The lead tru-cast reporter approached Vellus once he was off the phone. “I’m so glad you agreed to do an interview with us today, Senator.” Her solicitude made me want to gag.
He was still wearing the helmet, so I heard his spoken words through her thoughts. “Always a pleasure, Ms. Reed.”
“I’m afraid we’re not set up for sound today,” she said. “Would you mind terribly if you removed your helmet? If it’s a security concern, we can shoot some scenes of the construction here and then move to a more secure location for the interview.”
No, no, no. Take it off. Take it off. As if my thought chants would do anything. If the journalist kept giving him a way out, I would jack her to insist he remove it. I didn’t care if my jack was picked up on the boom mics. By the time anyone figured it out, we would be long gone—and besides, they were on the edge of Jackertown. No one would be surprised if she was jacked.
Senator Vellus said nothing for a moment. Then his smooth timber of spoken words rumbled in her mind, setting it at ease. “Not at all, Ms. Reed. We’re perfectly secure here. In any event, I have mindguard security that can assist if we have any problems with nearby jackers.”
“Yes, of course,” she said.
Sasha tensed next to me. “Mindguards will know the senator was jacked, assuming I can even get in.”
“I’ll handle the mindguards,” I whispered, popping my eyes open to look at Sasha. “When they take off their helmets, I’ll catch them by surprise. Even if they realize Vellus was jacked, they’ll expect him to recover. They won’t suspect he’s been turned, and if they find out, then Vellus will be discredited. Either way, it’s better than things are now. But you need to do your thing fast.”
“Understood,” he said without opening his eyes. The dark skin of his face was flushed with the effects of the adrenaline rushing through his body.
I rapidly scanned the helmeted minds near Vellus, unsure which were his mindguards and which were regular security. My hand gripped the splintered edge of the counter, anchoring me while I crouched. I rocked slowly onto my toes and back to my heels again, trying to calm the tension in my body while I waited for the slightest movement of the helmets. After an agonizing spread of several seconds, one of the helmets moved up, then down. The mindguard immediately swept out toward Vellus, who remained helmeted.
I held back from attacking the mindguard. If I alerted him too soon, before Vellus had removed his helmet, I might not distract him long enough for Sasha to do his work. I tracked his mindfield, dodging as he scanned the perimeter, looking for nearby jacker minds. I wasn’t sure of his reach, so I held my breath while he searched. Suddenly, Vellus’s helmet moved. I slammed my mindfield into the mindguard’s head. His mindbarrier wasn’t very hard, but he was strong enough to immediately fling me out again. He cast out, searching for me. I drew back to the limits of his reach, then surged forward again before he could find the three of us huddled in the abandoned bicycle shop. I baited him, wrestled with him, tried to keep him engaged in a cat-and-mouse dance long enough for Sasha to scribe Vellus, all the while praying the mindguard wouldn’t pinpoint our location and come after us physically.
“Sasha!” I heard Ava cry, and he slumped into me, knocking me back into the thin wooden wall of the register desk. Only my grip on the counter’s edge kept me from falling with him. He convulsed on the floor, his arm flailing against me and his eyes rolling back in his head.
What the...?
I grabbed Sasha’s shoulders and tried to hold him down, but the seizure stopped of its own accord, leaving him splayed out like a limp doll. A light sheen of sweat on his forehead reflected the dim light from the windows outside. Ava’s terror-stricken face froze me for a moment, then I remembered Vellus. I flung my mind back out, but crashed into the mindguard, who was now sweeping around Vellus’s mind to fend off the attacking jackers—namely me. I dodged his sweep and dove in. All I needed was a second or two and I would take Vellus down the old-fashioned way: by stopping his heart cold in his chest. Forget subtlety. Julian would just have to forgive me for killing the state’s leading anti-jacker politician at the edge of Jackertown. But I only snatched the barest whisper of contact with Vellus’s mind before my reach was cut off by a helmet dropping firmly over his head.
No!
