Through the Static

by Jeanette Grey

  “What should…interrogate…or call it in first?”

  “…get a crack at her…”

  Then with shocking clarity, a myriad of images appeared in her mind. Gruesome images. Twisted mouths and snapped bones, fingernails tearing and blood and…

  For the first time since her name had been spoken aloud, Aurelia snapped her gaze up to Jinx’s, only to find his visage a barely restrained mask of horror. His hands wavered around the handle of his weapon, doubt so clear in every line of him.

  But still, he stood firm. He was made to stand firm.

  Desperate, she forced open the connection to his mind again and spoke directly into his thoughts. Unsure if it was an accusation or a plea, she whispered her reminder. “You promised you wouldn’t let them touch me.”

  His mouth crumpled but his stance remained impassive, his weapon raised.

  As the others closed in, she couldn’t understand how she’d actually believed him.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  “You have your orders, soldier.”

  Another jolt of electricity seared Jinx’s spine, adding to the blanket of control keeping him in place. No longer his own, his arms ached as he fought in vain to lower them. To all outward appearances, he was utterly still, but inside he was all movement, all thoughts flying out into the ether of his link.

  “Don’t do this,” he pleaded. “Don’t—”

  The lick of electrical flame was hot enough to make his eyes roll back.

  In his mind, he saw what they were going to do to her, what they would make him do to her. He lashed out again, trying to reason with them. “She can help us. She’s innocent. We don’t have to. We don’t.”

  “You’re with us or against us. One mind, one mission.”

  Going numb from the pain, he rebuffed commands to advance, to reach for the knife tucked into his boot. But he still couldn’t make himself move the way he wanted to.

  Aurelia’s eyes fixed on his. The contrast with how she’d looked at him the night before couldn’t have been starker. Instead of trust, there was disappointment and resignation. Betrayal.

  He’d betrayed her as surely as his Three was betraying him.

  His knees threatened to buckle as their efforts to control him intensified. The rush of thoughts and commands overwhelmed his synapses, and his will to disobey shriveled beneath the onslaught. With his eyes, he begged Aurelia for forgiveness. From the hard set of her jaw, he knew she granted him none.

  Curse reached out and grabbed her by the back of her hair, yanking her upward, and her scream tore through the room. Jinx felt her agony, a shock of pain down his neck and to his shoulder blade. She squeezed her eyes shut. Jinx wished he could close his own.

  And then there were more eyes. Dark ones gathering on the edges of his vision. A woman with a pale face, staring out at him through the static.

  The sadness choked him.

  Aurelia’s silent whisper cut through the chaos. “Help me. Please.”

  He looked from the ethereal face to Aurelia’s. Both their voices echoed his own.

  “Stop this. Please stop this.”

  But nothing stopped. Curse squeezed Aurelia’s shoulder, wringing another cry from her.

  And Jinx couldn’t be still anymore. He couldn’t.

  With his arms screaming at him, he forced his weapon to lower, forced his legs to take one step back. The electrical backlash still coursed up and down his spine, but he ignored it.

  All he had to do was advance a few steps, lift the handle of his gun and crack it down on Curse’s skull. Subdue Charm. Grab Aurelia and run.

  He just—

  A crushing wave of suppression made him stagger.

  He couldn’t force his hand against his partners. He couldn’t. He looked on, helpless, as Curse shook Aurelia again. When her eyes met Jinx’s, he saw the despair and the fight in them.

  The fight rose up in him as well.

  Holding her gaze, he reached out for her mind and shuddered with relief when his thoughts found purchase in it.

  She was Aurelia Locke. The woman he’d helped patch together last night was Aurelia Locke.

  If anyone could do it, she could.

  “Free me.”

  Her eyes widened. “I don’t know if I can.”

  “Free me.”

  In the next instant, Charm was in front of him, her face twisted with anger as she lifted her hand and slapped him. His ears rang with the shock of it, and he fought to make his own fists come under his control.

  “Free me.”

  Charm was wrestling with his locked hands for his gun, and in his periphery, Jinx saw Curse lift Aurelia higher, saw him gather her hands behind her back and then slam her down, face-first onto the mattress. He placed his knee in the center of her back, and her scream cut off in a gasp that cut deeper into Jinx than her cries had.

  “Free me.”

  “Hold on to me.”

  All at once, Jinx’s brain exploded, a thousand electrical signals all crossing at once, synapses firing into nothingness. He felt the world falling out from underneath him as a silence so complete, so unbearable, shut down all his senses. His knees gave out beneath him, but he didn’t feel the impact.

  “Hold on to me.”

  He flailed out in the darkness for the soft tenor of her mind. When he found it, he grasped tightly to the sound of her mental voice and followed it, dragging himself to the surface.

  In a burst, his vision returned, but the silence still deafened him. Charm was standing over him, her weapon leveled at him. Her brows were pinched, and Jinx expected the flood of pain and anger, but it didn’t come. Instead he floated.

  But he was tethered, too.

