Free Souls (Book Three of the Mindjack Trilogy) Read online

“Or we could bring them here to keep them safe.”

  “Jackertown’s getting better, but it’s still no place for a reader like my mom.” I ran my hand over my face, trying to rub the frustration from it. “It’s not going to work, Anna.”

  I saw my argument take hold, trapping her in a box of logic. Backing Anna into a corner wasn’t the safest thing to do, but I’d rather take my chances with her than risk the alternatives.

  I leaned in close and dropped my voice to press my point home. “Julian doesn’t need me to be a figurehead in the revolution. He really doesn’t. People follow him. They love him. He is the revolution. He doesn’t need me up there, appealing to jackers and the public. I can serve the cause better on ops, even if he can’t see that.”

  “What can’t I see?” Julian asked, his voice breaking in from the door of the rooftop stairwell. I jerked back from my close whispering with Anna, my face heating up. How much had Julian heard? He claimed that he never controlled Anna’s instincts, but could he read her thoughts? Or was he locked out of her impenetrable mind, like he was with me? I spun back over my words. There wasn’t anything I hadn’t more or less said directly to him. Except maybe the part about leaving the JFA if I had to.

  Anna and I stared at each other and flicked looks to Julian as he quickly strode over to us, neither one of us apparently knowing what to say.

  Julian folded his arms. “If you’re done conspiring against me,” he said, seeming to include both of us in that statement, “I could use your help with something.” Those words were for me, and relief flooded through me followed by an echo of concern. Was Anna an advanced scout, prepping me for Julian’s latest bid to bring me into his jacker-recruiting program? My head hurt from all the jumping to conclusions. Better to simply take it at face value.

  “Sure thing, boss.” I eased the tension out of my voice. “Have some new recruits you want me to whip into shape? I’m ready to go. What do you do need?”

  He grimaced. “No, I have something much more difficult for you. It might be at the limit of your capabilities, but I’d like you to at least give it a try.”

  He was completely baiting me, but I let him, just to show I could play along. “We’ll see about that.”

  He turned toward the stairwell, but not before I saw a grin play across his face. I nodded to Anna as I left, but she didn’t look reassured. In fact, the lines on her face were even sharper than when she had come up on the roof.

  I followed Julian down the stairwell, trying to guess his intentions from his cryptic smile when he stole looks at me and the way his long-fingered hand lightly skimmed the rail.

  I had no clue.

  At the base of the stairs, to my surprise, we didn’t turn toward the central meeting area at the front of JFA headquarters or even the privacy rooms Sasha had built along the side, but instead strode past the training area, heading for the back door. When we reached it, Julian grabbed a white-hooded jacket off a rack and held it up for me to slip my arms into, even though I already had my ultralite. I tried not to grimace as all the obscure muscles in my body protested my every movement. Julian chose to ignore the signs that I was still recovering from the blowback, so maybe we wouldn’t argue about ops after all. Which only made my curiosity spike to a new level.

  Julian slipped on his jacket as we stepped outside into the blustery cold. “So, what were you and Anna talking about?”

  “You,” I said, casting a look from under my hood. “About how impossible you are to deal with. We’re seriously contemplating a coup. We’re going to put Hinckley in charge.” Hinckley was born to be second-in-command; he would rather fall on his own jacker-tuned Taser than join a coup against Julian.

  “At least put Ava in charge,” he said with a grin. “Then I can be sure that the changelings will get taken care of.”

  “Ava was our second choice.”

  His light laugh was good to hear, like all his worried thoughts about bullets and ops had been scrubbed clean in the bright midmorning sun. We crossed the street, striding past half a dozen changelings playing kickball. They were underdressed for the late fall cold, their breath leaving puffs of steam in the wake of their frenzied chase after the ball. A dark-haired girl stopped to beam and wave at Julian, and he smiled in return. Down the street, a cluster of JFA sentries, black armbands over their ultralite jackets, saw Julian coming and scattered. Maybe they finally remembered where they were supposed to be.

