Free Souls (Book Three of the Mindjack Trilogy) Page 10

  My shoulders sagged, the truth draining any remaining fight out of me. I was bitterly, painfully sorry; but sorry didn’t cover the giant black-hole-sized amount of pain and regret that I carried around in my chest. I had never had a chance to say it before. But what Raf was doing now… it had to be stopped. I couldn’t let this be who he had become. Who I had turned him into.

  He pulled back and stared at me, that unblinking stare from before. Then he slowly reached up and pulled the mask down, uncovering his face and gathering the fabric under his chin.

  “I want you to see me,” he said. “I want you to see who finally tagged you for what you are.”

  He had the same deep chocolate-brown eyes that I loved, but they were dulled, like a film of forgetfulness had been drawn across them. They were the eyes of an old man who has lost something precious but can no longer remember what.

  That’s when I felt the cuts, like small surgical strikes on my heart.

  I didn’t flinch as he leaned forward, tattoo in hand. If it weren’t for the anti-jacker helmet, I could have plunged into his mind, but I already knew what was there from all the times he had let me in so willingly. I looked into his eyes and spoke the truth to them.

  “This isn’t you,” I whispered. He was close now. The others were too far to hear, carrying Sasha away. Even Myrtle would have had to strain to hear us.

  He raised the tattoo. “Yes, it is,” he said between his teeth. “You don’t know me.”

  “No, Raf,” I said. “You have it backward. You don’t remember me. But I know you.”

  He faltered, looking more than a little freaked out by that statement. I kept my voice low. “You’re a good person, Raf. The best.” I pushed the words out like they were a force field that could stop his hand, which still hovered near my cheek. “You’re kind and decent and good. You did things for me—you helped me—when I needed it most. You were the one person who understood what it was like for me to be so… different. Who accepted me and looked past all of it. That part of you, the part with the open heart, is still inside you, Raf. That part doesn’t go away, no matter what you remember or don’t. It’s part of who you are.” I swallowed down the dryness in my throat, and it didn’t escape my notice that Raf had frozen in place, his hand hovering in the empty air between us.

  “This,” I flicked my gaze to the tattoo, “this isn’t who you are, Raf. If I could change what happened to you, I would. In an instant. I would give anything—anything—to erase it. Just because I can’t undo what’s happened, please… don’t throw away the good and decent part of you, Raf. The part that I loved.”

  I gasped, not intending to say that last part and wishing all of a sudden that I could pull the words back in, keep them inside me like the air I held trapped in my lungs.

  Raf’s hand literally wavered in the air, swinging closer and farther from my cheek, emotions flitting across his face with it. In one quick motion, he peeled away the thin plastic film that covered the tattoo. I closed my eyes and waited for the stinging that would come when the tattoo’s acid etched into my skin. Waited for the rough feel of his hands grasping my head and holding me still while he marked me. I couldn’t help thinking of the tattoo he’d put on our wrists, matching hearts when we were in love, pretending the world wouldn’t notice and would let us stay that way. That tattoo had faded. I told myself this one would too, even if it would mark my heart forever, just as the first one had.

  After several seconds of waiting, I realized nothing was happening.

  I opened my eyes. Raf’s hand had dropped and the tattoo lay on the floor. I glanced at it, then met his stare, trembling and wondering what he was thinking. Before I could say anything, Raf reached behind his back and drew something out. A silver knife blade glinted dull yellow from the late afternoon sun that fell through the high windows of the warehouse.

  I sucked in a breath, but he was too fast. Before I could pull back, he had put his arms around me and grabbed my wrists. In a painful tug that cut into my skin, the bindings fell free. Raf stepped quickly back, rising up to his full height and staring down at me. I still sat on the floor, but now with free hands. I marveled at them, then looked up at him, speechless.

  He scuffled over to Myrtle and cut her bindings too, then sheathed the knife behind him again.

  “I don’t ever want to see you again,” Raf said, staring at me with a wide-eyed look, like he wasn’t quite sure I hadn’t jacked him into letting us go. Or that he was doing the right thing. But he was doing it nonetheless.

