mindjack 04 - origins

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  She glowered. I smirked. We called it a draw, as we usually did.

  She resumed her cleaning, and I peered down the vast middle of the factory floor. Dust motes danced in the forked streams of light from the high windows. Racks stretched to the ceiling, cluttered with parts for machines that stopped working long ago. It was a warehouse of the past, guarded by white, concrete columns and overseen by the unblinking eyes of plasma lights dangling overhead. Once transformed and forced into the future, it would be large enough to sleep a small army. More jackers were trickling into this nether region of Chicago New Metro every day, but they were forming the same lawless Clans that had fought each other for years. Bringing them together would take more than simply clearing out an abandoned door factory. Our mission was to liberate jackers, not fight them, but we would have to earn the respect necessary to lead them forward.

  It’s your words, not your ability, that will encourage others to follow you.

  My mother’s words were still fresh, whispered in her lab at the University of Chicago, where my parents’ neuroscience research covered for the real work they did: preparing for the revolution. My childhood was non-stop training for the day when jackers would fight to be free—when we would become the dominant species. When I would fulfill the mission they had entrusted to me.

  Their lives, all their work, would be meaningless if we failed.

  To bring the Clans together, we needed a coalition of strength, a core group of jackers with extraordinary abilities who could move the revolution forward. Kira was the prototype, the ideal kind of jacker that we needed to recruit. The chat-cast chatter said she possessed unusual abilities, like my sister and me. More importantly, a revolutionary spirit seemed to animate her. She single-handedly took on the entire system with little more than her words and a camera phone, having never fired a shot. We needed someone like her to replace what we lost when the accident claimed my parents’ lives. In the end, they had given us every tool to fulfill their vision of the future, save one: their presence, fighting by our side, when the time came.

  I strode toward the center racks, determined to get the transformation under way, when the sound of pounding at the door stopped me.

  “Expecting anyone?” Anna asked, pulling a dart gun out of a cabinet drawer. We had only recently fixed the obsolete punch-code lock that held the front door shut.

  “I have a recruit coming today,” I said, “but not until this afternoon.” While handling instincts was a highly unusual and useful skill, I was deficient in the normal mindjacker abilities that whoever was pounding on the door would expect. And I doubted they just wanted to talk. “Perhaps you should answer the door.”

  Anna pointed her gun at the metal door, no doubt reaching out to mentally surge against the mindfield of the person outside. Anyone trying to jack Anna in return wouldn’t get past her mind’s barrier, but if they tried, they stood a good chance of being jacked or shot. People quickly learned not to mess with my sister.

  After a moment, a broad, unnatural smile sprung to life on Anna’s face. “We have a visitor!” The gun clattered when she dropped it on the counter, and she practically sprinted to the door. I stared open-mouthed after her—Anna was never giddy, even when she was a five-year-old girl on Christmas morning. She was born serious. But her instinctual mind had warmed to the sunshine yellow of unfettered happiness as she skipped toward the door.

  Something was definitely wrong.

  I reached beyond the door just as Anna threw it open, gushing, “Welcome!” to the woman who stood outside. She was young, and her long red hair writhed in the wintery breeze, each wisp seeming to undulate on its own. The woman’s mind jumbled flashes of color in a strobe-like effect that I couldn’t quite grasp. I tried to handle Anna’s placid yellow instinct into something a little more alarmed about the unknown jacker striding past her, but it was somehow locked. Had the woman jacked through Anna’s impenetrable mind barrier or was she just an extremely powerful handler? The intruder’s gaze roamed the dimly lit factory and sparse furnishings until she found me, hovering at the edge of the kitchen.

  Then she screamed, loud and raw, and dropped to her knees, a look of pure terror twisting her pale face and pinching her eyes shut.

  That was the normal reaction people had when trying to jack me, so I wasn’t surprised. My instinctual barrier protected my mind by digging into the primal part of theirs to conjure every soul-sucking horror they’d ever envisioned. At least, that was what people had told me after it happened. I never felt a thing.

