Shattered Minds Page 13

  Eventually, the linoleum beneath her cheek warms, sticks to her skin. She forces herself to sit up. She also wasn’t lying to them about her exhaustion. All her limbs are heavy. She catches sight of her new face in the mirror and flinches. Her mind still sees a stranger, and will for a long time. Pressing a hand against that foreign cheek, she turns away.

  Carina looks at the bed, debates crawling back under the covers and trying to sleep again. She can’t face the thought of more nightmares, so she curls up in the armchair, puts a silly action film on the wallscreen and orders some food from the replicator in the room, rather than bothering to go into the kitchen and risk seeing anyone. The day eases into night. Her eyes grow heavy.

  When she finally drifts off, she’s fitful. The dead girl from Mark’s vision taunts her, over and over again. Those open eyes, staring, as if daring her to bring Roz to justice.

  Carina twists and turns. ‘I can’t prove she did it. I can’t help you. You’re already dead.’

  The dead girl doesn’t care. She only stares, lifeless and pale.

  Carina wakes up from her thin sleep. The girl reminds her so much of herself at that age, in that same lab room, with that same scientist. Those memories, locked away and half-hidden for so long, are not what call to her. Instead it’s a memory of looking into a mirror and seeing her old face, over a decade ago.

  She put on make-up in the mirror.

  Carina leaned forward, brushing at her lashes carefully with the mascara. There. The finishing touch. She turned her face this way and that, scrutinizing her handiwork. With her blonde hair, brows and lashes and her pale blue eyes, she often felt like a ghost, but now her features stood out in starker relief. She put on a little lip gloss and chanced a smile at the mirror. It still didn’t look quite right. Too stiff. Nothing in her eyes. She tried to soften her features, make the smile look natural. Better. Smile like that when you get to the party, she instructed herself.

  Carina had been seeing Dr Elliot for four months. Thirty-two trips from Woodside down to San Francisco, after school. Sudice sent a hovercar to pick her up and send her back after. Four months of scattered thoughts. Her recent short-term memory would stutter. She’d forget where she’d set her tablet, forget to eat breakfast, or she’d eat dinner twice because she hadn’t remembered she’d already eaten the same thing.

  Her friends would ping her on her implants. Carina had no interest in speaking to them. They seemed distant, formless stand-ins, not real people at all. Her schoolwork improved massively. The only thing that made sense any more to her was science.

  Every now and again her head would snap up, and the fog around her mind would seem to clear. Her heartbeat would hammer in her throat, her skin break out in a sweat as if she’d just woken up from a nightmare.

  What is happening to me? she’d think, as if trapped in a corner of her own mind. The anger would burn, hot and bright. Why aren’t I doing anything about this?

  She’d access her brain implants to ping her old therapist. She wanted to tell her what had happened, ask her if this was right, if this was ethical. But almost as soon as she did it, her thoughts would spiral away again. Her heart rate would slow, she’d blink owlishly, fall into a sleep. When she woke up, she wouldn’t think about the experiments or wonder why her personality was slipping through her fingers like water.

  One evening, her friends invited her to a party. She tried various excuses – I have to study, I’m grounded. They were so insistent that eventually she relented. Carina recognized how nervous they were around her. How they were on the verge of speaking to someone at school or to their parents about her strange behaviour. This new person Carina was becoming decided she would go, blend in, halt the questions. High school would end in four months. She’d leave them all behind soon enough.

  Her one and only high school party.

  Leaving the mirror, she put on her coat. Just as she opened the door, her father came up the drive. He paused. Her stomach dropped.

  ‘What is that on your face? Where do you think you’re going?’

  She didn’t dignify the first question with an answer. She answered the second, albeit with a lie. ‘I’m going to study group. We have a big project due tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re not going with that on your face.’

  She should be frightened – she knew what that look on his face meant. Like everything else, fear was walled away. Her father, the Mana’s Hearth apostate, cast out from the cult for breaking the rules. He’d given up their Luddite way of life: he had implants, and he let his family have them, but otherwise, they did not change themselves. It was a strange tenet to cling to.

