Mindstormer Page 5

  She laughs, showing rows of sharp teeth and a long pink tongue. “I told you—I’m a friend. You can call me Jackal. I was out riding when I saw your chopper crash. Followed the smoke to the wreckage and tracked you here. No offense, but you left a pretty obvious trail, and you were going in circles, so I figured you were lost.”

  “How do we know we can trust you?” I ask, trying to sound bolder than I feel.

  “You don’t,” she replies. “It’s up to you. I can lead you to a safe place, or I can turn around and leave you here in the woods.”

  Steven and Ian exchange glances, then Ian says, “How far is it?”

  *

  I don’t know how long we trudge through bushes and brambles, picking leaves and bristles off of our clothes, following the woman on the horse. She keeps her holomask on the whole time; her pointed ears swivel back and forth like miniature satellite dishes. By the time we arrive in an open clearing, it’s dawn. My feet are aching stumps, my clothes drenched with sweat despite the cold.

  In front of us looms an ancient house, weathered and gray. It looks abandoned.

  “Here it is,” Jackal calls.

  “So, um.” I clear my throat. “Is this the Citadel?”

  Ian smiles. “No, our base is a lot more impressive than this, I promise.”

  Jackal places a cigarette between the black lips of her mask, inhales, and breathes out a smoky cloud. “So, you’re headed to the Citadel? You’ve got a long trip ahead of you.”

  “It might be smart to lie low for a few days,” Ian remarks. “I mean… considering everything, it seems safer.” He casts a glance at Steven, who nods.

  I frown. I feel like there’s a secret they’re not letting me in on. “Why? Why is it safer?”

  Ian tilts his head, as if weighing his words. “Things are a little chaotic in the Citadel right now. That’s all.”

  “Well, you’ll be safe here,” Jackal says. “This place is totally off the grid. No electricity or anything.”

  The house’s windows are dark and boarded up. If someone asked me to picture a haunted house, this is probably what I’d come up with.

  Jackal dismounts from her horse and tethers it to a nearby tree. She pats the sleek neck—it’s slick and foamy with sweat—then takes another drag off her cigarette and breathes the smoke out through her nose, like a dragon. The smell makes my eyes water.

  She walks us up the half-collapsed steps to the front door, unlocks it with a tarnished key, and leads us through a dimly lit foyer, down a narrow hallway. The wooden floorboards squeak and groan in protest under our footsteps. She pauses to open a closet and rummage through its contents, then she fishes out two kerosene lamps and lights them with a long wooden match. “There’s food in the kitchen,” she says, waving a hand toward a doorway. “Mostly canned stuff. There’s no way to heat it—well, I guess you could use the fireplace. But it’ll fill you up, anyway.”

  I look around at the faded, grayish wood walls, the saggy floor and shaggy cobwebs in the corners. “Do you live here?”

  She laughs. “God, no. I live on a farm a few miles from this place.” She blows out the match and hands me one of the lamps. “I discovered this empty house here awhile back, and it seemed like a good place for people to hide. So I keep it stocked with food and supplies.”

  “That’s… very kind of you.” I’m not sure how to feel, actually. Can helping terrorists really be considered admirable, even if her motives are altruistic?

  She shrugs. “When I first crossed the border, the Blackcoats got me a fake ID, helped me start a life here. I’m just paying it forward.” She hands the second lamp to Steven. “Anyway, I’m going to head out.”

  “You’re not staying?” Ian asks.

  “Got a little girl back home. It’s just me and her.”

  I wonder how someone with a child can take these kinds of risks. What if something happened to Jackal? What if she got caught?

  Maybe she reads the thoughts on my face. She smiles, showing a flash of white teeth. “I came here so Sara could grow up without Types, without being watched all the time. I want a world where all children can have that freedom. I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t fight for it.” She drops a house key into my hand. “The bedrooms are upstairs. There’s an escape tunnel in the basement, in case the cops show up—it comes out in the forest about half a mile to the west. Oh, and here.” She hands Ian a cell phone. “Prepaid. It’s got my number on it. Use it to contact me, if you need to. But only if you need to.”

