The Handler (3 page)

I stood at the kitchen sink, working the grease stains off my hands while trying to keep the ice-cold water from splashing my collared shirt and dress pants. The formal attire seemed more appropriate for greeting our first recruit than my earlier dirt-smudged black t-shirt and jeans. Although I supposed this was our second recruit, now that I had officially invited Serena to join us.

Serena was busy clearing racks in the far reaches of the factory, safe from the possibility of future kisses. The more I thought about it, the more kissing Serena seemed like an error in judgment. Playing favorites or getting personally involved with recruits would only sabotage my efforts to build a united coalition of jackers. I would be more careful in the future.

Thankfully, Anna had been too busy cleaning her guns to notice the kiss. She had finished her superfluous cleaning, but several weapons were still laid out on the table.

“You might want to put those away,” I said. “Don’t want to scare off the recruits before they’re even in the door.”

“They should know what they’re getting into,” she said flatly, eyeing her guns. Her protective instinct flared again. Maybe she had seen Serena and me after all.

Heat climbed up my neck. “Things aren’t always what they appear to be.”

She rubbed her temples with both hands then looked up at me. “Just tell me you didn’t promise her anything.”

Helping Serena learn to control her ability wasn’t so much a promise as an offer. And a necessity, if she was to stay with us. “Not that I’m aware of.”

Anna’s shoulders relaxed. A soft knock at the door drew both our attention, but barely, like it was a tentative plea. I noted the time on the screen perched on the kitchen counter.

“I believe our recruit is here.”

“Maybe you should answer the door this time,” Anna said.

I grinned and left her to stow her weapons, mentally reaching through the door before I arrived. The instinctual mind of our guest boiled red and hot, like Anna’s standard state of anger, and I hesitated with my hand on the door latch. I had only contacted this jacker on private message once; he had been referred by Henry, an older friend of the family who still ran the secret laboratory in my parents’ north shore estate. The recruit was a volunteer for one of Henry’s testing trials, which usually meant a jacker on hard times or thrown out by their Clan. Not typically someone who played well with others.

But I trusted Henry more than most people on the planet.

I took a breath and opened the door, letting in a blast of dry winter air. My recruit was a couple of years older than me, with dark brown skin, black curly hair, and even darker, almost fathomless eyes. His face was stoic, showing none of the raging aggression that churned underneath it.

“Sasha, I presume?” I asked.

“And you appear to be Julian.” His voice immediately softened, becoming almost apologetic. “Henry showed me your picture.” Then his eyes narrowed at my crisp, high-collared shirt.

“I am indeed.” I stepped aside. “Won’t you come in?”

Sasha hesitated, eyeing the cavernous and dusty interior of the factory, his body held stiff. I slipped through the angry red mist of his mind to read his thoughts. Most jackers couldn’t sense me, going in through the mind’s back door, so to speak, and I hoped Sasha would be the same. He looked like a powder keg about to go off, and I didn’t want to inadvertently light the fuse.

Why is he so dressed up?
Sasha’s thoughts jittered between staying and running.
Maybe Henry was lying. This isn’t worth the risk…

“Or,” I said, trying to keep him from bolting, “if you’d like, we could talk outside.” The street was empty. A plastic bottle tumbled lonely and hollow down the sidewalk, flashing cold winks of afternoon sun. Sasha pulled his gray trench coat tighter around his neck.

“Inside will be fine.” He stepped past me, enough that I could close the door behind him, but then stopped. Anna watched Sasha with undisguised suspicion. The dart guns were still on the table.

He turned back to me. “Look, maybe this was a mistake—”

“You’re not in any danger here, Mr…”

He ignored me, his gaze darting about the room but finding only Anna and me. Serena must have wandered off or possibly lain down to rest from her exertion in tidying up. The tension in Sasha’s shoulders ratcheted up until he was hunched over, like an old man. He edged closer and dropped his voice. “Did Henry tell you about me?”

