“Neither do I. It’s time to learn.”
Stormhead gestured to a nurse in the corner. She inserted a needle into a tube that led into Vijay’s wrist.
“What is that?” asked Trista.
“A combination of zolpidem and caffeine. It should wake him up a little.”
“Will his eyes open?”
“They may not.”
“Can you open them?”
The nurse crossed her arms. “I’m not happy with what you’re doing to this boy. He needs rest if he’s going to survive.”
“I only need a glance to make the connection.”
Pinwheel went to the other side of the bed and pulled Vijay’s forehead back far enough to reveal a sliver of eye.
Trista stared into the small part of Vijay's pupil that showed and trembled. “Wait. This is bad. There’s no order or reason. It’s a mess in there.”
“Does that mean you can’t help?” asked Stormhead.
“I’ll try.”
Trista projected herself into the wreckage of Vijay’s mind. There was no real distance, depth, or length. The memories around her were warped like old glass. Trista made out fragments of video games, a picnic with an Indian family on a sunny day, being beaten up outside of a middle school dance while his classmates watched, fantasies of standing on one of the Chrysler Building’s eagles in a four-armed silver battlesuit, a funeral on a rainy day, changing his grades in a high-school computer network, a blond girl laughing at him after he asked her out, and the scent of fresh samosas, all interspersed by shards of insecurity and resentment for everyone he met and tempered by self-indulgent amazement at his own intelligence.
She focused on breaking into the high school’s computer. Memories are interconnected like webs through associations and shared feelings, but this one led nowhere. It was a boring for Vijay, something he had done many times. She grabbed another thread the closest one within her psychic reach. This time it led to a center where many threads met. The connection gave Trista a sense of width and length to make the foundation for Vijay’s mindscape.
“Trista?” In the mindscape, the thoughts were as clear as voices.
The thought was so weak she barely noticed it, but the associated images of herself made the association clear. Some images showed her sad and subdued, others had her in the Mind Dame outfit with a larger chest and impossibly narrow waist.
Vijay must have thought about her quite a bit. That made her skin crawl.
Trista waved her hand and the images scattered upwards into a third dimension and creating the reality of height. She picked up the hacking memories again. This time the thread led to the names of programs. Each had them had the same ID, Vjawesome, and the same password, SilverShiva.
She broke the connection. On her way out, the weak words “Don’t go” echoed through the mindscape.
Trista logged into the hacking programs but quickly ran into a dead end. The screens of code were nothing but long lines of incomprehensible symbols to her.
She re-established the psychic connection. Vijay’s mind seemed brighter but the clutter of broken memories and fractured facts were more chaotic than before. They tried to fit together like puzzle pieces in a shaken box. They bounced off of each other without making a connection, but they never stopped trying.
The hacking memories were somewhere in that shifting mess. Trista grabbed a few memories. She saw curved lines for candles and somehow knew it was for Diwali despite having no idea what Diwali is. Another memory held the scent of a lotus flower in a cemetery on a spring day. The next memory association was a snippet of Lady Amazing showering captured from a hidden camera.
That made Trista retch. She still hated him for that violation. Lady Amazing did not deserve that. No one did. But he uploaded the video to the internet, so she pulled it towards her. That led to associations for how to set up a wireless camera and hack into file-sharing sites. Hacking was what she wanted.
Everything felt hot at first, but Vijay’s mind became cool again in a snap.
“You came back. You were gone for so long.”
There’s no time, no fourth dimension, in the mindscape, where the distance is measured only in feelings. Trista thought, “It was only a minute.”
“I can’t see or hear anything but you. What happened?”
“You were shot.”
“By who?”
“We don’t know. We can find out who wanted you dead if you show me how to hack.”
Vijay’s mind trembled with warmth tinged with sourness. “Hacking is what I do. That’s like asking a rocket why it …” The mindscape shook and changed colors quickly and vividly. “Wait, what about rockets?”
