Free Souls (Book Three of the Mindjack Trilogy)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  “I’ll be fine in a moment.” I hoped it was true. I clenched my teeth together so they wouldn’t chatter. My shoulder throbbed, but I ignored it.

  Before, in Kestrel’s cells, the tranq gas had kept Julian from handling, so in theory, Vellus being tranquilized should mean I could jack him like any other jacker and easier than most. If he was like Julian, underneath the crazy mind powers, he was just a linker and didn’t have the ability to resist. But Vellus had been a handler for longer than Julian and was probably more practiced at it. And possibly more dangerous. If he had the same terror-inducing defensive ability, it would be in full-form now that he was unconscious.

  This was going to be tricky.

  “What now?” My dad had tugged a tiny key from the guard’s pocket to unlock his cuffs.

  I gave him a tight smile. “Now we wake Vellus up.”

  His eyebrows flew up. “Why?” I could understand his reluctance.

  “Because we have an appointment with Sasha.” I jerked my chin toward the glass and the cells downstairs. “He is down there somewhere, right?”

  My dad nodded. “We were sharing a cell.”

  I reached down with a shaky hand and tugged the guard’s badge off his belt, along with a com-link clipped around his ear that was already squawking with chatter from the other guards, who must be losing their minds by now. With his gear in one hand, and the gun in my other, I stumbled over to Vellus’s body. He was slumped in his chair. I waved my dad over and motioned him to put his cuffs on Vellus.

  “Let me do the jacking,” I said. “You know Vellus is a jacker, right? I wasn’t just saying that for a distraction. He was handling you like Julian did before.”

  My dad’s jaw worked, and he glared at Vellus.

  “It’s okay, Dad. He’s fooled a lot of people.” I nodded to the dart gun in my dad’s hand. “Better keep that ready, just in case.” I held my gun pointed at Vellus as well. I’d already killed one man today, but I’d make it two if this scribing thing didn’t work out. I glanced over at Kestrel’s body, only to find it wasn’t there. “What the…?”

  “What is it?” My dad tensed and swept his dart gun toward the empty carpet where Kestrel should be.

  “Where did Kestrel’s body go?” I checked every corner of the room, as if he could have resurrected himself like a zombie and crawled off into one.

  “You must have just wounded him, Kira.”

  I shook my head. It wasn’t possible. I shot him. I’d seen the bullet throw his body to the floor. My gaze finally fell on the half-open door behind where Kestrel’s body should be, the one we had come through from the warden’s office. My body trembled again, not with the blowback, but with a rage that made me physically shake.

  My dad grabbed my arm, gently but firmly. “I know you want to go after him. But we have to worry about Vellus right now and how to get out of here.”

  I blinked a couple of times, then nodded and focused on Vellus.

  I suddenly realized Sasha had probably encountered Vellus’s defenses, and it had thrown him into some kind of epileptic fit. I steeled myself, hoping not to get hit with whatever had left Sasha convulsing on the ground.

  Vellus’s mind held nothing but a juiced up haze. I let loose a sigh of relief, then reached deeper to roughly jack him awake. I left the sedative swimming around the receptors in his brain. I didn’t want him handling anyone, and he would have to be under the influence of the sedative for Sasha to do his work anyway.

  Vellus moaned, groggily coming to. Vellus squinted up at me, like he couldn’t quite figure out what had happened. I pointed the gun at his forehead. That got his attention, but confusion still tumbled around his face.

  “I will kill you without hesitation,” I said.

  That froze the confusion in place. I linked in to both his and my father’s heads. Or my father can jack you into compliance. It might be easier on you if you cooperate.

  My dad held his dart gun leveled at Vellus’s belly with a stone-cold look that I was glad would never be directed at me. Vellus’s mind had a scent now, like decaying leaves in the fall, bitter with fear, like any other person would be. We could jack Vellus if we needed to, but he would be a more convincing hostage if he was frightened out of his mind.

  “Kira.” He raised his cuffed hands, then lowered, then raised them again, his hands doing a jerky dance in front of him, as if trying to conjure away the gun. “Kira, wait. I will do whatever you wish, but it doesn’t need to be like this.”

