The Thought Pushers (Mind Dimensions #2)(6)

We shoot his upper right arm next. This time, he screams.

We savor the fact that his pain must be excruciating.

A shot to each leg follows, and he falls to the ground, trying to get into some semblance of a defensive position.

Now the Mindful Combat part is over, and we can let the rage back in.

Still, we don’t let the rage make us go too quickly. We kick and take a breath. Then kick again and again.

We’re moving in a fog. Time seems to slow.

When our legs ache and we’re satisfied with the amount of bone-crunching noises, we finally get tired of this game. After all, unless the Pusher dies of these injuries, he’ll be good as new when he gets out. But that’s not going to happen. We aim the gun at our opponent’s head.

It’s time to get to the point. It’s time to begin killing this Pusher . . .



*



I, Darren, have to remind myself that this whole experience was just Caleb’s horrific memory. I feel sick. But at the same time, I also feel surprisingly at ease with the memory. It’s a very strange, contradictory combo.

“No shit,” Caleb’s voice intrudes. “We’re part of the same mind for now, and my half of it is fine with it. How your half, the weak half feels, is irrelevant. You don’t like it? Then get the f*ck out.”

I try, but I can’t control it. Unbidden, another memory of Caleb’s overtakes me.



*



We hear a loud noise and wake up. The alarm clock next to our bed is showing three a.m., meaning it’s only been an hour since we went to bed. That’s a single hour of sleep after hundreds of miles of running in the span of four days.

We’re being dragged somewhere. The weariness dulls the panic a bit, but we know something bad is coming. And that’s when the first punch lands. Then the second. Someone pushes us, and we slip on someone’s blood and fall to the ground. After all that, they decide to beat the shit out of us?

We try to ignore the pain, making a valiant effort not to Split into the Mind Dimension. Such a reprieve would be cheating, and we want to feel like we earned our place here.

“Don’t you want to quit?” a voice keeps saying, and we hear someone agree. That person’s beating stops, but of course, he’s out of the program. To us, there is no such option. We would give anything to stay in—lose anything, endure anything. We never quit. Ever.

Instead, we slowly begin to get up. A kick lands to our kidney, another to the small of our back, but rather than keeping us down, they have the reverse effect: they spur us into action. It feels like the world is pushing us down. We fight for every inch, every microsecond of progress we make, and we find ourselves standing on two feet once again.

The blows raining down on us from all around stop abruptly.

A large man steps forward.

“This one isn’t just surviving—the bastard wants to fight. Look at his posture,” he says, surprise mixed with approval in his voice.

We don’t have the strength to answer. Instead, we strike at him with our right arm, instantly blocking his countermove.

The man’s eyebrows go up. He didn’t expect this much resistance.

Once in fight mode, muscle memory takes over, and we start the deadly dance of our personal fighting style. Even through our exhaustion, we feel a twinge of pride as a low snap kick penetrates the man’s defenses. His right knee buckles at the impact; he falters, if only for an instant.

We become a flurry of fists, head, knees, and elbows.

The guy is already bleeding when someone yells, “Stop!”

We don’t. More people enter the fight. The style we’ve developed can usually deal with multiple opponents, but not people of this caliber, and not when nearly dead from exhaustion. We contemplate the idea of Splitting to cope, but decide against it.

Fatalistically, we block the deadly barrage of their attacks, but eventually an opponent lands a perfectly executed round kick to the left side of our head, and the world goes dark.



*



I, Darren, get my bearings back.

“What the f*ck was that?” I try to scream. Of course, I don’t have a body, so the scream just goes into the ether that is our joint mind.

“Just some training,” Caleb’s thought comes to me in response. “You seriously need to focus. You’re on the right track, seeking out the violence, but you’re still in the wrong person’s head: mine. Get back to Haim. Remember what we came here to do.”

I try to remember. It feels like years ago when we came to Brooklyn Heights to Read this Israeli guy. And as I recall this, I realize that I’m still there with Haim and Caleb, still conversing with Haim’s/Caleb’s/my sister Orit. The shock of becoming a double—no, triple—mind is still with me, but at least I can think on my own again.

“Hurry,” Caleb hastens me. “We’re about to fall into each other’s memories again.”

I don’t want that, so I make a herculean effort to properly get back into Haim’s head. I try the trick of feeling light. I picture myself as vapor in a fog, as weightless as a dandelion floret floating in a light morning breeze, and it seems to work.

As I get that now-familiar feeling of going deep into someone’s mind, I try to zero in on and recall just a fraction of what I saw in Caleb’s mind.