Clean: A Mindspace Investigations Novel

by Alex Hughes

  I pulled back into myself with a painful lurch, shoring up my shields again with an effort that almost made me bleed. I couldn’t do that again, or he would see me.

  I opened my eyes and fought double vision. Finally I resolved Cherabino standing ten yards in front of me. She was in front of the door to the lab, gesturing impatiently. Her eyes widened. Behind me I heard a gasp, a clatter.

  I turned. A nurse and a hulking bodyguard had just rounded the corner. The redheaded nurse, in full scrubs, was pale, her mouth open in shock, her hands out. A metal tray was on the floor, instruments strewn. The bodyguard went for a gun at his hip.

  There was no way I could run to Cherabino in time. No choice. I reached out—shields straining nearly to breaking. The barrel of the gun came up. My mind slowly enveloped his unshielded thoughts. The gun paused halfway.

  Our wills battled, him to pull the gun up, to pull the trigger, me to stop him cold. He was strong for a normal, strong-willed. Probably why he got hired in the first place.

  The nurse ran, gasping, down the hall in the other direction, and I couldn’t stop her. Finally my grip on the guard was strong enough—I found the right place in his brain and pushed. He fell over.

  The sound of shuffling footsteps came to my right.

  “Did you kill him?” Cherabino’s voice strained.

  I weaved a little on my feet, head pounding, pain hitting in waves. I would get this under control. I had to.

  “Are you okay?” Cherabino asked, getting the edge of it.

  I shook, and held, and held. I finally was stable, but there was Bradley, coming down the hallway, still around the corner, still a hundred feet away, but closing far too fast.

  “We need to go,” I told her.

  I lurched down the hallway, grabbing Cherabino’s jacket and pulling her along. I was disoriented, under pressure, and I knew if we didn’t make it to the room to regroup I might fall apart. I might die, unable to fight back. Taking her with me.

  She doubled her steps, trying to keep up, and the stab, stab, stab of the pain of her foot echoed in my head like a bad rock song on stadium speakers. “Did you kill him?” she repeated in a small voice.

  “No,” I said. I didn’t kill people with my mind. “He’s asleep. Hurry up.”

  I could feel Bradley’s wake behind me getting closer, and closer. I had his attention now.

  Fifteen feet from the lab door. Ten. Five.

  “Stop!” a man’s voice called out in booming tones.

  Bradley had arrived.

  CHAPTER 28

  Cherabino’s hand touched the doorknob.

  “Go,” I told her, and turned around. I heard the door open and backed up, slowly, toward it. At least she’d get away, even if I didn’t.

  Bradley looked just like he did in the picture, just like he did in the vision, a skinny, pasty geek with tortoiseshell glasses and a small sneer.

  “You! You weren’t supposed to get here until later,” he told me, in the tone you’d use on an old friend who had just kicked your dog. “Always ruining everything. The girl was supposed to keep you busy.” In Mindspace, he was huge, far larger than I’d thought him to be, a dark blimp with rough edges. In the real world, the fluorescent lights glinted off his glasses ominously.

  “You know she’s a cop,” I said, taking a small step back. “You have to know it’s dumb to kidnap a cop.”

  “She was yours. You hit me where it hurt, I did the same. It’s only fair.” He moved forward, measured paces, seemingly in no hurry. I inched back, counting on my peripheral vision to tell me when I’d gone far enough. His harmless-looking body just made his looming presence in Mindspace that much more terrible.

  The next logical question was, how in hell had I hurt him, but that seemed like the kind of thing that would get the bad guy mad, and I was a big proponent of talk now, fight later. Especially when fighting later would give me more weapons. My mind kept going back to the flamethrower—maybe they’d left it in the training room again. They’d done that all the time when I was here.

  I took another small step back. “Why is this so damn personal?” Oops, probably not the right tone to keep him from getting angry.

  He frowned, hard, then laughed with a bitter edge. “You don’t remember.”

  I thought about using the strong-drugs excuse, but I took the higher road. “No. I’m sorry.”

  He made a disgusted sound. “All the girls. All the money. All the accolades. And Golden Boy doesn’t even remember the research fellow who’s going to kill him. Tragic.”

