Vellus frowned. “Agent Kestrel. Please do not damage our young jacker revolutionary. We still have need of her.”
Kestrel let me go with a small shove.
I rubbed the back of my head. “Thanks for calling off your lapdog,” I said, mostly to see if I could provoke Kestrel again. He didn’t make a move, but I heard his tightly controlled breathing behind me. His fantasies had probably taken a turn to the violent, but his first instinct wasn’t to pull a gun. It might be possible to snap Vellus’s neck before Kestrel could kill me.
“We do not have to be barbarians,” Vellus said. “We do not need to mistreat jackers or conduct some kind of genocide. We can be more civilized than that.”
“Yes, civilized,” I said. “That’s the word I was searching for when I was locked in Kestrel’s cell.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that for you, Kira,” Vellus said. “A world filled with jackers is a dangerous world, for everyone, but not all of them have to live behind bars.” He took a breath and adjusted his helmet. “It was never meant to be this way, but this is the world we live in now. Only a few people at the top will understand what must be done. You can be one of those people, Kira.”
“No, I can’t.” I was done with pretending. “You can be one of those people. I’ll be the kind that stops you.”
Vellus’s brown eyes lost their warmth. “I’ve given you more than one chance to join me in a real way. If I can’t have your voluntary cooperation, I will take it in a different way. Mr. Kestrel tells me you’re not very motivated by self-preservation, but I believe I have something you value more than yourself.”
He glanced at Kestrel, and my stomach hollowed out as Kestrel’s shoes shuffled behind me toward the door. My window of opportunity was closing fast. If Kestrel had a gun after all, maybe I could simply grab it and shoot Vellus. I pivoted around, crouched and ready to spring at him, right as Kestrel opened the door.
There, shackled and held by the guard we had left in the reception room, was my dad.
I was prepared to die, trying to kill Vellus.
But I wasn’t prepared to have my dad be a martyr too.
My dad shuffled forward into the warden’s office, his wrists bound by the handcuffs. The red J on his cheek stood out sharply against his ashen skin. Dark circles haunted his blue eyes, but they were alert, his gaze darting swift and sure around the room, measuring the guard, Vellus, and Kestrel, but avoiding me.
I linked in to his head. Dad! Are you okay? His familiar mindscent of fresh morning dew was laced with an acidic fear.
I’m fine, Kira, he thought, still not looking at me. Whatever it is that Vellus wants, don’t give it to him. He has no intention of letting us walk out of here alive.
I hesitated. Should I tell him my plans? Kestrel could be in his mind at any time. Vellus wants me to do the tru-cast, I linked to my dad. He would have a difficult time killing me after that.
He would simply make you disappear, Kira. He finally looked at me. Believe me, he won’t hesitate, once he has what he wants from you. You’ll just be a liability after that.
He was probably right. Vellus brought my dad here for one purpose: to convince me to do the tru-cast. Once I gave Vellus what he wanted, he would have no reason to keep me around. And my dad knew more dangerous secrets about Vellus than I ever would. It wasn’t looking good for either of us.
Dad, do you know where Mom is? Maybe she had tried to come get him out of the DC.
His eyes went wide. No, I woke up at the Detention Center with Sasha. I thought she had gotten away with you and Xander. My dad must have been passed out the entire time.
The Fronters got us all. They let Mom and Xander go, but I don’t know where they are. It gave me a small amount of comfort that Xander would be able to look out for my mom even if my dad and I didn’t make it out.
“You can discuss things with your father later,” Vellus said. “I’m done asking nicely, Kira. We have an appointment for a live tru-cast and I don’t want to keep the reporter waiting.” He pushed off from his desk and hovered over me. “Unless you would like to see your father join your friends as one of today’s unfortunate mindjacker martyrs. One more body wouldn’t surprise anyone.”
“There’s no need for that,” I said as calmly as I could. “I’ll do it. As long as you let us both go once we’re done.”
Vellus grinned a wide, wolfish smile. “Of course.” He gave a nod to Kestrel. “You see, Agent Kestrel. I told you she could be reasonable, once properly motivated.”
