He grinned. “Yes, boss.” He ducked his head and added more softly, “I’m not going anywhere.”
Then he kissed me, and I forgot about the water for a while.
The Mindjack Trilogy is a story about a world where everyone reads minds, except one girl… who then learns she can control them instead. When I finished the trilogy in 2012, I thought I was done—three novels and three novellas seemed like nice round numbers. I knew for sure Kira’s story had been told, and at the time, there was no other Mindjack character I felt could compete with the Girl Who Changed The World.
And then Zeph came along and unlocked my mind.
It started with a simple request from Samuel Peralta (in 2015). “Hey Susan, why don’t you write a story for our telepath anthology?”
Telepaths… I might have a few thoughts about those kinds of characters.
The seeds were already sown to write more Mindjack stories—Keeper, a short Mindjack novella, was written more than a year after the trilogy was “done.” All the Mindjack novellas and flash fiction throw light on the shadowy corners of character backstory that couldn’t be covered in the main books, but I had yet to dream up a character who would fit into the world after Mindjack: a world where peace came at the price of unsettling change, and the push of a reset button had wholly transformed the landscape. Any story that came after Mindjack would require a whole new cast of characters. The Telepath Chronicles seemed the perfect opportunity to explore something that was completelynew within the Mindjack universe, but which might yet be able to carry forward into that altered landscape.
With that nudge, Zeph and his locksmith power came into being. I purposely wrote my piece for the Telepath Chronicles as Zeph’s origin story—this is where he came from before Kira changed the world of mindjackers and mindreaders forever. I won’t be writing the rest of Zeph’s story until later (after I finish writing my Singularity series), but as soon as I envisioned Zeph’s ability, I knew it had the power to change the world again… and that made his story worth writing.
When you read Open Minds, you won’t find Zeph there. He’s waiting for Kira to finish her story before he begins to tell his. I hope this taste will be enough to tide you over until I write the rest of it.
Like Zeph’s story, most of my works delve into the science of the mind (and the heart): from controlling minds (Mindjack) to collecting life energy debts (Debt Collector) to the intersection of technology and tradition in a retro past (The Dharian Affairs). My Singularity series takes that one step further, exploring the mind-body-soul connection as our bodies literally intersect with technology in a future world of hyperintelligence, sentient machines, and the legacy humans who live with them. I like to pose social-moral questions in my stories that leave just enough wiggle room for my readers to ask, what would I do?
Special hugs and telepathic kisses to all the readers of the Mindjack series over the years—you are the people who set my writing career in motion, and I’ll forever be grateful for that.
Summary: In a world filled with mindreaders, Zeph is a mindjacker who wants to stay hidden—even if it means the cute mindreader in his Latin class is forever out of his reach. He locks and unlocks minds for a ruthless mindjacker Clan in exchange for protection and the chance to have a normal life with his parents and little sister. But when a girl he doesn’t know reveals the existence of mindjackers to the world, Zeph is forced to make a choice: unlock—and ultimately destroy—the mind of a young jacker changeling… or turn his back on everyone he loves.
The mind is a puzzle, just waiting to be unlocked. Or re-locked, as the case may be.
The girl sitting in the chair in front of me is cute: long, shiny brown hair, little freckles that she’s probably outgrowing, and wide blue eyes that are staring straight into mine. Her name is Sarah, and she’s a mindjacker like me—well, not exactly like me, but she would fit in at my high school just fine. She looks my age, maybe a junior, but she’s probably older. Marshall doesn’t like underage jackers in his Clan—says we get in too much trouble. He made an exception for me, but only because of what I can do. Sarah’s just a normal jacker, at least for the moment. She looks like the kind who’s sweet to everyone, has a pet cat named Meow-Meow, and knows how to hide really well in the regular mindreading population.
Too bad I have to hurt her.
“Come on, Zeph,” Marshall says to me. “Get on with it.” He’s looming behind her chair, intimidating her with his six-foot-two frame, as if being a powerful mindjacker in his own right and hauling her into the Clan’s decrepit warehouse at six in the morning isn’t enough reason to completely freak out the girl.
