Mindwalker (29 page)

He has a point. Neural disrupters work by sending pulses of energy through the brain, temporarily scrambling the flow of information. They can do the same thing to machines, and machines don't recover the way people do. Still … “This seems risky.”

“We haven't got much choice. Set it to three. That should be enough to short out the collar without messing me up too bad.”

I wonder how he knows that. But then, Steven and the authorities don't get along. This probably isn't the first time he's been shot with an ND.

I gulp and place the barrel against the back of his collar. With my thumb, I turn off the safety, then slide the switch to setting 3. My hands won't stop shaking. “I—I don't know if I can do this.”

“Sure you can. Just pull the trigger.”

This is the only way, I remind myself. And I hate that collar. I hate what it does to him. I
want
to destroy it. But …

I stare at the back of Steven's neck. The skin looks soft. Vulnerable. In my head, I see people on the floor, jerking in convulsions, bloody foam running down their chins. I close
my eyes and breathe in and out, in and out. Finally, my hand steady, I press the muzzle firmly against the collar and pull the trigger.

There's an earsplitting
bzzzzt,
a vibration that shakes every nerve in my arm and leaves it numb.

Steven grunts. His limbs jerk, and his knees buckle.

I drop the ND just in time to catch him, looping my arms around his waist. He shivers and twitches as I half carry, half drag him over to a tree. I prop him against the trunk and crouch beside him. “Steven? Steven?” Frantic, I pat his cheek. He groans, his head lolling to one side. His eyes roll beneath his fluttering lids.

I frame his face between my hands. “Can you hear me?” When he doesn't respond, I carefully lift his eyelid with a thumb. At first, I see only bloodshot white. Then his eye rolls into view and slowly focuses on me. He smiles blearily. “Hi.”

I exhale a quiet breath of relief. “Hi.” I give him a smile, then hold up three fingers. “How many?”

He squints. “Purple.”

Well, it does take a while for the ND's effects to wear off completely. “You'll be fine.” I slip an arm around him, help him to his feet, and make my way toward the car, Steven stumbling along beside me.

“Can't feel my legs,” he mutters.

I glance down. He's standing, albeit wobbly. He's not paralyzed. “The feeling will return in a few minutes.” I ease him into the passenger's seat. “Just rest.”

“No time,” he murmurs. He tries to push himself up, to straighten his spine, then goes limp, groaning. “Okay,
now
I can feel my legs.” He rubs them.

“Pins and needles?”

“More like swords and daggers. Ugh.” He curses, squirming in his seat. “Almost forgot how much I hate getting shot by those things.”

“I can drive us for a while.”

“You sure?”

“I've driven manual before. With a simulator, not a real car, but still.” I learned the basics when I got my license. Everyone learns them, for those rare emergency situations when the car's computer fails. “Anyway, the autodrive isn't working now that the car's computer is fried, and you won't be able to take the wheel for an hour, at least. We can't afford to wait that long.”

Reluctantly, he nods.

I take a deep breath and grip the wheel. There's no telling how long that woman will stay unconscious, and once she's awake, she'll alert Dr. Swan. Even if they can't track us directly, IFEN has ways of locating people. If we're going to get to Canada before they find us, we have to move fast.

And then what? What, exactly, am I planning to do once we get there?

Well, we'll deal with that when the time comes.

I step on the gas. The car lurches forward. With a gasp, I slam on the brake.

“Easy.”

“I know.” Biting my lip, I tentatively lower my foot onto the gas again. The car moves forward in small jerks. I twist the wheel back and forth, trying to stay on the road, and the car veers from right to left. I nearly plow into a tree, fumble around, and shift into reverse. “Hang on … I've got this.”
I shift gears again and drive slowly forward, fingers locked around the wheel. This time, I manage to stay on the road, though I have to keep the car under thirty miles an hour.

Just when I'm starting to relax, there's a burst of movement in front of me. I gasp again and stomp on the brake. My mouth falls open as a group of sleek brown forms bound across the road. There are ten—no, twelve—of them. White-tailed deer. I've never seen one outside of pictures and videos.

Steven lets out a small, startled laugh. “Pretty wild, huh?”

“Yes. They are.” I watch them disappear into the trees, their tails flashing like white flags. So beautiful. Those creatures used to live all across the country. Now most people go their entire lives without having the chance to see one.

I feel a moment of gratitude that I could see them with Steven.

After an hour or so, Steven gets into the driver's seat. I've already run into two trees and a rock. I surrender the wheel with mingled relief and disappointment, but mostly relief. Driving manual is nerve-racking. How can anyone feel comfortable knowing they're controlling a four-thousand-pound weapon of death?

He's still a little shaky, but he's more or less back to normal. As for his collar, I have no idea whether it's still working or not. We'll just have to hope for the best.

We drive through the rest of the afternoon, making our way slowly but steadily north. Without the autodrive and the GPS, I have only a vague idea of where we are. There's a map folded in the glove compartment for emergencies, but I've never had to use it. I'm not sure I'd even know how to read one.

Steven, however, seems to know where he's going.

As the sun sinks lower, I watch him from the corner of my
eye. The fading daylight reflects off the pale plane of his cheek, tinting it orange, then gold, then soft pink, and finally a delicate purple-blue before the last wisp of twilight dims from the sky and there's only the pearly fairy light of the moon to guide us down the long, deserted stretch of country road.

Every so often, I start to think about that kiss, then forcefully pull my thoughts back to the present. It's too much to process. We need to focus on surviving.

I start to feel dizzy, and it occurs to me that it's been hours since that meager snack in the car. I grabbed the suitcase and the Gate when we fled, yet I didn't take the extra two seconds to grab our bag of fruit and cereal bars. Of course, I wasn't exactly thinking ahead at the moment. And now we're stuck in the middle of nowhere without food or water.

