by Dima Zales
But that’s not what’s overwhelming me the most.
It’s the tone of voice in Lucy’s mind. It’s familiar to me. The instructions in Lucy’s head sound like the ones I heard inside the heads of the mobsters who’d kidnapped Mira. And also like the ones inside the head of the murderous nurse, the one who gave me a near-fatal overdose of morphine and tried to smother me with a pillow. All these Pushing instructions came from the same person.
A person whose real-life voice I know well because I’ve heard it throughout my life.
It’s Kyle—the closest person to a father I’ve ever had.
I still can’t accept it, so with masochistic determination, I allow the memory to continue.
In a stupor, we watch Kyle. We can’t move for some reason, but we don’t want to move either. We’re relaxed.
“I really am sorry about this,” Kyle says as he gathers our notes. “It’s such a shame.” He walks over to the fireplace, takes out a lighter, and burns the papers.
We don’t understand what he’s doing, but the relaxation we’re feeling is pleasant.
“I really wish you hadn’t dug into this Arkady business. It’s ancient history.” We look at Kyle and see an expression of deep sorrow on his face, like at the captain’s funeral. “Now that I know the little bastard I helped you raise is a fucking Leacher, I can’t just make you forget the way I usually would. Your mind isn’t safe anymore. Not when Darren can just Leach the information straight out of it.”
None of it, except for the name of the mobster, makes sense to us. Through our haze of relaxation, we realize Kyle could be the one behind the cover-up. Then we promptly forget this thought.
“So if you need anyone to blame for me having to do this,” Kyle continues, “blame him. Blame Darren. But don’t worry. Your sacrifice won’t be in vain. He’ll come to your funeral, where I’ll finally rid the world of that blight.”
I, Darren, disassociate.
Kyle is right in more ways than he realizes. Back at the Coney Island Hospital, it was me who set my mom on the path to investigating the Arkady case by telling her about Mira’s parents. I also see how my Reading ability is what forced Kyle’s hand. It’s a horrible thought, one that nearly paralyzes me with guilt. With effort, I overcome it and instead focus on what really matters.
Kyle is the Pusher.
I have no doubt now. He was the one controlling Arkady and the one working with Jacob. He erased the memory of Jacob from Arkady’s mind. But that could also mean...
I decide to dig deeper in Lucy’s head. Much deeper.
“Lucy,” Mark says. “How are you still standing?”
“Seriously,” Kyle adds. “Five shots for someone your size is like ten for me or Mark.”
“What?” we say incredulously. “I can drink both of you pussies under the table.”
I, Darren, realize I’ve gone too far into the past. Given how young Kyle looks, this must be before Lucy even met Sara, back in the crazy days when the three of them—Mark, Kyle, and Lucy—kicked ass and took names in Organized Crime. Young Mark looks achingly familiar, like the reflection I see in the mirror every day. I try not to dwell on this. He’s my biological father, so it’s not that big of a surprise.
I should move toward the present in Lucy’s memories, but I can’t stop experiencing this. This is probably as close as I’ll ever get to having a drink with my father, the father I never knew. So I let the memory play out, watching them drink and joke without a care in the world.
“I’ll walk you home,” Kyle says to us eventually.
“I can do it,” Mark offers.
“You’ve been eyeing that blonde,” Kyle reminds him. “Why don’t you go say hi? I got this.”
Mark looks at the blonde, burps, and then shakily makes his way over to her table.
“I don’t need to be walked,” we argue. “I’m not drunk.”
We know we’re lying. We are extremely buzzed. But so are our asshole partners.
“Fine,” Kyle says stubbornly. “You go, but I’ll be right behind you. It’s a free country.”
“Whatever,” we concede with annoyance. “Let’s just get this over with.”
The walk is oddly silent. We can’t help but notice how tipsy Kyle’s walk is. Who needs to walk whom home? we think but don’t say it out loud. We’re not in the mood to start an argument.
“This is me,” we say when we get to our door. “Thanks for the walk.”
