Doc Truman surveyed the room: the closed shutters, the doors shut tight. His bleak expression sent a ripple of unease through the observers. “In my opinion Sleena has suffered traumas – terrible traumas, and more than just a few. Returning her memories to her will be painful, but without them she would not be herself.”
“Blah, blah,” she griped. “Can you just shunting start?”
“How painful?” Mason asked.
“Years’ worth,” Doc Truman said at last. “Compressed into minutes, or hours, their return could break her.”
Crystal rolled her eyes. “They won’t, but this frustration might. Just get on with it.”
Another implication struck Harmon. Earlier, she had repeated his words: repeating secrets, untouched by his controls. That meant the same could happen to other equally sensitive information, such as the existence of the Department. Who knew what she might cry out in extremity?
That the witnesses were limited to just these four could prove an unintended kindness. Briefly, he wished he had the design for a sound suppression spell. But this would be tricky enough as it was. Juggling a fourth spell….
He realized he was procrastinating, trying to delay the pain. The room fell silent as he cast his first spell, the mind probe.
Low enough for only her ears, he whispered, “I need to warn you of one more thing. You are more special than you know. You have been entrusted with deadly secrets. Spoken aloud, they would place death sentences on everyone here except you and I. Under no circumstances share your memories.”
“What secrets?” she asked.
Her too-loud question woke whispers from their witnesses, and Harmon in her mind read embarrassment.
“What secrets?” she said, far more softly.
“You don’t need to speak. To heal your mind I must monitor your thoughts. Just think your questions clearly to me.
“You and I work for a government agency protecting this country – including from one uncanny threat that dare not even be thought about.” For a moment, he considered telling her of the Foe, before realizing how insanely dangerous that would be in the circumstances.
She shook her head. ‘Sure, spamboy.’
“You will be able to judge for yourself – assuming you survive the shocks ahead.” He hesitated, then added, “You will hate me. But I did what I did for your own good.”
With those ominous words, once again Harmon cast the second and third spells, stacking each atop the one before, a feat of concentration few mages would attempt.
For the watchers, long minutes passed in which little appeared to happen. Doc Truman’s hands grew tense, sweat beading his brow
Then together, Sleena and he groaned.
Harmon and Leeth shared the memory of a four-year-old bouncing over a prairie, tears whipped from her cheeks into darkness. Harmon had seen this before, when he had first blocked it, her memory of being whisked away in the Sky Corn Tribe’s land yacht one night.
Outside, muffled by the heavy wooden doors, an argument began.
Sleena groaned again, her eyes still shut. Then her face lit with joy. “Faith!” she cried.
The next moment she and Doc Truman hunched in on themselves, teeth gritted, shivering. Sleena said nothing, simply rocked in her chair against her bonds, but the Doc jerked in shock. “What in the name of sanity!” His lips clamped shut. He had thought her tale of a killing frost, of Faith hauling her from it to safety, a mere child’s fantasy.
“Oh!” she cried out, then giggled.
The Doc blanched. In dismay, he shared her near death at her friend’s hands – paws? – when the cyborg dog’s laser shattered the rock face behind her. “Sweet buttered hell.” His experiment had nearly ended there and then, his subject aged just nine.
Forced to relive her childhood he gathered his resolve about him like armor, bracing for the torments to come. It failed to prepare him for an unexpected and far more recent memory: Leeth emerging from his mental bonds in a high-rise building, assassination completed, turning in horror from a birthday cake, red drops falling stark on white icing…
“Luiz!” she screamed, heartbreak hammering her afresh. Her eyes opened, glaring at the strangely familiar figure facing her, and threw herself against the heavy ropes in sudden recognition. “You bastard! Bastard!” She strained forward, the ropes tautening, creaking…
Behind them the doors flew open, slamming shut immediately as Marcie Dunkirk stormed into the room. “What the fuck is going on here?” she demanded, scanning the tableau and stalking forward, a taser pistol raised. “J-” she stopped and started again. “Sleena? Let’s get you out of here.”
Looking around, she singled out Mason, brandishing her weapon at him. “I’m not afraid to use this.”
Mason and Maeve both appeared more bemused than worried.
