“No.” His crystal blue eyes drill into mine, implacable.
“But I can help—”
“No.” Anger clouds his face, and he starts to turn away.
I catch his arm, and he turns back. “What do I have to do to prove I’m ready?” I ask, trying not to sound angry, but the words come out clipped anyway. “Just tell me. I’ll do it.”
He takes a breath, like I’m trying him to the limit of his patience. Then he gently lays his hands on my shoulders. With his touch, the blood under my skin pulses, the adrenaline still pounding through it. But my anger kills the instinctual gush of lovey-feelings his touch would normally conjure up.
“I promise you,” he says softly. “You’re going to be a key part of everything, keeper. You’re instrumental to making all of this work. Just… not on this particular mission.”
He drops his hands from my shoulders and gives me a parting regretful look. But this is far from over. If he thinks I’m letting this go, he’s seriously underestimating my hatred for Kestrel. And Anna is right: I have skills and the determination to use them.
I just need to figure out which one will convince Julian he’s making a terrible mistake.
Every shot from my dart gun stabs into the mannequin’s torso with a satisfying thunk. I can hear it even from fifty feet away, where the mannequin is strung up at the end of one lane in an abandoned bowling alley that Hinckley has turned into a shooting range.
“One shot went wide of the target zone,” Hinckley says in a flat voice, showing me a close-up of the mannequin’s chest in an image he’s snapped on his phone.
I push up my safety glasses—overkill for the dart gun, but I plan to shoot real weapons with bullets before I’m done today—and peer at Hinckley’s phone. “It’s fifty feet away and I missed it by less than an inch.”
“Still a miss.”
I wave off his phone. “My dart gun skills aren’t the ones that need work.”
He grunts a wry agreement, stows the phone, and relieves me of my dart gun. Hinckley knows I’m here to train with bullets, not tranq darts, but he likes to start our sessions with the less-lethal stuff. I already know how to shoot a real gun and miss; that’s how Kestrel got away the first time. I had no clue how to aim, and the recoil was completely unexpected. But a lack of training didn’t stop me from getting into situations where my aim was the difference between stopping a cold-blooded killer and letting him escape to torment more jackers.
“What do you want to shoot next?” Hinckley asks as he strides over to the gun cabinet.
“Julian?” I quip.
Hinckley jerks to a stop and gives me a dark look.
I roll my eyes. “I’m just saying it’s hard to change his mind once he’s got an idea in his head.”
He grunts again, but his shoulders are still tense as he turns to select a weapon for me. I shouldn’t joke with him. Hinckley is ex-military, although I didn’t realize that before I arrived a couple weeks ago. The shaggy haircut, ill-kempt clothes, and stringy hands are great camouflage. I knew about his extreme jacker ability to control many jackers at once; I just didn’t realize he had a mind for strategy and a decade of military experience to go with it. I had noticed his tendency to stick close to Anna, once we freed her from Kestrel’s cells. And since she’s been back, he’s spent a lot more time on the training floor, bulking up some of that lankiness in an obsession similar to Anna’s with the pushups. Maybe they read Guns and Ammo together in the back bunks of Julian’s headquarters.
Hinckley returns with a small caliber weapon. It looks lost in his long-fingered hands, but it’s probably just the right size for me.
“Six rounds, loaded, ready to go,” he says.
I take it from him. The cool metal runs a shiver along my fingers. Even though it’s small, the gun is heavy in my hand. I move my finger away from the trigger, keeping discipline like Hinckley taught me last week, then hold the gun with both hands in front of me, aimed at the mannequin. Already I’m picturing Kestrel’s angular face and imagining the slow squeeze of the trigger.
Hinckley lightly rests a hand on top of the gun, lowering it. “I’d rather you didn’t destroy our one tranq dart target.”
“Just visualizing.”