  The floorboards groan under her boots as she walks out and shuts the door behind her.

  “So,” Steven says, “guess we’re staying here tonight.”

  “Guess so,” Ian replies. The flickering light of the kerosene lamp reflects in his eyes. “I wish we had a way to contact the others. They probably don’t even know we’re alive. But given Lain’s condition—” he glances at me “—it might be better to wait a few days before we have any more contact with them.”

  By my condition, I don’t think he’s just talking about the bump on my head. Without my memories of the past few months, how well would I manage being thrown in with a bunch of hardcore antigovernment types? The thought sends a twinge of panic through me. Then again, Jackal didn’t seem that bad. Her words replay through my head, and I shift my weight, suddenly uncomfortable. “Do you really want to take down IFEN?” I blurt out.

  Steven and Ian look at me in surprise.

  “Do you think we’d be here now if we didn’t?” Ian asks.

  “Trust me,” Steven says, “if you had your memories, you’d hate them, too.”

  “Well, I don’t have my memories,” I say, a little more sharply than I intended. “Am I supposed to just take your word for it? Am I supposed to believe that Dr. Swan was really involved in illegal human experimentation? That he was responsible for my father’s suicide?”

  “You were there when I said those things to him,” Steven says. “He didn’t deny it.”

  “He didn’t confirm it, either. And even if it’s all true, that doesn’t mean IFEN itself is evil. You can’t blame the entire system for the actions of one person.”

  “Lain…” Ian’s voice is soft, almost apologetic. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

  “Then explain it to me! Because frankly, I’m having trouble understanding why my best friend is suddenly a terrorist.”

  “We aren’t terrorists,” Steven says. “We’re revolutionaries. And so are you. You just don’t remember.”

  I struggle to keep my tone level. “All right, maybe I was. I don’t know. But doesn’t this all strike you as a bit extreme? I know the system isn’t perfect, but it’s not like we’re living under some sort of totalitarian regime.”

  “Actually, yeah, that’s exactly what it’s like,” Steven says, his tone hardening.

  “That’s absurd. We have elected representatives—”

  “Who are basically puppets. And a fourth of the population can’t vote, anyway. You lose the vote once your Type gets bad enough.”

  “Well, yes. That’s not something I completely agree with, but still, I’m sure even you can understand the rationale…” I trail off. Steven’s eyes are cold and flat.

  “What the hell did Dr. Swan do to your brain?” he asks. “Because the Lain I know is smarter than this. Did he screw around with your personality, too?”

  I flush. “Of course he didn’t. That’s not even possible.” Still, the faintest hint of doubt flickers. The truth is, I have no idea what Dr. Swan did to me. And now I’ll never have a chance to ask him.

  Ian clears his throat. “Maybe now isn’t the best time for this conversation.” He places a warm hand on my back. “You should get some rest.”

  “Yeah,” Steven mutters. He turns and trudges down the hallway, toward a set of stairs at the end, leading upward. We follow. I step gingerly, wincing at every deafening creak. I can’t shake the feeling that, at any moment, the entire house might collapse around us.

  Steven�
�s voice, laced with scorn, echoes through my head. The Lain I know is smarter than this. I bite the inside of my cheek. Why should his opinion bother me, anyway? Why do I care?

  At the top of the stairs is a long hallway. Water drips from a gap in the ceiling and into a tiny puddle on the floor. The lamp throws a circle of yellow light on the floorboards. A mouse scuttles away from the glow, vanishing into a crack in the wall. Steven opens the first door we come to, and the hinges squeal.

  I peek inside. The room is little more than four bare walls with a narrow bed. The plaster on the walls has peeled away in places, revealing the brick beneath. Ian crosses the hallway and opens another door, then a third. “Two bedrooms and a bathroom,” he announces. “Though I wouldn’t bet on any of the appliances working. The shower in here looks like something out of a horror story.”

  I peer in. “Well, at least there’s a skylight.” I point to the hole in the ceiling. A thin, gray beam of sunlight shines through.

  Ian lets out a small laugh. “I guess that helps.”

