by Elle Casey
It continued until we were both numb from his screaming, from the pain that made up our entire shared existence. We couldn’t lie to each other in that moment. So I asked, the way he had asked me, though my question wasn’t the same. “Why?”
He tried to speak, but couldn’t, and wept instead. But deep in his mind, I felt the words echoing in the hollow dark: “Because I had to.”
I don’t know if the answer was Peter’s. It was possible I was projecting my own reasoning onto him, and perhaps his ideas were more sinister. I tried to read as little as possible, because I understood that by human standards it wasn’t polite to pry. But the answer was enough.
I opened my eyes, and I was back in my cabin, sitting cross-legged on my bed. I reached out to Peter telepathically. And I saw myself, instead. For an instant I thought I was dissociating, watching myself diverge. But that wasn’t it. Peter was watching me, from a camera inside the cabin. My inclination was to grab my chin at him, but the gesture would have been lost on him.
Rage bubbled up in my mind. I wanted to hurt him. If my subconscious was trying to hurt him, after this, I wasn’t sure I’d get in its way.
I turned to the camera and said, “Peter, we need to talk.” He played dumb and didn’t respond.
I called him up on comms, where he couldn’t pretend not to hear me. “Peter. No more games.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said. I pinged his location on my HUDmap. His dot appeared, inside his office, then abruptly disappeared.
“That would be an example of the games I don’t want to play with you anymore. No more lies. No more deceit. We need to have it out. Face to face.” I probed the ship telepathically. Four hundred souls might not seem like many, but it made it harder to sift through and find him. Or it would have. His panic shone like a beacon. He had left his office, and was moving swiftly away.
“How can we have it out when you’re trying to kill me?”
“I’m not,” I said, and felt guilt at the deceptive wording, because even now I couldn’t be sure that some part of me wasn’t.
“Not consciously,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t you doing it.” That told me how much of my session with Maggie he’d listened in on. That upset me, but I swallowed it, not least because I heard him mute me, and knew he was going to call SecDiv.
She called me a moment later, and her picture appeared on my eyescreen. “Elle?” I asked, because it was what Drew called her, and most of what I knew of her came through him—despite what we shared.
“HR’s on the other line. Not the first time, either. He thinks you’ve been trying to make him hurt himself.”
“I haven’t.”
“I know.”
“You believe me?”
“I know you, Sam,” she said. “Nearly as well as Drew. I don’t think you would hurt him. And I also know that if you were going to, he wouldn’t be in a position to call me. Just… don’t let him hurt himself, either.”
“I’ll try.”
“And let me or Maggie know if you think you need help resolving this.”
“I will.” I appreciated the offer, but I also knew this wasn’t the kind of thing we could handle in front of prying eyes. We were both too exposed, too raw—and we were the only ones damaged enough to see the other through the trauma.
And I saw him, as clear as I would with my eyes. He was pounding his way through the barracks. He wasn’t thinking lucidly, just moving in a panic, trying to buy more time. He didn’t want to hurt me, and didn’t want me to hurt him, but he didn’t see any other way out. So he was trying to run from that conclusion.
But I knew where he was, and where he was heading, and it was a simple enough matter to cut him off. I had to jog to hit him at the right point, just as he passed the cafeteria. He was moving quickly enough that he bowled into me and we both rolled.
I was up first, and he froze on the floor when he realized I was standing above him.
Five: Pete
“You can’t run from me forever, Peter,” she said from above me, and I closed my eyes. This was it.
“One of us is trying to kill you,” she continued, “and I don’t honestly know which of us it is. But I don’t want you dead—and neither do you. So I think the only way out of this is through.” She held out her hand and helped me stand. “Please, sit with me. Talk.” She gestured to the cafeteria.
“Drew once told me it was traditional in his family to settle grievances over a cup of cocoa. We could try that.”
“Okay.”
We stepped inside, found a table. I picked through the menu on my HUD and ordered two cocoas.
Several awkward moments later, Rickman from HomeDiv brought us a pair of mugs.
Sam pulled hers close to herself. I stared at mine.
“How do I know it isn’t tainted?”
