She’s still looking skeptical.
I shrug. “I could have killed you long ago, Wright. You have to ask yourself—why didn’t I? Why wouldn’t I spin your mindfield any of a hundred times, if I could have?”
She leans back, confusion scrunching up her face.
“Because I cared,” I say, and it comes out harsher than I mean to. “But not about you.” This is still delicate—I’m still trying to convince her to join my crazy plan—but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten all the horrors she’s perpetrated on countless people. Me. My family. My friends. “All along, you’ve used that against me—the fact that I care enough to hold back, so you don’t murder the people I love. You know it’s true. Do you think I’ve suddenly stopped caring? You might be a soulless monster, but tell me truthfully—do you think I am?”
This makes her blink again. Hesitate. I think I’m messing with her head. Which would bring me some perverse pleasure except all of it’s true.
Finally, she says, very quietly, “No. That’s always been your weakness.” And the way she says it… it’s almost a compliment.
“Yeah. It has.” My hands are shaking, so I clench them at my sides. “So, here’s the deal—you’re going to turn on all of them. You’re going to expose the whole thing. But you need to wait until the right time—and that right time is going to be tomorrow, at this horror show Torquin has planned. Only I’m going to stop him—and so are you. Because if you don’t, Wright… he’s going to kill us both.”
Her scowl is etching hard on her forehead now. “If you’re lying to me…”
I shove the phone Ailsberg gave me toward her. “Call the president yourself. Ask him. But if you do, he’ll know I’ve failed. He might still try to salvage me—I’m the one with the ability he wants, Wright, remember that—but he’s absolutely done with you. You won’t make it off the base alive.”
Her pale cheeks go a shade more white. Because that’s a bluff she can’t call. She knows it, and so do I.
“Right,” I say, pocketing the phone again. “So, here’s how this goes. We need to convince Torquin I’ve turned you, then between now and tomorrow’s demonstration, you need to gather copies everything you’ve got—data files, serums, vids, whatever we can use against Torquin—and you need to secure it. Because as soon as you’re officially “neutralized,” you know they’re coming in to clean up everything, right?”
Her face falls slack, and her gaze drifts to the Obedients all sitting or lying around her. It’s her personal slave army, and I swear that wistful look on her face for losing them will make me sick. Like actually throw up.
“Wright,” I say, probably too harshly.
But it whips a scowl back my way.
“We don’t have a lot of time. The president is expecting to hear from me soon.”
She frowns. “How will we convince him?”
I step a little closer. “He wants a vid of you as an Obedient. I figure you can act—and so does he. The problem is your mindwaves.” I pull out the phone again and tap the tiny slot that houses the thought mic. “This is going to pick them up, so here’s the thing—you can’t have any.”
“How is that possible?” She’s leaning away from the phone, so I pull it back.
“I’m going to turn you into your favorite thing—a jacker.”
The surprise on her face only lasts a half second before it clicks that I’ll be messing with her head, and she steps back. “This is insanity.”
More like poetic justice. “This is the only way it works.” I sigh because I’m willing to just turn her without permission if I must—but this works so much better with her going full whistleblower on her bosses. “Or I can actually turn you into an Obedient if you’d like. I might be able to change you back. Not a hundred percent sure of that, though.” I’m pressing hard now, and she can’t doubt that I’ll do it.
Wright takes another step back, clenches her hands, and seems to want to scream at me or something, but she’s holding it in. She grits her teeth and nearly snarls at the floor. Her head’s shaking no, small and short. I hope that’s not her answer, but I’m prepared for it.
I slip the phone back in my pocket. And wait.
Finally, she looks back to me. “I’ll be able to jack when you’re done.”
My shoulders relax. “Yeah. But I swear, if you abuse it, I’m turning you back into a reader—once you’ve turned over everything you’ve got, that is.”