  While her red nails clawed at images only she could see, I tried to make sense of her. Instead of the pitch black, chilly blanket of fear that my defenses normally invoked, her mind was a riot of color, some I didn’t even recognize, seething like an animal barely contained by its cage. Black tendrils twisted through the misty kaleidoscope of colors, mesmerizing me for a moment. Then they dissipated, and she climbed to her feet, an impossible grin spreading across her face. She had recovered far too quickly from an encounter with her worst nightmares.

  A chill raced up my back, and I reflexively tried to handle the roiling mess that was her mind, but I couldn’t understand it, much less manipulate it. That had never happened before. My mouth ran dry, and I eyed Anna’s discarded dart gun as the woman strode toward me. I could probably take her in a fistfight, but I wasn’t sure what else she could do. My heart thudded in my ears.

  “You must be Julian,” she said in a crisp British accent. She slowed her approach, bit her lip, and raked her green eyes across the length of my body. “I must say I’m not disappointed.” The mixed signals were doing a dance on my brain. Trying not to show the tension rippling through my body, I casually picked up Anna’s dart gun and let my hand fall to my side, the gun’s barrel pointing at the floor.

  “You have me at a disadvantage,” I said. “And you are?” Grayish flight instinct streaked through the throbbing colors of her mind, but I couldn’t get hold of it. Whatever the woman’s ability, she had managed to get into my headquarters with little more than a saunter. I would rather recruit her than shoot her, but if she was manipulating Anna’s mind from the inside, shooting might be my only option.

  “My name’s Serena.” She gave a quick glance to the weapon in my hand, and her sultry smile widened into one of pure excitement. “You’re not planning on using that on me, are you, love?” The gun certainly didn’t frighten her. Instead, she almost seemed to want me to shoot her. A twisted wraith of red and black—aggression and fear—zoomed across the surface of her mind and was gone before I had time to think about what that meant.

  I kept the gun pointed at the floor. “Do I need to shoot you? Or will you release Anna from whatever hold you’ve put on her, if I ask nicely?”

  She took a half step closer, dropping her voice. “Oh my, Julian.” I couldn’t help but feel the heat from her surge of deep purplish mating instinct. “I would do just about anything, if you asked nicely.”

  I frowned and leaned away from her. Anna blinked several times, then glared at us from the doorway, her creepy smile gone. I waved with the hand that held the gun, letting her know I had things under control. Maybe.

  Serena stepped closer, forcing me against the cabinet, then rocked back as I leveled the gun at her waist. “You’re just as dangerous as they say, Julian.” Her grin tipped higher in one corner. “And quite easy on the eyes as well. How lucky for me, since I’ve come to join your merry band of jackers.”

  “And why would that be?” Word must be getting out that we were looking, but I didn’t expect jackers to break in just to sign up.

  “You’ve got quite a reputation going already, love,” she said. “There’s chatter all over the casts about a new jacker who can strike terror into your soul without even jacking into your mind. If anything, the rumors don’t do you justice. That’s a wicked talent you have, scaring the pants off anyone who dares to touch your mind. And it so happens that I’m between Clans at the moment.” Her offer came with an arched e
yebrow, suggesting it included more than just joining my Clan. She was early twenties, and her tight fitting, tailored pants, teetering heels, and snug t-shirt showed off her body in a way that seemed as calculated as every other move she was making.

  I kept the gun pointed at her. “It didn’t slow you down much.”

  She shrugged. Anna came up fast behind her, yanked a gun from a cabinet drawer, and pointed it at Serena’s head. The gun was a small caliber pistol, fully loaded, if I knew my sister. Serena didn’t flinch. As aggressive as this woman was, she was definitely unusual—and unusual was what we were looking for, even if it came tromping through the door uninvited.

  I nodded to my sister to get her to stand down. She didn’t move. “What talent do you have that you can disarm Anna here, when most jackers can’t even get into her head?” Including me, I didn’t say. The idea of her jacking Anna made me queasy.

  “Oh?” Serena threw a fake surprised look to Anna whose gun barrel would make a neat hole in Serena’s forehead if she decided to pull the trigger. “Are you not normally that easy to manipulate?”

