Dante

  “So you know where I live,” I observe as we stand outside my family’s three-story brownstone. An automated cab waits patiently behind us, as Ghost isn’t staying and still has “miles to go before I sleep.”

  “I know what the Circle knows,” Ghost replies. “Or what their field agents are told, which always has gaps. But yeah, your address is public knowledge. If you can Google it, figure it’s out there.”

  “You said you could help with them showing up again?” I ask. I already feel indebted, but I also know this is the kind of thing where you take any help you can get.

  “Here’s a copy of my best,” Ghost says, pressing a cold white sphere about 3-inches across into my hand. “My best as of today, anyway. Just flash your family with the holograms, they’ll run full-spectrum triggers and burn out any implanted hypnogames in their heads.”

  “How?”

  “Same way I did it with you. Part of it’s like an immune system that attacks anything obviously foreign. The other is like an unconscious firewall that asks if the script your brain is running is something you truly want. That one adapts and becomes smarter the longer it runs.” She waved a hand. “There’s a little more to the secret sauce, but those are the main things.”

  “So you’re not really purging all of it. Just adding something else to guard the door.”Ghost shrugs. “Cognitive arms race, bud. If you’ve got anything better, I’m all ears.”

  “Side effects?”

  “You’re way harder to mindwipe. Also really bad hypnotists – the ones you don’t want in your head on principle, not because they’re trying to screw up – may have trouble ‘helping’ you. Oh, and it might help with poor impulse control but so far,” she grins impishly, “it really hasn’t.”

  “What do I tell them it is?”

  Ghost makes a face. “Play it by ear. They’re old, right? Just tell them it’s a disco ball, or crystal therapy, or something.”

  I bite back a sigh. “The Circle could still show up at any time.”

  “And now they know you’re being watched by their worst nightmare – me. Just run the protocols on some house AIs, and hand off a few agents to your family’s devices.” Ghost waves a hand. “Knowing what you’re looking for is a like an antigen in your immune system – something that triggers your body to look for the invaders. Which also works on their brainwashed minions. And your AIs can do more than alert you. They can tip off enough of the right authorities the Circle can’t control, and put your relatives on their radar.”

  I nod. That sounds like it has more than a few downsides, but it’s better than no plan at all. Also, my family’s already on the radar of some powerful people, if Uncle Kieron and Nana Price are any indication.

  But then, I also don’t know how they might be involved – unintentionally or otherwise. Assuming there are suggestions long-since planted in my head, and assuming my family is even at the root of them.

  Ghost eyes me carefully. “Look,” she says. “I know this is all crazy. I do. And I hate to say you get used to it. But the first thing to do is not let it drive you crazy. Do what you have to do. But you’ll be jumping at shadows for the rest of your life if you let this play on your imagination.” She snorts. “And trust me, the Circle isn’t worth your time.”

  “Why haven’t you told—”

  “The Feds? Already done.” She waves a hand around at the city. “The Chicago cops? Not sure how many were compromised, but I dropped anonymous tips while I was turning the Circle inside out.” She tosses me a burner cell. “The tipline number’s programmed in. I’d lose the phone when you’re done.”

  “What makes you so sure they won’t just upgrade their technology to get past their defenses?”

  “Oh, they’re trying. But one, I’m upgrading all the time, also. And two, there’s the real problem – most of their agents aren’t bad guys. They’re victims. And my tech keeps deprogramming them.”

  I think of how off-balance Destiny seemed in the alley, after Ghost showed up. “So those sigils you put in the air…”

  “Weren’t just about blocking whatever they were doing to you. They were about unraveling everything that’s been done to the Circle’s people. And I don’t have to be present to show a series of sigils, anymore than they do. But they need to control you, and I just need to break their systems.”

  I nod slowly, as everything I’ve seen suddenly makes a lot more sense. “So they have to make sure it takes. And to do something this dramatic—”

  “Takes more than just nudging you in the right direction. We’re talking a full-blown brainwashing down to a fanatical operative, a hapless cultist, or a straight-up drone. That means long-term conditioning, new associates, and depending on how fast you’re going, probably drugs or more tech.” She spreads her hands. “Or both.”

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  “While all you need to do—”

  “Is knock over the apple cart. I use a bunch of anonymous accounts to circulate embedded sigils in video clips, recorded triggers in audio files, and so on. And send them out everywhere, updating constantly. I mean, technically my AIs do most of it for me, at this point.”

  I blink. “So you’re making war on them all over the world.”

  Ghost winks. “See why they hate me? I don’t know how many people are at the core of the Circle – it could be a handful, or maybe just one. But a group that brainwashes everyone it can? You’ll never have much natural loyalty – everyone has to wonder if they’re another brainwashed pawn. You start breaking that brainwashing down –”

  “And the whole organization goes from being an unstoppable conspiracy to fighting itself.”

  Ghost grins. “Every. Day.”

  ***

  I wait until dinner to lay my cards on the table. We’re having desert when I cut the deck, shuffle it and my thoughts… and fan them out across my sister Bria’s open iPad.

  “What’re those?” she asks. She’d just been showing her friend Tegan the website for Waycross Academy, which you’ve got to admit looks pretty. But the cards on her tablet look almost magical when backlit by the screen.

  “So I ran someone with these cards today,” I begin, deciding to stick to the truth. “She dropped a few, but they’re used for hypnosis.”

  “Really?” my dad says, eyeing them curiously with no hint of recognition. Or any reaction to the triggers, which might mean Ghost’s magic ball of deprogramming is actually working. Or he’s never been primed in the first place. I glance past my family into the otherwise unlit living room, where I rejiggered the program to turn the ceiling and walls into a makeshift planetarium - only with mystically writhing, ever-changing sigils projected on every surface, instead of stars.

