Broken Wide

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  That turns the tide—there’s only four left.

  It feels like my mind is on fire—the feedback is shaking it so hard it feels like its losing coherence—but I grab hold of two orbs as they dive down to strike. They break and drop, smashing into my chest but not releasing their charge. I grunt my way through destroying the last two.

  The buzzing stops.

  I open my eyes, breath heaving, lying on my back in the street. I lift my head.

  I’m too late.

  The CJPD form a line spanning the pavement. Wright’s two meat drones are pulling screams out of the fallen jackers, but I know what comes next—me. The CJPD officers advance on me, slowly, their electric weapons pointed at my chest. I raise my hands in surrender, staring them down from my prone position, motionless on the ground, but mentally, I’m reaching out for the first abomination that Wright cooked up in her lab—or tortured into being.

  I grab hold of his mindfield and yank hard.

  The screams of his victim stop and he falls to the ground.

  There’s a flurry of confusion as the CJPD shout at each other and me, giving panicked looks to their downed jacker monster-pet. But my focus is on the second one—enveloping his mindfield and ending his tortured life, just like the first.

  Now the officers are freaked, yelling at me and menacing me with their weapons.

  I just smile.

  Because no matter what they’re packing in those guns, it’s not worse than what I just destroyed.

  As fast as I can, I reach for the nearby fallen, jackers who are down but still alive. I spin their mindfields, quick and dirty, shoving them into reader configurations as fast as I can. Their screams and flailing are like a living nightmare all around me.

  One officer finally loses his war with panic and shoots me.

  I scream as a thousand watts of something convulses my body.

  Then everything goes dark.

  Fog crackles around me.

  Blue lightning jumps from the formless mist. I shield my face and run. The electric storm gives chase. I mentally shove it back, but that only gives the shock-strikes a path into my head. I stumble with the hit then keep running—straight into something. It’s a wall of a man—a jacker with dead eyes and gigawatts of energy charging his mindfield. He grips my skull with two beefy hands and rips my head apart—

  I scream myself awake.

  The sound echoes even as my mouth gasps at the cold concrete floor. I wrench my face away from it, heart pounding, chest heaving as I roll on my back. I blink hard at the blinding plasma lights overhead—my body cramps, my stomach still churning from the terror. I swallow that down, and the room slowly comes into focus. Just as my eyes recognize the vertical bars along one wall for what they are—a cage—my mental reach confirms it.

  I’m in a shielded cell. Caught. Trapped.

  The only question is where?

  I quickly climb to my feet. My narrow cell has a bed, a toilet in the corner, and three solid walls, all of which are shielded. The fourth is a set of vertical bars, also shielded, and what’s beyond those makes it very clear where I am. A two-story prison stacked with cages of people I assume are jackers, due to the shielding and the light-green jumpsuits I’ve only seen one place before.

  The Jacker Detention Center.

  I rub my eyes to clear the last of the electrical haze from my vision. Whatever the CJPD shocked me with, it was tuned for jacker mindfields—just an ordinary mind-jolting taser, not Tiller’s mind-destroying tech, but it’s still messed with all my senses. The burnt electrical taste at the back of my throat. The electric skittish feel still sizzling my nerve endings all over my body. The sensitivity to light that’s making everything in this nightmare seem to glow around the edges.

  “Will you look at that?” I know that voice, but my brain is too fried to place it. “He’s a jacker!”

  I squint against the plasma lights and scan the cells across from me, trying to find the source. Directly across from me is a woman lying unconscious on the floor of her cell, so the voice isn’t hers, but I stumble forward anyway. I stop just short of the steel bars, so the shielding doesn’t fry my brain even further—the proximity raises the hairs on my arms.

  But my eyes aren’t deceiving me—it’s Anna Navarro. Her face is twisted in pain even in sleep.

  I hope it’s sleep.

  I do a quick visual scan of the other cells— from mine, I can only see about a dozen across the two levels, but we’re packed in like animals, stacked on top of each other in our narrow slices of the Detention Center. Only we’re not being “detained”—no one leaves this place. And last I heard, Tiller was still using prisoners as fodder for developing his device. Then again, he’s deploying it in Jackertown now, so maybe it’s no safer outside the prison than in.

