Text copyright © 2017 by Susan Kaye Quinn
July 2017 Edition
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Cracked Open
(Mindjack: Zeph Book Two)
young adult science fiction
Summary
Zeph always knew he was a weapon. He didn’t count on being a spy.
But he made a dangerous bargain with the Director of the Jacker Technologies Division of DARPA—he’d let Wright test his mutant mindjack ability if she’d release his parents. Simple. Occasionally painful. And the screams of his victims fill his nightmares. But it will be worth it as long as she can’t crack open his head and find out his sister, with her super-surge jack-ability, is still alive. And if his parents are finally set free.
Once that happens, he’s gone. Even if it means giving up everything he’s just now getting back. A home. Friends. A girl who believes in peace and love even when the world is falling apart.
But as the shock of assassinations and bombings and hate killings continue to pull at the threads that hold society together, Wright hands him a mission he can’t possibly complete. If he does, it will tear everything apart. If he doesn’t, he’ll lose everyone he loves.
Sometimes being a powerful weapon is the most dangerous thing of all.
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Mindjack Short Story Collection (Novella Box Set)
Singularity Series
The Legacy Human (Book 1)
The Duality Bridge (Book 2)
The Illusory Prophet (Book 3)
The Stories of Singularity #1-4 (Novella Box Set)
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Second Daughter (Book 2)
First Daughter (Book 3)
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“If I am not for myself, who is for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
If not now, when?”
— Rabbi Hillel the Elder
The pressure on my head is enough to make it crack.
At least, it feels that way. Dr. Wright’s latest “special project”—a wispy white girl with thin fingers and a mind like a bulldozer—bears down on my mindfield with everything she’s got. I’ve designed my own mindbarrier, and no mindjacker I’ve met has broken it. Not even this girl with no name and cold blue eyes.
But it hurts like hell.
“I think Zeph’s had enough,” Major John Scott says from his seat in front of me.
I’m perched on a high bench, the kind you see in a doctor’s office, holding my head in my hands, eyes squeezed shut, teeth gritted, but there’s no way I’m letting out the groan that’s bouncing around in my chest. Not that anyone who could hear it would be alarmed. Screaming happens regularly in this small, white-walled room buried inside a secret DARPA facility.
I should know—I’m usually the one causing it.
“Keep going,” Wright instructs the jacker girl with her slightly-British accent. Does DARPA recruit their steely-eyed Jacker Technology directors from the UK? Can’t they find enough sadists here in the states? Wright gives me nightmares. Literal ones. The screams come back in my sleep and freak my kid sister, Olivia, straight out. She should have her own room by now—Aaliyah’s got plenty of space in her Home—but I’m afraid to leave Livvy unsupervised. She still doesn’t believe me when I tell her what a monster Wright is, worse than any Clan leader. They used my ability to lock their Clan members’ minds—or unlock enemy ones—for generally illicit purposes, but they didn’t torture people needlessly.
This particular test of Wright’s has been going on for long enough—over a minute—that it should be clear to everyone the girl’s not getting anywhere. I signed up for this because Wright still has my parents locked up somewhere, but this is ridiculous. I drop my hands and lift my head to glare at Wright through pain-squinted eyes. There’s a shine in her cold gray ones—they glitter a silvery-white that almost matches her hair. The woman may be a sadist, but she also wants inside my head. She’s dying to know how I overcame my sister’s super-powered mindjack abilities and killed her—except Olivia’s alive, and I aim to keep her that way. Which means Wright can’t know. And every time she brings a fresh mutant jacker in to test my limits, I’m taking a risk she’ll find out.
“This is getting old,” I say through clenched teeth.
The jacker girl’s eyes go a little wild, almost afraid. The pressure inches higher, but I’m sure she’s maxed out. And I can’t worry about her fate if she fails to break into my unbreakable head—I’ve got my own family to protect.
A small twitch at the corner of Wright’s eye courses satisfaction through me, but I don’t let it show. She breathes out a long, low sigh before finally flicking a finger at the girl tormenting me.
The pressure cuts off immediately. I gasp out my relief.
The girl doesn’t move a muscle yet looks like she wants to crawl out of her skin. Or tear open the door to the small room. Her terror makes her look younger, and I’d already pegged her at younger than me—no more than sixteen. Without moving her head, she slowly drags her gaze away from Wright… to me.
I frown—she’s not afraid of Wright.
She’s afraid of me.
The twitch in Wright’s eye finds a home in the middle of my back, between my shoulder blades. “Before we go any further,” I say to Wright, hoping to forestall the thing I know is coming next. “We need to talk.” She’s been bringing me in every day for a week—probing at my abilities, forcing me to use them on other jackers, trying to break into my head—but she refuses to give up anything about my parents. I lock gazes with her, which is a lot easier to do now that I’m not in pain. “I’m starting to think you don’t even have my mom and dad in custody. Livvy was all you had, and you managed to get her killed. Now I’m all you’ve got.”
