mindjack 04 - origins

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  Anna frowns. She’s not buying this at all. “We’ll be using a rubber training blade. There should be minimal danger.”

  I deadpan it. “Anna, you’re scary even when you’re unarmed.”

  She narrows her eyes, like she’s trying to figure out my angle on this. She’s not saying no, but she’s not getting out the rubber knife yet, either.

  I pull out my last stop. “Look, I went running with Sasha yesterday, and we saw something go down in an alley, okay?” I glance at Sasha. He’s keeping quiet, following my lead. “There were too many of them for us to interfere, but it was a mess. Not just jacking, but a knife fight as well. I’d just like to be… prepared. Think of it as advanced self-defense.”

  Anna nods. I keep the sigh of relief inside as she strides toward a cabinet at the far side of the training area. Presumably where she keeps her weapons. I briefly wonder what else besides training blades she has in there.

  “Nice work,” Sasha says quietly. “Remind me not to believe anything you say ever again.”

  “It wasn’t entirely a lie,” I protest. “Knife fighting with Anna conjures up all my fears.”

  “Just wait until I bring the audience before you do anything… unusual. Then go through it just like we planned.” He gives me a pointed look then turns away, off to hunt down Julian and bring him back for the show.

  I take a deep breath. Unusual. I need something a lot more than unusual if I’m going to force Julian into a position where he can’t say no to putting me on the roster. Sasha walked me through a few knife fighting moves last night. As long as I was dosed on the adrenaline, my moves were faster, my perception was better, but most of all, I had some crazy strength. I could overpower him, literally force the knife from his hand like he was a child. But fighting Sasha and fighting Anna aren’t exactly the same thing, as my aching bruises from our last training session are quick to remind me. Which is why taking her in a knife fight, even a training one with a rubber knife, should prove I can handle just about anyone.

  I’m breaking into a cool sweat already.

  Anna returns with a grayish blade. She hands it to me.

  Rubber sounds soft and squishy but this blade is made of a hard plastic that doesn’t give a millimeter when I try to bend it. This is going to hurt.

  She gestures for me to return the blade. When I do, she steps back and takes a fighting stance with her knife gripped in one hand, tip pointed down, close to her body, and her other hand extended. With one overhand strike she could plunge the knife into my chest.

  “Where’s my knife?” I ask, sending a nervous glance to the weapons cabinet.

  “You don’t get one.”

  “What? I—I thought this was knife training.” It’s going to be hard to show off my superior knife fighting skills without a knife.

  “It is unlikely you’ll be carrying a knife at the exact time you will be attacked by someone with one. Or that you’ll be able to draw your weapon fast enough. You need to learn how to survive the initial attack first. Then you can hope to find a weapon that can defeat your opponent.”

  “All right,” I say, tensing up. “Just take it easy on the beginner, okay?” I can’t trigger the adrenaline until Sasha returns, so for the first half of this fight I’m going to be unarmed. Doubly so, because apparently I’m not even going to have a weapon. I may not have to artificially boost my adrenaline with the way my heart rate is kicking up a notch already.

  Anna drops her knife-wielding arm so it hangs at her side. “I don’t know what Sasha said to you, Kira, but this isn’t something you need to learn right now.”

  “No, no,” I say, trying to up my enthusiasm level. “I want to do this. Just give me a few pointers first.”

  “First of all, use your jacking abilities.”

  “Understood.”

  “Even if you’re caught off guard, your best defense is mental. But if you’re faced with someone you cannot jack…” She tilts her head in acknowledgment that we’re both keepers, so that’s exactly the position we’re in. “…and they cannot jack you, because you’re a keeper, then it will come down to a physical fight. When a knife is brought into the equation, the fight doesn’t just get more deadly. It changes the rules of how you should engage the attacker. The best move is to stay alive long enough to get away. Or until you can find a superior weapon. Your only objective is to survive.”

