Open Minds (22 page)

Simon moaned and then coughed as the sound rumbled through his chest. I linked into his mind to see if he was awake and found him caught in a dream that was all too real. A pack of older jackers crowded around a kid no bigger than Laney, menacing him with their looks and their minds. The boy quickly crumpled under the mental duress. Simon’s arm twitched against the rough blanket of his cot, but in the dream it was Molloy that held him back, saying
Too late, too late
.

That image was washed away by another where Simon ran past rows of barracks. He threw open every single door, searching for someone he was afraid to find. At the last door, he discovered a girl with brown hair collapsed on the floor. He rushed to her and pulled her into his arms. Her hair fell back from her face.

I jerked out of his head. The shock of seeing my face on that girl—that dead girl in his arms—chilled me to the bone. Simon writhed on the bed again and then curled on his side, a small whimper escaping him. I could jack his nightmare away, like I had Laney’s, but I didn’t relish the idea of seeing myself dead again.

I stared at the ceiling and tried to ignore my racing heart and the quiet sounds of pain from Simon’s cot. Either he was upset about my dream-death or the thrashing around was causing him physical pain. Regardless, I wouldn’t get any sleep with him moaning. I took a deep breath and linked back in.

He was still kneeling in the room where he had found me. Thankfully, my body was gone. Except now his hands were covered in blood, and he was smearing them all over his shirt and pants. He wasn’t getting them clean, just making a disastrous mess.

I needed to pull him out of his wild guilt dream before it drove us both mad. I erased the blood and the room from his mind and replaced it with a meadow in moonlight. Simon filled the meadow in with a giant boulder and his car parked beside it, recreating that night when we snuck out and met his reader friends for some pretend dipping.

These were safe true memories.

The faint smell of wild grass filled me. At first, it seemed like the scent of the meadow, recreated by Simon. Then I realized it was his mind-scent. I had been in his mind several times, but always under duress, never quite like this, where I had time to notice it.

Simon leaned against the boulder in his dream and a girl walked up to him. It was me, and when the dream-me reached up to kiss him, I jerked out of his mind again. I wasn’t ready to replay that bit of disaster—the moment when I decided to be Simon Zagan’s girlfriend. Not the best choice I’ve ever made.

Simon’s body calmed, but his legs were still crooked from his earlier trauma. His breathing evened out, and the wheezing seemed less pronounced. My muscles relaxed from the constant tension of the last three days, and I sank deeper into the thin cot. I closed my eyes and tried to summon my own safe dreams to lull me into a peaceful sleep.

Something that didn’t involve someone dying.

I imagined Raf, holding my hand in the car as we hid behind the hedge. In my daydream, Kestrel never came careening around the corner, and Raf slowly leaned toward me. He was going to kiss me, and this time I wouldn’t stop him. This time I would find out if his lips were as soft as they looked.

A hiss whispered in my ear. I cursed inwardly and added snakes to the perils that haunted us in the Camp of the Flies. Then I caught a faint whiff of orange spice and opened my eyes. Mist rose from the floor.

The gas.

I rolled out of the cot I shared with Laney and onto my feet. The mist was already numbing my mind, its tendrils winding through the room and seeming to come from everywhere. I focused inward and sped up my heart rate from jittery panic to full-blown pounding. My head throbbed, but the extra blood pumped out the juice that was clouding my thinking. Unfortunately, each new rasping breath brought another lungful of gas. I ripped off my pillowcase and covered my nose and mouth. It already smelled of orange spice.

I couldn’t hold my breath and make my heart beat out of my chest at the same time. I had to get out of the barrack and dilute the gas somehow. I linked gently into Laney and Simon’s minds. They were well under the influence of the gas, deep in an unconscious state. Hopefully the rest of the camp was as well.

I tore open the barrack door and lurched out into the moonlit gap between the buildings. The gas was less concentrated outside, but it still swirled in an orange fog around my bare feet as I strode toward the common space between Block C and Block B. I kept the pillowcase over my nose and mouth and slinked into the shadows close to the barrack wall. Bodies of the Block B crew lay crumpled on the ground. The gas must have claimed them while they kept watch.

Even through the pillowcase, my gasping breaths sounded loud in the quiet night air. My heart was pounding a pulse in my head that raced to keep the gas at bay. I sprinted down the wide corridors between blocks, and the desert rocks bit into the soles of my feet. I scanned for any movement from jackers who might have eluded the gas. There was nothing but stillness until I arrived at the depot.

Men garbed in black poured from one of the two trucks parked by the gate. Gas masks obscured their faces, making them look like freakish insects. They formed a protective circle around both vehicles. Their rifles glinted in their hands as they scanned for jackers that might be resisting the effects of the gas.

Like me.

I skittered into the shadow of a nearby barrack and lightly probed the minds of the well-armed guards. They were wary, but not overly anxious. No one had overcome the effects of the gas before, yet they were prepared for the unexpected. Although most of them were readers, there was one jacker in the lead. Their thoughts overlapped, like one beast with ten pairs of eyes that could see in every direction. I could easily jack the readers but the jacker guard was like a live-wire waiting to trip. I pulled back in case he sensed me lurking at the edge of his mind.

The second truck pulled up to the depot door, and a thick mechanical tongue extended to where two rifle-less guards stood waiting. Crates about the size of my cot slowly started to travel down the conveyor belt.

A man in a long black coat, face also obscured by a gas mask, stepped around the first truck. He grasped an e-slate in his hand and set off toward the closest barrack, accompanied by two armed guards. No doubt searching for fresh victims for the government’s experiments.

I stayed in the shadows.

