Broken Wide

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  “Tell your mother and Olivia I love them, too,” he says quickly, then flicks a look over my shoulder.

  I look behind me—Wright is marching back, but she’s holding out her phone like she’s not done with her call.

  “He wants to speak with you.” She hands her phone to me.

  “Who?” I ask, but then I look at the screen—it’s on hold, the image of the caller frozen, waiting.

  “President Torquin?” I just stare at the phone for a second.

  “Well, don’t keep him waiting, Zephyr.” Wright’s voice is pitched an octave higher than normal.

  I flash a look to my dad—his face has the same look of blank surprise I must have on mine.

  I tap the phone to release the hold. “Um.” I have no idea what to say.

  “Hello, Zeph.” The man’s smile is perfectly friendly. He’s young for a president and attractive in a non-aging way—like I have no idea how old he is, but he has the shiny-haired good looks of the celebrities on chat-casts. “My Director of Jacker Technologies tells me you’ve joined our team and want to serve your country. And that you’re very talented. I couldn’t be more pleased to hear that.”

  “Um… yeah. I guess.” There’s a pitched need inside me to scream—or maybe hurl the phone against the wall. This is the guy who gives speeches about the jacker threat. He’s ridden the wave of jacker-hate into power. And here he is smiling like he’s my best friend, and I’m his new favorite recruit. It’s so surreal, it’s like he’s hypnotizing me with his ice-blue eyes.

  “I’d really like a chance to sit down and discuss that with you.” He smiles even more, and I can’t help noticing how white his teeth are—like blinding white.

  A shudder runs up my back. I don’t know what he wants, and that’s in no way good.

  When I don’t answer, he moves right along. “How about day after tomorrow? I’d bring you here, but it turns out I’m coming your way, visiting Chicago. Let’s get together and have a little chat, shall we?”

  Is no an option? I don’t think so. “Um… okay.”

  “Excellent. Director Wright will make arrangements on your end.” He glances off screen and gives someone a nod. Then, turning back, he temples his fingers and leans toward the phone. “And Zeph, there’s something I want you to know. Are we alone on your end?”

  Wright and my father aren’t on-screen, but if they were any closer, they would be.

  “Hang on,” I say, then I tap hold. I just put the President of the United States on hold. My life is insane. “I’m going to…” I point toward the far end of the room where Wright retreated to take her personal call from the POTUS.

  My dad’s eyes are wide but not in a good way—like he thinks Torquin might reach through the phone and kill jack me long distance. Which is impossible since that’s not possible for anyone and Torquin’s a reader, but that’s the level of terror on my dad’s face.

  If Wright was any more rigid with anger, I think she might shatter.

  “Okay. Right.” I hustle past the electronic benchtops. When I’m as far as I could get from my onlookers, I tap the hold off. “Okay, we’re clear.” The surreal nature of sneaking private phone calls with the president is making my head spin—the presidential seal is on a flag behind Torquin. I think he’s actually calling me from the Oval Office.

  “Good.” He seems not at all put out that I put him on hold. “We’ll have more time to talk once I come out there, Zeph, but there are two things I need to get clear between us.”

  My chest tightens. “Okay.”

  “The first is that I know everything.”

  I frown. “Excuse me?” Is the president threatening me? And with what exactly?

  “I’ll explain more when we talk, but do me a favor and let’s just assume that I know everything there is to know. In other words, you have no secrets with me, young man.”

  I’m still not getting where he’s going with this. “Okay.”

  He nods like that’s all he expects from me. “The second thing—and I hate to be the one to share this with you, but it’s important that you know, especially given where you are right now…” He’s acting like he’s my cool but extremely powerful uncle just looking out for me and handing out some friendly advice. “I’m afraid your father isn’t, well, your father.”

