Shattered Minds Read online

  She concocted her plan. Saved the cash credits of her paltry allowance and bought a microscopic tracking chip in San Francisco, no bigger than one of the freckles on her arm. The man selling it to her seemed uninterested in the fact that a sixteen-year-old with cold eyes was buying something borderline illegal.

  Carina attached the chip to her father’s favourite pair of shoes, the plain brown ones he wore every day. She’d looked up countless tutorials on her ocular implants, and in the middle of the night, made a tiny slit in the sole where it met the leather of the shoe, inserted it, sealing it over. She surveyed her handiwork critically; she couldn’t tell the shoe had been tampered with. She could only hope that neither would he.

  Carina’s father did not seem to, and her hunch proved right. Her father left his work at five o’clock sharp every day. What was he doing for the next two hours before he came home each evening? Most of the time, he went to a few addresses near downtown San Francisco. She looked them up; bars and Zeal lounges. Business meetings or dates, possibly. The thought of him dating made her toes curl with hatred. Once every couple of weeks, though, he went somewhere else on the outskirts of the city. On those days, he came home closer to eleven, when she was meant to be asleep but her eyes were wide open as she listened to him shuffle through the halls of Greenview House.

  What are you doing, Daddy?

  Back in her room at the Trust headquarters, sweat staining the sheets, Carina wants to stop remembering, turn away, yet it keeps coming like a tide. She shakes her head, holding her hands to her temples, groaning.

  After two months, Carina finally gathered the courage to follow her father. He had always been distant and absent, but in the last few weeks, he’d grown worse. Carina’s body was peppered with fresh bruises, from harsh shoving into walls and hard hands around her arms. His abuse had never been sexual, thankfully, but as his abuse worsened, she couldn’t rule out those patterns might shift. She’d been studying child abuse, trying to remain remote and clinical. He was definitely escalating.

  After school let out, Carina made her way to San Francisco. She went to the Zeal lounge he frequented perhaps once a week, not far from his office. She couldn’t understand why he went. Wasn’t it against his lingering beliefs from growing up in Mana’s Hearth? He’d left that cult, or been kicked out. She never knew which – another mystery relating to her father and what made him tick.

  She stared at the Zeal lounge called Galaxy for a long time, at its purple walls flecked with moving stars. People came in and out. It wasn’t an off-grid lounge – the clientele were respectable people in suits or loose designer clothes. For a moment, Carina was tempted to enter, take a quick hit. She had enough of her allowance credits left over. Already it felt like a dangerous lure. She managed to turn away. Just.

  Carina went to the second location. It took her nearly an hour to get there on public transport, but she still arrived before five. Her father must go to it on his company-provided hovercar. The second address was one of the quiet warehouses in a nearly-abandoned estate on the edge of Millbrae.

  Her father arrived half an hour after she got there. Carina had found a way into an abandoned warehouse across the street and watched him from a cracked window. He entered, closing the metal door behind him.

  Carina waited. And waited. And wondered. How did her father find this place? Did he own it? What in the world was he doing?

  A little over two hours later, her father left the warehouse. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright. She’d never seen him like that. He looked almost deliriously happy. He had a small bag in one hand that he hadn’t been holding when he arrived. He climbed into the hovercar and took off. Carina had no hope of beating him home. She sent him a message saying she was at a study group and would be home late. It might work. It probably wouldn’t. No matter what, she’d have a beating tonight, so she might as well see what he was up to. One benefit of her newly reduced ability to process emotions: she wasn’t as afraid of that evening as she should have been.

  Carina approached the warehouse, wondering how to enter. On the side of the building, there were no windows at street level that weren’t blacked out and obviously alarmed, but if she climbed the fire escape, perhaps she could look in the second-storey one.

  It was her last chance to turn back. She stilled, wondering if she really wanted to know what was inside or was better off just going home, taking the beating and hoping she’d last until she could move away to university. Though even that wouldn’t be an escape – her father would force her to remain in San Francisco. Even after that, she could see him manipulating her to stay close, stay home, stay under his thumb. If she could find something to threaten him with in just the right way, she could break his hold over her. If she dared.

