Broken Wide

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  The shudder from before races up my neck. She means the assassination of the president. “Anna doesn’t know anything.” Which isn’t true, but Wright can’t crack into Anna’s head. At least, not without the help of her meat drone. “Leave her out of this.”

  Wright lifts an eyebrow. “Well, that’s up to you. But make no mistake, Zephyr—you are far too dangerous to be roaming around playing revolutionary or courting billionaire’s daughters. I have strict orders to bring you in—all the way in, Zephyr—or your talents will sadly go missing from the world. You know the choice I prefer.”

  “I don’t understand what you want—”

  The door to the room swings open. Two security guys come first, but then a silver-haired man in a military uniform follows—the Secretary of Defense. Part of President Torqin’s cabinet—the president who orchestrated a jacker-facilitated coup to gain power.

  Trailing the SecDef is a ridiculously good-looking black man.

  Renell. He’s only other surviving member of the secret team of jackers sent to kill the president. Or influence him as Wright justified the operation to us, but Renell clued us in on the assassination attempt—and worked with us to stop it. He’s not helmeted, so I reach out quickly and link in. He’s in reader mode.

  Where have you been? I ask quickly. I haven’t seen him since the attack. He disappeared under a pile of Secret Service agents and no one’s heard from him since.

  Renell flips to jacker mode while I’m still in his head—his eyes flashing from light brown to green/gray as he makes the change—which means his thoughts now stay in his head. Getting my ass kicked by Wright, he tells me. Then he flashes a series of images as he’s escorted to the middle of the room. Interrogations. Mind-scourings. Deprivation torture. Wright hasn’t used the isolation tank on him, but she’s still stripping away his humanity like he’s a thing, a tool for her and nothing more. Renell’s normally dark brown skin has taken on an ashy tone, and dark circles haunt his eyes. They brought me in after the coup and never let me go. That word—coup—tells me Renell put two and two together and came up with conspiracy at the highest levels, just like I did. And that he’s locking his thoughts so Wright can’t hear says he’s fighting her with everything he’s got. I hold his gaze as he eases up next to Wright, the intensity echoed in his thoughts. We have to stop these people, Zeph. They’re doing horrible things.

  I know.

  He gives a very slight nod.

  It’s the same understanding we had during the assassination—that no matter what happened to either of us, we had to stop what was happening. Renell is like me—his unique “gifts” used and abused by others, always at the mercy of someone like Wright or Rutkowski—but that only means it falls to us to stop the madness. Only we failed the last time, and I have no idea how we can stop any of this now.

  I run a fast mental show for him of the slaughter at Jackertown and now Wright’s chamber of horrors. Renell’s eyes widen slightly. He takes in the forest of caskets then swings back, his face even more drawn. They have us then. It’s over. His shoulders slump.

  No. It’s not, I insist, although I have no reason for that hope.

  His eyes flip back to amber-brown, and suddenly, he’s broadcasting to the entire room, just like Wright and the SecDef, who are having a heated mind-talk conversation. Wright breaks that and nods to the two guards. One grabs Renell by the arm—he doesn’t even resist—and the other goes for Anna. She steps back and drops to a fighting stance. The guard simply draws his weapon and points it at her head.

  Her hands go up.

  Renell’s guard jams a gun into his side.

  “Wright, what the hell—” I protest.

  “Time for you to decide, Mr. MacCay.”

  “Decide what?” I snap. I get she wants me to study her pet jacker experiment, but what is she doing—

  “Either Mr. Walker or Ms. Navarro. You insisted on bringing her. So it’s your choice as to which will be your first Obedient.”

  I gape at her. “You want me to… I can’t even…” Anna looks freaked. Renell seems to see nothing at all. I can’t get any air.

  The SecDef and Wright engage in more animated mind-linked conversation.

  I link fast and hard into their heads.

  I told you he wasn’t the material for this.

  Just give him a chance— Wright snaps her attention to me.

  I yank back out of her head, heart hammering.

