The Thought Pushers (Mind Dimensions Book 2) (3 page)

As I get that now-familiar feeling of going deep into someone’s mind, I try to zero in on and recall just a fraction of what I saw in Caleb’s mind.

It seems to do the trick . . .

The attacker in front of us leaves his midsection exposed for a moment; it’s the last thing he’ll do in this fight, we think as we unleash the burst.

“You did it, kid,”
Caleb’s thought intrudes
.
“Finally, we’re both in Haim’s head.”

“I got as much. You don’t exactly think in Hebrew, do you?”

“Right. Now shut the fuck up and let me see this.”

The ‘burst’ is what we mentally call this quick succession of punches to our opponent’s solar plexus. We walk into our opponent as we strike, making the force of our punches that much more potent. We count twenty hits before he tries to block and stage a simultaneous counterattack.

Fleetingly impressed with his economy of movement, we grab his arm and use his own momentum to throw him off balance. He hits the ground, hard. Before he tries to pull us down with him, we kick his jaw—and feel the crunch of bone as the outer edge of our bare foot connects with his mandible. He stops moving.

He’ll probably be fine. A couple of rib fractures and a broken jaw are a small price to pay for the opportunity to fight against us. Anyone who tried this outside our training module wouldn’t learn a thing. They would die instead.

The training module is our response to the immense pressure from our friends at the Shayetet to teach our unique fighting style to their people. They know we’ve left Krav Maga, the martial art style of Israel, far behind. What we’ve developed transcends Krav Maga, transcends every fighting style we’ve ever encountered.

Fighting in these modules is a compromise. No death strikes, no aggressive groin assaults; no one dies in the training module. Such a compromise defeats much of the original intent, of course. This style was designed with a single purpose in mind: killing your opponent. Now much of our energy is wasted trying not to use the style as it was designed. Not killing our opponent feels unnatural, counter to everything we’ve spent our life working toward. A hollow imitation of what we envisioned. Much to our dismay, no one else seems to care about these nuances. They clamor for a school where civilians will learn this for their own amusement, refusing to understand that it’s impossible to tame this training. This is not a sport for civilians; this is life or death. Anything less dishonors the work we have done, the lives taken in the evolution of our unique fighting style.

“Ha-mitnadev haba,” we say in Hebrew, which, I, Darren, understand to mean ‘next volunteer.’

We recognize the man who comes in: Moni Levine. He’s a renowned Krav Maga teacher. They probably want him to learn from us in the hope that he can teach it afterwards. We hope that it works out somehow. We would welcome any opportunity to be left out of this futile teaching business.

I, Darren, disassociate as I have done during other Readings. This time is different, of course, since I still feel Caleb here. I feel his excitement. He clearly appreciates Haim’s fighting style more than I do.

“
Don’t distract
,” Caleb’s thought comes, and I let Haim’s memory absorb me again.

“Azor, esh li maspik,” Moni says after five minutes of brutal attacks. Not surprisingly, that means ‘stop, I have had enough.’

We graciously tell him he did well and that he’s welcome to return.

The next opponent enters. Then another. It must be ten or more in a row. None of them are a challenge. This is another part of the training that we hate. We fight almost robotically, letting our thoughts drift to the upcoming quick trip to the United States. We’re concerned that this training module will make us develop deadly habits, like thinking idle thoughts during a fight . . .

I, Darren, disconnect again, only to have Caleb mentally convince me to find another recent memory of the same kind. So I do. It’s nearly identical to the previous fight, but Caleb wants to experience it. And then another. And another.

We do this over and over, reliving at least a week—if not two or three—of non-stop fighting. It all starts to blur.

“I can’t take this anymore,”
I think at Caleb eventually. The fatigue that I feel is not physical, but mental. Somehow that makes it more potent, inescapable. The human psyche isn’t equipped to do what we’re doing right now. I feel like I haven’t slept in years, haven’t rested in millennia. I’m forgetting the time when I wasn’t Haim. I can’t recall a moment when I was
not
doing this accursed fighting.

“Fine,”
I get a response back. I feel a sudden, enormous sense of loss. It’s as though the whole universe imploded.

After a few confusing moments, I understand. Caleb got out. I’m here by myself—no longer part of the joint-mind being.

Not willing to spend a millisecond longer than I have to in Haim’s head, I instantly get out as well.

* * *

I’m back in Haim and Orit’s kitchen in the Quiet. I look in shock at Haim, who’s still frozen—with that wax-statue smile directed at his also-frozen sister. He doesn’t look nearly as dangerous as I now know he is. In that, he’s unlike Caleb, who always looks kind of dangerous with his badass manner and that gleam in his eye. And now that I’ve gotten a glimpse inside Caleb’s fucked-up mind, I know that he’s even more dangerous than he looks.