  “Oh, I think that it does.” A laugh bubbled up in my chest, but I held it in. It felt like manic nerves, but my hand was steady.

  “Will you please point that somewhere else?”

  “Nope.” I moved the gun to point at Vellus’s heart while carefully tracking the amount of sedative in his mind. “Put out your hand.”

  He eyed me warily, as if I might bite him. Or possibly hand him a grenade and ask him to hold it. Which wasn’t a bad idea. Finally he held out a hand, and I could see it shaking.

  Pathetic.

  I dropped the com-link in his open palm. He bumbled, hooking it around his ear until it was close enough for the receptors to pick up.

  A scuffle sounded beyond the door where Kestrel had slipped out. My dad grabbed Vellus by his trim, silky dress shirt and hauled him up out of the chair, putting his body between us and the door just as two guards in starched blue uniforms burst through the open space.

  I shoved my gun into Vellus’s side. “Stay back!” I shouted to the guards. They stuttered to a stop right inside the door, guns extended. “Call them off,” I said to Vellus. “Or you’re not going to make it out of this pressroom alive.”

  Vellus threw his cuffed hands out. “Don’t shoot!”

  My dad tugged on Vellus’s arm and slowly backed toward the far door, opposite the guards and where we had come in.

  “You don’t have to do this, Kira,” Vellus said, trying to find his footing as he moved with me and my dad backward toward the door. “We can work together. You’re brave and strong and smart. I told you, I want someone like you on my side.”

  “Well, we do have something in common then,” I said. “Because I want someone like you on my side too.” I couldn’t resist grinning at Vellus’s expense. I was sure he had no idea what was in store for him in Sasha’s cell. “We’re going for a little walk, Vellus. Call them on the com-link and tell your goons to let us through. I have a particular prisoner who I want free.” Vellus’s thoughts flashed to Julian, and my heart about ripped in two. I wanted desperately to know more, but his thoughts showed he hadn’t heard anything back from the raid. And I couldn’t let thoughts of Julian distract me.

  We had reached the door, but it was shielded so we couldn’t tell what was on the other side. My dad jabbed his gun so hard into Vellus’s side that he cringed away from it.

  “Call it in, Vellus!” my dad growled, his face close to Vellus’s ear.

  Vellus tapped the com-link. “This… this is Senator Vellus. Clear the corridor. We’re coming out.”

  My dad took the guard’s badge from me, swiped it through, and peered through the cracked door. When he saw it was free, he held the door open. We marched Vellus down the hall, one of us on each side, his handcuffs stretched tight across his body. At the far end, a SWAT team of guards were huddled, blocking the way. I mentally reached forward. Not only did they have anti-jacker helmets, but they were hiding behind a bulkhead that supported a disruptor shield blocking the entire width of the hallway.

  They weren’t taking any chances with us. I ground my gun into Vellus’s side.

  “Tell them if they try anything, I can pull this trigger even with my dying breath.”

  “They’re not going to try anything.” But his voice was uncertain, and he seemed to be talking to the com-link as much as me. “Command, let us through.”

  As we approached, the SWAT members at the end of the hall scrambled to clear the passage, backing up and away.

  Vellus turned his head slight
ly to the side and dropped his voice. “Where do you think you can go, Kira? It’s not like they’ll let you leave the building like this.”

  “Right now, we’re going to the prison block,” I said conversationally. “What cell were you in, Dad?”

  “Two thirty one.” His voice wasn’t quite as cheery as mine, but I imagined he was thinking about getting out. That was something I had stopped worrying about once I stepped through the gate.

  We shuffled over the threshold, a tightly knit trio in lock-step like mindreaders synchronized to a common heartbeat, then took the stairs immediately across the hall. Our footsteps echoed through the concrete stairwell, clanging on the metal steps. Doors at the bottom clicked open for us, and we stepped out into a short hallway. There was a wide-eyed guard in an enclosed security checkpoint next to an iron barred door. He was shield protected, but he gaped at us, like he couldn’t believe what was happening.

