Head Rush

by Carolyn Crane

  “Death was four-eighteen,” Shelby says flatly. “You walked for six hours? Seven?”

  More revision? I’m feeling double crazy. Is there anything I can trust?

  Jordan says, “Hmm,” at something on the computer, mumbling about country roads in Iowa. Surveillance.

  I try to focus. “Avery and I wouldn’t take a seven-hour walk in the cold, or stop at McDonald’s.” I start to feel sick. “Did she take the whole day? Oh God—coffee. She likes to erase back to the first cup of coffee.” I look around, frantic. “If she erased back to when I drank coffee, that means she took a whole day from me. What did I do that day? What the hell did she take?”

  Packard casts a dark look in the direction of the fire. “You have no idea what she took.”

  “You know?”

  “You weren’t on a walk all morning.”

  “Where was I? What happened?”

  “It’s not something I can just tell…”

  “Why not?”

  He gets this strange look. “Can you—there’s nothing—” he looks at me, pleadingly almost. “Anything you can recall? Emotions…”

  I feel this surge of anger “No, Packard. It’s all gone. G-O-N-E, gone.”

  He looks away.

  My heart sinks. It’s something horrible.

  Shelby watches Packard; they seem to be communing. Like they’re deciding between themselves if it’s okay to let me in on the big secret.

  “Hey,” Jordan says from across the fire.

  “Why can’t you just tell it? Why not?” I demand, ignoring Jordan. I feel like such an idiot! And I still love him. I feel the tears sprout, but I refuse to cry. “Nothing ever changes, does it?” Sure, Packard wouldn’t kill, but he’s always been out for himself. I point at him. “You’ll never be up front with me. This is almost comical. Almost.” I turn to Shelby. “And my BFF.”

  She turns to Packard. Like he gets to say what I’m allowed to know.

  “Great,” I say.

  “It’s not so simple, Justine,” Packard says. “To tell…”

  “Hey,” Jordan interrupts. “Who’s Fawna?”

  Shelby stills. Packard goes pale. It’s as if everything drains out of the moment.

  Fawna.

  “What did you just say?” he asks hoarsely.

  Jordan straightens, startled by Packard’s tone. “Fawna,” she repeats softly. “You know her?”

  There’s only one Fawna I know: the powerful little telepath who lived in the old school ruins with Otto and Packard and the rest of the kids. Taken in the night some twenty years ago.

  “What about Fawna?” he says.

  Jordan taps some more. “There’s all this stuff about Fawna in Otto’s private account. This e-mail from a Fawna, forwarded a million times. Emails about Fawna. ‘Re: Fawna. Re: Re: Fawna.’ Several files about Fawna. Norman, Smitty. All his guys. They’re obsessed with this Fawna.” She hits some buttons. “Even the surveillance seems connected to Fawna.”

  Otto’s private account?

  Packard stalks around the fire and leans in behind Jordan, peering at the screen. “Open the emails from Fawna. Whatever’s from Fawna.”

  Jordan hits some keys. “Only one is actually from Fawna.”

  Shelby goes over and stands by Packard.

  “Scroll down.” He points. “Try another.”

  “The little girl kidnapped from abandoned school,” Shelby says.

  “Yes,” Packard says.

  So Shelby’s heard the story now, too. Otto and Packard once had a solemn pact to keep that boyhood episode a secret—how the two of them fought back against the men who’d kidnapped their friends, and it ended with Otto basically massacring the men. Otto didn’t fully understand what he was doing, but Packard did.

  I stay. “I don’t feel right about you guys reading Otto’s email,” I say.

  Nobody answers me. Like it doesn’t matter.

  “Seriously. Breaking into Otto’s private e-mail?”

  “Here’s the original one from her—see?” Jordan says. “Just a few weeks ago. This started it. ‘Dear Henji, I am bringing you your coon hand. You need the coon hand, because there is danger. The danger comes from your inner circle, and the ground will run red’.”

  Silence. Their faces look eerie in the light of the screen.

  Packard stands, stares into the fire. “She’s back. And she’s prognosticating.”

  “I thought she was a telepath,” I say.

