Vacant (20 page)

I left the paid-for food on the table and followed, dodging condemning thoughts from the old lady and all the others. So I hadn't picked up after myself. This was more important.

Wait up,
I sent to Tommy as he moved to the crosswalk. That kid was slipperier than a fish on a line. Worse, because there was no line.
You know you need to stay close to me.

“My friends are here,” he said, words heard more with my mind than my ears. “You're a liar anyway.”

I stayed a pace or two behind, my lungs struggling as I broke out into a half run. Tommy was already halfway across the street, headed straight for that school bus full of
kids—it was his school district written on the side of the bus, and a teacher with Ability lead the way into the courthouse. Kids everywhere.

She greeted Tommy when he came up to her, and I stood impatiently on the side of the street waiting for another break in the traffic. I never should have told him. I never should have taken him out of the controlled situation in the courthouse, no matter how hungry and anxious I was. I should have tied him to the damn chair in the deli, something. A black sedan with tinted windows stopped in the middle of the street with a screech of tires, nearly getting hit by the car behind it, which reared up on its anti-grav to stop the collision; the sedan bounced back, then up, above the car behind it, before settling with the driver cursing up a storm. I threw myself to the side, away from it. What the hell?

The sedan crossed traffic—highly illegal—and screeched into a spot next to the school bus.

The teacher yelled at the kids to back up, but they all were staring, not moving.

Four men got out of the sedan. Four men in ski masks, one of whom had a mind I knew, a mind I'd been looking for in the crowd for days.

The kids yelled now, but it was too late. I was running, uncaring of the cars, thirty feet to go. Only thirty.

One of the guys was Sibley; I was sure of it. And he was here. I didn't how in the hell he was here, but he was. Everyone was reacting.

And worse, he had an object the size of his hand, and he was lifting it up. Crap! The device. I was in trouble. There was no way I could block the device, not here, not now. My heart spiked with fear, but I ran harder.

But—but—he dropped it like a stone on the ground, and a blinding flash came. A noise like immeasurable thunder.

And I was on the ground next to the bus, a hundred
minds around me overcome with confusion, my mind overcome with a kaleidoscope of pain. I couldn't think. I couldn't breathe. And distantly, I felt Tommy's mind panic, panic on a whole new level.

They were taking him, I thought, before I passed out. They were taking him and I'd failed. I'd failed.

Pain flew across
my cheekbone and I woke up. Mendez had her hand up to slap me again, but I grabbed it. Our minds half merged for an instant before she knocked me out, pulling her hand away with a shocked and nasty look on her face.

“That was unnecessary,” she said.

“Your fault,” I said, and struggled to sit up. “Touching a telepath with no warning is bad for everybody. How long was I out?” I demanded from a mostly seated position. The grit from the roadway was under my hands and I only saw cars forward and back, cars, Mendez, and two uniformed police officers.

There was a man darting across traffic coming toward us—my sluggish mind identified him as Quentin, Tommy's father.

I grabbed Mendez's sleeve—the sleeve, not her arm, and pulled her toward me. “Where is Tommy?” And what in hell had Sibley thrown on the ground? I hadn't been prepared for that. I hadn't understood that.

Her face went completely blank. “They got him.” I'd fallen down on the job, she was thinking, but with that kind of coordination, the bad guys had been planning something for a long time. “They shot a security guard and the kids
said they took him away. The guard shot one of them first, though. They left him behind.”

I released her sleeve, stomach and head both feeling sick, and pushed myself swaying to my feet. The world wobbled, but I breathed deep and breathed through it. “I need to talk to the guy they left behind.”

“He's out cold,” Mendez said. “Jarrod wouldn't let him go to the hospital, but the paramedics are working now. He may not wake up.”

I checked my body, checked my mind for damage. I wasn't good, but I was functional. The bad part, though—the connection I'd had with Tommy was torn, like a mostly unraveled rope in the back of my brain, just holding on by a thread. I didn't dare mess with it for fear even that would break.

It had happened. The thing I had been working against, fighting against, missing Cherabino to prevent—the thing had happened. The vision had happened or would happen. It was inevitable now, and every second I delayed in acting was one more chance Tommy would die.

Tommy—the kid—the interesting, slippery, fun prototelepath I'd been guarding, he could die. He could truly die now if I didn't do something.

I was angry now, angry and guilty and worse. “I need to talk to the guy,” I said. “I don't care what it costs us.”

*   *   *

They'd taken the attacker into an internal room of the courthouse, what looked like the break room for the security personnel. Two of them stood at the front, defensive and ready to fight.

I told their minds I was okay and pushed through. Either they'd fight it or they wouldn't, and Mendez was less than a minute behind me. She could sort it out.