  I nodded, unable to form words.

  He turned and walked in the direction the other Fronters had dragged my father and Sasha. I didn’t hesitate. I leaped up, grabbed Myrtle’s hand, and yanked her small frame to standing. We ran in the opposite direction, weaving through empty shelves, searching for the back of the warehouse, stumbling over stray boxes left strewn on the floor. I prayed we would find a back door and that Raf wouldn’t change his mind before we could get away.

  A dull gray metal door beckoned, half-covered by a stack of cardboard boxes. We shoved them out of the way and pushed the door open, running blindly into the afternoon light. I heard angry shouts behind us, but I didn’t waste time looking back.

  We kept running until the Fronters were out of my reach and we couldn’t hear their angry shouts any longer. Then I stepped down the pace, letting Myrtle catch her breath. We steered clear of the demens floating around the abandoned brownstones and decaying storefronts. The wintery wind blew lonely down the street, lifting scattered dead leaves into the air for company. The Fronters had taken my flak jacket, so I only had my ultralite, and the dying afternoon sun didn’t warm the air in the slightest.

  My quarter-mile sweep didn’t reach the testing station, but I recognized the nearby buildings from our autocab ride in. We weren’t far from Jackertown. The tactical piece of my mind kept track of the relative position of Fronters' hideout. Maybe Julian could send a strike team later, in case they kidnapped more jackers. I wished we could call for backup now, before my dad and Sasha ended up in the DC, but the Fronters had taken my phone as well.

  Eventually, my reach found several National Guardsmen patrolling the half-constructed barricade. As we approached, we feigned that Myrtle was in dire need of jacker medical attention that could only be found in Jackertown. She was shaking from the residual tranq dart, which made her pretty convincing. The Guardsman were more intent on stopping and searching an inbound truck delivering groceries. The truck got turned back, but we were let through with a warning: they had orders not to let anyone back out again.

  Like we didn’t know that.

  I was desperate to call my mom or Xander, praying they were safe. Emotions roiled through me as we wove through the Jackertown streets and approached the JFA headquarters. We had failed so badly, I didn’t know how I was going to face anyone there.

  I swung open the heavy door to HQ and tensed in anticipation of seeing Julian again, but there was only Anna and a smattering of JFA recruits milling in the central kitchen area. Myrtle coughed and shrugged off her jacket. The J still blazed red on her cheek, but her whole face was unevenly splotched. She didn’t look well, probably because of the trauma of being branded like cattle.

  Anna stalked over to us. “What happened to you?” she asked Myrtle, about as subtle as a hand grenade.

  “I’m fine,” Myrtle said, but I could tell she wasn’t, not really. I gestured that she should go sit on the couch. My anger threatened to boil up out of me and explode on Anna.

  “Fronters captured us,” I said quietly to Anna, trying to deflect her attention from Myrtle gingerly settling in on the couch. Unwelcome tears sprang up, and I coughed to cover them, wiping my face while turned away.

  “What?” There was no sympathy in Anna’s voice. More like, how could you manage to get captured by Fronters? “Where is Sasha?” She looked to the door, which was already shut against the Chicago winter winds.

  “The Fronters have him,” I said, my voice cho
king up. “And my dad, too. I think they’ve taken them to the Detention Center.”

  Anna pressed a fist to her forehead and turned from me as if she didn’t have words for how massively I had messed up. I was barely holding things together as it was—I didn’t need her dressing me down.

  Then I saw Ava.

  She hovered at the periphery of the kitchen, holding on to the edge of the counter like it was a life preserver. On the best of days, Ava was thin, pale, and wispy. Today, she looked like she was about to float away. I stepped toward her to hug her or something, then stopped. I had managed to get her boyfriend captured, Tasered, branded, and hauled off to the DC. Any words I might have were empty and stuck in my throat.

  “Is he…?” Ava asked, her voice as light as a feather. “Did they…?”

  “He’s alive,” I rushed out. I would sooner have been branded myself than tell her the man she loved had been strapped to a post and tortured. “They took him to the Detention Center, but I promise you, we’ll get him out. I promise, Ava.” I wanted to hug her, to erase the tormented look on her face, but I couldn’t. I was shaking too badly myself.

