Free Souls (Book Three of the Mindjack Trilogy)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  Hinckley hiked up his eyebrows. Suppressive fire? As in shooting at them, so they don’t shoot at us? With dart guns?

  They don’t need to know that we’re firing darts, I thought. If we simultaneously discharge weapons into the roof, they’ll think we’re using live rounds. At the least, they’ll be unsure. You take the assault team in through the windows, and we’ll cover you with suppression from the rooftops.

  Hinckley was nodding now. We’ll have to time it tight, he thought, but his eyebrows had resumed their normal scowly position. Going through the windows is tricky—we’ll be silhouetted against the window frame, easy targets.

  You can throw a smoke bomb for visual confusion, I thought, but you’re right. The timing has to be precise. If I’m up high on a building where I can reach everyone, I can mentally coordinate the attack. Once you penetrate the building, the shield will cut me off, but the station is small enough to be within your reach. You should be able to manage a room-by-room search on your own.

  I turned to Julian. Minimum casualties, dart guns all the way. When Julian nodded his approval, I turned back to Hinckley. You need to scout out several good sniper locations first, front and back. We only get one shot at this.

  Hinckley pulled out of Myrtle’s head and lumbered off to gather his team and tell them the plan.

  Julian’s grin stretched so wide it threatened to break his face. Maybe I do like having you on ops after all.

  Myrtle shook her head and rolled her eyes.

  I shrugged like it was obvious all along. I tried to tell you.

  I had to fight a grin as I turned to join Hinckley and his men.

  Hinckley had his people in position, huddled flat against the wall of an abandoned truck depot just south of the water plant. The five of them—Hinckley, three of his brawniest ex-military jackers, plus Julian—were around the corner, out of sight of the patrolling guards. I would rather have had Julian on a rooftop, doing sniper duty like Myrtle and Ava, but he wasn’t the best of shots. He would serve the mission better on the ground, even if the front line wasn’t the best place to put the leader of the revolution.

  If Anna knew, she would kill me.

  I linked in to the minds of the assault team but hesitated with Julian. He had promised to pull back his automatic horror-show defense mechanism to let me link in, and it was necessary for the mission. Still, it gave me pause. Linking in to his mind would give him access to my instincts—that was how he had handled me before—but that wasn’t the source of my hesitation. Our rooftop discussion, when I had hurt him and embarrassed myself, kept tipping into my thoughts and making me cringe. Not my finest hour. When I linked in now, would he be able to read me? Not my thoughts, but my instincts? For some reason, that made me nervous. But we had a mission to do, so I took a deep breath and cleared out those feelings.

  Then I linked in to Julian’s mind, something I had vowed never to do again.

  Ready there, Revolution Boy? My thoughts bounced around in his head.

  Revolution Boy? Is that what you call me in your thoughts? His mind was like an empty room, and his thoughts sounded strange, as if he was projecting them through a static-filled megaphone. And there was no mindscent. Which meant the “thoughts” I heard were no more his true thoughts than the ones I carefully chose and linked into his head.

  That buffer was comforting.

  I call you many things in my thoughts, I linked to him, none of which I’ll be repeating during a mission. Unless you mess up. Julian couldn’t see my wry smile, given I was a couple of hundred feet away, lying prone on the cold, gravel roof of an abandoned auto-repair shop. But he probably heard it in my thoughts.

  I peeked over the low concrete lip of the roof’s edge, using a televiewer to get a visual on the patrolling guards and the fenced-in station across the street. The six snipers—four of Hinckley’s men, Myrtle, and Ava—were in position as well, strategically placed on rooftops and third-story floors around the perimeter of the pumping station. They each had a guard in their sights. I held a steady link with all six, even the ones near the back. The shield wrapped tightly around the building and blocked my reach inside, but through the images in the minds of our snipers, I saw all six guards.

  I was the only one with a vantage of every part of the battlefield. I was the center point and the control. Ava could have been our coordinator, but I was able to jack as well as link, which would come in handy if anything went sideways. Everyone was focused on their part of the mission, waiting for my signal to begin.

