Mindstormer

by AJ Steiger

He freezes. The breath hitches softly in his throat.

  Slowly, I reach up and slide a palm over his cheek, feeling the prickle of pale, invisible stubble. “Hi, Steven.” A weak smile tugs at my lips.

  The muscles of his throat constrict as he swallows. He presses my hand to his cheek, turns his face, and kisses the center of my palm. “Hi, Doc,” he whispers back.

  *

  I sleep for a while. When I wake up, I feel weak and shaky all over, and my body is drenched in sweat, but I sense that the worst has passed. The Lucid hangover has broken like a fever, and bright noontime sunlight shines through the dirty window and the hole in the ceiling. My stomach growls.

  Slowly, I sit up. I blink a few times. The room remains stable. I spread my fingers and count them, then do a few basic math equations in my head. I silently recite the lyrics to a pop song. So far, so good. All the basic equipment is functional. No multicolored spiders or weird, floating black orbs in my field of vision.

  God, what a trip. I never want to take Lucid again, if I can help it.

  A pair of green eyes flickers through the tangle of memories. Aaron. He was in IFEN headquarters. He must have been the one who sent that nurse to slip me the pill. I remember talking to him while I was a captive. I remember.

  I touch my temple. Yes. It’s all there… or everything that counts, anyway. The events immediately before the modification are shrouded in fog—I recall the Conditioning sessions, the conversation with Aaron, and then things get a little confused and I can’t separate reality from dreams—but I remember the Citadel, and Rhee, and Zebra, and all the other Blackcoats. And I remember Steven. I want to weep with relief. I feel the Lain I was slipping away, rapidly swallowed up by the Lain I am now, and there’s a faint pang somewhere inside me as she disappears.

  But I’m here.

  “Steven?” I call. “Ian?”

  Their footsteps thunder up the stairs, and they burst into the room, breathing hard. “Lain,” Steven gasps. “Are you—”

  “Better.” I smile. “Do you think you could bring me something to eat? I’m starved.”

  Minutes later, we’re all sitting on the bed, passing around a can of hash, though I end up eating most of it. I can’t recall the last time I’ve been so ravenous. When I’m finished, I lick my fingers clean. They watch me with wide, nervous eyes. So far, they haven’t spoken; it’s as if they’re afraid to ask me any questions, afraid that if they put even the slightest strain on me, I’ll crumble to bits again. “That was good,” I say. “Thank you.”

  Ian clears his throat. “So. Did it work?”

  “Yes. It worked.” I turn my gaze to Steven. He gives me a tentative, one-sided smile, and I stare into his light blue eyes. A flush creeps into my cheeks.

  Ian looks down, and his expression tightens. “I’ll give you a minute.” He leaves the room, closing the door behind him.

  Steven reaches out and lightly touches my cheek with his fingertips. “I thought I’d lost you,” he whispers.

  “I’m here now.” I lay a hand over his. “And I swear, I’ll never leave you again.”

  He drags me into a rough hug and buries his face against my hair, breathing in as if I’m the only source of air in the world. I hug him back, soaking in his warmth, the realness of him. A part of me is afraid to believe, convinced that this is an illusion that will be ripped away at any moment. But he’s here. I’m here. I’m alive, holding him, feeling his arms around me, his heart against my cheek. He clings to me so tightly, it hurts my ribs, but I don’t want him to let go. And I say the words I should have said before: “I love you, Steven.”

  “Love you too,” he whispers into my hair.

  He pulls back and smiles, his eyes shiny and reflective with tears, and I drink him in—the pale golden lashes, the tapestry of gray and blue in his irises, the scar on his cheek. That’s new. I explore the thin, hard ridge with my fingertips, and he closes his eyes, as if savoring the touch. “How did this happen?”

  “Got into a fight with Nicholas,” he murmurs. “He didn’t want us to rescue you. He said you were a lost cause, that it was too risky. I attacked him, and he gashed my cheek open.”

  Nicholas… The name triggers a brief flash of… something. What was it about Nicholas? Then it slips away. I stroke Steven’s scar. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s nothing. That BlueGoo stuff is really amazing, you know? It heals pretty much anything.”

