Mind Games (29 page)

49

The second I’m through the silver door to Gecko’s world, we join silver grids. Linked as we are, thoughts and emotions, he sees and feels it all – everything that has happened.

I’m sorry about your mother
. He holds me. Gecko is full of wonder at all that Astra did, but not why.
She loved you, Luna.

Yeah. She really did. And I’m sorry about Crystal.

We’re full of sorrow, both of us, but I have no jealousy for Crystal. I see how he feels about her. How he feels about me. But my sorrow is edged with guilt.

It wasn’t your fault. With either of them.

I’m dangerous. I was made to destroy. I even failed at that.

No. You’re a S’hacker. No one tells you who you are, or what you’re for. You choose your path, your name.

And I chose to stop.

Yes.

Your body, Luna
? he reminds me.
You need to get out of there
.

Oh, yeah
. I unplug back in the PIP, but like before, we’re still linked. We’re both here in my body, and in the VeeDub together.
What now?

You know what I have to do. I can’t do it without you.

I know. The only thing Gecko has ever wanted is freedom. He doesn’t want to be like this. But that doesn’t make it any easier.

Gecko taps into PareCo security through my Implant channel.
There’s a lot of fuss happening. They really want to find you. Let’s see what we can do to confuse them.
He sets off alarms in a path leading away from where we’re going. The one place I never want to go, ever again.

Door 427.

We hack the door again – but this time we unlock every door in the Centre. They won’t know where to check first.

Gecko takes over my body so I don’t have to do it. I could fight him, but it is his decision. His right. I stay weak, dormant.

Never, ever weak
. His thoughts caress me.
You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known
.

Is that why I’m crying?

No. That’s because you’re also the loveliest person I’ve ever known.

I stare at the gleaming equipment, the dark secrets contained in this room and many others like it.
This can’t happen here, not in this nightmare place. Don’t let this lab be the last thing we see together. Can you make it slow?

He pauses, peeks into my thoughts. A mental smile.
OK
.

He does what he has to do.

We creep back to the room with the bio body tanks, and across it to the lift. We press the button; go in, and up, up, up.

It opens outside, away from the PareCo complex. There is an empty helipad – they must take bio tanks away by helicoptor. So much for the no-fly zone around Inac. Maybe that is just so no one spots body part-laden helicopters coming and going?

It’s very early morning, the sky just starting to lighten.

We walk. Gecko is weakening, so I run. The nutrients he stopped from going into his Think Tank are starting to run out.

We hear the waterfall before we see it.

I lie down by the pool. We watch the sun come up together, glinting on the water.

What’s that?
he murmurs.

What?

The sound. Above.

I look up through the trees. A giant NUN helicopter is flying past, soon followed by another, then another.
Looks like PareCo is in trouble.

All down to you. You did say to send one. You should probably flag them down.

It’ll keep
.

Back in his virtual world, he kisses me again.
Thank you, Luna
, he murmurs. Our arms are around each other, waiting for the end. A physical embrace, the kind he said was closer and more intimate than I could imagine.

He was right.

It finally happens: he slips away. My arms are empty. The instant our grid link is broken, I leave Gecko’s world. I am utterly alone in my mind and my body, here, by the pool.

I cry.

Epilogue

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is
necessary that at least once in your life you doubt,
as far as possible, all things.

René Descartes

It’s a while before I can make myself return to the void. Even as it calls to me, and sings in my blood. But there is something I have to do.

At last I’ve chosen my S’hacker name. The search was difficult, but like most lost things it was blindingly obvious once I’d found it. And that’s what I do, what I’m really for, isn’t it? Finding things. Seeking out truths. Never easily; not without pain – but some things that you’d never miss for the world
have
to hurt, don’t they?

But never, ever, to destroy. That is easier to do, but I choose not to.

Friends are here around me, Marina and Media amongst them. With all the changes coming since PareCo was discredited, the old secretive S’hacker ways and barriers are coming down. I’d insisted on inviting non-S’hackers, too: Jason, holding tight to Dad’s hand, nervous to be in the void again but determined to be here. Roy Heywood. Melrose and her dad. Even Sally. They wait until I can turn to face them.

The meaning being found was only part of the search: the name to represent it took thought as well. But in the end, the beauty was always in the numbers, wasn’t it?

Seven: the seeker of truth.

When I finally turn and meet their eyes I smile for the first time in a long while. I may seek truth, but I still have my secrets.

‘My name is Seven.’

Acknowledgements

One thing I get asked all the time is where ideas for my stories come from. I can’t always trace the precise origins, but
Mind Games
was very much inspired by research into rationality and intelligence by Keith Stanovich, a professor at the University of Toronto. He proposed that the reason smart people can do stupid things is that intelligence and rationality are separate traits – that someone can be both intelligent, and irrational. And I thought, what would happen in a world where rationality was prized, much the way intelligence is today? One in which individuals who are intelligent but also irrational are considered dangerous to themselves and society? This is how
Mind Games
began.

The second source of inspiration was the quotation from George Berkeley at the beginning:
Truth is the cry of all, but game of the few.
I found it in an old edition of the
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
that I often use for ideas – it was given by my mother-in-law, Joan, to her husband Eric, way back in 1969, and found its way to me many years later. I’ve dedicated
Mind Games
to their memory: I wish I could have got to know them better.

