Mind Storm

by K. M. Ruiz

  “Of course, sir.”

  “You’ve overstepped your bounds, Ciari. Don’t come here again until I call for you. Just because you’re the face of the Strykers Syndicate doesn’t mean you are exempt from the rules every psion must follow.” His fingers stroked over a thin, familiar remote on his desk. “Remember that.”

  The burn at the back of her skull was a reminder that she didn’t really need. Ciari didn’t let her discomfort show as she turned to leave, the pain magnifying with every step she took until she couldn’t stand anymore. She almost made it to the door before she fell to her knees, fire ripping through her brain.

  “Ciari.” Cool fingers gripped her neck, a startling counterpoint to the heat beneath her skin. “As much as I appreciate your concern for humanity’s continued survival, I think I liked it better when you knew how to hold your tongue. Your place in this world is to serve.”

  “Sir,” she gritted out, feeling blood slide out of her nose and down the rigid line of her mouth.

  Over the roaring in her ears, she heard Erik sigh, the cluster of his tangled emotions battering against her shields. Ciari carefully kept her defenses passive until the pain receded to something more manageable as the World Court’s president took his finger off the remote and let her live.

  “You make an excellent OIC, Ciari,” Erik said. “Learn how to be a better dog and I might not be so harsh in my punishments next time.”

  He wanted a reaction out of her, some hint that what he had put her through was as humiliating as he thought it should be. She could feel that. Except Ciari had spent approximately thirty-five years of her life as a government dog and six years before that surviving in the ruins of New York in America as a child before she was picked up by the Strykers. Psions, no matter the Class rank, held on to their memories longer than humans ever could. Ciari remembered what it took to survive in the sprawling mess of a city that made up Buffalo on the polluted banks of Lake Erie. Much more strength than it took to survive in the glass cages of the government’s prison, bound by the collar in her head.

  So when Ciari said, “Sir,” as if her life depended on it, she meant what she said.

  It was her duty as the OIC to take the punishment, after all. She bowed to Erik in order to protect the Strykers beneath her. She always would.

  He took his hand away and another helped her up. Keiko held Ciari with a firm grip as she escorted the older woman out of Erik’s chambers. The door slid shut behind them and both ignored the armed quad, a group of four soldiers, that still remained in the hallway. The humans always feared for their leaders when psions walked through the seat of government.

  “Your orders?” Keiko asked.

  Ciari lifted a hand to wipe the blood off her face. She ended up smearing it across her skin in a vivid crimson streak as she let her thoughts expand beyond her mental shields to the edge of her public mind in a pointed request to the person who she knew was telepathically listening in. We need to talk.

  To Keiko, she said, “Stay calm and walk with me.”

  Keiko followed where she went. Before they even made it down the hall, the two women were teleported out of the Peace Palace and into a shuttle that had yet to leave the government’s private airfield. The man who had initiated the teleport at Ciari’s request raised a glass of champagne to them, a cold smile their only welcome.

  Nathan Serca was a brand first, a man second, and made no apologies for his family’s place in history. At fifty-one, he was as long-lived as psions came, with the physique of someone who had grown up with access to clean water and food that wasn’t grown in poisoned ground. He kept his blond hair cut short and his eyes were that signature Serca dark blue. His life as psion masquerading as a human was the ultimate sleight of hand. That the Strykers helped ensure his family’s success was something no one in the government could ever know.

  “Ladies,” Nathan drawled as he took a sip of champagne. “Have a seat.”

  “No thank you,” Ciari said, voice cool, calm. “We won’t be staying long.”

  “Just long enough to congratulate me? You shouldn’t have. Really.”

  Nathan’s voice was dry, the smug superiority on his face difficult to ignore. As he was a Class I triad psion with telepathy, telekinesis, and teleportation his to command, Ciari knew it was a superiority she had no hope in matching.

  Not often could a human brain handle the BPUs required for the control of two psi powers. One power was always a lower-Classed level when they existed together, and the main power was almost always telepathy. The more common dual psions that were a steady, if small, presence in their short history were telepaths and telekinetics on the low end of the Class scale, as well as telepaths and empaths. Telekinetics who were a Class V or higher and capable of teleportation were labeled dual psions as well.

  Triad psions were something altogether different. They should have been impossible, but the Serca family had proven that wrong. There were theories—there were always theories—on psi powers and the brain that housed them. It was possible for that combination to exist, the Sercas were living proof, but a Class I for all three powers? The brain shouldn’t be capable of holding that much power, but the Sercas could. They were the only psions ever to be labeled triads.

  Ciari supposed Nathan had a right to be smug.

  “Your family has illegally recorded the DNA of unregistered humans over the course of generations,” Ciari said. “The Genome Privacy Act you won out of the World Court today was granted retroactively and grandfathers in your family’s previous work. Why request legality now when the World Court was willing to continue turning a blind eye to your efforts, Nathan?”

  “My timetable isn’t yours.” Nathan set aside his glass and leaned back in the shuttle seat. “I have the information I want. The government knows the Serca Syndicate works fast. I’ll have a list for them by the end of summer at the latest and they will have to accept it.”

