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  For a split second, I thought she had betrayed us, but her face was blank, her eyes dead to me. I surged into her head and instantly recognized the hard, marble presence suspended in the softness of her mind, controlling her thoughts and actions.

  Arlis.

  As I wrestled with him mentally, she fought against me physically, like a tiny wild animal. I wrapped my arms around her, pinning her flailing arms to her side. Arlis had to know it was me, like I knew it was him. More pop-whoosh sounds told me that Anna still fought from the cabinets. After what seemed like a long stretch of time, but was probably just a few seconds, I managed to shove Arlis out of Ava’s mind. She went limp in my arms, her eyelids fluttering, like she was fighting to remain conscious.

  I relaxed my hold on her, my hand slippery with sweat as I tried to get a better grip on the gun. I surged out again, finding the four intruders—Arlis plus three of his henchmen—spread along the perimeter, probably taking refuge from Anna’s fire behind the massive door stamping machines that lined the front wall. They pushed back, shoving me all the way to my skull. They were too strong and quickly got inside my head. I fought them, but I was losing control, so I reached my pistol around the table and fired in their general direction. The shots rang out, pinging off machinery and concrete like a hail of metallic bees.

  A short scream pulled one of the presences from my mind. More gunfire sounded from the cabinets, like firecrackers smacking the air. Another scream and the pressure in my head lessened again. With only Arlis and one other mind, I managed to push them just outside my head, enough to keep them from controlling me.

  Ava stirred to life in my arms. I didn’t know if I could jack Arlis out of her head again. Preemptively, I held her tight against me, keeping my gun hand far from her reach.

  “It’s okay, Sasha.” Her voice was clear and light. “He’s not in my head.”

  Anna’s mental presence surged against Arlis and his henchman. Together, we pushed them back to their own skulls, and with Ava safe, my hands were free. I reached around the corner again and fired in their direction. A grunt and the lack of mental pushback told me Arlis’s henchman had been hit. That left Anna and me to both mentally press in on Arlis’s head. As we did so, we controlled him enough to immobilize him physically. His gunshots stopped, and Anna and I ceased fire as well.

  I motioned to Ava to stay put and climbed to my feet, still hunched behind the table. I crouched as I ran between the table and the nearby sofa, seeing if I could draw any fire, but there was none. Still crouched, I sprinted across the concrete floor.

  Arlis lay in a dusty grease spot between a stamping machine and the front wall. His eyes were half-lidded, trying to battle Anna and me in his mind. Seeing me, he struggled to raise his dart gun, but I stepped on his arm, pinning it to the floor. I pointed my gun at his head. My heart pounded in my ears, drowning out all sound other than my own labored breathing. I was about to shoot him when Anna arrived at my side.

  Without hesitation, she reached past me and shot Arlis in the chest. I twitched from surprise, but then disappointment rolled through me when I saw the dart in his chest. Anna turned and fired again, taking down Arlis’s henchman, who now lay unmoving with both a dart and a knife sticking out of his gut.

  I gripped my gun harder, still pointed at Arlis. Why didn’t she kill him? She should have killed him. I would have killed him if she hadn’t shot him with the dart.

  “The others are out.” Anna lowered her weapon. “Are you injured?”

  “No.” I should pull the trigger and kill Arlis now, but something about him lying on the ground, his cheeks slack and grey, stopped me. He seemed so much older than the last time I saw him. Worn. Tired.

  Anna peered at me. “Is he the one?”

  “Yes.” The one who made me what I am. The one who had caused me to ruin so many lives. A tremor in my hand made the gun waver a tiny bit. Why hadn’t I shot him already? What did it matter if he had become an old man since he tormented me?

  “Are you going to kill him?”

  Her words made me twitch. I turned to look at her. Those startling blue eyes locked onto mine.

  “He deserves to die,” I said. A flush of heat crawled up my face, though I doubted she would mind if I shot Arlis.

  “So what’s stopping you?”

  “I… I’m tired of killing.” The words felt traitorous, slipping out of my mouth, like the truth had escaped in spite of my best efforts to cage it.

  “You could rewrite him instead.” She held my gaze. I slowly let the gun drop to my side.

  Ava arrived behind me. “Sasha, no.” She pulled my attention to her. “It would be too hard on you. I’ve seen the nightmares. You don’t need to do that anymore.”

  “One way or another, you need to stop him,” Anna said. “Or I will, if you would prefer. But he’s not walking out of here.”

