Marked (3 page)

Outside, Meyers led the way along a small path of white gravel, quiet in both voice and mind. His breath, like mine, steamed in the chilly air.

I shivered but didn't complain. If he could take the cold, so could I.

I've never been in the gardens this late in the year,
I said, mind-to-mind. It was true, the prickly green bushes and spare brown trunks of trees set in geometrical shapes looking very different without the blooming plants of the summer. It would be pretty in the snow, I thought, the one time a year we got snow in Atlanta.

The silence got long, and I started to fidget mentally.

Meyers noticed and finally spoke, oddly out loud. “You're one of our highest-rated teachers of advanced students.”

“That's right,” I said, wondering where this was going. The voice-speech was a distancing method sometimes, and I wondered why he needed the distance.

“You have Xavier's gift,” he said.

“Yes?” What did that have to do with anything? Just because I could teach several students mind-to-mind at a time . . . well, it had gotten me the job. I remembered Meyers worked for the employment and training division of the Guild. “Am I in trouble? I'm up to date on all of my continuing education units. I've taken all the tests on time. Do I need more supervision hours?”

Be calm,
he said.
There's nothing wrong.

I subsided. A particularly cold burst of wind cut through my coat. “What's going on?”

He turned to regard me directly. “You were scheduled for a career at a psychological hospital before—”

I interrupted. “Before they caught me tutoring two kids at once, I know. What—”

“Don't interrupt me, please, Adam. I do have a point to this, and I'd like to make it in my own order.”

I stuck my hands in my pockets.
Go ahead.

“You were scheduled for a very lucrative career in resetting structures of the mind. You were, by all test scores, extremely qualified, and your essays showed real passion for the subject.”

So?
A pang hit me then, but I pushed it away. I was a teacher, and my students would go out and do all of that for me.

“Would you rather do that?” Meyers asked me.

I took a step back. “What?” In two years, no one had ever . . .
The decision was made,
I said.
It was made a while ago. Why bring this up now?
My heart was beating now, beating far too fast. How could he . . . ?

“I'm a senior fellow in Employment and Training, Adam. And my family—your family soon—has a lot of pull with the decision makers all over the Guild. You aren't just a member anymore. If you'd rather go out and work at the hospital, I can make that happen for you.”

“But I can teach . . .” I trailed off. They'd told me over and over that my gift for teaching a room was too precious to lose. “I'm worth more to the Guild as a teacher,” I said, but my voice was weak. “Why are you asking me to do something else?”

“Very few people anymore have the opportunity to do what they love. They get stuck in what they can do, or what they ought to do. I'm giving you a chance to ask a bigger question. What will make you happy, Adam? What will help you and Kara be happiest together?”

I doubted him, and didn't make a secret of it, but he opened up the public side of his mind and I walked in.

He was sincere. Utterly, unbelievably sincere. He wanted to give a gift, an opportunity, to someone who was joining his family.

“Can . . . can I think about it?” I stuttered in shock.

“Certainly,” Meyers said, and started walking again, around the dormant garden.

My feet crunched on the gravel in time with the beating of my heart.

Three days later, I went back to him with my decision: teaching stirred something inside me I couldn't put into words. As much as I'd wanted to work in the hospital, I thought teaching would truly, truly make me happier.

“As you wish,” Meyers said, and turned the talk to the latest political candidates for Council. I followed along, giving my own opinions, and the awkwardness was over.

The next Sunday he came for dinner at our apartment and Kara cooked a roast. He never spoke of the offer again.

But I never, never forgot.

•   •   •

I stared at the phone in the here and now, the receiver ringing with a dial tone from too long off the cradle. I set it back down with a
click
. I couldn't believe Meyers was dead.

I couldn't believe I was going to the Guild on lockdown. But this was Kara. And this was Meyers. To not show up . . .

I could at least try to talk Kara down. Be there for her. Figure out what was going on. Meyers deserved that much.

I could work with Stone, I knew that already. He'd been my Watcher, in and out of my head while passing judgment on my intentions a few weeks ago. He'd decided I wasn't a threat. I could spend the afternoon talking honestly, help Kara decide what to do, and then leave. Go in, go out, go home.

So why did I feel like I was going into the lion's den rubbed in steak sauce?

I sighed, picked up the phone and called the department.

“DeKalb County Police Department Headquarters Administration,” the brass's receptionist answered, a young guy straight out of college with a smooth voice who could calm down a bleeding rabbit in the middle of the apocalypse.

I said who I was and where I was. “Is Paulsen free?”

“She's in a budget meeting at the courthouse. It's an all-day affair and she cannot be disturbed for any reason. I've been instructed to tell officers to consult their division and squad leaders, who are fully empowered to make decisions.”