I slammed my fist into my knee, a white-hot heat boiling through me. So close, and I lost him. Sasha's whole body shuddered, and a moan seemed to be shaken out by it. His eyes slitted open and he struggled to get up from the floor. I helped him up to sitting, grabbing hold of his shoulders and peering close to his face.
“What happened?” I asked, my voice harsher than I expected. Ava frowned at me and I rocked away from him, my face running hot. “Are you okay?” I asked belatedly.
Sasha wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and I saw it tremble. “I don’t know what happened. One moment I was reaching for his mind, the next I was on the floor.”
“Did the mindguard push you out?” I asked, trying to keep my voice gentle. I didn’t cast my mind out again, for fear of leading the mindguard straight to us.
“I don’t think so,” Sasha said. “I don’t remember. I just suddenly found myself on the floor feeling this… horrible feeling…” He drew his hand across his forehead like it still lingered in his mind and he was trying to rub it away.
I looked to Ava.
She just shook her head. “All I know is that something awful attacked him. I lost contact with him as soon as it happened.”
I nodded and put a hand on Sasha’s shoulder. It was still shaking underneath his ultralite.
“It’s not your fault, Sasha.” Bitterly, I knew exactly whose fault it was and who would be taking the full blame for this failed operation. “They must have had a second mindguard that attacked you while I was distracted with the first mindguard. Someone with wicked skills we haven’t seen before.”
I took a deep breath and sat back on my heels, my shoulders drooping. “Meanwhile, we need to get out of here before the mindguards find us and haul us all into Vellus’s Detention Center.” I gave Sasha my hand, helping him up into a crouch but staying below the counter level so we wouldn’t be seen. We crept, slowed by Sasha’s unsteady legs, back into the bicycle graveyard that comprised the back of the shop.
I didn’t even want to think about how angry Julian would be when we got back.
Julian’s shouts on the short comm were muffled by Sasha smashing it against his ear, but it was clear from the taut muscles in Sasha’s face that he was getting a massive verbal lashing. I sent apologetic looks his way, but he wasn’t paying attention to me. When the call ended, the set of his jaw and the dark look in his eyes stopped the words in my throat. Ava’s soft blue eyes were wide, her gaze flitting between Sasha and the cracked concrete sidewalk in front of us, avoiding me altogether. The streets felt even emptier than when we had set out on our mission. I folded my arms over my ultralite and huddled against the cold as the three of us hustled toward JFA headquarters.
I had disobeyed a direct order from Julian. I had endangered Sasha and Ava by taking them on an unauthorized mission. I had engaged the perimeter, just like Julian told me not to. And, worst of all, we had failed. All would have been forgiven if we had returned to headquarters having defeated the enemy before he could box us in. Now we had nothing to show for my flagrant violation of Julian’s orders.
I had messed up. Bad.
The jitters in my stomach stepped up to a full jitter riot when we reached the crumbling red-brick building that was the JFA headquarters and pulled open the shiny black, bulletproof door. Hinckley was flopped on the weathered couch, eating a sandwich, but he just shook his head slowly and refused to look our way. Several of Hinckley’s military men sat in clusters at the battered kitchen tables, but no one was talking. They kept their heads ducked, and I couldn’t tell if they were mindlinked to discuss my failed mission or if they were simply rendered into embarrassed silence by our presence.
I didn’t l
ink in to find out. I didn’t want to hear what they were thinking.
Sasha slid his arm around Ava and pulled her over to lean against the kitchen sink for an intimate mindlinked conversation. I hesitated, having assumed they would at least come with me to face Julian. I squared my shoulders, ready to take responsibility for the failed mission alone. The faces at the kitchen table ignored me as I strode by.
An angry rumble of voices floated in past the racks. I followed the sound, winding through the ancient machinery that used to manufacture doors but now sat silent. I passed a few bunks filled with younger recruits playing holographic games on their phones.
None of them would look at me, either.
