by Sara Beaman
“Not by choice,” he grumbles.
“Sure.”
“Kate—“
“What am I supposed to think?” I say. “You could use Mnemosyne’s influence to justify anything! The devil made you do it!” I throw my hands in the air.
“All right,” he says, his voice strained and thin. “Compel me to tell you the truth, then.”
“What?”
“Force me to tell you the truth. Use Compulsion. I won’t fight you.”
I shake my head. “No, Adam, I’m not going to do that.”
He lets out a sharp breath and shakes his head.
“I cut my wrists open for you, you know,” he says.
“Are you really trying to guilt trip me into putting you under mind control?”
“That’s—no. No. I’m not.” He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Think about it. You saw my memories. You know what I’m really like, like I was before she took over. Would I lie to you about this?”
“Sure, but… after what you just told me, how do I know any of that was real?”
“There’s one way to be sure,” he says. “I can prove it to you. Make me prove it to you.”
“Using compulsion.”
“Yes.”
“What, so that you can be my puppet instead of hers?”
He doesn’t respond.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t do it.”
He shakes his head, laughing bitterly. “Well fuck,” he says. “I’m not sure what else you want me to do, Kate.”
“Maybe there’s nothing we can do,” I say. “Maybe we need to get used to the fact that we can’t trust each other.”
“You mean the fact that you can’t trust me,” he says.
“Well, yeah,” I say, shrugging a little.
He blinks at me a few times and opens his mouth like he might say something, but he doesn’t. Instead he presses his lips together in a sour frown, stands up and walks into the bedroom.
“Adam?”
He doesn’t respond.
I stand up and follow him. “Adam, look…”
Adam crouches beside the bed and reaches for something under it. He doesn’t look over at me as I approach.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Getting some shit together,” he says.
“For what?”
“We need to go back to SpiraCom and undo what Mirabel did,” he says, pulling a metal lockbox out from under the bed.
My throat tightens. “So we’re done talking?”
“What else is there to say?” he asks. “You don’t trust me, and you won’t do anything about it.”
At a loss for words, I watch Adam as he takes out a key from his back pocket and unlocks the box. Inside are some papers and tools and my vision starts to blur because I’m crying. I wipe away the tears before he can see them, shake my head and try to compose myself.
“You know what I don’t understand, Kate?” he asks.
I fight to keep my voice from wavering. “What don’t you understand?”
“I can read minds,” he says, rifling through the box. “I know what you want me to say. I could just say it if I wanted to. I could gloss over anything that would bring up questions, doubts, bad feelings. I could make myself sound like a better person. You know that.”
“I guess…”
“So if I didn’t care about you, why would I bother telling you the truth?” He stands up, shoves something in his back pocket, and looks me in the eye. “You know I want you to like me. Don’t you?”
“You do?”
“Yes!” He pushes the lockbox back under the bed with his foot. “Look, Kate—about the Red Hook mission. I never meant to hurt you, and I didn’t like lying to you. It was the last thing I wanted to do. Most of my motives are suspect at this point, even to me, but how I feel about you…”
He trails off, taking a deep breath. Suddenly I feel sick with guilt. Despite his new face, this really is Adam, not some stranger, and I think I’ve really upset him.
“You didn’t hurt me, all right?” I say. “You did your best. I’ll get over the thing with Jennifer. It’s just…”
“Just what?”
“This is all pretty weird.”
“Yeah,” he says with a bitter smile.
“I really want to trust you—“
“But you don’t.”
“Adam, think about what you just told me! If that was the truth—“
“It was the truth.”
“Then Mnemosyne is calling all the shots, and…” I shake my head.
“But like I said—you could make me trustworthy.” He takes a step towards me.
“No. I’m not going to do that. I won’t.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s…”
“It’s not the way I want things to be either, but as far as I can see it’s our only option.”
“It’s just—I don’t think I can do it,” I say in a small voice.
“You can. But you won’t.”
I don’t say anything.
“I guess it’s over, then? Whatever this was?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t want it to be, but—“
“No. I won’t just—Kate, I need to say something. You’re…” He sighs through his nose. “Meeting you has made this miserable postmortal coil a little less…”
I look into Lucien’s—into Adam’s pale eyes, waiting, holding my breath.
“I love you,” he says.
All I can do is keep staring at him, dumbfounded, my lips slowly parting.
“Please,” he says, breathing the word. He takes my hands in his.
“Okay,” I say, hearing myself as if from a distance. “All right. I’ll do it.”
He nods and closes his eyes. I take a deep breath.
Tell me the truth from now on, I command him. And tell me whatever I ask you to.
His face relaxes; his pale eyes open.
“What do you want to know?” he asks.
“Well, uh… was all of that true?”
He nods. “Everything I said.”
“Wow,” I say, pulling my hands away. “So you’re a professional, uh, seductor?”
He smirks. “That’s your word for it, not mine.”
“I’m just having trouble imagining it.”
