Closed Hearts (Book Two of the Mindjack Trilogy)

by Quinn, Susan Kaye

  “Well done.” Our faces were now close, her blue eyes piercing mine. “Is my brother with you?”

  Of course. I should have recognized Anna from the fake hospital ID Julian showed me.

  “Yes, but I need to find some adrenaline to revive him. And I’m pretty sure they know what’s happened.” We were running the same plan that Anna had originally hatched, so she should know what I meant.

  “Right,” she said. “Wait, don’t you have it with you?” She glanced down at my bare feet, frowning as she saw there were no shoes or socks. Then she took in my appearance a little more slowly. “What happened to you?”

  I must look worse than I thought. I certainly hadn’t been doing pushups in my cell for the last however many weeks that Anna had been imprisoned here, being experimented on.

  My face ran hot. “Things didn’t exactly go according to the plan.” Which was the understatement of the year, but time was a demon breathing hot down my neck. “Ava is in the room across from mine. She was knocked out by the grenade. I don’t know how many of the others are conscious. We need a bunch of adrenaline doses. This guy,” I said and tilted my head to the inert guard, “seems to think the drug lockup is downstairs.”

  She examined my hand with the passring. “Is that how you got into my room?”

  I nodded.

  “Give it to me. The gun too.” She jutted her chin to the guard, who also had a passring and a holstered dart gun. “Take the guard’s passring and gun with you. I’ll check on the others and keep watch until you get back. You find some doses and bring them as fast as you can.” She said this like she expected no protest from me, as if she was used to giving orders and having them immediately obeyed. All along I had thought Julian was the one in charge.

  But I wasn’t going to question it.

  I handed over the passring and gun. The guard’s fingers were skinny so his passring fit a little better as I fumbled to slip it on. Gripping the guard’s dart gun, I dashed around the corner to get free from the shielded corridor. I skimmed the surrounding hallways and spied a stairwell a split second before I heard feet clanging up the metal stairs and felt a mental surge slamming against my head. I took cover behind the corner, careful not to touch the wall, and jacked the reader guard to amble over. Then I leveled my gun at the stairwell door.

  “Anna!” I whispered loudly over my shoulder. “There’s more coming!” She was unlocking doors along the hall. The stairwell door was yanked open, and I pulled back again, out of sight. Anna had disappeared into one of the shielded rooms. At the end of the hall, orange mist curled out of my room, the door still propped open by Kestrel’s body.

  They were gassing the rooms.

  If Anna was inside a room, she might have gotten caught in the mist.

  I tried to quiet my hyped-up breathing. The footfalls had gone silent. I hadn’t seen anything but dart guns since landing in Kestrel’s cell, but Harrier had a real gun when he was guarding the tunnel. It was possible that whoever was around the corner would have guns with real bullets, too. I wrapped my fingers tighter on the gun. What I needed was a clear shot, without getting shot myself. I jacked the reader guard to charge around the corner. As soon as he was in their line of sight, two jacker guards plunged into his mind, wrestling with me for control of his body.

  Which was just the distraction I needed.

  I let them shove me out of the reader’s mind, then peeked out and fired my dart gun, quickly jerking back behind the protection of the wall. A shot popped the air and something whooshed past me to clatter on the floor down the hall. So they had dart guns, and from my quick look around the corner, I knew the guards were Grizzly and Pemberly. That made two against one and Grizzly was a much stronger jacker, plus they were armed.

  Time to run.

  I dashed toward my room as fast as my bare feet would carry me. Another shot whooshed past me. I dodged the fallen guard outside my door, kept running, and flung myself around the corner at the end of the hallway. Out of the shielded corridor now, I reached out as I sprinted down the hall. Just one reader guard pounded up a nearby stairwell, desperately checking his dart gun to see if it was loaded. I froze him and searched his mind while I used my passring on the stairwell door. The controller in the shielded medical area next to Kestrel’s office had put the compound in full-scale lockdown and had gassed the tunnels between buildings as well as the cells. Apparently, he also controlled the perimeter shields and the gate.