Sarah. Her name is Sarah.
I try to remember their names. It seems like the decent thing to do.
“You want this done fast, or do you want it done right?” I ask. It’s a rhetorical question, because there’s no speed or finesse involved in what I do. It’s either on or off, done or not-done. But Marshall is the leader of a Clan of thuggish and brutal mindjackers, not a rocket scientist, and besides, he doesn’t really understand what I do. I barely understand it myself. I just know I can lock Sarah’s mind tighter than the datafiles at the Pentagon. Which would be a great target for a jacker with an impenetrable mind, a keeper like Sarah is about to become, but that isn’t actually going to be her mission. I don’t know the details of her real mission—it’s not my business to know.
I’m just the locksmith.
“I want it done now,” Marshall barks at me over her head.
Sarah flinches. Her delicate hands wrestle with each other in her lap.
Marshall pulls out his phone and activates the holographic mindware interface. Must be checking his busy calendar. “She’s gotta meet up with the corporate guys in an hour.”
“Corporate guys?” I ask. Marshall’s sending the girl in for corporate espionage? I resist the urge to shake my head at all the ways that’s going to fail.
“Yeah.” He puts away his phone, then scratches his chin, like it’s using all his brain power to explain this to me. “They were supposed to contract out a keeper from Clan Molloy, but those guys imploded last week.”
I frown, trying to think if I know anyone in Clan Molloy. Their territory is on the seedy north side of Chicago New Metro and ours is in the Northwest Suburbs, but the Clans cross paths every once in a while. Not that I get friendly with other jackers, but there are a few who aren’t complete jerks.
“What do you mean, imploded?” I ask.
“Like boom, the whole Clan is in FBI custody.”
I whistle low. “Someone rat them out?” Now I’m really trying to remember who I know in Clan Molloy. And if they know where I live. And if the FBI is tormenting that knowledge out of them as I’m sitting here doing Marshall’s dirty work.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I think maybe they had a mole.”
I give a nervous laugh. “Right? I mean, how can a whole Clan go down at once without someone on the inside?” I’m not a mole for the FBI, but I’m always skating the edge with Marshall, so if someone was going to be pegged for being a mole, it would probably be me. I’m odd man out in the Clan, given what I can do, and the other jackers keep their distance. Not that I blame them. I wouldn’t like a guy who could lock me inside my own head, either. But the minute I stop being useful to Marshall is the minute the rest of Clan decides to take their I never really liked that guy tensions out on me. Even if I could leave unscathed, I can’t afford to be without Marshall’s protection. Staying out of the FBI’s clutches wouldn’t be too hard—those guys are messed up in what they do to jackers, but they’re also fairly inept. I’m more worried about another Clan finding me. Because there are worse Clans than Marshall’s. A lot worse.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says gruffly, ending the discussion with a wave of his hand. “Just means we get to step in and give the customer what he wants.”
Right. The corporate guys. “It’ll take at least an hour for her to recover,” I warn him. Marshall s
hould know this, but maybe he’s forgotten. It’s not like I do it that often, and he’s a busy guy, what with all the thuggery and petty crime he’s involved in.
Marshall lowers his voice. “Just get it done, Zeph.”
Fine. Enough messing around.
I look back to Sarah. Most of the color is gone from her face. “Is this going to hurt? Because no one said anything about recovery.” She bites her lip.
Marshall’s giving me the look, like it’s my job to close the deal with Sarah. She’s not from our Clan, which means he recruited her from another one just for the job. Or maybe she’s on loan, voluntarily or not. He could have scouted her straight out of school, for all I know. But whenever he brings someone for me to lock—or worse, unlock—he never gives them all the details. Says he likes to keep things on a need-to-know basis, but the truth is most wouldn’t sign up for this if they knew the price. Not that they always get a choice. Like that guy last month who backed out on one of Marshall’s schemes and ended up with half his mind erased, the rest scrambled, and a new tendency to drool when he talks.
