Soul and Blade (9 page)

8. PILLS AND POTIONS

L
ady Townshend had decided a bridesmaids’ brunch might be a good idea—mostly because I don’t know a single one apart from Angie and, of course, Melody.

Meeting the rest of the ladies is like preparing for a mind run, but I can’t be bothered with this one. I’d barely thought of it until Angie mentioned it last night.

At one head of the table is Lady Townshend, in a hat one might wear to the beach, only fancier—much fancier. It’s white with a huge wide brim and a black band around the middle. All the Englishwomen wear hats—at the table.

It’s beyond the scope of what I consider reasonable. Any orphan knows not to wear a hat at a table. I avoided hats for many years after leaving the orphanage. They hadn’t been allowed in church or in classes or at the table.

Next to Lady Townshend is Melody, who spends the entire brunch
acting like she is the one getting married. It bothers me until I realize that
sends all the questions right to her and away from me. Everyone sort of
assumes she and Dash might have rekindled their relationship after college.

She constantly waves to me from the other end of the table, but I’m not sitting at the opposite end. I’m placed next to Angie somewhere in the middle as if I’m a regular guest. I don’t know if I’m being slighted or if Lady Townshend is taking into consideration that I know no one and don’t like the spotlight.

Next to Melody are horse-faced girls, who must be in their midtwenties. It’s a sin seeing them next to Melody, who could be a model.

I have the unfortunate experience of again sitting near Clarice Underhill, the terrible snob from dinner the night before. She sits telling the same horrible story, bashing the Wauwinet and all of Nantucket.

The rest of the ladies all seem the same as Clarice, British and snooty. I think it’s the true wedding theme here. But then Angie is here and she’s not snooty at all. Unless it’s about her dating anyone—then she’s insanely particular and strange.

I could gag on my mimosa listening to them all talk, but I might need alcohol to get through this. In fact, I might order a scotch.

The only woman I seem to understand is Darlene, the other moron
we met the night before at the restaurant. She’s the one with the severe lack
of personality, but I suspect it’s drug induced. She doesn’t even try to talk to anyone, just stares and drinks and smiles at nothing. It’s rather restful.

I can’t believe this is my bridal brunch and the only bridesmaids I have are Dash’s cousins and Angie. I suck back my drink, and, as if by magic, another appears. The server offers me a wink and he’s gone again.

Angie leans in, whispering, “I want some of whatever Darlene is on. That woman is crackers. She’s high as fuck.”

I snort and do my best to not stare at the obviously stoned look on her face.

“Can we get high on yer wedding day?”

“Yes. Or drunk, but something is happening. Xanax. You’re a doctor, you could get some.”

“Yeah, I can do that. I never even thought of it.”

Darlene gives us a grin. “I’ll take a pack too.”

“Absolutely.” Angie laughs, not having realized Darlene has super-hearing.

She slides her small navy Burberry clutch across the table at us. “The pink ones,” she mumbles.

I almost return the bag, but Mrs. Townshend cackles and says, “Yes, well, we have been rather busy caring for Benjamin’s new hound. He’s a handful. Too much for Benjamin to care for on his own, what with work and all.” Her mean words raise every hair on my neck. I drag the purse into my lap and hand Angie a pill before taking one for myself. We slip them into our mouths before handing the bag back.

“Love the detail. Burberry is so nice,” Angie smiles and says loudly in case anyone gives a rat’s ass what we’re up to.

Darlene laughs—a lot and loudly.

I sip the mimosa in my hand and wonder what my liver will look like in an hour, and how much I truly care.

After about fifteen minutes Angie leans in, whispering so quietly I can barely hear her. “I think that was Ecstasy.”

I sigh, loving the feeling of the air rushing past my skin. “I think you’re right. I haven’t done drugs since I was forced to as part of training. It’s been years.”

She starts laughing, sort of like Darlene did. She snorts a bit, earning a look from Lady Townshend. I lean in. “She is on to us, tone it down.”