  The shielded control room was definitely where I needed to go. I knocked out the guard and swept the first floor before I reached the bottom of the steps. All the guards were either knocked out, hidden behind shielded rooms, or hot on my tail, like Pemberly and Grizzly. I dashed through the maze of the first floor, working my way to Kestrel’s shielded office by feel.

  I swiped the passring by Kestrel’s door and said a silent prayer of thanks when it worked. Locking the door behind me, I quickly scanned his office. His desk was bare except for a scribepad, but the shelf still held my scrubs and shoes from when Molloy had stashed them there! My heart raced as I ran across the room. I tugged on my shoes and snatched my scrubs off the shelf, gently fingering the cloth of the scrubs until I found the thought grenades. With these, I could take down Grizzly and Pemberly and anyone else that I couldn’t jack my way through to get the adrenaline. A thrill pumped through me until I realized I would have to stick my head out the door to see if Grizzly and Pemberly were nearby, which would only give them a chance to shoot me.

  If the thought grenades were still here, maybe Kestrel had forgotten about the adrenaline patches as well. I tugged open the top thin, metal drawer of his desk, thinking he might have stuffed them inside, and jerked my hand back when I saw a gun there, black and shiny. Then I remembered Molloy had put Harrier’s gun there when he was frisking me. I picked up the gun, and it weighed heavy and cold in my hand. I tucked it into the back of my pants, but I was still missing the adrenaline doses that I really needed.

  Kestrel’s screens caught my eye, lit with scenes around the facility, including shots of the access tunnels, both tinged with mist, and one of the ground-floor entrance. One showed my cell, where Kestrel, Harrier, and Julian lay in a swirling orange-tinged mist. Half a dozen other cells held sleeping jackers, including one with Anna sprawled on the floor in Ava’s room. Her arm stretched toward the door, like she had been trying to get out.

  There were no shots of the hallway outside Kestrel’s door, or the rest of the shielded area, which held the medical facility and the central control room. How many people did they have inside that area? I could tell by feel that it was about five times the size of Kestrel’s office. If the thought grenade could reach through the disruptor field, it might be able to reach everyone in the control room. I could knock them out before they knew what hit them.

  But I needed to get rid of Grizzly and Pemberly first, before they got me.

  I scurried to the door of Kestrel’s office, fingering the thought grenade with one hand and holding the dart gun in the other. I flung open the door, keeping my head safely in the room and propping the door with my foot. A shout came from down the hall, followed by running footsteps. My heart climbed higher in my chest with each banging step that brought them closer. When they were nearly on me, I crushed the thought grenade in my hand.

  Nothing happened.

  I slammed the thought grenade against the frame of the door. Once, twice… on the third hit, something connected and at the same moment, Grizzly reached me, closing one giant hand on my arm, the other on my throat. The grenade sent a wave of nausea through me and Grizzly’s hand reflexively squeezed my throat. I choked and tore free of his grasp as I tumbled to the floor on top of him.

  Once down, he didn’t move. Pemberly had landed facedown, five steps behind him.

  I climbed over Grizzly, dragging the scrubs and dart gun along. The trembling in my hands made it tricky to find the second thought grenade. Finally, I curled my fist around it. I needed to make sure I had a good
strong strike the next time. That had been too close.

  Had the thought grenade already reached into the control room? Had I given myself away by only blasting half the room? I lumbered down the hall until I was as close as I could get to the center of the shielded area. At the far end was a door, and just as I was thinking about trying it, a guard flung it open. He was surprised to see me, but quickly reached for his gun. Before he could pull it from the holster, I smashed the thought grenade against the wall with all my might.

  This time the nausea brought me to my knees, and I almost threw up on the industrial carpet. I had to gulp several breaths of air before I could look up. The guard was down, sprawled in the doorway.

  Propping it open.

  I staggered to my feet and stumbled to the door, holding my stomach so it would keep its contents. I peeked inside, dart gun at the ready, in case anyone was still up. An orderly stood in the middle of the room, next to a gurney, staring at the fallen bodies all around him.