Wright’s gaze gets a little too sharp. “Yes, let us discuss your sister’s death.” She waves a backhanded dismissal in the girl’s direction then whispers something into the mic hidden in the cuff of her trimly-tailored black suit. The door slides open behind her. Wright must have signaled the guard—they’re both mindreaders, but the room is shielded against jacking, and the guard’s wearing an anti-jacker helmet, both of which cut off regular mindwaves. So they’re reduced to audio communications. Wright doesn’t bother with a helmet, and in theory, I could jack her into doing anything I like. Or scramble her mindfield, although technically, I’ve never messed with a reader’s head. But I’m not that stupid, and not just because Major John Scott and his large-caliber, definitely-not-a-tranquilizer gun are in the room, although that’s a factor. His mind is a strange hybrid between jack
er and reader, with a mindbarrier that’s jacker-hard, but inside, he’s a simple reader. No jacking ability. If he gets up from his chair to take me down, it’ll be the old-fashioned way—with his fist or his weapon. And he’d better be fast because we both know I can spin the tumblers of his mind no matter what kind he has.
Wright knows it too. Which is why she always locks us in for these little sessions, in case I decide to go berserk and kill everyone. Which, honestly, has crossed my mind. If only to make her torture sessions stop.
The girl skitters out, and the door closes behind her.
She can’t get away from me fast enough.
I restrain my sigh and turn to Wright, getting the first word out before she can dive into how I killed my not-dead sister. “You’re stringing me along, Wright. Either give me some reason to believe you actually have my parents, or I’m walking out of here and not coming back.”
Tiny lines form at the corners of her eyes. I’m poking her with the biggest stick I’ve got, and that’s all the response I get. “I’m just as eager to move forward as you are, Mr. MacCay. If you would simply demonstrate how you overcame your sister’s electrical mind-surge ability, I’d be happy to—”
“I told you—I’m not killing anyone for you.”
Her eyes flash. I think she’s more pissed off that I interrupted her than anything else. Everyone quails in front of Wright, and with good reason. I glance at Scott, but he’s no help, stony-faced sitting backward on the chair, his no-hair haircut freshly buzzed.
“I’m being extraordinarily patient with you, Mr. MacCay.” Wright says the words like they’re a challenge to peek into her mind and see all the things she’d actually like to do.
No, thank you. My nightmares are bad enough.
I slide off the medical bench I’m perched on. Standing, I tower over the woman. I’m not small, and years of work in landscaping has filled out what used to be scrawny. But that’s the least threatening thing about me. “My parents. I want to see them, or we’re done.”
Her gray eyes harden into flinty steel. “Your mother is indisposed today.”
What the… I clamp my jaw shut. I want to say that if she hurts my mom, there’s nowhere even a director from DARPA can hide. But I know Wright well enough by now—rage and threats will get me nowhere. She’ll only respond to actual, concrete benefits to her… and that means showing her the full range of my abilities. Which, technically, isn’t even possible, given I don’t know everything I can do, but I can give her more than I have over the last week, which is basically zero.
So… a stalemate.
I pull in a breath and give her a look like she’s trying my patience. “Might be more convincing, Beatrix, if I knew my mother was still alive.”
Talking back to Wright is risky, but I’m working against the clock—there’s only so long I can keep my kid sister holed up in Aaliyah’s Home for the Temporarily Dizzy before she bolts. Or someone discovers she’s not dead. Or something else goes sideways, and all my leverage with Wright dissipates like the steam coming out of her ears right now.
Scott straightens in his chair, but I don’t need his sudden DEFCON 3 body language to tell me I’ve crossed way over the line.
Wright eases forward, and I have to resist the urge to back away, even with her small size. She stares up into my face, only a foot away. “You don’t want me for an enemy, Zephyr. Do you really want me to convince you of that?”
No. I really don’t. I struggle to keep my resolve and pray she doesn’t unleash her sadism on my parents because of all this. “I only want to see them. That’s all I’m asking.” I try not to sound like I’m backing down. Too much. Even though I totally am.
She tips her head in the barest acknowledgment, but I feel it—a compromise is coming. “I have someone I’ve been saving for you, Zeph.”
Which I’m sure is just as awful as it sounds. I say nothing.
“Let’s see some of that power I know you’re holding back,” she continues, “and I’ll allow a brief visit with your mother.”
“Okay,” I say, probably too quickly.
She backs off and whispers into her sleeve again. Scott relaxes in his chair but shakes his head at me, like he can’t believe what an idiot I am. But we have an understanding, the two of us—he knows Olivia’s alive, and I know he helped me save her. So we’ve got each other by the short hairs… but he would take me down if Wright orders it, too. It’s not like we’re blood brothers or something.