Kestrel’s face was impassive.
Vellus brushed past me and paused by the guard. “Please bring Miss Moore’s father with us to the pressroom.” He gave me a cold look. “A reminder of what you have to lose, to keep you properly motivated until we’re through.”
We followed Vellus out of the warden’s office, tailed closely by the guard. A second guard joined us as we left the reception room. Our footsteps echoed through the halls as we wound toward the pressroom.
Vellus said, we have an appointment. He planned to be a part of the tru-cast, which meant he might remove his anti-jacker helmet. But taking it off wouldn’t help me. Kestrel would be mindguarding Vellus, and there might be other mindguards in the tru-cast room as well. I glanced back at the guards and Kestrel behind us. The guards were both armed, one with a dart gun holstered on his hip, the other with a small-caliber pistol. Even in my hyped state, I would probably get shot before I had a chance to twist Vellus’s neck. So I couldn’t go directly for Vellus, but if I took out the guard with the gun, I could use his body for protection until I had shot Vellus good and dead.
After that, it wouldn’t matter what happened.
I would need a clear stretch of time to dive into my head. The interview would give me that, and if there was ever a time that Vellus would let his guard down, it would be in the middle of his own maximum-security jacker prison, surrounded by armed guards, while he was holding my father hostage right in front of my eyes.
The last thing he would expect would be an attack from me.
My dad mentally surged my impenetrable mindbarrier, a not so subtle signal that he wanted me to link in to his head. His thoughts whirled a storm of frustration that matched the tormented look on his face.
Kira, please! he thought. Don’t do this. We’ll find a way out of this.
I couldn’t tell my dad what I had planned, and not only because Kestrel might slip into his head and foil the one chance I would have. My dad would know there was no way I could assassinate a senator on a live tru-cast and end up anywhere but prison. Or dead.
Dad, I have to do the tru-cast. My heart twisted. I really didn’t want my last words to him to be a lie, but there wasn’t much way around it. I need you to get out and find Mom and Xander. At least that much was the truth, although I couldn’t see the prison releasing him after I killed Senator Vellus, especially given my dad was already a prisoner. I wasn’t just dooming myself, I was taking him down with me. And lying to him in the process.
I love you, Dad. I sent all the emotion I could put into that statement without giving myself away.
He examined my face, and for a moment, I was afraid he might have guessed. But his thoughts didn’t show it. Kira… you can’t do this. Please don’t do this. You don’t understand the risk.
Vellus says he’ll let us go afterwards. My heart seriously wasn’t in this argument.
You know that’s not true.
Just make sure you find Mom. I need you to take care of her. I smiled and pulled out of my dad’s head. We had reached the threshold of the pressroom, and I couldn’t bear to hear any more.
The tru-casters had outfitted the pressroom with an elevated platform by the window overlooking the prisoners’ cages below. The tru-cast reporter perched on her chair, grasping her scribepad. She nearly fell off in her haste to get up when Senator Vellus strode in the room. I gagged on the way she smiled and rushed over to bow slightly to him. She wasn’t wearing an anti-jacker helmet, and a boo
m-mic thread dangled above her chair along with two others.
My dad and the guard with the dart gun moved to the back of the room, my dad’s hands straining the cuffs that bound them. Kestrel stayed by the door we just came through, and the second guard took up a position by the far door. He was the one I had to track because he had the real gun. The one that would hopefully put a bullet into Vellus and not into me.
The cameraman left his tripod camera to come look me over. He clearly knew who I was because he immediately spoke out loud, his voice unnaturally smooth for a mindreader.
“Is this what you’re planning on wearing for the interview?” He seemed to take my buttoned shirt, cargo pants, and boots as a personal affront.
“Sorry, my luggage got lost at the check-in.”
He clucked his tongue, as if I were a wayward urchin. “Well this isn’t going to work, Senator,” he said. “She’s far too… rugged looking.”
Senator Vellus looked me up and down. “You’re right. Kira, you look like you’ve been in a brawl. We should probably clean you up before the interview, maybe find you something softer, more feminine-looking to wear.”