She scowls. “All right. When should we—”
But that’s all I need. I jack in fast and command her to take a seat at the nearest bunk. The nearby Obedients who were lying down all sit up. My jacked command is all that Wright can think right now, but the echo of it must also be beaming from her head, messing with them. I quickly jack her to lie down, and the rest fall over. I dive deeper into Wright’s head, and it’s a treasure trove of information—the lurid details of the conditioning tank protocols, the ongoing negotiation she has with the SecDef to grow her Obedient army, even the conversation she had with the president just yesterday. She’s still floating from the high of his praise in bringing me in—apparently, I’ve been the fish Torquin’s been trying to catch all along. There’s a bunch of information about each of the Obedients as well—including Renell and Anna—but I don’t have time for that right now.
I knock her out, put her body in sleep paralysis, and dose her brain with dopamine and endorphins to keep her from screaming or thrashing on the bed. If the orderly comes in, I’ll jack her too, but so far, she’s absorbed by her screen.
I spin Wright’s mindfield.
Her body twitches but stays silent.
I quickly push her through to a jacker configuration then let that drop. Wright as a newly-turned jacker is a mess, so I shove through her newly-hardened mindbarrier—which I’ve intentionally crafted to be super weak, just for convenience—before she wakes up and can fight back. Or do something stupid with her new jacker brain.
I command her to sit up, and the nearby Obedients stay lying down.
Good.
I pull out my phone and record Wright’s glassy-eyed stare. At this point, I don’t trust her to control anything, so I’m jacking her through this whole performance. I figure Torquin doesn’t really care, as long as she’s no longer a threat to him. And sitting on the bunk, looking like all the other Obedients passively lying nearby… it’s obvious she’s not a threat to anyone anymore.
I turn the camera to my own face. “It’s done,” I say to it, still recording. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Then I stop the vid and send it off to Torquin.
A response comes back almost immediately. Acknowledged. The caller ID says it’s from TruePatriot. That must be Ailsberg. Torquin is a powerful man with evil plans for the world, not a “dork” as my sister would say.
I release my jack-hold on Wright and step back.
She immediately clutches her head, even though the leftover endorphin level has to be keeping the headache to a minimum, and stands up, unsteadily. Her gaze flicks to the bunk she just rose from because I’m sure she doesn’t remember how she ended up there.
“What just happened?” She’s looking around with wide eyes as if everything’s new to her. She shouldn’t be able to tell the difference yet—neither I nor the Obedients are beaming thought waves from our heads and the orderly is too far away.
“I sent a recording off to the president,” I say. “You’re officially dead to him and—” A weak mindfield bangs against mine. I reach out and shove Wright back into her own head. “Settle down, changeling.” I’m more annoyed than pissed, but Wright cringes away and grasps at the bunk to stay upright.
I sigh. “It takes some training, which we have zero time for right now. Focus, Wright.”
She nods, shakily and straightens up. “So you did it… So I’m a—”
“Yes, you’re a jacker now.” Good lord, this going to take all day. I should have had Wright gather up her evidence before freaking her out. “We need to get busy on this. Torqui
n must have someone on the way already—maybe even someone inside your organization who will start the takeover. The first thing we need is to secure the control phrases for the Obedients.”
“I have those.” She taps her temple. “In here.”
“All right. You need to destroy any other copies.”
She nods absently, still looking pale and shaken. “I’ll have to go back to the conditioning room—”
“I’ll go with you,” I say before she gets too far down that road. “You need to play the part of an Obedient, at least for the next twenty-four hours. So we stick together. I’ll pretend I’m bossing you around with verbal commands since, in theory, I don’t have mindwaves to command you as an Obedient—got it?” Now that I think about it, I should be able to generate my secondary mind and beam out thought waves that the Obedients would pick up. I tuck that idea away for later.
She nods and blinks a little too much, but I think she’s recovering from the shock.
“All right, let’s go.” I cast a glance back at the end of the dorm. Anna and Renell are still lying in their bunks. I hate leaving them here, but we’ve got to stick to a plausible script for now.
Wright’s simulation of how an Obedient walks is remarkably close to her normal stiff-backed march.
I follow her out, jacking the orderly to ignore us as I go.