He nods and holds up his other palm. Two ear plugs rest in it. I tuck them in my pocket and follow him over two lanes to where a paper target sits in front of a bullet-ridden backstop. The mechanism that long-ago set up the pins is rusted and silent, just like the rest of the bowling alley. It was abandoned when the mindreaders fled the cities, looking to put more space between them and their mindreading neighbors. The readers still work in the downtown Chicago towers but that leaves a no-man’s-land at the outer edges of the city. The demens—driven mad by the change into mindreaders—haunted this part of the city long before the jackers moved in and set up Jackertown. Now, with Julian leading the way, this dead zone is coming back to life, if only as a place to train for war.
Hinckley gestures to the paper target. “Do you remember our training from last week or do you want to go over it again?”
“I’m good.” I line up the front and rear sights of the gun, then align them with the bottom of the target center, adjusting for the slight lift before the bullet flies to its mark. The safety’s still on.
“Have you started training people for the mission?” I ask, casually, as if this isn’t almost the entire reason why I’m at the range today. I do need target practice as well, but the real reason I normally come to Hinckley’s makeshift range is to clear my mind and quiet the ache left over from losing Raf. The focus required to hit the target, plus visualizing a bullet sinking into Kestrel’s brain, does wonders for my mood.
“You’re still not on the roster, Kira,” Hinckley says.
I lower the gun, but still keep it pointed downrange. “Thanks for the update.” I flick an irritated look at him. “But that wasn’t what I asked.”
“We’re doing a few drills, yes.”
I line up my sights again. “Assault on the gate? Or are you training with the assumption that you’re going to get inside first?”
“Kira.” His voice is quieter now. “If Julian says you’re out, then… that’s it.”
Hinckley would never go against Julian’s orders. I know that. There’s a fierce loyalty to Julian amongst his small band of revolutionaries—I’d say it almost borders on obsession, but I’ve felt it first-hand. He’s fighting for all of us. For what’s right. For the changelings and every jacker that’s ever been locked up by the government for the crime of simply being born. He’s trying to free all of us from prisons made of bars and bigotry. The feeling we have for him… it’s a lot like love.
Too much so, in my case, but that’s just because he messed with my head.
I squeeze my eyes shut and lower the gun. When I open them, Hinckley’s staring at me with an odd look of concern.
“I belong on that op, Hinckley.”
“I know.”
“Can’t you say something to him? Look at the tactical plan? See where you need a keeper?”
“He’ll just send Anna for that.”
I groan and let the gun fall farther, gesturing to him with my now-free hand. “There’s room for two keepers on the mission. And Anna can’t fight off the gas the way I can.”
“True.”
“And I can reach farther than anyone but Ava, and you know he’s not sending her in.”
“Even if he did, Sasha wouldn’t go for it.”
“Exactly!” Sasha is extremely protective of Ava. She’s his girlfriend, but it goes way beyond that. He hovers over her like he’s afraid something terrible will happen at any moment. “Which is why you need me on the op.”
“We do.”
My hope surges up. “So you’ll tell him? Explain to him? Get him to see—”
“He’s the boss, Kira.”
My shoulders slump and a huff of air escapes me.
“We’re going to get Kestrel. Besides…” He hesitates.
“You don’t want a repeat of the last time, do you?”
“I lost Kestrel because I was saving your worthless hide!” I try to keep the bitterness out of my voice, but it’s there. I don’t like it. Saving Hinckley was the right move at the time, even if it cost me Kestrel.
His face is stone cold. “I hope you won’t make that choice again.”
“I didn’t mean that, Hinckley.”
“I know you didn’t,” he said grimly. He stares at the distant target. If I jacked into his head right now, I’d probably find him visualizing bullet after bullet sinking into the bullseye. Not that I’d dare to link into his head without asking.
“When I was in the military,” he says quietly, “we never left anyone behind. Then I joined the jacker division.” He glances at me. “I quickly learned they play by a different rulebook. And some people were definitely expendable.”
“You’re not expendable.”
He smirks. “Actually, I am. But you on the other hand…”
I frown. “Kestrel still has changelings in his torture chambers. Kids. He’s single-handedly responsible for more jacker misery than I can even track. Putting him out of business is more important than either one of us.”
