Marked

by Alex Hughes

  “I’m—”

  I know who you are, she sent mind-to-mind, on the lightest, politest level. Along with the words came the sense that I was infamous. Also that I was messy with public/private mental space these days. She’d recommend fixing both if I could.

  I blinked, and settled my emotions down into the more acceptable Guild calm. Should have done that before walking in the door, but I appreciated the reminder. I’d been around normals a great deal the last few years.

  I blocked off a polite, surface level of my mind and dropped all but the lightest shields around it, public space. The rest of my mind I locked up with barbed wire; I was in no mood to be more vulnerable than I had to.

  She looked at me again. Better. She handed me a visitor’s badge; Kara had me on her list for the day. There was no brain wave recorder, she sent into my mind, because I’d been vouched for, good or ill, but there was a small location pip. No audio, no visual, just location.

  “Now,” she said out loud, clearly in her official capacity as she leaned forward over the desk. “Don’t you be wandering around today. Enforcement’s got a lockdown on Personal Quarters seventeen and adjoining, and high-rise four is secure-access only. You’re lucky; Ms. Chenoa’s office is in this building, which is still public-access.” She stared at me and added privately, I catch you outside your allowed areas, I catch you acting up in any way, I practice Mindspace kata blows on your skull. Don’t make me do that.

  “Understood.” I looked at my coat; that was going to be a problem to carry around.

  “I’ll take the coat,” she said, and I handed it over. “Now. Ms. Chenoa’s office is down the main hallway, second right, third door on your left.”

  “Thanks,” I said. What’s your name?

  “Turner,” she said. Ruth Turner, second-class permanent guard attached to Headquarters. Currently bored and will be monitoring.

  I forced a smile and a calm. “Nice to meet you, Turner.”

  She nodded. “Ms. Chenoa is waiting.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Kara’s door looked like a dozen other plain wooden doors in this plain public-servant hallway, windows spilling sunlight into the hallway at the end, a few feet away. It was a quiet area, a working area, with strong scents of lemon cleaner and sunlight permeating the space.

  Behind her door, Mindspace buzzed with the conversation of several minds, strong minds with strong convictions.

  I opened the door.

  Two men stood there with Kara in the middle of the ten-foot office. She perched on the edge of her large wooden desk, looking—and feeling—unhappy. Blond and beautiful, a year younger than me at thirty-eight, Kara radiated frustration and indecision.

  The others turned to look at me when the door opened. Silence fell.

  “Hello,” I said cautiously. Up until a few seconds ago, I’d been expecting Kara, only Kara. “Should I come back in a moment?”

  “You’re here now.” The older man, Hawk Chenoa, didn’t bother to hide his disapproval. He was one of Kara’s extended family patriarchs—her father’s eldest cousin, if I remembered correctly—and, unofficially, one of the most powerful men at the Guild. He had more gray in his dark hair and deeper wrinkles than the last time I’d met him but no less strength. He wore an American military uniform with a Guild mind-piercer’s patch, another, smaller patch commemorating hundreds of years of Native struggle. As always, his mind felt focused and ready; I would not want to go up against him in a fight.

  On paper, the power in the Guild rested in organizations: in the Council, in the heads of departments and the crushing money-based bureaucracy that moved it all along. But just as important were the old families, the clans that stretched back to Guild Founding, the groups that controlled the majority of the voting rights for both Council and legislative matters. The Chenoas in particular were an old, old family, grown large over the last sixty years, and Hawk was the one man the Chenoas would follow anywhere. More important, he’d forged alliances with several other families worldwide; when Hawk spoke, the Guild listened. Or, at least, it should.

  The families were an important check on the power of the bureaucracy and had been for decades. The Guild founder, Cooper himself, had supported this system, as far as it went, and the Chenoa clan were staunch supporters of Cooper and his ethical system. Hawk would take his balancing role very seriously.

