Shattered Minds Read online

  She didn’t answer him directly. ‘It’s long past time for the truth.’

  His eyes widened. ‘Carina.’ His voice held the promise of violence. It would have cowed her a few months ago. Now, she was unmoved.

  ‘I’m no longer afraid of you. I’m not afraid of anything.’ She hefted the knife. Time to scare him into telling the truth. She switched on the datapod in her ear. All of his words from now on would record. Some would say it wouldn’t hold up in court. That it could have been artificially created, or tampered with. Again, though – as long as it turned the eye of the law towards him, they’d find something. An errant smudge of DNA evidence in the warehouse. An instance of him being too close to one of his victims at the time of their death.

  ‘Carina,’ her father says again. ‘Stop this.’

  ‘Did you stop for my mother?’

  His eyes closed. Tightened. Opened wide. He said nothing.

  She placed the tip of the knife against his throat. Deep within, below that eternal numbness, came a thrill of excitement. It startled her so much, she almost dropped the knife. Her father swallowed and the knife nicked the skin. Carina couldn’t look away from the two bright drops of blood dripping down his neck.

  ‘What happened.’ She didn’t ask it as a question. She pressed the knife a little harder. A third drop of blood appeared. Her cheeks flushed with warmth. Something within her was unfurling, rising to the surface like a tide. She should stop, back away, but she had come too far.

  ‘She wasn’t meant to die,’ her father said, his voice hoarse.

  Carina froze. She’d almost wondered if she’d made it all up in her head. If her father had hurt people, perhaps that hadn’t actually extended to her mother. Yet with those words, there could be no turning back.

  ‘She found me . . . with someone.’ He didn’t mean an affair. Nothing so banal.

  ‘Did. You. Kill. Her.’ Each word tore itself from her throat.

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘Yes.’ The second word was more forceful.

  ‘Why?’ she asked, and her eyes filled with tears for the first time since she’d visited the San Francisco Sudice offices. They slipped down her face, unnoticed.

  ‘I see it in you,’ he said, not answering her question. ‘That same thirst.’

  ‘Liar,’ she spat. ‘I was a sad girl who had lost the only person who loved her. You tried to control my mother, and when it didn’t work, you killed her like the others. Then when I wouldn’t conform to how you thought I would be, you let them change me.’

  Carina could feel it, almost breaking through. The certainty that going to Sudice had transformed her, in some way. She knew that feeling wouldn’t last, that it would sink down back into the numbness, but she held it to her while she could. She’d forgotten how powerful emotions could be. They threatened to drown her.

  ‘I see it now,’ he said. ‘You were always like me. Now it’s even clearer. You are your father’s daughter.’ He had the nerve to give her something resembling a smile. His teeth glinted in the dark. ‘Think of what we could do together. A bond that cannot be broken. God still speaks, despite all that has befallen me. You are my clear sign.’

  She didn’t dignify him with an answer. The hypocrisy was baffling, but then, her father had long since lost his grip on sanity or morality, even if he could present a decent façade to the outside world.

  The emotions bubbled up inside of her. An urge growing within her, twining through every atom of her, every beat of her heart.

  Kill. Kill. Kill.

  After being cut off from her emotions for so long, she was completely unprepared for this torrent. The fear grew. What if she was just like him, doomed to destroy all she touched? What if, somehow, he had made her this way? Serial killer tendencies were not meant to be hereditary, or not solely so. They could be genetics and environment. Nature, nurture or both.

  Her arm raised, almost as if it were controlled by someone else. The knife slid across his face, a thin line of red blooming on each of his cheekbones. They were symmetrical, except for when he tried to twist away, making the left side deeper and more jagged.

  ‘Don’t move,’ her voice said.

  He complied. He thought she only wanted to hurt him, to frighten him.

  That had been the plan. Now, she was not so sure.

  ‘Tell me all of your sins,’ she said. ‘Every kill. Spare no detail.’

  Information given under torture would not hold up in court. Oh, they might find out what her father did now, but if she ever gave this datapod to the police, she would follow him right into stasis. She would be deemed just as much of a threat to society. And she was. She knew it in her bones.