  “They will never accept unregistered humans.”

  “Who said anything about them being unregistered?” Nathan waved his hand disdainfully at her. “My family helped create the Registry in preparation for the fifth generation after the Border Wars. Do you really think I don’t control that information? I have no intention of giving up the power we’ve worked toward finally owning. I am in the position to make my own future. You are nothing more than the government’s bitch.”

  Keiko took an angry step forward, but Ciari gestured for her to back down. They would lose in a direct confrontation with Nathan, and a fight wasn’t the reason why Ciari had asked for this meeting.

  “There isn’t enough time for me to give you who you need from the Stryker ranks,” Ciari said.

  “That’s your problem, not mine.”

  Everyone knew there were rogue psions. The Sercas had never been owned by the government, and most of the Warhounds they took in never had either. Psion children, when discovered, were either retrieved by the Strykers or the Warhounds, whoever managed to track them down first, or they were terminated. Usually the Strykers came out ahead, but whereas the Warhounds’ numbers were equal to half the total psions in the Stryker ranks, they had more of the stronger psions. Some within the Warhound ranks, at least a sixth of their fighting force, were Strykers saved from government termination, but only those that the OIC of the Strykers Syndicate deemed worth saving and that the Serca family needed.

  The Silence Law was a twofold rule. A small group of top officers in the Strykers Syndicate helped keep the Serca family’s secrets, and those same few officers were the only Strykers who made sure that the willful, purposeful setup and escape of Strykers tagged for government termination was never discovered. The Sercas only took the best when they deigned to retrieve Strykers at all. Which was why Ciari had these conversations with Nathan on his terms. The survival of her people was worth the humiliation of begging.

  Sometimes it simply wasn’t enough.

  “Give me a little more time to save my people,” Ciari asked.


  Nathan looked her straight in the eye. “You and your predecessors have had more than enough since the Border Wars. I am through being generous. Now leave. I’ve got a schedule to keep.”

  Ciari turned to look at Keiko. “Take us back to headquarters.”

  Keiko wrapped her telekinesis around the both of them, visualized the office they had left barely an hour ago, and stretched her power halfway across the planet. A long-distance teleport required more power than one that simply took a person across a city. She was traveling across continents. No one else in the Stryker ranks could bridge that distance in a single teleport, and Keiko only did it when it was necessary.

  The world shifted in a way it wasn’t meant to as they left Nathan’s shuttle under psion power. Keiko’s teleport brought them to Toronto, Canada, their sudden arrival in Ciari’s spacious executive office met by two Strykers. Keiko sucked in a deep breath once her feet hit the floor, a pinched expression of pain crossing her face briefly. She’d need a few hours of downtime to settle her mind and recover from two straight teleports of such long distances. She didn’t really want her brain to start hemorrhaging or her heart to burst anytime soon. Recovery was something all psions needed, it just wasn’t something all psions got.

  “Keiko?” Ciari asked.

  “I’m fine. Just a bit of a headache.”

  “Looks like Erik had fun with you,” Jael Dawson said, hazel eyes assessing their damage with a critical look. “What did you say to him this time?”

  “Would it matter?” Ciari asked as she walked behind her desk and activated the biometric log-in. “I was breathing. What do you want?”

  The Class III telepath and chief medical officer (CMO) set two thin hyposprays filled with painkillers on the desk as Ciari activated the office’s jamming defenses. The government liked to listen in on their conversations, and the Strykers Syndicate officers had long ago learned to work around that intrusion for very short periods.

  “One for each of you,” Jael said as Keiko reached for the closest hypospray and put it to use. “Though you need something more than medication to fix what I can feel past your shields, Ciari.”

  Ciari ignored the hypospray for the moment, knowing her mind would eventually compensate for the trauma she had just experienced. “It can wait. The World Court is granting Nathan’s request to retain the Serca Syndicate’s anonymity, at least when it comes to the newest Act they got the government to pass. Which means no one is going to have any sort of clearance to see just who the hell they’re choosing for the colony lists. The government won’t share that information with us.”

  “They still don’t know?” Jael’s expression was one of disgust. “About the Serca Syndicate?”

  “We’re just as much to blame for their ignorance as they are. Our Silence Law still holds when it comes to the Warhounds.”

  “Nathan’s as charming as always,” Keiko added.

  “You saw Nathan?” Jael pointed her finger warningly at Ciari. “You need a scan and psi surgery. No telling what that bastard did to you.”

  “He didn’t do anything,” Ciari said as she waved off that demand for the mental procedure that telepaths were uniquely capable of administering on wounded or subverted psions. Psi surgery had grown out of instinct and into a field of medicine that only psions were capable of using.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Nathan isn’t interested in breaking my mind, Jael. He’s got other things to worry about.”

  “Hell.” Jael bowed her head as she squeezed the bridge of her nose, the thin dreads of her black hair swinging to hide her dark face. “Times like this I wish we had a chance at stopping what the Sercas are planning.”

  “You don’t think we do?”

  “Being optimistic isn’t in my job description. I put minds back together, not lives. That’s your job.”

