Mindwalker

by AJ Steiger

We’re almost to the lobby. I lunge into the open space, which is filled with smoke. Alarms are blaring, or maybe it’s just my ears ringing. My whole being is focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Just keep moving. Keep moving.

  The doors are in sight, then three guards block my path. They’re aiming guns at me—not NDs, but real guns. I freeze. Time slows as I stare into the dark, empty muzzle of the weapon directly in front of me. Move! my brain screams at my body, but my muscles are locked. The man starts to squeeze the trigger.

  I’m going to die. Here, now, with escape in sight. It’s over.

  A roar fills the air, and a ball of fire explodes near the doors. The impact flings me backward. Bits of plaster and stone fly through the air; something grazes my face, leaving a searing line of pain. I see the armed men dissolve into the blinding glare, and a warm mist of blood spatters my face. Someone is screaming. Steven flings himself over me, shielding my body as a scorching heat fills the room. Everything is white.

  Then everything is black.

  For a while, I wander somewhere between dreams and nothingness. Occasional flickers of light and sound break through, but I can’t make sense of them. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but it feels like a very long time. Eons.

  Sometimes, I know who I am. Sometimes, I float up toward a dim glow, and voices break the cocoon of silence. Once, I glimpse a pair of blue eyes staring into mine and feel a hand clutching my own. A voice is calling me. I know that voice. I strain my mind, searching for the name, but it slips through my grasp.

  Then I’m sinking again, and gray enfolds me.

  My mouth is dry. That’s my first conscious sensation. I smack my lips and grimace. Water would be good.

  Other sensations filter in. A soft mattress beneath my back. Light shining through my eyelids, tinting the darkness red. Dull pain in my face and head, a steady throb in my ribs and left arm. Next to me, a machine beeps at regular intervals, and a medicinal smell stings my nostrils. A hospital?

  I open my eyes and find myself staring at a cracked cement ceiling. I blink a few times. That doesn’t look like a hospital ceiling.

  Breathe. Take stock of the situation, one thing at a time. I’m on a bed, wearing a thin cotton hospital gown. An IV trails from my wrist, and linen bandages cover my arm. I try to focus, to assemble my memories into something coherent, but all I can think about is Steven. I don’t know why, but I feel like he’s in terrible danger.

  Then I hear a soft snore and look up to see him slumped in a chair, head bowed.

  I open my mouth. At first, nothing comes out but a weak croak. My throat is on fire. After a few tries, I manage to whisper his name.

  His head snaps up. Pale lashes flicker open. For a long moment, he just stares at me, wide-eyed, as if he’s afraid to look away—afraid I might vanish if he blinks. “Lain,” he says.

  Relief breaks over me, so strong I want to weep. He knows me. He’s alive and whole, and for that, I want to fall to my knees and thank whatever powers exist.

  He stands and takes a cautious step toward me. I hold my arms out, and he hugs me gingerly. I squeeze him tighter, and he lets out a strangled sound. Quickly, I release him. “Steven, are you—”

  He smiles wanly. “Got a little scorched in that explosion, but they patched me up.”

  In a flash, I remember him jumping on top of me, shielding me with his body when the bomb went off. Wait—bomb? Why was there a bomb? I raise a trembling hand to my temple. “What happened?” I whisper.

  Steven’s expression turns serious. “How much do you remember?”

  “I—I don’t know.” Everything is muddled, and my head aches dully. Slowly, I sit up. The pain in my body seems superficial—bruises, cuts, nothing more. My face feels prickly and hot, like a sunburn. “I remember …” I trail off, sifting through my jumbled thoughts. “I can’t think.” My breathing quickens. “Why can’t I think?”

  “They said you had a concussion.” He gently pushes me back down. “You’re safe. Just rest. It’ll come back to you.”

  I close my eyes, light-headed. Once the spinning stops, I look around at the room. It’s small, lit by a single bare bulb, with rough cement walls. Definitely not a hospital, or at least not a normal one.

  He smooths my hair. “How do you feel?”