Angie giggles instead of chuckling, but it isn’t much better. When breakfast comes, it lands like an eagle swooped in and dropped it off. I know then I’m really fucking high. Whether my lips are chapped or just dry, I can’t stand the taste of the booze, and am forced to drink the too-cold water. It slithers down my throat, tickling and squirming.

“I think that was acid,” I mutter, hating the feel of my insides burning with cold water.

Angie is too excited about the eggs Benedict in front of us with smoked salmon from Norway on it. She takes her first bite, moaning like we’ve just smoked a lot of pot.

Darlene nods; she knows.

I cut in, moaning and sighing into my food. We look like idiots; I’m aware of it, and yet I cannot stop myself.

Darlene leans fully across the table, as if the three of us are having brunch alone, and starts talking so loud I swear she’s shouting, but no one else is looking or noticing. “When I was seventeen, I met a Frenchman who was so beautiful. We went to the banks of the Thames and drank a bottle of wine that he had put Ecstasy into. We lay there, feeling the poke of every blade of grass touching our backs. When the sky got dark we could see the stars, even though I have never seen the stars in London. We saw them that night.” She points with her dripping knife before cutting into another bite.

I don’t even care that I have hands or lips or there are stars in the sky. My breath is my life force.

I’m sighing again, making myself stronger with the force of the air, when I look up and see Dash. He waves and walks to us. All of the ladies at the table jump up, gushing and hugging him, greeting him in some way, but he’s locked on to me.

He comes and kneels next to me, holding up a small blue box, and kisses me on the cheek. “I wanted to come and say hello. Father and I and a few others are in the private dining room next door.”

I stare at the box, smiling. “Thank you.” I think it’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

“Open it,” he whispers.

I turn, our noses touch, and he smirks and looks at Darlene. The dis
approving stare on his face makes her look down at her plate and mutter
something, but I don’t know what it is. My super-hearing isn’t working yet.

I pluck at the white ribbon on the box and open it, smiling at the necklace with the black-and-white cat made of diamonds—of course, black and white diamonds.

He kisses my cheek again. “So you can wear him on your heart, and he can be at our wedding, as your family.”

I close my eyes as tears start to fill them. “You’re wrecking my high and my record for never really crying in public like this before. Ever.”

He pulls it out of the box and slips it over my head. The chain is long so it slips down into my blouse, lying exactly where my heart is. He bends and kisses me once more, waving and laughing. “Enjoy breakfast, ladies.” He leaves and suddenly the entire table is staring at me.

I just grin. I don’t have a single other response.

When my gaze travels the table, it meets a different sort of look from Dash’s mom—not mean or judgmental. It’s something else. Maybe awareness. Maybe she sees how much we actually love each other, even if we don’t show it. Even if no one else sees it the way we do.

I lift the necklace so they can all see. “It’s my cat.” The words emerge matter-of-fact and plain, despite the effect of the drugs.

They don’t seem excited, apart from Angie, who completely gets it, and Darlene, who would have been excited if I had a lump of crap.

“How lovely. He’s so thoughtful, my boy,” his mother says with force. She cocks an eyebrow. “The cat you brought to our house? The one who has made it hard on Benjamin’s new dog?”

“Binx.”

Their faces all tighten for half a second and then turn into smiles—terribly phony smiles.

“It may seem silly, but my entire family died in a terrible accident, and I am an orphan. Angie and that cat are my only family. This means I will have them both at my wedding.” I choke out the last sentence and pray they feel like shit. It’s wrong to work the orphan angle so hard, but I hate being just the ridiculous girl Dash is dating.

There are two sets of dry eyes at the table—mine and Lady Townshend’s, although she wipes like she might have shed a tear.

Melody sobs, quivering just a little bit. I hope it stings her to know she has been laboring after my boyfriend and treating me like a second-class citizen. Wishing evil on her makes me the second-worst person at the table.

We finish brunch with each woman turning remarkably kinder:

“We are so grateful to be able to welcome you into our family.”

“Benjamin is so lucky, he really is.”

“You are the bravest girl in all the world.”

“May I see your cat again?”

It doesn’t stop and even Melody hugs me. “I am so pleased to see his heart in such worthy hands.” She whispers her blessing. With that white flag, I suspect Mrs. Townshend has lost her ally.

