Dark Mind Rising

by Julia Keller

  “Lucky for you, I speak Rez.” He had been a challenge for her from the first day they’d sat down next to each other in their shared cubicle. Little by little, she’d learned how to deal with him, which meant learning how not to be frustrated by his personality. Or by what passes for a personality, she thought.

  “Whatever,” Rez said. “So will you help me? With that part, I mean?”

  “Which part?”

  “The part about why people want to ride rides. Have fun.”

  “Sure.”

  She wouldn’t mind a diversion. Because unless she figured out the reason behind the rash of deaths, she’d definitely be needing something to take her mind off the spectacle of watching Crowley & Associates dwindle. And falter. And fade. And tumble. And then go totally out of business.

  The particulars came slamming at her all over again: The Bainbridge case was her last chance. She didn’t know why she felt that way, but she did. If only she could solve it—big if—and if solving that one solved the other three as well, she’d finally make a name for herself. She wouldn’t just be getting by on her father’s name.

  And if she couldn’t …

  “So I’ll send you sketches of the rides I have in mind,” Rez said, interrupting her familiar worry over worst-case scenarios.

  If she didn’t know better, Violet would’ve said that he sounded almost happy. “And,” he went on, “you can tell me if they’ll work. If they’ll bring people…” His voice trailed off. He took a deep breath.

  “Joy,” she said.

  “Yeah. That.”

  “Say it, Rez.”

  Another deep breath. “Come on, Violet. I’ve got work to do, okay? Gotta go.”

  “You can’t even say the word?”

  “Sure I can. I just … No. This is stupid.” He shrugged.

  Violet felt a spike of intense guilt. She knew one of the reasons Rez didn’t like to talk about his emotions. And it had nothing to do with the Intercept. Or with his personality, warped as it was.

  It had to do with her.

  Two years ago, while they were working together at Protocol Hall, Rez had developed a very large and very inconvenient, unreciprocated crush on her. It was obvious to everybody. And instead of having a frank conversation with him and letting him down easy, Violet had used his affection for her own purposes. It was a lousy thing to do, even if it was for a good cause. Which it definitely was, she reminded herself defensively. It was.

  Later, in the midst of the greatest crisis New Earth had ever known, when an underground group that opposed the Intercept kidnapped Violet and her father, Rez had done a favor for the Rebels. Just one small thing. He did it, he later explained, in a momentary gust of anger against Violet. She didn’t love him. She would never love him. Motivated by hurt and disappointment, and maybe a touch of embarrassment, too, he had lashed out. Later he confessed, apologized, and was sent to prison.

  But she and Rez had worked it out. They were friends again. She trusted him now. And he trusted her.

  The trouble was, Rez still didn’t trust emotions. And he might never do so again, Violet thought.

  “Keep an eye on your console,” he said. “I’ll send you the drawings I’ve already done. See what you think.”

  “Deal.” The second Violet clicked off, the Headache returned. And she had a ton of reports to read and interviews to undertake. It was her own fault. This was a workday, and she had known that a workday awaited her even as she’d ordered her fourth Neptunia Node. Or had it been her fifth?

  Violet rubbed the back of her neck. Sometimes I’m not a very good friend to myself.

  Jonetta, of course, had gotten a great night’s sleep. Which was nice for her, but also irritating, especially if you were her boss and you were supposed to be setting the agenda—and yet here you were, with a clanging brain and a bad bellyache and an even worse kind of ache, too: the ache of knowing you weren’t really doing your best these days.

  From the outer office, Violet heard the steady click-clickety-click-click of Jonetta’s fingernails striking the keyboard. Her secretary was always working.

  “Hey,” Violet called out. “Did you get a chance to make some—”

  Before she was able to say the word coffee, an explosion blasted Violet clean out of her seat.

  15

  Trigger-Trap

  Feathers.

