The Thought Pushers (Mind Dimensions #2)(8)

“Are you okay, kid?” Caleb asks quietly.

“No,” I answer honestly. “I’m far from okay.”

“For what it’s worth, I am never doing that again,” he says, to my huge relief. “Your mind is too twisted.”

“What? Mine is too twisted?” I say in outrage, weariness momentarily forgotten. The gall of this guy. I’m not the one who tortures and murders people. I’m not the one who took some kind of weird masochistic pleasure in brutal training. I didn’t ask someone to Read a killer, so I could become an even better killer myself.

“You’re one odd puppy.” He smirks. “But it’s not just that. I really hated that feeling in the beginning, when our minds Joined.”

“I thought you’d done this before.”

He looks serious for a change. “This was different from the other time I did this. Too strange. Way too deep. We didn’t experience each other’s memories to the same degree when I did it before. This time, it felt almost . . .” He looks away, like he’s embarrassed to say the words out loud. “I don’t know, like a religious experience. Sorry, kid. The whole thing was just way too deep for me.”

Hmm, religious. That’s an interesting way to look at it. I wouldn’t have called it that, but now that he mentions it, I can see how the word makes sense. Not that I’ve ever experienced any kind of deep religious experiences myself, growing up under the care of two secular moms. I’d use the words transcendental or trippy to describe what happened.

“I’m in complete agreement,” I say. “I never want to do it again, either.” Especially with a mind as screwed up as yours, I think, but don’t say it.

“And we won’t speak of what we saw in there. That’s just between us.” He looks at me intently.

“Of course. That’s understood,” I say, a little too eagerly perhaps. I don’t know the full catalogue of the things he saw from my past, but I have no doubt he got more than his share of embarrassing tidbits. Thankfully, he seems to have missed the memory I most wanted to hide—what happened yesterday. Otherwise, I might be suffering a fate similar to the Pusher in his memory. The thought fills me with dread.

“You must be capable of even more Mind Dimension Depth than I suspected,” Caleb observes. “That Depth determines how far the minds intertwine during this experience. That must be why it was so intense.”

I digest this information. If what he says is true, then this experience will be more potent with almost anyone else—Caleb’s Depth is allegedly pretty shallow. I’ll have to be careful if I ever try it again. Not that I’m planning on it.

“Are you okay to walk back?” he says, interrupting my thoughts.

“Yeah, I guess. I certainly don’t see the point of sitting here,” I say. “Did you at least learn Haim’s fighting style? I’d hate to think we went through all that for nothing.”

“Oh, in that sense, this was a huge success. It exceeded all my expectations. He’s truly brilliant. Someday, I’m going to visit him in the real world, somehow get him to fight me, like he did with the people in his memory. That’s only after I come up with some counters to his best moves, of course,” Caleb says, chuckling.

“How does that work?” I wonder out loud. “Learning from Reading? Did I learn anything?”

“It’ll help me more than you. A practical knowledge base plays an important role. In my case, I’m familiar with Krav Maga, Aikido, Keysi, kickboxing, and many other styles that were clearly influences on Haim’s style. Thanks to that earlier knowledge, I’ll be able to appropriate a lot of what we both experienced on a direct, conscious level. But for you, I have no clue. You should’ve learned something, but I don’t know how much. And whether you can use whatever stuck in your mind in practice is a big gamble.”

And before he even finishes speaking, he’s standing next to me, aiming a punch at my face.

What I do next amazes me when I think of it later. I jump out of the chair and throw it at Caleb. Then, without conscious thought, my elbow stops his right hand mid-punch. My elbow hurts like hell, but the alternative would’ve been my face. What’s even more amazing is that my left hand tries to hit him in mid-chest. I remember doing this as Haim. It’s Haim’s signature move, I think—this punch in the solar plexus.

Caleb takes the hit in the chest, seemingly only raising an eyebrow in response. This should’ve hurt, I think fleetingly. But then again, some people’s abdominal musculature can reduce the impact of that hit. That little tidbit of knowledge comes to me from nowhere. I can’t dwell on it too much because he throws a punch, which I manage to block, and then I see another flash of movement. Before I understand what’s happening, a horrific pain explodes in my groin.

The world becomes pain. I can’t breathe.

I fall to the floor, clutching my balls.

“Sorry about that,” Caleb says. “You reacted so well, I thought I’d push you a little. I didn’t think you’d manage to not block such an obvious, slow kick. A move that’s a cornerstone of Haim’s style. You had to have done it yourself, at least a thousand times back in his head.”

He’s smirking as he says that—the bastard.

If I had a gun in my hand, I would shoot him in his smug face. The pain is unlike any I’ve ever experienced. The kick might’ve been ‘slow,’ but it doesn’t matter—it’s such a sensitive area. I try to regain control of my breathing. “You. Literally. Busted. My. Balls,” I manage to say with difficulty.