Driven (3 page)

"Keith,
his name is Keith and he's all I have left in the whole world. He's
tried not to use. He made it for an entire month a little while ago.
We moved out of our old neighborhood, but eventually his dealer
tracked him down."

She
was fighting the hope he could feel building inside of her, but her
strength was too brittle to successfully quash all of what she was
feeling.

"I
won't be able to help him if he doesn't really want to change, but if
he does then I can make it so that he won't ever go back to the drugs
again."

Her
laugh had an edge of hysteria to it. "You must not be very good
at conning people. Don't you know that you're supposed to promise to
fix him no matter what?"

Geoffrey
gave her a smile that he was pretty sure was tinged with more sadness
than he meant it to be. "I could promise that, but it wouldn't
be the truth. I'm only offering to do what I'm really capable of
delivering on."

"Right,
payments in advance, no refunds given."

Her
melting determination, her softening core, had given Geoffrey the
access he needed to skim off some of the surface thoughts he
otherwise would have been unable to access while still carrying on a
conversation.

"Your
favorite color is yellow, but you haven't worn it since you first
caught Keith using. You had a canary named Sunshine when you were
little, and I remind you of…your butler."

Aly
opened her mouth, doubtlessly to ask him how he knew all of that, but
Geoffrey didn't give her a chance to interrupt him.

"I'm
going to make you say springtime now. You're going to try to stop
yourself, but you won't be able to."

Even
as he said it, Geoffrey poured some more of his precious reserves
into a surge of power along the tendril that he'd lodged into her
speech center.

"So
what, you're some kind of
springtime
hypno…"

Under
other circumstances her expression would have made Geoffrey laugh.
She looked like someone who wanted with all her heart to believe. The
hope that she'd been doing her best to keep in check had just surged
through her like the crescendo of a world-class orchestra.

"No
springtime
way…how are you doing that? I meant to swear, but the wrong
word keeps coming out. I can feel it on the edge of my mind. Every
time I go to say…well, you know, springtime pops out instead."

"What
I do is better than hypnosis, but it still has limits. Do you believe
me now?"

She
nodded, not like someone who was unable to speak, but like someone
who was worried that speech would shatter the illusion and wake her
from a dream.

"What
do you want? What is your price? We…we don't have any money."

"What
would having Keith back be worth to you? What would you be willing to
give up in order to have things be like they used to?"

"Anything."

Geoffrey's
emotions surged up in a tidal wave that nearly cracked his composure.
He was so adept at interpreting other people's emotions, but
sometimes it was all but impossible to properly categorize his own.

Relief
was certainly a huge component, but it was more than just that. He'd
sworn never to feed from someone unwillingly again, but a part of him
knew that what he was doing wasn't any better than abducting Aly in
the dead of night and tearing the side of her throat open. She was so
obsessed with Keith that she wasn't fully capable of making the
decision Geoffrey was offering her. Despite all of his efforts,
Geoffrey wasn't sure that he was all that much better than Imastious.

"Are
you sure? Anything?"

Another
nod and this time Geoffrey couldn't have missed the certainty washing
through her mind. She was imagining the worst possible things she
could think of and yet she was still willing to pay that price if it
was what Geoffrey demanded.

"I
can't promise to fix him, it all depends on whether or not he really
wants help. Are you still willing to pay anything for just the
chance
that he'll come back to you?"

"Not
death, and I don't want to be a cripple. If there is a chance that
this won't work then I'll need to be around to take care of him.
Beyond that whatever you want is yours."

Geoffrey
had been planning on asking her if she was the kind of person who
took her promises seriously, but there wasn't any need. He could feel
her commitment surging through the tendrils connecting their minds.
She'd already risked everything she was or could become on a promise
to Keith, this was just an extension of that original promise.

"We'll
need privacy; do the two of you have a room?"

Aly
nodded and went as though to pick Keith up. Geoffrey slung Keith's
other arm over his shoulder and a couple of minutes later the pair
had safely deposited Keith on the bed in a small white-walled bedroom
one floor down from where Geoffrey would be sleeping.

"I'm
going to close my eyes for a few minutes, it's important that you
don't disturb me while I'm working."

Aly
nodded. "I understand."

Geoffrey
took a deep breath and then closed his eyes and inserted a mental
probe into the front of Keith's head. Hours of practice paid off as
Geoffrey strengthened the probe, forcing it to a thickness that made
it seem as though his mind broke free of his body and traveled down
the probe and into Keith's mind.

Geoffrey
hadn't been sure what to expect from deep contact with the mind of
this particular kind of addict. He'd expected to find a torrent of
destructive energy, all directed inward, he hadn't expected to find
that the torrent had been frozen into motionless suspension by the
drugs coursing through Keith's system.

Swimming
downward through the surface levels of Keith's mind was a new
experience as well. His thoughts didn't actively resist Geoffrey's
efforts to go deeper, but there was a stickiness to them that left
Geoffrey feeling like he was being coated with an unpleasant residue.

Geoffrey's
reserves of strength weren't what they should have been. He'd known
that before setting out, but he hadn't realized just how depleted he
was from the combination of being on the run and the blood
starvation. The realization triggered a wave of almost panic, but
Geoffrey was disciplined enough to keep the emotion from leaking into
Keith's psyche and he was experienced enough to know that once he was
this deep there was no course open to him but continuing to dive
deeper.

He
would either have the strength to make it to the seat of Keith's
reason, the metaphorical eye of the storm, or he wouldn't, but
turning back now would just guarantee his destruction.

Just
as Geoffrey became convinced that he'd misjudged, that he wouldn't
have sufficient strength to arrive at his destination, he brushed up
against something hard, something unyielding, the only unyielding
thing he'd yet found in the sticky sea surrounding him.