  “I’m gonna go look for some food,” Steven says without looking at us. He descends the stairs.

  I walk into the first bedroom and carefully sit on the edge of the bare mattress. It feels like a slab of rock, but it holds my weight, at least. There’s a thin, ratty blanket folded up at the foot of the bed. “Well, it beats sleeping in the forest.”

  Ian cracks a tiny smile. “Yeah.”

  We sit in silence for a long moment, listening to the drip-drip-drip of water in the hall. Two bedrooms, I think, and three of us. Well, I suppose we can rotate. It would make sense for one person to stay awake and stand guard, anyway.

  A tiny furrow appears between Ian’s thick, dark brows as he studies my face. “How are you feeling?”

  “All right, I guess.” I pause. “Well, no. Not all right.”

  He nods, shoulders hunched beneath his long black coat. His long fingers are tangled together in his lap. “You want to talk?”

  I rub my forehead. “My last memory, before all this, is going to class. Then I woke up in IFEN headquarters with one of the technicians telling me that I’d had a trauma erased from my mind. And then…” Tears sting my eyes, and I blink them away.

  Dr. Swan practically raised me after my father’s death. Just twenty-four hours ago, I believed that he was someone I could trust. Within the span of a few minutes, I found out that he’d lied to me about everything. And then I lost him. Steven’s face swims into my head. “Has he killed a lot of people?”

  “Who? Steven?”

  I nod.

  A brief pause. “I’m not completely sure, but I don’t think he’s ever killed someone with his own hands.”

  “That woman—Rhee—mowed down a row of guards in IFEN headquarters, and he didn’t even flinch.”

  “Yeah, well. We’ve all had to get used to death, whether we wanted to or not.” Pain tightens his expression. “Sometimes, you have to kill people if you want to survive.”

  “I don’t accept that. There’s always another way.”

  He smiles sadly. “I hope you’re right.”

  I wonder how I’d feel about all this if I still had my memories. I don’t even know who I am right now. I can’t even begin to imagine the chain of events that might have led the other Lain to become a Blackcoat.

  The other Lain. That’s a strange way to think about it, but that’s what it feels like. In a relatively short time, I somehow became a person with different values, a person who abandoned her dreams, her future, her entire life. And now I can never go back. There’s a small, sharp pain in my throat, like a fragment of metal is caught there. “Ian…” I swallow. “I’m really scared.”

  “I know.” He rests a hand on my back. He’s touched me many times before—we’ve hugged each other, comforted each other after bad sessions. But this time, something is different. His touch is more tentative, like he’s not sure where we stand. It puzzles me. His hand lingers on my back for a moment, then slips away. “You don’t have to take it all in at once. Just focus on getting through today. We’ll have something to eat, then get some rest.”

  I want to tell him to put his hand on me again, but something stops me.

  My fingertips wander across the mattress, tracing a gray stain. Faintly, I can hear Steven downstairs, rummaging through the kitchen. In my head, I see him sitting next to me, knees drawn up to his chest, looking so oddly young and vulnerable, despite the rifle on his back. “What sort of person is he?”

  “You want my opinion?”

  “I just want to know more about him, I guess. Apparently he and I were… close.”

  “Yeah. You were.”

  The endless drip of water echoes through the silence. I moisten my dry lips with the tip of my tongue. “How did I meet him? Do you know?”

  “You took him on as a client, even though Dr. Swan ordered you not to. They said he was a hopeless case, but you wouldn’t accept that. After that, you and he started spending a lot of time together.”

  “Wait,” I say, alarmed. “He was my client? I kissed a client?”

  A smile twitches at the corners of his mouth.

  “There’s nothing funny about it! That’s a huge breach of professional ethics!”

  “Sorry. You’re right, it’s not funny. It’s just, considering everything else that’s happened, the whole ‘professional ethics’ thing doesn’t seem like a huge deal.”

  “Just because there are bigger things going on doesn’t mean it’s not important,” I mutter. I look at Ian from the corner of my eye. “So, what is your opinion of him?”