But even with his back to her Dr Alex Harmon had recognized the voice: Marcie Dunkirk. Of course. At the worst possible moment. Against his express statement to let ‘Jane’s parents’ deal with the problem.
Sleena stared sightlessly at the ground, lost in a storm of heartache at the enormity of what she’d done. I killed him; cut off his head. Yet certain the man she faced now had caused it. By my hands though. But how? How did I do that? The memory of death burned in her fingertips. Her hands spasmed, clawing for the ropes around her wrists.
“Sleena?” Marcie said again, edging closer. She kept an eye on the four spectators to this torture scene or whatever it was. “Jane?” she whispered, sidling around her friend so she could see the bald guy’s face too. “What’s going on?”
Jane’s head lifted, her eyes slowly focusing on her. Then she cringed. “Let me guess: I know you?”
Marcie’s mouth fell open. She turned to the bald man. He looked weird: a thick gray and black beard but no eyebrows at all, though his eyes burned with an intensity-
Recognition jolted through her. “You! I might have fucking known! What have you done to her? Let her go this instant!” She thrust the taser up under his chin.
Across the room, Maeve stood. “Cool your chips, girl. Assuming Sleena’s a friend of yours, you should know she’s lost her memories. Doc Truman’s trying to restore them. Now who the raping one percent are you?”
Marcie took a jerky step back, head shaking, her gaze jumping between the woman, Jane’s evil uncle, and Jane herself – who had a really weird expression on her face. Worry, shock, guilt….
“I call poll-shit. ‘Doc Truman?’ He’s not Doc Truman, he’s a monster! He’s controlled her and manipulated her all her life. If she’s lost her memories you can be sure as Hell he had something to do with it.”
She aimed her taser at him. “What’s really going on here, uh, ‘Sleena’?” Not wanting to let Jane’s foul uncle out of her sight, she spared a glance to her friend.
But Jane nodded, her jaw working. “Until just now, my earliest memory was this morning. Doc Truman’s fixing me.”
Marcie glared at him. “I just bet he is.” She studied the man. She’d only met him once, and that at night, in a park. But she’d seen him use his hold on Jane. He’d controlled her, ordering her about like she was just a bot.
She’d helped Jane break that control. “Make me shoot you again,” she threatened him.
Harmon made a casual gesture, once again looking relaxed, using it to cover his casting of a Suggestion spell. He felt Leeth’s friend unconsciously resist it, but knew it had at least partly slipped through her defenses. “I am acting here at the request of your friend, and hers – as well as her mother. Who, I believe, warned you not to interfere? Yet here you are.
“We all want her memories restored. Although her new friends,” he inclined his head toward Mason and Maeve, “say the situation is even more complex and twisted than anyone knew.”
“You know this sliv?” Maeve asked him.
“We have met,” Harmon admitted. To Marcie he said, “The more people who connect you to Sleena, the harder it will become for her to carry out her parents’ wishes.”
“Maybe that’d be best for her,” Marcie snapped, wondering if the woman she’d spoken to even was Jane’s mother?
“Who are her parents?” asked Mason. “What wishes?”
Harmon ignored the questions, speaking to Marcie. “Your actions also make you and your own family a target for Sleena’s enemies.” He added a mind probe spell to the Suggestion. “How did you know she was in trouble?”
“None of your biz. Like I told, uh, Sleena’s mother, it was pure luck. I just tried to call her.”
Harmon read the thought behind the story. The warning had come from her younger sister, Amanda. In a dream. How curious.
“You know my mother?” Sleena asked him.
Marcie looked from Jane to her uncle, and then to the others. All watching, avid. Jane’s uncle studied her too, with that smirk she’d instantly hated. No wonder Jane despised him.
His expression soured, like he’d heard the thought, and Marcie frowned. Are you reading my mind, you slimy-
“Do you know my mother?” Jane begged her.
From glaring at Truman, Marcie turned to her friend. “Not really. I’ve just spoken a few times by Link to a woman who claims to be your mother.”
“Claims?” Jane asked.
“Yeah, claims.” She jabbed her taser toward Jane’s uncle, but he only met her eyes and shook his head pityingly, as if to say ‘you’re making a terrible mistake’. She flushed.