I try not to think too deeply about what I just experienced. It’s too late, though; the violent images run through my mind, and I’m overwhelmed. It’s not Haim’s memories of the never-ending fight that do this to me. It’s Caleb’s. Those things he did to the Pusher are disturbingly fresh, replaying in my head over and over. I sit down at the breakfast table, in the empty chair next to Haim’s sister, and try to take a few calming breaths. If I wasn’t in the Quiet now, I think I would be sick.

“Are you okay, kid?” Caleb asks quietly.

“No,” I answer honestly. “I’m far from okay.”

“For what it’s worth, I am never doing
that
again,” he says, to my huge relief. “Your mind is too twisted.”

“What?
Mine
is too twisted?” I say in outrage, weariness momentarily forgotten. The gall of this guy. I’m not the one who tortures and murders people. I’m not the one who took some kind of weird masochistic pleasure in brutal training. I didn’t ask someone to Read a killer, so I could become an even better killer myself.

“You’re one odd puppy.” He smirks. “But it’s not just that. I really hated that feeling in the beginning, when our minds Joined.”

“I thought you’d done this before.”

He looks serious for a change. “This was different from the other time I did this. Too strange. Way too deep. We didn’t experience each other’s memories to the same degree when I did it before. This time, it felt almost . . .” He looks away, like he’s embarrassed to say the words out loud. “I don’t know, like a religious experience. Sorry, kid. The whole thing was just way too deep for me.”

Hmm, religious. That’s an interesting way to look at it. I wouldn’t have called it that, but now that he mentions it, I can see how the word makes sense. Not that I’ve ever experienced any kind of deep religious experiences myself, growing up under the care of two secular moms. I’d use the words
transcendental
or
trippy
to describe what happened.

“I’m in complete agreement,” I say. “I never want to do it again, either.”
Especially with a mind as screwed up as yours,
I think, but don’t say it.

“And we won’t speak of what we saw in there. That’s just between us.” He looks at me intently.

“Of course. That’s understood,” I say, a little too eagerly perhaps. I don’t know the full catalogue of the things he saw from my past, but I have no doubt he got more than his share of embarrassing tidbits. Thankfully, he seems to have missed the memory I most wanted to hide—what happened yesterday. Otherwise, I might be suffering a fate similar to the Pusher in his memory. The thought fills me with dread.

“You must be capable of even more Mind Dimension Depth than I suspected,” Caleb observes. “That Depth determines how far the minds intertwine during this experience. That must be why it was so intense.”

I digest this information. If what he says is true, then this experience will be more potent with almost anyone else—Caleb’s Depth is allegedly pretty shallow. I’ll have to be careful if I ever try it again. Not that I’m planning on it.

“Are you okay to walk back?” he says, interrupting my thoughts.

“Yeah, I guess. I certainly don’t see the point of sitting here,” I say. “Did you at least learn Haim’s fighting style? I’d hate to think we went through all that for nothing.”

“Oh, in that sense, this was a huge success. It exceeded all my expectations. He’s truly brilliant. Someday, I’m going to visit him in the real world, somehow get him to fight me, like he did with the people in his memory. That’s only after I come up with some counters to his best moves, of course,” Caleb says, chuckling.

“How does that work?” I wonder out loud. “Learning from Reading? Did I learn anything?”

“It’ll help
me
more than you. A practical knowledge base plays an important role. In my case, I’m familiar with Krav Maga, Aikido, Keysi, kickboxing, and many other styles that were clearly influences on Haim’s style. Thanks to that earlier knowledge, I’ll be able to appropriate a lot of what we both experienced on a direct, conscious level. But for you, I have no clue. You should’ve learned something, but I don’t know how much. And whether you can use whatever stuck in your mind in practice is a big gamble.”

And before he even finishes speaking, he’s standing next to me, aiming a punch at my face.

What I do next amazes me when I think of it later. I jump out of the chair and throw it at Caleb. Then, without conscious thought, my elbow stops his right hand mid-punch. My elbow hurts like hell, but the alternative would’ve been my face. What’s even more amazing is that my left hand tries to hit him in mid-chest. I remember doing this as Haim. It’s Haim’s signature move, I think—this punch in the solar plexus.

Caleb takes the hit in the chest, seemingly only raising an eyebrow in response. This should’ve hurt, I think fleetingly. But then again, some people’s abdominal musculature can reduce the impact of that hit. That little tidbit of knowledge comes to me from nowhere. I can’t dwell on it too much because he throws a punch, which I manage to block, and then I see another flash of movement. Before I understand what’s happening, a horrific pain explodes in my groin.