  She opened her eyes and saw instantly that she was surrounded by feathers. Down they drifted, hundreds of them, soft and silky and mesmerizing. They danced past Violet’s bleary gaze.

  Endless feathers.

  The feathers were familiar. Violet had seen something similar before, hadn’t she? A soft and strange snowfall of feathers?

  Yes. She had. Two years ago, when Protocol Hall was destroyed in a blinding blast of hot fury. There were feathers then, too, a sifting-down of bits and dabs and threads and fragments and soft, floating flecks.

  But these things—the things streaming past her eyes right now—weren’t really feathers, she was slowly, slowly realizing. They only seemed like feathers in their elegant fall and quiet accumulation.

  She forgot about feathers. Her body felt … weird. Were her arms and legs still attached? Yes. Okay—good.

  But they seemed to be twisted into funny positions.

  “Violet?”

  She was lying on her side. That much, she could tell; she felt a dull pain in her left ear and realized the whole side of her face was smushed hard against the floor. She was sore everywhere, and raw, and confused.

  And somebody somewhere was saying her name.

  “Violet? Hey, are you okay?”

  She blinked. She tried to move. Moving hurt. She groaned, and then she tried again.

  “Go slow,” the voice said. “I think you’re just shaken up. Nothing looks broken. But you’ve got some cuts and bruises. Maybe a concussion. So take it easy.”

  Someone was touching her arm. She realized it was Kendall, and she started to speak to him, but her mouth was too dry.

  “I … I can’t…” It came out sounding like canth.

  “Relax. Just relax for a minute.”

  She needed to sit up. She let Kendall help her do that. He was kneeling beside her, keeping a hand on her back so she wouldn’t fall over.

  “How’s Jonetta?” Violet said, suddenly remembering her assistant. “Is she—”

  “She’s fine.”

  Violet felt a surge of relief so intense that it increased her dizziness. She looked around. Everything was covered in a fine gray-white mist. It was as if an overcast day had suddenly split wide open, revealing the tiny gray particles inside its foggy little heart.

  What she’d thought were feathers were actually tiny pieces of paper. The tiny pieces of paper were actually the unpaid bills—the ones she’d stacked in the corner. The blast had shredded them, lifting them high in the air, and when they fell, they stalled in lazy drifts and slovenly heaps that continued to rustle and simmer.

  All that paper—the same unpaid bills that were driving her crazy—had cushioned her fall.

  Ironic, Violet thought, and that was her first clue that she was okay. If she could think of the word ironic, then her brain was actually functioning.

  Her desk was still in one piece, but it had a large slashing crack down the front of it. The walls of her office were missing chunks here and there and were dented in a few places, but they were basically okay. The ceiling was minus a few tiles, but it, too, had held firm.

  She looked up at Kendall. “How did you—”

  “I’ve got an alert on my console. If an alarm goes off here or at your apartment, it lets me know.”

  She wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that—it had a vaguely stalker vibe in there somewhere—but she was too woozy to argue.

  “Once I knew you were safe,” Kendall went on, “I called for the ReadyRobs.” He nodded toward six small silver rectangles lined up along one wall. ReadyRobs—robots dispatched by the police and fire departments for heavy-duty
jobs—would handle the cleanup. Violet had seen their handiwork two years ago, in the aftermath of Ogden Crowley’s kidnapping; with a discreet series of whirrrrrs and a swift dazzle of shushes and a busy weave of synchronized mechanical arms, the ReadyRobs had restored the apartment that she and her father shared back then to its original state. In minutes.

  Kendall helped her rise. She was shaky, but she could manage. Now she saw how many people were jammed into her office. It looked like a tram stop at rush hour. There were five officers near the front door, tapping out notes on consoles. Another three were examining debris with green-gloved hands. And two more were on either side of Jonetta in the outer office. They had just gotten her to her feet as well.

  “Hey, Vi,” Jonetta said. “How’re you doing?”

