mindjack 04 - origins

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  I narrowed my eyes, knowing exactly what Julian was doing. Using the words that he thought would turn me. Not what I wanted to hear right after a phone call from Arlis. Not when the stakes were keeping Arlis away from me. Away from Ava.

  “Arlis doesn’t deserve salvation,” I said. “He deserves to burn in hell.” Like me.

  Julian held his hands up. “Okay, okay. It’s just that the threat of it alone could be quite a deterrent. Especially to someone like Arlis, who understands your ability. It was only a thought.”

  I didn’t respond. Julian turned and left, busily concentrating on his phone and hopefully dialing Henry to get Ava’s family into protective custody. I leaned against the shower wall and tried to quiet the pounding in my chest.

  I wanted to be calm before I found Ava and warned her that Arlis was determined to get her back.

  Once I had myself under control again, I wandered toward the front of the factory, taking the long way and weaving through the dusty racks that filled the center of the cavernous building. I hoped to find Ava to talk privately and warn her of the dangers of Arlis. She must know the chance she took in leaving him, since she had lived with him as her Clan leader. But I doubted she knew the extremes he would go to, like I did.

  Machine parts and cobwebs clogged the racks, along with the ever-present smell of machine grease. We’d cleared several racks, readying them for Julian’s new recruits, but only a few had been converted to sleeping bunks for me, Anna, and Julian. Now, I supposed, we’d need to make one for Ava, too. There wasn’t much in the way of privacy in the barracks, and a brief thought flitted across my mind of building a few rooms off to the side of the factory. For private meetings or possibly bedrooms. That thought resurrected the skating-on-thin-ice feeling, so I shoved the idea away and strode more earnestly toward the front.

  I reached the makeshift kitchen without finding Ava. Julian’s sister Anna sat at the hundred-year-old wooden table, cleaning her guns. There were a half dozen spread in front of her, in various states of disassembly.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of doing that?” I asked.

  “Nope.” She seemed sore, probably because Julian had let another recruit in that we knew little about. I hadn’t talked to her since Ava arrived.

  “She’s not so bad,” I said. “Things could be a lot worse than having a recruit who’s basically a linker.”

  “Right.” She sighted down the barrel of a half assembled gun in her hand, then rubbed an oilcloth over it and set it on the table. “Just not sure what Julian’s thinking, collecting a bunch of jackers who barely know how to jack.”

  “I know how to jack.”

  “You know what I mean. At least Ava’s not afraid to use her ability, such as it is.”

  “Gee. Thanks a lot,” I said. “By the way, have you seen her?”

  Anna stopped her polishing and looked up. “She’s in back, talking to Julian.” I ignored the twinge that Julian had gotten to her first. “What’s with you two, anyway?”

  “Nothing.”

  Anna seemed unimpressed.

  “We both had the same Clan leader,” I said. “That’s all. And I know what a piece of work he is. Let’s just leave it at that.”

  She was going to say more, but then her gaze shifted behind me. I turned to see Julian and Ava coming from the barracks. I must have missed them somehow.

  Julian waved his small silver phone, then pocketed it. “Talked to Henry. He’s on his way to pick up Ava’s mother and bring her to a safehouse.”

  Ava gave him a warm smile. I didn’t like it, and I could tell Anna didn’t either. I closed my eyes for a moment, determined to get my feelings under control. It was as if I was insanely jealous around her, which made no sense, given that I had known her for less than a day. Maybe it was the looming threat of Arlis back in my life that was making me so… unstable.

  Whatever it was, it needed to stop.

  I opened my eyes again. “That’s good news.” Ava stared at me with concern. You promised to stay out of my head, I thought. There was no reaction on her face, which trickled relief through me. I guessed she was keeping her promise.

