by Sara Beaman
“So Adam told you about the mission before he left?” I ask Jennifer.
“Yeah,” Jennifer says. “We work together.”
Julian snorts. “That’s one way of putting it.”
“Julian, please,” she says.
“You mean you’re his girlfriend?” I ask before I can stop myself.
“Well, yeah,” she says, looking embarrassed. “I guess.”
“Oh,” I say.
Adam has a girlfriend?
“What I don’t understand is why Desmond wanted to destroy Mnemosyne,” Jennifer says. “He’d spent so long making sure Carlyle didn’t do the same thing.”
“Maybe you can ask Haruko when she wakes up,” I mumble. “I was pretty confused most of the time.”
“It’s okay,” Jennifer says.
“I don’t mean to sound rude, Katherine, but why did Adam and Haruko take you with them in the first place?” Julian asks. “You were one of Mirabel’s proxies, were you not?”
“Yeah. That’s kind of the reason Adam brought me along,” I say. “He shot me by accident back at SpiraCom HQ, thinking I was Mirabel. So, then, I was bleeding out, and… I guess he didn’t want to leave me to die.”
I just don’t know. I don’t want to believe what happened between us meant nothing, but… he seriously had a girlfriend and he never told me?
Julian sighs. “He’s never been able to turn a blind eye…”
“So you were really working as one of Mirabel’s doubles?” Jennifer asks.
“Not exactly. I was still a trainee. I didn’t make it all the way through the, uh… the assembly line. What they called the Program.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I feel responsible. I should have tried harder to convince you to leave.”
“It’s not your fault,” I tell her.
“You sound depressed,” she says.
Not depressed. More like in shock.
“Actually, I don’t feel much of anything right now,” I tell her.
“It’s okay,” she says. “That’s normal.”
She puts her hand on my shoulder. I want to shrug it off, but I don’t.
“Things will change,” she tells me.
“Yeah,” I agree.
Emulator
{Adam Radcliffe - 2010}
Something brings me into consciousness.
I awaken to transcendent levels of pain and a bright light streaming into my eye in mono vision. I hear sound through my left ear only—voices that arrive through layers of interference and static.
I close my eye. Instinctively I turn my gaze inward, towards a point I visualize at the base of my medulla oblongata, as I always do to retreat into a dream. I have to escape the pain and the disturbing sense that half my head is gone.
It doesn’t work. The pain remains, coalescing around my skull, and the voices get louder and clearer.
“Dr. Radcliffe?”
I groan.
“Stay with us for just a moment,” an unfamiliar female voice says. “We need to recover your mental image of your face for the reconstruction.”
“Don’t try to talk,” a man—Richard?—says. “Just concentrate on your image of yourself. Project it in your mind’s eye as clearly as possible.”
I can’t think of anything but the pain.
“Here,” Richard says.
I feel fingertips against my wrist. My somatic sense evaporates. I know I have a body; I can locate it in space. But I can’t feel it at all.
“Good,” Richard says. “Now the image. Focus.”
Richard? I ask, assuming he’ll hear the thought.
“Yes, Adam?”
What’s this about?
“What do you mean?”
You remember what my face looks like just as well as I do.
He laughs. “You’re thinking about this too much.”
No. You’re keeping me out of the oneiroxis. Why?
Silence.
Why? I demand.
“Just following orders.”
Tell me, Richard.
“Adam, you know I can’t do that.”
But I outrank you now.
“Doesn’t matter. I can’t go against a direct order from Mnemosyne.”
I open my eye and stare into the formless light, considering. My change in rank, the change in my contract with the House—they both mean nothing. They’re just tokens meant to distract me from the fact that I’m still powerless to act, to determine my own fate.
Well—not entirely powerless, perhaps. I can tell Richard what to do. Perhaps if my order doesn’t contradict Mnemosyne’s…
Richard, take off your ring.
“My ring?”
The Dream-strain emulator. The one Mother gave you. I order you to take it off and give it to me.
No response.
Have you done it? I ask.
“Yes, sir,” Richard grumbles.
I turn my gaze inward again.
***
I immediately return to my Haunt.
You do not choose your Haunt, at least not consciously. Perhaps Mnemosyne chose hers—the clearing in the trees with the two pools of water, one deep, one shallow. Or perhaps she changed the real world to resemble her dreams. Regardless, everyone else gets what we are given.
My Haunt is my suite of rooms at Julian’s estate. Tonight I arrive to find them apparently unchanged. All my papers and texts and periodicals are in place. My personal journals sit in correct order, just as I left them in their padlocked trunk. But, come to think of it, Mnemosyne would have no reason to look at those. What could she have to gain by spying on me? I can’t imagine there is anything about me she doesn’t already know.
I try to think of what other reason she’d have to keep me out of the oneiroxis, out of my own Haunt. Maybe she set up some kind of enchantment here, or perhaps a sorcery that would trigger itself given certain criteria. If so, that kind of passive blood magic would almost certainly be contained in some kind of object.