“Imagining what?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but—“
“I get it,” he says. “I look like someone who… I don’t know. Collects stamps?”
“Come on, Adam. You look like someone who collects something a little cooler than stamps.”
“Like what?”
“Like advanced degrees?”
“Oh,” he says. “Much better.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“And yet…”
“And yet what?”
Without warning, he leans forward and kisses me on the mouth. It feels strange at first, kissing Lucien, but I close my eyes and he might as well be the same Adam as ever. His fingertips run down the back of my neck, down my spine. His breath and hands are cold, but they draw warmth and electricity from deep inside me. I feel alive.
“It works for you, doesn’t it?” he says in a low voice, his lips against my ear.
I laugh. “Yeah, well, don’t give yourself too much credit. Almost anything would work for me right now.”
“Oh?”
“I haven’t gotten laid since… what was it, two thousand six? Yeah. Two thousand six.”
“Are you serious?”
“Well, you know, with the Program and all.”
“That’s terrible,” he says.
“Yeah.” I shrug. “Right now I’d probably have sex with just about anyone.”
He smiles.
Haunt
Adam and I return to SpiraCom the way I came: through the door to his suite. He opens it, and we’re there. The transition is instantaneous; I stand in front of the revolving door of the atrium, unable to remember steppi
ng through the door or seeing what was on the other side.
“How does this work, exactly?” I ask.
“The oneiroxis?” Adam asks. “What about it?”
“The door thing, for example.”
“Ah. In dreams, if a door isn’t warded, you can open it and walk through any other unwarded door.”
“Really? It’s that simple?”
He nods. “You just think about the location and you’re there.”
“But you have to go through a door.”
“Exactly.”
“Why didn’t Mirabel just come through the damn door, then?” I ask, folding my arms. “Why did she bother with all of that phone call nonsense?”
Adam shrugs. “Seems to me she’s afraid of you.”
I laugh.
“I’m serious,” he says.
“So why do I keep coming back here?” I ask. “Every time I fall asleep, I end up somewhere in this building.”
“That’ll just keep happening, unfortunately. This is your Haunt,” Adam says. “It’s the place where you’re anchored in the oneiroxis. That’s why we need to secure it—to make sure Mirabel doesn’t try to infiltrate it again.”
“But I hate it here.”
“Understandable.”
“Why is it my… whatever you called it?”
“Well, probably because it was a formative place for you,” he says. “Although it could be Mnemosyne having fun at your expense.”
I make a face.
“We need to ward the doors,” Adam says, taking a piece of paper out from his back pocket and unfolding it. It’s a map of this very building. As he looks at it, it shifts, displaying floor after floor of blueprints. “But there are just so many. Christ, this is going to take a while.”
Everything goes dark in the atrium. For a few moments, the only light comes from the flat panel TVs on the walls, all displaying static. I take a few steps forward. Suddenly, the TVs all tune to the same channel. I recognize the feed instantly—it’s the same footage of Mirabel I was forced to watch when I worked here, when they sent me to ‘remedial training’ for remedial brainwashing. She isn’t speaking yet, just staring into the camera as VHS tracking lines dance on top of her pale face.
“Shit,” I say, cringing.
“Turn it off,” Adam says.
“How?”
“This is a dream. Your dream. Your Haunt,” Adam says. “Take control of it. This isn’t happening.”
“Really? Because it sure seems like it is.”
“This isn’t the real world,” he insists. “How things go is largely up to you. You can choose what to see.”
I grit my teeth and look at one of the screens. It’s not showing Mirabel, I tell myself. It’s showing a video of me. One of the videos I sent Jennifer, back from when I worked at SpiraCom.
On screen, Mirabel laughs.
“Is it?” she says.
It is. It’s showing me, at my computer, talking to conspiracy theorists about their vampire-sighting websites. Me. The back of my head. With my blonde hair. Like I was before they changed me. I close my eyes and force the image outward. When I open my eyes, I see my image on the screen. The only sound coming through the PA system is the dull percussion of my fingers on the keyboard.
“Did you do that?” I ask Adam.
“No,” he says. “You did.”
“I don’t get it,” I say. “Aren’t there any rules in this place?”
“Not many,” he says. “Aside from the ones we decide to establish.”
“So what now?”
“We set up the wards.”
“How are we going to do that? We’re not Wardens.”
“Any strain can be used to counter itself. That’s doubly true for Dreamers in the Oneiroxis.” He frowns, looking at the map.
“What’s wrong?”
“There are all these secret access tunnels leading into the basements and subbasements… If we ward every entrance, it’s going to take forever.” He closes the map and puts it in his back pocket. “Let’s start with a single room. Secure that first, then work out from there.”
“One room?”
He nods.
Inside my head, I list my options: the commissary. My office. The training room. Mirabel’s top-floor office. Yes—that sounds good. That’ll spite her.
“All right,” Adam says. “Let’s take the stairs.”
***
We walk to the stairwell and start climbing.