  “Henry can move Ava’s mother to our parents’ estate in the North Shore,” said Julian, ignoring us, “until he can get new documents for her and relocate—”

  A loud cracking sound split the air, followed by a hollow metallic bang. Before I could twist to see where the noise had come from, Julian slumped to the floor, landing with a dull thud in front of me. I dropped to the floor as well, rolled to the left, and scrambled to the table where Anna had her guns. I saw a flash of camouflage as she skittered across the floor to take cover behind the kitchen cabinets. I tipped the table, scattering guns and putting a shield between myself and whoever had broken through the door. Julian lay twisted on the concrete, a dart sticking out of his chest, which gave me a second’s worth of relief that it wasn’t a bullet hole. Then I realized I couldn’t see Ava.

  Boots pounded the cement, surging into the factory. I flung out my mind, trying to gauge how many, while also searching for Ava. My reach plunged into five minds, four of whom shoved me out. The fifth belonged to Ava, just on the other side of the table. I was about to link a thought to her when a volley of pop-whoosh sounds punctuated the air. The boots scuffled, and another volley fired off, stopping and starting in time with my erratic heartbeat.

  I was desperate for a weapon. As I remembered Anna’s dumped guns, Ava pivoted around the edge of the table, her small hand pointing a reassembled gun at my head. I spun toward her, rolling sideways on the floor and knocking my legs into hers. Her shot went wide, or at least not into me, and she tumbled down on top of me. I easily wrenched the gun out of her hand.

  For a split second, I thought she had betrayed us, but her face was blank, her eyes dead to me. I surged into her head and instantly recognized the hard, marble presence suspended in the softness of her mind, controlling her thoughts and actions.

  Arlis.

  As I wrestled with him mentally, she fought against me physically, like a tiny wild animal. I wrapped my arms around her, pinning her flailing arms to her side. Arlis had to know it was me, like I knew it was him. More pop-whoosh sounds told me that Anna still fought from the cabinets. After what seemed like a long stretch of time, but was probably just a few seconds, I managed to shove Arlis out of Ava’s mind. She went limp in my arms, her eyelids fluttering, like she was fighting to remain conscious.

  I relaxed my hold on her, my hand slippery with sweat as I tried to get a better grip on the gun. I surged out again, finding the four intruders—Arlis plus three of his henchmen—spread along the perimeter, probably taking refuge from Anna’s fire behind the massive door stamping machines that lined the front wall. They pushed back, shoving me all the way to my skull. They were too strong and quickly got inside my head. I fought them, but I was losing control, so I reached my pistol around the table and fired in their general direction. The shots rang out, pinging off machinery and concrete like a hail of metallic bees.

  A short scream pulled one of the presences from my mind. More gunfire sounded from the cabinets, like firecrackers smacking the air. Another scream and the pressure in my head lessened again. With only Arlis and one other mind, I managed to push them just outside my head, enough to keep them from controlling me.

  Ava stirred to life in my arms. I didn’t know if I could jack Arlis out of her head again. Preemptively, I held her tight against me, keeping my gun hand far from her reach.

  “It’s okay, Sasha.” Her voice was clear and light. “He’s not in my head.”

  Anna’s mental presence surged against Arlis and his henchman. Together, we pushed them back to their own skulls, and with Ava safe, my hands were free. I reached around the corner again and fired in their direction. A grunt and the lack of mental pushback told me Arlis’s henchman had been hit. That left Anna and me to both mentally press in on Arlis’s head. As we did so, we controlled him enough to immobilize him physically. His gunshots s
topped, and Anna and I ceased fire as well.

  I motioned to Ava to stay put and climbed to my feet, still hunched behind the table. I crouched as I ran between the table and the nearby sofa, seeing if I could draw any fire, but there was none. Still crouched, I sprinted across the concrete floor.

  Arlis lay in a dusty grease spot between a stamping machine and the front wall. His eyes were half-lidded, trying to battle Anna and me in his mind. Seeing me, he struggled to raise his dart gun, but I stepped on his arm, pinning it to the floor. I pointed my gun at his head. My heart pounded in my ears, drowning out all sound other than my own labored breathing. I was about to shoot him when Anna arrived at my side.

  Without hesitation, she reached past me and shot Arlis in the chest. I twitched from surprise, but then disappointment rolled through me when I saw the dart in his chest. Anna turned and fired again, taking down Arlis’s henchman, who now lay unmoving with both a dart and a knife sticking out of his gut.