  Ian makes a slight face, mouth twisting to one side, as if he just bit into something funny-tasting. “Honestly? At first, I hated the guy. I was really worried about you. He seemed… unstable. Dangerous. And of course, he was a Type Four, and I’d grown up hearing that we were supposed to feel sorry for Type Fours but never get too close to them, because they might infect us with their paranoia.”

  I nod—not because I agree, but because I’ve heard the same thing. That line always bothered me, though. Father taught me that all people were to be accepted as equals, and that if someone is suffering, you shouldn’t avoid that person, you should try to help him. Of course, you can’t argue with the data. Studies have consistently shown that humans tend to mirror each other’s emotions. Spend enough time around people who are depressed or angry or afraid, and you’ll start feeling the same way. Was that what happened to me?

  “You said ‘at first.’ Does that mean your mind changed?”

  He shrugs. “A lot of things changed. Including my Type. To make a long story short, I couldn’t handle the psychological strain of being a Mindwalker. I got depressed. And suddenly I was one of those people I’d always looked down on and pitied. I started to understand why so many of them hate IFEN. When the system is set up to control you and keep you powerless, being angry and paranoid makes sense. It becomes a survival strategy. But the more we fight back, the more IFEN tightens the leash, and the more freedoms we lose, the harder we fight. It’s a big self-reinforcing loop.” He gives me a tiny, wry smile. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to start lecturing there. That’s not even what you asked me about. You wanted to know about Steven.”

  “That helps, actually.” I want to ask what Ian’s Type is now, but that would be rude and invasive. I study his face. “Your eyes have changed. They’re darker.”

  He rubs the back of his neck; his long lashes flick down, hiding the objects of my scrutiny. “I think it’s just the lighting.”

  “No. I noticed it earlier, too, in the sunlight. I don’t mind, though. I kind of like it. They’re… intense.”

  He lets out a small laugh, more exhalation than sound. “Intense, huh?” His smile fades, and his eyes lift, meeting mine. For a long moment, we just look at each other.

  He’s still Ian and I’m still Lain, and yet everything is different. Over the past few months, he’s seen a side of me that I’ve never seen myself, and now I’m seeing a side of him
I never knew about. I wonder how many of those other selves are locked away inside us.

  “I’m the same person as before, you know,” he says, as if reading my thoughts. We’ve known each other so long, we can do that sometimes.

  “Well, you look strangely comfortable in that black coat.”

  “I’ve gotten used to it.”

  I hesitate, half afraid to ask the question hovering in my thoughts. “What did Steven want me to erase from his mind, anyway?”

  “Um. That’s kind of personal, so I should probably let him tell you. But he ended up keeping the memories, anyway. And there was this whole thing where you two left Aura together and went looking for this place from his memories… it’s complicated.”

  I breathe a small sigh. “I wish I could remember.”

  There’s another pause. “Do you want that?” he asks quietly. “Really? If there was a way to bring your memories back, would you do it?”

  It strikes me as an odd question. Of course I would want that. Why wouldn’t I? And yet, when I open my mouth to say yes, something stops me. I think about the pill in my pocket, then dismiss the idea. “It’s a moot point. Once memories are erased, they can’t be recovered.”

  “Yeah. You’re right.” He brushes a few loose strands of hair from my face, the touch ghost-light. “I’ve missed you, you know.”

  A flush creeps into my cheeks. “I wasn’t gone that long, was I?”

  “I guess not, but. I dunno. It feels like a long time. I’m just glad you’re back.”

  I hesitate, then lean my head against his shoulder. His breath catches, and his muscles tense briefly. Then he relaxes and slowly puts an arm around me.

  We’ve done this before, too. Once, after a day of training at IFEN, I’d been sobbing over a client—a quiet, terribly sad young woman who wanted to forget the parents who’d told her over and over that she was worthless, who’d starved her as punishment for the slightest offenses. Ian hugged me and wiped my puffy eyes with a cool, damp cloth, then said, “Come with me.”

  He took me to the planetarium. “I know it’s nerdy,” he said, “but in a weird way it can help, remembering how small all our human problems are.”