I
could
call Clark, who technically was the most senior of the interviewers these days, but he hated my guts. “Could you take a message?” I asked the guy.

“One moment,” he said, and I heard the sound of shuffling papers. “Go ahead.”

I repeated my name and job title. “I will not be back in the interview rooms this afternoon. You'll need to contact Clark so he can make arrangements. Tell Paulsen that an emergency has come up and that I will be back in the office tomorrow morning. I'll check in then.”

The sound of a pen scratching paper. Then it stopped. “Anything else?” the guy said.

“No, that's it,” I said. I paused, wanting to tell them that like an idiot, I was going into the middle of the Guild headquarters during lockdown. A Guild that, because of the Koshna Accords, still had absolute authority over me if it wanted. “No, I guess that's it.”

“Thanks for calling,” the guy said, and hung up the phone.

•   •   •

Nervous as hell, I went to find Michael, who was observing the crime scene in the main living area. The ME's tech was currently packing up the body, and everyone else swirled around that central task like a whirlpool, chaotic and focused both.

“Did they ever find the missing pieces?” I asked, trying for a conversational starter.

“Not yet, and we've looked everywhere. They didn't by chance turn up under the bed in there, did they?” He looked almost hopeful.

“Not that I saw,” I said, but I hadn't looked under the bed. Honestly, if there were body parts hidden like some insane game of hide-and-seek, I'd rather someone else find them. That was just creepy.

“Did you need something?”

“Can I get you to drive me somewhere?”

“I thought somebody else here in the department drove you around,” Michael said. He paused. “I'm kinda in the middle of something. Where do you need to go?”

“Um, well.” Bellury, my usual babysitter, had died a few weeks ago, killed by a suspect we were tracking down. Because I was stupid. Because I'd pushed us to rush in. Because . . . “I need to run an errand in Buckhead and I'd rather not take the bus if I can help it,” I said. “Where's Cherabino anyway?”

“She's calling Electronic Crimes and letting them know she won't be able to help out this week. This is the fourth murder we've gotten since Tuesday.”

“That's why I'm here,” I realized. “She needs a way to solve the crimes faster.”

“Yes, that's why we're both here,” Michael said in the tone of voice you'd use to state the obvious while trying hard not to be insulting. “Um, can't you drive yourself? I'll loan you the keys to the cruiser. We can ride back in one of the vans.” His mind flashed to his dad, and some complex feelings; the man lived two streets away, apparently.

I was very tempted to take the damn keys. “The department prefers that I not have control of any resources that might be construed as valuable.” It also wouldn't let me handle my own money, but really, who was counting? “Look, it's just Buckhead. If I take the bus I'll spend three hours getting there and back.”

Now I had his full attention. “You can't drive the department's cars? You lose your license?” His eyebrows pulled down. “DUI?”

“No!” I said. I'd never owned a car, and never had access to one when I was in my life on the street. DUI hadn't been an option for me, though I hoped I wouldn't have done it anyway. In the heat of the addiction, though, probably I would have. There was no pride, no shame, no anything in the heat of that addiction. “No, it's just they prefer me not to have a car unsupervised. You know what, never mind, I'll take the bus.”

Michael looked at me oddly, the feeling coming off him in Mindspace . . . unsettled. “Does Cherabino know you're going?”

“Would you tell her?” I asked, and started walking down the street. I thought I remembered where the bus stop was.

•   •   •

The North American Guild Headquarters complex had three large buildings, which were the only non-anti-grav-assisted glass-and-chrome old-style skyscrapers in the business district of Buckhead; they were dwarfed by the hundreds-of-stories-high monstrosities that had used antigravity during construction. The newer buildings looked like tall, thin fortresses, which is what they were; this entire area had been flattened during the Tech Wars by a bomb, and those who rebuilt it valued security and defense over looks.

Except the Guild, of course. Their best security was the people inside, not only the ones who would see your attack coming and give warning, but the thousands of highly trained Abled who would defend the complex with their last breaths. The extra expense of three-foot-thick earthenworks seemed paltry in comparison, and the arrogant beauty of a mostly glass building stood on its own merits.

The Guild had much to fear after the Tech Wars, but what they feared most wasn't anything that a heavy building would protect them from.

Was I really here? Was I really intending to tempt my fate?

It was Kara asking, and I'd been here to see her at her office before. Either they'd turn me away or they wouldn't.

