Blake’s right hand trembled as he brought it up to the side of his head and caged the fingers over his right ear. Wincing, looking over the eyes of the men in front of him, he saw that he had the full attention of everyone present, including the wounded bodyguard clutching his ragged hand and whimpering in the corner.
“You’ll go to sleep,” Blake said. “And when you wake up, you won’t remember any of this.”
Dominic touched the side of his own head. Like a needle being eased into Blake’s skull, Dominic’s voice entered, sharp and clean.
Again. With me.
“Go to sleep,” Blake repeated, relying heavily on Dominic’s support. He’d gotten rusty over the years. “And when you wake up, you won’t remember any of this.”
Gigi’s eyes slid shut as he fell back against a toppled chair, blissfully asleep and snoring even as he tumbled. The bodyguards and the bartender followed suit and seemed to melt into the floor.
Dominic tore off Gigi’s bow tie and made a tourniquet to keep the wounded bodyguard from bleeding to death. Then he gave Blake a nod and they got out of there.
They reached Blake’s car after ten minutes of walking only to find FSD officers inspecting it.
“Ah, damn,” Blake said.
Dominic frowned. “You have another one, right?”
“Don’t worry. Weisman has people all over the city that can set us up. Come on, we’ll walk there. It’s safer than driving, anyway.”
They were walking along an empty back street when Dominic grabbed Blake’s arm and spun him around.
“You know,” he said. “This shit only happens to me when you show your face. I’m not going anywhere with you, I don’t care what your deal is.”
Blake scanned his surroundings. They were alone except for a light scattering of drunks and prostitutes fading in and out of view as they passed beneath the streetlamps. Satisfied, he turned his attention back to Dominic.
“I need you on this, Dom. Come back to Gulch.”
“With John Meacham as Overseer? What the hell makes you think I would even consider that?”
A massive screen flashed to life at the end of the street, perched atop a tall, triangular edifice. They could see it over the shorter buildings in the forefront.
Dominic and Blake looked up at the rectangle of light, which had begun to play a video. A few seconds of propaganda passed, the Republic’s banners and flags waving triumphantly in the wind, a young Harold Targin Kole standing at the edge of a cliff, surveying the lands he had conquered. These were followed by video clips of his son Harris giving fiery speeches, helping factory workers, providing farmers with crucial advice on how best to develop their crops—all staged, of course.
Louis Blake stood transfixed by the sight, his mind flooding with bittersweet memories of a time when this sort of thing had excited him, made him proud to be a soldier. Those days were long gone.
“Things haven’t changed,” he said in a low voice.
“This can’t be good,” Dominic said.
The video changed to a news segment. Dominic’s face appeared; a mug shot taken when he was in his mid-twenties. The broadcaster began to explain the details of tonight’s disaster back at the bar.
“That was quick,” Blake said. “Kole’s media has gotten better.”
“...with new technology designed by the One President Harris Kole himself, we were able to alter this photograph to show how Dominic Scalazzo has aged”—the picture changed slightly so that his face looked more worn around the edges, his hair a bit thinner—“and also to apply the bruises and swollen areas witnesses claim to have seen.” The face took on a battered quality that was strikingly similar to his present state.
“Spiteful pricks,” Dominic said and spit on the sidewalk before turning to Blake. “So, Louis, what brings you to this fine country?”
Chapter 8
Uncle Sal woke up Saturday night after two days of lying in bed.
The Lanza family was lucky he was on vacation and didn’t have to report back to work until Monday. That, of course, raised another issue. What if Sal ratted them out once he woke up?
Michael spoke to his father about using his savings to get them past the border. Terry Lanza told him to stop being ridiculous. This was their home, their business, and they weren’t going to throw it away to go scavenge some blighted wasteland.
“Hey, Sal. Sally, you hear me?”
Terry slapped the man’s cheeks, which were covered in black stubble. Sal’s eyes were wide open and blank, like he was brain-dead. The tiny thread in his mind had been still for a while, but Michael could see it when he concentrated hard enough.
“He’s not going to wake up,” Michael said.
His father’s eyebrows furrowed. “How do you know that?”
“Trust me.”
Finally there was nothing else to do.
Terry called the FSD, and ten minutes later a half dozen men in suits and a dozen police officers filled the restaurant. They took Sal out on a stretcher through the back door as he gazed up at nothing.
Then they combed the restaurant and the upstairs apartment for evidence of foul play. Michael worried that they would find the loose floorboard in his room and his tin box of money. It was illegal to save cash that way; you had to deposit all savings into a state-owned bank.
He lucked out. They didn’t find a thing.
When the FSD agents were done combing, the interviews began.
“What is your full name?”
“Michael Lanza. No middle name.”
A scribble on a pad of paper. The man was well-groomed and dressed in a clean suit. He wore a badge on the lapel of his jacket featuring a tiny photograph of Harris Kole’s face turned upward in a heroic pose.
“You say your uncle showed up on your doorstep last night complaining of a headache.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Michael swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
“So how do you explain the footprint on the bedroom door?”
