Mindwalker (44 page)

“Yes, actually.” I debate whether to say more, but hold my tongue. Ian's identity in this underground world is a secret
he entrusted to me. It's not my place to tell anyone else, even Steven.

The door opens, and he enters, looking just as I remember—russet fur, nervous golden eyes, quivering whiskers. He glances at Steven, clutches his arm, and says, “Can I have a few minutes alone with her?”

Steven scowls. His hand strays to something in a holster at his hip, which I didn't notice until now. An ND? “Look, I appreciate that you helped bust me and Lain out of that place, but I don't exactly know who you and your buddies are, or if we can trust you. I'm staying with her.”

Fox opens and closes his mouth several times, then heaves an irritated sigh. “Close the door.”

Steven's brows knit in confusion, but he obeys. Fox reaches up and unsnaps the black hoop from his neck. The holomask disappears.

Steven's jaw drops. He blinks at Ian for a few seconds. “You knew about this?” he asks me.

“Well, yes.” I fidget. “I just found out the other day, though.”

“So.” Ian casts a glance at Steven. “Can you give us some privacy?”

Steven hesitates, looking from me to Ian and back again. His expression tightens, but he leaves the room, shutting the door behind him.

For a moment, Ian and I regard each other in silence. “You brought us here?” I ask.

He nods.

Suddenly, I feel very tired. I have a thousand questions swimming in my brain, but I'm not sure I want to know the
answers. I ask, anyway. “How did you set up all those bombs so quickly?”

“They were already there,” he says. “We were planning to use them to send a message to IFEN. I just convinced the others to change the schedule.”

So, he's more involved in this than he let on. Or, at the very least, he knew about a terrorist plot to bomb IFEN headquarters and told no one. “Do you really believe in what these people are doing?” I whisper. “Do you think setting off explosions can accomplish anything good?”

“It did,” he says. “You and Steven are free now because of it, aren't you?”

I can't argue with that.

He gives me a weary smile. “You can only do so much with words. There's a war coming. Pretty soon, everyone will have to choose a side. You will, too … and when that happens, you'd better be ready to get your hands dirty.”

“If that's the way you feel, how are you any different from them?”

His expression hardens. “We don't butcher children, for one thing. Or imprison innocent people and threaten to mindwipe them. We placed the bombs carefully so we wouldn't injure any patients. There were no casualties except those guards, and if we hadn't killed them, they would have killed
you.
”

He's right. I look away. Still …“When bombs go off, there's always a risk that innocent people will die.”

He sighs and runs a hand over his bristly red hair. “I know how this looks to you. You think I've gotten mixed up with a bunch of terrorists.”

“Isn't that pretty much what's happened? You saved our
lives, and I'm grateful for that, I really am. But what else do you call a group of people who use fear and destruction to accomplish their goals?”

“We're not about fear. We're about hope.”

“I'd like to believe that's true,” I say. “I really would.”

An awkward silence descends.

“We're in the same boat now, aren't we?” he asks quietly. “Neither one of us can go back to our old lives.”

“It might not be too late for you,” I say. “IFEN doesn't know about any of this. If you can just get your Type back up—”

“It
is
too late. And I've got no one to blame but myself.” He stares at the wall. “It was stupid of me to think I could keep modifying my memory after every difficult session.”

I hesitate. It's true—he should have known better. But Ian's not a foolish or reckless person. He must have realized it couldn't go on forever. He must have had a reason, something pushing him to keep doing it, to keep taking on clients he knew he couldn't handle. When understanding hits, a strange feeling washes over me. “It was for me, wasn't it?” I say.

He tenses. “I don't know what you mean.” His voice comes out stiff and unconvincing.

“After my breakdown, you started taking on all the sexual assault cases so I wouldn't have to.”

His silence is answer enough.

“Oh, Ian.” Tears well in my eyes. He's always been there, a warm shoulder to lean against, steady and supportive. He's been taking on my burdens all this time, and I never knew. I never even stopped to consider the possibility. “I'm sorry.”

“You've got nothing to be sorry for.” A tiny smile grows from one corner of his mouth. “By the way, I have a present
for you.” For the first time, I notice the suitcase he's wheeled in. He opens it, and I let out a gasp.

“My Gate!” He places the hard drive on the bed, and I run my hands over it. “Thank you! How did you—”

“Better not to ask.” He looks me in the eyes. “You should get out of here as soon as you can. IFEN will be hunting you. There's a car waiting outside with a map in it. Like I said before, your best bet is to head for the border. Don't stop. Drive straight through until you get there. We'll send someone to meet up with you at the fence and take you to the nearest safe house.”

“What about you?”

He smiles without meeting my gaze. “I'll be all right.”

That night, Steven and I leave the city in the unobtrusive gray car provided by Ian. We drive in silence, Steven at the wheel. Ahead of us, the road stretches to the horizon, cornfields on either side. Overhead arches the vast, starry night sky. In the backseat, in a suitcase, is my Gate.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror, and I almost don't recognize the face staring back at me. It looks thinner, sharper. Before we left, I trimmed off the burned parts of my hair, and now it hangs loose and uneven around my face, too short to bother putting in pigtails. Patches of my skin are tinted pink from the minor burns I sustained, and there's a wildness in my eyes that I've never seen before. I look a bit crazy, but maybe that's fitting.

I'm a fugitive now. We both are.

The realization terrifies me. Who am I if not a Mindwalker? That's been my identity for as long as I can remember. And in spite of everything, I still believe that Mindwalkers
can
do good, that I truly
have
helped my clients—at least some of them. But I can't go back.

