347 Ecstasy

CHAPTER ONE

The Wrong Reflection

At 2:07 every morning, Chad Fitzgerald burns two pieces of toast.

I know because I've watched him do it three nights in a row.

Tonight I'm hanging outside his kitchen window, forty floors above the drowned part of Anchor City, wondering whether this counts as stalking or just extremely poor judgment.

Probably both.

The magnetic grip under my left mag-boot starts whining.

Not a loud noise. A thin little squeal, like a mouse being murdered somewhere inside the mechanism.

I shift my weight onto the right mag-boot.

The noise gets worse.

"That's encouraging," Billy says.

"Shut up."

"I'm serious. Very reassuring. Sounds expensive."

"It's fine."

"Your definition of fine has killed a lot of people."

"Name one."

"I'm working on the list."

Rain runs down my neck and finds its way under my shirt. One hand grips a maintenance cable. My mag-boots cling to a steel service strip barely wider than my foot. The descent rig on my back has a folded drag canopy and magnetic brakes meant to grab the building's service rails if I slip. I checked the charge twice. I didn't check whether the thing was made by somebody with a sense of humor.

The safety label says EMERGENCY USE ONLY. Good. I was worried I might accidentally use it for fun.

Billy hovers beside my shoulder, blue-white around the edges. Water passes straight through his jacket. He's been dead seven years, but he's still an older brother, which means he's still certain I'm doing everything wrong.

"You know what they invented for situations like this?" he asks.

"Don't."

"Binoculars."

"Those can be traced."

"And a woman with a knife hanging outside a billionaire's window can't?"

"I'm on a maintenance route."

"You're on a wall. There's a difference."

Inside, the kitchen light comes on.

"Here we go," I whisper.

Chad shuffles in barefoot, wearing a white shirt and the expression of a man who can't remember why he got out of bed. He opens a cupboard and takes out two plates.

Two plates. Every night.

He sets them side by side, feeds two slices of bread into the toaster, and waits.

Victoria hasn't lived here in months.

Three weeks ago Chad paid me to remove the memory of their last good kiss. He said it was the one thing he couldn't get past. I did the extraction. He signed the release, I took the memory, and he walked out of my shop looking like a man who might finally get some sleep.

Now he makes breakfast for somebody who isn't coming.

And every night, no matter where I am, I wake up thinking about him.

It's embarrassing. I've met the man professionally. I know what his mouth looks like when he's trying not to cry, which is not information I should be replaying in the shower.

That's my job. People pay me to take memories they can't live with. Trouble is, the memories have to go somewhere. Mine end up with me. I have a few thousand already, and apparently one of them has developed an interest in Chad Fitzgerald.

Sometimes the feelings come along for the ride.

Once I pulled a memory from a tax attorney and spent a week calling everybody "sport." I also became obsessed with getting my taxes done six months early. Billy found that so funny he started calling me H&R Block.

Usually the borrowed stuff wears off.

This hasn't.

The worst part is that I don't even know what I want from Chad. I want to see him. I want him to turn around. I want him to be all right. A few nights ago I caught myself wondering whether he likes the same coffee I do.

I don't even like the coffee I drink.

"Your hand," Billy says.

"What about it?"

"You're doing that thing."

My thumb is turning the clamp on the maintenance cable a quarter turn. Back. Forward. Back.

I stop.

"Checking the lock."

"Seven times?"

"Eight's my lucky number."

"You don't have a lucky number."

"Well, I do now."

Billy doesn't laugh. That's how I know he's worried.

Chad reaches for the toaster.

The ache under my ribs tightens. It happens every time he starts this stupid little breakfast ritual. At home I can sometimes pretend it's indigestion. Up here, with him a dozen feet away behind the glass, I can barely stand it.

"Sean," Billy says, softer now. "We can go home."

"I need to know what's happening."

"To him?"

I don't answer quickly enough.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," he says.

"Don't start."

"I'm not starting anything. I'm asking whether this is still a job."

"It is."

"Then why are you blushing?"

"I'm forty floors up in the rain. That's windburn."

"Sure, sport."