The world becomes pain. I can’t breathe.

I fall to the floor, clutching my balls.

“Sorry about that,” Caleb says. “You reacted so well, I thought I’d push you a little. I didn’t think you’d manage to not block such an
obvious, slow kick. A move that’s a cornerstone of Haim’s style. You had to have done it yourself, at least a thousand times back in his head.”

He’s smirking as he says that—the bastard.

If I had a gun in my hand, I would shoot him in his smug face. The pain is unlike any I’ve ever experienced. The kick might’ve been ‘slow,’ but it doesn’t matter—it’s such a sensitive area. I try to regain control of my breathing. “You. Literally. Busted. My. Balls,” I manage to say with difficulty.

“You’ll be as good as new when we get back to our bodies,” he says, sounding utterly unapologetic.

“Fuck you.” Even to my own ears, I sound like the sore loser in a schoolyard brawl.

“Here, lean on me as we walk out,” he says, offering me his hand. I make him wait a couple of minutes, standing there in a strange hand-extended pose. When the pain subsides a little, I take the proffered hand.

Barely able to walk, I make my way out of Haim’s sister’s house. As soon as I’m standing next to my frozen self, I grab my elbow to phase out.

The world comes back to life, the pain instantly gone. The sudden lack of agony feels like pleasure for a moment. It overtakes me as we start our mad drive deeper into Brooklyn.

Immersed in that bizarre lack-of-agony bliss, I’m thankful yet again for this particular property of phasing out: the fact that leaving the Quiet undoes any physical damage you receive while inside. However, I now know there’s something irreparable that
can
happen to you in the Quiet.

Dying.

While I’m not yet sure how it works, I know Caleb was trying to kill that Pusher in the Quiet. His thoughts were clear on the matter—the Pusher was going to be erased from existence. Caleb had one-hundred-percent conviction of that.

I guess on some level I knew that death in the Quiet was a possibility, which is why I never tried to off myself there. A little cutting, sure, but I always avoided anything potentially fatal. I always had a feeling, an intuition, that if I died in the Quiet, it might spill over into reality.

“Am I getting the silent treatment the rest of the way?” Caleb says, pulling me from my morbid contemplation.

I realize that we’ve been driving in silence for a while. Caleb probably assumes I’m pissed about that below-the-belt hit of his. And I am, but it’s a tiny part of my concerns at the moment.

“I’m just thinking about what happened. Why we saw the specific memories we did,” I say, only half-lying.

“Someone told me once that you tend to find the memory your conscious—or sometimes subconscious—mind is dwelling on,” he explains. He shrugs, like he’s not sure whether that makes sense or not. “Seemed like a good enough explanation to me.”

It makes sense. Caleb asked me to seek out violent fighting memories, and I saw his training. I had been wondering what Readers do to Pushers, and I got
that
memory. Now I just need to make sure my Pusher connection stays hidden. Caleb clearly didn’t access that memory of mine, and I want to keep it that way. I’m more certain than ever that I don’t want Readers to know anything about my secret.

“So that’s why I saw all that violence in your head,” I say. It’s a calculated statement. I’m trying to cover up, since I just realized I could’ve given myself away by accessing that Pusher-related memory of his. If I can convince him that a Pusher being in the memory was just a coincidence and that violence was the real reason that moment in time popped up, he hopefully will never draw any other conclusion.

Caleb sighs at my statement. “That’s not the only reason. When you get into my head, violence is what you’ll find, no matter what your other interests are. There’s not much else in there. You won’t find two loving mommies, or puppies and rainbows.”

Though he’s trying to be sarcastic, I can’t help but feel a twinge of pity. He sounds almost wistful. Is this cold-blooded killer wishing he had happier memories?

“Darren,” he says as I ponder this. His tone is different now, harder to pin down. I’m not sure I like it. “There’s something else we need to talk about.”

My stomach twists. Does he know about my Pushing abilities after all?

“If Jacob asks you about Julia—which I don’t think he will—say you don’t know anything,” he says, and I expel a relieved breath. I now understand the tone. It’s worry, which sounds unnatural for Caleb. That’s two unexpected emotions in a row. Did our being in each other’s heads do something to him?

“Sure,” I say, trying to sound like it’s no big deal. “No problem. But why?”

“Since she’s recovering, I don’t see any need to worry her parents. Plus, she wouldn’t want her father to know she helped Mira and got shot,” he says curtly.

I get it now. It’s not just Julia who doesn’t want that. Caleb allowed his boss’s daughter to get shot. I get the sense his ass is grass if Jacob finds out the truth.

