Mindwalker (5 page)

My hands are balled into tight fists in my lap. I resist the urge to say,
I'm not a child.

He continues: “Your father would be very proud of you. But he also wouldn't want you to endanger your own welfare.”

My nails dig into my palms, but I manage to keep my expression composed. I know what's going on here. The cracks in my psyche are starting to show, and he's worried about my mental stability. I can't blame him, really. After Father's death, I plunged into a deep depression that lasted for months. But it was my training, my purpose, that gave me the strength to claw my way back to stability. I won't show him any weakness, any glimmer of emotion.

I won't let him take my purpose away.

“I understand,” I reply coolly. “But I'm fine. Really.”

He leans back in his chair, studying me. “You know, most trainees receive Conditioning from time to time. There's no shame in needing help. If anything
is
bothering you, you can come to me. Please remember that.”

I exhale softly. I promised myself, when I started my training, that I wouldn't rely on medical treatments unless I truly needed to. Maybe it's reckless, but I want to prove that I can handle this on my own. “Thank you.” I start to stand.

“There is one more thing,” he says, and I freeze. His tone is casual, but the look in his eyes is suddenly sharp and intent.
“Yesterday, after school, you were seen talking to a young man. Steven Bent.”

I sit down. The inside of my chest suddenly feels hollow. How did he find out about that so quickly? Was I seen leaving the school with Steven? “Yes,” I reply, as calmly as I can, and remind myself that I've done nothing wrong. Yet.

“I want you to stay away from that boy.” His voice is flat. It's an order, plain and simple.

My jaw drops. It takes me a moment to find my voice. “Why?”

“Because …” He stops, breathing in slowly, as if reminding himself to be patient. “Because it would be better for you not to get involved with someone like him.”

“That's not an explanation.”

“It's complicated. I can't share all the details.”

My teeth grind together. Before I can stop myself, the words burst out of me. “Why is everyone against Steven? What did he do?”

His face tenses. He averts his gaze, and a shadow passes over his expression. “Please understand, it's not that I'm against him. Far from it. It's just …” His features sag. He looks suddenly, profoundly weary, the lines in his face deeper, like grooves carved into wood. “He is a very troubled young man.”

The words puzzle me. Of course Steven is troubled, but doesn't that make it all the more important for someone to listen to him? To help him? And how does Dr. Swan know anything about Steven, anyway? Surely, the director of IFEN has bigger things to worry about than the problems of one high school boy.

I realize I'm fiddling with the cuff of my robe and clasp my hands together. “He has the collar. That prevents any violent outbursts, doesn't it? Surely, just talking to him—”

“Even with all the controls in place, he's too unstable. He's an unusual case.”

“Why?”

The light from the window dims, growing muted as a cloud passes in front of the sun. His eyes slip shut. “There was a tragic case, ten years ago. Seven children were kidnapped by a man named Emmett Pike. The authorities tracked Pike down, but he shot himself before they could arrest him. Do you remember?”

“I think so.” I was very young when it happened. “The children were killed, weren't they?”

A nod. “Their bodies were discovered in the woods, decapitated. The heads were never found.”

A thin chill slides through me like a razor. I remember now. When I was little, I spent more than one night lying awake, thinking about those children, wondering about those missing heads. My dreams were haunted by filmy, dead eyes staring in at me from the window.

Dr. Swan pours more water from the decanter. “Not all of them were killed, however,” he says. “There was one survivor.”

A wire tightens in my chest.

“Pike was a sadist. A man with a streak of creative depravity. And he liked children. He liked to play with them.” He sips. “Steven was kept in a basement for six months. Even with all you've seen during your training, all the trauma you've witnessed, you cannot imagine the horrors he endured. For half
a year, that was his world. What do you suppose that does to a child's brain? To his soul?” Glass clinks against wood as he sets his water down.

I think about Steven. About his flat, guarded eyes, the restive way he moves, like a wild animal accustomed to being hunted.

“I'm telling you this so you understand the gravity of the situation,” Dr. Swan continues. “You want to help him. I understand that. But trust me when I say this: the sort of help he needs is far beyond what you can give.”

My fingers clench on the arms of the chair. “Then who
will
help him?”

After a pause, he speaks slowly, as if choosing his words with care. “We're doing all we can.”

I blink, confused. “Then he's been here already?” Steven seemed adamant about
not
contacting IFEN. None of this makes sense. “Is he being treated?”

“That's all I can say.” He leans forward. “You understand, don't you? Why it would be a bad idea for you to get involved?”

I promised to meet Steven again. Whatever the facts, I can't go back on that promise. “I understand,” I say, hoping Dr. Swan will take that as an answer.

“Please realize, I'm only trying to observe your father's wishes. He entrusted your well-being to me, after all.”

I nod, gaze lowered. An ache flares deep in my bones, in the core of my chest.

“So,” he says, his voice suddenly light, “any plans for tonight?”

“Just studying.”

A smile quirks at the corners of his mouth. “Diligent to a
fault. Diligence
is
an admirable trait. But remember that there's more to life than textbooks and training.” The smile fades. “I fear, at times, that you've grown up too fast. You're a seventeen-year-old girl. Spend time with friends. Have a few parties. Go out on a date, for God's sake.” He adds quickly, “With a normal boy. And remember what I said.”

“I'll remember.”

I take the elevator down to the main floor. Steven's face flickers through my mind.

Kidnapped. Six months in a basement, held prisoner by a serial killer.

