Cracked Open

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  Somehow, that sobers her. She sniffs and wipes at her eyes then beckons me further into the apartment. When I don’t move fast enough, she grabs hold of both my arm and my shoulder and tows me toward a short side hallway that leads to a bedroom. She’s clinging in her hold on me like if she lets go, I might run off. She drags me to the back of the small bedroom to a double-doored closet. It screeches with rusty hinges when she opens it. A few things are on hangers which she grabs hold of, yanks off the rod, and throws on the bed behind us.

  I watch her, perplexed. Has my mom has lost her mind?

  Then she yanks me inside the closet and closes the metal-screeching door. It’s dark, but slivers of light come through the slats in the door, painting stripes of light and dark across my mom’s face.

  “I don’t think they can hear us in here,” she whispers.

  My eyes adjust, and I finally get a get a good look at her. Her soft brown eyes are the same, but there are dark circles underneath. And her face is more gaunt than I remember.

  “Has Wright been…” I can barely force out the words. My tongue is thick. “Did she hurt you?” My arms feel like lead, hanging at my sides. What’s wrong with my mom? The air is hot, and the space cramped. My shoulders brush both the back of the closet and the door.

  “No, baby, no,” my mom rushes out. Then she touches my cheek with her cool fingertips, and it makes my eyes burn. When my face scrunches up, trying to keep the tears in, she pulls her hand away. “Whatever she’s told you, don’t believe it. We’re going to get out of this, and then we’ll find your father and your sister, and we’ll all go where they can’t find us again—”

  “Mom.” My heart is sinking. She doesn’t know where my dad is. And I don’t know if I can tell her about Olivia. “Are you sure Wright can’t hear us?”

  She frowns. “I… no. I’m not sure.” Then she looks at me like she’s catching my drift. Like I can’t tell her something. But then I realize… we’re talking out loud.

  She knows I’m a jacker.

  I reach out with my hand to fumble and find hers. I squeeze it then I reach out with my mind and gently brush her mindbarrier. Her familiar mindscent of fresh-cut lavender fills my head. Her mindbarrier is soft, just like a reader’s—just like I remember—and I link in.

  Wright said you were a jacker, I tell her.

  I am, Zeph.

  What? But your mind… how am I linking in if you’re… I’m confused.

  It’s complicated. Then she plays memories for me, images flashing through her mind. It starts with a young woman in a hospital gown and bare feet, strapped to a gurney, thrashing around. That’s me, she thinks. A jacker. I was strong back then. So strong. That’s why they took me. Experimented on me. All kinds of serums. At first, they made me stronger. She plays an image of her surging another jacker, wiping out their mind. Then another of her sitting in a bare cell with a cot and a toilet, crying in the corner.

  Mom. I don’t want to see this.

  I have to tell you, baby. So you know. Just in case…She plays another scene for me, and this time she’s pregnant. That’s you. She’s in the same dirty concrete cell, barefoot, holding her belly. It’s surreal to see my mom pregnant with me—then I realize I’ve never seen pictures like this. I remember baby pictures but never vids or photos of my mom pregnant with me.

  Because she was here.

  My throat’s closing up. Wright might not be hurting my mom right now—maybe—but someone just like Wright was abusing my mom before I was born.

  The serums had taken their toll. I’d lost most of my jack-ability. The image shifts to a different day in the cell, when my mom’s belly is even bigger. I remember when she was pregnant with Olivia, and in the memory my mom is playing now, she looks like she was ready to have me at any moment. I was so afraid they would take you away as soon as you were born. A man comes into her cell—my dad! Remember how we always said your dad and I met at work. Well, that was mostly true.

  My dad sneaks my mom past several guards. I’m holding my breath. My mom’s hand clenches mine, and a trill of fear pulses through her, even just with reliving the memory. At the final door leaving the building, my dad has to physically take down the guard. But before he does, I notice that they’re wearing the same uniform. Some military-style police outfit. My dad takes my mom by the hand and leads her out into a darkened parking lot.

  Your father and I hid after that. Went up to Wisconsin for a while, had you and then Livvy. We were always afraid they would find us again. Finally, work brought us back down to Chicago New Metro. Your father insisted they had forgotten about us. That they would never find us again. And then you disappeared…

  I swallow. Is it my fault you got caught?