I feel dirty for cheating and using my dead family, but it is the truth, and a little kindness from them all on my wedding day will make it less awkward, considering it is meant to be the event of the year.

I wave and take the small box out to the foyer of the hotel attached to the restaurant.

Angie walks up, giving me a weird look. She sighs, looking down. “Go back and kill him.”

“What?”

She looks at me again, confusing me with the look on her face. “If ya kill him in his head, he could stroke. Before ya go in, I’ll terminate that nanite, taking his control out. Meet me in two days at the lab. I’ll get the clearance and figure how the feck we can do it.”

I wince, knowing she will suffer brutally going back there. “Dash will leave me.”

“We won’t tell him.” She gives me a pleading look. “We both need the closure. Ya won’t ever be free of him and the cells if ya don’t do this. If that doesn’t matter to ya, do it for me.”

I nod, hating that I am agreeing when I know Dash is going to flip his shit. She grips my hands and squeezes. “I love ya, Janey.” She leans in and plants a real kiss on my cheek before she walks off.

9. SHE BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE

I
lie back, wishing I’d told him I was doing it, because Dash is going to kill me when he finds out.

The laboratory bed lies cold and hard beneath me for a moment until my skin starts warming it up. I look over at Rory in his bed. His chest barely rises and falls. He’s been under for a long time, living in his made-up realities. It might be part of why he’s so strong with mind runs. He’s grown stronger at creating the world he’s in from being trapped in a state of mind run for the last few months. While I have been taking drugs and having brunch.

If they continue to keep Rory this way, he will not live past the next mind run. Coma patients are weak. Forced coma patients are less weak, but still not strong enough to fight even the flu or a cold or atrophy and fluid buildup in the lungs. Or I might kill him.

Lying there, he looks peaceful, even if I know he is not. His sins have prevented him from ever finding peace. I will not let them stop me from finding peace.

Angie comes to my bedside, touching my wrist with a sensor. She attaches all the other monitors and clips the two pads to my temples with the verbal plan inside of them. They sit there, sending signals to the nanobot in my head, coinciding with the headset I will be wearing. The pads tell the bot to use the biochip attached to it to send in the story. I will be given a shot to put me into forced sleep where I will hover in a state of semiconscious REM sleep. It is only attainable in this lab.

The biochip administers drugs to create the perfect environment for the mind run. The release of the neurotransmitters norepinephrine, histamine, and serotonin is curbed while melatonin is used to induce the sleep.

The prefrontal cortex is inhibited, tripped by the biochip, and cortisol is added to the system, creating a slightly more stressful environment in the dream world. It’s why they use spies and military personnel to do the mind runs—we already have fight-or-flight mastered and this system tends to leave the dreamer feeling the pressure of fight or flight in their dreams.

Reason and logic flee while the body believes it is in REM sleep, but being in a semiconscious state, the mind is more susceptible to subliminal messaging and repetition.

Once REM sleep occurs and the story is linked through to the system, it starts to play over and over. Soft speech—repetition of names, dates, and places. Creating facts inside the sleeping person’s mind.

Then the mind runner is hooked up to the patient, added to the same information as the dreamer. I never actually enter his mind, but we play together as if it were a video game.

We live the same dream, so to speak.

Angie hooks me up, getting me ready in silence until the other techs leave the room. Then she whispers, “I gave Rory an injection which sent another bot into his brain, like we did on the last run. This one is meant to search and destroy his old bot.”

“What happened to the last bot you shot in there trying to kill his old bot?”

“We didn’t try to kill the last bot, just override it. But he was somehow able to refuse the override. So now the last bot is a dud, just floating about, unable to receive or send anything, and his original bot is still running the show.”

“How do you know this one will work?” I can’t help but be dubious.

