Mindstormer Page 7

  He hesitates. “Well, yeah. We could do that, but—”

  “Memory isn’t just raw data, after all,” I say, interrupting him in my eagerness. “Memory is a narrative, a story about who you are. Right now, you and Steven know me better than anyone else. You both have memories of me during the months I lost. If I take the pill and you both share your memories with me—using a three-way loop—it could be enough to tie the sensory data together into a coherent whole.”

  Ian’s mouth opens in surprise, then closes.

  “Three-way loop?” Steven asks.

  “They’re used when young Mindwalkers are in training,” Ian says. “It’s a way for superiors to observe their progress. Usually, that’s all it is. This…” He glances at me, uncertain. “You’re talking about some kind of three-way mind meld? Has that ever been attempted?”

  “Well, no.” I swallow. If we try this, we’ll be the guinea pigs. “The only problem is, I’m not sure where we’d get a Gate.”

  “I have one.”

  “Here?” I ask, startled.

  “I brought yours. From the Citadel.” He offers a small, sheepish smile. “Sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but, well, with everything else that was going on…” He shrugs. “I thought maybe it would help you believe us, if you could see our memories of the past few months.”

  “And what if it doesn’t work?” Steven asks sharply. “What if it goes wrong?”

  “Well…”

  “We don’t even know what that drug is. It could be something even more dangerous than Lucid.”

  My heart hammers against my sternum. “I’m willing to take that chance.”

  His pale eyes drill into mine, but I don’t look away. Steven is the one who finally breaks eye contact.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to do the Gate thing on its own? Without the pill?” Ian asks quietly. “It would be safer.”

  I shake my head. “There are certain things that you and Steven can’t tell me about the past few months—like what was going on in my head that whole time. I need to understand myself. If there’s a chance I can get those memories back, I want to take it, no matter the risk.”

  “It’s your decision,” Ian says. He doesn’t exactly look happy about this. “If this is what you want, I’ll do it.”

  “Well, I won’t,” Steven snaps. “It’s too risky.”

  I remember the sight of him kneeling in the yard, face buried in his hands. It kills him, what we’ve lost. And still, he’s not willing to risk my safety.

  Slowly, I reach out and take his hand, and his fingers twitch in surprise. They’re thin and fever-hot. “I have to try.” My heart is beating hard and fast, knocking like a fist against my sternum. “Please. We need your help for this.”

  The muscles of his throat constrict as he swallows. “I can’t—” His voice breaks. “I’ve hurt you too much already.”

  My fingers squeeze tighter around his. I don’t know what he means, when he says that he hurt me, and for a moment, I wonder if I really want to find out. “Even if that’s true, it’s my pain. And I want it back. I want it all back.”

  I can feel his heartbeat drumming beneath the skin. At last he nods, once. His face is drawn and pale.

  I release his hand, trembling. I feel like I’m about to step off the edge of a chasm. Fear tingles at the base of my spine.

  “Shouldn’t we at least wait till we get back to the Citadel?” Steven asks.

  “We don’t have that sort of time,” Ian says. “Memories decay quickly, remember? She’s got maybe a forty-eight-hour window.”

  Suddenly, my chest is small and tight. It’s a struggle to fill my lungs. “I—I think I need to get some air.” I leave the pill on the table and walk out into the yard, into the crisp late-autumn coolness. The pines are still green, but most of the leaves have turned brown. They litter the ground, crunching under my feet as I walk deeper into the forest.

  A spike of pain shoots suddenly through my left eye and sinks into my head like a long, burning fang, and I cry out, clapping a hand to my eye. My vision swims, shimmering around the edges. I stop to lean against a tree, my shirt sticking to my skin with cold sweat. The world wobbles like Jell-O. I press my cheek to the rough bark and close my eyes, waiting for it to pass. The pain fades to a manageable pulse, but my head feels like it’s made of glass, like a sudden movement might shatter it.

  I hear movement behind me and whirl around to see Ian. Another wave of pain slams into me, and I wince.

  “Sorry,” he says. He hangs back awkwardly. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t go too far from the house. It’s not safe.”

