Cracked Open

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  Mindless. That’s what this guy feels like. As if he’s been programmed to seek and destroy just like Tiller’s autonomous jacker-converters. But he has to be a DARPA creation, one of Wright’s “special projects.” I realize with a jolt this was her plan all along.

  None of us were supposed to survive.

  I finally get a handle on one of the few sharp ridges of his mindmap and give it a hard yank… and it finally breaks free. Only the map doesn’t spin, and there’s no screaming. It just… breaks.

  He falls to the ground. And stays there. I slowly stand up from behind the lawn couch. People are still running everywhere, but the man’s just lying there, face down in the grass. His mind is entirely blank now. Not even static. As I’m probing it, the thing slowly dissipates into nothingness.

  A horrible chill washes over me. I pull back.

  I’ve sensed that nothingness before, during my time in the Clans, and I know exactly what it is.

  I just killed him.

  I stumble backward, toward the house, every instinct telling me to run. I belatedly remember Renell. He’s pinned under a pile of Secret Service agents, and a quick brush of his mind shows he’s back in reader mode again. Ethan’s instinct jack would have broken when he was killed, but my mindmap spinning must have automatically reverted back to his natural mode while I was distracted. He’s already concocting a story for them about how he’s an innocent reader.

  Mindjacked. Just like the president.

  And if Renell has a crowd of Secret Service around him, that’s nothing like mob around the president. He’s down, flat on his back on the grass, but only because several of them are holding him down. I can barely glimpse the president’s flailing arms and legs through their wall of protection. Someone’s struggling to get a helmet on him. I fling my mind out, and just before the helmet blocks his mindwaves, I get a sense of how chaotic they are. Terrified. Whirling in madness.

  Maybe Ethan didn’t have time to put a kill jack on him. Or maybe he was only supposed to drive the president insane. A sick feeling inside me says that in that brief moment of time when I was trying to save Renell’s life, Ethan kept his eyes on the prize.

  My chest is so tight, it’s hard to breathe. I take another step back and trip over a woman as she dashes past, her high heels digging into the soft grass. As I’m scrambling up from the ground, I see a huddle of Secret Service agents hustle across the grass toward the northeast wing. In the middle of their protective grouping is the Vice President, wide-eyed and wearing a helmet. It occurs to me as they reach the building and disappear inside… he was never a target.

  This is Wright’s mental coup. Whether the president is killed or simply loses his mind, the transfer of power will be the same. The result will be the same—President Torquin.

  I’ve got to get out. That thought rings like a bell in my head. There’s nothing I can do for Renell. Or the president. Ethan is dead. Wright’s assassin is dead. They have plenty of people to blame for what’s gone down here, but if they find me, I’m dead.

  I lurch toward the main house, praying the Secret Service will be too busy finding a safe space for the Vice President to worry about one more reader fleeing the scene. I head for the front, flinging out my mind, searching for Juliette. I find her in the entranceway, so I double my staggering speed, and when I break into the open area, I see her bent over Sammi’s body. It’s laid out on the floor. There’s no one else this far forward—my sweep says everyone who’s fleeing the party is going back out through the guest entrance. The Vice President’s detail is hunkering down in the northeast wing.

  I hurry up to Juliette, but I waste no time with words.

  Sammi’s mind is still static—fading, but still there. Tiller’s shock conversion therapy seems like just a form of whatever Olivia did to the minds of Jackertown. A surge that overloads the mind and resets it. How many jackers did Tiller kill with this technology? How many were able to reboot back into readers like he seemed to think would happen to Sammi?

  I realize that I could remake Sammi into a reader.

  I discard that idea immediately.

  Then I recall all the hundreds of times I’ve kept track of her, sought her out, linked into her mind to tell her that her date time was up with Juliette. I know every bump and valley of Sammi’s jacker mind, and it takes a little focus and shutting out Juliette’s sobs to spin up the static of Sammi’s mind into something I can shape into an operational form again.

  I close my eyes and go to it.

  Juliette shrieks, but that’s just because Sammi’s body is reacting to the reshaping of her mind. I don’t have time to mess with endorphins, so I just spin and spin and lock down as quickly as I can.

  Sammi gasps and lurches up from the floor to sitting. The residual pain contorts her face, but she’s so breathless, she can’t scream. Then I jack in and quickly crank up some endorphins for her because I don’t need her giving us away. Relief eases her expression, but it’s not just the endorphin-crank. Juliette is also hugging her and sobbing and softly crying her name.

  I link into both their minds. Juliette’s is a mess, but she’s functional. Sammi doesn’t push me out because I think she’s still coming back from being stunned.

  We have to go, I tell them both.

  Between Juliette and me, we get Sammi on her feet. She’s not too steady, but we hoof it out the front door, down the wide granite steps, and head for the forest, just like I originally mapped out for Juliette and Sammi’s escape.

  As we’re stumbling through the darkening forest, I can all-too-easily see us getting lost… and then finally found by Tiller’s men. Then I remember I still have my phone. I dig it out with my free hand then jack into the mindware and scrit Jiaying. NEED COORDINATES OF EXTRACTION POINT.

