Like Mind (14 page)

She had that weird little skirt thing on over her tights so that when she did spins and jumps it flared out. I watched her skate backward, forward and do all sorts of spins. She practiced fast spins where she grabbed her foot behind her and slower spins. My favorite was when she squatted on one leg and stuck her other foot out. I was rapt until Grosskopf tapped me on the shoulder.

“Enjoying the show?”

“Ah!” I jumped.

“Sorry for startling you. I should have known you’d be captivated. Let’s skate.”

“What? I don’t know how.”

Doctor Manatee just looked at me for a long moment until I caught up with him.

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh.”

He walked over to the counter and asked for two sets of skates. I gave my size when prompted and the girl gave us our skates. Grosskopf walked over to the bench, sat down and started putting on his skates. I followed and did the same. He didn’t say a word.

When we got out on the ice I almost immediately felt the movements of the aspiring figure skater flowing through my feet. I had to resist the urge to try a triple Salchow.

“Who’s helping you?” Grosskopf asked.

“No one. Who’s helping you?”

“Bullshit, you wouldn’t be alive if you didn’t have someone helping you. They sent people to kill all the other subjects. I know they sent people to kill you too. That’s why they arrested me, you know, because they killed off all my subjects and then blamed me for it.”

“No one’s helping me. You remember that you gave me the ability to learn anything.”

I did a single axel, skated backward around him and came up beside him again, just to prove my point.

“Fair enough. How did you escape then?”

“I picked up some MMA moves from YouTube.”

“Very good. But that doesn’t explain how you were able to evade the pursuit.”

“What pursuit?”

“The two men who were after you?”

“Oh, they weren’t that difficult to deal with.”

“Bah, why are you being so intransigent?”

“Because you zapped my brain and then people tried to kill me. I’m a little edgy.”

He chuckled, “Good point.”

“So, why did you contact me?”

“I want to help you, but you have to help me.”

“Why do I need your help? I’ve been getting along fine without you.”

“You don’t understand. That first treatment was only to activate the ability. It takes some time for your neural pathways to adjust to the new mirror neuron activity. The subsequent treatments are meant to stabilize your pathways and cement your ability.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, if you don’t undergo more treatments, your brain will destroy itself and you’ll die.”

“Oh.”

Michelle Kwan

I skated in silence for several moments digesting the words that portended my demise. I didn’t realize at first that I’d just accepted them as true. I’d forgotten to use the mirroring technique to test what Dr. Grosskopf said.

In mid-skate I corrected that oversight and imagined myself repeating the doctor’s pronouncement of my fate. It felt true, chillingly true. I held on to that knowledge for a time but soon realized that I was slowing on the ice and Grosskopf had passed me by. I moved to catch up but found my feet tangled. I fell to the ice and skidded to a halt at the wall.

The doctor skated around and helped me to my feet. He was still chuckling as I shakily started skating by his side.

“You can only mimic one thing at a time. These aren’t your skills. Not yet at least. You’re only borrowing them and you can’t borrow multiple skills at the same time.”

“Huh?”

“You obviously don’t know how to skate on your own. You can mimic what you saw of skating or you can do something else. You tried to do something else for a moment and forgot how to skate.”

“Oh,” he didn’t say anything about what he thought I was doing, so maybe he didn’t know that I’d been practicing lie detection. Of course I couldn’t verify that without falling on my ass.

“So, I was saying that you need more treatments if you want to keep your mind intact.”

“Yeah. I’m in favor of my brain continuing to work. I’m kind of attached to it.”

“Heh,” It was almost a courtesy laugh, “I have a lab we can use, but I’ll need your help getting there.”

“How do I know it’ll be safe?”

“You don’t really. But it’s not safe to stay away from my lab either.”

“Touché. How soon do I need a treatment?”

“It needs to be within a week of the initial activation. So, in about five days.”

I waited for the straight on the rink, locked my feet in place and switched over to test his statement. It also checked out as true. I noticed I had to imagine the young figure skater again to re-engage the ice skating skill.

“Who are you working for?”

“Heh,” another courtesy laugh, but I didn’t think I’d made a joke, “Who am I
not
working for? My main paycheck comes from the NSA, but I’ve also been working with the FBI and, through the Cubans, the Chinese government.”

I desperately wanted to check that statement, but we were rounding the curve and navigating through a crowd of people. Grosskopf went on before I could catch up.

“But mostly I’m working for myself. I want to develop this technology any way I can. Most legitimate research grants won’t touch something like this that remaps the human brain. Even though I’ve had successful trials on mice and primates, they all balked at performing clinicals on humans. But government organizations are happy to offer money for an advantage in spying.”

It felt like the doctor was speeding up so I had to concentrate on my skating just to keep up with him. Wily bastard.

“Corey, you are the only surviving subject of my life’s work. If I can stabilize your brain, and I’m sure I can, then I can prove to all the naysayers that I’m a legitimate scientist. I could win the Nobel Prize for this.”

“Wait, you want to do all this just for the glory of it?”

“That and the money. You get a cash prize from the Nobel foundation. It’s ten million Swedish kronor!”

“Is that a lot?”

“It’s about one-point-five million dollars.”

“Oh.”

“But it’s mostly for the glory.”

“So what do we do next? Where’s your lab?”

“Ah, right. Well, it’s complicated.”

“How’s that?”

