The Thought Readers (14 page)

We park in a Costco lot in Sunset Park.

According to Google Maps, the place where they’re keeping Mira is an industrial warehouse. What these guys are doing so far from Brighton Beach, none of us have a clue. Brighton Beach is where the Russian Mafia is supposed to be headquartered, according to Eugene. I hope that this actually plays to our advantage. If they do call for reinforcements, it’s a twenty-minute drive without traffic, according to Julia’s phone. Of course, that assumes the reinforcements are on Brighton Beach, and—this is a big one—that they’re going to need reinforcements against the four of us.

Caleb jumps out of his seat and starts rummaging through the trunk of the Hummer.

“Are we shopping for supplies?” I ask, looking in the direction of the huge store. I’m only half-joking.

“I have everything I need,” Julia says, hanging a messenger bag over her shoulder.

“They don’t sell the type of stuff I need in Costco,” Caleb responds, putting what has to be a rifle in a special carry case over his shoulder. “At least not in New York.”

He puts on a vest with special pockets and straps the huge knife I saw previously to it, along with a couple of handguns.

“This is for you,” Caleb says, handing me a gun.

The seriousness of the situation hits me again. We’re going against armed criminals. Just the four of us. A scientist, a girl whose toughness I haven’t fully determined yet, and, let’s face it, a financial analyst. Caleb is the only person even remotely qualified for this rescue. Despite his unshakable confidence, the odds don’t seem right to me.

Not to mention, the people holding Mira have an ace up their sleeve: a hostage.

All we have is our unusual skill set.

Caleb clearly has a plan, though. He leads us to an abandoned warehouse located a short distance from where we parked.

We walk up to the top floor, and Caleb methodically unzips his gun case and starts setting up. The gun is huge and looks very professional—complete with scope and silencer. I wonder if this is what he used to gun down our pursuers earlier. Eugene and Julia, who have been silent for some time, exchange impressed looks. Eugene seems grimly determined, while Julia looks thoughtful.

I gaze around the room we’ve found ourselves in. It’s dusty and dark, despite large, floor-to-ceiling windows—probably because said windows are yellow and covered with grime. Caleb opens one of those windows, lies down on the floor, and aims the huge gun at the industrial warehouse across the street. Then he says curtly, “All right, Darren, pull us in.”

I leverage my natural anxiety over what’s about to happen and quickly phase into the Quiet. Then I touch everyone in turn, pulling them in.

Once we’re all in, we walk down the stairs and cross the road. This part of Brooklyn is so abandoned that being in the Quiet doesn’t seem like much of a change. At least not until we cross the road, and Caleb breaks the door with a series of kicks. Even in a scarcely populated area like this, such bold breaking and entering might’ve gotten us noticed and reported, if it took place in the real world.

“You know, I could’ve picked that lock,” Julia says, looking at what’s left of the door on the ground.

“You’ll get your chance,” Caleb tells her as he walks into the building.

We walk through the door and find ourselves in a large open space. There are a bunch of guys frozen in the process of walking around. They all have guns. Caleb walks between the guys and the windows, looking intently at the building we came from.

His plan is beginning to dawn on me.

He’s figuring out how to shoot them from our location across the street. He’s triangulating his shots; as soon as we phase back out, he’ll shoot.

I’ll have to remember to never piss off Caleb.

“Where’s Mira?” Eugene asks after examining the hangar.

“Try Reading them,” Caleb says without turning. “We need to figure that out, because once we get back to the real world, the information will be lost.”

Right. Because you can’t Read dead men. A chill skitters across my spine. Caleb is too calm about it. Too poised. His coldness makes me uneasy. I wonder if I, personally, am capable of killing. Even if it’s an enemy. Even in self-defense. I don’t know, and I hope I don’t find out today.

For my Reading target, I choose a big guy near one of the columns. He must be on steroids or growth hormones—or both. Though he’s my height, he must be at least two hundred pounds heavier than I am. Being that he’s Russian, I wonder if he’s trying to look like a bear. He’s closer to a gorilla. I catch myself hoping that Caleb doesn’t miss this specific dude with his rifle. We wouldn’t want to face him in anything but a gunfight.