  “You do not have the luxury of saying no,” she says, voice strung tight, eyes afire with my intrusion.

  My chest is heaving, fighting for air.

  Anna’s eyes are wild. She’s flipping furious looks between the guard holding a gun on her and me—she’s expecting me to jack through his helmet and end all this. But I can’t do that faster than a trigger pull. She’d be dead before I could break it.

  Renell too.

  He’s unnaturally calm. Like some vast well of darkness has opened up inside him.

  “Do what you have to,” he says directly to me, his light-reader-brown eyes staring into mine. “Just make it fast.” Then his eyes shift to green. Jacker.

  I link in quick, knowing Wright can’t hear us now. I can change you back, I tell him. I promise. I have no business promising that—maybe I can make him a drone, but each drone I’ve spun has simply broken from it.

  Don’t let them win, Zeph. Make them pay for this. His face has gone slack. Like he’s halfway to the grave already. I can practically hear his heart hammering.

  Tears burn at the back of my eyes. I’ll bring you back, I promise again. And then I remember… Wait—your secret mind! The one I discovered when turning him the first time—the place where he locks away his long-ago secret, along with his guilt for the girl who died. She was at the wrong place at the wrong time with him. That secret—and his ability to keep it—is tied to his ability to flip between states. To shape his own mind. I know you’ve got extra abilities locked away—use them! Once we’re clear of this, change yourself back. Just like when you flip from reader to jacker.

  It doesn’t work that way.

  Make it work that way!

  Make it fast. Then he closes his eyes.

  I wait.

  One heartbeat. Two.

  Then I force myself to spin his mindfield. He screams and drops to the floor. I spin and spin, and at the same time, I make a map in my head of the nearby meat drone’s mindfield. It’s simpler than it should be to erase Renell’s bumps and valleys and replace them with the glass-smooth texture of an emptied mind.

  Obedient.

  I let his mindmap drop into that configuration. The screams stop. Renell stands, carefully, methodically. For a moment, I think there must be something there—but then his eyes open and stare straight ahead, seeing nothing.

  They’re a crazed swirl of amber and green, almost inhuman.

  The held-back tears are choking me.

  Wright is beside herself with delight, mind-talking with the SecDef while Renell slowly marches to the isolation tank. He starts removing his clothes. I’m transfixed and horrified, watching him strip down to his underwear. He’s like me, I tell myself. He can change his own mindfield. He just has to dig deep and want to…

  Renell climbs in the tank. Liquid sloshes over the side and bleeds down to the floor drain.

  I drop my gaze as he lays back in it.

  “Take her,” Wright says.

  What—My attention whips to Wright, but then Anna’s guard pulls a second gun and shoots her. “No!” I lurch forward to catch her as she falls. My heart has seized, but then I find a thick, blue dart embedded in her chest. I yank it out and throw it away, but she’s already out.

  I scream at Wright, “What are you doing!”

  She ignores me and waves at the guards.

  They come for Anna, one with his gun drawn, the other shoving me away and hauling her off the floor. I just watch as they drag her off. Wright trails after them, mindtalking with the SecDef, their silent conversation less ani
mated now that I’ve done Wright’s bidding.

  The guards disappear into the hallway with Anna, her boots limply bumping along the floor. The SecDef follows them. Wright is standing in the doorway, waiting for me.

  My mind is blank. My stomach heaves. I’m still on the floor, slumped where Anna fell.

  “Well, come along, Zephyr,” Wright says coolly. “It’s time for you to meet with your father.”

  I blink. I almost can’t make sense of her words. But then they click, and I climb to my feet, stiff and mechanical like one of Wright’s Obedients. The one whose chemical-and-torture-flattened mindfield I copied remains standing in the room—standing and staring at nothing and dripping on the floor. Forgotten, now that he’s served his purpose.

  Wright has stripped away my humanity just as surely as his.

  I force my gaze from the emptiness of his eyes and command my legs to move. I stumble and nearly go down but manage to stay upright enough to meet Wright at the door.