  Dutifully, her father told her of the crimes he’d committed, urged on by the edge of her knife when his words trailed away. Each drop of blood only fed her fascination. It was the ultimate satisfaction. The warm feel of blood. The easy give of flesh. She took her careful, measured revenge against the man she despised, foreign feelings swirling through her.

  ‘How many?’ she asked him, near the end.

  ‘How many what?’ His face was covered in a thin sheen of blood. His injuries were all superficial.

  ‘How many deaths?’

  ‘Thirteen,’ he said. No hesitation. His thinning hair was plastered flat to his skull.

  Carina wasn’t sure if it was higher or lower than she expected. Thirteen lives that might still be lived, right at this very moment, if not for her father. In so many ways, great and small, life for those affected by those thirteen people would be different. In a way, he’d changed the course of the future, even if in all likelihood he hadn’t made any lasting, large-scale changes. Still, the thought of that power, that control . . .

  ‘Does that include Mom?’ she asked.

  A hesitation. A short, sharp nod. ‘Please,’ her father begged.

  Carina closed her eyes, breathing in the iron tang of blood and acrid sweat. When she opened them, the knife was deep within her father’s throat. Warm blood gushed over her hands. Her hand moved the knife, back and forth. Cutting a throat was not easy. The throat was grisly, the skin slippery. Her father gurgled, his back arched. Air whistled in and out of his severed windpipe. Where was the carotid artery? Had she hit it? There was so much blood.

  It took four minutes for her father to die. He never looked away from her, until his eyes went still and glassy.

  This had not been the plan.

  She was breathing as hard as if she’d run for miles. Her heartbeat hammered. Her apathy was in shreds around her. Turning away from the bed, she ran to the bathroom. Threw up in the toilet, her throat raw with acid, her cheeks still burning.

  She flushed the toilet and crawled back into the bedroom. The sheets were already soaked. She could smell the iron in the air. As her heartbeat slowed, the emotions that had overwhelmed her receded. A few minutes later, she was wrapped back within her protection of numbness.

  She’d never been more grateful not to feel.

  Carina needed a new plan.

  She peeled off her clothes and bundled them in a clean cloth. She found some gloves and pulled them on over her hands. She went to the back of the house, to the barbeque pit, throwing the clothes in and watching them burn to ashes while standing in the cool night air in her underwear. All was so quiet. She threw the datapod after them, and it popped and sizzled as it melted. The proof of her sin vanished.

  She went back inside. Showered, washing her hair three times to make sure all the blood and smoke was rinsed out. After towelling herself off, she put on pyjamas. She threw several DNA scrubbers around the house.

  The next part was harder, but she didn’t know what else to do.

  Once her hair was dry, she threw herself against the walls of her bedroom, until flecks of her own blood splattered the white walls and she had the beginnings of a beautiful black eye.

  Next, she fell down the stairs, making sure to scuff her arms and legs against the wall and banister. She stumbled, as if drunk, unti
l she reached the basement. She threw herself back against one of the support pillars and slid down it. She might have hit it a bit too hard – she felt dazed. At the base, she’d already laid out the ties. She put her hands back around the pillar and the robotic rope slithered up her hands and tied tightly, before moving around the pillar and the torso, pinning her in place.

  All she could do now was wait.

  It took the police over sixteen hours to find her.

  When her father didn’t show up for work that morning, his boss pinged him. Carina could imagine how it all played out: no answer. Very unlike Mr Kearney. He was always in like clockwork, and never took a sick day. I’d have taken a few hours for his boss to obtain special dispensation to look up coordinates via VeriChip. At lunchtime, he’ll have had a spare moment to enter them in. At home. He’ll ping again. Still no answer. He’ll huff. Disciplinary action the next day, no doubt.

  Meanwhile, Carina had not shown up for school. This was also irregular. She did not skip because her father would find out, and that’d mean an extra beating. Her lead tutor pinged home. No response. They pinged her father. No response. Because of her reputation as anti-social (but not quite anti-social enough to merit disciplinary action), they were the ones to ping the police.