  Some things never change, Violet thought. If she wasn’t feeling like hell right at the moment, she would’ve given Jonetta a stern lecture—the 857th time, give or take, that she’d delivered said lecture—about the whole nickname business. But anger took too much effort. Maybe later.

  Violet gave her an I’m-okay wave. Then she turned back to Kendall. “So it had to be a pretty mild explosion. Otherwise, Jonetta and I would be floating in pieces with the dust particles.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We’re still trying to figure out what happened.”

  “I already know.” Jonetta’s voice was as perky as ever, despite what they’d been through.

  “You do?” Violet said.

  “Absolutely. It had to be a keyboard trigger-trap. It’s a low-level explosive device embedded in a computer. They’re programmed to go off when you reach a certain number of keystrokes—two thousand, say, or three or four. Eliminates the need for a remote detonator.”

  “I know what a trigger-trap is,” Kendall said. “But what makes you suspect one in this case?”

  “A second before the explosion, the computer screen went black,” Jonetta answered. “And then there was a red dot, right in the center. Classic signature of a trigger-trap. My brother, Rodney, is a computer guy. Taught me all he knows—and he knows a lot. Trigger-traps are mostly used for practical jokes. They’re not intended to really hurt anybody. Just to get a laugh.” She looked around at the smoking mess of what had formerly been the ready-for-business offices of Crowley & Associates. “But in this case, maybe somebody miscalculated and set the intensity too high.”

  “You think?” Violet said. She couldn’t resist sarcasm. Jonetta’s calm explanation had begun to annoy her. “No. This was a warning,” she added darkly.

  “About what?” Kendall asked. “Which of your cases do you think this is related to?”

  Um, well, actually … there’s only the one. The one you already know about.

  But Violet didn’t want to say that out loud, because if she did, she might as well have LOSER tattooed on her forehead. No one thought this detective business was going to work out, and she wanted to prove everyone wrong. If Kendall knew the extent of her troubles, he’d try to help. And she didn’t want his help.

  Actually, she didn’t want anybody’s help. With anything. She could do it all by herself.

  She looked at Jonetta. Not a word about our embarrassing lack of clients, okay?

  Violet was relieved. Jonetta’s face told her that she understood.

  “The Bainbridge case,” Violet declared.

  “Why would somebody not want you to look into Amelia Bainbridge’s death?” Kendall asked.

  Violet shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because we’re getting too close to something.”

  “Like what?”

  “If I knew that, I’d already have the case solved.” Her back was starting to ache. The Headache had flown back with a vengeance, and this time it had nothing to do with how late she’d been out last night. It was related to the fact that she’d been thrown to the floor in a blast from a trigger-trap.

  Jonetta picked up a chair. She set it right-side up again, and then she started on her desk, sweeping off the dust with both hands. She turned her lamp on and off, on and off, to make sure it still worked. “Kendall,” she said, “can you ask somebody from Tech Division to come over and check my computer? Make sure there aren’t any more nasty surprises in there? I’d ask my brother to do it, but he just started a new job today. Can’t get here for hours.”

  “Sure,” he replied. He looked at Violet. “And there’s something else I’m going to do, too.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to post a couple of cops at the door for a few days. At least until we get a clue about who did this.”

  “No way. Absolutely not.” Violet crossed her arms. She was still fuming silently about the fact that Kendall had rigged up his console to keep tabs on her. She’d discuss it with him later—and by “discuss,” she meant that she’d tell him to cut it out. But this? This was way over the line. It couldn’t wait for a nice, calm conversation later on. “I run a detective agency,” Violet declared. “How many clients do you think we’d get if people saw cops hanging around?”

  We’d fail even faster than we’re failing now, she thought.

  “I hear you, but you need some protection,” Kendall said. “It’s not safe with just you and Jonetta here.”

  “Having cops hanging around won’t protect us. Whoever did this could just set another trigger-trap remotely. They don’t have to actually touch the computer.”

