Closed Hearts (Book Two of the Mindjack Trilogy)

by Quinn, Susan Kaye

  A click sounded from the door. I mentally lunged at whoever was coming through, only to find it was Granite Guard. He easily batted away my juice-hindered mental reach. I rolled up to face him, bracing my bare feet on the floor. Maybe I could make a run for it. I reached through the open door, but it was blocked by the disruptor field, same as the rest of the room.

  Kestrel came in with a scribepad in hand and two orderlies in tow. One was tall and thin, his hands twitchy at his sides. The other was carved from the same square-jawed, muscular gene pool as Granite Guard, with no neck and the shoulders of a grizzly bear. Grizzly Man closed the door with a mechanical thunk that I was sure meant it was locked. Not that I had any chance of getting past Kestrel’s entourage anyway.

  Kestrel didn’t say a word, just nodded to the other three. The pressure of their minds hit me like a blow and knocked me back on the mattress. I pushed up with my weakened wrist, but I could barely sit up under the onslaught.

  The pressure ramped up further. I clutched my head, as if that would ward them off. The intensity kept climbing. I had to stop them before my skull imploded. I launched myself off the cot, running smack into Grizzly Man. I flailed my hands against his chest, but it was like pounding a concrete wall. The pressure grew worse. I crumpled to Grizzly’s feet. A sound keened in the distance, echoing off the bare hard surfaces of the walls. It bounced back to me, inside me, inside my head. Screaming, screaming, I rocked back and forth on the biting cold of the tiled floor.

  The pressure cut off like a switch.

  I panted against the floor, my mouth dry and buzzing. Stars twirled in front of me. I pushed myself up to sitting, gingerly touching the side of my head and half expecting to see blood on my hand, but it came away clean. Kestrel made a notation on his scribe pad, then he tilted his head toward me, giving a silent order to Granite Guard. I heaved myself off the floor and scrambled back to the cot, but there was nowhere to go. Granite Guard pinned me down while the gangly orderly came at me with a needle. I kicked and twisted, making it difficult for them to find a spot to stick me, but Granite Guard leaned his knee into my stomach, knocking the wind out of me and momentarily holding me still while the needle pierced my skin.

  They both quickly backed away.

  Whatever they injected into me raged like fire through my veins and boiled off the fog in my head. Blood pounded my ears, and my legs twitched with the need to run. I fought to gasp in enough oxygen to feed whatever was pulsing through my body. They had put some kind of adrenaline in me, like Julian’s patches, but why?

  The answer came with another onslaught of pressure. This time, hyped up on the drug, I was able to push back. I forced them slightly back from my head, stepping down the pressure and pain. After a moment, they stopped, and I shoved them back into their own minds. Granite Guy’s head was too hard, and his cousin Grizzly was the same, so I concentrated on the orderly with the relatively weaker mind barrier.

  I poured my anger and frustration into jacking him, and his knees buckled.

  “Enough,” Kestrel said calmly. He shoved me out of the orderly’s head and back into my own. I scuttled back on my cot. My ragged breathing was the only sound for a moment as Kestrel regarded me.

  “I’d like to do a few baseline tests.” Kestrel’s sharp gaze looked like he wanted to pierce my skull to take a peek inside. “It will go much easier if you cooperate.”

  No doubt it would be easier on Kestrel if I cooperated. I had no intention of doing any such thing. I just stared back at him. If he came close, I was contemplating biting him. I gagged, not liking that thought very much and feeling way too trapped. I needed to think my way out of this, now that my head was clear of the juice.

  Kestrel nodded, as if he could hear my thoughts, and for a short paranoid moment I thought maybe he could.

  I seriously needed to pull myself together.

  Kestrel tapped his ear. “Pemberly is coming out for trial two.” The door clicked and swung open, and with a wave, Kestrel sent Pemberly out of the room. Another guard was stationed outside the door, his hand resting on the bulky dart gun at his hip. They weren’t taking any chances—even with the door open, the disruptor field was firmly in place. Pemberly walked right through it, and the door swung shut behind him.

  Escape looked impossible.