  Okay, now I’m wondering if the President of the United States is secretly demens. “Um…”

  “I know, I know. Not what anyone wants to hear.” He gives me a sympathetic look. As if I’m concerned about this “news,” not that I think he’s cracked. “But I wanted to warn you, son. I know he’s there. I know you’re just now seeing each other for the first time in a couple years. As I said, I know everything. But you need to be very careful about trusting anything he tells you, Zeph. I know you grew up with the man, but he’s a deep cover agent who’s been working for us from the beginning. He has his own objectives, and he may not have your best interests in mind.”

  “But you do?” I’ve been around enough slimy Clan leaders to know a scam when I smell it.

  He laughs a little. “Of course you have no reason to trust me either. But I’m telling you the truth, Zeph.”

  “Maybe I should order up a DNA test from the lab just to check.” I can’t figure what his game is here—why would the POTUS play games with me at all?

  All humor vanishes from his face. He leans forward, so his face almost entirely fills the screen. “Any DNA test you run would be highly classified, Zeph.” He’s dead serious.

  And now he’s freaking me out. “Why?”

  “Because the truth is that you’re an experiment, Zephyr MacCay.” His eyes take on a demens kind of shine. “One of our most daring and most successful.”

  “Experiment.” The word is flat in my mouth. He can’t mean—

  “We made you, Zeph. We designed you. And when the man who calls himself your father stole you away, he was stealing highly classified experimental technology—something he was well aware of.”

  My heart is thudding in my ears now. My mom’s memory, the one she replayed for me—my dad sneaking her out while I was still in her womb—he knew she was pregnant. That was why he was stealing her away. Rescuing her, I tell myself. I just assumed that he loved her. That I was their son.

  The feeling of choking is back again.

  “I know this is a shock, son.” Torquin leans back, the presidential flag visible again in the background. “But now that you’ve fully come into your powers, it’s time for you to know the truth about what you really are. And what your purpose is.”

  “My purpose?” My mouth is hanging open now. I can’t process this. I don’t want to know any of this. Yet… a sinking feeling in my heart actually believes him.

  “We’ll talk more about that in person.” He nods to someone off-screen again. “Duty calls, son. I’ll see in two days.”

  The screen goes blank.

  I just stare at the even grayness.

  Lies—all of it could be lies. But I don’t believe that even as I desperately want to.

  I turn and stumble back to Wright, who looks like she might come unhinged at any second, and my father… I have a million questions for him, none of which I let past my lips.

  “Are you quite done?” Wright asks, so shrilly, I think she will lose it if I don’t answer quickly enough.

  “Yeah. I’m done.” I show her the blank phone.

  She snatches it back. “Then it’s time for me to show you your apartment.” Her words are brusque, but her nails are sharper when they dig into my arm and practically wrench me away from my dad, hauling me across the lab.

  I yank my arm out of her grasp. “I can walk.” I glance back at my father—his face is still locked up with horror. I turn my back on him and follow Wright out.

  She’s about to explode with the need to say something, but I stay out of her head. Mine is still reeling.

  She waits until we’re back in her creaky government electric go-cart before she blurts out, “What did h
e want?”

  “Who?” I’m fighting through a haze that’s descending on my mind.

  “The president!” she barks. The cart lurches into motion and carries us away from the small brick building where my father—or the man I thought was my dad—has been working with the government to destroy jackers.

  Jackers like me.

  “The president…” My mind works to form words. I turn to Wright. “He said my father wasn’t my father. That I was created in a government lab. That I’m an experiment.”

  Wright doesn’t look surprised.

  Or angry. Or frustrated. Or any of the emotions I expect if this is news to her or a complete and utter lie.

  No… she looks terrified. Genuine fear isn’t something I’ve seen on Wright before, and it’s simply baffling. More than my brain can decode right now.

  But one thing is clear. “It’s true, isn’t it?” I whisper.

  She doesn’t answer, but her face tells me everything I need to know.

  I slump back in the seat as the cart rumbles on.

  I’ve always felt different.