“What?” she asked.
“If you could telepathically tell Rickman to put something deadly in our cocoa, how would I know?”
“You can decide which you want to drink,” she said, and pushed hers forward.
“Unless it’s something toxic to humans, but not to you.” She licked where her lips would have been if her species had them.
“I don’t suppose there’s a way, definitively, to know. But I think that’s the overarching point. We can’t know which of our dueling mental problems is the cause of you trying to strangle yourself. So we have to move past them. You hurt me.”
“I did,” I said. “And I’m sorry.”
“I know. And I forgive you.”
“You do?” I asked.
“I’m not saying I’m over it yet. Even understanding why—in a way that I don’t think anyone else on the ship does, or maybe even could—it’s hard to move past. But I’m trying. I want not to be angry over it anymore.”
“But doesn’t letting the anger go come before forgiveness?”
“No. Forgiveness is the conscious acceptance of sorrow or regret for an action. It doesn’t delete residual anger. But forgiveness is also a promise to try and move beyond our differences. You tortured me. And that has tortured us both ever since. I don’t want to hold on to this hate, or for you to hold on to your regrets, or we’ll both be worried into early graves.”
“Some of us sooner than others,” I said, and unconsciously rubbed my throat.
“But that’s the point. Whether it’s my rage or your guilt that’s causing you to self-harm, the way to defuse both is with acceptance and forgiveness. And neither can be achieved without trust.”
She pushed the glasses toward me. I took the one nearest, the one Rickman slid to me in the first place, and took a sip. “It’s good,” I said.
She took a sip from hers. “It is,” she said with a smile. “I’ve never had cocoa before.”
A Word from Nicolas Wilson
“Tortured” is set amid the events of Nexus, the first book in The Sontem Trilogy. The trilogy continues in Book 2, Sins of the Past.
I usually like writing from a point of view. It’s how we see the world, and it gives characters subtler opportunities for expression. But given that Nexus was tied to one main character, we never really got to see how the torture that took place in that book affected the rest of the crew. And that bugged me. And it bugged Sam, and it bugged Pete. So I’m glad this anthology has finally given me the opportunity to tell their part in that story.
About the Author
Nicolas Wilson is a published journalist, graphic novelist, and novelist. He lives in the rainy wastes of Portland, Oregon with his wife, four cats, and a dog.
Nic’s work spans a variety of genres, from political thriller to science fiction and urban fantasy. He has several novels currently available, and many more due for release in the coming year. Nic’s stories are characterized by his eye for the absurd, the off-color, and the bombastic.
For information on Nic’s books, and behind-the-scenes looks at his writing, visit www.nicolaswilson.com. You can also keep in touch with Nic on Facebook, G
oodreads, or Twitter, or by signing up for his mailing list.
The Locksmith
by Susan Kaye Quinn
Chapter One
The mind is a puzzle, just waiting to be unlocked. Or re-locked, as the case may be.
The girl sitting in the chair in front of me is cute: long, shiny brown hair, little freckles that she’s probably outgrowing, and wide blue eyes that are staring straight into mine. Her name is Sarah, and she’s a mindjacker like me—well, not exactly like me, but she would fit in at my high school just fine. She looks my age, maybe a junior, but she’s probably older. Marshall doesn’t like underage jackers in his Clan—says we get in too much trouble. He made an exception for me, but only because of what I can do. Sarah’s just a normal jacker, at least for the moment. She looks like the kind who’s sweet to everyone, has a pet cat named Meow-Meow, and knows how to hide really well in the regular mindreading population.
Too bad I have to hurt her.
“Come on, Zeph,” Marshall says to me. “Get on with it.” He’s looming behind her chair, intimidating her with his six-foot-two frame, as if being a powerful mindjacker in his own right and hauling her into the Clan’s decrepit warehouse at six in the morning isn’t enough reason to completely freak out the girl.
Sarah. Her name is Sarah.
I try to remember their names. It seems like the decent thing to do.
