Free Souls (Book Three of the Mindjack Trilogy)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  “Please tell me you don’t want me to run this thing.”

  He smiled, but it was more of a wince. “I do not want you to run this thing.”

  My shoulders relaxed a bit, and I leaned against one of the chairs.

  “However,” he said, lapsing into his professor voice, “I do need you to understand it.” He mentally commanded the map to zoom in on the lakefront. “Chicago New Metro pulls its water from Lake Michigan, then sends it through this network to a series of pumping stations like the one we’re in now.”

  He paused for a breath and shifted his grip on his arm, then mentally nudged the map to show Jackertown. “This station pumps water to both Jackertown and a portion of the suburbs near the city.” He swiped that away and brought up a control panel. “Additional chlorine is added here at the pumping station, and this is the router for sending the freshly chlorinated water to the tank, then out to either the suburbs,” he said, highlighting one control switch, “or to Jackertown.” He highlighted a second switch. “Normally, both channels are green, which means water is flowing to both. It’s controlled by the mindware interface, but there’s also a manual control.” He tilted his head to a gray metal panel next to the screens. “That’s in case of emergencies, but it can also be used to override the mindware interface.”

  “Why are you showing me all this?” I was afraid he really did want me to run the controls after all.

  “Because if anything happens to me, I need you to understand how to work the controls and shut off the water supply to the suburbs if necessary. And how to keep Jackertown’s water supply safe.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Julian.” I heard the tremble in my voice and couldn’t keep my gaze from straying to where he clutched his arm. A small, bright red drop oozed between his fingers and ran down them, hugging the hills and valleys of his knuckles.

  “Julian!” I sucked in a breath. “You’re bleeding!”

  His face tightened. “I’m fine.” He looked into my eyes, capturing me with that intense gaze of his. “Tell me you understand the controls.”

  “I understand the controls,” I hastily repeated back, then pried his hand free from his arm. I gasped. An enormous gash had been torn out of his ultralite. There was nothing but a bloody mess underneath—I couldn’t tell which part was Julian’s flesh and which was the jacket.

  “God, Julian!” I yelled at him. “Why are you standing here telling me about water controls when you’re bleeding half to death!”

  “It’s important.” He had a faint smile, but I finally noticed the thin sheen of sweat on his forehead.

  I cast around wildly for a first-aid kit. The main control room didn’t have one, but one of the offices did, hanging on the wall. The white aluminum box looked to be a hundred years old, rusted out at the corners, but it was the same size as the one Ava had used downstairs. I grabbed Julian’s good arm and towed him into the office, gently pushing him to sit on the edge of a pitted gray-metal desk. I yanked the box off its hooks and prayed the contents weren’t as ancient as the box itself.

  I set the kit down next to Julian and worked on prying open the rusted latch.

  “Take off your jacket,” I said, not looking at him while I struggled to get a nail under the metal latch. Finally, it popped open, and I was relieved to see modern medical supplies inside: a tiny silver gas canister labeled anti-bacterial that I hoped was still in date, a couple of dozen packets of gauze and sterile wipes, and an assortment of medical tapes and glues, plus a laser-suture gun that made my hands shake simply looking at it.

  Julian sucked in a breath as he shrugged off his flak jacket. When he unzipped his ultralite, I got a better look at his injury. Whatever bullet had grazed him must have been big or possibly the shooter was close, because it had taken a chunk of Julian’s arm with it. He eased off the tattered ultralite and let it fall to the desk behind him. His garish wound was tangled up with the shirt material underneath, which was soaked all the way down to his wrist, turning his white shirt crimson red.

  My hands fluttered as I reached for him, like they had that long ago time when I accidentally knocked out Raf and he lay unconscious on the floor. My throat closed up—not because of the wound, but what it meant. Julian had been shot. If the bullet had been a little higher and to the left, he would be lying next to Jameson on the ground floor with a hole through his head.

  What had I been thinking, sending him in with the assault team? Stupid, stupid!

