Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(9)

It was colder today. Snowline creeping downwards. He pulled on the warmest clothes he had, shivering. Poor Miles, delicate flower. Bring on the f*cking smelling salts. No climbing today. He’d kill himself if he got blindsided thinking about what had happened with the—

No. Nothing had happened. It was a dream. Nobody was talking to him. He was on a mountaintop, twelve miles from the nearest human being. He was not even a telepath. Stop it with that crazy shit. Stop.

He dumped a packet of bean soup into a plastic mug of water, stirring with his finger. Gulped down the resulting ash-colored gruel. He was getting sloppy. Hadn’t eaten anything fresh in a while. He wondered if there was anything edible growing in the forest this late in the season.

He headed into the woods, resolved to find something with phytonutrients in it. A few hours into his search, he choked down some mushrooms, but they were wrinked and moldy, and the taste was too strong to endure. A couple of withered wild onions made his stomach burn. A person needed a genuine appetite for this. He gagged, spat twigs and dirt. Yikes. Evidently he wasn’t the frontier type.

The onions gave him a coughing fit, and he ended up crouched on the ground, grimly waiting for the pounding in his head to ease.

Fuck foraging. Icy wind chewed sullenly at his ears. He got back to the campsite, gathered wood, chopped and split it, and settled in for a cold, sleepless night by the campfire. He was going to have to beef up supplies soon, if this turned to snow camping. It could, at any time.

A bug caught his eye, trundling across the forest floor. It butted up against the toe of his boot, got itself turned around and went on its way. He was so absorbed in staring at it, the sensation crept up on him.

Lara. That zingy, bright feeling. If he let himself look inside at the images, he would see her, in her white, frothy dress, doing that sexy get-through-the-wall pole dance.

Don’t look. He stared at the flames, kept the camera in his head switched grimly off. He would not play this game with himself, goddamnit. He was not tuning in to this channel. His damaged prefrontal cortex could go f*ck itself. He was not falling for this.

The sound startled him. It was the beep his phone made when a text message came in, but he had no smartphone. It was miles away, swathed in plastic, stowed in the box bolted under his truck.

Just ringing in your ears. Memories of sounds. Breathe. Let it go.

But he couldn’t help flashing on the screen in his head. Reading the words that glowed there.

hey u there?

Don’t do it, *. Don’t talk to her again. You’re encouraging your own mental illness. Entrenching it.

He knew exactly what was happening. He’d researched it extensively. The part of his brain that governed language and abstract thinking had been blasted by Rudd’s psychic attack, causing biochemical changes, alterations in his brain connections. This caused miscommunication between the prefrontal cortex and the langague area in his temporal cortex, resulting in auditory hallucinations. Hearing voices. Which this was not, strictly speaking. But it was close enough.

It was also known as schizophrenia.

He would not listen to those messages. Especially if they started asking him to do things. But even as he lectured himself, his response was pounding out, scrolling down the screen, in a big, bold, yelling font.

wtf? what r u trying 2 tell me about my f*cked up brain that i dont already know? u dont exist! its just me! give it up, go away. integrate, already. pls!! stop torturing me!

He held his breath for a moment. There was a long pause.

wow strange i thought u were the dream

no Miles typed back. that wd be u so dont try 2 fck with my head i wont play

not! im not u! or a dream! im myself. crystal clear?

He felt absurdly stung. u’ve got attitude 4 some1 who sneaks in uninvited and starts twiddling with my shit

At some point in the strange exchange, he’d given in and looked, so of course now he couldn’t look away. She was seated in the chair, that wafty skirt spread all around. She stared at the screen, hands in her lap, face expressionless. She lifted her hands, and typed slowly,

i dont have anyplace else 2 go

That sounded so forlorn. It made him miserable. Which ratcheted up the crazy quotient. Which pissed him off, and made him sarcastic.

pity party?

That evidently pissed her off in turn. She did not reply, but she didn’t leave. She just sat there, staring at the screen. Chin up. In a huff.

oh come on u have got 2 b kidding he typed.

She shook her head. Crossed her arms over her chest.

not fkg fair u cant diss me in my own head he pounded in.

She couldn’t resist that opening. Her hands went to the keyboard.

evidently i can appeared slowly, letter by letter.

Miles started to laugh. Helplessly snorting into his hands, tears spilling over. He’d seem bonkers to anyone watching. But hey. He was bonkers. This was irrefutable proof. That was the real reason he was here, after all. So no one had to witness what Rudd’s mindf*cking had reduced him to. A whack job who heard voices. No, correction. A whack job who saw texts. Leave it to Miles, the geek freak, to put a computer engineer’s special twist onto the time-honored process of going batshit.

Okay, fine. He was convinced. Time to get the prescriptions filled.

So this was to be his future. Mental institutions, halfway houses. A career bagging groceries at best, if he could keep from drooling on them. That was the level at which he functioned on those meds.