  Jonetta joined the argument—but on the wrong side. “Yep, they do. Trigger-traps can’t be set remotely. They’re about as low-tech as you can get. They detonate remotely after the set number of keystrokes, but to plant the trigger, you’ve got to be on the premises.”

  Frustrated, Violet frowned and thought for a moment.

  “What if there were more people here? People other than cops, I mean. What if I promised to hire somebody else?”

  As soon as the last sentence was out, Violet caught the expression that flickered across Jonetta’s face: Hire somebody else? And pay them with what? Her assistant kept quiet, however.

  “Like who?” Kendall sounded skeptical.

  “Tin Man.” She wasn’t sure how his name had come to her, but there it was. And it made sense; Tin Man was devoted to her. And the size of his biceps ended a lot of arguments with rowdy people before those arguments even got started.

  “So you think he’d be willing to do that? Quit his job as a bouncer at Redshift?” Kendall asked.

  “Maybe,” Violet said. “He might not have to quit. He might be looking for a day job. And besides, everybody’s changing jobs all the time, anyway. They have to. Until we figure out who set the trigger-trap, he’s the best protection I could ask for.”

  Kendall considered her idea. The tables are so turned, Violet reflected as she watched him. She used to worry constantly about him.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “But you’ve got to take this seriously, Violet. It was just a trigger-trap today. Tomorrow, it could be something a lot worse. So you’ll keep your friends close, right?”

  A cop across the room had fired up the ReadyRobs, and now the whir-shush, whir-shush, whir-shush sounds made by the little machines filled the office. Violet had to raise her voice to be heard.

  “Yeah.”

  He wasn’t finished. Of course he’s not finished, Violet thought wearily.

  “And you promise,” he said, “that you’ll get yourself checked out by a doctor. To make sure you don’t have any internal injuries.”

  “Yeah. I’ll call Shura.” There were definite perks to having a best friend who was a physician.

  “And you’ll take a moment and think about who might have done this.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And why.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’ll let me know who has access to the office.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’ll try to remember if anything else suspicious has gone on lately.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’ll take it easy for the rest of the day.”


  “Nope.”

  Kendall sighed.

  “What’s so important that it can’t wait, Violet?”

  “My case.”

  Violet had decided that maybe she’d dismissed Jonetta’s idea too quickly. Maybe her secretary was onto something. The victims were young. So maybe the perpetrator was somebody old and bitter. Maybe it really was some kind of age-related rage.

  She knew the perfect place to start checking out the theory—a place that was positively full of potential suspects.

  16

  Starbridge

  Violet hesitated. She stood in the doorway of her father’s apartment. He was sitting in his reading chair, oblivious to the world, totally focused on the battered hardcover from Old Earth that lay open on his lap. She didn’t want to startle him.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said quietly.

  He looked up. His facial expression instantly shifted from annoyed to joyous. “Violet! So nice to see you, sweetheart. You said you were coming by, but I didn’t know it would be so soon.”

  “I figured you’d be worried when you heard about the explosion.”

  “It’s all over the news. And yes, I was concerned.”

  “I’m fine, Dad. Absolutely fine.”

  Ogden Crowley closed his book and set it aside. He tried to stand up. It was always a terrible struggle for him. He was the strongest man Violet had ever known, but he couldn’t lift himself out of his chair without help. His strength was in his mind, not his body.

  She didn’t rush over to give him a hand. He would rather fail on his own than succeed with somebody else’s help. And so she waited, watching. To save his pride, she looked around the apartment.

  The living room was spacious and elegant, presided over by a crystal chandelier whose wilderness of tiny facets caught the sunlight and sliced it into tiny shivering rainbows that shimmied around the room. The walls were snowy white. The carpet was a lush dark green. The heavy drapes were a deep scarlet. Those drapes were gathered on either side of an immensely tall window that ran the length of an entire wall. From here, Ogden could look out across the splendid vistas and glistening towers of the world he had created, dream by dream.