“It doesn’t matter,” Sleena said. “We’re wasting time. When Doc Truman restores my memories, I’ll know all this.”
Marcie’s finger tightened on the trigger. “No. You can’t trust him. Get someone else to do it. Anyone else.
“Tell me, did he try to use any strange phrase on you since you’ve met, Sleena? Maybe a collection of nonsense words, or a weird phrase that didn’t make sense? He has this control phrase he uses, to make you do anything he says. It’s like it makes you his slave. I bet that’s what he wants to do now.
“He might restore your memories, but it’ll cost you your freedom.”
Crystal looked from Doc Truman, who’d already brought back some of her memories, to the angry determined girl who clearly knew her. I trust her, she realized. She wasn’t sure why she did, but she did.
So, had Doc Truman whispered to her? She didn’t think so. “Did he, Mason? You or Maeve would’ve heard.”
The two exchanged a look. Maeve raised one eyebrow, and Mason shook his head.
“Not necessarily,” he said, slowly. “Not if he whispered to you. Did he?”
She eyed Doc Truman, sitting with arms folded, looking bored. But was that just an act? “Before we started, here, he did. He whispered that I was special. That I know secrets that could get you all killed if you knew them.”
“Burn the puking plastic, that I can believe,” said Maeve. She turned to Truman. “All the same, you knew both Sleena and Miss Mystery Bitch here, and Sleena’s maybe-parents. But you never mentioned any of that.”
“For good reason, which you will be able to confirm with Sleena herself after her memory is restored. But there is literally no one else who could help her. Memories are sets of linked neurons – complex patterns in a vast space. Only someone with my unique and specific knowledge can repair those faded and torn networks. Otherwise you would fill her head with false memories. It’s easily done – that fact has been known a hundred years, long before magic’s return.
“Only I can restore her memories, because only I know what traces of memory in her brain are true, and what fantasy. As well, I sincerely doubt there is another mage on the planet with a spell suited to such a repair.”
“So we have to trust you?” sneered Marcia.
“You have to admit it does seem to be working,” Mason said. “George didn’t get far.”
“Let him try,” said Sleena, the words pulled from her like teeth.
“A minute ago you were calling him a bastard!” objected Maeve. “Looked like you wanted to kill him.”
“And you said a sentient AI might reclaim her if her memories were not restored.” Harmon stood. “But I will not force my help where it is unwanted.”
“Sentient AI? What?” demanded Marcie.
Mason threw up his hands. “Look, we don’t have a smekking choice. Doc Truman’s right. And if he’s the only game in town, we have to play the cards he’s dealing.”
Sleena snarled. “I swear, if you all don’t stop arguing I’m gonna tear myself free and toss every one of you out! It’s my head. I’m the one who’s lost her memories. It’s my choice. Now sit down, shut up, and let Doc Truman do his freaking spell.” She glared at each of them in turn.
“Doc Truman,” sniffed Marcie. “More like Doc Lieman.”
Sleena growled, low in her throat.
“Fine!” Marcie snapped. “But I’ll be telling you ‘I told you so’ when he double-crosses your innocent butt!” She snarled into her Link: “Vince. She doesn’t want to be rescued yet. Just wait there.” Stalking to the side of the room opposite the other watchers, she threw herself into a chair, pointing two fingers in a ‘V’ from her own eyes to Jane’s evil uncle.
“Go sit with the others,” he ordered her. “You will object once I begin. Let them answer your objections. Just try to hold your inane whispering to a minimum. You treat this like a carnival show, but it is psychic brain surgery.”
He lifted a hand as she opened her mouth. “And the reason I know you will object is because the return of her memories will make her relive years of trauma. She will scream. It may break her.”
“I won’t break.”
They all heard the determination in Sleena’s voice – but everyone doubted her strength.
Everyone but Marcie. “Just call for my help if you need a hand to hold,” she said. “I’m here.”
Sleena saw she meant that – really meant it. She believes in me.
“Then perhaps you will change your seat now?” Doc Truman said, looking at Marcie.
“Yeah. Yeah, you know what, I will!”
