Head Rush

by Carolyn Crane

  He tightens his lips. His serious lips.

  I push a dark curl behind his ear. “Baby, we’re both fear-driven people, but our lives can’t be just about staying safe. We have to grow bigger than our fear.” I stop, wanting so badly not to cry. This is something Packard once said: that I have to be bigger than my fear. I want that so badly, and it feels so far away.

  “Hey,” Otto says. “Don’t worry, Justine—we’re getting there. We’re making each other stronger—can’t you feel it? We can conquer it together.”

  I want to believe. I almost can.

  Another car door slams. Chauffer Smitty and the bodyguards are out there, waiting.

  “We need trust, not trackers,” I say.

  “I can’t let anything happen to you.”

  “Where is it?”

  I can see in his expression when he decides to give in. He touches my purse. “May I?”

  “My purse?”

  He reaches under it and peels a little square sticker off the bottom. It looks like a hologram.

  “Thank you.” I throw my keys in. “Ready?”

  He stays, looking troubled.

  “What?”

  He holds out a beefy hand. “Give me your dollar coin.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a dollar coin in your coat pocket.”

  I smile. “How’d you know?” Then, “Oh.” I slip my hand in and pull it out, a cool weight on my palm. I’d found it in with my change recently and had put it in my pocket. You never see dollar coins, and it seemed lucky. “What if I’d spent it?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t. You like the little things.”

  I stare at it, feeling betrayed.

  “It’s part of what I love about you,” he says. “I can’t lose you.”

  I hand it to him. “You won’t.”

  We get out and stroll arm in arm through the dim garage and into the condo building’s warm, elegant lobby. This place was a grand hotel in the 1920s, one of the architectural jewels of Midcity’s prosperous era.

  Norman, a thick-set, Swedish-looking man in beat-cop blues, waits next to the elevator. “King’s penthouse, I presume?” He punches the top button. The golden doors thunk open and we get in.

  He’s being funny—people have been calling Otto “King Otto”— not out of sarcasm, but out of adoration.

  I smile at Otto. “Lord help you if the Felix Five hears that one.”

  Otto stares grimly at the blinking lights: two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. “Let them,” he says finally. “Let them.”

  Chapter Four

  I push away my nursing textbook and stare out the window of Maurice’s, a Midcity institution for French cuisine. I come here in the dead hours after lunch to study my anatomy textbooks. Otto’s back at work at the government center on the next block.

  My window table has a view of the entrance of Otto’s condo—Otto’s and mine—across the street. A cop with a submachine gun is hunched underneath the green awning. Snow has begun to fall in big, lazy flakes.

  At first I was surprised by how readily people embraced the police getting more weaponry and power, but along with the surge in highcap crime, there’s been a surge in the number of citizens who believe in highcaps—and fear them. Even Midcity’s mainstream media accepts the idea that highcaps may exist, a big change from when they treated highcap stories the way they treated Big Foot sightings.

  A couple and their little boy dine at a table near mine, and all three of them wear gloves and long-sleeved shirts…inside. Like many citizens, they’re fearful of Stuart the dream invader, the main highcap boogeyman. Nobody knows what Stuart looks like these days, but he has only to touch you to get control of your dreams and force you to do horrible things in your sleep. As soon as his hold is strong enough, he adds you to his band of sleepwalkers who lumber around at night, attacking and cannibalizing citizens. I’ve heard rumors that just before dawn, he has his sleepwalkers wash their faces, hands, and feet—some say they even wash their clothes—so that they don’t wake up in their beds all dirty or bloody and know they’ve been dream-invaded. I can’t imagine the logistics of that, but the stories have added to people’s paranoia; lots of people could be dream-invaded and not know it. I don’t wear gloves, but I’m careful who I touch.

  I flip idly through my textbook. Otto believes I’m ready to fulfill my dream of being a nurse, and he pulled strings to get me into nursing school next quarter, but studying anatomy and pathology is just disturbing. Every new piece of information gives me new ideas for things to worry about.