  Several prisoners are knocked out; the rest are murmuring low or keeping quiet, looking shocked to be where they are. I recognize a few from Jackertown, but I’m unprepared for the familiar, sneering face in the cell across from me to the right.

  Rutkowski. The jacker clan leader whose sons mind-abused Jiaying. One of them stands just behind him, sporting a black eye and the same evil grin.

  “Is it him?” Rutkowski asks him. Rutkowski’s son is about my age, raised in a ruthless clan—he’s what I thought all jackers were when I was growing up. Cruel. Brutal. I had no qualms about spinning his mindfield to free Jiaying, but there’s no reason he would peg me for it—he and his brother and their sick friend were twisting on the ground by the time I came on the scene.

  “Dunno,” Rutkowski’s son says, squinting and edging forward for a better look. “Maybe he changed since. Was just a gardener back then.”

  Rutkowski smirks. “Did you drink some inhibitors from the hose, MacCay?” He’s looking me over like he thinks he could kill jack me without breaking a sweat.

  “You’re a very fortunate man, Rutkowski.” The chill in my voice quiets the prison chatter. Anger lights up his son’s face.

  Rutkowski’s smile just grows. “That so?”

  “You’re lucky there’s a shield between us.”

  Rutkowski and his son laugh, but I’m not even close to joking.

  Jiaying needs justice. She can’t go home, still haunted by what this monster and his sons did to her. Maybe if Rutkowski was put down like the dangerous animal he is, Jiaying would finally believe he can’t hurt her anymore—her or anyone else. Then she could put those flashbacks to rest and return to her life.

  Rutkowski smirks at me from behind the safety of his shield—and I know there’s no justice in this. I shouldn’t be here, and Rutkowski should have been sent here long ago. The CJPD let the gangs terrorize readers and jackers alike—how do I know they won’t just set him free again? I left Tiller alive so I could bring down his whole sordid enterprise, and I still landed in jail.

  I won’t make the same mistake with Rutkowski.

  I step back from the cell door, hands clenched at my side. I don’t know if there’s a way out of this—if Tiller finds me here, I’m a dead man, anyway—but if nothing else, I will make Rutkowski pay for his crimes.

  I take a breath, ignore the man’s snickers, and examine my cage. We’re deep inside the Detention Center. I reach out with my mindfield to test the corners of the cells, and a familiar nausea wrenches my stomach. Technically, I can walk through a shield unharmed—but only because the contact is fleeting. Any extensive interaction with an anti-jacker shield is debilitating. I’m not like my sister or even Sammi—I don’t have the kind of surge power that can bust through helmets or corral mind-busting orbs…

  Hang on.

  I reach out again mentally and grit my teeth through contacting the shield. The feedback is tremendous, the nausea surges up, but as I push through that initial interference field… there’s a smooth surface underneath. Buzzing and electric but completely featureless.

  Very much like an orb.

  I pull back before my stomach stages a full revolt. But my heart is racing with
something like hope.

  An orb is smaller, and its field is weaker—but I can surround it and manipulate it without having to surge through. I just grab hold and wrench hard until I break the field coherence that holds it together. The cell’s shield is ten times more powerful—but it’s essentially the same underneath. Which makes sense, since this is MINDWARE tech at its core.

  The main problem is that I can’t surround the cell with my mindfield, given I’m inside.

  I toss a measured glare at Rutkowski. It’s cold enough that his smirk falters. Then I step back to the center of my cell. I haven’t done this in a long time and definitely never in this way. But while the natural and easiest way to spin a mindfield is to surround it with my own, taking a map-measurement of every hill and valley, every nook and nuance, that’s not the only way I can do it. For a jacker with a hard head—one I can’t penetrate with my mindfield—working from the outside is the only option. But for any normal jacker, I can slip into their mind and take a map measure from the inside. A mindmap is like a relief map of the moon—the inside is just the inverse of the outside.

