It took two more days for Jayden to finish the vial.
He really hadn't decided what he wanted to do by the time he fell asleep on the sofa in the wee hours of Sunday morning, his face bathed in light from the grainy reruns on his television. He was too distracted to do much else, too unsettled by what he'd learned. His dreams were unexpectedly vivid and unsettling, filled with molecular chains that lunged towards him like angry serpents.
A terrible noise woke him, and it took him a few seconds of pain and confusion to realize that he was making that noise; he'd moaned himself awake. It was bad. He convulsed, automatically thrusting his head over the side of the couch so his vomit would end up on the floor rather than himself, but it quickly became clear that he had nothing in there to vomit. He helplessly heaved for a few seconds longer anyway. Afterwards, he gasped, trying to focus. The television was still on, and his apartment was filled with the kind of grey light that told him it was early morning. He felt wretched – not just nauseated, but aching, brittle, as though his current shaking might shatter him. He gripped the sofa hard with both hands while he worked on remembering why he was so miserable. The half-filled tube of triptocaine winked at him from the coffee table.
Jayden made it, staggering, to the bathroom, clinging grimly to walls along the way. Washing his face helped to bring things into clarity, but that frightening, jittery feeling wouldn't leave. He looked sorrowfully at his reflection – hanging on to the towel rack for balance, he looked waxy, corpselike. Was it the ARI, or the triptocaine that was still hurting him? Belasco's words popped up, unwelcome, into the back of his brain: I got so lost in someone else's ARI once that I couldn't remember my name for hours. I stuttered a little for two weeks afterward. With no one around to be ashamed in front of, Jayden whimpered a little. Weeks.
He tried taking aspirin, going back to bed, washing his face again, drinking coffee, drinking more water. None of it helped; the acidity of the coffee even made things worse for his empty stomach, and his guts started to cramp. When he surrendered and picked the triptocaine up in one sweat-slicked hand, the realization that he was giving up was already a kind of release. Terrified of overdosing, unsure of how much he should take – just a little, Miller had said – he gave himself the barest snort. The high was good. It was very good. But it was less important than the relief.
In half an hour, he was showered, dressed, and ravenous. He got lunch at the greasy spoon across the street, bolting his food almost without chewing, smiling a little bit at his pleasurable secret: he was still high, enchanted by the details of the world around him, but carefully, deliberately concealing it. His skill in hiding his altered condition made him feel oddly superior, and he spent the rest of the day refining his ability to do so, taking another bump of the tripto once he started again to fumble with his coordination and struggle to focus at items in the far distance. He was already learning that he wasn't good for much in those first few minutes after taking a hit; even though the intensity was much more manageable than the first time, the rush was still too overwhelming. But after those few minutes, he mused, he was golden.
So golden that he decided he could handle going in to work – taking public transportation, because he'd left his car in the lot again. His nerves became more and frayed over the course of the morning, as he braced himself for the ARI effects he was dreading. When a headache began to stick tiny, kittenish claws all around the circumference of his brain, he wasn't sure at first if it was actually brought on by the bad experience from Saturday, or the tension in his shoulders. But then the rows of data on his screen began to swim and blur together, and he knew the ARI wasn't done with him yet. He had to work hard to not stagger on his way to the bathroom, where he nearly tumbled into a stall and onto a toilet seat.
That first time taking it at work was terrifying; he rubbed the vial hard, hard through the fabric of his jacket, wishing he'd taken the day off, instead, convinced that as soon as he got the drug to his nose, someone would kick the stall door open and simply arrest him on the spot. When he finally snorted it, the combined thrill of the tripto high and the adrenaline from the fear almost literally floored him; in his effort to stay upright and release energy, he ground his hands so hard into the metal dividers on either side that the tendons in his wrists popped audibly. It was a struggle not to vocalize his relief.
On his way back to his desk, walking almost jauntily, he abstractly realized that he should be scolding himself for what he was doing in his head: making a list of everything he needed to do to better accommodate the problem. For one thing, he'd forgotten to check his watch, so he was unsure how much time he'd spent uselessly high before coming down enough to function. For another, he really needed to try to regulate the dosage better. For yet another, he needed to spend more time practicing talking calmly while elevated. And, of course, he really needed to talk to Miller.