  Ready for go, Operation Water Tower? I linked to each of the snipers simultaneously. Six ready to gos returned to me.

  You know, Julian’s thoughts intruded on my check-in with the snipers. I might die today. You should probably tell me the rest of your pet names for me before I go into battle and die a war hero.

  Will you kindly shut up? I linked back. I’m trying to run an op here.

  Yes, ma’am, he thought. Was that sarcasm in his thoughts? It was hard to tell with all the echoes. I resisted the urge to come up with another snappy comeback. I really did need to focus.

  Instead, I linked, Ready for go, Operation Water Tower? to Hinckley and his team of four, including Julian.

  Five ready to gos came back, including Julian’s tinny reply.

  The guards held their shiny black rifles in a position I now recognized as “ready to shoot without having to think about it.” I couldn’t peek behind their anti-jacker helmets, but their body language didn’t indicate any awareness of the dart guns aimed at a soft tissue part not protected by their flak jackets. Or the assault team poised at the corner.

  Surprise would be our most important weapon.

  Hinckley had scavenged an old metal door from a nearby building to use as a shield. I didn’t know if it would stop a bullet, but that was all there would be between Julian and the armed guards inside. At least we had brought flak jackets and helmets. I prayed their makeshift shield would get them to the building in one piece.

  I took a deep, steadying breath and issued the command to both teams. Go.

  Simultaneous small pops sounded across the street like children’s balloons bursting in the distance, something you would have missed if you hadn’t been listening for it. The three front guards dropped as a single unit to the ground, the only sound their large, metallic guns clattering on the sidewalk beneath them. I saw the rear guards fall through the sniper’s eyes. At the same moment, Hinckley’s assault team surged forward on silent, shuffling boots, a black-clad centipede with a flat metal head and ten legs quickly covering the space between their hidey-hole and the fence. They flowed over the fallen body of the guard stationed there and burst through the gate.

  Muffled sounds came from inside the building, and one of the vertically slit windows that lined the front of the pumping station smashed outward. A rain of bullets targeted the assault team, pinging off their metal shield.

  Suppression Fire! I linked to the snipers. The three forward snipers sent a hail of darts to the open window. At the same time, the three rear snipers, who had repositioned and switched to live munitions, pounded the roof with bullets, adding an impressive sound to cover the pop-whoosh of the dart guns.

  The assault team headed for the gray metal door that was the entrance to the water pumping station. Hold fire and move! I linked to the snipers, partly to keep our team from going down under friendly dart fire and partly to give the snipers time to shuffle their position. I wanted the gunmen inside the building to be targeting the empty space where our sniper team used to be. As soon as the suppression fire stopped, the row of tall front windows spewed glass onto the lawn, the gunmen inside returning fire.

  The assault team had reached the front door and pressed flat against it, huddling under their metal shield. They folded into a crouching centipede as the glass flew around them.

  My mental map of the newly positioned snipers showed the gunmen were aiming wrong, plus my snipers were crouched behind protective brick and concrete. I’
d never been so glad for the solid Chicago architecture of the twentieth century as I was now.

  The gunmen inside the pumping station hesitated and I commanded, Suppression fire! Bullets pounded the roof again, cracking the air with their shots, now coming from new forward positions on the roofs. Inside, figures flung themselves back from the windows, but I couldn’t tell how many had been hit by sniper darts. I knew how difficult it was to hit anything moving with a dart pistol, much less a moving target inside a building hundreds of feet away. My hand itched for my own gun, but I held steady, gripping the rough casing of the televiewer. My fingers were numb from clutching it so hard.

  Ready for smoke bomb, I linked to the assault team. They crept toward the blown-out window nearest the door. I noticed a tiny movement at the edge of the window—a rifle muzzle tucked in the corner. If the assault team got too close to the window, they’d be point-blank in front of the gunman.