  “Long-term prognosticators always start as telepaths. From reading the minds of people to reading the mind of the future. Of fate. She used to get visions of the future, even as a child, though sometimes she confused them with daydreams. But then they’d come true.” Packard gets this distant look. “And the coon hand, God. That’s a bit of raccoon skeleton Otto decorated with ribbons—a gift for Fawna, a good luck charm. And now she’s bringing it back to him.”

  “Well,” Jordan says, “she never contacted Otto again. The rest of the emails are from Otto asking about the meaning of the prediction, or him asking her to revisit the prediction. To recheck. He wants her to define inner circle. In some of these he offers to go get her and give her a ride. She never says where she is.” Jordan looks up at Packard. “His downfall. Can we trust this? Are we sure she’s not crazy?”

  Packard says. “Even if she’s crazy, she’s probably right. Wherever she’s been, this vision has inspired her to emerge or escape. This is clearly a death prediction.”

  Otto must be freaked out of his wits.

  Shelby says, “We have to get the others out first. And then I hope he dies painfully, and I will spit on his body.”

  “What?” Heat rises to my face. “What?”

  “You heard,” she says.

  “You’ll be happy to see him die and spit on him?”

  Shelby’s eyes blaze. “Wake up, Justine! Is Otto who killed Avery. And he is holding Carter, Helmut—”

  “Shelby,” Packard says in a low voice. “Not like this.”

  Shelby flings up her hand. “She says she wants to know. Do you want to know, Justine? Well, I am telling you.”

  I’m stunned by her bizarre accusation. “You’re being insane.”

  Shelby pulls off her cap, stalks over to me, hair wild. “You feel sorry for Otto? Think, Justine. He killed Avery, and told Sophia to revise you.”

  “He would never do that!”

  “Who does Sophia work for? Tell me! Who?”

  “That doesn’t mean he killed Avery. Why would he?”

  “You know why,” she says. “Avery’s glasses allowed Otto to be recognized as highcap. They rendered him powerless. Him and all other highcaps—powerless. These glasses, they allowed him to be taken, terrorized. Otto sent people to destroy Avery’s factory that day you freed him. Did you know? They destroyed everything. Otto’s people, they hunted down every pair ordered. We know this. Otto wanted to erase glasses from this earth. But Avery kept formula in his mind,” she slaps her head. “Last highcap glasses left on planet, these were in Avery’s mind. For that, Otto killed him.”

  “But he knew Avery helped us,” I protest. “I told him so.”

  “He does not care!”

  Packard grabs Shelby’s wrist. “She’s had enough.” He turns to me. “Justine…”

  “Oh God.” I feel sick. “You believe it too.”

  Shelby yanks away from Packard. “Of course he believes it.”

  It’s too much. Otto. My safe harbor. A man who selflessly puts the happiness and safety of citizens above his own. “It’s not true.”

  Softly, Packard says, “He did it, Justine.”

  “You didn’t see him kill Avery,” I say. “You just need a culprit.”

  Jordan sniffs. “Somebody had to hold you for Sophia. Somebody you know.”

  “And since I know Otto, it has to be him? You’ve got him killing Avery, then holding me for Sophia to revise?” I shake my head. “This is a man who is destroying himself to keep dangerous highcaps sealed up,
so that the city is safe. Yeah, you’re right. I have had enough. And you, Shelby, my fabulous maid of honor? All the time thinking this?”

  “Oh, I am sorry. Otto is such an honest man,” Shelby bites out. “Otto would never have secret headquarters below your condo full of weapons. Otto would never hide your car from you, or put tracker on you, or secretly make new powers which he keeps hidden from you.”

  “Shelby,” Packard growls.

  She yanks away, lost in her private storm. “Otto would never force city engineers to fake sinkhole under your apartment building so that you must move in with him. Tell me, has building sunk? Have they torn it down? And why the curfew?”

  “To protect people from the cannibals and criminals!”

  “No! To smoke out Packard. Where is Carter? Enrique? Vesuvius? All our people? He has them!”

  I back away, bewildered.

  Packard comes to my side

  “Don’t touch me!” I yell.

