“What does it matter to you?”
“It just does.”
He glares at me. “They’re all highcap.”
It must’ve been Daryl. Probably why he’s not here anymore. I release Marty’s hand.
“You going to treat me?”
“I’m thinking.” The movies where people pull parts of bodies straight are usually Wild West movies, but it seems like movies set in modern times show it too. The pinky definitely needs straightening. It seems like a matter of logic. “It is important to do this sort of thing earlier rather than later,” I say. “You don’t want it healing wrong. Or to lose the finger.”
“Could you just get it over with?”
“I’m willing to try to set it, but here’s the thing. While I have a certain kind of medical experience, I’m not really a nurse per se.”
“Are you in nursing school?”
“No.”
“What sort of experience? Have you set bones or dealt with things like this?”
“Not specifically.”
He stares at me incredulously; the light overhead glints off his glasses and makes his bald head shiny. “You have no nursing experience at all?”
“Not really.”
“Why in the hell would you say you were a nurse?”
“I’m here as a nurse. To act in the capacity of a nurse for you.”
“Act in the capacity of a nurse? Christ, what is this?” He kicks the table.
I jump.
“Ow,” he says, cradling his hand. “Fuck. This is fucking great.” He grabs the cold pack with his right hand and holds it to his damaged pinky. Winces. He’s a man at the end of his rope.
“Well, clearly you need some medical attention if you’re going to save that finger.”
“Fuck off.”
I unwrap an antibacterial pad. “I’m going to clean your lip.”
“No, you’re going to fuck off.”
I put the pad on its wrapper on the table. “I’ll leave it in case you change your mind.”
“How long exactly do you guys plan on keeping me here?”
“That’s undetermined.”
“So basically you’re useless.”
“I came to see that you’re all right.”
He leans forward and glares at me. Being in this room with this man feels like being confined with an angry wasp who might decide to sting me. Packard says he’s not dangerous. Is he sure? Suddenly I wish he could listen in. Though if he was listening, he would’ve stopped things the minute Marty kicked the table.
I walk back around to my side and try to think what to do. Questioning a guy is weird. It’s not like a normal conversation, even a normal fight. You’re supposed to sort of be the boss. I’m not the boss type, or the predator type.
“So you think this is okay?” he suddenly asks. “All this? It’s okay for highcaps to go around raping people’s private thoughts? And then, when a guy like me does something to protect himself, they kidnap and assault me? That’s all good with you?”
“You did something to protect yourself?”
“Listen, I don’t have jack to do with the Dorks, as I’ve told them over and over. Don’t you get it? The highcaps don’t like that I can see them, that’s all. And they don’t like that they can’t fuck with me. That’s why I’m here.”
“You’re here because somebody’s killing them, and those people have the same kind of immunity that you do.”
“And as I’ve already told your friends, I don’t know anything aside from the news. I didn’t know it was highcaps getting it until, oh, about six harrowing hours ago.” He blinks at his hand. “You don’t think I’d actually lose my finger, do you? You weren’t just saying that.…”
“If it’s not getting blood you’ll lose it, I know that much. You need medical attention.”
“Maybe you should see that I get some.”
“How could you tell I wasn’t a highcap? How are you immune?”
“Don’t you dare question me!” This, like I’m so beneath him.
“Did you always have these abilities?”
He clamps his mouth shut in the shape of a big frown.
“If you’re innocent, why won’t you say?”
“Because I shouldn’t have to.”
“You should if you know something that could prevent a crime.”
“Then arrest me, huh?” He stands and shoves the table. “Why don’t you turn me in to the cops?”
My pulse surges. I’m not good at this.
He breathes hard, nostrils going. Aerating.
“I’m trying to help.”
“Well, you’re not.” He flops back in his chair, tan jacket hanging open. You can read his whole T-shirt now. Midcity University Beagles.
I pack up my first-aid kit, click the lid shut, and snap the latch.
He sits up, as if alarmed by my leaving. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s been a harrowing day, you know?”
I nod.
“I was heading to my son’s ball game. My parents were going to meet me there.”
I recognize this as Captive 101—you remind people that you have a family so they empathize with you. It makes me feel very weird.
“And I don’t see why it’s a crime. Having this, you know, capability.”
“What’s it like? The capability?”
“To recognize them? And they can’t fuck with me? It’s great, that’s what it’s like.”
“Right.” It’s true that once you know about highcaps, it is disconcerting, to know they could do so many things to you and you’re helpless, often ignorant about it. “So, like, if you were at a baseball game, you could just look around and instantly tell who the highcaps are?”
“That’s right.”
“And they can’t do their thing to you?”
“Nope.”
“Hmm.” I trace the red embossed cross on the lid. “Sometimes when I know a guy’s a telepath, I think of an awful song. Sometimes I do that Wham! song, “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.” Or else, you know, “Who Let the Dogs Out?” … Woof. Woof woof …”
He says nothing.
I smile. “They hate it when you do that.”
“You have to protect yourself,” he says. “That’s smart of you.”
