Shattered Minds Read online

  ‘Recruiting a sixteen-year-old high school student? Seems unlikely. In what Mark sent me, she was preparing for a senior project. Didn’t sense anything about her working for them.’

  ‘They hired you at, what, twenty-three?’

  ‘Yeah, but I was a precocious little post-doc that Roz wanted to keep an eye on.’

  ‘Roz was interested in her, too. Clear parallels.’

  Carina shivers. That’s what has haunted her, from the first time Mark showed her Nettie’s death. When he’d taken that memory block off, and she’d remembered what had really happened to her. Roz can’t stop moulding people into what she wants. It didn’t work on Carina. It didn’t work on Nettie. What is Roz trying to accomplish and who is she going to target next? Or has it already begun?

  ‘We’ll keep digging,’ Dax says. ‘There’ll be a slip-up somewhere. We’ll figure out what’s up with Nettie Aldrich.’

  ‘Will we tell the others about it?’

  ‘I think so. There may be more information hidden in the images, and they can keep an eye out. Mark found it important enough to send to you.’

  ‘If only he’d told us more clearly what she’s trying to do. Why go to such lengths to try and change me and Nettie, and why won’t it stick?’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t know either, not really.’

  A group of schoolchildren on their way to brainloading sessions walk through the metal plaza, shoes squeaking on the dark imitation marble. Carina pauses to let them pass, White Noise or no. They’ve reached the museum of modern art with its glass pyramids on the roof, and they lean against the cool brick walls.

  Out here in the brightening day, it is hard to reconcile what her life has been and what it is now. A long nightmare in Zealscapes, and she’s not sure she has the strength to keep resisting them. There is a Zeal lounge somewhere on the perimeter of this plaza. She accesses her implants. Yes. There. The Rosetta Lounge. Less than 500 feet away. She could go in, pay out of pocket with the dregs of her cash, fall right back in. Kill dozens of phantasms in all the ways she loves best. Maybe she should just let go of it all, let the programming break down further. Stop caring. Forget about Sudice. Forget about Roz. The Trust can carry on without her.

  She blinks, focusing again on the here and now. The plaza. The sound of people moving past, on their way to continue their lives. Dax’s face, focused on hers, as if he knows exactly what she’s thinking.

  ‘It’s still a strong lure, isn’t it?’ he asks, his voice soft.

  It frightens her, how easily he can read her. How much she wants him to know her. She’s grown so used to pushing everyone away, to protecting them from herself. She moves closer to him, as if seeking more warmth despite the heat of the day.

  ‘Are you afraid of me?’ she asks.

  ‘A little. More afraid of what’s been done to you.’ He moves closer, too. She wonders what would happen if she closed the distance between them. Pressed her lips against his. Would it feel as bland and distant as past kisses? Or now, would her new, raw nerve endings light up?

  It’d be a sweet kiss, soft, then hard. Opening her mouth to taste him, his tongue slipping into her mouth. Her hands going towards his neck, under his hair. Then she imagines biting his lip, drawing blood, her fingers twisting into claws against the pulse of his throat. Another one of her victims. Another person she can’t help but hurt.

  She leans away from him, turns her face towards her lap. Bites her own lip, focusing on that pure, clear feeling of pain.

  Sudice did this to me, she thinks. She wants revenge. Simple, beautiful revenge.

  ‘I have to stop thinking of it as getting information out of my head just to give to you and the others,’ she says. ‘I have to start thinking of Sudice as a target. As a . . . victim to be stalked. That’s the only thing that will keep me away from Zeal. Sudice gave me a lot – but they also took everything away. I have to make it personal.’ Her face twists into a grimace.

  Dax licks his lips. ‘I’m maybe a little more afraid of you, in this moment.’

  She hunches her shoulders. ‘You probably should be.’ Now that the sun has risen, it’s too bright. The lure of Zeal still sings in her veins, despite her pretty speech.

  ‘Let’s go back,’ she says. ‘Time to figure out how to rip out Sudice’s throat once and for all.’

  TWENTY TWO

  DAX

  The Trust headquarters, Los Angeles, California, Pacifica

  The other two members of the Trust are not pleased when Dax and Carina return.

