by Dima Zales
“Yes,” she answers. “I knew her. I know everyone.”
“You’ll have to tell me about her one day,” I say. “But right now, I have some important business to take care of.”
“I really don’t think—”
“Liz, I’m sorry to interrupt,” Thomas says, “but I think Darren should do what feels right.”
“Men,” Liz says derisively. “All this macho bullshit. If you go through with it, don’t come begging me for therapy.”
“Fine,” I say. “I’m sure I won’t have trouble finding another therapist. Maybe even one who won’t lie to me for over a decade.”
“That’s classic projection—”
“Seriously, Liz. That’s enough,” Thomas says sternly.
To my huge surprise, Liz stops whatever psychobabble she was about to spew at me. I never realized Thomas had the power in this strange relationship. Interesting.
“I’m sorry, Liz,” I say. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
“No, I was out of line,” Liz says, shaking her head. “Just think before you do anything irreversible. That’s all I’m suggesting.”
“I’ll take your words under advisement.” I’m lying through my teeth. “Either way, we need to find out where he is. He’s still a threat to Lucy.”
“So what’s the plan?” Thomas asks.
“You, Bert, and I will go run an errand,” I tell him before turning to my shrink. “Liz, would you mind keeping an eye on things here?”
“Sure,” she says.
“Sounds good to me,” Thomas says.
Giving them both a grateful look, I phase us out of the Quiet.
“Mom,” I say ambiguously, a trick I developed as a kid.
“Yes?” Sara and Lucy say in unison, and I can’t help but smile. Works every time.
“Since you’re feeling better, Bert and I need to swing by our work,” I say, looking at Lucy. “There’s this big move in the portfolio, and they can’t deal without—”
“It’s not a problem,” Lucy interrupts. “Thank you for saving me.”
“I’ll be back soon,” I say. “You won’t even notice I’m gone.”
Sara gives me a hug, and I kiss Lucy goodbye on the cheek. Then I walk out with Bert following on my heels.
Behind me, I hear Thomas make an excuse and Liz give some weird explanation as to why she’ll stay with my moms. She must’ve greased their mental wheels through Guiding, because they act like Liz’s story makes sense. I really hope that stuff doesn’t cause permanent brain damage.
“Your men aren’t exactly inconspicuous,” I say to Thomas as we pass five big dudes wearing black suits and earpieces in the hospital hallway.
“No, they’re not. But they’re effective,” Thomas says curtly. “Liz will make sure no one pays them any heed.”
Bert is about to comment on something, but I shake my head. Then I phase into the Quiet and pull Thomas in.
“Please don’t talk too much about the Guiding stuff in front of my minion,” I say. “I don’t want to make him forget more than I have to.”
“Why do we need this guy at all?”
“He’s part of my contingency plan.”
“I don’t even know what the primary plan is, let alone the contingency,” Thomas says.
“We’re going to the police department, to start,” I say. “Is that good enough?”
“It’ll do for now. Let’s take my car.”
I phase out, and we exit the hospital.
Thomas’s car is the same one he used in the big standoff on the Brooklyn Bridge. Though he crashed it, the car looks as good as new again. I hoped this would be his ride since this car has a cache of weapons in the back. I’ll need those, but I don’t mention this to Thomas.
Before we leave Staten Island, we swing by my moms’ house. We clean up the scene to make it fit my ‘clumsy mom’ story. The good news is that my moms have so many extra bed sheets and blankets that they won’t even notice the ones they had on the bed are missing and have been replaced.
Next, I change out of my bloodstained clothes and into a pair of old jeans and a T-shirt that I keep at my moms’. The clothes are a little stiff, but they’ll do.
“Okay,” I say when we get back into the car. “Our next stop is the police department.”
Thomas puts the Manhattan address I provide into his GPS and begins driving.
Our trip starts off silently. I don’t want to talk too much since Thomas thinks Bert isn’t supposed to know stuff, plus I’m not in a very talkative mood.