  His voice, his touch, everything about him is so gentle, so careful. As if I’m made of glass and a loud word or sudden movement might shatter me. “Tired,” I murmur. “Dizzy.”

  “You need anything? Water?”

  The word brings back my thirst with a vengeance, but I have more urgent needs right now. Namely, the need to have my questions answered. “Where am I? How did I get here?”

  “We’re in a safe house. And we were brought here by the same people who helped us escape from IFEN headquarters. You know—the ones with the crazy animal heads?”

  A dam breaks, and images pour in: IFEN headquarters, the recording my father left me, the confrontation with Dr. Swan. I went to Ian’s apartment; we met with Tiger and uploaded the memories. I went back to rescue Steven, and then—and then—

  Smoke. Explosions. Blood spattering on the walls and the floor and my skin.

  My vision goes fuzzy, and the walls seem to be zooming toward me.

  Steven seizes my hand. “Lain, stay with me.” He squeezes my fingers. “Focus on my voice.” The desperation in his tone penetrates the thickening fog around me. I concentrate on breathing slowly—in and out, in and out—trying to bring my racing heartbeat under control. Steven strokes my temple, murmuring soft reassurances.

  For a few minutes, I just lie there, clutching his hand, feeling his fingers in my hair. I reach up to touch his face. He has a few scratches, a bruise on his temple.

  In my head, I keep seeing the guards go down, blood spraying through the air in a red mist. Probably dead. Ian triggered that explosion. I shudder, remembering the blast of heat, the way their bodies seemed to dissolve into light. Those guards probably knew nothing about Dr. Swan’s plans. They were just following orders. And now they’re dead, because of me. How many other people were injured or killed in the explosions so Steven and I could flee to safety?

  Steven touches my cheek, traces the line of my jaw with his fingertips. “Eyes on me,” he says firmly.

  Only then do I realize I’m hyperventilating. I look into Steven’s eyes, focusing on the familiar gray and silver flecks in the blue. A lump swells in my throat. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  “For what?”

  “I—I gambled with your life.” The shame burns me, suffocates me. “If we’d been caught—”

  “Stop that.” He grips my chin. “I told you to do whatever you needed to do, remember? I’m proud of you.”

  “But—”

  “Death would be better than being his puppet. Do you understand?”

  I look into his eyes, those beautiful eyes, still ringed by the dark flesh that never quite goes away. I sit up, wrap my arms around him, and hold him close. Slowly—as if he’s afraid to break the moment—he hugs me back, pulling my head to his shoulder, and rests his cheek against my hair.

  My cheek is pressed against his neck—warm, smooth skin—and I realize something. “Your collar’s gone.”

  “Yeah. They removed it.” A pause. “It’s weird. I thought it’d be a relief to have it off. But I feel kind of … I dunno. Naked.”

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  We hold each other for a long time. Finally, I pull back and touch my hair, which has been singed short in places. I’m pretty sure my face is burned, though not severely, or I’d be in a lot more pain. “I probably look awful.”

  He laughs, a small, choked sound. “You’ve never looked better.” He frames my face between his hands, leans in, and kisses me. And for a while, I forget everything—all the pain, all the darkness.

  After a few hours, a woman with an off-white coat and an owl’s head comes in to examine me. She flicks a light at my eyes and asks me some simple questions, the
n re-dresses my wounds, making soft hooting noises the whole time—a feature of her mask, I assume. She stands, crosses her arms over her chest, and studies me. “So,” she says, “you’re Lain Fisher.”

  It seems like a rhetorical question, so I don’t answer. “Did it work?” I ask instead.

  She tilts her head.

  “The memory upload,” I clarify.

  “Oh yes, it worked. It vanished within a few hours, but people saw it, and word is spreading quickly.”

  “Of course Dr. Swan is denying it,” Steven says. He’s sitting in his chair, one knee drawn up to his chest, an elbow resting atop it. “He made an announcement on TV and brought in these memory experts”—he makes air quotes around the phrase—“to testify that it was a hoax. But most people aren’t buying it. Some groups are calling for Dr. Swan’s resignation.”

  “Somehow, I doubt he’ll give up that easily,” I say.