  “Tell them to let us in, Vellus,” I said.

  “We need access to the prisoner level,” Vellus said into his com-link. The guard pressed two fingers to his ear, obviously listening to his own commands. He shut his gaping mouth and must have mentally activated something because the door buzzed and slid open.

  We frog-marched Vellus down the hall and through the door, passing through a disruptor shield along the way. When we arrived at the central prisoner area, it was like the view from the pressroom: two stories of cages filled with jackers in pale green prison garb. An audible murmur swept through the air as jackers caught sight of us. I mentally reached ahead. There weren’t any disruptor shields on the cells: every jacker was in a physical cage but each could reach all the other jackers for a hundred feet in every direction. It was madness, a recipe for death and mayhem. It was a wonder there were still people left alive here. I sensed a few were juiced, but most were fully functioning mentally, enough to react to my lightest touch and shove me out.

  There were no guards that I could see, but the door had also shut tight and locked behind us. Whoever was calling the shots probably figured there was nowhere for us to go.

  The jackers watched us carefully as we strode down the center aisle between the cages. Some leered at Vellus, others stared in disbelief. A few rested their elbows on their cage bars, their arms hanging out casually, as if having Senator Vellus paraded in front of them at gunpoint was an everyday occurrence. Or perhaps they had simply given up and didn’t care anymore.

  No one surged us, but I was in the awful position of having to mindguard Vellus to make sure no one killed him before we got him to Sasha.

  “Pick up the pace, Vellus.” I urged him and my dad a little faster toward the cell where I saw Sasha peering through his bars at us. “And you better hope Julian is still alive, because if he’s not, you’ll have a hard time living out your normal lifespan in Jackertown.”

  “So, you’re taking me to Jackertown?” Vellus said, with an I’m-the-snake tone slipping into his voice. His thoughts tripped through scenarios like a high-speed computer, trying to figure out what I would do next.

  “If you’re lucky. Or we could just leave you here.” I tilted my head toward a particularly large jacker inmate who looked like he could eat Vellus for lunch.

  The truth was I wouldn’t leave Vellus anywhere. I wasn’t entirely sure Sasha would be able to scribe Vellus, but if he couldn’t, I would be true to my word and not hesitate in killing him. It was still my primary mission here, and I would take the consequences from there. Especially with the plans Vellus had set in motion, there was no way I could allow him to walk out of here alive, unchanged.

  Walk out of here… oh no. Kestrel!

  I clenched Vellus’s arm tighter. He wanted power and glory, but Kestrel… he was a true jacker-hater, even though he was a jacker himself. If Kestrel wasn’t dead, then there was one place I was sure he was going: the water pumping station. Vellus seemed to think Kestrel was only following orders, but I knew Kestrel the way you know someone who’s been the focus of your hate fantasies for such an intense period of time that you’ve forgotten that there was a time before hating them. And that Kestrel, the one that I had killed a hundred times in my head, would never let something as small as the capture of his boss by jacker revolutionaries stop his years of work. Kestrel loathed jackers with the kind of hatred which could only come from somewhere deep, dark, and pathological.

  He wouldn’t stop until I put a bullet in him.

  As we approached Sasha’s cage, I called out to him, “We come bearing gifts.”

  Sasha smiled bright white. “You didn’t bring much of a rescue party, that’s for sure.” The J on his cheek didn’t stand out against his dark skin as much as my dad’s did, but it stabbed my heart, nonetheless.

  “The rescue party is in need of a little rescuing themselves,” I said. There wouldn’t be anyone else coming for us today.

  Sasha’s face visibly grayed. “Is Ava all right?”

  I cringed and lied as convincingly as I could. “She’s fine.” It was possible. She might be fine. Or she might be dead. There was no time to explain, and even if I had hours, there was no way I was telling him Ava had been on a mission trying to save him when the water station was taken. He needed something to live for.

  Sasha took a shaky breath and nodded.