The sound of the crowd just keeps growing.
Mac Simpson—jacker bigot and newly-elected Senator for Illinois—is the warm-up act for this rally the president is throwing. It’s an anti-jacker fest, and the crowd is eating up Simpson’s rhetoric about how jackers have infiltrated readers’ homes and schools and families. Normally, speeches would be delivered by mindwave, translated and displayed on a screen, but we’re in an iconic pre-Change concert pavilion in Millennium Park, downtown Chicago, known for its sweeping steel bandshell and perfectly tuned acoustics. Simpson’s booming voice is amplified and blasted over the crowd, and their clapping and cheers erupt even as the collective wave of their thoughts is approaching synchrony, reverberating and reinforcing each other.
They don’t have helmets, unlike the extensive security.
I’m tucked under one of the gleaming metal shells, as close as I can be to the action and still be offstage. I told Ailsberg my range was limited, and if he wanted me to cover every jacker they were planning to hustle out for this brutal show, I needed to be close by. The truth is that handling dozens of minds at once—the president is bringing in a hundred jackers and thirty Obedients for the demonstration—will be a challenge, and being closer makes that easier. But I’m out of view of the crowds, which means I have to watch the coverage on my phone. A lone Secret Service agent in a helmet is watching over me, although he’s more attentive to the raucous crowd, which he can see from his station a half dozen feet to my left, at the edge of the bandshell.
The venue is huge—thousands of people could attend, and they’re still filing in, getting louder as more join the ruckus. The wide wooden stage where Simpson is giving his speech and the sheltered offstage area where I’m hidden are just a small part of the overall pavilion. The concrete plaza in front of the stage can hold at least a couple thousand people, and the long lawn that stretches out from there can easily hold twice that. Above the whole thing hangs a giant metal lattice that’s part of the artistic flair of the place. It also supports lights and stationary cameras; drone cams are buzzing everywhere.
I’m scanning the crowds on my phone. These people cheering Simpson’s bigotry look no different from other readers. Young and old, laughing and smiling, dressed like they just woke up and decided to bring the kids downtown to see the president and join the hate fest. It’s a brilliant sunny morning, and the weather’s good, so why not? The Fronters are also here, distinguished by their black shirts with a single, red “pure” blood drop. They’re keeping to the perimeter, a sort of visual guard that edges the lawn and that people must pass to get in.
Tessa’s Free Thinkers and Kira’s JFA—what’s left of them—haven’t arrived. Yet. When they do, that’s when things will get tense. Although this whole plan could go sideways in so many ways.
The tru-casters are covering the event like it’s a rock concert, with commentary and coverage of all aspects of the pavilion and the crowds and the speakers. Before Simpson, there was a parade of lower officials, each grabbing the mic for their five minutes of hate. The theme is Ten Reasons Why Jackers Are Terrible, and the volume of the crowd is rising more from the baiting of the rhetoric than the number of people.
On my screen, the camera pans around The Thinkers, a statue added to the pavilion after the Change swept the world. Once the tipping point was reached and virtually everyone had turned into a mindreader, the government stopped putting them in camps and started celebrating their “new way” of living. The original Thinker statue by Rodin was a solitary guy hunched over, chin propped on his fist as he contemplated the deep complexities of being a bronze casting for all eternity. The modern Thinkers sculpture is a pair placed in the middle of the concrete plaza. The male Thinker is seated like the original, only instead of tucking his fist under his chin, he stretches it out, palm forward, fingers wide. The female Thinker stands with her hand outstretched, not quite touching his. Both their heads are bowed and their bodies naked—the tru-casters wax on about how the piece represents the best of post-Change art. How readers’ thoughts are open and honest, bared to each other and the world, and that openness is emblematic of the readers’ naturally superior way of being—not only better than the generations who came before the Change, but definitely superior to the jackers who currently threaten the way of life of all reader-kind.
It’s a little sickening.
The sculpture is also why Torquin chose this venue, I’m sure.