That phone call, from his desk, was his first real exercise in keeping his cool during a conversation. "Andy," he said, as soon as he heard the other end pick up. "Need to talk to you."
"Yeah," the other voice agreed, sounding glum. "I figured you did. Can we do it tomorrow? After work?"
Jayden mused, slowly. He was self-consciously trying to do everything slowly, to make sure he was thinking through things first. "Yeah," he agreed. "Where?"
"Meet you at the Washington Monument," Miller sighed back, and Jayden had already agreed and hung up before he thought that through all the way. He was pretty sure that was strange, but Miller presumably had his reasons.
Jayden finished the last of the tripto that evening; when his alarm went off the following morning, he literally fell out of bed lunging for it, his muscles responding as though they were phoning in from a distant time zone. It was an unpleasant beginning to an unpleasant day; by the time he was trying to shave, with limited success, he'd figured out what Miller had meant by "the tripto shakes." For much of the rest of the day, he again had to concentrate hard on walking, talking, everything, though now it wasn't because he was occasionally high, but because his brain still wasn't quite firing on all cylinders. It wasn't as bad as he'd feared – definitely nowhere near as bad as it had been on Sunday – but still challenging. At least, he reflected grimly after lunch, re-reading a file for the nth time to make sure he was concentrating on it, the entire experience was teaching him how to be thorough.
After work, Jayden spotted Miller on a bench by the reflecting pool before he even made it all the way to the Monument. The other man was slumped low on the seat, hands jammed in his pockets, a lit cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth; he didn't even look up as Jayden hesitantly took a seat beside him.
"Hey, Andy. Didn't know you smoked."
"I don't. Or, you know, I haven't for a couple of years. I bummed this off a tourist who asked me for directions. Little stress relief. So. What kind of a conclusion did you come to?"
"You really want to do this here? Why here?" Jayden wanted to know. "Isn't this a little . . . public?"
"Cold War nostalgia," Miller said, eyes still on the ground. "There are all those stories about KGB spies meeting their contacts on park benches on and around the Mall."
"Did anyone ever actually do that?"
Miller shrugged. "No idea. It's pretty this late in the day, though, isn't it? It looks amazing." He dropped the cigarette, crushed it out with the toe of his left shoe. "When the light's this color. You know as well as I do that sometimes public spaces are sometimes more private than private ones. Don't leave me hanging here, Norman. It's been a long couple of days for me, you know?"
Jayden hesitated, trying to be cautious with his phrasing: "I think . . . I think I'd like to start keeping some for an emergency." He shot a shy look over at his fellow agent, was surprised to see the other man visibly trembling.
"Oh, Jesus." Miller gave a shaky laugh. "I thought for sure I was here to get a death sentence. I'm just about ready to puke on my shoes, over here. Okay. Wow. Shit, I wish I had another smoke." He laughed again. The two men stared for a while at the smoldering cigarette butt on the ground for a long beat. "How are you feeling?" Miller finally continued. "You okay? Thought you might be having some trouble, after all that."
"Today was hard," Jayden admitted. "I can tell I'm not quite all there, still. But it helped a lot, I think, being able to work through the worst of it like that, with what you gave me. Everything we do with the ARI is risky. It's all . . . maybe it's all a little wrong, what we do. But it's important. It's more than that; it's perfect. The problem isn't with the ARI, it's with us. I just . . . I want to be able to keep up with it. To be as good as the ARI. At least, to try."
Miller was flashing that black Irish grin again: "You can pretend you're an idealist all you want, buddy, but I've seen your fake trees. You're having fun in there."
"There a reason I can't do both?" Jayden was a little flustered by the accusation, but he had to admit Miller wasn't being unfair. "How does this happen, now? Do you . . . can I . . . I don't know how to ask you about getting it."
"First off, you need to stop looking so guilty. You look sneaky, is what you look like. I did bring some with me, just in case. And, I hate to say it, Norman, but it's not free."
Jayden was embarrassed in turn. "No, of course. I, uh. Unless it's under five bucks, I think we have to find an ATM."
That was the beginning, but far from the end. For a while, things were perfect. Jayden chugged along through training, continuing to dip his fingers in every pie of specialization he could find, toying a little with his time limitations, learning how far he could push it, learning how to regulate the effects of the triptocaine. As Miller had predicted, the highs from the drug quickly lessened in intensity and duration, but its ability to help him deal with the ARI effects continued. He'd reached, it seemed, an equilibrium, and Belasco congratulated him every time he checked in at training.
