Dark Mind Rising

by Julia Keller

  She had spent the previous day sitting in her office, staring at the wall. The damage done to that wall by the trigger-trap explosion had been repaired, and there was a funny shadow in one spot where the new plaster blended with the old. Violet’s eyes stayed on that seam. Hour after hour.

  She didn’t eat. She didn’t drink. She didn’t answer her console. She had no recollection of getting up and going to the bathroom, although she must have.

  She just stared.

  She remembered Delia’s saucy laugh. And Delia’s red bandana. And Delia’s frisky dark curls. And Delia’s tea bag. She remembered the brave and funny and feisty and sometimes crude and rude and ornery—but when it came to Violet, always, always kind and loving—woman from Old Earth.

  Delia Tolliver. Gone. Just … gone. Absent forever from the rest of Violet’s life.

  Delia’s death was sparking the second-worst emotional pain Violet had ever endured. The first came when her mother died nine years ago. At the time, Violet believed that no pain henceforth could ever be so bad—so searing, so overwhelming. It was a pain that seemed to blot out the world. It made everything dark, like a permanent solar eclipse.

  And she was right. Nothing else ever would be that bad. But now something was coming damned close: Delia’s death. The anguish she was feeling was only marginally less horrible. Delia Tolliver had been a second mother to her.

  So now she had lost two mothers.

  The Long Stare had lasted the whole day. Jonetta didn’t try to cheer her up, which Violet deeply appreciated. Somehow her assistant sensed that empty words—and they were all empty now, because they couldn’t bring back Delia—would make things worse, not better, even if they were uttered with good intentions. Jonetta had kept her distance, only offering her coffee once, and when Violet shook her head to refuse it, she never offered again. Jonetta returned to her own desk, working quietly at the computer as the day slouched by.

  Then evening had arrived. Violet suddenly jumped up from her chair. She needed to work. She needed to solve her case. She needed to be in motion. It was the only antidote to this sorrow.

  She had turned and looked out the window at New Earth, at the beautiful dusk that the Color Corps concocted for that day. The sky was a deep violet shade. She remembered the moment when she was six years old and she’d asked her mother why they had named her Violet. Her mother said, “Because it’s my favorite color. It’s the color of the sky right before the sky goes to sleep, and it’s already dreaming about the next day.”

  Dreaming about the next day: Yes. Rest was good, rest was necessary—but you should always be planning ahead.

  That was the lesson Violet had taken from her mother’s answer. Not when she was six, of course, but later, once she was grown up, once she’d been through all the pain and the heartache of losing her. Cry when you must, grieve as long as you need to, but then get to work. Violet is the color of dusk, but it’s also the color of tomorrow.

  She had to find out who had killed Delia and the others—and how that person had revived the Intercept in order to do it.

  So that night, after the long hours of brooding and staring, brooding and staring, Violet had finally switched on the lights. She called Jonetta into her office. Her assistant stood in front of her desk.

  “Okay,” Violet said. “The suicides. How’s the investigation coming along?”

  Jonetta didn’t say, “Are you okay?” or “What happened?” or anything of the sort. She nodded and then tapped the series of jewels that would bring up her console notes, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be ignored for an entire day and then summoned to discuss a case as if nothing at all was amiss.

  “Obviously, my theory was wrong,” Jonetta said. “The killer’s not just targeting young people. Delia’s death breaks the pattern.”

  “Right. So what’s next?”

  Jonetta flipped to another section of her console notes.

  “I sent you more information about Amelia’s dad and the accident that killed him. Plus more information about the Wilton twins’ parents. And Arianna Prokop. Just trying to find a link—any link—between the deaths. And—”

  “Book me on a transport pod,” Violet said, interrupting her. “I’m going to Old Earth.”

  “Why in the world do you need to go to—”

  “I’m going to Old Earth.”

  Violet had made her decision in an instant. She’d solve the case in her own way. She would honor Delia’s memory by following her instincts—a very Delia-like thing to do—no matter what anybody else thought about it.