“Lain?”

In my lap, my hands curl into fists. “I'm fine,” I mutter. It probably doesn't sound very convincing. I watch Steven through my peripheral vision, noting the shadowed hollows in his cheeks and under his eyes. “What about you?”

He half smiles. “Haven't been sleeping so well. Bad dreams.”

“I'm sorry.”

He shrugs. “I'm used to it. It's just that instead of having nightmares about Pike, now I have nightmares about guys in white coats. And what happened to Lizzie.”

My father is undoubtedly one of the figures haunting his dreams, and the thought makes me ache. We drive in silence for a few more minutes. The streetlights are far apart, tiny yellow dots strung along the side of the road, barely keeping the darkness at bay.

“If I still wanted my memories erased, would you do it?” Steven asks suddenly. “I mean, once all this is over.” His tone is unreadable. I can't tell if it's a rhetorical question or not.

My pulse quickens.

If I erase his memories, it will change him, transform him into a different Steven. I want
this
Steven—his cussing and sarcasm; his toughness and vulnerability; his sharp edges and softness; his love-hungry, guarded eyes. I want the Steven who overcame such ghastly pain, struggled so hard against his demons.

But to refuse him on those grounds would be horribly selfish. “If that's what you truly want, then yes.”

He stares straight ahead, hands locked tight around the wheel. The car's engine hums faintly. “For a long time, it was
all
I wanted. To forget everything. To not think about anything that hurt. I was afraid of what I'd have to do to make that happen, but I thought that once it was over, everything would be okay. I didn't even care if it destroyed who I was, because I didn't see anything good in myself. But now …”

I don't say a word. I just wait.

“If I forget everything that makes me who I am, is that happiness? Or is that just a sort of death?”

“I don't know.”

He pulls over, parks the car, and looks me in the eyes. I can't read his expression. “How do you feel about me, Lain? The me I am right now?”

Words rise into my throat. I choke them down. “I don't want you to make your decision based on what
I
feel, Steven.”

“Just answer me.”

I clutch my knees and shut my eyes tightly. Tears burn behind my lids. “I want to keep you,” I whisper. “I don't want you to disappear. I don't want to see you become someone else, and I don't want you to forget the things that happened between us. I want you the way you are.”

A warm hand settles on my back, between my shoulders. “If you see something in me worth keeping, then I want to let that thing live, whatever it is.”

I snap my head up. “Steven, I told you—”

“I'm not doing this for you. This is what
I
want.” He gives me a crooked smile. “Who knows? Maybe someday I can learn
how to feel okay in my own skin. Maybe I'll find out what it's like to
enjoy
being me. If I become someone else, I'll never get that chance.” The backs of his fingers brush against my cheek. “I don't want to forget you, either.”

My heart leaps.

He touches my chin, tilting my face upward. Then he slides one hand into my hair and presses his lips to mine. His are cool, but they grow warmer as I kiss him. The world contracts to the points where our bodies touch—my lips on his, his hand in my hair.

When we finally come up for air, he whispers, “So, what now? I mean—okay, we head for the border, and hopefully we get across. Then what?”

I utter a short laugh. “I have no idea. But we'll be together. That counts for something, doesn't it?”

His expression is serious. “You know, if I stay me, then I stay screwed up. My problems aren't going to disappear. I'll have flashbacks and bad dreams, maybe for the rest of my life.”

“So will I. But we'll be there to keep each other from breaking apart.”

His eyes move in tiny flickers, searching mine. “You'll stay?”

“I'll stay.”

I lean forward and kiss him again, tasting a faint hint of coffee on his tongue. I try to lock the moment in my mind, to imprint it deep in my heart so I'll have it with me for the rest of my days. Forever. Of course, I know it doesn't work that way. Memories fade and crumble. This moment is reality. Forever is an illusion. But then, neurologically speaking, there's no difference between the two.

We keep driving. The headlights cut through the darkness as I reach over and grip Steven's hand. The open road stretches ahead. Canada waits. If there
is
a resistance, they may want our help, and I'll have more difficult choices to make. I don't know what I'll do, and whatever I choose, I'll probably never be certain if it's right or wrong.

But that's the nature of choice. Our world is not black and white, after all. It's a shifting, ambiguous mass of gray—a twilit realm of memory and dream, truth and half-truth. A world where monsters cry and angels carry switchblades. A world where hopes and dreams are formed by chemicals in organs resembling lumps of cauliflower, and where pain and beauty are so tightly intertwined that you can't pick them apart. This gray world is all we have.

I look down at Steven's hand in mine.

Maybe it's enough.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It's been a long journey, and I wouldn't have made it this far without the support of many wonderful people:

To my agent, Claire Anderson-Wheeler, for believing in
Mindwalker,
and for all her hard work and brilliant feedback.

To my editor, Melanie Cecka—and the entire team at Knopf—for helping me polish this book and whip it into the best possible shape.

To Mel, my writing buddy and kindred spirit, for reading and critiquing the story in its earliest form, and for all the late-night chats about food, philosophy, fiction, and altered states of consciousness.

To Beth, for sharing my warped sense of humor and my taste in wine and cartoons (both the good ones and the so-bad-they're-good ones), and for sticking with me through the years.

To my grandma, for telling me stories when I was little and thus igniting my love of fiction.

To Mom, Dad, and Rusty, for their love, support, and encouragement, and for being an unusual family—in the best possible way.