PsyCop 5: Camp Hell (22 page)

“Your file says you’ve been having sexual relations with your fellow residents. What you do in your own time makes no difference to me. But when you’re within these walls, you’re on my time.”

My mouth worked. They put stuff like that in my file?

“Fraternization, between staff and residents, and among the residents themselves, ends now. After focus groups, residents will return to their rooms and remain there, unless they are called upon for testing.”

“You mean, like solitary confinement?”

“Hardly. The program is in danger of being shut down. The telepaths can’t see anything, the TKs can’t move anything, and the mediums don’t get anything but the vaguest impressions. Heliotrope Station isn’t a social club, Mister Bayne. It’s a training facility. And we will train you.”

I really, really didn’t want to be the star pupil in the medium department. I’d need to be sure to do even worse next time I was tested. And if I did get thrown out for underperforming, at least I’d be able to get laid without someone documenting it in my goddamn file.

“Mister Brown will show you back to your room.” I had been there nearly four months—it’s not as if I didn’t know where my room was. And I don’t think that was the point. I turned toward Brown, because I would rather walk beside him then have him start grabbing me, when some motion in the far corner of the room caught my eye.

A bunch of meaningless highlights resolved themselves into a figure, transparent, but recognizable enough. I knew Director Sanchez by his bald spot. It was shaped like an hourglass, big on the crown, wide across the forehead, and a tiny bridge of hair that tried to connect from ear to ear over the top of his head. His face was not so recognizable. It was swollen and bloated, and his eyes looked ready to pop out of his skull. A length of wire was wrapped around his neck so tightly I was worried it would act like a cheese cutter and lop the whole thing right off.

I stumbled, and I looked at my boot. But I don’t think Krimski was convinced that the carpet was what had distracted me. Sanchez had died there. And I knew it. And he knew I knew it.

That night I picked a hole the size of a La-Z-Boy in the plaster of the wall in my room, not that I thought I could escape through it or anything, but just because I was bored, and antsy, and of course second-guessing my decision to hop ship from the CCMHC to come to Heliotrope Station at all.

Because logically, once I’d tested as a Psych, couldn’t the medical center have just let me out?

I hadn’t wasted much time thinking it through. Heliotrope Station promised a cutting-edge career in Psych work. I was twenty-three, and I’d only made it halfway through the tenth grade. Heliotrope seemed like a logical choice, especially since it was residential, and I wouldn’t have to worry about finding somewhere to live and coming up with rent month after month.

I slept, eventually, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours. “Wake up.” I opened my eyes to an orderly shouting in my face. Not Mister Brown. But another new guy. As if all the orderlies we knew (and loved to make fun of) had been replaced by a soulless bunch of thugs.

I was escorted to the medical wing. “I’ll be late for class,” I told the dried-up guy in the nurse’s office. He wasn’t the nurse. He looked vaguely like a monkey. If Stefan were there, he’d crack a joke. But Stefan wasn’t there.

“You won’t be attending focus group today,” said monkey man—the man with the rainbow of pills and the pointy syringes. “Today, we’ll be testing the effect of a new medication on mediums.”

“Breathe deeply, and focus on my voice.” I’d know Stefan’s voice anywhere. But he wasn’t there. Hadn’t been there. Shit. My sense of time was all screwy.

“You’re centered, you’re relaxed. As I count down to one, you find yourself becoming more and more alert. Ten. Nine. Safe and relaxed. Eight.”

Hypnosis couch, right. My breathing was fast, like it could tip into hyperventilation at any second. The back of my shirt was soaked with sweat.

“Four. Feel your hands resting on your thighs. Feel the soles of your feet on the floor. Three.”

What if I opened my eyes, and I was still in the nurse’s office? The last fourteen years would turn out to be a big, drug-induced nightmare. Seriously, what if? Would I do anything different? God, I’d like to think so.

“One. Open your eyes, feeling completely refreshed.”

“If this is what refreshed feels like, I’d hate to get a taste of the exhaustion around here.”

“You were talking about Einstein.”

“Richie. Yeah. I saw him. He’s doing okay.”

“And Krimski. You said he was in Sanchez’ office.”

“I did? What do I say during these regression things, anyway? Do you record them?”

