Mindstormer Read online

  There’s a funny look on his face. For a long time, he doesn’t answer. Then he says quietly, “There is a lot of sickness in the world. A lot of suffering. But, Lainy… sometimes we call people ‘sick’ when they make us frightened or uncomfortable. Even if we don’t really know them. It’s possible that that lady never had a baby, or if she did, maybe it was taken away for a good reason. But it’s also possible that her baby was taken for a wrong reason. Maybe she’s just really angry and scared. And being angry or scared isn’t sick. Do you understand?”

  I bite my lip and nod, though I’m not sure I do. “So what should we do?”

  He opens his mouth, then closes it. “I’ll talk to someone at work. Maybe I can find out what’s going on.”

  “But… what about the lady? If she’s in trouble, doesn’t she need help now?”

  He crouches in front of me, looking me in the eye. “Sometimes, you can’t help people right away. You have to change the way the system works.”

  I wonder why. Maybe if we tried to stop those men, we’d get in trouble too. Maybe they’d take us away in a car, and other people would watch it happen and say we were sick. My stomach hurts. Suddenly, I’m really confused. “Isn’t IFEN good?” I whisper. “Don’t you work for them?”

  He breathes a little sigh and smiles, though he seems sad. “Yes, Lainy. They’re good, mostly. They’ve made our country a much safer place, and they help people who need it. But they make mistakes.”

  My ice cream is melting, dripping to the sidewalk. Apricot is the best kind, but I don’t want it right now.

  *

  I’m swimming up through a shining mist. Something hard pokes the small of my back, sending a tiny jab of pain through me, but it’s nothing compared to the throbbing inferno in my skull. My thoughts are a tangled mess, but I remember falling. Falling through the air—and then an impact shattered the universe.

  I was dreaming about something a moment ago, but now the images are fading, leaving only a dim impression, like the blurry outline of footprints in the sand, smoothed away by waves.

  It takes an effort to pry my eyelids open, and when I do, I find myself staring into a pair of big brown eyes, just inches from mine. Ian. A moment’s disorientation washes over me.

  “Lain? Lain, can you hear me?”

  I’m a little amazed that I’m still alive, much less conscious, but I manage to form the word Yes.

  He lets out a quiet breath of relief and straightens.

  Memories rush back. IFEN headquarters. A blur of explosions and terror. Dr. Swan’s death. Escape. Then the helicopter crash which left us stranded here, wherever here is. Overhead, sunlight winks through the trees and clouds sail across a bright, innocent blue sky. The small, prickly object pokes my back again—a pinecone? I roll onto my side, wincing. A strand of loose hair tickles my cheek, and I brush it away.

  “How do you feel?” Ian asks.

  I do a mental scan of myself. The blood pounds in my skull, and my body is a collection of aches—I feel like one big bruise—but I can move all my limbs. Despite the bone-jarring impact of the crash, I don’t think anything is broken. “Sore.” I touch my hair, and my fingers come away sticky with blood. My vision wavers, and my stomach turns hollow.

  Ian rests his fingertips on my cheeks, ten spots of warmth. “Count backward from ten.”

  I do it without a hitch. He asks me a few more questions to ascertain that I don’t have a concussion, then straightens. “You’re okay,” he says.

  If I was unconscious for any length of time, there’s still a chance that I’m concussed, even if I feel relatively lucid, but there’s not much I can do about that. Slowly—very slowly—I sit up, and my brains seem to slosh around in my skull. Ugh. I place a hand gingerly against my temple, as if that will help to steady my ravaged gray matter, and look around. We’re in a forest, though I’d already deduced that much. Pines loom around us, interspersed with a few scrawny, leafless deciduous trees. The air is cold. The helicopter rests on its side about thirty feet away, smoking. Steven sits on a log nearby, his rifle propped next to him. He avoids looking directly at me.

  “Where are we?” I ask.

  “The good news is that we made it into Canada,” Ian says.

  I shiver.

  For the first time in my life, I’m in another country. Here, on this ground, our Types mean nothing. Vertigo washes over me, as if the earth has shifted beneath me.

