Strykers

by K. M. Ruiz

  Jessica managed to physically hide her flinch, but Samantha could still feel the recoil in the other woman’s thoughts. Jessica disengaged herself from the system, locked it down, and led her superiors to the server room at the back of the moderate-size office. The lights snapped on as the door slid open, revealing two terminals that hummed on standby power.

  Samantha eyed Jessica after they stepped inside, not impressed with the other woman’s hesitation. “Well? Get on with it.”

  Jessica moved around Gideon, peeling off her elbow-length gloves. She tucked them into her pockets and steeled herself for what was to come as she pressed both hands to the console, long practice helping her tamp down the fear of the unknown beneath her fingers.

  Every psi power in existence affected the brain in ways modern science still couldn’t quantify. Afflicted with an incurable disease born out of the ruins of a vicious nuclear war fought 250 years ago, psions were the people that the rest of society feared.

  A psychometrist’s power worked through tactile contact. Skin was the focal point of their power, and touch activated it. Psychometrists lived with the constant and brutal knowledge that anything and anyone they touched could and would suck them under into memories that weren’t their own.

  Jessica sank into the flashes of memories that had been imprinted over the years, sliding her hands through hundreds of moments as she ran her fingers over the edges of the workstation. The past sought to carve out space in the present through her Class VI power. It made her head spin as she followed that glittering line to the one bright moment purposefully embedded in the terminal.

  One touch to that memory and the trigger Lucas had left behind in Jessica’s mind broke her. Or seemed to. She sucked in a ragged breath, yanking her hands off the terminal as if she’d been burned as a hole she never knew was inside her mind filled up.

  In her mind, Lucas smiled at her.

  She remembered trying to pull away, but he didn’t let her go. Hadn’t let her go yet.

  It won’t be enough, you know, Lucas said to her as he turned her head this way and that, his power eating into her thoughts a week ago. I still expect my sister to try. So let’s make this chase interesting, shall we?

  The image of a broken-down, timeworn cathedral filled her mind. It wasn’t complete. Pieces of the picture were purposefully missing, and their absence would make teleportation difficult, if not outright impossible.

  Here is where I will be. They shouldn’t have any trouble finding it. Enjoy your headache when you remember this.

  Jessica opened her eyes, breathing raggedly. She tucked her hands close against her body, refusing to touch anything else around her in an instinctive reaction to keep her sanity safe.

  “What did you see?” Jin Li demanded from the doorway.

  She lifted her head to look at her superiors, hating the words that came out of her mouth. “It’s me. He—Lucas left it all in me.”

  A sick feeling was already in her stomach, pain in her head. Samantha made it all worse as the telepath cut through Jessica’s shields, the psychometrist unable to drop them fast enough. Samantha’s telepathy, so different from Lucas’s cool interference, filled her mind and drove her to her knees. Where a human was incapable of surviving psionic interference if the psion in question wasn’t careful, psions themselves were genetically built for it. That didn’t mean it was easy to handle, just that they could. The repercussions were still painful.

  “I am getting sick to the back of my teeth with the bloody games he plays. He’s almost worse than Nathan,” Samantha said, biting off the words as she shared the acquired memory with Gideon. “Can you piece that together enough to ’port us there?”

  “Maybe. If you get me a clearer picture from someone else’s memory,” Gideon said after a short pause. “Unless you want to risk being a smear of atoms in the smog?”

  “We don’t have the time to wait. I’ll get you a better memory, you work on getting a stable avenue of teleportation.” Samantha tapped the fingers of one hand against the edge of a terminal even as she skimmed her power over the minds of everyone around them until she found what Gideon needed and shared it with him. “You have any ideas on why Lucas would want cartel contacts? It’s the only possible reason why he would be here in the Slums, since drugs are really all we handle out of Los Angeles.”

  Gideon closed his eyes. “He can’t possibly hope to cut into the support Nathan’s built up over the years. The drug cartels won’t switch their loyalty that easily, not until Nathan formally hands over power to Lucas. Which he won’t. Now let me work.”