I walked into the relative heat of the main atrium, a huge circular place with marble columns and the Guild founders looking down on you, judging. On the right was a glass-and-chrome desk blocking the way, manned by a security guard. Today's guard was the small black woman I'd seen there before; she looked like she'd blow over in a strong wind, but anyone who did guard duty for the Guild could handle four armed normals with no backup.

“I'm here to see Kara Chenoa,” I told her, taking off my coat and folding it over my arm. I was very polite to guards.

She looked me up and down in Mindspace, and I suppressed the sudden urge to check my fly.

“I'm—”

I know who you are,
she sent mind-to-mind, on the lightest, politest level. Along with the words came the sense that I was infamous. Also that I was messy with /files/12/24/01/f122401/public/private mental space these days. She'd recommend fixing both if I could.

I blinked, and settled my emotions down into the more acceptable Guild calm. Should have done that before walking in the door, but I appreciated the reminder. I'd been around normals a great deal the last few years.

I blocked off a polite, surface level of my mind and dropped all but the lightest shields around it, public space. The rest of my mind I locked up with barbed wire; I was in no mood to be more vulnerable than I had to.

She looked at me again.
Better.
She handed me a visitor's badge; Kara had me on her list for the day. There was no brain wave recorder, she sent into my mind, because I'd been vouched for, good or ill, but there was a small location pip.
No audio, no visual, just location.

“Now,” she said out loud, clearly in her official capacity as she leaned forward over the desk. “Don't you be wandering around today. Enforcement's got a lockdown on Personal Quarters seventeen and adjoining, and high-rise four is secure-access only. You're lucky; Ms. Chenoa's office is in this building, which is still public-access.” She stared at me and added privately,
I catch you outside your allowed areas, I catch you acting up in any way, I practice Mindspace kata blows on your skull. Don't make me do that.

“Understood.” I looked at my coat; that was going to be a problem to carry around.

“I'll take the coat,” she said, and I handed it over. “Now. Ms. Chenoa's office is down the main hallway, second right, third door on your left.”

“Thanks,” I said.
What's your name?

“Turner,” she said.
Ruth Turner, second-class permanent guard attached to Headquarters. Currently bored and will be monitoring.

I forced a smile and a calm. “Nice to meet you, Turner.”

She nodded. “Ms. Chenoa is waiting.”

CHAPTER 3

Kara's door looked
like a dozen other plain wooden doors in this plain public-servant hallway, windows spilling sunlight into the hallway at the end, a few feet away. It was a quiet area, a working area, with strong scents of lemon cleaner and sunlight permeating the space.

Behind her door, Mindspace buzzed with the conversation of several minds, strong minds with strong convictions.

I opened the door.

Two men stood there with Kara in the middle of the ten-foot office. She perched on the edge of her large wooden desk, looking—and feeling—unhappy. Blond and beautiful, a year younger than me at thirty-eight, Kara radiated frustration and indecision.

The others turned to look at me when the door opened. Silence fell.

“Hello,” I said cautiously. Up until a few seconds ago, I'd been expecting Kara, only Kara. “Should I come back in a moment?”

“You're here now.” The older man, Hawk Chenoa, didn't bother to hide his disapproval. He was one of Kara's extended family patriarchs—her father's eldest cousin, if I remembered correctly—and, unofficially, one of the most powerful men at the Guild. He had more gray in his dark hair and deeper wrinkles than the last time I'd met him but no less strength. He wore an American military uniform with a Guild mind-piercer's patch, another, smaller patch commemorating hundreds of years of Native struggle. As always, his mind felt focused and ready; I would not want to go up against him in a fight.

On paper, the power in the Guild rested in organizations: in the Council, in the heads of departments and the crushing money-based bureaucracy that moved it all along. But just as important were the old families, the clans that stretched back to Guild Founding, the groups that controlled the majority of the voting rights for both Council and legislative matters. The Chenoas in particular were an old, old family, grown large over the last sixty years, and Hawk was the one man the Chenoas would follow anywhere. More important, he'd forged alliances with several other families worldwide; when Hawk spoke, the Guild listened. Or, at least, it should.

The families were an important check on the power of the bureaucracy and had been for decades. The Guild founder, Cooper himself, had supported this system, as far as it went, and the Chenoa clan were staunch supporters of Cooper and his ethical system. Hawk would take his balancing role very seriously.

“Is this the man we've been talking about?” the second man asked, in his late fifties with a dark complexion and a hard face that seemed set in anger. “Joe Green,” he introduced himself. In this case the voice-speech was definitely a distancing mechanism. “Guild First. If the Erickson-Meyers and the Chenoa clan are going to conspire, one of us needs to be here to keep them from doing something stupid. One man's life is not worth the entire Guild's. Much less when the man is already dead.” His mind added subtext: the madness needed to be controlled at all cost, even if that meant evidence was destroyed. Meyers had killed himself anyway.