  Back home, we were taught so little about the world outside the URA. They told us that Canada is wild and dangerous, a decayed civilization a few steps away from anarchy. I have no idea how much of that is reality and how much is propaganda, because I’ve never even met anyone who’s traveled abroad. There are a few Americans that do, but they’re mostly the wealthy elite, people who can afford bodyguards. Leaving the country requires all sorts of special permits and papers. Well, assuming you do it legally.

  “So what’s the bad news?” I ask.

  “The bad news is that we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere with no way to contact the others. The equipment’s shorted out.”

  “You don’t have cell phones?”

  “Hell no,” Steven says. “They’re too easy to track.”

  Ian rocks back on his heels, chewing his thumbnail. “What’s our weapon situation?”

  “We’ve got our rifles,” Steven says. “That’s it.”

  “Well, let’s hope we don’t get attacked out here.” Ian adjusts the straps of his pack. “We’ve got some food and water, at least. Though not a lot.”

  My gaze keeps straying to Steven’s rifle. Before this, I’ve never even seen a gun, at least not in person. Most security guards and policy use NDs, these days. All things considered, I think, it’s impressive that I’m not panicking. Ian’s presence helps, but considering the recent turn of events, I wonder how well I really know him. How long has he been involved in this madness?

  One thing at a time, I tell myself. “So what now?”

  Steven rises to his feet. “We start walking. Hopefully, we’ll come to a road.”

  I just want to lie here on the soft, mossy ground until my head stops pounding. But that’s not an option. There are probably border patrols in Canada too, and the longer we stay, the greater our chance of getting caught.

  Would that be so bad? a voice inside me whispers. I’d probably be sent back home. From all outward appearances, it would look like these people kidnapped me—which is pretty much what happened—so I wouldn’t get in trouble. But then what?

  If it’s true that Dr. Swan erased my memories against my will, then I need to understand why. I need to know what happened to me. Which means staying with Ian and Steven, at least a little while longer.

  I push myself to my feet and sway like a drunkard. Steven steadies me with an arm around my waist, and I tense. The way he touches me—so familiar—sends a shock through my nerves. “I’m fine,” I mutter, pulling away.

  I see the flash of hurt in his eyes, and for a second, I actually feel guilty. Like I’ve just kicked a puppy. A violent, scarred puppy with an assault rifle. Then his expression closes off, going stony again, and he turns away.

  His scent lingers in my nose. Leather and gun smoke and the faint, coppery tang of blood… and beneath that, another, subtler smell that stirs an echo of memory. Neurons nudge each other, whispering like leaves in the wind as his scent ghosts through the corridors of my brain. An image flares, bright and sharp. I’m sitting across from him in the Underwater Café, and he’s telling me… telling me…

  It’s gone.

  Steven and Ian are watching me intently. “What is it?” Ian asks.

  I give my head a shake and look away. “I don’t know.”

  Ian puts a warm, gentle hand on my shoulder. “Don’t force it. Your mind is still fragile.”

  I nod. My gaze catches briefly on Steven’s, and he looks away.

  “You’re really not dressed for hiking,” Ian remarks. He opens the pack and pulls out a heavy flannel shirt, a
pair of sweatpants, and some sturdy brown hiking boots.

  “You came prepared.”

  He smiles. “I’m always prepared.” He tosses the clothes to me. “We’ll keep our backs turned while you change.”

  “Thank you.” I walk a little ways into the woods, just enough to give myself some privacy. Quickly, I shed my thin cotton hospital clothes and pull on the warmer clothes Ian brought. They’re too big for me, so I have to roll up both the pant legs and sleeves. I sit down and tug off my slippers, and the pill tumbles out and lands on the ground. Slowly, I pick it up. In the rush of everything else that happened, I’d almost forgotten about it. I tuck the pill into my pocket and walk back. Steven and Ian are still standing with their backs turned. “You can look.”

  They face me.

  I think about showing them the pill, asking them what it is. Instead, I ask, “Who was that nurse? Was she a Blackcoat, too? One of your contacts?”

  “Nurse?” Ian sounds puzzled. “What nurse?”

