Mindwalker (19 page)

“Oh no,” Steven says. “I'm going in with you.”

“Steven …”

“After what he did, you think I'm leaving you alone with him? I don't trust him.”

I meet his gaze and set my lips into a firm line. “Ian's not dangerous. And I need to handle this on my own.”

His eyes flash, and I see him getting ready to argue.

I reach out and place a hand on his arm, and he freezes. “Steven,” I say again, more quietly, “something happened to Ian. He went through a very painful experience, and it's affecting him more deeply than I expected it to. I need to have a serious talk with him, and I can't do it with you hovering over my shoulder and glaring lasers at him the whole time.”

A muscle in Steven's jaw twitches. “Fine. I'll wait ten minutes. If it takes any longer than that, I'm coming in.”

“I don't know how long it will take,” I say, annoyance
creeping into my tone. “And what are you planning to do after ten minutes? Break down the door?”

“If I have to.”

I roll my eyes. He's determined to be dramatic about this. “Look, what if you come into the apartment with me and wait just inside the door? Ian and I can talk in the other room, so we'll still have some privacy, but you'll be close by.”

He pauses—then gives a single sharp nod.

We walk in through the wide double glass doors of the lobby and take the elevator up to the top floor. When the doors slide open, Ian's in the living room, sitting on the couch. At the sight of Steven, he tenses. “It's all right,” I say. “He's just going to wait here.”

Steven and Ian stare at each other, and Steven narrows his eyes. I can almost hear the testosterone crackling in the air between them. I suppress a sigh.

Then, unexpectedly, Ian smiles. It looks real—open and warm, the way he used to smile so often—though I can still see the lines of fatigue around his eyes. “Anyone want coffee? I've got a pot brewing.”

Steven blinks, then frowns, eyebrows scrunching together. He wrinkles his nose, as if sniffing for a trap. “Sure,” he mumbles, surprising me.

Ian glances at me. “No thank you,” I reply. Coffee's too bitter for my taste.

Ian goes into the kitchen and returns with two steaming mugs. He hands one to Steven, who examines it as if it might be poisoned, then takes a cautious sip.

“I never really introduced myself, did I?” Ian asks. He extends a hand. “Ian Wellick.”

Steven hangs back, peering at Ian's outstretched hand. Then he clasps it and gives it a brief, hard shake. “Steven Bent.” He lets go and stuffs his hand in his pocket. “Sorry for nearly strangling you.”

“Sorry for nearly stabbing you.” He smiles again and takes a sip from his mug. “So.” He turns to face me. “You need some Lucid?”

I nod.

He steers me through a door into a bedroom—his mother's, judging from the diamond necklaces sparkling on the dresser and the thin black gown hanging up on the closet door. “Should we be in here?” I ask nervously.

“It's fine.” He sets his coffee on the dresser. “She's gone for the rest of the week.”

“Are you sure? I don't want to get you in trouble. Will she notice if some of her supplies go missing?”

“I doubt it. She's got other stuff on her mind right now.” He opens a drawer and rummages through the contents. Then he withdraws a shiny black compact and flips it open.

I lean forward. Inside, I see three compartments, each containing a single capsule—a shiny white circle with a tiny cartoon image printed on the front. One has a blue rabbit, one a smiling mushroom. On the third is the head of a snarling Chinese dragon.

He snaps the compact shut. “So, you going to tell me about this blocked memory, or what?”

I hesitate. “It's very personal. It involves something that happened to Steven when he was a child—a trauma. I don't know if he'd want me going into detail.”

Ian's fingers curl around the compact. “You know, I looked up his name earlier today.” His gaze flicks away. “I'd ask why he
wanted
to remember something like that, but I don't think you'd answer.” A muscle in his jaw tightens, then loosens. He hands the compact to me. “Be careful with this stuff. You remember that study I mentioned? With one of the subjects, they messed up the dosing, gave him too much. He flipped out and tried to jump off a building. They stopped him, luckily. Afterward, he couldn't remember
why
he'd done it.”

I fidget nervously. “Is there anything safer that could achieve the same result?”

“No.”

I'm starting to have second thoughts about this. But I'm here. The pills are within reach. Later, I can talk to Steven and decide whether he actually wants to take them. “So how can I make sure that doesn't happen to Steven?”

“Space out the pills,” Ian says. “Don't take more than one within twenty-four hours. Personally, I would start with the blue bunny. Try the mushroom only if that doesn't do it for you. The dragon—well, let's call that a last resort.”

I rub my thumb over the compact's smooth, glossy surface. “Have you ever taken Lucid?”

“No, but my mom took a blue bunny once. While she was studying its effects, she decided to sample the wares.” He digs in the drawer again, pulls a small notepad out, and flips through the pages. “She told me she was planning to write down the whole experience—you know, for science—but this was all she got.” He opens the notebook to a page on which she's scrawled:

ROSEBUSHES BEHIND MY OLD HOUSE A BOWL OF
BUTTER-BROWN ICE CREAM
.

And several inches below that, in a shakier hand:

GREEN FOAM EXPLODING OUT OF MY ANUS
.

Oh dear.

“I guess she started hallucinating at some point,” he says. “Like I said, it makes you trip.”

“Then how do you tell the real memories from the hallucinations?”

He shrugs. “Does it matter?”

“Well, of course. Hallucinations are just products of the brain. They don't mean anything.”

“I wouldn't be so sure about that.” His eyes lose focus. “Neurologically, there's no difference between a real and an imagined experience. In a way, it doesn't matter if something actually happened to you or not. On the inside, it's all the same.” He blinks a few times and gives his head a shake, as if coming back to the moment. “By the way, make sure you don't lose these pills. They're the last ones I have, and I don't know if I'll be able to get more.”