  And for Violet Crowley, all roads led to Old Earth.

  * * *

  Rez was waiting for her. Violet hadn’t seen him right away, but when she turned to take in her surroundings, he appeared: Rez, her friend and former colleague, walking solemnly in her direction. He looked so … so totally Rez-like, by which she meant scruffy and preoccupied.

  Behind him, the broken-off tops of bombed-out buildings regularly exhaled oily black gusts of smoke. The buildings had been smoldering for years, like tire fires. There was no one to put them out, once and for all. They had been burning ever since the Second Mineral War, when the bombs dropped from the sky in vicious multitudes, igniting the chain nuclear reactions that destroyed people and cities and landscapes and the last shreds of hope that civilization would come to its senses.

  “Hey,” Violet said.

  “Hey.”

  He was glad to see her—at least that was the vibe she got, and with Rez, you had to go by the vibe. His greetings were never effusive.

  “How was the ride in?” Rez asked.

  He knew how the ride was because the ride was always the same. Rocky. Risky. Painful. Even misery-inducing. The few pods left in service were flimsy and shopworn, prone to a violent quaking as they dropped from New Earth’s sweet manufactured atmosphere to the stale air of Old Earth. And the ferry from Thirlsome was ancient and even creakier than the pod. Kendall had once wisecracked that the ferry covered more distance rolling side to side than it did lurching forward. A lot of first-time riders ended up puking over the side—which didn’t much matter, because the bay was already a stinking, soupy, goopy, polluted mess.

  “It was fine,” Violet said.

  So if Rez knew how the ride was—and he did—why was he making small talk? Rez didn’t do small talk. His typical behavior when he first approached her down here was to blurt out his latest technical dilemma as if he expected her to solve it. Like that was ever going to happen.

  “Good,” he said.

  She had told him about Delia’s death during the call to arrange this visit. Rez being Rez, he was, Violet knew, trying to figure out what to say to her. He hated clichés like “Sorry for your loss.” But if you rejected clichés, you had to come up with something else to say. Something original. And for Rez, that was tough.

  She waited another few seconds. When Rez didn’t add to his “Good” remark, she said, “So can we head for the prison?”

  She had to keep moving. If she slowed down, if she paused for any length of time for any reason, the grief would overwhelm her, like a steep gray wave closing over a clumsy swimmer.

  And she would drown.

  “Sure,” Rez said. “Let’s go.”

  24

  Prisoner Number 57681299-17-WZN

  Stone and steel. That’s what the prison on Old Earth was made of.

  Wait. There was another ingredient, too, Violet realized.

  Stone and steel and loneliness.

  The loneliness seeped out of the thick gray walls. She could feel misery and despair, too, sliding off the rocks, but it was the loneliness that struck her. The walls had soaked up many, many years of the total and absolute loneliness of the prisoners they held in their grip. After a while, she surmised, the loneliness would be breathed out again on the other side of these walls, an endless, sorrowful exhalation. Hence they were streaked and slimed with a sticky moisture that was, Violet thought, the liquid eq
uivalent of loneliness.

  The mammoth prison had been carved into the belly of an Old Earth mountain. The small, dim cells were identically sized pockets scooped out of the rock, row by row. Prisoners never saw each other. But all through the long nights they surely could sense the vibrations as the mountain shifted and trembled in response to the human activity inside it, the low moans and the sad murmurings, the restless turnings, the nightmares.

  This was where Tin Man Tolliver had served his time. And two years ago, this was where the Rebels of Light were taken after being found guilty of criminal conspiracy. The Rebels had opposed the Intercept from the beginning. They had managed to discover an antidote to it, a way of muting its power.

  That was why Violet had come here. If anyone could figure out who might be accessing the Intercept again, she thought, it would be a Rebel. They had made a long, careful, and ultimately successful study of how to thwart its power.

  She stood in the waiting room, mesmerized by the strange wet walls. The walls that seemed to weep with frustration and despair. The warden, Samantha Chivers, was on her way.