  “Then tell me we have some information on the target that’s been holding steady on the West Coast.”

  Ciari was looking at the man standing next to Jael when she asked the question. Aidan Turner was the Strykers Syndicate’s chief administrative officer (CAO), a Class IV telepath, and the last living member of a three-person team that hadn’t made it to the age of thirty on the field. He had got past the bitterness and pain of survivor’s guilt only by a severe application of psi surgery. Telepaths were the most numerous psions, but the majority were a Class V or lower. The Strykers Syndicate needed him, and it needed him sane.

  It did not need the report he delivered.

  “We lost contact with Threnody and Quinton in the field,” Aidan said. “Jason and Kerr dropped off the mental grid as well.”

  Ciari’s expression didn’t change. “When?”

  “There was a spike around the same time you left for The Hague. The psi signatures were that of Nathan’s twins.” Aidan hesitated a moment before continuing, “The target’s psi signature changed into that of Lucas Serca’s.”

  Those three were the best murderers on the planet aside from their father, psions that could read as human on the mental grid and you’d never know they were there until they were killing you. Only the OIC and her top supporting officers knew of the Sercas’ true nature, a truth that complicated everything.

  “Did you give the Warhounds our Strykers, Ciari?” Jael asked sharply.

  “You know I didn’t,” Ciari said as she looked each of her officers in the eyes. “None of us granted those four a reprieve, and Lucas has never been assigned retrieval duty. He’s been missing from the field for two years.”

  Keiko frowned, rubbing fingers over her left temple. “Which begs the question of why?”

  Lucas Serca’s absence in the media and by his father’s side had been noted. Whatever game Nathan was playing, they were far behind on knowing his goal. There wasn’t a chance in hell that Threnody and Quinton could be alive, not after the last two escapes. The third time was never the charm, not in this world. Kerr and Jason might have a chance, with Jason being a telekinetic and able to teleport, but Ciari doubted it.

  Was it worth it? Ciari thought. She reflected on the government’s decision, at her urging, to cut Threnody loose for a suicide run because the electrokinetic cared more than she should for the humans she had been indoctrinated to protect. Threnody had never been one to swallow propaganda whole without choking on it. All Strykers were like that, most were just better at hiding it.

  “Get a team together,” Ciari said, her face devoid of all emotion. “Bring back the bodies. The World Court always requires proof when Strykers die. It’s so damn difficult to make them believe anything without a corpse.”

  [SIX]

  JULY 2379

  LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM

  New York City had been a crater since the Border Wars, the remains swallowed by the Atlantic Ocean and worn down by acid rain. The world’s financial center had been transplanted perforce to London once the fallout dust settled, because London still stood, thanks to the fanatical service of long-ago RAF pilots. The metal clock hands on Big Ben’s face remained stuck at 3:27, a historical testament, a reminder, to the arrogance of the human race.

  The main city towers that spanned both sides of the sluggish Thames River cast long shadows over the crowded city below. Downstream, the Thames Barrier stood like a silent sentinel, an engineering feat something that only the educated, registered humans understood and were allowed to operate. The streets themselves teemed with unregistered humans who would never find themselves removed from obscurity and written into the safety of the Registry. Their genetics hadn’t passed muster when the time came to prove themselves clean of radiation taint and mutation. At least, not any mutation that was profitable. They would never join the ranks of the educated to better their lives save through illegal schools that would mean their death if found out. The government cracked down hard on those who disobeyed the directives that had separated society into what it was now.

  Freedom, with all its various connotations, was one of the first casualties of survival.


  Nathan was used to his sort of freedom and getting his way, even if the humans—registered and unregistered alike—weren’t exactly aware of how he did it. The problem was that he hadn’t been getting his way for two years and it had left him in a foul mood for just as long. Nathan was excellent at hiding his displeasure, though, especially in front of the cameras.

  The pressroom of the Serca Syndicate was filled to capacity, everyone jostling for the clearest read on the man whose sheer presence up on the speaking stage was enough to capture everyone’s attention. Nathan smiled at his audiences, both the one present and the one beyond the cameras, as he stepped behind the podium, and he meant the expression for what it was—a means to an end.

  “Ladies, gentlemen, it’s always a pleasure to have something to celebrate,” Nathan began, his voice carrying through the room. He cut a striking figure behind the microphones, with the shine of a hologrid at his fingertips. All the reporters leaned forward, eager for what one of the most prominent figures in their society had to say.

  “The government, in its righteous duty to further enable the survival of the human race, has a difficult balance to keep when it rules on issues that come before the World Court. My family, as you know, has had a unique relationship with the ruling politicians that seek to keep us alive in a world our ancestors made. Not everyone has or will agree with the Fifth Generation Act my predecessors campaigned and fought for, but it was necessary at the time. It remains necessary today, despite its detractors.

  “This year marks the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary since the last bombs fell inside China, ending the Border Wars that held the world prisoner for five long and terrifying years. We nearly annihilated ourselves through shortsightedness and greed. The fallout of that time was so much more than radiation sickness and a ruined planet, so much more that we have had to live with and survive through over the past two and a half centuries.