  ‘You can’t just fuck off without telling us, Dax,’ Charlie says, still not fully awake and definitely grumpy.

  ‘I did tell you, but you were sleeping. Left a message. Aw, were you worried that Carina had clunked me on the head and kidnapped me? I’m touched.’ He didn’t mention that Carina and violence are things that go together quite naturally. He’s still trying not to think of the look on her face when talking about taking her revenge on Sudice.

  ‘Carina’s VeriChip is still new. What if she’d triggered something?’ Raf asks.

  ‘Now you’re just being difficult,’ Dax says. ‘You checked over the chip. You know it’s sound. Her new face won’t trigger anything. She wore gloves. We both needed the fresh air and we’re better for it. Calm down, have your coffee and let’s get to work.’

  He looks at Carina, who has stayed silent during this exchange, her eyes darting between them. Always listening, turning everything over to see how best to use the intel.

  The Trust grumble, as he knew they would, but the lure of coffee brings them to the kitchen. They load up the Thorn information onto the wallscreen, and Dax tells them about Nettie Aldrich and that information about her was in the third image to unlock. The group look at the still-silent Carina again, each with their own opinions. Raf’s still hesitant about her motivations, but is equally fascinated by the idea of so much information spirited away in wetware instead of hardware. Charlie is impatient to retrieve the information and use it. All are wary, and Carina hasn’t made it easier for them to like her. Prickly. That’s the word for her.

  Dax likes her, though he didn’t lie when he told her he was afraid of her. She can be cold, but he senses there’s a yearning for connection lurking underneath that she tries to hide. Yet he worries about reaching out in turn. She’d either lean into it, or strike out at him.

  Charlie is more interested in Nettie Aldrich than Dax would have expected. Carina sends over the information and Charlie sifts through it, frowning, as the rest of the group watches.

  ‘This isn’t the first missing teen in conjunction with Sudice,’ she says.

  Dax watches as Carina’s focus sharpens. ‘What do you mean?’ Is she wondering if Roz experimented on people before or after her own experience with SynMaps? Dax feels guilty, holding that piece of information back from Charlie and Raf, but it’s not his to tell.

  ‘There was a spate of rumours somewhat recently,’ Charlie replies. ‘A journalist, Morena Nemec, claimed that five missing person cases were directly linked to Sudice. She compiled some compelling evidence – all of them bright kids, good with science and, even if it was hidden, given scholarships by Sudice. I’ll bet somewhere along the line, Sudice gave this girl Nettie some sort of financial aid in return for the internship. With these other five kids, they thought they’d hidden the money trail, but not well enough. Nemec must have had to go through hundreds of cases to find the links. All the kids disappeared in different ways, different places.’

  ‘How recently?’

  ‘One to three years ago.’

  Her lips tighten. The timing meant this would have been going on while she was working at Sudice. Another thing Dr Elliot kept from her. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Exactly what you’d expect when Sudice is involved. Nemec was fired from her magazine and blackballed in the industry. She disappeared. The media claimed she’d become a Zeal addict, but I don’t believe that.’

  Carina’s eye twitches. There’s still a bit
of swelling around the left one, Dax’s doctor brain notices. He’ll have to check it out later.

  ‘Curious and curioser,’ Carina says, as Charlie finds one of Nemec’s first articles on the missing teenagers. ‘Did she ever have any theories on why Sudice wanted them or what they did?’

  ‘Yes, but she didn’t publish them. Raf helped me find this.’ Charlie draws up some scanned, handwritten notes.

  Dax scans the messy cursive. ‘She thought Sudice were recruiting them to be corporate spies?’ Guess his hunch was right.

  Charlie shakes her head. ‘For corporate espionage, they’d surely go for people who have been working in business a few years. Understand the structure.’

  Carina shoots him a look, as if to say: Exactly.

  ‘Nemec didn’t publish her article because she knew people would react the same way,’ Charlie says. ‘But perhaps it makes sense. Just. Groom them before their brains have fully developed. Teenage minds are still developing and deciding who they are. They can be ripe for manipulation. The Ratel evidently did something similar with Verve before SFPD took them down. Took in young people outside the system, without Veri-Chips, massaging their personalities.’