“You want this done fast, or do you want it done right?” I ask. It’s a rhetorical question, because there’s no speed or finesse involved in what I do. It’s either on or off, done or not-done. But Marshall is the leader of a Clan of thuggish and brutal mindjackers, not a rocket scientist, and besides, he doesn’t really understand what I do. I barely understand it myself. I just know I can lock Sarah’s mind tighter than the datafiles at the Pentagon. Which would be a great target for a jacker with an impenetrable mind, a keeper like Sarah is about to become, but that isn’t actually going to be her mission. I don’t know the details of her real mission—it’s not my business to know.
I’m just the locksmith.
“I want it done now,” Marshall barks at me over her head.
Sarah flinches. Her delicate hands wrestle with each other in her lap.
Marshall pulls out his phone and activates the holographic mindware interface. Must be checking his busy calendar. “She’s gotta meet up with the corporate guys in an hour.”
“Corporate guys?” I ask. Marshall’s sending the girl in for corporate espionage? I resist the urge to shake my head at all the ways that’s going to fail.
“Yeah.” He puts away his phone, then scratches his chin, like it’s using all his brain power to explain this to me. “They were supposed to contract out a keeper from Clan Molloy, but those guys imploded last week.”
I frown, trying to think if I know anyone in Clan Molloy. Their territory is on the seedy north side of Chicago New Metro and ours is in the Northwest Suburbs, but the Clans cross paths every once in a while. Not that I get friendly with other jackers, but there are a few who aren’t complete jerks.
“What do you mean, imploded?” I ask.
“Like boom, the whole Clan is in FBI custody.”
I whistle low. “Someone rat them out?” Now I’m really trying to remember who I know in Clan Molloy. And if they know where I live. And if the FBI is tormenting that knowledge out of them as I’m sitting here doing Marshall’s dirty work.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I think maybe they had a mole.”
I give a nervous laugh. “Right? I mean, how can a whole Clan go down at once without someone on the inside?” I’m not a mole for the FBI, but I’m always skating the edge with Marshall, so if someone was going to be pegged for being a mole, it would probably be me. I’m odd man out in the Clan, given what I can do, and the other jackers keep their distance. Not that I blame them. I wouldn’t like a guy who could lock me inside my own head, either. But the minute I stop being useful to Marshall is the minute the rest of Clan decides to take their I never really liked that guy tensions out on me. Even if I could leave unscathed, I can’t afford to be without Marshall’s protection. Staying out of the FBI’s clutches wouldn’t be too hard—those guys are messed up in what they do to jackers, but they’re also fairly inept. I’m more worried about another Clan finding me. Because there are worse Clans than Marshall’s. A lot worse.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says gruffly, ending the discussion with a wave of his hand. “Just means we get to step in and give the customer what he wants.”
Right. The corporate guys. “It’ll take at least an hour for her to recover,” I warn him. Marshall should know this, but maybe he’s forgotten. It’s not like I do it that often, and he’s a busy guy, what with all the thuggery and petty crime he’s involved in.
Marshall lowers his voice. “Just get it done, Zeph.”
Fine. Enough messing around.
I look back to Sarah. Most of the color is gone from her face. “Is this going to hurt? Because no one said anything about recovery.” She bites her lip.
Marshall’s giving me the look, like it’s my job to close the deal with Sarah. She’s not from our Clan, which means he recruited her from another one just for the job. Or maybe she’s on loan, voluntarily or not. He could have scouted her straight out of school, for all I know. But whenever he brings someone for me to lock—or worse, unlock—he never gives them all the details. Says he likes to keep things on a need-to-know basis, but the truth is most wouldn’t sign up for this if they knew the price. Not that they always get a choice. Like that guy last month who backed out on one of Marshall’s schemes and ended up with half his mind erased, the rest scrambled, and a new tendency to drool when he talks.
I shudder. I don’t want to see anything like that happen to Sarah. So I sigh and lean forward in my chair, hands clasped, elbows on my knees, giving Sarah my best it’ll be okay look… even though it won’t.
