Sharp: A Mindspace Investigations Novel

by Alex Hughes

  “You want some coffee?” Cherabino abruptly asked Michael.

  “Um, no.”

  “Let me put this another way. You’re getting yourself some coffee. Or some fresh air. Or you’re going home. But whatever it is, you’re doing it now.”

  He blinked at her. “Did I—”

  “No.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Scram.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” He picked up his jacket and walked out. Cherabino waited until he was past the secure cubicles, past the noise shield, before she turned back to me.

  “What in hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “What in hell do you think I think I’m doing?” I asked, just to buy time while I tried to sort out the images coming through the Link. Why were we doing this now? I needed time, damn it! I needed to figure out what the hell was going on and to get my brain to focus.

  She barreled full steam ahead. “What in hell cause do you have to speak that way to Michael?”

  “He’s expecting special treatment,” I said, the first thing popping into my head.

  “How?”

  He’d taken over my chair. He’d taken over my place at Cherabino’s side. He’d taken over . . . Well . . . My mind filled with all the things I couldn’t say. All the angry, nasty things I couldn’t even think, for fear she’d overhear me, and honestly none of them were justified anyway. I stood up. “He’s an annoying cheerful bastard.”

  “The hell.” Cherabino stood too, her body language going into a fighter’s pose. “He’s the nicest guy I know.”

  I flinched like she’d hit me.

  I sat there, looking at Cherabino, beautiful, pissed-off, strong, crazy, amazing Cherabino, the woman who’d kissed me like she was drowning. I looked at her, and it was like the weight of the world, the distance to the sun, was between us.

  “This isn’t about Michael, is it?”

  I turned. “I’ll try to be nicer to him,” I told the cubicle wall, and took a few steps toward it. But she was quiet, so very quiet behind me. I turned back.

  “I didn’t establish the Link on purpose,” I said, too tired not to say it. “I didn’t mean to do it. And I saved your life. Don’t I get any credit for saving your life?”

  “Back in the beginning, I asked for two things. Only two.”

  “Keep my hands and mind to myself. I know. I didn’t do this on purpose.”

  “It doesn’t matter!” she almost screamed. She looked away, but not before I could see the pain, the fear in her eyes. She hated this thing in her head; she hated it enough she’d have cut it out of her if she could, whatever damage it cost. And now she was tired, was irritated just as much as I was. That was how the Link worked. “You told me it would fade. You promised—” And her voice broke. She took a shuddery breath. “You promised it would fade.” Too close, too close, her brain echoed, echoed. Too close and he’ll hurt me.

  I felt like a hundred tons of rock were crushing me. Broken promises. Failures. Mistakes. And the terrible, terrible certainty it would all fall apart. I had to fix this, to keep this job, to keep her. I had to. But her adrenaline was waking her up now; her fear was waking me up. I could think again. “It will fade, Cherabino. It will. It’s taking longer than it should, but I promise you it will fade eventually.” We hadn’t slept together; it had to fade. A month, a year, two, no Link I’d ever heard of that didn’t involve a physical component . . . well. It would fade. The knowledge was like a double-edged sword; it cut me on both sides.

  In telepath circles a Link was a rare and precious thing, an intimacy, a source of strength and grounding like nothing else you’d ever seen. Like fire, you treated it cautiously. You didn’t just play around. But on its best day, used correctly, a Link was the most beautiful thing in the world. There were telepaths who would kill for what we had. And she was treating it—and me—like garbage. “I’m not a bad guy, Cherabino. I used to be good at this. You can ask Kara. A Link isn’t anything to be afraid of. I promise you. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to die and leave you like Peter did. I can do this. This I can do.”

  “Don’t talk about Peter. You don’t have the right.”

  “It’s sitting in the air between us.”

  She shut down like someone turning a light switch. The death of her husband had scarred her too badly; she was terrified, honestly, irrationally terrified of letting anyone—most of all me—too close. “Your shield is slipping again,” I said, out of obligation, respect, and the twist of the knife of shame and failure.

  And in that moment, I saw two things at the depth of certainty: she didn’t trust me, she wouldn’t trust me completely; I’d proven untrustworthy. That hurt—it hurt like the edge of a razor—but it was true—at least about the drug. And she was afraid.