Inside, Jarrod and Loyola and two paramedics stood over a guy in a ski mask currently on a stretcher at hip level.

“He's going to bleed to death,” the first of the uniformed paramedic hissed at Jarrod. “I've got one bag of blood in his type, and we're through that. You're costing a man his life.”

“He doesn't—” Jarrod saw me then. His lips were in one thin line.

“I'm here,” I said. “I can get the information. You want to know anything other than where they've taken Tommy? I'll have seconds, at most.” I didn't add that I'd likely cause permanent damage to the guy—memory loss if he was lucky. Information retrieval from someone who was unconscious was a brute-force, cruel thing, but I'd had the training and right now I didn't give a shit whether I hurt him. Not if it would save Tommy's life.

“You can't talk to him right now,” the other paramedic said, a woman this time, and calmer. “Not a chance in hell. You let us take him to the hospital and get him real care, you can talk to him in a few hours. Otherwise he's going to die for no good reason.”

“Do it,” Jarrod said. “Location is all I want.”

I paused, conscience fighting with the desperation of the situation. “Be aware this is unethical,” I told him.

“You get me the information in the next ten minutes, and I'll authorize any tactics you take,” Jarrod said.

I didn't know whether to be grateful or irritated, or even to hate him. But I didn't have time to do any of those. Tommy's life was on the line, and it was my fault. I stepped up next to the stretcher. Loyola was looking at me differently, like I was a threat now. He didn't approve of torture, of any kind, and he was sure I was about to do something he would call torture. He wasn't wrong.

I met the woman paramedic's eyes. “You want your patient to survive, you will back up at least four feet. You do
not
approach until I give you the okay. That applies to everyone,” I said louder. “Give me three minutes and then you can take him to the hospital.”

The paramedic looked at Jarrod; Jarrod nodded, and everyone backed up. Loyola had his hand near his gun. He thought he was surreptitious, but I saw the decision in his mind.

It didn't matter. I took a deep breath, and regretted. I regretted this already, and under any other circumstances I'd kick myself in the ass before I'd even consider it. But Tommy had been terrified, and it was my fault. That vision—that horrible vision—was very likely to come to pass unless I moved now.

I forced absolute calm. Then, ruthlessly, I did something I'd only ever done once before, in a life-or-death situation directly authorized by the Guild. I dove directly in an unconscious man's mind, without permission. I wasn't gentle—I couldn't be—but I wasn't any more cruel than I had to be either.

I surfaced, feeling exhausted and dirty, exactly two minutes later. “Patient's yours,” I told the paramedics, and sat down in one of the chairs on the outside of the room.

I would say this for them; they moved. In the space of two deep breaths, they had him prepped and out the door. It slammed behind them.

And I hated myself. I hated myself intensely in that moment, for crossing that ethical line. I'd have to live with it for the rest of my life, and it would hurt. But if I could save Tommy, I would take on that and more.

I looked up at Jarrod. “Keenan didn't know what the final destination was, but they're abandoning the car just
outside River Street and moving on foot for a little over two miles until they hit the next transport.”

Loyola scowled at me.

“Where on River Street?” Jarrod asked, his tone of voice urgent.

I shook my head, the bits of memory and discussions and decisions that weren't mine floating around like snow in a snow globe, refusing to settle into patterns despite my desperation. “I'm still sorting the images,” I said. “Probably I'll get it on the way.” I prayed I would get it on the way, or I'd crossed that line for nothing.

Jarrod nodded, then spoke to Loyola. “I need you to stay and coordinate with the locals and the house security to get a grid search going. I want the major air routes shut down—shut down, you understand? Along with the ports. I'm trusting you to get it done.”

“I'll go with the teep,” Loyola said flatly. “You've got more favors out in this city than I do right now, and we need it fast.”

Jarrod thought, then nodded.

“You going to be able to handle this?” he asked me, in that tone of voice that cops use to make a question an order.

“Yeah,” I said, and pulled to my feet again. I felt like utter and complete crap, but I was functional and the vision—and Tommy's panic from earlier—would not let me go. I would push through the pain. “I'll handle it if it kills me.”

*   *   *

As we entered downtown, I was still sorting through the images in my head. Loyola sat next to me, his disapproval tangible in the air of the small car.

I couldn't think about what I'd done to that man, not now, not even as I was rummaging through his memories with everything that was in me. I had to think about
Tommy, not my stupidity and failure at losing him, not his death in the vision, but the possibility of saving him. To stay sane, at any cost I had to think of saving him.

I wanted to run away. I wanted my drug with every ounce of my body. It didn't matter. If there was any chance in hell I could save him, I had to try. I had to believe I could.