My nerves were strung way too tight for a debate about attire. “Well, I was just rescued from a band of revolutionary jackers,” I said between my teeth. “One might expect me to be a little scraped up.”
The cameraman cocked his head to one side, then took hold of my shoulders and surveyed me. I felt like a doll he was deciding how to dress. “It could work.” He wasn’t speaking to me, but to Vellus and the reporter. He ruffled his hand through my hair, leaving it mussed when he was done manhandling it. “Yes, she definitely has that ‘just rescued’ look.” He reached for the buttons on my shirt. “Maybe a little more disheveled would work even better.”
I smacked his hand away. He held it like a puppy I had just kicked, giving me a horrified look that I had the gall to hit him, flesh on flesh. I glared at him. There was no way he was unbuttoning my shirt for the tru-cast. I might end up dying in a few minutes in a hail of gunfire from Vellus’s guards, but I wasn’t going to do it with my shirt half undone.
Vellus let out a low chuckle. “I think she’s perfect the way she is.” He guided me to the tru-cast chairs spotlighted in the middle of the room, his hand at the small of my back, as if he were truly a caring senator tending to his young charge. His touch sent creepy shivers up my back, so I quickly moved away and climbed into my chair. The cameraman retreated to set up his lighting, moving it around and making minute adjustments.
I took a low, deep breath, focusing my mind. Outwardly, I probably looked like I was trying to settle my nerves for the big interview. Vellus eased into the seat next to mine, the smile wide and winning on his face.
“Now, I believe we have about ten minutes before the tru-cast is scheduled to begin,” said Vellus. The reporter nodded her agreement. “We haven’t had much time to review what you’ll say,” Vellus said to me, “but our lovely host will help us by guiding you with her questions, won’t you, Ms. Trinkle?”
Ms. Trinkle. That was Ava’s last name. That awareness jarred me out of my focus. She looked nothing like Ava, with dark eyes instead of blue, and long black hair instead of Ava’s feather-light blond. The interviewer could pass for Sasha’s sister. Sasha, who was now trapped in one of the jail cells below, a casualty of the fact that I wasn’t here to rescue anyone, but to assassinate Vellus. And distraction I couldn’t afford to have.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
The tru-caster was speaking, but I was transfixed by Vellus taking off his anti-jacker helmet and running his hand through his somehow perfectly groomed hair. He set the helmet at his feet, and I tried very hard not to stare at it. The temptation to jack him was like a magnetic pull.
“Of course we’ll want to hear all about your captivity,” Vellus said to me when the tru-caster paused for a breath. “Tell us how ill-treated you were, how they were barbaric, even to their own kind…”
Breathe in. Breathe out. Down the elevator…
I dialed down the sensitivity of my hearing and focused on Vellus’s lips as they moved, forming words that I no longer heard. My eyelids drooped, badly wanting to close, but I couldn’t afford that luxury. I nodded my head, hoping it was well timed for something that Vellus was saying. The spaghetti mass of threads that tied my brain together splayed before me. I could study them for a hundred years and still not map it all out. But today, I only needed one thread…
Vellus’s hand touched mine, cold fingers lying like a dead mouse on my skin. I jerked with the sensation, and it yanked me out of my head, flooding my ears with a rush of sound.
“Kira!” His stare was cold and insistent. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
I sucked in a breath and cursed inside. “Sorry. Just a little… nervous.”
His smile was back. “Of course.” He nodded to the interviewer. “Very understandable, after all you’ve been through.” He was completely in character now for the interview: the kind, caring senator looking after one of his citizens. “It was lucky we were able to get you out of the water pumping station along with the other hostages. Now that the station is safely back in the hands of the government, the workers can keep the water flowing to the suburbs.”
His voice was sincere, but Vellus was lying about the water plant, somehow, even though they didn’t have their anti-jacker helmets on.
“Yes, it’s good that we kept the water flowing.” I couldn’t tell if the sarcasm in my head bled through into my voice.