  Warm whispers of encouragement, underscored by the quietest wisps of panic filled the spaces left by his partners’ voices. Like a hand in the darkness, Aurelia’s mental energy held him to the world.

  And helped him up. Filled him with energy and with life.

  Feeling all his strength return, Jinx flung himself up from the ground. Half his synapses were still misfiring, but for the first time in years, his actions were entirely his own. He lashed out, knocked Charm to the floor and stood over her.

  “You made me hurt her. You were going to make me hurt her.”

  Charm’s mouth opened and closed, but no sounds came out. He reached down, lifted her head and slammed it against the floor.

  Her eyes closed.

  “Help me.”

  He whipped around, adrenaline and rage surging through him. Curse stood over Aurelia, horrible sounds coming out of his mouth.

  Jinx didn’t wait to listen to them. In an instant he was upon them, clinging to his former leader’s back with one arm wrapped around his throat, the other pulling at his hands, forcing the bigger man to let go. Freed, Aurelia rolled away, and then Jinx was fighting for his life.

  And hers.

  He kicked and punched, tore at Curse’s chest. His fist came away bloody, and then his spine was slamming into the wall, Curse’s head bashing into his temple. His limbs all cried out, wanting to let go, but he held on as his skull hit plaster again and again.

  “Stop!”

  He looked up at the same time Curse froze. Aurelia stood before the both of them, a gun in her hand, her arms shaking. She motioned with the muzzle of the weapon.

  “Let him go.”

  Curse’s arms twitched, hesitation making him pause for just a second.

  Jinx didn’t falter. As Curse vacillated, Jinx twisted, pulled hard and yanked himself from between the man’s huge body and the wall. In the next instant, he slammed Curse’s head into the plaster. Kicked him again and again.

  Only when the man went limp did Aurelia’s voice break into his haze.

  “Stop. Stop, you have to stop.”

  The veil o
f violence and madness receded just long enough for him to look back at her.

  “You can’t. Kill him, and it’ll kill you, too.”

  She shook as she pointed the gun at them both.

  “The link?” he asked.

  “Interrupted, but not severed. He dies, you die.”

  Jinx glanced between Curse’s still form and Aurelia’s shivering one.

  He only took the time to grab Curse’s weapon. And then her hand was in his, and it was as if every broken piece of himself clicked into place at once. As if everything suddenly made sense.

  And he could never go back.

  He breathed into her mind the single word, “Run.”

  Chapter Five

  Something was wrong. Every cell in Aurelia’s brain felt like it was lighting up, the tips of her fingers and toes all curling.

  She’d been psychically linked to others before, of course, but never like this. Never to someone who needed so much from her or who clung so tightly, never in a way that cut so sharply into her very tissues. The connection rippled, the depth of it opening up parts of herself she’d never dared to expose, and yet they revealed themselves eagerly. It made every inch of her skin feel warm. Needy. Quenched by the touch of his.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  “Faster.”

  She quickened her pace and reached out with her senses. There were no sounds of pursuit, no thoughts following them from the house. She looked over her shoulder to find the path behind them clear.

  Jinx didn’t slow at all. His hand both gentle and firm around hers, he tugged her forward and out into the light, and she struggled to match his pace, all while still trying to figure out what was happening with their link. Scanning the frayed edges of his mind, she scoured his brain for any sign that her efforts to isolate him from his partners were failing. There were definitely loose neurons firing into oblivion, and his hand twitched where it wrapped around hers. It had been such a patched-up job, the way she’d pulled him free. She’d need to fix it soon if he was going to survive. If she was going to survive keeping him together.

  It was a dangerous business, trying to separate a Three. The connections between the members ran so deep, and Jinx’s mind in particular had already suffered so much damage as the link had degraded. He wouldn’t have been able to recover if she’d just set him loose; the second she’d tried, he’d foundered, sinking to the earth with his brain giving off sparks. He’d reached out through the darkness for anything to grab onto. And she’d let him grab onto her. She’d let him inside her, more intimately than if they’d made love.

  Just beyond the tree line, he pulled her off the dirt road and into the brush. An image of a transport materialized in her thoughts, and sure enough, as they pushed through the leaves, she saw the glint of metal, a stray beam of sunlight reflecting off glass. She tensed in anticipation of his letting go of her hand, but if anything he just gripped onto her more tightly. He led her around to the passenger’s side, still holding on to her as he flung the door open.

  For a moment, they stood there in the shadow of the car, as if on a precipice. Shadowy images of his Three flashed through her mind. The Three he would leave behind. His uncertainty was a heavy weight in her mind as he seemed to brace himself to step off and into the unknown.

  She clenched her hand into a fist at the prickly sensation of his anxiety. He wasn’t the only one taking a leap here. She was getting into this car with a stranger—one who should be an enemy. After refusing to trust anyone for so long, it was terrifying.

  Something warm dulled the edges of her fear, and she looked up into his eyes. His concern blanketed her at the same time that his silent questions wrinkled its fabric.

  She tilted her head up and squared her jaw. “It’ll be all right.”

  God, she hoped it would.