“Um, my other lab is at the NSA headquarters in Seattle.”

“Oh.”

It appeared that Grosskopf slowed down to give me some time. I switched over and checked out his last statement. It was true. I skipped over the Nobel stuff and scanned back through the rest. I verified that he was, indeed, working for the NSA, FBI and Chinese. Then it was time to skate again.

“So, I need your help to get into the NSA headquarters and to my lab so I can give you another treatment. If we don’t get there in the next five days your brain will start to break down and you’ll eventually die.”

“Great. Best fifty bucks ever.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

I tried to determine if we could trust him. Everything he’d said so far had been the truth, but the truth didn’t really inspire me. I thought for a few moments but Grosskopf interrupted me.

“Aren’t those NSA agents? I think they were the ones who arrested me.”

He pointed to agents Smith and Jones walking by the entrance to Macy’s. Crap.

“Crap.”

“We should probably get out of here before they see us.”

“Do you have a way to get up to Seattle?”

“I was going to take the train. Do you have a better idea?”

“Not right now.”

I hastily scratched my chin with my right hand. I kept doing it for as long as possible, but Agent Smith spotted me and called out. Double-crap.

We were exposed on the ice, but so were they. They couldn’t kill us in public, but we couldn’t get away.

“Just keep skating for now,” I told the doctor.

“Why, what do you have in mind?”

“I don’t know yet, but for now this is the safest place for us.”

Smith and Jones stepped up to the side of the rink and stared at us as we skated by. They too were trying to figure out how to navigate this situation. My one advantage was that Anka was out there somewhere. I just hoped she saw Jones and Smith too. I decided to make sure of it.

Instead of the slow pace we’d been taking, I sped up and zoomed around the rink. By this time the agents were standing by the rail watching us. I made one circuit and then another, building my speed. Then I skated right at the two suited men. At the last instant I stepped sideways and skidded to a stop on the edge of my skates showering them in a blizzard of ice. I stood there, face to face with men who wanted me dead. Slowly and deliberately I put my hands on the railing, leaned forward and smiled at them.

“So, how’s the weather?”

I saw Jones reach inside his jacket; I assumed it was for a gun. Smith put his hand out to stop him. He stepped forward to regain the step he’d lost when I came straight at them. He placed his hand next to mine and leaned into my face. In a gravelly whisper he spoke.

“All I need to complete my mission is your head.”

Triple-crap. I hoped that he didn’t notice my knees nearly buckle at the image of being decapitated by an angry man in a cheap suit. I plastered a smile on my face. It felt weak and forced. About this time Grosskopf skated up beside me.

“Why are you bothering this boy? He has nothing that you want. I’ll report you for harassment if you don’t cease this instant.”

Smith tilted his head to the side and regarded Grosskopf with a quizzical expression. I couldn’t help but make the same face and turn to look at the doctor beside me.

“What?” we said in unison.

“We don’t have to stay here and listen to this, Corey. Come on.”

Grosskopf took my hand and pulled me away from the rail. We started skating away from the agents and they called for us to come back.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

“What your friend told me to do.”

“Friend?”

“Anka…my old intake nurse-slash-secret-agent…”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. She said she has a plan.”

“I hope so.”

The agents were following us around the rink when I heard a shout from the opposite side. Over there a cloud was billowing out from the ice.

“That’s the signal. Head toward the cloud.”

I decided to not question the doctor again and just followed him toward the rising vapor. When we got close the ice became slushy and soft, my skates started slowing and sinking deeper into the surface. By the time we got to the wall we were both walking through melted slush instead of skating. There, through the dense fog, we saw Anka with a hose. She sprayed steaming water onto the ice and as soon as it hit clouds of vapor formed.

“Hurry up and get those skates off. I’ve got your shoes right here.”

We both slid over the short wall and sat to remove our skates while Anka continued to fog up the mall. I had both skates off and just one shoe back on when I heard Anka gasp. I looked up to see Agent Jones grab her from behind. He still didn’t see me through the mist. I took a discarded skate and stabbed him in the back with the toe-pick. It didn’t penetrate very deeply, but it was enough to get his attention. He spun around and knocked the skate from my hand. Then he punched me in the gut before I had time to think about blocking.

From behind him, Anka recovered and slithered onto Jones’ back. She soon had him in a sleeper hold. He struggled for a moment, but the blood flow to his brain stopped and he fell limp within moments. I recovered enough to gasp a thanks but Anka just gripped my hand and pulled me away. I scooped up my other shoe when she stopped to collect Grosskopf and then we fled into the back of the teenybopper earring place across from the Ice Chalet.

The Bowels of the Mall

Despite the protests of the employees, we walked into the back room of the store and found the back door. Once through into the hallway we took a right and started running. Anka’s plan seemed as good as any right now, so we ran. After making a few more right turns we were hopelessly lost. The insides of the mall have no defining characteristics that make it possible to differentiate between one hallway and the next. It’s nothing but endless concrete floors, beige walls and tan doors. Occasionally there would be a cart of flattened boxes outside a door waiting to be recycled. Or was that the same door with the same cart of boxes that we’d passed again? I started to get a bit dizzy.

“I think we’re going in circles.”

“Just as long as we keep making right turns, we should be okay,” Anka reassured us.

“Unless the right wall is the inside of a circle,” Grosskopf added.

“Have we passed by that cart before?” I asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Anka said.