  My eyebrows hiked up, and I was honestly surprised that Anna didn’t pull the trigger right then. “She’s a handler, Julian,” Anna said, low and tight.

  Hearing it out loud tugged something deep inside me. I had never met another handler. Did Serena see the same colorful ball of instincts at the back of my head? Handler was a term Anna and I used—no one else would know it—and her words were actually asking whether she should put a bullet in Serena’s brain or give her a chance to prove her worth as an ally.

  “A handler?” Serena’s voice was less sure now. “Is that what you call… what I do?” A black mist snaked through her mind. Maybe it unnerved her that we might know more about her than she knew herself. “Sorry, love,” she said to Anna, “about my little demonstration on you. Had to make a big entrance, show what I was capable of. You understand.”

  Anna didn’t look in an understanding mood.

  Serena’s gaze darted to the door. “I am terribly sorry about jacking your girlfriend, Julian. Not quite sure even how I did it. Her head is as hard as a rock.”

  So she hadn’t jacked through Anna’s mind barrier. My shoulders relaxed a little. “She’s my sister,” I said. “And we all have unusual abilities here.”

  Serena flinched. “I don’t suppose you can forgive my frightfully impolite entrance then, could you? I’m not used to people understanding my, shall we say, peculiarities. Frankly, it’s become quite tiresome, being a freak among freaks all the time.” Her green eyes sparkled with what could be unshed tears or possibly sardonic wit. I couldn’t be sure, but I was more than a little interested in exactly what her peculiarities were. If Serena was a handler like me, we could learn a lot from her, including things about my own abilities that I couldn’t find out any other way. She could be a tremendous asset.

  If she refrained from handling my sister again.

  I glanced at Anna, but she must have already seen the decision on my face. Her cheek muscle twitched, but she lowered her weapon.

  “I think we might have something to talk about after all.” I smiled at the clear relief that washed across Serena’s face.

  Serena refused to take the piece of dusty machinery I had just heaved off the grime-coated racks in the middle of the factory. The motor smelled of stale grease, and decades of rust had chewed into every seam.

  She crossed her arms. “I’m not a bloody pack mule.”

  The motor was a good twenty pounds and would probably crush the toes peeking out from her impractical shoes, if she dropped it. I was tempted to toss the motor to her for real, but instead just pretended. She jerked back, reflexively opening her arms. I placed the greasy motor into them, and she sunk under the weight of it, her expression transforming to horror.

  “See if you can find room over there.” I pointed to the shelving opposite us and turned to my own rack before she could see my smirk. Hundreds more boxes and spare parts needed to be cleared out or reclaimed, all left over supplies for the massive door stamping machines. She’d only just arrived, but I couldn’t afford to have people join the cause who weren’t willing to pitch in.

  I glanced over my shoulder. She wobbled in her red heels, searching for an open spot for her load. The metal rack screeched in protest when she dropped the motor onto it. Anna, in the kitchen area down at the end of the row, glanced up from rubbing down guns that she had already cleaned an hour ago. She was deliberately keeping her distance, outside my hundred-foot range, so I couldn’t get a read on her instincts, but even at that distance I could see the glare. I pretended not to notice.

  Serena stared at her oil-smudged hands, as if discovering an alien lifeform was taking over her body. I snagged another antique motor and carried it over, setting it gently on the rack in order to not draw more attention from Anna.

  I pulled a rag from my back pocket and handed it to Serena. “I’m fairly certain it will come off.” Only a valiant effort kept my smirk in check.

  She rubbed at the black smudges, but just managed to smear them across her palms. “I may have to reconsider joining your Clan, Julian, if all you want is a janitor to tidy up.”

  I folded my arms and leaned against the skeleton rib of the rack. “Oh, I have a lot more I want to accomplish than just cleaning up the place.” I gestured to the building around us. “This factory is hardened against conventional weapons by brick walls that are nearly a foot thick, and it’s large enough that the core of the building provides protection from the standard reach of most jackers. We’ll have to renovate the kitchen and bathroom facilities, but there’s plenty of space to organize and gather the large number of jackers we’ll need for the revolution.”

