Shattered Minds Read online

‘Here.’ Chopper passes her a pill. She eyes it mistrustfully. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’ll help the shakes.’ She still hesitates.

  ‘If I was gonna kill you, you’d be dead. If I was gonna turn you in, you’d be turned in. Whatever you’re up to, it’s your business. Though I still want that bonus.’ Another sharp-toothed smile.

  With a little mental shrug, she swallows the pill dry. It takes about a minute to kick in. Her withdrawal is still there, that gnawing emptiness wanting to swallow her whole, but her hands don’t shake quite as badly. Her head is a little clearer.

  ‘Thanks. What is it?’

  ‘Modified beta blocker, mainly. Here.’ He tosses her the rest of the bottle. She thanks him and the bottle disappears into her pocket.

  ‘That’ll cost extra.’ More teeth.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. You’ll get your bonus.’ Her voice has taken on that far-off timbre it gets as she concentrates. Soon, Chopper and everything else falls away. The program runs through her, mapping every nook and cranny of her brain. How many times has she mapped her brain? Both to compare against the subjects at Sudice and since she left, to try and figure how it’s changed. She’s looked at her own brain more than at any other.

  It still hurts to see how the Zeal has changed so much already. The dopamine receptors. Her memory and motor functions are affected, but it’s one thing to know she’s an addict and another to see it right in front of her, in her very brain.

  Deep within those swirls is a more serious flaw, the reason she’s like this in the first place, and she can’t figure out how to bring herself back to how she used to be.

  Chopper looks at the map, and it makes her feel more exposed than being naked ever could. Mark’s ghost has already told her he rifled through memories she thought long deleted, and now a stranger sees right through her.

  Carina’s hands dance through the air, fingertips manipulating the programming on her neural dust, the hundreds of nanobots scattered throughout her brain – the occipital and auditory lobes, a few others to help memory, not that they did much any more. Taking out all the data stored within, flushing the cache, refreshing the microscopic servers. It won’t protect her completely, and she plans to stay off external data as much as possible. They’ll be out there. Waiting, watching, hoping for her to mess up.

  Her fingertips pause as she looks at the various parts of her brain that store memory. Locked somewhere in there is all the information Mark sent her. All the many secrets linked to her memories. If only they lit up like beacons, and pointed the way. No such luck.

  ‘Why not treat it?’ Chopper asks, breaking her concentration. ‘They can do that pretty easy these days.’

  ‘The Zeal addiction?’

  ‘Yeah. I watched all those ethics debates.’ Carina had already started growing addicted, but she’d watched a few and remembers half-read bits of news articles. It’s a recent pushback. People pointing out that just because your brain is wired for violence doesn’t mean you’ll actually commit it. Certain factions are leaning on the government to fix the Zealot problem rather than let a percentage of the population slowly kill themselves. Too few people care. Zeal’s been part of the fabric of Pacifica for so long now that people close their eyes to the violence, just like people before the Great Upheaval used to avoid thinking about the abattoirs that supplied their bacon.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Carina says. ‘It’s complicated.’ For a second, she wants to confide in him. I want to kill people when I’m out of the Zealscape. Everyone I come across. All the time. So I hide in the dreams and conjure up criminals, so I can pretend I’m not as twisted as I am. She imagines his eyes widening as she backs away, wondering if she’d take a swing at him. She wants to. She’d take one of the scalpels on the side bench, launch herself up, slip the blade into his neck, so sweetly. He is a criminal, after all . . .

  She swallows. Hard.

  The lizard man shakes his head. ‘Whatever. Your business. You done yet?’

  Carina turns back to the code, forces herself to rid her mind of anything except the characters and numbers before her. She makes a last swish with her fingertip. ‘Yeah, think it’s pretty much ready.’

  He looks over her amendments. ‘Not bad.’

  She feels a little flush of pride. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘OK, lie back.’

  She settles back into the Chair.

  Chopper comes forward to give her the anaesthetic, but she motions him back. ‘I should stay awake. Whatever you give me will take a little bit of time to wear off, and I’ve got to jet as soon as I’m able.’

  ‘Your call. It’ll hurt like a bitch, though.’

  ‘I know.’