  “Is this the man we’ve been talking about?” the second man asked, in his late fifties with a dark complexion and a hard face that seemed set in anger. “Joe Green,” he introduced himself. In this case the voice-speech was definitely a distancing mechanism. “Guild First. If the Erickson-Meyers and the Chenoa clan are going to conspire, one of us needs to be here to keep them from doing something stupid. One man’s life is not worth the entire Guild’s. Much less when the man is already dead.” His mind added subtext: the madness needed to be controlled at all cost, even if that meant evidence was destroyed. Meyers had killed himself anyway.

  “I told you, Green, we’re just talking.” Kara said. “There’s no need for dramatics.”

  “Green is welcome to stay,” Hawk said. “There’s very little I have to say that can’t be known publically. There will be no cover-ups on my watch. Kara, I’ve told you that. Plus we have nothing to fear from the likes of him.”

  “What’s Guild First?” I asked.

  Contempt flashed across Green’s face, though his Mindspace presence was controlled enough not to show it. Green’s Ability rating was a heavy Seven at best, and the shields I had up past my “public mind” should hold just fine. Still, something about him made me defensive.

  But he decided to tell me anyway. “Guild First does exactly that: it fights to protect Guild interests and Guild projects first. From funding pensions over charity to developing tools to help improve Ability and advance interests of the Guild nation, we put Guild first.”

  “Against the normals?” I asked.

  “If need be. If they threaten us, we will be ready.”

  Kara spoke up then. “Is all this chest beating really necessary? We’re here to talk about my uncle.”

  “Bringing in an outsider is going to raise questions,” Hawk said.

  “Adam’s not an outsider, he’s neutral,” Kara said.

  “I’m just here to talk,” I corrected, firmly, but no one listened.

  Hawk faced me. “This is an internal family matter. I’m sorry, but you’re a criminal and no longer a Guild member.”

  “A criminal?” Green echoed, suspicion leaking into the air.

  “Kara asked me to come and I’m not leaving until Kara asks me to leave. Kara?” What’s going on? I asked her, mind-to-mind.

  Hawk is angry over the death. He hides it well, but he’s livid. He wants people to jump and take orders like the military, and this isn’t the military.

  “Talk where we can all hear you equally,” Hawk’s voice cracked.

  Kara said out loud, “This isn’t the military. The best course of action isn’t to take orders. It’s to put our heads together and figure out a way out of this. Procedure isn’t going to get Uncle Del’s murderer found. It’s going to erase every trace of him out of the air in the apartment and burn everything he ever touched.”

  “We can’t afford to take a chance at Guild-wide contagion for one man,” Green said. “Quarantine is the only way we move forward.”

  He might have a point, Kara, I said quietly.

  If you’re not going to help me, I don’t know why you came.

  Now, that’s just out of line, I said. I’m here, aren’t I?

  “It’s possible that he killed himself,” Hawk said. “It’s his right. But I agree, the method doesn’t sound like Del. We hire our own people or import them from another location. We have plenty of experts in the family.” People who haven’t been kicked out of the Guild as a criminal, his mind added, broadly enough he
had to know I’d hear it. “With someone in the family we have the control over the results.”

  “I want the truth, not control!” Kara said, too quickly, and then stifled her too-loud emotions.

  I objected to the criminal label, and put that out there for anyone to see. I had been convicted, in both the normal and the Guild systems. I wasn’t hiding that, but it didn’t change my skills. Which I hadn’t even volunteered to use.

  “Kara, I said I’d show up and talk. Offer suggestions. What is it exactly that you’re trying to get me to do?”

  “Find Uncle Meyers’s murderer.” Her voice was firm, decided.

  “If we get at the truth through an outsider, it will be my choice of outsider,” Hawk said. “The telepath military teams have plenty of good men.”

  “None of whom can be trusted to keep their mouths shut like Adam has already proven he can,” Kara returned.

  “You should leave,” Hawk said.

  Oddly, this made me angry. “I didn’t cut out of work early to get dismissed. I’m not leaving until—”

  Kara cut me off. “Adam, just go.”