“Hacking. Give me all you have.”
The memories rolled around Trista like a glistening tunnel of lights. Several fell in front of her like rain. She grabbed as many as she could. Each had a bit of information, but she couldn’t tell what each meant.
“I need everything,” she thought. She drew the memories to her. Far more came to her than she anticipated.
There was something far larger linked to his hacking, the foundation for the sparkling tunnel. Something warm yet sour like sadness.
The mindscape grew stuffy with hot arrogance. “You can’t take that from me.”
Trista drew in those memories. Everything shifted under her power.
“Stop,” thought Vijay. “I won't let you take that.”
A cloud of vague ideas formed a silver mechanical man with four arms. Trista recognized as Vijay’s self-image as the Silver Shiva despite never having seen it before.
His sleek guns pointed at Trista. Rockets popped out of his shoulder. Behind an ornate mask he grimaced.
Trista grabbed the thought web and yanked it. Everything shifted from sky-blue to dark and hot and sky-blue and cool again as the mindscape quaked. The Silver Shiva fell to pieces like a glass statue in an earthquake.
Trista withdrew from Vijay’s mind. “He’s conscious enough to be a jerk, but something keeps shaking things up.”
The nurse said, “He’s having seizures. He wasn’t like this before you came in.”
“I may cause more if I pull anything out.”
“Trista, I don’t mean to pressure you, but we need this information. There are many locations on the CIA’s list. This can show us which one the Handler is at.”
Noah said mockingly, “He doesn’t mean to pressure you, but do this or he won’t know what to do.”
Stromhead almost yelled before Pinwheel put his finger to his lips and pointed at Trista.
Trista locked eyes with Vijay.
Pinwheel took a notepad and wrote, WHY DID YOU SAVE 4-EYES FROM THE ISLAND?
Stormhead took the notepad and wrote back, I HAD TO.
Pinwheel wrote, YOU HAD TO SAVE SOMEONE YOU HATE?
Stormhead wrote, HEROES DO NOT CHOOSE WHO THEY SAVE.
Pinwheel wrote back, THEN WHY ARE YOU WILLING TO LET VIJAY DIE?
Vijay’s mindscape was filled with crimson seething heat. Echoes of insults in Vijay’s own voice about being weak, clumsy, and ugly almost kept Trista from thinking. Only Vijay's pride in his own intelligence held things together. No, wait, the negative words were in a voice deeper than Vijay’s, but somehow still his.
The Silver Shiva lay in tarnished pieces. Vijay sat among them, his face hidden behind his hands.
It became cold and blue when Trista took more of the hacking association web. The pieces of the Silver Shiva reformed. Instead of standing in a threatening posture, they staggered and stumbled.
Trista pulled at the hacking association web again. The mindscape shook and shifted to a shade of lightning-blue.
“Please,” thought Vijay as his Silver Shiva image fell apart again. “My memories are all I have. Don’t take them.”
“If I don’t do this, people may die.”
“But you’ll take what I am if you do.”
Trista yanked the association web hard enough to cause a massive mindquake. �
�You betrayed us. You deserve worse than this.”
Everything shook again as the sensations changed from extremes of burning to freezing.
Vijay created an image of Trista with feathery wings, a white gown, and a halo. “I thought you were good.”
Trista warped the image back to herself as the fishnet-clad Mind Dame, with emphasis on the sadistic smirk. “You don’t know what I am.”
Vijay’s mindscape rippled and turned a thousand different hues as Trista pulled more hacking memories away. She saw images of nodes, IP protocols, and blocks of codes that she somehow now knew revealed bugs that allowed access to the underlying program.
Vijay’s image as the Silver Shiva came together with all four arms spread. “I won’t let you take the only thing that makes me special.”
“Do you remember how the Idea Man offered me to you, and how willing you were to accept?” She threw back Vijay’s image of her with exaggerated proportions. “You had no problem taking my body. I have none with taking your mind.”
