Mindwalker (9 page)

I sit on the couch and give him a self-conscious smile. “Make yourself at home.”

He plops into an armchair across from me, and the leather creaks in complaint. “So, uh. What about your parents? I mean, are they okay with you having your own place?”

“My father died a few years ago. I've been here by myself ever since.”

Steven opens his mouth, as if to ask something else, then closes it. He glances at the picture on the coffee table, and I feel suddenly exposed. I can't remember the last time I've actually had a visitor.

Steven picks up the ceramic squirrel saltshaker and turns it over in his hands. “So, this mind-reading machine of yours is in some kind of secret underground room?”

“Yes.” I told him about the Mindgate on the way over. “Before we start, though, how are you feeling?”

He wrinkles his nose. “You really need to ask that?”

“Of course. You're my client. It's important for me to know.”

His fingers tighten on the ceramic squirrel. “Okay. I'm scared. Is that what you want to hear? I'm scared stiff.”

“Why?” I ask gently.

He gives me a dry smile. “You're about to go into my head. If you don't know why
that's
scary, you need to retake your psychology classes.”

I ignore the barb. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He shakes his head. “I suck at that touchy-feely stuff. Back in the nuthouse, they tried to make me do talk therapy a few times. I hated it.”

“Why's that?”

“It's kind of like puking your guts out on the floor and letting some creep poke around in the bloody mess and take notes.”

“You don't like psychologists, do you?”

“Gee, what clued you in?”

“I'm just curious about your reasons. I'm a psychologist, after all.”

He rolls the squirrel saltshaker across his palm. “I get tired of all these rich people in white coats pretending they understand my pain.”

“But that's what they're trained for. To understand.”

He unscrews the squirrel's head and peers into its hollow ceramic skull. “Dissecting something isn't the same as understanding it. You can cut open a rat and pick its brain apart and label every little piece. But that doesn't tell you what it's like to be that rat.” He sets the squirrel's head on the coffee table and places its body next to it.

“Do
I
make you feel like you're being dissected?”

There's a pause. “No.” He looks away. “I haven't figured you out yet. But I don't think you're one of them.”

“I'm glad.” I catch myself twirling a pigtail around one finger, a habit I've tried hard to break. Pigtail twirling doesn't inspire confidence when you're about to rewire someone's brain. I drop my hands to my lap and interlace my fingers. My pulse drums in my wrists. Don't think of him as a boy, I remind myself. Think of him as a client. This is just another Mindwalking session. I keep telling myself that, but the nervous flutter in my stomach won't subside. “Is there anything else you want to discuss, or …”

His fingers clench on the chair's arms, the skin around his nails whitening. “Let's just do it. Before I lose my nerve.”

I screw the squirrel's head back onto its body, stand, and walk over to the bookshelf. It's filled with thick, leather-bound volumes. I trail my fingers over the books' spines until I find the familiar copy of Thomas More's
Utopia.
When I pull it out,
the massive piece of furniture slides to one side with a low rumble, exposing a door.

Steven raises his eyebrows. “A hidden passage. Have to admit, I'm impressed.”

I smile over one shoulder, then open the door and lead him down a set of cement stairs. There's another door at the bottom, a heavy, solid metal one with a keypad. I pause, fingers hovering over the keys. I remember the code, of course. My father used to see clients here, in his home. But since his death, I haven't been inside this room even once. I'm afraid that if I step through that door, the memories will hit me like a roaring wind. My throat knots. I swallow, trying to loosen it.

I key in the code, and the door slides open. A light comes on, revealing a large room with white walls and a white-tiled floor. Two black-padded reclining chairs stand side by side, and between them is the Mindgate. The Gate, for short. For all its sophistication and power, it looks rather ordinary—a sleek black hard drive, about the size of a briefcase, atop a metal counter. Next to the hard drive sit two white plastic helmets. They're similar to bicycle helmets, rounded and smooth, with black visors. There are no wires, nothing visibly connecting them to the computer.

The rush of grief is less overwhelming than I expected. There's a brief prickle in my sinuses, then it passes, leaving me aching but stable. I exhale softly.

Steven watches me from the corner of his eye, and I wonder if he noticed. Then he turns his attention to the Gate, squinting. “This is it?”

I nod. “I know it doesn't look like much, but it's one of the most sophisticated computers on the planet.”

He makes a noncommittal sound. “So how's it work?”

“We'll sit in those chairs and put on those helmets. The Gate will read the activity in your brain and translate it into electronic signals, which will be sent to mine. I'll be able to share your thoughts and memories, as well as any physical sensations you're experiencing.”

His eyes are shielded, but I can see the clouds of tension swirling just beneath the surface. “Will I be able to read
your
thoughts, too?”