  Carina climbed the fire escape. It was old and rickety, creaking so loudly she feared it would fall off the side of the building. Her hands were soon covered in flecks of black paint and iron rust. Upon reaching the top, she stood and peered through the window.

  She’d expected to see an empty room, as decrepit as the exterior. Perhaps her father simply liked to go somewhere remote and alone to unwind before coming home and having to deal with her. Instead, the warehouse was still empty, but in the centre was a large medical table surrounded by a rod with the curtains pushed back. The sight of it made goosebumps rise on the skin of her arms. The walls were dark and probably soundproofed. A giant tub was pushed against one wall, with taps and buckets stacked to one side. In another corner was a trunk, tucked away but topped with a globe figurine. She swallowed. They had a similar globe in a trunk in their home, and it doubled as a security device. Her mother had taught her the code, in case she ever needed to access the passports and spare money, the datapods with backups of the house deeds and insurance papers. Her father wouldn’t be so stupid as to use the same code, would he? And what would she find inside if he did?

  Carina scrutinized the window. Again, if security was similar to how it was in Greenview House, she’d see the tiny green line of an alarm on the windowsill. No line up here, though she saw them one floor up. She peered within and down to the floor of the warehouse. It was a decent drop, but she could make it. Opening the window, she paused. No alarm. She waited ten minutes. If her father had the alarm wired to his implants, he’d turn around and come back immediately to investigate. She should be able to dart into the alleyway and avoid him if so.

  She waited. No one came. Perching on the windowsill, her breath steady, she looked down at the very hard concrete of the warehouse floor. On her implants, she searched for the best way to jump from a second-storey window. She turned around, hanging from the windowsill by her fingertips, shortening the distance to the floor. Then, before she could change her mind, she jumped.

  She bent her knees before impact. The breath left her lungs in a whoosh, and she rolled backward.

  Her body hurt, but nothing was broken or torn. At least, she hoped not. She sat up, slowly. Getting out was going to be trickier – she’d have to figure out a way to disarm the alarm from within. She’d worry about that later. Carina checked her father’s location. He was still on his way home.

  She walked to the globe on the trunk. Every footstep echoed in the empty space. No alarm sounded. She crouched in front of the globe and pulled some gloves out of her pocket. Diffidently, she tapped in the code. The globe glowed orange and rolled out of the way, the lid of the trunk opening.

  Inside were torture devices. Scalpels, sharp knives, forceps, pincers, cat o’ nine tails and other things she didn’t recognize. Her gaze kept snagging on the knives. She wanted to pick one up, but refrained.

  Carina’s eyes rose to the tub. A horrible theory bloomed in her mind. The tub was big enough.

  She knew what had happened to her mother. And now, she feared that her mother was not the only one. Horribly, she felt drawn to the weapons of violence. She reached into the trunk, bringing out the sharpest knife.

  In her real memory, it is clean and pristine, bu
t now she sees something on the blade: a single drop of blood.

  The drop of blood grows in Carina’s mind, red as all the blood she saw during her year in the Zealscape. She has missed that colour, the gleam of light on that viscous fluid. She wants to reach out and smear the blood between her fingers. Smell it. Taste it. Possess it.

  She feels the information release, trickling into her brain like the other three images before it. Mark’s face appears, a recorded memory, just for her.

  Mark looks thinner than the AI she saw in the Zealscape. His cheeks are sunken beneath prominent cheekbones, and shadows gather beneath his eyes that not even gene therapy could erase.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve made it this far, Carina, though I’m also grieved that you have.’ Mark stops and coughs. It’s wet, deep in his lungs. He’s sick. Very sick. ‘You see, I’ve left things out. Vital pieces of the puzzle. I should have made this information the first image. If it didn’t motivate you to stop Sudice, nothing would.’ More wet coughing. ‘But it’s not easy to confess to such crimes. After you see what I show you, you will think so differently of me. You looked up to me, I think, in your own distant, disconnected way. You shouldn’t have. I won’t ask for forgiveness. I don’t deserve it.’ Mark looks at her, eyes ringed with purple bruises. ‘Stop this before it’s too late.’ His image pixellates and dissolves.

