Sharp

by Alex Hughes

  I was looking directly at Sibley with my full attention.

  “Let me rephrase.” Sibley pulled the cord around my neck, settling in behind me, his breath falling on my ear like a lover’s. The cord pulled against my neck—not tight, not yet, but all of the slack disappeared in a slow pull. “Pay attention to Ms. Johnson over there. Stay completely still.”

  My heart sped up, terror engulfing my veins, but I couldn’t move so much as my eyelids. I watched her in Mindspace instead, the sodden twisted knot of her mind like a fortress, a fortress my mind wouldn’t be able to touch. If she couldn’t reach out, neither could anything touch her in turn.

  “Did you hear me, Adam?” his voice asked in my ear.

  “I’m listening,” I murmured, moving my mouth as little as I could and still answer him.

  “Good.”

  Faintly, in the background, came the sound of sirens. But they would be too late—too late. All it would take was one movement from Sibley’s hands and I would die, slowly and horribly. Somehow I knew he was too good to snap my neck right away; I knew, with dreadful certainty, that he would draw it out.

  “Sirens,” Tamika said.

  “We can’t be sure they’re for us,” Sibley said. He nodded to one of the guards, who went out of the room. “Make sure we’ve got plan C in place, please. There’s enough ammunition and manpower to hold us to our timetable even if the police do show up for us. The floor is yours, ma’am.”

  Tamika widened her stance. Gone was the shy, self-assuming girl I’d known once upon a time; in her place was a strong, angry woman with a purpose.

  “Now, Professor. Not that you’re a professor anymore. I’ve been thinking about this since the funeral and your insensitive idiotic apology.”

  “Thinking about what?”

  The cord tightened around my neck, and the smile on her face widened. Just when the world was starting to go black, Sibley let up.

  I struggled to breathe, struggled with everything in me, panting hard.

  “Stay still,” his terrible voice said in my ear, and I stopped panting. I barely breathed, the air hissing down my now-sore throat. I couldn’t move. I wasn’t allowed to—

  “We’re running out of time,” the guard said from the door.

  Sibley made an agreeing noise next to my ear. “Let’s hurry this up.”

  The thick blanket in Mindspace, the thick shield the Minder had held, was starting to lighten, and Tamika’s twisted mind settled in front of me. I couldn’t move to look up. I moaned, unable to move even enough to speak.

  “Talk if you want,” Sibley said.

  “Why did you kill Bellury?” I whispered. “Why him? He didn’t do anything to you.”

  “You ruined my life,” she said, quietly, intensely and for the first time I heard an echo of that pain, that real devastation that I’d seen all those years ago when she’d realized what had happened. “You put my mind through the shredder for no reason at all other than your own stupid selfish pride and a drug. A drug. A thing. You burned me out, so that I never, never will feel another person’s mind against mine. I’m alone now. I’ll always be alone. And I figured out how to destroy you. How to make you feel alone like me.”

  Her hand came into my field of vision as she gestured toward the telepath. “Coleen thinks she’s figured out what it is you did to me. While Sibley makes you hold your mind still, she’ll turn your mind inside out and shred it to careful, painful pieces. Just like you did to me. But she’ll make it slow.”

  Tamika stood back, frowning contemptuously. “Let’s get on with this.”

  Coleen moved forward into my field of vision. “You need to tell him to drop his shields now. This will take a good five minutes or more.”

  There was one last thing I had to know before I died, or worse, had my gift stripped away. I took a shallow breath and asked it. “Why—Emily . . . ?”

  “She had a connection I needed,” Tamika said, stand-

  ing over me. “Coleen, now is the time. It’s time for me to have my justice.”

  “Not—justice. Is . . . revenge,” I choked out, my heart beating so fast I was afraid it would burst out of my chest. “Revenge,” I repeated, but I didn’t believe it. In my heart of hearts, I believed I deserved whatever she did to me.