  In the Hearth, no one altered their appearance. Simple haircuts, no changing hair colours. No shifting tattoos. No make-up. No nail polish. Clothing could not be too fashionable or colourful. Her father wore clothes that were little more than homespun. Journalists would always comment on his appearance in interviews, considering his old-fashioned look charmingly anachronistic, and some even mentioned how quaint and touched they were that his family followed his example. He’d give his signature, charming grin and say that his wife and daughter were so beautiful already, they didn’t need all the extra ‘flash’, as he called it. The journalist would dutifully chuckle, the smile stretching their surgically altered features, self-consciously touch their own vibrantly hued hair.

  Carina had bought the make-up in secret. She’d taught herself from videos on her implants. Her first time sneaking out with a mask of paint, and she’d been caught.

  Before she could respond, her father grabbed her roughly by the upper arm, marching her back into the house. Carina didn’t cry out.

  He took her to the bathroom and ran the tap of the bathtub.

  ‘I’ll take it off,’ she said.

  ‘Only to put it back on as soon as you leave the house. It’s sinful. Sinful.’

  There were so many things she wished she could say to him in return. That if he still believed in everything the Hearth stood for, then he was in many, many violations with the Impure world outside the confines of the commune. He had implants; their Greenview House had technology far more advanced than the Hearth allowed. They were surrounded by ‘those who could not hear God’s true voice’. He had left the bosom of the Hearth. His Mana-ma did not give a damn what he did out here.

  Carina said none of this. Logic did not apply in most cases when it came to her father.

  He scrubbed at her face with a towel. The mascara smeared around her face until she looked bruised. Still snarling, he held her head under the water of the bath. She had just enough time to suck in a breath before he pushed her under. Human survival instinct kicked in and she struggled, limbs flailing, trying to get her head above water. Precious bubbles of air escaped. She went limp on purpose, and playing possum worked. He brought her up, dragging her, dripping, onto the cold tile floor. She gasped for breath.

  I should feel something, Carina thought. Anger, fear, sadness. I should feel something, but it’s all gone.

  He threw the towel at her.

  ‘Finish cleaning yourself up. Then you can go to your study group.’

  He left, slamming the bathroom door behind him.

  Gingerly, she wiped at her face with the towel and wrung out her sopping hair. She took deep, steady breaths.

  When she could bear it, she looked in the mirror again. Gone was the careful eyeshadow, the delicate cat-like flick of eyeliner. Gone was the foundation and the powder, the soft sheen of lip gloss. Her pale skin was blotchy, her eyes red, her damp hair limp.

  She spent the next ten minutes drying her hair. The blotches on her skin faded.

  She put her coat back on, put her books in her bag, so she could still pretend she was going to study group.

  Her father looked through her bag and checked her pockets, to make sure she hadn’t hidden make-up somewhere.

  At last he let her go.

  She left Greenview House, took public transport to the main street of Woodside. She wal
ked right past the house where the party was being held, only pausing long enough to gaze at the lit windows. She continued down the path and went to the nearby creek, sitting on a little wooden bridge and letting her legs dangle over the edge.

  The fog in her mind lifted ever so slightly as she stared at the swirls and eddies of the water. That night was the first time she seriously contemplated killing herself. She watched the edge of her sneakers kick back and forth, back and forth. The bridge was high enough. The water deep enough. She could stand up, climb over the railing, lean forward, and just let go.

  Would it hurt? The water would be cold. Perhaps she’d hit a rock, hard enough to knock her out and let the water do the rest. She didn’t like the thought of drowning. Of her lungs burning, vision going dark. It was meant to be painful. Would the river wash her all the way out to sea?

  Carina stayed there until late, and then went back to Greenview House. She did not tell anyone what had happened. There was no one to tell. She made herself a cup of tea, made some toast, and sat at the table where she had eaten breakfast every morning with her mother. The food stuck in her throat, but she finished it.

