Dark Mind Rising
Page 23
“He said, ‘Violet doesn’t like being pushed around. You know that you’ll be a great assistant—and soon, a lot more—and I know that you’ll be a great assistant. But Violet doesn’t know it yet. And if she focuses on the fact that I insisted she hire you, she never will know it. She’s a wonderful young woman, but she’s also stubborn. Holds a grudge. So you’ve got to take her mind off the circumstances of your hiring, or she’ll never see past it.’ And I said, ‘How in the world can I do that, President Crowley?’ And he said, ‘Make her mad. Make her mad about something else—something unimportant, but irritating. She’ll be so busy resenting you for the small thing that she’ll forget to resent you for the big one. Before you know it, you’ll be indispensable. Then it won’t matter anymore.’”
Violet felt her irritation melt away. She laughed. “Sounds like my dad.” She thought about it. “So he really said I was stubborn?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I guess it all worked out. But can we stop the Vi business now?”
“Absolutely. I don’t like it, either.”
Violet moved on to more serious matters.
“So how’s your brother doing?”
“Rodney still can’t talk about Sara,” Jonetta said. “I mean, her death hit him hard, sure. But when he found out the rest of it—how Sara used him to get the information she needed to reboot the Intercept—he was totally devastated. The idea that he was involved in all those deaths. Even accidentally. It was shocking.”
“There’s a lot of shock to go around.”
“Yeah. He’ll be okay, though. He’s a good guy. And strong. Hey, one more thing.”
“What?”
Jonetta looked a little sheepish.
“Um,” she said.
“Um?”
“Um, do you happen to know if Tin Man is dating anybody?”
Of all the things Jonetta might have asked her, that question would not have been in the top 250.
“No clue,” Violet said.
“Okay. Well.”
Jonetta returned to sorting the bills, shaking her head and rolling her eyes each time she came across one that featured an unbelievably ginormous total. Violet watched her for a minute or so. Then her thoughts began to drift—away from Jonetta, away from unpaid bills, away from this office and all of her responsibilities, away from New Earth itself.
She was thinking about the crazy-cold, storm-stunned night on Old Earth and how she had felt when she saw Rez’s face as she and her friends were huddled, shivering and hopeless, upon the dark ridge.
Could she be falling in love with Steve Reznik? The same guy she’d totally rejected two years ago? It seemed … well, impossible.
He was weird, for one thing. He was on parole for a serious crime, for another. He barely talked unless the subject was computers. He wasn’t handsome—not the way that Kendall was handsome. He was … he was Rez. He was just himself.
Yet when she thought about him, she got that funny flipping feeling in her stomach.
She looked down at the crook of her left elbow, at the small blue mark. What a relief it was to see … nothing. No spark, no flash.
And that, of course, was because the Intercept was gone. But she could tell herself that it was for a different reason:
Because she didn’t feel anything.
Right?
Well …
She shook her head. This was ridiculous. Rez lived on Old Earth. He wasn’t even around here. Nothing could happen between them even if she did want it to … which she didn’t. Of course not.
Her console chirped. The ringtone told her it was Rez, calling from Old Earth. Calling her personally, not through the office console as he usually did. And Violet was aware once again of that flipping sensation in the pit of her stomach. Was she getting the flu?
Yeah. Had to be it.
She touched the rising orange jewel. His face materialized on her screen, and the stomach-flipping thing intensified.
“Rez,” she said. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m okay,” he said. “I wanted to tell you that they shaved a few months off my parole, so I’ll be back up to New Earth sooner than I expected. But that’s not the only reason I called.”
She waited. Her belly had settled down, so it definitely wasn’t the flu.
But maybe that was bad news, not good. As Shura had pointed out two years ago when Violet was crushed out on Danny, “The flu, I can maybe cure. Being in love? Um, not so much.”
Love? Where did that come from?
“Here’s the thing,” Rez was saying. “I’ve been thinking. As long as the Intercept’s back up again, why don’t we maybe use it a little? Run it on a limited basis? The chips are already in place. Instead of collecting emotions from everybody, I can rig it to just pick up negative feelings. Feelings that lead to crimes. Greed, rage, hate, lust, whatever. Just a trial run. It’ll really help the cops. They’re swamped these days, and this could be the answer.”
She knew she needed to pay attention to the rest of what he was saying, but Violet’s mind was stuck on lust. She shook her head. Okay, focus.
“What are you taking about?” she said. “After what we’ve been through, I can’t believe this.”
“Hold on. I’ve given it a ton of thought.” Rez’s voice crackled with excitement. His eyes gleamed with hopefulness.
She understood why he was proposing it. This was a fresh hurdle for him, a chance to work on something that was beyond his current skill level—which was, she knew, what Rez loved best in all the world. An intellectual challenge. And it also might help him take his mind off the loss of his little sister.