I study his face. “So your thoughts are secret and private. You’re your own person.”
“They have a hold on you, don’t they?”
This stops me.
“Don’t look so baffled,” he says. “You’re uneasy about their power, yet here you are. And why else would you say you’re your own person? It doesn’t make sense to the conversation. But it shows what’s important to you.”
“Important, huh?”
“That’s right. I’m in sales. I’m always looking for people’s priorities.”
I give him the vague, knowing smile Packard sometimes gives me when he wants me off balance.
“You don’t have to worry what you say in here,” Marty says. “They can’t hear. Did you know that? They don’t have this room miked.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I’ve been in this hellhole all day. Figured a few things out.” Marty nods. “And it’s clear you’re not your own person, and that you would love to be.”
He has no idea how not my own person I am, I think wistfully. How badly I’d like to be free. Even as a prisoner, Marty’s freer than me. He’s not a slave to zinging.
“Wouldn’t you love that?”
“This isn’t about me.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not one of them. You want to keep something to yourself? That’s your right. We’re on the same side, you and me.” He crosses his legs. “Imagine if there was a way you could keep them from ever seeing into you, or using their powers on you. And you could tell who they are just by looking. Would that interest you?”
I narrow my eyes. He’s talking like he can give me the power.
“You don’t have to say it. I know you want it. And you deserve to have it. Ho
w is it right that some people should walk around with power over other people? Some guys can see your thoughts, but you can’t see theirs? Some guys have the power to fuck with you and fuck with your stuff in totally outrageous ways, but you just have to sit there and take it?”
“It’s not wrong to have different powers. If we met out on the street, you could probably beat me up if you wanted. Is that wrong?”
“Questions are good. It shows you’re serious about this. And my point is, you should have the right to level the playing field, wouldn’t you agree? And you can do that,” he says.
He has no idea how wrong he is. It’s way too late for me to level the playing field.
He sits up straight, adjusts his jacket. “What’s your name?”
“Justine.”
“Justine, I know not all highcaps are bad, but some of them are. Think how it was before Mayor Otto brought the hammer down for law and order. But Mayor Otto isn’t standing on every street corner, is he? What’s wrong with recognizing highcaps for yourself and guarding against them? It just levels things out.” He claps his hand to his chest. “But they’re holding me here because they don’t want us humans to have that.”
“It’s not a crime to be like you are,” I say, “but it’s not a crime to be a highcap, either.” This is all starting to get confusing. There are too many angles that seem right. “Look, my one and only function here is medical, and I feel strongly that you need medical attention.”
He gets this wily look. “Will you help me”—he does quote fingers here—“get medical attention if I show you how to be like me?”
This is interesting. I want him to say more, but he’s waiting. I look up at the cracked white ceiling, bare except for a decrepit light fixture in the middle with three lightbulbs. If this was a normal place a glass cover would be over them, making the bulbs less harsh. “I don’t have a lot of pull around here.”
“With what pull you have? Surely you could find a way to see that I get out of this.”
“I really don’t think I could, unless the case was solved.”
“Maybe I’d show you out of the goodness of my heart. We’re both trapped, and it makes us natural allies. Maybe I want to do that for you.”
“I don’t understand. You could show me how to be like you?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
I consider this. Immunity to highcaps wouldn’t be a bad power to have. It wouldn’t get me out of being a minion, and it’s too late for it to work against Ez; the damage is done, she’s made the dream link. Still, it could be handy going forward.
But then I start wondering. Why is he offering to show me? What’s in it for him? I narrow my eyes. “What’s involved in this showing?”
“It’s nothing weird or complicated.” He runs his hand over his smooth head. “Just a little … sort of … something.”
Everything in me goes on red alert. I’ve heard this sort of talk before—it’s how Packard tricked me into minionhood: he knew a technique I could use to get out of hypochondria attacks. He would just show me, that’s all. Never mind that it would enslave me for life. I shake my head. “No. Forget it.”
Marty pulls back in confusion. “Forget it?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Forget it.”
“You don’t want the power?”
“No, I don’t want it.”
A vertical furrow appears on his forehead. “It’s nothing to be scared of.”
“If it sounds too good to be true it probably is something to be scared of,” I say, wishing I’d thought of this when Packard offered me his cure.
“It’s a simple little thing.”
I fold my arms. “No way.”
“This is silly. I want you to have the power. I mean, I’m not giving you the … thing. You’d have to get your own. But you can see how they work.”
Thing? They? “No, I don’t like it.”
The furrow deepens. “I’m doing you a favor!”
He wants this way too much—suspiciously so. “I’m not interested,” I say. “At all.”
“This is a way to help yourself. You won’t even help yourself? I’m your ally here. We’re allies!”
“How do I know it’s not a trap? Maybe I end up somehow beholden to you.”
“You are the most paranoid person I’ve ever met! What’s wrong? You don’t want to be immune to highcaps? You don’t want to be able to recognize them?”
“No,” I say.
“For Chrissake!” He removes his eyeglasses and slides them across the table to me. “Just put them on.”