It must be even worse than I thought. I’d disobeyed Julian’s direct order, something I’d never seen anyone else do. What would he do? Yell at me? I couldn’t imagine him scribing someone for disobeying an order. Usually, when someone was irredeemable in Jackertown, he kicked them out, banishing them forever. The jitter riot in my stomach froze up.
Was Julian going to send me away? Was that why no one would look me in the eye?
A haze clouded my vision, and my toe stubbed a box of machine parts sticking out from a rack, sending me tumbling forward. I caught myself on the edge of the spindly frame, the cool metal biting into my hand but keeping me upright.
I had to force my feet to start moving again. The voices were coming from near the privacy rooms Sasha had built along the east wall. There was no mental barrier to the privacy rooms, just an unspoken agreement that no one jacked through those walls unless they were invited. It was part of the respect built into Julian’s new jacker society. A society that he might soon be banishing me from.
I stumbled my way forward and eventually found Julian and Anna arguing in the thin corridor between the industrial machinery and the privacy rooms. I crept up on them, unsure if Julian knew I was there. Anna’s arms were crossed, her hands clenched into fists as well. She saw me, then looked away.
No, no, no. The frozen ball of fear in my stomach melted into a puddle of dread that pooled at the bottom.
“Now is the time, Julian,” Anna said, kicking up the intensity of her voice. “It’s our best option. Probably our only option.”
“No.” Julian’s voice rose to meet her pitch. “It’s reckless and dangerous. Not unlike today, except we will probably lose our best assets in the process.”
“There are always going to be risks,” Anna said, tempering her voice and unfolding her arms. “You know that. Sasha knows it. Kira knows it, too. It’s part of what we’re doing, and everyone is willing to put themselves on the line for the JFA. You have to let her try.”
They were talking about me. I meant every word when I told Anna I would do whatever Julian asked of me as long as it didn't endanger my family. Which was probably what Anna had in mind: sending me back to recruit my dad to infiltrate Vellus’s defenses and take him down that way. Or maybe she had thought of something new.
“Let me try what?” I asked, my voice soft.
Julian whipped his head around. His face was a rigid mask. “I’ll speak with you in a moment.”
Oh no.
My mouth hung open.
Julian turned his back on me as if I weren’t even there. He wasn’t going to send me off to recruit my dad, he was going to plain send me away. Of course. How could he trust me now, after I blatantly disobeyed a direct order from him? My chest squeezed with the realization. It became hard to breathe. Where would I go? I couldn’t go home—I had left there in order to keep my family safe in the first place. I sent a wild look to Anna, wishing like crazy I could link past her impenetrable mindbarrier.
I begged her with my eyes. Please, Anna. Don’t let him send me away.
But she was engaged in a staring contest with Julian. “It’s now or never with Vellus.”
“The worst thing we could do right now,” Julian said, “is try to take on Vellus directly. He knows we just tried to jack him. He was assaulted at the perimeter of Jackertown! It’s a public relations nightmare. And we didn’t even manage to scribe him. Now all of us look far more dangerous, and the assault just gave him more reason to crack down on us.”
I didn’t think my stomach could sink any lower, but there was a basement it hadn’t discovered yet, and it slithered into that. I hadn’t just failed in the mission to scribe Vellus, I had made things worse. Now the public would support Vellus as he quarantined us from the world. I had made it easier for him to cut us off, the very thing Julian said we weren’t ready for.
No wonder he was so angry.
Anna clenched her hands at her side as if she was losing her patience with the argument and was considering using her fists to beat some sense into Julian. “No matter what happened today, Vellus would still finish erecting the barrier. I’m sure his future plans are worse than just a siege. He needs to be neutralized, not coddled, before he turns all of Jackertown into a prison. This isn’t a PR war, Julian. You need to let Kira go to her father and see what he can do, quickly. Before Vellus suspects her father might be helping us and we lose that avenue of attack altogether. If we can scribe Vellus, he would be extremely useful to us, but failing that, eliminating him has to be an option as well.”