“Here’s what I’m wondering,” Thomas says, breaking the silence after a couple of minutes. “Why didn’t Kyle attack you in Miami?”
“I bet he couldn’t find us,” I say. “As a precaution, none of us told anyone the specifics of where in Florida we were vacationing.”
“But there should’ve been an electronic trail—your phones, credit cards, that sort of thing,” Thomas says. “With so many people involved, someone could’ve slipped.”
“We had Mira, the queen of paranoia, and a ton of cash. Plus we had Bert, the god of making electronic trails disappear and a paranoiac in his own right.”
In the rearview mirror, I see Bert puff up like a peacock.
“But Caleb found you,” Thomas points out. “So you slipped up somewhere.”
“True,” I admit. “I have no idea how Caleb found me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it involved one of the Enlightened using their boundless Depth to Read a massive amount of people all over Florida—something Kyle couldn’t do. On his own, he can’t Read at all.”
“Right. That man who died, Jacob, he was his Reader partner. But where he had one, he could have others.”
“Maybe. My crazy grandparents did mention a whole organization called the Orthodoxy.”
“Right, the mysterious organization that combines Leacher Purists and our craziest Traditionalists,” Thomas says skeptically. “I don’t see those groups uniting so easily.”
“It doesn’t matter. Kyle probably didn’t even bother looking for us since he had a surefire way of smoking me out. He was planning on getting to me at my mom’s funeral.”
My friends digest that morbid scenario for a few blocks in silence.
“I have an idea about the Orthodoxy,” Bert says. He’s always hated uncomfortable silences, and I hope he hasn’t forgotten how little he’s supposed to officially know. Not that I know how much someone in this pretend position would be allowed to know to begin with.
“What’s your idea, minion?” I say in a commanding tone, hoping that ridiculous term convinces Thomas that I’m Guiding Bert.
“This Orthodoxy is probably behind the ‘suicides’ of the prominent scientists I’ve been telling you about. Don’t you see that what happened with your mom has the exact same MO? When combined with the USB drive results—”
“Darren,” Thomas says, his voice even. “Is this the expert you gave the USB drive to? The USB drive my people couldn’t crack?”
“That’s because the encryption was strong, but not—”
“Yes, that’s him,” I say, stopping Bert from going into a post-graduate-level lecture on cryptography.
“I’m impressed,” Thomas says, looking in the rearview mirror. “I can see why you brought him up to speed.”
“What? No,” I say defensively. “I just let him know things because he’s pretty bright and can usually give me wise counsel—”
“I didn’t buy it at the hospital, and I’m not buying it now,” Thomas says. “But Liz did, so I didn’t contradict you. When it comes to matters of exposure, she’s a lot more cautious than you and me, having grown up a Guide and all, so I didn’t want her to put her brainwashing sights on your friend.”
“Thanks,” Bert says. “So you don’t mind?”
“No,” Thomas says. “Especially since, in my line of work, I might need your help.”
“Blackmail,” Bert says sadly. “At least Darren will stop calling me his minion now.”
“I don’t think I want to stop calling you my minion,” I say.
“I can make your Harvard diploma disappear.” Bert crosses his arms. “For starters.”
“Oh yeah, minion? Surely you forget that I can use my superpowers to make you eat your own—”
“Your destination is on the left,” Thomas’s GPS chimes in.
“Okay, pull up there,” I say, humor forgotten. I point to a ‘no parking under any circumstances’ spot across the street from the police building. With Thomas’s nifty Secret Service plates, no one should bat an eye at this.
He pulls over. “So, what’s your—”
I don’t hear Thomas finish the rest of his question because the world goes silent as I phase into the Quiet.
Thomas is stuck with his mouth open mid-sentence.
My plan is simple.
Walk in. Find Kyle. Then come back, take a gun out of Thomas’s arsenal, and bring Thomas into the Quiet with me. Together, we’ll go to Kyle. I’ll bring Kyle into the Quiet with us and shoot him. Then, once he’s Inert, we’ll figure out step two.
