Dead Space: Catalyst by Brian Evenson

he had, some delusion of glory and fame that he’d invented for himself, which would amount to nothing. His brother had reentered his life for a brief, somewhat painful moment, and now he was gone again, maybe for good this time. I should be thankful he’s gone, Jensi told himself. He’s nothing but trouble.
    But he wasn’t thankful, couldn’t feel thankful. Instead, despite being exhausted, he found himself having difficulty sleeping. What had his brother been talking about? His purpose ? What if it did mean something?
    He turned over and tried to ignore the thoughts. He closed his eyes and lay there watching little bursts of imagined light flicker over his eyelids. He tried all the tricks he could think of to coax himself to sleep: counting sheep (even though he had never seen an actual sheep), thinking through a math problem mentally, repeating to himself the same rhythmic phrase over and over again, trying to imagine the weight of his body growing heavier and heavier and falling asleep limb by limb. But nothing worked. There, beneath the exhaustion he was feeling, like an inhuman, baleful eye, was his worry about his brother, staring at him, staring into him, keeping him from sleeping.
    *   *   *
    He kept trying to fall asleep, until finally he felt like he was going mad. Then he got up, vidded Henry.
    “Do you know what time it is?” Henry asked, his face and hair scruffy through the vid.
    “All too well,” said Jensi. “I couldn’t sleep.”
    “So you thought you’d wake me up and make it so neither of us could sleep.” He yawned.
    “Istvan was here.”
    “What?” said Henry. “Really. You mean you dreamt about him?”
    Jensi shook his head. “He was really here. In the flesh.”
    “I thought by this time he was probably dead,” said Henry. “What did he want?”
    “He wanted to see me one last time.”
    “One last time before what?”
    Jensi explained the little he knew. “He’s crazy, right?” he asked once he was finished.
    “Maybe,” said Henry slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s planning to do something.”
    “What?”
    Henry shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Something drastic maybe.”
    “Like what?”
    “What’s he capable of?” asked Henry. “I know you love him and that he’s your brother, but you remember how he was when we first found him? He might have killed us. If he’s in the right mood—or the wrong one, I guess—I think he’s capable of anything. A bomb, maybe?”
    “A bomb?” said Jensi. “You’ve got to be kidding. It could break one of the domes, put everyone at risk.”
    “Doesn’t have to be a bomb,” said Henry. “Anything happening tomorrow?”
    “Like what?”
    “A speech, a rally, some sort of protest march, a meeting of two officials. Something along those lines?”
    “I don’t know,” said Jensi. “I’ve been picking. I haven’t been following the vids. Have you noticed anything?”
    Henry shook his head. “I don’t think so. If there is, maybe he’s planning to disrupt it. He claimed he was going to be on the vids?”
    “That’s what he said.”
    Henry shrugged. “Look through the vid notices, see what’s happening tomorrow. We can try to figure it out, stake a place out if it sounds right. Otherwise, we just wait, watch the vids for something that seems likely and then, if we find it, try to make it there before he does.”
    Jensi cut the link and tried to sleep, again without success. He lay there staring up into the dark until, slowly, the room began to brighten. Then he got up and began scrolling through vid notices. A school was being opened, someone from the colonial authority coming to cut the ribbon. There was a press conference on the steps of the municipal hall, run by a politician named Tim Fischer, about a methane leak in one of the outlier domes and to what degree if any, the government was responsible. A political rally for the opposition candidate, David Vernaglia, held not far from the municipal