Free Souls (Book Three of the Mindjack Trilogy)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  The tipping point had well and truly been reached.

  I wondered if it had felt this way to my great-grandfather, the one who had lived through the first mindreader camps and survived to experience the aftermath when everyone was a reader. Was this sudden absence of strife and fear in the wake of the change what peace felt like?

  Yet peace had a cost.

  I was luckier than most jackers: my impenetrable mindbarrier was still intact, along with most of my jacking strength, minus the extended reach. I hadn’t shied away from drinking the water, in spite of Julian’s attempts to stop me. It wasn’t like any of us could really escape it: the chemicals weren’t just in the water we drank, but the showers we took, the food we ate, the dishes we washed. Pharmaceuticals in the water are notoriously difficult to control. I understood Vellus’s thoughts better now.

  The way I saw it, I was responsible for everything, and that responsibility came with an obligation to be one of the first affected. It made logical sense, even though Julian had fought against it. I was less sure that Julian would still forgive me once the effects of the inhibitors were fully understood, regardless of his reassurances. But I was one of the few who could reach inside my own head and inspect the contents there, to know exactly what I had done in that split second of time when I had tipped the fate of our world.

  I smiled. I should have my head examined for coming here, spying on Raf and selfishly taking time for this one last connection with the past, when there was much more important work for the future that I should be doing in Jackertown. I linked back in to Mama Santos’s mind. It was blank, numbed out of thoughts, just repeating the words that Raf had put into her head, over and over.

  I’m a jacker too, Mama.

  My breath caught, a surge of emotion I hadn’t expected. He’d told her. Finally. She wasn’t freaking out, at least not yet, still caught in the shock of it.

  Good for him.

  I pulled out of her head, starting to feel like the praver I appeared to be. I hadn’t realized I was waiting for this moment, but now that it had arrived, I knew I wouldn’t need to come back. I could finally leave behind all that had happened in that before-time: back when Raf was only a mindreader with stolen memories; back when he thought I had jacked him into loving me; back when he had threatened to brand me a jacker.

  It was a new world for him now, and he would be fine in it. He didn’t need me anymore.

  I was sure Sasha had never imagined the privacy rooms he built at the JFA headquarters would be used this way. The jacker sitting next to me on the worn couch bounced her leg and pulled over and over at a thread sticking out of the fabric. Her name was Crystal, she wasn’t much older than a changeling, and she was very nervous. But that was how they all looked in the beginning. It wasn’t easy to trust someone you didn’t know, especially enough to let them into your mind. And it was almost impossible when you had lived through Kestrels’ mental torture experiments.

  Something of which I had a first-hand understanding.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Everyone’s nervous the first time. It’s natural.” I kept my voice gentle and soothing, like my mom, when I talked to patients.

  No one feared my mom when she was a mindreader, but now that she was a scribe, people heard a quiet menace carried on the soft velvet tones of her voice. It was really just their fears speaking. My mom was an excellent scribe, precisely because of her gentleness. Only someone with great compassion should be allowed to have that power. Most people didn’t know my mom was a sweet, self-sacrificing person. They thought the power owned the person, turned them. That was probably what people thought of me too. Like Crystal, in front of me, who probably thought I would do irreparable damage once inside her head.

  “Primum non nocere,” I said with a small smile, hoping she might understand the Latin. Back when I was still in school, all the mindreaders bound for college had to learn it, but I didn’t know if she was old enough to have taken the classes. I guessed not, by the way she froze, as if I had thrown an ancient curse over her, in addition to threatening to invade her mind.

  “First, do no harm,” I translated, trying to keep that soothing tone. It was something I already believed in from that long ago time when I wished I could read minds, so that I might someday become a doctor. It was strange to be here, now, doing the one thing I never thought I would be able to: healing. I clearly had already caused enough harm, but that just made my commitment even more iron-clad to do no more.

  “I promise, I will only work on things that are already broken.” I laid a hand on her tapping leg to still it, careful to just touch the part that was covered by her thick wool pants. Touching bare skin had no effect, but it made them even more skittish.

  “Think of me as someone who can fix what’s in here,” I tapped my temple with my other hand, “without having to get out a scalpel or anything scary like that.”

  She nodded and flicked a look to my assistant, Anna. She had traded her camouflage for hospital scrubs, but it didn’t help much with the scary intense look on her face. I was training her to help me, and a small, selfish part of me hoped to win back her respect along the way. It would help with the enormous task ahead if Anna could learn to heal, but we wouldn’t get anywhere if she made the patients more nervous.

  “I can send Anna out if it would make you more comfortable,” I said. “She’s only here to observe me, but she can sit in with the next patient.”

  Anna wrestled a smile onto her face, but Crystal’s shoulders had already relaxed. That word—patient—seemed to have that effect. I didn’t like to call myself a doctor, but it helped if they pictured me that way: confident, calm, assured that I knew what I was doing. I needed her to trust me. When I dove into my own head, generally speaking, I didn’t get in my own way. But when I was tunneling into the depths of someone else’s mind, all kinds of barriers were thrown up, even when the patient consciously allowed me in. The subconscious was almost like a beast that roiled underneath the conscious mind, and I needed it not to fight me.