The Silver Shiva glowed power from what remained of Vijay’s willpower. He raised four fists at Trista’s self-representation as Mind Dame.
“You know nothing about psychic combat.” Trista’s presence took on the sharpness of a razor. “I can do anything I want to you, and you can’t stop me.”
The Silver Shiva made himself so big he dominated the mindscape. His guns and missiles aimed at Trista.
Trista hit him with enough psychic energy to induce a massive seizure. Everything spilt apart.
The Silver Shiva crumpled into a million little pieces and sank into the liquefied mindscape beneath him. Trista ripped the huge tangle of memories associated with hacking into her.
The shaking got worse and everything went black and bright again and again. It took Trista time to realize Pinwheel was waving his hand in front of her face. “Pull out. Stormhead says to abort the mission.”
Trista blinked repeatedly. Vijay’s puffy face contorted in agony.
Stormhead pointed to the monitors. “He had too many seizures.”
The nurse said, “You tore his brain apart after my son put it back together.”
Memories of nodes and code-cracking techniques settled behind Trista’s mind in a tangled mess. She tried to put them into some semblance of order.
“Your son?” asked Pinwheel. “You’re Deon’s mother?”
Something about the word “mother” made the jumbled memories associated with hacking take on a sharper tone. Mother. There was something about a mother in there, a foundation below the hacking memories.
Trista envisioned an Indian woman pointing to an old white plastic computer. In the monitor’s curved glass Trista saw a reflection of a smiling Vijay – he had a gap in his smile where his baby teeth fell out - and felt second-hand excitement. The woman said, “Happy birthday.”
This was Vijay's memory. But it jumped sharply through many hours of experimenting to a moment.
It happened on a night when Vijay downloaded movies that weren't released yet. His mother said she had to work an extra shift at the convenience story. He said she could work a shift after that because it was annoying having her around the house.
A forgettable time later, there was a knock at the door. He heard the policeman his father that his mother there was a robbery. He didn’t hear the exact words about his mother’s death. His father’s expression said it all.
Everything moved in slow-motion as his father slumped. The facts – a man shot her when her back was turned, and shot her again after he found only fifty dollars in the register – remained cold and distant, not visualized, not processed, only frozen as ideas. After a bitter blur came a funeral on a rainy spring day, where Vijay placed a lotus on an unadorned coffin.
Trista spread her fingers over the laptop’s keyboard. They moved in ways meaningless to her but that meant a lot to Vijay. They tapped out the rhythms of games and programs Vijay used to hide in so he wouldn’t think. The motions became more complex as she worked through the years from games to hacking games to true hacking. Underneath was pride mixed with a twinge of guilt for how he treated his mother.
She looked at the hacking programs. They seemed simple in a way she couldn’t describe. She tapped a few buttons. A map of nodes showed up on her screen. Each one showed the flow of information from one computer to another to a relay station back to the source, not unlike a mind association map. It only took a ping to get an IP address for the central source.
“The information is all flowing to a place called Satell Enterprises in Jersey City. I think I found out where the Handler is.” She looked up the IP source and read the address aloud.
“Well done,” said Stormhead. He pressed the speakerphone button on his smartphone and a contact’s button.
After a ring, “Agent O’Farrell.”
“Alexander, we have an address. Have Arbalest get his motorcycle ready and Professor Photon and Magna meet me at the roof of this hospital. I want to be there within an hour.”
“Good work. By the way, I interrogated the ninja and the cyborg.”
“Cyborg? What do you mean?”
“There was an Iron Pirate hiding in Harry’s lab. They said they were hired by someone named Portia to break in.”
“Who is this Portia?”
“I made some calls to the Australia Federal Police’s Metahuman Division. They had a record about a woman who calls herself Portia Fimbriata. She has a reputation as a mastermind, but almost everyone she works with disappears. Their profilers’ theory is that she’s a villainess who preys on villains.”
