Mindwalker by AJ Steiger Page A

sigh escapes me before I can stop it. Then sensations flow into me—Steven’s heartbeat, the expansion and contraction of his lungs, the sweat dampening his armpits and palms, the tension in his muscles, the nervous way he jiggles one leg and taps his fingers against the chair’s arm. The duality is always disorienting, like existing in two places at once. For an instant, my identity wavers, and I
am
Steven Bent. I am the boy desperately trying to escape his past, the boy whose focus is on surviving this day, this hour, this moment. The boy who still hopes, in spite of himself.
    I keep my eyes closed and focus on breathing.
Lain Fisher. Mindwalker. Seventeen years old. Brown hair, brown eyes. Likes chocolate and sad music. Particularly violins.
I repeat the words until my sense of identity settles back into place, like sediment on the ocean floor. “Ready?”
    â€œYeah,” he whispers hoarsely.
    â€œAll right. I want you to try sharing a memory with me now. To start, let’s pick an incident that has nothing to do with your kidnapping. But it should be something with a strong emotional charge.”
    â€œEmotional charge?”
    â€œSomething that evokes a strong feeling, either positive or negative.”
    A moment passes. A hazy image forms in my mind: dark, blurry figures walking down a fog-shrouded corridor. I’msinking, falling into empty space. The fog dissolves. When the last clinging wisps break apart and vanish, my ears are filled with the din of students’ voices talking and laughing, the echoing thunder of footsteps. Rows of gray lockers line a beigetiled hallway, where the air is pungent with a thick smell of disinfectant. Cameras track my movements from the ceiling.
    I’m in Greenborough High School.
    I move down the hall as faces float past to either side. Then I stop in front of my—
Steven’s
—locker.
    The word

    is scrawled across the metal in black marker, the letters slightly smeared, as if a sweaty hand ran over it before the ink dried. Someone— perhaps the same person, perhaps someone else— has stuck a note on the locker with a message neatly printed in pink marker:

    Beneath the words is a smiley face, and below that, in parentheses:

    The writer has drawn a little diagram of a hand making a vertical razor cut down an arm, illustrated by a dotted line. Mybreathing quickens. i rip off the sticky note, crumple it in one fist, and toss it to the floor.
    The image fades. I’m left with a void in my stomach. I’m cold. Shaken.
    â€œSo what did you see, Doc?” His voice is flat and guarded.
    I swallow, mouth dry. The muscles in my chest feel uncomfortably tight. “Someone wrote the word
freak
on your locker, and beneath that, there was a note advising you to commit suicide.”
    Silence.
    â€œSteven?”
    He exhales a soft, shuddering breath. “You know, deep down, I think a part of me didn’t believe this machine would actually work.”
    â€œThat really happened to you?” I whisper.
    â€œWell, I didn’t make it up.”
    â€œI know, but—I don’t understand. How could someone get away with that? Were they caught? Did you report it?”
    He snorts. “Of course I didn’t. The system’s not designed to protect people like me. It’s designed to protect everyone else
from
people like me.”
    â€œBut that’s …” I trail off, not knowing what to say.
    His heart is beating very hard. Very fast. I can feel it. Absently, I rub my sternum.
    He fishes in his jeans pocket, as if searching for something, then withdraws an empty hand and curses. I remember the little white pills from earlier.
    â€œI can give you something to help you relax if you want,” I say. “The machine comes equipped with a sedative. It should still be good.”
    â€œYeah. Yeah, I think I need something.”
    â€œKeep your hand where it is.” I press a button on the arm