Broken Wide

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  I turn back to Juliette. “Just go!” I slam the autocab door shut before she can respond. Then I jack into the autocab mindware and set an autopath to Aaliyah’s.

  I turn to face the carnage as it rolls away.

  I start with the closest body—one with a mind filled with static. I spin her mindfield, and her screams ricochet off the stone faces of the brownstones. I work as quickly as I can, spinning until I can shape her mind into a jacker configuration—but I don’t even know this person. There’s no chance of restoring her original mindmap. I just do the best I can and move on. Next is a young boy—a changeling. He screams even louder. I stumble further down the street, spinning and healing, struggling through a mental triage. The apartments lining the road are the kind abandoned by readers and now filled with jacker families. Ones who thought it might be safe to have children—I sense their young minds behind the facades, hiding. But the windows are smashed in, and it’s clear they’ve only been spared because they’re not old enough to turn jacker. Little kids. But they’ve witnessed all of this. I focus on a pair of adults who have fallen just outside the steps—a man and a woman. I try resurrecting both at once, leaving them groggy with no memories, but jacking an impulse for them to seek out the kids.

  Then I move on.

  The next mind is empty—a girl in a bright yellow shirt, thirteen at most. A changeling. Her rolled-up jeans are dusted by the dirt where she fell. Her eyes stare at the street, her cheek mashed to the sidewalk.

  Tiller’s tech killed her young mind… all because he couldn’t stand for her to grow up.

  I’m looming over her, unable to move. I wrench my gaze down the street. So many bodies… This isn’t even downtown. There were thousands of jackers in Jackertown before I left—even more now—how can I possibly… I can’t…

  Dullness steals over me. I can’t save them all.

  I stumble forward, my legs unlocking with the scream that’s building in my chest—the need to do something is so overpowering, it fights through the mind-numbing haze. I reach out to two minds at once and spin them up. More screams. Then I try a third at the same time. The sound is making me shake. A fourth, then a fifth. That’s all I can do, dropping the first one as I shamble down the street and spinning up another. It feels hopeless—these minds have been nearly blasted out of existence; they’ll never be what they once were—but I do it anyway. A few are readers… I just leave them. They’re alive—terrified at the sudden looseness of their mind as if all the contents might fall out—but they’re moving. They have their memories. They’re the fortunate ones.

  Then it hits me—the orbs are gone and haven’t circled back yet.

  I scan further down the street, but downtown isn’t that direction—at the end of this block, there’s a right turn that leads to the center of town. The health clinic. The Mediation Center. The old JFA headquarters. I have to fight to keep breathing—to not have my lungs collapse in fear of what I’ll find there. I look over my shoulder to see if the orbs are coming—I have no idea what I’ll do then, but it doesn’t matter, because what I see back there nearly makes me go down, my feet catching on some crack in the street.

  Three blocks behind me, outside my jacking range, two armored vehicles stamped CJPD are rolling my way. There’s a patrol on foot, armed with large guns and launchers of some kind—no kind I want to discover. But that’s not what’s making my heart seize and my body cramp up. Striding at the front are two of Wright’s mindless jackers—her killing machines with the hollowed-out minds. I can tell instantly by the way they walk, stiff and precise, even if it weren’t obvious—they’re the only ones not wearing helmets.

  I run.

  Simply haul it out of there, heading straight for downtown. Because if there’s anyone still there—anyone with a mind that’s more than static—they must get out. Right now.

  I drop the mindfields I was spinning and leave them with a single, blazing jack command—run now. With their screams gone, the sound of my pounding feet is impossibly loud. The CJPD shock troops and Wright’s meat drones have to see and hear me, but they’re moving slowly, like an armored tide, relentlessly sure of their ability to mop up any resistance. The jackers I’m forced to leave behind won’t be offering any. I’m hoping they just run, as fast as they can.

  I grit my teeth against the scream that’s reaching the top of my lungs. How can this even be happening? How can people be mowed down in the streets as if their lives don’t matter? My lungs are ready to burst with the outrage and the terror and the desperate need for oxygen as I sprint toward downtown, turning one block, then another. Bodies point the way, fallen where they were struck. I spin a mind or two as I go. Their screams follow me. When I turn the final corner and stumble into the street in front of the clinic, I nearly fall over in my haste to backpedal.

