KINGSLEY MOTIONED FOR her to be silent as the front door of her house shut behind them. A subtle look that said not yet lingered in his eyes. She nodded, accepting the command for now, but barely stifling the blaze of questions inside of her. Every neuron in her head was demanding answers, something to cure the bubbling insanity. She could feel her power stirring inside of her, clinging onto her guts like a lead weight. The urge crooned to her in the back of her mind: use me.
Kingsley led her down an alley between the last two houses on the row and stopped in front of an idling black Audi waiting for them.
"Don't even say it, kid."
"The Chancellor's eyes—."
He shoved her against the wall. "You're putting us both in danger!"
"They glowed." She gritted her teeth as her hands grazed the brickwork. "You saw it too."
"I saw nothing, and so did you."
She dropped her bag on the floor and pushed him away, "You're afraid, aren't you?"
"I ain't afraid of self-preservation, kid. In fact, I think it's mighty fine."
"And you're going to let him walk around freely?"
His head snapped up and his eyes narrowed sharply. A leer on his lips.
"I'm letting you, aren't I?" he said bitterly.
She bit her tongue. He had stumped her on that one. She scooped up her bag and tossed it through the open window of the Audi onto the backseat. So much for a happy mutualistic working relationship with a police officer. For all she cared, once she helped him catch these killers—and guaranteed she stayed on the right side of the Wall—he could go on his merry way. He caught her arm before she got in the car.
He put his mouth to her ear, "Think very wisely about what you say next," he said.
"Shouldn't you worry about what I do?"
"Eva . . ."
"He had an aura and you knew it too," she said, "I'm gonna prove it."
She shot a glare at his hand and he retracted it quickly, closing the door on her. She let out a quick sigh of relief and sunk back onto the leather seat. Kingsley got in the door opposite her, he didn't spare her a look but instead murmured a word of instruction to the driver. The car purred into gear and slid smoothly out the alley.
"What now?" she asked, forcing a sense of calm as her house disappeared around the bend.
He didn't look up from clenching the rim of his hat, "We've got an appointment."
"With who?"
"You'll see."
***
Eva couldn't stop fidgeting as they drove across the city. Passing checkpoint and checkpoint, but only her and the driver had to expose their tattoos to the Reapers. Kingsley, it seemed, had special treatment that with a nod of his head they let them through.
She was sceptical as the sleek black Audi pulled up outside a shop in eastern London, the loosely named Section Two—or the Void district—and told her this was it. Section Two was famous for all the illegal deeds of the capital. The ground here was scorched black bearing the echoes of the firebombs and the riots that descended here every year. Black stains blotted the skanky brick work that made the houses look like they were one shiver away from falling down.
The outside of the shop was scattered with old newspapers, bits of broken glass and shards of metal from the last riots that had ruled the street. Old posters bearing the last Prime Minister's face sat crumpled on the nearest brick wall, shadowed by the gleaming red 'EVICITION' notices that lined each panel of the glass.
"Where are we?" she asked, getting out of the car and shutting the door behind her.
Kingsley tilted his hat, "A clinic for memory retrieval."
"An illegal one?" She judged by the state of the shop.
"This whole ordeal is off the books, and we're gonna keep it that way."
"If you say so."
She knocked on the heavily reinforced front door but on the second knock the door wrenched open. A scatty man in a stained dressing gown stood in its place. He glared at Kingsley, ignoring her. Red spots, almost puncture holes adorned his wiry frame.
"You're banned," he sneered at Kingsley.
"If it wasn't for me you'd be arrested by now."
"Last time you were here you shot a paying patron! You're bad for business." He looked at her and eyed her up and down disgusted. "Her too, both of you can fuck off out of here. You and your bitch of a girlfriend."
"Hey!" she shouted, pushing past him and into the threshold. She shoved him up against the wall. "Have some goddamn respect!"
The man cackled, "Is this your new project now, Detective? Some fucking sick game? How many Voids you can burn through before you get an answer? Is she going to end up like the last one too?"