I shudder. I don’t want to see anything like that happen to Sarah. So I sigh and lean forward in my chair, hands clasped, elbows on my knees, giving Sarah my best it’ll be okay look… even though it won’t.
“I won’t lie to you,” I say, totally lying to her. “It’ll hurt a little, but not for long. You might have a headache for a while afterward. But once I’m done, no one will be able to jack into your head. So there’s that. Plus you’ll be all set for the job.” I glance at Marshall, because I have no idea what the specifics of the job are, but he’s nodding, so I continue. “Then you’ll come back here, I’ll undo it, and everything will be back to normal.” That part at least is true. Assuming she comes back. They don’t always.
She’s quaking a little, but she nods, and looks to Marshall. “Then I get paid, right?”
“Just like I said.” Marshall folds his beefy arms.
Sarah hesitates, like she’s going to question him further, but then she doesn’t. And she really doesn’t need to worry about that part. For all the illegal activities he runs, Marshall’s strangely honest. He’ll hold up his end of the bargain if she does.
Sarah turns back to me.
“Ready?” I ask. Because it’s nice to ask. They’re never ready.
She swallows and nods once more.
I reach out with my mind and brush her mind barrier, just to give her a little warning, and to get a sense of how hard this one’s going to be. The scent of sun-baked strawberries fills the back of my throat. Her mind-scent is probably the same flavor as the lip gloss she wears when she goes out on a date with her boyfriend. I’ve always wondered if those lip glosses taste the same as they smell, a little too-sweet and artificial, but mouth-watering nonetheless. I wouldn’t know—never had the chance to kiss a girl. Not for lack of wanting, mind you. I’m as red-blooded-straight as any other seventeen-year-old male. Just never met a girl jacker who would have anything to do with me, and kissing mindreaders is all kinds of wrong.
Focus, Zeph, I tell myself.
I should have grabbed a coffee or something before coming in.
I close my eyes and push on through Sarah’s mind barrier. It isn’t very tough, but reaching deep into any mind is a creepy sensation, like shoving your hand into a bowl full of raw ground beef. It gives, but there’s serious interference between the two mind fields. I have no idea why that translates into the sensation of cold meatloaf gushing between my fingers, but it does. The mind is a strange thing.
I’m not a tremendously strong mindjacker, and she shoves me back out pretty easily.
I open my eyes again and try not to chastise her. “You need to let me in.” Strictly speaking, this isn’t true. I can lock her mind without having to be on the inside, but I’ve been hiding that little tidbit from Marshall, and I’d rather keep any small advantage for as long as I can. Never know when you need something like that in your back pocket. Besides, Sarah’s here at least somewhat voluntarily. I don’t know all the specifics of the deal she made with Marshall—sometimes he’ll threaten—but it sounds like he’s cut her in on the deal, whatever it is. Either way, Sarah shouldn’t be working against me.
“Sorry,” she says. The hairs on her arms are raised. I know it’s not pleasant for her either, but it’s about to get a whole lot worse. No need to prolong it more than necessary.
“It’s all right,” I say, trying to keep my voice soothing. “Just relax, let me in, and we’ll be done before you know it.”
She nods and closes her eyes, taking a breath and letting it out through pursed lips.
She’s extra cute when she does that. Makes me feel about ten times worse for what I’m about to do. I close my eyes again, not because I need to relax, but because I don’t want to see her face when I lock her.
I reach for her mind field again, and this time, I slip in no problem. Deep inside her head like this, I can hear all her thoughts, feel all her emotions. That overbaked strawberry scent hits the back of my throat again, and the basic information about her pops up like a digital display in the front of my brain. Sarah Zuckerman, nineteen, freshman at Harper College. I ignore all that and stretch my mind field presence inside hers. It expands, like the fingers of my mind flexing outward, until my mind field basically fills the same space as hers. I could do the reverse, surrounding her field from the outside, floating above the contours of her mind barrier rather than mushrooming out from the inside to coat it. It doesn’t matter. What I’m doing is syncing up my mind field with hers and feeling out the parameters of it. Like taking a sonar map of the surface of the moon. Her map is unique, just like she is. And once I’ve got a fix on it, that’s when I can shift things, move them around. Smooth the bumps, raise the minuscule peaks, dig the valleys a little deeper. Changing the map alters her mind field’s capabilities. I don’t know what each peak or valley is for; I’m just operating by feel. It’s like I’m a safecracker, only I’m turning the tumblers in her brain until each clicks into place and locks her mind down.
