Marked

by Alex Hughes

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “No problem,” she replied. “We’ve got a lot of these today. She took out the electrical system and half the minds in the professional building.”

  I processed that for a moment.

  “Captain Harris, the neutral non-Guild guy? I assume he’s fine?” I asked. His brain wouldn’t have been affected much by the Mindspace tsunami, maybe. Although he did have the Link to Jamie. . . .

  “He’s fine, though he’s left the Guild for now.”

  “How is Jamie?” I asked.

  “Tired,” Jamie’s voice came from ten feet away as she walked toward me. Deep circles were under her eyes, and a bandage was around her arm. I’m okay, she said. Underneath the words was gratitude . . . and hesitancy. She was never quite comfortable with the full use of her gift.

  “We did it,” I said. “We found the killer and saved the day.”

  “You did it,” she said uncomfortably. “Johanna was quite . . . She influenced the fear. I could see her doing it, but I couldn’t stop it. The fear was so . . . I couldn’t do anything. I am profoundly sorry.”

  “You finished it, given the chance.” I paused, realizing I was suddenly in the role of teacher here. “The lizard brain is hard to fight. Even policemen and women freeze up when they encounter real danger the first few times. It’s the nervous system. It’s not you. And she’d been manipulating so many people, I’m betting she was real good at stoking that fear.” In fact, that’s probably what she did with Meyers, that and plant the idea of suicide for his future-sense to play with.

  Jamie looked down, not meeting my eyes.

  “You did what you had to do at the moment, and you did it well,” I said. “It’s a win in my book. The police department might even give you a medal.”

  “I still thank you,” she said. “You saved my life. You . . . you may not be what you were, or as strong as you were. But you’ve become a good man. You’ve built skills that make a difference in this world for the better. I’m sorry for my harshness earlier. I didn’t understand. I do, now.”

  I took a moment and soaked in the warm feeling. She had been one of the most important teachers I’d ever had. “That really means a lot,” I said.

  “Good.”

  Awkwardness crept into the silence, so I asked, “What will happen to Johanna?”

  Jamie shrugged, some of her confidence settling back. “She’s with the deep-scanner now and the Council will convene tomorrow. If she is responsible for as much as I believe, she will be executed or mind-wiped the day after.”

  “She’ll be gone. The person that she was will be gone either way.”

  “Yes.” There was no sympathy in Jamie. “The flyer crash killed friends, and they found her fingerprint on one of the tampered parts. They found another device in the gymnasium, what they think mimicked madness and started the spread of the illness. Four people died from that alone. She deserves to answer for what she did.”

  “I suppose she does.” It still seemed a waste.

  Jamie shifted and changed the subject, firmly. “The Chenoa and Erikson-Meyer clans have accepted appointments to the ruling body. I was involved in the selection. We will be working out our differences together, at least for now. You averted a war, Adam. The Guild will be much better for your visit.”

  “Then why do I feel fatalism from you?”

  She looked at me for a moment, then finally said, “If you’re able to walk, Diaz and Hawk wish to see you now. I have already given my testimony on your behalf and my belief that you saved my life. I said I’d come down to tell you personally.”

  “Oh,” I said. Then I stood. “I can walk. Um, can I ask you a question?”

  “At this point, you’ve earned any question I could possibly answer.”

  Oddly, the vision from earlier came back, nagging. “I had . . . a vision. It seemed very certain, and Cherabino experienced it through some spillover with a Link. She thought the boy in danger was a relative of hers. I . . . Now that I’ve had a chance to think about it, I don’t believe it is. I knew the boy in the vision, but I don’t know him now.”

  Jamie stopped. “What are you asking?”

  “Nothing has happened yet, nothing remotely like that vision. Did our actions change it? Is it just one of the ones that appears and disappears?”

  “You know I can’t answer that, Adam. The future is unknown. You know that.”

  I sighed. “Yeah.”

  The female court official showed up in the infirmary then. “Adam Ward?” she called. “You’re overdue.”

  “Will you come with me?” I asked Jamie.

  She shook her head sadly. “I can’t. I’m sorry.” I will always remember what you’ve done for me. Always. I am so deeply sorry I could not do it myself.

  Nobody’s perfect, Jamie.

  I left, with the unsteady and fatalist feel of my old mentor—and my own self—ringing in my head.

  Now it was time to face the Council.

  • • •

  Diaz stood in an empty Council chamber, Rex and Hawk on either side, neither happy. Diaz looked out onto the now-graying cloudy day through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the soft light kind to his heavily wrinkled face. Darting cars moved down the skylanes. Skyscrapers started to light up with the approach of darkness.

  “I’m here,” I said, unable to keep myself from getting cranky. “Unless you’re going to throw me out on the street like you did Captain Harris, I’d suggest we get to it.”

  Diaz turned, looked at me critically. “Perhaps you were right. Strength is not all that matters. The Guild . . . the Guild has been too complacent. You showed me that today. We need new skills. We need new perspectives.”

  “If you’re offering me a job . . .”

  He held up a hand. Let me finish. “We need new perspectives. We need . . . information. We need new blood. It came to my attention during the trial process that you have been linked to a certain young Jacob. He is strong, and by rights belongs to the Guild.”