  She was right, of course. Arlis would come after us again. Or he would track down Ava’s family, just for vengeance. And that was the problem. This felt like cold vengeance, the kind of thing that Arlis would do. It felt like I was trying to take back all that he stole from me by putting a bullet in his brain. Killing Arlis would stop him from doing what he did to me again. What he did to Ava and her family, and who knew how many other people over his lifetime. It would stop the monster.

  But I wanted more.

  I wanted him to feel sorry. I wanted him to regret what he had done. I wanted him to live a long life carrying the guilt of so many wrongs that he could never put right. I wanted him to spend years trying anyway. I could rewrite him into being someone horrified by the things he did. And somehow that felt more like justice. But that was also giving him another chance, just like Julian said.

  My throat closed up. Ava’s hand gripped my arm, a light pressure that almost wasn’t there. I cleared my throat, but didn’t push her away. Instead, I turned to Anna and held my gun out to her. “If I lose control, I want you to use this.”

  She frowned, but took the gun. She knew the danger of what I could do, and if nothing else, I knew she wouldn’t hesitate to use force if threatened. If the madness took me this time, she should be able to stop me before I touched anyone else.

  Ava’s grip on my arm grew stronger. “Sasha, you don’t have to do this. I don’t want you to do this for me.” Her pretty face drew into lines of pain.

  “I’m doing this for me.” I gently pried her fingers from my shirt.

  I knelt by Arlis, unconscious at my feet, and touched the first two fingers of my left hand to his sweaty and chilled forehead. I closed my eyes, tunneling deep inside his mind until I reached the cloud of mental connection that enveloped everything: bits of memories, snippets of personality quirks, behaviors and convictions, all wound together like a giant ball of string. No organization, just connection. A set of memories that wove together into a conviction which then threaded into a new behavior. It was the tapestry that made Arlis unique.

  I plucked a string and it unraveled, traveling back in time to when he was a child, a boy with few possessions to call his own, but who wanted more. A boy who grew into a man who discovered he had a great power. Who would never be satisfied, always craving what his power could bring him. The tapestry came apart in an endless cascade of memories and emotion that washed through me like a pulse of energy, intense and paralyzing.

  I teetered, dizzy with it. Hands were on me, holding me up. My eyes remained squeezed shut.

  The pieces of Arlis fought for space inside my head, pushing around my own thoughts and memories. I absorbed him, became him. I held the empty box that was a cruel joke by my foster father on my birthday. I cried silent tears while I bunched up the sheets on my bed, wishing the pain would stop, vowing never to hurt from wanting again.

  My mind blew the memory away with caustic sands that eroded me into bits. The pieces lifted like small leaves swirling into the air on a whirlwind. I scrambled, grabbing at them, trying to shape them into a life. My life. Arlis’s life. Any life. But they shredded
into a hazy cloud of dust.

  I remember you, Sasha, a voice spoke in my head. I know who you are. It was Ava’s voice, like a lighthouse in the cloud, calling me. My own thoughts and memories pulled toward it, beating back the dust of other personalities that threatened to choke them.

  I remember you, Sasha, Ava said again, inside my head, urging me on. I collected up the pieces, gathering and shaping them, until they coalesced into a single life.

  Mine.

  I blinked open my eyes. Arlis lay motionless under my touch. Ava’s hand gripped my arm, anchoring me. I was so light-headed, I might have fallen over, if this tiny girl wasn’t holding me up.

  I reached into Arlis’s mind and rewrote him, reassembling the pieces of him to form a new picture and scribing his mind into something better than it was. I left every memory of every wrong act intact, but made them barbs in his mind; thorns that he could never remove and that would remind him of what he had done. Then I crafted a basic need, stronger than any other, stronger than self-preservation itself.

  A need to fix what he had done.

  That last part drained every parcel of energy I had left. I slumped over, my head falling to my chest, my eyes tugging close.

  I fell into Ava, and somehow she held me up.

  The training area still reeked of old grease and ancient dust. I circled Ava, tracking her, keeping my eyes on her small hands. They could move pretty fast when she wanted them to. She watched me, her gaze flitting over my body, looking for the next move I would make. She finally worked her way up to my eyes, locking stares with me. Then she broke out into a grin.

  I kept my face serious, although the compulsion to smile back was almost overpowering. “This isn’t a game, Ava.”

  “It’s not?” she asked, a laugh in her voice.

  “Close combat training is important,” I said. “You need to be able to defend yourself.” In case I’m not there, next time. I kept that thought to myself.

  She moved lightning quick, leaping out and punching me in the gut, then hopping back and regaining her balance, like a bird on a wire. I barely felt the punch—it was like being batted by a kitten.

  I sighed and stood up straight. “Is that all you’ve got? C’mon.” I crooked my fingers, urging her closer. “Hit me as hard as you can.”