“What do you think I should do now?” I ask Adam.
“I would suggest continuing our current course of action until we get to the top of the building.”
“Ha ha. That’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why did Mnemosyne give me this stupid mission?”
He shrugs. “You’re smart. You can handle it.”
“Sure, but I’m not a… a private eye, or a bounty hunter, or anything,” I say. “How am I supposed to find Aya?”
Adam stifles a laugh.
“Stop it. I’m serious! She could be anyone. Or no one. She could be invisible,” I say miserably.
“She is a conundrum, isn’t she.”
“Come on, Adam. I need your help,” I say. “What should I do?”
“If you want my opinion, to find Aya, you need to look for Markham.”
“See, that’s what I thought,” I say. “But Haruko says he’s dead.”
“I’m not sure about that.”
“So you think Aya’s trying to find him?”
“I don’t know anything for sure.”
“I get that,” I say, annoyed. “So is Aya Mariah? The girl from Julian’s lost memory?”
“That memory isn’t lost anymore,” Adam says. “And no. I used to think so, but now…” He trails off, shaking his head.
“Mnemosyne said Julian would be critical in finding her,” I say, thinking aloud. “Why? Because Aya’s in love with him?”
“Yes.”
“I’m supposed to use him as bait, then?”
“Essentially.”
“What if I…” I grimace. “I mean, I’m an illusionist too…”
“What if you pretended to be Julian?”
I nod.
“You’d have to make a pretty convincing Julian,” he says. “Aya may be many things, but she’s not stupid, and she’s obsessed with him.”
“You’re right. She probably has all his mannerisms memorized,” I say. “The only reason I ask is, Julian kind of hates me.”
“What?” Adam frowns, laughs. “Really? Why do you say that?”
“Because he treats me like shit. I wonder if it might be easier for Haruko and I to leave and go off on our own.”
“Maybe,” he says. “Talk to Richard about it. He knows much more about impersonation than I do. And he might be the only one alive who knows Julian better than Aya does.”
“Better than Mnemosyne?”
“Possibly. So you’re with Julian now?” Adam asks, his voice straining slightly.
I nod.
“At his estate?”
“I’m sleeping on the couch in your suite as we speak,” I say. “Why?”
“Just be careful around him, all right?” Adam says. “You saw those memories. How he defeated Mnemosyne.”
“Right.”
“You remember the… mutation. The things he saw in the abyss.”
“How could I forget?” I say. “But you made him forget, didn’t you?”
As I ask the question, a conversation Adam and I had springs to the forefront of my mind. Right before we went into Desmond’s underground complex, he told me about how Julian and he became friends, and how Julian gained back his trust—
“And how I told him about the memories,” Adam says.
“And then…” I bite my lower lip.
“And then he Compelled me to give him my blood,” Adam says.
“And he got his memories back,” I say.
“That was three years ago,” Adam s
ays. “Since then I’ve heard he’s changed. Any time he gets upset or impassioned, he loses control of himself. Often it’s subtle—maybe he’ll snap at someone when before he would have been patient. Other times…”
He takes the next few steps in silence.
“Other times what?” I ask.
Adam sighs and presses his lips together.
“What?” I demand.
“A member of his staff told me Julian’s gotten so enraged he’s killed people,” Adam says. “More than once, apparently.”
“Really? God! That doesn’t sound like him at all.”
“It isn’t,” Adam says. “It really isn’t. Him, I mean. Whatever he saw in that vision has sentience. Volition. It’s acting through him. Or at least that’s what I believe.”
I think about this quietly for a while, equal parts terrified and saddened.
“Isn’t there anything we can do?” I ask.
“How do you mean?”
“To help him!”
Adam shrugs. “If there is something we can do, I don’t know what it is.”
“In your memories, he seemed… sad, maybe. And a little odd. But fundamentally decent.”
Adam doesn’t say anything.
“So he’s just lost to whatever this thing is?”
“I hope not,” Adam says, “but I don’t have a solution. See, this problem with Julian is why everything happened—with you, with the head, with… well, with Desmond.”
“It is?”
Adam nods. “Desmond knew about what Mnemosyne did with Julian’s blood, what happened in 1893—all of that.”
“He did? How’d he find out?”
“I told him.”
“Oh.”
“After Julian got those memories back, Desmond heard about it, and he realized Mnemosyne was in danger. So he sent Haruko to meet with me. She asked me for help getting Mnemosyne’s head and body out of the sepulcher.”
“Why did Desmond care about what happened with Mnemosyne?” I ask.
“I don’t really know,” Adam says. “Back in 1893, the Wardens signed an accord with us Mnemonics, and agreed to keep Mnemosyne in cold storage rather than destroy her. Maybe Desmond wanted to honor that agreement.”
“Well, obviously he changed his mind about that before we brought the head back,” I say.
“He must have had a reason,” Adam says. “He and I weren’t friends, but he was… consistent. Rational.”
“Maybe he snapped,” I say.