  “I heard you made head of the department,” I said. “Congratulations. Really. Is that where you found the machines?” I backed up faster.

  His glasses glinted like the carapace of a bug. “Think you’re so clever, just because you’re a professor. I left the machines. You made me, you and the cops. Think it will stop me. But you don’t know everything. I have the blueprints, and they’ll make me better ones.”

  “Who will make you better ones?” I asked.

  His eyes narrowed, and he held up a hand, palm out. “I’m done talking now.”

  Overwhelming force threw me back, past the doorway. I landed on the floor, seeing stars.

  In front of me the door opened and a glass container flew through the air. Bradley ducked as glass broke in front of him. He hissed in pain, cradled his eye, screamed out names. Reinforcements—he was calling reinforcements.

  “Take that, teep!” Cherabino yelled. She grabbed my ankle, pulled. What?

  She pulled again. “Help me out.”

  I pushed with my hands, my body halfway into the door. Another push, my vision still blurry. I sat up, got to my hands and knees.

  Down the hallway, Bradley rubbed at his eye while another big guy came up behind him. Much farther down the hall, the first guard slept on, oblivious. He’d be out for at least another hour.

  I was not so lucky. Pulling myself up, I grappled with the heavy steel door until it closed, locking it with the one small deadbolt I had available. My eyes finally focused, but the back of my head was throbbing in time with my heartbeat.

  “What was in the beaker?” I asked Cherabino.

  “Baking soda and water. Everything else is locked up. Unless we can figure out a way to throw lit propane, all that’s here is glass, baking soda, and water. Maybe some salt.”

  I looked around, panting. We were in the middle of a chemistry lab full of low black tables, tables covered in beakers, tubing, gas burners, and jars. The smell of chemicals, glass, and burnt wood permeated the room. I saw a couple boxes of that baking soda, some salt, sand, even a few pipettes. But she was right, no chemicals were out, not even a plain acid.

  At the end of the room was the solid wooden door I wanted, less than twenty feet away. Bad design to make it wood, but maybe there was another steel door on the inside. Regardless, we needed to get out of here and into the pyro practice room, now. I did not want to be in a room full of glass and propane lines with a telekinetic on the loose.

  On the floor, Cherabino held her ankle. “Damn foot.”

  “We’re out of time. I’m carrying you.”

  “No you’re not.” Her expression was firm as she reached up to grab a table.

  “Fine.” I stood up myself. “At least pull out that knife of yours. The door won’t hold him for long.” I paused. “This is the part where the nasty stuff starts flying around. The real world, yeah, but also Mindspace. Hide under a table if you have to, do the same in your mind. Distract him in the real world if you can.”

  “Got it,” she said, leaning against the table with a determined expression. “Get going.”

  A thud came from the door.

  I limped to the next student table, turned it over quickly, violently. Glass beakers crashed against the floor on the other side, metal tinkling, rubber thudding. I got my hands under the side of the table and lifted, using every muscle in my back to keep the bulky table moving.

  “You might want to move,” I told Cherabino.
Then I yanked the table over in front of the door, bracing it against a vibration I could feel in my bones. That should buy us a few seconds at least.

  “You okay?” I asked her. She looked pained and was already limping to the center aisle, knife in one hand.

  “I’m fine. Get that door open.”

  I staggered past her, through eight rows of chemistry tables, all the way to the front teacher’s station. The chalkboard at the front of the room was emblazoned with the words Safety First. My equilibrium was going, but I got my hand on the doorknob to the door next to it. Another crash came from the hallway.

  Cherabino was almost halfway down the aisles, a steady stream of pain and cursing accompanying every step.

  I turned the knob. It was locked. “Damn it.”

  Another crash, and a low, tortured hum from the hallway. The table bracing the door started to shake visibly. I looked around, heart pounding. There on the teacher’s desk. A couple of very long thin pieces of metal—sharp flat thermometers. The top edge of them would work nicely. I’d learned a few things on the streets; I could pick an easy lock if my life depended on it. It might now.

  There was a long silence from the door, while I felt ripples in Mindspace. I grabbed the thin metal thermometers and fed them carefully into the lock, hoping they’d fit. Yes. I moved them around with shaking hands…. I had to do this; I had to….