I nodded, wondering why we were whispering. “He said that you had an unusual ability. He didn’t specify what it was.” Which wasn’t entirely true. Henry said Sasha could do something extraordinary with erasing memories, but I wanted to hear it from Sasha himself.

His dark eyes searched mine, as if he could take the measure of me by peering into them. “Did he tell you that I don’t want to use it anymore?” Sasha asked. “Not ever again. I’m not here for that, so if that’s what you want, I might as well leave now, and we’ll just consider this all a misunderstanding.”

Sasha’s instincts had gushed black. The sudden, fierce chill of it made me think he had tried to jack me. But he wasn’t cringing on the floor or screaming in terror—whatever was raising his most basic fear came from the depths of his own mind, not mine.

“You’re afraid to use your ability?” I asked him.

He looked away and examined the machinery that lined the nearby exterior wall. A mask of indifference dropped over his face, but his instincts burst into a writhing red mass. “All I’m saying is that I don’t ever want to do that kind of work again. Henry said…” Sasha faced me with his impassive look locked in place. “He said you would be different. That you would understand that some weapons should never be fired.”

I nodded. Every jacker’s mind was a weapon, one that could easily be used for evil. For Sasha, however, it seemed to be something more. His ability fueled an inferno of fear and anger that he had to keep contained with an iron mask. The need to know what he could do sparked to life inside me.

“I would never force you to use your ability against your will, Sasha,” I said. “You have my promise on that.”

Sasha narrowed his eyes, studying me. No doubt looking for some reason to believe a promise from a jacker he had just met. Anna wouldn’t be too pleased about me making promises to someone barely inside our front door, but I couldn’t recruit people to our cause by forcing them to do things that terrified them. And my curiosity already burned like an itch I couldn’t scratch.

“Can you at least tell me what it is?” I asked, trying not to let too much of that intensity show through in my voice. I swept out a hand, inviting him to the kitchen table where Anna stood, her hands resting on her hips. When I saw she had tucked a pistol in her waistband, I threw her a scowl. Her full military welcome wasn’t making this any easier.

Sasha hesitated a long moment, then strode toward her. He ignored the weapons on the table and met Anna’s defiant glare. Her fingers silently drummed her hip, like they were warming up for shooting. I arrived at Sasha’s side, wishing my sister didn’t have such a hard head in so many ways. Linking a choice thought into her mind would have been very convenient at the moment.

“I can erase you,” Sasha said to her, and my sister’s hand froze. “I can take away everything that makes you who you are, from your love of these weapons,” he glanced at the table, “to what kind of childhood you had, to the kind of person you want to marry. I can rewrite you into being someone completely new, down to every last personality quirk and habit and memory. Everything that is you would be gone. Permanently.”

The muscles in Anna’s jaw worked. “I doubt that.”

“My sister is probably immune to your charms,” I said, making a desperate bid to lighten the tension. “Seeing how most people can’t jack into her head at all.”

“I don’t think that would be a problem for me,” he said. “All I would need is to touch you.” Anna flinched, even though Sasha had made no move towards her, and I could understand why. I had never heard of a jacker who had to touch someone to use their ability, which made me think Sasha’s ability was very different. And possibly able to breach Anna’s defenses… as well as mine.

The hard edges of Sasha’s mask softened. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you. But you need to understand that I could destroy everything that you are. That’s what this is. That’s why it’s dangerous. And why I’ve vowed to never do it again, no matter what.” He swallowed and turned to me. “You have my promise on that. I can’t go on killing people’s souls.”

I had no words for that. Air seemed frozen in my lungs as I wondered what price his soul had already paid for his ability.

“Then why are you here?” Anna asked. No one but me would notice the slight shake in her voice, but then again, I could see the flashes of fear gripping her mind as well.

He glanced at her, then turned study me. “Henry convinced me that you wanted to do something more than just whatever it took to survive. That you had some kind of plan to make things better. To make surviving worthwhile.”

