Open Minds

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  “I can tell you how it works.”

  “Oh, you’ll need to do much better than that, little Kira. I’ll believe you can defeat the gas when I see you do it.”

  Considering I had the Impenetrable Mind, and Molloy couldn’t get into my head for a truth examination, there was a certain logic to proving my newfound talent by demonstration. But I still didn’t like the sound of it.

  “Uh, okay.”

  Molloy smirked at my discomfort. “According to information from a few, ah, recruits from Lenny’s Clan, we’re due for another supply drop.” Pasty Man seemed like he enjoyed extracting that information from the minds of Lenny’s crew.

  “When the Feds come in, they gas the camp first. Everyone goes down and wakes up with fresh food and water supplies to fight over.”

  “Why don’t they just send in the truck?” Given that I had been delivered on an autotruck to the camp, gassing everyone seemed like a lot of effort merely to supply food and water.

  Molloy’s face turned cold. “Because they take a few volunteers with them when they leave.”

  The Feds took people out of the camp? I had assumed it was a one-way trip. Why send us all to jacker camp, only to take us back out again, a few at a time? It didn’t make any sense. “Where do they take them?”

  “According to Lenny’s Clan, somewhere worse than here,” Molloy said with dead seriousness. What could possibly be worse than the camp? “If you’re able to fight off the gas, little Kira, then perhaps you could be useful after all.” He loomed over me with his giant frame, but his words were more frightening than his hulking presence. “I don’t want to lose any of my Clan to the Feds and their ghoulish experiments.”

  My jaw dropped. The Feds were experimenting on jackers? It was like the early days of the change, when they pushed probes into my Great Grandpa Reilly’s brain like he was a lab rat. How could they possibly justify that? Anger boiled in my stomach.

  “Like I said,” Molloy continued, “I’ll believe you can control the gas when I see it. If you can, we’ll talk about putting your ability to good use. Like getting out of the Fed’s cozy prison. But I’m not going to risk any of my Clan members based on your good word,” he said, the words sounding like they tasted bitter, “and Simon’s misplaced trust.” He folded his arms to study me. “If you can fight the gas when the drop comes, you should be able to bring back food from the depot before the rest of the camp awakes. If you can’t do that much, well, you’re not much use to us then, are you? And if the Feds catch you, then we’ll see you when you come back in the newcomer truck with a few pieces missing.” He leaned closer, looming over me. “Either way, I expect you to use that unique head of yours to keep my Clan safe. If there’s anyone missing after the drop, it had better be you.”

  I leaned away from him. Either Molloy thought I could fight through the mist and hold off the Feds all on my own, or he was hoping I would get caught trying and end up in one of the Fed’s experiments. I had a chance of fighting off the gas, but I didn’t have much hope of holding the Feds at bay. I hoped like crazy that they wouldn’t come looking for any Clan Molloy members during the next drop.

  Because it seemed there was a place worse than the camp after all.

  Molloy had learned much from interrogating Lenny’s crew.

  Andre, Molloy’s pasty second-in-command, was briefing me and seemed to enjoy talking to me about as much as I liked his beady stares. We each wore the red armband that identified us as Block C now, like the rest of the Clan, but I didn’t make the mistake of assuming we were on the same side. “The supply drops happen randomly,” he said. “Before the drop, the camp is gassed. It comes in through an underground piping system. The barracks, the washrooms, the depot. Even outside.” His grin was filled with evil, and I was sure he hoped I would fail miserably in combating the gas and the Feds.

  Only that was exactly what Molloy expected me to do. “How many prisoners do they take?” I tried to not bow under Pasty Man’s antagonism.

  “Usually only two or three.”

  Maybe luck would be on my side. Block C could hold about 400 people, but it was relatively empty, with most of Lenny’s Clan fleeing after the fight. If the other Blocks were even half full, and with seven Blocks spread around the camp, my rough calculations put the camp at over a thousand inmates. The odds seemed low that any Clan Molloy members would go missing.