  There’s nothing for a heart-stopping ten seconds, then the coordinates come through, playing out slow and even in my earbud. I tap them to guide us in.

  “Are you okay? The news. Zeph.” The even tone belies the panic that must be going on in Aaliyah’s Home.

  THREE FOR EXTRACTION. ME. BABY BIRD. SUPERFLY. Those are the code names Jiaying made up. She dreamed up one for every person who might be involved.

  “Your ride confirmed waiting for extraction.”

  I almost hate to ask, but… KID RESCUE?

  “Complete. Kid and Mama Bear helped escape.” There’s a pause, then, “Two casualties. Non-fatal.”

  I breathe out a sigh. Two people. Injured, but not dead. Risking themselves for my sister and my mom. WHO?

  “Hoorah.” That’s Major John Scott. “StringBean.” That’s Hinckley. I almost laugh with his codename.

  I OWE THEM. I have no idea how I’ll pay them back for any of this.

  A shudder of relief passes through me as Juliette, Sammi, and I break free of the trees, and sure enough, there’s an autocab waiting. Sasha hurries out to open the door and help us inside.

  As we pull away from Tiller’s sprawling estate, I let my head fall back, and my eyes close…

  And I try not to think about what all this will mean.

  “It could change,” I say.

  “It’s not going to change, Zeph.” Tessa lets her irritation show because that’s what readers do. They don’t lie or hide or keep secrets. Not normally. And I don’t want that with her.

  But it still hurts. “I’m sorry.” But my words mean little. Not with the final precincts reporting, and the spread by which Kira is losing the election just growing wider. Not with Tessa busily writing Kira’s concession speech between swipes at the tears that keep leaking from her eyes.

  This isn’t my fault, but it feels like a rock in the pit of my stomach anyway.

  Tessa and I are huddled in a corner of the stage of the Mediation Center. The floor is filled with folding tables and chairs and volunteers with screens, all bringing in the latest vote count tallies and casting them up on the screen on the wall. Everyone is here tonight, even people like Sammi who were lying low, recovering from the trauma. An
d my mom, who’s been resting and getting a thorough workup of medical tests from the clinic, at Kira’s insistence.

  I don’t want to bother Tessa anymore, so I leave her to her speech-writing and make my way across the stage. Juliette’s sitting in Sammi’s lap on one of the couches, but they’re both watching the screens and the endless tru-casts of Mac Simpson’s fiery anti-jacker speeches. The polls closed an hour ago, and he’s already made an acceptance speech. In between Simpson’s ugly rants, the tru-casts are building up to Vice President Torquin’s impending speech. President Ashton lasted three days, but he died at three o’clock this afternoon before the polls were even closed in the special election in Illinois. Torquin took the oath of office minutes later. The new president is scheduled to address the country this evening.

  I gesture to the screen. “Has he made his speech yet?”

  “It’s starting soon.” Juliette’s biting her lip, looking pensive. She’s been hiding out at Aaliyah’s with Sammi, refusing to go home. I’m not sure if that’s a final decision, but it’s like everyone has been holding their breath until tonight, watching three days of tru-casts about how jackers attacked the president and permanently put him in a weird medical condition where he was locked in a constant state of terror. He lived for those three days while the courts debated whether it was permissible to allow a president to die under such extreme extenuating circumstances. What was humane? What was right? What was legal? Meanwhile, public opinion slowly and inexorably turned against jackers. By the time the president died of heart failure today, the fate of the special Senate election in Illinois was sealed. And the fate of countless jackers around the country was worsened in ways just starting to come out. A surge in hate crimes. Roaming reader justice mobs. More purity killings. The Reader’s First Front has registered as a legit political party. The election of their leader to the Senate will be the first solid expression of reader outrage over the whole incident.

  It would have been better had Ethan killed the president outright.

  But he didn’t.

  Sammi has been more quiet than normal since I rebooted her mind. I was afraid at first that she remembered nothing—that I had wiped all her memories like the others—but Tiller’s technology really was about flipping her into being a reader. It didn’t surge and wipe out her memories so much as try to flip her brain mode. It hadn’t worked, of course, and once I reshaped her into a jacker again, she was fine. But the whole thing had her spooked, and she has said little about it—just held Juliette and watched the world slowly unravel like the rest of us.

  I ease onto the couch next to the two of them.

  Sammi catches my eye. “He’s going to win,” she says quietly.

  “Yeah, I know.” I grimace at Simpson flapping his jaw on the screen. He has this permanent red-faced look to him.

  “It’s going to get worse, Zeph.”

  I raise one eyebrow, but I think I know what she means. “Having a hate group elect a senator isn’t going to make things better, that’s for sure.”

  She gives Juliette a little squeeze. “I mean Torquin.”

  I frown. This is the most she’s said about it in three days. “What do you mean?”

  She flicks a look at Juliette, but she better not try to order the girl away because even I know how well that will go. Instead, she says, “They still have Tiller’s technology.”

  “The new jacker-converter he used on you.”

  “It’s more than that.” She shudders, visibly, then she drops her voice. “When I was fighting Tiller’s drones… there was something different about them.”

