Triggers

Chapter 13

Nikki Van Hausen was supposed to show two houses this afternoon, but that wasn’t going to happen. After her encounter in the hallway with Drs. Sturgess and Redekop, the security guard had taken her to a room that she only belatedly realized was in the psychiatric ward. A few other people seemed to have been here for a while, and two more were brought into the ward shortly after her—wailing and screaming over the terrorist attack.

Her room was cubic, with a high ceiling, and was empty except for a couch bolted to the wall. She wasn’t suicidal—but this was where they put people who were, so there was nothing that a makeshift noose could be hung from, no glass over pictures that might be smashed and used to slit wrists—and no way to open the door from the inside. There was also no bathroom. She was just about to press the buzzer that would summon a guard to let her out so she could use the one across the hall when the door opened and in came Eric Redekop accompanied by a pretty blue-eyed brunette with shoulder-length hair. She was wearing a black jacket, black pants, and black leather shoes with flat heels.

“Hello, Ms. Van Hausen,” Eric said.

She tried to match his formality—after all, she wanted out of here. “Dr. Redekop,” she replied, and nodded politely.

Eric indicated the woman. “This is Susan Dawson, a Secret Service agent.”

Nikki felt her heart beginning to pound. “Hello.”

“You seemed to know me out in the corridor earlier,” Eric said.

Nikki nodded. “I know we’ve never met, but…”

“But you knew things about me—or was it Dr. Sturgess?—that you wouldn’t normally know.”

She had a brief moment where she thought she should lie: letting them know that she sensed things had gotten her into this booby hatch in the first place. But, no, no, she had to tell them; she had to get this fixed.

“It’s you,” she said, looking at Eric. “I only know the things about Jurgen that you know.”

Susan Dawson spoke. “What has happened to you happened to several others. There’s been a linkage of minds. We’re going to try to find a way to break the links, but for now we must acknowledge that they exist.”

Eric nodded. “I’m affected, too, and so is Agent Dawson.”

Nikki felt a wave of relief—it wasn’t just her; as crazy as all this sounded, she wasn’t nuts. Suddenly, she was angry. “But if it was happening to you, too, why didn’t you speak up when you first saw me? Why’d you let them lock me up here?”

Eric spread his arms. “I’m so sorry, Nikki. I probably did become linked to the person I’m reading at the same moment you became linked to me. But nothing brought her memories to mind for me until I actually saw her, after I saw you—first, because I was exhausted and preoccupied with the president’s health, and, second, because we both work here, she and I; this building is mostly background noise for the two of us. But for you being in a hospital is unusual, and the sights and sounds of this place immediately brought my memories of it into your consciousness.”

“Oh,” said Nikki. “But—wait!—does that mean somebody can read my mind, too?”

“Your memories, yes,” said Agent Dawson.

“But my memories are private!” said Nikki.

“So are mine,” said Eric. “So, um, if you’d not share them with anyone else, please…”

“Of course,” said Nikki. “Of course. But how long is this going to last?”

“We don’t know,” Agent Dawson said.

“I want to meet the person that’s linked to me,” said Nikki.

Susan Dawson shook her head. “I don’t think that would be advisable. Some of those who are linked already knew each other, and there’s nothing we can do about that, but others are strangers, and I think it’s best we keep it that way. But of course we’ll get you out of the psychiatric ward. Do you have a cell phone with you?”

“Yes.”

“Give me the number so that I can find you easily later. You’re free to roam the hospital—there’s a cafeteria in the lobby—but we’re not letting anyone leave.”

“Leshia, it’s Darryl. Are you okay?”

“I’m…I’m fine. God, Darryl, are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“You heard about the White House? My God…”

“Awful. Just…awful.”

“They say no one was hurt, but…”

“But everyone was hurt.”

“I saw you on TV just now. They were showing what went down at the Lincoln Memorial. I’m so proud of you. Where are you now?”

“Still at LT.”

“How’s—how’s the president doing?”

“He’s stable, but Sue has locked the hospital down. Leshia, listen, something super-unusual is going on here. It’s happened to me, and it’s happened to other people. We’re—we’re reading each other’s memories somehow.”