Approaching the police station, I walk through the revolving door. The station looks eerie, like some kind of police-themed wax museum.
I make my way to the second floor where Kyle’s department is located.
When I reach his desk, I find it empty.
I look inside the nearest bathroom, stop by the copy room and water cooler, and in general, search the floor for the man.
No luck.
Shit. I really wanted him to be here. Then again, maybe it’s best we don’t recreate the bridge debacle in the middle of a police station. But if Kyle is not here, I need to figure out where he is.
I find a few detectives at their desks in the Organized Crime section and Read them. They don’t have much for me. Kyle came in this morning, but left shortly thereafter. He didn’t tell anyone where he was going.
I look around Kyle’s desk for any clues about where he could be, but don’t find anything. I wonder whether he kept his desk clear of any evidence because he planned for this eventuality—a Reader or Guide snooping around in the Quiet. I doubt it. He was always neat, a trait he shares with Lucy. This thought reinvigorates my anger. The scope of his betrayal is mind-numbing.
I refocus on figuring out where he is. Even if he thought someone might snoop in the Quiet, would he take the extra step of protecting his computer? Those things don’t work in the Quiet, plus most people think their computers are safe, especially detectives who have government-issued security. Luckily for me, whatever security they have is unlikely to be Bert-proof. This is the contingency plan, which has now become my primary plan, though it has tricky elements of its own.
I look around. For my backup plan to work, I need to do what my aunt likes to do.
I need to Guide a whole bunch of people.
I consider this. If she can do it, so can I, as my Reach is probably greater than hers. That aside, what exactly would I get everyone to do? One thing I can try is Guiding the whole precinct to fall asleep and stay that way for half an hour. That would give Bert enough time to do his thing. But this idea has a few flaws. Like what happens if a 911 call comes in? I don’t want people getting hurt because of me. Well, no one except Kyle, that is.
Another option is to make them all forget they saw us. But a whole bunch of police officers and staff simultaneously getting amnesia is less than ideal, especially if someone is in the middle of responding to a life-or-death emergency when they see us. Whatever I do, it has to be subtle.
What if I make it so they don’t see us at all? Yes, that could work.
I begin Guiding the nearby officers.
My idea is simple.
I start by painting my and Bert’s exact descriptions in the targets’ minds. Then I highlight the critical moment, which is when they see us. At that point, the directive is to let their attention wander onto something else—something more important than us—instead of registering our presence in their conscious minds.
We’ll be the equivalent of that little stain on people’s glasses that they never see.
Guiding every person this way is tedious and gives me a new appreciation for what Hillary did for us. It takes me what feels like hours to set everything up, though the number of people I have to deal with is a fraction of what Hillary dealt with at the airport. Even worse for her, she couldn’t occasionally entertain herself by Reading random bystanders, the way I’m doing. Funny tidbits—such as the bald lieutenant’s fetish for his coworker’s mustache—definitely break up the monotony.
Finished with the interior of the building, I make my way back to the car. As I do, I Guide the handful of officers who are hanging around outside the building. Once I reach the car, I phase out.
“–plan?” Thomas says, finishing his question.
“The plan is simple,” I say. “Bert and I walk in, go to Kyle’s computer, and Bert will poke around in it.”
“Are you going to brainwash me to do that?” Bert asks caustically. “Cause that’s what it will take for me to waltz into a police department and hack into a detective’s computer.”
“I will if I have to,” I say. “But I already made it so no one will say boo to us. Don’t you trust me?”
“I don’t trust you with my freedom from jail, no,” Bert says. “But I do trust that you’d brainwash me to get your way. So I’d rather go on my own than get mind-controlled again.”
“Good thinking,” I say. “Because who knows what else I might’ve made you do while inside your head.”
“Okay then. Let’s go,” Thomas says.
“I was actually hoping you’d stay in the car,” I say. “In case something goes wrong, it’ll be good to have an ally on the outside.”