  Orbs. Dozens of them.

  They’re swarming in front of the clinic, and it takes me a moment to see—there’s a person in the middle of the black tornado. They can’t be alive… but then a half dozen of the drones crash into one another in a spectacular wipeout. Parts fly in all directions, and I get a glimpse of red hair before the swarm reforms and blankets her airspace again.

  Sammi.

  She’s standing in a cleared spot in the middle of the street, but closer to the clinic, the density of bodies is insane—they’re piled on top of one another, as if they were mobbing the clinic, seeking refuge, but were cut down before they could get inside. They’re heaped right up to the inner door to the medical rooms. Jackertown was supposed to be a sanctuary, but instead it became a killing field. The clinic, a place of healing, has its glass windowfront smashed in. It wasn’t the people forcing their way in—the glass is on top of their bodies.

  The orbs crashed through to reach them, just like in Tiller’s vision.

  Sammi’s the only one still standing. I could resurrect a few of the fallen, but the drones would just strike them down again. They’d be coming after me, but Sammi seems to have a monopoly on their attention. That can only be intentional—like she was trying to draw them away from the fleeing crowds, and now she’s stuck in their vortex. I’m desperate to help, but I don’t have her surge ability—or her skill with mindware circuitry. She’s a wizard programmer with an electric mind-scalpel, but she’s barely holding her own in the fight. And she’s running out of time.

  We both are.

  I could draw some orbs away, but I’ll just end up on the pavement like everyone else. I’ve got an impenetrable mind, but—

  A noise of frustration rises above the buzz of the orbs. Someone’s inside the clinic, shoving open the inner door, fighting the weight of the bodies, and now climbing over them toward the busted outer door…

  Tessa.

  She doesn’t see me as she scans the bodies, looking for something. She reaches the outer door and suddenly bends down next to a fallen jacker—a girl with long brown hair covering her face. Tessa hooks her hands under the girl’s arms and tries to drag her inside. I sprint over, and I’m nearly upon her before she notices.

  She jolts to a stop. “Zeph!” It’s an admonishment. Her cheeks are streaked with tears, her eyes wide as she throws a fearful look at the orbs. “Everyone’s already left! You have to get out—”

  “Let me help you.” I try to take the girl from her arms. Her hair falls aside—it’s Kira.

  Tessa shoves away my hand. “I’ve got her! You take someone else. Then get out!” She angrily gestures with her chin toward the inner door of the clinic then hooks her hands under Kira’s arms. “Now! Before it’s too late.”

  There’s no way she can drag Kira clear before the CJPD arrives. “I’m not leaving without you.” I’ve never been tempted to jack Tessa before, but—

  “They’re not after me.” And she’s right—but she would have been a target if I had agreed to her demands and changed her. Now is definitely not the time to point this out.

  She won’t even look at me as she hauls Kira’s body over a fallen man slumped at the
threshold, heading for the safety of the inner clinic.

  I fling a hand to the street behind me. “The CJPD are on their way,” I try, my voice rising.

  “Then grab someone and save them,” she says between clenched teeth. Her whole body is shaking, but she struggles on.

  “I’m trying to!” And I mean her, but I step over the man’s body to stop her. “Look,” I say more softly. “Let me resurrect Kira. I can do it fast. Then you take her and get out of here. We can’t afford for her to be caught.” I’m glad Tessa can’t read my thoughts at that moment—I believe every word I’m saying, but Kira’s not the one I’m desperate to save.

  Tessa’s eyes go wide, but she stops her epic struggle and gives me a quick nod.

  I envelop Kira’s mindfield with mine—it’s not completely gone to static. She has an impenetrable mindbarrier, like mine only not as finely-tuned, and it must have given her some protection from the orb. But it’s half-smooth as if the orb spent itself on breaking her mind open, leaving half of it jarringly intact. She’s not so much knocked out as just… broken.