  The authorities arrived at around 4 p.m. She heard the sirens approach, the hovercar set down. They noticed the disabled security right away. The door opened. They checked the ground level. When they cried out, stumbling upon the telltale small smears of blood on the stairway, Carina lifted her head. Opened her mouth and tried to scream. No sound came out. The movement caused the scab on her split lip to break open. Blood leaked down her chin.

  It tasted like copper. Like freedom.

  She heard their boots on the main staircase. They found her father first. Someone threw up. That wouldn’t be good for the crime scene.

  ‘Where’s the daughter?’ she heard someone say. Carina had left the basement door open, but she had a thrill of fear that they might not realize she was down there.

  She opened her mouth to scream again, but it only came out as a squeak. She’d pissed herself three hours ago, and it was cold and unpleasant. She swallowed a few times, and then she opened her mouth and let out the most blood-curdling scream of her life.

  Carina’s memories after that grow fractured. They found her, tended to her wounds and gave her fluids. They interviewed her, and she managed to keep it together enough that they never truly considered her a suspect. She doesn’t like to think of those days spent wondering if she’d say the wrong thing, or they’d find some sort of evidence. But that didn’t matter. She’d remembered enough. Nettie’s green and blue eyes rose in her mind’s eye, staring at her, unblinking, accusing. One long, slow blink, and the information unlocked into her brain.

  Mark had uncovered even more crimes, leading back to the very beginning of Sudice. Proof that they undercut other companies to make sure Sudice was the sole company working on tech during the Great Upheaval. Sudice had stolen technology from other companies in order to fulfil contracts. Every year was an elaborate exercise in tax evasion. Government officials were regularly bribed. It’s all plenty of ammunition to add, if the Trust can manage to send it all out into the world.

  The last image also has information on Nettie’s family. Her parents’ new names, where they live. It’s a chance to reach out and explain what happened to their daughter. It’s Mark asking Carina to apologize on his behalf for what ended up happening to the girl.

  ‘Oh, Mark,’ she sighs.

  The last of the information settles into her brain. A shiver runs through her from the top of her skull to the tips of her toes. She stumbles back to her room to grab her electrodes. Once back in the yoga studio, she sticks them to her head and begins transferring the information to Raf’s servers. All the information in her brain has released. She has done what she set out to do, and fulfilled her promise to Mark’s ghost.

  Carina returns to the hallway that overlooks the party, resting her elbows on the railing. It takes her a few minutes, but she finds the rest of the disguised Trust down below. Kivon and Charlie are chatting and eating nibbles. Raf and Kim have just entered. Aliyah is probably resting and recovering. Charlie gestures them over. A faster song plays, one ideal for dancing. Most of the perfectly coiffed, masked celebrities move in a careful, measured way that doesn’t muss their hair. The Trust, instead, lose themselves in the music. They’ve been so pent up for so long that they let themselves go. Raf twirls Kim, and Kivon lifts Charlie above the crowd. Aliyah enters in the middle of the song, seeming fine, and does a very good pirouette on one foot. Dax follows behind and does some silly moves. They jump, they dance, they ignore the sidelong glances from the celebrities. Carina finds herself smiling as she watches them, wondering if it’s actually a genuine expression.

  Dax’s head swivels, searching for her. Carina watches them for another moment and then turns and makes her way to the front door. A drone asks if she wants her coat, and returns with it. She wraps the dark fabric over her finery, even though the night is relatively warm. Carina walks through the garden, a mile above Hollywood, scented with rare, engineered flowers.

  She finds the Trust’s hovercar, takes out the keys from her coat pocket. She took the spare ones from the Trust headquarters before they left, in case this moment presented itself. Here it is.

  She opens the hovercar and climbs into the driver’s seat.

  The five images have been unlocked. Raf has all the information. They don’t need her any more. She won’t be much of an asset, breaking into the headquarters. Charlie will be the one to use what Aliyah gave them. Carina is free to go find the closest Zealot lounge. She’ll just have to get her hands on enough credits for a hit first, as she can’t access her bank account and government money. She’ll find a way. Selling the hovercar would do it. The Trust will be annoyed she stole it, but surely it’s fair payment for all she’s given them.

