Closed Hearts (11 page)

“I didn’t see much,” I said. “They were injecting them with serums. I think Kestrel was targeting certain parts of their brains, or at least that was the result. There were… dead spots, where their brains didn’t function anymore.”

“It takes time, though, right? It could take a while for these injections to take effect? Anna’s only been gone for a week.” His shoulders drooped, like the weight of time was pulling them down. “Maybe he hasn’t started with her yet.”

I nodded, not sure what to say. I flat-out hated Julian for bringing me here and endangering Raf and my dad, but he hadn’t hurt them, and he saved us from the pravers who wanted to sell Raf to the highest bidder. Maybe he would actually let us go in the morning. I felt genuinely bad for his sister, or any jacker in Kestrel’s clutches. I understood wanting to get her out. If it weren’t ridiculously dangerous, I could even see helping them.

I shook that thought out of my head and wondered if Julian had slipped into my mind after all. “You know this is demens, right?” I said. “Breaking into Kestrel’s facility, trying to rescue people?”

“The plan will work just fine, little Kira,” Molloy’s voice rumbled behind me. He must have finally returned from dropping off Raf. “It will go right as rain, if we use you as the bait Kestrel can’t resist. Only this time, you will go alone, so you don’t have a chance to leave a fellow jacker bleeding in the desert.”

I turned from him, refusing to acknowledge his accusation, but my mind couldn’t help flying back to that time in the desert with Simon. I wasn’t the one who killed him, I reminded myself. The guards did that with their high-powered rifles and their camp in the desert. Ultimately, it was Kestrel’s fault for sending us there in the first place.

Molloy chuckled. “The worst that would happen would be you going into Kestrel’s facility and not coming back out. Wouldn’t break my heart none.”

“Wow. Great plan.” I hooked a thumb back at Molloy without looking at him. “Is that all you’ve got? The Red Giant’s idea of irony?”

Julian dismissed my concern with a wave. “Don’t listen to Mr. Molloy. Although you
were
the key to making sure that Kestrel wouldn’t escape. You were going to be our Trojan Horse, an impenetrable fortress of the mind that would only open when you surprised him with your intent to destroy him. He wouldn’t know what hit him.”

I couldn’t help it. I liked the sound of that.

“Now we’ll simply have to find a different way to assure that Kestrel is—” A metallic screech cut him off and rent the air. The door to the factory flew off its hinges and skidded across the concrete floor. Figures in black vests and pants and gas masks lurked right outside the doorway, like a flood of SWAT team members being held back by an invisible dam. Before I could do anything but drop my mouth open, three pops burst the air and canisters trailing orangish gas sailed toward us. Julian grabbed my hand and hauled me out of my seat, half-dragging me across the carpet. The canisters crashed into the kitchen cabinets and the couch, spinning and spraying misty spirals that looped the air.

“Wait!” I reached back for my dad, linking into his mind just as a metallic butterfly buzzed the air and pierced his hooded jacket. A freezing jolt of mindjacker-tuned electricity pulsed through his mind. My body seized for a split second before my mind recoiled from his. He slumped to the floor, a statue lying inert in the gas that curled around him.

“Dad!”

I reached for the black figures beyond the door, but an unyielding barrier stopped me right at the doorway. The black figures weren’t held back by it, they were
hiding
behind it—protected from my reach by a barrier that felt like granite but was completely invisible.

Julian jerked my hand. “It’s too late!” He dragged me toward the back of the factory, and I stumbled, banging my leg into a metal shelf as I struggled to catch my footing.

“We need to get Raf!” I cast toward the racks of beds, but Julian yanked my arm, pulling me against him, and we both nearly tumbled to the floor. A butterfly whizzed through the empty space where I had just been.

