locked from the outside. They still put some of those pictures in textbooks, to show you what the sentient Tech did to us after the madman took over. Raymond’s body looked like those pictures, almost, the body all swollen out of its natural shape. The rain hadn’t been kind to him, not in that huge petri dish of a mostly-sealed container, and he wasn’t recognizable. I glanced—and saw splotches of color, details, and bloat, split clothes and a dark band around the neck, the wound—and looked away again before I lost it. I was not going to throw up at a crime scene again. Period. I was a consultant, and consultants didn’t have that luxury.