  As we neared a large furniture store, abandoned long ago when the city depopulated under the range ordinances, I finally realized where we were headed.

  “The Mediation Center?” I asked as we slowed in front of the door. “Did I get a traffic ticket?”

  Julian didn’t smile, just pulled the door open for me. “I want your opinion on something.”

  “My opinion.” That sounded like Julian wanted me involved in something that was decidedly not ops. The dimly lit interior of the Mediation Center waited past the open door, but I didn’t step through.

  “Mediation is important, Kira,” he said patiently, his hand bracing the heavy wooden door open. “If we’re going to have a civilized society of jackers, we need to have laws and people to enforce them.”

  Of course he was right, but I didn’t want to encourage him. “I know. I’m not saying it’s not important.”

  “I’m glad you think so.” Julian handed me a small, tinfoil-covered pellet. It looked like a bullet, but I knew it was much more powerful than that.

  “A thought grenade?” I asked, eyebrows arched.

  “Just in case. I’m hoping you won’t have an occasion to use it.” He swept his hand through the open space. “They’re waiting for us.”

  I gently closed my fist around the thought grenade, careful not to crush it. It was an anti-jacker weapon designed by the government, specially tuned to jacker mindwaves but completely harmless to mindreaders. Julian and I had used one to bust out of Kestrel’s prison, which only worked because the thought grenade didn’t electronically scramble my brain like it did most jackers. What possible use could there be for one here in Jackertown?

  I stepped over the threshold of the Mediation Center, and a gust of wind rustled the photofilms that papered the windows inside. They were pictures of the jackers who had gone missing. The ones Julian and the mages had rescued and returned to Jackertown. It afforded privacy to the proceedings and a vivid reminder of life before Julian had arrived in Jackertown full of hope for the future and the conviction that we all deserved to be free.

  We hung our jackets by the door. The room still hinted of furniture polish from the long-ago time when it was home to bedroom sets and armoires. Now it was empty except for a few people in rickety chairs. They faced an elevated stage and a single, battered table that served as the magistrate’s bench. An older jacker, dressed in long black robes that pooled on the floor, sat on another spindly chair. Behind him stood one of Hinckley’s men with a military buzz cut and the square jaw to match. I didn’t recognize him, but Hinckley had acquired a whole new batch of recruits when Senator Vellus purged the government of suspected jackers last month.

  As soon as the magistrate saw Julian, he hustled to his feet, his chair creaking behind him. The three people seated below took their cue from him and rose as well. One of them wore an anti-jacker helmet, with his hands bound in front, and my curiosity went into overdrive. No one in Jackertown wore helmets. It was like waving the enemy’s flag in the face of an armed militia.

  The cage fit snugly around his head, held in place by a chin strap. A quick mental brush verified the disruptor field was fully functioning. No one, not even Julian’s strongest jacker, Myrtle, could breach the shield when it was active. The man was mid-twenties, thin, and had the crazed look of a demens on a very bad day. The two jackers on either side rested their hands on their holstered weapons, but they acted like the guy was radioactive, staying close enough to guard him but keeping their distance as much as possible. The helmet clearly wasn’t to protect the person wearin
g it, but to keep others safe from the mindfield inside.

  The thought grenade in my hand took on new weight—it would reach through the man’s helmet to scramble his brain. Just in case, as Julian put it.

  Julian motioned everyone to sit as we approached the stage, but they remained standing. Behind the magistrate’s bench, a wall-mounted screen was split between a database of adjudicated cases and a listing of the Jackertown Code: no kill jacks, no stealing, no mental or physical assaults, no forced jackwork, no contracting to mindreaders, no unauthorized memory wipes, and no vigilante justice. The system was mostly held together by a universal respect for Julian’s judgment and stiff penalties ranging from banishment to scribing. There were no jails in Jackertown and not much in the way of second chances. A lot of dangerous jackers passed through the Mediation Center, but I had never seen someone helmeted before.

