Head Rush (23 page)

“Hey, we got a disillusionist over there!” The telepath points the chainsaw at Simon. “That one’s a disillusionist! Heard it before he started skunking. Wanting to whammy us.”

“Disillusionists are a myth.” Vanderhook eyes Simon. “Yes? No? Maybe so? It doesn’t matter. Either way, this thing ends bloody.”

Trinh screams.

“Shut up and get over to the couch!” he yells.

She complies, a look of shock on her face.

“You all stay right there.”

The boy whimpers as Vanderhook tightens his grip, staring at Trinh—his grandmother, I’m guessing.

“Trade me for the boy,” Packard says. “Let the boy go and I’ll come along with you.”

“We really only need part of you,” Vanderhook says.

“Don’t!” I grab Packard’s hand, but he pulls away, with a sly sideways glance and walks toward Vanderhook.

“Stop!” Vanderhook says suddenly. “Go to him, not me.” Vanderhook nods his head at the chainsaw-wielding telepath, but as soon as Packard changes direction, Vanderhook changes his mind. “Stop! That doesn’t work out either.” Warily he watches Packard, who waits in front of the platforms where Simon and Ez had stood. “What are you doing?” he barks.

“Standing where you told me to stop,” Packard says.

“Everyone stay where they are.” Vanderhook says, then he pauses, getting impressions—waves—from the future. I heard a short-term prognosticator explain it that way. “Packard lies down.”

Packard kneels.

“All the way.”

“Not until you release the boy,” Packard says.

“We’ll release the boy once we cut your head off.”

My fear surges. I think about lunging, but the boy… I consider zinging Vanderhook, but then I decide it’s the chainsaw guy I should zing. Maybe go at him from the back. The room is eerily silent, except for my pulse,
whoosh
ing in my ears.

Vanderhook looks over at me. “You make trouble in this scenario. I want you down too.”

“What do you mean?” I sidle nearer to Packard.

“No. In the other corner,” Vanderhook says. “You can’t be by him. You’re a highcap or…” he glances at his telepath pal, then back at me. “Doesn’t matter. Get over there with the others.” Vanderhook tightens his arm around the boy, who cries out.

“Okay, okay.” I back off.

How can we win against this guy? He can read the near future, the instant events are set in motion. Whatever I commit to doing, he’ll know.

I take my time getting over there. Maybe zinging the guy would have worked—is that what he saw? Fear trumps most weapons.

Over by the couch, Ez holds Trinh, who sobs quietly. Simon, Shelby, and Jordan stand by. Do they have a plan? I don’t. Hank keeps reading the Vindalese papers, scribbling notes, like he’s in study hall or something. Where does Simon get these people?

“It’s a Small World” plays  senselessly and somewhat ironically in my mind.

“There’s no chip in your neck, you know.” I’m stalling, hoping to distract them. “It’s a memory revision. A fiction. You’ve been revised.”

“Shut up.” Vanderhook says.

“Let the boy go,” Packard says. “It’s my head you want. Get these people out of here and it’ll be just us. You have a chainsaw and a gun. You’re in control.”

“We don’t make it two feet out the door in that scenario. Wait—” Vanderhook pauses, then he jerks his head to the side. “Maybe…” He stops, tilts it a different way, as if he’s getting a new wave of information. “You wouldn’t,” he says to Packard.

Packard waits.

“Stop that! You’re forming intentions you don’t intend!”

Packard gives him an innocent look that tells me he’s anything but innocent.

I gasp as Vanderhook turns the gun to Packard “We can chop off a dead man’s head easy as a live one’s.” But then he tenses and lurches the gun back onto the boy. What did he see? “Stop it!” Vanderhook says. “I know what you’re doing!”

“Don’t need him dead to chop off the head.” The telepath pulls the chainsaw cord. Vanderhook stares mutely at Packard as a throaty roar fills the room. I’m so focused on the chainsaw I don’t see Vanderhook push the boy away, but the next thing I know, the boy’s stumbling across the floor. Shots boom out, and Vanderhook’s a blur heading into the front hall—spooked by whatever he saw. Which leaves his partner holding a chainsaw—it’s him and the chainsaw against nine people.

Packard’s up with a metal folding chair, and he’s stalking toward the man. “Drop the saw!”

Simon has a chair too; he comes at the telepath from the other side, still wearing his top hat and belt-and-chain shirt.

The man pulls the trigger to start up the chainsaw part, making the buzz of the giant, angrily vibrating thing more shrill.

