Shattered Minds Read online

  Horrific, yes. Twisted, yes. Interesting data for Roz’s hypothesis? Undoubtedly.

  ‘I’ve seen his memories many times now,’ Carina says, her voice even. ‘Over and over. Always women. Subject B is particularly happy he has a female scientist. You’ve noticed he doesn’t like Mark. I think if that’s who he’d been assigned, he’d have quit right out.’

  ‘Do his memories bother you?’ Roz asks, choosing her words carefully.

  Carina gives her a strange look. ‘Of course they bother me. I’m more equipped to deal with him than the other members of the team. Especially Mark. He cries at commercials. Never met a bigger bleeding heart.’

  ‘Do you feel at risk?’ Roz asks. She’s watching Carina’s pupil size, her body mannerisms. Carina’s head twitches to the side, just once. A little glitch.

  ‘No. He’s chemically castrated.’

  ‘Yes.’ Roz had ensured that. She isn’t a total monster.

  ‘That will affect results, too. If you’d properly briefed me, I wouldn’t be so far behind the others.’ One aspect of her programming that’s holding strong. Carina cannot abide failure. She’ll do anything to succeed. Being last has gotten under her skin in a way few other things could.

  They stare at each other, at an impasse. Carina’s blue eyes and baby face contrast with her serious expression and harsh words.

  ‘You’re right,’ Roz says. ‘I apologize. It’s a tricky situation.’

  ‘Yes. What you are doing with Sudice’s blessing is not legal. I’ve checked.’

  Roz says nothing.

  ‘I understand your approach, even if I think it’s a poor one.’

  Roz narrows her eyes at her, then smooths her face into her own mask. ‘This is only step one. To ensure it’s safe enough for non-criminals.’

  ‘What have the other subjects done?’ Carina asks.

  ‘I’ll send you their files.’

  ‘You’re gambling with their lives.’

  ‘Do you really think they’re in danger?’ Roz counters.

  Carina falls silent as she thinks this through. ‘I’m not sure. None of us are.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Roz concedes. Carina’s head jerks again, as if flinching from a fly. ‘I appreciate you coming to me, and your honesty. I want you to always feel that you can trust me.’

  ‘That would be easier if you did not withhold vital information.’

  Roz bites down on a sharp retort. ‘That’s fair. But I want you to know I have your best interests at heart.’ She steps closer to Carina. Hesitates, and then sets a hand on Carina’s shoulder and squeezes. Carina doesn’t flinch, but she tolerates the gesture more than appreciates it. Roz drops her hand, and wishes she hadn’t done it.

  ‘I do. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my subject. I have a lot of work to do.’ She turns to leave the office.

  Roz can’t help it. ‘Why is Subject B afraid of you?’

  Carina rests a hand on the door as she turns back. ‘I give him nothing. He tries to goad me into a reaction, and I look at him as if he’s no more interesting than a piece of furniture. I am very clearly asserting I am stronger than him. In his castrated state, he feels extra vulnerable. It keeps him cowed.’

  Roz nods. ‘Right.’

  Carina’s eyes blink rapidly, one eye faster than the other. Another glitch? Roz should demand another brain scan, reset her code now, but before she can say another word, Carina leaves.

  Roz stays in her office for a few moments, composing herself, before she returns to Subject D. Carina is working with Subject B again. He doesn’t look like a serial rapist, but then very few actually do, especially these days. He’s handsome, sculpted in flesh parlours to look like an old actor from the 1930s. That sort of reassuring, confident, strong-but-not-threatening look. Roz’s eyes slide away from him.

  She finishes with her own Subject D. Thankfully, the woman is still thinking about her teenage years, though even that is hard to stomach knowing a serial rapist is in the same room. Roz delves into some of the woman’s other crimes. She stole government secrets. Pacifica found out, arrested her before the journalist drones could even sniff the story. She hopes that once these trials are over, there will be a pardon. All four subjects will be packed off to stasis, to disappear onto ice like all the others.