  The mind was a tricky thing that way.

  “Okay,” I said, “I’m going to close my eyes, because it helps me concentrate. You can do the same if you would like, but you don’t have to.” I closed my eyes as I spoke, and I reached out to Anna. She knew the drill and met me half way, our mind fields synching up. Look, but don’t touch, I reminded her.

  Look, but don’t touch, she echoed back, indicating she was ready.

  I pulled her mindfield along, and we slipped into that synchronization where our thoughts became melded like one person. I was dominant, because I had to be, but it was still hard to communicate without using the plural.

  “We’re going to reach toward your mind, now,” I said to Crystal. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was just a whisper, but when we touched her mindbarrier, she let us in.

  Very good, Crystal, we thought. You’re doing fine. We’re going to slip below your conscious thoughts now, down deeper in your mind where the damage is, so we can fix it. You won’t feel a thing. In fact, you may get bored waiting for us to finish, so try thinking about something that will occupy you. Maybe sing one of those new synchrony songs that are so awful.

  We could feel her relax. Humor always helped to lower their defenses, especially the subconscious ones.

  All right, we thought. We’ll let you know when we’re finished. Don’t get too bored while we’re gone.

  We dove slowly into the deeper levels of her mind. When we were two, it was important not to break the connection while we were so deep in our patient’s mind. Plus going slow helped us to slip under the patient’s natural defenses. We found the spaghetti mess of threads that tied together all the connections of Crystal’s mind. There were a myriad of them, bewildering to the weaker one of us, but the stronger one knew exactly how to tell them apart.

  We can sense the flavor of each, we thought. Like strawberries, this one is pleasure centers, none of our concern. These, a nudge sent a
vibration down the length of it, a tiny signal just pinging to show that it was active, these taste of mint, the memory strings. Also not what we are looking for. But these ones that flavor of nothing, these ones are broken. Their function, their flavor is lost. We will search the string till we find it, the breaking spot.

  The stronger of us let the weaker one lead as we traveled the string. We knew that at deeper levels the strings were made of neurons, connecting each one to the next, but at this level, they formed a circuit. Only this live wire had lost its spark of life. We found the break, a sudden end that tasted of death. It wasn’t chalky or burnt or some kind of sulphurous decay. Death tasted like the acrid residue from an electrical fire. It was the flavor of something that used to be living and vibrant, but was now gone. It was a ghost.

  This, in the break where death sat, was where we set to work.

  I left Anna behind and tunneled deeper for the most detailed work. I microscoped in, but it took a full minute to find a new neuron that would properly connect to the dead end of the broken link. The beautiful part was that, as soon as I did, the brain itself did the rest of the work. Once I reconnected the dead ends to living cells, the brain quickly sought out a connection, like a lightning strike searching for ground. I had to watch for it, backing off as soon as the connection was made.

  It hummed with electric life. I smiled.

  I drew back until I synced with Anna. We are done with this one now, we thought. Let’s find another. Anna’s focus was intense, and her thoughts approved of the quick progress we were making. I tried to hide how much that approval made me glow, but it was tough with our minds twined together. We pressed on, and after two more repair jobs, we decided Crystal had been waiting long enough, and we should pull out of the depths of her mind before she became too concerned.

  When Anna and I pulled completely out of Crystal’s mind, I opened my eyes. “All done for today,” I said in a bare whisper, knowing better than to startle the patient.

  She still winced and popped open her eyes.

  “It went really well in there.” I gestured to her head, and she raised a hand to touch her temple, as if she could feel what we had done. “It may take a few more sessions before you notice the difference, but your mind seems eager to heal itself.” I glanced at Anna, who was wearing a true smile now, and it didn’t even look too scary. I couldn’t help returning it, but I ducked my head and turned to Crystal, using my smile to reassure her. “We hardly had to work at all. I think you’ll be jacking again in no time.”

  A small grin crept up on Crystal’s face. I patted her knee and reassured her once or twice more before I left her with Anna, closing the door behind me to let her take her time in deciding when she was ready to leave.

  I leaned against the wall between two of the privacy rooms, resting my head back and closing my eyes. It left me tired deep inside, doing the healing work which I alone could do, and I alone was responsible for. It wasn’t so much the focus and the energy, but the tension of making sure I got it right. Primum non nocere. It didn’t help that the patients came in with wild expectations of what I could do based on rumors that had swirled since I had started healing. As much as I pretended to be an expert in front of the patients, I was just a novice. With no one to teach me but myself. The idea that I was training others, like Anna, would be faintly amusing if it wasn’t the only way to reach everyone who needed to be healed.

