Closed Hearts (21 page)

I threw it at him, but he easily caught it. “I’m not stripping for you, praver.”

Kestrel let out a chuckle. “She’s fine the way she is.”

I glanced around the room. It wasn’t so much a control room as Kestrel’s personal office, complete with a beaten-up desk, a rickety metal chair, a stack of scribepads neatly squared with the corner of the desk and a dozen monitors lining the wall. I stared openmouthed at the screens. He had almost certainly watched me the entire way in.

It was an elaborate trap. Too elaborate. I closed my mouth and examined Kestrel. Same cold blue eyes from the last time I saw him handcuffed to his bed post. Same hollowed cheeks that looked like they had been scarred. He ignored me, flicking looks across the screens. Why had he gone to so much trouble to lure me here? Molloy, who was obviously working for him, already had me in his grasp two days ago. At the diner.

He could have taken me then and left Raf alone entirely.

Raf.
That image of him dead on the floor reared up in my mind again, and my knees went weak. What was going on? I began to think
now
was an excellent time to panic. Molloy was looking me over again, as I stood in front of him with bare feet, a t-shirt, and too-long scrub pants. He must have decided I wasn’t hiding anything else, because he walked my scrub shirt and shoes over to a high shelf that held a dead plant and a chipped coffee cup. Kestrel was pretty spare in his decor. His apartment had been the same way, empty of anything personal, no memory films or personal items. It was like the guy didn’t exist outside of his work. I tried not to stare at the scrubs too long, afraid to give myself away. I would have to wait for my chance to get to the capsules.

“She’s all yours,” Molloy said to Kestrel. “I kept my end of the bargain. Time for Liam and me to make our exit.” His hand rested on a dart gun holstered at his side, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he planned to shoot his way out if Kestrel reneged on whatever agreement they had made to bring me in.

“Not yet,” Kestrel said. “Besides, I don’t think you’ll want to miss the show.” He turned to me. “What do you think, Kira? How long will it take your friends to come in after you?”

“What friends?”

Molloy snorted and Kestrel gave me a look like I was being a silly little girl. My face heated up. Molloy knew Julian and all the mages. Knew about all their plans. Of course Molloy had told Kestrel everything.

“Well,” Kestrel said. “I don’t want them to break down the front door, so we might as well let them in.” Kestrel tapped his ear, using some kind of com system. “Drop the disruptor field at the front gate.”

A full minute ticked by with Kestrel and Molloy scanning the screen images of the front gate, the demens wards, and the connecting tunnels. The other screens held images of prisoners in their cells, asleep on cots in sterile white rooms. They didn’t look peaceful, more like simply unconscious. There were hundreds of jackers in the building. What made these prisoners so special? I had more pressing things to worry about at the moment.

Maybe Julian wasn’t coming because he had figured out that it was a trap. If I had been the one to drop the shield, I would have linked to Ava or called on the phone. The phone! It was still sitting on Kestrel’s desk. I quickly jacked into the mindware interface: Molloy had left it on! I pulled up Julian’s number and hastily tried to scrit him a message—just a single word,
trap—
but the phone had lit up and Molloy quickly snatched it up. While he fumbled to turn it off, I darted behind his back toward the shelf, but he caught my arm and yanked me close, my bare feet dragging across the rough industrial carpeting.

He stared down at me. “Don’t be trying anything, lassie.”

Molloy pocketed my phone, then twirled the desk chair around and shoved me into it, keeping a hand on my shoulder. Had the message gone through? Maybe that would be enough to warn Julian. Kestrel’s gaze never wavered from the screen with the gate. A movement on the screens caught my eye, and a boy with dark hair—Julian—led a crew toward the guard. The gate sprung open as they neared and Julian paused.

I wanted to scream and reflexively reached out, but was stopped by the chill of the field surrounding Kestrel’s office. Julian signaled to the mages behind him, and Ava, Sasha, Hinckley, and Myrtle crept forward, following his lead, right through the gate.