“This way.” He grasped my hand so hard it hurt, weaving us through white columns and using racks and equipment to keep the assault team from targeting us. My mind was a crazed jumble.
My dad
…
Raf
…
I can’t leave them
…

A whiff of orange spice reached me, the first hint of the gas. The attackers remained behind their invisible shield, waiting. Another butterfly buzzed past my face, embedding its pointed feet into the paneling next to me and sending blue sparks skittering across the metallic surface. I sobbed as Julian hauled me toward a doorway in the crumbling brick wall. Even if I could pump the gas out of my brain to go back for Raf and my dad, the butterflies would get me.

I had no choice but to leave them behind.

The street was in chaos.

Julian crushed my hand as we hovered at the edge of the alleyway. Gas canisters slammed against buildings and spun down the street, spraying an orange cloud that skulked after the fleeing jackers. People leaped up stair steps and slammed doors against the gas, sprinting for the shadowed alleys and away from the streetlights beaming spots on the sidewalks. A police van the size of a tank rolled down the street and screamed an alarm. A huddle of black-garbed, gas-masked figures with POLICE stamped on their chests led the van, their crossbow-like rifles pointed in an outward-facing half circle. One marched in the middle, no weapon, just a gas mask and a ramrod-straight step. I reached out, thinking I might be able to stop their leader, only to find he was a jacker. His head whipped to face us, and every weapon in the circle pivoted to release a flurry of butterflies. Julian’s arm swept me flat against the chilled wall of the alley and the whirring butterflies narrowly missed us.

Julian dropped his arm and sagged against the gritty concrete wall. At first I thought one of the butterflies got him, but then he rubbed his eyes. The gas was affecting him, and I could feel it seeping into my own brain, although adrenaline hyped my heart and kept much of the effect at bay.

For the moment.

“We need to get inside!” I shouted over the ebb and flow of the alarm. I might be able to fight the gas in my own head, but there was no way I could jack into Julian’s to control the effect of the gas on him. He wouldn’t last long on the street, and I wasn’t sure I would either, with these new anti-jacker weapons.

We shuffled down the trash-strewn alley, away from the approaching garrison, but the SWAT team at the opposite end was still assaulting the mages’ headquarters, hiding behind their shield. I reached out but I had never had to jack
around
anything before, and now wasn’t the time to figure the shield out. I might get a taser shock for my trouble.

Julian found a slim center alleyway that cut between the streets, with brownstones on one side and the rear entrances to businesses on the other. The blare of the police siren stepped down a notch as we dashed into the darkened canyon between the buildings, lit only by the spots of light spilling from the windows above. Our footsteps echoed off the dumpsters and weathered brick walls, and Julian kept stumbling over the broken pavement hidden in the shadows. He needed to get out of the gas soon or the police would find him passed out next to a trash bin.

My heart shredded with every step we took away from my dad and Raf.

We reached a street that was clear, sprinted across it, and darted down another alley. Julian threaded us between businesses, finding tiny, jagged passageways that bypassed the streets. Jackertown was a maze of brick and concrete buildings held together by a web of side alleys jumbled with decades of debris. We dodged couches with ripped cushions, rusty cans of paint hazardously stacked, and abandoned bicycles missing tires and seats. The labyrinth was dotted with teetering fortresses of trash, as if the demens had carved cubbyholes into the city. Their homes were built from overturned benches fortified by crates and stuffed with blankets, as well as the occasional discarded boost canister of hydrogen for cars that had long since fled the city. Now the demens had left as well, run out by the jackers moving in.

Finally, Julian stopped at the side of a three-story brownstone and smashed a red button on the concrete wall. A metal fire-escape ladder unfurled from the top floor, and Julian fumbled to grab hold of the rungs and scale it. I held the ladder to keep it from whipping around and followed him up. After only one story, I felt the effects of the gas lessen. Julian climbed onto a narrow, wrought-iron balcony on the third floor and pounded the glass door that beamed light from inside. A young boy came running and mentally activated it to slide open, and I recognized him as the older changeling who had “rescued” Raf and me from the streets.