"I hate you."

"You did my taxes early. I can live with that."

Inside, Chad rubs his eyes. He looks exhausted. For one stupid second I want to go in there and put my arms around him. I grip the cable instead.

The toaster clicks.

And suddenly I'm somewhere else.

A hospital walkway. Damp railing. Flood sirens somewhere below. Victoria Fitzgerald is in front of me, pale and furious at the world, gripping the lapels of Chad's coat. I know this moment. It's the memory I took. I saw it through his eyes when I checked the extraction.

"I'm scared," she says.

"Then be scared," Chad tells her. "You don't have to put on a show for me."

She laughs, just a little, and pulls him close.

That's the part I know.

Then the angle changes.

Now I'm looking up at Chad. Dark wool scratches my fingers. There's a hospital gown under my jacket. My mouth tastes of medicine. I want to tell him he's an idiot for being kind to me when he's frightened too.

I want to kiss him so badly it hurts.

I do.

And for a few seconds I forget there's a building beneath my feet.

My hand opens.

The cable slides through my fingers.

"SEAN!"

I hear Billy from very far away. The name doesn't seem to belong to me.

"Look at your hands," he says. "Your actual hands."

I'm holding Chad's coat. No, I'm not. I'm hanging outside his apartment, and my right mag-boot has started to slip.

"Count your fingers."

"Ten."

"On one hand? Jesus, Sean."

"Five."

"And the other?"

"Five."

"Good. Victoria had six on her left. Terrible reconstruction."

"She did not."

"There you are."

I grab the cable so hard the clamp bites my palm. Cold metal. Rain. The kitchen window. My knee complaining like it pays rent.

Billy's face is inches from mine.

"Where are you?" he asks.

"Outside Chad's apartment. Fortieth floor."

"And what are you doing?"

"Quality control."

"Stalking."

"Can we not?"

He exhales, though I don't know what a ghost needs air for.

"That's the third time tonight," he says.

"I know."

"No, I don't think you do."

He's right. The usual carryover feels like somebody else's mood getting into my bloodstream. This was different. I wasn't watching the kiss. I was inside it, somewhere I'd never been. Chad couldn't have given me that view. And I can't explain why it felt more real than the rain on my face.

I look through the window.

Chad has taken the toast out. Both pieces are black. He sets one on each plate and stares at the empty chair across the counter.

My chest aches again.

"You need to get off this wall," Billy says.

"In a minute."

"You've been saying that for forty-three minutes."

"Forty-four."

He gives me a look.

Then something moves behind Chad.

At first it's a shimmer from the mag-cars running along the elevated track. The cabinets bend at the edges. A strip of kitchen wall beside the refrigerator goes soft, like wet paint.

A woman steps through it.

I don't mean she comes out of a hidden door. I mean the wall opens and lets her through, then closes as if nothing happened.

She's tall, dark coat, hair pulled tight. Thin silver threads cross the fingers of her right hand.

Titanium weave.

Ballast Dynamics security wears it. I've seen those hands before. Once is plenty.

"Billy."

"I see her."

She goes straight to Chad and rests her threaded hand on his shoulder.

The ache in my chest jerks tight. Chad freezes, one hand suspended above the counter. His eyes stay open, but there's nobody home behind them.

Billy disappears from my port.

Not just his picture. The little electrical hum I've lived with for seven years cuts off in the middle of a breath.

"Billy?"

Nothing.

The woman studies Chad. She lifts her hand. He blinks, takes a breath, and goes back to his toast.

"Billy, answer me."

A burst of static.

"I'm here," he says, thin and rough. "What the hell was that?"

"You tell me."

"Whatever she did, it shut me out."

Chad picks up a knife and starts scraping the burned toast. He's holding it wrong, pressing the serrated edge into his palm while dragging the blunt side over the bread.

A line of blood appears along his little finger.

He doesn't notice.

The woman does. She watches the blood, then his face. Waiting.

I slide my knife from my sleeve.

There's a narrow balcony below the window. Twelve feet of kitchen floor between me and her. My knee won't thank me, but my knee never thanks me for anything.

