Closed Hearts (26 page)

“I—” Sasha swallowed, his voice raspy. “I can’t. His mind is still… jumbled. And so is mine.” He meant the thought grenade. Both of them had been subjected to it.

“You have to try!”

“I did!” Sasha pulled Ava’s head close to his chest, as if protecting her. “I told you, I can’t do it.”

I took a step back and stumbled into Kestrel’s body. I righted myself and resisted the urge to kick him. “We can’t just leave him here. There has to be a way.” I turned to Julian. “We could revive him, give him one of the doses. That way Sasha can scribe him.”

Julian darted a look to Sasha, but he shook his head.

“Even if we used a dose on him,” Sasha said, his voice gaining strength. “I couldn’t scribe him now. Julian, I can barely see straight. We’ll have to do it later.”

“Later?” My voice screeched, panic clawing my throat. “There may not
be
a later. We may get caught before we can get out of here.” I pulled the gun from the back of my pants. I checked it again. It was the kind with bullets, the kind that killed.

Julian was on his feet, his voice cool. “What are you doing, keeper?”

I knew Sasha was telling the truth. He might not like me, might think I had betrayed him, but he had no reason not to scribe Kestrel. If Sasha could, he would eliminate any trace of the monster that had tormented him, me, Julian, and so many other people. If we didn’t stop Kestrel, he would keep doing his experiments. He would never stop.

Never.

I pointed the gun at Kestrel. “We have to stop him.” I wasn’t sure who I was talking to now. My hand shook so badly that I stepped closer to Kestrel, afraid I might miss, even though he was motionless on the floor.

Kestrel was a monster. If I didn’t kill him, he would keep doing horrible, terrible things. I should pull the trigger and stop him forever. But with him lying on the floor, a blank look on his face, my mind recoiled from that thought. If I shot him, it would be an execution. Plain and simple.

My hand trembled so violently, I thought it might make the gun go off by itself. Maybe it would be fate that killed him, not me. Julian’s hand stole over mine, gently pulling the gun down so that it was pointed at the floor.

“You’re not a killer, Kira,” he said softly. “Let us take care of this.”

I peered up at his face, now close to mine. “We have to stop him, Julian.” But my voice was choked. Because he was right. I couldn’t kill him. Not like this. Not in cold blood.

“I know we do.” Julian’s voice was rough, but his hands were gentle as he took the gun from my hand. “But you shouldn’t be the one to do it.”

He leveled the gun at Kestrel. His hand was steady, but the muscles in his jaw flexed.

“Wait,” a voice said from behind us. It was Anna. “Let’s take him with us, Julian. He could be useful to us after Sasha is able to scribe him.”

Julian didn’t move an inch. “Are you sure, Anna?” The gun still pointed at Kestrel’s head.

Anna scrambled to her feet. “I am sure that you’re no more a killer than she is, Julian.”

Julian still didn’t move. Hinckley stumbled up to us with the boy I had revived and four other jackers: Myrtle, a girl who was barely a changeling, and two others who were older like Hinckley. They stared at Julian, his gun still trained on Kestrel, watching to see what would happen. Hinckley stepped over to Anna, taking a position to her right. He looked ready to spring into action with a word from her.

Anna turned her head and looked up at Hinckley’s face, which was red from the effects of the adrenaline. “Do you have an extra dose of adrenaline?” He grimaced and shook his head.

“I have one.” Sasha handed it up to her.

The idea of waking Kestrel up made my stomach heave again. There were enough of us, in various states of alertness, that maybe we could keep him under control. Myrtle could probably take him on her own, if she wasn’t still recovering from the gas. But Kestrel ought to be reeling from the effects of the thought grenade too. It should be possible to control him.

Anna took the dose and scooped the dart gun off the floor. Kneeling down by Kestrel, she pressed the gun deep in his stomach with one hand and injected him with the adrenaline with the other. Only then did Julian lower the gun. He kept it in his hand, pointed at the floor. Emotions warred across his face. I don’t think he liked the idea of waking up Kestrel any more than I did.