  As Julian led me up the three wooden steps of the stage, the Mediation room suddenly felt like a duty I had neglected while playing with guns and ops. Julian was building a new society for jackers; the least I could do was understand the mechanics of how it worked. Maybe that was why he had brought me here. Or maybe he needed someone to wield the thought grenade if things got out of control.

  When Julian took his place by the bench, the magistrate finally sat. The guards and their prisoner took their seats as well. I stepped back two paces and nodded to Hinckley’s enforcer who had his rough, meaty hands clasped in front of him, having not moved through the entire display of courtesy and officiousness. Julian frowned at me and tilted his head, indicating I should step forward to stand next to him, which I dutifully did.

  “Magistrate,” Julian said in his official I’m in charge voice, “I understand that you’ve found this jacker guilty of murder, is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir.” The magistrate’s wrinkled face barely moved with the words. It was strange to hear him call Julian sir.

  The helmeted man leaped up, his chair clattering to the floor behind him. “I am not a jacker!” The man’s mouth trembled like he had trouble forming the words. “I didn’t kill nobody!” The two guards next to him were on their feet in an instant. Hinckley’s man stepped forward, a dart gun in his hand. I searched for a hard surface to crush the thought grenade against. Without looking back, Julian flung an arm out to stop all of us.

  “So you keep saying,” Julian said to the prisoner, his face falling into the blank look he reserved for jackers he would soon be scribing or banishing. “We have several dead bodies that would seem to indicate otherwise.”

  “I didn’t kill them!” The man’s voice climbed an octave, almost hysterical. “They attacked me! I… I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t do anything. I’m not one of you!”

  The man’s impassioned plea struck me as strange. Was he just crazy? A demens jacker? I’d seen a lot of things, but that would be a new one. Julian’s face twitched. Normally, he could to dip into the man’s mind and read his instincts, his intentions, his most basic desires. Julian could read any jacker or reader that way—the sole exception being me, with my impenetrable mind. He knew what was going on inside people’s heads better than they knew themselves. But with the prisoner’s helmet on, Julian’s ability was useless.

  Julian surprised me by turning around. “This person,” he said, emphasizing the word, as if his jackerness was actually up for debate, “was found with a JFA patrol beyond the perimeter. He claims they attacked him.”

  I swallowed. Julian didn’t say I would have to give my opinion in court, especially on a murder case I knew nothing about. “What does the patrol say?” I asked. Everyone was watching me, including the magistrate, who had twisted in his seat to stare.

  “They aren’t saying much,” Julian said. “They’re dead.”

  My stomach hollowed out. Six dead jackers. What kind of ability could wipe out an entire patrol? Once upon a time, I’d knocked out a warehouse full of jackers, but I had caught them by surprise. A JFA patrol would be very difficult to surprise, and it was practically impossible to get a kill jack on all six at once.

  My fingers brushed the smooth metallic surface of the thought grenade. “Why does he say he’s not a jacker?”

  “That’s the part we don’t understand.”

  The prisoner's skin was pale and sweaty, as if he was living inside a nightmare and couldn’t wake up. Definitely freaked out.

  “Could he be a changeling?” I asked. “Maybe he just came into his power, so he’s not sure what’s going on?” It had been over a year since I had discovered my ability, but I still remembered the day it happened—and the terror that came with it—with crystal clarity.

  “He’s at least a decade older than any changeling I’ve ever seen,” Julian said.

  I nodded.

  “I… I told the judge here,” said the defendant, waving a shaky hand. “I can prove it.” He pointed his bound hands to a spot near his shoulder. “You can check for yourself! They took my DNA. They tested me. I’m not no jacker.”

  He had been tested? I knew Vellus was herding people through testing stations to sift the readers from the jackers. Most jackers left with a J inked on their cheeks, while some never came back, detained indefinitely under Vellus’s latest laws reducing jacker rights. No one knew why some jackers were set free while others were held—it seemed a cruel, random lottery—but mindreaders left the testing station with a Band-Aid of Honor from their DNA test and a special designation in Vellus’s national registry as “normal.”

