Mind Storm (6 page)

Where's a fucking precog when you need one?
Threnody thought in some distant, bitter corner of her mind as she tried to struggle, but couldn't, in the Class I telekinetic grip Lucas Serca had her in.

Usually dead,
Lucas said telepathically for all of them to hear.
Personally, I consider them a pain in the arse.

Kerr's telepathic shields slammed up between them and Lucas as he readied for an attack, but it was a useless gesture. Kerr didn't stand a chance against the man who would one day run the Serca Syndicate, he only knew that he had to try.

Lucas's smile stretched wider.

Psions were ranked for a reason, the various mental powers assigned by tenths of strength of conscious Brain Power Used on the Class scale. Class X were straight humans with 10 percent of BPU, and Class IX were those humans who had a fair amount of sixth sense, the sort that let them survive in a harsh world when other humans would merely die. Class VIII through I were psion ranks, and of them all, Class I was the rarest, most powerful rank.

A Class I triad psion was born only once every other generation, if that. They burned bright and fast, dying off young if they constantly used the powers they were born with, a risk every psion took.

This generation there were two.

Lucas, born with telepathy and telekinesis strong enough for teleportation, cut through Kerr's telepathic attack with a brutality that sent Kerr's power snapping back through the Stryker's brain. The backlash sent Kerr's mind almost to the breaking point, his shields skittering against their mental foundations, his control slipping away. Swearing, Kerr struggled to get his telepathy under control through the agony he was feeling.

Lucas ran a hand through his hair as he eyed the four in front of him. “This is not how it's supposed to go.”

“You're a Serca and a
psion
?” Jason asked incredulously.

Lucas arched an eyebrow. “Now, really, how else did you think we keep our Warhounds in check?”

All four Strykers flinched at the admission of whom the Warhounds belonged to. The government and Strykers had known the Warhounds were organized; they simply hadn't known they were
owned
by anyone, much less by one of the world's oldest, most prestigious human families. Only not so human, judging by what Lucas could do, by what he really was.

“What do you want?” Quinton asked in a stiff voice.

“Not any of you dead, Stryker. I'm not here to kill you.”

“Do you really expect us to believe that?”

“Belief is subjective. I've already had this conversation once today, I'm in no mood to have it again. You're here for me, Stryker. Or did you honestly think that you were targeting an unaffiliated psion?”

Quinton clenched his teeth, muscles standing out in his neck. He turned his head to stare at Threnody, keeping her in view. Threnody kept her attention on Lucas, knowing all she needed was just one touch to take him down; knowing that she would never get that chance.

“I've got a proposition for you,” Lucas said. He leaned back against the table and gripped the edge of it with both hands as he looked at Threnody.

“We don't negotiate with Warhounds,” Threnody said automatically.

“I bet I can change your mind. I won't even need telepathy to do it.” Lucas turned an indulgent smile on her. “Let's even up the odds, shall we? You've got five seconds.”

In reality, it was more like two. Threnody blinked and nearly missed the arrival of three Warhounds as they teleported into the middle of the cathedral. Threnody felt Lucas's telekinesis disappear and she moved instantly, the other Strykers doing the same, because to stand still meant certain death, and shock at the revelation of Sercas as psions wasn't enough to cripple their responses.

Jin Li immediately tossed a dozen small, round electric surge anchors in Gideon's direction. The Class II telekinetic caught them with his power and scattered them around the cathedral with a thought, wires linking all of them together. Jin Li twisted the surge anchor in his hands, activating it and all the others. Electricity flowed through the device, powered by Jin Li, a barrier that was a dangerous extension of himself. The surge net took that power and multiplied it ten times over until the entire place burned with it, electricity crawling across the floor and walls and high, arched ceiling, looking for conductors.

Jin Li's power found it in bodies.

Jason struggled to bring up a telekinetic shield, but he was still suffering from being yanked unexpectedly out of a teleport and wasn't quick enough to block the first wave completely. It shocked through him like lightning, curling through his nervous system and brain. His control skipped just out of reach and his shields wavered.

