Kestrel had tipped the table up on end and crouched behind it, using both the table and Julian as cover. When I appeared in the doorway, Kestrel locked gazes with me. There was a demens sparkle in his eyes. “So, tell me, Kira—did Vellus explain to you about the antidote?”
I didn’t answer him. What was he playing at? I couldn’t imagine Kestrel would tell me where the antidote was if I asked nicely, or even at gunpoint. Julian’s insistent stare captured my attention, then he looked with only his eyes toward the screens. There was a bar graph slowly rising. Julian was telling me to stop Kestrel. But shooting Kestrel would just end up with Julian dead and no antidote.
When I didn’t answer Kestrel’s question, he smirked. “There is no antidote, Kira. There never was. It was a small lie, but one that Vellus needed to hear.”
No antidote. Was Kestrel lying to me or had he lied to Vellus? There was no way for me to know. And why was Kestrel telling me this now? My gaze flicked to the bar graph on the screen again. There was a schematic of a tank next to it, like the chlorine tank Kestrel had been draining before, filling now instead of draining. Filling with the inhibitors was the only logical thing. If the inhibitors were already on their way, he wouldn’t be stalling; Kestrel still needed time for his plan to work.
My mind linked back to my mom, counting on Anna to hear my thoughts in her head. He’s stalling until the poison is all done transferring or whatever. We have to stop him, but with Julian in the way…
If only we could get your mom close to him, Anna thoughts rang in my mom’s head.
My mom? I asked. What in the world, Anna?
I’m a scribe, sweetie, my mom thought.
My brain stalled out. What? How can that be possible—
“I can understand why you wouldn’t believe me,” Kestrel went on, conversationally, as if my lack of response and look of disbelief were directed at him. “Vellus easily believed the lie. It worked well for both of us. He needed to think he would still have a place of power when it was all done, and I needed him on board with the rest of the plan. But Vellus never understood the truth: that there was never going to be a way out of this. For any of us.”
My mom’s thoughts broke through. Kira, I really am a scribe! When the Fronters let us go, I went to Mr. Trullite for help. I accidentally figured out I could scribe when Mr. Trullite wasn’t as helpful as he could have been. Xander helped me sort through it. She paused. And I’m pretty sure I could do it again, if I can just get close enough—
That’s crazy! I linked. Sasha’s mind had been completely scrambled by his scribing, and he knew what he was doing. My mom was a brand new changeling. I had no idea how that was possible, but I was sure she knew nothing about how to control her power—
Julian’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Kestrel’s right, Kira. There’s no way out of this for any of us.”
Kestrel hit Julian on the helmet with the grip of his gun. The dull thud sound of it made me flinch. “No one’s asking you, Mr. Navarro.”
Julian’s brilliant blue eyes were still focused on me, peering up from under his bowed head. He wanted us to shoot Kestrel, to not worry about whether he got shot as well, but I couldn’t do it. All this talk, all of it, and the tank on the screen kept filling. When it was done, Kestrel wouldn’t have any reason to stall any more. Which meant Julian would have no value left as a hostage. When that happened, I had a feeling Kestrel would start shooting people and would keep going until someone stopped him with a bullet.
I have another idea, Anna thought. The thought grenades we used back in Kestrel’s cells, to break out…
They can reach through shields! I thought, relieved and excited at the same time. Which means they’ll reach through Kestrel’s helmet. And they’ll work on him, because he’s a jacker. Do you have some?
Hinckley used to carry one, Anna thought, in case a jacker went rogue, but I can’t find him.
Wait… the Guardsmen… they used one coming in!
I’m on it. I heard Anna’s footsteps flying down the stairs.
I turned my attention back to Kestrel, gripping my gun tighter. “So you’re poisoning the water to stop a war?” I asked, to keep him talking until Anna returned. If she didn’t get back in time, I should shoot Kestrel and hope I could get him before he shot Julian. Only I didn’t know if I could force myself to do it.
“Poison is such a harsh term,” Kestrel said.
“I didn’t know jackers could go demens, Kestrel, but you’ve proven me wrong.”