  She stood straight as well. “I just did.”

  “That was pathetic.”

  She leaped at me, both arms raised, and brought them down on my chest, beating me with her fists. She knocked me off balance, forcing me to take a step back, but I easily caught her wrists in my hands, holding her close.

  “I surprised you that time, didn’t I?” she asked.

  “A little.” I couldn’t help but smile. “But now you’re trapped.”

  “That’s awful.” She smiled up at me. “Poor me.”

  “You’re not taking this seriously.” I didn’t let her go. I liked having her close way too much for that. She didn’t try to move away either.

  “I take you very seriously, Sasha,” she said quietly. “Always.”

  I was going to kiss her. Someday. Probably soon. Very soon.

  But not today.

  I spun her till she faced away and locked my arms tight around her. “Try to break my grip,” I instructed.

  “But I don’t want to.” I could feel her smile, even though I couldn’t see her face. Definitely kissing her. Very, very soon.

  “Ava,” I warned. Her safety could depend on this, and that wasn’t something I was willing to mess with.

  She stomped on my foot and shoved her elbow into my gut, both of which actually hurt a little, then she twisted out of my loosened grip and spun to face me, stepping back out of my reach.

  She crouched into the fighting stance I had taught her.

  “Better,” I said.

  She smirked. “Try to grab me.”

  “Grab you how?” I pictured grabbing her and kissing her, but I didn’t think that was what she meant. Maybe.

  “Any way.”

  I shot a hand out to her left shoulder, but just before my hand touched her, she dodged it. I tried grabbing her right wrist, but she whisked her hand away. I lunged for her waist with both hands, but she twirled away right before I got there. She was a slippery eel all of a sudden.

  I stopped. “How did you do that?” I tried to keep the surprise out of my voice.

  “You know how I promised to keep out of your head?” She gave me a wicked smile. “I don’t always keep that promise.”

  I narrowed my eyes, crouched, and lunged for her again. This time she let me catch her.

  Probably because I had decided to kiss her after all.

  If you enjoyed The Scribe, please leave a review.

  If you’ve read this story before any other Mindjack works, there's much more:

  Mindjack Trilogy (novels) and Mindjack Origins (shorts)

  Mind Games (short story)

  Open Minds (Book One)

  Closed Hearts (Book Two)

  The Handler (short novella)

  The Scribe (short novella)

  Free Souls (Book Three)

  coming soon

  find all of Susan’s stories here

  Book One of the Mindjack Trilogy

  When everyone reads minds, a secret is a dangerous thing to keep.

  Sixteen-year-old Kira Moore is a zero, someone who can't read thoughts or be read by others. Zeros are outcasts who can't be trusted, leaving her no chance with Raf, a regular mindreader and the best friend she secretly loves. When she accidentally controls Raf's mind and nearly kills him, Kira tries to hide her frightening new ability from her family and an increasingly suspicious Raf. But lies tangle around her, and she's dragged deep into a hidden underworld of mindjackers, where having to mind control everyone she loves is just the beginning of the deadly choices before her.

  “Open Minds pushed me to the edge of my imagination and then tossed me over the edge as I screamed for more. When you can literally control the thoughts of others, how far will you go?” — Michelle Davidson Argyle, author of Monarch and Cinders

  Buy Open Minds Now

  Check out the Mindjack Trilogy website

  or

  Subscribe to Susan’s Mailing List

  (for future releases)

  Susan Kaye Quinn grew up in California, where she wrote snippets of stories and passed them to her friends during class. Her teachers pretended not to notice and only confiscated her notes a couple times. She pursued a bunch of engineering degrees (Aerospace, Mechanical, and Environmental) and worked a lot of geeky jobs, including turns at GE Aircraft Engines, NASA, and NCAR. Now that she writes novels, her business card says "Author and Rocket Scientist" and she doesn't have to sneak her notes anymore.

  Which is too bad.

  All that engineering comes in handy when dreaming up paranormal powers in future worlds or mixing science with fantasy to conjure slightly plausible inventions. For her stories, of course. Just ignore that stuff in her basement.

  Susan writes from the Chicago suburbs with her three boys, two cats, and one husband. Which, it turns out, is exactly as much as she can handle.

  I love to hear from readers! Like my Facebook Page, follow me on Twitter, or visit my author blog. Subscribe to my newsletter to be the first to hear about giveaways and new releases.

  Table of Contents

  copyright

  chapter ONE

  chapter TWO

  chapter THREE

  chapter FOUR

  Other Mindjack Works

  about the AUTHOR

 

 

 
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