  My fingertips slide along the curve of his jaw line, feeling the prickle of fine, almost invisible stubble. I’m afraid to blink, lest he vanish while I’m not looking. “I’m sorry. I should never have left. I—”

  He kisses me, cutting off the apology.

  His lips are just the way I remember—cool and slightly rough, tasting faintly of the ocean. I want to breathe him in, to climb inside him and swim around in him, to meld my body with his so that nothing can ever come between us again. When we finally come up for air, I’m pleasantly dizzy. I rest my head on his shoulder, and for a while, we just hold each other.

  I hate the fact that I forgot this feeling—forgot him. The idea that something so precious can be stripped away by a machine makes me want to rip apart IFEN headquarters with my bare hands. And I understand, in that moment, why Father killed himself rather than risk having his memory erased.

  “Lain? You’re shaking.”

  I press closer. “I’m all right. Just hold me.”

  I remember the terror and sickening helplessness, the sinking dread when I realized that Dr. Swan intended to steal my memories. And I wonder—is that how Steven felt every time he was Conditioned against his will? No wonder he despises IFEN so passionately. No wonder he’s so determined to wipe them off the face of the Earth.

  Until now, I don’t think I ever understood that, not completely. Maybe I had to experience it for myself. Even if I’ve gotten my memories back—some of them, anyway—I’ll never be the same. Something that used to be clean is now dirty. The hurt is difficult to pin down in words, but no less real for it. And I know, in this moment, that IFEN can’t be reformed. The rot goes too deep.

  I pull back, rubbing at the corners of my eyes. Steven touches the underside of my chin, tilting my face up, and studies it carefully. His expression is so serious, so intent, I smile despite the ache in my soul. I could happily spend the rest of the day in his arms, but there are too many questions. They crowd inside my skull, jostling each other, and I sift through them, trying to pluck out the most important ones.

  I take a deep breath. “So. What’s happening back in the Citadel? Earlier, Ian said something about not being sure whom to trust. Does that mean Zebra hasn’t found the traitor yet?”

  His shoulders stiffen. A strange look slips across his face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  His lips press together in a thin line, and he turns his face away. “Zebra is dead.”

  Dead. I flinch. But somehow, the word doesn’t shock me as much as it should. It’s as though a part of me knew already. “How?”

  “He was found in his study, sitting in his chair. No one really knows how it happened. There are security cameras throughout most of the Citadel, but not in Zebra’s study. He was always really private. It looked like a heart attack or a stroke, but Ian and I both think it was a little fishy.”

  A trickle of cold runs down my spine and through my nerves. “You’re saying he might have been killed.”

  “Yeah. That’s what we think.”

  My mouth has gone dry. Memories scratch at a door inside my head, trying to get out. There’s something important, something just out of reach, lost in the fog. I raise a trembling hand to my temple. “If he was killed, who did it?”

  “We don’t know.” He opens his mouth, then looks away. When he answers, his voice is soft, like an apology. “There are a few people who suspect you.”

  “Me? But how would I even—I wasn’t there when it happened!”

  “Most of the Blackcoats know that you had nothing to do with it,” he
adds quickly. “It’s just a few troublemakers.”

  I feel sick. But if I look at it from the Blackcoats’ perspective, I can understand their suspicion. I’m a Mindwalker, a symbol of everything they hate. Living among them was hard enough before. What will it be like now that some of them suspect I’m a traitor?

  “We don’t have to go back, you know,” he says.

  “Then where should we go?” I ask. “What should we do? We can’t stay here. Sooner or later, the authorities will come looking for us.”

  He nods reluctantly.

  I sit on the bed, hugging my knees. “So if Zebra’s gone, who’s in charge of the Blackcoats now?”

  “Nicholas, kind of,” Steven says. “I mean, he was second-in-command, so he’s the natural successor, but not everyone wants to follow him—people don’t have the same respect for him that they did for Zebra—so the Blackcoats are split and arguing over everything. It’s chaos.”

  Nicholas.

