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

  The perimeter of Jackertown stretched for miles, but even this small strip had a half dozen Guards patrolling it, hanging out in pairs. Vellus must have hundreds of Guardsmen at his disposal. The rough sound of their voices, unused to talking out loud, drifted down the alley. Their helmets not only kept us from jacking in, they kept the readers’ mindwaves from beaming out. The Guardsmen were all effectively zeros, an irony I didn’t have time to dwell on.

  I brushed the soft mindbarrier of Ava’s mind, asking her to let me in. Are you sure this is the least-protected strip of the perimeter?

  Yes, Ava thought, and I sensed Sasha’s presence in her mind, joining us. Since they haven’t activated the shield here, we should have a straight shot to downtown. If Vellus is still there.

  Don’t you need to get up higher? Sasha pointed to the fire-escape ladder of the three-story brownstone we were huddled against.

  Ava’s eyes unfocused for a moment, then she blinked. They’re assembling the shield along the southern edge, so we can’t search in that direction. If we don’t find Vellus in our first sweep, we may need to go up higher to reach over the shield.

  Then we better get started. I took Ava’s hand and led her behind a dumpster that was bashed in and leaning perilously to one side, forming a small cove between the rusted metal and the crumbling cement of the brownstone. We needed a safe place to hide while we searched, in case the Guardsmen decided to take a stroll. Sasha followed, keeping his gun and his gaze trained on the opening at the far end of the alley. The dumpster reeked of yesterday’s pizza and day-old salad—someday I hoped picking up the garbage on time would be Jackertown’s biggest problem.

  Are you ready? I asked Ava.

  She nodded. Sasha pulled out of our minds, but watched us with high interest. We sat cross-legged on the rough pavement, hands resting on our upturned knees. I counted down from ten, trying to breathe through my mouth to avoid inhaling the nearby garbage stench, and dosed myself, then Ava, with adrenaline. We reached for Sasha’s mind to get synced.

  What the… His mind did a contorted dance, caught between reflexively shoving us out and holding onto Ava. We were synced and gone before he could decide.

  Where do we start?

  We knew the answer even as we asked it.

  Tribune Tower.

  The Chicago Tribune reporters were no doubt tru-casting the breaking news of the siege right now, and they might know Vellus’s itinerary. We reached to downtown and found our favorite reporter, Maria Ramirez, working on a story about families torn apart when a member turned jacker, something that hit uncomfortably close to home for both of us. We brushed Maria’s mind, lightly, not wanting to ransack her memories, but also concerned about alerting the other reporters to our presence.

  Maria, we thought. Would she recognize our twinned thoughts or freak out? We are Kira. Well that didn’t come out exactly right.

  Maria bolted up from her desk and panic spun through her thoughts. We were tempted to jack her into calmness, but that wouldn’t be mesh. We would have to talk her down.

  We… I’m Kira, I thought with some effort, trying to project my thoughts with a little more authority, although Ava’s were dominant at this distance. Please be calm. We’re not going to hurt you. This was a lot trickier than it seemed, controlling our thoughts.

  What do you want? Sour panic trickled through her normal apple-flavored mindscent.

  We’re trying to find Vellus, we thought, giving up on trying to separate our thoughts. Do you know his itinerary?

  Kira, is that really you? Why are you so… different?

  Don’t worry. We tried to think reassuring thoughts, but the distance was hard to overcome. We’re just trying some new skills. Can you help us find Vellus?

  He was here a few minutes ago, she thought. Doing an interview with another reporter. I was definitely not invited. We had no doubt about that. Vellus would never take the chance of a one-on-one interview with Maria again, not when the last time Julian had been there and handled Vellus into releasing prisoners from his own Detention Center.

  I think Vellus is headed for another interview on site at the perimeter of Jackertown.

  What? Our thoughts rang strong in her head. Thank you, Maria. That is very helpful. We would call Maria later to explain. Or maybe not, because the less she knew about our operations, probably the better. We pulled back from Maria’s mind and started sweeping the major streets of downtown Chicago near the Tribune Tower. There were thousands of mindreaders working in the skyscrapers, but relatively few in the streets. They bustled through the early-winter chill in search of lunch or their next appointments. We quickly found Vellus’s entourage, a cluster of anti-jacker helmets heading south, toward Jackertown.