Matching
his essence to the barrier was more difficult than usual. The same
stickiness he'd noticed in Keith's thoughts was also present in the
barrier, but eventually Geoffrey was able to pass through the barrier
and into the calm center of Keith's mind.

As
always, Geoffrey was astonished at the way the thoughts and beliefs
in the center of Keith's mind formed a coherent, beautiful
latticework of glowing crystal. Aly had been right, there was an
incredible amount of goodness in what presented itself to Geoffrey.
Keith was a person who had great creative capacity, but there was a
black fissure running through one side of the arrangement of light
and glass.

The
beliefs and habits located here in the center of Keith's being had
only minimal ties to the memories outside of the room, but Geoffrey
still got vague impressions of a soul-crushing loss that had happened
at some point in Keith's past. There was just enough to that thread
for Geoffrey to formulate a plan for fixing the flaw he was
examining.

As
always, creating constructs inside of this place was a heady but
difficult experience. The mental commands and impulses Geoffrey was
leaving would have a staying power exponentially longer than anything
he could do on the surface of Keith's mind, but it was hard to work
simultaneously with thoughts and emotions all the while seeing the
fruits of his labor visualize as part of the living forest of crystal
before him.

Even
working here in the near-absolute calm that made what he was doing
possible, Geoffrey still knew that he wouldn't be able to fix
everything that needed to be fixed before he ran out of strength. He
arrived at a compromise as he was working, a compromise that
felt
right even though he had no way of being sure that it would work.

Creating
an aversion to the drugs that were ruining Keith's life was easy.
That construct was equal parts aversion to poking himself with
needles and a healthy fear of the long-term effects of what the drugs
were doing to his body.

If
Geoffrey had been able to stop there he would have returned to his
own body still with a large portion of his energy reserves intact.
Unfortunately that was nothing more than a short-term fix. Unless
Geoffrey could correct the underlying problems Keith would just find
a different way to self-destruct.

Geoffrey
laid out a series of patches designed to hold the damaged part of
Keith's mind together. An acceptance that loss was part of life, that
without the bad parts of life the good parts wouldn't be quite as
good, was one glowing shard that connected the two halves of Keith's
psyche and then contracted to pull the edges back together.

An
ability to forgive himself, a deeper understanding of what his
actions were doing to those around him, especially Aly, a desire to
interact with others, the constructs sprang into existence one after
another and stitched themselves into the fabric of Keith's beliefs
like life-saving sutures.

Looking
at the clean vista around him, it would have been easy for Geoffrey
to believe that he'd solved the problem, but he knew it was still
there, a fissure of weakness running underneath the patches that was
just waiting to break back open.

Geoffrey
marshaled what was left of his strength and sent a single tiny
tendril of thought back out into the sludge of Keith's thoughts. He'd
never tried this particular experiment before, but it seemed to be
working. Geoffrey let his probe skitter from thought to thought,
memory to memory, until he finally found what he thought was the key.

Keith
had lost someone important, but it wasn't just anyone, it had been
someone very similar to Aly. The similarities had been a blessing at
the start of his relationship with Aly, but as time had gone on
they'd become a curse. Their relationship had progressed to the point
where Keith should have told her about the other girl, the girl Aly
reminded him of, but he hadn't been able to bring himself to tell her
precisely because of how much she reminded him of what he'd lost.

Geoffrey
placed one more construct inside of Keith's mind. He created a
certainty inside of Keith that he could talk to Aly about anything.
Once again there wasn't any guarantee when Geoffrey started the
construct that it was what was required, but when he saw the way that
it settled down over the very start of the damage, the way that it
seemed to join core supporting threads of Keith's personality
together, the fact that it seemed to have tiny tendrils already
growing further into the damaged area, Geoffrey knew it would do what
he wanted it to do.

Keith
wasn't cured any more than a single session of therapy would have
cured him, but the foundation had been built. If Keith talked to Aly,
and if he could avoid any serious shocks to his life for a few
months, then things should heal completely. Even after he healed he'd
still be just as vulnerable to loss and damage as anyone else, but at
least he'd have a chance at happiness.

Geoffrey
created another construct, a fragile one that started fraying away as
soon as he set it down, and then launched himself out of the
protective bubble and into the full fury of Keith's conscious mind.
The final construct did its job, creating a fissure of calm that ran
all of the way out to the furthermost edge of Keith's mind.

Geoffrey
expertly followed that fissure, racing along it at the mental
equivalent of a sprint, but even so he barely made it all of the way
free before the thoughts closed back together. Geoffrey came back to
himself with a gasping breath that was unlike anything he'd ever
before experienced.

"Are
you okay?"

It
took Geoffrey a few seconds to get his breathing under control enough
to respond. "Yes, I think so."

Aly
looked at him doubtfully. "Are you sure? I think you stopped
breathing for a minute there."

Geoffrey
had known that his strength was running out, but he hadn't realized
that he'd pushed things that close to the edge of disaster. Even now
he could feel that his mental strength was exhausted, that it was
pulling against the reserves of physical strength that were keeping
his heart beating and his lungs working.

"Did
you save him?"

"I
think so. I've done all I can, right now at least. Are you ready to
make your payment?"

Aly
was obviously scared, but she didn't let that stop her from nodding,
and if the nod was the tiny movement a small animal might make when
in the sights of a large predator, well, she could hardly be blamed.

"It's
important that this remain a secret, Aly. That's part of the price I
need from you."

"I'll
never tell anyone."

Geoffrey
felt the hallucinations dancing just outside the edge of his field of
vision. He was running out of time. He reached over and gently took
her by the wrist.