  Now I was angry at her. “What the hell! You call me in here? I’m not leaving until you—”

  My mind was wrenched, grabbed, and flattened, before I could react. Pain. Disorientation. I couldn’t move. I was frozen, in the middle of Kara’s office, heart beating like a small animal’s faced with a predator.

  I forced myself to calm, to figure it out; Green had me by the public space, not an acceptable tactic in the Guild, but the reason I’d stopped doing the separated space concept years ago in the normal world, damn it. Left you too vulnerable. He had me pinned by a leverage hold on the front of my mind, incredibly strong, perfect leverage. I wasn’t going anywhere. Well, not until he slipped up or got distracted.

  “Let him go, Green,” Hawk said.

  Kara was very, very quiet, moving back to her desk, doubtlessly toward a panic switch. I thought about puppies and rainbows and the interview room and Paulsen screaming and whatever the hell I could fill up my head with that wouldn’t give her away.

  Green only moved closer to me, and tightened his hold. “The Guild won’t tolerate interference from a criminal. You’ve been asked to leave. You’ll leave.”

  He held my mind with crushing force. I breathed. One, and exhale, two.

  Out of his pocket he pulled a small device, a sphere the size of a grapefruit, dull black with twists of wire on its surface and a small ring of lights along its equator. He hit a button and a light on top of the sphere blinked. Mindspace rippled, a disquieting sensation, the earth moving under your feet like you stood on a boat. The sphere was the exact center.

  “Nice try, but you’re not Jumping out of here with this on,” he told Kara. “We handle this my way.”

  Hold up, why in hell do you have a Mindspace machine? I asked Green. Those are banned by the Koshna Accords. Not that the Guild wasn’t experimenting with them anyway; I’d seen several in the last year when I investigated the Guild-related serial killer. It’s incredibly stupid to pull those out where anyone can see you. It could spark a conflict with the normals, one that would tear apart the whole building.

  The Koshna Accords are already being broken by the normals, Green said, the words hitting me with bruising force on top of an already intense pressure. The Guild needs whatever tools it can build in return, and Guild First will build them.

  This guy was crazy! What had I gotten myself into? There were others who thought like him? If so, the Guild was in trouble.

  “Turn off the device and give it to me,” Hawk said then. “You’re giving me a headache and this isn’t solving anything.”

  Green shook his head. “Not until you tell me why you invited a criminal into the Guild to break our quarantine.”

  He tightened his grip, and I lost track of the conversation. My shields started to crack, Mindspace around fracturing like the world seen through a cracking pane of glass. This shouldn’t be happening! I should be able to outmass him in Mindspace. My numbers were higher than his.

  Slow down. I spackled up the holes in my shields. Slow down. He wasn’t going to break me. It wasn’t an option. And brute force, as my old mentor had taught me over and over again, was not always—nor usually—the best solution to a given problem.

  His mind was right up against mine, holding that pressure. Right there.

  Telepathy was a two-edged sword; you couldn’t be this close to someone’s mind without having your mind close as well. And I was a Structure guy. And he was clumsy, and all too focused on large scale and strength. All too distracted. If I could focus . . .

  I seeped into his mind, following the shape of his grip around to the mind that controlled it, trickling in like water through a brick wall with no mortar.

  He didn’t even notice, amateur.

  I moved through his surface mind, slowly, slowly, getting a feel for the space. In the back of my own mind, Kara’s fear had relief added like a spice; she’d managed to hit the panic button, good for her.

  And then I was in. Green’s mind was consumed with a strong, self-satisfied position of control, me in his power, and visible strength in front of Hawk. He’d let me squirm, a little.

  My anger spiked at that one, too quickly, and he knew I was there.

  Why the overreaction? I asked. And why be a bully about this? It doesn’t even make sense. As I’d done before in the interview room, I pushed at the core of the problem. Only here, now, I followed one thought trail back, and back, until I hit the source.

  Oh. There.