I badly wanted to jump in but held myself back. It was one thing to take Sasha and Ava on an unauthorized mission. If we got caught, well, that was part of being in the revolution, like Anna said. But my dad… any mission to take out Vellus had a high likelihood of failure, and Vellus would do much worse to my dad than simply put him in jail.
Besides, my dad needed to be home, protecting my mom and Xander, the changeling we’d rescued but who was more like a little brother to me now. Things were getting worse every day for jackers and the people who loved them. I was the revolutionary, not my dad. If anything, I should go on a covert op, by myself, to get Vellus. Could I possibly convince Julian to let me do that when I had just disobeyed a direct order?
“I don’t want her anywhere near Vellus,” Julian said, dashing my hopes. “If he gets his hands on her, it will demoralize everyone. You know he’ll force her to go on the tru-casts, and that will set the movement back, not only with our own people and jackers still at large, but with the public as well.”
“The public is not on our side!” Anna said. “We are at war, Julian. When are you going to face that?”
“I know that!” Julian shouted back, his face darkening. “There are just some risks that aren’t worth taking.”
Anna’s fingers slowly uncurled from her tightly closed fists, and somehow that seemed more dangerous than when they were clenched. “You need to get your priorities straight.”
Julian closed his eyes, took a breath, then opened them again. “We’ll come up with a plan to counter Vellus’s moves. Later.” Then he turned to me, his face inscrutable. “Can I have a word with you in private?” He swept out his arm toward one of the privacy rooms. I tried to catch Anna’s eye, to get her support, but she was busy sending angry glares down the hallway away from us. And avoiding my gaze again.
I swallowed and marched through the open door to the privacy room. It was empty except for a couch and a couple of chairs with a blanket draped over the back. It smelled like a coat of paint had been put on recently, making it jarringly fresh compared to the rest of the decrepit factory. A portable heater in the center wafted puffs of air that brushed my face and made me uncomfortably warm in my ultralite.
I didn’t bother taking it off, not sure how long Julian would let me stay. Once the door shut soundly behind us, I turned to him. “Julian, I’m sorry—”
He cut me off by wrapping his arms around me. His hug nearly lifted me off the ground, my toes just barely touching the tiled floor. My arms ended up around his neck, although I wasn’t sure what to do with them there. Confusion did a whirling-dervish dance in my head.
His face was buried in my hair, and I felt him draw in a breath. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
Right when my brain figured
out that Julian wasn’t mad at me, that he was worried instead, he relaxed his grip and eased me back to the floor. I scrambled for something to say, how I hadn’t meant to worry him, how I was just trying to complete the mission—
Then he kissed me.
His lips pressed gently to mine, soft and warm. Before I could think, something surged up inside me, lifting me up and welding my lips to his, as if they weren’t already pressed together. His hands on my back crushed me to him, and a small moan rumbled in his throat, vibrating through me as well. The feeling rushed my body, flooding every small dip and turn, gushing and unstoppable. The hole that perpetually sat in my chest like an empty grave overfilled with it, and the whistling wind inside me fell silent.
My body stilled.
Julian froze. As my brain caught up with what my body was doing, he slowly untangled his lips from mine and relaxed his fever-tight grip on me. I teetered, then pushed back from him, my hands lifting free from his shoulders. My legs wobbled like the world had gone on tilt and forgotten to tell me. Julian was breathing hard and his face was flushed. The shock on my face crashed into the unmistakable half-lidded hurt in his eyes. Then it bounced back to slice me through the heart.
Julian turned his back on me and pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. I took a half step toward him, then stopped.
What just happened?
My mind grabbed at the pieces, trying desperately to put them together. Julian worried about me the way Sasha did about Ava. He was angry because I had put myself in danger. All those times he leaned close, all the soft looks and whispers and orders for me not to go on dangerous missions… Julian is in love with me.
Free Souls (Book Three of the Mindjack Trilogy) Page 6