  Rez had gone to check in with his parole officer. He had been an inmate here for a year and a half, serving his sentence for conspiracy and treason. He was still required to come to the prison twice a week, so that his parole officer would know where he was and what he was up to. Rez and Violet agreed to meet in the waiting room when they were finished with their respective tasks.

  “Miss Crowley.”

  Chivers was an old woman. At least sixty, Violet guessed. She was petite, black-haired, dressed in a black tunic and black slacks. Her eyes fastened onto Violet’s.

  “Hey,” Violet said.

  “Good day,” Chivers replied in a curt voice. It felt like a correction, not a greeting, as if Violet’s Hey had somehow offended her.

  I’m off to a great start, Violet thought dismally. As usual.

  “I hope you will give my regards to your father,” Chivers went on, her voice starched and formal. “He and I both endured the Second Mineral War here on Old Earth, back when we were kids. We stayed in touch, and I worked for New Earth Security Service. After I retired, Ogden asked me to do one last thing for him—come down here and whip the prison into shape.” She looked around. “Quite the challenge, let me tell you.”

  “Right,” Violet said. She was only as friendly as she had to be, to get what she wanted. She had never heard her father talk about the warden. This was clearly a job that nobody else had wanted.

  “Please tell me again which inmate you would like to visit,” Chivers said. Her finger was poised over her wrist console, ready to pull up the name and cell number.

  “Paul Stark.”

  Chivers’s face slowly rose. Once again, her eyes locked onto Violet’s.

  “Paul Stark,” the warden repeated.

  “Yeah.”

  “Leader of the Rebels of Light. The group that kidnapped your father two years ago.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does President Crowley know that’s who you want to see?”

  “I didn’t discuss it with him. Or ask his permission. I’m here on my own.”

  Chivers thought about that for a moment. Violet’s honesty had apparently surprised her. Maybe she’d been expecting a lie, Violet thought—Oh, yeah, my dad says it’s all good—which she could then have checked and disproven very easily. The truth was something new and different.

  “I suppose I don’t see the harm. The prisoner is in”—the warden’s eyes dropped to her console again—“Section 3447-A. And in here, he’s not ‘Paul Stark.’ He’s Prisoner Number 57681299-17-WZN.”

  Violet let her inner smart-ass out for a spin. “Catchy,” she said. “I’ll bet he has a nickname by now. I bet almost nobody says, ‘Hey, there, Prisoner Number 57681299-17-WZN! How you doin’?”

  Delia would be so proud of me.

  Chivers ignored her little joke. “I’ll take you there myself.”

  * * *

  With the warden leading the way, they walked through a twisting series of narrow corridors hacked out of the mountain’s cold black heart. There was no conversation. With each turning, Violet felt as if the air were getting thinner, slowly but steadily. She knew this wasn’t the case—the prison had an excellent air disbursement and filtration system—but it felt that way, anyway. The low-ceilinged hallway was lit by torches that hung on chains from the stone walls; the torches were placed every few feet, casting weird, gyrating shadows when anyone passed through.

  The prison was a hellish maze. It was pierced by sudden tunnels that branched off unexpectedly and whoops!-look-out trapdoors and out-of-the-blue staircases chiseled into the walls, leading to unmarked locations.

  Behind every iron door there was, Violet knew, a prisoner. And every prisoner had a face and a story. But you wouldn’t know that human beings lurked behind those doors unless you were told, because no noise escaped from them. The thickness of the walls made the cells virtually soundproof. The prisoners might have been shouting or screaming or singing or calling for help, but no sound reached the hall. Violet could hear nothing beyond Chivers’s breathing and the occasional echo of a guard’s footsteps from far down the corridor.

  At last they came to Section 3447-A. Two more turns down two more corridors, and then a right and a left and another right, and there they were, standing in front of a cell. The iron door bore a nameplate inscribed PRISONER NUMBER 57681299-17-WZN.

  “I’ll send my assistant to take you back when you’re ready,” Chivers said. “Just text me.”

  “My console will work down here?”