Tension drained from me like a receding wave, releasing the breath inside me. “Because surviving isn’t enough, is it?” I asked.

He nodded slowly and a thrill ran up me. This was what I was looking for in a recruit, this drive for a better life for all of us.

“Then Henry sent you to the right place,” I said. “Jackers are taking humanity into a future where the every rule will be rewritten. It will be a fight, but in the end, the world will be transformed, and people like you and me and Anna are going to be at the forefront of that change. You have this ability because you have a purpose to serve in carrying us forward.”

Sasha frowned and stepped back, so I held up my hands to reassure him. “I’m not saying that you’ll have to use your ability. I’m saying there’s a reason for you to be here, if only for us to understand how it works, how we might manage it, in others as well as in you. We understand that this is something you were born with, not something that you chose.” I paused, taking a guess at why he had truly come to us. “And that, someday, you’d like to be something more.”

He gave me a suspicious look, like he couldn’t quite believe the words coming out of my mouth. Black tendrils of fear seeped out again, and I fought the very strong temptation to handle them back into place. My mother’s voice tickled my mind; I needed to win him over on my words alone.

He seemed balanced on a knife-edge of indecision. “You won’t make me use it?”

“I gave you my promise.” I stole a look at Anna. Definitely not happy.

Sasha followed my gaze, and a movement along the center row of racks caught our attention. Serena had wandered in from wherever she had been, her hands sporting more black marks. At least she had been trying to help out.

“What kind of trick is this?” Sasha cried, stumbling back from the table. His shoulders went slack, his eyes glassy and staring at the floor. While Serena sauntered over, my mouth hung open.

I shut it and ground out my words. “Release him. Now.”

“Julian, love.” A pitying smile curled up her lips. “You have no idea how dangerous this one is.”

A sick dread worked through my system. “That wasn’t a request,” I said. “Release him.”

Serena reached the kitchen table and casually picked up one of the dart guns. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, pet.” She pointed the gun at me. Anna had her pistol out and trained on Serena’s chest before I could blink, but Serena was just as fast. Anna’s red-hot rage evaporated into a warm yellow mist. She inspected her weapon, then sat down at the table and happily started to disassemble it.

Serena’s instincts still swirled the same confusing mash of colors. I could try to wrestle her for control of Sasha, but she would shoot me long before I won. I reached into the mass of color, hoping she wouldn’t pull the trigger before I figured out what to do with it.

“It seems that you and Sasha have quite a history together,” I said quietly, to keep her calm and talking. I flipped the small vapor trail of fear instinct to peaceful yellow, but it made no difference.

“Unfortunately, yes.” She scrunched her nose up at Sasha, who still stared at the ground. “I had honestly thought there was no one left from my previous Clan. Quite a bad bit of luck, him showing up here.”

“That is unfortunate.” My stomach twisted as I realized her story from before was a complete lie, and that if I didn’t figure out how to control her, we might end up just like her old Clan. I grappled with a green, burning vapor while I inched forward. My stomach lurched as I amped up her mating instinct and lowered my voice, hating the soft tone I had to put into it. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know he would upset you so much. What actually happened with your previous Clan? It might help if you talked about it.”

I subdued the green mist, and a peaceful look descended on her face for a second, but then an angry red fog gushed up. The gun remained pointed at my chest.

“They didn’t have a proper appreciation for my skills,” she said, as if they had offended her by using the wrong fork. “So I conducted a demonstration on the Clan leader’s brother, turning him on his own Clan. It got a bit more out of control than I had anticipated, but honestly, they all got what they deserved with that. It was messy, though, and I didn’t much care for that. Which was why I left before it was all done. Tricky one, this jacker.” She waved the gun at Sasha. Over half of her instincts still writhed with color: wisps of pink, a lava spill of orange, and a puff of pale blue that burned like acid. “He must have stopped the brother somehow, which even I couldn’t do, not once it was started anyway.”