Clean: A Mindspace Investigations Novel (11 page)

I was still three years clean. The emptiness mocked me. My own mind mocked me.

Swartz moved past me to the bathroom again, destroyed my escape one more time with the distinctive sound of metal on metal and shattering glass. My last vial.

Then he came out. He loomed over me. I stayed where I was.

“I’m not getting down on the floor, kid.”

Too bad, I thought, closing my eyes and leaning my head against the wall. Isn’t that too bad for you.

“Is that the last of it?”

I was silent.

He sighed, and I heard his footsteps as he searched the rest of it, systematically. It took a while, even in the little space I had. I wondered what he thought of me.

Finally the footsteps stopped next to my head again.

“Why’d you come back?” I asked, quietly.

He took a breath. “If there really was an interview tomorrow, it wouldn’t be Cherabino who’d call. Plus, you just said she’s mad enough to hit you. It didn’t add up.”

“Oh.”

I heard the very faint sound of him punching in numbers on his phone.

I looked up then. Crap, he was really going to do it, wasn’t he? I stood up, to at least face it like a man.

“This Bellury?” Swartz met my eyes, his mouth set in a deep line. He nodded to the person on the other side of the phone as if he could hear him. “That’s right. You might want to sit down. I have some bad news.”

At two in the morning, I sat in my bedroom, on my cot. The machine was still on and Swartz was asleep on the sofa in the living room. I’d just gotten two hours of lecture from him—disappointment and understanding and censure—and I didn’t really want more from his mind right now. His words were ringing in my ears as it was. He said I should be getting past this by now, I should be starting to make some of my own positive
choices. The vial in the apartment was a choice, damn it. It wasn’t like he’d never been tempted.

I sat and stewed. Thought of the drug, pleasure/painful memories of the days I’d been lost to it. Thought of the last time I’d fallen off the wagon, how bad it’d been then, for months, for over a year. Thought of my big screwups at the Guild. And, oddly, I remembered Dane, the guy who’d designed this machine behind me, the machine that had saved my sanity more than once, the machine that had gotten me caught tonight.

Dane had been my best friend. He’d sat down in the desk next to me in a Third School history class and introduced himself, and we’d just clicked. For ten years, we were inseparable. Dane was a microkinetic with spiky blond hair and a zest for life that wouldn’t quit; you never knew what he would do next. Guild guy to the core, though; his research those last years, into applications of technology in Ability, was illegal in all fifty states and most of Europe. The Guild kept it quiet, and I didn’t care. I was Guild then myself.

Hell of a gadget I had behind me; it was probably illegal, against the spirit if not the letter of the Tech laws. But worth it. Technology fields and human-driven Mindspace influenced each other in weird ways; like electricity and magnetism, they were two forms of the same thing. But unlike electro/magnetism, no one yet had a formula to describe the interaction, to even begin. They said math didn’t go that far yet. They said you couldn’t describe a human mind accurately enough to start.

But Dane could. He’d modeled the shape of my mind, modeled it well enough to echo with Tech. He’d designed a machine to mimic my mind in reverse. Like those headphones you wore to hear nothing, the
machine echoed the shape of my mind, and the waves canceled one another out. When I turned it on, I stopped existing in Mindspace, and Mindspace stopped existing for me.

But even Dane wasn’t perfect. There was a flaw. The mind was fluid and the Tech was not; if you thought hard enough, differently enough, if you moved far enough away, it would stop working. Your brain waves and the machine’s waves would start to clash painfully. Then you turned the Tech off, or you’d end up with rips in your mind. Short-term exposure, you could heal in a week or so—the physical brain slowly overwriting the mind until you were back to normal. Long-term exposure, on the other hand—well, you’d be lucky to be a vegetable. Your physical brain left empty without software to run it.

It was a crazy, bitter thing that I hadn’t thought outside the bubble tonight; it hadn’t torn my mind. Apparently panic and anger, bitter gall, and helplessness were normal for me. Normal, as depressing a thought as that was.

