by K. M. Ruiz
BUFFALO, USA
She fell.
Telepaths’ minds were layers of control and power, memory from birth to now, perfect recall, and a silent plea that the space in their head remained theirs for just a little longer; that their thoughts and who they were remained them and not other. Control meant keeping that separation intact. Power meant being able to live through the aftermath of when control wasn’t enough and everything in their head just broke down.
Pieces of who she was, who she had been, cut into her thoughts.
Samantha swallowed blood and snot, wiping at her nose. It felt as if her brain were leaking out of her nostrils. Just her mind playing tricks on her, she decided as she studied her bloodstained fingers. Just everything and nothing, because this wasn’t what she was supposed to be.
She’d lived nearly her entire life broken. Eighteen years of a very slow mindwipe.
How had she missed that?
Arms wrapped around her waist, and Samantha looked down at her sister, Kristen’s thin face turned upward. Her gleaming dark blue eyes were hooded, knowing, mouth curved hard in that gleeful smile of hers.
“Shh,” Kristen whispered through the noise of the crowd around them in Bunker North. “It always hurts the first time. When you learn to think for yourself.”
Samantha dug her nails into her sister’s shoulder, held on, because the world was moving without her. Clarity. It was such a fucking bitch.
“I’ve always thought for myself,” Samantha ground out, pitching her voice low, because she couldn’t focus enough to think, much less use her telepathy.
“No. Nathan thought for you.”
Truth never tasted so bitter, so bad. Samantha swallowed against the bile that was crawling up her throat, stomach clenching from pain, nausea making her a little weak. Kristen held her up as they followed Jin Li away from the maglev platform, a few new Warhounds surrounding them as they continued the hunt for Lucas. More telekinetics and two telepaths, because she couldn’t fully perform her duties anymore.
Do I want to? she thought somewhere inside the mess of her head, shields barely strung together. Too many minds pressed against her own. It was difficult to remember why they were here, what they had been ordered to accomplish. It was difficult to care.
The hardest thoughts to ignore were her sister’s. Kristen was a pulsing, sick presence on the mental grid, a deep well of borrowed emotion and little sanity, despite all the minds she had eaten through that night. The strange thing was that she wasn’t intruding, wasn’t trying to pull apart Samantha’s weakness. The empath never gave up an opportunity to eat her way through someone else’s mind; this should have been no different from all the times before. Only it was and Kristen’s distance wasn’t comforting at all.
“We need to get aboveground,” Jin Li said, looking over his shoulder at Nathan’s children. “Lucas isn’t down here.”
“I’m searching through the human minds around us,” one of the telepaths said. “I’m not sensing any hidden pockets that he’s carved for himself. Just—”
She broke off with a frown, dark head turned in the direction of a set of quads behind them who were ignoring the Warhounds through psionic interference.
“What is it?” Samantha felt compelled to ask.
“They’re getting a report from their command central. Something about a break-in at the power plant.”
Jin Li rocked to a hard halt, ignoring the humans flowing around him as if he weren’t even there. “The power plant? Which one? And what the hell is Lucas doing there?”
“Are you sure it’s even him?” Samantha said. “Of the three Strykers he took, one’s an electrokinetic. The only reason why they could possibly be there would be because they want to turn it back on.”
“Want to? Or need to?” Kristen corrected as she chewed on a fingernail until it bled.
Samantha rubbed a hand over her face. They’d lost their identity-protective glasses a while ago, but the bioware was still attached to their skin. They had their hackers working through the security grid to circumvent the feed, all of them knowing that the Strykers were most likely doing the same. She didn’t think it would be enough in the long run.
Jin Li focused his attention on the other telepaths in the group. “Can we get a fix on whoever it is?”
They all looked away in order to concentrate, closing their eyes and merging their powers together. The whole group was stretched out in the crowd, pressed close against the side of the bunker’s wall on the second level, unnoticed only by way of psionic interference and hackers in the system. Samantha took in a careful, shallow breath and felt another layer inside her head shear off.
