Open Minds

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  I knew the Clan was up to no good, but espionage? I shook my head, trying to clear the fuzz. “Wait. You had an agent in the Clan?”

  “Yes.” His cold eyes measured me for a moment. “Mrs. Gomez. She’s the—”

  “Librarian.” It jarred my orange-misted brain: the librarian wasn’t simply a jacker. She was an undercover FBI jacker, infiltrating the local jacker mafia. She always seemed so nice, when I needed help at the reference desk.

  Kestrel waited for me to piece it together. “So I was supposed to be the new recruit?” I asked. “The asset?”

  Kestrel leaned forward and laced his fingers. “Yes. We moved in when we lost contact with our agent. When you linked into my head,” he grimaced, “I thought you were just one of the Clan. It wasn’t until after I got inside the warehouse that I realized what you were—and what had happened.”

  What I was. I gulped. What was I? A mutant jacker, with an extraordinarily hard head. That much I knew. But I didn’t know if Agent Kestrel knew.

  “What am I?”

  “Well, that is the question, isn’t it?” He looked me over. “I’ve never seen a jacker lay low an entire Clan at once. Whatever you are, Kira, you are unique.”

  My pulse started to beat on my temples. Being unique probably didn’t come with a blue-ribbon prize. “What about the Clan?” I asked, stalling while I figured this out. “Did you arrest them?”

  “They’re all in custody now.” His voice was flat, and I imagined Simon juiced up in a smelly holding cell somewhere. I found it hard to muster much sympathy for him. He knew what he was getting into, but he had no right to suck me into it and get Raf caught in the crossfire. The Justice Department could deal with Simon and his law-breaking friends.

  Except I stumbled over the idea of Simon standing trial. “Wait, how can you try them?” I asked. “It seems unlikely you could get a jury to convict.”

  Kestrel’s face hardened. “There won’t be any trials. We have a special camp for jackers, Kira. You don’t want to go there.”

  My jaw dropped. Camp? Images of barbed wire and my Great Grandpa Reilly in the early reader camps flashed through my mind. I shuddered.

  Kestrel’s eyes bored into mine. “Kira, the only reason you’re not under sedation now and on your way to jacker camp is because of what you can do and who your father is.”

  “My father?” My voice squeaked. “My father works for the Navy…” I stopped because it was getting hard to breathe. My father worked for Naval Intelligence. The Clan had jackers, the FBI had jackers—surely the Navy had jackers too. My father is a jacker.

  Kestrel watched calmly as my mouth flopped open. My father was a jacker, and he had never said a word. All this time, he knew. He knew. Why didn’t he warn me?

  “Officer Patrick Moore is a very important asset for the government.” Kestrel lowered his voice. “One we would rather not lose to the camp.”

  “What are you saying?” Panic crept into my chest. Would Kestrel send my dad to that camp for jackers if I didn’t do what he wanted? And what about me?

  “I’m saying that you and your father can both help the government, Kira. It’s a big job, protecting normal citizens.” He arched an eyebrow. “I’m sure you understand how dangerous a jacker can be. We can’t have them running loose in society.”

  The sharp edge of his voice scraped against my already panicked nerves. My legs twitched in agitation. I jumped to my feet, startling Kestrel. He jerked back from the table and then deliberately folded his hands in his lap.

  I paced the room, my twitchy legs carrying me from the door to the opposite wall, only a half dozen paces. Blood pounded through my head, and it seemed to flush out some of the haze. If only I could think clearly for a minute.

  “Kira, sit down.” Kestrel’s voice was harsh, like he could command me to sit. I kept pacing. He wanted something from me. He said I was unique. He had never seen someone take out an entire Clan before…

  “Kira. Sit down.” This time his tone was softer. I stopped, frozen halfway across the room at the gentle sound of his voice. Just like Simon, he wanted to talk me into something—something he couldn’t force me to do, because he couldn’t jack me. The Clan wanted me for my hard head, to do some kind of special spy mission. What did the FBI want me for?

  The same thing as Kestrel. Catch other jackers.