  However, I did need to bring him up to speed on everything else, so I reached out to link in to his head and ran smack into a disruptor barrier around his cage. Then I noticed Sasha stood back from the bars, not sticking his hands through, like the jackers in the cages behind us. In fact, the stretch of cages ahead were all the same as I skimmed along. All blocked by disruptor shields.

  This must be the maximum security section. I saw why Sasha would be here, but it would complicate things considerably. Sasha needed to touch Vellus, and physically reaching through the bars while the disruptor shield was up would scramble his mind. I couldn’t reach through the shield either, so boosting his ability was out as well.

  “Tell them to open the door,” I hissed in Vellus’s ear. He scrambled to relay the command to the com-link. There was a long stretch of silence that had me second-guessing this plan.

  I resorted to speaking out loud, but quietly. “I have a job for you, Sasha, but if you can’t do it, then I’ll have to do it for you.” I hoped he could decipher what I was saying. If they don’t let you out to scribe Vellus, I’m going to have to shoot him.

  Sasha’s face settled into a mask. “Well, that was always part of the mission, wasn’t it?” It had taken a circuitous route, but he was right: we were still on the mission. He knew from the start that we might not come back from it, just as I did. As long as we eliminated Vellus, it would be worth it. However, my dad didn’t sign up for this. I flicked a look to him and linked in to his head, but he was way ahead of me.

  Make sure you shoot him in the head, Kira. I don’t want him making a miraculous recovery.

  I pressed my lips together and gave him a short nod. My dad and Sasha both had to know that if I shot Vellus, there would be nothing holding back the prison guards anymore. We would likely all end up dead on the floor. The entire prisoner wing had fallen silent, the whisperings quieted, as if everyone knew it. With a hundred jacker minds jostling one another, they probably did. It was an odd feeling, like back in my days in school, when rumors surged in waves through the adolescent minds in the cafeteria.

  I moved my gun from Vellus’s ribs to his temple. “You had better hope they open that door very soon,” I said quietly.

  Vellus shrank away from me, and my dad pushed him back upright again, none too gently. Vellus tapped his com-link several times, like he didn’t think it was working properly. “Command! Command, you need to open the cell!”

  Nothing happened. I waited, finding myself slowly counting in my head. I moved my finger to the trigger. If I got to ten, something was wrong. They were probably finding a way to shoot me first, or gas the prisoner cells, or something… suddenly, the door to Sasha’s cell clicked and slid open. I tr
ied not to let the relief show too much on my face.

  Sasha hurried out of the cell as soon as it had opened wide enough.

  I brushed his mind and he quickly let me in. Can you scribe him? He’s still under the gas, but he’s a handler, Sasha.

  Sasha narrowed his eyes, measuring Vellus like he had transformed into a cobra ready to strike. I should be able to. I’ve never scribed a handler before. Given that Julian was the only other handler any of us had met, I wasn’t surprised.

  Well, no time like the present to find out. I cast a look up and down the jacker prison, checking for signs of snipers or SWAT teams waiting to rush in and rescue the senator.

  Sasha reached his hand toward Vellus, who threw up his cuffed wrists to fend him off.

  “Wait!” Vellus cried out. I couldn’t tell if he had guessed what Sasha had planned, but Vellus’s mind was a terrorized scramble. If necessary, I’d jack him into lying prone on the ground, so he better not make much of a fuss about it.

  He turned to me. “Kira, there’s… there’s something you don’t know. It’s about the water station.”

  “I know, Vellus.”

  “What?” he asked, more confused than afraid. “How could you… what do you think you know?”

  “I know that whatever the problem is, you’re going to help us solve it.”

  I nodded to Sasha. He dashed two fingers to Vellus’s forehead, the lightning strike of a mongoose on the kill bite. Vellus jerked in surprise. Then his eyes glassed, just like Molloy’s had when Sasha scribed him from being a vicious clan leader to a lumpy teddy bear of a jacker who we had to keep under careful watch in Jackertown, just to make sure someone didn’t use him for their own evil purposes.

  All the things that made Vellus who he was—all the plans, all the evil acts, all the threats of retribution, all the political scheming and years of turning good men like my dad into tools for his quest for power—all of it faded under Sasha’s mental washing.