  A click. The steel door from the hallway made an awful sound. The table was splintering, the hard steel of the hallway door was stretching, straining like a bubble inward, cracking the table. It wouldn’t be much longer. I turned the knob—

  Only to come face-to-face with five shelves of bottles and a tangle of beakers. I stared, adrenaline pumping, not able to understand what I was seeing. Shelves? Sulfuric acid? Beakers? Magnesium? Sodium? A bag of sand? This couldn’t be right. I reached out a hand through the bottles—the back wall was solid. A closet. A chemistry supply closet.

  Damn it, damn it, damn it.

  “What’s wrong?” Cherabino said in a pained voice. “Why aren’t you going through?”

  “It’s not the cut-through,” I said. “We’re in the wrong room.”

  There was no way out. None but the door to the hallway that was even now about to break. We would be stuck in a chem lab with a telekinetic who could throw all the nice sharp glass objects directly at our heads. I hit my head on the shelf.

  While Cherabino cursed, I tried to think, tried to make my brain work while a truly nasty scraping sound came from the door. My eyes ran over the bottles, clear glass the length of my arm with black stoppers and handwritten labels. My eye went back to the magnesium, the little jar with the dull gray metal strips.

  One of the professors at the Guild liked to do demos with that stuff—it burned. Hot. With a really bright light that was dangerous to look at. I grabbed the bottle, shut the door. I didn’t want anyone else to see the chemicals and use them against us.

  I needed fire. Something hot. My eyes ran over the teacher’s station, the gas line already set up, a snaking line leading to a simple Bunsen burner. I hustled over there. Now I just needed a spark—something to light it with.

  “Do you see any matches?” I asked Cherabino, who was taking a pained rest stop halfway up the room. She was sweating and pale, but the knife was still in her hand.

  She took a breath, looked up at me. “What’s wrong with your lighter?”

  Oh. I felt like an idiot. I fished the lighter out of my pocket and—

  The outside door flew with impossible force, hitting the opposite wall with a clang.

  I gulped. Two men, one tall and beefy, the other Bradley in all his skinny geekiness, entered the room. Bradley’s left eye was bright red, leaking fluid. He looked pissed.

  Knife in hand, Cherabino stepped toward them, one lurching step at a time. “You’re under arrest,” she said.

  Bradley raised one hand and threw her back with solid force.

  Cherabino’s face lit up with surprise as she flew through the air. Her knees struck one of the student desks with painful force, her head slamming into the tabletop. She slid off the table, landing on the hard tile floor with a crunch. Then came the lighter sound of the knife hitting tile.

  She tried to rise, her vision swimming, before collapsing into a puddle, her consciousness sliding away. I caught myself at the edge of that same abyss, fought back with my vision turning into a tunnel—and stayed standing.

  My hands flew, hitting the gas valve, opening the jar, bringing the lighter up. It caught—

  And Bradley threw me back, hard, against the chalkboard. I hit with an impact that jarred my teeth, the lighter flying across the room. I blinked, disoriented, while he paced forward, grabbing beaker after beaker with his mind. A bottle of water next to me started to rise in midair, the changing air currents making the flame on the Bunsen burner flicker.

  I lurched ahead—surprised to find I could. No pressure held me to the board. Before he could change that, I grabbed for the magnesium, threw it at the fire, and turned my head.

  Blinding light flashed out with a popping sound, and I threw myself forward, under the first row of student desks. The water bottle dropped onto the floor with a thud. I dropped into Mindspace, quickly, knowing I’d have one chance at this.

  Bradley’s shields were down, his mind full of the painful flash of light. I darted in like a fish into the mouth of a whale—fast, quick, no apologies, swimming as hard as my mind would let me. While my mind cracked and bled, I kept going, kept pushing, holding the course no matter what it took.

  He started to react—but he was too slow. I reached the right spot, grabbing with my whole mind and clamping down. He froze, literally unable to make a decision.

  I took a breath. With painful double vision, I opened an eye. There was still another bad guy out there. If my concentration slipped for a moment, Bradley would be free, but I couldn’t just let the bruiser hit me over the head.