  I tried not to let my eyes go wide. Kestrel gestured encouragingly to the rickety chair. “It’s going to be all right, Kira. Let’s just talk about it. Sit down.”

  I slowly sank into the seat.

  “Do you want some more water?” he asked. The cup was still full. I shook my head. “It’s not as bad as you think. The FBI is giving you a chance to avoid the camp and work for us.”

  The FBI should only send dangerous criminals to that jacker camp, like Molloy and his Clan. I wasn’t a criminal, and neither was my dad. But Kestrel seemed all too happy to send me there—and possibly my dad as well—if I didn’t work for him, catching other jackers and sending them to the camp. I gripped my knees to keep my hands from shaking.

  Kestrel leaned forward, his face severe again. “Not everyone gets a choice, Kira.”

  There had to be some way out of this. I didn’t want to go to jacker camp, but I didn’t want any part of sending other jackers there either. Maybe I could pretend to go along with what he wanted. At least until I figured a way out. I nodded to keep him talking.

  His shoulders relaxed. “Good. You’re making the right choice, Kira.”

  He started explaining about the FBI’s jacker recruitment program, but I wasn’t listening any more. I pretended to weigh his words. The pacing had cleared my head a little, but my thoughts were still fuzzed. Maybe this was what obscura felt like, for readers that wanted to dull their thoughts and everyone else’s. Everything in my mind was less distinct, as if parts of my brain had gone numb. As I fought through the haze, I found my brain felt soft…

  “Once you go through the training, everything will return to normal,” Kestrel was saying. “You’ll have a regular life, like your father…”

  The Jell-O inside my head was exactly like the squishy material of other people’s minds!

  I carefully kept my face flat and nodded some more as Kestrel rambled on. The orange mist was infused into the thinking parts of my brain in the front. I could feel it, taste it. Orange and spice, like tea, but it felt like anesthetic.

  I told my body to increase the blood flow to that part of my brain. My heart started to race, pumping blood furiously to my head. My face radiated heat as blood coursed through it. I focused momentarily on Kestrel to see if he noticed.

  He prattled on. “No one will know you’re a jacker. And you’ll be helping to put dangerous jackers where they belong, where they won’t be able to hurt anyone else…”

  The orange mist was clearing, carried away in my bloodstream to some place in my body where it wouldn’t affect my ability to jack. My mental strength was coming back. If I could fight off the juice, maybe I could escape. Catch Kestrel off-guard and jack him hard. I would only have one chance. If he saw it coming, he would be too strong for me. I picked up the glass of water and drained it.

  “Do you…” He faltered as I smiled at him. “Do you have any questions?”

  “Can I get another glass of water?” I kept my face blank, although the heat from it seemed to scorch the air. Kestrel didn’t notice.

  “Sure.”

  Whisking the cup off the table, he paused at the door, clearly linking a thought to someone outside. In a moment, it opened for another cup exchange. He returned to the table. “So, what do you think?” He gave me another invisible-lipped smile.

  I took a deep breath and jacked into his head with everything I had. The jack felt weak, even as I strained forward and plunged deep into Kestrel’s mind. Stop, I thought, but it had the strength of a suggestion, not a command.

  Kestrel’s eyes went wide and he tumbled backward, knocking the chair over and tripping as he scrambled to put dist
ance between us. Stop! Stop! I jumped to my feet and crawled over the table. If I got closer to him the intensity would increase. I leaped off the table, trying to grab him, but he batted my hands away. I managed to latch onto his arm and pull him close. It didn’t matter. I was too weak to knock him out.

  The door burst open. A large guard quickly pinned me to the floor, and another followed right behind him. There were too many of them, all trapping me within my own skull again. The second guard already had a needle in my arm.

  Kestrel’s stark face loomed over me. “You shouldn’t have done that, Kira.” His voice faded as the orange mist pumped into my brain and clouded my vision.

  His cold blue eyes were the last things I saw before oblivion.

  I swam up out of unconsciousness to the feel of someone’s hands roughly patting me down.