  I hastily shot at him with the dart gun. I managed to hit him, in spite of my hand shaking like an earthquake had struck. He fell on top of the two doctors in scrubs who were already heaped on the floor. They lay next to a gurney with a prisoner strapped to it. Behind a glass wall in back, a bank of computers lined the wall. A guard was slumped over what must be the control center.

  I stood in the doorway for a long moment, afraid one of them would pop up again like a zombie, but they were all completely still. I crept in like I was stealing into a graveyard and then tiptoe-ran to the prisoner on the gurney.

  It was Sasha.

  Sasha lay unconscious on the gurney. He must have been caught in the pulse from the thought grenade like the rest of the jackers in the medical room. I knew better than to jack into Sasha’s head in that state, so I tried to shake him awake, which was stupid, then I searched around for the wake-up meds. I stared at the shiny cabinets of medical supplies. I had no idea what I was doing.

  I floundered, then I realized the orderly—the only guy left standing during the thought grenade blast—must have been a reader.

  And I’d shot him full of juice.

  I sighed and jacked into his head, bringing him slowly awake. He groggily peered up from where he had fallen, then jolted when he saw the doctors’ bodies he had landed on. He winced while I searched his mind for the information I needed. I didn’t care. He was one of the monsters doing heaven knew what to Sasha and the rest of us.

  Thankfully, he was a medical orderly, not just a goon for Kestrel, and knew how to prepare the adrenaline doses. I jacked him to get a dose for Sasha out of the locked medical cabinet in the corner. While he lurched up from the floor to obey my command, I counted the rest of the bodies: three doctors on the floor, the command controller behind the glass, the guard at the door, and two other jacker guards slumped in chairs, probably waiting to take Sasha back to his cell. What were the doctors doing to Sasha? I thought it was bad with the tests in my room, but at least I hadn’t been taken to this medical torment chamber with trays of serums and gleaming metal cabinets.

  When the orderly had the syringe ready, I injected it into Sasha and jacked the orderly to prepare doses for the other mages. Then I hurried to the control room to find a way to open the gate. I jacked into the control panel mindware and found the switch for the shield just as an urgent message came in from the guard at the gate, the one who had warned me away from the east wing. His thoughts scrolled across the heads-up mindware display, asking if the patient breakout had been contained and saying he had sent for backup.

  Just what I needed.

  I mentally flicked the switch to drop the gate shield, but my reach was still blocked by the shielded control room, so I hunted for that too. Once the control room shield was down, I reached out of the building, across the parking lot, all the way to the front gate. I could knock out the guard, but the damage had already been done. Did he know we were jackers, not just demens breaking out? It would make a huge difference if he had sent for the local police or the FBI. I probed his mind—he didn’t know anything about jackers, but he had a special number to call, a failsafe in case of a lockdown.

  Kestrel would have made sure it was an FBI jacker containment unit.

  I knocked out the guard and quickly swept the rest of the facility—the staff were in a full-blown state of panic, trying to contain the demens who were working up to a riot. That should keep them occupied while we made a run for the gate. I jacked back into the controller mindware, searching for the gate release. We would need it open to have any hope of getting out before the backup help arrived. I found it, gave it a nudge to spring open the gate, and hurried back to Sasha’s side.

  Red splotches mottled his face, and his eyes were unfocused. “C’mon.” I tugged him up to sitting and he didn’t fight me. “We need to go.”

  Sasha worked his mouth, but nothing came out. Probably the juice had parched his throat. Then he croaked, “Traitor!” and shoved me away and fell off the gurney. I tried to catch him, but he thunked hard on the floor, which seemed to stun him, but also helped to wake him up. He batted at my hands trying to help him, so I stepped back and commanded the orderly to get him up.

  “Molloy is the traitor, not me,” I said slowly, but I could tell he didn’t believe me. My fists curled up. “Look, I don’t have time to explain everything. Julian is passed out upstairs. We need to go help him. Are you coming with me or not?”

  Sasha clung to the edge of the gurney and blinked several times, like he was still fuzzed out from the thought grenade.

