CHAPTER FOUR - SADIE
The brand-new Cathedral City Asylum is beautiful in a way only buildings can be. It’s not tall, only six stories, and stretches out into east and west wings. It’s not institutional in design, either. Even though the front gate leading onto the property is all gothic archway with pitted stones covered in lichen that remind you of ancient battles in places that are much wetter than here.
It’s last-century modern with long panes of glass near the roofline, accentuated with strips of metal gleaming from a stray ray of sun.
I stop the truck and wait my turn at the gate, acutely aware of the timer on my vision screen, ready and waiting to begin counting up once I initialize the trip.
When it’s my turn, I start the illusion and the timer, but they wave me through, so it only gets up to three seconds before I drop the trip and it resets.
My power is very limited. Five seconds is the average time it takes a person to do a double-take and reassess what they’re seeing. If I need it to last five seconds, it’s perfect. I can go up to nine if I have to. But anything past ten is almost unheard of.
It’s a hitch, and nothing more. A moment when you’re looking out across the hot desert and you see… something. But then it’s gone. What I do is not a mirage. It’s something in between hallucination and delusion. Something people want to see. Something people expect to see. But then quickly realize it cannot be.
It works on everyone except my Prodigy handlers. Nothing works on them. My inhibitor keeps them immune. Each Prodigy child has their own unique inhibitor and mine is coded into my DNA through periodic manipulation. It will last for months before it degrades and has to be reinitialized.
I won’t be out in the real world for months. I know this. The assignment is scheduled to last four hours and one and a half of those hours has already passed. When I finish, I will be rewarded with bliss once again. The dream in my head will become real. I will shut down, and then everything will be perfect until the next time they wake me for a job.
But I am special. They almost never let me outside. I like it this way and I’m anxious to complete this mission so I can return to what I do best.
The map on screen tells me where to park. A worker dressed in the white uniform with the asylum logo approaches me. His name tag says Grant.
This is when things become tricky.
Almost any illusionist can manage what I’ve done so far, but no one but me can manage what I’m about to do now.
The timer starts as I throw the trip. A wave of energy flows out of my head in concentric circles with me at the center.
My net catches almost two dozen people. And the wave is powerful, something that calls me to attention. But they don’t see me. They see what they want to see. What they expect to see. I open the door at two seconds, smile, but don’t talk to anyone because that will cancel out the illusion, and walk straight for the back loading dock. Some of them call out. “Hey, Jane!” or, “Hi, Mike! Are you going bowling tonight?” One says, “Sarah, you look great today. Is that a new haircut?”
I become—whoever. I become the person they expect to see.
At seven seconds I’m pulling the door open, at eight seconds I’m walking down a dimly lit hallway as it closes behind me. At nine seconds I am Sadie again. But it doesn’t matter. These people don’t know I’m supposed to be the laundry truck driver. They’re not even looking at me as my recovery timer counts up the seconds I will need to make a new trip.
It’s a small power. I’ll admit that. It’s fleeting. Nine seconds is not enough time to do much, but I have perfected my art. I can do so much with nine seconds. I can create havoc with nine seconds. I can become a dead child in a mother’s eyes. I can become the husband they lost in the war. I can become a celebrity. I never become a celebrity or any of those other things. The point is to go unnoticed. Getting people to notice me defeats the purpose.
I essentially become invisible. Hidden in plain sight.
No one but me can pull this off en masse.
The bright red path in my vision screen leads me to a locker room as an alarm sounds off in the building. I punch in the code to enter, find the place empty—my handlers taking care of me now with that fake emergency—and go to locker number 818 where there is a gray uniform waiting for me. I pull the loose top on over my existing uniform, then drag the extra-large pants up my legs. Looking down at my chest I see a name tag. I am Phil now. There’s a picture of him inside the locker. Him and his wife. Poor woman. Her husband is probably dead. Well—I chuckle—she’s probably dead too.
I slam the locker shut and follow the lighted path out of the room and into a stairwell, climbing to the fifth floor, home to one escaped Prodigy child called Thomas Brooks.
I access his personal file to get familiar with him. His power is… well, that’s interesting.
My feet are still climbing up the stairs as I read.
Thomas Brooks—Level Ten Mentalist. Level Ten Aggressionist. Level Ten Manipulist. Level Ten Capturist. Use extreme caution. Non-lethal intervention advised at all times.
It’s a unique combination, but it all adds up to one thing. Mind thief. Mentalist combined with capturist means he can steal memories, especially from people who die in his vicinity. Aggressionist combined with manipulist means he can force people to do things against their will.
All together these things mean that unless he’s drugged, he’s always the one in control.
My vision screen has a flashing red caution sign next to his name, and there’s a yellow tag attached to it which reads: Active.
Well, he won’t be active for long. My hand unconsciously pats the outline of a syringe in my pocket underneath my asylum uniform. I have what I need to deactivate him.
When I get to the fifth floor, I enter the hallway. People are insanely—no pun intended—busy because of the blaring alarm Prodigy triggered to help me get in the building, and take no notice of me. So I don’t even have to bother with a trip. There’s a nurse’s station along the far end of the hallway, but there’s no way to get into that computer, so I head to my left, push through another door, and try for one of the empty offices.