  The part of my heart that hadn’t hit bottom yet sank a little further.

  Kestrel folded his arms, tucking the scribepad under one. “I’d like you to try to jack into Mr. Harrier’s mind.” He flipped his hand to Granite Guard. “Please try hard.”

  I drew up my knees and held them tight to my chest. “Do it yourself, if you’re so interested in what he’s thinking.” Granite Guard looked like he was relishing whatever Kestrel expected me to do. Grizzly stared at me like he expected me to make a sudden move. I wasn’t sure what Kestrel was getting at, anyway. If I could jack into Granite Guy—Harrier, whatever—then I would have already done it.

  Kestrel smirked. “You’re one of the few here whose thoughts are truly private, Kira,” he said. “I’m not so much interested in what’s in his head as what’s in yours.”

  Well that he wasn’t going to get. I was determined about that if nothing else.

  “For now I’d like to simply know the extent of your abilities.” He untucked his scribepad and continued in a clinical tone. “For example, your mind barrier seems exceedingly strong, even harder than Mr. Harrier’s. And yet I seem to be able to push you out of Agent Pemberly’s mind rather easily. So I’m wondering just what is the extent of your jacking strength?”

  “I guess that’s going to be a mystery for you.”

  A light knock at the door drew Kestrel’s attention. He tapped his ear. “Yes?” He listened for a moment. “Bring her in.” The door swung open. Pemberly had returned, now gripping the arm of a girl. She stumbled as she crossed the threshold, her feet bare and her straggly blond hair hiding her face. Pemberly left her standing in the middle of the room and closed the door behind him. When she looked up, her fine features were shadowed, her eyes sunken and dark.

  Ava.

  I uncurled and clutched the edge of the cot. What was Kestrel doing?

  “Ah, good,” he said. “I see that you recognize her. Now, please. Jack into Miss Trinkle’s mind so we can have a sense of your uninhibited jacking strength.”

  “I’m not interested in your games, Kestrel.” I threw my words at him, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Ava. She seemed thinner. How long had I been out? What had Kestrel done to her?

  “Mr. Harrier, if you would.”

  Ava’s eyes clamped shut, and she fell to her knees in wordless pain.

  “Stop it!” My body tensed, ready to fly at all three of them again, even though it would do no good.

  “That’s up to you,” Kestrel said. “Are you going to stand by and watch her suffer, Kira? That doesn’t seem to be your personality type. You’re more the kind that pokes your nose into places it doesn’t belong. Surely you’d like to stop the suffering of your friend.”

  My hands bunched the thin sheets of the cot, but what choice did I have? I jacked hard into Ava’s mind and found Harrier there. He was digging through her memories, causing the kind of internal pain that comes from mental violation. I grabbed hold of Harrier’s presence and managed to pull him out of the cavern of her memories to wrestle with me full time. Ava tried to help, but she was weak. Her strawberry mind-scent was tinged with orange—was she normally this weak, or was she still under the influence of the juice? I didn’t have time to figure it out; I was too busy trying to get Harrier out of her head.

  When I finally moved the solid spot of his presence a little, he fled her mind.

  Are you okay? I asked. I’m sorry, I just… I’m sorry.

  It’s okay, she thought. I’m okay. But I could tell she wasn’t. I lightly searched for the dull, dead spots that were in Liam’s mind and let out a sigh of relief when I didn’t find any.

  Where are the others? I asked. Have you seen them?r />
  No. Her thoughts were fragmented and tired. I backed out slowly, trying not to cause her any more pain.

  “About a five or six,” Harrier said impassively, and Kestrel made a note on his scribepad. The desire to make them pay for what they were doing was a hot fire in my chest. How much of this pointless pain and suffering had they already inflicted on innocent jackers like Ava? But there was no way I could jack Kestrel or Harrier, much less Grizzly, standing by like a Roman centurion. Even hyped up on Kestrel’s drug, I could barely take on Pemberly.

  Which was almost certainly why they were all here: to test me, but keep me safely caged.

  I smothered the fire threatening to flare up and consume me so I could think. There had to be a flaw in their system. I needed more information.

