White light was already pouring on down. Heart attack victims tend to be more sad than scary, and most of them don’t stick around. But the ones that linger are the ones who didn’t see it coming, and they’ve got a bunch of unfinished business holding them back.
If there was a ghost in the room, they’d be haunting me by now. Given that I wasn’t currently getting an earful, I ruled that out. But I hadn’t been looking for repeaters.
“I’ve got to admit,” Jacob said, “for something that’s still in testing, this is remarkably seamless. You’d almost forget it was experimental.”
I was glad he was onboard. Jacob didn’t hand out praise lightly.
Evelyn gave a quick, almost startled smile. “Thanks—I, um—well, that’s really good to hear.”
I scanned the floor first. Nothing. Then again, our prior resident probably had a few minutes to come to terms with the notion that their indigestion was something a lot more serious. Tragic. But not sudden enough to leave a repeater behind.
I didn’t ask where the death had occurred. I let my training take over and I walked the grid.
More nothing.
“It’s not often that I say this,” I told Evelyn, “but I’m sorry to break it to you, your room’s not haunted.”
“That’s beside the point, Agent. How do you feel?”
Still digesting about thirty pounds of mozzarella. But aside from that? “Fine.” And then I glanced up and caught a glimpse of my reflection in the dresser mirror and nearly did a double-take, because I’d been so focused on checking for a ghost, I’d completely forgotten about the glasses.
And they didn’t look too bad on me, either.
* * *
We did a few more tests, comparing and contrasting the high-tech SPECs with Mood Blaster. Evelyn even showed me how to beat level 18 by strategically holding my breath at a certain point. It wouldn’t help me modulate my brainwaves, she said, but it was enough to fool the crude sensor in my smart watch by manipulating my pulse.
The SPECs were so unobtrusive, I hardly knew they were there. But Evelyn assured me that if I were hooked up to a scan, my brain would be putting off the smooth, flowing peaks that accompanied heightened ESP.
I wasn’t so sure about that. Not with the third piece of deep-dish I’d attempted now setting fire to my esophagus.
“There’s a 24-hour convenience store in the lobby,” Evelyn said. “I’ll bet they have some antacids—and I’ll bet they’ll be exorbitantly marked up. I’ll walk you there and put it on my expense account.”
She tucked away the SPECs and we headed toward the elevators. On the way down, she told me about the success they’d had so far with astral projection with a medium recruited from PsyTrain. I’d never met the guy, and the level of augmentation they’d achieved with him seemed negligible to me. But apparently it was “statistically significant.” And that meant something was working.
“I was thrilled when Bethany agreed to a clinical trial,” Evelyn said, then proceeded to rattle off a bunch of numbers and percentages about Bethany’s ability to trip the light fantastic—which had always seemed pretty limited to me. That was probably for the best. The only clear application for astral projection is espionage, which would be a sure way to get yourself picked off by the opposing team. “Bethany’s data will really help with the fine-tuning. Which also gave me an excuse to revisit my old Mood Blaster and see what’s become of it. Er…don’t include that on any of your reports. My bosses wouldn’t take kindly to me showing interest in an intellectual property I sold off years ago.”
“My lips are sealed,” I assured her, swallowing down an oregano-tinged burp.
The tiny convenience store did indeed have some antacids—and I could’ve bought a year’s supply for what they charged for a single roll. But since Big Brother was footing the bill, I grabbed two. I was considering adding a bag of chips, just on principle, when movement caught my eye—at the counter level.
I don’t care how swanky a hotel might be. Chicago is Chicago. And that means rats. Except when I did a double-take, I saw it wasn’t a rat at all shambling along the counter, but a creepy, cylindrical, semi-transparent mass that looked like a gigantic ghostly bacteria.
My heartbeat stuttered—I’d been holding my breath just like I had on level 18—and the massive germ thinned until its outline could be mistaken for a trick of the overhead lights bouncing off the chrome trim on the Lotto machine.
That’s where it roosted, I realized. Lying in wait for the next hopeful sucker to waste two hard-earned bucks so it could hop on and feed.
A habit demon.
I’ve seen habit demons crawl, slither and float, and they’re just as different from one to the other as a cornucopia of rotting fruit. But the way they feed off the dopamine squirt of a human’s addictions makes them easy to classify by their behavior. I’ve never seen a random non-physical cootie just hanging out and enjoying the ambiance. This thing was lying in wait.
Evelyn glanced over sharply, scanned the counter, then returned her gaze to me. She’d felt me feeling whatever it was I felt—and we all knew it.
I nodded toward the stack of Tribunes beside the machine. “Four bucks for a daily paper—since when? That’s highway robbery.”
No one in their right mind would buy that excuse for my adrenaline spike, but she didn’t press. Either she didn’t know me well enough to spot the fib, or she was incredibly tactful.
I wasn’t sure if I’d minimized my talent out of strategy or habit. But now it would be too obvious if I asked how long till the binaural SPECs enhancement wore off, so I just chafed the back of my neck and hoped the bacteria brick didn’t decide to feed on my big, fat lie.