  It’s true. He’s coming here.

  I pulled our twinned mindfields all the way back to our heads, then disentangled my thoughts from Ava’s. The rapid mental shift and the excitement surging through my body made the alley walls spin. I braced myself up from the grimy pavement and shook my head to clear it.

  I met Sasha’s expectant look and whispered, “Vellus is coming this way!” I pulled Ava up to standing, and she brushed muck from the seat of her pants. I motioned with my head for them both to follow me down the alley.

  When we were out of earshot of the guards and around the corner, I whispered, “Vellus is doing an interview along the perimeter.”

  “Why would Vellus come here?” Sasha glanced at Ava who confirmed it with a nod.

  “Maybe he’s doing a photo op with the troops,” I said. “Maybe he wants to inspect the troops personally. Who knows? I don’t care, Sasha. He’s coming here!”

  Sasha pulled his short comm radio from his pocket to call Julian, but I stayed his hand.

  “We don’t need a strike team,” I said softly. “You and me, Sasha. We can do this together.”

  “Julian won’t like that,” he said carefully. But he wasn’t saying no.

  “Look, this has a much better chance if we work together. If nothing else, I can boost your scribing power with adrenaline, so you can scribe Vellus without having to touch him. But I’m pretty sure I could sync with you too. I think I know what level you’re working on.”

  “What level I’m what?” Sasha’s face twisted up, as if I’d gone demens right in front of his eyes.

  “Never mind that part,” I said. “I think I can boost your range even farther by syncing with you the way I did just now with Ava. Our minds would work together. You could scribe Vellus from far away. We wouldn’t have to get close, and Vellus would never know what hit him.”

  “If I can get in and out without having to do a physical assault…” He was thinking out loud now.

  “No one would have to know he was attacked,” I said. “Or that he was turned. Plus Vellus is coming straight to our doorstep. We won’t get another chance like this.” I wasn’t absolutely sure it would work, but it was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.

  “Vellus and his entire entourage are helmet-protected,” Ava said. “How are you going to get past that?” She was asking questions, but she wasn’t saying no either.

  I thought back to the interview I’d seen earlier with Vellus. “On the tru-cast,” I whispered to myself. This could totally work. “Sasha, on the tru-cast—he wasn’t wearing an anti-jacker helmet!”

  “That’s right!” Ava said. “Otherwise, how would they pick up his thought waves for the interview?”

  “We’ll have to track him until he gets near.” My voice rushed to match the racing of my heart, which hammered double time with the adrenaline and the excitement. “We’ll shimmy around the perimeter until we’re close enough to jack, then wait for the moment to make our move.”

  “Okay,” Sasha said, clearly sold on my hastily put together plan. “But you get to explain this to Julian when we get back. He’ll have my head.”

  I grinned. “He’ll pin a medal on you when you come back with Vellus’s mind in your pocket.”

  Sasha shook his head.
He glanced back at the alley we had just come from, then looked at Ava, concern drawing down his face. I knew that look too well from all the times I’d seen it on Julian—Sasha was worried about Ava doing an op so close to a perimeter crawling with Guardsmen.

  “We could send Ava back,” I said, trying not to have our plan derail before it got started.

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Ava said. “You need me to track him until he gets within your range.” She brushed her hands free of the last traces of alley dirt, then slid next to Sasha and stared up into his dark eyes. “Besides, I want to be there when you scribe the worst jacker-hater on the planet.”

  Sasha lips parted like they wanted to say something, but the words were lost. He had one of those looks he reserved just for her, as if she was the only thing standing between him and desolation. He pulled her into a brief, fierce kiss that knifed through me before I could look away.

  It wasn’t just the normal embarrassment that averted my eyes and heated my face, but a cruel kind of jealousy. Of both of them, for what they had. Or rather what they didn’t, and I did—a whistling hole in my chest that I tried to fill with missions and training and a singular focus on killing Kestrel.

