Closed Hearts (19 page)

“If you can shoot Kestrel, that will work as well,” he said. “But if you get caught, don’t panic. As long as you have the thought grenade, you’ll have the upper hand. You’ll have two, just in case. I’ll keep the third. And there’re these.”

He fished a dozen med patches out of his pocket, each about a half inch square, and set them on the table. They were covered with a transparent film to keep the medicine from dosing before it was time.

“These are specially formulated adrenaline patches,” he said. “They will bring a person back to full mental strength, even if they’re on the gas.” He inclined his head. “I know you can fight the gas off on your own, keeper. I saw you do it during the raid. But this is quicker, plus there’s extras for the prisoners inside, who might be quite helpful should you get stuck.”

I took several of the patches and tucked them into my running shoes. “What if they lock me up and I can’t get near Kestrel? Your thought grenades won’t do me much good then.”

“Getting close to Kestrel won’t be a problem for you, keeper.” He tapped another section of the flex scroll and popped up a picture of me with long brown hair and no tattoo—and the word
REWARD
. It sent a chill down my back. I knew a lot of jackers wanted me dead, but I thought it was only for revenge. I didn’t know they would also get paid to do it.

“This has been circulating around the jacker chat-casts for a few months,” he said. “Anna traced it back to a server at the Lakeshore Hospital. That was our first break in hunting down Kestrel’s new hideout. He’s been looking for you for some time, and we’re going to deliver you to him, wrapped in a bow. Believe me, he won’t be able to resist visiting you.”

Molloy’s words floated back to me.
We’re using you as bait Kestrel can’t resist.

Yeah. I was running straight into a burning building.

Julian’s perch in the thirteenth floor of an abandoned apartment building had a nice view of the interior of Kestrel’s facility, as well as the placid Lake Michigan shorefront. Kestrel had simply walled off a section of the street to create his latest jacker compound. A weathered wooden shack guarded the front gate, which was large enough for cars to drive through, and a skinny parking lot ran between two front buildings. Each was four stories high and stretched to a shorter brick building in the back. A series of elevated tubular hallways connected the buildings to each other.
Chicago Lakeshore Hospital
shone in white letters on the far building.

We were right across the street, so my reach would normally have stretched the length of the compound, but I ran smack into the same shield barrier that had protected the SWAT team. In the heat of the raid on Jackertown, I hadn’t had time to investigate the shield, but now I took a minute to skim the surface of it. A clammy feeling crawled along my skin and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The perimeter shield stretched well above the physical wall, blocking my reach even from thirteen stories up. I felt around the edges, wondering if I could somehow go over or under, but apparently my reach was straight-line only, which was a new discovery. I had always been able to reach whatever I wanted, roaming high and low, but I had never had something that could block me before. Very interesting.

Oh man—now I was starting to think like Julian. My brain vibrated with the energy pulsing through the shield, so I pulled away. Vellus had called it a mindwave disruptor field—it certainly felt like it could shake my brain apart.

Hinckley was camped in the corner of our apartment hideout, watching the Cubs game on a handheld screen. Sasha and Ava talked quietly at the end of the barren room, with Ava shaking her head and Sasha looking frustrated. I suspected he was trying to talk her out of the mission. Everyone was pretending not to hear their whispers, giving them privacy—which I imagined was in short supply at the mages’ headquarters. Myrtle was studying the complex, peering through a far window she had rubbed clean of the grit that seemed to coat every surface.

Julian had said the guard didn’t control the gate, but I checked anyway. He was a mindreader, sitting in his shack outside of the shield’s protection. Apparently the disruptor field blocked mindwaves as well, because he wasn’t sensing anything from the other side. He thought the disruptor shield was intended to keep jackers from breaking into the ward and setting the most violent demens loose on the downtown offices. Why jackers would want to do this didn’t seem to have crossed his mind, just another wild story that readers too easily believed about jackers. His thoughts also showed that a central controller inside checked IDs and facial therms. I hoped that Hinckley had been successful in updating their facial thermography database with my image, or this was going to be a very short mission.

Myrtle had sewn one thought grenade capsule into the front neck of my scrubs and another under a logo on the pocket. The one along the neckline itched, but I couldn’t tell if it was actually poking me or if the itching came from the idea of having a thought bomb located so close to my brain. They were small enough that they shouldn’t be discovered in a pat-down and yet within reach when I needed them. I decided they just loomed larger in my mind.

The disguise Julian had provided made it plausible that I could rook as a hospital worker, although my pink scrubs stamped with tiny elephants looked slightly alarming with my bright white hair and tattoo. I would probably fit in better with the demens. The pant legs pooled around my sneakers, but they covered the dart gun pretty well, and the adrenaline patches were safely tucked into my shoe. The silky material of the scrubs draped smoothly over the t-shirt and shorts I wore underneath, making the too-big uniform look like it was close to fitting. I guessed that Anna was blessed in the height category, like her twin brother.

According to Julian’s surveillance, a lot of the staff arrived by autocab, so he had one standing by for me. “Once you’re inside,” Julian said as he scanned the facility with a televiewer, “you should be able to reach the rest of the compound, right?”

I surveyed it quickly. “Yeah, no problem.”

“Good. You’ll have an advantage that Anna did not, since she was only a keeper and you…” He lowered the televiewer to look at me. “You have many talents.”

Before I met the mages, I used to think that my talents were special, not just another flavor on the spectrum. “You know, back in the hospital, when I was rescuing the changelings, I found vials with my name on them. At the time, I thought Kestrel might have injected me with something that made me extra mutant.”