  Hell of a change of subject, and everything Cherabino and I had been working to avoid for such a long time. I supposed it was inevitable, but I still chose my words carefully. “It would be a mistake to remove him from his family without due consideration. They have political and police contacts who will fight. Hell, I’ll fight you. It’s a mistake to target the boy when what you want is me. You know that. Hell, everybody here knows that.”

  “No one is targeting a boy,” Hawk said then, quietly. “The Guild does not use children as bargaining chips.”

  “If he has the strength, he belongs to the Guild by right,” Rex said. He had his mind very, very controlled. But his face—that look was disgust. The emotion that fueled violence. “Further, Ward is a criminal for concealing a potential Guild member from us. No matter how strong or weak the boy is, that needs to be addressed.”

  I stood a little straighter. “It would be a mistake to take him from his family,” I said again. “He has an ongoing severe medical issue, and I don’t believe the Guild will be able to address his needs. Furthermore—” I cut off Rex’s protests. “Furthermore, I don’t believe he will survive the pressures of the Guild program at this age. It would be a shame to destroy such a promising Ability to prove a point. He has allies in the police force. And he has me. This is not about Jacob, or it shouldn’t be. If you’re going to punish me for my sins, go ahead. I’m here. But leave him out of it. He’s just a boy.”

  “Let’s leave the boy for now and move to you.” Diaz’s mind leaked certainty, and respect, and sad decision. “At the beginning of today’s events, the Council took a vote to remove your Ability but keep your mind and memories intact. This would protect the Guild—as Rex has argued so heavily in favor of—and yet still allow you to pursue this life you have among the normals.”

  I swallowed. Losing my telepathy—well, I’d lived
through it once. But it was like losing a leg, or a testicle. It wasn’t dying, though. It wasn’t dying and it wasn’t losing Cherabino or Swartz. “And now, after I’ve saved the life of one of the rarest telepaths?” I asked. “After I’ve saved your Council from a sociopath?”

  Diaz shook his head. “It looks like Rex was right all along. Your . . . skills, unethical as I might find them, uncovered a snake in our midst. You risked your own life to save a Guild treasure. It’s time to talk about debts.”

  “Where are you going with this?” I asked, cautious, not quite daring to hope.

  “As head of the Council, I am overruling the vote, as is my right,” Diaz said, in a flat tone. “You have paid for your accusation. You have paid, many times over, for the lapses in courtesy you have committed. I am also forgiving half of the debt you have incurred for using our medics—half.”

  “Thank you,” I said, automatically, not knowing what else to say. “What does that mean exactly?”

  “The balance sheet is accounted for. But understand, Adam Ward, I don’t like you. I don’t like your ethical choices. I’m asking you not to come to the Guild here—or in any other office—for any reason, unless you are called. If I find you here, you will find yourself in a cell and in considerable pain. I don’t like surprises in my territory,” Diaz said.

  “I will be the one administering the pain,” Rex said. “Consider that a promise.”

  I should have been scared at that. But the maelstrom of emotions I’d been through in the last several hours had left me numb and unimpressed. “Fine,” I said. “I’ve paid off part of the debt, you forgive me, we part ways, and I stay away. I can do that. But about Jacob—you leave him alone. You want me to cooperate, that’s my condition.”

  “No deal,” Rex said.

  Hawk faced the others. “The boy comes to the Guild for twice-weekly lessons with experts. We monitor any home tutoring he receives in his Ability as well. When he reaches his Level and Skills test, he will have the choice to join the Guild . . . or our support in pursuing membership at another, qualified Guild. He is a boy, not a pawn,” he said roughly.

  Private messages flew from him to the other two, and back, for several minutes. Hawk seemed brittle and angry, and stood his ground.

  “Fine,” Rex finally said, his mouth twisting like he’d bitten into a lemon. “Fine. But he fails to show and Ward pays double the use-price for the boy’s talent, to be added to his debt or taken out on his hide.”

  Hawk paused, and I felt the decision not to argue.

  “So it is,” Diaz said.

  I looked at him. He looked at me.

  “Is that it?” I asked, a sense of relief waiting in the wings while I moved carefully, oh so carefully out of this.

  “You should leave now,” Rex said, that disgust back in his voice.

  I nodded and walked away.

  • • •

  Captain Harris drove me home in total silence, the air flyer’s engine and air noise the only thing I heard other than the screaming of my own mind. Relief and anger fought by stages, relief and anger and hope and fear.

  Finally I couldn’t take it anymore.

  Now that I had escaped losing . . . well, everything, I needed to know. “Am I still employed?”

  Harris glanced at me, and I felt a thin, weak burst of exhaustion escape into Mindspace. “Aren’t you going to ask me if the Guild’s secrets are safe now? That’s usually what you people ask me at this point.”

  I blinked at him. “I’m not really ‘you people’ anymore. I don’t really care if you keep their secrets or not, so long as I don’t have to deal with the Council for, I don’t know, approximately forever. You want to hold a press conference, you knock yourself out. I’ll hold the camera and cheer.” I looked out the window. Tried to figure out how soon I could ask the job question again.