  “Maybe if I had a knife…”

  “Even better if you had a gun,” she says, wryly. “Another reason not to leave headquarters unarmed.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She takes a fighting stance again and starts to circle me, so I mimic her, sans blade. We’re attracting some onlookers already as a few of Julian’s latest recruits wander out from the racks to see what’s happening. I’m hoping we can get through a couple of engagements before Sasha returns, just so I’ll have some idea of how to attack her. Maybe the adrenaline-hyped speed will be enough to outmaneuver her superior experience. Maybe I can manage to take her knife and show with a quick strike that even a novice like me can come out of a dangerous situation alive. If not, then I can go the brute force way, using my adrenaline-enhanced strength to disarm her.

  This sounds really good in my head. I have no idea if it will actually work.

  “Keep track of the blade,” Anna says as she circles me. “Do everything you can to avoid contact with the knife. Even a small cut, strategically placed, can be deadly.”

  “Well, that’s good to know.”

  “But if you do get cut, don’t panic,” she says. “Direct your alarm into disabling your opponent or, better yet, escaping.”

  “Fear is my friend.”

  “Exactly.” She lunges at me, but I can tell she’s taking it slow, giving me time to react. The knife is still pointed down, but she’s back-slashing with it, aiming for my neck. I jerk out of her reach, knocking the back of her arm as it sails slowly past me. The knock is hard enough to make her stumble a little; either that, or she’s completely taking it easy on me. Meanwhile, I dance away.

  “Use everything you have.” She’s chastising the weakness of my hit on her arm. “Strength. Surprise. Most of all, move. Agility and speed will get you out of range of the weapon and hopefully enable your escape.”

  Strength and speed. If that’s all it takes, I should be able to do this.

  I glance around at our spectators, who are growing in number, as Anna straightens and considers her next attack. Sasha and Julian are still absent, but I’m feeling the itchy need to start the adrenaline ramp up now, before they get here. Otherwise, they’re going to arrive to find Anna taking me down with a fake knife to the throat. Not the impression I need to make.

  “Protect your face,” Anna says, bringing my attention back to her. “Keep moving. If you’re going to strike, hit hard. Then get away. Got it?”

  “Sounds simple enough.” Definitely time for some adrenaline enhancement. As she circles me again, I dive into my head, searching for the string that triggers my adrenaline release. I’m momentarily lost in the spaghetti mess of my mind, and before I can figure out where the string is, Anna lunges again.

  This time she’s aiming the knife straight for my gut. A surge of panic grips my heart. I don’t care if it’s a training blade, that plastic knife’s going to hurt. I side-step enough that it glances off my hip. She’s close in, so I wrap my arm around her neck, pulling her closer and wrenching her around. The self-defense moves she taught me kick in, and I try a short-jab punch to her side, but she’s already whipping me around, over her hip. I’m momentarily airborne before I hit the mat. Then she’s on top of me, pinning me to the ground with her arm across my neck. I can’t see it, but the knife digs its point into my side. The pain is only slightly less than the embarrassment.

  “Attack the weapon.” Her face is close, clear blue eyes like her brother’s boring into mine. She’s barely breathing hard with the throw. “Only attack your opponent once the weapon is deflected. And only enough to enable your es
cape.”

  Julian and Sasha arrive at the back of the cluster of jackers already gawking at our knife fight just in time to see Anna climb off me. Or rather, to see Anna finish using me as a practice dummy for her knife fighting skills.

  Fantastic.

  I avoid looking at Julian and take my time getting up, focusing inward to find that adrenaline string. I may need an extra-large dose. My search is taking longer than I expect, my mind grappling simultaneously with figuring out the right approach to take Anna down, watching her circle me, and wading through the neural strings in my mind. She’s flipping the knife up and down, switching her grip, and no doubt considering how she can demonstrate another way I can potentially die by knife attack.

  Focus. I fixate on the knife, its twirling motion acting as a hypnotist’s charm as I test each string, moving more by feel than anything else, looking for the familiar-feeling one I’ve triggered before. The one that will give me that edge, so I can attack Anna’s knife before it attacks me. Or take it from her in a burst of unexpected strength and speed.

  Anna feints, causing me to jerk away, dancing out of her reach, but then she draws back again. Still circling. Panic is starting to climb up my throat. I shove it back down and mentally stumble over a string that’s humming with energy. I pluck it, sending a signal zinging down its length. A split second later, I realize… that wasn’t the right string.