The third one on the right is unlocked when I turn the knob, so I slip in, close the door behind me, and take a seat at the desk just as a passcode flashes on my vision screen.
I type it in, get access to the database, then go looking for my target.
There he is. Thomas Brooks, level three, room seven, solitary housing.
Level three, though. That’s not what I have on my screen—my vision screen updates, changing level five to level three.
Hmmm. They don’t usually get this stuff wrong.
I shrug as I stand, then head back out. The chaos is dying down now that people realize the alarm was a bug in the system, so I have to throw a trip, make my face and body look like poor Phil, to get past a few people and back into the stairwell. It only lasts a few seconds, so recovery is a non-issue by the time I’m back on track.
Level three is empty.
It’s also very… prison-like. Nothing at all like level five. There’s no nurse’s station, for one. And there’s no tile on the floor. Just bare concrete. The rooms look more like cells. Small, high windows. Slots in the doors for… what? Food? Yes, definitely more like a prison.
I walk cautiously along the corridor until I get to the one door with no window.
Number seven.
And it’s open.
Empty.
What the fuck? I type out to my handlers. There’s a little camera in my iris that shoots footage back to them, so they see what I’m seeing.
Check the computer.
What computer?
End of the hall, turn left. Second door on the right. Code to get in…
It lists the sequence to enter that door.
I punch it in, ready to throw a trip if anyone’s in there—even though I have no idea who I should become if that happens—and push it open.
Dark and empty. Just the faint light from a sleeping screen off to the left.
I take a look behind me, checking for people, then slip inside and close the door.
How do I get in? I type.
What is presumably a password flashes across my vision.
I take a seat, type it in, gain access, then go searching for Brooks.
Sixth floor, it says. Dr. Yasmine Bates’ office. Room six-nineteen. Scheduled for… It doesn’t say what he’s scheduled for. It says, ‘Classified.’
Hold, is Prodigy’s reply.
I wait, nervously looking over my shoulder at the door. If anyone comes in I will fail. I don’t have a face to trip into. Not one that will have security clearance to get into this room. Phil was presumably a low-level employee, a janitor or something. And there are no pictures in here to steal a face. I tap my fingers on the desktop, forcing myself not to start counting seconds.
And then they’re back.
Abort mission and return to Prodigy.
“What?” I say, then type it with my mind, since they can’t hear me. What?
You will abort mission immediately and return to Prodigy for storage.
Motherfuckers. I was just getting excited about this shit.
The chair slides underneath me as I stand and make for the door. I open it, peek out, then type, Send me a face to steal in case I’m seen. Assholes. I can’t use any of the faces from before. Those people clearly do not belong on this floor.
A picture flashes on my vision screen and I memorize it, slipping back out into the corridor at the same time.
I go back the way I came, looking around. A face appears in a window, the man’s hand slapping against the shatterproof glass. I do not jump or scream. But he definitely makes my heart skip a beat.
This hallway is creepy as fuck.
A loud buzzer blares and the doorway leading to the stairs opens. I trip into the face Prodigy sent, but the woman scowls at me when it… fucking fails to take.
What the hell?
“Who are you?” she demands. “What are you doing on this floor?”
Abort, abort, abort, my vision screen is flashing.
No shit, assholes. I am aborting.
Three things happen, almost all at once. First, the woman leans into her shoulder, clearly about to speak into a radio. Second, I move forward with speed, reacting out of instinct now. Third, she says, “We—”
But she doesn’t get any farther than that because I’ve snapped her neck.
Her body slumps to the floor as her radio squeaks static, then words. “Say again, Mona?”
I’m Mona now. I grab her face, tuck it away in my memory for later, and enter the stairs.
Footsteps below me. Running up.
Shit.
My stupid screen is still flashing, Abort, abort, abort.
“Mona?” someone calls.
I am frozen in place. I cannot call back. I cannot capture voices. So I’ll have to wait until they reach me, or risk going down to meet them, in order to start a new trip. And even then—fuck—it hits me then. My trip didn’t work. What the hell?
But I’m saved again by another blaring alarm. I pray that it does the job, since we just used that tactic a few minutes ago.
“Forget Mona,” another voice says, one floor below me. “We’ve got a riot on three.”
Their footsteps recede, going down again. I take my chances and go up to the top floor just as more people enter the stairwell down below.
What’s happening? I type.
You were told to abort.
I am aborting! But if you want me to get out of here unseen, then I have to take the long way back.
Proceed to the garage level.
Fuck them, I decide. I’m on six. But there has to be another stairwell. Probably on the other side of the building. I have Mona’s face now. I can be her on my way out. If I can manage to get a clear path. And—I don’t want to think about this part, because it unsettles me—if I can make the trip work.
What the hell happened back there? It was like… I was… normal. I don’t want to be normal. I do not do normal. I am Sadie Scott, the best motherfucking illusionist this world has ever seen.
I like it that way.
I open the door for the sixth floor and peek out. It’s quiet and silent. I slip out, walk casually, Mona’s face at the ready so I can throw a trip. But then I see the room I’m almost looking for. Six-nineteen. Dr. Yasmine Bates.
Inside that room is my objective, Thomas Brooks.