I begin to search for something, anything, that doesn’t belong here. I tear the entire office apart looking for something unfamiliar, opening drawers, looking under furniture, even peering inside the case of my ancient CPU. After some time, I give up and start searching the sitting room. I’m in the midst of digging under the couch cushions when I hear a knock at the door.
“Who is it?” I call.
“Richard.”
“I thought I told you to take the ring off!”
“You didn’t say I had to keep it off,” he says. “Can I come in?”
“Fine.”
The door swings inward and he walks inside. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to figure out what Mnemosyne did in here while you detained me.”
“Well, there’s nothing you can do about it now, so I guess I can tell you,” he says. “Go look in a mirror.”
A sinking feeling sets in.
“So she didn’t hide anything in here?” I ask.
“Nope. God, it’s weird to hear your voice coming out of his face…”
“Whose face?”
“Just go look.”
I take quick strides through the bedroom, throw open the bathroom door and look into the mirror over the sink.
Lucien Verlinden stares back at me through the glass.
Richard saunters into the bedroom, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket. “How much do you know about what I was doing at SpiraCom?”
“I know you were Mirabel’s secretary,” I say.
He takes one out and lights it. “There was more to it than that.”
“How much more?”
“We were trying to bring her into the fold,” he says.
“Are you serious? How?”
I get a brief mental flash of Richard undoing the zipper of a tight black cocktail dress. The woman wearing the dress has pale skin; her hair is an artificial-looking burgundy color.
“That’s—I can’t—thank you that’s more than enough explanation,�
�� I stammer.
The image is gone.
“What’s wrong?” Richard asks sardonically. “You’ve got some experience with this kind of assignment, don’t you?”
“Not with Mirabel,” I protest. “How the hell do you get close to Mirabel?”
“I’ll admit, it takes some skill. The right choice of words. The right sort of gestures, both physical and sentimental.”
I can’t even begin to imagine what those might be.
“So this was a long-term thing?” I ask.
“Well, I was there for four years,” Richard says.
“So you had an actual… relationship with her.”
He smirks. “An honest-to-God fake relationship, yes.”
“I don’t see how that would—I mean, I wasn’t aware she was capable of experiencing, you know…”
“Human emotions?” Richard asks.
“I was going to say romantic feelings, but yeah.”
“I bet there’s a lot about her you’re not aware of,” Richard says, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Now, I never learned to like her. But I think I understand her fairly well. That’s why I want to talk to you.”
“Wait.” I frown. “You’re not just here to torment me?”
He flicks ash from the tip of his cigarette. “No. I’m not.”
“So you actually want to help me with something?”
“Jesus, Adam, you say that like I’ve never done anything for you before!”
Combing through my memory, I try to recall a single time Richard Stone has helped me out of his own free will and without having some ulterior motive. I can’t think of anything, and I’m certain there’s nothing I’ve forgotten.
He laughs. “Well, I’ve done things for people around you, anyway. Why would I do something just for you?”
“I don’t know. Why would you?”
“Anyway,” he continues, “you must have questions.”
I nod, bringing a hand to my mouth in thought. “So I guess your strategy must not have worked?”
“That’s not—it wasn’t my fault Mnemosyne was resurrected!”
“But, I mean, four years is a long time. Did you really think it was going anywhere?”
He glares at me. “Mirabel’s a hard nut to crack.”
“All right,” I say. “Regardless, now Mnemosyne’s changed tactics.”
“Yes.”
“I assume I’m not going to go apply for a job at SpiraCom.”
“Correct.”
“So exactly what am I supposed to do?” I ask.
“You’ll hear the specifics from Mother, don’t worry. But I’ll tell you this. I was sent in because she thought I could evoke memories of Lucien Verlinden. I was never supposed to impersonate him, per se—unlike you.”
“And she thinks I can? Why?”
“Even I have to admit you did a bang-up job with the last one, even hamstrung like you were.”
“It’s not the same thing. Not even close. I wasn’t impersonating anyone with Jennifer.”
Richard shrugs.
“I’ve never impersonated anyone! I’m not an illusionist.”
“Look, Adam, it’s not up to me.”
I run a hand through my hair. It’s longer than I expect it to be, and thicker. The effect is jarring.
“Mother will feed you some memories. You’ll learn how to behave. It’s not that hard,” he says with a wave of his hand. “Trust me, you’re lucky. You’ll only be doing it in dreams.”
That couldn’t matter less to me. The oneiroxis has always been just as real to me as the waking world—perhaps even more so.
“All right,” I say. “I guess I’ll wait until I get the official orders.”
“Yeah.” He laughs. “Might as well put things off as long as you can.”
“Richard?”
“Mm?”
“Don’t tell Kate. I want her to hear it from me.”
Pulse
{Kate}
We sit in the van while we wait for the driver to return from the emergency room. Jennifer takes out a camcorder from one of her bags, plugs its Firewire cable into her netbook, and starts uploading the footage she took from the Wardens’ compound. Julian does nothing. His eyes are closed; he might even be asleep. I sit quietly, trying not to think about what they said about Adam. It’s none of my business, is it? Except it totally is. We kissed, back at that model home, and we probably would have done more than that if it hadn’t been for Aya. And the sun.