Kristen’s power seeped into her mind, sliding past her shields with jagged edges. Emotions weren’t something that Samantha had the luxury of feeling; Kristen lived them, day in and day out. It hurt, drawing her sister into a link, as if her mind were being torn to pieces all over again.
And again.
Listen. Kristen’s thoughts, soft, modulated, backed by a coherence that Samantha had never before felt in that tangled, ruined mess of a mind.
Samantha had spent all of her life learning when to bend so that she wouldn’t break. All Warhounds learned that skill early. The Serca children of any generation learned it earlier than most. Samantha raised a shield between herself and her sister, forcing Kristen out of her mind. It left her with an almost debilitating headache, but she’d lived through worse over the years. Compartmentalizing the pain was easy. Ignoring her sister was not.
Kristen leaned up to press her mouth against Samantha’s ear, her voice barely distinguishable from the noise of the crowd.
“You’re going about this all wrong, Sam.”
Kristen’s voice, but not her words. Only one person had ever called her Sam.
She would have pushed Kristen away, except the younger girl was holding on to her so tightly that it was impossible to shake her off completely.
Traitor, Samantha thought, shoving the word straight into Kristen’s mind, ignoring how it made her own bleed psionic pain.
The empath smiled at her, her psi signature overlaid with Lucas’s presence. Tell me, Sam, Lucas said through Kristen’s mind. How am I the traitor when I was the one who pieced your mind back together over and over again? You’ve got those memories back now. Aren’t you grateful?
Not to you.
Still so sullen. We’re going to have to work on that. Lucas stretched his power through Kristen’s mind, the empath’s insanity a barrier between him and the scans that the Warhound telepaths were doing. You know what Nathan wants. I want something different.
I’m not on your side.
Remember when I said I would save you? I never said it would be easy. Trust me, Sam. I’m all you’ve got left. Do you think you can go back to Nathan with your mind the way it is now?
She couldn’t. She knew that it would be impossible to return to London, present herself to their father, and leave his presence alive. Nathan would take her changed state of mind as betrayal, and only one punishment fit that crime in the Warhound ranks.
He’ll kill you messy and he’ll kill you slow, Lucas told her as he drifted away through the cracks in Kristen’s mind. I need you alive. What’s it going to be, Sam?
Kristen sagged against her, done being her oldest brother’s conduit. Her head rolled against Samantha’s shoulder, the smile on her face unchanging.
“Strykers,” one of the telepaths announced, breaking Samantha’s precarious concentration. “That’s not Lucas in power plant two. It’s Strykers.”
“Any of them the ones he took with him out of the Slums?” Jin Li said.
“No. Several teams’ worth, though.”
Jin Li shook his head as he made his way back to where Samantha and Kristen were standing. More like leaning, Samantha thought, curiously removed from everything as she felt the wall at her back. Jin Li stood before her, eyes narrowed into slits.
“I don’t give a fuck what you previously decided with Gideo
n,” he said in a low voice. “But he’s a Class II telekinetic and we need his ass in the field. Contact him, give him a visual, and tell him to get here. Now.”
Samantha glared at Jin Li. “He stayed behind for a reason. One of us needs to be available to Nathan.”
“Bullshit.” Jin Li tangled his hand into her hair and yanked her closer to him, his fingers brushing over her bare scalp, over her nerves. “The little one-upmanship game you two are playing isn’t helping us here and—”
He broke off with a strangled curse, shoving himself away from Samantha as Kristen slammed her empathy through his mind. Much as Jin Li’s power could disrupt a person’s nervous system, Kristen’s disrupted downright everything. He got his mental shields up before she went too deep, but the first layer was already gone, peeled off by Kristen’s insatiable hunger.
She bared her teeth at him, smile fixed and threatening as she put herself between Jin Li and her sister. “Naughty boy,” Kristen rasped. “We own you, remember?”