Finally, one week, the instructor eyed him narrowly: "No field trip today, Norman. I've got to talk to you a little. Stay put while I get everyone else settled." Jayden tried not to squirm nervously in his seat as he waited, desperately wishing he'd left his tripto in the car, rather than smuggling it in, in his inside breast pocket. Finally, Belasco folded his gawky frame into another chair and addressed him seriously. "So. I think you're done here, Norman."
"I . . . what?" He was frozen. What did Belasco know? Jayden stalled: "What is it?"
"I know you're supposed to have a few weeks left, but I don't think they'll be useful to you, so it seems silly to make you do them." Jayden was blinking in a mixture of confusion and relief. Belasco was giving him a slightly confused smile of his own as he continued: "You've been tearing through stuff, and I think today should be your last day here. Time to kick you out of the nest. I took the liberty this past week of talking to Carruthers and your director. From what I understand, you should be expecting to hear from them in the next couple of days about taking ARI into the field."
"Mm-hm?" Jayden was surprised into incoherence.
"I'm sorry." Belasco's eyebrows were raised now. "I . . . do you not feel ready? I thought that'd be good news, but you look like a goldfish I just threw in the piranha pool."
"It's . . . no, no, it's fine. I mean, it is good news. Great news. Awesome." Now Jayden was tripping over himself. "Thank you."
"Good. You'll do fine. Meanwhile, your job today is helping me with training. You know Connors, that big guy in the corner? Walks into things a lot? Go tap him out of his ARI, take him outside, and help him do some work with tire tracks. Don't let him get hit by a car."
Jayden tended to Connors, and another agent interested in cars – Price – and a few others, all distantly. He knew that he didn't have that magic touch of Belasco's, that ability to see how other people saw, but he did his damnedest. He could feel the debt he owed to all the other trainees, and he tried to pass it on as best he could. He was distracted because the future was teasing his brain, that possibility of doing his first field work with the ARI.
It came. Though it involved flying all the way out to Arizona, that first case was small potatoes: the killer had already been caught, and the case building against him was solid. Jayden was mostly dotting the i's and crossing the t's – running his fingers over still-preserved crime scenes, over the shattered remains of a woman's head, the last victim. She'd been kept waiting for his arrival, carefully refrigerated, and as he worked, Jayden murmured a tiny apology to her for delaying her burial. It was a minor assignment, but deeply satisfying, because it was his. He was polished, professional, thorough, quietly elated by his own capability, and his report was immaculate. Everyone said so.
Things got faster after that, quickly. More field work followed. As he began to be assigned to more cases, particularly more open cases, Jayden was shuttled out of his shared office space into a closet-sized room of his own so that he would have somewhere to store the growing towers of file boxes. All of that information on all that paper took up almost no space at all in his ARI, but he had to keep the physical copies around; relying only on invisible electronic data files made his director and colleagues uneasy. The boxes made the walls of the tiny office close in further, but he simply used the ARI to give himself endless, gorgeous landscapes.
Things got faster. He ended up in Florida one week, sweating through his suit, combing through DNA associated with the Daytona Beach killings. There hadn't been any confirmed victims there for a few years now, but he was getting closer to cases that were important, open, solvable. Ones where if he did things right, he could keep more people from dying. He wanted desperately to live in that kind of universe, one where he could help keep order, where he could save people. Frequently, he didn't need or use the triptocaine at all, but kept purchasing the little vials from Miller on a regular basis regardless, building up a hoard for reasons he couldn't specify, even to himself. He accumulated so many that he carefully hollowed out a wall space, stacked books in front of it; his treasure trove of drugs was just as orderly as everything else in his life.
Things got faster. It was the case in Oklahoma that first made everything feel like it was going so fast that Jayden was going to burn up on re-entry. He was barely briefed, ricocheted through the Oklahoma City field office, was practically dragged out to Tulsa by the scruff of his neck by a fellow agent. Everyone at the scene appeared to be quietly panicking: they were still trying to figure out just how big the scene even was. The first three skeletons that had been found in their shallow graves were in fairly close proximity, but now one had been dug up nearly a quarter-mile away, and important people were demanding, very loudly, to be told whether or not they were all related. Jayden hit the ground running, almost literally, picking his way through knee-high clouds of summer dust, splintered bones, tarnished jewelry, dried strips of skin. They found more corpses - he found two more by himself, one of the bodies almost mummified by the heat.