  He makes the last little changes, shows her what he’s amended for her approval, and then starts to run the updates.

  This is the hard part.

  Carina’s eyes bulge as she stares up at the ceiling. Her fingernails dig grooves into the side of her Chair. The pain is everywhere, and everything – a presence running out all other thought. She can’t worry about Sudice, her desire for Zeal or her failing body. She can’t fear that Chopper or Kim will turn her in. She can’t focus on the fact that, at any moment, men wearing black Kalar suits and scrambler masks could find her and take her away while Roz watches, self-satisfied smile on her face. She can’t worry that she’s rusty, coded something wrong, and the lizard man hasn’t caught it. If that happens, her implants could fry, taking her brain along with it. She can’t worry. There is only pain.

  Perhaps pain is a better drug than Zeal. In some respects.

  Carina loses sense of time, but eventually the pain ends. She gasps in the Chair.

  Chopper looks over her biometrics. ‘You’re doing as well as can be expected. If you can, try and get a good long night’s sleep, let the new code settle a bit.’

  She rubs her forehead. ‘I have a feeling there’s not a lot of sleep in my immediate future.’

  ‘Probably not.’

  He holds out his hand. Nestled in his palm is a tiny silver datapod, twisted like a seashell. ‘Your backup.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She slips it into her ear, but doesn’t re-download the information yet. ‘Here’s half of your bonus,’ Carina says, digging in her pocket for her last credits. It’s all she has on her, and she can’t access her bank account. ‘My associate will give you the rest.’ She hopes Kim won’t be too angry at her for volunteering more of her money.

  ‘I’ll show you the way out. Duck through the streets, there’s a Metro stop in about 500 metres. Do you know where to go after that?’

  She shakes her head. ‘I’ll figure something out.’

  He sends her an address and a location through her amended implants, storing it in her address book. ‘That’s a good flesh parlour I know, if you decide to change your face.’

  ‘OK.’ It could be the best flesh parlour in the world, but she won’t go to it any sooner than she’ll go to the one Kim recommended. If Sudice find this man, it’ll be too clean a link to her next steps.

  She stands up. Even with Chopper’s magic pill in her system, she still feels like a wreck. And now she has to dash through Los Angeles, find a hideout and come up with a plan before her body completely gives out on her. Great.

  Chopper walks her to the door, and she caves and turns to him: ‘OK, I swore I wouldn’t ask, but I have to. Why the third arm?’

  He smiles and holds open the door. The serrated edges of his shark teeth glint in the light of the street lamp.

  He grins, a little wickedly. ‘So I can type and jack off at the same time, if I want to.’

  That startles her into a laugh. ‘Fair enough. Thanks again. You’ve probably saved my life.’

  ‘Don’t lose it, then.’

  ‘No promises.’

  She runs into the darkness on shaking legs.

  EIGHT

  ROZ

  Highway 110, Los Angeles, California, Pacifica

  Roz swears. The hovercar that she’s ordered has arrived, but far too
late. Useless. Useless. She gets in, falls into a seat and rests her head on her hands.

  ‘We can’t track them, can we?’

  Her hired muscle takes off his scrambler mask and pauses as he accesses his implants. ‘Her signal’s blocked.’

  ‘Of course it is.’ Carina has probably found a way to do it herself. But Roz blocked her implants. So how did she hail a hovercar? A subfrequency? It niggles at her.

  ‘They’d better be able to unblock it in the next ten minutes.’

  ‘It’s in progress, Dr Elliot.’

  Roz leans back in her chair. She accesses her neuroware and has her implants release serotonin to dispel the headache lurking in her temples.

  ‘I have to make a call,’ she tells her bodyguard. The muscled man nods and accesses his own implants, face slack and eyes glazed. His neck is still bleeding from Carina’s needle.

  Roz uses the private line. Mr Mantel accepts almost immediately, and his face looms in her vision. His features are severe, his dark hair perfectly combed and gelled.

  ‘Carina Kearney got away,’ she says, starting with the bad news.

  ‘That’s . . . deeply disappointing, Roz.’ His mouth turns down in disapproval.

  ‘I am aware. We’re containing it. I told you I needed more backup.’ He only gave her the budget for one.