Jin Li raised his fist, pride demanding that he retaliate. Except these two were Nathan’s children, his blood, Sercas to their very DNA. Even if Kristen would never be acknowledged, even if Samantha would never take control of the Serca Syndicate after Nathan, they still ranked higher than Jin Li did in the grand scheme of things. Much as Jin Li wanted to tear Kristen apart, he didn’t dare touch her. He’d crossed a line with Samantha just now. He couldn’t afford to do it again.
“Keep your mind to yourself,” he snarled. “And you, Samantha, get Gideon down here. We need a functioning Serca.”
Jin Li retreated because he had no other choice. He wasn’t ’path-oriented, and no way in hell was he going to fight Kristen unless ordered to by Nathan.
“Do it,” Kristen said, laughing through the words. “Oh, bring our brother down here, Sammy-girl.”
Samantha would have given anything not to, but if they were going to face a contingent of Strykers in the middle of a powerful acid storm, then they would need whatever strength they could get. With Samantha’s telepathy pretty much broken, her mind bleeding through psi shock, she didn’t have a choice in the matter. Jin Li was right. They needed a functioning Serca.
She closed her eyes against the chaos of the bunker, against the pain in her head. Stripped as she was of everything even remotely resembling control, the only way she could reach her twin was through the psi link that was still intact between them. She shielded as best she could, but Gideon would still know something was wrong.
Gideon, she sent at him, mental voice strained, the psi link between them shaky. Gideon, we need you on the field.
What happened? He didn’t sound concerned, just curious, and Samantha swallowed her bitterness until she couldn’t taste it anymore.
What do you think? She managed a tight, angry little laugh. I’ve hit burnout, pushing into psi shock. We need you to lead.
You wanted me to stay behind.
Now I want your arse here. Samantha opened her eyes, sharing the space she was in with him, the dimness and crowdedness of the bunker. The way it smelled of old metal and human perspiration, the stench of too many years lived beneath the ground. Do you have it?
She felt him like a vise inside her skull, in what little area of her power she could spare, the world gone blurry as another pair of eyes looked through hers. Yes.
Suddenly, her twin was standing before her, a little smile on his face that was for her alone. It wasn’t supposed to be reassuring.
“I told you it should have been me,” Gideon said.
Samantha pushed herself off the wall, let Kristen continue to hang off her because her sister’s mind was a better barrier than anything she herself could come up with at the moment. “You really think Lucas will let you find him?”
“One wonders why he let you.”
They stared each other down, but Samantha couldn’t afford to be the one who looked away first. Kristen solved the problem for them, shoving at Gideon with one hand, or at least trying to. Gideon held her in place with his telekinesis, her hand splayed against an invisible shield millimeters above his chest.
“Don’t,” Gideon warned. “Or I’ll break your arm.”
Kristen licked her dry, cracked lips and winked at him. She was shoved back against Samantha, Gideon leaving the pair of them behind whole and intact because they needed everyone they could get to take Lucas down. Samantha sucked in a breath and started walking after her twin, Kristen keeping pace with her. The Warhounds with them were grouping together—she counted sixteen of them, herself and siblings included—everyone except Gideon wearing a field uniform. He didn’t need one, nor the armor it came with, not with his power wrapped like a second skin around his body.
“Report,” Gideon said, now the center of attention, taking control of the mission away from Samantha.
Clenching her hand into a fist, Samantha looked down at her white knuckles, the blood drying on her fingers, and listened as the Warhounds who had obeyed her for the majority of this mission switched their focus and loyalty to her twin.
Kristen wrapped her arms around Samantha’s waist, pressed her forehead against Samantha’s spine. “What’s it going to be, Sam?”
Kristen’s voice, Lucas’s words.
Samantha didn’t answer. Not here in the bunker, not when they arrived in the middle of the acid storm ninety seconds later, teleported within meters of the power plant in question, where Strykers were hunting some of their own. The wind nearly threw them both to the ground. Kristen dug in her heels and kept them upright through sheer will as thunder and lightning crashed above them, the clouds so low, it gave the illusion that if they lifted their arms to the sky, they could touch the storm.