“Your secret’s safe with me,” I say, possibly overacting a bit.

He doesn’t respond, and silence falls again as we continue riding.

As we leave all the other cars behind in the mad rush to the Reader community, I think some more about what just happened. In theory, I should have some seriously impressive fighting skills for the first time in my life. And I don’t mean simply being able to kick ass in a bar brawl either—what Haim did went way beyond kicking some dumb jock’s butt. It’s an exciting thought. If, by some misfortune, I get into a fight, I’ll be able to hold my own. In theory, at least.

Recognizing the view outside, I realize we’re passing by the canal—that small body of water on what Eugene called Sheepshead. We’re on Emmons Avenue, the street where those mobsters were shooting at Eugene and me just yesterday. We’re almost at the community, and I wonder again what Jacob wants.

When we leave the car in the parking lot, we’re met by a dude I recall seeing the other day. The one who doesn’t seem to like Eugene. Caleb’s rude twin—and being ruder than Caleb is a challenge. I really dislike the look he gives me—kind of like a wolf eyeing a stray lamb.

“Sam, take Darren to meet Jacob and bring him back here when they’re done,” Caleb says.

Sam turns toward the lavish building without a word, walking briskly toward it. I follow him. The silence hangs over us the whole way.

Who knew Caleb would turn out to be the friendly one?

* * *

“Sam, you may go now,” Jacob says dismissively after Sam leads me into the man’s posh office.

“Darren, it’s nice to meet you face to face,” Jacob says as soon as Sam is gone. He shakes my hand firmly, giving me a reassuring smile.

“Nice to meet you too, Jacob.” I try to return his friendliness and hope he doesn’t notice how nervous I am.

He looks different in this face-to-face encounter than on Skype the other day. I guess Eugene brought out the worst in him. Today Jacob seems like a nice guy.

“I wanted to properly introduce myself.” He sits down, gesturing for me to take the chair across from his desk. “We don’t get new Readers every day.”

“I see. There seemed to be an element of urgency for this specific visit.” I try not to sound hostile as I take my seat. I also wonder if I should phase into the Quiet and take a look around the office. Given that he’s aware of the Quiet, would Jacob leave anything informative lying around? Not likely, I determine, and decide against it.

“No true urgency, I assure you. More like satisfaction of my curiosity, and a proper response to a truly rare case. Your situation is very special. You said you didn’t know you were a Reader until yesterday.”

“I said it because it’s true,” I respond, a little too defensively. Modifying my tone, I continue, “I was adopted, you see.”

“You have to forgive me if I sounded incredulous—I certainly didn’t mean to imply deceit on your part. It’s just such an unusual occurrence. Particularly the fact that you discovered on your own that you can Split. Did I get that part right?”

“Yes. It first happened to me as a child,” I say. I tell him about the bike accident, about thinking I was about to die and the whole world freezing around me.

He asks more about my childhood, and I tell him a few stories. It’s the friendliest interrogation technique I’ve ever encountered. The guy seems genuinely curious about me. And I have a weakness. Like most people, I like talking about myself. As I realize this, I proceed more carefully. I don’t want to blurt out anything that can reveal my Pusher experience.

“The main thing I wanted to talk to you about today is discretion,” Jacob says after I accept his offer of coffee, and he personally makes me a cup.

“Discretion?” I say, blowing on my coffee.

“We Readers have kept our existence a secret from other people since antiquity,” he says, his voice becoming preachy and monotone. I get the feeling he’s given this spiel many times before. “We have always firmly believed that if the public found out, they would do something terrible to us.”

I recall both Mira and Eugene alluding to the Reader community having a non-disclosure stance when it comes to Reader powers. Remembering how Jacob reacted to Eugene on Skype, I decide not to go with ‘I’ve heard this from Eugene before.’ Instead, I say, “That’s pretty dark.”

“Yes,” Jacob agrees. “But we can Read people’s minds, as you now know, and that ability enables us to accurately assess human nature. Trust me when I say they would not take to us kindly at all. I wish it weren’t so, but it’s the truth.”

“So what do you think would happen if our existence became common knowledge?” I ask, putting my suddenly chilled hands around the warm cup.

“We could become secret slaves to some government agency—and that would be the best case scenario.” His jaw tightens. “The more likely possibility would be complete genocide.”