His plan is simple and horrible—pump up the readers and trot out the jackers to be “cured” by the orbs. My job is to make sure everyone has safely turned either reader or Obedient. The worst part is Torquin’s plan to let the readers “play” with the Obedients—as if that won’t result in bloodshed.
Then again, that’s probably what he wants.
I have no intention of letting it get that far.
But my plan is a lot more complicated and stupidly risky. Once the Free Thinkers and the JFA arrive and the orbs deploy, I’m relying on Sammi to activate the backdoor kill switch. Then we’ve got a second surprise for Torquin in the form of data pulled from Tiller’s secret files. I’m in charge of freeing the Obedients so they can’t be abused, including Anna, Renell, and a play-acting Wright, all of whom are currently penned up backstage. Finally, I’m supposed to restore Wright to being a reader so she can make her big reveal, turning on Torquin and pinning him for the coup.
Basically accusing the president of treason at his own pep rally.
Absolutely nothing could go wrong with that.
But Tessa’s right—most of this was her plan anyway—that we have to go big and public with all of this. It’s the only way to make sure Torquin or Tiller or that bald guy who’s taken over DARPA now that Wright’s an “Obedient” don’t just eliminate us one by one. Or slay every last jacker in the DC. We’ve got to shock the readers out of their hate fest, and we’ve got to do it now—otherwise, Torquin will roll right ahead with his plans. And those include using the orbs literally everywhere across the country, despite the fact that they don’t really work—he’ll convert or destroy every living jacker like Tiller intended all along.
It’s genocide, just as Tessa says.
And we have to stop it today, or we won’t be able to stop it at all.
I close my eyes and reach out mentally—I max out at the furthest reaches of the crowd, although I have no hope of jacking that far. But that doesn’t matter because I’m just scanning, making sure I keep on top of things. Most of the readers are unhelmeted, although I sense a scattering of smooth helmet fields in the throng—a lot are on the shortest people. Children, I realize. Hey, honey, let’s bring the kids to the hate
rally, but safety first! Gotta have helmets!
I shake my head, eyes still closed. Along the perimeter is a line of helmets—Fronters and probably Secret Service. More agents on stage and backstage. Simpson has a helmet. Behind the bandshell, there’s a holding area with the jackers, all one hundred huddled together and helmeted. Then there’s the Obedients, also penned up, but standing absolutely still and lined up in exact rows. Their mindfields are impenetrable but don’t have the same static buzz of the anti-jacker shielding that the helmets do. Anna and Renell are there, although without a visual, I can’t tell them apart. Wright stands out like a lion in a herd of zebra—her untrained jacker mind is all over the place. Fortunately, none of the nearby readers are unhelmeted, so her frantic attempts at control go unnoticed. I hope she’s visually putting on a better show of being an Obedient than she is mentally.
And this is my star player for taking down Torquin.
I let out a long, low breath and stretch my neck. Worst comes to worst, I’ll jack her into revealing everything. I scan again for the Free Thinkers and JFA, but there’s no sign. Either they’re running late, or they’re out of my range.
I open my eyes and flip through several tru-casts on my phone. The aerial shots look the same, maybe a few more readers trickling in, drawn by Simpson and his bombastic speech. Which it seems like he’s winding up. The crowd swells applause.
My Secret Service guard looks visibly alert—like if he were any more alert, he’d pop a vein—but he’s not watching me, he’s focused on the crowd. Does he expect some jacker assassin to leap out and jack the president? I guess it’s not an unreasonable fear, given the last president was jacked into madness. This guy’s helmeted so I can’t link in to see what he’s thinking, but I’d guess all the Secret Service guys are extra revved, having basically failed to protect their last commander-in-chief. What’s funny is he knows I’m a jacker—I’m unhelmeted for a reason, and he knows it’s part of the show. Ailsberg read him in on that much and tasked him with keeping me safe. Or possibly not escaping. My guard’s got about fifty pounds more muscle than I do, plus he’s armed, and I’m not, so I guess he figures that won’t be a problem—either that or he just can’t help focusing on the possible sea of threats in front of the stage.
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