  “Lucas needs to be killed,” Jin Li said, watching as Samantha walked around the two work terminals, running a finger over the console edge on each one.

  “That’s your opinion. It’s not our orders,” Samantha said.

  Jin Li scowled. “It’s going to come down to Nathan. He’s the only one with the strength to pull Lucas back into the fold.”

  “Nathan hasn’t lived this long by being stupid, Jin Li.” Samantha gave him a sharp look over the top of a vidscreen. “He won’t risk himself to hunt Lucas down. He’ll risk us. You’ll accept our father’s orders, or have you suddenly found a way to save yourself from Nathan’s attempt at living longer than a human’s average lifetime?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I thought not. Stop hoping for something that won’t happen. You’re in the same predicament as we are. If we die trying to bring Lucas in, then we die. At least we’ll have worn him down.”

  “Your mother would be so proud of your human sensibilities.”

  Jin Li was picked up and slammed into the nearest wall, held there by Gideon’s telekinesis. The younger twin glared at him. “Don’t insult us.”

  Jin Li just smiled. Gideon let him go after a moment of warning pressure. Once Jin Li had his feet back on the floor, the electrokinetic straightened his uniform. “Lucas is your brother, Samantha. Out of all of us belonging to the Warhounds, you would know best why he decided to leave.”

  Samantha grimaced. “I’ve never been deep into Lucas’s head. That’s Nathan’s prerogative, not mine.”

  “Some prerogative.”

  It wasn’t, not really, not for those who had to live through it. Nathan’s and Lucas’s arguments had always happened privately and always ended bloodily, but Nathan inevitably won. The only time Lucas came out the winner was two years ago. Lucas had been eighteen when he’d walked away from the Serca Syndicate, from the Warhounds, leaving Nathan to deal with the fallout of his absence right when their father could least afford it. Samantha still didn’t know how he had done it.

  Samantha turned her attention to where Jessica was still huddled on the floor. “Put your gloves back on and clean this place up.”

  Jessica nodded, already yanking on her gloves, and stumbled out of the room. Gideon rocked back on his heels, eyes still closed and fingers tapping against his thighs as he concentrated on visualizing the teleport. “I need five more minutes.”

  “Then hurry the hell up. We have our orders.”

  Gideon opened his eyes, the light in the room skimming over the irises, turning them black. “Why the rush? Lucas will see us coming.”

  “Lucas always sees us coming. It doesn’t change anything. It never will.”

  [FOUR]

  JULY 2379

  SLUMS OF THE ANGELS, USA

  They ditched the SUV two kilometers from their destination.

  The streets of the Slums were shrouded in darkness, the ruins beneath the city towers like miniature mountains of rubble. People worked their entire lives down hard-cleared alleyways and never left the cartel territory they called home. Electricity was patchwork at best, always expensive and never reliable, even with backup generators.

  Kerr’s telepathy kept people from looking at them twice as they made their way down the crowded street in a small group. They had already used up the pass cards after a dozen checkpoints, deep enough now in cartel territory that telepathy was the only thing the
y could rely on. The target pulsed on the mental grid on the other side of a raucous street market teeming with people who moved out of their way with brief mental nudging.

  Kerr had everyone shielded beneath his power, so when the psi signature that he recognized from previous missions pinged off the mental grid, he only hoped they hadn’t been sensed here on the ground. Even as Kerr began to build up telepathic walls between the Strykers and the Warhound telepath, that mind winked out. Not dead, because Warhounds could drop off bioscanners with a thought and read as human on the mental grid when it mattered. It was a trick no Stryker had yet learned to imitate. A trick they hadn’t been allowed to learn. Those who tried were terminated. The government liked to keep tabs on their dogs at all times.

  “Warhounds,” Kerr warned as they shoved their way through a line of people waiting impatiently for their weekly allotment of vitamins and supplements. “This will probably get ugly.”