"Don't," Billy says.

"She's hurting him."

"He's hurting himself."

"That makes it better?"

"No. It makes me wonder why she's watching instead of stopping him."

I look again. She's not interested in Chad's hand. She's watching his reaction.

Or waiting for somebody else's.

I could make that jump. I even bend my knee to try it, and the pain nearly makes the decision for me. Then I look at the woman again. She isn't stopping Chad. She's waiting. Ballast knows enough about me to guess what I'd do if somebody started bleeding in front of me. I stay where I am, hating every second of it.

"How long was he out?" I ask.

"Nine seconds. I lost most of them."

Chad finally notices the blood. He turns the knife around and wraps his hand in a dishcloth. The woman gives a tiny nod, as though he's passed a test.

I don't like that at all.

She turns toward the window.

She shouldn't be able to see me through the rain and the glare. I'm pressed against the dark service strip above the kitchen lights.

Her mouth moves.

I can't hear her. But I know the shape of my name.

Sean.

A pulse runs through the port behind my ear. The wall shivers. The woman steps backward and disappears into it.

Chad keeps holding the dishcloth to his hand. If he knows she was there, he gives no sign.

"Did she see me?" I ask.

"I think she wanted you to know she did."

"That's comforting."

"I specialize in comfort."

I stare at the empty spot beside the refrigerator. Maybe Ballast is testing Chad. Maybe it's testing me. Either way, that woman just turned a man's nervous system off for nine seconds and waited to see whether he'd notice a knife cutting his hand.

Chad turns off the kitchen light. The glass darkens, and for a heartbeat all I can see is rain and the faint outline of my own face.

The window catches my reflection.

I'm smiling.

Except I'm not.

I can feel my mouth. My jaw's clenched so hard my teeth hurt. But the woman in the glass has my face, my scars, the little nick in my eyebrow from a stupid fight with a vending machine Billy dared me to pick.

And she's smiling at me.

"Billy. Look at the window."

"What am I looking at?"

"My face."

"That is traditionally how reflections work."

"She's moving. I'm not."

He goes quiet.

The woman in the glass tilts her head. I keep mine still. Her smile fades, and for one second she looks like she wants to say something.

I lean closer.

The magnetic grip under my left mag-boot screams.

My left foot slides off the strip. The right mag-boot tears loose after it. I grab for the cable, catch nothing, and fall backward into forty floors of rain.

For one impossible moment, the other woman watches me go.

Then the window is gone.

I'm going to die.

A second thought arrives, because apparently my brain is an idiot: the Mustang's parked three blocks north. If I live, I still have to walk back in wet boots.

"SEAN!"

Billy has used that voice once before.

Room 317 at St. Mary's. Seven years ago. Three forty-seven in the morning. Machines screaming around my brother's bed. Me trying to hold on to the last pieces of him because I couldn't stand the idea of letting him go.

There are parts of that night I don't remember clearly. I remember his eyes. I remember thinking I was too late.

And I remember that voice.

The descent rig fires behind me with a crack like a gunshot. The little canopy snaps open and yanks my shoulders nearly out of their sockets. For one beautiful second, I slow. Then the magnetic brakes catch a steel service rail and shriek all the way down it. Sparks spit past my face.

A red warning flashes across my vision. BRAKE OVERHEAT.

'Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me.'

The rail ends. The brakes let go. I'm falling again, slower than before, which is a distinction my knee is unlikely to appreciate.

I hit the flooded alley feetfirst and sideways. Pain goes through my bad knee and up into my hip. Water closes over my head. I push off something solid, come up coughing, and grab a submerged stair.

Nothing feels broken in a way that's immediately fatal.

Promising.

"Sean? Talk to me."

Billy flickers beside the stairwell.

"I'm thinking about a career change."

"Great. Think about it where I can see your face."

I drag myself into knee-deep water. The air smells of rust, burned wiring, and something sweet that's been rotting for a long time.

A red '57 Chevy hangs above the flood on an abandoned guide rail, the belly of its dead engine about hip height. It's been there for years, a salvaged shell somebody apparently still comes down to polish. The chrome looks better than anything I own.