  I take a break to page through the Midcity Eagle, and I find Pentagon researchers’ ad Otto told me about on the back page.

  Do you identify as a high-capacity human being or “highcap”? Do you believe you have one and only one of the following powers: telekinesis, telepathy, dream invasion, structural interface, psychological insight, memory revision, short-term prognostication? Have you possessed this power since childhood? Do you believe it is a genetic mutation or genetically based? If so, you may be eligible for a study involving a confidential interview and a quick and easy cheek swab test and skills test. We’ll pay $100 for one-half hour of your time.

  So the Pentagon found the highcap conspiracy websites. I snap on the cap of my yellow highlighter. I could see a truly desperate highcap coming forward for more money, but it would have to be a lot more. Hell, I’m just an overwrought human with the power to zing, and I wouldn’t want the Pentagon knowing about that. But if I were a highcap? You couldn’t pay me enough to get tested. Because what happens when the powers turn out to be real? What would the scientists want next? Where would you hide?

  Needless to say, Otto hasn’t revealed his highcap status, and he won’t be going in for tests.

  Again I think about Otto’s foster sister Fawna, the gentle little telepath, taken so long ago from that abandoned school where they were living as children, presumably to a lab for horrible tests. Are kids like her even still alive?

  I pack up and leave a five-dollar bill for my coffee. On the way out, I catch sight of a couple sitting across from each other in a booth, heads bent, lingering over coffees…there’s something about the way they sit, with all that fierce focus on each other that hits me in the gut—it reminds me of the way Packard and I used to sit, back at the Mongolian Delites, the restaurant where Otto had him trapped. The two of us spent so much time in that one stupid booth, talking, laughing. Later fighting. Eight years he was imprisoned there. Until we struck the deal that got him out.

  And then he killed Avery.

  A numbness in my head. Shit! I shouldn’t have thought of him. I close my eyes. Is a vein weakening? I can’t find pain, but my fear of the pain surges, and fear of the fear that it causes.

  “Miss Jones?”

  I open my eyes. The waiter waits, hand outstretched with money. My change.

  “No, it’s for you. Thanks.” I head out into the snow. A police helicopter chop-chops overhead.

  My bodyguard Max falls into step behind me. He has Brillo-like brown hair and the biggest Adam’s apple ever, and he puts lotion on his hands a lot. Antibacterial. Good luck with that, I always think. Antibacterial won’t save you.

  Otto says to ignore Max, but we end up waiting for the light at the same time, and it’s too weird, so I say hi, and he says it back, but his attention is on the top of the Maurice building behind us. When I look up there, I catch a glint.

  I point. “Something’s up there.”

  “Don’t point.” He pushes my arm down. “It’s nothing. It’s us.”

  “Like a lookout?”

  The light changes.

  “Go on,” he says. “I’m not here.”

  “Like a lookout?” I press.

  “Yeah,” he says dismissively. “Go ahead of me.”

  “Why be so secretive? Don’t you think my obviously having a bodyguard would make me safer than my seeming to wander the streets alone?”

  “I think you should do your jo
b and let me do mine.”

  I give him a look that says I know I’m right and cross the street, feeling like I’m confined to a very small box. Even my thoughts are confined to a box, because every time I think of the shooting or Packard my head tingles or hurts. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. My whole goal has always been freedom.

  Nordic Norman is in the elevator as usual, all spiffy in his street-cop blues. He punches the top button in his military way, standing ramrod straight, seeming to concentrate on distant, pleasant thoughts. The door thumps closed and the old elevator lurches up. Live shots of Max heading up the stairwell feed into a mobile phone clipped to Norman’s belt.

  “You’re not highcap, are you?”

  “Human,” he says.

  “How long have you been a cop?”

  “Couple months,” he says.

  “Really.” This surprises me; he looks like he’s at least 40. “What were you before that?”

  “Navy Seal. Military contractor. Combat operative. South America consultant and so forth.”

  “Oh.” Otto’s security arrangements are getting curiouser and curiouser.