  “I know.” My breath plumes in the air. I stand with my feet close together, hugging myself, wanting to curl into a tiny ball and disappear.

  He approaches and gently touches my temple. “Are you okay?”

  “Sort of.” I grimace. “Actually, it feels like someone has a pair of pliers clamped around my optic nerve.”

  He touches my face, careful, gentle. “Close your eyes. The light can make it worse.”

  I do. Almost immediately, the pain recedes. “How did you know that?”

  “Because I’ve gone through neural modification before. You really have to take it easy for a few days if you want to avoid those headaches. But then, I guess that’s not really an option now.”

  I open my eyes in surprise. “You’ve had your memories modified? When?”

  “That’s another long story.” He gives me a strained smile. “Keep those eyes closed.”

  My eyelids slip shut again. And then I feel his lips against the left one, and my heart jumps. The pressure is an explosion of light and color in my head. It doesn’t hurt, but it leaves me breathless and shaky. “Ian…”

  “I’m sorry.” He rests his forehead against mine, breathing in small, unsteady hitches. “I know it’s selfish. But I have to say it. I—”

  “I know,” I whisper. I open my eyes and tangle my fingers in his shirt, pulling him closer, and I crush my lips to his. They’re full and soft, like sinking into a warm bed. His stubble scratches my chin as I move my lips against his. I wind my arms around his waist, and his arms slip around me, and our chests are pressed together. When I pull back, I can barely breathe, and the world is spinning around me like an out-of-control carousel. My knees start to buckle, and he catches me.

  His eyes are wide. “Lain… are you…”

  “Too much stimulation,” I whisper. Then I let out a breathless laugh. “God. I’m seventeen, and I just had my first kiss.”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Right,” I murmur. “Eighteen.”

  A shadow slips across his face. “And that wasn’t your first.”

  “Well, I don’t remember my first. So I guess now I’ve had two firsts.”

  He touches a thumb to the corner of my mouth, a light, cautious touch, as if he’s not quite sure I’m real—like I’m an illusion that might dissolve at any second. In the shadows of the forest, his eyes are almost black, and his long, messy hair stirs in the breeze.

  Ian. My Ian. Why did I never see him like this until now?

  “I don’t want this to end,” he says. “I want to stay here, in this moment.”

  “It doesn’t have to end,” I say.

  He smiles at me, pain in his eyes. His fingers graze the curve of my neck, tuck a few strands of hair behind my ear. “You’re in love with him, Lain. You just don’t remember it yet. And you’re a Blackcoat. But I’m not—not deep down. I can’t be. When I went on that mission… you don’t even know what I’m talking about now. But I realized then that I couldn’t do it, that I couldn’t fight the way you and Steven could.” He drops his gaze. “In a little while, you’ll know who you really are. This is only a dream.”

  I draw in a shaky breath and let it out slowly. The other Lain, apparently, was pretty hardcore. I wonder again if I really want to be her, if I want to become someone that ruthless. “Why don’t you let me decide what’s a drea
m and what’s real?”

  “Fair enough.”

  I chew my lower lip. The sunlight fills his eyes, highlighting the small hints of brown in the blackness. “Have I ever killed anyone?” I’m afraid of the answer, but I need to know.

  A brief pause. “I don’t think so,” he replies. “I mean, if you did, you never told me.”

  That’s not the most reassuring answer I could have hoped for.

  I’ve already made up my mind. If we don’t act now, we’ll lose the chance forever. I just wish I had more time.

  The sunlight ripples through the leaves, dancing like water shadows at the bottom of a pool. It’s disorienting. I wince, and Ian covers my eyes with one hand. “You don’t have to look. Just follow me.”

  I nod. His fingers slide between mine, and I keep my eyes shut against the light as he leads me back to the house.

  Without warning, a blinding agony explodes from the center of my head. Fireworks burst behind my eyes. I thrash, gasping, unable to catch my breath.

  “Lain? Lain!” Ian grips my shoulders. “What’s going on?”