  The bottom drops out of my stomach as I wait through the next heartbeat to see what I’ve just done to myself.

  A jittery itch slithers up from my feet, crawling like a thousand centipedes have alighted on my legs. In the fraction of a second it takes me to look down, the feeling has surged my entire body. It’s twitching but just below the skin, like my muscles have come alive with an insane need to move.

  Fast.

  I look up. Anna’s only now realizing that something’s wrong. There’s six feet between us, but my vision telescopes down, as if space is warping right in front of me. The mutterings of the onlookers mutes, like someone cut the volume, and my muscles scream for me to move, move, move.

  I launch myself at Anna.

  My legs are like intensely coiled springs that have finally let loose. Anna’s eyes barely have time to go wide before I’ve crossed the space between us in one giant leap. My senses slow as I descend on her, like I’m in a simcast with the speed turned down. I see exactly where my hands are going to land—one grappling her knife-hand wrist, the other shoving into her shoulder to knock her back. I see her make a tiny jerk back before I arrive, but I compensate for it, connecting with her shoulder and tumbling us both to the mat. We’re down, but somehow I’ve got too much energy. I keep going, flipping over her and dragging her by the hand still clenched around her wrist. She rolls with me, landing on top, mouth agape as she tries to wrench her knife-hand free.

  Whatever energy is pulsing through my body, it’s like my muscles are super-juiced with speed and flexibility. I contort, arching my back and flipping us both over again, but I lose contact with her knife hand. She’s flat on the mat now, and I try to pin her, knife-hand first, but her hands are moving as fast as mine, flying across my body, jabbing me with her fists and the handle end of the knife. I register the blows in my mind, but there’s no pain. Just a slow pounding in my ears that sounds like a drum but that I know must be my heart beat drowning out every other sound.

  Anna’s face twists in concentration. I manage to grab her knife hand again, thinking I can wrench it free, but I don’t have the strength I had the night before with Sasha. My muscles quiver with the need to move, move, move, but there’s no superhuman power behind it. Instead I twist the knife and slam it down on the mat beside our bodies, trying to knock it out of her hand. But the knife just digs into my leg sprawled out to the side. I look at it in a daze, stunned that I misjudged where my own body was. I see my leg quivering and the training blade lying on the ground beside it. My brain can’t make sense of it. Then Anna somehow locks her legs around my midsection and flips me over onto my back again.

  Her hand is on my throat, and her legs pin my arms down. Suddenly I’m nothing but a giant, shaking mess. My teeth chatter against the hold she has on me. The knife is back in her hand, but her eyes are wide, like she’s not sure what’s happening.

  Neither am I.

  She yells at me. Her lips move, and I feel the puffs of warm air brush my face, but there’s no sound. I shake so hard that it seems to dislodge her from where she has me pinned. Or maybe she’s realized that she’s won and is finally letting me go.

  Except every muscle in my body is seizing up. I shake like I’m having a convulsive fit. I gasp for air, just now realizing I haven’t taken a breath the entire time… which may have been two seconds or ten. I can’t tell. Dull throbs of pain poke at my leg, and sound rushes back into the world as Julian bends over me.

  “Kira!” He grabs hold of my shoulders. “Kira, stay with me.” He says something more, turning to shout orders to the others, but everything dims as blackness sweeps in to cloud my mind. I push against it, diving deep inside my head, searching, searching for the string, the one I triggered, the one that turned me into a super convulsive speed freak. And now feels like it’s going to kill me.

  I need to switch it off.

  I find it and quell the vibration of the string just as consciousness fades from my mind.

  My body hurts in ways I didn’t know it could.

  I think about opening my eyes, then reconsider when even that causes small lightning bolts of pain to race across my face. I hold still, eyes closed, taking stock.

  The pain is everywhere. Like every single muscle in my body has been strained. But my heart rate is normal. My breathing is calm, although pain follows every rise and fall of my chest. Whatever neural string I accidentally triggered, two things are certain: it made me impossibly fast, and the blowback from that left me feeling like I’d been run over by a truck.

