What Tomorrow May Bring

by Tony Bertauski

  I could jack into another jacker’s head, but he couldn’t get into mine.

  There’s something different about me.

  Simon had missed the entire exchange, intent on working our way toward Molloy. Simon had let me think I couldn’t jack into his mind or even link in.

  And I had never questioned it.

  My stomach clenched hard. That Simon would lie was no shock, but this was different. Danger seemed to radiate from the crowd circulating around Molloy.

  I tried to link into Simon’s mind and slipped in no problem. He better hold up his end of the bargain…. Simon shot me a look. What is she…? He pushed me out his mind and yanked me close to his side with our clasped hands.

  “Don’t do that!” Then his head snapped to Molloy, who had locked his emerald-green eyes on us. He resembled an oversized, maniacal leprechaun, and the Clan members parted before his determined stride to meet us. Simon dropped my hand like it was on fire and stepped away as Molloy neared.

  Molloy bared his teeth in a simulated smile and loomed over me. Seamus, with his wild red hair and imposing linebacker build, would have disappeared in the shadow of Molloy. He grasped my hand and held it with surprising gentleness, like a giant cradling a kitten. I didn’t dare link into his mind. My voice had fled, and my legs wished they could follow.

  “Welcome, Kira. We are so glad you could come.” His teeth glinted in the blue plasma lights of the warehouse, and he stared at me too long. Pressure built on my mind, an echo of the mental force from his pasty minion. I slowly extricated my hand from his grasp.

  Molloy arched an eyebrow as I took a small step back so that he wasn’t crushing me with his presence. The pressure on my mind ceased, and Molloy checked with his spook over his shoulder. His nod caused Molloy to break into wide smile.

  He showered his approval on Simon and grasped his hand. Molloy must have linked into Simon’s mind and exchanged words mentally, because Simon’s look of horror was replaced by a tentative grin.

  Molloy took a step back, dropping Simon’s hand and raising both of his.

  “Friends!” he said to the crowd. “We have a new member to welcome to our Clan!” He swept a hand out, encompassing Simon and me. “You all know Simon, Alec Gerek’s young recruit. He wishes to make his vow tonight.” There was a patter of applause and Simon flushed.

  I clasped my hands together, trying to stop the quivering and summon my inner ninja.

  Molloy was still talking to the crowd. “Simon brings us a new friend, today. Someone to welcome into our Clan as well.” He smiled a row of shark teeth. The eyes of the entire Clan turned to me. I was a minnow in a pool of sharks. Simon sent me reassuring looks, as though he hadn’t just betrayed and abandoned me.

  It didn’t seem wise to tell them I planned to run as soon as I could. I took a deep breath so my voice wouldn’t quaver. “Um, yeah. I’m still thinking about that.”

  Molloy’s predatory smile grew, but Simon’s grin evaporated with my words. A twitter went around the room. Pasty Man started toward us with silent footfalls.

  “I see you and Andre have already met,” Molloy said, ignoring my words.

  Andre arrived at his elbow, steely eyes still trained on me. A faint smile turned his plain face menacing. “Hello, Kira.” His voice was bland, his words gone almost before they were spoken. “I think we have much to talk about.”

  Talking to Pasty Man was the last thing I planned to do. Top priority was finding a way out of the shark pit that the warehouse had become. I couldn’t possibly outrun them. And besides, I was somewhere in Glenview with only Simon for transportation home. Simon’s face had gone blank.

  In one enormous stride, Molloy cut the distance between us and hovered over me again. I tried not to shrink away, although the gesture was no doubt useless. My eyes went wide as he ran his large, rough thumb over my forehead, the way Simon had ages ago when we first met. A chill ran from that touch to my clenched stomach.

  “Your mind is indeed a wonder,” he said. “Even my friend Andre says so.”

  I didn’t understand exactly what was happening, but one thing had become clear: Simon had not brought me here to watch his ceremony or learn about the Clan, but to sell me out to the Red Giant and Andre the Spook. They wanted something from me that had to do with my hard head. My impenetrable mind.