  “I’m not going to take advantage of you,” I said, one more try, even though it hurt. “I’ve proven you can trust me not to take advantage of you, proven twice over.” Hell, I’d turned her down when she literally had thrown herself at me. “Isn’t that good enough? What is it going to take, Cherabino?”

  She was quiet, utterly quiet. But inside she was angry now and afraid, emotions that were now echoing in me despite my best efforts to fight them.

  If it wasn’t for her nephew, she thought . . .

  “Your nephew?”

  Her gaze focused past me. “It’s time we went home.” Then, like the coward she was, she left. She ran away like she’d been doing for weeks.

  Her fear haunted me the rest of the night, like a smell that clung to me and wouldn’t let me go, and I didn’t have the control to block it out.

  CHAPTER 7

  I have no idea why I agreed to a second shift, but halfway through, the interviews ran out and I had to try paperwork. Paperwork, where the letters jumped and wavered, the words refusing to make sense. This time of night, the sea of desks downstairs was basically empty, the secretaries gone for the night and the night cops mostly out on the streets working. But even with the—reluctant—introduction of computer databases into the department, Paulsen and the other diehards still remembered the aftermath of the Tech Wars. Still remembered decades of history wiped out in a day, history gone because it was stored in computers. I understood why we did paperwork. I did. Hard copy first, hard copy last, and you printed in small block caps to keep it legible for the next cop to pull it out, in a hundred years or so. I got it. But this time of day, with my bone-deep weariness and my uncooperative brain, it might as well be written in Greek.

  I woke up an hour later, my brain in a fog, a small pile of drool on the back of my hand. I blinked, and looked up at the clock. This was not how to keep my job, was all I could think. And Bellury wouldn’t drive me home for two hours yet.

  Was this how Emily had felt, locked away from her telepathy because of me? Emily had been a fighter, when I’d known her, and in the memories I’d seen of her in the house, even through the abuse she’d been a fighter. So far in the investigation we’d learned she’d been saving up money—a lot of money—at a separate bank her husband didn’t know about, and applying for jobs out of state. She’d been on her way to get out of the situation, and she’d always protected her daughter. Emily was still a fighter, even in that situation. She’d been a fighter. But losing your telepathy, losing the thing that made you special, made you you . . . Charles had killed himself, Tamika had checked herself into a non-Guild mental treatment facility, and Emily . . . well, she’d ended up with an abuser. For a while, at least, she’d given up. Let somebody else’s fists punish her for the thing she’d lost.

  All of them—all three terrible fates—were my responsibility. It didn’t help that to this day I didn’t know what I did wrong. The damage was done, that terrible, terrible damage—an accident, and one I couldn’t reverse. Maybe Swartz was right. Maybe I needed to go to Tamika, the only one left alive, and try to apologize. Try to make it right to whatever degree I could.

  To get away from the guilt and fear as best I could, I walked. I wa
ndered upstairs, through the more sedate minds of the second-shift cops in their cubicles, and went through the paperwork Cherabino had left from the case. I knew the key code to her filing cabinet; she thought it loudly and often. And something was nagging at me. Something maybe deeper than the guilt, deeper even than my increasing exhaustion.

  I found the right murder book. Then the medical examiner’s report for Emily, in its sterile rows of transcribed notes on the body, all she left behind. It had pictures, and text in small bits. Even shielding the rest of the page so I could only see the small bits didn’t help much. I turned on a brighter light, rubbed my eyes, and tried. This was Emily. And she’d gone through worse because of me.

  Old bruises, cuts, wounds, and breaks, more than some soldiers from war zones. A pin in her arm from a compound fracture years ago—that one was a picture. I puzzled out a note about having a baby, which I knew. A concussion, a few weeks old. And a small, cramped note it took me far too long to figure out—and when I did I winced. Brain scarring, scarring from years ago—it cut at something inside me, to see what I’d done have a physical effect. It had been an accident, but it had cost Emily everything, and I’d never brought myself to face her again, not even to apologize. I made myself keep trying, keep trying to puzzle it out despite my exhaustion, despite the pain from concentrating so hard, so long.