  At the end of the work day, after the subjects have gone back to their apartments, Roz gathers the team together and tells them that the subjects are stasis criminals. No one is entirely surprised, but all are deeply annoyed at her for withholding the information. This is fair, she says to them, as she did with Carina. She didn’t tell them at first, for fear that they’d pull out and they’d have to delay starting the project while they found replacements. Now they are in too deep, all interested enough by the science to overlook the murky legality. At least, she hopes so, and they’ve all signed ironclad nondisclosures.

  Everyone goes home. Roz stays, working on her side project. Her true project.

  Before she can make proper headway, she has to fix phase one of SynMaps: Carina.

  SEVENTEEN

  CARINA

  The Trust headquarters, Los Angeles, California, Pacifica

  Carina is finally ready to meet the Trust.

  She’s spent the morning going over their profiles again, closing her eyes as the facts come up. She can sense the information is planted and not her own, just like a brainload, so it’s easier to draw on. Crisper.

  Someone has given her clothes, since the ones she arrived in were torn, a little bloody and none too clean in the first place. Underwear. Plain dark trousers and a blue T-shirt. New boots that need to be broken in before they will be comfortable. Serviceable, but somehow completely different from what she would have chosen herself. Combined with her new face, it makes her feel even more alien.

  The door to her room is locked from the outside. The Trust are talking as they eat, cutlery clinking. She buzzes them impatiently from the panel on the wall. Their voices trail away.

  Dax opens the door and leads her to the kitchen, almost like she’s a prisoner. Hesitating at first, she pushes on. She doesn’t like meeting new people, even if, in this case, she knows a lot more about them than they do about her. Carina used to meet strangers with total detachment. She pretended to find them interesting, but never did. Facts, projects, science were the only things that truly fascinated her. She faked her way through the proper social etiquette. After so many months in the Zealscape, she’s not sure how she’ll react to outright aggression or hostility. Will she strike back and kill someone before even realizing what she’s doing?

  That wouldn’t exactly make the best first impression.

  She enters the kitchen, which looks surprisingly homey considering it’s in a converted hovercar park basement. The two unfamiliar members of the Trust stop eating and look at her. Carina stands stiff and straight, meeting their gazes. She’ll make the first parry.

  ‘Good morning, Charlie, Dax and Raf,’ she says, greeting them by name and nodding at each in turn.

  ‘Well, you look a lot better than you did the other day, I’ll give you that. But who the hell are you?’ Raf asks.

  ‘I’m Carina. You’re Raf. The hacker. Former government. You sold information. Pacifica was pissed. You went into hiding, stayed there. Pacifica thinks you’re dead or abroad. You never told the others what exactly you stole, or what made you decide to turn against your employer. Raf isn’t the greatest alias considering your name is Rafael Hernandez.’

  She tilts her head up. Perfect little threat at the end.

  Raf shrugs. ‘They already know my name. Sudice can’t find me anyway.’

  ‘You should all know better than to underestimate Sudice.’ She turns to the woman with the short, red hair. She’s staring at Carina, arms crossed, an eyebrow raised.

  ‘Charlie, formerly of the Mantel family. Born in New York. Second cousin to good old Mr Mantel himself. Studied engineering and psychology, primarily, though you’re a decent hacker. Also a talen
ted painter, though you haven’t lifted a brush since you left home. Creator and ringleader of the Trust.’

  ‘I didn’t know you painted,’ Raf says, surprised.

  ‘I wasn’t that great.’ Charlie’s mouth twists. ‘Are you saying Sudice know I’m in the Trust?’

  Carina taps her temple. ‘I’m not sure. Don’t think so. This bit is all Mark’s intel.’ She turns to the man who brought her back from the brink. ‘Dax. I already know all about you.’ She flashes him a smile, showing too many of her teeth. It unnerves him. Good.

  ‘And then there’s the member who’s not here. Tamaya. Or Tam. Dax’s twin sister. Grew up with him in Timbisha. Studied software engineering, was Raf’s mentee. Attacked by AI Wasps, which are nasty. Pacifica don’t know what became of her after that. Where is she?’

  Dax’s hands have clenched into fists. ‘We’re not on close enough terms to discuss my sister.’

  Yes, that’s definitely a sore spot. She files that away.