“I told you, Green, we're just talking.” Kara said. “There's no need for dramatics.”

“Green is welcome to stay,” Hawk said. “There's very little I have to say that can't be known publically. There will be no cover-ups on my watch. Kara, I've told you that. Plus we have nothing to fear from the likes of
him.
”

“What's Guild First?” I asked.

Contempt flashed across Green's face, though his Mindspace presence was controlled enough not to show it. Green's Ability rating was a heavy Seven at best, and the shields I had up past my “public mind” should hold just fine. Still, something about him made me defensive.

But he decided to tell me anyway. “Guild First does exactly that: it fights to protect Guild interests and Guild projects first. From funding pensions over charity to developing tools to help improve Ability and advance interests of the Guild nation, we put Guild first.”

“Against the normals?” I asked.

“If need be. If they threaten us, we will be ready.”

Kara spoke up then. “Is all this chest beating really necessary? We're here to talk about my uncle.”

“Bringing in an outsider is going to raise questions,” Hawk said.

“Adam's not an outsider, he's neutral,” Kara said.

“I'm just here to talk,” I corrected, firmly, but no one listened.

Hawk faced me. “This is an internal family matter. I'm sorry, but you're a criminal and no longer a Guild member.”

“A criminal?” Green echoed, suspicion leaking into the air.

“Kara asked me to come and I'm not leaving until Kara asks me to leave. Kara?”
What's going on?
I asked her, mind-to-mind.

Hawk is angry over the death. He hides it well, but he's livid. He wants people to jump and take orders like the military, and this isn't the military.

“Talk where we can all hear you equally,” Hawk's voice cracked.

Kara said out loud, “This isn't the military. The best course of action isn't to take orders. It's to put our heads together and figure out a way out of this. Procedure isn't going to get Uncle Del's murderer found. It's going to erase every trace of him out of the air in the apartment and burn everything he ever touched.”

“We can't afford to take a chance at Guild-wide contagion for one man,” Green said. “Quarantine is the only way we move forward.”

He might have a point, Kara,
I said quietly.

If you're not going to help me, I don't know why you came.

Now, that's just out of line,
I said.
I'm here, aren't I?

“It's possible that he killed himself,” Hawk said. “It's his right. But I agree, the method doesn't sound like Del. We hire our own people or import them from another location. We have plenty of experts in the family.”
People who haven't been kicked out of the Guild as a criminal
, his mind added, broadly enough he had to know I'd hear it. “With someone in the family we have the control over the results.”

“I want the truth, not control!” Kara said, too quickly, and then stifled her too-loud emotions.

I objected to the criminal label, and put that out there for anyone to see. I had been convicted, in both the normal and the Guild systems. I wasn't hiding that, but it didn't change my skills. Which I hadn't even volunteered to use.

“Kara, I said I'd show up and talk. Offer suggestions. What is it exactly that you're trying to get me to do?”

“Find Uncle Meyers's murderer.” Her voice was firm, decided.

“If we get at the truth through an outsider, it will be my choice of outsider,” Hawk said. “The telepath military teams have plenty of good men.”

“None of whom can be trusted to keep their mouths shut like Adam has already proven he can,” Kara returned.

“You should leave,” Hawk said.

Oddly, this made me angry. “I didn't cut out of work early to get dismissed. I'm not leaving until—”

Kara cut me off. “Adam, just go.”

Now I was angry at her. “What the hell! You call me in here? I'm not leaving until you—”

My mind was wrenched, grabbed, and flattened, before I could react. Pain. Disorientation. I couldn't move. I was frozen, in the middle of Kara's office, heart beating like a small animal's faced with a predator.

I forced myself to calm, to figure it out; Green had me by the public space, not an acceptable tactic in the Guild, but the reason I'd stopped doing the separated space concept years ago in the normal world, damn it. Left you too vulnerable. He had me pinned by a leverage hold on the front of my mind, incredibly strong, perfect leverage. I wasn't going anywhere. Well, not until he slipped up or got distracted.

“Let him go, Green,” Hawk said.

Kara was very, very quiet, moving back to her desk, doubtlessly toward a panic switch. I thought about puppies and rainbows and the interview room and Paulsen screaming and whatever the hell I could fill up my head with that wouldn't give her away.

Green only moved closer to me, and tightened his hold. “The Guild won't tolerate interference from a
criminal.
You've been asked to leave. You'll leave.”

He held my mind with crushing force. I breathed. One, and exhale, two.