  The idea of a thousand jackers made my mind fuzz out a bit. There must be many more jackers in the world than I ever imagined. With a thousand in the camp, there had to be many times that amount hiding among the readers of the world.

  Andre was distracted by Simon hopping around on one foot and making a squawking noise. I had convinced Simon to let Laney practice her jacking skills on him, since she couldn’t jack into my Impenetrable Mind. I linked a thought to her. Don’t make Simon mad. We’re going to need his help.

  She pouted. Can I make him sing?

  No.

  How about cartwheels?

  I threw out my hands. Just practice linking your thoughts.

  She rolled her eyes, but Simon stumbled to a stop and glared at me from across the room. I ignored him. “So,” I said to Andre, “as long as no Clan Molloy members go missing and I bring back some food, we’re good. Right?”

  Andre hesitated, but gave me a short nod. “As soon as the drop is finished and the camp awakens from the gas, the depot will be overrun. Each Block sends its strongest jackers at harvest time. Some don’t come back.” His evil smile returned. I narrowed my eyes. “If, however, you can remain awake, it should be no problem for you to bring back food for the Clan.” He lifted a dusty pillow from the cot next to us. “A pillowcase full should be enough to convince Mr. Molloy.”

  I snatched the pillow from him and started to tug the pillowcase off. “No problem.” But I wasn’t at all sure about any of it. If I could keep the gas at bay, I should be able to get to the depot after the Feds left and before anyone else woke up. But if the FBI agents came after any Clan Molloy members, I was in serious trouble. Maybe I would be able to knock them out, if they weren’t expecting me. And if I was on the losing end of that jack? No, if they came looking for volunteers from Clan Molloy, I’d be better off finding another Clan to join. Which made me realize how little I knew about the rest of the Clans and the layout of the camp, much less where the food was held. “Where’s the depot?”

  “I’m sure Simon can help you with that.”

  I had a sick feeling that I had stepped into some kind of trap. We both glanced at Simon, who was doing pushups on the floor next to a grinning Laney. I let out a long sigh.

  After Andre left and I convinced Laney to apologize to Simon, I planned to check out the rest of the camp, find the depot, and possibly scout out ways to escape and take Laney with me. Simon insisted on coming along. I told him I didn’t want to leave Laney alone, that I was concerned about the less savory members of Clan Molloy, including Andre. Simon insisted she would be fine as long as she stayed in Block C.

  I lightly brushed Simon’s mind, just a bare whisper of a link so I could read his thoughts without him being aware of my presence. I had learned how to do this shortly after Molloy gave us temporary sanctuary in the Clan. Jacking into someone’s mind was the same as asking for a fight, but only if they knew you were there. Trusting Simon wasn’t high on my priority list, but he seemed to only be thinking of keeping me safe outside Block C. And I didn’t see a way to leave him behind.

  As it turned out, I was glad Simon came with me as soon as we left Block C. A gang of jackers drifted away from Block B to follow us. They were the four guys from before, they knew my head was as hard as a rock, and they had brought more friends with black armbands. They might have figured out I was unique or maybe they wanted to finish whatever praver thoughts they had from before.

  Simon didn’t have to tell me to pick up the pace.

  We started jogging and then flat out ran to the depot when they kept pace. We avoided territory staked out by ot
her Clans by staying in the wide-open areas between Blocks. The depot was hard to miss. If there hadn’t been a melee when I first arrived, I would have seen it. The sand-colored walls enclosed racks and racks of empty shelving that stood in rows down the warehouse-sized depot. We shut the heavy double doors and locked ourselves inside.

  “Do you know those guys?” My voice was strained from the run and the panic.

  “Yeah,” Simon said. “They’re some of Lenny’s old crew.” His voice was even more wheezy than mine. “Block B must have taken them in. They’re not very nice.” Simon dragged an empty rack over, metal screeching against concrete, and braced it against the door. I reached out to lightly check on our followers. They were gathered in the open space where the fight had gone down.

  “They’re waiting for us to come out,” I said. “They’re planning to attack us then. They want to take us prisoner, not kill us.” They really wanted to take me prisoner, not so much Simon, but I left that part out.