He laughed, and it actually sounded light-hearted, like the burden of a hundred years had been finally lifted. “Demens? I’m the only right-thinking one here, Kira. Jackers won’t be destroyed, just weakened. The evil part, the jacking part, carved out of us. Excised. I would have thought you would realize what a good thing that is by now,” he waved his hand in the air, “with all the horrors you’ve seen jackers perpetrate. The only solution is to strip all jackers completely of their abilities, so the balance of power can tilt back to what it was before. That will eliminate the need for war, Kira, something you and your revolutionary friends,” he nudged Julian’s head with his gun, making me twitch, “don’t seem to understand. But there are so many jackers, more every day. And I had to be sure to get everyone, you see, which was why I had to test it on so many mindreaders as well. Lucky for me, Vellus was all too willing to help. His testing stations have been very useful in expanding the reach of my experiments, not to mention the extra help the Fronters were eager to provide, bringing in new subjects.”
I sucked in a breath. Vellus said Kestrel had to cut his experiments short, but he had just shifted them to the testing stations. How many people had Kestrel already infected with the genetic inhibitors? My mom had crept up behind me, and I involuntarily glanced at her.
Let me try to get to him, Kira, she thought.
Don’t be demens, Mom, he’ll shoot you. Kestrel peered at her, now that she was visible in the door, like he was trying to figure out who she was. Which I didn’t like at all. The thought grenade will work, I linked to my mom.
What if Anna can’t find one? she asked. Maybe we can bargain with him. If he surrenders, we’ll scribe him, but let him live.
I wasn’t entirely sure Kestrel wanted to live, but it was worth a shot.
“Look, Kestrel,” I said, putting on my best game face and glancing at the two jackers still holding rifles pointed at his head. “This isn’t going to end well for you. You have to know that. No one’s letting you walk out of here alive. If you’re lucky,” I hooked my thumb over my shoulder at my mom, “we’ll only scribe you and let you live, like Vellus.” Which wasn’t the best point to make, given that Vellus was dead at my feet. Then again, it was Kestrel who shot him, not me.
“You’ll only scribe me? That’s not much of an offer, Kira.” Kestrel flicked a look to my mom and frowned. “Besides, I know your mother is a mindreader.”
“Yeah, well, not anymore.”
“Mindreaders don’t change late in life.” His voice was patronizing. “And your mother is suddenly a scribe? That’s not much of a bluff, Kira.”
“Like I said, getting scribed is only going to happen if you’re lucky,” I said. “If you put the gun down now. Because I guarantee that if you kill Julian every jacker in this building will want you dead. So, what’ll it be, Kestrel? It’s the only offer you’re going to get today.”
He flicked looks between my mother and me, as if trying to figure out a puzzle, but it was pretty simple the way I’d laid it out. My mom had a freaky earnest look, like she was itching to use her new scribing skills on him. Then a strange realization dawned on Kestrel’s face and his mouth fell open. He hastily glanced at the screen, then stabbed at the manual interface on the floor with sudden, jerky movements.
I frowned. “Change of heart, Kestrel?” I checked the screen. What was he doing?
Anna’s footsteps came pattering down the hall and her thoughts filled my mom’s head. I’ve got it! She slipped the tiny bullet-s
ized thought grenade into my hand, then hurried back to the top of the stairs. I’ll be out of range, just in case you get taken out too. She leaped down the stairwell steps.
Suddenly, Julian whipped his head back, knocking into Kestrel’s arm and sending the manual interface board skittering along the floor out of Kestrel’s reach. Kestrel growled and bashed Julian’s helmet with his gun hand. The blow tipped Julian sideways, but he was held upright by the wrist ties. Kestrel brought the gun around to Julian’s neck again. I panicked and slammed the thought grenade against the door jam. Nausea ripped through me as everyone crumpled to the floor, including and, most importantly, Kestrel. The shot from his gun, intended for Julian, must have missed, because I heard it ricochet, and a black divot marred the tile floor next to Julian’s feet.
I lurched into the room, leaving the bodies of Anna’s two jackers in the doorway, along with my mom, who had fallen on top of them. My mom, the jacker—if I needed any more proof, it was the fact that she had been taken out by the thought grenade. I stumbled past Julian, who was tipped over sideways, and stepped over Kestrel, the nausea from the thought grenade still pulsing through me. There was a dead Guardsman hidden behind the table. Kestrel must have shot him too, probably after he shot Vellus.