The van crossed over some invisible boundary, and the tires started bumping on cobblestones,
bump, bump, bumpity-bumpity-bump.
The driver from the sheriff's department hit the anti-grav then, and we popped up two feet before settling with a lurch that bothered my stomach. The car skimmed barely above the ramp then, occasionally touching down with a tap against a higher stone as it made its way down to the river. Using the anti-grav was an energy-expensive way to do this, but that was what the fusion drive was for, and the gravity fields didn't interfere with Mindspace, so I didn't really care. If anything, though, it made the car move slower down the cobblestone ramp.

Around us were a mix of very old and very new buildings, all either two hundred years old or built within the last thirty. As we got farther into downtown, the new ones gave way almost completely to the older. A few buildings were vacant, abandoned, and the air felt strange around them. I wondered how much pollution they had, and what the impact of the Tech Wars had been around this area. There were some strange toxins that had gotten out in Atlanta—had they had similar or worse here?

The driver brought the nose of the car up with a lurch, and the tires went
bumpity-bump
on a level surface then, buildings on our left, the river on our right. He found a flat parking area next to the river, pulled into a spot, and turned back to me. “Where are we going? I've given you all the time I've got.”

“Give me one second,” I said, and held up a hand when he was about to tell me off again. “Just one.”

Heart beating too quickly, all the pressure of the world on my shoulders, I tried one more time to force Keenan's fractured memories into some semblance of order. He knew they were going to the cobblestone area, on foot. He knew roughly where it would be, but we were already in the rough area he'd specified. I was frustrated, and I felt like crap, and I was genuinely worried about Tommy. I used that to push aside all of the other worries, and focus.

I went back to the fragile connection half-broken in the back of my head, and it turned on like a lightbulb. I backed away, and it disappeared, then approached, and it begged for attention. This was strange. This was so strange. I could feel his fear, and a desire to talk to me or anyone who could help, and more important, those emotions came with a sense of direction.

“Where is he?” Loyola asked me, his disapproval loud and clear between us.

“I don't know,” I said, eyes still closed. “But I can tell you direction. Let's play a little game of hot-cold.” I pointed in the direction I was feeling.

The driver asked, “How far?”

I thought about it. “He's moving, but not fast. Keenan's buddy said they were going to move by foot at one point. It's . . . up. They're above our level, maybe on one of those ramps down.”

Loyola had an affirmative feeling, like he was nodding. “On foot, then.”

*   *   *

River Street was a long street squeezed in between a muddy river and a wall of ancient buildings with the occasional covered tunnel; its ground-level shops saw little sunlight in the wake of the height of the buildings on top of them. On
the ground floor, boarded-up and abandoned buildings rubbed shoulders with stately restaurants and tawdry tourist shops. A tattoo shop on the ground floor under an overhang advertised bioluminescents in the window, but its door was a supermaterial advertised to be break-in proof. A small stream of tourists dressed brightly walked past a homeless man half in an alley full of cobblestones and trash.

Above, a man leaned out over a metal railing of a hotel balcony, the intricate shapes of the metal nearly lost in the coating of old rust. He smoked a cigarette and looked down on the dark street below. In another window high up, a woman stood in profile wearing very little. In another, a sign advertised accountant services. River Street smelled, of mud and perfume and old sweat, of bright dreams and dead hopelessness, of mold and mildew mixed with the freshly cooling pralines from the candy store at the street's end.

I felt overwhelmed. This was an old place, a place that advertised ghosts for ghost tours, and I could feel them, not spirits left behind—so far as I knew there were no spirits left behind—the debris and remaining emotions of hundreds of years of continuous human habitation, of death and danger and hope and love all baked together like the layers of a lasagna Cherabino's grandmother served at Sunday dinner, layers and layers of one thing after another until they baked into one messy, settled whole. Mindspace was dense here, and full of echoes upon echoes. It was also full near to bursting with people's minds in every direction, which made it hard to keep Tommy's fear in front of me. Years of Guild training made it possible—but only just, like the half-heard memory of a song from two years ago.

Worse, Tommy's fear-sense was getting quieter. He was tired, and there would eventually come a time in which even Guild training wouldn't let me pick up the signal. I kept myself very, very still, straining to hear that signal.

I kept following that sense to a ramp intended for cars, winding up to the street level above, cobblestones threatening to turn my ankles with every step. Loyola followed behind, like a shadow of disapproval. A restaurant was to our right, a cloud of fried smells hitting me as a door opened to their back alley, part of the main cobblestone riser here. A man in a dirty apron emptied a trash can into a dumpster with a
clang.

The feeling ended here for a moment, but when I stopped and concentrated . . .

“Where is he?” Loyola rumbled.

“You're not helping,” I said.