  I spin up her mindfield, and she screams, thrashing in Tessa’s arms. Tessa gasps and drops her, now flailing on top of the fallen body of a young woman. I use the pieces of Kira’s mindmap to put it back together, filling in the empty zones, shaping them as I remember—it helps that the mind tends to revert to its original form. Plus I’ve got a near-perfect memory for mindmaps, and I’ve encountered Kira’s several times—but it’s important to get this right. She can’t lead if her memories are wiped.

  When I’m as sure as I can be, I lock her mindmap in place.

  Her screaming stops, the vacancy of sound filled with the buzz of drones still assaulting Sammi outside the clinic. Tessa’s face is drawn, distraught, but she hustles to help Kira to her feet.

  We only have a minute, maybe less.

  “You have to go,” I say to them both, hoping Kira can actually move fast enough for them to escape. She’s blinking her way out of a mindmap haze. “I got what Kira needed,” I tell Tessa. “Juliette has it. You both need to get away and take down the people who did this.” Then I scan the bodies around us. “I can’t save everyone, but maybe I can resurrect a few. Together we can hold off the CJPD. For a little while at least.” I can’t look at Tessa now. Instead, my gaze locks with Kira’s—she’s sharp again, and I don’t have to read her mind to know she understands. A town full of jackers couldn’t hold off this assault—whoever I resurrect will just be struck down again. We can stall the CJPD, maybe, for a short while, but… It’s one thing to sacrifice myself—it’s an entirely different thing to volunteer someone as a human shield. Which is why I need Kira to pick. Whoever it is, I silently vow I’ll turn them into readers before Wright’s monsters get hold of them. Failing that, I’ll kill them myself… before their minds get torn apart.

  Kira holds onto Tessa for support, leftover pain lining her face, and she squints at Sammi lost in her cloud of orbs. “Save her,” she wheezes, lifting her chin in Sammi’s direction.

  I wince. “Okay.” How in the world—

  “Zeph.” Tessa’s voice whips my attention back. Her deep brown eyes are wide and luminous, and they capture me completely. “Your sister got out. Hinckley and Scott made her leave with them. She’s okay.”

  Relief makes my limbs loose. In all the shock and carnage, I’d forgotten my sister could be among the bodies. “You need to go. Now.”

  Tessa nods and helps Kira climb over the bodies piled up by the inner door—Hinckley and the others must have escaped by taking refuge inside, then snuck out the back, hopefully with some way to avoid the CJPD. For all I know, they’ve got Jackertown surrounded. I wait until Tessa and Kira slip through the inner door of the clinic… then I climb over the bodies to get back outside to Sammi.

  How is she keeping the swarm at bay? They keep diving around her, sniping closer, their attempts to shock her electrifying the air. The smell of ozone is thick. I try to reach out with my mindfield, but she’s fighting them with her surge ability, and the feedback is intense. This mindwave war between her and the AI jackers is creating a field around them that’s hard to even get near. My mindfield is rock-hard, like Kira’s—I might take a hit without completely breaking—but then again, maybe I couldn’t. Or I could just help—but even as I try to surge at the periphery of the battle, the field is too powerful.

  I pull back.

  Down the street, around the corner, I hear a scream—long and holding all the pain a body can withstand. Or a mind. I know that sound—it came from my own mouth in a cell when Wright’s meat drone nearly broke me.

  We are out of time.

  I look for something I can use as a weapon—maybe I can smash the drones physically. Get at least a couple before they get me. Then Sammi cries out. She’s down on one knee, the swarm buzzing even more frenetically. One drone swings a long arc away from her like it’s gathering momentum for a strike. I reach out mentally for just that one, and in a flash of insight, I see it—its field is perfectly smooth.

  It’s not a meat drone.

  It’s not a mindmap.

  It’s not human at all.

  But I can spin it.

  I envelop the probe with my mind—not surging against it, not jacking, but encasing it at a distance. Once I have it surrounded, I try grabbing hold of the slippery surface of its artificial mindfield. It almost slips through my grasp, but just as it reaches the swarm again, I give it a good yank.