I know this alley. At the end of it, the old street disappears into a flood channel.

A dead electric clock on the building across from me reads 3:47. The colon still blinks, though the numbers haven't moved in years.

My implant says 02:13.

I know the clock is broken. I knew it before tonight. Still, the sight of those numbers turns my stomach.

Billy follows my eyes.

"You're thinking about the hospital."

"I was already thinking about it on the way down."

His outline is still ragged from whatever happened in Chad's kitchen.

"Whatever you saw in that window," he says, "it saw you too."

"I noticed."

"I'm serious."

"That's the problem."

Something tugs beneath my ribs.

Not the ache I get when I think about Chad. This is narrower, sharper. Like somebody has hooked a finger around a thread inside me and started pulling.

I take a step toward the channel. The pain eases.

I step back. It tightens.

"You feel that?" I ask.

"Interference. I can't tell where it's coming from."

"Down there."

"Then we go the other way. We get Jim. We get equipment. We get somebody with two functioning knees."

"I have two."

"One of them is decorative."

He's right. I should go to the Mustang. I should go home, take a shower, and tell myself the window was an electrical trick caused by sleep deprivation and the four thousand other people's memories living in my head.

I'd almost believe the reflection was a trick of the light, too. I've managed to believe that before.

I haven't told Billy about the other reflections.

Three years of them. A face in a train window that kept looking at me after I turned away. A figure in a puddle when nobody was standing there. Once, an unplugged screen showed my own hand reaching toward something I couldn't see.

I never got a clear look. I never told him. Billy would have spent the next three years throwing blankets over mirrors.

Tonight the face smiled.

That makes it harder to pretend.

"Sean," he says. "Where are you going?"

"To see if it happens again."

"That's not a plan."

"It's the beginning of one."

"It's the beginning of what they say at your funeral."

I stop where the pavement breaks apart. There is no railing, just a ragged edge and water moving below it. I can hear Billy behind me, but he has finally run out of jokes.

The channel opens ahead of me. Ballast's towers throw broken light across the black water. High above, a '69 Camaro glides along the mag-track, its driver on the way to some perfectly normal Tuesday morning.

Good for him.

At the water's edge, the rain stops making ripples.

Only in one small circle. Beyond it, the channel churns under the storm. But the patch near my boots is flat as polished glass.

There's a face in it.

Mine.

I crouch. The face follows, a fraction too late.

"Don't touch it," Billy says.

"I wasn't going to."

I reach out anyway, meaning to stop just above the surface. My fingertips catch on something sharp under the water. Broken glass. Blood runs along the side of my thumb.

One drop falls.

It sits on the water without spreading. Then it sinks straight down through the still circle.

The face below me looks up.

And rises.

For a second I think my own body is climbing out of the channel. Same crooked eyebrow. Same scars. Same way of squaring her shoulders when she's frightened and doesn't want anybody to know.

But she's older. Six years, maybe. There's a tiredness around her mouth I don't recognize.

Water runs from her dark clothes. She's shivering. When she sees me, her face changes so completely I forget the knife in my hand.

Relief.

Not surprise. Relief.

"Who are you?" I ask.

She looks past me at Billy. Her expression hardens. Then she looks back at me, and something in her eyes makes my chest hurt worse than the fall did.

She says three words.

"I missed you."

I try to answer. Nothing comes out.

There is no reason for a stranger to look at me like I've been gone for years. There is even less reason for that stranger to have my face.

The still water rolls over my boots.

I jerk back. It follows, climbing my ankles. The water hardens around the leather. I pull, but my foot won't move.

"Sean!" Billy's light flares. He comes toward me, hand out, as if he can grab my arm.

He can't. We both know it. For one awful second, we both forget.

The woman reaches toward me too.

She looks frightened now.

"Wait," I tell her. "Whatever you want, just—"

The channel yanks my legs out from under me.

I hit the water facefirst. Blackness closes over my head, and the last thing I see is Billy reaching for me with a hand that cannot touch.

He always said he'd find me.

This time I don't know where I'm going.