"I need a favour." Kingsley's eyes darkened. "And then we'll be gone."
"You're bloody bold, you know that?" the man snapped.
"The Reapers—."
"All right, all right! I didn't expect the whole bloody package when you arrived. It was supposed to be you only. Get in. Get in, both of you." The man pushed her off him and adjusted his dressing gown.
Eva retracted her hand, half tempted to wipe it on her trousers—still feeling the takeaway grease from his clothes on her hand—but thought better of it. He punched a key code into the keypad behind her head and the door swung shut automatically. Deadbolts sliding across it. He turned and squeezed around them down the narrow corridor.
She gagged as the stench of decay hit her nostrils. Brown stains, bloodstains she'd guess if she had to, blotted the threadbare navy carpet. Door frames draped with smoky curtains lined the walls of the corridor, a monotone whirling coming from behind them. She ignored Kingsley and followed the man down the corridor.
Behind each curtain came methodical clicking, machines working by the sounds of it. She let them wander ahead and hesitated to pull back one of the curtains. An old man in his sixties lay on a bed in the centre of the room, surrounded by medical machines and a woman in black drapes who held his hand. Psychiatric straps held him down as he twitched violently.
And I'm the next one up.
She looked over her shoulder. The door wasn't that far away. She still had time to run. She could make the door open with her mind if she had to.
"Eva?"
Damn it.
"C'mon," Kingsley said, nodding his head at large black door at the end of the hallway.
Everything in Eva's head screamed abandon ship. Her foot stepped forwards on instinct and she staggered her way down the corridor, trailing her fingers along the curling striped wallpaper. The man had begun to unravel a thick chain from his neck—complete with key—and slid it into the lock midway up in the black door.
Kingsley regarded her as she faltered beside him, "I thought you were gonna bail."
"It tempted me," she said.
"We need to do this."
She knew he meant: I need you to do this.
"So what do we call you?" she asked the man.
"Me? How about we settle on the technician for now?" He shrugged. "We'll talk about names when you're not dead."
She stared at the technician's head as he disappeared through the door into the room. Trying to detect a shred of an aura but it wasn't there. He flicked a switch and an industrial light glared on. She squinted against the light and edged forwards into the room.
Two medical beds lay side by side in the middle of the room. Not one. Inches thick straps that should've belonged to an execution bed dangled from the sides of them. Blood splatters spotted the chrome bases of the beds. The technician wandered the room, turning on medical equipment—heart rate monitors and scanners—and pulled an IV stand out from the corner of the room.
"So where'd you want to go this time, Detective?" He crossed his arms.
Kingsley pushed her forwards, "Her head, not mine."
"Wait, what?" she said, edging back. "You said nothing about getting in my head."
The technician rolled his eyes, "Dreamscaping is a non-invasive process—."
"I don't care if it is or not! You're going into my head!"
"Actually, it'll be you and I," Kingsley said, "and it's a dream, not a hallucination, so you're in control."
She put two and two together.
"You'd want me to relive the murders," she breathed, "you're sick. Bloody sick . . ."
"It's to process the memories, kid! The thousands of details, millions of details that your eyes process that your brain stores in the irrelevant section. He brings those memories forwards and we...we rewatch them, yes."
She tightened her hand over the ends of her sleeves and rubbed her thumb against the stiffened fabric. Caked in dried blood from the last night. All the suppressed memories thundered back into her head. The screams. The gunfire. The blood, that...rancid, moist irony smell of blood. She could still smell the blood on her clothes. That drying, sour iron smell that she couldn't shake.
"I need a sec," she said.
The technician's head snapped up and he gave her a wary look. "Bathroom's out the back."
Her mouth went dry, "Thanks."
Her stomach clenched as she stumbled her way out of the room and towards the shop's single bathroom. Shoving the door out of her way she clutched onto the chipped porcelain sink, she hung her head over it heaving. She heaved what little her stomach could muster into the sink. Pain stung behind her eyes as she grabbed onto the shelf above her head, digging her nails into the wood. Bile burned her throat, she gagged but managed to keep the second wave down.