“Of course not,” he snapped. “I would’ve told you if I was recording them.”

“Okay, okay, I just wondered what I said.” Because it would’ve been really awkward if I just came out and said that I used to pose for him with my crotch sticking out. I suspected he knew, given his empathic ability. But putting actual words on it made it sound so pathetic.

“You don’t say very much, which is pretty typical of my patients with PTSD. You’ll tell me where you are, who you’re with, maybe what you’re doing. And only if I ask you. All the sights, the sounds, the subtle nuance, that’s something that you keep to yourself.”

So, the crotch thing. I’m guessing I didn’t say that.

“The big talkers are the suburban ladies with way too much money and way too much time on their hands. They go on and on—they’re narcissistic that way.”

“But you can imagine all this stuff, can’t you? You were there.”

“Yes. I was. That’s probably the only reason I get half of the things you’re talking about.”

“When you reminded me about Krimski, I slipped back into one of the memories from before, from the first regression we did. When they tested Neurozamine on me.”

“It’s not uncommon to revisit a traumatic event at various points. It’s your way of trying to make sense of things.”

Various snappy comebacks occurred to me, but none of them seemed worth saying. “So, when did we start sneaking into the kitchen? Before Krimski, or after?”

“Before. Don’t you remember that lock? I could pop it with a sharpened comb. The cafeteria was more like an all-you-can-eat buffet back then, until he got that lock fixed and hired all those disgustingly muscular orderlies.” Stefan stroked the soul patch under his lower lip. “When you think about it, Heliotrope Station was more like a cheap vacation package back then. Especially the classes. Those were like sitting through timeshare presentations.”

“The classes…we had a nun, and she was actually pretty nice. But then she was gone. And the classes were gone. And they called them focus groups instead.”

Stefan’s chair creaked as he resettled his bulk in it. “How devastated would you be if I suggested that not only were you traumatized by the meds, and the invasion of privacy, and the restriction of your activities—but you also miss what Heliotrope Station might have been, if the management never changed over?”

“They would have folded. Krimski told me as much, when I met him.”

Stefan raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. “Did he?”

“I don’t think I’m mourning what Camp Hell might have been. I think it’s more that I’m baffled that I went in there voluntarily. I mean, no one twisted my arm. Right?”

“We were all there voluntarily. If you’ve been telling yourself differently, it’s probably a harmless little fantasy that’s been helping you deal with your experience.”

“Now you’re making it sound like maybe I am crazy.”

“We don’t use the word
crazy
around here. We prefer
coping mechanism
.”

I grabbed a tissue from a holder next to the hypnosis couch, which had probably been placed there for the suburban ladies who were moved to tears by the experiences of their regressions, and I used it to wipe off my forehead and upper lip. I wondered how coherent I’d been when I was reliving the experience of Stefan telling me about what he’d done to Movie Mike. And I suspected that Stefan was more interested in my regressions than he’d been letting on. How could he not be? He played a starring role in the tawdriest scenes.

I asked him, “What did Krimski say to you the first time you got called into his office?”

Stefan twirled his chin hairs and his gaze went far away. “No smoking. No fraternization. And that they’d finally start taking advantage of the section in our intake papers that said we’d consented to be human guinea pigs. I think I got hung up on the no-sex, no-smoking part of the lecture and didn’t realize how bad everything else would actually get.”

“And he didn’t say anything about your performance.”

“Why would he?”

I shrugged. I’m sure Stefan felt my anxiety, but its causes were so poorly thought-out that I don’t think either of us could have articulated what I was struggling with.

“Did you ever try anything with him?” I asked. “You know, like
Boo-Hoo-You
?” I think that the other residents suspected one of the high-level empaths was behind the unexplained bursts of tears that punctuated our days, at least some of the time, but I don’t think they ever pinpointed Stefan. Not definitively.

“Believe you me, I would’ve done all that, and worse. Remember, I never got a read on him. He had an emotional suit of armor—kind of like Jacob.”

Time stopped for a second. I tried to process. But it was like eating pudding with chopsticks. “What?”

“What do you call them, Stiffies? That’s what Krimski felt like.”