  I forced air back into my lungs and clenched and unclenched my hands, trying to stop the ridiculous fluttering. My first-aid training kicked in. I searched the box for scissors to cut away the fabric tangled with his wound. There was nothing.

  “You’ll need to take off your shirt, too.” My voice was surprisingly flat, almost calm sounding, even though my heart was rushing blood through my ears like a freight train. I avoided Julian’s eyes. I couldn’t hold it together if I looked at him. While he fumbled with one hand at the buttons, I searched the kit for gloves, but there were none of those either. I ripped open a packet of sterile wipes and scrubbed my hands until the skin turned pink and raw. Then I sprayed the fronts and backs with puffs from the anti-bacterial canister, trying not to use it all on my hands because I would need it for Julian’s gunshot wound.

  Gunshot wound. I tried not to dwell on that thought or else my hands would start shaking again.

  Julian was taking too long, and I finally looked at him, concentrating on the buttons of his shirt. They were those fancy magnetic latches that you had to twist and unlock, which required two hands. His one good hand tugged at the top button with an extreme ineffectiveness that just ramped up my nerves. Only Julian would wear a boardroom-ready shirt on an op.

  “Stop it.” I pushed aside his hand. “At that rate, you’re going to bleed to death before you get that thing off.” I grabbed the bottom half of the button in one hand and twisted the top to the unlock position with the other, then pulled the two halves apart. I moved rapidly through the buttons, focusing tightly on each one and trying hard not to brush the bare skin that was revealed by each unbuttoned step, but I felt the warmth of his skin on my fingertips. I tried not to notice that his chest was very well-muscled for someone who spent his time on chat-casts, not training. Heat rose up in my cheeks anyway.

  “If I’d known getting shot would result in you undressing me,” Julian said, “I would have arranged something with Hinckley much sooner.”

  “Shut up.” His words turned the heat in my cheeks into a fevered inferno. I sensed his smirk even as I avoided looking at his face. I tore through the last two buttons and hastily tugged his shirt back over his shoulders, trying to get it off without looking him in the eye, but I couldn’t miss the sharp intake of air, and the way his face twisted in pain.

  “Sorry!” I gasped. “Sorry, sorry.” I moved more slowly, carefully working his shirt down over the gaping red of the wound. I tore open several antiseptic packets and wiped the edges clean so I could see it more clearly.

  The wound was wide but not so deep that it would need interior sutures. Thank heavens I could leave the suture gun in the box. The bleeding had slowed, but it still seeped from the edges. I thoroughly sprayed it with puffs from the antiseptic canister, then pressed two sterile gauze squares over the whole gash, holding for a few seconds. He winced and the warm brown skin of his face paled. My heart squeezed, and I almost let up the pressure.

  Long before I was a jacker, I had dreamed of becoming a doctor. Of being someone who could heal people. That dream died when I ended up a zero, someone no one could trust. Maybe it had always been an impossible dream if the sight of a grazing gunshot wound made me want to burst into tears. Or maybe it wasn’t the wound, but the patient. Maybe if Julian were a stranger who I was charged with patching up… maybe if him sitting next to me, bare-chested, didn’t bother me quite so much… maybe a flesh wound wouldn’t turn my hands into a shaking mess. I tried to imagine Julian as one of those ectomorphic dummies we tended
in first-aid class, but failed utterly.

  The idea of Julian being hurt made something wither inside of me.

  I pulled the bandage away—it wasn’t as bloodied as I feared it might be. I puffed the wound again with antiseptic and then ripped open two of the largest medical suture tapes.

  “This might hurt a little,” I breathed out, the words stabbing me like the wound was inside me instead of grazing Julian’s shoulder. I pressed one end of the tape to the undamaged skin below, then gently eased the wound closed, pressing the tape firmly to the skin above. Julian gritted his teeth, but a small sound of pain still escaped him and sliced into me. I quickly applied a second suture tape, overlapping slightly with the first to seal it completely.