I saw the breaking glass again, the drops of blue salvation running out, wasted. I saw Swartz turn the faucet handle….

My mind grabbed for something, anything, to not think about it. And I got Swartz’s words: “I’m so disappointed.”

I shied away from that too, and ended up with Dane’s face in my mind, a different kind of older pain. I missed him, still missed him. It wasn’t fair. Aneurysm was such a small word for something that destroyed everything. There wasn’t even any warning. I couldn’t even try to save him. He was dead by the time we got there.

I thought, It’s his fault. His fault for dying. If he’d been there, maybe I wouldn’t have found the drug. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten hooked. Who knows, maybe Stewart wouldn’t have asked me in the first place. He’d been one of Dane’s friends, working in the same hush-hush experimental section. He would have kept his stupid drug research to himself. But Stewart was just the kind of bastard to have asked either way.

He was researching drugs to improve telepathy, to bolster Ability long term. Satin had been one of the drugs he was testing; it had a strong effect in Mindspace, and it hadn’t been illegal then. Stewart had been looking for some volunteers to try it out. Two days after the funeral, three days after the aneurysm. I hadn’t been thinking straight.

The first three doses weren’t my fault. They were Stewart’s, the Guild’s. Given to me, in the lab, like a rat. After that, well, after that there was plenty of fault to go around. Breaking into the lab to steal the drug was the least of what I was guilty of. When it all came out, in the end…Well, things fell apart, my bridges burned in slow motion, burned my old life, my good life, to pieces. Sitting in the ashes afterward just reminded me I’d set the match.

I’d lit another match this time, and I could feel the bridges burning again. Swartz might never look at me the same again; the cops either. Cherabino might throw me out like garbage, especially after what I’d done before this. But as I sat in the ashes of the night, as I remembered other nights, as I missed Dane again with a pain that cut at my heart like a knife, my eyes watered. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did.

I could feel the precog waking up, the crazy, stupid, unreliable precog. I could feel something coming, something bad. Something dangerous.

And I had just done the one thing in the world that would keep anyone from believing me.

Bellury showed up
at the door the next morning. I glanced at Swartz—who was still glowering—and let him in. The older cop had a small leather case with him. We both knew why he was here.

Bellury paused in the center of the living room, exchanged an inscrutable old-man look with Swartz.

“Can at least I finish my cereal?” I asked them.

Swartz nodded. I ate slowly.

Finally I did it, peed in the cup when I was told. Bellury watched me do it, like I was a newbie all over again, like all the trust in the world had run out for me. I wasn’t stupid enough to protest, but the humiliation of it burned.

I put the cap on the cup, set it in the clear baggie he held out for me, and zipped up.

“Can I at least wash my hands in peace?”

He nodded, tucked the baggie away in his case with a frown, and shut the door. I heard his footsteps as he walked away, across the apartment, and said good-bye to Swartz. The outside door creaked and slammed.

Finally, I turned the water on.

When I emerged, Swartz told me to get ready. “We have a park to clean,” he said.

“Give me a minute,” I said.

Most of the NA chapter showed up for the cleanup project. We picked up trash, cleared brush, trimmed bushes and branches; we even planted a few flowers that wouldn’t mind the heat. I bitched and sweated through two shirts, my muscles getting more and more sore while the back of my neck sunburned bad. It was miserable and hot and unhappy, but I went home with a small and angry sense of satisfaction.

When Swartz signed us up for another Saturday next month, I complained louder than anybody—I hated the heat, we all did—but I didn’t take my name off the list.

Swartz sat on my couch while I called the Guild on Sunday. More specifically, their external relations department. It had to be done, and the weekend was already a low point in my life. What was one more humiliation? It wasn’t like they were going to call Enforcement on me. Probably not, anyway.

Swartz nodded encouragement, and I picked up the phone, dialing slowly. I watched him play solitaire as the phone rang.