  If she was working with the Blackcoats, it seems like they should know about her. “There was this strange nurse who…” Something stops me. I find myself reluctant to tell them about the pill, not knowing what it is. What if they try to take it away from me? “Never mind. It’s probably nothing.”

  Ian frowns, but doesn’t reply.

  We start to walk. The blood surges and ebbs behind my eyes, a tide of dull red. Every few minutes, I have to pause and lean against a tree to catch my breath. Steven walks ahead of us, keeping his rifle in his hands as we make our way through a maze of trees. Somehow, he seems to know exactly where we’re going. The oversized pack bounces against Ian’s back.

  Orange light bleeds through the forest canopy, making me squint as the sun sinks lower, vanishing behind the horizon, leaving only a pink haze in the western sky. Branches form sharp black shadows against the light. Somewhere in the forest, a coyote howls, a long, high, mournful sound.

  I stumble again, pausing to lean against a tree.

  “What’s wrong?” Ian asks.

  The world wavers and blurs. Leaves lose focus, becoming soft green spots. “I just need to rest.” I slide down and sit on the cold earth. The throbbing in my head hasn’t quieted; if anything, it’s gotten worse. Maybe I do have a concussion.

  “We shouldn’t stay in one place for long,” Steven says. “Even if IFEN can’t touch us in this country, there’s still the Canadian authorities to worry about.”

  “Just give her a minute,” Ian says. “I’ll stand watch.”

  I lean back against the tree. Steven sits a few feet away from me while Ian paces the area, scanning the surrounding forest. He’s just out of earshot. Several times, Steven opens his mouth as if he’s about to say something, then closes it. He draws his knees to his chest and wraps his arms around them. “You really don’t remember anything,” he says at last.

  “No.”

  His throat muscles constrict. He rests his forehead against his knees, and for an awkward moment, I wonder if he’s about to cry. I’m not sure how I would deal with that. My brain keeps replaying the clip of him slamming the butt of his rifle into Dr. Swan’s face, the crunch of bone. But I remember, too, the look on his face when I pulled away from him. He doesn’t feel like a cold-blooded killer.

  Still, I can’t bring myself to offer him any words of comfort. My chest aches, and I turn my head away, unable to look directly at him.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says quietly.

  I stare off into the woods. “I know.” And I do—that’s the odd thing.

  His arms tighten around his knees. “I’m sorry,” he says, “about… about what happened back there.”

  My chest aches. “You said Dr. Swan did horrible things to you. That he experimented on you.”

  He nods.

  “If that’s true, I guess you must be glad he’s dead.”

  “I thought I would be.”

  In the woods, an animal rustles through the foliage. Even in my heavy flannel shirt, I’m cold, and I rub my arms, listening to Steven’s quiet, unsteady breathing. I should despise him. Why don’t I?

  Steven told me I got mixed up in this because I chose to help someone. Was he talking about himself?

  I remember that flicker of memory when I breathed in his scent. The olfactory bulb is tightly wired to the hippocampus—the part of the brain responsible for processing memory and emotion. That’s why smells are a powerful memory trigger. Maybe…

  I scoot closer to him.

  Steven raises his head. His brows knit together. “Lain?”

  He tenses as I grip his jacket in both hands and lean toward him. My heart is pounding. What I’m about to do will look ridiculous and possibly a little creepy, but it’s worth a shot. “Hold still.” I press my face against his neck and breathe in deeply. He makes a small, choked sound.

  Leather. Smoke. Coffee. Beneath that, a distant whiff of rain and stone and dust and the ocean. I close my eyes, holding onto that scent, trying to follow it back to its source within myself. But whatever I glimpsed before, it’s gone now. There’s only that blankness, like a solid wall. When I pull back and look at Steven, he’s a stranger once again. “I’m sorry,” I say. “For a moment, I thought… but it’s gone.”

  The hope in his eyes flickers and fades. He stops and inhales slowly, then rakes a hand through his hair. “If you remembered something, even if it was just for a second, that means it’s still there.” He says the words firmly, as if that will make them true.

