Mindwalker (23 page)

A shiver runs through me.

Leaning closer to Steven, I point to the graffiti and lower my voice. “Do you think there actually
is
some kind of secret resistance movement?”

He gives me a long, searching look. “What do you think?”

IFEN has made official statements that the rumors of a resistance are false, that the Blackcoats are a thing of the past, that anyone who talks about an underground network of rebels is merely disturbed. Troubled people often try to stir up fear and unrest, because they want others to be as troubled as they
are. They hammered that point into us over and over in the psychology classes I took during my training:
Fear is contagious. As a Mindwalker, you'll be exposed to many paranoid people. The most dangerous thing you can do is to take them seriously.

Maybe they're right, but it strikes me as a very convenient mantra for those who want to keep the status quo in place:
Anyone who questions the wisdom and goodness of our system is sick, and they'll infect you if you pay too much attention.
I wonder if having such thoughts means that I am already infected. Isn't that exactly what Dr. Swan warned me about? Am I slipping deeper and deeper into insanity, as my father did?

I think of the wild-eyed man on the street corner handing out his flyers.
Join the resistance,
he said. If I picked up one of those incoherent, exclamation-point-laden flyers now, maybe it would actually make sense to me. Maybe the words would magically rearrange themselves into a compellingly written thesis on the rights of man, complete with citations.

The mono pulls up, and we get on. I haven't answered Steven's question, I realize. I don't have any answers. Only more and more questions.

***

Back in the Gate room, I settle myself into my chair, open the compact, and pluck out the mushroom pill. I glance over at Steven. “Ready?”

“As I'll ever be.” He smiles, though he's a little pale. “Let's ride the mushroom train.”

I hand the pill to him, and he curls his fingers around it,
gripping it tight. I remember the way I felt after the blue bunny pill—sick, my head pounding like a drum—and I try to swallow my dread. But of course, the physical pain is the least of my worries. Suddenly, my palms are wet, my throat clenched. “You're sure about this?” I can't resist asking.

“You got any better ideas?”

“No,” I admit. St. Mary's is clearly a dead end; we saw for ourselves there's nothing there. These pills are our only key to the truth. Still … “This is going to be stronger than the last one, you know.”

“Getting scared, huh? Can't say I blame you. If I were you, I wouldn't want to go back into my head, either.”

“I just wish I had some idea of what we'll find.”

He rolls the pill between a thumb and forefinger. “You ever read Dante's
Inferno
? I think it's like that. I think
I'm
like that. The farther down you travel, the worse it gets. I wonder just how deep you're willing to go.”

I meet his gaze. “To the very bottom of the ninth circle.”

He stares back at me for a long moment, his expression solemn. Then he smiles with one corner of his mouth. “Kinda cheesy, Doc.”

The remark is so unexpected that I burst out laughing. “It's
your
metaphor. Don't blame me.” I swallow the laughter. “I mean it, though. However bad it gets, I'll be there.”

“You've got a masochistic streak,” he says, arching an eyebrow. “You know that?”

“Look who's talking.”

We maintain eye contact, drawing it out, locked in a silent battle to see who can hold a straight face the longest. Then we
start to giggle again. Giddiness swims through my head like silver bubbles. “There's nothing funny about this,” I gasp, tears of mirth leaking from my eyes.

“I know,” he replies through bursts of laughter.

When the manic giggles finally die down, I square my shoulders and say, “All right. Let's do this.” I shove the helmet onto my head and buckle the chin strap. Steven puts on his own helmet, then swallows the mushroom pill. I slide my visor into place as the familiar tingling of immersion spreads through my body, and I feel the pill sliding down Steven's throat.

I brace myself for the disorientation, the vertigo, the feeling that space is stretching around me. But this time, it doesn't happen that way.

My stomach cramps in a sharp, wrenching spasm. Steven gasps, his back arching off the chair. His fingers twitch, clench, and flex, as if he's being electrocuted. As the drug works its way into his bloodstream, my body and brain burn along with his. My heart slams against my breastbone. Electricity buzzes in my skull. My muscles spasm, then lock tight, as if someone flipped a switch in my brain, shutting off my voluntary motor functions. I can only lie there gasping for breath as my heart rate climbs.

Then a hole opens up in the air in front of me.

It's perfectly black, an expanding circle of nothingness. The edges blur and distort the room, as if it's warping the very fabric of space. From within, I hear a low, buzzing hum. No, not a hum—voices, a soft chorus of them. There are no words. It's somewhere between moaning and singing, and it grows louder with every passing second. I try to scream, but nothing comes out. I can't move.

My body lurches forward into the hole, and blackness swallows me.

For a span of time that might be seconds or centuries, there's nothing. Then I'm walking through a desert. The sand stretches in every direction, white and rippled under a star-filled night sky. I have the sense that I've been walking for a very long time. Years, maybe.

I stop. An enormous sphinx of sand-colored stone looms before me. She has my face.

What is this place? Why am I here? I knew a moment ago, but now it's gone.

Between the sphinx's paws, I see a dark square. A hole.

I approach slowly. Voices swell around me, warbling in their unearthly harmony as I near the edge. A set of stone stairs leads downward, into blackness.

I don't want to enter that hole. I know with a bone-deep certainty that something terrible awaits me. Somewhere in the depths of my dream, I'm still aware of my physical body sitting in the chair. Maybe I could wake up if I tried.
Go back,
my instincts scream.

I descend the stairs. Silence enfolds me. The shadows grow thick, and the only sound is my own rapid breathing. I touch the wall, trailing my fingers along the cool, dry stone, feeling my way down a long tunnel as the faint light dwindles behind me. Then I see another light ahead, dim and reddish. The tunnel opens out into a vast stone cavern, filled with that bloody glow, which comes from everywhere and nowhere. In one corner, a pale golden form is curled up like a cat. But it's enormous, bigger than my house.