  I had done some minor repair work on my own mind, but my long-distance reach was less important for the work that I most urgently needed to do. I worked mostly with changelings who suffered damage under Kestrel’s experiments. They had more mental destruction as well as the most potential for healing because their brains were still growing, trying to build new neural pathways to compensate for what Kestrel had done. Like Crystal, whose mind was so responsive to my efforts. But there would be others, many others. An impossibly large number, so I tried not to think about it most days.

  I still wished we had scribed Kestrel first and asked questions later. We didn’t learn nearly enough about his experiments in that short time after the crisis at the water pumping station. The information we had managed to retrieve verified a few things: the inhibitors were truly designed to weaken jackers but not destroy them; Kestrel had been pressured by the formation of the JFA to speed up his experiments; the side effect that turned some readers and almost all the demens into jackers was unexpected; and there truly was no antidote.

  There was more information locked in his brain, gleaned from all that experimentation, and we could have learned more, but things were pretty chaotic in the beginning. A contentious debate had raged about whether scribing was the right choice for Kestrel or whether we should put a bullet in him for all his crimes. Unfortunately, he managed to kill himself, ending our debate rather finally. We never quite figured out how he managed it, locked in a room, under heavy guard. Maybe he just hated himself to death, if the thoughts in his head during interrogation were any indication.

  In the end, it didn’t matter. Any answers died with him.

  I would probably spend the rest of my life trying to fix the damage that he and I had accomplished together. Every time I worked on a changeling, I couldn’t be sure if the damage in their brains was his or mine. On a bad day, I still questioned whether it was the right choice to put the inhibitors in the water. But when I could make those neurons come back to life, I finally felt like I was doing what I was put here on the planet to do.

  “I leave you alone for a few minutes,” a voice said, soft and close, “and here you are, slacking on the job.”

  I grinned with my eyes still closed, turning toward the sound of Julian’s voice. “Can’t a girl get a moment’s rest without being bossed around by uppity jackers who think they own the place?”

  I opened my eyes when I felt him move closer. He slipped an arm around my waist and kissed me quickly on the lips. It was a mere ghost of a kiss, gone before it had even announced its presence. He gave a quick look down the hall to make sure we weren’t putting on a show. As if anyone cared. But Julian was more and more cognizant of how “things looked” these days.

  “Afraid someone’s going to see the newly-elected senator of the Free Jacker State of Illinois making out in the hall?” I grinned when he flushed, not sure if it was his new title or the public making out part that made him the most embarrassed. Knowing Julian, probably a little of both. The thirty-year-old requirement for the US Senate had to be relaxed to allow the nineteen-year-old leader of the JFA in, but then there wasn’t much precendent for many of the things we were doing.

  His embarassment quickly faded, and that intense look commanded his face, the one he had when discussing politics or jacker freedoms. Or sometimes when he looked at me like I was a feast after a hundred day fast.

  He pressed me into the wall with his kiss, holding my cheek with one hand while the other snuck behind and pulled me into him. It welled up the same lightness of being that flooded me every time he kissed me like this. Like I was at exactly the right spot at the right time, and all the universe’s troubles had melted away, leaving only the two of us, fused together. When he released me, it felt like being pried apart. Not just our bodies, but our hearts and minds, even though we rarely mindlinked.

  He held me loosely, but with restrained power, like a tiger at the limits of its cage. “What does a guy have to do,” he whispered, his words caressing my cheek and floating into my ear, “to get an appointment with you in one of these privacy rooms?”

  I smiled, heat running up my neck at his suggestion. I bunched up the starched fabric of his shirt and pushed him away, but without enough strength to actually move him.

  “Get in line,” I said. “There are a lot of people ahead of you, Mister.” In the strictest sense, Julian would never need to visit my jacker clinic; he was one of the few unaffected by the inhibitor, something I gave thanks for every day. He said it was because his jacking came out of a different part of his brain; all I knew was I wouldn�
��t have been able to stand it if he was hurt with no way to get into his head to fix it. Julian had forgiven me from the start, but it wasn’t until the effects were known and we had reached the tipping point, that I dared to hope his forgiveness would hold. And even then, if he had been damaged, I would have never forgiven myself.

  Julian let me put a tiny distance between us, but no farther. “I know,” he kissed me lightly on the lips, “the work you do is so important, Kira. It’s holding everything together.” Which wasn’t true. My healing didn’t come close to righting all the wrongs that had been done. It was Julian who held everything together, but that thought was lost when he kissed me again. Then he pulled back and whispered against my lips, “Your ability to heal is making a difference to jackers everywhere.” Another kiss, longer this time. “And I wouldn’t dream of pulling you away from your work, not even for a few minutes, during a short break, in between patients—” Then he couldn’t talk anymore because my hands were tangled in his hair, and our kiss was growing.

  If he kept talking like that, I would pull him into the privacy room with me.

  A light clearing of a throat behind Julian made us both stumble mid-kiss. Ava stood behind him, trying to hide her smile and look business-like.

  “Julian, you’re on in five minutes.” Her smirk was finally defeated by her pleasant-but-determined executive assistant demeanor.