Mind Games (11 page)

“It’s nothing like that—”

“Then why’d you ask that out of the blue? I would never do anything against Henji. I don’t even know him. He was before my time!” Rickie backs up to the couch. “I don’t like this. You guys have to just get out of here. And I will never talk about Henji again—you tell him that. And if he wants to know, I would be the most loyal person, and I will never say his name again.” She hugs her bottle. “God! Just get away. Don’t come back here.”

As soon as we push the stuff in, the door slams. We rush down the stairwell, spooked.

“Henji. Henji imprisoned both,” Shelby whispers. “It has to be.”

“Right, but why?” I lower my voice. “Henji leaves at age eleven, after the fight with Packard, but then he comes back years later and imprisons Packard for eternity. What’s that about?”

“I do not want to investigate this further,” she whispers. “I do not like this.”

“And here’s another thing: I don’t see Packard as a criminal. No way.” We cross the lobby and push outside. The air is like a blast from a furnace.

“Packard is prisoner now,” Shelby says. “We are his gang now.”

“Shit.” I stop, pulling Shelby to a stop. “We know Henji’s been back at least eight years, right? Because that’s how long Packard’s been trapped.”

She stares longingly at our cab across the street. “Yes.”

“Okay, what started eight years ago?”

“I was still maid then.”

“Eight years ago was that notorious first summer of crime, remember? The holdup gangs that could read minds? And then the pickpockets, the open-window robberies? Remember? It all started
eight years ago.”

Her eyes widen.

“Henji’s behind the crime wave. He comes back, puts his rival Packard away—I mean, isn’t that the first thing a nemesis would do? And then he starts destroying lives.” I feel this surge of anger toward Henji. “This guy has to be stopped.”

She clutches both my arms. “He can kill with thought! He could be somebody we already know. He could be listening now. And what if you alert him and make things worse for Packard?”

“How do you know we won’t make things better? Frankly, I’d like to hunt this jackass down on my own behalf as a pissed-off citizen of Midcity who’s sick of people being terrorized.”

“No, Justine—”

“We could at least
locate
Henji. A little knowledge never hurt anybody.”

   That night I hop on a computer—at a coffee shop, just to be safe. There are no mentions of Henji anywhere, which I find ominous. I learn more about the force field ability among highcaps, however.

Power over force fields—or “structural interface,” as
most sites call it—is rare. The theory goes that force fields people can actually interface with the atoms of a building. They can also modify architectural details and get impressions of important events that transpired inside—not like a movie camera but flashes, images, according to the sites. Like a “dimly remembered dream,” one says.

          Nine

I
LEAN AGAINST THE STONE WALL
outside Delites; today’s the day I’m to pick up my uniform and instructions for the Silver Widow job.

I haven’t faced Packard in the week since the kiss. Part of me is eager to see him, and part of me feels like everything’s spinning out of control and seeing him will make it spin harder. So I lean on the sun-warmed wall and watch the employees of the Glorybell Ad Agency wander into the door down the way. A lot of them wear helmets with their business casual clothes. There’s talk that the Brick Slinger is due for another strike.

Is Henji responsible for the eight-year crime wave? It makes sense. And then there’s Chief Sanchez. He’s the first one to make any progress against it. What if Henji goes after Sanchez? How does Sanchez fight an enemy who can kill with a thought? Chief Sanchez has his own motto—the papers have been making much ado of it lately—something like, “Guarding citizens from evildoers of all kinds.” But not Henji’s kind, I think wistfully.

But Chief Sanchez will keep fighting no matter what—that’s how he is. Does he know about Henji? Would that information be valuable to him?

It occurs to me here that Packard and Chief Sanchez are natural allies, which makes me a natural ally of Chief Sanchez. I get a real charge out of this thought. By
crashing and rebooting criminals, Packard and the dis-illusionists and I are helping Sanchez in his mission. I turn my face to the sun, resolved not to let any doubts cloud my mind today—doubts around the vigilante bit and all the secrets and shadows lurking just beyond the light.