  “Revolution?” Her eyebrows lifted. “I thought you were building a Clan, not an army.”

  “There’s much more in the way of change coming, Serena.” I gentled my voice. This was most important: did she understand the stakes? “Revealing jackers to the mindreading world didn’t just make it difficult to hide anymore. It made it imperative that we don’t.” I studied the whirling mass of instincts at the back of her head, and a wisp of flight instinct writhed through the ball, like a vaporous snake. If she were a normal jacker, I could slip through and tap her conscious mind to read her thoughts—but I couldn’t handle something I didn’t understand.

  “What are you on about?” she asked. “Not that I’m interested in hiding, mind you.”

  I pushed off the rack, standing straight and focusing on her eyes instead of her mind. “What do you think will happen as more and more jackers come out of hiding?”

  A frown crinkled her forehead.

  “What will happen,” I asked, “when the mindreaders decide we’re not just a frightening possibility, lurking around the corner, hiding in the shadows, but a real threat?”

  “Well, they’re just mindreaders,” she said. “What can they do against us?”

  “The mind isn’t much of a weapon against a tank or a bomb, Serena, no matter how powerful that mind might be.”

  Her frown grew deeper and her instinctual mind writhed with black. I mentally reached out. Maybe I could get hold of that snake of fear and ease it away. Part of me wanted her not to be afraid, but more importantly, I needed to know if I could tame the wildness of her instincts. Control them. I’d never met someone before that I couldn’t…

  “Is that what your army’s about, then?” she asked. “Fighting the mindreaders in some kind of grand war? You’re an idealist. A revolutionary.”

  “Most definitely.” I grasped the black wisp and flipped it to sunshine yellow. Her face showed no change, just the indulgent smile of someone regarding a misguided, but well meaning, lunatic. Perhaps the flight instinct wasn’t strong enough to have the manipulation cause a visible effect. At least I could handle the bits that I recognized. “We’re not freaks, Serena. And we’re not an anomaly. We’re destined to be the next step in the evolution of mankind, but only if we fight to survive.�
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  Her smirk grew stronger. “I suppose there are worse Clans to join, than ones destined to rule the world.”

  I looked away from the gleam in her eye and studied the rack behind her. Now it was clear. Serena was a mercenary, the kind who was willing to sign up for whatever cause put her on the winning team. I had hoped for more, for someone who would actually believe in the cause we were fighting. I wasn’t sure if it could truly work any other way.

  “When we’re done cleaning up, we’ll have enough room to house a good sized Clan,” I said. “But it remains to be seen whether you’ll be joining us.”

  Her smile evaporated. She brushed a dangling red lock of hair out of her eyes, leaving a trail of gritty machine grease behind on her forehead. When she wasn’t screaming in terror or leering at me, she was actually attractive. I resisted the urge to wipe away the smudge.

  She glanced down the row. “I thought you had decided to keep me on, once your sister declined to shoot me.”

  Anna was still fastidiously rubbing down her pistol with machine oil and ignoring us. “You could have stopped her, like you did the first time,” I said quietly to Serena. “Why didn’t you?”

  She ground more grease spots into her skin, turning the lily white to pale gray. “I could have,” she said. “At least, I think so. But that frightful talent of yours meant I couldn’t control you, and that was the heart of it. She was clearly important to you, and controlling her wouldn’t have gained me any points. A gamble on my part.” She smiled up at me. “Must have paid off, if I’m still here.”

  “Yes, you’re still here.” I returned her smile. “Because I’d like to know more about what you can do.”

  “Well, you seem to already know,” she said. “Called it a handler, I believe.”

  I waved the term away, not ready to reveal anything. “I’d like to hear it from you. How does it work? Could you reach Anna now, if you chose to?”

  Serena squirmed, shifted from foot to foot, examined the machinery next to us, and took a long moment before shoving the rag into my chest. I caught it before it dropped to the floor, and thought she might be storming out next, but instead she spoke. “No, your sister is safely out of my range.” She acted as if I had mentally tortured the words out of her one at a time.