“No. That would only be a distraction.” I take a few steps toward the Gate and rest a hand on the hard drive. At my touch, it powers up automatically, humming softly. A green light blinks on. I run a hand over the smooth plastic. It feels like greeting a pet I haven't seen in years. “The initial phase is called mapping. It will help me create a system to navigate your memories so that later I'll know exactly what to delete. Many clients are concerned that good memories will be accidentally destroyed along with the bad ones. I'll do everything in my power to avoid that, but you should know there's still a risk.”

“I don't have any good memories, so I guess I'm safe,” he mutters. “Lucky me.”

“None at all?”

“Well, I guess I've had a few decent lunches.” He flops down in the chair on the left and props his shoes up on the footrest.

I wonder what his life was like before the kidnapping. What sort of childhood did he have? But now is not the time to ask.

I settle myself into the other chair and pick up my helmet. It's marked with a silver dot on the back to differentiate
it from the client's. The inside is lined with malleable white foam designed to conform to the contours of a person's skull. Hundreds of sensors are embedded within that foam: shiny black circles, like tiny eyes capable of peering through scalp and blood and bone.

Steven pulls on his helmet, fastens the adjustable strap under his chin, snaps the black visor over his eyes, and leans back in the chair, his whole body as stiff as a board. His fingernails dig into the chair's arms.

I wave a hand in front of the Gate's black hard drive, over the sensor, which blinks a blue light. A holographic monitor appears, hovering in midair, displaying a three-dimensional image of a brain rendered in translucent blue. Amorphous clouds of yellow and orange—neural activity—swirl within, while a corner of the screen displays Steven's vital signs. “All the sensors seem to be functioning.”

He grimaces. “It's making my head tingle.”

“That's normal. Do you want to see your brain?” I remember being enormously curious the first time someone showed me mine.

“No thanks,” he says. “I've seen it. It's nothing special.”

I shrug, switch off the monitor, and pull on my own helmet. “Just relax.” There's a tiny microphone embedded in each helmet, close to the wearer's mouth, and little speakers by the ears, so we can talk to each other without raising our voices.

“Am I supposed to be seeing anything?” he asks.

“No. The visors are just to block the distraction of sight so you can focus more completely on visualization.” I fold my hands over my chest and take a few deep breaths. Unlike the
chairs at IFEN, these have no restraints. Enveloped in darkness, with only the sound of Steven's breathing in my ears, I find it easy to forget the outside world.

The connection opens. That warm, allover tingling envelops my body. A soft sigh escapes me before I can stop it. Then sensations flow into me—Steven's heartbeat, the expansion and contraction of his lungs, the sweat dampening his armpits and palms, the tension in his muscles, the nervous way he jiggles one leg and taps his fingers against the chair's arm. The duality is always disorienting, like existing in two places at once. For an instant, my identity wavers, and I
am
Steven Bent. I am the boy desperately trying to escape his past, the boy whose focus is on surviving this day, this hour, this moment. The boy who still hopes, in spite of himself.

I keep my eyes closed and focus on breathing.
Lain Fisher. Mindwalker. Seventeen years old. Brown hair, brown eyes. Likes chocolate and sad music. Particularly violins.
I repeat the words until my sense of identity settles back into place, like sediment on the ocean floor. “Ready?”

“Yeah,” he whispers hoarsely.

“All right. I want you to try sharing a memory with me now. To start, let's pick an incident that has nothing to do with your kidnapping. But it should be something with a strong emotional charge.”

“Emotional charge?”

“Something that evokes a strong feeling, either positive or negative.”

A moment passes. A hazy image forms in my mind: dark, blurry figures walking down a fog-shrouded corridor. I'm
sinking, falling into empty space. The fog dissolves. When the last clinging wisps break apart and vanish, my ears are filled with the din of students' voices talking and laughing, the echoing thunder of footsteps. Rows of gray lockers line a beigetiled hallway, where the air is pungent with a thick smell of disinfectant. Cameras track my movements from the ceiling.

I'm in Greenborough High School.

I move down the hall as faces float past to either side. Then I stop in front of my—
Steven's
—locker.

The word

is scrawled across the metal in black marker, the letters slightly smeared, as if a sweaty hand ran over it before the ink dried. Someone— perhaps the same person, perhaps someone else— has stuck a note on the locker with a message neatly printed in pink marker:

Beneath the words is a smiley face, and below that, in parentheses:

The writer has drawn a little diagram of a hand making a vertical razor cut down an arm, illustrated by a dotted line. My
breathing quickens. i rip off the sticky note, crumple it in one fist, and toss it to the floor.

The image fades. I'm left with a void in my stomach. I'm cold. Shaken.