  There’s another flash in my head. I stiffen, clutching my shirt as a memory of suffocating pain fills my chest. My lungs constrict and burn as if filled with poison gas. I let out a ragged cry as a hot spike stabs through my head.

  “What’s wrong?” Steven asks, eyes wide.

  Images flicker dimly. Blinking lights. White walls. A sense of dread. The memories are spinning, careening around and around. “It was him.” I manage to hold my voice steady. “Nicholas. He’s the murderer.”

  Steven’s eyes widen. “Are you sure?”

  “I felt Zebra die. I remember—I remember him telling me to stop Nicholas.” I swallow the sourness at the back of my throat and force myself to breathe through the nausea and the stabbing pain in my head.

  Steven’s brows draw together. “How is that possible? You weren’t there when he died.”

  “I was, though… sort of. Zebra implanted a device in my head, so he’d be able to communicate with me while I was in IFEN headquarters. We were connected at the moment of his death. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the truth. As long as Nicholas is there, all the Blackcoats are in danger. We have to warn them.” He doesn’t reply immediately, and a wave of despair washes over me. “You don’t believe me?”

  “I believe you,” Steven says grimly.

  “Lain?” Ian stands in the door. “I heard a shout. What—”

  “Contact Jackal using that emergency cell she left us,” Steven says. “Tell her to come pick us up. Now.”

  *

  After Ian makes the call and Steven explains the situation, we wait on the rickety front steps outside the house. The trees sway and creak in a heavy wind, and a few raindrops spatter against the wood as thunder rumbles in the distance. I try to breathe through the squeezing panic in my chest.

  “We need to work out a plan,” Steven says. “First things first, we have to tell the other Blackcoats about this, but we have to make sure Nicholas doesn’t catch on that we know.”

  Ian frowns. “Shouldn’t we be sure, before we say anything to anyone?”

  “Lain says he’s the traitor,” Steven replies. “That’s good enough for me.”

  Ian opens his mouth, then closes it. “Okay. So what do we do, then?”

  “As soon as we get to the Citadel, we track down Rhee or Burk,” Steven says. “Someone we can trust. We make some excuse to talk to them alone. And Lain can tell them everything. If we run into Nicholas before that, we act normal. Don’t let him know that Lain has her memories back.” He looks me in the eye. “Right now, he doesn’t know that you know, right?”

  “I—I don’t think so. No.”

  “Good. We’ll keep it that way. He won’t be happy about having you back, but he won’t want to blow his cover, either. If he’s still hanging around in the Citadel, it means there’s something else he needs to accomplish, something he’s planning to do.”

  “But what?” Ian asks. “Do you know, Lain?”

  “No.” I feel like I should know. But there’s that patch of fog in my head, that blurry area right before the moment I woke up in IFEN headquarters with my memories gone. There’s something I’m missing, some crucial piece.

  “We’ll find out,” Steven says grimly. “Once we’ve told the others, we’ll work out how to take Nicholas down—it shouldn’t be hard, if we have help—and get some answers out of him.” His eyes are hard and flat, like slate. “I’ll wring the truth out of him myself, if I have to.”

  For a moment, I waver. What if I’m wrong? What if those flickers of knowledge are part of a dream or hallucination? What if—

  No. I know what I saw.

  Ian gives my shoulder a squeeze. Ever since I recovered my memories, he’s been avoiding eye contact with me, but his voice is as warm and gentle as ever. “We’ll get to the Citadel as fast as we can. I promise.”

  I manage a faint smile, but my rapid heartbeat refuses to slow. A sense of dread looms over me, and I can’t shake the clinging terror—the feeling that everything is about to end.

  The wind picks up, whistling. An echoing boom of thunder rolls toward us. Just as it starts to rain in earnest, cold pellets hammering the top of my head, a faded, dirty red pickup truck rumbles up the gravel driveway toward the house. The pickup stops, and Jackal opens the door, sticking her doglike head out. “Ready?” she calls.

  We pile in, wet and shivering. I sit squeezed between Steven and Ian as the truck roars down the road, leaving a trail of dust. Tense silence hangs in the air as the windshield wipers swish, cutting through the downpour. Her headlights are twin yellow paths in the gloom.

