Dark Mind Rising

by Julia Keller

  Your joy is all behind you now.

  There’s nothing left. Just long days of emptiness and pain.

  You know what to do.

  He flung his head back, dumping the entire contents of the bottle into his mouth. He choked and gagged but somehow managed to swallow the pills, washing them down with a desperate gulp from the bottle of water he kept in his cup holder.

  It was a cool night. The heat of the engine had caused condensation to form on the inside of his windshield. With a trembling fingertip, Oliver wrote the word in the moisture, a word that began to dissolve as the water evaporated. The streaming droplets made it look as if the word itself was weeping:

  S C R E A M

  27

  Hangover City

  “Um … Vi? Vi? I hate to wake you up, but you’re sort of … well, drooling on the files—”

  Jonetta was taking pains to keep her voice soft and low. But it still sounded to Violet like the roar of ten thousand transport pods with leaky manifolds.

  She tried to lift her head.

  Damn. Jonetta was right. She was stuck.

  She tried again. This time she was able to free her cheek from the desk, but the effort came with an unseemly smooching sound. It left an icky-looking spot on the documents she’d been using as a pillow.

  How long had she been asleep in her desk chair, with the side of her face spit-glued to the paperwork? And how had she even gotten here in the first place?

  She had no memory of leaving Redshift.

  No memory of making the trip from the club to her office in the middle of the night.

  It was totally embarrassing. Jonetta was the only witness to her degradation, but it was still totally embarrassing.

  “What time is—”

  “It’s just after eight,” Jonetta said perkily. “Can I get you some coffee, Vi?”

  Violet didn’t even have the oomph right now to get mad about the very latest Vi violation. The Headache was back. Her mouth felt like somebody had stored their dirty socks in there. Her stomach was swishing back and forth. Plus, she needed to pee.

  Violet tried to stand.

  Whoa.

  Before she’d taken half a step, she fell back into her chair. It was the infernal dizziness, caused by drinking too much in too short a period of time. Her knees felt wobbly. She remained sitting.

  “How did I—”

  “Don’t know. You were like that when I got here.” Jonetta handed her a mug of coffee. Violet wasn’t crazy about coffee, but right now she needed it. Whether or not she liked it was irrelevant. She polished off half the mug in one swallow.

  “Thanks.” Her mouth began to register the heat of the beverage she’d just consumed. Violet didn’t care. A seared tongue was nothing compared to a troubled mind.

  “Sure,” Jonetta said. “Ready to run down today’s agenda?”

  No. She most assuredly was not ready to run down today’s agenda. What she was ready to do was to sit here and drink coffee for the next several hours—or the next several days—and figure out, as soon as her head cleared, the possibly humiliating specifics of what she had done last night at Redshift. And why.

  The why was the key. Why was she behaving this way? What was her problem? Ever since the Intercept had gone away, Violet had watched herself grow more and more reckless. Having fun was one thing; incapacitating herself was another thing altogether. It was almost as if the Intercept was a parent, and that parent had gone on vacation with the parting words “I trust you to behave.”

  Bad decision, Violet thought ruefully.

  She assumed she was seconds away from being fired by Charlotte Bainbridge. And after that, she’d lose her office and her business. And after that—

  “Call on line two,” Jonetta said. She had been waiting for Violet’s reply to her question about the day’s agenda when the office phone rang. Two long steps had taken Jonetta back to her own desk, where she answered it and then made her announcement to Violet.

  This is it, Violet thought. It’s going to be Charlotte Bainbridge, demanding a full refund, telling me I’m off the case, and telling me that, furthermore, I’ve made no progress on her case because I’m a lazy jerk who wastes valuable time while her daughter’s killer is still out there somewhere, ready to—

  “It’s somebody named Dave,” Jonetta added.

  Dave? She didn’t know a Dave, did she?

  “Um … hello?” Violet said. She squinted at her console. It was some guy with a beard. His face didn’t ring any bells. Wait, did this guy ask her out in high school?