  I’ve always known, deep down, there was something flawed about me—something that set me apart, and not in a good way. When I first discovered I was a jacker, it made perfect sense—of course, everyone else in the world would become a reader at their change time, but I would become this mutant who could control minds. Then, when the Clan leaders found me, I wasn’t even normal for a jacker. And the things they made me do… the minds they forced me to lock and unlock… I’ve never stopped hearing the screams.

  My life is made of screams.

  Because I’m a monster.

  I’m sitting, staring at the wall in my apartment prison—one similar to where my mother was kept under house arrest for nearly two years, only this one has a screen and windows and no lock on the door. I’ve been in this spot for so long the red rays of the setting sun have bled slowly across the white walls, and they’ve now turned gray. There’s still light, but not enough to really see. The shapes of things are all that remain, their grainy outlines turning the couch into a hulking beast that lounges against the wall. The screen is a black mirror reflecting the ghosts of furniture. The dingy curtains that edge the window are a shroud around the day.

  I’m an experiment.

  A thing crafted in a lab.

  My abilities aren’t an accident—they were engineered. And now the owners of that top-secret DNA are coming to claim their prize. To make me perform like a puppet for them—or die a death of the mind, excavated out, nullified.

  Obedient.

  My hands ache. I look down, half in a daze, and see them clenched on my knees so hard the knuckles have turned white against the ashy gray of my skin.

  All I’ve ever wanted was to escape the control of powerful men who would use me to hurt others. I ran away from home to do that. I kept far away from any entanglements—no friends, no lovers, no family—just to prevent that from being held over me, used against me, forcing my hand. And now my family isn’t my family, and the most powerful man in the world is coming to Chicago to see me.

  He’ll use me, just like all the others. He’s said as much.

  The worst part is not knowing if I’ll say no.

  I’m not sure who I am anymore.

  I unclench my fists, and it takes a moment to uncurl the cramped claw that is my fingers. Then I dig into my pocket, deep at the bottom, where I safely tucked the memory stamp I carry with me everywhere. I stroke it open with my thumb—the first image is the last that was up before. My mom, younger and happier, telling me to blow out the candles on my birthday cake. It plays silently on a loop. The smiles almost kill me.

  I swipe it off, get up from the couch, walk to the mini kitchen and drop the stamp in the trash bowl. I punch the button, and it flushes away. Then I march like an Obedient back to my couch, sit down, and resume staring at the despair that fills the living room.

  I will never have anything normal again.

  I’m that alien the crazy Fronters think jackers are—and if DARPA can make me, they can make more. Or did they lose the DNA recipe? Are they planning to clone me? Maybe Torquin wants to verify what I can do before authorizing a fleet of Zeph-clones. I have no illusion I could stop that from happening, even if I took a running swan-dive off the balcony of my apartment right now.

  Wright’s Obedients may be crazy strong and completely controllable, but I’m the true superweapon. I always have been—that’s the secret I’ve always known, deep in my core, even before I spun my first mindfield. And now I’ll be a pawn in other people’s games, just like I’ve been all along.

  I stare at the wall as it gets darker.

  A banging sound registers in my brain, but I don’t even blink. Wright stuck me in some housing for on-base soldiers—the neighbors are just banging the walls. I’m not a prisoner. I could walk out, run away, leave everything behind—the banging comes again, louder. It rouses my brain enough to wonder if there’s a fight going on next door. Or maybe they’re putting up pictures. Family pictures of mothers and fathers and children—

  I shut that down. Whatever they’re doing, it’s not my problem. But I find myself getting up and walking stiffly back to the kitchen and staring at the trash chute. Can I get the stamp back? I don’t know the mechanism, but I’m sure the answer is no.

  Three sharp bangs.

  My head whips to the front door—it finally registers that someone’s there.

  I fling out my mindfield—there’s no shield around my apartment because I’m doing Wright’s bidding all of my own accord—

  It’s my dad. Christopher MacCay, in any event.