  An amused smile cracked Chivers’s grim face. “No. It won’t. You’ll have to use this.” She drew a square, clunky console from the pocket of her tunic and handed it to Violet. An antenna sprouted from the top. Clearly it was a purpose-built device for use within the thick-walled prison. Violet had a fleeting, disturbing notion: If she hadn’t asked, would the warden have even told her that regular consoles had no signal capacity inside the mountain? Or would she have let Violet try and try and try to contact her office, to no avail, until finally—maybe a dozen years from now—Chivers sent somebody down to check on her, whereupon they’d find a rat-gnawed corpse? Poor girl never called, Chivers would say, explaining how Violet was left to perish under thousands of tons of stone and steel. We just thought her interview was running long.

  “Okay, thanks,” Violet said. No use picking a fight. She was close to her goal now.

  Chivers pulled open the cell door.

  “You’ve got a visitor,” she called out into the blackness, and then she stepped to one side, letting Violet enter.

  Violet felt the rush of chilly air as the cell door was slammed shut behind her. She heard the meaty, solid ka-thwunk sound as the bolt was pushed along the oiled groove and rammed home in the socket in the wall. She envisioned Chivers striding away from the cell, heading back down the corridor—but she couldn’t hear her footsteps. Outside noises did not exist anymore.

  There was no escape now.

  She switched on the flashlight app on the console. From a small, exceptionally dark corner of this small, exceptionally dark cell, she saw a figure emerge. He moved slowly, haltingly. He was slightly stooped, and as he approached her, Violet heard the air currents growing louder and stronger, as if they were on a rheostat.

  Paul used a HoverUp. He’d been injured many years ago, as a police officer working the streets of Old Earth, when a criminal’s slab gun had melted his spinal cord.

  “Violet,” he said. His voice was weary and flat, but not unwelcoming.

  “Hey, Paul.”

  Now his face was visible as he moved into the tiny circle of light provided by the console. She was shocked but had the good grace not to show it.

  Two years had passed since Violet had seen Paul Stark. She knew prison would alter him—but this much?

  His eyes had sunk so deep in his head that the pupils were only a rumor. He had always worn his graying hair cut
very short—he’d been a cop, like Kendall, and every cop she knew favored the bullet-headed look—but now the decision was out of his hands; his hair was gone, leaving a pale, flaking scalp. The rest of his skin was yellowish-brown. His body was thin and frail.

  “Nice to see you,” he said. With a tease in his voice, he added, “Actually, it’s nice to see anybody.”

  Violet smiled. Good to hear him make a joke.

  She should have visited before now. She knew that. Paul had fought on behalf of his deepest convictions, and while there was no question he had to be removed from society—he had violated New Earth laws and put many lives in jeopardy, including Ogden Crowley’s—his crimes were not motivated by greed or ambition or cruelty or vengeance. He and his fellow Rebels had believed the Intercept was a very bad thing, and they were determined to shut it down.

  She and Paul had started out on different sides but ended up on the same side. She admired him. And she knew he admired her, too.

  “I need your help,” she said.

  “Me? Help you?” He waved at the stone walls that rose all around him. “My ability to get things done is a little restricted these days. In case you haven’t noticed. So if there’s anybody around here who needs help—it’s me. Not you. Not the proprietor of Crowley & Associates Detective Agency, the pride of New Earth.” He smiled. The smile stripped off a bit of the sadness from his face.

  “How’d you hear about that?”

  “Information is a commodity in this place. Just like candy bars and cigarettes and burner consoles. We’re let out of our cells once a month for exercise. That’s when the bartering happens. You pay for what you need with whatever you have. And I pay for information. It’s what keeps me going. Just some general details about New Earth.”

  Violet didn’t ask how he paid for that information. Better not to know.

  “Well, I think you can help me,” she said. “Maybe a lot.” There were no chairs in the cell. Paul stood, but Violet sat down on the cold stone floor. She didn’t mind. She was too focused to be aware of any discomfort. “I’m working on a case right now that’s got me stumped. Totally stumped. And it’s an important one. It could affect the fate of New Earth.”