  I lean in. “I saw you surging them. And then it seemed like you must have reprogrammed them, or something, to smash into each other.”

  “I thought that would do it,” she says. “I thought I could just retarget them, but once they started killing each other, there was a failsafe that kicked in. And that…” She swallows. “Remember how I told you there was a rudimentary jacker AI?”

  I frown. “Yeah.”

  Juliette’s flicking looks between the two of us.

  Sammi shakes her head. “That AI wasn’t just for sensing jackers. It was a jacker. I know what it feels like to fight with another jacker. I was fighting those drones, Zeph. And they were fighting back. And once they put their collective power together, they slammed my reach back into my head… and then I couldn’t stop them. That’s when they got me.”

  I lean back. “That’s not good.”

  “That’s very not good.” The dark circles under eyes make a little more sense now.

  Juliette twists in her lap to peer into her face. “You didn’t tell me that part.”

  Sammi sighs. “He’s still your father.”

  Juliette’s jaw works like she’s chewing on words instead of spitting them out. Finally, she says, “I can’t help that.” Then she climbs off Sammi’s lap and stalks away. She doesn’t go far, just sits over by Tessa working madly on her screen. Tessa ignores her while she fumes.

  “Things okay with you two?” I ask.

  Sammi leans forward and laces her fingers. “She wants us to run away together.”

  I lift my eyebrows. “Well, that could work.”

  She scowls. “How is that going to work?” She flicks a hand to the screen. “This is everywhere now, Zeph.”

  I nod. It’s not like I believe running is the answer either. But I want them to get back together, just because I want to believe it’s possible for jackers and readers. Still. Even though the rift between jackers and readers is wider than its ever been… and getting worse, not better.

  Kira is alternating between watching the screen and talking to Hinckley and Anna and Scott. Hinckley’s arm is in a sling, and Scott still has a limp from where he was shot, but they’re right back in the fray. Scott’s a permanent member of the team now. It’s not like he can go back to Wright.

  “Have you told them about Tiller’s jacker drones?” I ask Sammi.

  “Not yet. I was waiting.” And I know what she means. Waiting for the election. Waiting to find out if jackers will have a voice in the Senate or if the most virulent bigot to run for office would take the day.

  “You should tell Kira,” I say.

  Sammi nods. “I will. After.” After the concession speech, which is coming soon.

  The door of the Mediation Center swings open, and my sister strides in with my mom in tow. They’re carrying bags of food that they set on the tables in the middle of the floor. The volunteers descend on them and get busy unpacking and diving in. My mom is all smiles, handing out napkins and drinks from a cooler. She looks better now, getting color back in her face. Mostly, I think it’s just being around other people, especially jackers, that’s bringing her back to life. That, and she hasn’t left Olivia’s side for most of the last three days. But we’re all still worried about my dad—Wright still has him, as far as we know. And I’m not exactly Wright’s favorite person right now. Although technically, I did nothing wrong. Scott broke into the base with a horde of JFA jackers to liberate my mom and sister… but I did what I was supposed to do.

  Everything except die. I’m pretty sure that was her plan for me.

  I haven’t heard from her since the day of the party, and I’m still sorting what our next steps will be. But I’ve promised my mom that we will find my dad—one way or another. And I’m sticking around Chicago New Metro—specifically Jackertown—until we do.

  Olivia grabs a slice of pizza, puts it on a napkin and works her way through the crowd to the stage. She lightly patters up the three steps and stands in front of Sammi and me on the couch. “Food’s up,” she informs us.

  I point to her slice of pizza. “That for me?”

  “No.” She scowls at me like I’ve said the most offensive thing ever. “Get your own.”

  I grin and rise up from the couch. “I’ll jack wrestle you for it.”

  She lifts the piece to her mouth and takes a giant bite. “You’d lose,” she says around a mouthful of food.


  “I’d listen to her,” Sammi says with a smirk. She gets up from the couch. “I’ll be back.” But instead of heading off to get food, she strolls toward where Juliette’s sitting with Tessa.

  Olivia, meanwhile, has already chowed half her food. I grab for it, but she slaps my hand. I cringe away and hold my hand like she’s really hurt me. She scowls again. “You are such a dork.”

  I grin. This week has been a complete disaster, but the one good thing that’s come out of it? Olivia’s forgiven me. It took her going back to Wright, Wright locking her up with our mom, our mom explaining everything that’s happened and me sending half the JFA to bust her out.

  But everything’s good between us again. And we both know we’re on the side of the “good guys” now.

  “You know,” I say, making another play for the pizza. She gives me the world’s dirtiest look like she thinks there’s something broken with my brain. “Sometime, I want you to show me how you surge through helmets. Scott said he’s never seen anything like it in his life.” Turns out that my sister and my mom didn’t so much need a rescue as they needed a ride. Just as Scott and his jacker team were breaking into the base, Olivia and my mom were busting out. There was mass confusion at first, but once Olivia decided she would surge her way through the helmets of anyone trying to stand in their way, she pretty much led them straight out again.

  She shrugs one shoulder. “What’s in it for me?” But the small smile on her face gives her away.