Genocide? Wow, he doesn’t pull his punches. “Does the prospect have to be so bleak?” I inquire, forcing myself to sip my coffee. I can’t resist my tendency to play the devil’s advocate. I haven’t given this topic much thought after my friends mentioned it, but what Jacob says actually sounds plausible—which is why some pain-in-the-ass part of me questions it. My habit of questioning virtually everything drove my moms and my uncle nuts when I was growing up. “What about progress?” I say. “Surely in modern times, people wouldn’t do something like that. It’s not like we’re that much different from anyone else.”

“We’re a different species.” His tone sharpens.

“Well, strictly speaking, we’re not.” Even though I risk further eroding the positive tenor of our discussion, I can’t help myself. “The ones you call half-bloods are proof of that.”

And just like that, the conversation takes a bad turn. Jacob’s face goes red. “You’re not here to split hairs about semantics.” He slaps his palm on the desk. “That so-called progress will just make our annihilation faster than we ever thought possible.”

I stare at him, shocked into silence by his outburst. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” I say in a soothing tone after a moment.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out in an audible sigh. “I’m sorry. This is a sensitive issue for me.”

“I understand,” I say cautiously. I wonder if he’s so touchy because Eugene, a half-blood, used to date his daughter. “You have to realize that I have a deep affinity for normal people—” I use my fingers to make air quotes around the word
normal
, “—since until recently, I assumed I was one. I didn’t know Readers existed.”

“Right, and that is probably a good reason for you to trust me
.
My people have had centuries to develop the best strategy for dealing with our situation—and it is
not
to let anyone know of our existence. That’s why I thought it important to talk to you. You are new to this, and being young, you’re by nature more idealistic, more naïve, than others. As a child, you didn’t get the usual Reader upbringing. You didn’t learn the horror stories of our turbulent past. Trust me, the danger to our people is real.”

I realize now that I might’ve devil’s-advocated my way into trouble. What if he thinks I can’t keep their secret and decides to silence me for the good of the species?

“You make a good case, Jacob,” I say solemnly. I pretend to think about it for a few seconds, hoping I’m not going overboard. “Upon reflection, I think you might be right about all this.”

Pacified, he smiles. “Mostly everyone comes to that conclusion.”

“I should tell you, though,” I say carefully, “as a child, I might’ve inadvertently broken the rules that I intend to follow from now on. I tried telling people about being able to go into what you call the Mind Dimension. I don’t think my attempts did Readers any harm, though. Everyone just thought I was nuts.“ I figure he can find this out anyway if he wants to—my moms’ and my shrink’s heads would be open books to any Reader—and by volunteering this information, I might be able to forestall any potential snooping. Not to mention, demonstrate my rule-abiding intentions.

As I’d hoped, Jacob shrugs, not looking overly concerned. “What’s done is done. Like you said, it was dismissed; that’s what matters most. It’s not a crime when you don’t know the rules. What’s important is that you’re discreet from now on. If you can mitigate some of your earlier slips, all the better. What’s truly forbidden are demonstrations of Reader abilities with the intent to reveal our nature.”

“Oh, I’ve never done that,” I say. “If we’re talking about Reading, I just didn’t have a chance to show off that particular skill. Of course, I’ve abused going into the Quiet before. In either case, though, I never told—and wouldn’t dream of telling—people about how any of this works, so I definitely have no plans to ‘reveal our nature.’”

I do wonder if Readers approve of using powers the way I’ve been using them, for my personal financial gain. I’m not going to ask Jacob about it, though. If he said ‘stop doing that,’ I’d be out of a job. If it’s forbidden, I’ll stop when he explicitly asks me to. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?

“Good. That’s what I thought,” Jacob says, smiling again. “You seem like an intelligent young man.”

“Thank you, Jacob. You don’t need to worry. I work in a field in which confidentiality is important. Besides, I’m a very private person. And don’t worry about the people I mentioned earlier, either—the ones who didn’t believe me. I’ll muddy the waters for them like you asked if it seems needed, but I highly doubt it will even be necessary,” I say, meaning nearly every word.

“That’s wonderful. Thank you for understanding.”

A weight is lifted off my shoulders. I got worried for a second that my moms might be in trouble. Truth be told, they didn’t for a moment believe my stories. If mitigation
is
needed, the place to start would be with my therapist. I’ve told her quite openly about the Quiet. Not that she believed me any more than my moms did. She thinks it’s just a delusion. Still, I should probably show her that I doubt that delusion, now that, ironically, I know it’s real.

This thought actually answers a question I’ve been pondering for a while—whether I should keep my standing appointment with my shrink tomorrow. Lately, I’ve been paying for my hour so I don’t lose my weekly spot, but not actually going to therapy. But today, I’ve been feeling the urge to actually go. I can now conveniently tell myself that all I want from my shrink is to lie to her about no longer having visions of the world being stopped.