“Took the engineers two days with an entire team working the full forty-eight hours to come up with the little guy. It is programmed to take yer frequency to Rory’s bot so he doesn’t know there is a difference, but while it does that, it’ll also wrap itself around the previous bot and take over. It’s all delicate though and time consuming to kill that other bot. If we do it too quickly, he could go into shock or shut down. So this time the bot is creating an illusion like ya are not there and he is actually just dreaming about ya. It might give ya some time to sneak around. The bot will create the world around him; ya won’t have control over where ya go, but yer reactions will be yers. And its purpose is going to be to create a world where he triggers other memories and a new playing field each time. We are trying to get him to lead us to the place where ya can learn how he came to know of the lodge. Once ya do, get out.”

“This is a terrible idea. Genius and terrible.” I give her a look. “Does anyone else know you did this?”

“The one person who needs to know.”

She means the president, given that he’s got the ultimate authority over our operations. “Does Dash know?” I whisper my question, scared of the answer.

She winces. “No.” She’s lying.

I bite my lip. “How bad?”

“Worry about it when ya get back.”

I lie back and close my eyes, taking a deep breath. “He’s going to kill me.”

“Me first. It was all my idea. Oh and if ya get in there and it’s just black with nothing, it means the new bot accidentally fried his brain so come back out,” she says, and it’s the last thing I hear before the whispers of my own voice fill my mind.

I’m falling, just for a second. It isn’t like landing in the mind of a person who doesn’t expect me; it’s much more turbulent this time, like an invasion.

Walking down the torchlit hallway the new bot is programed for me to see is not something I’m excited about. It’s dank and it smells. It’s always dank here. His world stinks.

I walk to a door with a light making an outline around it, like the other side of the hallway is bright, compared with this place. I press against the door, pushing it open slowly and peeking around the edge. I’m exactly where I expected to be.

The photos Angie showed me have made a perfect picture and hopefully he doesn’t know I’m here.

I slink past the door, stepping into the light of day in a slum-like place.
It’s something I haven’t seen in a long time. I glance at the street, won
der
ing where to start, if he has seen me yet. Or sensed the game is afoot.

This isn’t a regular mind run. I’m alert and aware of who I am, not trying to convince Rory I’m him or to persuade him to let me into his world or share memories with him. This is all meant to trick him with an interactive bot that will change the scene we are in, in response to Rory’s memories so he will take me to the brothel in the mountains.

I creep from the shadows and down the road. His house should be here, on the right. He showed it to her once, Angie. He took her here and let her see his house, above the cleaners on Clowney Street.

The name makes me think of pedophiles picking up kids.

The houses are rather small—row houses, with one window on the main floor and one window up top. They have small doors and tiny gates. The alleys have barred doors on them and everything is so little I feel a bit lost.

Northern Ireland was not peaceful when I became a spy, but it was peaceful enough that I didn’t ever spend much time here.

Clowney Street shows the parts that weren’t quite peaceful enough in murals and graffiti on the brick walls. The hunger strike of ’81 is depicted in a mural and the riots of ’69. There is an old mural with something about 350 years of occupation and 350 years of resistance. It’s about the strangest thing I have ever seen.

I hurry along the concrete of the narrow street, passing the UPS storefront and another before stopping at the cleaners.

It’s at the end, the shitty end.

But the door is locked.

I stand there, waiting for a moment, before a small boy appears. He’s skipping and licking a lolly. He stops when he sees me, looks back behind him, and then at me. “Who are ya?” His accent is thick, but I would recognize those dark-blue eyes anywhere.

“I’m a friend of yer ma’s.” My accent is not so amazing. I can speak many languages, but mimicking the Irish accent always turns to Scottish for me.

He cocks an eyebrow. His little face is dirty and sticky. He hasn’t changed much, apart from the fact he’s a boy and still innocent of the evil I know him to have. “My ma died.” He says it matter-of-factly.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

He is dubious. “Ya know the sisters then?” He turns and points at a church. “My ma always loved the sisters—maybe not these ones, though.” The second part is whispered.

I close my eyes a second and instantly I am a sister. My costume is a nun’s habit, but one of the ones for younger women with the shorter skirt and all-white headdress. “I am one of them, Rory. I came to take ya back home. To the better sisters.”

He lifts his hand, trusting me straightaway.