“You’re not leaving me behind so you can kill Kyle by yourself, are you?” Thomas asks.
“If I were, why would I bring Bert?”
Thomas looks thoughtful for a moment. I wonder whether he phased into the Quiet to walk around the police department and verify what I told him. He doesn’t know where Kyle’s desk is, but he knows what the fucker looks like, so it’s plausible.
When his face looks alert again, he says, “I’ll wait in the car.”
Bert and I head for the precinct.
After observing the officers outside, it’s clear my Guiding is in effect. One officer sits down to tie his shoes at just the right moment, his gaze completely missing us. The other one stares intently at a nearby girl in a short skirt. Another looks into the distance, lost in thought. No one will remember seeing us because they pretty much didn’t. Not consciously, anyway.
When we enter the building, things get even spookier. The woman at the front desk looks at her phone at the exact moment her eyes should’ve been turning toward us. Instead of greeting us, she starts dialing.
“Dude,” Bert whispers, “they’re ignoring us.”
“Don’t talk,” I whisper back. “They’re blind to us, but if they hear us, they might have amnesia about it later since their brain won’t be able to reconcile my Guiding with reality.”
Just to be safe, I phase in and check on the desk clerk. As I suspected, she has no amnesia, but doesn’t have any memories of seeing us either. She was that absorbed in the phone call.
I phase out and follow Bert, who walks quietly the rest of the way. It’s like we’re invisible, but not just invisible. It’s as though we’re eye repellents. The funniest side effect happens when two rather rotund detectives almost plow through us. That’s how absorbed they were in their conversation.
As we walk, a look of awe appears on Bert’s face. I can’t blame him. If asked, these people will say they never saw us, despite us walking through the precinct in plain sight.
When we reach Kyle’s desk, I point it out to Bert.
Without a word, he sits down and touches the keyboard to wake up th
e PC. The monitor shows the login screen. The password page would deter most people, but Bert’s fingers dance around the keyboard for only a few minutes before he’s in. He rapidly opens and closes windows, and I’m not sure what he’s doing. It’s fine, though. I trust him. Eventually, he locks Kyle’s machine and walks over to the printer to pick up some printouts.
“Let’s go,” he mouths.
Our path back to Thomas’s car matches our way in; no one pays us any heed.
“They won’t even see us on video,” Bert says as he opens the door. “I poked around the system and deleted all relevant footage.”
“Damn, Bert, that—”
“That was some impressive Guiding,” Thomas interrupts. “At least from what I could tell from their reactions, or lack thereof.”
“You checked the place out in the Quiet?” I ask.
“I couldn’t help myself,” Thomas says. Then he looks at Bert. “What did you find?”
“This,” Bert says triumphantly and hands me a few of the printouts.
I look them over. “It’s a list of names, Bert.”
“It’s the list,” Bert says. “Don’t you get it?”
“I don’t,” Thomas says. “I have no clue.”
“He knows we don’t understand,” I say, sighing. “He just wants to build anticipation.”
“Fine, be like that,” Bert says, crossing his arms over his chest. “These are the same names as the ones I got off the USB drive you gave me in Miami. The one I cracked for you.”
“The names Jacob was going to give to his and Kyle’s pet Russian mobsters to assassinate?” Thomas is on full alert now.
“The very same list,” Bert says.
“If I had any doubt that these two were working together, they’re gone now,” I say as I digest that information.
“Right. Only it looks like your uncle—I mean, Kyle—is going to deal with them himself using his favorite tool: the Russian mob,” Bert says, his elation growing. After enjoying our stunned silence for a few beats, he hands us each a few more printouts.
I look at mine. The pictures are of normal-looking people.
“That”—Bert points at the one I’m holding—“is a nanotechnology expert. Yours”—he points at Thomas’s—“is a guy in robotics.” He gives us more printouts and goes over the master list. We learn there are in fact two guys in the field of robotics, one in genetics, three in informatics, and one in nanotechnology.