He inclines his head in agreement but doesn’t say anything more. Even if he doesn’t agree with Julian’s orders, I know he won’t object to them. And it’s not just because of his military training. He believes in Julian, the way we all do. But I seem to be the only one willing to say Julian’s making a mistake.
I turn away and dig the earplugs out of my pocket with my free hand and clumsily stuff them in my ears. I line up my sights again. “I’m going on that mission.”
I don’t know if Hinckley says anything in response, because I’ve got the plugs in, and I’m focusing on the target. Kestrel’s ice-cold blue eyes stare at me from the bullseye. The hole inside my chest moans like a baleful wind whipping through a forest, empty of all the things Kestrel stole from me. I breathe the wind in, filling up the hole with its tormented sound, taking it deep and slow into my chest like Hinckley taught me last week. I click off the safety and move my finger to the trigger, then exhale, long and low. When the last of the wind leaves me, I gently squeeze the trigger.
The recoil jerks the gun up, but my hold on it is firm. I breathe in the wind again, line up my sights, and fire.
I empty all six rounds into Kestrel’s head.
I don’t need to see Hinckley’s image of the target to know the bullets flew true.
The next day, I’m no closer to figuring out how to get on the roster. It’s time to take it to the boss. Again.
Julian’s been squirreled away all morning in the chat-cast room, the one Sasha built and Hinckley wired up to cast Julian’s revolutionary message farther than the mind-whispered rumor mill of Jackertown. Jackers have been gravitating to this patch of abandoned Chicago New Metro for months, seeking out a haven from the mindreading world that hates them. But that doesn’t mean they all believe in Julian’s ideas about jackers being the next step in the evolution of mankind.
I certainly thought he was more than a little demens when I first met him.
Julian’s had to walk a tight-rope with the other jacker clans, a balance of power that lets the mages—his clan of super-jackers—exist without alienating everyone else. But since I arrived, he’s been talking non-stop about growing the mages from a clan into a movement… and how that takes more than a few Jackertown clans being willing to leave us alone.
It takes a message.
I hesitate outside the chat-cast room, hand on the doorknob, wondering if this is really the best time to disturb him. I hear a voice inside. I can’t make out the words, but I know they belong to Julian. Along with that soft, yet urgent, tone…. the one he uses when talking revolution. The one that convinced me I had to leave my home and join him.
I quietly turn the knob and ease open the door. It makes no sound. Sasha’s been putting his carpentry skills to good use with the supplies he’s been scavenging. Inside is a tiny, well-lit room, flush with the smell of fresh paint and dryboard.
Julian sits at a desk with blank wall behind him and a screen in front. He’s focused, still talking, obviously giving his chat-cast speech. Ava hovers nearby, out of the camera’s range. She’s not looking not at the chat streams that must be scrolling on the screen in response, or the handheld clutched in both her slender hands, but at Julian’s face. Ava is wispy-thin, graceful, and kind-hearted in a way that makes me think her extreme ability is actually niceness, not long-distance viewing. I completely understand why Sasha is crazy in love with her, and she’s the closest thing I have to a best friend now that Raf has vacated that role.
With her blond hair and waifishness, on a normal day, she looks half-angel… but today her face is almost radiant as she gazes at Julian. It sparks a demens kind of jealousy deep inside me. I want to take that feeling out into the alley and beat it into the grimy, broken streets of Jackertown.
These flashes of mushy love for Julian are really starting to annoy me.
I tune in to Julian’s speech as it takes an upswing in cadence, his tone getting stronger along with the words. “There will soon be no hiding for any of us,” he tells his chat-cast followers. I have no idea if there are ten or ten thousand. “No camouflage will be good enough. No haven safe enough. Fear is a powerful thing, my friends. It justifies the worst acts. All we have to do is look to history: all the atrocities committed in the name of safety, of protection, of keeping the world clear of threats, both real and imagined. It’s happened before. It will happen again. And make no mistake: we are a threat.”