  She’s just about to start the engine when there’s a knock on the hovercar door.

  FORTY

  DAX

  The Apex, above Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, Pacifica

  Dax pushes open the door to the hovercar. Carina’s guilty face looks back at him.

  He sighs and climbs in, the door shutting behind him. ‘Leaving already?’

  She looks away. ‘How’d you know?’

  He pauses. ‘Raf stopped mid-dance and said you’d uploaded a bunch more information from the last image. They’re all looking through it now.’

  ‘Aw. I killed their party buzz.’

  ‘I think they’re more excited now than when they were dancing.’

  ‘But you knew to come looking for me.’

  ‘I remembered you saying you only planned to stay until you unlocked everything. I wondered if that was still true.’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘Well, indeed.’ Dax leans back in the chair, crossing his arms across his chest. He looks out into the clouds and stars, the white, smooth mansion glowing like a pearl with the lights of the party. ‘Is it really worth throwing away everything you’ve gained?’ he asks her.

  Carina’s lips purse. ‘I’d ruin it anyway. Sort of my specialty.’

  ‘Cursed to loneliness and self-destruction?’ Dax’s voice is sardonic.

  ‘Something like that.’ Her shoulders hunch, and he sees her force them to relax, to seem unconcerned.

  Dax keeps his voice soft. ‘Well, I don’t believe that.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you believe.’ She stares ahead. ‘You’ve never really asked me which memories Mark’s images were tied to. Were you ever curious?’

  ‘Of course I was. Still am.’

  ‘I told you the first image, the Bee, was tied to my first memory, but never what it was.’

  Dax waits. She doesn’t speak. ‘Do you feel like sharing, then?’ he prompts.

  A hesitation. ‘They all revolve around my father. I guess Mark pegged I had daddy issues. Might have mapped
them deliberately after finding them in Roz’s data.’ She gives something approaching a laugh. ‘Still don’t know how he did it, not really.’

  She pauses, licks her lips. ‘My father ended up making me who I am today. If he’d not been a monster, maybe I wouldn’t have become one either. It’s hard not to wonder – when the programming broke down, did I become violent because it’s hidden in my nature, or did I become that because I feared it so much?’

  ‘Are you saying your father was violent?’

  ‘He killed my mother. He killed thirteen people over ten years. Pacifica had its very own serial killer, as it prided itself on its lack of murder. I looked beneath his façade and found out we’re mirrors.’

  Dax looks at her, eyes wide.

  ‘They never caught him,’ she continues. ‘He was so careful, only targeted people who wouldn’t be missed. Except my mother.’

  ‘You’re not a serial killer.’

  ‘It depends on your definition.’ She bites her lip, then answers his unspoken question. ‘Only one. My father. I killed him when I was seventeen. The first little break in my programming. I only . . . I only meant to frighten him. To have him confess what he did.’ She stops, thinking. ‘And maybe those people at the silo. Let’s say three.’

  Dax lets that information sink in. ‘You haven’t killed anyone innocent.’

  ‘No one’s innocent.’

  ‘Nettie was.’

  ‘Please. Teen girls are just as varied and complicated and full of flaws as anyone else.’

  ‘She didn’t deserve to die, is all I mean.’

  Carina nods. ‘I know.’

  Dax stares out at the stars. ‘I might have killed people, too. At the silo. In past altercations with the Trust.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Two. Maybe.’

  ‘You don’t kill like I do. In the Zealscape, I killed hundreds. In every way you can imagine. You want to avoid speaking about that, to pretend that didn’t happen. But it bothers you. It’s why you pulled away from me when I kissed you.’

  ‘That wasn’t why.’ Again, Dax is glad he never saw that Zeal recording. ‘I pulled away because you were off your face on Zeal, and I wasn’t sure if it was what you wanted. Or I figured perhaps you were projecting emotions onto me, a sort of transference after the trauma of the Zealscapes. I didn’t want you to feel pressured into anything you weren’t ready for.’