  My mind was fuzzed from the orange-mist drug Kestrel’s thugs had injected into me, and my eyelids were a heavy curtain I couldn’t command open. The warm, rough floor shook underneath me, and sounds of crunching tires and creaking metal bounced along with it.

  I wondered where on earth I was, but top priority was stopping the praver who was pawing me as if he expected to find weapons hidden in my thin t-shirt and shorts. I beat at his probing hands, but the juice had made my arms quivery and useless. I jacked into his mind, but he immediately threw me out.

  Taking a deep breath, I reached inside my own mind to speed up my heart and clear away the mist. I tolerated about ten more seconds of the groping. As soon as the fuzz cleared enough, I jacked deep into his mind and ordered him to stop. His hands left me, and I heard him hit the metal floor.

  I forced my eyes open and grimaced against the harsh light that streamed in through the truck’s high windows. My molester lay like a broken puppet on the dusty floor. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen. My stomach curled into a knot. As I contemplated waking him, I heard a sniffle. A girl sat huddled on a metal bench that ran along the wall of the truck. Her face was buried in her arms as they hugged the tops of her knees.

  “Are you okay?” My voice rasped with dryness. She didn’t answer. The truck swayed underneath me, and I gripped the metal bench to haul myself to my feet. I stood on my tiptoes to peek out the windows. Nothing but blue sky.

  Holding the wall to keep steady, I shuffled to the front where a door looked like it might lead to the driver’s compartment. The knob twisted easily in my hand, and I flung it open, only to find two empty seats. The truck ambled down a hard-packed dirt road, apparently on an autopath, but there was no mindware interface, no entry point where I could jack in and change the preprogrammed course. Ahead, a huge encampment rose out of the desert, covered with sand-colored camouflage netting and surrounded by metal fences fifteen feet high. Barbed razor wire spiraled along the top. It looked like a prison.

  Which, of course, it was.

  A tremor ran through my hands as the pieces clicked into place, and I gripped the back of the vacant driver seat to steady them. Kestrel had sent me to the jacker camp, along with these two jacker kids. I licked my cracked lips, parched from the drugs and the desert. He had sent me to prison simply for being who I was.

  Anger clawed my stomach like an angry beast.

  As we approached the camp gate, it swung open with determined mechanical speed. Sunlight pushed through the netting and mottled the ground under the canopy. Another metallic gridded gate and a second fence waited a hundred feet inside the camp. We rumbled past the first fence, and I strained to see beyond the second one.

  Whatever was on the other side, I was sure I wasn’t prepared for it.

  The truck lurched to a stop, and the girl whimpered. Her dirty face was streaked with tears. She couldn’t be any older than the boy. Straggles of brown hair fell across her wide blue eyes, and dirt marred the pink skirt draped over her knees. Her bright white ankle socks were untouched by the desert. If I wasn’t prepared, she didn’t have a prayer. I found handholds along the truck and crouched down next to her.

  “What’s your name?”

  She leaned away from me. “Laney.”

  “Okay, Laney. You and I are going to stick together.” I tried to smile without cracking my dried lips. She nodded and glanced at the still form of the boy.

  “Should we wake him?” I asked, following her gaze.

  She shook her head in short, rapid movements. A whining sound came from below the truck, and the view out the front spun until the first gate appeared again. The truck jerked and I almost tumbled over, catching myself on the wall behind Laney’s head. We were backing toward the second gate now, and whatever waited for us would soon be here. I searched the dusty floor for a weapon. The truck was bare.

  I tentatively reached through the gate with my mind. Hundreds of people milled around inside the fences. I pulled back from the thrumming of all those thoughts and heard the metallic grinding of the second gate opening. The truck lurched to a stop, and I nearly lost my footing again. The gate rattled shut behind us. An audible murmur rose in the distance.

  I gave Laney a quick nod and edged toward the back door, hoping to get the jump on whatever lay beyond it. There was scuffling outside the truck, and something heavy slammed against the door. The entire truck shuddered with the impact.