  “If I was one of you,” the helmeted man said, “they would have tagged me. You… you gotta let me go! I didn’t do nothin’, and I don’t belong in this freak town. You can’t keep me here! I got rights!”

  “Did he really just get released from a testing station?” I asked. “That’s kind of a strange lie to make up.”

  “That’s what he claims, and he has a bandage and recent puncture wound on his arm,” Julian said, face grave. “However, I’m not inclined to take the chance of sending someone into his head to search his memories. A second patrol found him passed out next to the bodies of the first patrol. When they realized he was alive, they jacked him awake. He nearly killed the jacker waking him—permanently wiped half his mind—before they put him under again. We were lucky he was still half-tranqed when they figured out what he was.”

  “Which is?”

  “I don’t know, precisely,” Julian said. “But Myrtle’s got serious competition for the Strongest Jacker I Know award.”

  “Are you going to banish him?” I asked. “He doesn’t want to stay, anyway.”

  “If he’s as powerful as he appears, I’m not sure that’s wise. He seems…” Julian glanced at the man, whose gaze was shifting between the magistrate, Julian, and me in a bouncy dance that made me dizzy to watch. “…unstable. But we can’t take the chance of unhelmeting him for scribing or… any handling that I might be able to do.”

  That gave me pause—I only knew of one other time that Julian had permanently altered someone’s instincts, and it still haunted him. It wasn’t an option he would even consider unless there weren’t any others. The rough justice of the Clan approach, where killing was as common as jacking, was slowly giving way to the rule of law, exactly as Julian wanted. I knew he didn’t want to go backward, but the only place equipped to keep someone like this was Vellus’s Detention Center. And I couldn’t stand the thought of sending another jacker there, even one as dangerous as this guy.

  “I know it doesn’t seem likely, but maybe he really is a changeling.” I had captured the attention of the man now, his flighty gaze landing on me and sticking. “How old are you?” I asked him.

  He flicked a scattered look around the room, then came back to me. “Um. Twenty-seven.”

  “If I’d been a reader all that time and suddenly changed… well, I’d be a bit freaked out too.” I was talking directly to him now. “There are a lot of jackers who, when they first come into their abilities, can’t control them. Especially when it comes on quick
ly.” That was painfully close to what had happened to me with Raf. “Jacker changelings need someone to guide them, to help them understand what’s happening, so they can learn to control it. Your ability doesn’t have to be a weapon that kills. It’s like a gun—just because you have it doesn’t mean you have to use it.”

  He blinked, his eyes bloodshot and rimmed in red. His chest heaved a little with his labored breathing, but his body seemed to calm along with the tension in the room.

  “We haven’t harmed you.” I gestured to the guards hovering on either side of him, their hands still on their weapons. “Any one of them could have killed you at any point, but instead they brought you here for trial. An ability as powerful as yours is dangerous. Anywhere other than Jackertown, and you would likely be dead by now.”

  The man pursed his lips and slipped a glance at his guards.

  “Out in the mindreading world,” I continued, “you might be able to rook for a while, passing for a mindreader, but eventually you’ll be caught. Especially if you can’t control it. If you don’t get yourself killed first, the readers will happily throw you into Vellus’s Detention Center. Your brain will rot away under the gas until you not only can’t jack, but you won’t even know who you are.”

  I let my words tighten around him for a moment.

  “It’s not up to me,” I said, “but in my opinion, you should be given a chance to learn to control this ability of yours. If you can, you could make a real difference in the fight to build a better life for jackers everywhere. Or you can take your chances with a world that thinks you don’t deserve to share the same air now that you’re one of us instead of one of them.”

  His face fell, but there seemed to be a new rationality dawning. Less panic. If he had somehow just changed, maybe the craziness was because he felt trapped in the middle of Jackertown with all the lies and rumors that mindreaders believed about us. I looked to Julian, but his eyes had a fire that made my face heat up, so I quickly looked away and stared at a rusted nail poking out of the raised platform, avoiding his gaze.