“So, what's the plan?” Steven says.

“Plan?”

“For getting into Canada. How are we going to cross the border without being seen?”

“Um …” He assumes I have a
plan
? Who does he think I am? Someone who knows what she's doing? “Honestly, it's a little hard to think right now. I'm very hungry.”

“I still like my barbecued roadkill idea.” One corner of his mouth twitches. “We passed a dead squirrel a mile back. I could try frying it with the ND.”

“I'll pass. How are you holding up?”

He tosses a few pills into his mouth. His eyes are bloodshot. “I'm getting all these weird floaters in my vision, like jellyfish or something, and there's this buzzing sound in my head. And I can't feel my feet.”

I shift my weight. “Do you want to take a nap in the backseat?”

“Nah. I'm good.”

“Seriously. I know I'm a terrible driver, but there are fewer obstacles out here, at least. Crashing a car in the middle of an empty field with no other vehicles in sight would be an impressive achievement.”

He makes a small, rough sound, not quite a chuckle. “Really, I'm okay. I've driven in worse shape than this.”

“You have?” I wonder what kind of situation would necessitate that. Do I even want to know?

“Yeah. Don't think I could sleep, anyway.”

It's almost midnight when we reach Wolf's Run, population sixteen hundred and fifty, according to the crooked sign.

Steven abruptly slams on the brakes. I lurch forward and grip the edges of the seat. “What's wrong?”

He stares out the windshield, fingers locked in a death grip around the steering wheel. Then he parks the car and gets out. I follow, bewildered.

The moon hangs over the horizon, enormous and yellow. The stars are so clear out here. You can see millions of them, it seems, like bright pinpricks against deep, velvety black. I never realized how many stars I was missing out on in Aura.

Steven stands, a breeze ruffling his hair. “I know this place,” he says.

The land slopes into a valley, and the town sprawls across the valley floor, bordered by woods on one side. It's the first time I've seen a town. It looks absurdly tiny, a short stretch of road lined by stores and a handful of squat little houses—though
even from here, I can see that the houses are more individualized than those in the city. Some have peaked roofs; some have flat roofs. Some are made of stone, others of wood. There's no standard design. Beyond the houses is a cluster of lights and machinery. A generator.

“St. Mary's is close,” he says. “In the woods just to the east. Those woods.” He points at the solid, dark wall of trees near the edge of town.

My heartbeat speeds. “Do you remember anything else?”

His brow furrows, and his eyes cloud over. “I remember …” A shudder runs through him.

I touch his shoulder. “Steven?”

His expression is distant, closed off. I wonder what's going on behind those pale eyes. After a moment, he gives his head a shake. “It's gone.”

“But something came back to you,” I say, “even if it was just for a moment. Your blocked memories must be close to the surface.”

“Yippee,” he mutters. He looks down at the town again and rubs a hand over his face. Then he sways on his feet and staggers to one side, as if he's drunk.

I manage to catch him before he falls over. “What's wrong?” I cup his cheek, tilting his face toward me. “Did another memory—”

He lets out a breathless laugh. “Nope. Just got dizzy.” He presses a hand over his stomach. “I've been running on adrenaline for the past few hours.”

“Oh.” I had a nap last night, but Steven—not counting that brief spell of unconsciousness—hasn't slept at all. And of course, we both need to eat. No wonder he can barely stand.

I sling an arm around him. “We can stop in town. They must have somewhere to buy food.” Of course, it would be safer to drive straight through—the sooner we can reach the border, the better—but there's no telling when we'll have another chance to stock up on supplies. And there is the small matter of us not having a plan or, therefore, any reasonable expectation of crossing over into Canada without being caught.

We get into the car and drive down the hill, past a ramshackle collection of barns and grain silos, past pens of grazing cows and sheep, into town. The highway runs through the center, but it seems to be the only real road. The rest are dirt and gravel. To our right is a small brick pub, seemingly the last place in town that's still open. The smell of meat, smoke, and grease drifts from within.

Ordinarily, that smell would probably repulse me, but my midsection voices an eager rumble. “Should we go in?” I ask.

Steven's gaze shifts back and forth, scanning our surroundings. “It's probably safe. We shouldn't stay long, though.”

I nod in agreement.

The pub's windows glow with yellow light, and there are a few cars parked in the lot, along with a motorcycle. I study the odd-looking contraption. Motorcycles are illegal in Aura, and have been for decades. And no wonder. The thing looks terribly unstable, like it might tip over at any second.

We get out of the car. It occurs to me that Steven still has a neural disrupter and a switchblade concealed in his leather coat. Just a week ago, the presence of weapons might have made me nervous. Now it makes me feel safer. I wonder what that says about me.

We approach the small door, and I hesitate outside. Vague
stereotypes about townspeople float through my mind—they're illiterate, violent, crude, et cetera. Or at least that seems to be the general consensus, though most people have never actually visited a town, just traveled from city to city. At best, the town dwellers are seen as quaint yokels with charming local customs but no idea how the real world works. At worst, they're portrayed as a bunch of anarchic thugs from the dark, barbaric past. Who are they, really?

I suppose we're about to find out. I push open the door. The hinges squeal like small animals being tortured.

The place is dimly lit and deserted, save for the bartender and a few very old men sitting in a corner playing cards. Their clothes are heavy and rough, mud-stained jeans and flannel shirts. Music plays—an ancient, crackling recording. Every surface seems to be stained deeply with several layers of grease and smoke, as if they're part of the wood itself. A deer head stares down at us with glassy eyes, its antlers spread out like tree branches. At the sight of it, I flinch. Is that
real
?