“You
are
special, keeper,” he said. “But your abilities are just a variation on the genetic mutation that is changing people into jackers all over the world.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant by “special” then. But whatever. “Well, maybe Kestrel didn’t create
me
.” I gestured to the compound with my chin. “But maybe he’s trying to make other mutants.”

Julian studied the compound, without the televiewer. “Perhaps. At the least, he’s trying to find out how mindjacking works,” Julian said. “He’s not that much different from my parents, I suppose. Using science to figure us out. Except that he’s completely amoral and willing to torment people to get his answers. I think he plans to use that knowledge to destroy us, one way or another.”

“If he wants to get rid of us, why doesn’t he just kill us?” I said. “I mean, he had no qualms about kidnapping all kinds of jackers, even changelings, and sending them to a prison in the desert. A lot of jackers died there.” I stopped. The image of Simon lying in a pool of his own blood flashed through my mind. I could almost taste the grit of the desert, feel the heat on my skin. I shook my head clear. “I can’t imagine killing jackers would bother Kestrel any. What if he’s trying to do something different? What if he’s trying to create more jackers like the mages?”

“Now that jackers have been exposed to the world, it would be difficult to kill them outright,” Julian said. “There’s too many of us; more every day. Not that Vellus isn’t heading that way with his Detention Center.” Julian stared down at me. “I don’t know precisely what Kestrel is doing, but whatever it is, it has to be stopped.”

I nodded. I was going in to get Molloy’s brother and to save Raf, but one way or another, I was going to stop Kestrel, once and for all.

Julian gave me one last look-over, ostensibly checking my uniform. “Do you have your phone?”

I patted my pants pocket. “Got it.” I had erased any identifying information, just in case.

“Call us when you’ve dropped the shield,” he said. “Or if you have Kestrel and can’t get the gate open. If necessary, we’ll break it down and come get you.”

“I thought that was too theatrical for you.”

Julian gripped his televiewer tighter. “I’m willing to blow a few things up, as long as I’m sure we have Kestrel. I just don’t want him slipping away while we’re crashing down the front door.”

I gave a sharp nod, and his hold on the televiewer relaxed. He lightly tapped me on the forehead. “Or you could reach out and give us an all-clear nudge.”

“I’ll nudge Ava,” I said. “I’d like to avoid your brain, if it’s all the same to you.”

A smile lit his face, then he went serious. “Be careful, keeper.” There was more worry in his voice than I wanted to hear moments before I was about to break into a jacker prison. I didn’t say anything, just smoothed down my scrubs and turned away. The rotted-out wooden stairs creaked under my footfalls as I went down to the waiting autocab below.

The autocab dropped me in front of the main gate. A half dozen other orderlies in flat green scrubs lounged outside the guard shack, waiting for the shift change. Most of them were substantially larger and beefier than me. I stood a little taller and tried to look tough as I linked into all their heads. Their musky mind-scents overwhelmed the fresh-water breeze coming off the lake, and they tossed thoughts of dread about the work day back and forth, but nothing unusual.

Just another day working in the demens ward.

I always thought the workers at mental hospitals would be zeros who wouldn’t be plagued by the chemically altered thoughts of the demens. It was exactly the job I once thought I would have: a zero on the lowest rung of the social ladder, consigned to working in the demens ward. There must not be enough zeros to go around, because these orderlies were all readers. At least they were doing respectable, law-abiding work, while I was committing criminal acts and rooking to break into a demens ward. Turned out there was an even lower rung than I had thought possible.

I straightened my scrubs and focused on the people ahead of me in line.

One by one, they swiped their badges through a scanner and looked into a wide-barreled thermal camera behind the glass. The guard barely looked up from his screen, his thoughts bound up in catching and sorting the pieces of his game. When the orderlies ahead of me were cleared, a side door next to the gate sprung open, then closed behind them once they’d gone through.

I shuffled forward when it was my turn and swiped my badge. I stared at the camera, wondering how long I was supposed to do that and if I would mess it up by blinking. Julian had taken a picture for the facial therm database and my badge, but were they checking my retinas too?

The guard glanced up, then did a double-take. He set down his game and his thoughts were awash in curiosity.
New here?
He was more excited than suspicious, so I decided it was better not to jack him. Maybe his thoughts were being monitored by a hidden boom mic. I didn’t want to set off any alarms before I’d even gotten inside.

Today’s my first day,
I linked to him.
Is it as bad as I’ve heard?

Worse, probably.
Was he trying to scare the newbie? He eyed my tattoo and had a fleeting thought about asking me out for coffee. He pressed his face close to the glass between us
. Stick to the west wing.

Why? What’s in the east wing?

The hard-core demens are there,
he thought.
If you get stuck doing a rotation in there, come back and find me. I’ll make sure you get swapped out.

Thanks.
I smiled my fake appreciation and glanced at the gate.
What about the north wing? Who do they keep in there?

Oh, you won’t get sent there.
He shrugged
. That’s only for medical treatment and recovery. Mostly empty.

North wing it was. Anna’s original hack and Hinckley’s swap of my information must have worked, because my ID came back approved. The door clicked its unlock and I hurried toward it.

Hey, maybe we can have coffee after your shift?

I threw a smile back to him.
Maybe.
If I was lucky, I would be out long before the shift was done. As I stepped over the threshold and through the shield, a slight electric buzz bristled my hair out. I smoothed down my electric hairdo, and the gate swung shut behind me, clicking into place. The orderly ahead of me disappeared into a side entrance to the east wing.