Michael Prescott - In Dark Places

Rambo's owner, or handler, or trainerwhatever he was calledstepped into the pit and tended to his dog. The man responsible for Driver stripped the collar and chest protector from the carcass, leaving the dog where it lay, a torn and wasted thing, its throat open, limbs askew, fur stiff with drying blood.

Robin finally had the space behind her to turn aside. She stood drawing deep breaths and fighting the pull of nausea. And then she saw him.

Brand.

Across the room, near the cellar stairs, wearing a black button-down shirt and black pants.

And laughing as he collected a wad of cash. He'd backed the right combatant, evidently. The mastiff's death had paid off for him.

"You son of a bitch," Robin said aloud, startling a man next to her, who thought the comment was directed at him.

She slipped through the dispersing crowd and closed in on Brand as he pocketed his winnings.

"Alan Brand," she said, getting in his face.

"Who the hell amp;?" But then he knew. Somehow he knew, though they had never been introduced.

"Oh, shit," Brand said.

"Sorry to spoil your fun."

"Shit," he repeated. He seemed slow to react, less intelligent than she'd expected. Maybe it was more than a love of the streets that had kept him from advancing higher in the ranks.

"You forgot your appointment," she said.

He presented a stupid smile apparently intended to charm her. "I didn't forget. Had more important things to do."

"So I see."

"Hey, sorry about that. We'll reschedule."

"That's not necessary."

"You mean you're giving up on me?"

"I mean you're doing your session today."

He blinked, processing this statement and finally producing a startled response. "Now?"

"Yes. Now."

"I don't think so."

"I do. Or we'll see how your superiors feel about the kind of entertainment you enjoy."

He puffed up, a man defending his rights. "What I do in my off time"

"Watching dog fights is a misdemeanor, Sergeant."

"You gonna arrest me?" He said it with a sneer.

"I'm going to report you."

"Go ahead."

"But not to Wolper or anyone at Newton. I'll go over their heads. I'll bring it up with Deputy Chief Wagner."

"Your fucking angel in the department. The dickwad that approved this half-assed psychiatric bullshit."

"I doubt he'd appreciate being characterized that way."

"How'd you get him on your side? A little mouth action? Oral report? You give his baton a few good licks?"

"Stop being an asshole."

His flippancy abruptly vanished. "You're fucking serious, aren't you? You'd rat me out to the D-chief?"

"I'm calling him right nowunless you follow me back to my office for our first session."

"You're a regular ball buster, aren't you?"

"Is that a yes?"

"God damn it," Brand said, and he headed up the stairs.

She watched Brand's eyes tick nervously as his gaze shifted around the office. Possibly he'd been expecting a mad scientist's laboratory or a chamber of horrors, but all he saw was a large room furnished with the plush sofa he was sitting on, and an assortment of thickly cushioned chairs. A desk and a file cabinet occupied one corner of the room. Framed diplomas and other credentials hung on the walls. Sunlight trickled through curtains rustling in the breeze of the central air-conditioning. The floor was carpeted. A potted fern stood near the doorway to the kitchenette.

All very normal. She hoped Brand took some reassurance from that fact.

He didn't seem tomaybe because of one other chair in the room. It had metal arms and a straight back. Wires ran from it to a bank of computer consoles and heart and brain monitors. Nestled among this gear was the MBI appliance, a metallic cap sprouting wires.

Brand's gaze kept coming back to the appliance. His hands twitched in his lap.

She had produced waivers for him to sign. So far he had merely stared at them, his face grim.

"Before we get started," Robin said, "I want to explain a little about the theory behind my work." She tapped an illustration on the wall. "As they say in those public service spots, this is your brain."

Sometimes she got a smile out of a patient with that line, but not this time.

"See this almond-shaped structure just above the brain stem? It's called the amygdala. A primitive part of the brain, responsible for tying together the data that come in from your sense organs. Sight, sound, smellthey all meet here. The amygdala not only puts all this incoming information together, it also instantly applies a kind of nonverbal value judgment. Dangerous or safethose are the two main judgments it hands down. And it does all this before your conscious mind, operating in the neocortex, has even received the data. Do you see the implications?"

"The only implication I see is that I'm stuck in this office when I've got a hundred better things to do."

"The implication," she persevered, "is that you can perceive something as dangerous or upsetting before your conscious mind has analyzed it. Phobias work this way. A person who's phobic about dogs may react in terror to a little Pekingese. Rationally he knows a lapdog isn't dangerous, but the amygdala has already registered a threat. The same is true of any persistent, irrational fear. Telling yourself to be logical or trying to exercise willpower doesn't work. The fear exists on a lower level than logic or will."

Brand showed a glimmer of interest. "So how do you fight it?"

"You have to reprogram the brain so it stops responding in a counterproductive manner. Basically, the core experience that frightened you is frozen, incompletely processed, so it keeps coming back. Any stimulus that reminds you of the core event will trigger the same automatic fear response. But suppose you could reexperience the event, this time without amygdaloid arousalrelive the trauma, but process it correctly so the memory is properly evaluated and stored. Then you would stop overreacting to subsequent stimuli. You could view your earlier trauma with objectivity and perspective. And you wouldn't be a prisoner of your memories anymore."

"And you can do this?"

"I've been successful in other cases."

"How? By strapping that thing"he pointed to the appliance"on my head so my brain gets zapped with electricity?"

"There's no zapping involved."

"That's not what I heard."

"Heard from whom?"

"Well amp; there are, you know, rumors around the department about what you do."

"Rumors aren't always your best source of information. Still, you're partly right." She walked over to the appliance and picked it up. "I will be asking you to wear this."

"The helmet?"

"I call it the appliance. But it doesn't send out an electric charge. It uses magnets." She turned the device over. "As you can see, the inside of the appliance is lined with about fifty figure-eight electromagnetic coils. Each coil produces a fluctuating magnetic field that can pulse at speeds ranging from one cycle per second to sixty cycles per second. Low frequencies work best, so in our session the fields will be running at one hertz, one cycle per second. These magnetic fields produce local electrical currents in the brain tissue. PTSD is characterized by increased blood flow in the right frontal and paralimbic structures, so that's where the fields will be activated. With me so far?"

"I guess so. Not all of the coils will be on?"

"Only the ones targeting the relevant brain structures. There will be about fifteen superposed fields generated by the coil array."

"Sounds like a lot of juice. I'm not too keen on getting brain cancer."

"The overall field strength will be lower than that of an MRI scanner. There's no danger. You may feel a slight contraction of your facial muscles, sort of like your forehead is being pulled taut. While the procedure is going on, you may experience blind spots in your vision, owing to inhibition of the occipital area."