  She shouldn’t have killed Bellury, I thought, as the cord tightened, and Sibley said, “Drop your shields.” Bellury didn’t do anything to her.

  But—but my shields didn’t drop on their own. That feeling of mesmerizing attention had dissipated and I could move. I could move! I pulled forward—

  And got yanked back in the chair. Sibley was suddenly standing over me, pulling the cord with such angry force I knew I was going to die. “With eye contact this time, then. Drop your—”

  And the world wrenched as someone teleported in, my mind screaming as I was used as an anchor.

  Kara?

  Stone came up from a crouch, mammoth dart gun in his hand, firepower pointed directly at the guard. And then he opened fire.

  I was on the floor before I could think, deafening cracks of gunshots tearing through the room. A trail of fire hit my neck. I put my hand on the spot. It was bleeding like a stuck pig but seemed more or less intact; a graze maybe. Shocking, hard pain, nothing at all like the pain of a telepath.

  The guard was down, unconscious, and Stone and Coleen were grappling mentally, the waves of their struggle disturbing Mindspace like the sea during a storm, as they flailed and fought with painful cruelty.

  Then Coleen lost it; Stone’s mind enveloped hers, and she went down. Her nose ran with blood from what he’d done, and her body went boneless. Her head struck the floor, hard.

  Mindspace was fading in and out now, my vision going blurry, so I surfaced out of the shallows.

  Tamika was standing behind Stone. Tamika, the one person in the room immune to whatever telepathy could throw at her. She had the heavy telephone in hand, lifted it—

  And Stone couldn’t get out of the way in time. It hit his skull with a crunch. He fell, his mind going spotty and cold before unconsciousness. The guard and Coleen were down on the floor, out cold. Sibley, his nose bleeding from something Stone had done, grabbed me by the arm. He pulled me up, the side of my neck still streaming blood. A lot of blood in this room. A lot.

  Sibley said calmly, “If we don’t leave now, we may not get away.”

  My mind wouldn’t focus; it was like a display of fireworks, bright shiny fireworks I couldn’t look away from. I stared at him, drawn in oddly—and I felt the cord around my neck twist and tighten again.

  Tamika said, “If Fiske wants the last few designs, you’ll have to get me away from here in one piece. He’ll never find them otherwise.”

  “I promised you we’d get away clean. There’s the lift to the back, and we have plenty of firepower. Stop talking and start moving.”

  “Fine.”

  I was choking, choking, as Sibley yanked me through the door and down the hall.

  As we entered the hallway, I realized the fog that had been blocking my telepathy was gone. Gone! I reached out through the Link to Cherabino.

  We’re pulling up now, she said clearly, her mind settled on what needed to be done. Stay out of the line of fire.

  Relief—and guilt—hit me like an anvil while I struggled to keep up with Sibley, my hands around the cord, trying ineffectually to get some slack as he yanked me down the length of the hallway. You’re here?

  With Kara and a couple friends. You did say there was another telepath—

  Suddenly the connection was cut off cold as I found myself face-to-face with another man, this one with a Guild patch, a goatee, and some kind of significant weight in Mindspace. How many telepaths had Tamika talked into joining her cause? This was getting ridiculous. Was someone at the Guild involved with this group?

  “We have troub
le,” Sibley said. “A guy Jumped in the middle of things. You said nobody could Jump through the field you set up.”

  Goatee looked familiar. Had he been another one of Dane’s students? His face wrinkled up. “I said, unless there’s a Link I don’t know about or a tracer. That almost never happens.” He grabbed my arm and rifled through my brain, his mind going straight through my thin shield before I could think to increase it. Finally he pulled out and kicked me in the shin so I almost fell. “He’s got both. Nothing I would have seen while he was unconscious. We keep him blocked, the Guild can’t follow. But really, your best bet is just to kill him.”

  I was spending too much time among normals, getting sloppy. I built my shields up to battle strength and swore to myself it wouldn’t happen again. It couldn’t happen again, no matter how tired I was.