Carter squeals up in front of the restaurant and jumps out of his convertible, all ruddy face and windblown hair. “It’s an asshole driving convention up on the tangle.” He slams the car door. I can feel the rage wound up tight inside him; even his body looks more compact.

“You need a zing.”

“Damn straight.” He plugs the meter. “Goddammit!” He starts smacking it. “Come on, motherfucker!”

I turn and trace the wooden plane of the giant’s cheek, admiring his dashing Renaissance look. He would be perfect with a sword and a ruffled collar, like a knight. Why would Henji use such a pleasing symbol? Or doesn’t he have control over it? If it’s really like a fingerprint, he wouldn’t have control. He probably wishes it was a viper head or something.

“You going to open that door or hump it?”

“Yeah, yeah.” I open the door.

Carter heads back, but I stop to say hi to Helmut and Simon at the bar. Helmut greets me like a civil person. Moppy-haired Simon is silent.

“Hi, Simon,” I say.

Simon hops off his stool, brushing my arm—did he just touch my energy dimension? “You’re not a disillusionist. You’re a decoration.”

“Excuse me?”

“You imagine you have diseases you don’t have,” he says. “It’s a preening, pathetic specialty. You’ve got nothing.”

“Are you saying I’m not screwed up enough?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Simon says. “I don’t know why Packard even has you here.”

Helmut frowns. “Take it down a notch, Simon. Only a fool criticizes somebody he hasn’t seen in action.”

“That’s okay,” I say. “Simon’s entitled to his opinion.” I turn to Simon, hoping he can’t tell how he’s hurt my feelings. “Let’s see, your area is gambling. Winning and losing money. My area is the fact that you depend on a flawed and decaying piece of meat for survival. My area is mortal terror.” I stare into Simon’s deep blue eyes. “My area is the loss of everything.”

“You deal in imaginary loss,” he says. “I give them genuine loss.”

“Both of you—” Helmut barks. “Tone it down. There’s enough strife on this planet.”

Simon smiles and walks off.

Helmut turns to me, full of despairing gravity. “Don’t listen to him. Simon is one of our best, but he’s an artist—a very dark one. He’ll warm up to you.”

“I don’t know if I want him to warm up to me.”

Helmut updates me on the impending nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan. This does not make me feel better.

Finally I go back. Carter’s sitting with Packard, who glances up and smiles. My goose bumps go full flare. “Justine,” he says.

“Packard.” I take the seat next to Carter, who’s firing up a laptop.

Packard launches into the meeting. “Skin conditions will be the Silver Widow’s Achilles’ heel,” he informs me. He’s identified the perfect disease: Osiris virus, a skin syndrome that’s so amorphous, its very existence is hotly debated. Amorphous syndromes are ideal for the hypochondriac. You can’t rule them in and you can’t rule them out.

“I’ve never related to skin diseases,” I say dismissively.
“They’re so nonvital. I mean, with internal organs, you can’t see them, so you don’t know what’s going on. But skin?”

“Oh, you’ll see that skin hypochondria can be quite profound,” Packard says. “Imagine what would happen if you could touch and inspect and irritate the vascular walls of your brain?”

I concentrate on folding my napkin into an insanely meticulous square. “I guess it would be more participatory.”

“Among other things.” Humorously, he adds, “You shouldn’t automatically write off one thing because you’re better acquainted with another.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, seemingly bored, like I didn’t catch that double meaning. Like my pulse isn’t racing.

Carter works on emailing me articles on the Silver Widow’s trial. He tells me they couldn’t get a conviction due to circumstantial evidence.

Packard points at the screen. “Send her this one, too,” he says. “And this.” His eyelashes are long and thick—the sort of detail a mother would enjoy in a baby. I have to get away from him.

He looks up and catches me staring, and smiles. “Just because it’s an unknown quantity,” he says, “doesn’t mean it might not be superior in every conceivable way.” He’s playing. It’s actually kind of funny.