  The field breaks.

  The orb drops to the ground, tumbling away until it bumps into the body of a fallen jacker—a boy, young, Olivia’s age. It stops… and stays there.

  “Sammi!” I call out above the din. “Fling one out. Away from the cloud.” She doesn’t seem to hear me.

  I try grabbing another one, but they’re moving so fast and so tight next to the cloud—I can’t get my mind wrapped around a single one unless it’s separate, on its own. I try anyway, but the feedback keeps slamming me back, forcing me off.

  Then one orb breaks from the pack and sails straight at me.

  I grab hold with my mindfield and physically duck so it can’t strike me. Before it can circle around again, I’ve got a mental hold on it. A yank breaks its flimsy construction, sending it tumbling to the ground like a rock.

  “Again!” I yell, bracing myself.

  Another one soars out, and I snag it before it can turn on me. It drops and rolls away, harmless. Another, then another—Sammi’s sending them as fast as I can handle. Faster. One slams my shoulder and shocks me, sending me sprawling on the ground. The electricity rips pain that makes my teeth clack, but I keep it together enough to mentally break the orb before it can hit me again. I stagger to my feet, but movement down the street freezes my heart—the CJPD.

  Their relentless parade of death has arrived.

  Wright’s meat drones are efficiently marching from one fallen jacker to the next—the dead ones are lucky, but the ones whose minds are merely static give their final screams.

  “Sammi!” I stagger closer to the swarm, which is now greatly diminished.

  Sammi’s back on her feet, facing me but not seeing me—her eyes are closed, hands held in front of her, making jerky motions as she feels them out and fends them off with her mind. She keeps sending me orbs, and I keep disabling them. I don’t think she realizes the CJPD are even coming, much less almost here.

  “Leave the rest of this to me,” I shout, not at all sure I can handle them. There’s at least a dozen left, maybe more. It’s hard to count with them moving even faster now.

  “I got this,” she hisses through her teeth. Her eyes are still closed.

  “Juliette needs you.”

  Sammi’s eyes pop open—her glare is intense. Another orb sails straight at my head—I knock it away.

  “She has data,” I say, angrily. “On Tiller. She needs protection until she can bring him down.”

  Sammi closes her eyes. “Finish this,” she says roughly.

&n
bsp; The CJPD is closing in. “We don’t have time.” I grab another orb and break it. We’re down to maybe ten. “I can take these. You have to go—now, Sammi. Tiller’s going to do horrible things. To Juliette.”

  Her eyes snap open again.

  I lift my chin for her to look behind her.

  She turns, and what’s left of the cloud of drones turns with her. “Shit.”

  “I’ve got this,” I say, taking down another drone. “Go.”

  She turns back, eyes wide. Then with a flick of her hands, the orbs pulse in a wave towards me. The swarm is momentarily stunned, hovering in the air. She makes a break for the door of the clinic. Three chase after her while the other six focus on me. I throw out my mindfield, trying to isolate each one, but they’re moving so fast—I sense Sammi’s mindfield still surging against them, keeping them away from me, but that also means I can’t get too close. One slips her grasp, but before I can get hold, it slams into my shoulder—the electrical surge nearly knocks me out. I’m down on hands and knees, blindly reaching and wrenching—two of them separate enough, from each other and Sammi’s presence, that I manage to take them out.

  That leaves four, but Sammi’s mindfield around them is fading.

  I squint and see her slip through the inner door of the clinic—the one that leads back to the healing rooms inside. The three who went after her slam into it. She made it. I want to link to her, tell her to look for Tessa, watch over her, but the three orbs give up bashing the clinic door… and come back after me.

  I break one, but the rest are learning, adapting, pairing up to make it harder for me to isolate each one. One pair separates enough for me to disable them both, but another pair slams into my back, and the electrical surge blacks everything out—I can’t see or hear, just feel the street rush up to smack my face. I roll over, eyes squeezed shut in concentration, still reaching mentally. I grit my teeth as I try to envelop the pair that just struck me, the feedback threatening to tear me apart. But I get a grip and yank them both—they go down.