  “Probably not. Still, you made an impact.”

  The owl woman nods. “That was a brave thing you did.”

  I don’t feel brave. I feel small and uncertain and scared. What if Dr. Swan was right and this causes a new wave of violence? Maybe it’s already started. Maybe my revelation will be the spark that sets off a powder keg of rage.

  The owl woman turns and walks toward the door. “I’ll get Fox,” she calls over her shoulder. “He’s been wanting to talk to you.”

  Steven frowns. “He has?” He looks at me. “Do you know him?”

  “Yes, actually.” I debate whether to say more, but hold my tongue. Ian’s identity in this underground world is a secret he entrusted to me. It’s not my place to tell anyone else, even Steven.

  The door opens, and he enters, looking just as I remember—russet fur, nervous golden eyes, quivering whiskers. He glances at Steven, clutches his arm, and says, “Can I have a few minutes alone with her?”

  Steven scowls. His hand strays to something in a holster at his hip, which I didn’t notice until now. An ND? “Look, I appreciate that you helped bust me and Lain out of that place, but I don’t exactly know who you and your buddies are, or if we can trust you. I’m staying with her.”

  Fox opens and closes his mouth several times, then heaves an irritated sigh. “Close the door.”

  Steven’s brows knit in confusion, but he obeys. Fox reaches up and unsnaps the black hoop from his neck. The holomask disappears.

  Steven’s jaw drops. He blinks at Ian for a few seconds. “You knew about this?” he asks me.

  “Well, yes.” I fidget. “I just found out the other day, though.”

  “So.” Ian casts a glance at Steven. “Can you give us some privacy?”

  Steven hesitates, looking from me to Ian and back again. His expression tightens, but he leaves the room, shutting the door behind him.

  For a moment, Ian and I regard each other in silence. “You brought us here?” I ask.

  He nods.

  Suddenly, I feel very tired. I have a thousand questions swimming in my brain, but I’m not sure I want to know the answers. I ask, anyway. “How did you set up all those bombs so quickly?”

  “They were already there,” he says. “We were planning to use them to send a message to IFEN. I just convinced the others to change the schedule.”

  So, he’s more involved in this than he let on. Or, at the very least, he knew about a terrorist plot to bomb IFEN headquarters and told no one. “Do you really believe in what these people are doing?” I whisper. “Do you think setting off explosions can accomplish anything good?”

  “It did,” he says. “You and Steven are free now because of it, aren’t you?”

  I can’t argue with that.

  He gives me a weary smile. “You can only do so much with words. There’s a war coming. Pretty soon, everyone will have to choose a side. You will, too … and when that happens, you’d better be ready to get your hands dirty.”

  “If that’s the way you feel, how are you any different from them?”

  His expression hardens. “We don’t butcher children, for one thing. Or imprison innocent people and threaten to mindwipe them. We placed the bombs carefully so we wouldn’t injure any patients. There were no casualties except those guards, and if we hadn’t killed them, they would have killed you.”

  He’s right. I look away. Still …“When bombs go off, there’s always a risk that innocent people will die.”

  He sighs and runs a hand over his bristly red hair. “I know how this looks to you. You think I’ve gotten mixed up with a bunch of terrorists.”

  “Isn’t that pretty much what’s happened? You saved our lives, and I’m grateful for that, I really am. But what else do you call a group of people who use fear and destruction to accomplish their goals?”

  “We’re not about fear. We’re about hope.”

  “I’d like to believe that’s true,” I say. “I really would.”

  An awkward silence descends.

  “We’re in the same boat now, aren’t we?” he asks quietly. “Neither one of us can go back to our old lives.”

  “It might not be too late for you,” I say. “IFEN doesn’t know about any of this. If you can just get your Type back up—”

  “It is too late. And I’ve got no one to blame but myself.” He stares at the wall. “It was stupid of me to think I could keep modifying my memory after every difficult session.”

