The Locksmith by Quinn Susan Kaye

Author:Quinn, Susan Kaye [Quinn, Susan Kaye]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, young adult, Paranormal
Published: 2015-02-09T08:00:00+00:00

“C’mon man.” I’m pleading Marshall to let me out of this. “He’s just a kid.”

“He’s not just a kid,” Marshall says, his voice as hard as his muscular arms, which are now flexing in agitation. The kid is seated in a chair Jackson brought for him. He’s so scared he’s not even crying, he’s just shaking like a mouse. “He’s part of that Molloy Clan.”

“I thought those guys were all taken by the Feds.”

“They were—except for this one.” Marshall juts his chin to the kid. “And that other one who’s been on every tru-cast for the last hour.”

I narrow my eyes. “I don’t understand. What’s on the news?”

Marshall grimaces, looks at the kid like he’s got the secrets to the universe trapped inside his head, then lets out a sigh and waves over Jackson, who brings his handheld with him. The screen is small, but it’s easy to see the stylishly dressed tru-cast reporter posing for the camera. Red lines of text scroll across the bottom, her captured mindwaves rendered into words for her mindreading audience. She’s saying something about mindjackers.

Holy… what? Mindjackers are on the news?

My heart rate kicks into overdrive. I jack into the mindware interface on the screen and rewind the program. The metallic taste of the interface tastes especially bitter as I search for more details. I freeze the tru-cast when it pops up an image of two FBI agents, guns pointed at the camera, which shakes slightly, like it’s a handheld. The Feds are in what looks like a hospital lobby, and the words scrolling along the bottom obviously don’t belong to them. Someone else’s words are narrating the image.

It’s like the old days when the first readers were discovered, the text is saying. My mind is whirling. Did somebody out mindjackers on camera? Who would do that? What jacker in their right mind would expose themselves, not to mention the rest of us? As if in answer to that question, the camera swings to show the face of the girl holding it. It must be the camera on her phone. The text identifies her as Kira Moore, but she looks a lot like Tessa—pale skin, pink in the cheeks, long brown hair, only this Kira girl has blue eyes that are blazing in anger. She shifts the camera to capture a bunch of kids in hospital gowns sprawled on the floor behind her, fighting with guards of some kind.

I was kidnapped by the FBI, the text along the bottom is saying, brought here, and then sent to a prison with hundreds of other kids just like me. For no other reason than who I am.

I mentally nudge the screen to stop. I don’t need to see any more. My brain is stunned into a kind of suspended animation, where everything slows down, all sound disappears, and there are only my thoughts banging around inside my head.

This girl just told the world about us. The world. Now everyone knows we exist. From now on, everyone will look slant-eyed at their neighbors, wondering if they’re jackers.

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