  I open my mouth, but I can’t speak. I can’t even breathe. The world vanishes in a wash of silver sparkles.

  ‌

  6

  “Lain? Lain! Can you hear me?”

  I moisten dry lips with the tip of my tongue and focus on his face. I’m flat on my back, on the ground. Cool grass tickles my neck. “What happened?”

  “I was about to ask you that.” He helps me to my feet. His eyes are wide, the whites visible all around. “You just… collapsed.”

  I try to remember exactly what I was feeling before that moment, but I can’t recall anything triggering it. One second I was walking along, the next, my whole world was incinerated by the fire in my head. The pain is still there, but it’s dimmed to a manageable level. It seems like I’ve had a more or less continuous headache ever since I left IFEN headquarters.

  Of course, I’ve just had a neural modification. There’s a glossy pamphlet we hand out to clients and their families after every procedure, filled with recommendations about what to do after returning home, and number one is the word REST! In large, bright red font, just in case the exclamation point wasn’t enough. Too much stimulation can worsen their condition and cause long-term side effects, similar to a traumatic brain injury.

  What I should do, medically speaking, is rest for the next few days and try to avoid any form of stimulation. But that’s not an option.

  I close my eyes. The lids feel like sandpaper, and there’s a pressure at my temples, like huge hands squeezing my head. Trails of tiny rainbows dance in the darkness.

  “Hey… everything okay?”

  I open my eyes, breathing raggedly. Steven is standing in the doorway. The image blurs, pulses, then steadies.

  “I’m fine,” I say, though my voice sounds thin and watery. “I just need to lie down. Ian, help me upstairs.” I don’t want Steven to see how bad my condition is.

  Ian helps me up to the bedroom and eases me into bed. He starts to pull back, and I catch his arm. “The Gate,” I say, “where is it?”

  A pause. “In my pack.”

  “We should get it set up. We have no time to waste.”

  Ian carefully touches my face and leans in, examining my undoubtedly bloodshot and dilated eyes. “Lain…” His teeth catch on his lower lip. “Maybe Steven is right. Maybe we should reconsider this.”

  “I’ve made up my mind.”

  “This could damage you beyond repair,” he says flatly. “It could kill you.”

  Fear swoops through my stomach, though the words don’t surprise me. He’s right, of course. Is it stupid to risk my safety—my life—just to recover my memories?

  My mouth is painfully dry, and I swallow, wincing at the twinge in my throat. “You said before that it isn’t safe in the Citadel right now,” I whisper. “What did you mean?”

  He breathes in. “You’ve already got a lot on your mind. Trying to explain everything would just—”

  “Ian.”

  He rubs his face with one palm. “Right now, we don’t know who we can trust.”

  My hands clench. “You’re saying there’s someone there who might be working for the other side.”

  “Yeah. That’s the situation.”

  “And what if I know who it is? What if that information is in my memories?”

  He shakes his head, looking bewildered. “Why would you know that? Lain, this is—everything about this is dangerous. I can’t—”

  My fingers dig into his arm. “I need to know who I am.”

  He presses his lips together into a thin line. His gaze meets mine, and I see the worry in his eyes. The fear. But he nods. “I’ll get the Gate ready.”

  Ian walks out of the room, and I sink back into bed. Icy sweat beads on my forehead as a rainbow of patterns forms behind my eyelids—matrices and grids of bright lines. Visual distortions are another side effect of neural modifications. When I open my eyes, everything appears different—dreamlike and yet somehow more real, more three-dimensional, and weirdly shiny around the edges. It might be fascinating, if I weren’t so terrified and worn out. As it is, I wish it would all just stop so I can get some rest. I want to turn off, to stop thinking and sleep for three days. But I’ve denied myself that option.

  I’m playing Russian roulette with my own brain. I shudder.

  *

  “This is it?” Steven asks.

  “This is it,” Ian replies.

  There are three wooden chairs arranged in a triangle, all facing each other. Three helmets rest on the seats. In the center of the triangle stands the Gate’s slim black hard drive.