  I hesitate. It’s true—he should have known better. But Ian’s not a foolish or reckless person. He must have realized it couldn’t go on forever. He must have had a reason, something pushing him to keep doing it, to keep taking on clients he knew he couldn’t handle. When understanding hits, a strange feeling washes over me. “It was for me, wasn’t it?” I say.

  He tenses. “I don’t know what you mean.” His voice comes out stiff and unconvincing.

  “After my breakdown, you started taking on all the sexual assault cases so I wouldn’t have to.”

  His silence is answer enough.

  “Oh, Ian.” Tears well in my eyes. He’s always been there, a warm shoulder to lean against, steady and supportive. He’s been taking on my burdens all this time, and I never knew. I never even stopped to consider the possibility. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.” A tiny smile grows from one corner of his mouth. “By the way, I have a present for you.” For the first time, I notice the suitcase he’s wheeled in. He opens it, and I let out a gasp.

  “My Gate!” He places the hard drive on the bed, and I run my hands over it. “Thank you! How did you—”

  “Better not to ask.” He looks me in the eyes. “You should get out of here as soon as you can. IFEN will be hunting you. There’s a car waiting outside with a map in it. Like I said before, your best bet is to head for the border. Don’t stop. Drive straight through until you get there. We’ll send someone to meet up with you at the fence and take you to the nearest safe house.”

  “What about you?”

  He smiles without meeting my gaze. “I’ll be all right.”

  That night, Steven and I leave the city in the unobtrusive gray car provided by Ian. We drive in silence, Steven at the wheel. Ahead of us, the road stretches to the horizon, cornfields on either side. Overhead arches the vast, starry night sky. In the backseat, in a suitcase, is my Gate.

  I catch a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror, and I almost don’t recognize the face staring back at me. It looks thinner, sharper. Before we left, I trimmed off the burned parts of my hair, and now it hangs loose and uneven around my face, too short to bother putting in pigtails. Patches of my skin are tinted pink from the minor burns I sustained, and there’s a wildness in my eyes that I’ve never seen before. I look a bit crazy, but maybe that’s fitting.

  I’m a fugitive now. We both are.

  The realization terrifies me. Who am I if not a Mindwalker? That’s been my identity for as long as I can remember. And in spite of everything, I still believe that Mindwalkers can do good, that I truly have helped my clients
—at least some of them. But I can’t go back.

  “Lain?”

  In my lap, my hands curl into fists. “I’m fine,” I mutter. It probably doesn’t sound very convincing. I watch Steven through my peripheral vision, noting the shadowed hollows in his cheeks and under his eyes. “What about you?”

  He half smiles. “Haven’t been sleeping so well. Bad dreams.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugs. “I’m used to it. It’s just that instead of having nightmares about Pike, now I have nightmares about guys in white coats. And what happened to Lizzie.”

  My father is undoubtedly one of the figures haunting his dreams, and the thought makes me ache. We drive in silence for a few more minutes. The streetlights are far apart, tiny yellow dots strung along the side of the road, barely keeping the darkness at bay.

  “If I still wanted my memories erased, would you do it?” Steven asks suddenly. “I mean, once all this is over.” His tone is unreadable. I can’t tell if it’s a rhetorical question or not.

  My pulse quickens.

  If I erase his memories, it will change him, transform him into a different Steven. I want this Steven—his cussing and sarcasm; his toughness and vulnerability; his sharp edges and softness; his love-hungry, guarded eyes. I want the Steven who overcame such ghastly pain, struggled so hard against his demons.

  But to refuse him on those grounds would be horribly selfish. “If that’s what you truly want, then yes.”

  He stares straight ahead, hands locked tight around the wheel. The car’s engine hums faintly. “For a long time, it was all I wanted. To forget everything. To not think about anything that hurt. I was afraid of what I’d have to do to make that happen, but I thought that once it was over, everything would be okay. I didn’t even care if it destroyed who I was, because I didn’t see anything good in myself. But now …”

  I don’t say a word. I just wait.

  “If I forget everything that makes me who I am, is that happiness? Or is that just a sort of death?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He pulls over, parks the car, and looks me in the eyes. I can’t read his expression. “How do you feel about me, Lain? The me I am right now?”