  ‘You said she was a Zealot.’

  ‘Yes, but she’s still what I made her, even if she’s let herself go around the seams.’

  Mr Mantel raises an eyebrow. ‘Your shining example is now a sickly drug addict.’

  Roz keeps her face blank, though she grinds her teeth. ‘She was a prototype. You know the next version is more than adequate.’

  ‘I do, and that’s all well under way.’ He smiles tightly, his eyes nearly turning into credit signs. Born rich as sin, and still greedy for more. ‘You made the mistake of growing too close to her, though. Taking her under your wing like that.’

  ‘Long-term observation, nothing more. I couldn’t let a mind like that go to waste.’ The girl made several breakthroughs in SynMaps. Roz doesn’t regret what she did. ‘Carina won’t be able to evade us for long, Mantel, never fear. She’s in bad shape. Get the bots to sweep the chop shops. If she’s masking her steps, that’ll be what she does next. Get rid of the VeriChip before we find it, alter implant programming.’

  ‘We’re on it,’ Mantel says, and Roz knows he bristles at her ordering him about. Good. He should get used to it.

  ‘Dr Teague will have told her where to go next. We figure that out, then I can find her and rip that information out of her head before she can make a nuisance of herself.’

  ‘Find her.’ He pauses. ‘I cleaned up your mess with Dr Teague.’

  Again, Roz keeps her face blank. She remembers the feel of pulling the trigger and watching him fall.

  ‘Let others do the dirty work, Roz.’

  ‘Of course, Mantel.’ He gives her a curt nod and the line goes dead.

  Roz imagines finding Carina, hacking her implants and dragging everything from her. The information Mark sent, but more. What made her leave Sudice when she’d been so promising. Carina had always been an enigma. As if no matter how much Roz delved into that brain, another secret was lurking, just out of reach.

  Roz will siphon everything from that shattered mind until nothing is left.

  NINE

  ROZ

  THREE YEARS AGO

  Sudice headquarters, San Francisco, California, Pacifica

  Roz hasn’t seen Carina in seven years.

  ‘Welcome back to Sudice,’ she says with a smile.

  Carina now looks like a woman rather than a girl, dressed professionally in a sheath dress and comfortable heels. Blonde hair pulled back from a face brushed with understated make-up. Roz remembers meeting her for the first time as a quiet thirteen-year-old. A perfectly normal teenager, but for her overbearing father and the trauma of losing her mother. She seemed fragile. After Roz’s sessions she was forged into a cool, collected, brilliant young woman, meant for great things.

  Now she’s come home.

  Carina meets her eyes, nodding. How much does she remember? How well does that mental block Roz installed make Carina not think about the . . . less savoury parts of the first SynMaps experiment?

  Roz shakes her hand. Carina barely touches her fingertips, lets go immediately.

  ‘The rest of the team has already arrived. Why don’t we go meet them?’

  Carina smiles, nods. She’s still cool as a cucumber. She follows Roz to the elevator, a polite half-step behind. The robotic secretary’s smooth silver head turns, watching them go, before turning back to greet the next customer.

  They take the elevator to the top floor. Carina stands, perfectly safe, perfectly collected.

  They arrive at the top level. Carina pauses at the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out over San Francisco Bay.

  ‘I missed this view,’ she says.

  Roz never tires of it. Sudice’s building looks out over the Embarcadero, towards the bay, the Bay Bridge standing tall even though hardly any vehicles travel by land any more. Sailboats take advantage of the morning sunshine, the larger boats for tourists setting out to circle the now-condemned Alcatraz or sail under the bridges. Hovercars fly past, smooth as stingrays, light reflecting off their metal hulls. Skyscrapers rise from the sloping hills. By day, the bay is the same steel-grey it always is, but by the time they leave work, the view will be transformed. The buildings will be illuminated from within. The bay will glow green from the algae farms that give the city energy and a food supply. The entrances to the underground MUNI tunnels will shine the same emerald.

  Roz shows Carina her new office on the way to the lab. Carina takes off her jacket, sets down her bag and puts on the waiting lab coat. She compliments the office, with its spacious desk, the white wallscreen where she can project things from her ocular implants.