I raise my eyebrows. “I know what works for me.”

“You know what’s
familiar
to you.”

“It’s familiar because it works, and because I’m committed to it,” I say.

“But what if your commitment only holds you back? What if what’s familiar has no ability to recognize and appreciate the full truth of you? Don’t tell me you haven’t imagined how it would feel to fully indulge the unknown quantity—”

“You think I’ve imagined it?”

Carter looks up. “What the hell are you guys talking about?”

“Skin diseases,” I say.

Carter returns his attention to the screen.

Simon appears and slides in next to Packard. “I feel so left out,” he says. “Justine has touched everybody’s energy dimension except mine.”

“How would you know? Maybe she has.” Packard glances at me and I give him a look that says no. Packard instructed me to practice on everybody, but I never did Simon.

Packard raises his eyebrows scoldingly.

I twist my lips in an oops face.

“My, what robust nonverbal communication. Aren’t you two cozy.” Simon puts his hand on the table, grinning. “Try me, Justine.” Like he thinks I can’t do it.

“I don’t see what the big deal is.” I touch his hand and push out with my awareness, but as I near his energy dimension, I have this sense I’m closing in on something disturbing; I feel shaky and clammy. I try to press on, but I can’t force myself to push out all the way to him any more than I could force myself to chew and eat my own tongue.

Simon’s blue eyes are aggressively innocent. “Something wrong?”

“No.” I keep trying. My repulsion grows stronger; sweat blooms down my back.

“Enough!” Packard pulls our hands apart.

Carter snorts. “Christ, Simon.”

I breathe hard. “What’s going on?”

“Some disillusionists have reactions to certain energy dimensions,” Packard says. “It happens to the best of them.”

“Never happens to me,” Simon says.

Packard glowers at him. “It’s okay, Justine.”

But it’s not. It feels like the residue of Simon’s energetic
dimension clogs my throat. Am I actually going to throw up? I need air.

Packard says something I don’t register; I get up and beeline out through the dining room and straight to the bathroom.

I push open the door to find a woman washing her hands at the last sink. Smarty glasses and a neat gray ponytail, like an upscale librarian. I sit in the wicker chair near the stalls, head between my knees, willing her to leave. What if this happens when I’m with a vile and dangerous target? Will I be a failure as a disillusionist now, too? Maybe Simon’s right. Maybe I don’t belong here.

Clicks across the floor. Sensible black heels stop in front of me. “It’s a miracle everybody’s not throwing up all the time,” the woman says.

I raise my head. “Excuse me?”

“All of it. Packard, this restaurant, this world. The outrageousness of the human condition. The best you can hope for is to comprehend the full horror of it. Because things will never get better. I guarantee it.”

I squint at her.

“I’m sorry, I should’ve introduced myself. I’m Jordan. The therapist. I understand you’re our new health anxieties specialist.”

“You’re a therapist?”

Jordan frowns at my incredulous tone. “I deliver the truth that other therapists spend their lives trying to minimize. Deep down, my friend, we’re all crazy and twisted.” Her eyes dance as she speaks. “Nobody and nothing gets better.”

“Well, we’re crashing and rebooting criminals. That’s something better.”

She rolls her eyes. “Oh, maybe we’re
rebooting
them. Doesn’t mean it’s not crazy and twisted.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why are we rebooting them?” she asks.

“Because they need a change of heart.”

She smiles down at me like I’m an idiot. “Why?”

“Who cares why?” I say.

“Why
always
matters.”

“We’re helping them turn good.”

She adjusts her glasses and peers at me intently. “I have a riddle for you—when is good not good?”

“Is this one of those mind twisters? Or like a definition thing? It doesn’t make sense.”

Jordan snorts. “You people.”

“I give up. When is good not good?”

“I’m the therapist. I ask the questions.”

The door swings open. Packard. “Are you okay?”