Mind Storm (38 page)

Why me?
Quinton demanded to know as Lucas pulled the pyrokinetic into the psi surgery.

Does it matter?
Lucas said tiredly.
He needs another mind, Quinton. He's carrying too much power for one person to contain and live with. Your power is kinetic-based, a better match than Kerr ever could be.

If it had been anyone else lying in Lucas's arms, Quinton would have refused. And he could have, he knew that. Lucas was worn too thin, carrying too much, to be able to fight on a dozen different fronts right now. But his refusal would kill Threnody, would kill Jason, and that wasn't something Quinton could ever willingly allow and be able to live with himself afterward.

Quinton dropped all of his shields. He had no other choice. Lucas entered his mind, going down deep to the very bottom where the channels that his power stemmed from were located. There, Lucas anchored the bond to Quinton's mind with Kerr's help, tying him to Jason more permanently than the Stryker psi surgeons had been able to tie Jason to Kerr. It hurt, as if Lucas were digging out pieces of who Quinton was and discarding them all, carving out space in his mind to make room for someone else in a place that should have only held him.

Ready?
Lucas asked.

No.

It didn't matter.

Lucas removed the block, dragging Kristen out of Jason's mind as she tore apart the last barrier. He threw up a mental shield around them both, around all of them, as Jason's mind exploded.

No thoughts. Just power. A white-hot burn that turned the world inside out and fought for space, for room, for the body that housed it to breathe. It ricocheted down the bond, straight into Quinton's mind, burning through the synapses in his skull and changing everything that he was into whatever Jason needed him to be in order to survive.

An anchor. A shield.

A victim.

Quinton screamed, the sound brief. His eyes rolled up into his skull and he passed out where he sat strapped into his seat. On the deck of the shuttle, Jason lay sprawled beside Lucas and Threnody, bleeding out of his ears and nose. The world was so much
clearer
than it had ever been before as awareness returned in slow, painful increments.

Lucas gripped the hypospray in his hand and injected Threnody with nanites, his mind in hers, forcing her to keep her heart beating, to keep her lungs moving.

You know how to do this, Jason,
Lucas said.
Aisling said you would. It's all instinct at this point. It always is.

Jason turned his head, his power filling the shuttle like a heavy, unwanted pressure. He closed his eyes, his mind in pieces but still being guided by Lucas's implacable will.

Deeper.

The walls of the shuttle. The burned skin of Threnody's body.

Deeper.

The charred lines of her muscles. The hot flow of her blood.

Deeper.

The nanites that swam there, with their ability to coax cells toward the regeneration of the human body, waiting for their orders.

Deeper.

The feel of his microtelekinesis pulling at Threnody's DNA.

[
THIRTY-SIX
]

AUGUST 2379
TORONTO, CANADA

The order came at 0600 hours, on a weekday. It came through the usual channels, and Ciari took the uplink in her office, a twenty-second demand that Erik delivered in a quiet, emotionless voice at odds with the furious expression on his face.

“We require the OIC of the Strykers Syndicate to present herself before the World Court to explain the actions taken in Buffalo.”

No more and no less, but the threat was there; the anger and the hate.

The world press was already reporting on the fighting that had taken place in Buffalo, streaming eyewitness accounts of what had happened in the bunkers and aboveground. The most downloaded image from that stormy night was a holopic taken by a military jet, of the sprawl that made up the city burning like a star, running on full power for the first time in generations.

Not the sort of thing the World Court needed to be dealing with when they were so close to the launch.

Pirate streams were already cutting into main media downloads, impossible to ignore. The government was having a difficult time containing everything. Ciari could feel the quiet shift of a city's emotions moving from fear into something much more difficult to deal with—suspicion. Resentment. A mob mentality, when it encompassed the majority of a population, couldn't be ignored.

Ciari dressed with care that morning, in her best uniform, not a hair out of place. Appearances were everything, and she had to look the part she played down to the shine on her boots. She walked with measured strides to Jael's lab two floors below, where the CMO was busy dealing with the wounded Strykers under her care who had survived the field operation in Buffalo. She didn't take kindly to being interrupted.

“I need to speak with you,” Ciari said. “Privately.”

Jael, having heard about Ciari's summons from Keiko, kept her attention on the datapad in her hands and the Stryker on an exam table. “It can wait.”

“No, it can't.”

Jael arched a dark eyebrow at the steely tone of Ciari's voice before she sighed and ordered a nurse to take care of her patient. Then she silently led Ciari to an empty exam room, which was harder than it sounded, since most of the rooms were occupied. She watched as Ciari went to stand beside the exam table, showing something Jael might have called regret if it had been anyone else.

“There's something I need you to do for me,” Ciari said. “And we have very little time to do it.”

“What's going on?”

“I'm pregnant.”

In the years after that she survived, Jael would point to that moment, to those words, as the start of it all, of the beginning of the end.