Kestrel tapped the com link again. “No,” he said to whoever was on the other end. “Wait until they’re inside the tunnel.”

No, no, no. Think!

I couldn’t jack Kestrel or Molloy on my own. Maybe I could jack Molloy’s brother, just long enough for a distraction. It might buy me a second of time so I could reach the scrubs and activate the thought grenade.

Whatever I was going to do, it had to be now.

I plunged into Liam’s mind, which churned with confused thoughts even as he was fascinated by all the colors on the screens. Molloy was still there, holding tight onto Liam’s mind. At the same time, I wriggled out from under Molloy’s grasp and lunged up from the chair, past Liam, heading for the shelf. Molloy growled and caught me by the wrist. It was the same wrist that Liam had twisted before, and I let out a yelp that finally drew Kestrel’s attention.

“Hold her still,” Kestrel said to Molloy, then returned his gaze to the screen. Molloy forced me back into the metal chair, his two hands welded to my shoulders and jamming me farther into the seat. I tucked my injured wrist against my chest.

“There will be no more escapes, Kira.” Kestrel’s eyes remained glued to the screens. “No more rescue attempts.” I watched helplessly as Julian and the mages worked their way through the demens ward. “Now that you’ve brought all the most dangerous,” he said and flicked a look to me, “and the most unusually talented jackers to me, there won’t be anyone left to come get you.”

Julian and the mages found the door to the access tunnel that I had left open. I could hardly pull in a breath. Julian examined the inert body of the guard. A smile lit his face when he found the dart sticking out of his chest. My dart. From the gun Julian had given me. He must think I was simply waiting for him.

I was suffocating on the need to scream out. Warn him. Do something.

Kestrel tapped the com link again. “Now.” Orange mist floated down from the ceiling of the connecting tunnel. My shoulders caved further under Molloy’s weight. Ava spotted it first. Her shout—soundless on Kestrel’s monitor—alerted the others. They covered their noses and mouths with their hands, but they were already stumbling. A tear leaked down my cheek as, one by one, the mages fell. Julian was the last. He almost made it to the door, his fingers fumbling adrenaline patches from his pocket, but the gas took him. The patches lay scattered on the floor, and Julian’s hand fell open next to them.

An animal sound rumbled deep in my chest, and I struggled vainly against Molloy’s hold. I twisted around, trying to scratch his face, grab his ears, get hold of anything to make him pay. He held me at arm’s length with a sour look on his face.

“Would have been better if I’d killed you too, lassie.” Molloy’s teeth glistened white when he smiled. “Better for you, in any event.”

“And for her friends,” added Kestrel matter-of-factly. “I haven’t forgotten those three darts you put in me, Kira, even if I can’t remember how you got them there. But I assure you, this is nothing personal. This is much bigger than you. It always has been.”

Kestrel’s voice was closer now. The needle stung as it went in. As the juice clouded my mind, Molloy’s leering face blurred into a patch of white and red. My last thought before the juice pulled me under was about Raf.

I hadn’t been able to save him after all.

When I woke up, the familiar orange anesthetic taste of the juice stung the back of my tongue. A sterile white sheet crinkled under me. My room looked identical to the ones on the screens in Kestrel’s office: bare white walls blending into the white tiled floor; the cot standing opposite the thin outline of a handleless door; diffuse light raining down from overhead panels. I swallowed down the dryness that came from the juice and sat up. My wrist couldn’t take any weight, still sore from Molloy and his brother Liam.

I slumped on the edge of the thin cot, tempted to lie down again. I was trapped. Julian and the mages were caught. Molloy had to be long gone by now, having finally gotten his brother in exchange for the rest of us.

I should find a way to break out.

I should try to escape.

All I wanted to do was lie down and wish it all away.

A cloud of anger boiled in my chest. It was my wishful thinking—that I could go home, that Raf and my family would be safe from the likes of Molloy and Kestrel—that had landed me back in Kestrel’s grasp.