Julian pauses, brow slightly furrowed, like he’s contemplating his next words carefully. I’m caught up in it, just like Ava. We’re both hanging, waiting, like his chat-cast audience must be, sitting by their screens and their handhelds, wondering where he’s going with this.
He takes a breath and continues. “We’re a threat because readers believe we are. We’re powerful in ways they don’t understand. And that conjures a nameless, instinctual fear that festers deep inside them. It’s an ancient fear, one left over from the time when deadly things lurked just outside the reach of the caveman’s fire.”
I smile a little. Julian knows more about instinctual responses than anyone else on the planet. It’s his extreme ability, which he calls handling: sensing instincts, manipulating them… controlling them.
Like he did with me.
“But we’re not creatures of the dark,” he continues, his voice deepening slightly. “We may have abilities that conjure those primal fears, but we aren’t monsters. We are human beings. People just like them. We deserve freedom. We deserve the right to live in peace.” He pauses for a breath. “And while the mindreaders may think we are strong, the truth is that we cannot stand alone. None of us, not the strongest jacker among us, is as powerful as a bullet. Or a prison. Or the mind-numbing gas they use to sedate us. We are the next step in the evolution of mankind, but we will not survive if we move into the future as individuals. We cannot do this alone. And now you do not have to, my friends. Our strength will come from our numbers. Our commitment to freedom and to peace. The future is here, my friends, right here, right now, in Jackertown. Come join the Jacker Freedom Alliance. Join our fight to ensure a future for all jackers, everywhere.”
I hold my breath for more, but he’s done. He taps the chat-cast off and leans back, closing his eyes and rubbing both hands across his face. Weariness drags on his shoulders as if the crumbling bricks of Jackertown’s aging brownstones have been suddenly been piled high upon them. It unexpectedly wrenches my heart.
For once, I don’t question it, I just lurch across the rugged industrial carpet to his desk. “Are you all right?” There’s a catch in my voice. Ava is closer, her smile gone. She reaches a hand toward him before I can think about coming around the desk.
Julian startles and drops his hands from his face. “Keeper.” He blinks at me. “I didn’t realize you were…�
�� He glances at the two of us hovering over him and waves Ava back. “I’m fine. I just… I hope someone was listening. I don’t know if my words will be enough.”
Ava’s smile is back to full radiance. “Your words are exactly what they need.”
He gives her a small smile, but it’s enough to banish the fatigue. Ava perks to attention and waves her handheld at the screen on Julian’s desk, synching them. Then she taps the handheld rapidly. “I’ll pull down our traffic from the chat-cast and have Hinckley check it out right away.” She looks up from her small screen. “I’ll have some numbers and a geographic analysis for you soon.”
“Thank you, Ava. That will help.”
The brightness of her smile somehow encompasses both Julian and me. Then she floats across the floor in her light-stepped way. The door closes softly behind her. Julian rises from his chair and comes around his desk, leaning against it and crossing his arms.
“I didn’t think you were interested in the chat-casts.” His smile is a little too pleased with that. I take a half step back. Suddenly the room feels much smaller.
“Speeches are your specialty, Julian, not mine.”
He gives me a look like I’m being ridiculous. “I seem to recall a certain speech you gave on a national trucast. Nothing terribly important. Just changed the world as we know it.”
“That was different.” Outing jackers to the mindreading world on a national trucast doesn’t count as a speech. At the time, I was desperately trying to save a half dozen changelings and myself from heading back to Kestrel’s torment chambers. “I literally had a gun to my head,” I point out.
“We could arrange that, if it works for you.”
“Ha ha,” I say, but I can’t help smiling. His grin in response stirs up another hot flash, so I quickly drop my gaze and pretend to examine the textured non-slip surface on his desk. I need a change in subject. Something that will get us closer to my real purpose for being here. “So, Jacker Freedom Alliance, huh? That’s new.”
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