  I follow her out.

  What have I done?

  Wright has whisked me halfway across the base before I can think straight.

  “Where have they taken Anna?” My voice is hoarse. The small electric cart we’re riding in trundles around a cluster of buildings.

  Wright looks up from her phone. “If you wanted to turn her yourself, you should have chosen her.” She looks slightly put out.

  “You’re making her an Obedient.” I can barely choke out the words. I’m in serious danger of throwing up right here in the cart. Not that Wright wouldn’t deserve it, but I’m afraid she’d call off this meeting with my father.

  Her put out expression hardens to annoyance. “The procedure is complex—as I told you, it takes some time. And the attrition rate is high. If you would like to turn her yourself, I can summon her after you discuss matters with your father.”

  Matters? But I should know Wright does nothing that doesn’t serve her—this isn’t a reward for me; it’s part of her plan.

  I frown, mind racing. Should I spin Anna’s mind myself and hope I can bring both her and Renell back? Or should I let the ghoulish medical personnel in Wright’s Jacker Technologies Division slowly drip mind-poison into her and risk her dying before I can break her free?

  “How long is the procedure?” I ask.

  “Usually at least a week.” Her eyes narrow. “I would like to remind you, Mr. MacCay, that your cooperation will need to be complete going forward. Do not tempt me into further displays of how I can make life uncomfortable for you.”

  “No,” I say hastily. “I just meant, how long would she suffer? I don’t… I don’t want to turn her… but I can make it fast. Renell didn’t suffer too long.” My tongue feels thick with the lying. Can Wright tell? How could it not be obvious?

  But she just gives me an appreciative look. “I’m glad you can see this clearly, Zephyr.”

  “I want to change Anna,” I say, firmly, like I’ve just decided this. “And I’ll need to check on Renell when he’s done with his… programming… in the box. To make sure the configuration I’ve designed for him still holds, and he’s not unstable or something.” That will at least get me a chance to see him again.

  She tips her head in agreement.

  The cart pulls up to a brick building, smaller and older than the others. It’s tucked behind a copse of trees, nearly hidden from the view of the surrounding structures.

  “Your ability is extraordinary,” Wright says as she climbs from the cart. I join her as she strides toward the entrance, a small metal door that seems almost an afterthought in the uniformly blank design of the building, all towering brick walls and no windows or other visible doors. It’s guarded by two helmeted military types with large rifles. “You could be key to achieving our ends faster, but I have alternate means should you turn uncooperative. In which case, I’ll have no qualms in consigning you and every jacker you know to the Obedient program.”

  I don’t doubt her in the slightest. “I understand.”

  She gives me a curt nod then swipes through security. The guards give me a cool look—especially the fact that I’m not wearing a helmet—but let us pass. Inside are a couple brightly lit corridors lined with labs, at least what I can see through the small windows in the doors. We reach the end of the hall and a larger, double door. Wright presses her palm to the security panel, and the door springs open. The expansive room inside is half machine-shop, half electrical lab—a lot like Juliette’s with shiny new equipment and screens on the walls. Three technicians in blue lab coats are busy at the screens and the electronic benchtops, but all I see is the middle-aged man at the back—short brown hair, wiry frame, bent over an orb that’s been eviscerated into component parts on the table.

  My dad.

  He’s focused on his work, half turned away, so I only see him in profile, but it’s him. Wright strides purposefully forward as if this is just another bit of business she must get out of the way before unfolding her grand plans for the destruction of jackers.

  I have to force my legs to move.

  I barely remember to link into both their heads just as they come into mind-reading range.

  I told you it was too soon to deploy them. My father’s still bent over his work, his mind a small vortex of panic. He stabs a probe into the guts of one of the splayed circuit boards.

  Jackertown wasn’t my call, Wright snaps back as she weaves through the benches.

  I follow behind, stomach knotting tighter with each step.