  What I needed was anesthetic—a general pain-killer would be best, but a local anesthetic might work if it was strong enough. I rifled through the box, bypassing a couple of aspirins, and came up with two med patches at the bottom. I quickly peeled the films off and pressed them both to his bare skin below the sutures. They looked more like local anesthetic, but the pain rippling across his face eased, making the tension in my body step down a notch.

  I dropped my hands and Julian peered down at the bandage, inspecting it. “You’d make a fair field medic, keeper,” he said softly, then turned to smile at me. “I might have to get wounded more often.”

  “No!” The intensity of my voice made his smile flee. I gave in to the tug that drew my body closer to him. He was leaned against the edge of the desk, low enough that we were nearly eye to eye. Was my need to be close an automatic response left over from when he'd handled me long ago? I didn’t know or care. The panic clawing at my throat wasn’t because the revolution might be in danger of losing its leader.

  “Don’t you dare get hurt again.” I slowly, very intentionally, put my hand to his cheek, my fingertips brushing the soft bristles that had sprung up since we last talked close on the roof, what seemed like days ago but was only last night.

  “A small part of me dies,” I whispered, like it was a secret, “when the people I love get hurt.”

  My body stilled, saying those words. Calmed. There was a rightness to telling him, like a truth that had needed saying, only I had tried so long not to say it, even to myself.

  His eyebrows lifted, but I didn’t say anything more, just let my words soak in.

  The shock still paralyzed his face as I leaned forward to lightly kiss him. His lips were chilled, with no shirt and the trauma of being injured, but by the second kiss, they had warmed and he kissed me back, his lips moving against mine. Emotion welled up in me, flooding the hole in my chest with a pure light that blotted out the grave, obliterating it and lifting me up.

  I had a light-headed need to touch him, hold him, have him pressed against me, as if he were my anchor and without a grip on him, I might float away in this lightness of being. My hands roamed the smooth, bare skin and solid muscles of his shoulders, staying clear of his bandage. I ran them along his back, urgently seeking some place to hold on to him without hurting him. His good hand slipped under the back of my flak jacket, bunching my ultralite and crushing me to him, like he needed the contact as much as I did. We breathed each other in, all skin and hands and his mouth on mine.

  “Julian?” a voice called from the doorway, rough and deep, but with no apology in it. I jerked free of our kiss, vaguely recognizing the voice as belonging to Hinckley. Julian’s arm was a locked iron band around the small of my back, not letting me pull free. His startling blue eyes blazed at me. I stopped trying to pull away and eased back into him, our faces close enough that I could feel his too-quick breath. I touched the heated skin of his cheek with my fingertips. A smile fought through the intensity on his face. Its brief appearance faded before he turned his head to Hinckley, who was waiting patiently by the door.

  “What?” Julian asked, his voice low and breathy. It sent a thrill through me that was completely irrational, as if I had never heard him speak before. But it was different here, trapped willingly in his arms, feeling his voice rumble through my hand where it had come to rest lightly on his chest.

  “We’ve heard back from Vellus,” Hinckley said, no embarrassment in his voice, as if finding us in a heated embrace in a back office was completely expected. “He wants Kira. Says you have to send her as an emissary or he won’t negotiate terms.”

  I had a surge of vertigo, as if I should push away from Julian, yet at the same time feeling like he was the only thing holding me up.

  After all this time of trying to find Vellus, he had found me instead.

  Julian’s arm locked even tighter around my lower back. “Well, we’re not going to hand Kira over to Senator Vellus no matter how much he would like her to come negotiate terms.” He stated that as an indisputable fact.

  Hinckley didn’t seem at all surprised by Julian’s words. “Understood. What will our response be?”

  Julian sighed and dropped his gaze, studying the scuffed and dirty floor next to us. “Give us a moment, please.”

  Hinckley ducked back out, heading to the office where Myrtle was doing the chat-cast, which was also probably where the contact from Vellus had come in.

  “Julian—” I said.

  “Don’t worry.” He gently pulled me closer, kissing me lightly on the cheek before pulling back to look me in the eyes. “We’ll send someone else to negotiate. He doesn’t get to dictate terms, not while we have the station.”