Kestrel grunted as the adrenaline coursed through his system. It took a moment, but he finally opened his eyes and tried to focus on Anna’s face looming above him.

“I just saved your life, Kestrel,” Anna said coolly. “But if you give me a reason to regret it, I’ll happily put a bullet in you.”

Kestrel stumbled behind me as our group marched through the lobby and out the main entrance of the building. Julian kept pace with me, leading with the gun. Anna poked a dart gun into Kestrel’s side and Myrtle kept a wrinkled hand on his shoulder. The two older jackers we had rescued followed right behind Kestrel. Sasha trailed them, carrying Ava, which was definitely slowing us down. Hinckley and the two younger jackers brought up the rear. Our minds were a multi-headed hydra, hyped up on adrenaline and reaching in all directions.

I made continuous sweeps of the buildings, afraid I had missed a lurking guard. The low morning sun lit up the west wing, where the reader staff had calmed the demens somewhat, but the lockdown had them all in a state of confusion. In the east wing, one armed jacker guarded the rear access tunnel and another kept the staff and demens under control. How many long-term jacker prisoners were trapped in the east wing, mixed in with the demens, either gassed or addled like Liam? Letting loose the entire wing of the demens, in hopes of freeing the jackers, had some serious appeal, but we needed to focus on getting ourselves out first.

A long minute stretched as we crept along the parking lot between the trio of buildings, a brigade of jackers with one prisoner. Kestrel kept his head down, but the redness in his face showed the adrenaline had found its mark. Anna and Myrtle had trapped him inside his own head with a mental grip in addition to the gun Anna had thrust into his side. If Sasha—who had been awake the longest after the thought grenade—had diminished jacking ability, and Ava was still knocked out from it, I hoped that meant that Kestrel was at reduced strength, even if he was awake and mobile. I was sure he was waiting for the right moment to run. He had to know that this wouldn’t turn out well for him. I trusted Myrtle and Anna to keep Kestrel under control while I kept a lookout, sweeping the buildings and beyond.

As we neared the front gate, I reached through and checked the street. A few demens roamed the abandoned apartment buildings, but the street and surrounding buildings were clear of jackers as far as I could reach. Then a squeal of tires reached my ears, and two cars carrying four FBI agents slid into my range.

Jacker agents.
They shoved me out of their heads the moment I brushed them.

“Julian!” I grabbed his arm, bringing our whole entourage to a stop. He had heard it too. “Four agents, all armed.”

He cast a look over his shoulder. “Myrtle! We’re going to have to jack our way out.” The gate stood open, a narrow gap showing a sliver of the street outside the compound. Julian and Myrtle sprinted to the opening, and the whole group shuffled after them. The cars screeched to a stop, not thirty feet outside the gate.

I reached to the agents, trying to jack them or at least keep them distracted. The other inmates pressed on their minds as well. There were eleven of us, but Ava was unconscious and Sasha was in no shape to jack. Which meant Julian probably wasn’t recovered enough to handle either. But he had the gun, and Myrtle was the strongest. With her, the agents were outnumbered, eight jackers to their four. It should be enough.

The agents couldn’t even manage to leave their cars as they waged a mental battle with us. We continued to creep forward. A scuffle behind me drew my attention. Anna lay on the pavement and Kestrel was running back to the east wing.

“Julian!” I cried out.

Julian left Myrtle at the gate. Hinckley knelt by Anna and pulled a dart from her side. He threw it away with a growl of frustration. Kestrel must have grabbed the gun from her in the confusion of the agents arriving.

Julian thrust his gun into my hand. “Take Hinckley with you,” he said. “And stop him, keeper. Do whatever you have to, but don’t let him get away.”