I sit on the edge of the bed, holding the compact and studying Ian. He seems to be in control of himself. That unnerving, half-crazed look no longer haunts his eyes. But his face is thinner than usual, and his lips are cracked and chapped. “What happened during that last immersion session?” I ask quietly.

He doesn't respond.

I continue, keeping my tone calm and gentle. “I know
it was a sexual assault, and those are especially hard to deal with. But no client's ever affected you like this. You've always been the strong one—strong enough to deal with the things I couldn't. I don't know what you went through this time, but it must have been terrible.”

His shoulders slump, and he chuckles hoarsely. “Strong. Yeah, I guess that's how I wanted you to see it.” He shakes his head and gives me the most mirthless smile I've ever seen. “The truth is, I've been cheating.”

“Cheating?”

He lowers his head and splays his long fingers over his scalp, cradling his head in his hands. “I've been getting my own memories erased.”

My eyes widen. “After every client?”

“Not
every
client. Just the really bad ones.”

The words leave me dazed, baffled. It never even occurred to me that we could choose to forget our own Mindwalking experiences, that we could erase the things we see in others' minds. Memory modification is not something to be done lightly; there's always some risk. The idea of going through it multiple times is mind-boggling. “They let you do that?”

“It's not encouraged. But it's possible. I did it the first time out of sheer desperation, and then it sort of turned into a habit. Not that I remember much now, but apparently I kept going back to Dr. Swan. Kept begging him. I asked him not to tell anyone, so he didn't.” His mouth twists in a bitter smile. “Everyone thought I was so resilient. They were all so impressed by how many tough clients I could take on without cracking.” He lets out a hollow laugh. “Of course, I should've known it couldn't go on forever. Last time, when I went in to
get my head cleaned out, he told me that I had to stop. That if I kept doing this, I'd damage myself. There's only so many times you can modify a person's memories before his brain turns to mush. So now I'm stuck with it.” He stares at the wall, as if he can't bring himself to look at me. “It felt like being ripped open.”

“Ian …” The words die in my throat. What can I possibly say?

He meets my eyes. “You've never erased any of the memories, have you? From the immersion sessions, I mean.”

“No.” My voice sounds very small. I sit on the edge of the bed, clutching the compact.

He presses the heels of his hands against his closed eyelids. “I don't know how you can take it. How you can live with all that pain, day after day.”

I swallow, my throat tight. “I couldn't, though. The first time I went through what you did, I ended up in the psych ward for a week.”

“But you recovered. You went back on the job. I—I don't know if I can keep doing it, Lain. Look at me.” He lowers his hands and watches them tremble. “Look what I've become. I can't sleep. Can't eat. My grades are already slipping. My life's falling apart.”

I tuck the compact into my coat pocket, rise from the bed, walk over to him, and take his hands in mine. “Have you told anyone?” I ask. “Your mother, at least?”

His Adam's apple bobs up and down. “I
can't
tell her. She—she's in this special, weeklong intensive therapy program. After they caught her dipping into some of the drugs at work, they scanned her, and she came up a Two. If she can't get her
Type back up, she'll lose her job, and she's already got a lot of debt and other stuff that I didn't know about until now.” Tears glint at the corners of his eyes. “I don't know what's going to happen to us.”

“Oh, Ian.” Everything inside me aches. All this time, I've been so worried about Steven, I've barely thought about what Ian's going through. I just assumed he'd be okay, the way he always is. “I'm sorry.”

He squeezes his eyes shut. “I'm scared, Lain.”

I put my arms around him.

He starts to tense up, then goes limp against me. “I must seem so pathetic to you,” he whispers. “So weak.”

“You're not weak.” I tighten my embrace. “It's all right. You can let go.”

His chest hitches once, twice. Then he lets out a sound somewhere between a moan and a sob, the sound of a dying animal. He crumples to the floor, like his legs have been cut out from under him. We both go down.

The door bangs open. Steven stands there, his eyes wild. “Lain, I heard—” He freezes. I sit in the corner, rocking Ian back and forth as he cries softly against my shoulder.

Steven and I are silent during the ride home. He doesn't ask about what happened, and I don't tell him. My shirt is still wet with Ian's tears, and it occurs to me that in the span of twenty-four hours, two boys have broken down in my arms. I'm starting to wonder if my body emits some pheromone that attracts emotionally damaged males.

Once Ian got ahold of himself, we talked some more. He told me not to worry, that he'd be okay, that he and his mom had some money in savings and it would be enough to float them until she found another job. He claimed, too, that he'd work on getting his own mental state under control. That he was just tired, just overwhelmed. I don't know whether to believe him.

I pull out the compact and flip it open. “Here it is.”

“This is Lucid?” Steven picks up the blue bunny pill. “What do these pictures mean?”

“I guess that's how they mark the different dosages. Ian said to start with the bunny.”

“What else did he say?”

“That it might make you hallucinate.”

“So how will we know if what we're seeing is a memory or a hallucination?”

“I asked Ian the same question. He didn't have an answer.” I give Steven a tiny smile. “But if the giant purple hummingbirds chasing you start to sparkle, it's probably a safe bet that you're hallucinating.” I try to ignore the tightness in my stomach, the way my heart is trying to crack through my ribs. “Have you ever taken something like this before?”

“No. I may be a pill popper, but I tend to stay away from psychedelics. The inside of my head is not a fun place to be.”

My doubts flare up again. “You know, this could be dangerous. Ian said there was a study, and one of the subjects tried to jump off a building.”