  “How does he know I’m here?”

  “Lucky guess.” Julian ran his hand up and down my arm like he couldn’t get enough of touching me. I didn’t exactly mind. “He’s wanted to trap you for a long time, ever since you evaded him before. I’m sure he’s just fishing.”

  “Why do we have to send anyone?” I asked. “I don’t like the idea of delivering someone into Vellus’s hands. He already has too many of our people.” My dad. Sasha. Hundreds of jackers whose names I didn’t know but who had people who loved them, wondering if they would ever come home. Wondering if they were already dead.

  “Agreed,” said Julian, a shine in his eyes. “I’ll get on the chat-cast myself. This negotiation is just start—”

  Several rapid-fire pops drowned out Julian, and we both jerked in surprise. He dropped his hold on me and pushed up from the table. A dozen more pops, louder this time, rattled the windows that lined the office. Julian bolted from the room with me right behind, bringing his flak jacket.

  Hinckley had already reached the stairs and took two at a time. More gunfire rang out. Julian paused while I slid the flak jacket on him, then pivoted and ran to the office where Myrtle was. Her thin hands gripped the edge of the table where she sat. She focused intensely on the monitor, controlling a dozen chat-cast windows via the mindware interface. A live image of the water pumping station popped up. National Guardsmen ran low and crouched behind makeshift barricades they carried, shorter and heavier versions of the fence they had erected around Jackertown.

  “What’s going on?” Julian asked her. “Who’s shooting?”

  “Not us,” Myrtle said. “As far as I can tell, it’s the Guard, trying to keep us from firing on their people while they set up a perimeter around us.”

  Julian leaned forward, his hand turning white as he held the edge of the monitor. “Where is this image coming from?”

  “There are news people out there, Julian,” Myrtle said. “This is the local tru-cast.”

  Julian fisted his hand and pressed it onto the table top. Then he slammed his fist, making the screen jump slightly. I knew he'd expected this to happen, but not so quickly.

  I mentally reached out and brushed Hinckley’s mind. It took him a moment, but he let me in.

  Are we prepared for the Guardsmen? I asked. Through his eyes I saw three snipers holding positions at the windows, behind the upturned tables that blocked them, and Hinckley helping a fourth get the last window covered. Ava and the rest of Hinckley’s crew dragged the limp mindreaders to a small office in the back, safe from any stray
bullets. Whatever fire the Guardsmen had directed at us hadn’t injured anyone so far.

  As long as they don’t actually attack us, we’ll be fine, came Hinckley’s wry thoughts.

  I zipped my focus back to the room with Myrtle and Julian. “They’re reinforcing downstairs, but Hinckley thinks they’re not quite ready.”

  Julian strode out to the control room and examined the monitors. “Myrtle,” he called. “Can you re-route these cameras to show more exterior angles? I need to know how many troops they have and where they are.”

  “On it, boss.” Myrtle scurried out to the control room to manipulate the screens, and Julian returned to the office to examine the scrolling chat-casts.

  I flung my mind out to the area surrounding the water pumping station. Now that the shield was down, I could access everything for over a quarter mile in every direction. I closed my eyes and skimmed the anti-jacker helmets the troops were wearing. There were so many of them.

  “Julian, there are dozens of troops. Mostly at the front of the station, but they’re pulling around the rear as well.” I lifted my scan up, searching the sniper points we had so recently occupied ourselves. “They have snipers finding perches in the buildings next door as well.” If there were reporters mixed in with the Guardsmen, they must be wearing helmets too because I couldn’t find anyone unhelmeted within my reach.

  I opened my eyes. Julian stared at the screen. We were lighting up the news on every tru-cast station, with snippets of Myrtle’s demands scrolling in red lines across the bottom.

  Then a video-call request popped up. The ID said Police Negotiator.

  Julian put his hand to the small of my back and guided me around the desk. “You stay here, out of sight.” He returned to the screen. “Don’t say anything,” he added, then mentally nudged the incoming call to accept.