  “Hell,” Threnody said. She took a sip of distilled water from her water bottle before re-clipping it to her belt, next to the pouch containing her filter-capable skinmask. “We got further than I thought we would. Psi signatures?”

  Kerr pulled his mind out of the masses. “I got enough from the initial touch. Class II telepath, female. You know what that means.”

  Quinton glanced at Threnody and grimaced. “There’s only one Class II telepath in the Warhound ranks.”

  “Brilliant. I always wanted to die at the hands of someone I’ll never see coming,” Jason said, voice a little garbled as he cupped his hands around a cigarette and lit it. “Never knew this target was such a prize. Two years and the strongest members of the Warhounds still haven’t been able to catch it either. Maybe we should just attempt to take them out rather than this target.”

  “We’d have to be able to identify them, which no one has, but they aren’t why we’re here. It’s not our place to question orders, Jason.”

  “And look where that’s got you.”

  Threnody reached out and grabbed Quinton’s arm before her partner could put his fist through Jason’s face. “Not the place,” she snapped. “I want to know how often you come across Warhounds when tracking this unaffiliated psion.”

  Jason pocketed his lighter. “Often enough. If not this set of psions, it’s some other Warhound. Neither side has gotten close to retrieving the target.”

  Threnody didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to be reminded of how impossible this mission was.

  “Still think it’s worth it?” Kerr asked.

  “Guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” She glanced at him. “How’s your mental balance? We’re going to need you to hold steady.”

  Kerr bristled, offended. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “I’m not. I’m worrying about myself.”

  Conversation died, both physical and mental, as they picked up the pace. The crowd didn’t ease up, becoming thicker the farther they walked. Only when they rounded the corner did they figure out why. Between them and a crumbling landmark cathedral was a veritable tenement of ragged tents and lean-tos. The stench of so many people was worse here than in the streets behind them.

  “Is it Sunday?” Jason wanted to know.

  “Would it matter?” Quinton said as he reached for his gun, pulled it free, and thumbed the safety off.

  “Kerr?” Threnody said. “The target?”

  A brief pulse of telepathic power and then: “Still on the mental grid.” Kerr sounded surprised.

  “Let’s do this.”

  The four of them walked through the dirty crowd, Kerr’s telepathy clearing them a way to the locked doors of the cathedral. Threnody placed a hand on the control panel just to the left of the doors and used her power to short-circuit the locking mechanism. Jason hauled the doors open telekinetically, just enough for them to slip inside, before closing the doors.

  They came into a space that had dirt on the floor, dust in the air, and lights that were only half on. They noticed the emptiness first, the body second. The corpse was sprawled on the steps leading up to the chancel, white and crimson-edged vestments fanned out around it.

  Quinton caught Kerr’s eye and the two of them approached the body, Jason’s telekinesis wrapped firmly around them in a shield. Quinton rested his finger lightly against the trigger guard of his gun as he kept an eye on their surroundings while Kerr knelt down beside the corpse. Kerr lowered a few of his mental shields, reaching out with his telepathy.

  There were no physical wounds, no blood, to mark the bishop’s passing. It took heavy, extensive trauma to the mind for the wounds to translate to the body. When they did, they showed mostly above the neck. Kerr studied the dead man’s twisted face as he withdrew from the edges of the gaping hole that existed where personality had once resided.

  “Six hours,” he said. “Judging by the echo left behind on the mental grid, his mind was ripped apart from the foundation outwards. Hard telepathic strike.”

  “I thought we were dealing with a telekinetic, not a telepath?” Quinton said slowly. “One strong enough to teleport. That’s the only explanation we were given for how the target has managed to appear and disappear so quickly from one place to the next across continents.”

  “Sometimes the mental grid can be made to lie.”

  Quinton stared at Kerr. “That takes a lot of strength and a psionic power that’s not telekinesis.”

  “What about the Warhounds who just arrived?” Threnody asked as she and Jason approached.