“No problem,” he says. “Can I come in?”
“Sure,” we say.
When Kyle walks in, we stare at him expectantly. “The bathroom is down the hall.”
“That’s not why I asked to come in,” he says. “I wanted to be alone with you for a second. I wanted to talk.”
Shit. Not this. Our heart sinks. We were dreading this day. We’re no expert when it comes to men, but the looks Kyle has given us in the past always seemed odd—longing and lustful.
“I love you, Lucy,” Kyle says, his speech slurred. “It’s not the drink talking. I fucking love you.”
We take a deep breath and organize our drunken thoughts.
“I’m sorry, Kyle,” we begin. We don’t want to break our best friend’s heart, but he hasn’t given us much of a choice. “It’s not you. It’s me. I don’t like men that way...”
His expression is hard to understand. “You’re just going through a phase,” he says softly. “Women belong with men.”
“I don’t think so,” we say more forcefully. Kyle can be such a bigot sometimes. It drives us crazy. “Besides, even if I wanted dick, what makes you think I’d go for yours?” That’s definitely the liquor talking, and we instantly regret the words.
Then there’s a Pusher presence in our mind.
You love me, the instructions tell us. You want me just as much as I want you...
I, Darren, disassociate in horror, but not before I see a glimpse of Lucy meekly following Kyle into the bedroom, murmuring sweet nothings to him.
Dizzy with dread, I jump ahead a couple of months in Lucy’s memories.
“I’m sick again,” we tell Kyle over the siren. “Nauseous for the third morning in a row.”
Kyle stops the car.
“What are you doing? They’re getting away,” we say.
A Pusher presence enters our mind.
Forget the pursuit. We’re taking a trip to the doctor’s.
I, Darren, follow the rest of this thread, completely stunned.
“How can this be? How can I be pregnant?” we ask in a brief moment of clarity from the Pusher’s influence.
The Pusher presence re-enters our mind. Forget the test results for now. You’re just having a rare condition called pseudocyesis—a false pregnancy.
I, Darren, can’t watch in detail—it’s just too crazy—so I skim Lucy’s memories, trying my best not to go too deep into the turbulent emotions of her pregnancy. When she begins showing, Kyle Pushes her to take a six-month vacation. Everyone at the department thinks she’s visiting China. But in reality, she spends those months in a dingy apartment Kyle rented for her in Queens. He messes with her mind at regular intervals. The whole horrid affair culminates in a birth. Then he Pushes her to give up the baby. The agony Lucy feels, even despite the Push, is terrifying. It’s so deep that, though I’m skimming, the intensity of it hits me like a physical punch.
Then, even after Kyle makes her forget the whole thing, she intuitively knows something is wrong with the world. Something is missing. This might be what led her to be so obsessive-compulsive sometimes, in her work and at home. Maybe she’s looking for that something that’s on the tip of her awareness—a splinter in her mind.
I fast-forward through more of her memories. Two weeks later, she almost remembers the birth, but not before Kyle Pushes her to forget everything all over again. And then he repeats the mind wipe fourteen days later.
This tells me that Kyle’s Reach must be about two weeks. After that, it wears off, and Lucy starts remembering the even
ts concerning her baby.
Something else clicks for me. This is why he’s been hanging around Lucy all these years. He was making her forget. It had nothing to do with him providing me with a male role model.
I wonder why he didn’t kill her back then. Maybe he did love her, in his own loathsome way. His infatuation with her must’ve faded with time, though, because it didn’t stop him from trying to kill her today. In a similar vein, I wonder why he hadn’t Pushed her to get an abortion. And then I remember all the fights we had on this very subject. Of course. Kyle is Mr. Pro-Life all the way, even when it came to the product of his own rape.
This was the baby he allowed her to remember before she attempted to kill herself. But he said he’d allow her to remember something about Mark too.
With a heavy heart, I seek another memory. I already have an idea of what I’ll find, but I have to see it. Otherwise, I won’t believe it’s true.