  I close my eyes and reach my mindfield out in all directions, slowly expanding it evenly from my body until it matches up with the contours of the room. A simple rectangular prism, but that just means the corners are tough to get right. And I can’t get too close at any given spot or this will not work. Even so—just being this close mentally—the skin-crawling electric buzz makes my stomach clench.

  I keep my focus, steel myself, then shove out against the shield in all directions.

  I gasp and double over, clenching my stomach, but I keep an iron lock on the surface—it’s insanely slippery, like trying to grab a giant ice cube from the inside—but just as I’m sure I’m going to throw up, I grab hold of the surface… and yank.

  There’s a popping sound like an electrical circuit has blown, only it’s softer.

  I breathe through my teeth and straighten, but I can already tell—the shield is down.

  Holy crap—I did it. I rush forward to the door of my cell.

  I’ve got the attention of the entire cell block. Especially Rutkowski.

  I give him a small smile and ease my hands around the bars of my cell door.

  His eyes go wide, and he stumbles back, bumping into his son, whose face has lost all color.

  I’ll get to them in a minute.

  First—Anna’s cell.

  She’s still passed out. Her cell butts up against three more—one above and two on either side. I reach out with my mindfield, but the shields on the other cells keep me from wrapping my mindfield around the entirety of her cell.

  I blow out my frustration and rub my stomach, which is still aching. It’s one thing to pull down a single shield; another to orchestrate a prison break. But this new thing I can do… it’s a spectacular tool, one I’m sure will be key to getting us out. Right now, I need Anna Navarro awake. We can strategize from there.

  I try grabbing hold of just one face of her cell’s shield, but that only earns me some bile rising in the back of my throat.

  Rutkowski & Son have edged back to the front of their cell, watching me.

  I try again with Anna’s cell, but one face of the box just isn’t enough of a grip. Then I realize I can go down… I close my eyes to feel my way below the floor of the Detention Center. Now I’ve got two sides. But even as I do this, I realize there’s the tiniest of gaps between Anna’s cell and the neighboring cells. Sliding my reach between them means double the contact with the shield—like slipping between two live wires and hoping not to get shocked. Which just means I’ll need to do this fast… and maybe lose the contents of my stomach.

  I move quickly before I can dwell on that too much, slipping my mindfield through a crack so small only something as insubstantial as a field of mental energy could make it through. I groan and clench my teeth so hard they squeak, but I mentally slide along the wall, between the fields, and surround the cell… and yank.

  It breaks. That same soft popping sound punctuates the air.

  I instantly let go of the mental hold and slump against my cell door. There’s silence as I pant against the bars. A trickle of sweat itches my forehead. I wipe it away and stand straight again, opening my eyes. The whole block is riveted. Rutkowski’s face is gratifyingly pale.

  I am coming for you, jackhole. My expression says words I don’t need to.

  I reach into Anna’s cell—her mindfield is complete static. I’m not sure why they even brought her here, rather than just killing her like the others. Maybe because she’s Anna Navarro, sister of the slain leader of the JFA. But I know her mindmap, filed away in the seemingly infinite storage my mind has for such things.

  I spin up her mindmap—the entire block jolts with her screams, several jackers retreating from their cell doors. I quickly reshape her mind into the hard-headed jacker she was born to be, in more ways than one. She comes out of the electric haze fast, lurching to a crouch and casting around with both her eyes and her mind.

  “Over here,” I say, then smile when she looks.

  Her eyes go wide, but she cautiously stands. “What’s our status?”

  I snort out a laugh, and it hurts my stomach. “Pretty bad.”

  She squints disapproval at my answer.

  So I elaborate. “We’re incarcerated in a place no one breaks out of, but I was able to wake you up, so there’s that.” No need to tell her she was basically mind-dead for a while. But I hope she’ll take my hint and realize the shields are now down on both our cells without me calling it out specifically. There have to be cameras everywhere. “Now we just need a plan.”