  “Hey,” he said. He looked embarrassed, his glance shifting right and left and then returning to the center of the console screen. “Listen. I need to tell you that I’ve thought about it, and while I’m really flattered, I just can’t see how it would work, and so I think at this point we ought to just—”

  “How what would work?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Remember what?” Now she was concerned. What had she done last night?

  “You said … you said we ought to get married. And I was like, hell yeah. I mean, we danced great together. But I really don’t think that—”

  “Whoa. Whoa. WHOA.” Violet sprang up from her chair, a gesture that caused the Headache to intensify into a violent thumping. For a brief, horrified second, she thought she might throw up. Was he going to say that they’d actually gone somewhere—like that quickie wedding chapel in Franklinton—and gotten married?

  Her voice became a strangled squawk. “What are you talking about?”

  “It seemed like a great idea last night, but now that I’ve given it some thought,” he said, “I realize that dancing with somebody one time—when you’ve both had too much to drink—probably isn’t the basis for a lasting marriage.”

  “Agreed,” Violet said. Her horror continued to mount. Was this stranger actually her husband now?

  “So we’re good? We can call off the engagement?”

  The fact that he had used the word engagement and not marriage instantly caused such a tsunami of relief to flood through her body that she thought she might keel over. “Yeah,” she muttered. “Let’s call it off.” Because I don’t even know you, Dave.

  “See you around,” he said. “Maybe tonight at Redshift?”

  Apparently, her almost-husband didn’t learn from his mistakes. It really wasn’t going to work.

  “Um … maybe.” She clicked off her console. She took a series of deep, restorative breaths.

  But her relief was short-lived. The grubby fact dawned on her that she’d come very close to marrying some guy she barely knew.

  Okay, some guy that she did not know at all.

  What was she thinking? Shura would be horrified at how Violet was messing up her life. Kendall would be horrified, too. And her father—she couldn’t stand to think of how disappointed he would be. The thought of his reaction made her cringe.

  Violet executed a quick but solemn vow to herself: She was going to change. She had to change. Next time she needed to drown her sorrows, she’d stick to tea. She could toast Delia’s memory when she did so.

  “So am I invited to the wedding?”

  She knew that voice. It was Tin Man. He leaned against one side of the threshold. His arms were crossed. He had a slight smile on his face, a smile that was right on the cusp of being a smirk.

  “How did you—” Violet stopped. All kinds of conspiracy theories roosted in her head—Tin Man had tapped her console or Jonetta was eavesdropping and told him or he could actually read minds—before the truth struck her.

  “It was a trick,” Violet said. “And you did it.”

  “Yeah.” Tin Man pushed himself away from the doorframe and came into her office. “Dave’s an old buddy of mine. I needed to scare some sense into you.”

  Now that he was closer, she could see that he still wasn’t himself. The skin around his eyes was smudged with fatigue. She knew the signs because she knew the feeling herself all too well: He was
missing his mom.

  It didn’t matter how many practical jokes he played. He was grieving.

  “And so,” Violet said, “you told Dave to call me this morning and pretend…”

  “You got it.” Tin Man sat down. “Had you going there, right? You’re still shaking.”

  “Nasty trick.”

  “But necessary. My mom was always worried about you, too, Violet. Did you know that? In one of the last conversations I had with her before she—”

  He couldn’t say the word. He gulped and went in another direction.

  “Anyway, she said you were out of control. Taking too many wild chances. And that something bad was bound to happen. Believe me, my mom knew all about taking chances and paying the price for it. She wanted something better for you.” Tin Man crossed one leg over the other knee. He fiddled with the sole of his boot. Whatever he was going to say next was as hard for him to say as the word died. That’s why he was stalling. She knew him well enough to recognize the tactic. “A lot of people care about you, Violet, and they’re all saying the same thing. You’re being reckless, and you need to start taking care of yourself.”