We’re walking up to Mark’s house. We don’t recall the drive over. Strange how these things sometimes happen—you drive someplace but do so almost by instinct.
Mark opens the door.
“Welcome,” he says, smiling. After he gives us a kiss on the cheek, he looks thoughtful. “Why didn’t Kyle come with you? I thought this was like a little department reunion.”
“He had something else going on,” we say.
“What about Sara?” Mark asks. “We could’ve made this into a double date instead.”
“Darren is very cranky today,” we say. “He has an ear infection.”
“Margie will be so disappointed that he couldn’t make it. Looks like it’s just us again.”
“Looks like,” we say.
After a moment’s hesitation, he says, “Look, Lucy. I haven’t seen Kyle at all since I left the department. He wasn’t at my wedding. He never returns my calls. Do you know what happened? Did I do something?”
“I don’t know,” we say honestly. And then something triggers a directive in our mind. “Let’s talk about this later,” we say, the words predetermined. “Can I use the restroom?”
“Sure,” Mark says, looking confused. “It’s through the kitchen.”
At this point, it’s more correct to say that only I, Darren, am experiencing this. Lucy isn’t present in her own mind. Not in the regular sense of the word. She’s more like a robot in a Lucy shell.
We enter the kitchen, with Mark walking a few feet ahead of us. We see Margret, Mark’s wife. Her back is to us, and the smell of fried garlic combined with the sizzle of oil tells us that she’s cooking.
Before Margret can turn to say hello, we take out the gun with a quick, practiced motion and fire at the back of her head, watching as it explodes and her body falls to the floor.
Mark spins around to face us. There’s no trace of confusion or surprise on his face, only horror. Somehow he knows what’s happening.
As we fire the next shot, he starts twisting to the side, as though he has some supernatural insight into the bullet’s path. But he’s not fast enough.
His limp body falls on the floor a few feet from his wife’s.
We methodically approach and wipe Mark’s lips. He kissed our cheek after saying hello and might’ve left some DNA. Then we carefully back away. We were instructed to make sure no blood gets on our shoes or clothes.
Still on autopilot, we leave the house, drive to the bridge, and dispose of the gun. Then we drive back. As soon as we park in Mark’s driveway, our mind goes clear, and Lucy is back.
We ring the doorbell. No one responds. We notice the door is unlocked. We open the door a sliver and yell, “Mark! Your door is open.”
No one answers.
We let ourselves in.
Something isn’t right, our inner detective screams.
That’s when we smell it: the familiar, metallic stench of death. We’re beyond horrified.
And then we see the bodies.
Our friends—the parents of our child—are dead.
Rage and grief mingle together in a poisonous cocktail as the enormity of the loss begins to dawn on us. Yet some cool part of our mind reminds us that this is a crime scene.
Pushing aside our emotions, we examine everything as thoroughly as humanly possible.
No break-in. No evidence of any kind.
How did the shooter do this?
We call it in. We use an ‘officer down’ code, which always gets the EMTs and the police to the scene faster.
“This will be the most important case of your career,” we tell the coroner on the phone in a shaking voice. “I want some answers, and I want them yesterday.”
I, Darren, disassociate.
So this is why Lucy had such a hard time solving my parents’ murder. She went about it the usual way, looking for a regular suspect. How could she fathom a crime where she was the killer? A crime Kyle committed with Lucy as the murder weapon?
She never stood a chance. And neither did my biological parents.
And then it hits me.
I saw my parents get shot. Margret was clearly caught off-guard, but Mark must’ve phased into the Quiet at the sound of the gunshot. That’s why he looked like he knew what was happening. He might’ve even Read Lucy’s mind and learned that she was being controlled by a Pusher. Of course, that knowledge wouldn’t have helped him. It was too late by then. Margret was already dead, and Lucy was aiming the gun at my dad and pulling the trigger. He tried to twist to the side to save himself, but even a Reader is not fast enough to avoid a bullet at close range.