The air was so dry that Jayden couldn't even calculate how badly he was sweating, as it evaporated off his body at lightning speed. The OKC field office, desperate for answers, pushed him greedily, and he guiltily sucked down the triptocaine to meet their demands. Even after he fainted in the field, was briefly hospitalized because of his dehydration, they pushed, and he gave everything he could, excited, terrified.
Ultimately, it was exhilarating, but not as important as he'd hoped. The bodies were quickly identified; all that had been found so far were women, all missing for over a decade, all with prostitution convictions on their records.
"You can tell so much about a society by who its serial killers kill," Jayden said feverishly, his lungs filled with dust, brushing a femur with his fingertips. "The successful ones pick the people nobody cares about. Prostitutes, like Jack the Ripper. The Green River Killer. Jeffrey Dahmer got lucky because nobody cared about young gay men dying in Milwaukee in the early nineties. Albert Fish killed a lot of little black girls back in the twenties and nobody cared until he killed one little white girl, and then they caught his ass."
His temporary partner twitched nervously. "So you're saying this chick was a hooker, too? Like the other ones?"
"Yeah," Jayden admitted. His sense of order was outraged. "Whoever this bastard was, he knew to kill the ones nobody would care about."
"Sheesh," the other man contributed. "Or was lucky enough to want to kill only them, I guess. Are you sure you don't want to take off your jacket? It's like ninety degrees, and you look a little shaky again."
He felt a little shaky, but his fascination with the slowly growing number of corpses kept him upright, even though none were recent. Someone had been very, very busy on the outskirts of Tulsa, but not for some time, apparently. Once it appeared that a pattern had been established and that none of the victims were anywhere near current, Jayden was dismissed, thanked for his efforts, told that his skills would be better deployed elsewhere. By the time he was headed back to DC, he was so destroyed that he sucked a quarter-tube of triptocaine up his nose in the airplane bathroom and barely made it to his seat before he passed out. The flight attendant who shook him awake on the otherwise-empty plane seemed genuinely concerned.
"Goodness," she said lightly. "I thought I was going to have to get a cattle prod to get you out of here. Are you all right?"
He had already automatically fumbled his identification out of his pocket and was opening it towards her, rubbing his sand-filled eyes with his other hand. "It's okay," he mumbled. "I'm with the FBI." He stumbled off the plane before either of them could comment on just how little sense his response had made.
By the time he was back in his apartment, he was barely walking, and he couldn't even tell why. It might be exhaustion, or ARI damage, or triptocaine abuse. He only knew that he needed to be in bed. God only knew how bad the damage was. Weaving unsteadily, he peeled back his wall panel, glared at what was left of his stash, groaned, and dialed Miller.
"Hey, Norman. Aren't you out of town?"
"Just got back." Their conversations on the phone were always carefully coded. "Really need to see you."
". . . already? We just talked before you left. All right. I'll probably be here at work at least until six. Want me to stop by your place after that?"
"Yeah. Yes." He was having so much trouble even making it through the conversation. "I think I have to go to bed. I'm leaving the place unlocked. Just come in if I don't answer the door."
A grinding pain in his chest woke him; he curled into himself. "Muh?" he asked, too disoriented to make more sense.
"If you don't start talking to me, I'm taking you to the emergency room." Miller said. Miller's knuckles were digging into Jayden's sternum.
"S'okay. Tired."
"It's not okay. I've been trying to wake you up for five minutes. You're freezing. Can you feel your hands? Can you feel me squeezing your hands?"
He couldn't, but lied in the hopes that Miller would leave him alone: "Mm-hm. Just tired."
"You're fried, Norman. You're hurt. You hurt yourself. Jesus, what did they do to you out there?"
"Make it not hurt," Jayden whispered. Miller, and the triptocaine, made it not hurt so much.
Eventually, Jayden woke up on his own bathroom floor, hugging a pillow, shivering against the linoleum. There was a note for him: I called in sick for you. Never again.
He eventually found his phone, left Miller a brief message: "Thank you. Never."