I have to mention Inaccessible Island! I had a very clear picture in my mind what PareCo’s island should be like: very isolated, with sheer cliffs to make access or escape impossible. Convinced I’d have to make one up because none would fit the bill, I did an internet search on ‘inaccessible islands’, and there it was. A real place, and that is its real name. And it even has a waterfall.

Special thanks to Sharon Jones, who said
you must write this
, and to my agent, Caroline Sheldon, for agreeing with her; to my editor, Megan Larkin, for championing the story, and her insightful editing; and to editor Rosalind McIntosh, designer Thy Bui, and everyone at Orchard Books and Hachette Children’s Books for their hard work and enthusiasm.

Thanks to Scoobie (SCBWI) pals Addy Farmer, Jo Wyton and Amy Butler Greenfield for reading early versions and giving invaluable feedback. Thanks also to Liz and Paul Medhurst from my SF pub night, and to Anne Rooney for the Giordano Bruno quotation.

Thanks to Christina Banach – a fellow author and Scoobie – for making the highest bid for a character name in the Authors for the Philippines Auction. I was very pleased to name a character for her father, Roy Heywood.

Thanks and all my love to Graham, Banrock, and muses everywhere – even Dodgy Dog. I couldn’t do it without you.

And finally, the answer to Lord Byron’s four questions. I didn’t complete the quotation, as Luna was – and Seven is – still working on the answers:

There are four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love
.

Lord Byron

About the Author

Teri Terry has lived in France, Canada, Australia and England at more addresses than she can count, acquiring four degrees, a selection of passports and an unusual name along the way. Past careers have included scientist, lawyer, optometrist and, in England, various jobs in schools, libraries and an audiobook charity. The footpaths and canal ways of the Buckinghamshire Chilterns where she now lives inspired much of the setting of Teri’s first books, the internationally best-selling
Slated
trilogy. Teri has won twelve awards including the Leeds Book Award, the North East Teen Book Award and the Rotherham Children’s Book Award (twice).

Teri hates broccoli, likes cats, and has finally worked out what she wants to do when she grows up.

Twitter: @TeriTerryWrites
Facebook page: TeriTerryAuthor
Website: teriterry.com

If you enjoyed
Mind Games
, you’ll love
Book of Lies
by Teri Terry, coming soon.

Who lies? Who tells the truth?
Death hangs on the answer.

Turn the page for a sneak peek…

Chapter One

There are things you know you shouldn’t do. Like standing on the tracks when the train is getting too close. Or holding your hand over an open flame. You can wave it across fast and be fine, but something inside makes me hold it there a second longer, then another, and another. Train tracks and mothers are much the same as flames: too close, too long, risks pain.

If I sat and made a list of all the things I shouldn’t do and put them in order, starting with the worst, being here today would be near the top. But I’m drawn to things I shouldn’t do. Is it just to see what happens, who it will hurt? Maybe.

So no matter how much that inner voice of caution, of reason, says stay away; no matter how much I try to convince myself or hide the keys or deliberately don’t wear anything even vaguely acceptable, I was never going to be anywhere else, was I?

How close, how long, is another matter. For now, I’m shivering under leafless trees on a hill above the crematorium, a splash of red in a colourless dark day. Considering my options.

It starts to rain, and I’m glad. She hated the rain. Not just how most people grumble if they’re caught in a shower, or their garden party is ruined, or clothes soaked on the line – she proper
hated
it. Almost like she was made of something that would wash away, not sinew, muscle, and bone, all in hard angles.

Maybe she was afraid rain would wash away her mask. Like the one she wears in the newspapers, smiling with a man I’ve never seen before.
Smiling?
I wonder if she smiles in her coffin, if they arranged her features into a pleasant lie for the afterlife, in hope it’ll persuade them to open the pearly gates instead of giving that final push for the long slide down. Or maybe there wasn’t enough left of her face.

Cars start winding up the road. The first is long and black, a coffin in the back. When it pulls in front of the crematorium, it seems right that the rain goes from steady to
more.
It thunders down in sheets, and lightning splits the sky.

Even as I hang back and think about the things I should and shouldn’t do, about how close to get to the flame, it is almost like the storm has made the decision for me. It says,
Quinn, you must step forward. You must seek shelter
.

But that’s just the excuse. I’m really here to make sure she is really dead.

In memory of Joan and Eric Terry

ORCHARD BOOKS

338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH
Orchard Books Australia
Level 17/207 Kent Street, Sydney, NSW 2000

This ebook published in 2015 by Orchard Books

ISBN 978 1 40833 426 3

Text © Teri Terry 2015

The right of Teri Terry to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ebook conversion by Avon DataSet Ltd, Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire

Orchard Books is an imprint of the Hachette Children’s Group, and published by The Watts Publishing Group Limited, an Hachette UK company.

www.hachette.co.uk
www.franklinwatts.co.uk
www.orchardbooks.co.uk
www.hodderchildrens.co.uk
www.waylandbooks.co.uk

www.hachettechildrens.co.uk
www.facebook.com/hodderchildrensbooks
http://twitter.com/hodderchildrens