  He raises his hands, to show he won’t touch me. “Come and sit. Let’s ratchet down. Shelby should never have…”

  “I don’t want to ratchet down!” The roar of cars above us seems to heighten. “I don’t know what’s worse, that you all…that you all would think Otto, my fiancé, killed Avery? And had me revised? That’s horrible just right there. But then, that you would think something like that, something so monstrous, and not tell me? You’d just allow me to marry somebody you believe to be a deranged psycho?” I turn to Shelby. “And you hope he dies?”

  “No, I hope I can kill him. We will retake city from him, and I hope I will have chance to kill him slowly.”

  I don’t know what’s real anymore. I don’t know who’s real. “I’m done with all of you.” I look around, discern the path Shelby took, start toward it, impervious to the pain in my knee. I’m moving on pure adrenaline. “And you’re all uninvited to the wedding.”

  “Justine, wait,” Packard says.

  I hear him behind me. I grab the machine gun Shelby put down and spin around.

  He stops. “Please.” He raises his arms. “The revise is making the world seem crazy, out of control. You’re reacting without thinking, and you’re going to go where you feel safe but you’re not safe—”

  “Don’t you psycho-screw me!”

  “If he realizes you know about the revise, you will be in danger,” Packard says.

  I jerk at the lever on the gun and something inside it shifts. Shelby and Jordan drop to the ground.

  Packard stays standing. “You get overwhelmed with emotion, but afterwards, you always think things through and make smart decisions. Let yourself do that now.”

  “Tell me one more thing about myself and I’ll shoot you.”

  A pause. Then, “You won’t shoot me.”

  I stand there in disbelief. God! That old arrogance—it rips me up. I grip the gun. “I’m going home,” I announce in a weird, calm voice. “Don’t try to stop me.” The weird calm voice comes from this desperate spot deep inside, and it scares me. It seems to scare Packard, too, because he doesn’t move. Pushing people to their breaking points is Packard’s game, but I’m sure he prefers that a person doesn’t hold a gun when he gets them there.

  “We won’t follow,” he says. “I know you’ll think this through.”

  “Give me my axe.”

  Jordan gets it and hands it to Packard, who hands it on to me, handle first. I’m freezing, and covered with Tanglelands muck, and everything has been turned upside down. I just need my safe, warm life back. “You’d better not follow me.”

  I turn and skate like hell out of there, taking Shelby’s path back, the ridge around the edge, which turns out to be a slightly tilted, sunken fragment of a highway that dead-ends into a rubble pile, then continues. I ditch the gun but I keep the axe, using it for balance as I climb to the next section of sunken highway, which stretches brokenly, like a chopped snake, around the edge of the space. Finally I reach the crawl hole and make my way down the rubble pile, and back to where the storm lantern was, my mind spinning at a high, strange frequency all the while. On and on I backtrack, and soon I’m out in the cold, cold night.

  Chapter Eight

  The heavy axe gives me extra momentum as I pump my arms, skating fast down the dark streets, trying to concentrate on my balance and not on the outrageousness of my supposed friends’ thinking Otto would shoot Avery and then have me revised.

  Or that they would think such a thing about him and be okay with my marrying him. I feel just stunned, and so very alone.

  Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s always been Packard against Otto, and when I crossed over and consented to marry Otto, I became an enemy too. But Shelby? My dearest friend? Will be like Camelot wedding, she’d said.

  My face burns in the bitter cold. I’ve always been able to trust her. Maybe the death of Avery made her vulnerable to these wild ideas. And I could see Packard thinking the worst of Otto. And Jordan thinks everybody is deranged.

  God, I feel like such a fool for that kiss. Packard must have sensed it would help snap me out of the revise and clear his name. He keys into me like that. Is he washing his lips right now? I can just hear him gloating to Shelby and Jordan: She loves me—that’s the one thing they didn’t count on when they tried to revise her. Laughing about it.

  Worse, my love for Otto seems anemic now. How can I marry Otto when I fell headlong into Packard’s arms? Maybe it wasn’t real for Packard, but it was real for me. It’s hardly fair to Otto.

  You got what you wanted, asshole, I say to Packard in my mind. Your eyewitness will recant her story.