  “You’ve got a hell of a nerve. Telling me what to do.”

  “So you disagree? You think you’re just fine?”

  No. She absolutely did not think she was just fine. The fact that she’d fallen for his little trick and thought that she actually might have married some guy and didn’t even remember it proved to her that she wasn’t fine. She was about ten thousand miles from “fine.”

  But it was her life. Nobody else’s. She didn’t want to live this way anymore, true, but that was her decision. She had come to it on her own, not because Tin Man or anybody else told her she had to change. Not even if Delia had told her to change.

  Not even then.

  “Listen,” she said heatedly. She wanted him to understand. “Back when we had the Intercept, I had to watch everything I felt. I had to keep tabs on my emotions all the time. If I liked a guy—” She paused here, because the only guy she’d ever really liked that way was Danny, and she still couldn’t talk about it because it had been so intense, and that’s why she went with the generic “guy,” as if she fell in love every three minutes or so. Which definitely was not the case.

  “If I liked a guy,” Violet repeated, starting again, “I’d try to disguise it. To myself, I mean. I tried to not feel it, because I hated the idea of the Intercept spying on me. Recording my feelings. You know?”

  “I know,” he said. Tin Man was listening intently. He really did seem to understand.

  “So when the Intercept was destroyed,” she continued, “it was like … like I was a cork that had been held underwater for years and years. And then the pressure was released.” She flipped her hand toward the ceiling. “It’s like—whoosh!—I went shooting off into the air. Really fast. Because I’d been holding everything down for so long. I just let it all go. That’s when I started hanging out at Redshift. Admittedly way too much. And when people like Shura tried to point out to me that I was on the wrong path, I really resented it. I think I even told her to go to hell one night. My very best friend.” She flung herself back in her chair.

  “Not cool.”

  “Oh my God. I’m such an idiot.”

  Tin Man shook his head. “No. Not an idiot. You just don’t know how to handle life without the Intercept. Nobody does, really. We’re still learning. The lesson’s harder for some than for others.”

  Violet absorbed what he’d said. “You seem to be doing okay. How did you—”

  “You have to be your own Intercept.”

  She frowned. “What does that mean?”

  He lifted his gaze. Sunlight was trundling in through the window behind Violet’s desk. Another beautiful day on New Earth.

  “It means,” he said, “that you watch your emotions yourself. You remember them on your own. And when you need to, you use the memory of an emotion to adjust your behavior. Just like what the Intercept did—but without the pain. Without the anguish.” He touched the scar in the crook of his left elbow. “I’m glad they left the chips in,” he said. “It’s a good way to remember how powerful feelings can be. How they can get the best of you if you let them. Rip you up. Twist you around and torment you.”

  When Tin Man spoke again, there was a slight hitch in his voice. Violet guessed that he was holding back tears. “I’ll remember forever how it felt when I came into that kitchen,” he said, “and found my mother’s body. I was a mess. I was totally wrecked. I was … undone. I didn’t see how I was going to go on with my life. Which is exactly how I felt when Molly died. But you know what, Violet? It’s different this time. It’s different because there’s no Intercept.

  “Now I’m in control. I get to decide which memories get recycled. Which ones I allow to come back and affect my life. Not the Intercept.” He smiled. “You know my old job at Redshift? It’s like that. I get to be the bouncer of my own emotions. If I don’t want to let a feeling in, it doesn’t get in. But if I do want to let it in, I open the door. And in it comes.”

  “Be your own Intercept,” Violet said softly and slowly, exploring the concept even as she pronounced the words.

  “Yeah. And believe me, it works. If I can do it, you can do it.”

  She started to ask another question when Jonetta showed up in the doorway. Her face looked stricken, and when she talked, she had trouble finding enough breath.

  “Check your consoles—it happened again,” Jonetta said, her voice trembling. “Another suicide. Some guy named Oliver Crosby.”

  Before Violet had a chance to react, her console chimed. Incoming call.