“If it works,” he went on, “we’ll never have to deal with anybody like Sara again. We’ll pick up on the feelings that lead to the crimes—before the crimes even happen. And if the crimes do happen, we’ll have the emotions to take down the criminals. Just send ’em right back into the bad guy’s brain. I’ll coordinate with Kendall. It’ll be official. We can make this happen. What do you say?”
“I say no.”
He seemed a little taken aback. “Is that really your only response?”
“Wait. Let me rephrase. Hell no.”
His face crinkled up as a consequence of a deep frown.
“I thought you’d have an open mind about it,” he muttered.
“Come on, Rez. I’m still getting over the frostbite in my hands and feet,” Violet said. “And I still have to sit down with Charlotte Bainbridge and explain all of this to her—in more than just bullet points. Do you seriously want to play around with the very device that basically killed her daughter?” And your sister, too, she wanted to add but didn’t because it seemed like a cheap shot.
“We’re missing a golden opportunity.” He sounded sullen and discouraged. The brooding frown still owned his face. “The research possibilities are—”
“No, Rez. That’s final. And if you’ve got any bright ideas about doing it anyway, you know that Kendall will be monitoring all the channels, all the frequencies, all the time. If somebody so much as gets a dab of peanut butter on a computer keyboard, Kendall will know about it and investigate it. Just warning you.”
“Fine. See you around, Violet.” He clicked off the console. He’d wanted to sound snippy, she knew, and he had succeeded.
Well, he would get over it. She was used to Rez being mad at her. They had clashed a lot in those days back at Protocol Hall when they’d monitored the Intercept together, and they always made up. Because Rez never stayed upset. Or discouraged. He was the kind of guy who pushed and pushed, and if he didn’t find a way to get what he wanted right away, he’d try another way, and then another, and another. Usually it was some kind of computer breakthrough he was after. Some new horizon of technology.
Violet turned around in her chair to look out her office window. New Earth sparkled in the sunshine of a spectacular day.
The only thing that made it less than perfect was a small, nagging worry.
Rez neve
r gave up. And he had his eye, once again, on the Intercept.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Climbing a roller-coaster track on a stormy night—not in a car but on foot, all by yourself, bent over, grabbing at the rails—while the fate of the world hangs in the balance: That, we decided, is just about the most exciting thing ever.
It was during a car ride to Dairy Queen one summer day that Thomas King, 13; Catherine King, 9; Elizabeth Clare King, 7; and I first came up with the roller-coaster-at-midnight scenario. (You’ll be glad to know that I was driving.) Thanks to my three friends for helping me envision what became a pivotal moment in this book.
I am also grateful to Ali Fisher, my deft, funny, and imaginative editor at Tor; and Lisa Gallagher, wise agent and dear friend.
by Julia Keller
THE DARK INTERCEPT TRILOGY FOR TEENS
The Dark Intercept
Dark Mind Rising
Dark Star Calling (forthcoming)
THE BELL ELKINS SERIES FOR ADULTS
A Killing in the Hills
Bitter River
Summer of the Dead
Last Ragged Breath
Sorrow Road
Fast Falls the Night
Bone on Bone
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JULIA KELLER, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and former cultural critic at the Chicago Tribune, is the author of many books for adults and young readers, including A Killing in the Hills, the first book in the Bell Elkins series and winner of the Barry Award for Best First Novel, and The Dark Intercept. Keller has a Ph.D. in English literature from the Ohio State University and was awarded Harvard University’s Nieman Fellowship. She was born in West Virginia and lives in Ohio.
Visit her online at JuliaKeller.net, or sign up for email updates here.
Facebook.com/julia.keller.writer
Twitter: @DarkIntercept
Goodreads: Julia Keller
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One
1. A Twitch in Time
2. Crowley & Associates, At Your Service
3. The Dare
4. Home Is Calling
5. TAP
6. Rez’s Request
7. Countdown
8. Ambush
9. Shura Lu, M.D.
10. Wendell’s End
11. Statute No. 293874-A-392876
12. At the Station
13. Redshift
14. Pattern Recognition
15. Trigger-Trap
16. Starbridge
17. Delia
18. Secrets and Lies
19. The Peanut Butter Principle
20. Olde Earth World
21. A Last Glimpse
22. Epiphany
Part Two
23. Gray Area
24. Prisoner Number 57681299-17-WZN
25. Dance Fever
26. Oliver’s Final Ride
27. Hangover City
28. The Key to Everything
29. Rodney to the Rescue
30. Peril in the Park
31. Confession
Part Three
32. Into the Storm
33. Sara’s Revenge
34. Ride at Your Own Risk
35. Rachel’s Star
Acknowledgments
By Julia Keller
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DARK MIND RISING
Copyright © 2018 by Julia Keller
All rights reserved.
A Tor Teen Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-8765-3 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7653-8766-0 (ebook)
eISBN 9780765387660
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First Edition: November 2018