They’re like pieces of a puzzle. The contours of the moon, ridges and valleys, dips and peaks, all fitting together to make one contiguous whole… I just have to shift it around, change the pieces, smooth out the bumps, until the tumblers click into place… and it will all make sense again.
Marshall’s waiting for me. Jackson and another of his thugs have come over to watch, presumably because they’ll be drilling through the kid’s mind. Three adults against one kid, plus me, the locksmith to break him open. The kid is about to pass out, he’s hyperventilating so badly.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, like I’m preparing to do the job. I reach out and lightly brush every jacker mind in the room. They don’t notice. This is another thing I’ve kept in my back pocket: the fact that I can brush minds undetected. I’ve been saving it for a rainy day, and the end of times for mindjackers qualifies as a pretty bad day. I lightly touch every mind, so I know where they all are. My mind field is spread thin among them, touching them lightly, mapping their contours, taking their unique measurements. When I’ve got them all figured out, every one of the twenty-three in the warehouse and the one outside the door…
I start locking them all.
The screams are deafening. I jerk up from the chair at the same time I open my eyes. The kid has fallen off his chair, and he’s shaking so bad on the floor, it’s like he’s having an epileptic fit. But he’s small, so I grab his arm and hoist him up from the ground. I step over Marshall’s writhing body on the floor and haul the kid across the expanse of the warehouse as fast as I can. As soon as he gets his feet under him, I dig out my phone. I’m hailing an autocab before we even reach the door. We push past the fallen jacker guard outside and keep going. I’ll only be able to hold the lock while I’m in range of the warehouse, which means about a hundred feet or so. I go to the very edge of my range, hand still gripping the arm of the kid because I’m afraid he’ll panic and run, and I wait for the autocab.
It takes a really long time. Probably a full thirty seconds.
Marshall’s going to be so pissed.
As soon as the autocab arrives, I shove the kid in, climb in after him, and release everyone in the warehouse. They’ll have migraines for a day, but I haven’t locked them. Just spun their tumblers for a while; they’ll go back to the original maps. I hope. I did it all by feel, and sweet mercy, I’ve never done anything like this before.
I hope I haven’t done something awful, something… different… like I did with Sarah.
I can’t worry about that now.
Now, my only concern is how to stay alive.
I drop the kid off at his house. I tell him he should watch out for Marshall—that he’s going to come looking for us both. It would be better if the kid wasn’t there when Marshall showed up. The kid says he’s going to tell his parents he’s a jacker, and I hope he does. And that it works out. But I can’t worry about that now.
At home, Livvy’s done playing her game. When I stride into the living room, she’s hanging her head off the couch, reading something on her screen.
“Hey, Zeph,” she says, looking at me upside down. “You’re back.”
I choke up, and there’s a pain in my chest that’s making it hard to breathe, so I just nod and head upstairs. I have to pack before my parents get home.
My room’s a mess. Clothes everywhere, my sheets spilling half on the floor, bits of a toy hydrocar I took apart a million years ago and never put back together piled up in the corner. I grab my backpack, dump out my scribepad, and stuff in a few changes of clothes. I grab a photo frame that’s always scrolling through old pictures. I haven’t updated it in forever. It goes in with the one hoodie I own that doesn’t have Fremd across the chest.
Because I can’t have anyone tracing me back to here.
I grab the stash of unos, and I’ve still got Marshall’s tally card. That should get me to Wisconsin. Then I can jack my way from there. The pain in my chest is reaching critical by the time I come back downstairs. I can’t afford to say goodbye to my folks. I’d have to jack them to let me go, and I don’t think I could take doing that right now. They’ll figure out what happened once they watch the news.
Not least because I’m going to tell Olivia.
I stand at the threshold to the living room, just watching her play some game on her tablet. I wait until she notices me.
She rolls up to sitting the normal way. “Hey, are you making dinner tonight? Or are we waiting for Mom and Dad?”
I swallow down the lump in my throat. “You’ll have to wait for Mom and Dad today, champ. I’m taking off.”
“Again? I thought you were back.” She gives me a cockeyed look, but she’s not terribly concerned.
I shuffle over and sit on the edge of the couch, just on the arm. I want to hug her goodbye, but I don’t think I can. Not and actually make it out the door.
“Livvy?” I start, then choke up again.
She sets down her tablet and sits at attention. “Yeah?” She’s wary now, like she knows something’s up, just not exactly what.
“I’m leaving.”
“I know.”
“I’m not coming back.”
She just blinks, looking at me like I’ve gone demens right in front of her. “Huh?”
“Have you seen the news today?”
She shrugs. Livvy doesn’t really watch the news. I know this.
“When you watch it, you’ll know why I have to leave.”
She glances at the wall screen, but it’s turned off. “What, did you like rob a bank or something?”
I smile. A small laugh works its way past the lump in my throat. I decide I want to hug her after all, so I do. Halfway through the hug, I think she figures out I’m serious, because she’s not letting go of me.
“Livvy, I gotta go,” I say, ducking my head and wrenching away from her.
“But… I don’t want you to go.”
I nod, blinking so I can see while I’m backing away. “Someday I’ll come back.”
She has this panicked and confused look on her face.