  Roz’s virtual assistant, Vera, has ordered a potted orchid from the replicator, which is a nice touch.

  ‘Come,’ Roz says. ‘Let’s meet the others.’

  ‘Of course,’ Carina replies.

  At the door to the laboratory Carina falters just for a moment, her brow furrowing. She swallows hard and then her face smooths back into her mask. Roz’s pulse spikes. Does she remember?

  But Carina walks right into the lab ahead of her, as if nothing is the matter. It looks different than it did seven years ago. No expense has been spared, every state-of-the-art piece of equipment kept immaculate.

  Roz gestures to her colleagues clustered in one corner of the lab, waiting for them. ‘You met at the interview, but here are your new colleagues, Carina: Dr Kim Mata, Dr Mark Teague and Dr Aliyah Zahedi.’ Carina takes them all in. Kim Mata, wearing a bright turquoise and yellow striped dress. Mark Teague, his smooth baby face contrasting with his silver hair and slick dark purple button-down shirt. Aliyah Zahedi with her deep brown eyes and vermilion hair in an asymmetric bob, wearing a dress not unlike Carina’s. They are a complete team of scientists, each with their own virtual assistants. A tingle goes down her spine. The work they will do here could be revolutionary.

  Carina says her hellos with that same cool but polite detachment.

  ‘We’ve stuck to our schedule,’ Roz tells them. ‘Trials will start in a month. That will give you all enough time to catch up with our preliminary research and studies.’

  ‘You’ve been a little vague on what we’ll actually be doing here, Dr Elliot.’ Carina’s voice is flat and expressionless. ‘I understand the need for confidentiality, of course, but . . .’ She trails off. Her eyes have snagged on the title of one of the articles: ‘Lessening Fatalities with Deep Brain Tissue Mapping’.

  ‘You will be fully briefed,’ Roz continues. ‘But I’m sure you’ve figured out what we do here by now.’

  Carina says nothing.

  ‘You were the natural candidate, with your extensive research on memory in your doctoral work. We’re aiming for the impossible her
e,’ Dr Teague says, smiling brightly. Roz tilts her head, observing Carina. The newest employee’s eyes narrow.

  ‘I have guesses. Do you wish to hear my hypothesis?’ she speaks clearly, elocution perfect.

  Roz holds out a palm, inviting her to proceed.

  ‘You want to figure out how to record memory. Completely. Everything someone sees, smells, their impressions, the thoughts in their mind. More than simply what ocular implants see and auditory implants hear . . . More than a virtual reality recreation of events. Memories fade; wetware can only do so much. These recordings wouldn’t. We could essentially time travel back to any moment in people’s lives and see what they’ve missed the first time or forgotten. So that others could tap into these memories, too, if needed,’ Carina says. ‘Living history, accessed at any time.’

  ‘Would that make people immortal?’ Mark asks.

  ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ Roz says. ‘At the moment, we’re only looking at brain recording.’

  The other scientists nod at Carina, pleased that she’s found the kernel of the research so quickly. Roz’s eyes narrow in cat-like satisfaction. This will work. She can feel it in her bones. Her head moves, her hair swinging.

  ‘Yes,’ Roz says. ‘We wish to create a perfect recreation of a memory. As if you become that person, experience it as that person. And we’ll find a way to do it where they don’t almost all die.’

  TEN

  DAX

  The Trust headquarters, Los Angeles, California, Pacifica

  ‘I don’t see the point,’ Dax says. ‘We haven’t found anything. All that work, all that risk, and it’s turned up nothing.’

  ‘It’s only been a few days,’ Charlie replies. ‘Patience is a virtue.’

  They’re in the living room of their underground compound – the Technodrome, as Raf still calls it, despite the others’ eye-rolls. They sip their coffee, still waking up. Charlie’s bright red hair sticks up from her head at all angles, the artificial light from the false window illuminating it like a halo. Raf has some code circling his head. The Viper they planted the other day in Sudice’s system has deleted itself and transmitted the results. Raf’s initial diagnosis is that they haven’t found anything concrete they can use against Sudice. A few lists of minor staff; a day’s record of the door entry to the lobby, which is slightly more useful.