  Which was apparently different from everyone else.

  My breath hitched as I realized the depth of my trouble. Simon stood several feet behind Molloy. I was tempted to link into his head and tell him what I thought of his betrayal, but I had to focus on a way out.

  Molloy seemed amused. “Kira, my dear, don’t be angry with Simon.” His massive hands clasped around mine. My pounding pulse beat a tempo in my wrists. “He only wants what we all want. For you to join us, your family. Your true family. Whether you realize it or not, Kira, you belong in Clan Molloy.”

  I yanked my hands out of his grip. “You’re not my family.”

  He shook his head. “I very much hope you change your mind about that. You don’t want your mother or father, or that delightful brother of yours, to be involved in this, do you?”

  My lower lip started to tremble. How did he know so much about me? “Leave my family out of it!” The words jerked out of me in gasps.

  He stepped back. “Well, now, that’s up to you.” Another Clan member slipped behind him, and they seemed to exchange thoughts. Molloy arched his eyebrows and announced to the crowd, “It appears we have an opportunity for young Simon to prove his loyalty today.” Simon’s impassive face cracked into a frown. “I’m sure he won’t mind,” Molloy continued, staring down Simon.

  Molloy swept his hand to the back door as two figures walked in, one blond haired and head held high, the other with dark curls and head hanging as if examining the floor where every foot fell. His hands hung slack at his sides.

  My body tensed. Maybe this was the distraction that I needed. I made ready to run and stole another glance at Simon. His face had drained of color. The blond Clan member seemed to be mentally steering the black-haired man to the chair in the center of the room. As he sat down, his arms fell limp down the sides of the chair. He raised his head and gazed unseeing at the table.

  No! My heart seized up. Raf. His eyes were glazed, a puppet under the control of the Clan minion, but clearly Raf.

  “It seems we have a spy amongst us.” Molloy laughed as though that was some kind of private joke. The Clan’s chuckles echoed around the warehouse, bouncing off the concrete floor and the metallic walls.

  The urge to run drained out of my body. What was Raf doing here? And what were they going to do to him? As the laughter died away, Molloy turned to me. “It seems we aren’t the only ones who admire you, lovely Kira,” he said. “Yet we can’t have readers stumbling into our meetings. You understand, I’m sure.” He glanced at Simon and consulted silently with his spooky sidekick. Simon’s face had turned ashen and his jaw worked.

  I linked into his head. This is not how I had… He threw me a sharp look.

  Simon, what is happening? What’re they going to do to Raf?

  Kira, I have to… I don’t have any choice…

  Have to what? What?? He ignored me and jacked fast into Raf’s mind. Raf’s head slowly bent down until it rested on his chest. I jacked into Raf’s head, too, and found Simon’s presence had tunneled deep, going past the thoughts that were jacked by Molloy’s guard and into the part that controlled breathing. And heart rate.

  No! I reached for the solid marble of Simon’s mind and pushed hard. Simon flew back out of Raf’s head. I kept pushing until Simon was back in his own mind.

  And then I jacked hard into Simon’s mind, until he dropped like a stone to the warehouse floor. Back in Raf’s mind, I found the guard and flung him out as well, pounding him back into his own head until he collapsed like Simon into a heap.

  A gasp went around the room, and I knew I couldn’t stop.

  I slammed into Molloy and Pasty Man with all the forc
e that I could. Stop! I commanded and they fell, collapsing onto a Clan member that had been hovering nearby. I closed my eyes, and one by one, I sought them out and cut them down, a chorus of cries and gasps rising and then falling as they hit the floor with sickening thuds. The last one was trapped under Molloy’s body, but he reached out to me with his mind. I slammed him back into his own head and commanded, Stop.

  He was still.

  chapter TWENTY-THREE

  I opened my eyes.

  The warehouse looked like a battlefield littered with jackers as still as corpses. They lay motionless, one on top of another, with limbs bent at odd angles. My feet were riveted to the floor. The jackers weren’t dead, but I had erased their conscious thoughts, like words wiped from a scribepad. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t move again unless I told them to wake up.