That’s more than I can take, so I turn and practically run out of the house. I hail an autocab with my phone by feel because I can’t really see anything through my blurred vision. I’ll take the autocab a few towns over, get out of the suburbs, then catch a train. Go as far as the unos will take me. Then I’ll have to think about how to make it in the world as a reader. I’ll have to forge some papers or jack someone into doing it for me. Find a job or jack my way into that. It’ll be tricky to avoid the Clans, but they’ll likely be lying low as well. I’ll have to be constantly on my guard until I can establish a new identity, build some trust, have a cover that works as well as being just a regular mindreading kid in a high school full of mindreaders.
Because there’s one thing I know for sure: the world isn’t ready for mindjackers.
Not yet. And probably not ever.
They’ll hunt down every last one of us, and the only ones who’ll survive will be the ones who are best at blending in. Being a locksmith won’t keep me alive, but being invisible might.
Once I’m in the autocab with the path programmed in, I do the one last thing that will give me half a chance to survive in this new world where mindjackers are no longer hidden. Where Clans are going to be fighting each other or on the run or hunted down. I’ll need all my jacking skills to be able to pass for a reader, but there’s one thing I’ll need to protect myself from the worst jackers out there: a mind so hard no one can breach it.
I take a deep breath.
I grip the seat of the autocab.
And I lock myself.
No one can hear my screams as the autocab carries me away.
~*~
WANT MORE MINDJACK SAGA?
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NEW SERIES from Susan Kaye Quinn...
; young adult SF
What would you give to live forever?
Singularity Series
The Legacy Human (Book 1)
The Duality Bridge (Book 2)
The Stories of Singularity #1-4 (Novella Box Set)
The Illusory Prophet (Book 3)... coming 2016
Seventeen-year-old Elijah Brighton wants to become an ascender—a post-Singularity human/machine hybrid—after all, they’re smarter, more enlightened, more compassionate, and above all, achingly beautiful. But Eli is a legacy human, preserved and cherished for his unaltered genetic code, just like the rainforest he paints. When a fugue state possesses him and creates great art, Eli miraculously lands a sponsor for the creative Olympics. If he could just master the fugue, he could take the gold and win the right to ascend, bringing everything he’s yearned for within reach… including his beautiful ascender patron. But once Eli arrives at the Games, he finds the ascenders are playing games of their own. Everything he knows about the ascenders and the legacies they keep starts to unravel… until he’s running for his life and wondering who he truly is.
The Legacy Human is the first in Susan Kaye Quinn’s new young adult science fiction series that explores the intersection of mind, body, and soul in a post-Singularity world… and how technology will challenge us to remember what it means to be human.
~*~
Check out the MINDJACK SAGA!
ebook, print, audio
READING ORDER
Novels
Open Minds (Book 1)
Closed Hearts (Book 2)
Free Souls (Book 3)
Mindjack Short Story Collection (Novella Box Set)
THE MINDJACK SAGA: There are three novels in the original Mindjack trilogy (Open Minds, Closed Hearts, Free Souls), as well as five novellas that accompany the series... and plans for another trilogy in the works (see Susan’s latest novella, The Locksmith, for a peek at a new Mindjack character for the coming trilogy).
watch the live-action trailer
a NEW Mindjack character...
CLICK HERE
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More Susan Kaye Quinn Stories
The Royals of Dharia
sweet royal romance
Romance, sword fights, and skyships...
Third Daughter (Book 1)
Second Daughter (Book 2)
First Daughter (Book 3)
Aniri is the Third Daughter of the Queen of Dharia—and she has zero royal duties. She’s just the backup daughter, in case her older sisters’ arranged marriages don’t quite work out. But then the impossible happens—a marriage proposal. From a barbarian prince in the north, no less. And if Aniri refuses, the threat of their new flying weapon might bring war. So she agrees, only to discover the prince has his own secrets… and that saving her country may end up breaking her heart.
This Bollywood-style royal romance takes you to an alternate East Indian world filled with skyships, saber duels, and lots of royal intrigue.
The Debt Collector
cyberpunk, future-noir series
What's your life worth on the open market?
ebook, print, audio
Season One
Season Two
dark, gritty, sexy... recommended for 17+
Watch the Debt Collector trailer on YouTube.
I think of Debt Collector as a kind of grown-up Mindjack, only instead of mindreading and mindjacking, the titular Debt Collectors can suck the life energy from one person and transfer it to another "more deserving" person. It's a chilling future-noir where going into debt risks a lot more than your credit rating.
Find all of Susan's works here.
(available in ebook, print, and audio)
Susan Kaye Quinn grew up in California, where she wrote snippets of stories and passed them to her friends during class. Her teachers pretended not to notice and only confiscated her notes a couple times. She pursued a bunch of engineering degrees (Aerospace, Mechanical, and Environmental) and worked a lot of geeky jobs, including turns at GE Aircraft Engines, NASA, and NCAR. Now that she writes novels, her business card says "Author and Rocket Scientist" and she doesn't have to sneak her notes anymore.
Which is too bad.
All that engineering comes in handy when dreaming up paranormal powers in future worlds or mixing science with fantasy to conjure slightly plausible inventions. For her stories, of course. Just ignore that stuff in her basement.
Susan writes from the Chicago suburbs with her three boys, two cats, and one husband. Which, it turns out, is exactly as much as she can handle.
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