  Hawk was threatening him. The Cooperists were conspiring to take him off his Council seat in the upcoming election. And he’d make the Meyers issue—and the quarantine of the madness—the proof he was worthy to stay. They weren’t going to meet up without him. They weren’t going to have secrets. And they weren’t going to endanger the Guild. He wouldn’t let them.

  In shock and surprise, he pulled back, dropping my mind.

  He glowered at me. I stared back and picked the pieces of myself up, feeling bruised. Trying to figure out the next step if he attacked again.

  “You . . .” He stared again.

  Three minds burst into the room, the guard from the front of the building and two of her compatriots.

  “This criminal committed a privacy violation,” Green said with contempt. “Deep-thoughts, no invitation.”

  I frowned. “You attacked me first. I didn’t even bruise you.” More than I could say for him.

  Turner moved forward, stickycord out and ready to restrain me. She was angry; that much was clear.

  Kara took a breath and held up a hand for the guards. “Wait a second.”

  “Is this true?” Hawk asked, in a dangerously low tone.

  “Is what true?” I asked.

  “Did you go past his public mind? Without permission?” His mind was thunderous.

  I stared at him. “He had me in a mental headlock. He was doing his best to turn me into tenderized steak!”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Turner the guard said, next to me.

  My own shields had slipped, damn it, out of practice, and she was quick. Got me.

  I found myself on the floor, my body no longer under my control, even my vocal cords paralyzed. Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, my mind echoed. The square of textured carpet in front of my nose smelled like oranges, fresh ones, not cheap cleaner. And my side and my cheek hurt from the impact.

  Turner’s grip on my mind, unlike Green’s, was surgically precise. She was structurally trained; she’d done something to the movement center of my brain. I could picture getting up, blinking, turning my head, but I couldn’t do it—literally couldn’t. When I tried, I got an overwhelming impression of sticky bubble gum, strong smell of classic pink bubble gum. I’d be able to get out of this, with a few hours left al
one, but not with her actively there. She was good.

  Thank you, she said mind-to-mind, reacting to my surface thoughts. Then, out loud: “Tell me what happened, sir.”

  Green’s voice solidified, and an odd sense of satisfaction and self-righteousness leaked out into the room, along with anger. “This . . . criminal charged into the office and threatened Ms. Chenoa. He attacked me when I tried to intervene. I immobilized him with no permanent damage. And then he stole into my private mind-files and ruffled around. He is not an Enforcer, and I am a Council member and not under suspicion. This is a clear privacy violation.”

  Kara made that quiet clicking-teeth sound again, and then a second guard’s shoes came into my line of sight.

  “Should I give him the ability to speak?” Turner asked, with absolutely no sense of humor.

  “No,” Hawk said. “Throw him in a cell and start procedures.”

  A long pause. “Do it,” Kara finally said, in her very carefully political voice.

  My heart sped up even faster, a bird in a glass jar. Kara!

  “In the maximum shielding cells?” the other guard asked in a deeper voice, a male voice.

  “Let him rot,” Green said.

  A strong telekinetic force lifted me up. Fury swept me. Then the world went black.

  • • •

  I heard screaming, high-pitched screaming, and sobbing, sobbing like someone’s heart was breaking, and screaming like all that was evil about the world was locked in a small room with a small child. I staggered to my feet, feeling disoriented.

  Across the way, a small woman with ragged hair and a torn dress huddled in a corner, looking at something I couldn’t see while screaming, screaming so loudly it hurt my teeth. When she took a breath, the sound stopped for a second before resuming.

  Her vocal cords had to give out eventually, I told myself. Eventually. No human could make that sound forever.

  I was in a chilly concrete box that smelled of ancient urine, with a wire-inset glass-paneled wall in front of me emitting a low-level buzzing in Mindspace. Small metal dials were set into the glass wall about shoulder height, dials that spun and settled, spun and settled as the electric field on the wall ebbed and flowed. In case that wasn’t enough, a small sign said DON’T TOUCH, SHOCK HAZARD.