  Simon straightened. “How do you know that?”

  Oops.

  “How do you think?” I retorted. Simon may be on my side for the moment, but I wasn’t on a sharing-secrets basis with him, even if he had saved me from Molloy’s wrath. Simon shook his head and searched for other things to stack against the door. He settled on an empty 55-gallon drum that he wheeled over and shoved against the rack.

  “So, are we going to hole up here until they go away?”

  Simon brushed the dust from his hands and opened his mouth to answer, then sagged toward the ground. I lunged forward and barely got my arm under him to keep him from cracking his head on the concrete floor.

  “Simon!” I jacked fast into his mind. Three of the Block B gang were deep inside and tunneling deeper to slow his heart and breathing. They had a change of plans. Now they decided if they killed Simon, it would be easier to take me without a fight. My quick survey outside the warehouse showed all six had crept up to the door.

  I pushed them out of Simon’s head, slamming them back into their own minds and knocking the weakest one out, but the others were too strong for me. When the body hit the dirt outside, the others were momentarily distracted.

  I gritted my teeth and dragged Simon away from the door. I needed to put distance between him and the gang to revive him. He groggily squirmed in my arms, which didn’t help much. Then he snapped awake with a gasp and twisted out of my hands altogether. He crouched on the floor, wild-eyed.

  Follow me! I ordered his limbs to move while his mind sorted things out. They’re right outside the door!

  The back of the warehouse was a good seventy feet from the door, far enough to lessen their ability to jack Simon. I reached back to lightly tap their thoughts. They still didn’t realize I was listening in and couldn’t seem to find the blank spot of my mind. But they could sense Simon. They revived their crewmate and planned to split up, one group going around the side of the warehouse to seek us out, while the others worked on opening the door.

  I slammed into the weakened one and sent him collapsing back to the ground again. Their outrage and confusion derailed their plans for a moment, but we were running out of time. I scouted the warehouse for another door. There was only a row of high windows letting in camouflage-dappled light and a bunch of empty shelving. That would have to do.

  I flashed a picture of our escape route to Simon. Together we tipped a shelving rack until it banged loudly against the wall and formed a metallic ladder of sorts. I grabbed a discarded coffee can and clambered up the scaffolding with Simon close on my heels. The sharp edge of the can dug into my hand as I slammed it against the window. It made a terrific noise and achieved nothing. Simon climbed up next to me and twisted around so he was balanced on the top shelf with his feet braced on the window. He kicked a hole straight through, sending the shattered pieces of glass flying outward. Several dagger-sized pieces still rimmed the edges. He kept kicking until there was a hole we could climb through without slicing ourselves to shreds.

  I reached for the minds of our stalkers. They had heard the sound of the window smashing. Simon’s shoes protected his feet as he perched on the edge of the window, but tiny rivers of blood flowed down from the gashes in his leg. He leaped down to the ground, and I scuttled up to the window to jump after him, wincing as the glass bit into my hands. When I hit the ground, Simon steadied me so I didn’t topple into the glass-littered dirt.

  The pravers had heard us, but we had a head start. Simon took my hand, and we ran like our feet were on fire all the way back to Block C.

  After that, I crossed Block B off the list of Clans I would seek refuge in if things went south with the Feds during the supply drop. I might not survive joining another Clan, but it had to be better than being taken by the Feds. I was still hoping I’d get lucky and the Feds wouldn’t come looking for any Clan Molloy members. Then maybe, with the help of Clan Molloy, Laney and I could escape. In the meantime, there was nothing to do but wait for the drop to come.

  After my nightmarish trip to the depot, I kept to our barrack room, well within the protective zone that surrounded Block C. If the waking periods in the camp were nightmarish, the actual nights weren’t any better.

  I was dead asleep when something jabbed me in the stomach. My eyelids dragged open. It was only Laney, rolling around in her restless, dream-haunted sleep again. I gingerly moved her elbow away and linked into her mind.