Kingsley was mad. Utterly mad.
The floorboards creaked behind her, "I threw up first time, too. After, rather than before . . ."
"Do you know how insane this sounds?" she muttered into the sink.
"An hour ago you dented a car with your anger."
"Tell me about it."
He handed her a scrap of tissue to wipe her mouth with. She leant against the cracked tiled bathroom wall and regarded him. A silent thanks. He took off his hat and scratched his head.
"I won't force you, but—."
"Remember your deal with the PM," she sighed, "yep."
"You ready to go? Or do you fancy throwing up again?"
Her stomach rumbled as her mouth watered. Damn she was hungry, but she didn't want to think about food. She wiped the sweat from her brow and nodded. She pulled her limp auburn hair up into a messy bun and followed him back out in the dream-room. The technician had altered the lighting in the room a bit so that the fading green paintwork read:
Memory Retrieval Service
Your finest dreams for a small fee!
He smirked at her and waved one of the IV lines at her. "Adrenaline," he said, "for if you mess up."
"How can we mess up?" she asked dryly. "It's a dream."
He shoved her onto one of the beds and strapped her arms in. Leaning close to her face so she could see each of his individual yellow teeth. "You fuck up, darling, by staying longer than three minutes. You'd fry your empty little nut-shell of a brain."
Kingsley lay down on the bed beside her. One of the veiled women from the other room emerged and went over to him, strapping him in, too. Eva held back a hiss as the needle pierced her vein, a flash of Dr. Hillary's office seared in her mind but she quickly squashed it. She'd be revisiting it soon enough.
Kingsley turned to look at her as the technician started to strap her legs in. "Eva," he said.
"What?"
"Don't freak out."
She glared at him, "Your faith in me is admirable."
The heart rate monitors were stuck onto her. The final strap around her chest tightened, almost rib-crushingly so. She lay back and stared at the ceiling, taking deep slow breaths. Don't freak out, right, she could do that. The woman took her hand in hers—wrapping it in her deathly cold hands—and sat between the beds. Linking up with Kingsley, too.
The technician walked into her field of view. "Sweet dreams, you two," he said.
A stabbing pain scoured at the inside of her head. Digging. Scratching. Like a hag's nails on a chalkboard. She arched her back to get away from it. This was wrong. So, so wrong. Someone as drilling into her skull. This was torture. She withered and screamed, clenching her fists.
The digging stopped.
A thin, white corridor filled her field of vision. She cracked open her eyelids and managed to sit upright. Specks filled her sight. Blood speckled the walls, flicking blood onto the walls as if it was mere paint. She got to her feet and swayed, spotting Kingsley further down the corridor getting to his feet, too.
The gunshots had stopped for now. The last of the guards were dead.
"Where were they?" Kingsley asked.
She looked around, trying to orientate herself. Recreating the path she and Dr. Hillary had took. The bold L4 stamp leapt out at her. "That way."
He grabbed her arm, "Remember, everything you see in your dream you've already seen."
"I know," she said, "doesn't make it easier," she added under her breath.
She swallowed and moved deeper into the corridor, eyeing up the size of the bullet holes and memorising the spray direction they'd hit in. Not daring to see if there was a body in the opposite direction.
A man's foot edged out over the corner of the corridor, shuddering, in the clutches of death. She looked away quickly.
"I don't remember this," she said.
"Your brain does. It processes millions of details, but your consciousness only processes a few," Kingsley said. "Try not to look at them."
She rounded the corner and spotted the black mist dimming the overhead strips of light. The Pariahs stood further forwards, in front of her past-self. She moved around them, seeing the blood from her hand drip onto the floor in slow motion – she'd just managed to grab the glass.
"Shit," Kingsley breathed, "you weren't kidding."
She shot him a glare, "Good to know."
She edged closer to the lead Pariah. The guy who'd confronted her. Dr. Hillary's body lay slumped against the wall, the hole in his chest fresh and raw. Even in her dream she could smell him burning. She traced it back to the lead Pariah, catching the sparks from the lightning on his fingertips. The aura from his eyes much clearer now. Brighter. An aura of lilac, nearly violet.