  His mind is a swirl of anxiety and pain and… fear. He’s not supposed to be here. He’s hoping I’ll open up. He’s afraid something’s happened.

  I twitch, my shoulders jolting, but I open the door before I can think that through.

  “Zeph,” he gushes, relieved. “You’re okay.”

  “Depends how you mean that.” It’s cold. I feel the ice in my heart.

  My dad—Christopher—winces and flicks a look behind me. “Do the lights not work?”

  I guess I am sitting all alone in the dark. I smack the button on the wall next to the door to turn on the entryway light.

  “Why are you here?” I’m not letting him in. I’m not sure why I even opened the door.

  “I know you’re thinking the worst of me right now—”

  “Not the worst.” Somehow the fact that he never told me what I was is a worse betrayal than building anti-jacker weapons for Tiller and Wright. “But give me time.”

  His shoulders sag. “Are you going to kill me?”

  I blink and actually lean away from the door. “What?”

  “I’d understand if you wanted to, son.”

  I don’t know what’s worse—him calling me son or thinking that I’m monster enough to kill my own father. Either way, I’m speechless.

  “Just… before you do anything, just hear me out, okay?”

  “I’m not going to kill you.” Now I’m pissed. “Even if you’re not my father, I’m not in the habit of killing people just because they betray everything I am and everything I’ve ever known.” The tears rush forward. I grip the door and fight them back with anger. Maybe I should kill everyone who’s done evil in the world—I wouldn’t make it far, but at least some of the carnage would stop.

  “Oh, God,” my dad mumbles. “They told you.” His gaze searches the floor—for what, I don’t know. He’s not finding my forgiveness there.

  “Yeah. I just found out. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m busy figuring out what the hell to do with my life.” I try to close the door on him, but he shoves a hand and a foot in the way.

  “Zeph, wait. Please.” His face is filled with pain.

  I could jack him. I’m so close to jacking him.

  Instead, I let the door open again and suck in a breath. “Whatever you’ve got to say, say it. Then I don’t want to see you again. Understand?
”

  He nods, drops his gaze again to the floor like he’s thinking through what lies to tell me. What bits and pieces of the truth.

  I’m about to shove the door closed again when he whispers, “I still love you, Zeph.”

  That jolts me to stillness.

  He looks up, and suddenly he’s the dad I’ve always had—same slightly-tired eyes, same weary smile. I always thought he was overworked, but now I see it’s something else—it’s the kind of fatigue that comes from carrying something for a long time. Something you can’t ever put down.

  “I love your mom and your sister, too.”

  My sister. A pang of insane jealousy runs through me. “Is she an experiment, too?” But I know even before I ask—my mom and dad had Olivia long after they escaped from DARPA. She’s theirs, for real, even if I’m not.

  “Oh, Zeph.” He’s shaking his head, his eyes shining with tears. “I knew you weren’t mine. I didn’t care. They’d done unspeakable things to your mother, and I loved her. You don’t know how much I regret not telling you sooner. I don’t expect you to forgive me—not for that or for…” He waves behind him, vaguely gesturing at the whole base. “Not for any of this.”

  “Then why are you here?” I ask again, only this time, it’s in exasperation. And I’m back to fighting off the tears. But now I don’t want him to go—I want him to explain all of it, make it all make sense, make it all better. As if some magic words from him can undo everything.

  He takes a shaky breath. “I’m here because there are things you need to know, and I might not get another chance to tell you.”

  And the way he says it, it’s not that he loves me—which I can’t even square with what’s happened, so I don’t try. No… it’s something else. Something that would make my father risk being killed by a son who must hate him.

  I step back and open the door wider.

  His face opens in surprise, but he takes the invitation and steps inside.

  I close the door, and we stand awkwardly in the small kitchen just off the entrance, neither of us apparently wanting to commit to moving further into the apartment.