  I don’t know what you expect from me. It’s not like I can— My dad stalls out mid-thought when he lifts his head. He just blinks, his thoughts blank. Then the panic surges back, tinged with rage. He whips his gaze to Wright just as we arrive. What are you doing, bringing him here? he demands.

  It’s a punch to the gut that I don’t see coming—all the air just vacates my body.

  Wright’s smirk is some weird kind of pride. It was necessary to bring him in. His skills have become useful. Not a lie, but definitely not the entire truth.

  My dad’s eyes go wide, and his hand drops to the table, releasing the small probe. What skills? He flicks a look at me, then away. Like he can’t look me in the face. Because he’s working for Wright, and he probably never thought I would know. I’m fighting to breathe, not to cry, and to flounder up something to say.

  He’ll be involved in the Obedient program. Wright’s smirk morphs into a full smile.

  My dad jolts then sends me a panicked look. You’re not making him one of those—

  I create them. I don’t know why I linked that thought to them both—anger, probably—but it beats back the tears and lets me breathe.

  And it makes Wright beam.

  My dad’s face goes blank, but there’s no hiding the horror in his thoughts. I see.

  My dad thinks I’m a monster—this isn’t how I pictured this reunion. I hoped I would find him locked in a comfortable cage, like my mom. Or maybe brainwashed into helping, like my sister Olivia. But no… he’s here, in Wright’s lab, building the orbs that just destroyed the minds of thousands of jackers. Arguing about schedules.

  “I don’t need to see any more,” I say, out loud, so everyone in the lab can hear.

  It wounds my father—I can feel the pain in his mind, see the flinch at the corners of his eyes—and I wish it would quench some of the rage seething under my skin, but it doesn’t. It just hurts more. I turn an angry scowl on Wright, ready to demand we leave, but she’s focused on her phone.

  This will just take a minute. Then she marches off toward the far side of the lab. I’m still in her head, hearing her thoughts as she orders the other lab assistants out. They scramble to get out the door. She moves out of mindreading range—not too far for me, but I pull out of her head anyway and slowly turn back to face my dad.

  My shoulders twitch like I’m one giant exposed nerve.

  His face is as tormented as his thoughts—warring between holding back and reaching out. The reaching out wins, and he tr
ies to hug me. I step back, shoving him away for good measure.

  “You betrayed us.” I’ve never spoken words so bitter in my life.

  “Zeph.” I’ve wounded him again.

  I don’t care.

  He reaches again, almost reflexively, then pulls back. “I saw you on the tru-cast, with your sister…” His face twists up.

  He thinks she’s dead.

  For a moment, I want to let him keep thinking that.

  Then my anger breaks into a gush of words. “She’s alive. Mom, too. I broke them out of this place…” I direct my rage at Wright, but she’s hunched over her phone, having some kind of animated, silent conversation.

  “What?” My dad’s gasp draws me back. “Your sister… but I saw her…”

  So Wright didn’t tell him.

  I give him a cool look. “That was just for the cameras. She’s safe, now that she’s away from here. And Wright always had Mom—”

  “I know.” He’s mentally scrambling to put it all together. “Wright told me.”

  “Wright lies.” I squint at him. “How do you not know that?”

  He drops his gaze. “I do.” It’s hushed.

  “Yet, you’re doing her dirty work. And Tillers’.”

  He says nothing. His thoughts are all over the place, but pointedly ignoring the accusation—running away from his guilt. I might respect him more if he even tried to defend it.

  Finally, he peers up. “Your mom—she’s free now?”

  “Yeah. No thanks to you.” Which isn’t fair—maybe. How much of a prisoner has my dad been? He’s been here years… and I’m not seeing any restraints. No cuffs while he works on death machines for jackers. He’s just a reader, but still—he didn’t have to lend his brain to fuel Tiller’s jacker-hate. Or Wright’s power dreams. And while he was here in his lab, playing with his toys, my mom was wasting away in her apartment-prison. And Olivia was being twisted into a monster.

  “I still love you, Zeph.” His voice is soft.

  Those words surge up the anger so fast, I can’t even come up with a retort.