Damn it. He should have told me about Jennifer! I probably would have gone for it anyway, but he should have given me the choice.
I look over Jennifer’s shoulder, trying to distract myself, but there’s nothing to see but random stills while the upload is processing. I even venture a look at Haruko, who rests corpse-still in the front seat. The wound on her eye doesn’t look any smaller. It has been only a few hours, though—not much time for her to heal.
Eventually I hear the front door open and close. The engine revs and the van starts moving backwards, then forward at increasing speed.
“Where are we going now?” I ask.
“South, to Julian’s estate,” Jennifer says. “We’ll switch drivers at twilight. We should arrive before dawn.”
“Is it safe to go back there?”
“It should be,” she says. “Why?”
“Don’t you think the Wardens will find us?”
“They don’t know we were involved with what happened,” Jennifer says. “And they shouldn’t be able to figure it out, given I took the hard copies of the security tapes and erased the digital ones.”
“Oh,” I say. “What about Aya?”
“What about her?”
“She had a head start on us. What if she set up some kind of illusion trap or something?”
Jennifer shakes her head. “I’m not worried about that.”
“Why not? She attacked Haruko, you know.”
“Most likely we’ll get to the estate first, presuming that’s even where she’s headed.”
“Why?”
“Do you think she has a car and driver?”
“Oh,” I say. “I see your point.”
For a while I sit, stare, and wait. I don’t really want to talk to Jennifer, but there’s not much else to do.
“So, uh… you were in hiding?” I ask her. “From the Wardens?”
“Yeah. From revenant society in general.”
“How did that work, exactly? Can’t Wardens sense revenants?”
She shakes her head. “They can’t sense other Wardens. The only revenants that can sense us are Children of Orpheus, and they’re a dying breed.”
“Huh,” I say. “I didn’t know that. But Julian knew where you were?”
“No. He didn’t know where I was, even though I was hiding just a few hours away, in a suburb of Atlanta. I’ve kept contact with him in recent years, but always through back channels. This is the first time we’ve seen each other since… well, right after he became Aya’s steward, I suppose.”
“You went to see him just because of my texts?”
She nods.
“Why?”
“They seemed pretty important.”
I wonder if it was because I mentioned Adam.
“So why did you leave the Wardens, anyway?” I ask.
“Because the WotA is in bed with SpiraCom,” she says sourly.
“‘The Wota?’”
“The Watchers of the Americas,” she says. “See, Mirabel isn’t actually a member of the WotA, but I’ve got proof that she’s been involved with every revision of the Sanguine Consensus since the late eighteen hundreds. She’s turning us inside out—turning us against each other. Not to mention what she’s doing to mortal society.”
“So you thought you could do more if you went out and fought her on your own?” I ask.
She laughs a little. “Well… more like I knew I’d never get anywhere within the WotA, so I thought I’d take my chances trying to affect change outside th
eir sphere of influence.”
I nod.
“Honestly, I’m surprised I’ve been able to avoid Mirabel’s notice for as long as I have,” she adds.
“You don’t think she knows you’re out there?”
“If she does, I don’t know why she hasn’t had me killed.”
“I guess that’s true.”
Jennifer takes out her ponytail, then puts it back in. She goes back to looking at her computer screen.
“So, um… you were in contact with Julian, and Adam…”
“Mm-hmm,” she says, fiddling with a program on her netbook.
“What about Haruko?”
She shakes her head. “I haven’t spoken to Haruko for… thirty-five years, I guess.”
“Why not?”
“She’s the watcher for Atlanta. She’s implicitly allied to Mirabel, aligned with her goals.”
“But she was more than willing to raid SpiraCom HQ…”
“Desmond must have asked her to do it.”
I frown. “From what I could tell, she seemed pretty jaded. She sure didn’t seem to regret her actions.”
“It’s certainly possible she’s changed since the last time I saw her,” she says, stealing a glance in Haruko’s direction.
“Why didn’t you ever try to talk to her?” I ask. “To recruit her for your cause?”
“It wouldn’t have been that simple,” she says. “Once I left the Wardens I cut off all communication with them, Haruko and Desmond included. It was the only way I could be sure I’d stay hidden. I couldn’t risk compromising my position.”
“Are you worried about what she’ll do when she wakes up?”
“After what just happened? Her career is over,” Jennifer says. “Most likely she’ll just drop off the map like I did. All she’ll need to do is stop checking in with Chicago.”
“Do you really think it’ll be that easy?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. “It seems like the stakes are getting pretty high here.”
Jennifer looks at her computer screen for a while.
“I guess you’re right,” she says soberly.
***
We ride for hours. Even over the sound of the engine and the tires against the road, I can still hear the driver’s heartbeat. I become more and more agitated, anxious and restless. If I didn’t think that Richard would be waiting for me to slip back into dreams, I might try to sleep, but I don’t want his particular brand of help right now. So I sit, staring through the wall between the back of the van and the cab at the spot where I imagine the driver’s head is.