  I hang back in the doorway, examining the concrete-walled room. We’re in the basement of the house—a bare, damp place filled with exposed pipes and water stains. A few kerosene lamps sit on the floor, flickering and filling the room with eerie shadows. The ambiance is more fitting for a seance than a medical procedure, but Ian thought it would be safest to do this down here. While we’re all strapped in and tripping out on Lucid—if, indeed, that’s what the mysterious pill is—we’ll be unaware of our surroundings. Vulnerable. But even if the police come searching for us and discover the house, they probably won’t think to look down here.

  I meet Ian’s gaze, then Steven’s. His expression is flat and unreadable as ever—at least on the surface. But there’s something beneath, something roiling and wild, like a storm. “You ready?” he asks me quietly.

  I open my mouth, but my voice is frozen. The cold, strong hand of panic squeezes my lungs. Once the other Lain is freed from her prison inside me, what will happen? Will she swallow me whole, or will we both exist simultaneously inside the same skull, an uneasy mishmash of different ideals and perspectives? Maybe that won’t be so different from the way I feel now. “Yes.” Trying to ignore the tremor in my legs, I approach the chair and sit down. “So… how will this work?”

  “I’ll activate the Gate,” Ian says. “And you take the pill. You’ll be guiding the session. That is, you’ll be in the role of the Mindwalker, and you’ll be receiving signals from Steven and I. If it all works the way it’s supposed to, your mind will integrate those signals, and when it’s over, you’ll be more like the person you were before Dr. Swan erased your memories.”

  My fingers are slick with sweat as I pull the helmet on. Ian approaches and hands me the Lucid pill, then sits down in his chair and puts on his own helmet, buckling the strap beneath his chin. Steven remains standing. The amber kerosene glow casts shadows beneath his eyes, in the hollows of his cheeks.

  My gaze meets his, and a small shiver races through me. Right now, he still feels almost like a stranger to me. Like a mystery. If this works, that mystery will unravel. I’ll know not just Steven, but myself—I’ll know about the Citadel, about the people I met in IFEN headquarters. And if this doesn’t work—

  Quite possibly, we’ll all go running into the woods screaming like lunatics and get eaten by a bear
or something. Or maybe my brain will disintegrate into a lump of catatonic oatmeal, and I’ll spend the rest of my life drooling and wearing diapers. Maybe we all will. I picture the three of us all sitting around in a treatment facility, our eyes like dead screens filled with static, our bodies withering away in silence, tended by indifferent people in white uniforms.

  No. That won’t happen. I won’t let it.

  Slowly, Steven lowers himself into the chair and straps on his helmet. We all look at each other, and the empty space in the center of our triangle feels alive with tension.

  “Ready?” Ian says. I nod. After a moment, Steven does, too.

  He switches on the Gate. A faint hum fills the air, and my scalp begins to tingle. The tingling spreads slowly down my spine, throughout my body. I close my eyes and feel my heart beating. Then I can feel another beat, a second pulse beating within mine, like one image superimposed over another. I somehow know that it’s Ian’s. His pulse is steadier than mine. A third joins in—Steven—filling my chest with a cacophony of beats—and then, all at once, our heartbeats synch up. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.

  “I’d almost forgotten how freaky this is,” Steven mutters.

  Ian utters a short laugh. “No kidding.”

  He rubs his chest absently. “Aren’t you used to it by now? You’ve done this a lot.”

  “That was different. You know. Clinical. This is more like—”

  “Like some kind of psychedelic ménage à trois?”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to put it like that. Thanks for making it extra weird.”

  I don’t say anything—I’m too preoccupied by the steady thrum of their heartbeats inside my chest. It’s oddly soothing. Or would be, if I wasn’t so terrified.

  “Hey.” Steven squints at Ian. “You’re not going to be able to read my thoughts, are you?”

  “Honestly,” Ian says, “I don’t really know how this is going to work. There’s a chance we’ll get some mental feedback from each other.”

  “Great,” Steven mutters. He’s rigid with tension, fingers digging into the arms of the chair. “You get to wade through my angst. Welcome to the funhouse.”