  One of Mark’s recorded memories plays from his point of view.

  He is in a plain, white-tiled room, the bright lights harsh and unforgiving. The Sudice labs in San Francisco. He looks down at an operating table, so similar to the metal table in her father’s warehouse that it startles her. On it is Nettie Aldrich. Her head turned to the side, her eyes closed. Her skin and skull have been cut and peeled back. Carina, through Mark’s eyes, sees her brain.

  The image zooms out and Carina finds herself standing next to Mark. He seems healthier, and also . . . not quite like Mark. With a jolt, she realizes it’s Mark’s AI ghost who convinced her to dive head first into this mess in the first place.

  ‘Plug into the Trust’s brainloading Chair. They’ve likely kept it from you, but it’s in a storage cupboard at the back of the compound.’ A map flashes in her mind’s eye. ‘What I need to tell you can’t be fully transmitted in this manner. It means more Zeal, but the risk is worth it. I promise.’

  The drop of blood blooms in her mind, the information still pooling into her brain. It pours through Carina, the torrent gaining momentum. She balls her fists over her eyes, struggling to breathe. Her heart beats an arrhythmic staccato in the chest. It’s the information on the subjects before Carina joined the brain-loading project. The heart attacks, the strokes, including the ones she created on her own subjects. Mark has dumped more information into her brain than the previous three times. What if it’s too much? What if she goes the same way as all those nameless people before her and she dies right here, right now?

  She should ping Dax so he can help her, but she can barely hold onto the thought before it flies away again. Then she remembers she doesn’t even know if he’s back from the hospital, or if he even survived his wound. Lying there, the information coursing through her, she’s vaguely surprised to find that she doesn’t want to die. Not yet. Not today.

  After a time – how long, she can’t begin to guess – her mind quiets. Carefully, she sifts through a little of the information. Raf will be so happy. It has information on the subjects Roz’s team worked on, yes, plus lots of information about Sudice’s experiments on other criminals who should have been put in stasis. It also contains information about the remote server, unconnected to anything, in the heart of Sudice’s Los Angeles headquarters. Carina feels her face crease into a smile, the dry skin of her lips cracking. She tastes blood.

  She has no mental fortitude to look through it all more closely, especially when her mind burns with curiosity.

  The Trust have been hiding a Chair from her. They told her they brainloaded directly through their implants. She knew they had Zeal somewhere in the compound, but not where it was.

  Carina tiptoes from her room, hoping the rest of the Trust hasn’t put sensors on her door like Dax did. The room with the brainloading Chair is locked, but after a bit of careful sifting, she finds the passcode hidden in her head. Thank you, Mark. Raf should change the internal passwords more often.

  She walks in. The Chair is small and lonely in a small and lonely room. How many times has she lain back against a headrest like that? In Sudice, in slick Zeal lounges in San Francisco and dingy hovels in Los Angeles. Losing herself, finding herself, and wanting to lose herself all over again.

  Do the other members of the Trust come here to fall into Zeal? They never mention the drug. Carina thought none of them used it. Perhaps, like her, they need to lock themselves in a dream to scream at the top of their lungs, to let out that anger and fear. What do they dream? Who do they hurt? Unlike her, they can seemingly release that darkness without it consuming them whole.

  She opens a cabinet on the far side of the room. Clear vials of Zeal are lined up neatly, as though waiting for her. She reaches out with a shaking finger, touching the tips of the vials. So much of it, all in one place. Zeal isn’t a drug you can overdose on, or not in the traditional sense. The more you take, the longer you stay in the dream, but if you take enough to keep you in for a week without any fluids or nutrition, your chance of dying increases. Zealot lounges, no matter how seedy, never put in a client for longer than twenty hours.