  At her assurance, he searched her eyes, then nodded. He placed his hands on her hips and lifted her, set her down inside the seat before turning as if to walk away.

  He didn’t want to, though. She could feel it.

  She reached out and grabbed onto his shirt, a sudden surge of panic flaring inside her at the idea of not touching him. Her mind and skin were still crying out for contact, and as he let himself be yanked back toward her, she surprised herself by clutching him close, throwing her arms around his neck.

  In the next instant, their mouths crashed together, a hot culmination of everything she’d been longing for the night before and everything she needed right now. With the perfect understanding between them, she didn’t fight it. Instead, she drowned, opening to him and sucking at his bottom lip, tasting the inside of his mouth and letting his tongue play against hers.

  She didn’t know if it was the link or if it was just him, but as she pressed herself against his body, her nerves caught fire, her breasts tight and the space between her legs aching. Kissing had never been like this before.

  His fist slammed into the metal frame above her head. A hundred impressions flooded her mind, pleasure and a gasping need he couldn’t contain. Nothing had ever been like this for him before.

  She pulled her head back and put her hands on either side of his face. For a long moment, she searched his eyes, struggling to process the depth of emotion he was pushing across their link.

  “I can’t. I don’t know. I want…”

  And then there were images of the broken bodies of his partners. Their names. Curse. Charm.

  They were still inside. Probably regrouping.

  God, how had she let herself get so distracted?

  “You’re right,” she said, gasping. “I know. I know. Go.”

  He didn’t, though. He leaned in and pressed his lips once more to hers, showing her a wave of gratitude too deep for her to understand. Of trust. When he pulled away, it was abrupt and left her reeling. The door slammed shut, and seconds later, the one on the other side of the transport opened. He folded his big frame into the seat, then pressed his palm to the control panel in the center of the console. The engine of the vehicle roared to life.

  He strapped himself in, wrapped one hand around the steering wheel at the same time he reached over with the other and grasped the back of her neck. The contact soothed all the frayed edges inside of her.

  And then they were off.

  He drove like a maniac through the brush and onto the narrow dirt path. The sight of branches whipping out at them brought a wave of nausea and flashbacks from the night before. A sensation of running through trees, wet and bleeding. As the first wave of adrenaline from their escape abated, the ache in her shoulder flared. She winced, lifting the arm gingerly, and in her periphery, Jinx frowned.

  “You need a doctor.”

  She’d heard his voice so rarely, and always when he was throwing it around for his partners’ benefit. Hearing it here in this close space, as tense as it was, it sounded musical and intimate. She wanted to hear more.

  She scanned his form, grimacing at the bruise blooming across his temple before taking in the blood and scrapes on his knuckles where they gripped the steering wheel. “So do you.”

  His words were tight and clipped. “I’m fine.”

  But even as he spoke, a menacing tickle of electrical noise skimmed across the surface of their connection. Things were unstable inside him, and though he was trying to keep it from her, he couldn’t contain the aftereffects of being torn from his Three the way he had.

  He needed more than a doctor. He needed Isabel’s sure surgeon’s hands. He needed Stan.

  Aurelia bit back the dizziness swirling through her head again at the thought of her research partner, soaked in blood and laid out beside the open door of their transport. She wished so badly that he were here. While she’d led the way with the more theoretical parts of their work, Stan had always been the better clinician, steadier with his hands and more delicate with his manipulations of the connec
tions between neurons and electrodes. He would know what to do—how to sever Jinx from his Three. And from her.

  There was a low rumble from beside her. She looked over to see Jinx staring straight ahead, jaw tense, arms locked. “Who is he?”

  She cursed. It took time to settle into a connection like this, and she wasn’t guarding her thoughts closely enough. “My research partner. Stan.”

  Jinx’s body tensed further. “Is he…”

  A rush of heat surged through her spine and lingered in her sex as flashes of how Jinx had kissed her warmed her skin. Still, it took her a second to comprehend what he was asking—if there was someone else she owed those kisses to. If Stan was that someone to her.

  “No.” She turned away and gazed out the window. “And even if he was…” She ground her teeth together and said a silent, guarded prayer inside her head. “He’s dead.”

  A hush fell over them, made deeper when they drove off the dirt road and onto smooth asphalt. No longer bumping with the uneven ground, the car ceased its trembling even as it accelerated.

  Jinx finally broke the uneasy quietude. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.”

  Stan had been one of the only people she’d ever trusted, and even that had been hard-won over a period of years and years of slow advances. The only other people were Isabel and…she shuddered. Peter.

  Unwilling to go anywhere near that, especially while her mind was not her own, she refocused on the road in front of them, physically and metaphorically. Watching the pavement disappear beneath them, she tried to sort out a plan.

  “How long until your partners catch up with us?” she asked.

  “I can’t hear them.” The way he said it, the words sounded hollow, his disconcertedness bleeding across the wires.

  She reached out with as much comfort as she could, touching his arm with her fingertips and stroking the tattered edges of his mind with her thoughts. “I know you can’t. But how long do you think we have?”