  I sent the image to Hinckley. He passed the shield to Jameson behind him and crouched under the level of the window, creeping up to it. I directed the snipers to hold fire so they wouldn’t accidentally hit Hinckley, but instructed the roof brigade to keep firing. I knew what Hinckley was thinking, and I didn’t exactly like it, but I wasn’t going to tell him to stop, either. I guided him with my vantage point, zooming the televiewer in to get him a good visual on the rifle and where the gunman likely was, right inside the window. Guided by my thought-image, Hinckley quickly reached past the broken glass, grabbed the barrel of the gun and hauled the surprised gunman out through the window. The gunman made it halfway, snagging on the jagged glass around the frame, before he must have realized what was happening and let go of the gun. It sailed across the grass and Hinckley yanked the gunman’s anti-jacker helmet off in one quick tug. Hinckley jacked him, and the gunman went limp, draped across the window frame.

  Which only alerted the remaining gunmen inside that the assault team had arrived.

  Smoke bomb! I linked to Jameson, who quickly lobbed the grenade over the inert body of the gunman. A beat or two passed, then a flash inside the water station told me it had detonated. A cloud billowed and rose to the ceiling, burgeoning toward the windows. The assault team pulled down their masks, covering their eyes and noses with a clear membrane that would filter out the smoke and keep them from choking. Once they were past the disruptor field, they would be able to sense the anti-jacker helmets even if they were blinded by smoke.

  The gunmen inside had to know things were going badly for them now, and gunfire started up again inside the building, even with the suppression overhead. Jameson threw the metal shield to the ground, and the entire assault team swarmed the windows. They crawled up and over like snakes slipping into the building, covered by the smoke and their low-profile entrance through the windows. I held my breath, praying hard that they made it through without catching a bullet on the way. Once they were inside, my link with their minds was painfully cut off by the disruptor shield, and it made me physically cringe with the force of it. They had disappeared into the smoke, and my breath caught in my throat as I ordered everyone else to cease fire and wait.

  Wait.

  Wait.

  Wait for the shield to come down so I would know what had happened. Wait and strain for a sound, any sound, to tell me what was going on inside. Wait to find out if he was hurt. What was I thinking? How could I send him in there? What an incredibly, stupendously stupid idea, sending Julian in with the assault team. Every linked mind on the rooftops watched and waited with me. Just as my breaths were starting to come short and panicky and I thought my head might explode from the tension, the shield came down. A breath burst out of me, and I flung my mind into the station, searching, searching for Julian.

  I ran into a mental horror show that made me scream from the rooftop. My mind reflexively jerked back, my body shuddering with the shock of it.

  Julian. His defenses were up, not allowing me into his mind. He’s alive.

  I slumped, thunking my head against the rough lip of the concrete rooftop. I let the dizziness of my pounding heart wash over me, pulsing relief through my body in waves, beating the thought again and again. He’s alive. He’s alive. I waited until I pulled myself together, then linked to the six jacker snipers who were anxiously waiting to hear.

  We’ve taken the station.

  Even before I reached the door of the water pumping station, I linked back to everyone still conscious. All except Julian, who kept his defenses up while he wandered around upstairs. Which made sense—now that the assault was over, there was no need for us to communicate that way. But for some reason, it bothered me. Before, I was nervous about linking in to his mind; now I wished he would let me in, just so I could see he was okay.

  The sniper team had brought in the patrol guards, still knocked out from the dart guns, and lined them up along the back wall of the first floor. The assault team had quickly cleared the building, sweeping through the lower level with the shattered windows, a second-floor control room with a few offices, and an overlook on the third floor that peered into a cavernous room in the back. It had pumps and large, L-shaped tubes that pushed water to the giant blue tank behind the pumping station. At least that was what I had gathered from the thoughts and images ricocheting through the minds of the jackers who secured each room.

  The smoke still lay heavy on the floor. The whitish-gray mist curled up to the bodies and swirled as the living walked by, tingeing the air with the smell of burnt chemicals.