  Before she went to bed, Carina looked in the mirror again. And she reached into her secret stash and put on some lip gloss. It shone in the low light. She kept it on for a few minutes, staring at herself in the mirror again, before she wiped it off and pretended to sleep.

  And there it is. The image of her looking at herself in the mirror, facial expression unreadable, as she slowly wipes off the lip gloss. The key twists and unlocks the image of the Thorn. It looms, large, pointed, dangerous, barbed like a cat’s claw.

  It sinks its point into her.

  It’s not as much information as the first two images. This is a simple, clean snippet that slots into her mind as if it was always meant to be there, settling deep into her synapses.

  The name of the girl with different-coloured eyes was Nettie Aldrich.

  She was sixteen when Roz started experimenting on her. The girl disappeared, but there is no active missing person case. It does not seem Sudice is implicated in any way. A body has not been found; there has been no widespread news coverage about her. It’s as if no one searched for her.

  Nettie came from a good family, to outside eyes. Both her parents are pharmacists. She lived in the suburbs across the bay from San Francisco, in Union City. Nettie was bright and showed promise. She was accepted into UC San Francisco, but didn’t even start before she disappeared.

  Another shot of Nettie’s corpse. Blank and staring. Mark has written scattered notes about the state of her in a hasty pathology report. Did he find her body after Roz was done? Did Roz make him clean up her mess?

  Carina skims the notes. It’s not easy reading, even for her. Roz had removed part of her skull and put in nanites, sure enough, and though her code had been promising, it hadn’t been good enough. The nanites fried Nettie’s brain, and she had an aneurysm. It was quick, at least, but from that flash of memory, Carina knows first-hand that Nettie still suffered.

  Carina gets out of bed and goes to the kitchen. After she makes a hot chocolate from the replicator, she projects information onto the blank wall in the kitchen. Somewhere, out there, there will be more information on Nettie Aldrich.

  She spends hours poring over the notes and then planning how to search for the girl once she has access to the net again, forcing her rusty mind to remember how to search for things hidden and deleted. Carina could ask Raf to help her, or pretty much anyone else in the Trust would be able to search for things more efficiently. But she’s still only just met them, and for some reason, feels protective and wants to keep Nettie to herself. Mark tasked her with that mystery, not the Trust. She needs to know what Roz was trying to do to her, and why it failed.

  The sound of bare feet swishing along the floor reaches her. Carina sends the information away, but not fast enough. Dax enters the kitchen, wearing a T-shirt and pyjama bottoms. He orders a drink from the replicator, then crosses his arms over his chest while the machine hisses and bubbles.

  ‘What were you looking at?’ he asks.

  Carina should have expected this. He probably has security enabled so that as soon as she left her room, he awoke.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she says, drawing the empty hot chocolate mug towards her, as if it’s a barrier between them. ‘Couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Huh,’ he says. ‘So far, you’ve been a better liar than that.’

  Carina fights the urge to take the knife on the counter and ram it into his throat. The derisive smirk would leave his face as the warm, iron-scented blood pumped over her hands. She can almost smell it.

  It’s the strongest urge she’s had since kicking Zeal. She lets go of the cup, clutches the edge of the table hard. Her eyes squeeze closed. Don’t think of blood. Don’t think of sliced skin.

  ‘Carina?’ he asks.

  She doesn’t answer, just hunches over herself, tighter.

  ‘Withdrawal?’ he asks, gently.

  ‘Why do you have to be real,’ she says. ‘Why does anyone have to be real?’

  He sits across from her and waits. Carina’s breath drags in and out of her. This isn’t Zeal, this isn’t Zeal, this isn’t Zeal.

  Eventually, the urge passes, her muscles relax. She’s still keyed up, still doesn’t trust her body or her mind.

  Dax perches at the table with his own drink. Could he have any idea what just went through her mind? He still looks sleepy, eyes half-lidded in the dim light of the kitchen. His long arms are muscled beneath his skin.