  Carina’s jaw has clenched, and she grips the edge of the table. ‘Brain reprogramming.’

  ‘Exactly. Do you think they could do it?’ Charlie asks.

  Carina gives something like a laugh. ‘They can, but the last I knew, it was an imperfect method.’

  Raf perks up at this, not noticing the strain in her voice. ‘I thought the SF mob Ratel stuff was greatly exaggerated when I heard it, but maybe there was more to it. I suppose it’s inevitable, eventually. Pacifica’s already tried to control us through Zeal. Calm us down. Troops are less afraid in battle because we change their dopamine supply. We re-route brain neurons to help avoid certain brain diseases. Extra serotonin for depression – we’ve been doing that for decades now, saving countless lives. If you have the code, you can hack the system.’

  ‘None of that is wholesale amending personalities,’ Charlie says.

  Again, Carina’s head stays bowed.

  ‘Carina . . .’ Dax begins.

  She looks up, her eyes narrowed. Then she deflates, the tension leaving her shoulders. ‘I know.’

  Charlie and Raf look between them. ‘What’s going on?’ Charlie asks.

  ‘Roz is trying to do that. She’s been trying for over a decade. I was one of her first subjects. She changed me.’ Carina takes a deep breath. Dax wants to reach out and take her hand. She hasn’t properly told anyone for years, and now three people in one day know. Is it a relief, to let out a secret held for so long?

  ‘It didn’t work properly, though. It started breaking down, and that’s why I became a Zealot.’ They ask questions – how did she change, when did she notice her personality shifting? Carina sketches in a few more details, but Dax focuses on the nervous flutter of her hands.

  ‘And so Roz was trying to change Nettie into someone else,’ Raf muses. ‘And she died.’

  ‘The other teens probably did, too,’ Charlie says.

  ‘Roz would stop at nothing, and Sudice gave her the blessing to do this.’ Carina crosses her arms over herself.

  Dax shakes his head, slowly. ‘This is still not enough. We have that image of Nettie, some scattered suppositions. We need more.’

  Charlie leans forward, her face as determined and vicious as Carina’s was in the park. ‘We’ll find it.’

  TWENTY THREE

  ROZ

  Sudice headquarters, San Francisco, California, Pacifica

  Roz hates her temporary Los Angeles office.

  Objectively, she should love it. It’s a floating office, tethered to Sudice’s main Los Angeles headquarters. It has incredible views of the city, hazy in the growing sunset, light glinting from the windows of skyscrapers and the endless stream of hovercars flying past to her left. Potted date palms line the partitions between the windows. The wallscreen behind her large, sleek desk is set to watercolour artwork of Los Angeles, and there’s a sofa almost comfortable enough to sleep on tucked into a corner. She’s slept on it almost every night since she’s been here so far, despite the hotel room Sudice has provided. She’ll often get up in the middle of the night, trying another method to find Carina.

  No matter how nice this room is, it’s not her office. There’s a good team in place, but not one she knows. Her San Francisco team thinks she’s down here for a conference. There’s no lab in sight; she’s not here for science.

  Roz’s new support team are in the offices directly below her. She needs quiet to think, and their very presence annoys her. The trail to Carina has cooled, and if she doesn’t hurry, it’ll go cold entirely. The team have their instructions to go through Los Angeles with a fine-toothed comb, aided by Wasps looking for anything unusual. Roz hopes Carina is still in the city – they’ve been monitoring the outgoings and haven’t seen anything suspicious, but if Carina’s gotten a good new VeriChip and face, they don’t have much hope of finding her unless she’s stupid enough to leave bits of her DNA behind.

  Roz settles behind her desk, nursing a glass of watered synth whisky. She’s not meant to drink on the job, but she’s not meant to do a lot of things she’s done under the banner of Sudice over the past few years.

