Head Rush

by Carolyn Crane

  I watch his eyes with the sense that many grave thoughts pass behind them.

  “Okay?” I remove my fingers, resisting the temptation to make a joke, like he only has to apologize for screwing up the game. This isn’t the moment.

  There’s a fast-food bag on the ground nearby. He puts the condom inside it and pulls up his gloves from his pockets.

  The wind has shifted: the air feels drier; sweat chills on my skin. I can hear the steely whine of a jet in the distance.

  Otto’s jaw is tight; lips in a grim frown. He looks around, seeming remote now, disgusted, even.

  Disgusted? Is he disgusted that we had sex in the middle of the impound lot? That he ruined the game? That he gave me so much, when I gave him so little?

  I jump down off the hood and put out my hand. “I believe you have something of mine.” Meaning my panties.

  He hands them to me and pulls his gloves back on. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter Three

  I decide to demand the tracker later, given Otto’s strange mood. I crank the heat and drive us out, enjoying the familiarity of my car and its quirks. As we pass the impound trailer-office, Smitty joins us, following in the limo.

  Just as I’m turning onto the main road, I notice that somebody has messed with dashboard Gumby.

  “What the hell?” I gape at his rubbery green arms, raised up high. Happy arms. “Somebody changed dashboard Gumby.”

  “Mmm?” Otto scowls at his mobile.

  I bend Gumby’s arms down—his glum position. “I always adjust dashboard Gumby when I drive. To reflect my mood. The last time I drove, I specifically remember adjusting Gumby so his hands were over his eyes. Because I was worried. About you.”

  I have Otto’s attention now.

  “That’s when I last drove,” I say. “The moment we knew the Dorks had you, but we didn’t know if you were okay, or if we’d be able to rescue you. I left my car behind at my apartment when we went to find you. But when we got in just now, Gumby was set on happy Gumby. Arms up is happy Gumby. It’s not how I left him! I never put him like that.”

  “Does anybody else know you do that?”

  “Everyone,” I say. There’s this awkward silence where I realize that doesn’t include Otto. “—who’s ever driven with me,” I add, feeling weird that Otto doesn’t know about dashboard Gumby.

  “How about people who knew about Gumby and had access to your apartment?”

  “Who would drive my car somewhere, leave it, tweak Gumby, and put the key back?”

  Otto gazes at me, still with that grim edge. “Who indeed?”

  It takes me a moment to get who he means. “You think it’s Packard? You think this is part of his trying to make me think my memory was revised? Changing dashboard Gumby?”

  “It would be smart. He obviously wants you to distrust your memories.” Otto points at Gumby. “Superficial wrinkles, is what that’s called.”

  “What?”

  “Superficial wrinkles are small, random details that don’t prove the larger picture, but match it. Any kind of frame job or con is most effective when the superficial wrinkles are right. Juries love them. If that’s what this is…well, it would be quite masterful.”

  “You think Packard engineered this.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “To make me doubt what I saw.”

  Otto’s silent.

  Would Packard really mess with my mind? Stupid question. Packard’s highcap mutation gives him awesome powers of psychological insight; he can get people to think and do almost anything. This is the man, after all, who had more than a dozen of us believing we were his minions, and if we didn’t do his bidding, our brains would fry. I replay Packard’s words: You love to remind me that I’m a villain, but when I actually do something the least bit villainous, you act outraged.

  But to make me doubt my own memory? I drive us past the bleak factories and empty warehouses of North Midcity, trying desperately to sort out Packard’s possible motivations.

  “My sweet?”

  I straighten. Otto’s been talking. “What?”

  “What is Gumby now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You adjusted Gumby. What’s his mood?” Otto asks.

  “Glum,” I say.

  “Oh.”

  I slow as we hit the traffic crowding the Midcity River bridge, heading toward the nice side of town. I’m feeling pretty shitty about making Gumby glum. After all, I have my car back, we’re getting married in three days, and we just had sex.

  “Gumby’s not feeling so good about the tracker, that’s all.”