“What?”

“I know it sounds crazy, baby. It is crazy. But it’s happening. So I need you to go online and change the PINs for our bank accounts and things like that.”

“But—”

“Just do it. Don’t you see? Somebody else knows them now; I don’t know who. But we’ve got to change them before they clear us out. Do it, and don’t pick anything I’d easily guess.”

“Darryl, um, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I know it sounds insane, baby, but do it—do it right away. Okay, look, I gotta go. Love you!”

The cab dropped Secret Service agent Dirk Jenks at Reagan. He paid the fare in cash, didn’t wait for his change, and didn’t ask for a receipt. He checked the departures board and saw that there was a flight to LaGuardia in sixty-five minutes. In the wake of the explosion at the White House, FBI agents were already swarming the airport, but so far there’d been no sign that flights were going to be suspended as they had been back on 9/11.

There was a line at the Delta ticketing counter, but Jenks flashed his Secret Service ID at people and moved to the front.

“The next flight to LaGuardia, please,” he said.

“One-way or round-trip?” asked the woman behind the counter.

“One-way.”

Susan Dawson headed from the psychiatric ward to Professor Singh’s laboratory, which, she knew, was six doors down the third-floor corridor from his office. As she entered the lab for the first time, it was, as Yogi Berra had famously said, déjà vu all over again.

Singh was talking on his phone. He quickly finished his call.

“Who were you talking to?” Susan asked.

“My wife. Why?”

“Did you tell her about the memory linkages?”

“Of course. It’s fascinating.”

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” she said. “We should keep this quiet.”

He gestured at his computer monitor, which was showing Twitter.

“You tweeted about this?”

“No, no. I just searched Twitter for ‘Luther Terry’ while I was talking to my wife, and those came up.”

Susan loomed in. There were several about Jerrison being brought here after the shooting and five about the lockdown. But there was also one that said, “Weird things going on at Luther Terry Memorial Hospital.” Another declared, “Memories being linked at Luther Terry Hosp in DC.” Someone else had chimed in with, “I’m at Luther Terry Memorial Hospital. Anybody know anything about telepathy?” Twitter was helpfully informing Ranjip that there were now four new tweets that matched his search. Instead of clicking on the link for those, though, he put in a new search: “LTMH.” Two tweets came up: One said, “Saw a woman freak at #LTMH, berating the surgeon who saved the prez. She must have been a Democrat.” And the other said, “Heard craziest story at LTMH just now about reading memories. Anybody else?”

“God damn it,” said Susan. “We should put a lid on contact with the outside world.”

But Ranjip shook his head. “There’s been a terrorist attack here in the city, Agent Dawson. People need to keep in touch. They need it on a human level; they need to know their loved ones, wherever they are, are well—and to let them know that they themselves are safe.”

Susan said nothing; there was no rule book, no protocol, for a situation like this.

“And, anyway,” continued Singh, “besides the hospital’s phone system, there are hundreds of cell phones here. Patients have them, and staff, too. And, of course, hundreds of laptops and iPads and the like, not to mention all the hospital’s computers. By the time you could confiscate them all, even if you could find legal grounds to do so, the whole world will know about the memory linkages. And if a bomb hits here—the terrorists must know where the president is, after all, and that he’s still alive—you’ll want people to have as many ways to communicate as possible, in hopes that some will function after the EMP.”

“You’re right,” Susan said. Just then, the door to Singh’s office opened and in came Kadeem Adams. Susan knew him at once, although—

Well, that was interesting. There was no doubt that this was indeed Kadeem; he easily matched Ranjip’s memories of him. But she was now looking at him with her own trained agent’s eyes, and seeing details Ranjip had never noted. For starters, Ranjip had had no idea how tall Kadeem was, but Susan immediately pegged him at six-one; agents learned to take the measure of a man even when he was seated. She also noted he was wearing a T-shirt advertising Brickers, a rap group that Ranjip had apparently never heard of; that he had creased earlobes; and that he was a nail-biter.