  She furrows up her brow and does this scanning thing all around, no doubt getting oriented. I glance down the walkway between cell rows, and I can see farther now, given I can press my face against the cell bars. It’s a long walk to the end, where there’s a heavily fortified door. I’m sure it’s shielded, but even if I could break it, we don’t have a key. I unlock minds not industrial steel doors controlled by helmeted mindreaders outside anti-jacker shielding.

  Anna’s thinking.

  Rutkowski & Son are extremely attentive. When I look his way, he says hastily, “Whatever you want, kid. Get us out, and we’ll get you whatever you like.”

  I snort my disgust. “There’s only one thing I want from you.” It takes a moment for it to sink in, but I can tell when it does. That color of gray is not natural on a person.

  While Anna’s figuring a way out, maybe I can take care of this trash.

  I grip the bars of my cell and focus on the shield protecting Rutkowski. It occurs to me that the shielding is really the only reason any of the jackers in the Detention Center are alive. Left to their own devices, jackers like Rutkowski will kill or be killed, a brutal economy where mind-violence is the currency that buys power. It’s the opposite of what Julian fought for—it’s the opposite of civilization—and if I can get out of this place, I’m going to fight to make sure the whole world doesn’t turn into either Rutkowski’s version, with brutal mindjackers in charge, or President Torquin’s vision, with readers ascendant over jackers.

  I don’t know if peace is truly possible—I only know it’s worth fighting for.

  My stomach lurches as I find the limits of the shield around Rutkowski’s cell. I keep my eyes open, glaring at the man as he and his son shrink further back in their cell. I also keep half an eye on Anna. She’s doing something with her mind, focused on the door of her cell. Is it mindware active? That wouldn’t seem prudent in a jail full of jackers. I return my focus to Rutkowski and grit my teeth as I slide my mind between the shields adjacent to his cell, seeking to surround it… the instant I get there, I break it and retreat. Still, my stomach is churning, making me gag against the bars.

  I feel Rutkowski & Son assaulting my mind a half beat later.

  They’ll get nowhere with that—it would be annoying except the look of panic on their faces is so gratifying. I don’t bother shoving them b
ack. I just surround their mindfields… and spin.

  They go down on their knees, grasping their heads and screaming through the pain. I’m tempted to let the spinning go for a good long time, but I’m visibly freaking out everyone in the cell block… including Anna. With a grimace, I lock open their minds and jack in for the kill. Their screams are replaced by panting and soft moans. I could simply tell their hearts to stop beating or make them speed up until they burst a blood vessel somewhere vital—like their brains—or just run their hearts until they fail.

  But then I realize… that’s not nearly enough punishment.

  My stomach clenches. I’ve never been the one driving the torture—done it, yes. Enjoyed it, no. Rutkowski and his son share the same mindscent—a woodsy smell that’s utterly ordinary. No sulfurous demonic scent to go with the evilness of their deeds. Their minds are both in a state of complete and total terror—Rutkowski’s son is surprised, but Rutkowski himself isn’t. There’s a deep sense of recognition like he always knew it would come to this—death at the hands of more powerful jacker. That’s always been his greatest fear. It’s what drove him to brutality—he wasn’t raised on that kind of violence, he chose it. Because it was the only way to survive. Which just reminds me that all of this—the gangs, the secrecy, the prison, the hatred, the myth of reader supremacy—all of it serves men like Torquin, not men like Rutkowski.

  Or me.

  Rutkowski needs to pay for what he’s done—but that should earn him jail time, not torture and death. Justice isn’t the same as vengeance. It’s something Jiaying would say.

  Rutkowski & Son are ebbing toward death. I release my jack-hold on their hearts and quickly spin up their mindfields again—their screams jolt the air but then cease when I let their mindfields drop open. Only this time, I’ve left them in reader configurations.

  The shock on their faces, the way they jolt back as they hear each other’s thoughts, wide open and terrified and completely defenseless… it’s just a small taste of what they put Jiaying through. But as readers in a prison full of jackers, they’ll have plenty of time to discover what it's like to be on the wrong end of a jack. Assuming their lifespans don’t become a lot shorter.