Find the details, she told herself. Kingsley moved around the Pariahs, observing them and making mental notes as far as she could tell. She walked around him, trying not to get in the way, when she spotted an engraving on the briefcase.
R.B.I.C.
She memorised it and looked away quickly before Kingsley noticed she'd found something.
"Is the building still here?" she asked.
"Bits of it," Kingsley said, measuring the heights of the men against himself.
"But not enough to recreate the scene."
"Focus, will you? We're on a time limit."
"Fine," she said. She stared at the Pariahs. "This one was the leader, he was in control—" she touched the guy with the lightning. "—and this one must've controlled the portal."
Kingsley stood up and frowned. "What's wrong with this picture, kid?" he asked.
She looked at the scene. Two dead guards on the floor, Dr. Hillary dead, too, her past-self holding onto the glass, and the two Pariahs bearing down on her. Arguing with each other. She fought the urge to say: 'everyone is dead?'
Kingsley took over, "The Pariahs have no shadow."
"So?"
"They're mirages."
"I don't—."
"If you're a telekinetic, then they're in league with a very powerful Pariah," he said. "We need to go. Now!"
He rushed away from her, towards a blank space in the corridor. There wasn't a wall or a floor. The dream world ended right there, the escape from the memories. She watched him fall through it before she stole another look at the scene. At the machine gun on the floor, the empty magazine beside it. The Pariahs stood in the blood from the murdered citizens.
She felt the dream receding as the details blurred out.
There were only two Pariahs. But there was three sets of footprints leaving the blood.
She knew, she remembered, that she never crossed the blood.
The dream wobbled around her. Like a television trying to tune in. Static, shaped like a man, rose up from the floor. The man struck his arm out, reaching towards her. He could see her. The dream version of her. As if he was in her head with her. Real, like her.
Her stomach twisted as she stumbled over Dr. Hillary's body as she retreated. The man fined down in details, everything black like death, except for his teeth—shining white in a leer.
"Hello, my dear Eva," he said.
The exit of the dream was behind the man. Every nerve in her body screamed at her to escape.
She smacked against the nearest wall, "Kingsley, get me out of here!"
The man advanced, a butcher's knife in hand.
". . . bring her out of it, god damn it!"
This wasn't a part of her. Consciousness, memories or anything. This was new. Fresh. A virus hacking her mind. And she knew it posed a very real threat.
". . . you're killing my business partner—."
"And you're killing my lead witness!"
She concentrated. Feeling the crushing aura coming off the man and refusing to let it cave her in. She clenched her fists, trying to stir up her own power. Even if it would knock the knife out of man's hand. He was closer now, metres. Then inches. She could feel his breath. He laughed and reached forwards—.
Pain stabbed through her chest. She lunged upright. Gasping and fighting whatever was trying to pin her down. The heartrate monitor beside her blared with her galloping heart. Two strong hands pinned her down as she heard something crack. The blurriness edged from her vision, she realised it was tears, and spotted Kingsley holding her shoulders down and the technician pointing his Taser at her chest.
"We tasered you more than once," the technician said, "you didn't wake up."
"There were three," she panted looking at Kingsley. "Three Pariahs."
"I know," he said. "The last one is the Illusionist."
"You know him?"
"He's supposed to be dead."
Her heart slowed at that, "Supposed to be?"
"I shot him." He undid the straps and helped her up. "Someone really wants you dead."
She slid off the chair and onto a small heap on the floor. Bits of dust fell from the ceiling. A massive crumple in the plaster and she knew it was her fault. She rummaged through her bag and pulled out a grey scarf, tying it around her neck and breathing deeply into it—smelling her old perfume. Steadily the heart rate monitor returned to normal.
Kingsley helped her to her feet, "We need to go. There's been another murder. A politician in a hotel near Millwall Docks."
"They're beating us."
He smiled wryly, "Then let's get a move on."