  I looked around, holding, holding on to impossible pressure. Cherabino’s body sprawled three feet to my left. The shadow of the bright magnesium started turning red, and the high hiss it made started to crackle, to crackle like a wood fire. I was betting the teacher’s desk was starting to catch; I hadn’t been all that careful with the magnesium.

  I grabbed at Bradley again when he struggled. Where was the second bad guy? Cherabino’s knife was maybe two feet to my left. Could I get it in time?

  The bruiser ran straight down the aisle, ignoring me in favor of the fire. His thick legs darted back and forth, dashing forward to the wall to turn the gas off at the source. The fire got quieter, suddenly, and the bruiser hurried forward to get the red fire extinguisher under the teacher’s desk. The wrong one—the red carbon dioxide, not the black chemical extinguisher. Crap.

  I heard the safety pin tinkle on the floor, closed my eyes, and braced.

  The boom of an explosion, a flash of light visible through my eyelids. I’d been expecting it; my mind slipped, but I recovered, holding, holding, keeping Bradley immobile by my will alone. Had it spread beyond the desk?

  The bruiser cried out, hit the floor with a thud. I opened my eyes; he was scrabbling back, on his back like a crab, cursing up a storm, his face splotched with burns.

  On the board, the erasers caught fire, but the tray was metal. We had a few seconds at least.

  “Fire!” the bruiser yelled at Bradley, and Bradley struggled, trying to react.

  “Fire!” the man screamed in Bradley’s face, shaking Bradley, hard, and my mind stretched like taffy to keep his will—and held. I felt warmth trickle down my lips as my nose started to bleed. But I had to hold this. I had to. I grabbed control of Bradley’s body—

  I made his leg kick at the bruiser’s knees. Connect. The bruiser’s arms windmilled, and he hit the side of a table—hit it hard. He didn’t get up. For ten seconds and more, he didn’t get up; he didn’t move.

  I breathed. I’d gotten lucky. But I could feel the heat of the fire, hear the crackle
of the flames. It was spreading.

  I stood up, holding my grip on Bradley’s mind through sheer will and concentration. Sweat rolled down my face, and blood ran in a steady stream down my face as I held him, carefully, taking one concentrated step at a time. I was walking the high wire with no net, one step from death.

  The center of the teacher’s table cracked, and the hot flames grew higher. Fingers of flame ran all the way under the desk, a few feet—and a minute—from lighting the whole room on fire. The chemical extinguisher was no longer an option.

  I couldn’t do water, I thought, in careful small thoughts as I took step after tiny step down that tightrope. I couldn’t smother it with another table, not with it about to fall apart. A fire-retardant blanket? Or sand? Sand. There was a fifteen-pound bag of sand in the closet.

  Ten careful steps later, the fire roaring, I pulled the rip cord to the sandbag. I shoveled out handful after handful of sand with my hands, throwing it on the fire with slow, careful moves.

  My concentration split, Bradley strained against my hold like a giant moth in a small glass jar. Blood ran down my face faster, sweat pooling, as my head pounded like the beat of a gong. Handful after handful of sand hit the burning table. The last handful of sand went on the last flame, which sputtered and died. I breathed.

  The smell was acrid, deadly, the table turned into so much splinter and ash. For a long moment, I stood swaying, in so much mental pain I could hardly think. I put a hand on one of the student tables to support me. I was out of juice—and Bradley was struggling harder.

  I had to do something, had to know what he knew, so I forced a partial merge. It might kill us both—

  Just you, Bradley spat at me. You deserve to die.

  My brain pushed farther than it had ever been, I actually held on. Tears streaming, nose bleeding, arm throbbing, I actually held on.

  I saw myself from his point of view, the handsome guy, the Golden Boy at the Guild, the head of the department Bradley wanted more than anything to work in. He’d screwed up his courage, put the application in, and two days later saw it come back in a red envelope with two words scrawled on it: Too Weak. The words were in my handwriting, Golden Boy’s handwriting. His jealousy surged. I’d gotten everything he’d ever wanted, ignored him at every turn, and now I dared to sneer at him? It was like a kick to the ribs, a kick from an angry horse. He still felt the impact.