  But it was new. And unmistakably powerful. And Julian was there to see it.

  I smile a little with that thought, then stop, because even that hurts.

  “Sweet dreams?” Julian’s voice surprises me, popping my eyes open. Which is painful enough that I close them again. I wince and blink and creak my head sideways in the direction of his voice.

  He’s sitting on a chair next to my bunk in the racks. He smiles when I finally meet his gaze, but it’s strained. I struggle to sit up, but it hurts so much I can’t help sucking in a breath.

  “Hey, take it easy,” he says. “You don’t need to go anywhere.”

  “You saw it, right?” I manage to whisper. My voice is weak; even swallowing is an effort. But I manage to stabilize myself on the cot, mostly by gripping the edge to keep steady.

  “You mean, did I see you nearly kill yourself doing heaven knows what to your own mind? Yes.” He’s not pleased.

  “You talked to Sasha,” I guess. The will to fight about it struggles up from somewhere deep inside me. “It was entirely my idea—”

  Julian waves me off. “Oh, I’m sure it was.”

  “I just need to work on it a little. Then I can be ready for the mission. I can make it work, I promise.”

  Julian gives an elaborate sigh. “What am I going to do with you, Kira?”

  It’s the first time I’ve heard him use my name in… I can’t even remember. I peer at him, afraid I’ve angered him without really understanding how or why. “Hopefully not firing me as Friend-in-Chief?”

  He gives a small smile then shakes his head sadly. “You tried to tell me I was messing up by not putting you on the mission. I didn’t listen.” He sighs again, then gestures to the bunk. “You need to rest up. Training sessions for the assault start tomorrow. You’ll need to have your strength back if you want to be on the roster.”

  “If I want to?” I sit up straighter. “You’re letting me go?”

  “Yes.” He stands up and half turns away, like he’s going to leave now that he’s delivered that piece of information.

>   I’m at a loss for a moment, then I rush out the words. “I’ll work on figuring out the neural string I triggered right away! Sasha can help me—”

  “No!” Julian turns back to face me, anger suddenly alive on his face. “No. New. Skills.” He says each word slowly, like I’m a child he’s lecturing about playing with scissors.

  “But… I don’t understand.” My brain feels fuzzed out from the blowback. Maybe I missed something. “You saw what I could do.”

  His shoulders tense up. “I saw what you almost did. I saw you on the floor, shaking like…” He takes a breath. “I didn’t realize how far you’d go, Kira. I don’t want you to kill yourself trying to convince me you need to be on this op.” His shoulders drop a little. “I’ll put you on the mission.” He points a finger at me. “But only if you promise: no new skills. Just the ones we know won’t kill you.”

  “It wouldn’t have killed me!” But the truth is, I don’t really know that. I don’t understand at all what I did. I’ll have to study it. Try it out. Probably trigger it a few more times before I can figure out how to control it.

  The murderous look on Julian’s face stops me from saying anything about that.

  I quickly blurt out, “Whatever you say, boss. No new skills. Got it.” I nod for extra emphasis, then stop, because every muscle in my neck is protesting.

  “Promise me, Kira.”

  I know what promises mean to him. I look up into his eyes with all the sincerity I can muster in a state of pain. “I promise.”

  He seems satisfied with that. Without another word, he turns and strides away. I watch him leave, then slowly, painfully, roll back down on my bunk. A flush of happiness makes my body buzz, easing the aches and pains. My left leg throbs where I think I stabbed myself with the training knife. The assault training tomorrow is going to hurt like crazy.

  But I’m going on a mission to kill Kestrel.

  I smile wide, close my eyes, and try to rest.

  Seeds of Promise is a short Mindjack novella originally written for a charity anthology in coordination with Audiomachine's album Phenomena and inspired by the titular song, Seeds of Promise. The story is told from Anna's point of view and takes place off-screen during Closed Hearts. I literally wrote it while listening to the song (Seeds of Promise) on repeat on my iPhone... so if you're into that sort of thing, check out the song while you read!