A dragon.

Its nose rests on its car-sized, scaled paws. Its blue eyes watch me, unblinking, as the tip of its tail flicks. Slowly, its head lifts, and its jaws stretch open, revealing rows of dripping white teeth. Smoke curls from its nostrils.

I take a few steps back. My hand tightens around the hilt of my sword— Wait, I have a sword? I glance down and see a shining blade. In my other hand, I'm gripping a shield.

The dragon growls and takes a step toward me, then stops. It watches me, waiting. Waiting to see if I'll attack or defend.

I look into its eyes. Sharp, intelligent eyes, cautious and wounded.

I drop my sword and shield. The dragon looks at me.

“Go ahead,” I say.

Its jaws stretch wide, descending. A gust of hot breath hits me in the face as the jaws close around me. The dragon swallows me whole.

And then I'm falling again, plummeting into a dark, deep pit.

Time stretches and bends. For a while, I float. I drift up slowly through layers of murky darkness, growing steadily lighter. Distantly, I can hear voices. Men's voices.

I open my eyes.

Everything is white—the walls, the ceiling, the overhead lights. I'm lying on a cold metal table, and I can't move. Out of sight, a machine buzzes and whirs. My breathing quickens. I try to sit up, but I can't. My body feels like it's glued in place. Only my eyes can move. I strain them down, trying to see myself, but everything goes fuzzy.

“Gently, now,” says a soft voice. It's distorted and echoed, but there's something vaguely familiar about it.

“Relax,” replies a deep voice, equally distorted. “I know what I'm doing.” In the corner of the room sits an old, boxy gray machine with a little window. Behind the window, tiny circles turn, and a woman's voice drifts from the speakers. She's singing in another language.

“Can we turn that thing off?” the first voice mutters.

“It helps me focus. I'm the one doing the tricky part here. You just concentrate on holding up pictures.” The drill whirs again.

An image fills my vision—a black-and-white drawing of an animal, and I should know the name, but it won't come. “Do you see this?” asks the soft-voiced man.

I whimper.

“Steven, I need you to concentrate. Look. What is this?”

The name drifts into my head. “Elephant.” My own voice sounds soft and far away.

The picture lowers. Off to the side, gloved hands pass shiny knives back and forth. Something red drips from the blades. Blood. My blood. I start to breathe faster.
Move,
I tell my body. The little finger on my right hand twitches once. I try to lift my hand, but it's too heavy. The blade lowers toward me and disappears. There's a faint, wet, crackling noise, as if someone is cutting meat.

Another picture comes up in front of me: three fluffy kittens in a basket. “What about this one? Do you see this?”

I feel sick. Dizzy. Black spots wiggle in front of my eyes.

“Steven. Can you tell me what's in this picture?”

“Cats.” My voice is faint now. Weak. A drill whines and whirs, and grinding noises echo through the room. Somewhere deep beneath the numbness is pain, and for a few seconds, I
feel like I'm going to throw up. They're taking me apart, and I can't move.

More whirring and grinding.

A moment of blinding panic—
THEY'RE KILLING YOU. RUN!
—then the gray fog comes over me again. Run where? Where would I go? What would I do?

My body feels heavy. It's a strange feeling, being so scared, yet not caring.

“Heart rate spiked for a moment,” says Soft Voice. “Should we increase the sedatives?”

“No,” Deep Voice says, growling a little. “We need him conscious. I'm going to—” The voice goes fuzzy in my ears, the words running together, garbled. “—deliver the injection directly into—” More fuzzy babble, almost understandable but not quite, like someone speaking underwater.

I just want this to be over. A tear escapes the corner of my eye and slides down my cheek.

Gloved fingers brush away the tear. I blink.

“Just relax,” says Soft Voice. “It will all be over soon.”

A face lowers into my field of vision, and a pair of eyes stare at me from above a surgical mask as a hand touches my temple. My focus narrows. All I can see is those eyes. Light, tawny brown, with a slight tint of green, and a tiny gold fleck in the left eye. I
know
those eyes. I've seen them many times. They're …

They're mine.

No!

I snap back into my own body, into the present, shaking and drenched with sweat. I shut my eyes, clutch my bracelet, and repeat my identity affirmation exercises to myself.

Lain Fisher. My name is Lain Fisher. I'm seventeen years old, a student at Greenborough High School. I—I—

I yank the visor up. Light floods my eyes, stinging, making them water. I blink, dizzy and nauseous, as the world settles into place around me. Tiled floor. Blank white walls. But
my
walls. My basement.

My head pounds. It's worse than last time. When I try to sit up, nausea rolls over me and pushes me down like a wave of liquid lead.

At first, my voice doesn't want to work. I open my mouth and nothing comes out, save a weak croak. After a minute, I finally manage to whisper, “Steven?”

Steven sits, breathing heavily, the visor covering his eyes. Slowly, he reaches up and pulls off his helmet, not looking at me.

“Steven, can you hear me?”

“Yeah.” His voice is flat, emotionless.

I slide off my own helmet and run a hand through my sweat-damp hair. “Do you …” My voice wavers. “Do you remember what you saw?”

“Some of it.” He sits up, shoulders stiff. Still, he won't look at me. He reaches into his pocket, fishes out a handful of little white pills, and swallows three of them. “I'm going outside,” he mutters. “I need some air.” Without even glancing at me, he leaves the room.

I find Steven standing on my front lawn, hands in his pockets, staring into space. The sun sinks toward the western horizon, orange light bleeding between the clouds and reflecting in the windows of the houses around us.