  The major wound, expected, part ligature strangulation, part deep cut into her throat, evidence of that odd sharp cord we’d seen earlier. The hyoid bone was broken, consistent with strangulation, but the blood—there was so much blood, such deep damage. No evidence of cord slippage, no fresh bruise lines on the throat. No recent bruising on the hands or arms, no fresh slices or bruises to indicate defensive wounds around the time of the murder; all of her wounds seemed too old, days and weeks old. He’d beat her, but she hadn’t seemed to struggle nearly as much as you’d expect during the murder itself.

  I closed the folder. Emily had died Monday, I thought, slowly, closing my eyes so I could think clearer. It was Thursday now, Thursday night. How we’d gotten an autopsy on such short notice I didn’t know, but Cherabino routinely worked miracles.

  There had been that one line of milk and blood at the scene, one line like an arm throwing itself up. On the report, there had been a circle around her right hand. Even if I couldn’t read it right now, it had to be a simple defensive wound. Why just one? Stranglings usually had crazy defensive wounds, more than you’d expect. Why hadn’t she shrugged as much as that?

  That thing nagging at me poked harder. An unknown drug? I’d check tomorrow, when I could read tox screens, but I had a fuzzy memory of Cherabino saying she’d been clean except for a little alcohol. No struggle . . . it made me think. Telepathy? Was I stretching?

  I opened my eyes and blinked at the clock until I could read it. Nine fifty, I think. I needed to talk to Kara. Hell, I needed to talk to Kara anyway. Swartz said I should try to get my old certification back, and I could just—just—handle the phone right now.

  * * *

  I sat down at Cherabino’s incredibly messy desk, moving piles away from where I needed, setting them down on the floor so they didn’t interact with other piles. She claimed she had a method, a system, and from the few glimpses I’d gotten through the Link, I knew she thought she did.

  Then I picked up the phone. Kara Chenoa, current Guild attaché to the metro Atlanta area. A lithe blond teleporter, a Guild woman to the core—and once, long ago, my fiancée. She was married now, to a guy I’d never met. A Guild guy.

  I found my fingers hitting the worn buttons after all, punching in a number I hadn’t realized I’d memorized. It rang and rang, and I mentally prepared a message to leave for her for the morning.

  “Hello?” a tired women’s voice came over the line.

  “Kara?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me. Um, isn’t it a little late for you to be at the office?”

  “Guild attaché is more than a full-time job.” She sighed. “What is it now?”

  I rubbed at the back of my neck. Thought. Finally went for it. “Could you meet me for breakfast?”

  The line went silent. “Are you all right?”

  “I just have a favor to ask, okay?”

  She sighed. “What do you need?”

  “Can I ask in person?” I was not nearly coherent enough to do anything right now.

  “When and where?”

  I named the place and set the time even earlier than my usual meeting with Swartz. “My morning interviews start really early tomorrow.”

  “This had better be important.”

  “It is.”

  We said our good-byes and she hung up. All our history, our engagement, our Link, her betraying me, all gone to the sound of the dial tone.

  Exhausted, I stumbled over to the crash room to put my head down for just a second.

  * * *

  It was the first time I’d slept without my wave-cancellation machine in a long time, and of course, I dreamed.

  The dream wasn’t a dream; it smelled of truth before it began, truth of what could be, or would be, a vision of the future from the stupid stubborn precognition.

  I was somewhere else. Somewhere dark, with heavy concrete overhead and the smell of mold and wet below. I had a needle in my hand. A needle, and my arm was encircled by a rubber tube to make the vein pop out. I felt my hands pull off the tube, set the needle down, my head lolling back as I waited.

  A few breaths and the familiar rush of Satin flowed into my brain, turning the dirt and mold and polluted rain into a kaleidoscoping symphony of smells, the visual of my surroundings rippling and flowing in odd ways as it settled into my brain and said hello.

  The world was bigger, and smaller, and infinitely more perfect. I looked at my dirt-caked hands, the ratty torn clothes around me, and the rain falling down through the cracks in the concrete, and they all were joy, and they all were sorrow, ice-crystal, sharp-edged sorrow and strong, furry joy like a small animal meant to be petted.