  “What if you got kidnapped? Wouldn’t you want to be found? You’re the mayor’s fiancée.”

  “I have a bodyguard. Isn’t that enough?”

  “It wasn’t enough today.”

  “I just got done with being a minion. I won’t have a tracker on me. I just won’t.”

  Otto’s phone buzzes. He frowns at it, then answers, scowling as he listens, all swarthy and stormy. From what I can gather, an old factory by the river is on fire. Probably the source of the smoke we saw on the horizon. Otto seems upset.

  My thoughts go back to Packard. Why would Packard kill Avery right in front of me and then concoct an elaborate scheme to make me think I was revised? Why not kill Avery in secret?

  And with that, I’m at the shooting again: Packard, aiming the gun. Avery, backing up, hands raised. The jerk of his body.

  Pain behind my eyes—it’s as if the shock of the memory physically stabs at my veins. I have to stop remembering the past!

  I focus on Otto’s phone call. He wants to go out to the scene. Whoever’s on the other end protests, because Otto repeats himself, a bit thickly. “I’m coming out. I need to see.” He ends the call and turns to me. “Fire marshal. Mind if we take a quick detour?”

  “Not at all.”

  He directs me to turn off and we head west along the river instead of going over the bridge; soon we hit a stretch of road lined with emergency vehicles, some with flashing lights. Police officers strut about, submachine guns strapped to their backs; firefighters seem to be packing up. I pull over and we get out.

  Camera crews spot us immediately and start moving toward us. Shit.

  Otto puts an arm around me and kisses my cheek and suddenly we’re on: lights, microphones.

  There are questions about our wedding plans. As usual, I refer people to the old photos of the last time a sitting Midcity mayor got married, which was in 1943. Even the plumes on the horses pulling the wedding carriage will be the same. Our wedding will be fabulous, and it’s fun to talk about it. My dress will be a close copy of the one that the 1943 mayor’s glamour-puss bride wore—with some modifications, like fake fur instead of white ermine. And, now there might be a top-hatted, belt-and-chain-shirt-wearing bridesmaid, but I don’t go into that with the reporters.

  Somebody asks Otto how he feels about the Felix Five holding an emergency session to recall him as mayor. The Felix Five is five council members headed up by Henry Felix. If Packard is Otto’s number-one enemy, Henry Felix is his number-two enemy, and the rest of the Felix Five would be three through six.

  Otto smiles and informs reporters that nobody is more interested in ending martial law than he is, but the right way to end it is when safety is restored. “Mayoral recalls won’t make citizens safe again,” he says. “But if working on a recall will keep Henry Felix and his pals out of the way of the police, I’m all in favor of it. However, if their sessions stretch past the ten o’clock curfew, I’d advise them to pack pajamas, plenty of snacks, and board games. A bit of advice: Park Place and Boardwalk are always excellent values.”

  Some of the TV crew members snicker. Henry Felix and his allies will not think that’s funny. They’ve accused Otto of exploiting his popularity and the dangerous situation to create his own personal police state. I might agree if I didn’t know Otto was operating from goodwill, and making extreme sacrifices to keep viol
ent highcaps sealed behind force fields. I do question the need for a curfew—if people want to risk getting caught by cannibals or violent highcaps by going out at night, isn’t that their right?

  His popularity has slipped a few points, but he’s not worried. The citizens have been frightened for years, he told me once. They want desperately to trust, to believe.

  This is something I understand all too well. I’ve been frightened for years myself, and it feels good to trust, to believe, to think there’s an end. To think that if Otto and I can just work hard enough together, we can conquer our fear together, and be this happy couple in love. I’m aware of the fear even now: a low hum, like a beehive inside me. I’ve gotten so used to it I barely hear it anymore.

  “What do you say to people who are tired of the curfew?” Somebody asks Otto.

  Otto looks straight into the camera. “I say, I’m tired of it too. But you know what? We Midcitians, we’re fighters, scrappers. No other people in the land have our guts, or our vision, and we’re coming out of this stronger. Smarter. It’s already happening. They say it’s darkest before the dawn. Well, I see a future so bright, it’s blinding.”