  We looked everywhere for you. She releases my hand and touches my cheek again. She’s peering at me like she can’t believe I’m here. Don’t blame yourself, Zeph. They would have found us eventually.

  I pull back, away from her touch. My stomach is curled into one giant knot.

  This is my fault. All of this. If I hadn’t run…

  I link none of that to my mom, but it must show on my face.

  Zephyr Elliot MacCay. My mom scowls at me. Do not blame yourself for the evil others do. This is not your fault!

  She can say it all day long, but I know the truth.

  She grabs my hand again. You said we only have a short time. Focus, Zeph. I need you right now.

  I’m here. Every part of me wants to knock out Major John Scott and take my mom far, far away. Where Wright and her kind can never touch her again. The impulse is so strong, it’s making me twitch with the need to move. But I stay in the darkened closet with my mom’s face lit up by stripes of light and dark.

  Good, she thinks. We can’t make a move until we figure out where they’re keeping your father and Olivia.

  Olivia’s safe, I link in fast.

  What? My mom’s eyes go wide. You’ve gotten her free? My mom must not even get the news in this dingy-white prison Wright’s keeping her in.

  Sort of. It’s complicated. And this is important—Mom, you can’t let Wright know she’s alive. I’ve convinced her that Olivia’s dead, but I’ve got her tucked away, safe and sound. I just need to get you out—

  I’m not going anywhere without your father.

  Mom—

  I mean it, Zeph. Take care of your sister. She needs you. But I’m not leaving until I can get Wright to show me what she’s done with your father. I need to see him, at least. Something. So I know he’s… he’s still alive.

  I can’t even think for a moment. Would Wright kill my father? It’s possible. More than possible—what was my father but the guard who snuck out a valuable jacker experiment? Olivia and my mom—even me—we’re valuable to her. But my dad?

  Is dad a jacker? I ask. That might be all that would keep him alive.

  What? No. She frowns in the semi-dark of the closet. He was a scientist working for DARPA. Jacker research.

  Wait, I thought he was a guard.

  He just used that to get us out. God only knows what they’ve done to him. I’m not leaving without him.

  Mom, I can’t leave you here. Between the rock of guilt lying at the bottom of my stomach and the severe tightness in my chest at the thought of leaving my mom in Wright’s clutches, I can barely breathe. The closet’s running out of air, and the darkness is closing in on me.

  My mom takes my cheeks in both hands. Zephyr, listen to me. Breathe.

  I force several breaths into my chest. It eases a little. I give her a nod.

  She releases me and holds up her wrist. The striped light from the slats illuminates the slender knotted ropes around her wrist. Two bracelets—one for me and one for Olivia. I’ve tied two knots for each of you since I saw you last. I’ve been waiting and waiting and… Zeph, I’ve been waiting so long for you to come back to us. But I never gave up hope. I knew you were strong. I knew you could survive. And I knew you would find your way back.

  I can’t help
the tears leaking from the corners of my eyes. I’m coming back for you.

  Yes, you are. Me and your father both. She pulls me into another hug that’s almost painful.

  My mom is rail thin—stress or sickness or they simply aren’t feeding her enough, I don’t know—but she must have been doing pushups all this time in her apartment-prison. She’s going to crush me with this hug. Yet I feel like I have to be careful when I hug her back. Like she might break if I hug her too hard. Or maybe it’s me that feels like something about to shatter.

  There’s a pounding somewhere out in the apartment, then Scott’s muffled voice drifts in. “One more minute, Zeph. Don’t make me come get you.”

  My mom pulls back. Her tears stick to her lashes, but her eyes are fierce.

  I don’t bother to wipe mine away. I have so many questions. Still.

  We have time for three. She gives me a small smile. Short ones, Zephyr. And not the philosophical ones you were always quizzing me with in 6th year.

  I have to fight to keep the tears from obscuring my view of her beaming face. I know everyone loves their mom, but mine… mine is a serious badass. How did you fool me? I thought you and Dad were both readers.

  How do you fool people? Even other jackers? Her smile grows.

  So you’re like me? Of course, she’s like me. She’s my mom.

  No, baby. But I have a few tricks of my own. Next question.