And Raf…

Tears stung my throat even more, making me cough and sob at the same time. The image in Molloy’s mind of Raf sprawled on the floor haunted my thoughts. If Molloy was telling the truth, Raf was dead. If not, he would either kill him now or maybe trade him to some praver in Jackertown. Then Raf would live, although I wasn’t sure if that was better or not.

My shoulders caved and my knees slowly tucked up until I tipped sideways on the cot, a tight ball of pain crushing me from the inside out. Tears dripped onto the starched pillowcase and clouded my head, a fog descending on my brain. Maybe I could just slip into it, fade away—

A click sounded from the door. I mentally lunged at whoever was coming through, only to find it was Granite Guard. He easily batted away my juice-hindered mental reach. I rolled up to face him, bracing my bare feet on the floor. Maybe I could make a run for it. I reached through the open door, but it was blocked by the disruptor field, same as the rest of the room.

Kestrel came in with a scribepad in hand and two orderlies in tow. One was tall and thin, his hands twitchy at his sides. The other was carved from the same square-jawed, muscular gene pool as Granite Guard, with no neck and the shoulders of a grizzly bear. Grizzly Man closed the door with a mechanical thunk that I was sure meant it was locked. Not that I had any chance of getting past Kestrel’s entourage anyway.

Kestrel didn’t say a word, just nodded to the other three. The pressure of their minds hit me like a blow and knocked me back on the mattress. I pushed up with my weakened wrist, but I could barely sit up under the onslaught.

The pressure ramped up further. I clutched my head, as if that would ward them off. The intensity kept climbing. I had to stop them before my skull imploded. I launched myself off the cot, running smack into Grizzly Man. I flailed my hands against his chest, but it was like pounding a concrete wall. The pressure grew worse. I crumpled to Grizzly’s feet. A sound keened in the distance, echoing off the bare hard surfaces of the walls. It bounced back to me, inside me, inside my head. Screaming, screaming, I rocked back and forth on the biting cold of the tiled floor.

The pressure cut off like a switch.

I panted against the floor, my mouth dry and buzzing. Stars twirled in front of me. I pushed myself up to sitting, gingerly touching the side of my head and half expecting to see blood on my hand, but it came away clean. Kestrel made a notation on his scribe pad, then he tilted his head toward me, giving a silent order to Granite Guard. I heaved myself off the floor and scrambled back to the cot, but there was nowhere to go. Granite Guard pinned me down while the gangly orderly came at me with a needle. I kicked and twisted, making it difficult for them to find a spot to stick me, but Granite Guard leaned his knee into my stomach, knocking the wind out of me and momentarily holding me still while the needle pierced my skin.

They both quickly backed away.

Whatever they injected into me raged like fire through my veins and boiled off the fog in my head. Blood pounded my ears, and my legs twitched with the need to run. I fought to gasp in enough oxygen to feed whatever was pulsing through my body. They had put some kind of adrenaline in me, like Julian’s patches, but why?

The answer came with another onslaught of pressure. This time, hyped up on the drug, I was able to push back. I forced them slightly back from my head, stepping down the pressure and pain. After a moment, they stopped, and I shoved them back into their own minds. Granite Guy’s head was too hard, and his cousin Grizzly was the same, so I concentrated on the orderly with the relatively weaker mind barrier.

I poured my anger and frustration into jacking him, and his knees buckled.

“Enough,” Kestrel said calmly. He shoved me out of the orderly’s head and back into my own. I scuttled back on my cot. My ragged breathing was the only sound for a moment as Kestrel regarded me.

“I’d like to do a few baseline tests.” Kestrel’s sharp gaze looked like he wanted to pierce my skull to take a peek inside. “It will go much easier if you cooperate.”

No doubt it would be easier on Kestrel if I cooperated. I had no intention of doing any such thing. I just stared back at him. If he came close, I was contemplating biting him. I gagged, not liking that thought very much and feeling way too trapped. I needed to think my way out of this, now that my head was clear of the juice.