  A frantic knock sounds at the door. Roz startles, hates that she does, and answers. It’s Niall, one of the underling hackers Mantel assigned her. She schools her face into a bland smile. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I think I’ve found something,’ he says, a little breathless from excitement and the dash up the stairs. He’s tall and slender, with black hair slicked back in a hairstyle that makes him look sleazy. He wears clear-lens specs as an anachronistic affectation, which she finds particularly irritating. ‘Took some digging and reverse engineering on the Darknet, and there’s some poor fool in Virginia who thinks he’s getting hired by the Atlantica CIA for this—’

  ‘Get to the point.’

  ‘Sorry. Sorry. We found a bit of footage of Carina leaving the Metro a few days ago. We mapped the bones of her face, and just a few hours ago, the security drones found another woman whose skull matches the same specifications.’

  ‘You think it’s her?’

  He projects the images onto the screen. ‘Look for yourself.’

  There’s a woman with dark purple hair. Unremarkably pretty. She’s wearing dark shades, her mouth is twisted as she speaks to a man with long, black hair. Roz doesn’t recognize him either, and he’s also clad in shades and plain clothing. They’re both wearing gloves, which is not unusual in Los Angeles.

  Roz takes the snapshot of the woman, puts her side by side with Carina’s employee photo. The dimensions work, and Roz recognizes that twist to her mouth. Carina hasn’t changed herself enough to be a complete stranger.

  ‘Who’s with her?’ she asks.

  ‘It’s a big leap, but I think it might be a member of the Trust. The one who goes by the moniker of Dax.’

  ‘The Trust? That group with Rafael Hernandez? I thought they disbanded.’ Panic threatens to rise, and Roz pushes it down. There is no room for fear. Forcing it away, she wills her heartbeat to slow. ‘Any leads on where they’re based? Could you follow them back to their headquarters?’

  ‘We tried, but they were clever. Lost them on the way back, moving in between camera drone patrols, taking false trails.’

  Roz pinches the bridge of her nose. ‘Keep looking with the rest of the team. Pass on anything you find to me, no matter how insignificant it seems. And for God’s sake, all of you cover your tracks. Don’t leave a shred of evidence behind for the Trust to know we’re looking for them. We want the element of surprise on our side. Am I clear?’

  Niall nods, licks his lips.

  Roz forces herself to soften her tone. ‘Good work. This is valuable information.’

  He brightens. If he were a puppy, his tail would wag. He closes the door behind him. Roz downs the rest of her synth whiskey in one gulp.r />
  She should call Mantel and tell him, but she wants to come with more information than ‘the woman with dangerous information is with a bunch of hackers led by your blacklisted cousin’. He’ll be reading all the reports, anyway. If he wants to speak to her, he will. She’s not looking forward to it.

  Roz stays in her spotless, floating office above the Los Angeles skyscrapers. She sends new commands to security Wasps, trying to find any anomalies. If the Trust are the slightest bit sloppy, she’ll find them.

  Roz has a chance to hit two birds with one stone: contain Carina before she puts the company in jeopardy, and capture the Trust. A grin spreads across her face as her fingers fly in front of her, weaving the code into the net, calling another software engineer to come up and help her.

  ‘I’m coming, Carina.’

  TWENTY FOUR

  ROZ

  ONE YEAR AGO

  Sudice headquarters, San Francisco, California, Pacifica

  Despite Roz’s protestations, Sudice replaces Subject B with another stasis candidate. At least the asshole is now on ice. Mantel stalls the greenlight on the next aspect of SynMaps.

  Roz has not reported her suspicions about Carina to anyone at Sudice. She’s watching her closely, formulating a plan to take the situation in hand. The rest of the team has found a steady balance. They know how each member functions, how they work best. Even Carina seems to have bonded with them, which again puzzles Roz. Yet the scientists are making progress. She can’t risk upsetting the equilibrium, even if that means risking the subjects.

  It should keep her up at night, but Roz sleeps as she always does: fitfully, rising at dawn to be the first in the office.

  The new subject is creatively dubbed Subject E. He’s small and spare. Nervous eyes. Something of the weasel or fox about him. Roz dislikes him at first sight, but Carina seems to take to him well enough. Roz should take Carina aside, warn her to be more careful, but she doesn’t want to spook her. So Roz observes them all and makes her plans.