  He took a right turn, then a left. A few minutes later, about the time I was going to ask again, he spoke. “I haven’t kept my pass by being indiscreet. Neither, I suspect, have you. You did well, for what it’s worth. Focusing the anger at the third party was . . . an unusual choice, but I think it worked. Johanna certainly reacted in a way that supported that decision and made your accusations seem credible.”

  “They won’t have a war or anything for right now, at least,” I said. “That much was a lie, you know. Johanna wasn’t behind it all. They did a lot of the stuff themselves, out of fear. The quarantines, the Tech. The fear that spread like wildfire. They engineered a large portion of their own downfalls. Even if Johanna helped. A lot. She admitted to the illegal devices, you know.”

  He sat with that a minute. Then: “You can lie to suspects, Ward. It’s legal. And the Guild . . . well, a few lies that keep the peace may be the way to go. You handled the suspect; she’s in custody. You united the Guild against her and prevented a civil war. You found the rotten apple in the TCO and solved an ax murder. I’m not unhappy with the outcome of this week.”

  After a moment, I couldn’t wait anymore. “Do I have a job?”

  “That’s up to Bransen. I’ll mention your performance here, however. Come in tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And, Ward?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You leave me in the middle of the Guild hallways while you deal with suspects on your own again and I will chew you out so bad your ears will ring a month from now. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Cherabino was sitting on my couch when I opened the apartment door. Her mind was worn, weary, worried sick with stress.

  She looked up and put her head in her hands, a burst of relief coming through Mindspace. Her shoulders shook, and suddenly I realized she was crying.

  I closed the door behind me, locked it. Then I stood there, not sure what to do. I mean, we were dating, right? I needed to do something. But Cherabino didn’t cry. She just . . . Cherabino didn’t cry.

  I went over there, sat next to her. Put my arm around her.

  She pulled away. “Don’t touch me right now.”

  “Okay,” I said uncertainly. I got up to get her a tissue.

  She took it, her mouth set. “I can’t believe you scared me like that! You went off without even telling me where you were going. And when I showed up here . . . when I showed up here, you were gone.” Her face was blotchy and red from the crying, and now the anger. She thought about punching me, decided against it. “Don’t you ever. Not ever, okay?”

  “I won’t do that again,” I agreed. And then I realized, as scared and angry as she’d been . . . I hadn’t felt her. I went inside, to the place where the Link was, and it was a thin vaporous bridge, nothing that would hold any weight. Nothing that would transmit emotions without specific intention.

  A huge sense of loss hit me.

  “What?” she asked, blotting her face with the tissue.

  I looked up. “Your greatest wish has come true. I promised you the Link would fade, and, well, it has, damn it.” I crossed my arms. “I hope you’re happy.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder, and her mind came into focus. A focus it didn’t have without the contact. “Adam . . .” But she was happy, in that moment, relieved and happy and just a touch of sad and angry left over. “I guess I didn’t believe you were telling the truth. I’m sorry.” She paused. “What happened in there?”

  “I caught a killer,” I said, turning, her hand falling off my shoulder. “I caught a killer and I survived.”

  And then I was kissing her, kissing her as if she were the air and the sun and everything good in the world. And she was in my arms, kissing me back, the saltiness of her tears flavoring everything.

  I’m sorry, I said quietly, with no idea if she heard me or not.

  I pulled her down onto the couch, into my lap, and we kissed for a long, long time, me slowing her
down when she tried to escalate, me drawing out the moment, just the moment, no more, no less. Finally I pulled away, panting.

  I wanted to tell her I loved her. I wanted it so, so bad. I looked her in the eye, everything in me wanting to say it.

  She pulled away, like she always did, and I forced myself back.

  Silence rang in the room as I tried to put the lid back on the box. As I tried desperately to figure out what I’d do without the feel of her in the back of my head.

  “I wish this was easier,” I finally said. It was true, and I could say it, and for all the things rolling around in my head I had to say something. “I really wish this was easier.”

  She stood. “You’ll come back into the office tomorrow and we’ll figure it out, okay? I filled out a fraternization report. You can sign it and we can tell Michael and we can figure it out.” She cleared her throat. “Sex is off the table for now?”

  I looked up at her. “That one’s up to you. As long as you want to walk away free and clear, then yeah, sex is off the table. You make up your mind to make this long-term, a lot of things go on the table,” I said, unable to keep my heart away from my eyes.

  She looked away. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Okay. Sex is off the table. You’re buying me better dinners to make up for it.” She needed more time, she thought. Her mind flashed an image of her dead husband, and some very strong feelings of loss and a squirrelly unwillingness to lose again, before she pushed both aside.

  “Okay.” It was an actual effort not to respond to what I’d seen. Finally I offered, “You’re not going to sleep at my place again, are you?”

  She laughed, and some of the tension was gone. “Not unless you get a bigger bed, no. You’re welcome at mine, but if you leave beard hairs in the sink I will kick your ass.”

  “Understood,” I said. And a small, critical part of me relaxed. “Will you stay while I eat at least?”