The Thought Pushers (Mind Dimensions #2)(57)

The American kid? I, Darren, take a mental step back, struck by the wording. Eugene is Russian, and at almost thirty years of age, he’s not exactly a kid. If Arkady was thinking about him, wouldn’t he call him a Russian guy or something along those lines? Unless . . .

Unless the shooting this morning wasn’t directed at Eugene, like we all thought.

Suddenly, it all becomes clear. Of course. It was the Pusher. He tried to kill me, not once but twice—first via the shooter and then again in the hospital.

I’m the un-killed American kid in question.

Shit. Whoever this Pusher is, he’s serious about eliminating me. Is it possible he had something to do with my parents’ deaths? Or Mira’s parents’ deaths? Had he used this exact puppet—Arkady—to do it? I need to dig deeper into Arkady’s head to find out.

I focus on going back a long time . . .

We spit out a tooth, but don’t slow down. Instead, we execute our plan of attack on the Captain. A punch to the liver, another to his Adam’s apple. The Captain has been teaching us Systema for the last couple of weeks. Learning the unit’s secret martial art was one of the main reasons we joined this training. Well, that and curiosity. We wondered if this, of all things, will take away the boredom.

I, Darren, realize I’m too deep inside Arkady’s past, so I try to go for more recent events.

The Chechen woman is shot in the neck. She falls, bleeding, convulsing, and trying to scream. We feel nothing, though we know that most people would feel pity at the sight. We vaguely understand the concept. We wonder if it’s pity that compels us to think about how the woman was beautiful, and it’s a shame we didn’t get a chance to f*ck her. No, that’s more regret than pity. Pity is an emotion that still eludes us.

I’m still in too deep. Also, I finally understand what the strange thing about this mind is. The guy is a real-life, certifiable psychopath. He doesn’t feel the usual range and intensity of emotions that other people do.

I decide I have to be careful about poking around in his head. His experiences make Caleb’s disturbing memories seem like summer camp. The atrocities Arkady committed in Chechnya are there, in the back of our shared-for-the-moment mind, and I don’t want to experience something like that. No amount of therapy with Liz would undo it.

So I mentally tiptoe around, trying to look at experiences that shed any light on the murders of the past. I’m drawing a blank, though, whenever I try to focus on anything having to do with my parents’ murder. He must not have been involved in that.

I do come across many signs of the Pusher, though. And the explanation of why Arkady thinks he met Esau recently. The Pusher regularly makes Arkady forget things—like missions from this Esau. In fact, he often makes Arkady forget Esau’s existence completely. To me, that means only one thing.

Esau and the Pusher are the same person.

I want to scream in excitement.

Unfortunately, it seems like the Pusher took obsessive precautions to never be seen by Arkady. Even when he Pushed Arkady, he probably walked over to him in the Quiet, rather than being physically in the room. This Esau identity must be the Pusher’s way to control his pet Mafia goon by more conventional means—via the phone.

I look further into Arkady’s memories.

We finish setting up the explosive device and get back into the car. As we sit there, we wonder why this Tsiolkovskiy guy needs to be eliminated in such a fancy manner. Bullet to the head would’ve been much cheaper and less risky. Every assassin knows that explosives can hurt the man who works with them. We’ve heard of this happening on many occasions. It’s understandable for someone high-profile, but doing it to kill some Russian scientist? It doesn’t make sense. But the client said he would pay double, claiming that Tsiolkovskiy might see it coming otherwise, so explosives it is.

I feel cold all over at my discovery. I can’t even imagine what Mira will do when I tell her.

With a shudder, I get out of Arkady’s head.



*



“Fuck,” I say unimaginatively when I’m out and catch Mira’s gaze.

“I take it you heard the phone conversation,” Mira says. “We’ve got to hurry.” She turns and starts to briskly walk away.

“Mira, wait.” Catching up, I place my hand on her shoulder.

“What?” She gives me an annoyed look. “Didn’t you Read the same information I did?”

“Yes, a Brooklyn Bridge meeting,” I confirm. “But I learned something else, too. Something you might not have, given your Depth . . . ”

Her face turns pale. “Tell me.”

I take a deep breath. “He remembers planting a bomb under a car for a Russian scientist with the last name of Tsiolkovskiy. That had to have been your dad—”

Her reaction is so violent and sudden that I don’t have time to say anything else. Grabbing a chair, she starts whacking Arkady’s frozen body with it, over and over.

Then she puts the chair on the floor and sits down on it, propping her elbows on her knees and covering her eyes with her palms.

“Mira,” I say softly, approaching her. “If you want, I can try to make him drown himself in that cold pool over there.”

I don’t know if I can actually do what I just said, both from a practical standpoint and from an ethical one. But trying it will certainly make more sense than beating up a man in the Quiet—an action that will have no impact in the real world.