Mindwalker (6 page)

“Do you need help finding anything in particular?” Chloe asks, distracting me.

I hesitate.

Maybe this is a bad idea. If Dr. Swan happens to check the log-in records and sees that I've been poking around, there'll be questions. But I have to know whether everything he told me is true. “Steven Bent's file. Bring it up.”

Lines of glistening green code scroll across her eyes as she searches.

“Found him!” Chloe singsongs.

Steven's file pops up on the floating screen. Sure enough, he's a Type Four. I scan through his basic information. Height, weight, age (he's eighteen), and occupation (student, in his case). I scroll through paragraphs and paragraphs of information. So much. His list of diagnostic labels alone takes up half the screen. Depression, PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder, paranoid personality disorder …

I look away, suddenly uncomfortable. Steven's my client—sort of—so it's important that I know his medical background. Why do I feel like I'm betraying him?

“Is something wrong?” Chloe asks, leaning forward. “Not the file you were looking for?” Though she's just a computer program, she can recognize and analyze body language. At times, it feels almost like talking to a person.

I meet her luminous green gaze. “Chloe, am I being a snoop?”

She blinks a few times. Her ears twitch. “That's not really a question for a program, is it? Maybe you should ask another human.”

“You're right, of course.”

“Do you want me to close this file?” she asks.

“Not yet.” I lift a finger and slide it down the floating screen, scrolling until I hit a solid black line of text:

LEVEL 6 SECURITY CLEARANCE REQUIRED. ENTER PASSWORD.

Part of his file is classified. Why?

I run my finger back and forth across my lower lip, thinking. Then my gaze catches on a single phrase near the bottom of the screen.

STATUS: VOLUNTARILY PASSED.

Those words hold my gaze for a full minute, as if by staring at them long enough, I can make them change. My heartbeat fills my ears and thunders in my wrists and fingertips. “This can't be right,” I whisper.
Voluntarily passed
means that someone has chosen to take his own life with Somnazol, the legal suicide pill.

“Is something wrong?” Chloe asks.

I shake my head. “Log out,” I murmur.

The screen vanishes. “Do you need anything else?”

I need an explanation for this, but of course, that's something she can't give me. “No.”

“In that case, I'll take a nap.” Chloe curls up at the foot of the bed and disappears.

Those two words burn inside my head, as if etched into my brain by sharp little claws.
Voluntarily passed.
It sounds so civilized, so peaceful. Father always hated the term. He said it masked the suffering of the people involved, that suicide is suicide, regardless of whether the government approves it or not.

I struggle to control my breathing.
Think.

As soon as someone obtains Somnazol from a doctor, his status changes to
voluntarily passed
—meaning he's legally dead, even before he takes the pill. That means Steven might still be
alive. But if he's planning to die anyway, why did he approach me? Is he having second thoughts?

In my head, I see the Somnazol ad in the school bathroom. I've seen those same ads in mono stations and stores—ads filled with soothing colors, smiling doctors, words like
merciful
and
dignified.
Somnazol is an accepted part of society. We learn about it in school. A humane, painless death for people who are too broken to be fixed, a last resort for those who would otherwise just be dangerous burdens on society. That's what they tell us. I never liked it, never quite believed the line, but the cold reality never hit me so hard until this moment.

That's why Steven didn't want to go to IFEN. There's no way they'll approve him for neural modification therapy. There's no way they'll let me treat him. They're not even legally allowed to treat someone who's obtained a Somnazol.

In their eyes, he's already dead.

When I arrive at Greenborough the next day, there are police cars everywhere. Students huddle outside, bundled in coats and shivering.

An evacuation?

I park my car, get out, and jog toward the crowd, scanning it for a familiar face. Guards prowl around us. They're all wielding NDs—neural disrupters—resembling small pistols, as well as portable neuroscanners resembling black plastic wands. One of the guards stalks toward me, and I tense. “What's going on?”

“We're dealing with a potential threat,” he says. “Hold still.” I flinch back as he waves the scanner in front of my face.

“Excuse me,” I say, holding up one arm like a shield. “I haven't consented to a scan.”

“We don't need your consent,” he snaps. “An emergency has been declared. Hold still!” I freeze. A green light blinks. “Type One!” he shouts to someone else. “She's clean.”

More voices raise. “Get in line! Everyone get in line!”

The guards are brandishing their NDs at the students, pushing them into a loose line and scanning them one by one. Many of the students are bunched together, as if for protection. Some of them have been on the wrong end of an ND before. I've seen it happen—the twitching, the convulsions, the bloody foam bubbling from bitten tongues and lips.

I spot Ian. With his hairstyle and trademark black leather jacket with fishnet sleeves, he's easy to pick out of a crowd. I run toward him, calling his name.

He turns. There's an odd, unfocused look in his eyes, as if he's not quite there. “Lain …”

I jog to a halt, panting. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay.” Sweat shines on his forehead. He rubs his hand over the fuzzy stripe of ginger hair on his scalp. Then he leans in, lowering his voice. “Be careful. They're really riled up. They're itching to use those NDs.”

“What's going on? Did someone find a weapon?”

He shakes his head. “You won't believe it.” A tiny, wry smile curves one corner of his mouth, though the glassy look doesn't quite leave his eyes. “They're here because someone found a sticky note on the inside of a bathroom stall. And of course, because the stalls are the only places that don't have cameras, they can't tell who it was.”

“A note? What did it say?”