Trinh rushes around the perimeter of the room and pulls the boy into her arms.

Shelby and Ez have crept to the wall behind the chainsaw-wielding telepath. Nobody wants to get close to him. Suddenly the man throws the entire buzzing, shaking behemoth at Packard, narrowly missing him, and spins to run out, crashing right into Shelby. He grabs her hair and flings an arm around her neck, as if to use her for a human shield, backing toward the door.

And then, all at once, his angry face softens. It looks as if he’s thought of something disturbing. His shoulders droop—his whole body droops—until he’s practically leaning on her. “Fuck it,” he says.

She wrenches away from him, triumphant, majestic. “Yes, that is right, fuck it.” There’s a gleam in her eye. She’s glorying.

The man sits cross-legged on the floor. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

She zinged him, of course—zinged all her grim hopelessness into him. He picks at the carpet. I have a new respect for Shelby’s weaponized grimness—it really is a destabilizing force. Meanwhile, she’s free of her darkness for at least an hour, feeling normal for once, or likely, beyond normal. Beyond happy, beyond powerful.

“Let’s get out of here,” Simon says. “Vanderhook’s coming back. He’ll keep initiating and testing new attacks until he hits one with a successful future.”

“Gimme one more sec,” Hank says, scribbling furiously.

Simon turns to Packard. “You really fucked him up. Forming crazy intentions you didn’t intend? How
do
you form intentions you don’t intend?”

“Oh, I intended them, that’s the trick,” Packard says. “It takes a massive inner shift—rearranging the packing material of your personality. Hard to hold something like that.”

Unless you have the highcap psycho-sight, I suppose.

“Done.” Hank slaps the sheaf of papers down next to him on the couch and holds out his hand to Simon. “That’ll be three hundred bucks.”

Shelby grabs the papers, scans with a pleasant expression. “Anything of Sophia Sidway?”

“In there somewhere,” Hank says, counting the money Simon gave him. “There’s no word for Sophia in Vindalese, but a phonetic spelling like that showed up. Near the end.”

Shelby shuffles through. “Here! With address.” She shows it to Packard.

“Good. You and Justine and I can go find Sophia—she may be able to give us something for leverage. Simon, you do some cleanup and, you know, manage things.” He nods his head at the far corner where Trinh and the boy huddle. “After that, maybe you three can settle our glum friend in with Mr. Bricks.” In the railcar with the Brick Slinger, he means.

Shelby suggests meeting at Mongolian Delites after that.

“Not me,” Packard says.

“Otto and I have our rendezvous with Dad,” I say.

Packard gives me a look out the corner of his eye. Still not a fan of that plan.

Chapter Thirteen

Packard and I ride in the back seat of Shelby’s car on the way to the North Midcity apartment complex where Sophia’s imprisoned—according to Hank’s translations, anyway. Shelby drives quickly and expertly; we all tend to be better drivers when we’re glorying.

I’m glad to finally get the chance to treat Packard’s shoulder wound, but I’m not so glad when I peel back his shirt.

“This…this is full of…” I pat the area with an antibacterial pad, then just resort to wiping it. “Sludge.”

“Quite some bedside manner.”

I don’t tell him that this was my positive spin on things, commenting on the sludge aspect instead of the fact that the sludge could be laden with anything from flesh-eating bacteria and E. coli to encephalitis strains, and it has been soaking into his open gash
all this time
. It was good that the field bandage I’d made stopped the bleeding, but that same bandage held the Tanglelands Tea in place. I go through wipe after wipe, patting the gash and thoroughly scrubbing his entire arm and shoulder, as though getting the whole area insanely clean will somehow reverse things. I scrub and scrub. I’m so worried.

“You trying to amputate my bicep with those wipes?”

I put it aside. “No.” I grab a new wipe and dip it in some salve. “It’s a good thing I got this salve,” I say. “This salve is amazing. It will fight anything.”

“Excellent.” He kisses the top of my head.

Fight
anything. I don’t say win, but of course Packard doesn’t pick up on that; only a hypochondriac would. It’s not that I want to deceive him, but it’s important that he believe the treatment will work; the placebo effect cannot be overstated in cases like these. At least it’s not red or inflamed; that’s a good sign, but still, I’m so worried—it’s unsettling to think of him as vulnerable. I wrap new gauze around the area, then I press my lips to his pale, firm, chemical-smelling shoulder, just above the bright, white bandage.

I don’t want to leave him, either.