  “Julian,” he wheezed.

  “Yes, Julian,” I said, my fists unclenching. “He sent me to get the adrenaline for him and the rest of the mages so we can get everyone out.” The orderly had only filled about ten doses of adrenaline, which would have to do, because that was all we had time for.

  Finally Sasha nodded. As he lumbered toward the door, he said, “Ava? Is she—” He coughed and clutched the doorjamb.

  “Ava’s upstairs too.” I handed him my dart gun. He looked surprised, but took it. “And Anna. There’s a whole block of rooms where Kestrel’s keeping the mages.”

  I held Harrier’s gun in front of me, leading the way down the hall. The orderly trailed behind us, bumbling to hold on to all ten syringes. I urged Sasha to go faster up the stairs while I reached out to scan the rest of the building. There were a lot of sedated jackers in their cells, and I only had ten doses. Even stopping to unlock the doors would delay us in getting back to Julian and the mages, and I didn’t know how much time we had.

  My chest pulled tight. That meant leaving most of the inmates behind, including the changelings. Again.

  I gripped the handle of the gun tighter and resolved that we would at least stop Kestrel. Without him in charge, maybe the others could escape. Or at least the experiments would stop. Sasha hobbled up the stairs, as if his legs weren’t working right, and he was climbing on sheer force of will. The lingering effects of the thought grenade must have been more severe than I thought.

  It was slow going, but we finally reached the second floor and the shielded rooms where the mages were kept. The orange scent of the gas tainted the air, but it wasn’t too thick. I tucked the gun back in my pants and took most of the syringe doses out of the orderly’s hands, leaving him with one. I jacked him to head straight for Julian.

  Sasha braced his hands on his knees, gasping for breath, his face red.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yes.” He straightened and leaned a hand against the wall, then drew it back a moment later when the buzz of the shield rippled through it. A thud sounded from the end of the hall, followed by a clinking, skittering noise. The orderly had reached my cell only to be overcome by the gas.

  I huffed out a breath. “Look,” I said to Sasha. “The adrenaline should protect you from the effects of the gas, at least temporarily. Go get Julian out of that cell. I’ll get the rest up and out of theirs. Then you need to do your scribing thing on Kestrel. W
e don’t have much time. Reinforcements are on the way.” I handed him another dose. “In case you need an extra one for Julian.” Or Kestrel, I added in my head. I wasn’t sure if Kestrel had to be awake for the scribing.

  Sasha nodded and stumbled down the hall. I waved the passring across the scanner for the cell next to Anna’s, took a deep breath of orange-tinged air, and shoved open the door. I figured I could dash in and out, but as soon as I stepped into the room, the gas burned my eyes. Holding my breath, I sprinted to the form lying on the cot and quickly shoved up the sleeve of his gown. As the injection was going in, I realized I didn’t know him. Maybe I should have saved the doses for the mages, but it was too late now. He thrashed on the bed as he swam up out of unconsciousness. I tried to wrestle him up from the cot, but I was running out of air, so I sucked in a gas-filled breath and reached inside my mind to speed up my heart rate. The gas was already making me dizzy and my heart pounding harder only made it worse. My stomach heaved; I threw up on the cot. I grabbed the edge to keep upright, trying not to drop the handful of adrenaline doses or breathe in any more gas. I didn’t have time to be sick. Wiping my mouth on an unsoiled edge of a blanket, I grabbed the boy’s arm and hauled him up to sitting.

  If it took this long to get every jacker awake, I was in serious trouble. I dragged him to standing and braced my shoulder under his. Fortunately, he was a skinny kid like me and didn’t weigh too much. We hobbled to the door.

  Once we were in the hall, I closed the door, trapping the gas inside the room. I took several gasping breaths and sprinted to the next cell. I scanned the passring and tore inside. As soon as I reached the cot, I recognized Hinckley. I found a bare spot on his arm and injected him. He thrashed around, and I took a step back. He was over six feet tall. There was no way I could wrestle him up off the cot, much less out the door.