“ ‘Burn it all down.' They're treating it as an arson threat. Personally, I think the administration did it, just to have an excuse to raid, since there hasn't been one for a few weeks—”

I clamp a hand over his mouth and hiss, “Ian! Be careful!”

He rolls his eyes. When I lower my hand, he says, “They
already scanned me. They know I'm not a threat.” Despite his words, there's an edginess in his voice and posture that I've never seen before. His large brown eyes dart back and forth. They usually remind me of a hound's, but right now, they look more like a fox's. Did
he
place the note? No, that's absurd. Ian's always had a bit of a rebellious streak, but he wouldn't go that far.

“You know,” a boy nearby says in a hushed tone, “after this, I bet they'll try to put cameras in the stalls, too.”

“Yeah,” another says. “Those pervs just want to watch us poop.”

Muffled snickers greet this remark.

“After that, they'll be putting cameras
in
the toilets,” a girl says in that same hushed tone.

“Yeah, you never know, we might be smuggling something up there.”

More laughter. But they keep glancing furtively around to make sure none of the guards are listening.

I scan the crowd, looking for Steven's pale blond hair.

“Hey, you okay?” Ian asks.

“Fine. Mostly.”

His face softens, and for a moment, he looks more like himself. “Don't worry. This'll all blow over in an hour, and we can get on with our lives.”

I smile, but it takes an effort.

Sure enough, within an hour, the police give the all clear, but I see them haul off a struggling boy. His hair is dark, not blond. I don't know whether or not to feel relieved. I don't want Steven to be locked in a treatment facility, but if that boy
were
him, it would at least mean he was still alive.

“Poor bastard,” Ian says.

Steven's not dead, I tell myself. We're supposed to meet today. He wouldn't take the pill before then, would he?

They shove the thrashing boy into a police car.

“How can they be sure he was the one who wrote the note?” I ask.

“I don't think they're too concerned with proving who did it,” he says. “As long as they catch
someone,
people will feel like it's been dealt with.”

I look at him uneasily from the corner of my eye.

The car drives away, taking the boy with it. Suddenly, I feel cold. Without thinking, I put my arms around Ian, leaning against his shoulder for comfort. To my surprise, he tenses and pulls away. I look up, brows knitted. “Sorry,” he mutters, rubbing his palms over his face. His hands are shaking. “I just—I don't want to be touched. Not now.” He clutches his arms. His pulse flutters in his long, skinny throat.

What's going on? Then I remember. His last client was a sexual assault victim. “I'm sorry,” I whisper. “I forgot.”

“It's fine.” His eyes are glazed, his face a sickly whitish gray. “I'll be okay in a few days.”

I study his face, uncertain. Ian's dealt with similar cases in the past, but he's never been affected like this, at least not that I've seen. Was there something especially bad about this one? I want to ask, but don't quite dare. “I wonder what's going to happen to that boy,” I say instead.

“He'll probably be Conditioned. Nothing we can do about it now.”

I went through Conditioning myself a few times, though for me it was voluntary, an effort to battle the anger and
depression I faced after my father's death. I remember lying in the darkness, encased in that metal tube. It's a soothing experience, if you don't fight it—the low hum in your head, the sense of floating, the pain and tension ebbing out of you. But there's also something oppressive about it. A heaviness, a vague feeling of defilement, like dirty fingers touching you.

“Or maybe they'll send him to a Mindwalker,” Ian adds. His voice has dropped to a low, almost inaudible mutter. “You never know.”

“Without his consent? Certainly not.” Involuntary memory modifications are rare, almost unheard of.

He shrugs. “Yeah, you're right. Probably.”

The guards shepherd us back toward the school. We walk through the open doors, down the hallway, following the other students toward the gymnasium, where we file into the bleachers. Greenborough's plump, matronly superintendent makes an appearance and delivers a short speech. It's the usual. There was a threat, but the threat has been dealt with. A Type Four has been identified and will be given the appropriate treatments. And a collar, no doubt.

My hands curl into fists in my lap.

Later, after school, Ian and I walk across the parking lot together. “Do you think it's right?” I blurt out.

“Is what right?”

“This. Everything.”

He walks stiffly, hands shoved into his pockets. “You've seen the documentaries, right? About the way things were before?”

We've all seen documentaries detailing the rise of domestic terrorism. Images flash across my brain—explosions, stampeding
crowds, debris flying through the air, bodies riddled with bullets from mass shootings. A war with no single enemy, just lots of angry people with sick minds. Of course, all that happened decades before I was born.

Back then, IFEN was simply a research institution focused on the budding field of neurotechnology—mostly mind mapping and mind imaging, at that point. Mindwalkers didn't even exist yet. But as the terrorist attacks escalated, scientists began sharing data with the government to create the National Registry of Mental Health—the database that is now a central pillar of our society—so potential threats could be identified and watched. The Typing system was established, active video monitoring became commonplace, and for a while, the authorities managed to keep the violence under control. But some people began to mutter that we'd become a totalitarian state, and social unrest grew.

Then came the Blackcoats, a semiorganized group of hackers and political radicals who declared war against the government. Another wave of terrorism, even worse than the first, swept the country. The fighting raged on and on—the police and military against soldiers of a hidden army who attacked from the shadows and disappeared without a trace, with innocent people caught in the cross fire.

I shudder.

Father lived through that nightmare. He only talked about it a few times, but those few times were vivid enough. When the dust finally settled and the Blackcoat leaders had all been hunted down, people were desperate for the violence to end. Who could blame them?