  “Mostly, they’re meant to be triggers,” I say casually, picking up one trump, The Fool, and idly turning it over and over in my fingers. “For anything that might be there already. Like suggestions set off by any one of these exact designs.” My peripheral vision was good enough to keep an eye at everyone at the table, but no one gives a start of recognition.

  Or any tell at all. Frustrating. I can’t tell if they’re master manipulators or completely clueless.

  “They look like the runes from your magic ball,” Bria observes, which might have been a complement. She and Tegan spent a while hanging out in the living room talking while constellations of sigils flowed through the seasons – I set it to imitate the last three thousand years of astral drift, marking patterns in the stars as the ancients had known them around the world, and then highlighting new ones as they changed from millennia to millennia.

  Which even if it hadn’t deprogrammed them, did a decent job of distracting the younger teens. Bria shows Tegan The Star trump as we talk.

  “I think the orb might have been inspired by the cards,” I acknowledge. I’m not sure what nightmare method the Circle had used when trying to ‘recruit’ Ghost, but for all I know they used the same deck. “But that’s not the only place I’ve seen them show up.”

  “Oh?” my mom says. She’s watching Bria and Tegan pick up the cards and turn them over. They’re gorgeous to stare at, even when they aren’t sneaking into your subconscious. Elaborate trump cards, vividly illustrated on both sides. The backs are illuminated with a silvery metal – perfect for the one-way mirror effect which kicks in when the far side of a card has a light source literally illuminating it. Like an iPad… or a candle.

  Almost as though the one dealing the cards doesn’t want to see the sigils themselves.

  Someone really thought them through before commissioning them. I grudgingly admitted to myself that whoever it was did a magnificent job. I wonder, not for the first time, if they knew what their purpose was. And if they crafted them of their own free will.

  The thought of a mindleashed slave blissfully working their art – or screaming inside the whole time – makes me shudder when I touch the cards, so I try not to think about it.

  Then again, it’s hard to ignore, given exactly where I’ve seen some of those symbols before.

  “You know those children’s books Nana Price used to get me? The fantasy ones? And science fiction?”

  “The ones with all those illustrations?” my mom asks. “Of course. I still have them in the reading room.”

  I nod. “They were limited runs, or even custom made. But they all used the same couple of illustrators. And those artists…” I spread my hands to indicate the cards “…used the same sigils throughout. Slipped into dozens of scenes that I’ve noticed already.”

  “That’s interesting,” my dad straightens up slightly. “Did you go check the books, or is this your eidetic memory again?” He scans over the cards, and stares at a few symbols, as if willing them to trigger a few memories in turn.

  My mom, though, leans back, looking from the cards to me and back again, thoughtful.

  “A bit of both,” I admit. “But it got me to wondering. If these sigils are meant to trigger post-hypnotic suggestions, why was Nana Price sending me books full of them? And did anyone ever try giving me a suggestion to be triggered later?” I look from my dad to my mom. “I know she had me visit that hypnotist friend of hers to help with studying, Dr. Orin. Was there more to it than that?”

  “Mother tried a lot of things to help when you were both growing up, Dante,” my mom says. “But nothing like that. And I was always in the room, the few times you had sessions with Lucas. It wasn’t just him and Nana.”

  I nod. I didn’t expect any blinding revelations or tearful confessions when we talked, but I had to bring it up for more than one reason.

  “Part of the reason I’m asking,” I say, “is I felt something when I saw these cards being used. Nothing I couldn’t shake off—” not an exaggeration, though I’m leaving out how for the time being “—but they shouldn’t have that impact unless someone had tried to leave me with a suggestion. And the other hypnosis I’ve tried to do has all been self-hypnosis. Either prerecorded or scripts I’ve made up myself. No room for symbols or unknown triggers there.”

  “It does feel a little weird to look at them,” Bria comments, holding up The Magician card.

  “It does,” Tegan agrees, staring at the Empress trump as she turns it over and over in her hands. With a sudden start, she drops it.

  “Wait, what if we’ve got whatever Dante has?” Bria says. “Like, what if someone tried to put something in our heads?”

  “I’m sure that isn’t an issue,” mom says smoothly.

  “Shouldn’t be,” I agree. I point a thumb back into the living room, where constellations are still busily crawling over everything. “But exposure to the orb in there should have already defused anything you’ve got.”

  My dad blinks at me. “Where did you get that?”

  I shrug. “A friend. But my AIs have been all over it. Working as advertised.”

  Bria cocks her head at me and our parents. “So there were suggestions in our heads?”

  “Mine at least,” I observe. I turn back to my mom and dad, who are exchanging a look. “Which begs the question of how they got there, especially when the sigils are crawling all of the books Nana gave me as a kid.” I raise an eyebrow. “Or do we have another meddling relative who pulls this kind of thing?”

  “Dante,” my dad says, “Nana Price is a lot of things, but she does love you. And even if she didn’t,” his face breaks into a wry grin, “she never sabotages her own work. Especially not her masterpiece.” Dad shakes his head. “You’re more than just a grandson to her.”

  I school my expression. Nana Price is… a lot. Growing up in a time when some doors were supposed to closed to her, she kicked them open anyway – or made doors of her own. Apparently Dr. Price had been less of an ambitious genius than a rolling earthquake, especially if you got in her way.

  Even five years into her official retirement, she seems as intense as ever.

  And I listened to enough conversations meant to be out of earshot to guess she’s more responsible for my unexpected talents than anyone.

  I don’t say any of that, though. I just nod resignedly.

  Nana Price is always a sensitive topic, probably for more reasons than I know. And I’ve pressed this as far as I can.

  “I know.”

  If there are more answers to be found, they won’t be here at the dinner table.

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