  So, you knew I was a jacker—why not tell me you were too? This feels like a betrayal. Or maybe a tragedy. Like, all of this could have been avoided if we had just told each other what we were. Or I confessed to my parents. Or didn’t run away. Something.

  You were hiding so well. It was second nature to you. She shakes her head. I should have known you might get into trouble and hide that, too. I regret that like you can’t even know. I don’t know why you ran, honey, but whatever it was, it doesn’t matter now. We’re going to be a family again. Free. Together.

  I nod, rapidly. It’s a promise.

  The banging comes again. I’m out of time.

  I hug my mom once more. I’m coming back for you.

  I know you are. She holds me a beat too long, and I have to pull away first. Scott’s not going to wait, and I don’t want him anywhere near my mom. I climb out of the closet and hurry across her small apartment. I reach the front just as Scott’s coming through the door.

  “Okay, kid. Time to go.” He frowns. “Wright’s waiting for you.”

  Of course, she is.

  I don’t say a word, just brush past him as I stride out the door.

  Scott brings me to a room where I’ve never been before.

  I already don’t want to be here, but the room itself is creeping me out even before Wright arrives with whatever party she has planned. The walls are lined with screens and stainless cabinets. The floor is stark white tile that glints with the overhead plasma lights. There’s a ton of machinery—lab diagnostic types and boxes spilling out electrical wires and circuitry like it’s been disemboweled—but the worst is the two chairs in the center, about a dozen feet in apart in this cavernous shop of horrors. Chair is probably the wrong word. These look like the seats in a dentist office—if your dentist worked with electrodes and brainwave mappers. A skull cap bristling with a thousand optic wires hovers above each, dangling from a pole that holds bags of saline or medicine or who-knows-what. A bewildering array of straps lies limp around the chair, strategically hanging off the arm rests and foot stirrups. Whoever sits in these things doesn’t get up voluntarily. Next to each gleams a stainless steel tray cart on wheels. There’s nothing on it, but it’s the kind that holds medical implements during a surgery… or something.

  A full-body shudder makes my sneakers squeak on the tile.

  “I am not sitting in one of those,” I say to Scott.

  He snorts a laugh, and I’m not sure what that means. Before I can ask, the double doors into the operating theater—because that’s the only way I can describe it, although I have no idea what kind of operation happens here—swing open, and Wright cruises in, her short heels clicking like gunfire on the flooring. At her side is a silver-haired man who’s thin, with bags under his eyes, and a ram-rod straight back. I could tell he was military even without the olive uniform and forest of chest candy. Behind him follows a man with jet black hair swept smartly to the side. He’s younger, with dead eyes and a thin mouth—the creep factor with this guy is off the charts. I reflexively reach out with my mind to check them both, but they’re just readers.

  It’s the guy who follows that makes me step back.

  Ethan. I barely remember his name, but sure as hell remember his face. He’s the jackhole Tiller used to drill into my head to make sure I wasn’t a jacker. The guy I fooled into thinking I was a reader. Ethan is Tiller’s attack dog… and he’s here. Which means he works for Wright, too.

  Holy crap, I am so very, very screwed.

  I take another step back. “What’s happening here?” I ask Scott as this group of trouble sorts into the room, backed up by a final guy with an anti-jacker helmet and a very large gun slung in front. He stays by the door, which is now shut, definitively showing there’s zero escape from this room until Wright’s done with her party.

  “That’s SecDef Hatchoff,” Scott says, gesturing to the man in the uniform. I wouldn’t know the Secretary of Defense from the janitor, but it’s obvious in context. The thing that’s got me bracing for a jack-attack or something worse is the smirk on Ethan’s face. And Wright’s silent mind-talk conversation with the SecDef and his slimy follower with the slicked-back hair.

  The three of them stop on the far side of the two chairs in the center. Ethan stands off to the side with an amused expression that’s definitely pointed at me. It’s obvious he hasn’t forgotten me, either, and he’s not surprised to see me, which means he knows more about what’s happening than I do—which is a whole lot of nothing.