I ran, grabbing Hinckley’s arm as I dashed past. Hinckley hesitated, like he didn’t want to leave Anna’s side, then heaved up from the ground and sprinted with me toward the east wing. Kestrel was already inside. I reached forward to jack into his head, and in his weakened state, I got in for a moment before he pushed me back out. Without Myrtle to keep him contained, he was strong—too strong. The adrenaline shot must have given him more strength than I thought, or he had recovered a lot faster from the thought grenade than Julian and Sasha. Then again, Kestrel hadn’t been the subject of experiments for days on end.

I slammed my fist against the door to the east wing and rushed inside after Kestrel. A tall nurse came from nowhere and tackled me, pinning me to the floor. The jacker orderly controlled her mind. I wrestled with him mentally while struggling physically against the nurse’s rough hands holding me down. A half second later, Hinckley shoved the nurse off me and pushed the jacker out of her mind. I scrambled up from the floor and searched for the two jackers in the building. One was still guarding the access tunnel, but the other was behind the glass partition that housed the demens, providing cover for Kestrel as he fled to the back of the ward.

Hinckley’s hands danced in front of him. The demens on the other side of the glass rose up from their cots, all at once, stumbling and bumbling in a mass of confusion. The jacker orderly was swallowed by the chaos. I brushed through the demens minds, trying to find Kestrel, but the dizziness of their thoughts made me tip sideways. I braced against the wall and kept searching.

I had no idea how Hinckley could do it without going a little crazy himself.

I finally locked onto Kestrel, who was threading his way through the jumble of demens. Hinckley’s dancing hands reached for him, but it wasn’t as strong as a full jack. Turning heads and motivating people to amble around was different than jacking Kestrel to stop him from escaping out the back door. Kestrel had to know that the tunnel was gassed, so he must be going for a different exit.

I should have killed Kestrel when I had the chance.

I banged through the glass double doors and fought my way through the mass of demens, but I couldn’t get a clean shot with all the dancing demens between us. I jacked into Kestrel’s head, but he threw me out again. He stopped at the rear door and pointed something at me.

The dart gun.

I dashed behind a large patient in front of me. The dart stuck in the chest of another demens behind me, and he collapsed to the floor. Then the patient who was acting as my shield dropped facedown onto the cot next to us.

I ducked down, hiding out of Kestrel’s line of sight. Then all the random motion of the demens around me ceased. I popped up, but I couldn’t see Kestrel through the forest of stock-still figures. I pushed through two demens standing in the center aisle and elbowed another aside until I had a clear shot of Kestrel at the door. I aimed the gun at Kestrel, and just as I fired, he ducked through it. The crack of the shot pierced my ears, and the recoil of the gun jerked my arm back, but I could see that I had missed. Dust puffed from a bullet hole in the door. I ran after Kestrel, reaching back to tell Hinckley to follow me, only to find him passed out, pumped full of juice from Kestrel’s dart. And the jacker orderly was working his way through the demens toward Hinckley with a syringe. Hinckley was already unconscious, so whatever was in the syringe couldn’t be good.

I stood frozen, uncertain.

I couldn’t lose Kestrel. The mere thought of it made me want to scream for not being strong enough to kill him when he lay helpless at my feet. But if I didn’t act fast, the orderly would inject Hinckley with whatever was in the syringe. And if I went after Kestrel by myself, when he had the dart gun and another jacker outside the access tunnel to help him, I’d just end up back in one of Kestrel’s cells.

I growled as I spun back to Hinckley and jacked three of the demens to charge the orderly, choking down the sour taste that their minds surged up. The jacker orderly was so focused on Hinckley that he never saw the demens coming. They piled on top of him, and he wrestled with me in their minds, but that was enough distraction for one of the demens to grab the syringe and inject it into the orderly. His eyes flew wide, and his mind filled with horror. For his sake, I hoped it was only tranquilizer.

Thankfully, Hinckley still had the adrenaline pumping through his system, and it wasn’t too difficult to jack him awake. We needed to get back to the gate and make sure Julian wasn’t losing the fight there. Otherwise we’d all end up back in Kestrel’s cells. Hinckley struggled up from the floor, and I guided him as we stumbled back out of the east wing.