He really didn’t plan on leaving the water station alive.
The bar graph on the screen had frozen. I nearly tripped over Kestrel’s body on my way to the manual control panel on the side. I flipped the mindware interface back on, jacked in, and verified it: Kestrel had stopped the poison from filling the secondary tank, and it hadn’t been connected to the main line yet.
Trying to weaken jackers everywhere was Kestrel’s life’s work. He never had an antidote, not even for himself. He was crazy, willing to take whatever came from the outcome. He relished it, in some kind of demens atonement, hoping to excise the jacker within him, along with everyone else.
So, why, at the last moment, had he stopped it?
I glanced back at my mom. He couldn’t believe that she had changed into a jacker. I couldn’t believe it, either, but it was incontrovertible, with her lying on the floor with the rest of them. When the Fronters attacked you, I don’t know, it was like something was triggered inside me, my mom’s voice echoed in my mind. She had just left the testing station… where Kestrel had been experimenting with the inhibitors.
I flashed back to the jacker at the Mediation Room: he claimed he was a reader, fresh out of the testing station, too. Then he had run into a JFA patrol and wiped them out. That attack had somehow triggered the change, turning him into an extreme jacker. It was just like my mom, when we were attacked by the Fronters, changing into a scribe. The inhibitor was changing people, under certain conditions, into powerful jackers, even though they were way past the age where it should be possible.
Kestrel was creating jackers, entirely without meaning to.
I looked at him crumpled on the floor. He must have figured out that something had gone wrong, and that he was about to flood the world with genetic inhibitors that would weaken jackers everywhere… but create newer, more powerful ones out of mindreaders as well. It was the extreme opposite of everything he had worked for. Kestrel knew that the only thing stopping the Feds from rolling out their military option was his inhibitors. He was ready to die for his cause: I was sure he would rather have all jackers die with him than run the chance of creating new super jackers.
No wonder he had stopped the inhibitors.
This will eliminate the need for war, Kestrel had said of his grand plan.
I stared at the screen. The inhibitors would weaken jackers who I knew and loved, maybe create the dead spots in their brains that I’d seen too many times from the results of Kestrel’s experiments. I’d already felt the effects myself, when I was trapped in his cells, losing my mind to the effects of the drugs. But the inhibitors would also create new jackers, stronger ones. Jackers who might give us a fighting chance in the war that was coming, no matter what.
How much of a chance? I glanced at Kestrel passed out on the floor. Enough of a chance that Kestrel was willing to destroy his life’s work to stop it from happening.
This is about fighting to survive, Julian’s words welled up in my mind. But you’ve always known those were the stakes, haven’t you?
Maybe the new jackers would be enough to tip the scales in our favor long enough for us to survive. And we would need every weapon we could get to have any chance at all.
You’re poisoning the water to stop a war. Somehow it didn’t sound so crazy when I said it to myself. I quickly linked in to the mindware interface before I lost my nerve.
I searched for the switch, hesitated, then gave a mental nudge to the pump that stood frozen. It chugged into operation, and I watched the tank fill. When it reached completion, a valve switched, and it dumped into the main line. A chill pulsed up and down my body. Fear? Uncertainty? It was too late for any of that now. The genetic inhibitors were on their way to change the balance of the war in a way that Kestrel hadn’t foreseen.
I looked down at Julian, the jacker revolutionary I loved. He had tried to find a way for us to survive, to live, to not be annihilated before the tipping point could be reached. The day he was sure would come, when everyone would eventually turn into a jacker.
You were right after all, Julian, I thought. It was inevitable. Just not the way you imagined.
Anna scurried into the room, just missing the bodies in the doorway, then quickly knelt next to her brother. She checked his pulse, then looked up at me. “Did we stop Kestrel in time?” she asked, scanning the screens and trying to decipher their meaning.
“No,” I lied. We stared at the screens together as the poison raced to fill the waterways of Chicago. I would tell her the truth later.