Vellus didn’t miss a beat. “Right. Now, Ms. Trinkle, most people don’t realize the importance of the water infrastructure for our great metro area…” Vellus chattered on, but I had stopped listening again.
The water station is much more important than you are, Kira.
Why did that nag at me?
In all my explorations of my mind, I had learned that the vast majority of its operations happened below the surface, like the tunnels we followed to get to the water station—buried far underground, but key to everything. Why were the hidden information wells of my mind nagging at me about the importance of the water station—
The cameraman reached for my face and I shrank back. He was only trying to powder my nose, probably to take the shine off under the tru-cast lights. I curled my lip, and he scampered off like a scared rabbit.
“I sponsored a bill last year, in fact,” Vellus was saying, “that refurbished some of our least efficient water plants, bringing them up to modern standards…”
The water station is much more important ….
Why?
If Vellus cut off the water, there would be heaps of bodies, something he was trying to avoid. He wanted to weaken jackers, not kill them. My tru-cast was supposed to strike at jackers’ will to resist, so that they would turn themselves in voluntarily. Why was the water station more important than that?
“It’s a good thing you were able to rescue Kira,” Ms. Trinkle was saying. She glanced at the cameraman, who was motioning to her. “Looks like we have about five more minutes, Senator. Perhaps you could tell me more about these water station renovations…”
The water station….
The water.
It hit me like an electrical storm in my brain. My mouth dropped open. I coughed into my hand to cover it, hoping Vellus and the reporter hadn’t noticed. I focused on my hands, as my brain rapid fired through it.
Vellus was using the water. Putting something in it, something that wouldn’t kill jackers, just weaken them, like my tru-cast was intended to do. Make them easy to control. That was why the water station was so heavily guarded. He hadn’t planned on us taking it at all. Vellus was guarding his access to the water supply that fed Jackertown, not to cut it off, but to poison it.
But with what? Kestrel’s experiments. They were done. He had figured out whatever medical thing he wanted to use to control us. Something to dull our brains, produce the dead spots I found in every changeling and jacker he experimented on
. Something that would reduce our ability to jack, make us docile, lifeless, unable to go on…
I flushed hot with the memory of contemplating my own suicide while in Kestrel’s care. Maybe it hadn’t been my own weakness. Maybe Kestrel’s serums not only weakened my ability to jack, but my will to live. My face caught on fire as I imagined thousands of jackers drinking the water. Vellus wanted to make all of Jackertown into one giant padded cell, so he could drive us crazy with drugs and imprisonment.
It was becoming hard to breathe.
It would undo everything Julian had tried to build, everything I believed in. I looked at my hands limp in my lap. I could strangle Vellus. Or I could rev up into my hyped state, grab a gun, and shoot Vellus, only to die a moment later than he did.
But I couldn’t be sure that would stop it.
I knew—I could feel it deep inside—that Vellus’s plan was in motion, and we had messed it up by taking the water station. That was why Vellus couldn’t wait for the other hostages to be released, why he had to take the station back right away.
I could kill Vellus, but it wouldn’t matter. I could refuse to do the tru-cast, but that wouldn’t matter either. The weight of hopelessness pushed me deeper into my seat.
Ms. Trinkle cleared her throat. “Ms. Moore?” she said. “We’re live in two minutes, honey.”
Vellus had already won.
The glare of the tru-cast lights was making me dizzy. My pulse beat a slow gong, ticking down the seconds until the interview.
It had been hopeless from the start. The moment I saved those changelings in the hospital, all those months ago, was the moment I doomed us all. I had ripped away the veil that was the only thing keeping us safe. All of Julian’s dreams of a better life for jackers never had a chance. Vellus’s plan all along was to strangle that shining hope in the crib.
Julian.
I spent all that time mired in the black hole of my own despair when I could have been loving him. My heart swelled and cried tears that I couldn’t let reach my face. All that time, lost. The mint-green jumpsuits milled below us in their cells, waiting for a rescue that would never come. I wondered if they could see me up here in my glass box, betraying them.
Free Souls (Book Three of the Mindjack Trilogy) Page 16