[
THIRTY-SEVEN
]

AUGUST 2379
ARCTIC CIRCLE

“Lucas,” Matron said over the comm system, sounding tired, voice raspy and dry. “You should see this.”

He blinked open eyes more red than blue, exhaustion, pain, and stress carving deep lines into his face. Blood was dried in streaks over the lower half of his face, his mouth, his throat. Dark, brown-red stains that flaked off as he moved, hands fumbling with the straps of his flight harness, the portable IV and tubing strapped to his left arm catching a bit on the edge of his seat. Everyone except Matron was hooked up to one of them, the IV fluids barely enough to keep them all stabilized. His head ached in a way it never had before, body weakened due to mental damage.

Lucas hit the audio on the control panel of his seat and said, “On my way,” out loud instead of telepathically. His mind was so badly strained, teetering between the edge of psi shock and something dangerously deeper, that
thinking
hurt. A psi link was out of the question.

He spared a glance for the people around him as he levered himself to his feet. His sisters, slumped together in a sprawl two seats away from him, tied down by individual harnesses and strong support restraints. Threnody, who was strapped down across a row of flight seats in the center of the cargo bay, hooked up to a portable IV they had secured to the seatback near her hip and a trauma kit to monitor her vitals. The nanites in her veins were still struggling to fix damaged organs, to turn burnt flesh into new, pieces of her skin sloughing off in slow, slow increments.

Quinton, sitting on the opposite side of the cargo bay, his arms and face slowly becoming whole again courtesy of the nanites Lucas had injected him with and Jason's power. Kerr had set Quinton's broken bones as much as he'd been able to. Jason was seated next to Quinton, one hand wrapped around Quinton's wrist, face so white that Lucas could see the veins beneath his skin, power like an inferno behind the new secondary mental shields his mind had created. Kerr sat on Jason's other side, with the ravages of his fight and his loss pressed deep into his body, still unconscious.

All of them a mess. All of them half-dead, it seemed.

Lucas stumbled his way to the hatch, unable to stand up straight, and pressed his hand against the control panel to open it. The flight deck was marginally warmer than the cargo bay. Lucas took the navigator's seat, collapsing into it with little grace.

“Got a total,” Matron said, not looking at him as she passed over a hypospray. “Roll call puts us at nine.”

Lucas took the hypospray and shot himself full of painkillers. It was a momentary relief that wouldn't numb him long enough to be useful. Closing his eyes, he scratched at the dried blood on his face. Nine shuttles out of thirty-six had survived the launch out of Buffalo and the derecho that was still blowing its way toward the Atlantic. Nine shuttles, which was more than he'd thought they'd actually come away with.

“Take a look at that.”

It took effort to open his eyes again, to focus his blurry, tired vision on what Matron wanted him to see. The surviving shuttles were flying in a jagged line over the Arctic Ocean, almost too low to be safe as they struggled to stay beneath whatever security measures the government had up here. Which would be enough, but not too much, because the World Court couldn't afford to draw attention to what they hoarded.

On the horizon, in the constant daylight of an Arctic summer, a black dot could be seen, growing larger with every kilometer they put behind them.

Spitsbergen.

The Svalbard Global Seed and Gene Bank.

Matron's voice came out softly, barely stronger than a whisper. “Your orders?”

“Get us down without them noticing us,” Lucas said, curling his hands over the edge of the seat, light from the midnight sun biting into his dark blue eyes. “We've got a world to steal.”

PART NINE

PROLOGUE

 

SESSION DATE
: 2128.10.02

LOCATION
: Institute of Psionics Research

CLEARANCE ID
: Dr. Amy Bennett

SUBJECT
: 2581

FILE NUMBER
: 921

She sits listlessly in the chair, a tired, wilted shadow of herself. The wires that connect her to machines are a heavy weight she has long since given up fighting against.

“Aisling,” the doctor says, desperation and fear coloring her voice as she leans over the table, body shaking ever so slightly. “Please. You have to help us.”

The girl turns her head slowly, looking at the camera. She blinks, the bruises beneath her bleached-out violet eyes darker than her irises. “Are you listening? I can see it, Matthew. It's going to be okay.”

The door to the white room slides open. Two more attendants in lab coats rush into the room, mouths open in half-formed screams that the camera is barely able to pick up through the static that cuts across the screen.

“It's going to be—”

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS
.

An imprint of St. Martin's Press.

MIND STORM
. Copyright © 2011 by Katrina M. Ruiz. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ruiz, K. M.

Mind storm / K.M. Ruiz. — 1st ed.

        p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-67317-8

  1.  End of the world—Fiction.   2.  Psychic ability—Fiction.   I.  Title.

PS3618.U54M56 2011

813'.6—dc22

2010054459

First Edition: May 2011

eISBN 978-1-4299-2435-1

First Thomas Dunne Books eBook Edition: May 2011