  Up in the condo foyer I set my hat and gloves down on the table under the chandelier with the strangest thought; is Midcity’s social order breaking down? Isn’t this what it would look like? Bodyguards, curfews, cops with machine guns, a mercenary running our elevator.

  Max strolls out from the interior of the place, having arrived ahead of me and checked everything. All clear.

  “Thanks, Max.”

  Max joins Norman in the elevator and the doors thunk shut.

  Alone. Sort of.

  I hang my coat on the hook and wander through the big, empty living room, with its ornately carved panels and bookcases—ornately carved by Otto’s mind. I light a fire in the fireplace and sit in front of it, hoping to feel cozy. I don’t.

  It’s not just all this security; for the first time in years I don’t have my own job or my own place, and that makes me feel weak. But after the wedding, I’ll have my own space again—surely that’s what’s going on down on the seventh floor. Otto and I even had a conversation recently about the how the perfect home for a couple would be arranged—it would feature parts that we share, and private spaces where we can each enjoy our respective solitude.

  I wander to the corner where I keep my books. I pull one out, but it has a vampire—that reminds me too much of the cannibal attack. I put it back and take another, but the girl is kidnapped in it. I grab a third, a fourth, rejecting them all. Finally, I choose a romantic comedy that I’ve read twice, hating myself.

  Just as I’m settling in with it, there’s this weird squeak in the far corner, like metal on metal. I spring to my feet, gripping my book.

  Another squeak. Prickles spike across my skin.

  Somebody’s opened the back window.

  The heavy, velvet curtains move and shift., like somebody’s trying to find the opening.

  Crap.

  No way can I run for the elevator—I’d have to pass within grabbing distance of the curtains. I stand there, frozen, like if I don’t move or scream, I’ll be invisible. The strategy of a rabbit, I think with disdain. What would old Justine have done? The brave disillusionist? Then again, when I was a disillusionist, I wasn’t so full of fear—I got to zing it out all the time.

  A dirty, brown hiking boot appears under the curtain. Another boot. Folds of fabric shudder, then fly aside. Out steps Packard.

  Packard.

  “Oh my God!” I sigh in relief. I don’t know what I expected—cannibals, machete-wielding killers, rabid zombies. Not Packard. I’m so stunned I can’t think.

  He regards me with that burning gaze of his, though it strikes me that this burning gaze is somehow sadder than his old burning gaze.

  “Justine,” he whispers. Snowflakes glisten on his long, black coat, his cinnamon hair.

  Wait a minute… I stiffen as the memory floods back—Packard pulling the gun from his pocket and shooting Avery. The blood.

  A few long strides and he’s in front of me, clasping my upper arms. He smells of the cold.

  “You know me, Justine.”

  I shake him off. “The hell I do.”

  He searches my face, like he might find something hidden there. “I saw it, Justine—you were relieved when you realized it was me. Weren’t you?”

  “I was glad you weren’t a cannibal!” Dimly, I think I should call somebody.

  “Trust yourself. Trust that instant where your heart knew me.”

  “Knew you? You killed Avery! I don’t know you at all!” I push him, hard. He doesn’t move. “How could you?”

  His pale green eyes glisten with anguish. “Those are Sophia’s images.”

  “Don’t.” But it’s too late. The pain is back. “Damn.” I squeeze my eyes shut.

  “Oh, Justine, come here.”

  I put up a stop hand. “You have two seconds until I call the bodyguard.”

  Silence.

  How long was he out on the ledge? “Packard, shit!” I open my eyes. “There are security lookouts all around on the rooftops. Turn yourself in—let this be over!”

  “Those aren’t lookouts; they’re snipers,” he says. “It’s handled.”

  “Jesus!”

  “You’ve been revised. Can’t you feel it? Just a little?” he pleads.

  “You killed a man. You don’t get to undo that by messing with my mind.”