  Anna reined in her anger enough to whip back and face me. “You need to tell Julian this. I don’t want him to hear it from me.”

  I swallowed and nodded.

  “He’s on the roof,” Anna said, more quietly this time, the heat evaporating from her voice.

  I avoided Ava’s gaze as I swiped a spare phone off the kitchen counter and headed toward the back. My boots clanged heavily on the metal steps of the stairwell to the roof, the echoes bouncing off the concrete silo to pound on my ears. I jacked into the phone and sent a call to my mom first, but it went straight to message. So did Xander’s. Maybe the Fronters had taken their phones too. I hadn’t sensed either of them near the Fronters' hideout. Could they have managed to find an autocab, without phones and in the no-man’s-land that autocabs were programmed to avoid? That seemed very unlikely. They had to be wandering around, trying to get back home after Raf and the other Fronters had released them.

  Raf’s last words had lifted me in a perverse way. I never want to see you again. It wasn’t so much the words as the way he said them. Without the hatred. Without the anger. Somehow they reached straight into the black hole of my heart and showed how empty it was. I had spent the last four months trying to fill that hole with other things, not realizing it wasn’t right for anyone to walk around with empty spaces inside them.

  I understood why Raf had gone after my dad. To get answers, he had said.

  To fill up the holes again.

  The irony wasn’t lost on me: I could change the chemistry of my brain, cause my muscles to alter their form, ramp my heart rate up and down, but I couldn’t heal my own heart.

  I paused, my hand on the chilled doorknob at the top of the stairs. I had to face Julian, having failed in a mission he never wanted to send me on. Having lost not only Sasha, but also my dad and any chance of getting Vellus. And I wasn’t even sure if Julian wanted to talk to me.

  I took a deep breath and eased open the door, the blustery wind fighting me for it. The setting sun had painted the sky blood orange, and plasma lights had started to wink on throughout Jackertown, though it wasn’t quite dark yet.

  Julian sat cross-legged at the corner of the building, right at the precipice, like he was meditating. He faced away from me and surveyed the broken brick and boarded-up landscape that was Jackertown. I had been whisper silent when I opened the door, but I could tell by the way Julian’s back turned ramrod straight that he had sensed me.

  He didn’t turn around.

  I didn’t reach out—no one volunteered to link in to Julian’s mind, if they could help it. But at this moment, as my boots crunched the graveled surface of the rooftop, stepping slowly heel-to-toe up to him, I wished that he would hold back his automatic defense mechanism so that I could link in to his mind, and he could read my thoughts.

  Just so I wouldn’t have to say them out loud.

  When I had crossed half the roof, only a dozen feet between us, his voice made me freeze: it was as biting as the wind on my damp face. “I haven’t seen you on the tru-casts. Or any news about Vellus having a sudden change of heart. Did your father tell you no?”

  I didn’t say anything, just closed the distance between us and stood behind him. He still hadn’t faced me.

  “You know,” he said, “I can reach a hundred minds from here. Sense their instincts, their most basic drives. The things that make them love or hate or protect. It’s a sea of primal emotion that I can reach out and shape with a thought. And I can reach thousands more with my words on the short comms and chat-casts.” He stopped. “But I can never reach you, even when you’re just a few feet away.”

  Words burst out of my throat like sob. “We were captured by Fronters.”

  Julian’s head whipped to the side, then he pivoted out of his meditation pose and stood in one smooth motion. His hands reached for me, gently taking hold of my shoulders. He looked me over, head to toe, like he expected to find a bullet hole somewhere between my ultralite and cargo pants.

  His gaze finally traveled back up to mine. “Are you okay?” His voice was soft, and he was so close… the same gush of emotion swept through me as when he had kissed me before. My body sang with his touch.