  One of Hinckley’s men wrestled with an upturned table to block one of the shattered windows. The station guard that Hinckley had pulled through the window was laid out next to the other readers, who all had darts sticking out from their arms or necks or other exposed parts. The guard’s shirt was sliced open from his encounter with the jagged glass, and blood seeped into the starched blue of his uniform, turning it an ugly purple. A quick link in to his head showed he was alive. Hinckley stepped back to let Ava have access to him. The white first-aid kit she used must have come from the station because I didn’t recognize it. She tended the man’s wounds with bandages and med patches.

  Next to the unconscious guard lay one of Hinckley’s jackers. I’d missed him in my initial post-mission sweep. I linked in to his mind, but I recognized his face at the same time I realized why I missed him before: Jameson’s mind was empty now. Vacant. I should have known he was dead by the bullet hole through his helmet and the still-spreading pool of blood underneath him.

  My gaze was drawn to the squareness of his jaw and the light blue of his eyes, now staring unseeing at the ceiling. The leftover smoke lapped at his fingers.

  I brushed Hinckley’s mind and he let me in. I’m sorry. I couldn’t think of what else to say.

  He was a good man. Hinckley’s normally crisp mindscent was heavy with a bitter aftertaste. He didn’t speak out loud or turn to me and kept his arms folded as he watched Ava tend to the mindreader. There was no outward sign that either of us had said anything.

  I bent down to Jameson and lightly touched his eyelids, closing them. His skin was still warm. The bullet hole had punched in his helmet and the pool of blood reminded me way too much of Simon lying on the desert floor. It felt horribly wrong that I hadn’t properly noticed the color of Jameson’s eyes before. My brain fuzzed out trying to think about what to do next. How could we arrange a funeral when we were in the middle of an operation? I wondered if he had someone back home, like Ava, who would be nervously pacing and waiting for him to return. At least Ava still had hope of getting Sasha back.

  But only if our mission succeeded.

  I slowly stood up and Julian had appeared by my side. He was saying something, but the sound was empty of meaning, like my ears were blocked.

  “What?” I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my head. Sound and meaning rushed back into the world.

  Julian tilted his head toward a stairwell at the far end of the room. “I have something I need to show you.” His right hand gripped his left should
er, with his arm dangling at his side. He had a look of serious urgency, motioning with his head to the stairwell again.

  I stared at his hand clutching his ultralite. “Are you hurt?” I asked, my throat tight.

  He barely looked at his arm. “No, I’m fine,” he said. “But I need you up in the control room.”

  I nodded and strode toward the stairwell, Julian following close behind. I glanced back as I started up the stairs. His face was pinched. Was it pain? Or worry? It was hard to tell. I reached ahead to the control room, but there was nothing amiss there, just a member of the assault team coming through on his way back from checking the pumps. He passed us at the top of the stairs. Light brown hair, dark brown eyes. He was probably twenty-five, with the muscular build of the ex-military men Hinckley had recruited. It suddenly seemed important for me to notice. I brushed his mind and his name popped up. Michael. He padded downstairs without a look back.

  I swallowed the dryness in my throat. Julian stepped ahead of me into the control room. One side was lined with offices, doors ajar. The other was dominated by a wall of screens. About half showed pictures of the station while the rest were filled with charts and data. A couple of chairs faced the screens, and a small tabletop held interface keyboards, but it appeared that most of the controls had mindware interfaces. A trio of offices behind us had windows, and Myrtle was already there, interfacing with a chat-cast box on the screen. She must be casting out the message Julian had prepared, listing the JFA’s demands: 1) a JFA representative on hand to monitor all water-station activities, 2) assurances from the City of Chicago that water service would continue uninterrupted to Jackertown, and most importantly, 3) release of all jackers held without due process at the Detention Center, including those illegally turned in by the Reader’s First Front.

  “This is important, Kira.” Julian’s strained voice pulled my gaze back. He had mentally pulled up a map of the water tunnels and pipes throughout the Chicago New Metro area. It looked like blue spaghetti to me and I gave Julian a concerned look.