Michael blinked at the man, stunned that he hadn’t thought of that before. His feet had been dirty after walking down the hallway barefoot. He’d cleaned up every trace of that night’s events—except that damned, cartoonish footprint on the bedroom door.
“Uncle Sal was—after we put him to bed, he started acting wild. He locked the door and started throwing furniture around. So we had to kick it down. The door, I mean.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“Me, sir. My father was going to do it but he has bad knees.”
“Mm hmm.”
More scribbles. The man was frowning down at his pad. Then he looked up.
“Are you familiar with telepathy?”
Michael stiffened. “It’s the ability to read minds,” he said, before adding quickly: “I think.”
The agent nodded, letting his brazen eyes roam all over Michael’s face, like a spotlight tracking a fugitive in the dark. Michael lowered his gaze.
“I’m going to give you some advice before we begin this next session.” The agent leaned in. “Don’t lie to us. Really. It’ll only make things worse. You’ve heard of the Tank, right?”
Michael gave a solemn nod.
“Well”—he removed a metal case from the pocket of his suit jacket, plucked out a thin brown cigarette, and lit it, puffing twice before he spoke—“It’s not a fun place. You’ve probably heard the stories. I’m not authorized to tell you if they’re true or not, but I will tell you one thing.” He blew smoke directly into Michael’s face. It smelled a bit like cinnamon. “A pathetic little teenaged nobody like you wouldn’t survive a day in there. You’d be screaming for your mommy before sundown.”
Fear lit up inside Michael like cold fire. He began to take shallow breaths.
“You understand me, Mike?”
The man was smiling. His teeth were yellow behind the smoke. Michael nodded and joined his hands together on the table.
“Are you a—a—”
“A ment?” The agent said, sitting back. “Afraid not.” The cigarette crackled as he drew on it. He looked back over his shoulder.
“Harrelson,” he shouted.
A toilet flushed in the back of the restaurant. Michael heard the bathroom door click open and click shut. He expected to see another agent come strutting down the hallway into the dining room. Instead, he was surprised by the sight of a boy barely older than himself, wearing a featureless black suit and boots that looked too big for his feet. The boy’s head was shaved, and he was blind. He had to feel around with his hands to find his way.
“Over here,” the agent said. “Come on. We haven’t got all day.”
The boy’s head turned slowly, almost mechanically to face them. Michael shivered at the sight of those milky eyes. They didn’t seem human.
The boy made his way over to the table with stiff movements, his elbows knocking against the backs of chairs. His boots made a shuffling sound against the carpet. Michael wanted to be as far away from this bald, clumsy creature as possible. Something about the way the agent ordered him around, like he wasn’t even a person, turned Michael’s stomach.
Harrelson sat down with a heavy plop across from Michael, his eyeballs moving from side to side like pale cocoons about to burst in their sockets.
“This doesn’t have to be difficult,” the agent said as Harrelson’s sightless eyes rested on Michael. The agent pointed at the blind telepath with the tip of his cigarette. “You lie to me and he’ll know, and it’s off to the Tank with you. And your parents? Straight to the labor camps, split up so they won’t ever see each other again. And you can forget about having a brother since you’ll never see him again, either.”
Michael locked eyes with Harrelson, nodding to show he understood. This was it. This was going to be the end of his family and his life.
“Question number one,” the agent said. “Have you ever been contacted, or have you ever made contact with, a member of an anti-government group?”
A shred of a memory flashed in Michael’s mind, of being in a van with a small group of people dressed in black. Images from the dreams he’d been having, maybe.
Or were they memories from his past?
“No.”
“He’s lying,” Harrelson said, blinking once. His voice came out smooth and genderless.
An icy feeling washed over Michael’s skin. “I’m not lying. I—I don’t even know any rebels. I’m just a dishwasher.”
Harrelson sat back, brows lowering as he considered this.
“He’s not lying.”
The agent scowled at Harrelson and stubbed the cigarette out on the table, not bothering to ask for an ashtray. “Make up your mind.”
Harrelson blinked several times. “He’s hiding something.”
The agent leaned over the table and squinted at Michael. “When your Uncle Sal first arrived tonight, was he acting normal?”
Michael wanted badly to tell the truth. To say that yes, Uncle Sal had been perfectly normal, until Michael had used some kind of telepathic weirdness to plunge him into a catatonic state. It would have been so much easier than trying to hide from Harrelson, whose eyes were like magnifying lenses trying to burn a hole into Michael’s forehead.
He was about to answer truthfully when a voice slid into his head.
You can block him.
“What?” Michael blinked several times and looked around.
“Answer the question, kid,” the agent said.
There’s a string in the blind kid’s mind. You can see it vibrating if you look closely.
Michael squinted at Harrelson, pushing himself to locate the string.
There. He felt it more than he saw it—a thin wisp of thread dancing in the center of Harrelson’s forehead.
Harrelson and the agent peered at Michael, suddenly suspicious. Despite being blind, Harrelson appeared to be watching him. Maybe he was seeing him, in his own way.
“Kid, you have exactly one second to answer my question,” the agent said.