  Wright turns to me. “Zeph, this is Secretary of Defense Hatchoff.” She doesn’t introduce the shadow guy standing to her right. “He knows of your success with Renell, moving a reader into jacker mode. He would like to see a demonstration of your ability to do the reverse, pushing a jacker into reader mode. If you would.” That last part is a formality. There’s no way this is optional. She gestures to one of the torture chairs. “Ethan, please take a seat.”

  He stays put and folds his arms. “I’ll stand.”

  Wright is mightily unimpressed. “Sit.”

  The smirk drops off his face, and he slouches over to the chair. With a barely audible snarl, he climbs into it, straddling the center cushion and not leaning back. Which he should. If I have to flip him like Wright says, he’ll wish he was lying down. That way the pain won’t send him crashing to the floor. Instead, he just smirks at me and kisses the air in my direction. Then I feel it—the slinky ooze of his instinct jack trying to work its way into my mind. Since I last grappled with this jackhole, I’ve reconfigured my mindbarrier to lock out his frequency of jack—which is unusual, but not unique. Julian was an instinct jacker, too, and he couldn’t get in. The coolness of Ethan’s attempted jack slides across the back of my skull then retreats. His smirk slowly fades and hardens into a glare.

  Okay, maybe it won’t be such a burden to spin Ethan’s mindmap.

  “Any time you’re ready, Mr. MacCay,” Wright says, with a tone that means get moving or I’m getting out the guns.

  I suck in a breath. Scott gives me a pointed look. He warned me about this—keep your cool and do what she says—yet I’m still hesitating. This is exactly the thing I feared—Wright using me, pushing me into being her weapon. And she didn’t bring in the SecDef for no reason. This is going somewhere, and I have no idea where. But powerful people using my abilities for their own purposes? That has never turned out well. For me or anyone on the receiving end of my skills.

  Skills which don’t currently include the ability to flip a jacker into a reader.

  “Okay,” I say to Wright, any
way. As if she were waiting for my agreement.

  I slowly step up to the foot of the chair Ethan’s straddling.

  The smirk is back. “Give it your best shot, MacCay.”

  I kind of feel sorry for him. Not really, though.

  I reach out and surround Ethan’s mindmap with my own mental reach, measuring the peaks and valleys with that fine-tuned ability I have to memorize every detail. I really have no idea what I’m doing here. When I was trying this out with Renell, he already had the ability to do it—I just had to nudge his mindmap from one fuzzy state to another. Like it wanted to flip, or at least it had the built-in capacity to do so. But Ethan’s mindmap is as sharp and crisp as they come. Jagged cliffs. Cavernous valleys. Like a relief map of a prickly moon. I vaguely remember from reshaping the minds in the clinic that the sharpness of the features was related to the strength of the jacker. If so, Ethan’s probably a strong jacker in the conventional sense, on top of his instinct jack ability.

  The smirk on his face is slowly dying. He’s realizing that I’m not going to jack him the normal way. Not a lot of IQ in this one.

  I close my eyes to focus better. I went by feel with Renell, and I will have to do the same here. Worst case, I’ll flatten out everything and reshape it the way I remember. Probably wipe his memory. Possibly most of his personality. Which wouldn’t be a tragedy—maybe he’ll fashion something better out of his life than what he’s got now.

  Focus, Zeph.

  I give a nudge to Ethan’s mindmap. I hear a gasp and a squeak of the leather of the torture chair, but that’s just a taste of the pain he’ll have if I fully spin his map. I feel him lashing out, shoving at my head like he can jack me to stop. Which is a decent approach, except it’s too late for that. But a simple nudge apparently wasn’t enough. He’s not going to flip through into some alternate mode like Renell.

  Full spin, then.

  Ethan’s screams echo like crazy around the room. I’m fishing through the spinning configurations, searching for one that’s like a reader. A simple open configuration won’t do—he has to have zero mindbarrier. Zero resistance. And beam thoughts from his mind… like my secondary mind. The reader mode I use to fool jackers. That’s a construction, and it’s hollowed out, just a shell outside my own mind, but what if it wasn’t? What if I filled it with the contents of everything I am? I can almost see it—how I could flip myself to a reader configuration—but no way am I experimenting on myself. Instead, I search inside the flying possibilities of Ethan’s mind and find one that’s a shell. An empty shell. Then I let his mindmap fall back to its original jacker configuration, and just before it locks in place, I shove it into this shell configuration.