  ‘Sudice have their suspicions about who you are, and they’re not far off. They think you’ve disbanded, but there are rumours you’ve regrouped. If they find out you definitely have, they’ll squash you like flies.’

  ‘They can try,’ Raf says, all bravado.

  She’s unnerved them enough with what she knows. Now to placate them. ‘So. Dax will have told you I am Carina Kearney. Then I was Althea Bryant for a brief moment, and who knows who I’ll be next. I used to work for Sudice but left as soon as I saw too much, and then your source stuck everything he knew in my head, but I haven’t figured out how to access it all yet.’

  ‘Yes, we know that,’ Charlie says. ‘But we still don’t know what your true alliances are.’

  Carina shrugs. ‘Guess not, though you can map my brain to see if I’m telling the truth, if that’ll make you feel better. I don’t have any alliances. That’s why Mark chose me. I was well on my way to dying until he went and interrupted it. Can I have some coffee?’

  Charlie gestures to the replicator. ‘Help yourself.’ She stands, holds out her hand. ‘Sorry for the frigid welcome. We might be called the Trust, but you might have gathered we’re not exactly the most trusting people.’

  Carina takes her hand, shakes it. Not too hard. ‘Thanks. And I get it. I’ve got plenty of trust issues of my own, believe me.’ She orders coffee from the replicator. Black and bitter. She’s starving, so she orders some eggs and toast as well without asking.

  She sits down, sipping her coffee. ‘So, I know all that you’ve been up to, except for the last week or so. Mark’s records stop with his death.’

  Charlie’s face falls. She has the kind of face that’s clear as glass, showing all emotion underneath. ‘I never knew who our source was. I had suspected Mark, but . . . never really thought he’d be brave enough to turn on Sudice.’

  ‘You and me both,’ Carina replies. Mark had never seemed to have a problem with authority. He loved the science, the data. He was not her first thought when thinking of who might sell out Sudice’s secrets.

  That’s probably the reason he went undetected for as long as he did.

  Carina takes a bite of egg, chews and swallows before continuing. ‘Mark wasn’t able to feed you much intel because he couldn’t get it to you safely enough. So I’m basically your delivery service, even though he didn’t ask me what I thought about it. Or his AI didn’t, anyway. I’m not a strategist. So I’ll tell you what I know, and we can at least hurt them a little with what I have. Hopefully I can figure out how to unlock the rest.’

  Carina acts brusque and ever so slightly irreverent, knowing it’s what they’ll respond to, though they’ll bristle a little at her being a new authority in the group. Let them. Carina knows her worth; she’s vital to them. They’ll listen.

  As she finishes her rubbery synthetic eggs, they begin, cautiously, to share information with each other. It’s not comfortable. Both sides feel like they’re giving away secrets, eroding ground. But the more time they spend posturing defensively against each other, the less time they have.

  ‘We’ve been looking at ways to target people within Sudice, but the main problem is that most of the personnel records are well-sealed. I haven’t been able to get in,’ Raf says.

  ‘Well, I’ve got you covered there.’ Carina projects the personnel files from her eye implants onto a nearby white wall. The Trust stare at the faces and information scrolling past.

  ‘Wow. So you weren’t lying to Dax,’ Raf says, his eyes lighting up with glee before they dim in suspicion. ‘And you’ll just hand this over to us? No hesitations?’

  ‘I don’t know what to do with it on my own. I’m a neurohacker. I can’t do much with actual servers that are outside the human brain.’ She pauses. ‘And I promised Mark I’d help.’

  ‘He spoke to you before he was killed? Do you know who did it?’ Charlie asks.

  ‘No, in a weird way . . . he spoke to me after he died.’ She presses the wireless electrodes to her head, sending the information to the Trust. She tells them about the AI ghost that came into the Zealscape, explained what she had to do. She doesn’t mention the true reason he knew she’d help. They don’t need to know her mind was reworked like putty by the woman who’s leading the search against them.

  ‘Jesus. I’d kill to get my hands on that code,’ Raf says. He winces. ‘Rephrase that to be less insensitive.’ A halo of code pops up as he goes through the information he’s just received. She only sent intel from the Bee and the Rose, and the Rose includes a lot of information on the Trust. She wonders if they all know each other’s secrets. If not, that’ll be interesting.