The door slides open, and a lanky guy with deep brown skin steps into the room—just barely. He turns his head to watch the door close behind him, but he’s no further in the room than he has to be. He swings back to face me, his light-brown eyes regarding me the way you would a very large snake in the same cage as you.
“Zeph, meet Renell Walker,” Wright says tightly, like this is a business meeting where we’re all formal. Very much not the way she’s introduced the other dozen jackers she’s brought into our “sessions.” “Renell, this is—”
“I know who this is,” the guy cuts her off. Which instantly hikes up my respect for him while thinking he’s stone-cold to be pushing back against Wright that way.
I reach out tentatively with my mindfield to get a gauge of what this guy’s about, but he shoves me away without a waver of that stare—except his eye color shifts from that light amber to something more… green? Gray? I squint, wondering if I’m seeing things, but then they changed back to light brown.
“Dude, what is going on with—” I stop when his glare intensifies to kill jack level. And I guess that’s fair. We’re not here to become friends.
“Your reputation precedes you.” Renell glances at Wright. “Whatever he breaks, he fixes. Are we clear?”
“It will be fine,” Wright assures him.
My eyebrows hike up. Wright’s doing a creepy impression of a human being.
I take a fresh look at Renell Walker. He’s the kind of guy who should model for a living. Sculpted cheekbones, full lips, intelligent eyes… all the things that say “this guy gets all the girls.” He’s on the lean side with close-cropped hair. I can’t tell if he’s African-American or mixed race. Then there’s that crazy, shifting eye color thing.
“Then let’s get this over with. I have somewhere to be.” Renell returns my scrutinizing stare. His eyes flux in color again, and that kicks my heart rate up. Something’s different about this guy, and I’m sure Wright’s brought him here because of it.
“Renell is able to switch between being a reader and a jacker,” Wright informs me like that isn’t something flat-out crazy. “Something I suspect you are capable of as well.”
“Wait, what?” My attention tears away from Renell and his freaky eyes to stare at Wright. Is she only fishing for information? “I never said anything like that.”
“Come now, Mr. MacCay,” she says with a sneer. “Let’s not pretend, shall we? You lock and unlock minds. I believe that is how you put it. What precisely do you think you’re doing when you accomplish that?”
I squirm. I need to give her more, but not too much. “It’s all by feel. I spin a person’s mindmap, taking them from locked to unlocked and back. I told you that. I don’t understand it. I just make it happen.”
“Like you did with your sister.” Her gaze sharpens again, and it’s definitely not a question. She eases forward, standing between Renell at the door and me at the bench. Scott is quietly watching from the chair, but his alert level is full-strength. “You saw her striking down people in Jackertown. You knew they would stop her eventually. Kill her, yes, but probably painfully. And not until they got the answers they wanted, tearing apart your sister’s mind in the process. Or possibly making her their puppet instead. What you did was a mercy, Zeph. I understand that. But to kill her you must have made her vulnerable first. You must have changed her, eliminated her jacking ability. Simply unlocking her mind would have been insufficient with the power she had. You turned her into a reader first, didn’t you?”
> I’m just staring at her, mouth agape. Her theory is making my stomach churn, and I can’t decide what the right answer is. I turned my sister into a reader so I could kill her? Or did I simply overpower Olivia’s mega-wattage kill jack? “That’s not quite how it went down,” I say, stumbling.
She waves me off like she wasn’t expecting an answer from me. Then she thrusts a knobby finger toward Renell. “He will resist you. Try to prevent the flip. You,” she says to me, “will force him to change.”
Force him to change? I don’t have the slightest idea how to do that.
Renell’s face is a mask. He’s curled up his hands like he thinks this will hurt, and he’s determined not to cry out. Which instantly makes me regret all of this.
Your reputation precedes you. The screaming. The monster in the room. Word has to be getting around about the jacker who can crack open your mind, spin the contents, and then put you back together again. That’s the most I’ve done for Wright but this… I’m not actually sure I can put Renell back together if I try to rewrite the very nature of his mind.
He and Wright are both waiting. I slide a glance to Scott, who gives me a barely perceptible nod. This is what I have to do to have any chance at getting my parents free.
I look back to Renell, reaching out with my mindfield to brush his. This time, he lets me. My reach extends all around the map of his mind, sensing every dip and valley, every contour that speaks to the shape of him. It’s oddly fuzzy in texture like it’s slightly indistinct. Or buzzing so fast I can’t detect the edges. I stare into his eyes, which are solidly amber now, and test the strength of his mindbarrier with a small pulse against it. Not that I’m jacking in that way, just to see what I’m up against, should he decide to dole out some vengeance later in a dark alley. But instead of getting resistance, my mindfield plunges into his.
Cracked Open Page 1