  “So, did you get tired of torturing children, Kestrel?” Ice dripped from my voice. “Graduated to twenty-year-olds? How civilized of you.”

  He didn’t even look up from his scribepad and silently consulted with Harrier, who took Ava by the arm and steered her toward the door.

  Kestrel held a finger to his ear. “Harrier and patient 603 are coming out.” They seemed to have an elaborate checking system. The room was almost certainly monitored, like the other patients’ rooms had been. Was the person on Kestrel’s com link watching us to make sure everything was going according to plan? Or was Kestrel talking to the guard outside the room?

  The door swung open and Harrier led Ava out. I wanted to link back into Ava’s mind and find out if there was anything she knew that could help, but she was already through the disruptor field in the doorway, clutching her stomach as she went. I hoped against hope that they would leave her alone now that they had done their test.

  “Ready for trial three,” Kestrel spoke to the com, then finally looked at me. “I suspect, based on what I know of your previous escapes, that your reach extends beyond most jackers’. Is that true?”

  I just stared at him. My previous escapes. How much did Kestrel know about me? I had to be careful not to tip my hand. It might be my only advantage.

  He tapped his com link again, this time holding my stare. “You may proceed.”

  My heart stuttered.

  To me he said, “There’s a changeling somewhere in the building. He’s receiving painful electrical shocks from Mr. Pemberly, carefully tuned to his jacker mind. I suggest you find him.”

  My mouth fell open. What kind of sick game was Kestrel playing? “I won’t do it.”

  “The shocks will continue until you do. I’m in no hurry.”

  I didn’t for a second doubt that Kestrel would do as he promised and probably make it worse if I delayed. I clenched my fists and mentally pushed out. Sure enough the disruptor field was down. I quickly brushed through the hundreds of minds in the hospital, searching for the changeling. I found Pemberly intent on administering the shocks. He wasn’t expecting me, so I easily knocked him out.

  I linked into the mind of the changeling. Are you okay? He was so disoriented by the jacker-tuned shocks that I had to pull out of his mind for fear of getting trapped in the swirling electrical field. I roamed the building, searching for Ava or Julian or the other mages. Kestrel must have them locked behind disruptor-field-reinforced rooms like mine, because I couldn’t find any of them.

  “Pemberly!” Kestrel’s voice made me start. “Control, this is Kestrel. Shield!” Suddenly the disruptor field sliced through my mental reach, like a knife had cut through part of my brain. I gasped with the pain of it, my hands holding my head. The agony of having my thoughts chopped in half made me double over. I staggered back to the cot, catching myself before I fell. I reached to the door. It was sealed with the mindwave-disruptor field again.

  When I finally shook my head clear, Kestrel’s face was on fire with an excitement that made me shrink back. “I see. You can jack at that distance. Very interesting.”

  He scribbled furiously on his scribepad. Kestrel had only told me to find the changeling. He must have expected me to link a thought to Pemberly to tell him to stop. It didn’t occur to him that I could stop the experiment, which was at least a couple of hundred feet away, by knocking Pemberly out. But how could I keep from revealing what I could do, when he was torturing people in front of me?

  My fists curled up. The only one who was getting any information here was Kestrel and I needed to change that. What was Kestrel really after? Was he trying to create a legion of super jackers, like I thought? Thanks to me, he now had the mages and a wide range of DNA samples to choose from. So why the heinous experiments?

  “Look,” I said. “Why don’t you just take our DNA and let us go?”

  Kestrel frowned slightly and seemed to consider something, then said, “I’ve had your DNA from the beginning, Kira. I do appreciate you bringing the others in, though. That will certainly speed things up.”

  “Speed up what things?” Kestrel ignored me and went back to his scribepad.

  Did having the mages’ DNA speed up his quest to create super jackers? Or had I simply delivered more subjects for his experiments to discover a medical way to destroy us all? Was he trying to damage parts of our brains with his serums or was that just a side effect? He said he wanted to see what I could do. A baseline test, he said, before whatever serums he had planned for me.