  “Fine,” Sibley said.

  “I want my justice,” Tamika hissed.

  “Pay attention to me, Adam.” Sibley shifted me over to his other side, hand still on my back, me still oddly focused on him. “Sorry, we’re out of time.”

  “A few more minutes, okay? I want him to suffer.”

  We ducked into an elevator. When the doors opened and Sibley increased his speed, she had to stretch her short legs all too fast to keep up. She had a scowl on her face as we dashed through a long, cold hallway.

  As we rounded the corner, through the window—finally—I could see the cop cars, lights blazing, pulling into the parking lot. Two large guys with huge automatic weapons started laying out ammunition clips in front of them as another opened the glass window. This was about to get ugly. Really ugly.

  * * *

  There was a door up ahead, at the end of the long hallway. I’d take my chance there, cord or no cord; Sibley had that odd mesmerizing machine, but so what? It wore off, and it could be circumvented. Even odds if I could disable the telepath in front of me, I could take down Sibley too.

  And Tamika—well, she might be immune to mind games, but she was a small woman, with maybe one more shot in the gun, without any extra ammo that I could see. I might die—it only took one bullet, and she’d have plenty of time while I was taking down the telepath and Sibley—but I had to try. I had to. For Emily—for Bellury.

  I was preparing myself mentally, quietly, behind subtle walls and misdirections I hoped would get this Goatee telepath off my back. He was testing my shields, tap, tap, to check for weaknesses. Tap, tap, to check for vulnerabilities. What would happen would happen; I couldn’t warn Cherabino or her fellows, as much as it hurt to admit that, without tipping off my own set of problems. I had no illusions. If it came down to it, Sibley would kill me to save the trouble of transporting me. When the cavalry arrived, my life expectancy dropped. I had to move while I still had the mental strength to do so.

  I took a deep breath as Sibley nodded at Goatee to open the door.

  On the other side were three more guards, gun muzzles pointed directly at me.

  More importantly, behind them was large warehouse space—row after row of shelves two stories high, boxes piled on every available surface, and cranes on tracks far above carrying items in sleds hanging from long hooks. Bright fluorescent lights perched all the way at the top, thirty feet above our heads, banks of windows at the same level adding fresh white sunlight to the mix.

  A tangle of machinery and parts was piled to the right. In the center of the far wall, a bright beam of sunlight coming in around an open moving truck on a loading dock, its back end settled against a raised forklift that beeped slowly as it backed up. A small group of guards and workers were loading a truck.

  And to the left, a long row of machines, machines with clear glass covering more of the cell-like biologicals I’d found in the wreck earlier. Real biologicals, shimmering blue-vein-covered cellular-looking green bodies with long extensions like dendrites, extensions that melded into tubes and circuit boards, extensions that kept the things alive. Maybe six, currently each running their machines, pulsing slowly, living anathemas. A nest of wires stuck out of one of the machines from an open panel, as if an installation hadn’t been finished when we walked in. Here, in this one room, was enough technology to bring the entire country to its knees.

  The sound of air moving across the space came from fans in the walls, and the low hum of working machinery settled in the room, a sound that hit the back of your teeth, and a smell like burned ozone and dust permeated the space.

  The biologicals weren’t networked yet. I could tell because Mindspace shimmered like the haze of an oasis, moving in unexpected jumps and starts around the biologicals like waves. They were on, the fields they produced making the world feel like the deck of an ocean liner jumping beneath me. But they weren’t linked, not yet; I could ride out the waves.

  “What in the hell are you doing?” I asked Goatee. “This stuff could kill you. Will kill you. Killed half the world and more.”

  “From the actions of a madman and a security hole, neither of which will happen again,” the telepath replied. “The Guild has been experimenting with this stuff for years. Tamika’s right. It’s time to even the playing field. And if we make millions doing it, well . . .”