I just hoped that she and Julian could forgive me.
I lurked like some kind of demens stalker behind the bushes near Raf’s house. If anyone saw me hunkered down in my camouflage and black ultralite jacket, they would call the police to come pick up the peeping praver in their neatly manicured suburban yard, and rightfully so. My ability to reach long distances had quickly wasted away under Kestrel’s inhibitors and now, almost a month later, I had to be practically at Raf’s front door to check in on him.
Of course, it was my own fault, having put the inhibitors in the water in the first place. But no one knew that, except me, Julian, and Anna. They had sworn to take the secret to their graves and, eventually, had forgiven me, although Anna broke a few things first. Her reaction made sense—it was Julian’s forgiveness that I still didn’t understand. After all, what I’d done wasn’t something that could ever truly be forgiven.
I understood that part when I pushed the button.
I shifted my crouch as my muscles protested my hunched position next to the hedge. This would have to be the last time, I told myself. Or I would end up getting caught. And that would be far too embarrassing, even if I could jack my way out of going to jail for peeping.
I brushed Raf’s mind, lightly, so he wouldn’t detect me. Now that he had turned, his mindbarrier was getting harder—more the firm gel of a jacker changeling than the soft nothingness of a mindreader. His skills were getting stronger too, but they weren’t anything extreme. Just a normal jacker: something that was extraordinary all by itself.
I stayed out of his head and dipped into his mom’s instead. He was jacked in, so I heard his thoughts clearly there. I was lucky he hadn’t mastered his skills enough to sense me.
There are more and more people changing now, Mama, Raf’s thoughts rang in her head.
I know! Her mind was inching up to panic. The world is going to hell in a hand basket.
Whoa. If Mama Santos was swearing, they must have been at it for some time. But Raf was right. The inhibitors were flowing through the watery arteries of the country, and they had worked just as Kestrel had promised, and exactly as he had feared at that last moment: normal readers all over Chicago New Metro had been turning into extreme
jackers. But no one had expected what came after that. The demens were turning as well, and a large percentage of them had extraordinary abilities. Julian was coming up with new names for them every day.
It’s not as bad as you think. Raf’s lilting Portuguese accent came through in his thoughts, and it pulled at memories buried deep inside me. These are our neighbors, Mama. They’re normal people. They’re just… different now.
Different? You mean evil! his mom thought. It’s like the devil himself has come up and is spawning his children all over the neighborhood!
Raf didn’t answer. So he still hadn’t told her that he had changed. But it was reassuring to hear Raf had found other jackers nearby. He would have someone he could turn to in order to navigate his new skills. Someone who could help him.
Someone who wasn’t me.
The dull ache in my chest made itself known, but I tucked it away. I settled into the dirt next to the bush and swept the neighborhood as far as I could reach, which was actually only as far as Raf’s cranky next door neighbor. Thankfully, he hadn’t noticed me peeping from the bushes.
A broken white stone poked out of the grass beside me, and I idly picked it up. It had once been round and smooth and whole, but a piece had been chipped off. The jagged part left an interesting shape to it, almost like a heart. I rubbed my thumb over the rough part, the broken part, tempted to keep it. Something to take back with me. Instead, I tossed it back into the grass, where it buried itself.
I really needed to not come back here anymore.
Everything was about the future now, as Julian liked to say, and in that future, eventually everyone would be a jacker. The world had gone a little demens—although that term had a new meaning now, with so many of them changing. Healing. It made me wonder if they were meant to be jackers all along, only something had not quite gone right.
There were more questions than answers these days. The world had turned upside down, yet it was strangely calm as everyone felt their way through the change. The threat of war had evaporated like a black cloud that was cleared out by the morning sun. It was one thing to contemplate locking us up, or even killing us, when “us” was a strange group of dangerous people in a small corner of Chicago New Metro. But when “us” was Aunt Mildred, who could suddenly jack into her niece’s mind two states away, or Grandma Jane, who had taken to winning her golf games by mindjack, it forced people to stop and think. And argue and debate and worry. But it had ceased all talk of a war on mindjackers mid-thought.
Free Souls (Book Three of the Mindjack Trilogy) Page 22