  Kerr shook his head. “This wasn’t them. This is—the wound’s too deep. A Class II telepath didn’t do this. Couldn’t do this.”

  Threnody, trained to have a tactician’s mind, snapped through all the possibilities in seconds, coming up with the only one that made any sense. It left her cold, breathing too fast, as she turned to face Jason.

  “Get us out of here. Now.”

  Jason didn’t bother to second-guess her order, just tapped into his telekinesis, visualized the ’port out of there, and let his mind carry the weight of them all out of the Slums.

  Or tried to.

  The world shifted in an instant, their kinesthesia stretching past the point of stability for a long millisecond before snapping back into the same reality they were trying to escape. The backlash ricocheted through their minds, the worst of it burning hard and fast through Jason’s mental channels as they all hit against a telekinetic wall that he couldn’t break through.

  Jason doubled over, falling to his knees as a crippling headache nearly blinded him. The rest of them struggled to get their balance back even as a voice filled the silence of the cathedral.

  Rude of you to leave so soon when it’s taken forever to get you here.

  A tall young man, with dark blue eyes and a messy tangle of white-blond hair, appeared on the dais above them. They recognized him instantly. It was who he was, and what he wasn’t supposed to be, that shocked the Strykers into silence. Four pairs of eyes were riveted on a face many had only seen in news streams over the years, a young boy growing into adulthood with the world at his feet, the poster child for the privileged elite.

  Where’s a fucking precog when you need one? Threnody thought in some distant, bitter corner of her mind as she tried to struggle, but couldn’t, in the Class I telekinetic grip Lucas Serca had her in.

  Usually dead, Lucas said telepathically for all of them to hear. Personally, I consider them a pain in the arse.

  Kerr’s telepathic shields slammed up between them and Lucas as he readied for an attack, but it was a useless gesture. Kerr didn’t stand a chance against the man who would one day run the Serca Syndicate, he only knew that he had to try.

  Lucas’s smile stretched wider.

  Psions were ranked for a reason, the various mental powers assigned by tenths of strength of conscious Brain Power Used on the Class scale. Class X were straight humans with 10 percent of BPU, and Class IX were those humans who had a fair amount of sixth sense, the sort that let them survive in a harsh world when
other humans would merely die. Class VIII through I were psion ranks, and of them all, Class I was the rarest, most powerful rank.

  A Class I triad psion was born only once every other generation, if that. They burned bright and fast, dying off young if they constantly used the powers they were born with, a risk every psion took.

  This generation there were two.

  Lucas, born with telepathy and telekinesis strong enough for teleportation, cut through Kerr’s telepathic attack with a brutality that sent Kerr’s power snapping back through the Stryker’s brain. The backlash sent Kerr’s mind almost to the breaking point, his shields skittering against their mental foundations, his control slipping away. Swearing, Kerr struggled to get his telepathy under control through the agony he was feeling.

  Lucas ran a hand through his hair as he eyed the four in front of him. “This is not how it’s supposed to go.”

  “You’re a Serca and a psion?” Jason asked incredulously.

  Lucas arched an eyebrow. “Now, really, how else did you think we keep our Warhounds in check?”

  All four Strykers flinched at the admission of whom the Warhounds belonged to. The government and Strykers had known the Warhounds were organized; they simply hadn’t known they were owned by anyone, much less by one of the world’s oldest, most prestigious human families. Only not so human, judging by what Lucas could do, by what he really was.

  “What do you want?” Quinton asked in a stiff voice.

  “Not any of you dead, Stryker. I’m not here to kill you.”

  “Do you really expect us to believe that?”

  “Belief is subjective. I’ve already had this conversation once today, I’m in no mood to have it again. You’re here for me, Stryker. Or did you honestly think that you were targeting an unaffiliated psion?”

  Quinton clenched his teeth, muscles standing out in his neck. He turned his head to stare at Threnody, keeping her in view. Threnody kept her attention on Lucas, knowing all she needed was just one touch to take him down; knowing that she would never get that chance.