Hands grabbed his arm and shoulder, dragging him behind the precarious safety of a pew. Kerr focused his power on Jason, looking into those bloodshot hazel eyes, and snarled,
“Shields.”

With Kerr's help, Jason wrenched his power back into place, managing to slide his telekinesis around them both. The sudden absence of electric burn left both of them gasping for breath and reaching for their guns. Together, they took aim at Jin Li. Neither of them were surprised when all the bullets missed. A distraction only, and not a threat; both sides had telekinetics to shield against bullets.

Across the aisle Threnody had her hand pressed firmly to the back of Quinton's neck, her power regulating both their nervous systems against Jin Li's attack. She was still recovering from the last time she had pulled this maneuver in Johannesburg against Jin Li and it was a strain, her power barely able to cope.

“Jason,” Threnody said. “Get a shield around Quinton.”

She could handle Jin Li's power on her own. Quinton was a drain on her reserves that she couldn't allow. Seconds later, she felt invisible power hardening between her fingers and Quinton's neck, a telekinetic barrier that would let him live. She pulled away, blue ribbons of electricity arcing from fingertip to fingertip, sliding up her arm and through her body. Quinton took aim with his gun at Samantha and fired, the weapon the only thing Jason wasn't shielding. When the gun was wrenched out of his hands, nearly breaking his trigger finger, Quinton realized that Gideon didn't much like people targeting his twin.

Jason looked up, eyes sweeping over the cathedral's interior to visually tag everyone's position. His inspecs were dead in his eyes from the electrical surge, leaving only the human spectrum for him to work with, and eventually even that threatened to shut down as a massive telepathic blow pounded against his mental shields. The surprise that leaked from Samantha into his mind when they didn't break wasn't comforting.

You can't keep those up forever,
Samantha said as she began to bear down on his mind.

They keep themselves up,
Jason shot back even as he dialed back on the strength of his telekinetic output to focus on the telepathic strike that was carving mental canyons into the outer edges of his mind. Canyons that were then filled by Kerr's power, a burning challenge that Samantha was forced to reckon with.

Get the fuck out of his mind,
Kerr said.

The twins had spent their entire life learning how to wield their powers simultaneously in a merge, like the dual psion they resembled, but weren't. Kerr and Jason didn't have the twins' expertise, but that didn't mean they weren't up to the task of protecting themselves against a pair of Class II psions. It just meant they would be the first to falter.

Nearby, Threnody had emptied an entire clip at the Warhounds, the bullets going everywhere except into bodies. Ejecting the empty magazine, she looked over at Quinton and said, “Burn it the fuck down.”

He didn't answer her in words. The air down in the Slums was heavy, thick, and hard to breathe at the best of times. It trapped heat and caused the temperature to rise higher than the regulated environment in the city towers of Los Angeles. It was already sticky hot in the cathedral, mere degrees cooler than the suffocating heat that burned outside.

Quinton made it hotter.

He couldn't create fire, but he could control it, use it, make it grow. Quinton clenched his hands into fists, the biomodifications in his limbs releasing the natural gas from biotubes in his arms. He snapped his fingers, the metal tips sparking the gas into fire that crawled through the air and expanded around where he stood. The red-orange flames flickered in the air until it was like an inferno that he sent roaring down the middle aisle of the cathedral toward the Warhounds.

Gideon's telekinesis saved the Warhounds as fire engulfed them. It blinded them from any physical attack even as Gideon reached out with his power and grappled with Jason's to get to Quinton. Quinton's attack still bought them seconds, precious time for Threnody to lunge for the nearest electric surge anchor, get her fingers around it, and slam her power through its electrical field. The surge net broke beneath her power, circuits frying as she overloaded its limited system faster than Jin Li could counteract it, bringing down the barrier separating the two groups.