Now, pluck that string as you say the word “No.” Pretend your mind has fingers. Run them across.
Michael did as he was told and said, “No.”
“No, what?” the agent said.
He ran his invisible fingers across the string, like he was gently playing a harp.
“No, Uncle Sal was not acting normal when he got here. He seemed—drunk, or really sick. I don’t know what was wrong with him.”
Instead of vibrating more, Harrelson’s mental string seemed to relax. His eyes took on a calm and satisfied look, as if he’d just eaten a heavy meal.
“The subject is not lying,” Harrelson said.
Michael wanted to sigh in relief but thought it would look suspicious. He kept himself frozen in place, moving only to blink.
The agent sat back, his finger tapping the table. He bit down on his lower lip and made a series of sucking sounds as he considered the situation.
“Would your mother, father, or brother have any reason to cause your Uncle Sal harm?”
Michael flicked his mental fingers. “No.”
He’s yours now, the voice told him. Good work.
The following night the Lanza family celebrated.
Michael’s father brought out his last three bottles of wine, probably the most valuable items he owned. The restaurant had closed early and his mother had lit candles.
Michael tried his best not to brood. He was thinking about the voice in his head, about being a ment and how easy it had been to control Harrelson’s lie detection abilities even as the agent and the blind boy went on to interview the rest of his family.
It wasn’t just Harrelson’s mind that could be manipulated. For hours, under the guidance of the mysterious voice in his head, Michael had sat there, plucking peoples’ mental strings like a little kid strumming a guitar with no idea how to create real music.
Eventually, when the agents began to leave, the voice cut off for good.
“Mikey, here,” his father said, offering to fill his glass. As soon as the wine was poured, he gave Michael a thumbs-up to lift his mood.
Terry had instructed them not to talk about anything out of the ordinary, in case the restaurant had been bugged, which it probably had. They were also under strict orders never to speak of the previous week’s events to anyone outside the family.
His mother and father each put a hand on Michael’s shoulder and smiled at him. Benny made small talk, obviously doing so in case of microphones.
As Benny spoke, he reached across the table, put his hand on Michael’s, and winked at him.
Tears came to Michael’s eyes. His mother and father—and yes, they were his parents; to hell with what anyone else might say—squeezed his shoulder, and Benny squeezed his hand. They all had tears in their eyes except for Benny, who grinned as he rambled on about some old friend he had bumped into that morning.
Terry whispered, “You protected us.”
Michael looked over their faces. He didn’t want any other family besides this one. He tapped his chest, right over his heart.
His mother, father, and brother did the same.
At one o’clock in the morning, after his parents had gone upstairs for the night, Michael and Benny decided to clean up a little. The kitchen was filled with shivering orange light from candles they had set up along the counters. It was quiet out in the streets.
“You got those trash bags?” Benny said, pointing at a pile of them.
“Do I look like your bitch?” Michael said.
Benny shook his head. “You’re too ugly to be anyone’s bitch.”
They burst into laughter that faded into drunken giggles. Benny made his way to the basement to lock the fridge (their father was paranoid about burglars breaking in to steal food) while Michael lifted two trash bags, slung them over his shoulder, and took them out behind the restaurant.
He wished he could see the stars. The sky above the outer sectors was always the same yellow-black color from all the elec
tric lights glowing in the Inner Sanctum, the only part of the city allowed to consume electricity after ten o’clock. If only they could see the stars out here in the slums, at the very least.
“I can show them to you,” a familiar voice said behind him.
Michael spun around to face the man. Whoever he was, he was standing beneath the battery-powered bulb above the door, dressed in a leather jacket, a black T-shirt, and dark jeans. He had fixed his wavy hair into a short ponytail that looked greasy and tangled.
Despite the man’s chiseled features, almost effeminate in their fineness, there seemed to be something wrong with his face. In the low light, Michael could make out bumps and bruises on the man’s skin. One of his eyes was nearly swollen shut.
“Who are you?”
The man narrowed his eyes. “I’m the voice inside your head.”
Remember me?
Michael flinched. Those last two words had been like cold water flooding his skull.
“I’m the one who saved you from going into the Tank. Name’s Dominic.”
“How did you do that?”
The man touched a bruise on his face and winced. “I’m a telepath, like you. Thought you’d have figured that out by now.” He took another step forward. Michael backed away. “You don’t owe me anything. I just want to talk.”
“What happened to your face?”
“This?” The man touched his swollen cheek. “Illegal bare-knuckle boxing match. A man’s got to earn a living.” His knuckles were just as cut up and bruised as his face. “Don’t be so scared. I’m here to give you an opportunity.”
“To do what?”
The man bent down to pick up a trash bag. Michael had piled them outside the dumpster so he could throw them in one after the other. Dominic nodded for Michael to get the other one.
“Might as well get these out of the way,” Dominic said, mostly to himself.
Quietly, they deposited the bags into the receptacles. Dominic was courteous enough to lower the lid gently so as not to slam it and wake Michael’s parents.
“I’m here to offer you a new life,” he said finally, slapping his hands together. “In the Eastlands.”
“And what if I don’t want it?”
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