  “I’m not the one—”

  “God, would you just stop? How many times have you tricked me? How gullible do you think I am? Plus, I happen to know that if you really thought I was revised, you wouldn’t be here. Because according to you, a revision is permanent. Remember telling me that? You’re obviously here to convince me I was revised. It won’t work.”

  He seems about to say something, still watching me with that searching gaze. I remember thinking once that if I became blind, his would be an easy face to recognize by touch—rough-hewn nose and lips. The way his cheekbones jut out too harshly. It’s a strong, crudely-made face.

  But when he smiles, there’s this lightness to him, like when you crack a rock and a gem shines out.

  Now he just looks lost.

  And he shot Avery. I close my eyes as the sound of the shot rings in my head.

  “I saw you shoot him.” Rage wells up in me as I see Avery lying wrong and broken on the shoreline. Dying. “I’m in love with Otto too,” I tell him. “I love him.” Saying I love Otto still feels like a lie. Even that is Packard’s fault—he made me second guess everything, even my own feelings.

  The pressure in my head builds. “Uh!” I press the heel of my palm to my forehead.

  “It’s the revise,” he says. “It’s too deep an internal contradiction. Zing me. You’ll feel better.”

  “That’s why you’re here? To get me to zing?” I pull my hand from my head, shocked. “Do you know how hard I’ve struggled with it? And you come here to upset me, then offer to let me zing you?”

  “No!”

  “Stop lying!” I push him with all my might, and he stumbles back this time. “When will you stop messing with me? You think I’m so stupid!”

  “You’ve been revised.”

  “And you yourself said that when a person is revised, the one who would know the truth is gone. Or was I revised to imagine that conversation, too?”

  “We had that conversation.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  He looks at me wildly, eyes shining, face flushed.

  “Why?” I demand.

  “I know nobody comes back from a revise,” he says. “I know it’s impossible. Of course I know that.” This, like he’s talking to some part of himself. “You can’t remember. The you who knows the truth is dead. Yes, Justine, I couldn’t be more aware of these things!” He clutches the thick, soggy lapels of his long black coat. “Of course you can’t remember.”

  He comes nearer, gaze intense.

  I back up.

&n
bsp; “You asked me if I think you’re stupid. No, Justine, I don’t think you’re stupid at all.” Lapels in hand, he pounds his fists to his chest, once. Hard. The sound of the pound reverberates through my own chest. “I’m stupid. Me. I’m stupid,” he says. “I know it’s impossible to come back from a revise, but I want you to come back anyway. I want you to remember what really happened. I want you to know I could never kill a man. I want you to remember us.”

  I watch him through the haze of pain. He seems so genuine. But he always has.

  His voice softens, like the air is going out of him a little. “I need you to remember us…”

  “Stop it.” Still I don’t call out for Max. Where is this urge to protect him coming from?

  “I was stupid to lie to you. Stupid to betray you and to use you. I was stupid to believe you when you said Otto made you happy. To send you to him, to think he might have a shred of decency where your free will is concerned. I was stupid to let you out of my sight that last day. I regret so much of what I did. And I keep hoping things will be right again. It’s stupid, of course I know that. And I’ll keep being stupid, Justine. I’ll keep being stupid because I love you.”

  I back away with a sob trapped in my chest. “You love me? How could you say that?” It’s so twisted that he’d say that now, after all that he’s done. For the first time I wonder if he might be going crazy. I picture his face when he shot Avery…the pain in my head sharpens, and I get this lurch of fear—I think it might consume me. “Just get out.”

  He doesn’t move. Is this what a vein-star blowout feels like? Even zinging can’t cure a ruptured vein.

  “In one second I’ll yell. I mean it.”

  “I love you. I won’t stop waiting—”

  “I mean it. I shouldn’t even warn you.”

  I hold the back of the couch and lower myself to the floor, sitting cross-legged. I close my eyes. He’s saying something, but I barely hear him. I feel like I might pass out from the pain. Things go dim—a very bad sign! I warn him again to get out. And, though it goes against every fiber of my being, I push through my urge to protect him. Because I have to protect myself. “Max!” I yell.