Putting my hand on his gigantic forehead, I jump in a few hours ago.

* * *

We see Mira playing cards with Vasiliy. There is one other guy in the room with her.

“Na huy ti s ney igrayesh?” we say. As usual I, Darren, marvel at understanding this. He, Lenya, was asking a question about why his idiot bro is playing cards with the hostage. Playing cards with a girl who is a renowned card cheat.

He, Lenya, is picturing what he would do with the hostage. We see images of Mira tied up and abused. I, Darren, distance myself almost instantly and nearly puke—though this is not easy to do in my current position. Can you vomit mentally? This almost makes me want to jump out of this asshole’s head, it’s so sick. I also feel an instinctive need to protect Mira from ever coming near this guy. I feel dirty. The best way to describe the experience is it’s as if I’m dreaming of being this scumbag. I am rethinking my earlier squeamishness toward killing.

I shouldn’t jump out, however, as he’s about to give me key information. I try to focus on what the guy’s body is experiencing—an ache from yesterday’s workout, soreness in the knuckles from punching someone, anything except those sick rape fantasies. This approach is flawed, though, because focusing on his body makes me realize he’s getting turned on from these disgusting thoughts. Thankfully, before I’m forced out of his head from sheer horror, he refocuses on what he should be doing. And that is locking the door in front of him from the outside.

We lock the door, mentally praising Tolik, who is also in the room. At least he has his gun next to him, and isn’t letting the bitch distract him. He also forbade untying her legs from the chair. Tolik will keep Vasiliy in check.

We walk out into the corridor and through a maze of concrete hallways until we reach the stairs. Then we go down to the main hall, where the rest of the guards are.

I, Darren, now know where Mira is being held.

I almost jump out, but I decide to try to go even deeper. I want to know who told this guy to lock the door from the outside. That’s very specific. Whoever came up with that could’ve been trying to limit Mira’s range of motion in the Quiet—and thus might be the Pusher fuck behind all this.

I jump further.

We’re sitting in a banya. I, Darren, learn that a banya is a Russian spa—a bit like a sauna, but much hotter. Given how we, I mean he, feels when in there, it sounds like something I should check out.

I go further still, jumping around scenes from this goon’s life.

Aha.

“Keep those doors closed,” Piotr says. We look at Piotr and wonder who the fuck he is to be giving orders around here.

I, Darren, realize with disappointment that Piotr is another Russian I saw in the very room we’re in now.

I jump out of Lenya’s head.

* * *

“Darren, let’s go,” Caleb says as soon as I’m conscious of being myself again.

“Give me a minute,” I respond. “I need to check that guy.” I point at Piotr, sitting at a desk.

“Hurry,” Caleb says.

I walk up to the guy. He looks a tiny bit more intelligent than the one whose mind I was in a moment ago. I place my hand on his forehead.

* * *

I’m in, but I don’t know where to start. Intuitively I jump around scenes from this guy’s life until I find it.

We’re watching boxing on TV when another mind enters. Time stops; now there are more of us in his head.

I understand that the guy himself wouldn’t have felt the Pusher enter his mind. Apparently people don’t consciously notice either us or them when we do our thing. But I am very much aware of it. It’s like a ghostly presence. And as I keep Reading, the Pusher begins to give instructions.

‘Instructions’ is a poor word for it, but I can’t think of a better one. In reality, they’re almost like experiences the Pusher inserts into the guy’s mind. Like the reverse of Reading. The Pusher inserts experiences and reactions to them. How this will ensure the guy does what he’s supposed to, I don’t know, but it must work. To me, it feels a little bit like a very detailed story of what Piotr should experience when the time is right.

The experience in this case is pretty simple. ‘Pick up the phone’ is the first step. The Pusher seems to almost play out a fake memory for his target. Every detail of how it would be to pick up the phone is considered: which hand, the weight of the phone in his hand, and so on.

Next comes the instruction: ‘Text all the trusted people with a request to meet at Tatyana Restaurant in an hour.’

Finally, Piotr is instructed to get up and go there himself.