What’s it going to be?
A memory. A promise. Lucas seeding rebellion throughout the ranks, throughout her mind.
Trust me.
[THIRTY]
AUGUST 2379
BUFFALO, USA
Threnody couldn’t hear anything over the sound of the storm, not even her own ragged breathing as she crouched behind the thick security wall of the power plant, next to the guard building. Quinton and Kerr were directly across from her, on the other side of the front blast doors.
To get past the quads who guarded the area, Kerr had altered their minds and convinced a human to walk with the three of them, in the illusion of a quad, through the power-plant gates to get inside. Once there, Kerr had knocked out every single human. Humans were always easy to control. Dealing with the Strykers who had arrived soon after was something else entirely.
Quinton’s power was useless now that the storm had picked up. So were their guns because shooting bullets through wind that was blowing at 320 kilometers an hour was just asking to die. They had Kerr’s telepathy and Threnody’s electrokinesis, two powers against ten times that on the other side of the doors. Quinton had managed to close them again, but the doors were steadily being peeled apart despite Kerr’s psionic interference that blocked ’path-oriented strikes and teleportation. Not good odds.
The one thing they had in their favor was that the Strykers couldn’t find them on the mental grid. Lucas’s trick of hiding a psi signature until the person in question seemed only human, or not present at all, was keeping them alive. She didn’t know how much longer their luck would last. They needed to get inside the power plant. Running right now would leave them easy targets without a telekinetic to watch their backs, and the only way inside that power plant was through the front doors. A lot of open space was between them and those doors.
We should have brought Jason, Threnody said in a tense voice through the psi link Kerr had strung between their minds.
Kerr didn’t answer her. Someone else did.
He was needed elsewhere. You’ll have your chance to make a break for it in thirty seconds, Lucas said as he appeared beside her, stumbling out of his teleport and needing the wall to support his weight for a few seconds. He’d startled her; blue lines of electricity sparked over her hands out of
instinct. She pulled her power back in only after she realized who it was.
Threnody glared up at Lucas through the rain, rapidly blinking the stinging wet out of her eyes. What did you do?
Twenty seconds. Be ready.
When the Warhounds teleported in, arriving between where they were cornered and where the Strykers were waiting, Threnody felt her stomach clench. Lucas waved a hand at her, the features of his face sharply lit by the brightness of the security lights that burned hotly through the storm on the walls around the power plant.
Now, Lucas told her, head turned toward the doors that had been torn to the ground under telekinetic pressure. Both of you, run.
Threnody was already running toward the entrance of the power plant, slipping through the sheet of mud that overlay the cement pathway, bent nearly double against the wind and the rain. Quinton was running in her direction, both of them highlighted by the lights and the storm, presenting perfect targets to everyone behind them.
Except they would have to get through Lucas first.
Kerr, Lucas said, drawing him into a merge. I’ll need your support.
Kerr didn’t understand what was happening, having never had his mind merged into another’s before. He didn’t try to fight it, as he hadn’t fought Lucas when the other man had fixed his mind, knowing that this was the only way they were going to survive. Lucas needed his strength, he could feel that now, because for all that Lucas was a Class I triad psion, the younger man had been pushing himself hard since well before the Slums. Alone, Lucas didn’t have the reach he needed to fight nearly fifty-odd Strykers and Warhounds.
The limits of Kerr’s mind expanded, his power pushing through someone else’s strength and laying down anchor points across their area of the mental grid. A merged Class I and Class II mental wall was built up along the edge of a chasm that cut so deep and so wide it would take everything all the psions outside the power plant had and more to break through their shields. A breach was still a possibility.
It was similar to how Kerr had worked most of his life with Jason, except this partnership went deeper. Kerr could feel the channels of Lucas’s telekinesis more clearly than he’d ever felt Jason’s. Kerr let Lucas take whatever he needed, their minds weaving together seamlessly, thoughts paralleling as Lucas became the apex of a two-mind merge.