  I gripped my gun harder, still pointed at Arlis. Why didn’t she kill him? She should have killed him. I would have killed him if she hadn’t shot him with the dart.

  “The others are out.” Anna lowered her weapon. “Are you injured?”

  “No.” I should pull the trigger and kill Arlis now, but something about him lying on the ground, his cheeks slack and grey, stopped me. He seemed so much older than the last time I saw him. Worn. Tired.

  Anna peered at me. “Is he the one?”

  “Yes.” The one who made me what I am. The one who had caused me to ruin so many lives. A tremor in my hand made the gun waver a tiny bit. Why hadn’t I shot him already? What did it matter if he had become an old man since he tormented me?

  “Are you going to kill him?”

  Her words made me twitch. I turned to look at her. Those startling blue eyes locked onto mine.

  “He deserves to die,” I said. A flush of heat crawled up my face, though I doubted she would mind if I shot Arlis.

  “So what’s stopping you?”

  “I… I’m tired of killing.” The words felt traitorous, slipping out of my mouth, like the truth had escaped in spite of my best efforts to cage it.

  “You could rewrite him instead.” She held my gaze. I slowly let the gun drop to my side.

  Ava arrived behind me. “Sasha, no.” She pulled my attention to her. “It would be too hard on you. I’ve seen the nightmares. You don’t need to do that anymore.”

  “One way or another, you need to stop him,” Anna said. “Or I will, if you would prefer. But he’s not walking out of here.”

  She was right, of course. Arlis would come after us again. Or he would track down Ava’s family, just for vengeance. And that was the problem. This felt like cold vengeance, the kind of thing that Arlis would do. It felt like I was trying to take back all that he stole from me by putting a bullet in his brain. Killing Arlis would stop him from doing what he did to me again. What he did to Ava and her family, and who knew how many other people over his lifetime. It would stop the monster.

  But I wanted more.

  I wanted him to feel sorry. I wanted him to regret what he had done. I wanted him to live a long life carrying the guilt of so many wrongs that he could never put right. I wanted him to spend years trying anyway. I could rewrite him into being someone horrified by the things he did. And somehow that felt more like justice. But that was also giving him another chance, just like Julian said.

  My throat closed up. Ava’s hand gripped my arm, a light pressure that almost wasn’t there. I cleared my throat, but didn’t push her away. Instead, I turned to Anna and held my gun out to her. “If I lose control, I want you to use this.”

  She frowned, but took the gun. She knew the danger of what I could do, and if nothing else, I knew she wouldn’t hesitate to use force if threatened. If the madness took me this time, she should be able to stop me before I touched anyone else.

  Ava’s grip on my arm grew stronger. “Sasha, you don’t have to do this. I don’t want you to do this for me.” Her pretty face drew into lines of pain.

  “I’m doing this for me.” I gently pried her fingers from my shirt.

  I knelt by Arlis, unconscious at my feet, and touched the first two fingers of my left hand to his sweaty and chilled forehead. I closed my eyes, tunneling deep inside his mind until I reached the cloud of mental connection that enveloped everything: bits of memories, snippets of personality quirks, behaviors and convictions, all wound together like a giant ball of string. No organization, just connection. A set of memories that wove together into a conviction which then threaded into a new behavior. It was the tapestry that made Arlis unique.

  I plucked a string and it unraveled, traveling back in time to when he was a child, a boy with few possessions to call his own, but who wanted more. A boy who grew into a man who discovered he had a great power. Who would never be satisfied, always craving what his power could bring him. The tapestry came apart in an endless cascade of memories and emotion that washed through me like a pulse of energy, intense and paralyzing.

  I teetered, dizzy with it. Hands were on me, holding me up. My eyes remained squeezed shut.

  The pieces of Arlis fought for space inside my head, pushing around my own thoughts and memories. I absorbed him, became him. I held the empty box that was a cruel joke by my foster father on my birthday. I cried silent tears while I bunched up the sheets on my bed, wishing the pain would stop, vowing never to hurt from wanting again.