  I pressed my back against the smooth wall behind the cot. The chill from the wall and the situation seeped into me. Whatever Kestrel had planned, there was no way he would ever let us go. He’d use us up in his experiments and then we’d waste away in the demens ward. I searched for something I could use to bargain my way out, but I was locked in his cell with no leverage whatsoever. He already had my DNA. He had me. What else could he want?

  Then I realized he had already told me: he wanted inside my head.

  “You want to know what I can do?” I asked. Kestrel looked up, mildly interested. “I’ll tell you everything I can do, how it all works, why you can’t get into my head. That is, if you want to know.” I would make up stuff if I had to. The trick would be getting Kestrel to believe me. “I’ll do whatever little demonstrations you want to prove it, but then you need to let us go—all of us.”

  He laughed a little. “You’re far too useful at this point to release.” He had that clinical tone again. “You were too old for the experiments before, but now that my research has advanced, you and your friends are the perfect test subjects. You may not like it.” A cruel smile twisted up his lips. “But like I said before—if you cooperate, things will be much easier.”

  Easier. He meant easier on me. Easier on the changelings or Ava or whoever was the other party to his experiment. The chill settled into my stomach and made it seize up.

  Kestrel nodded to Grizzly, who produced a syringe filled with a clear serum. He came toward me slowly, gauging whether I would put up a fight.

  I wanted to.

  Every part of me screamed out to fight him.

  But I didn’t.

  I hardly felt the pain of the needle.

  “Very good.” Kestrel checked his scribepad one last time, then turned to the door. Grizzly went out first and Kestrel paused at the threshold. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back later to see if it worked.” The door clicked shut behind him.

  Whatever Kestrel had injected in me coursed painlessly through my veins, probably heading straight for my brain to do its damage there. I didn’t feel a thing.

  I was completely numb, inside and out.

  Time crawled by.

  I forced down the morning delivery of flavorless oatmeal from Pemberly. At least I thought it was morning. Oatmeal seemed like it should come in the morning. When I returned to my cot, an indentation the shape of my body remained pressed into it.

  The lights in my cell never dimmed and the air never stirred, always warm enough to not be cold. I wasn’t sure if time was ticking by in days or weeks. I spent most of it curled up on the cot. Kestrel came and went. Sometimes there were more injections. Sometimes it was just tests. Mostly there were
long stretches when nothing happened.

  That was when I probed around in my own mind, wondering what Kestrel’s injections were doing to me. Searching for dead spots. Would I be able to sense them? As time dragged on, I became more and more certain that I wouldn’t get out of Kestrel’s torment room except to head to the demens ward, to slowly become addled like Liam. How long had Liam been under Kestrel’s care? He hadn’t been at the camp, that much I was sure of. He would never have lasted, and Molloy would have found him.

  Molloy. Part of me clung to the idea that he had traded Raf, rather than killed him. I wanted to believe it. Except then my mind drifted to the horrible things that would happen to Raf as a slave to jackers, and I hoped that Molloy had actually killed him instead.

  Then my brain shut down, because I couldn’t keep that thought without going insane.

  I should have slipped away after I escaped the camp, like Simon wanted. Stayed far from everyone I loved and survived as a jacker hidden among the readers. That was the only way any of this could have turned out okay.

  But I wasn’t strong enough to do that.

  At least with me locked up in Kestrel’s facility, my family was relatively safe. Molloy had no reason to go after them, not with his revenge already exacted on me. He would dispose of Raf’s body and go on his way.

  I rolled over and faced the wall. My body ached from being on one side too long. My mind didn’t feel different, but I decided there was no way for me to know if it was spotted with dead zones. Maybe they were already there.

  The door clicked open, but I didn’t bother to move. The scuffle of feet on the linoleum told me there were three of them. There were usually three—Kestrel, one of the strong jackers like Harrier or Grizzly, and an orderly or agent like Pemberly. Hard-soled shoes tapped the floor. Those belonged to Kestrel. I kept my eyes shut, wondering if there was any point in resisting this time. Most times I didn’t. They came and went so quickly it was better to get it over with. Sometimes I did, when I couldn’t stand it anymore and anger climbed out of the deep well of my despair. Those times were worse, lasted longer, and were usually more painful for everyone.