“I won’t lie to you,” I say, totally lying to her. “It’ll hurt a little, but not for long. You might have a headache for a while afterward. But once I’m done, no one will be able to jack into your head. So there’s that. Plus you’ll be all set for the job.” I glance at Marshall, because I have no idea what the specifics of the job are, but he’s nodding, so I continue. “Then you’ll come back here, I’ll undo it, and everything will be back to normal.” That part at least is true. Assuming she comes back. They don’t always.
She’s quaking a little, but she nods, and looks to Marshall. “Then I get paid, right?”
“Just like I said.” Marshall folds his beefy arms.
Sarah hesitates, like she’s going to question him further, but then she doesn’t. And she really doesn’t need to worry about that part. For all the illegal activities he runs, Marshall’s strangely honest. He’ll hold up his end of the bargain if she does.
Sarah turns back to me.
“Ready?” I ask. Because it’s nice to ask. They’re never ready.
She swallows and nods once more.
I reach out with my mind and brush her mind barrier, just to give her a little warning, and to get a sense of how hard this one’s going to be. The scent of sun-baked strawberries fills the back of my throat. Her mind-scent is probably the same flavor as the lip gloss she wears when she goes out on a date with her boyfriend. I’ve always wondered if those lip glosses taste the same as they smell, a little too-sweet and artificial, but mouth-watering nonetheless. I wouldn’t know—never had the chance to kiss a girl. Not for lack of wanting, mind you. I’m as red-blooded-straight as any other seventeen-year-old male. Just never met a girl jacker who would have anything to do with me, and kissing mindreaders is all kinds of wrong.
Focus, Zeph, I tell myself.
I should have grabbed a coffee or something before coming in.
I close my eyes and push on through Sarah’s mind barrier. It isn’t very tough, but reaching deep into any mind is a creepy sensation, like shoving your hand into a bowl full of raw ground beef. It gives, but there
’s serious interference between the two mind fields. I have no idea why that translates into the sensation of cold meatloaf gushing between my fingers, but it does. The mind is a strange thing.
I’m not a tremendously strong mindjacker, and she shoves me back out pretty easily.
I open my eyes again and try not to chastise her. “You need to let me in.” Strictly speaking, this isn’t true. I can lock her mind without having to be on the inside, but I’ve been hiding that little tidbit from Marshall, and I’d rather keep any small advantage for as long as I can. Never know when you need something like that in your back pocket. Besides, Sarah’s here at least somewhat voluntarily. I don’t know all the specifics of the deal she made with Marshall—sometimes he’ll threaten—but it sounds like he’s cut her in on the deal, whatever it is. Either way, Sarah shouldn’t be working against me.
“Sorry,” she says. The hairs on her arms are raised. I know it’s not pleasant for her either, but it’s about to get a whole lot worse. No need to prolong it more than necessary.
“It’s all right,” I say, trying to keep my voice soothing. “Just relax, let me in, and we’ll be done before you know it.”
She nods and closes her eyes, taking a breath and letting it out through pursed lips.
She’s extra cute when she does that. Makes me feel about ten times worse for what I’m about to do. I close my eyes again, not because I need to relax, but because I don’t want to see her face when I lock her.
I reach for her mind field again, and this time, I slip in no problem. Deep inside her head like this, I can hear all her thoughts, feel all her emotions. That overbaked strawberry scent hits the back of my throat again, and the basic information about her pops up like a digital display in the front of my brain. Sarah Zuckerman, nineteen, freshman at Harper College. I ignore all that and stretch my mind field presence inside hers. It expands, like the fingers of my mind flexing outward, until my mind field basically fills the same space as hers. I could do the reverse, surrounding her field from the outside, floating above the contours of her mind barrier rather than mushrooming out from the inside to coat it. It doesn’t matter. What I’m doing is syncing up my mind field with hers and feeling out the parameters of it. Like taking a sonar map of the surface of the moon. Her map is unique, just like she is. And once I’ve got a fix on it, that’s when I can shift things, move them around. Smooth the bumps, raise the minuscule peaks, dig the valleys a little deeper. Changing the map alters her mind field’s capabilities. I don’t know what each peak or valley is for; I’m just operating by feel. It’s like I’m a safecracker, only I’m turning the tumblers in her brain until each clicks into place and locks her mind down.