“The glasses?”
“Go ahead, put them on.”
“No.”
“Don’t be an idiot. I’m trying to help you! You can take them off if you don’t like them.”
I stare at them. “What do they do?”
“They give you personal immunity to highcap powers. And let you see them.”
I touch the rim.
He says, “If I was a highcap, you’d see the blur around my head. Sort of like, you know on a hot day and you look at the sidewalk and see this blur above it? That’s how highcaps look when you wear the glasses. Slight blur around their heads—it’s the energy that their freak brains give off. At the same time, there’s a chip implanted in the frame, right here, that disrupts the waves or something.” He points to the area between the lenses, the part that rests above the nose.
“Do you make these?”
“No, they came from the Internet.”
“You can get these on the Internet?”
“Twenty-nine ninety-nine, baby. Paradigm Factory dot com.”
I sit up straight. Should I believe him?
“My brother buys all their conspiracy shit—lead-lined hats to guard against space rays, insoles for radiation from tectonic plates, you know.” He lowers his voice. “He bought me this pair. Just for the hell of it, I tried them out on this guy at my chess club who I’ve always suspected of being a highcap cheater. Sure enough, the blur’s coming off his head and suddenly he can’t beat me.”
“You’re sure nothing will happen?”
“Only that you’ll have the power.”
“I mean, will they alter my brain chemistry or anything?”
“Your brain chemistry?” He squints like I’m talking crazy. “No. Just try them.”
Now I’m totally suspicious, because I feel like he’s pressuring me. “Forget it, I’m not touching them. I don’t want anything to do with these glasses.”
“What is wrong with you? Christ!” He bangs the table—really hard this time. “I’m trying to help you!”
Another bang behind me—the door. I spin around. Packard is staring beyond me. I turn just in time to see Marty shambling the glasses back on, but it’s too late.
“The glasses,” Packard says. “It’s the glasses.”
Marty holds them fast on his face as Packard closes the distance between them and looms tall over him, his hard, angular frame in soft plaid—browns and burnt reds that match his shaggy curls.
“Take them off or I’ll rip them off of you.”
“Fuck you.”
I back away from the table. I don’t need to see Packard’s expression to know it’s intense.
“Fine! Okay.” Marty pulls them off and places them in Packard’s palm.
Packard jerks his arm. “Ah!” The glasses clatter onto the floor. “What the hell?”
My heart jumps. “Are you okay?”
Packard’s inspecting his hand. “Yeah … just a kind of a bite. It’s okay. I’m okay.”
I glare at Marty, outraged.
“They wouldn’t have done anything to you,” Marty says, as though I’ve accused him of something. “They’re antihighcap glasses, and you’re not a highcap.”
“Well, they did something to him, didn’t they?” I snap. “They hurt his hand.”
“He’s a highcap!”
Packard stares at the glasses where they landed on the floor. Curiosity has made his features so
fter, more boyish. “Where’d they come from?”
Marty turns to me. “Don’t tell him. Don’t be a collaborator.”
“Of course I’m telling him,” I say.
Marty’s eyes go dark; there’s a rumbling in his throat, and then he spits—a longish goober that flies through the air, seemingly in slow motion, and lands in the center of my sweater, a shiny blob on gray cashmere, just above my belly button. I stare, dumbfounded. I’ve never had a person’s spit on my clothes.
Out the corner of my eye I see Packard fly at Marty, pin him against the wall. “You do not do that! You do not!” He jerks Marty with every not. “You do not disrespect that woman, you understand me?” Packard speaks through his teeth, as if to bite back his fury. “It was your goddamn lucky day she decided to come in here. And you would spit at her? You were privileged she came in here!”
“It’s okay,” I say, unable to take my eyes off the glistening wad. I’m vaguely aware of buzz-cut Greg entering the room.
“What’s up?” Greg asks.
I don’t know how to answer. Packard jerks Marty again. “You have proven that you don’t deserve her kindness, but she’ll give it anyway, and you know why? Because she has a nobility of spirit.”
I look up and see them struggling strangely; Packard’s wrestling Marty’s canvas jacket off, I realize. Greg goes over to help him. The next thing I know, Greg’s holding Marty and Packard’s coming to me with the jacket.
“So sorry, Justine.” He kneels in front of me. “You mind?”
I shake my head.
Packard pulls my sweater gently away from my stomach and scrubs from the inside and outside at the same time, with the interior quilting of Marty’s jacket. “You know, they say spitting is a legal form of assault, and there’s a reason.” He scrubs harder, getting every bit of moisture out, knuckles lightly brushing my bare tummy. “Here we go,” he says.
“Thanks,” I whisper, wanting badly to touch his hair, at the very least.
“You did such a great job.” He looks up, gaze soft. “We would never have thought of the glasses.”
Our eyes lock. The feel of his hand is still alive on my stomach.
“It was luck and blundering—”
“Don’t discount it.” He stands. “This is information that will save lives.”
Behind me another of Packard’s guys has edged in the door.
Double Cross Page 8