Marcie stood, but instead of joining the others, dragged a chair up alongside her friend and gripped one bound hand in both hers. “Why wait to be asked though, hey?” she said, her grin lop-sided.
Sleena felt a surge of warmth and hope at the touch. Is this what love feels like?
“Brain surgery,” Harmon admonished Marcie, glaring at her. “Do not jog my elbow.”
Marcie squeezed her friend’s hand, giving her a reassuring smile. “Just don’t crush my fingers.”
“Don’t let him stop, even if it looks like I’m hurting. I can handle it.” A shiver of doubt ran through her, half felt memories stirring. She braced herself for a warning pain… that never came. The absence only deepened her unease.
Once again, Harmon cleared his thoughts and recast the spells. Once again eased his spells past the obstruction of the manufactured objects planted in her brain. Closing his eyes, ignoring Marcie Dunkirk, he restarted the gentle healing, reinforcing wispy strands, mending others. Pouring life back into the damaged and eroded mental landscape.
Each watcher, seeing the young woman bound and helpless in the chair, struggled to reconcile the innocence on that face with the history they knew.
For Crystal herself – or am I Sleena? Or Jane, or… whoever – as the magic flowed, deep inside she felt a part of her, a tiny stubborn flame, gasp in relief and flare brighter. Determined. Never give up.
As long minutes trickled past, a gamut of emotions crossed her face – wonder: a child, dancing with spirits through a jungle with Faith, tongue lolling, trying to keep up. Joy: prowling darkened grounds with the war-dog at her side. Shock: Faith’s laser, blasting rock. Determination: plunging through a ceiling to save Godsson. Excitement: her first love-making, with- Disbelief: him? Why had she chosen him? Remembering how she’d felt, the urgency, the power – it seemed pure madness, now. Had he made her feel that way somehow? Then dismay: his coldness, disappointment.
The bitterness of betrayal: letting him bind her magically. Tricked into ceding control.
“No-o-o!” she wailed, wracked. A part of her called for it to stop, but she needed to know it all.
Harmon, sharing her journey, burned in caustic shame. Bowing his head, knowing and dreading what still lay ahead. Wishing he could stop now; leave the job half done, his worst crimes forgotten.
But Leeth needed to be herself. She had earned herself.
Feeling tears leaking that he had vowed never to shed, he pushed on.
Horror: torture. Literal, physical and mental torture, of the worst kind. Taunting her for her weakness, during it. Healing her, after.
Rage, fury… until she erupted, thrashing in her bonds. “You bastard! Monster! I’ll kill you! Kill you!” She lunged forward, determined to stop him.
Marcie, eyes fixed on his in angry horror, felt her fingers crushed, her bones break. But she glared at her friend’s foul uncle through that agony, only able to guess the depths of hell he’d dragged her through. She accepted that pain, to share some of Jane’s.
Vaguely, she was aware of an odd blue tinge appearing on his cheeks.
Harmon, deep in Leeth’s mind, seeing the Imaginal, felt it rise like a black cloud, flowering from a seed of fury. He flinched back as her eyes washed out in a lapis lazuli glow that could mean only one thing: Tezcatlipoca. The vast horror began pushing through from elsewhere, hungry.
“No!” screamed Leeth, “he’s mine!”
And then, in terror, Harmon saw her drag a god back inside herself and thrust it away.
He could only stare in shock at what he’d just witnessed, heart hammering, his whole body trembling, hands shaking like some palsied ancient’s.
In contrast, the impossible feat appeared to have appeased Leeth. Panting, she glared at him, death in her eyes.
But as his terror ebbed, remorse and horror rose in equal crushing weights to take its place. With relentless clarity he saw how Leeth clung to her fury at him – its certainty providing an anchor for her sanity.
So be it. It was a price he deserved to pay; that he willingly paid; that he would keep on paying.
He looked around, gathering his wits, realizing none of the fools here had seen what he had, had no idea how close they had all come to Death. He met Leeth’s eyes again.
He saw that fury… but in wonder, deeper still, saw the tiny core of stubborn hope. Inextinguishable. Indomitable.
If Leeth ever failed, it would not be through giving up, he understood in that moment. Not ever.
Breathing deep, he pushed on.