  I skate along, passing where the Butcher copycat attacked. Let somebody try to attack me now.

  Hope you’re satisfied, I think at Packard.

  And then I slow, picturing that whoosh of relief, and the happiness in his eyes when I said he wasn’t a killer. That wasn’t the look of triumph, or of a point won. Packard was happy, as though my realization meant something to him. Or am I imagining that? And it hurt him that I ever thought it—I saw that, too, much as he tried to cover it up. Surely I didn’t imagine that.

  This pathetic little hope that he really does care flares up in me. I hate that little flare, and I pick up speed, as if I’ll outrun it.

  Another flare: this time, Shelby and Simon, and how they were about my car. Simon went through a pretty elaborate charade so we could seem to discover it together in the lot. I must have been the one who drove it during my lost day. I must have left it somewhere. And I’m the one who put Gumby in the happy pose. What made me do that? What made me happy on that day? What aren’t they telling me?

  I think about the way Shelby was about Gumby—over and over she’d insisted there must be an explanation for how Gumby got in the happy mode. You always find your way to truth, Justine, she’d said. It had seemed odd, how desperately she was fishing, like a schoolteacher, wanting me to find the right answer on my own, doing everything short of telling it to me.

  When I do the thought experiment, it’s pretty obvious that if they’d told me outright I was revised, I wouldn’t have believed them. Yes, I’d taken their silence as part of the proof that I wasn’t revised, but if they’d told me I was revised, would I have used different things as proof? Nobody wants to believe that even a day of their experience is fake—it’s too upsetting. I still don’t want it to be true.

  I near the river, recalling how Simon had suggested we search the car. And Shelby had asked about the trunk. Clearly, they both thought something inside that trunk might be significant. What? I wish I’d looked, but of course Otto didn’t want me to touch anything until the car got dusted for prints.

  A twinge in my gut.

  Yes, I suppose that does look bad, as if Otto didn’t want me opening the trunk. And yes, there’s the secret operation on the seventh floor, and his secret personal force field. Strange, too, that Otto’s people wouldn’t have turned up the car. He’d had them searching for it; he told me so himself, and it was right there i
n Midcity’s central impound lot. How could they have not found it? And yes, Sophia, the only known revisionist, does work for Otto.

  A chill comes over me as I recall Jordan’s words: Somebody had to hold you.

  Just then, the street lights up in red flashes. I slow, disoriented, unsure where the lights are coming from, until a loudspeaker blares behind me: “Police! Drop the weapon and put your hands in the air!”

  I slow and turn—I just passed a parked cop car, but I didn’t see it. I’m confused about the weapon bit until I get that they’re talking about the axe. I throw it down like it’s on fire.

  More lights; another squad car barrels out of the alley to my left. I could get away if my knee wasn’t injured, I think. But, running from the police? What is that?

  Two officers emerge from the first car, guns drawn. One of them is a woman about my age. She squints. “Miss Jones?”

  “Hi,” I say. “Yeah.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “My knee’s hurt.” It’s the only thing I can think to say.

  She helps me to the car. Her partner questions me, and I explain that somebody pretending to be the Belmont Butcher attacked me, though this version doesn’t involve Shelby, and features the man spooking and running off rather than being zinged by me. Somebody mentions Otto. It turns out that he’s in a cruiser nearby. I get the feeling they’ve been looking for me for a while.

  Another officer gives me a blanket, and I pull it around myself, repeating my description of the Butcher copycat, insisting I don’t need medical attention.

  More cars and lights. I sit halfway in the back of a cruiser, feet on the street, paralyzed by two competing realities. One, Otto wouldn’t kill Avery and have me revised. The other: Packard, Simon, Jordan, and Shelby wouldn’t all simultaneously believe something so farfetched without a reason.

  I flash back in time to January, to the scene right after we rescued Otto from his kidnappers. They’d been holding Otto prisoner and terrorizing the city for days, thanks largely to the power of the antihighcap glasses Avery’d invented, and I suddenly remember the violence with which Otto crushed those glasses under his boot—lips taut, eyes bright with anger. Never again, he’d said. His intensity had surprised me at the time. It had seemed out of character.