  I backed away, keeping between Laney and the door and hoping I could stop whatever would come through. As I stretched my mind forward, the gray door screeched open and there stood Simon.

  My mouth fell open, and he threw his head back, as if I hit him. “You!” The word wheezed out of him. “What the…” His eyes went wide, as though finding me in the truck was the worst possible twist on a very bad day.

  Behind him a full-on melee raged in the camp. Desert-brown buildings hemmed a large open area jammed with people. They encircled a dozen fighters in the middle, a scrum of fists flying and bodies dropping. I saw a flash of red hair.

  Simon cursed under his breath, pulling my attention back to him. He seemed to resolve some debate in his mind. I was afraid to link in and find out what it was.

  “Come on, let’s go!” He spat the words and held the door wide for us. But there was no way I was trusting Simon Zagan, arch-betrayer of girlfriends and unsuspecting jackers.

  I stood straighter and clenched my fists at my side. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

  His jaw dropped, but it quickly set into a hard grinding of muscles. “I don’t have time to argue. If you want to live, come with me. Now!”

  I glanced again at the melee behind him. The ring of onlookers, some as young as Laney, cheered on the fighters, who seemed older and bigger. The brawl was getting uglier, with fighters falling down and not getting up. I didn’t want Laney or myself mixed up in any of that.

  My options seemed bad and worse, and bad would have to do.

  “Fine. But she’s coming with me.” I took hold of Laney’s hand and pulled her up on shaky legs.

  “Okay, okay, let’s go.” Simon checked over his shoulder.

  As Laney and I scooted past the slumped figure of the boy, I asked, “What about him?”

  “He’s on his own.” Another boy lay motionless in the dirt below the door. My mouth flopped open to ask, then I shut it. Simon hoisted Laney out of the truck and over the body. I ignored Simon’s hand and hopped over the inert boy myself. Simon shut the truck door behind us, glanced over his shoulder again, and hurried us away from the center square.

  The hardscrabble dirt reflected the dots of sun that made it through the canopy. I gripped Laney’s hand as Simon weaved us between dizzying arrays of identical sand-weathered barracks. They stood in clustered rows like parked train cars, with large open areas in between. We ran to keep up with him, and he alternated between sprinting and darting looks around corners.

  Simon held his arm out to stop us, and I almost crashed into it. Up ahead, between barracks, three girls huddled around a fourth, who was on her knees in the dirt. As we watched, she slumped to the ground. A chill went through me as Simon backed us up, watching
the ring of tormenters to see if they noticed us. They were too busy checking the pockets of the fallen girl.

  Simon tugged us around another barrack, out of their sight. He dashed across a short alleyway-sized gap and turned down a different row of buildings, each with four doors. At the last building, he pulled open the furthest door. Inside was a space about the size of my living room back home. The air was cooler, but stale. Six cots wrapped tightly with gray blankets lined the bare walls.

  He closed the door and pressed against it, listening or maybe reaching for something. Laney dropped my hand and climbed on a bed in the furthest corner. She drew up her knees and clenched them again. Simon exhaled, apparently content that we hadn’t been followed.

  I linked into his mind. He whipped his head around and shoved me back out. “Don’t do that here.” His voice was rough and low. “Not if you want to make it through the day.”

  I took a step back. Maybe I had made a terrible mistake, letting him secret Laney and me away.

  He rubbed his face with both hands. “What are you doing here, Kira?” he demanded.

  “I didn’t want to come here!” I shot back.

  “It’s your fault we’re all here!”

  My jaw dropped. “How is it my fault?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re not a mole for the FBI!” He clenched his hands. “Someone had to rat us out, and you and Gomez are the only ones who didn’t come with us to the camp. So, did the Feds give up on you? Couldn’t break into that hard head of yours?” He took several swift steps and made to tap on my forehead. I cringed away from his touch.

  “I…” I swallowed and straightened. “I didn’t know anything about the FBI or this place. I didn’t know anything at all until you came along and tried to trick me into joining your stupid Clan!”