A young-sounding male voice picked up the call, and I relaxed one small degree. It was probably a student, judging from his general lack of confidence. Only six rounds of I-don’t-know and let-me-ask-my-supervisor-tomorrow before he’d write down what I wanted. After getting all of my old Guild information and current department contact—good for him—he repeated my request carefully and promised to send it on to the attaché.

“When?” I asked.

“When she gets in tomorrow,” the guy replied. “Um, Kara is usually in about eleven.”

“Kara?” I repeated with a sinking feeling. The universe could not be so cruel as to make it be…

“Yeah, Kara Chenoa. The attaché? That is who you wanted to meet with, right?”

I dropped the phone to my chest. Swartz looked up, frowning, but I waved him back to what he was doing. I picked the phone back up, gritted my teeth, and dealt with it. “If she’s the attaché, that’s who I need to talk to.”

“Do you have another number we can reach you at?” the guy asked.

Lacking anything better, I gave him Cherabino’s work number. I probably couldn’t use Swartz’s for a police investigation.

My head in my hands, I spent the next twenty minutes
not
explaining who Kara Chenoa was to Swartz. Who was Kara? Only the woman who’d betrayed me to the Guild. The woman I thought I’d marry.

I wanted to throw up. But somewhere deep inside, I also relaxed a small, terrified degree. Kara might kill me herself, she might twist the knife on every bad thing I’d ever done, she might humiliate me in a hundred legitimate ways, but—but. She wouldn’t string me up for something I didn’t do. She wouldn’t call Enforcement. Kara had been fair to a fault, political as hell—but she would follow the rules if it killed her.

I could work with her. It would be hell, but I could work with her.

Monday morning,
I got a cheese Danish and a cup of café-bought fancy coffee for Cherabino. It had taken a two-block hike in the early-morning heat to get it, but it was a peace offering. It wasn’t supposed to be easy. With my stomach in knots, I climbed the stairs to DeKalb County police headquarters with a deep sense of foreboding.

I stared at the main common area, currently crawling with people shouting at the top of their lungs. Looked like a lot of teenagers, sullen and yelling teenagers, while their parents—I assumed the older people were their parents—sobbed and screamed and threatened to hit the cops.

A few fistfights were breaking out in Booking to the left, the secretaries had abandoned ship to the right, and the officer normally on Reception was escorting a very huffy teenage girl to the restroom.

Great. Whatever was going on, I’d see it in the interview rooms soon, which meant a lot more work for me.

I dodged chaos on my way to the elevators, making my way through desks and screaming suspects.

I had screwed up my courage to apologize to Cherabino. I had a peace offering. I thought maybe, if I gritted my teeth, I might even manage to deal with Paulsen. I’d get through this. I had to.

Upstairs, I found Cherabino hunched over her desk, the overhead light off, sunglasses on. I set the Danish and coffee down next to her. Some of the tension went out of me. She wasn’t mad; she probably couldn’t even start to be mad with a migraine. “Did you take your meds?” I asked, voice pitched quiet and low.

Her shoulders were hunched in, almost collapsed, and she was leaning over the keyboard. In Mindspace, I could see the slow, inexorable pound of pain.

She shifted her head slightly: a no. I sighed and fished out the bottle of pills from her second drawer. Handed them to her. Repressed a lecture. They didn’t do her any good if she wouldn’t take them, but she knew that.

“You been to the doctor?”

She forced down two of the horse pills, swallowing them with a face, then gulped the fancy coffee. “No,” she said, in that telling, raspy whisper. “Nothing they can do if I don’t want the surgery.”

Obviously she didn’t.

I knelt down by the side of the chair, close enough to feel the pounding pain, which suited my mood about now. I met her eyes. “About Friday—”

“I’m sorry I hit you,” she said, reaching a hand out toward my still-tender jaw, pulling her hand back before she touched me. She looked away. “Just don’t go over my head again, okay?”