There was pain in his eyes, but something else, too—something in that hard stare, in the set of his jaw, that tells me he's a survivor. And whatever Dr. Swan says, I don't believe he's dangerous—not to me, anyway. I want to help him. Father would have understood.

Grief hits me in the chest, sudden and hard. I flinch. It's been four years, and still, the pain keeps finding ways to sucker-punch me.

I walk stiffly out of the building and across the parking lot, toward my car.

Sometimes, I imagine that Father's not actually dead, that the body in the coffin was just a fake, a wax dummy, and he's out there somewhere in hiding, waiting for me to find him. It's absurd. I know that. Many grieving people harbor similar fantasies. I'll never heal and move on until I give up that irrational hope. But a stubborn, childish part of my mind still insists that it can't be true, that his death is all some kind of mistake.

My house stands at the end of a street in a wealthy subdivision. It's built from wood and stone, with a traditional peaked roof, and the yard is a sprawling, wild mass of green filled with shade and flowers. Compared to the geometrically precise houses and yards around it, it looks like something out of another time, which it is. It was built before the war.

After Father died, leaving me more or less alone in the world, Dr. Swan offered to let me move in with him. He said living by myself in a house full of memories would be unhealthy for me. But I couldn't let go of this place. It was—still is—my home, the only one I've ever known. In those long, black months, I battled mind-crushing grief while striving to convince Dr. Swan that I was capable of taking care of myself. He finally relented, on the condition that I meet with him regularly and keep him updated on my life. Not difficult, since he's the one supervising my training. He hired a housekeeper as well, to come in three times a week. More than once, I've
caught Greta snooping around in my bedroom. I suspect she keeps tabs on me and reports back to Dr. Swan, reassuring him that my drawers aren't filled with bloodstained razors and illegal drugs.

I know he's only concerned about me, trying to be a responsible guardian. But his constant meddling in my life sometimes makes me feel like I'm suffocating.

I'll be eighteen soon. Of course, I'll be in training for a while yet, so I'll still have to answer to him. But when I become an adult, the house will be mine, and I'll have at least one place where I can hide from his prying eyes.

It's five o'clock in the afternoon. I sit on my living room couch eating my dinner—a reheated meal from a container, scientifically engineered for optimal nutrition and nearly as bland as the box it came in.

The house is too empty, too silent. I turn on the TV.

On the hovering screen, a woman sits in a hospital bed, gazing lovingly at the newborn in her arms, while a piano plays softly in the background. “A parent already has so many things to worry about,” says a female narrator, her voice gentle and soothing. “We all want to give our children the best possible future. So why gamble with something as precious as your child's DNA? NewVitro is safe, proven, and guaranteed—”

I change the channel. There's a war documentary. Somber music drones as the camera pans over grainy shots of rubble and weeping people. I quickly flip to another station.

After finishing my dinner, I head upstairs to my bedroom and sprawl across my bed, stomach-down. The lights are off. Rows of stuffed animals watch me from the shelves, their eyes reflecting the faint glow of moonlight from the window.
There's a teddy bear with an eye patch and a sword, a smiling pink bunny with sharp teeth, and a little green Cthulhu, among others. Nutter, my squirrel, sits on my pillow.

My gaze wanders to a framed picture on the nightstand. Behind the glass, Father beams, brown hair wind-tousled, arms wrapped around me. I'm only three or four, my hair in pigtails, my mouth open in a wide, laughing smile. Above us, the sky shines a brilliant, cloudless blue. I try to remember what it was like to be that happy, that safe.

“Chloe,” I say.

A black cat materializes at the foot of the bed, close to my face. Her tail sways, and her luminous green eyes blink. “Hello, Lain,” says a childlike voice. She stretches—a long, full-body stretch ending with a flick of her tail.

She's only a hologram, of course. A computer avatar. But the sight of her always makes me smile. “Hello.”

She scratches behind one ear and yawns. “So, what are you looking for today?”

“I need you to access IFEN's database for me.”

Her eyes glow brighter. “This site requires a password and voice identification.”

“Lain Fisher,” I say. “The password is ‘atonement.'?”

She grooms one paw. Then she blinks, tilting her head back, and two thin beams of light shine from her eyes, projecting a holographic screen into the air about two feet above her head. I touch a small square in the bottom left corner of the screen, which lights up as the computer scans my fingerprint.

Text fills the screen, letters glowing white against a dark background.

IFEN's database is filled with information on millions of
people across the country. Of course, the database is locked to the general public, but as a Mindwalker, I have access to some of the records. Anyone who's had his brain scanned or been psychologically evaluated at any point—which is around ninety-nine percent of the country—has a file. And they're all ranked by Type, from One (psychologically stable) to Four (imminent danger to self or others). There's a Five ranking as well, but it's reserved for unusual cases.

I sometimes wonder what sociologists from an alien culture would think about our world. They might see it, not inaccurately, as a sort of caste society based not on race or the situation of one's birth but on psychological health as defined by the dominant caste. Threes and above lose certain legal privileges, and they're limited in the kind of work they can perform. Most people wouldn't trust a psychologically unbalanced, potentially violent person in the role of a doctor or politician, naturally, and most of the jobs that
are
open to the unbalanced tend to be low-paying and menial.

Of course, the system is built on extensive scientific data and designed to protect the public safety. In the past, authorities simply waited until people committed crimes and then locked them in places called prisons. Now we recognize crime and violence as symptoms of mental illness and treat them accordingly. Now we stop tragedies before they happen. Admittedly, some people still manage to hide their violent tendencies for a while before they're caught, but crime has been dramatically reduced. It's better this way. Surely.