After that, the Pusher’s presence disappears. Based purely on the person’s presence in this mind, I can’t tell whether it was male or female. To my disappointment, whoever it was never came into physical contact with Piotr.

I Read Piotr’s mind a little longer. I’m curious what he’ll recall of the Pusher influence. As I expected, he remembers nothing. He arrives at the restaurant, slightly amused.
Isn’t it strange how sometimes you drive someplace, but don’t even remember the driving process?
he thinks.

It seems like the Pusher’s influence has caused a mild memory lapse in the target’s mind, but overall Piotr acts as though of his own volition. It’s interesting to watch how he rationalizes his actions as happening of his own choosing and his memory lapse as one of those times when the conscious mind goes on autopilot and the subconscious takes over. The illusion of free will at its finest. It comes to me all over again how dangerous these Pushers are. Whatever they need done, all they need to do is plant the seed in someone’s mind.

Mind-rape, Eugene called it. Now I understand why.

Knowing I won’t get any more than this, I decide to jump out of Piotr’s mind. People are waiting for me.

* * *

When I’m conscious again, Caleb is standing next to me looking like he’s about to say something snide. I just head for the exit, explaining where Mira is as I move. The group follows.

“That’s perfect,” Caleb says when I finish my explanation. “If they’re that far inside the building, they definitely won’t hear my shots.”

“Did any one of you Read a guy whose name was Arkady in there?” I ask. No one responds, so I assume they haven’t.

We return to the room across the street, on the top floor near the window. Our frozen bodies are hunched near Caleb, who’s lying on the floor with his eye to the scope of his rifle. I touch my forehead.

As soon as the phase-out process is complete, Caleb fires the first shot.

Then another.

Then another.

I lose count of the shots, as I’m more focused on plugging my ears. In the movies, silencers work much better than in real life. Despite the elongated device on the end of the barrel of Caleb’s rifle, the noise is deafening in this room. I hope the area is abandoned enough that no one hears the shots—or if they do and call the cops, we’re out of here before they arrive.

His shooting done, Caleb pushes off the floor to a standing position.

“Now things should go more smoothly in there,” he says, picking up his gun. Wiping down his prints, he leaves the rifle behind and heads for the stairs.

We follow him all the way down to the ground level of the building we’ve just fired the shots from.

“Darren, take us into the Mind Dimension again,” Caleb orders before we exit to the street. “We need to assess the situation.”

“Okay, Sergeant,” Julia says sarcastically. “Before we go running around again, can you please tell us the plan?”

“The plan will become clearer after we reconnoiter,” Caleb says curtly. “The only thing I can tell you now is that with two armed guards in the room with Mira, stealth is of utmost importance. If I were them, I’d shoot the hostage as soon as I caught wind that some shit was going down.”

Eugene looks pale, and a shudder runs through me. Without further ado, I phase into the Quiet once again and get everyone to join me.

We cross the street. I’m getting a sense of déjà vu. The door is locked again, which of course makes sense, but is no less annoying.

“Now you can practice picking the lock,” Caleb says to Julia. “We want to be in as quickly as we can.”

She goes inside her messenger bag and takes out what I assume are the instruments of a professional burglar. I wonder where she learned to do this. Her people seem too ritzy for thieving.

She struggles with the door for only a minute before we’re in.

“Will you be able to do this faster when we actually get here?” Caleb asks.

“Yes. I can get it down to twenty seconds,” she says.

We enter the hangar we inspected before. Though I’m not surprised by what I see, my gag reflex kicks in, and I barely hold back vomit.

They’re all dead. Shot in the head, every single one of them. There’s blood, lots of blood everywhere. Though it’s my second time seeing a scene like this today, it’s not in any way less disturbing.

Julia looks green too, making me feel a bit better about my own sorry state.

Caleb steps over the bodies in his way and just waltzes to the stairs. We gingerly follow, trying to keep our eyes off the dead people.

After a few flights of stairs, we reach a floor that appears to be the one we’re searching for. We follow Caleb into the maze of corridors, which, according to Lenya’s—the disgusting gorilla’s—memories, leads to the room where Mira is held.