Out of his pocket he pulled a small device, a sphere the size of a grapefruit, dull black with twists of wire on its surface and a small ring of lights along its equator. He hit a button and a light on top of the sphere blinked. Mindspace rippled, a disquieting sensation, the earth moving under your feet like you stood on a boat. The sphere was the exact center.

“Nice try, but you're not Jumping out of here with this on,” he told Kara. “We handle this my way.”

Hold up, why in hell do you have a Mindspace machine?
I asked Green.
Those are banned by the Koshna Accords.
Not that the Guild wasn't experimenting with them anyway; I'd seen several in the last year when I investigated the Guild-related serial killer.
It's incredibly stupid to pull those out where anyone can see you. It could spark a conflict with the normals, one that would tear apart the whole building.

The Koshna Accords are already being broken by the normals,
Green said, the words hitting me with bruising force on top of an already intense pressure.
The Guild needs whatever tools it can build in return, and Guild First will build them.

This guy was crazy! What had I gotten myself into? There were others who thought like him? If so, the Guild was in trouble.

“Turn off the device and give it to me,” Hawk said then. “You're giving me a headache and this isn't solving anything.”

Green shook his head. “Not until you tell me why you invited a criminal into the Guild to break our quarantine.”

He tightened his grip, and I lost track of the conversation. My shields started to crack, Mindspace around fracturing like the world seen through a cracking pane of glass. This shouldn't be happening! I should be able to outmass him in Mindspace. My numbers were higher than his.

Slow down
. I spackled up the holes in my shields.
Slow down
. He wasn't going to break me. It wasn't an option. And brute force, as my old mentor had taught me over and over again, was not always—nor usually—the best solution to a given problem.

His mind was right up against mine, holding that pressure. Right there.

Telepathy was a two-edged sword; you couldn't be this close to someone's mind without having your mind close as well. And I was a Structure guy. And he was clumsy, and all too focused on large scale and strength. All too distracted. If I could focus . . .

I seeped into his mind, following the shape of his grip around to the mind that controlled it, trickling in like water through a brick wall with no mortar.

He didn't even notice, amateur.

I moved through his surface mind, slowly, slowly, getting a feel for the space. In the back of my own mind, Kara's fear had relief added like a spice; she'd managed to hit the panic button, good for her.

And then I was in. Green's mind was consumed with a strong, self-satisfied position of control, me in his power, and visible strength in front of Hawk. He'd let me squirm, a little.

My anger spiked at that one, too quickly, and he knew I was there.

Why the overreaction?
I asked.
And why be a bully about this? It doesn't even make sense.
As I'd done before in the interview room, I pushed at the core of the problem. Only here, now, I followed one thought trail back, and back, until I hit the source.

Oh. There.

Hawk was threatening him. The Cooperists were conspiring to take him off his Council seat in the upcoming election. And he'd make the Meyers issue—and the quarantine of the madness—the proof he was worthy to stay. They weren't going to meet up without him. They weren't going to have secrets. And they weren't going to endanger the Guild. He wouldn't let them.

In shock and surprise, he pulled back, dropping my mind.

He glowered at me. I stared back and picked the pieces of myself up, feeling bruised. Trying to figure out the next step if he attacked again.

“You . . .” He stared again.

Three minds burst into the room, the guard from the front of the building and two of her compatriots.

“This criminal committed a privacy violation,” Green said with contempt. “Deep-thoughts, no invitation.”

I frowned. “You attacked me first. I didn't even bruise you.” More than I could say for him.

Turner moved forward, stickycord out and ready to restrain me. She was angry; that much was clear.

Kara took a breath and held up a hand for the guards. “Wait a second.”

“Is this true?” Hawk asked, in a dangerously low tone.

“Is what true?” I asked.

“Did you go past his public mind? Without permission?” His mind was thunderous.

I stared at him. “He had me in a mental
headlock.
He was doing his best to turn me into tenderized steak!”

“I'll take that as a yes,” Turner the guard said, next to me.

My own shields had slipped, damn it, out of practice, and she was quick. Got me.

I found myself on the floor, my body no longer under my control, even my vocal cords paralyzed.
Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it,
my mind echoed. The square of textured carpet in front of my nose smelled like oranges, fresh ones, not cheap cleaner. And my side and my cheek
hurt
from the impact.

Turner's grip on my mind, unlike Green's, was surgically precise. She was structurally trained; she'd done something to the movement center of my brain. I could picture getting up, blinking, turning my head, but I couldn't do it—literally couldn't. When I tried, I got an overwhelming impression of sticky bubble gum, strong smell of classic pink bubble gum. I'd be able to get out of this, with a few hours left alone, but not with her actively there. She was good.