  The last three nights, the same dream had played like a sim-cast on an endless loop. Laney ran through a maze of empty hallways, searching barren white rooms for her mom. At the end of the dream, Laney would find her mom sprawled on the floor next to Laney’s dad and little brother, all motionless like broken dolls. I was pretty sure she had only knocked them out, considering the FBI had told her they wiped her family’s true memories, but Laney didn’t know for sure. The FBI had hauled her off before she saw them wake up.

  I intercepted her dream-self and steered her to a park filled with sunshine. I conjured her family waiting at a picnic table. Having seen the pallid versions of their faces in her nightmares, it was easy to create the outline of their features—Laney filled in the rest.

  Her body quieted and her features smoothed. She rolled away from me and sighed. A kid like Laney didn’t belong in a place like this. And neither did I.

  If I could find a way out, I vowed to go home and set a few things straight—starting with my dad. My dad the jacker. Since Agent Kestrel dropped that little bombshell, a rumbling anger had filled me. Why hadn’t my dad warned me? He must have known it was possible I might be a jacker, not a zero after all. And what did he really do for the Navy, anyway? At some point, he must have taken the option to work for the government, rather than going to the camp. I couldn’t believe he would round up other innocent jackers. He wasn’t like Kestrel. Maybe all those childhood sims my dad told us were true, and he was using his jacker abilities to catch the bad guys.

  Except I wasn’t sure who the bad guys were anymore.

  If my dad had simply told me the truth, I wouldn’t be lying in a concentration camp, trying to find a way to break out. If I ever did get out, he would have some answering to do.

  And I would make things right with Raf as well. No more lies. He deserved to know the truth, and now I knew he would understand. It made me cringe to think his last true memory of me was with Simon, in the car, making out.

  Simon wheezed as he pulled air into his lungs. It made me shudder. He’d had been beaten pretty good in the fight with Lenny’s Clan, and the gashes on his leg from yesterday turned out to be pretty deep. I had cleaned and bandaged them as best I could, but there weren’t any doctors or real medical supplies in our little Camp of the Flies. I hoped his injuries could heal on their own.

  Simon moaned and then coughed as the sound rumbled through his chest. I linked into his mind to see if he was awake and found him caught in a dream that was all too real. A pack of older jackers crowded around a kid no bigger than Laney, menacing him with their looks and their m
inds. The boy quickly crumpled under the mental duress. Simon’s arm twitched against the rough blanket of his cot, but in the dream it was Molloy that held him back, saying Too late, too late.

  That image was washed away by another where Simon ran past rows of barracks. He threw open every single door, searching for someone he was afraid to find. At the last door, he discovered a girl with brown hair collapsed on the floor. He rushed to her and pulled her into his arms. Her hair fell back from her face.

  I jerked out of his head. The shock of seeing my face on that girl—that dead girl in his arms—chilled me to the bone. Simon writhed on the bed again and then curled on his side, a small whimper escaping him. I could jack his nightmare away, like I had Laney’s, but I didn’t relish the idea of seeing myself dead again.

  I stared at the ceiling and tried to ignore my racing heart and the quiet sounds of pain from Simon’s cot. Either he was upset about my dream-death or the thrashing around was causing him physical pain. Regardless, I wouldn’t get any sleep with him moaning. I took a deep breath and linked back in.

  He was still kneeling in the room where he had found me. Thankfully, my body was gone. Except now his hands were covered in blood, and he was smearing them all over his shirt and pants. He wasn’t getting them clean, just making a disastrous mess.

  I needed to pull him out of his wild guilt dream before it drove us both mad. I erased the blood and the room from his mind and replaced it with a meadow in moonlight. Simon filled the meadow in with a giant boulder and his car parked beside it, recreating that night when we snuck out and met his reader friends for some pretend dipping.

  These were safe true memories.

  The faint smell of wild grass filled me. At first, it seemed like the scent of the meadow, recreated by Simon. Then I realized it was his mind-scent. I had been in his mind several times, but always under duress, never quite like this, where I had time to notice it.