  Something banged against my knees, and the floor rushed at me. My hands flew in front of my face to keep it from smacking into the concrete. I stared at the floor, and air wheezed in and out of my lungs. The fallen bodies haunted the edge of my field of view.

  Suddenly hands grabbed my shoulders and lifted me. Raf’s face swam into view. “Kira, are you okay?”

  His thick black brows drew together. I reached up and touched them. Soft like feathers. They moved under my hand when he frowned deeper.

  “I’m getting you out of here,” he said. He reached his arm around my back and hoisted me from the floor. My legs didn’t work right. I tried to walk, but my toes kept catching on the concrete floor.

  Or maybe the bodies.

  Raf hauled me across the endless cavern of the warehouse until we reached the door he had come through. He kicked it open, and we stepped out into the clammy night air. The ground disappeared as Raf hooked his arm under my legs and carried me across the street. He set me down by the passenger side of his car and opened the door. The car light spilled out onto the grass and jump-started my brain. I felt sick and bent over, sucking in gulps of night air to stop the queasiness.

  “Oh god, Kira, are you okay?” Raf rubbed my back. The sickness climbed up in my throat, but I swallowed it down and straightened. A wave of dizziness swept me. I leaned against him and buried my face in his chest.

  “We need to leave,” he said, taking hold of my shoulders and nudging me toward the passenger seat. “Just get in the car, and I’ll get us out of here.” I obeyed, sitting heavily and dragging my legs in after me. He hurried around to the driver’s side, throwing a glance back at the warehouse, as if he expected them to come barreling out at any moment.

  He pulled up the mindware to start the car. I touched his shoulder to stop him.

  “We need to go.” His voice was soft, like he was talking to a child waking from a nightmare.

  “No. Wait. I have to wake them up.” It didn’t seem right to leave them passed out cold on the concrete floor.

  “Wake them up?” He peered at the warehouse, draped in shadows. “What happened in there, Kira? I only remember being here in the car. You went in, but I don’t remember anything else until I woke up inside. Then everyone was falling down.”

  Words came out of my mouth explaining how I jacked into people’s minds, how Molloy had ordered Raf killed, and how Simon was going to do it. And so, of course, I had to stop Simon. And Molloy. And the others. I watched his eyes go wide as saucers and then shrink with horror and finally settle into pure amazement. I walked him through every step, but it felt like a lecture I was giving to students in a tinny hall far away. Today, students, I will explain how I knocked out a battalion of mindjacking Clan members. There will be a quiz at the end.

  Sickness rose up again. I had to stop talking to choke it back down.

  Raf brushed my cheeks, and they seemed wet. I blinked to clear away the blurriness.

  The amazement on Raf’s face had tempered to concern. “What do we do now?”

  “We should call the police,” I said. “No, wait.” I tried to clear the fuzziness in my brain. “If I wake them up while the police are there, they’ll just jack the officers and escape. Or worse. There has to be some way to stop them. Maybe order them to cooperate with the police and turn themselves in?” I wasn’t even sure of that. Somehow I had managed to knock them out, but they weren’t expecting it. I caught them by surprise. If they were all awake… and angry…

  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to stay until the police arrive,” Raf said.

  “We can’t let them go free,” I said. “They’ll hurt my family.”

  Raf pulled his phone out of his pocket. “How about I call the police, and we’ll pull over behind those bushes.” He pointed to a row of hedges large enough to obscure his car and out of reading range of the warehouse. “Can you do your, um, jacking from there?”

  “Yes. I think so.” An unreasonable smile broke across my face. Raf gave me a whisper of a smile and then became serious as he focused on his phone. I reached inside the building. The location of each mind was seared into me. They were all still safely unconscious. Raf switched on the car and used the manual joystick to quickly swing the car around and hide us behind the hedge.

  The night was still as we waited.

  The air was thick with things I needed to say to Raf, but the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. I stared at the green twisting branches of the bush, snarled like all the lies I had told, and searched for the right thing to say. From the corner of my eye, I saw Raf staring at me. It all seemed so silly now, in retrospect. The one person I should have trusted all along was the one I had lied to the most.