  “The Guild will come after you. That Enforcement agent was only the first of many.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Either way we’re prepared. We have enough backing to ride it out even if they do come.”

  And the full import of what was going on hit me. The Guild, playing with Tech? Real Tech? Biologicals and machines of every kind? I knew they’d done it a few decades ago, played with powers beyond what they should. I knew they’d flirted with disaster—I’d seen that this summer, when one of those machines threatened everything if the secrets got out. But that was midlevel technology, still illegal but nothing world-class, nothing like the stuff that broke the world from the inside. This—it bowled me over, the sheer gall.

  Nobody should have this technology. Nobody should use it, period. No one should want to; a death toll of millions with people still living who’d seen it should be enough to ensure that. I couldn’t believe, I literally couldn’t believe, that the Guild—or any part of it—was doing this knowingly. What possible advantage did this give them? This stuff burned out telepaths.

  Tamika ran her hands over her gun. “We have four minutes while they finish loading. I’m having my say and then you’re going to kill him.”

  “Get moving!” Sibley gestured at a few of the loaders who were staring. “We leave in five!” Then to Tamika: “Our people in the front won’t hold them for long, and for every death, I have to answer to my boss. You have to answer to Fiske, personally, and he’ll want more than money to pay the bill. I’d suggest you hurry.”

  With that, he turned and left, clearly intending to join the forces holding off the people.

  He left the cord attached to my neck. The cord, like a choke collar for a dog. I felt cold, strangely cold.

  “What could you possibly have to say to me that’s worth all this?” I asked Tamika, numb at last.

  She stepped back, looked at me with disgust. “You still don’t understand, do you? You don’t give a shit about anybody but you. It’s my life we’re talking about.”

  “And you’re killing innocents along the way,” I said, suddenly certain I was going to die and unwilling to go down without fighting. I reached out, hard, at her mind—but it was too twisted. I couldn’t get a grip. I couldn’t do anything.

  And she had a gun, currently pointed at the floor, a gun with one more bullet in it. If that wasn’t enough, a trained telepath and a guard with a huge automatic gun stood beside her, ready to take me out.

  CHAPTER 27

  While Sibley hurried the rest of the group, now loading the last few machines, another three men with guns settled in front of the one window in the room, maybe two feet away. I heard the sound of gunfire and screaming from the parking lot past them, only somewhat muffl
ed by the building. They couldn’t possibly get away from the back before the cops got them, could they?

  Goatee and the guard next to Tamika looked on, impatiently. They kept looking around, kept monitoring radios, and kept waiting for her to finish her goals. She is in charge here, I thought. For the price of horribly dangerous Tech, she’s managed to buy her way into real power. Suddenly, as if from a distance, I heard the crackle of gunfire beginning. I swallowed, and prayed—really, truly prayed—that neither Cherabino nor Kara would get hit.

  Tamika laughed, a bitter sound. “You know, this wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be. And turning your head inside out probably isn’t possible. Not without Coleen.”

  “You could let me go. It would be the right thing to do.”

  “The right thing to do? I’m tired of you and your right thing to do.” She frowned. “You know what?” She looked at the guard behind me. “Just kill him.”

  “We need to talk about this,” I responded immediately, then flinched as the guard’s gun stopped inches from my head. My hands were out, my back cowering away.

  She raised her gun—and I had nothing left to lose. There were five of them, five minds, one a relatively strong telepath. I couldn’t take them all out at once with Deconstruction tricks. I couldn’t disable or put to sleep or do anything in Mindspace fast enough. And I was exhausted.

  But I had one card still in my pocket. One painful, difficult card. I was a Level Eight telepath. Level Eight. And, even exhausted, even lacking all control, I’d healed enough to have my power back—my raw, overwhelming numbers. And I had the truth.

  Goatee had forgotten to shield. Amateur.

  I had one shot at this—one. I had one chance to make it right.