  It was Kendall.

  “I need to talk to you, Violet,” he said. “Right away. I went by your apartment last night, but you weren’t there.”

  He waited for an explanation. She didn’t offer one.

  My business, Kendall. Not yours.

  “I was busy,” she said. “And I’m sort of in the middle of something now, too. Can it wait?”

  “No.”

  “Come on. What’s so urgent that it can’t—”

  “It’s about the Intercept.”

  “On my way.”

  28

  The Key to Everything

  Kendall’s apartment was on the eleventh floor of a complex on Curie Street. A lot of cops lived in the same building—a beige box with a flat red roof and stucco sides and small slits for windows—because it was relatively cheap and close to the center of Hawking, handy for people whose lives were defined by responding to emergencies.

  The person who opened the door after Violet’s fierce and prolonged knocking was not Kendall but Sara Verity. She held a gray dusting rag in one hand. Her red curls were corralled back into a ponytail.

  “Hey,” Violet said.

  “Come on in. I’m just finishing up. Kendall’s in his study.” Sara stepped to one side as Violet swept past her. The apartment smelled mildly fruity. Violet chalked that up to the furniture polish Sara had been using. Violet saw the can on Kendall’s coffee table. The table gleamed. And you could actually see the surface. The table, in fact, looked better than it ever had before—which wasn’t an especially high bar, Violet reminded herself, because in the past it had been not only dusty but also stacked up with a bewildering assortment of scribbled-on notebooks and chewed-at sprockets and grimy filters and greasy snippets of wires and tiny flywheels and portable electron microscopes and an untold number of mysterious gizmos, along with not-so-mysterious things like candy wrappers and half-empty coffee cups.

  The apartment was much too small to have an actual study. That was just the name Kendall had given to the single bedroom, which he had turned into a combination laboratory and library about ten seconds after he’d first moved in. He had gotten rid of the bed and the dresser and jammed in a workbench and bookshelves and towering stacks of computers. He slept, Violet knew, on the couch in the living room—when he slept at all, that is, because Kendall considered slee
p to be a self-indulgent luxury.

  “Hey,” he said. “Take a look.”

  He was sitting on a stool at the end of his workbench. The screen of a small laptop glowed in front of him.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. “What’s that?”

  “My own version of a trigger-trap. And it worked.” He didn’t say it triumphantly.

  “Meaning…?”

  “Meaning I wasn’t sure if somebody was really accessing the Intercept again. It just seemed so unlikely. Especially after I talked to Rez. He didn’t have any real evidence. Just a few scraps from a bunch of old algorithms. Somebody would need a hell of a lot more than that to get the Intercept up and running again. The technical threshold would be daunting, not to mention the—”

  “Got it, Kendall. So what did you do?”

  He nodded toward the laptop. “I set a trap. I put in the old Intercept coordinates. If somebody tried to fire it up—even just as a test—these numbers would climb until they reached a certain point. A level that I designated. At that moment, it would trip a silent alarm. Late last night, it happened.” He pointed at the screen. “See this red spike? That’s the Intercept. Rising from the dead.”

  Violet felt the bottom drop out of her world. “So somebody used it again.”

  “Yeah.” His face was grim. “Briefly, but … yeah.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “And then I checked the news feed on my console. Another suicide.” Kendall grimaced. “Do you know what I think? I think somebody is using the Intercept to cram terrible ideas into people’s minds—ideas about how horrible life is, how futile. Based on their memories. And so the people kill themselves.”

  Violet could only look at him. For the moment, she was too stricken to speak. She was still reeling from the confirmation that the Intercept was alive again.

  Kendall filled the gap. “The question is, how could somebody do it? How could they re-create the Intercept? Even I wouldn’t be able to revive it without the original specs. And maybe not even then. Not that fast, anyway. It took me nearly a dozen years on Old Earth to invent the thing in the first place, and that was when I was working day and night, year after year, with no distractions.”