  My mind blew the memory away with caustic sands that eroded me into bits. The pieces lifted like small leaves swirling into the air on a whirlwind. I scrambled, grabbing at them, trying to shape them into a life. My life. Arlis’s life. Any life. But they shredded into a hazy cloud of dust.

  I remember you, Sasha, a voice spoke in my head. I know who you are. It was Ava’s voice, like a lighthouse in the cloud, calling me. My own thoughts and memories pulled toward it, beating back the dust of other personalities that threatened to choke them.

  I remember you, Sasha, Ava said again, inside my head, urging me on. I collected up the pieces, gathering and shaping them, until they coalesced into a single life.

  Mine.

  I blinked open my eyes. Arlis lay motionless under my touch. Ava’s hand gripped my arm, anchoring me. I was so light-headed, I might have fallen over, if this tiny girl wasn’t holding me up.

  I reached into Arlis’s mind and rewrote him, reassembling the pieces of him to form a new picture and scribing his mind into something better than it was. I left every memory of every wrong act intact, but made them barbs in his mind; thorns that he could never remove and that would remind him of what he had done. Then I crafted a basic need, stronger than any other, stronger than self-preservation itself.

  A need to fix what he had done.

  That last part drained every parcel of energy I had left. I slumped over, my head falling to my chest, my eyes tugging close.

  I fell into Ava, and somehow she held me up.

  The training area still reeked of old grease and ancient dust. I circled Ava, tracking her, keeping my eyes on her small hands. They could move pretty fast when she wanted them to. She watched me, her gaze flitting over my body, looking for the next move I would make. She finally worked her way up to my eyes, locking stares with me. Then she broke out into a grin.

  I kept my face serious, although the compulsion to smile back was almost overpowering. “This isn’t a game, Ava.”

  “It’s not?” she asked, a laugh in her voice.

  “Close combat training is important,” I said. “You need to be able to defend yourself.” In case I’m not there, next time. I kept that thought to myself.

  She moved lightning quick, leaping out and punching me in the gut, then hopping back and regaining her balance, like a bird on a wire. I barely felt the punch—it was like being batted by a kitten.

  I sighed and stood up straight. “Is that all you’ve got? C’mon.” I crooked my fingers, urging her closer. “Hit me as hard as you can
.”

  She stood straight as well. “I just did.”

  “That was pathetic.”

  She leaped at me, both arms raised, and brought them down on my chest, beating me with her fists. She knocked me off balance, forcing me to take a step back, but I easily caught her wrists in my hands, holding her close.

  “I surprised you that time, didn’t I?” she asked.

  “A little.” I couldn’t help but smile. “But now you’re trapped.”

  “That’s awful.” She smiled up at me. “Poor me.”

  “You’re not taking this seriously.” I didn’t let her go. I liked having her close way too much for that. She didn’t try to move away either.

  “I take you very seriously, Sasha,” she said quietly. “Always.”

  I was going to kiss her. Someday. Probably soon. Very soon.

  But not today.

  I spun her till she faced away and locked my arms tight around her. “Try to break my grip,” I instructed.

  “But I don’t want to.” I could feel her smile, even though I couldn’t see her face. Definitely kissing her. Very, very soon.

  “Ava,” I warned. Her safety could depend on this, and that wasn’t something I was willing to mess with.

  She stomped on my foot and shoved her elbow into my gut, both of which actually hurt a little, then she twisted out of my loosened grip and spun to face me, stepping back out of my reach.

  She crouched into the fighting stance I had taught her.

  “Better,” I said.

  She smirked. “Try to grab me.”

  “Grab you how?” I pictured grabbing her and kissing her, but I didn’t think that was what she meant. Maybe.

  “Any way.”

  I shot a hand out to her left shoulder, but just before my hand touched her, she dodged it. I tried grabbing her right wrist, but she whisked her hand away. I lunged for her waist with both hands, but she twirled away right before I got there. She was a slippery eel all of a sudden.

  I stopped. “How did you do that?” I tried to keep the surprise out of my voice.