That frightens me a bit. No child should take the hand of a stranger. I take his small, sticky hand in mine and squeeze gently. “Ya must be getting hungry. I’m fairly glad it was ya I found.”

He scowls. “Who the heck did ya think ya might find?”

“The other you. The one who scares me,” I whisper, hoping my nun costume is putting him at ease and not triggering a ripple so grown-up Rory senses anything. “I was hoping I would just find you. So I could ask you some questions.”

“After we eat?” he asks, like every street urchin might.

“After we eat,” I confirm and lead him to the convent. I imagine it’s filled with nuns, all kind and sweet, but I don’t control the memories here. I control me. It’s a different sort of run. “Where is the other Rory? The older one?”

He turns his little face up to mine and he shakes his head. “He never comes here.” I open the door and find that inside is what I feared it might be. It’s not nice or homey. It is most definitely not the place I grew up, with people loving you and caring for you. It’s gray—like everything, including the furnishings, is indifferent to you.

This is a special place for children no one wants in the land of no birth control or abortions, but heaps of judgment. Add to that the fact Belfast is incredibly impoverished, and you have a perfect storm. Too many children no one wants and no money to feed them.

A red-faced woman storms to him, taking his ear in her hand. “Where did ya steal that lolly from, ya little brat?” She tosses him aside, making him drop the lolly. She kicks it to the corner, shouting at him and whacking him in the side of the head. “God is watching you, Rory. And he will never forgive the sins you have committed.”

I want to defend him but that might make a ripple.

So I stand there, watching her hurt him.

“God doesn’t love boys who don’t live his word.”

Rory sobs and stares at his broken lolly lying on the dirty wooden floor. “I got it from the lady at the cleaners. I swear to ya. I never stole it.”

He has just finished the sentence when the lady hits him again. “Yer mother was a sinner and yer father was a sinner and you won’t ever be anything but a sinner.” She hits him until he’s sobbing and then storms off to “deal” with another kid.

I cannot believe the difference between this and the life I lived.

“Thank you.” I look up to the ceiling and smile. God and I have differing opinions on a few key items, but we both agree he took care of me. I believe in the part of the story where God carries you. And I believe the people who work here are Godless.

I hurry to Rory’s side, taking his hand. “Let’s get ya cleaned up.” I turn and pull him to the bathroom, hoping he’s going to feel better with a wash and a kind word.

He sniffs and shakes a little, but he isn’t scared of me. It’s weird. He should be. I’m one of them. But he isn’t. He wasn’t born an orphan like these kids. He had parents at one point, like I did.

The bathroom is dirty, everything is gray. Ash and soot sort of gray. Like they burn coal right in the rooms to heat them all. I don’t know what to think. I never saw it this way. The place Angie told me about, Rory’s orphanage, was wonderful. The pictures were bright and cheery, not desperate and scary like this place. But he is a liar, so maybe his good childhood was also a lie.

I grab a crisp paper towel and dampen it, softening it. I rub his face and wipe his tears, all the while looking in his eyes. “God loves you, Rory. He loves all children. The sins of the father are not the responsibility of the son.”

“What about the sins of the mo—mother?” He sniffs.

“No. That is all wrong. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I know God very well. My ma and pa died when I was yer age, and I lived with the nuns and the priests and they were kind to me. They treated me with love and respect and taught me that God loved me, and that even a silly little orphan catches the eye of God. Just like the sparrow.”

“Ya believe that?” His eyes are still filled with tears, but there is hope behind it all.

“I do.”

He smiles and I can’t help but laugh at the goofy grin on his face. He is not a monster yet. He’s a baby still.

We sit in the old decrepit bathroom, me hoping for a moment of lucidity from him. “Where is yer room?” I ask.

He frowns and scoffs. “I sleep in the room we all sleep in. It’s a bunk room.”

“Do ya like it, being with all the other boys?”

“Naw. They’re all mean. It’s not like home here. I miss my ma and pa. I miss every bit of our old house. It was over a couple streets, where I met ya. My ma had a little garden and there was grass in the backyard. I had my own grass and a fence.”

“How old were ya when they died?”