  “I’m fine.” My voice betrayed me by squeaking. “But the Fronters tagged Sasha and took him and my dad to the Detention Center. One of the Fronters let Myrtle and me go…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it was Raf. “I couldn’t stop them, Julian. I was tied up, and poor Myrtle… I couldn’t stop them, and…” The words were coming out in gasps now. “And I lost our chance to get Vellus, and my mom and Xander are missing, and I’m sorry…”

  Julian’s hands moved up, warm on my face. “Shh. Shh. It’s okay. It’ll be all right.” His words washed over and soothed me. He had that holding-back look that I had misunderstood so many times before… but I couldn’t let him kiss me. The rush through my body wanted it, but with the crazy mix of emotions rolling through my chest, I couldn’t be sure it was real. Not just an instinct. Not just my body responding to his brilliant blue eyes and gentle touch. I hadn’t even sorted out the first time, but it was real for him: he deserved the same from me.

  I took a half step back. The wind carried away the heat and intensity building between us.

  His hands dropped to his sides, his shoulders falling with them. “You’re never going to forgive me, are you?”

  I blinked. “What?”

  He sucked in a breath. “You’re never going to forgive me for what happened to your boyfriend. To… Raf.” He stumbled over Raf’s name, as if he didn’t want to say it out loud. “It’s because you love him, isn’t it? I mean, you really did love him, and you can’t forgive me for not saving him in time.”

  My lips opened and closed, the words they were trying to form swirling in my mind. How could I explain that seeing Raf had made me realize how empty I was? The pain in Julian’s eyes was making it difficult for me to speak.

  “I don’t blame you for Raf,” I finally choked out. “That was all Molloy, and he paid for it. I can’t…” I searched for words but all I found was pain. “I just… there’s something wrong with me, Julian. I’m… broken.” The word escaped me, carried on pain wrenched from deep inside. Julian’s hands flew back to my face, gently cupping my cheeks.

  He ducked his head to whisper, “Let me fix it.”

  The words surged up a crazy thought, a demens kind of hope. Maybe he could reach through our linked thoughts, like he had when we were being held in Kestrel’s prison, and heal this wound inside me that I couldn’t seem to seal up.

  I peered up at him, his face close. “Can you fix me? Like you did before? If I linked in to your mind…”

  Julian shrank back, pain flashing across his face and slicing me through the heart.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “You wouldn’t have to…” I stopped. You wouldn’t h
ave to make me fall in love with you. I couldn’t say that out loud and simply thinking it was making me dizzy. “You could just… just fix the part that’s not working.” This wasn’t coming out right, and every word seemed to stab into Julian, which wasn’t what I wanted at all.

  “It wouldn’t be real, Kira.” His voice was back to the icy coldness that matched the wind. “You don’t understand. It’s all connected and I couldn’t just… you would be different. I’m not sure that you would be able to love someone again. Not for real.” He paused, then softened. “But I guess… I could make the pain stop. Is that what you want me to do?”

  Guilt twisted me so hard my chest physically caved in. I knew he was still tormented by the one time he had permanently altered someone’s instincts. My simply asking hurt him—how much more would it hurt for him to actually reach into my instincts and change me? Yet he would do it, or at least try, if I wanted. It made me realize how messed up I was, that I would even consider having Julian handle away my pain.

  I straightened, trying to regain some of my shredded dignity. “No, I… I shouldn’t have asked.” I gave a rueful half laugh. “You would think I could fix myself, right? With all my crazy mind powers.” I waved my hand in the air, trying to joke it off, but it came out weak. My shoulders slumped. “I’m a mess, Julian. Trust me, you don’t want to be mixed up in it.”

  “You’re not a mess.” His voice was warm again. Patient. Understanding. My heart squeezed with the familiarity of it. It was how Raf used to talk to me.

  “Well, there’s no question that I’ve messed things up pretty good,” I said, desperately trying to change the topic away from my pathetic emotional state. “Vellus is still in his right mind, I’ve managed to lose one of our best assets, and you don’t even want to see Myrtle’s face.” An image of Myrtle, bent under the Fronter’s knee, surged up and buried my attempt at lightheartedness. “They need you downstairs to come clean up my mess. They need you to lead them, encourage them, like you always do. To help them find a new plan of how to deal with Vellus, now that I’ve failed.”