  “How did you find me?” I asked, stalling while I searched for a way to apologize. Raf gripped the car’s joystick. I wasn’t sure if he was anxious about the police or if he was angry about the insanity that had just occurred. He didn’t look at me.

  “I followed you.” His voice was quiet, like he was embarrassed.

  “From my house?” I asked, not quite putting it all together.

  “No, from the school.” His whisper hung in the air. Heat crept up my neck as I remembered what Simon and I had been doing, for quite some time, in that school parking lot. Had my mom called Raf? Did he just stumble onto that scene? It didn’t matter. Simon’s betrayal just fueled the fire on my cheeks.

  “I was worried about you, Kira,” Raf said, still defending himself.

  “Raf.” I wanted him to look at me, but he kept staring at the bushes. “I was wrong. About a lot of things. I should have told you the truth.” My hands were white from clenching each other in my lap. “I was trying to protect you,” I mumbled.

  His head snapped to me. “Protect me from them?”

  “And from me.” The words came out a whisper.

  He shook his head. “Kira, you wouldn’t hurt me. You saved my life tonight.”

  “I already hurt you once.” My final secret came out before I could stop it.

  “You mean, in chem lab?” Knowing I had cut down a warehouse full of jackers, he had to know that I had done the same thing to him. He took a deep breath and gazed through the bushes to the building where the bodies still lay. “I knew there was something going on with you, Kira, I just didn’t know what. And you wouldn’t talk to me. I wish you had let me help you, instead of turning to that guy, Simon.” The hurt in his eyes was clear, even in the dim parking lot lights, and it stabbed me.

  “Me too,” I whispered. My face burned with embarrassment and anger—at Simon, at myself for lying, at the universe for giving me this cursed ability. I had messed things up pretty good and almost gotten my best friend killed.

  Twice.

  And I had lied to everyone I cared about in the process. There must be something worse than green sludge on cheese, because I had sunk to a new low. I stared at my hands and wondered if Raf could ever trust me again. Then his hand found mine. It was warm and soft, and my fingers automatically sought his and held tight.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he said. But I already knew that from the safe feeling that pulsed from his hands into mine, from the
easy forgiveness he gave me with his touch. Although I didn’t deserve his trust, I desperately needed it.

  The right words had abandoned me again.

  As I searched for something to say, a black car careened around the corner of the winding industrial row and screeched to a stop in front of the warehouse. It didn’t appear to be a police car, with no lights, siren, or markings. We heard the doors open and hard soled shoes clattering on the pavement. I linked into the two newcomer’s minds to see if they were Clan members coming to rescue their fallen crew.

  One pushed me out of his head before I could register a name. The second was distracted, thinking about someone inside the warehouse. His name popped up. Agent Kestrel, FBI. My eyes went wide. Agent Kestrel pushed me out, hard, and kept pushing all the way back to my impenetrable mind. Except maybe it wasn’t. The force of him on my mind was stronger than anything I’d felt before.

  “We have to leave!” I said. Raf jumped in his seat. “Now, now, now!”

  I closed my eyes in concentration. If we stayed any longer, Agent Kestrel might jack into my head, and I was certain that would be a bad thing. I pressed my hands to my temples, as if I could ward Kestrel off that way. Raf threw the car into reverse and flung me forward into the dash. We hurtled backward across the empty parking lot. The pressure on my head lessened. I opened my eyes and braced myself against the dash right as Raf hit the brakes and flung me back into my seat. I struggled with the seat belt as he screeched out of the parking lot.

  A squeal of tires sounded behind us. Even though we were tearing away from the warehouse, the pressure on my mind started to grow again.

  “He’s following us…” I whispered.

  “Who’s following us?” Raf said hoarsely. “What’s going on?”

  “They’re FBI agents. Jacker agents.” The pressure grew stronger. I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead. “We have to get farther away, Raf. Go faster!”

  “I am!” he said, but then he started to slow down and pull to the side of the road.

  He had slumped against the dash.