  Sasha whispered in Ava's ear. I sucked in air, trying to breathe through the pain and focus on the mission. Sasha caught my eye and waved his dart gun down the street, deeper into Jackertown and farther from the Guardsmen. He pulled Ava along, their hands clasped between them, and I trailed after.

  Sasha led us to a shuttered brownstone, taking us up to the third floor where we could keep a lookout for any sudden incursions by the Guardsmen. Ava mentally cast out and found Vellus’s entourage on her own, then tracked them as they slowly wound their way toward Jackertown.

  Sasha leaned against one wall, next to a cracked window, intermittently peering down at the street through thin tatters of drapes. I paced the wooden floor in the center of the room, far enough from the window to avoid attracting attention. My entire body was strung with tension, and I was beginning to regret hastily chowing down the sandwiches Ava had forced us to eat before we left.

  Ava called out Vellus’s movements from her corner by the stairs. Apparently his entourage had a few stops to make along the way. Was Vellus doing photo ops with the demens now? There wasn’t much else between downtown Chicago and Jackertown.

  Sasha watched me from his spot next to the window.

  “You need to call Julian,” he said. “Or I will.”

  His words grated on my tight-strung nerves, but I managed not to snarl at him. He was probably right. Vellus would be here soon. If we were successful, no one would know he had been scribed. A transformed Vellus could dream up a plausible reason to call off the siege, and who knew what else he could do for us. But if we had to resort to a physical assault or were caught... well, I didn’t want Julian to see it first on a tru-cast. I snatched the short comm from Sasha’s outstretched hand and jacked into the mindware interface, buzzing Julian.

  “Kira!” He didn’t sound very calm. Not a good sign.

  “Hey, we’ve acquired the target.” I avoided using Vellus’s name. The National Guard probably couldn’t crack Julian’s encrypted short comm system, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

  “Good. Just give us a location and time and we’ll send a team.”

  “Um, the location is here and the time is now, so we’re proceeding.”

  “What?” Definitely not calm. “Kira you promised! I want—”

  “Sorry, gotta go do an op!” I said cheerfully into the short comm and mentally nudged it off. Sasha shook his head slowly as I handed the small black device back to him.

  “What?” I said. “It’s not like any explanation on my part was going to make him any happier.”

  Sasha pocketed the short comm, rubbed both hands over his face, then peered out the window again. Letting it go was a wise choice on his part. My nerves were hyped as it was—I didn’t need to worry about Julian’s excessive protectiveness right now.

  “He’s getting closer,” Ava said. Since everyone in Vellus’s party was helmeted, we wouldn’t know his precise final destination until he was nearly there. “There’s also a team of unhelmeted reporters gathering along the perimeter near Cermak Road. They’re setting up to do an interview, and Vellus is definitely heading their way.”

  “Cermak Road?” I tried to visualize the ten-square-mile footprint of Jackertown. I’d patrolled the section near Cermak a few times, and it was one of the least populated areas. “That’s at least a half mile from here.”

  “Maybe you can boost me that far?” Sasha asked, obviously reluctant to move from our little safe haven.

  “Your range with enhancement is only a hundred feet, Sasha,” I said as I hurried to the stairs. “I can boost you to about twice that, maybe, if we sync. I’m not sure we can even make that work. We need to get closer.”

  My hand skimmed the worn-smooth railing as I took the stairs two at a time. Ava and Sasha pounded the creaky wooden steps behind me, but I was out the door at street level long before them. I cast out, searching for the reporters Ava had sensed, but they were still out of my reach, so I waited for Ava to catch up and lead the way. We stuck to the main streets—half a mile wasn’t far, but we needed to move quickly.

  Ava had to close her eyes every once in a while to focus. “Vellus’s party has reached the reporters. They’re moving around slowly now, so I think they’ve left their vehicles.”

  My reach finally locked onto the reporters, and I ran faster, not looking back to see if Sasha and Ava were keeping up. I kicked aside a rusty metal can in my way, instantly regretting the ricochet sound it made as it tumbled down the broken sidewalk. The Guardsmen didn’t need any more reason to step over the line into Jackertown. I kept one eye on the ground as I ran.