  The swell of energy in the air is electric.

  Otto continues: “I see businesses flocking here to become part of our success story. I see Midcitians back at work. I see our schools outpacing the nation. I see a Midcity on the verge of greatness. And most of all, happiness.” He looks over at me and puts out his hand and I rest mine atop it, conscious that I’m playing the part of Midcity, taking Otto’s hand, but I’m also playing the part of me. We can achieve so much together, Otto and I. He closes his fingers around mine. From somewhere off to the side, there’s clapping, and then the clapping spreads.

  Eventually the cameras stop. The fire marshal, a portly man in a puffy gray coat, accompanies us up the walk to the building. He lifts the crime-scene tape; the news crews stay behind. The fire marshal tells Otto that there’s accelerant present, but it could be for the purpose of cooking. This factory once made pogo sticks and stilts, but it’s been empty for decades—children don’t play with pogo sticks or stilts anymore, and the factory never updated its products, an all-too-common Midcity story. “It’ll probably have to come down now,” the man says.

  Otto wants to be taken inside; the fire marshal complies, though I get the feeling he’d rather not.

  The place is dark and dank; a sharp smell hangs in the air; rusted-out machinery looks strangely sculptural amid piles of rubble and beams.

  Otto glances at me significantly as he touches the wall.

  I get it: he needs a moment to commune with the building, to use his highcap power on it. I turn to the fire marshal. “Let me ask you something that’s been bugging me forever. Why do firefighters sometimes use foam, and sometimes use water?”

  I listen intently to his answer, as though it’s the most crucial information in the world, then distract him with some follow-up questions.

  Packard used to say Otto and I are like fear junkies, enabling each other, pulling each other down. We’re not pulling each other down now, I think defiantly.

  Otto acts like he’s listening, but all his attention will be on the place where his hand meets the worn, gray stone. Thanks to his force-fields power, Otto can interface with structures on an atomic level. When he wants to imprison somebody inside a building, he uses his power to harden and extend walls invisibly across every opening, keying it just to that prisoner. He can modify the shapes of walls, too—which accounts for the gorgeous and ornate woodwork in his condo—or push his hand right through. He can also gather impressions, which is what he’s doing now. Gathering impressions is a more unreliable use of his power—the way he explained it to me once is that when extreme, high-emotion events take place inside a building, they can leave impressions in its atoms. He picks up those impressions in the form of glimpses. Pretty handy when he was a homicide detective; killings are such extreme, high-emotion events, he could usually get a quick image—the weapon, if nothing else.

  He pulls his hand off the wall. There’s a heaviness in his demeanor.

  “Homeless?” Otto asks.

  “That’d be my initial guess,” the marshal says.

  Otto nods. “Seeking shelter.”

  “Amount of refuse would suggest it,” the man says. “Cans and such.”

  “Thanks for all your good work.” Otto smiles a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes and the men shake. “Keep me in the loop on this. Investigation plans and any demo plans. I want to be directly in the loop.”

  “Will do.”

  Otto takes my hand and we walk out.

  “You felt something,” I say.

  “No. Nothing spiked for me.” He helps me over a gap in the floor. “I think he’s right. Homeless. Human error.”

  When we get to the front, he stops and puts his hand on the wall. “Sorry old boy,” he whispers.

  I wait, mildly baffled. Did he just talk to the building? With human speech?

  We continue in silence.

  “Do you think it hears you?” I ask after a while.

  “No,” he says. “But it feels me. All matter is alive.”

  “Do you think the building is sad? Because it will be torn down?”

  “The building isn’t sad.” A pause, then, “It doesn’t have an attachment to one form or another. It’s all matter.” I get the feeling he says this as much for his benefit as for mine.

  I link my arm in his. “Are you sad?”

  “Yes,” he whispers, “I’m sad. We used to play here. I spent my happiest hours here.”