“Stiffs,” I said, too distracted to bother to make fun of his Freudian slip. “Seriously, you couldn’t read Jacob?”

“You didn’t know that?”

I wiped my face with the tissue, which was disintegrating in my hand. “How would I know? I don’t read live people, only dead ones.”

“When I push hard enough with my talent, other people give. But not Krimski. Never Krimski.”

Or Jacob. Holy shit. Stiffs were supposed to balance Psychs, but as far as I knew, everyone just saw them as being psychically neutral. Heck, NP, or non-psychic, was an interchangeable term for Stiff—old-fashioned, but more politically correct. They were a neutral gray in a world of black and white.

But what if they weren’t really gray? What if they were silver?

And there wasn’t any way to test it…because a test would bounce right off a genuine Stiff.

“Where are you right now?” Stefan asked.

“I’m here. I’m just thinking.”

“Okay. Let’s talk about it. That’s what you’re paying me for.”

I studied Stefan’s face. I’d been through hell and back with him, but he’d had thousands of experiences since then, too. He was Steven Russeau now. And whatever new idea my inadequate brain was trying to piece together, it seemed too personal to drag out, half-formed and naked, and show him.

“I’m gonna go home,” I said. I glanced at my watch. It was after seven. I could be home by eight if I didn’t run into a traffic snag. “Jacob and me…things have been kinda…bumpy…lately. I really want to see him.”

Stefan gave a careless shrug. “I don’t know how you do the whole relationship thing. It’s so complicated, so much work. I’d much rather keep things casual. It’s more fun to just date.”

I glanced back at the hypnosis couch as I stood. Luckily, my sportcoat had stopped me from leaving a giant sweat mark behind. “What about Fernando? Don’t you love him?”

“We have a good time together. It doesn’t mean I want to marry him.”

On my way to the elevator I thought about Stefan’s attitude. Or more accurately, what it said about me, that his unwillingness to get involved with someone made me sad. I flipped open my phone and hit a memory dial.

“Sticks and Stones.”

“Hey, it’s me. Listen, I was just wondering, as an empath, could you… you know. Could you get a read from Jacob?”

“Newsflash, I’m working here.”

Okay, so it was pretty tacky of me to ask Jacob’s last boyfriend how he felt psychically. But who else could I ask? “I mean, as a Stiff, was he different from other people? Was he harder to read sometimes?”

“I bet you’re trying to pull something over on him. Don’t drag me into the middle of it. Honesty is the best policy, sappy but true.”

“No, nothing like that.” The elevator door opened. I stepped on, and my phone connection got staticky. “I was just wondering if he felt different.”

“Well, sure he does. All those hours in the gym pay off.”

I almost said “Jesus,” but then I remembered him saying I was disrespectful, and I turned it into a brief sigh. “You know what, never mind. I’m sorry I asked.”

“
Hasta la vista
,” he said, and hung up.

I stepped off the elevator into the lobby, and saw the plate glass windows were dark. There was a handful of people wandering inside against the crappy weather, some of them poking at their PDAs, some of them on the phone. When one figure in black peeled itself off the wall and came at me, I nearly reached for my weapon, figuring it for the FPMP. But it wasn’t Officer “Andy.” It was Jacob.

“Jesus, you scared the shit—”

He grabbed me by the shoulders and stared into my eyes. “Are you okay? You’re soaked.”

“Yeah, I’m…” the feel of his hands, even through my overcoat, made me giddy with relief. I felt my whole body relax. And I thought about my internal faucet, my protective barrier, and I wondered if my proximity to Jacob made it stronger. “I’m sick of this. I want to be able to stop worrying. It’s like we’re always worried about something—like we’re always looking around to see who’s watching us.”

Even in the lobby of Stefan’s building we were the center of attention, whether or not anyone else was spying for the FPMP. Because everyone else was a conservative businessman, and none of them were currently engaged in a big, gay, personal melodrama.

Jacob slid his hand up my shoulder and cradled my cheek. So intimate, so public. And I leaned into his touch, even turned my head to brush a kiss across the inside of his wrist.

“Let’s go somewhere,” he said.

“Where?”

“Anywhere. It doesn’t matter. At least for tonight. Let’s just drive.”

-TWENTY TWO-