  Great, Carina thinks. Now you can’t decide if you want to fuck him or kill him.

  ‘Well. Good night, then,’ she says, awkwardly. Words are hard to form. She stands, putting the cup in the replicator. Every step is difficult – she still wants to turn around and either attack him or kiss him. Or both.

  Lust and attraction have been missing from her life for years. They’d awaken when called, reluctantly, weakly, but like so much else, they were dampened by SynMaps. Roz would have considered them an unnecessary distraction. How much has been stolen from Carina? Still, most of the time, the anger she should feel about all of that is just beyond her reach.

  ‘You unlocked more information, didn’t you?’ Dax asks.

  She pauses, then turns back to face him. ‘And you’re monitoring my brain activity, aren’t you?’

  ‘All your vital signs, actually.’ He’s unrepentant. ‘You’re still healing from surgery. Brain activity spiked three hours ago, but if you have unlocked information, I’m guessing it wasn’t much compared to the first two images.’

  Carina presses her lips together. If she tells him about Nettie, she’ll have to tell him about phase one of SynMaps and her own history with it. Mark sent this to her because of the link between them both.

  ‘Come on,’ Dax says, gesturing to the seat across the table where she’s been sitting. ‘Haven’t we established by now that we’re on the same side?’

  Only until she gives them what they want. This is image three out of five.

  ‘I want to help you, Carina,’ he says. He stares at her, unblinking, like he truly sees her. Not like the people on the Metro, afraid, as if they could catch her addiction. Not like the orderlies who didn’t want to touch her skin in the Zeal lounges over the last year. Even before she grew dependent on Zeal, she’s not sure anyone has ever looked at her quite like this.

  Carina sits back in her chair. ‘The trip before I received the full five images, he sent me a girl’s dying memory. No information attached. Just her. It didn’t save, though it might be in one of the later images.’

  She projects the image of Nettie onto the wallscreen.

  Dax takes her in, his doctor’s mind noting her unhealed surgical cuts and the sutures.

  ‘Her eyes are heterochromic,’ he observes. ‘Like the last image Mark sent you, right?’

  ‘Yes. They’re her eyes. She was a recent experiment for Roz Elliot. She showed this girl, Netti
e, an image of a bee on a rose, and somehow it tied into what she was trying to achieve. Maybe it was just distraction, so Nettie wouldn’t realize Roz was opening her skull. This is the end result.’ She glances up at Nettie, then away again. ‘I unlocked the thorn. It had little more than her name, Nettie Aldrich, and the medical notes Mark took of the state of her body.’

  ‘How did he have access?’

  ‘I think he was helping Roz, and this was a step too far.’

  Dax swallows. ‘I’ll say. Have you searched for her family?’

  ‘Can’t. Don’t have access to the net down here, and I’m too tired to try hacking it.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be able to.’

  ‘That’s probably true. So I’ve just been studying the notes, trying to get into Roz’s head.’

  ‘She was your boss.’ It’s a cross between a question and a statement.

  Carina meets his eyes. ‘For a time, yes, but I’ve known her since before that. Since I was a teenager.’

  Dax nods.

  ‘You know about it?’

  ‘It was hidden in a previous draft of your employee file. Raf found it this morning.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘That you were the main subject to reach the end of phase one of the SynMaps trials. Mark couldn’t get the rest of the file out, as it was confidential. Or –’ a pause – ‘he chose not to.’

  ‘It was the latter, I think. It’s not his secret to tell.’

  Dax takes both their cups and tosses them into the replicator. ‘I’m not going to push you right now,’ he says, still turned from her. ‘But I think you should consider telling me.’

  He turns back and pulls up the secure, encrypted net access on the wallscreen. ‘In the meantime, let’s find out more about Nettie Aldrich.’

  TWENTY ONE

  CARINA

  The Trust headquarters, Los Angeles, California, Pacifica

  Dax and Carina stay up until dawn looking for information on Nettie.