She screams.
Even though I expect it, my whole body jolts. I’ve got a good grip on the chair, so fortunately I don’t fall out and give myself away with how much I hate this part. The screaming lasts about ten seconds, until the last tumbler falls into place, and then I’m done.
She stops screaming.
I open my eyes.
Tears stream down her pretty face, and I have that sick feeling I get every time. Like what I’m doing is so wrong there’s no right-thing I can ever do in the world to make up for it. Her face is still scrunched with the pain. It’s not as bad now as it was when I was locking her down, which is why she’s not screaming, but I’ve left her with a killer headache. I don’t know why it hurts, exactly, but it’s not hard to imagine: I just changed her mind field into something different. There must be some kind of effect from that. Some pushback from the brain. Or maybe it triggers one of the pain centers for some reason. Like I said, I don’t really understand how it works. I just do it.
Then her face goes slack, and she starts to tip sideways.
I’m out of my chair so fast it falls backward, but I manage to catch her before she goes head-first into the concrete floor.
What in the sweet mercy… ? She’s thin, and not too tall, but she’s dead weight in my arms.
“What in the… what did you do, Zeph?” Marshall asks, his mouth gaping at me.
I have no idea, and I’m freaking out. “I don’t know! This has never happened before.” I struggle to keep hold of her and lift her back into the chair.
Marshall isn’t helping, he’s just standing there, staring. Sarah’s body is completely limp—I can’t even get it to stay upright in the chair. The seat is just a flimsy plastic thing on metal feet, and suddenly it slides out from under us. I nearly drop her, but somehow I slow her fall enough to ease her to the floor without thumping her head.
I’m still cradling her in my arms. “Sarah!”
I can hear the panic in my own voice. “Sarah, wake up.”
I hold her with one arm and use my other hand to pry open one of her eyelids. All I see are the whites, and it jolts me. My stomach heaves, and I yank my hand back. Oh my god, please don’t be dead.
“Is she okay?” Marshall looms over us.
“I don’t know!” My voice has hiked up a whole octave. I put two fingers to her neck, trying to find a pulse. They taught us how in first aid class freshman year, but it’s a complete blur to me now, and I have no idea what to do. I feel something pounding in my fingertips, but I can’t be sure it’s not my own heart echoing there. But then she moans and moves away from my touch. Relief flushes through me. I pull in a full breath for the first time since she keeled over.
“Sarah.” I pat her cheek gently. “Sarah, you need to wake up.”
She moans again and scrunches her face. Her eyes slit open, and she peers up at me. I’m still holding her close in my arms. She hunches her shoulders as she flails around, trying to escape my hold. I try to let her go without letting her fall. She ends up on the floor, scuttling away from me on all fours, not turning her back, in case I might hurt her. Again.
My heart is pounding so hard it actually hurts my chest. I’m so relieved she’s alive, I almost feel sick from it, but at the same time… what in the world did I just do?
I climb unsteadily to my feet, and Sarah does the same. Standing up seems to spike her headache, because she gasps and clutches her head with both hands.
Finally Marshall springs into action and hurries to her side to keep her from tipping over again. “Okay, all right, all done. You’re going to be fine now.”
He holds her upright with one beefy arm around her shoulder, then picks up the chair from the floor and sets it upright for her. She sits down, but just doubles over, holding her head. That’s what she should be doing. That’s the normal reaction: splitting headache, maybe a little nausea. An hour’s rest, and it will pass.
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