mindjack 04 - origins by quinn susan kaye

Author:quinn, susan kaye [quinn, susan kaye]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Young Adult, Science Fiction
Published: 2015-10-10T04:00:00+00:00

Every shot from my dart gun stabs into the mannequin’s torso with a satisfying thunk. I can hear it even from fifty feet away, where the mannequin is strung up at the end of one lane in an abandoned bowling alley that Hinckley has turned into a shooting range.

“One shot went wide of the target zone,” Hinckley says in a flat voice, showing me a close-up of the mannequin’s chest in an image he’s snapped on his phone.

I push up my safety glasses—overkill for the dart gun, but I plan to shoot real weapons with bullets before I’m done today—and peer at Hinckley’s phone. “It’s fifty feet away and I missed it by less than an inch.”

“Still a miss.”

I wave off his phone. “My dart gun skills aren’t the ones that need work.”

He grunts a wry agreement, stows the phone, and relieves me of my dart gun. Hinckley knows I’m here to train with bullets, not tranq darts, but he likes to start our sessions with the less-lethal stuff. I already know how to shoot a real gun and miss; that’s how Kestrel got away the first time. I had no clue how to aim, and the recoil was completely unexpected. But a lack of training didn’t stop me from getting into situations where my aim was the difference between stopping a cold-blooded killer and letting him escape to torment more jackers.

“What do you want to shoot next?” Hinckley asks as he strides over to the gun cabinet.

“Julian?” I quip.

Hinckley jerks to a stop and gives me a dark look.

I roll my eyes. “I’m just saying it’s hard to change his mind once he’s got an idea in his head.”

He grunts again, but his shoulders are still tense as he turns to select a weapon for me. I shouldn’t joke with him. Hinckley is ex-military, although I didn’t realize that before I arrived a couple weeks ago. The shaggy haircut, ill-kempt clothes, and stringy hands are great camouflage. I knew about his extreme jacker ability to control many jackers at once; I just didn’t realize he had a mind for strategy and a decade of military experience to go with it. I had noticed his tendency to stick close to Anna, once we freed her from Kestrel’s cells. And since she’s been back, he’s spent a lot more time on the training floor, bulking up some of that lankiness in an obsession similar to Anna’s with the pushups. Maybe they read Guns and Ammo together in the back bunks of Julian’s headquarters.

Hinckley returns with a small caliber weapon. It looks lost in his long-fingered hands, but it’s probably just the right size for me.

“Six rounds, loaded, ready to go,” he says.

I take it from him. The cool metal runs a shiver along my fingers. Even though it’s small, the gun is heavy in my hand. I move my finger away from the trigger, keeping discipline like Hinckley taught me last week, then hold the gun with both hands in front of me, aimed at the mannequin.

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