  It’s only now that I put it together: less than a mile down, on this side of the river, was where Riverside Elementary once stood, the abandoned, crumbling old school building where he and Packard and the other discarded highcap kids lived. There are probably paths between here and there. Or were paths. There are condos now where the school stood.

  His happiest hours. I always imagine that time as a dark one: all those children out alone, using their fledgling powers to keep themselves fed and clothed, and to escape the hunters who kidnapped and supposedly sold them to a lab. Many of Otto’s little friends disappeared from there, including his beloved foster sister, Fawna. And he killed for the first time there—more than once. He and Packard turned from friends to bitter enemies there. I never thought of his being happy back then. But he was happy playing here, in the abandoned pogo stick and stilt factory. And now it will be torn down.

  Finally we reach the car. The wind has shifted, bringing with it a sulphury-sweet river smell. In the space beyond the old warehouses, you can see clusters of garbage, bobbing in the river; garbage flotillas, they call them.

  He tips his head toward it. “The Pentagon was here. Testing the water.”

  “What?”

  “Taking samples. The Pentagon and the CDC. That’s not a fact for public consumption, of course.”

  I unlock the doors. “Because of the highcap connection?”

  Otto nods. “The highcap question’s made it to the national news.”

  “I thought it was more like, news of the weird.” We get into my car and I start it up.

  “The Pentagon takes news of the weird seriously. Telekinetic highcaps stole half their equipment on the first day. Not while they were watching, luckily. I have to get this under control before they decide we’re real and devise a test or something. It would be highcaps against humans. That must never happen.”

  I maneuver around a sinkhole marker in the road.

  “The researchers put an ad in the Eagle,” he continues. “For highcaps to come forward for study.”

  I smile. “Like any highcaps in their right mind would come forward.”

  “Plenty of fake ones will,” he says with a sparkle in his eye. I’m pleased to see it.

  The traffic’s loosened near the bridge; I spot Smitty, ahead of us in the limo. I follow him to the underground garage. Another car pulls in behind us—a pair of bodyguards.


  Otto points out an area to the side. “Take one of those spots,” he says. “We’ll get you an assigned place. Maybe a double-wide.”

  “Are you impugning my driving?” I joke. Of course he is.

  “We’ve got more than enough spaces available, my sweet.”

  That’s for sure. He’s taken over the entire floor below our penthouse condo. I’m not supposed to go down there; I suspect he’s creating a wedding present—a lower wing of our home, in a sense, just for me. He knows how distraught I was to lose my apartment—and my solitude and independence along with it.

  I turn off the car. Otto unbuckles his seatbelt.

  “Wait.” I put a hand on his arm. “Where’s the tracker? I don’t want one on me.”

  “It’s for your safety,” Otto says. “What if you’d gotten in serious trouble back there?”

  There’s this awkward pause where we both think of the answer. I would’ve zinged those guys. I would’ve filled them with my terror.

  “Zinging won’t stop bullets,” he says.

  “Who would shoot at me?” The sound of car doors slamming echoes through the parking garage.

  “Zinging won’t stop a telekinetic attack. Or sleepwalking cannibals,” he says. “Even the police feel nervous, and they’re carrying submachine guns.”

  I nod. It’s a well-known fact that single gunshots don’t stop sleepwalking cannibals; Stuart, the highcap dream invader who controls the cannibals, can’t feel their pain. You have to shoot the cannibals over and over, physically disabling them.

  “I already agreed to a bodyguard.” I stare into his eyes. “No tracker. It’s too much like a leash. Anyway, it’s not like Stuart’s cannibals come out during the day.”

  “All powers grow, my love, just as yours did.”

  He’s talking about the way I can zing anybody I want now. “A tracker is a leash.”

  “You know I would do anything for you—give you anything…”

  I look into his eyes. There’s not much I’m sure of anymore, but I’m sure of his honesty at this moment. He would do anything for me. He needs me desperately. It gives me a strange sense of security, but it also sometimes scares me. “Then show me the tracker.”