I look up to find him watching me; he slides his hand around the back of my head and kisses me. I stretch up to him, dragging my lips against the seam of his until they open, hot and hungry. My heart races as I taste him, melt into him.

His teeth graze my lips like a dark promise, hands sliding secretly under my coat.

Shelby clears her throat. “We are there.”

Sophia is imprisoned on the top-floor community room of a mostly vacant 1970s building. A sign on the door says “Closed Until Further Notice”. But from the cobwebby condition of the hall and the dust on the party room sign-up sheet, no Closed sign is needed; it was 1994 when it was last reserved. Probably 1993 when it was last cleaned.

I open the door and pass right through the force field. Otto has imprisoned her with low security, like our friends at the fun house.

I could swear Sophia looks happy and relieved when we walk in, but then she shakes it all off, acting all tough girl. “Well, looky what the cat dragged in,” she says, standing up unsteadily from a green-and-orange-plaid couch. She strolls toward us with a challenging gaze in her glassy eyes. The woman who invaded my mind, stole my memory.

I beeline to her, grab her lapels, and push her up against the dark-paneled wall. “Did Otto hold my eyes open?” I ask.

“Justine—” Packard says.

“I want to know!”

“He didn’t hold your eyes open. I did. Otto held your arms; he held you still.”

A queasy feeling comes over me. “And I saw it? I saw him shoot Avery?”

“Seems so,” she says. Her breath is boozy, and faint dark lines of mascara drool track down her cheeks. I guess she’s been crying, though you wouldn’t know it from the proud, smug look she’s got on her face now. Even in here, she’s wearing one of her crisp, beige safari-looking outfits.

“Did
you
see it?”

“Nah. I came after.”

I want more. More than this.

“Hey.” A hand on my shoulder. Packard pulls me off and I let him, regarding Sophia with disgust, avoiding her eyes.

She straightens her jacket.

“We need her sane,” he says.

“That stench alone is going to drive me crazy,” she says. “You guys been down in the Tangerlands again?” She doesn’t get the word quite right.

Shelby comes and links her arm in mine, surveying the moth-eaten, mood-lit 1970s-era party room Sophia’s imprisoned in. A half-full bottle of brandy stands on the counter. “You deserve worse. However, this step goes in right direction. Is right start.”

I give Sophia a hot, hateful look. “You’re lucky Shelby’s glorying.”

“I’m not the only lucky one here.” She squints at Packard. “Glad to see you’re alive.”

Packard nods.

“Gotta say, accommodations on the side of evil were way better.” In the new light you can really see her puffy eyes, her red nose; she’s definitely been crying. Her proud look can’t erase those things. “And you busted the revise. Out of professional curiosity, Justine, was it the quality of the replaced memory, or was it emotional nonalignment?”

Crying or not, I want to slap her. I want her to act more sorry.

“Never mind.” She waves her hand, like she’s drying nail polish. “Don’t tell me. It doesn’t matter. I’m done with revision. I deserve this, and worse. I know. God, look at this place. Hey! I need you to get a message to someone. I know you don’t owe me—”

“What? What else happened that day on the waterfront?”

Sophia picks up her glass and sips with a pinched look on her face. Maybe if I had to sit in here forever, I’d be drinking too. “You were happy to see me for once, I’ll tell you that. You were fighting with Otto when I walked up. Avery dead on the rocks. You told me Otto shot him.”

“Then what?”

She swirls the liquid. “I said,
Maybe he shouldn’t have had that antihighcap chip implanted in him.
” I feel Shelby tense at this. Sophia looks at her. “I’m not proud of that. I know that following orders isn’t a decent excuse.”

“Then don’t use it,” Packard says.

“Do you have any idea what you took?” I snap. “Do you even care?”

“I don’t review the memories, my friend, I just revise them. Look…” She sits, clumsily crossing one leg over the other. “I took something from all of you and I’m sorry for it, okay? I really am. I’m telling you straight. Hell, I lost something too. Have you supersleuths detected that I’m stuck in here, likely forever?” She stares into her glass. “Whatever,” she adds. I get the feeling she says that to herself a lot.

“I tried to make it right, afterwards,” she continues after a bit. “I know that’s no decent excuse, but I wanted to warn you. I was starting a new life with somebody, and I left him in a hospital bed especially to go and warn you.” She raises her glass. “As you can see, Shelby, I got detained on the way to our fateful meeting. Otto had a telepath checking on me, and he knew I’d turned against his whole…” She waves her other hand to indicate Otto’s plan. His vision. His everything, I suppose.