A memory—her own—of one of her favorite writers flashed through her head: You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive. But that was the other war; she knew, because Ranjip knew it, that Kadeem had actually been in Iraq.

“Kadeem Adams,” said Singh, “this is Agent Susan Dawson. As you know, she’s with the Secret Service.”

Kadeem shook his head. “All this shit that’s goin’ down. I can see it from your point of view—the president bleeding on the steps, you and him in the limo, you looking down on him on the operating table. Been one hell of a day.”

“Yes,” said Susan.

“And—well, damn, girl! You had a hell of night last night, too, didn’t you, Agent Dawson?” Susan felt herself blushing. Kadeem went on. “Although, given how well I now know you, maybe we should be on a first-name basis, don’t you think…Sue?”

Ranjip picked up a lined notepad. “I think we need to start writing this down. Agent Dawson is reading my memories. Kadeem, you’re reading Agent Dawson’s. And…” He paused.

“And?” said Kadeem.

Ranjip looked at Susan, asking permission with his eyes.

Susan thought about it, then said, “I don’t think I’m actually in a position to keep secrets from Kadeem.”

And as soon as she said it, Kadeem’s eyes went wide. “And—God!—the president is reading my memories.”

Susan knew there was no point denying it.

Kadeem looked at Ranjip. “I knew somebody was, from the questions you asked, guru, but…” He shook his head. “No shit! The president!” He smiled slightly. “Guess he knows now I didn’t vote for him.” He then looked at Ranjip. “What about you, guru? Who are you reading?”

“A doctor here named Lucius Jono,” said Ranjip—and he took a moment to jot this fact on the chart he was making.

“And he’s reading a real-estate agent named Nikki Van Hausen,” said Susan. She gestured for the pad and wrote the name down. “And Nikki’s reading Eric Redekop, who was the lead surgeon for the president. And Redekop is reading a nurse, Janis Falconi.” She wrote these names down, too. “The chain just keeps getting longer and longer—which raises the question of exactly how many people are affected. Agent Michaelis wasn’t—he was too far away from your equipment, it seems. But how many were?”

“Good question,” Singh said. He consulted a PC on a worktable. “Huh,” he said, and then, “Hmmm.”

“Yes?” said Susan.

Ranjip moved to his apparatus, a padded chair and a geodesic sphere two feet in diameter. “Well,” he said, “this equipment can edit memories, but the effective field is normally constrained to the interior of this sphere. According to the diagnostics, what happened, it seems—and this certainly was unanticipated—was that during the electromagnetic pulse, the field expanded while maintaining its spherical shape. It got to be about thirty-two feet in diameter, so presumably everyone in that sphere was affected.”

“That’s a radius of sixteen feet,” Susan said. “Enough to reach up to the fourth floor and down to the second, no?”

“Exactly,” said Singh.

Susan considered. “The president was there.” She pointed down and to her left. “And I was right next door in the observation gallery.” She pointed directly to her left. She turned to Singh. “Are you sure the field didn’t get any bigger than that? And you’re sure no one outside that radius could have been affected?”

“We’re not sure of much,” Singh replied. “But the field size is directly proportional to the power used to generate it, and the equipment recorded the magnitude of the surge in its syslog file. Assuming we’re right, and it’s my equipment that caused all this, then, yes, I’d say the effect was limited to people in that bubble.”

“I can’t keep the hundreds of people in this hospital locked up indefinitely,” said Susan.

“Given the size of the bubble, it shouldn’t be more than one or two dozen who were affected,” replied Singh. “Anyone who was on the lobby level or below, or on five or above, probably isn’t affected. And anyone on two, three, or four who was more than a couple of rooms away from here probably wasn’t, either.”

“Assuming nobody has moved to a different floor,” said Susan.

“Ah, right,” replied Ranjip.

“Still, it does narrow the list of suspects,” Susan said.

“Suspects for what?” Kadeem asked. But then he looked at Susan and nodded. “Ah. For who’s reading the president’s memories. Guess you gotta find that dude soon, huh, Sue?”