  ‘There it is. Come up with a plan and let me know what it is. I’m still not at my best.’ She tears the electrodes from her temples. Understatement. Now that she’s eaten, she’s flagging terribly, even with the coffee.

  The Zeal addiction may be broken, physically and mentally (for the most part), but she also isn’t used to being conscious for long periods at a time. She needs a nap. Carina drains her cup and leaves them to it. She’s done her part.

  In her small room, she falls asleep and dreams of killing people. Slowly. Meticulously. As she has so many times before. The man she conjures up is an aggregate of Subject B, the man she studied in Sudice. She cuts him open and takes out his organs one by one. He’s still alive and screaming as she does it. Eventually, she stabs him in the throat to shut him up. But all the details blur together. Her form seems to shimmer and teleport from one side of the room where she does her gruesome deed to the other. She can’t control the hunt. Even the killing feels false. There’s no way to heft the weight of the body parts in her hand. It all dissolves into darkness.

  When she wakes up, a dry sob catches in her throat.

  Dreams aren’t a patch on the Zealscape.

  She yearns for more.

  EIGHTEEN

  DAX

  The Trust headquarters, Los Angeles, California, Pacifica

  After Carina leaves, Raf wastes no time rifling through the information. The Trust gaze at the white wall, not even looking away for a sip of coffee. There’s so much here. Personnel files of the important members of Sudice, with the notable exception of Mr Mantel himself. Dax supposes even Mark had his limits. The potential weaknesses are already highlighted for them. Some are greedy. Some are already doing little jobs on the side for more money, not content with their lavish salaries. There are copies of their work diaries. Perhaps no longer up to date, but quite a lot of these events and meetings won’t change. Sudice runs like clockwork.

  There are no passwords, but there’s enough information that Raf will be able to find a way in. There are corporate Sudice working practices and standards, highly encrypted, sensitive information Mark has somehow spirited out of the servers.

  There’s material on the types of things Sudice does to remain such a powerful corporation. They perform plenty – plenty – of espionage on their own. They monitor their employees’ implants. If they think an employee is doing someth
ing they shouldn’t, Sudice set the ocular implants to take a photograph every time they blink. They’ll record the sounds that come through on auditory implants. The websites they visit, whether at work or at home, the music they choose to stream, the shows they watch, and their choices of pornography.

  Sudice monitors it all, and employees don’t realize their privacy is being violated every day. Yet, hidden in their monumental personnel contracts, everyone who works there gave Sudice permission. Going public with just this won’t do much at all.

  Dax is able to draw up Carina’s old personnel file. It’s fairly sparse, with obvious gaps. Someone’s tampered with it. Carina herself, or someone she used to work for? What remains shows Carina didn’t watch or listen to anything unusual in her time there. Her reason for leaving is listed as ‘laid off’. That smells bogus.

  Carina’s implants were already blocked when she crashed on their doorstep, thankfully, and well enough that Raf was satisfied when he checked them. Either she did it herself or got someone to do it for her. He should check into that, Dax thinks. Who else has she been in contact with since Mark sent her the information?

  Dax focuses again on the intel, annoyed at his wandering attention. Sudice has fingers in many other companies’ pies, but hidden: masked share prices, bought-off employees. Sudice covers its tracks well, but Charlie asks Raf to look through the data and see if they have been sloppy. There might be splinters of data they can collect and add to the incriminating bomb of information they eventually hope to ignite. Something that stockholders can’t ignore. That the government can’t ignore. That the people of Pacifica and the rest of the world can’t ignore.

  The Trust’s goal has always been to wake everyone else up. Shake them from their virtual reality or their Zeal-fuelled slumber. Make them see the ugliness of the corruption as it truly is around them, beneath the veneer of plastic surgery, glittering clothes and flashing advertisements.

  ‘There’s a lot we can do with this,’ Raf says. ‘It’s a big break. We have a chance of hurting them. All the Vipers in the outer levels wouldn’t have been able to collect even a fraction of this information.’ His face splits into a grin.