  Of course, that’s not how memory modifications work. Even if a few bits of sensory data remain, floating around in the murk, they don’t mean anything if they’re disconnected from the larger context. It’s like having a handful of fragments from a shattered stained-glass window. You might be able to see some things—a leaf, a flower, the curve of a cheek. But it’s not enough to put together an image. Whatever was taken from me, it’s gone for good. I don’t have the heart to tell him that.

  I push myself to my feet. “Let’s keep moving.”

  *

  By sundown, we still haven’t found a road. We set up camp in a small clearing. Ian takes a small electric lantern out of his pack, along with a folded stack of blankets. He sets the lantern on the ground, where it casts a small circle of pale light.

  “It’s freezing,” Steven says. He hasn’t looked at me once since our brief conversation. “Do we have any matches?”

  “Nope,” Ian says. “If we want to start a fire, we’ll have to do it the Boy Scout way. You know how, right?”

  Steven snorts. “You think I was in Boy Scouts?” He flops to the ground and rests his folded arms on top of his knees.

  Ian shrugs. “Probably shouldn’t risk a campfire, anyway. Too much smoke and light. We don’t want to attract anyone’s attention out here.”

  I lean back against a tree, head pounding. The temperature is dropping rapidly; my teeth start to chatter. Ian sits down next to me and drapes a blanket around my shoulders like a cloak. A tiny smile tugs at my mouth, and I hold out one arm. “Here. We’ll share body heat.”

  He hesitates briefly, then slides under the blanket with me.

  I lean against his side. It’s warm, and I close my eyes. There’s so much I need to think about, but I don’t want to think. I just want to exist here, tucked into the curve of Ian’s body. He holds a water bottle to my lips. “Drink some. It’ll help with your headache.”

  The water splashes down my throat, soothing the raw, parched flesh. He drips some of the water on his fingers and rubs them over my forehead, cooling my skin, which is fever-hot despite the cold air. “That’s nice,” I murmur. I glance up and see a pair of pale blue eyes staring back at me from across the clearing. They cut quickly away.

  He seems so very alone. A part of me wants to reach out to him. But right now, I can’t deal with the tangle of questions he represents. I’m too exhausted.

  For awhile, I doze, anchored by the pressure of Ian’s shoulder against mine. He smoothes m
y hair, fingers sliding over and through it. I like his hands. The thought appears randomly, but I’ve always liked them—how long they are, how graceful and dexterous. The hands of an artist, or a piano player. I breathe in his scent, so comforting and familiar, like a favorite book, and I find myself thinking of the first time I saw him in IFEN headquarters, wearing his white Mindwalker robe. He seemed so young, with his big puppy eyes and a pink glow in his cheeks, but there was an easy confidence about him that I envied. His hair was long back then, I recall, tied back into a loose ponytail. He was always changing his hair, but I think I liked it best at that length.

  A sound catches my ears. It takes a moment for me to recognize it. Hoof beats.

  Ian tenses. “What is that?”

  Steven stands up, cocking his rifle. “Be ready.”

  Ian stands, and I rise with him, still leaning against his shoulder. The beats come closer and closer, clop-clop, clop-clop. The leaves rustle, and a huge, black shape emerges from the surrounding forest. The horse snorts and paws the ground with one hoof, ears twitching. A woman sits astride its back, holding the reigns—a woman in a short-sleeved black coat, dusty jeans and cowboy boots. An abstract design of intricate, spiraling black tattoos covers her arms from wrist to elbow, and she’s wearing a holomask of… a wild dog, I think.

  She smiles, her narrow muzzle opening to reveal rows of sharp teeth. I notice the pistol slung low on her hip. “Well,” she says. “I finally found you.”

  ‌

  4

  I blink a few times, trying to adjust to the surreal image of a dog-headed woman sitting before us astride a black stallion.

  Steven raises his rifle.

  She drops the reigns and raises her hands, though she doesn’t seem alarmed. “Relax. I’m not an enemy.”

  “What do you mean, you finally found us?” Steven asks, his voice low and cold. He keeps the gun trained on her. “What do you want?”

  “Allow me to guess,” she says. “You’ve just crossed the border, and you’re on the run?”

  He tenses. Ian leaps to his feet.