  I scanned the perimeter, but the Guardsmen all stood more or less stationary at their posts. Vellus’s team included a dozen helmets, and there were four reporters without protection. I brushed their minds to search for information about the interview, surging up a mix of wild grass-and-flower mindscents. They were planning a segment with the shield fence construction in the background and were already setting up shots. We zigged down a street and ran parallel to Cermak Road. One block more... I searched for an alley to cut over to Cermak, but even so, we would need a place to hide. We couldn’t just stroll up the street to get close enough to jack.

  “There!” I pointed to a center alley that cut between the three-story brick buildings. A back door stood open, half falling off its hinges. We could creep right up to Cermak through the shop. I motioned Ava and Sasha to sprint, and we squeezed through the half-open door just as a Guardsman strolled past the alley opening.

  The chill of Chicago winter gave way to a stuffy warmth inside. The air was stale and thick and smelled of grease. As we worked our way to the front, we passed through a room with half-assembled bicycle frames and wheels hanging from the ceiling, like a demens collection of dismembered bicycle parts. I stepped around the greasy boxes that littered the floor and we slipped into the main showroom. All the fully assembled bicycles had long since been cleaned out, leaving the room barren. Empty hooks lingered where goods once hung on the walls, and an ancient register sat open on a counter covered with decades of dust. The windows weren’t papered over, so we could see out through a thin layer of grime.

  Through the corner window, I glimpsed Vellus’s tall, lean form, far down the street, towering over a petite tru-cast journalist and several other people gathered around them. Suddenly, at the opposite end of the store, a single Guardsmen walked in front of the window. I grabbed a fistful of Sasha’s jacket and pulled him down behind the counter. Ava quickly ducked with us. We held our breath, waiting for a sound or some indication that we had been seen, but there was nothing but silence and motes of dust drifting in the dim, filtered light.

  I let myself breathe again and released Sasha. My reach told me the guard had moved on, no longer by the window, but he hadn’t
gone far. Vellus was close enough that Sasha should be able to scribe him, depending on how far I could enhance his reach between the sync and the adrenaline.

  “Sasha,” I whispered. “See if you can visually triangulate Vellus’s position. We need to be ready the moment he takes his helmet off for the interview.”

  Sasha nodded, popped up for a quick look, then hunkered down next to me again. I did one quick sweep through the crowd. Vellus was still helmeted as far as I could tell.

  “Ok, first I’ll dose you with adrenaline, see if that boosts your reach enough. If not, we can try the syncing. Are you ready?”

  Sasha nodded, his jaw set, waiting for me. I reached out to push into his mind, but he was seriously tensed up and reflexively shoved me back out.

  “Sorry,” he whispered. He closed his eyes and I saw him trying to relax. I tried again, this time slipping into his mind with no problem. I had only searched through Sasha’s mind one time before, and his mental networks were more tangled than most jackers. It took almost a solid minute before I found the right thread. I followed it to his adrenaline centers and dosed him strongly. His breath caught as the chemicals coursed through his body. I felt him extending his mindfield out toward Vellus.

  “Can you reach him?” I asked.

  “I think so. At least, I can reach the reporter next to him, as well as the helmeted minds near her.”

  “Good.” I followed him, trying not to distract him, and checked the minds around his reach. Ava focused on Sasha’s mind more than the entourage on the street, which was fine. She wouldn’t be much help in the jacking department, anyway, if things got tricky.

  The reporters were getting ready for the interview and waiting for Senator Vellus to get off the phone. They were jittery, being so close to Jackertown and unhelmeted, but their thoughts likened it to being in a war zone. They mentally congratulated themselves on being so brave. Every few seconds, the cameraman checked the barrier that was the backdrop for the interview, as if he expected a mongrel herd of jackers to spring over at any moment. The reporters’ thoughts showed they expected Vellus to take off his helmet. I prayed their boom mics weren’t the kind that recorded sound.