  There’s enough here that she could stay in Zeal for months. If she could somehow lock herself in so they couldn’t open the door, no matter what, she wouldn’t hesitate to do it. Even with all she needs to do. Even with the promise she gave Mark.

  She would still let go.

  Instead, she takes one half-full vial, preps the dose. Her hands shake. She shouldn’t – one drop nearly undid her completely – yet here she is, unable to stop herself. Mark’s AI will tell her something important. She feels it deep in her bones.

  Lying back on the cushioned Chair, she doesn’t strap herself in, hoping she won’t flail enough in her dreams to hurt herself. Once she slipped out of her restraints at the Green Star Lounge and scratched deep gouges into her cheeks, as though she’d been attacked by a large cat. They didn’t leave scars. Sometimes she wishes they had.

  She starts the machine, presses the syringe into her vein, and falls back into that warm, deep void.

  THIRTY TWO

  CARINA

  The Zealscape, the Trust he adquarters, Los Angeles, California, Pacifica

  Mark does not appear right away.

  Carina is back at Greenview House. She missed the depravity that happened in its various rooms of her own creation. She walks through the hallways. She could open any door, walk in, create a victim and kill again.

  Behind the first door of the hallway is her father’s room. She stumbles back. In her old Zealscapes, she never went there. She wanted no reminder of that monster. In the corner, a shadow rises, hulking, larger than life. It glides closer to her, and she almost imagines his laugh. Fear closes her throat.

  Instinct takes over. A knife appears in her hand. Long, sharp, another limb. She hefts it, checks the sharpness with a thumb.

  A drop of blood wells up, crimson bright.

  Greenview House disappears. She knows that nightmare will never leave her.

  Mark is still in the lab with Nettie’s corpse, on a Chair just like the one where Carina now sleeps. It’s as though no time has passed.

  Carina’s in the throes of murderous rage. She flies at Mark, but her hands move through him. He’s as insubstantial as the phantom that he is.

  She tries to conjure up another victim. Someone, anyone that she can kill. But in this section of the Zealscape, she’s powerless. Nothing happens. She pants, her hands empty of that knife, clawing at air. Mark comes forward, places his hands to either side of her face. She can’t feel it.

  ‘Breathe. Breathe. You control more than you think.’


  She tries to follow his instructions, but her breath only comes faster.

  ‘Close your eyes. Breathe. In. Out. This is all in your mind. You are the master here, not your urges.’

  It takes an age, an eon, but eventually, her breathing slows, her heart finds some semblance of a steady beat. The urge to kill is there, as it always is. She’s driven it back, for now. Out there, in the real world, it’s only a matter of time before she snaps.

  ‘This is too much for me, Mark,’ she says. ‘You placed your bets on the wrong person. I’m only going to let you down.’

  ‘You’re strong as iron, Carina.’

  ‘Iron rusts.’

  ‘Then you will be re-forged.’ He takes his hands away. ‘Come. You’re getting closer. I have every faith in you, even if you haven’t yet found it in yourself.’

  Mark disintegrates, appears again beside Nettie. Carina drags herself to the corner of the lab.

  ‘Nettie,’ he says. ‘The girl whose death I caused, even if unintentionally.’ He shifts, moving to her other side. ‘From this angle, she looks like she’s sleeping, doesn’t she? Just a patient etherized on the table, to borrow a line from T. S. Eliot.’ He reaches out, fingertips hovering over Nettie’s hair. Blonde, like Carina’s once was. ‘I brain recorded this memory, and have overlaid it with this AI code so I can speak to you. I’ve sent you just the brain-recorded memory as part of the information associated with the drop of blood. That one is completely untampered with, the memory clear enough you should be able to use it as evidence against Sudice, if you can manage to send it. Just the police won’t be enough. Too many internal moles that’ll sweep it under the rug. Get it out wide enough, and everyone can’t look the other way. Roz killed her within Sudice walls. They still never managed to have brain recording work easily for longer than an hour. It matters little, though. Brain recording was never Roz’s main goal, as you must have known. That’s why you left, isn’t it, Carina?’