The door to the room opened, and Sadie heard the sound of music, voices, and laughter from other parts of the building. What is this place? she wondered, recalling advice Catrina had given them at a lunch Q&A during orientation. “Think of yourself like an anthropologist dropped into an unfamiliar locale. To get your bearings, you’d note the terrain and the wildlife and make yourself acquainted with the important people in the village. You should go through the same exercise when you begin Syncopy. The more detail you can collect, the better your assessment of the internal mindscape will be.”
Sadie took in what she could see of the room. It had a high curved ceiling and wide windows framed in stone with pointed arches at the top, like a Gothic university building, or the Detroit Union Club, where her Mind Corps interview had been. Only here the windows were missing most of their panes, the wood-paneled walls were covered with brightly colored graffiti rather than demure hunting landscapes, the wide-screen television was showing advertisements rather than market updates, and she was pretty sure these guys weren’t leaders of industry and law. Leaders of lawlessness, more likely.
At least with so many people she’d be able to learn Subject 9’s name, she thought.
“That was epic, Frosty,” a guy with big ears standing behind Subject 9 said, reaching down to pump his hand.
The guy next to him nodded vigorously. “Seriously, Snow. You killed it.”
Killed what? Sadie wanted to know. And was it really so hard to use a name?
While they spoke, the graveyard-like whistling Sadie had noticed at first rose and fell in pitch, and she realized she’d been wrong about it coming from far away. It was actually inside Subject 9’s head, the sound of chemicals—thoughts and emotions—moving through his mind faster than the speed of sound. It oscillated, as though it was made up of several different threads superimposed on one another.
“They’re like the electronic relays that make your computer work,” Catrina had explained during the Q&A lunch. “At the beginning the impulses will probably sound like white noise, a low hum. To start with, focus on how and when they change. With practice you should be able to key them to the specific mental processes they represent.”
Catrina had made it sound banal and basic, but the reality of it—she was listening to his mind working!—was amazing.
Sadie tried to focus on the behavior of the sounds, but the number of people speaking around them made it hard to process.
A guy on the left who seemed to have the sniffles said, “Got to say, thought you were going to end up more like a snowflake than a snowman after that last one, if you get my drift,” prompting a chorus of laughter around the table.
“So you going to tell us your secret, Ice Baby?” a little guy with red hair asked.
Ice Baby? Sadie repeated. This was getting ridiculous. And secret to what?
“I was just lucky,” a voice very close to her said, and she realized it was the voice of Subject 9. It was low but not too low, and nice, she thought. It wouldn’t be a bad voice to listen to for six weeks.
From his left a voice said, “Lucky that all of you are such crap card players, that is.” The speaker, a guy with dark skin and slicked-back hair, leaned forward to touch Subject 9 on the shoulder. “No offense, friend.”
“None taken,” Subject 9 assured him.
The guy directly across the table hefted himself out of his chair and pushed a pile of poker chips toward Subject 9. “Take your winnings, Little Ice.”
There was a slight uptick in the volume of sound inside Subject 9’s head, and Sadie saw a flickering out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned to look there was nothing there. “Thanks, Willy,” Subject 9 said.
A name! Sadie thought. Even if it wasn’t his, it was a start. An associate. Her first entry into her mental notebook.
“You earned them,” the guy called Willy told him. Sadie concentrated on making mental notes of his characteristics the way they’d been taught in orientation. He was big, from muscle not fat, but with wide-spaced gray eyes, light brown hair, and a genuine, open smile, he looked too much like an overgrown schoolboy to be intimidating. He wore a chalk-striped denim cap far back on his head, with matching chalk-striped denim overalls. “I think it’s pretty amazing, you sitting there blindfolded for three hands and predicting what we had just from hearing how we bet. Tell you the truth, felt like you were reading my mind.”
Sadie agreed that was pretty amazing. If Subject 9 had actually done what Willy had described, it would mean he was either exceptionally good at both poker and reading people’s voices, or exceptionally lucky.
Or cheating, she added, which, given Curtis’s warnings about his criminal tendencies, was probably the most likely.
“Wouldn’t take long to read your mind, Willy,” the guy with the red hair said, and everyone, including Willy and Subject 9, laughed.
A voice directly to Subject 9’s right cut in, saying, “Are we done with the circus performance yet? I want to play some cards.”
Another momentary rise in volume followed his words, and Subject 9 asked, “You in a rush to lose more money, Linc?” His voice sounded lower to Sadie, and strained.
But she had a second name. Linc. Short, no doubt, for Lincoln.
Sadie expected Subject 9 to turn toward Linc, the way he had whenever anyone else addressed him, but he gave only a quick glance, just enough for Sadie to get the impression of a well-built guy with pale skin, chin-length black hair, and lips pressed together tightly in distaste. She didn’t see his eyes, and she had the impression Subject 9 was deliberately avoiding them.
Clearly there was some history between them. For a second time Sadie thought she saw something flutter at the edge of her range of vision, but when she looked, she found nothing there.
The guy with the slicked-back hair said, “What’s wrong, friend Linc? Tired of having money slip through your fingers?”
Linc was on his feet so fast his red leather club chair tipped backward and thudded to the ground. “What the hell is that supposed to mean, friend?” he hissed.
There was a collective intake of breath in the room, and everyone seemed to stiffen. Subject 9’s eyes moved very slowly to stare at Linc, and everything inside him went silent. Sadie had been to a lot of debates, but she’d never seen an atmosphere go from jovial to explosive so quickly over words.
If there’s a fight, I won’t push the panic button, she resolved, steeling herself. I told Curtis I could handle violence, and I won’t let him down.
The guy with the slicked-back hair seemed oblivious to the tension. His teasing smile stayed in place, and he was meeting Linc’s eyes defiantly—but, Sadie saw, his hands were trembling. “Word gets around is all,” he said. The Chapsters who had been standing near his chair shifted away as though wanting to disavow even a physical proximity. He added, too brightly, “And you lost on those last three pots. That had to sting.”
Arms braced on the sides of the table and head lowered, Linc looked like a bull ready to charge.
Willy chuckled, jumping in. “Relax, Linc. Nobody meant anything by anything. Our old friend is just trying to get under your skin and win back some of his loot. You see how he’s dressed. Could use it, I’d say.”