“Wouldn’t that make her a hero?” asked Stormhead.
“No, it makes her a sociopath. She was seen with Wykedblade shortly before his disappearance and was Malone’s last known employer. There’s a chance you could see her and dozens of other villains we haven’t fought in a while. Oh, and she and Candilyn were on that van bound for the women’s prison that got hijacked last night. If you see Candilyn, try to bring her back alive.”
“We’ll save all the lives we can.” Stormhead ended the call. “Trista, Pinwheel, it may be best if you go back to Griffin Tower.
Trista kept typing. “I’d like to explore the Handler’s spyware network. Vijay’s memories are still fresh in my mind, and if I stop using them for even a few minutes they may disappear.”
“I’ll keep her company,” said Pinwheel.
“Very well. The MAB agents will remain stationed outside the door.”
Noah said, “And you will go off to continue your war to keep everything the way it is.”
“People like me can’t make the world a better place because we’re too busy keeping scum like you from making it worse.”
“It’ll never be a good place for anyone who’s different from the status quo. Those of us born monsters will always be monsters.”
Electricity crackled over Stormhead’s body. He walked to the other side of the partition. “I know you were raised in an institution. I was too. In my youth I couldn’t control my flight or electric discharges. My own family feared me as a monster, and quite rightfully, for I was a danger to everyone around me. I could have lashed out against the world that rejected me, but I refused to live that way. I made myself the best person I could be through a desire to join society. Now I lead the heroes who defend the world, and you couldn’t even defend the people who counted on you.”
Stormhead strode out.
After a silent moment, Noah muttered, “I hate him more than ever.”
Ruby said, “He saved your life back on the island.”
“He had a reputation to protect. People were watching.”
Ruby looked at her claws. “I don’t feel right about taking that woman and kid hostage.”
“We could’ve escaped if Gary wasn’t so weak.”
“But we had to abandon Joey, and I was headed to the streets anyway. Now they’ll send me to prison.”
“After all I’ve done, you couldn’t make a sacrifice for m
e?”
Ruby wanted to say something about how she once believed Noah could protect her, but the words didn’t come out. She grinded her claws together, alone in her corner of his half of the hospital room.
Chapter Nineteen: Parting Gifts
Kayleigh touched the three lines of steri-strips on her cheek as she looked into a mirror. She gave a strip a gentle tug. The glue clung tightly to her skin. “I should’ve kept the mask.”
The reflection showed Magna standing behind her.
Kayleigh turned around. Magna stood imposingly. The robot held Kayleigh’s sleeved harness and a mask.
“Before you say anything you should know that I, Doctor Harry Von Dyme, or Professor Photon, am in manual control of this robot. I shrank myself down and am piloting it through a microsuite I installed in Magna’s head.”
Kayleigh looked over Magna’s distinctly feminine body. “You don’t stop getting creepier.”
Magna lifted the harness and mask. “I made some improvements on these. The harness has an extra titanium alloy reinforcement to make it harder to bend.”
Kayleigh didn’t touch the harness. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”
“You won’t have to ever again. I added an AC adaptor so you can recharge the harness’s battery with a wall socket. Here is a belt with extra capsaicin capsules, and if you need more Agent O’Farrell can order them for you.”
Kayleigh whispered, “I can’t take these without people asking why you gave them to me, and I don’t want to lie anymore.”
He whispered back, “I don’t know what else to do. I’m not good with people. “
“You could try saying you’re sorry. You couldn’t even say that to Agent O’Farrell.”
“I made myself clear.”
“You also made it clear that you won’t apologize for sexually harassing me.”
“What? I did not do that.”
“Let’s talk it over with Agent O’Farrell and see what he thinks.”
“Are you blackmailing me?”
“I don’t want you to do that to anyone else. Come to think of it, maybe you did it to someone else.”
The Prospects (Book 2): Nothing Poorer Than Gods Page 20