My dad had to know that—which means that he had to know he was also about to die.
I think I’m too emotionally numb at this point to fully comprehend the horror of it. Either that, or something else is distracting me at the moment, an emotion that doesn’t leave room for grief.
An emotion that’s overtaking my mind like a hurricane.
Rage.
Kyle messed with Lucy’s mind. He raped her. Then he made her give up her baby. He had her kill my parents, and he made Lucy try to kill herself.
The fury that fills me is indescribable.
Kyle will die.
I will kill him.
I will enjoy killing him.
I never knew I was capable of wanting to kill someone so much. Even if he’d tried to kill me, I wouldn’t have wanted to hurt him this badly. I’d want to do something to protect myself, sure, but it wouldn’t feel like this. Not even close.
For what Kyle did to my mom, I want to tear him into little pieces.
Even that day on the Brooklyn Bridge, the day I mistakenly thought Sam had killed Mira, my hate for that fucker wasn’t this strong. It was a momentary rage, and what I’m feeling now is qualitatively different. It’s something cold and calculating. Something dark. I feel it becoming a need, like the need to breathe or eat. This rage must be coming from a more savage part of my brain, a part I hadn’t realized I possess. But I don’t care where it’s coming from. All I care about is feeding it what it wants—a sacrifice of Kyle’s blood.
I need to get out of Mom’s head. I need to start planning my revenge.
First, though, I have a decision to make. What do I let Lucy remember? It’s clear she had genuine amnesia about killing my parents, as most people do when they’re Guided to do something so out of character. She may never remember the rape for similar reasons. But when it comes to her baby, Kyle fucked up. She’ll likely remember something, now or in the near future, without Kyle’s regular memory wipes.
On top of that, what should she think of her suicide attempt? She won’t remember it either, but she’s a detective. One look at their house, combined with the injury to her wrist, and she’ll put it all together. Then, for the rest of her life, she’ll think she went crazy. I don’t want her to live with that.
You will forget about your baby, I instruct. Forget him or her until I’m ready to tell you everything. You were cutting open a package, slipped, and cut your wrist. You will not question the stupidity of this explanation.
Not until I’m ready to explain this too.
Will she buy it? I believe so. Bert believed worse bullshit after Hillary’s treatment.
I exit my mom’s head with just one thought, one soothing mantra.
Kyle will die.
Chapter 18
As I wait for Sara to arrive, I step out into the hallway and make another phone call.
“Bert, buddy. I’m going to be in your debt forever,” I say instead of hello.
“What’s up, dude?” Bert says. I hear worry in his voice. “You sound strange.”
I don’t blame Bert for thinking I don’t sound like myself, since I don’t feel like myself either.
“It’s my mom,” I say, trying to normalize my voice. “It’s Lucy. She’s in the hospital.”
“Oh my God, Darren. What happened?”
“It’s not a conversation for over the phone,” I say. “We’re at the Staten Island University Hospital.”
“Okay. My cab just got out of traffic on Belt Parkway. We’re still driving through Brooklyn. I can have him go to Staten Island.”
“Do it. Thanks, man.”
“See you soon,” my friend says and hangs up.
I’ve never needed my friends so much in my life—especially Mira—but they’re all stuck midair between New York and Miami. If Kyle learns that his attempt failed, he’ll come here to finish the job, or send someone else to do it. That means I need the help of someone who knows how to protect people.
Someone who works in security.
For a second, I consider calling Caleb and making a deal where I agree to fuck anyone my grandparents wish me to in exchange for Caleb helping me out. But seeing as Caleb’s under arrest in Miami, he couldn’t help me even if he wanted to. Maybe he knows other people in his line of work in New York?
No. Before I resort to something like that, I need to weigh all my options. As I think, I get the epiphany I should’ve had right away. I know someone who might be even better suited for this than Caleb.
I browse through the contacts on my phone, press call, and wait.
“Hello,” Thomas answers.