  “So,” Jackal calls from the driver’s seat. “Have you heard the latest news? Dr. Swan is dead.”

  “Yeah, we heard about that,” Ian says.

  A shudder runs through me. I’m still trying to adjust to the idea that he’s gone. Of course, Jackal doesn’t know that we were involved. Maybe it’s better to keep it that way.

  “So who’s gonna take his place as Director?” she asks. “Any ideas?”

  “No, not really,” Ian replies. “Standard procedure is that the old Director nominates a new one. Officially, the elected reps on the National Ethical Committee have to approve the choice, but they’ve never gone against IFEN’s decision.”

  “Fake democracy in action,” Steven mutters.

  “The URA’s in an uproar,” Jackal continues. “Everyone’s panicking. They think it’s the start of a new war. Hell, even up here, people are freaking out. They’re talking about establishing curfews. Curfews, in Canada!”

  My thoughts flash back to Dr. Swan’s meeting with the Minister of Psychological Welfare. Is IFEN already stretching their influence into this country?

  The journey to Toronto is a blur of field and forest and billboards half-seen through a gauze of rain. The city itself is a hazy glow of colors and fragile-looking, improbable skyscrapers on the horizon. As we draw nearer, Jackal leans forward, peering out the windshield. “Huh, that’s weird. That wasn’t here last time.”

  A white, peak-roofed building, no larger than a shack, stands next to the road, a security camera blinking on the roof. A metal gate bars the way. My stomach sinks. It’s a checkpoint. I recognize it because there are checkpoints stationed at every road leading in and out of Aura, my home city.

  We draw nearer to the gate. I can’t see if there’s actually anyone in the building, but there’s a small security camera on the roof.

  “Maybe we should turn around,” Ian says.

  “Fuck this crap,” Jackal growls. She pulls out her pistol, rolls down the window, and fires a shot. The security camera spins off the roof.

  Steven whistles, impressed.

  “Uh, what about the gate?” Ian says nervously.

  Jackal veers off the road, so suddenly that I clutch the seats in terror. Her tires rip through mud and grass, bumping over rocks as she drives around the gate, and the whole vehicle rattles and vibrates around me. An alarm starts beeping, but it fades quickly behind us as she swerves back onto the road and resumes driving. “Whoev
er built that thing didn’t plan very well. Why the hell are they trying to monitor traffic, anyway? I mean, what is this, the URA?”

  The question leaves a hollow feeling in my chest. I don’t want to think about what this means, but I know: IFEN’s already extended its reach into Canada.

  ‌

  33

  Toronto enfolds us. It’s all so strange, and yet so familiar, like remembering something I’ve seen in another life. In the sky, I see the giant, holographic dragon making its rounds over the city, scales gleaming red and bronze, fire spewing from its open mouth. A row of cartoon pink elephants swagger through the sky, smiling. The candy-bright glow of signs and the hard, bright squares of store windows shine through the gray haze. People are laughing in the streets, people as colorful and strange as the city around them. The city is a fever-dream of endlessly flowing pleasures. Somewhere in the distance, gunshots bark and police sirens howl. But the pedestrians go on laughing and chugging from bottles.

  Jackal drops us off on a street corner.

  “Thank you,” Ian says. “For everything. You’ve helped us a lot.”

  She flashes white teeth in a smile. “No problem. Anything to help the cause.” She drives off, leaving us alone in front of a Chinese restaurant, rain still sheeting down around us. A large, golden lucky cat smiles at us from the window, paw waving back and forth.

  We enter, tracking in water. A tiny, wizened old woman stands behind the counter, peering at us with dark eyes. Steven exchanges some sort of hand signal with her—it looks like he’s tracing letters or numbers in the air—and the woman nods. She smiles, showing a row of very small, very white teeth, and gestures to a door behind the counter.

  We follow her down a narrow, twisting set of stairs to an underground room, where she moves aside an elaborate tapestry to reveal a rough hole in the brick wall.

  “Thanks,” Steven says.

  She nods, her face crinkling in a smile. She hasn’t said a word the entire time.

  Ian fishes a flashlight out of his pack and hands it to Steven. “Ready?”