Slate Man and his two goons returned with the limp body of a young jacker in their arms. She couldn’t be any more than fourteen. My throat closed up as I watched them load her into the first truck. Then they headed straight toward me.

I scurried back along the wall and around the corner, out of their view. Their boots scuffed the ground nearby, and I muffled my heavy breathing with the pillowcase. The trio’s determined steps faded. What if they were heading to Block C? I huddled out of sight and strained to listen. I didn’t dare brush into their minds in case they were jackers and could sense me so close by.

The pounding of my heart was starting to take a toll. I leaned against the wall as a wave of dizziness swept through me. My chest ached. Was I giving myself a heart attack? I pressed my forehead against the cool wall and focused on slowing my heart a little, enough to keep the dizziness under control. Only each gulping breath brought more gas, and my mind was starting to fuzz out.

I wasn’t going to last until the guards finished unloading.

I edged back around the barrack to check the progress at the depot. Maybe I could jack the guards unloading the crates to look the other way while I slipped inside. I brushed their minds, but pulled back quickly.
Jackers.

The rough scraping of boots on dirt sounded to my right, and I flattened myself against the wall. The footsteps shuffled along, and when the guards swung into view, they carried a fresh victim between them, another girl, even younger this time. With dark brown hair.

Laney.

No!
I lurched out from the shadows before I could stop myself. My hands twitched with the need to do something, anything, but what? Before they could catch sight of me, I ordered the two guards carrying her to
Put her down!
I would knock all three of them out as soon as Laney was safely on the ground. They readily obeyed my command, stopping in their tracks and slowly lowering her to the ground. But Slate Man was a jacker.
Keep going!
he overrode my command and quickly cast his mind out searching for me. I glimpsed two piercing blue eyes behind the mask.
Kestrel!
I tried to disappear back into the shadows and hoped he wouldn’t detect the blank spot of my mind, but it was the movement that caught his eye and gave me away.

Kestrel grabbed a pistol from the guard’s holster, and the pop of the gun split the quiet air.

A sharp pain stabbed my leg, and I fell to the ground. Two more jabbed my back, but I hardly felt them.

I slipped into a deep orange-colored haze.

chapter TWENTY-NINE

I struggled through the orange-flavored fuzz, but couldn’t pry open my eyes. My dry tongue scraped uselessly against the roof of my mouth. I groaned my frustration and a hand clasped my arm. Instinctively, I gasped and lunged out with my mind.

Hey! It’s just me,
Simon thought as I plunged into his mind. I stilled and tried again to force open my eyes.

What happened?
I linked the thought to him, unable to form words with my drug-disabled mouth.

I found you by Block E, near the depot,
he thought.
You must have been some kind of raging elephant, because it took three darts for them to take you down.
There was a strange undercurrent of pride in his thoughts that didn’t make any sense to me.

Darts?
I recalled Kestrel and his victims.
Laney!

I jerked upright, yanked my eyes open, and cringed against the barrack lights and morning sun. Half-blind, I patted the cot next to me, but I knew Laney wasn’t there.

Laney’s gone,
Simon thought.

No!

Maybe I distracted them. Maybe they dropped her and left after they shot me. I stretched my mind out, roaming lightly over all the Clan members in Block C. She wasn’t there. Maybe some other Clan had taken her in. I stretched and found I could reach Block B. I skimmed across the dozens of minds packed into the safety of their barracks. Still nothing. I kept stretching. It didn’t seem like I should be able to reach so far, but then I had never really tried before. There had been no reason to. But now I reached and scanned every barrack in the camp, stopping at each of the thousand minds long enough to know they weren’t Laney. They weren’t the little girl who had already suffered too much for the non-crime of being a jacker kid.

No! No.
But I couldn’t find her anywhere in the camp.

I’m sorry,
thought Simon.

Why?
The thought ripped through me and came out as an animal sound in my parched throat.
Why did they take her and not me?

I don’t know.
Simon’s thoughts were genuinely puzzled, like he knew as well as I did that it was some kind of cruel joke. Some horrible trick to take little Laney, who was too young to have even broken curfew, and yet leave me behind, probably the most mutant jacker of all. I hung my head and tried to swallow down the pain of that thought.

Simon hesitantly put his hand on my shoulder. When I didn’t shove his hand away, he lightly rubbed my back.
I’m so sorry, Kira.

It’s not right.
I retreated from his mind to my own, where no one could hear the thoughts running through it. Thoughts about how I had failed—failed to conquer the gas, failed to get the food from the depot, failed to stop them from taking Laney.

“None of it’s right,” Simon said softly. He tipped my chin up with his finger. “But you did a pretty good job of convincing Molloy to keep you around.”

“What? But…” The words caught on the dryness of my throat and made me cough.

Simon hopped off my cot and fetched a water bottle from our meager stash of supplies by the door. I gulped it down, washing away the dirt and the orange aftertaste. I wished I could wash away my guilt for losing Laney along with it.

When my mouth could function again, I rasped out, “What are you talking about? I didn’t get the food. And they took Laney!”

Simon rested his hand on mine. “Laney was probably the only other Clan member, besides yourself, that they could have taken and Molloy would have forgiven you for.” He cracked a smile. “Although he probably wouldn’t have missed me much.”

It still didn’t make sense. Laney was new to the Clan, but her disappearance only proved that I had failed. Simon cocked his head. “Molloy’s not a monster,” he said. “Well, not completely a monster. He knows you were trying to protect Laney, and that means something to him. The fact that you made it out to the depot, and they had to stop you with darts, convinced him pretty well that you were the real deal.”

“So.” I had to stop to take another drink of water. “So, he’s letting me stay in Block C?”