  That brought me back to myself, and I looked around, fighting the drug—what was this vision trying to tell me? I was still in my apartment in reality, still here . . .

  A small, dirty canvas backpack sat next to me, just out of the polluted rain falling in streams around the concrete beams. A dirty backpack and a small bedroll, stained, torn with holes from some kind of animal gnawing at it. I lived here, I realized. Or at least I lived in this kind of place, moving on from day to day. A sense of despair stuck to the bedroll and the backpack, a sense of despair like an unwelcome relative who would not leave.

  A long, beat-up knife lay on the ground in front of me as I sat, back against the concrete, ready to defend my perch from all comers. I couldn’t depend on the telepathy to work reliably under the influence. And there was no one else who would care if I died.

  A roach skittering past my leg, heading for its own shelter; I lifted my bag out of its way with sad resignation, hands shaking, missing the clasp twice before I got it. The roach was well on its way, but the bag went in my lap and I hugged it close.

  I was alone in my own head, completely alone; no Cherabino, no Link, no minds around me that I could feel; Mindspace appeared and disappeared in stages, like beautiful, perfect bubbles floating in my head.

  I shifted and the top of the bag fell open, and I looked. Two syringes, and a sheet of heavy paper over wadded-up clothes and a little soap—I opened the paper, which thanked me for my service to the DeKalb County Police Department and gave instructions on how to claim my funds. Which were about twenty currency units; the last metal coins rattled at the bottom of the bag.

  I felt tears run down my face in a steady stream, one after the other, like the rain around me. No one was coming. No one would care if I died. And soon, two syringes soon, I’d have to lie or cheat or steal or worse to get the money for more. I had no one and nothing holding me—but I was less free than I had ever been in my life.

  The tears ran as the bubbles in
my head flexed through their beautiful dance as the world fell away, and my foot settled on top of the knife, just in case. Just in case.

  I fell back into myself, devastation echoing through my brain, staring at a ceiling in the dim light of night.

  The department. The empty crash room. Alone.

  I tossed and turned the rest of the night, despair riding me like a tick the size of a boulder, sucking me dry of hope. No one was there. No one, not even Swartz.

  I was up and on the bus before dawn. There was nowhere else to go.

  CHAPTER 8

  Right before the seven a.m. opening, there was a line of patrons already lined up for the Flattened Biscuit. Grungy students and overdressed yuppies rubbed shoulders with gay couples, artists, and more than a few dogs in little jackets, more primped than their owners. Midtown was an amalgamation of groups, with a bright energy and take-no-prisoners attitude that mixed in interesting ways, always fun for a telepath, even if I couldn’t really read it now. I hadn’t gotten enough sleep, not nearly. But I was here.

  The new owner of the Biscuit was a twenty-year NA veteran, a friend of Swartz, was always happy to see us when we stopped in, and lately he’d been kind enough to start up a tab for me so I could come in without Swartz. It was one of two places outside of Decatur where I could actually take Kara and pay for her meal.

  Food was always an issue for me. Since my last fall off the wagon at the department, a condition of my reemployment was that I couldn’t handle money directly. I couldn’t own anything (that they knew of) I could trade for drugs. But Bellury took me shopping for shoes and shirts and such, there were basic groceries delivered, and it was tolerable. Well, until I wanted to do anything on my own. Swartz kept telling me depending on other people was good for me, but lately it was starting to rub me the wrong way.

  The Flattened Biscuit had a cult following; before the war it had had another name, and when a bomb had landed directly on the building it was housed in, the then owner had, in typical Midtown fashion, shaken his head, flicked out the finger, and rebuilt better than before. The boxy postwar building was three stories high, concrete, rebar, and heavy Georgia brick, with a concrete-and-insulation-layered roof that was like a dare to try again. The apartments on the top floors would feel claustrophobic, I’m sure, but the Biscuit on the bottom floor had a crazy, worn, cramped feel with medieval arrow slit windows that only added to the postwar appeal. The contrast with the smoky gray crystalline two-floor structure next door, a law firm by the looks of it, couldn’t be more striking. Its single-material delicacy, a product of modern engineering and supermaterials, in contrast just seemed to be trying too hard.