In retaliation, Jin Li targeted her first, as he had in Johannesburg, electricity sparking across his fist as he aimed for her face. She knocked aside his first attack and dodged an elbow to the throat, Jin Li's blow connecting with her shoulder instead. They fought their way down the aisle toward the back of the cathedral, a pitched battle that was as much fists as it was power. Threnody was fast, but Jin Li was faster, and he caught her in his grip, slamming her up against the wall. His hands were around her throat, just as they had been the last time when he almost killed her. Right now, he meant to rectify that failure.

Threnody planted her hands against his chest, fingers digging into the bare skin near the hollow of his throat, and shoved her power into him before he could off-load into her. She needed to stop his heart if she was going to kill him. She almost did.

Electricity ripped through both of them, frying their nervous systems and pushing their hearts to the breaking point. Their screams mingled over the roar of the fire, over the rush of blood to her head as telepathy that wasn't Kerr's swallowed her mind.

Come with me,
Lucas said.
You know you don't have any other choice.

Threnody gasped for air as her skin got hotter and hotter, her nerves seeking to burn right out of her body. The world bled colors brought on by extreme stress from Jin Li's power, a disconnect caused by a nervous system out of whack, synapses not firing correctly. The neuroplasticity of the brain freezing up, just for a nanosecond.

She didn't answer him.

You can die here or you can die when the government flips the switch to fry your brain through their collar. Or all of you can come with me and live. Make your choice, Threnody Corwin.

What do you want?

The same thing you do—a chance.

Threnody saw bleached-out violet eyes inside his mind, the image of a little girl in some sterile white room frozen in his memory. A cascade of orders, of actions, that couldn't be a hallucination, not when it came from Lucas Serca, of all people.

The shock of that shared memory propelled Threnody to say,
Yes.

Or maybe it was Jin Li's hands choking the life out of her that made her reach for a way out.

It didn't matter.

They disappeared. Lucas teleported out of that cathedral with four Strykers, leaving behind his siblings and Jin Li to the quiet darkness of a broken place of prayer.

PART TWO

RETRIEVAL

 

SESSION DATE
: 2128.01.15

LOCATION
: Institute of Psionics Research

CLEARANCE ID
: Dr. Amy Bennett

SUBJECT
: 2581

FILE NUMBER
: 1

She sits alone at the table, young and small, with feet that do not touch the floor. Paper drawings are scattered across the tabletop and the floor around her. She has stayed silent for over three hours, the chrono marking time in a corner of the feed, amused by the pad of drawing paper and the crayons provided her. Only now, when she is out of paper, does she go still. The machines she is connected to click and whine like a disharmonic orchestra.

“Don't sulk, Marcheline,” Aisling says as she frowns at the camera. “I'm trying to help you.”

As if summoned by her voice, the door to the white room slides open and a doctor steps inside. The woman is thin and dark skinned. She ignores the camera.

“Hello, Aisling,” the doctor says. “Do you know who I am?”

Aisling tilts her head away from the camera, attention on the woman. “Hello, Dr. Bennett. I saw you months and months ago.”

“Did you? Fascinating.” The woman sits in an empty seat, places her documents and a deck of white cards in neat piles on the table. “Do you know why you're here, Aisling? You're here because you are a very special little girl.”

“Mama thinks I'm sick.”

“Your mother is concerned about you. She was right to bring you here.”

Aisling shrugs and slouches in her chair, something like resignation settling on her face. “You always say that, Doctor.”

Behind her, the high-pitched sound of the EEG machine is louder than that of all the rest, loud enough to force the doctor to cover her ears.

[
FIVE
]

JULY 2379
THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS

The crowd of personal aides, lobbyists, military soldiers, and reporters jostled for view of the vidscreens that lined the walls of the International Court of Justice, known in the vernacular as the World Court.

The heavily fortified Peace Palace was an old building residing over the bunkers that had protected the only seat of power to survive the Border Wars. It was the world's premier functioning government, the place that all remaining countries with viable populations looked to for guidance and obeyed in the face of continuous societal decline. Its fifteen justices held office for life, whereas they had once been restricted to term limits. In these trying times, so the saying went, justice needed a long eye.