Once inside with the windows and doors closed, there was almost no trace of the gas. Julian quickly became alert, and the boy and I trailed after him as he took the stairs two at a time down to the main floor. Two changelings—the younger boy from before and a girl—stood in the wallpapered sitting room, haunting the edges near the windows. We must have made it back to Myrtle’s, only I hadn’t recognized it from the back. The faint smell of lilacs had been replaced by a trace of orange from the gas. The rail-thin girl, who was probably less than twelve, pulled back the lace-covered curtains to peek out.

“Don’t, Olivia!” Julian said. Olivia jumped as if she had been shocked. He gentled his tone. “We don’t want to give them any reason to come looking in here.”

“Are they coming for you, Julian?” she asked.

“Maybe.” He gave her a smile. “But they haven’t caught me yet.”

She beamed a row of perfect white teeth. Julian turned to the older boy who let us in and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Joshua, what about the other cells? Have they checked in?”

Joshua shoved his hands into his weathered jeans. “Just Sherman and Ming.”

“That’s all?” Julian stumbled to one of Myrtle’s over-upholstered chairs. “They got Myrtle for sure, and Ava,” he mumbled. “Sasha wouldn’t leave, so probably him, too. Maybe Hinckley got out.” He looked up at Joshua, whose face had drawn down at the mention of Myrtle. “The police—did they come here first, or do you think they were targeting us?”

By “us” I was pretty sure he meant the mages.

“They came rolling through the street a little while ago.” Joshua jabbed a thumb toward the covered window. “The police weren’t shooting, but most people ran inside anyway. The gas canisters just started flying a minute ago.”

Julian ran a hand along his face. “So they
were
targeting us.” His eyes narrowed at me. “Or maybe they were looking for you.”

I took a step back. “How would they even know I was here?”

Julian pushed up from his chair and came at me quickly, forcing me back against the stair railing and nearly making me trip over the steps. If the intensity of his glare alone would let him slip into my mind, I would have already lost my instincts and started making tea. I stood on the bottom step and held my ground, almost eye to eye with him now. After all, he had dragged me into this mess. Whatever came out of it certainly wasn’t my fault.

His unnerving blue eyes stared into mine. “Maybe your father wasn’t so stupid after all.”

I drew back from his accusation. Could my dad have brought the police raining down on Jackertown? I knew Mr. Trullite was a powerful man, but could he command a police raid? Just for me, his sometime mindguard?

“My dad
isn’t
stupid,” I said. “He was only trying to get me out of here. He knew the danger of me being in Jackertown—more than you, apparently.”

Julian released me from his stare, rubbing the scruff on his cheeks like he couldn’t decide what to think of me. The alarm outside cut off, leaving an eerie silence behind, as if the air was hollow. Empty of life. Olivia pulled back the curtain again, unable to resist. The sliver of street outside was deserted.

Julian joined her at the window in the sitting room, peering outside. “Maybe this isn’t targeted to the mages.” He let the curtain fall back, then held his chin with his hand. “Maybe this is simply the government cracking down on jackers doing trade and business out of Jackertown. Trying to intimidate us, show us that we’re not invulnerable.” His gaze fell on Joshua. “I need to know who’s missing.”

Joshua gently elbowed the younger boy next to him. “Dimitri and I can get on the short comms. Make contact with the other cells, see what they know.”

Julian nodded. I shifted away from the stairs, out of the path of the boys pattering by. Olivia chased after them. Julian focused on the wall screen at the far end of the room, near the kitchen door. I edged into the sitting room to see animated ninjas somersaulting over each other on the screen. Julian paged through the sim-casts and brought up a local tru-cast program. He must have some linking ability, if he could control the mindware interface of the screen. Could he link, but not jack? Figuring out Julian took a back seat as the tru-cast reporter on the screen started to interview Senator Vellus.

It must have been a previous interview, because it was daytime. They were standing in front of a gray concrete building that looked like cubes on top of cubes, stacked in a squarish and severe manner. The most frightening part, of course, was the barbed razor wire that topped the wall surrounding it, just in case someone thought of climbing over.