The Handler by Susan Kaye Quinn

Century-old dust coated the portable news screen in my hands, as if this crumbling, abandoned factory could keep the future from coming by choking it with the past. I brushed away the grit and sunk into a couch whose spine had long been broken, only to puff up another musty cloud. I cleared the screen again, then mentally nudged the tru-cast recording on it to play. This was at least the twentieth time I’d replayed it. Maybe the thirtieth. I’d lost count.
    The image showed two FBI agents, both mindjackers, in a scene so familiar I had memorized every detail: the agents’ black guns pointed at the camera, glinting from the lobby’s plasma lights; the mindreaders huddled by the receptionist’s desk, trying to keep out of the showdown; even the janitor frozen in his window cleaning at the hospital gift shop, staring at the soon-to-be-famous sixteen-year-old girl wielding the camera phone like a weapon.
    At least that’s how I imagined her holding it—maybe because I was inclined to think of everything as a weapon these days. But my imagination would have to suffice, not having been one of the jackers present, on either side of the camera. In fact, I had no idea that Kira Moore was about to reveal the hidden mindjackers of the world until I saw it on the morning tru-cast two weeks ago, along with the rest of the nation.
    “It’s like the old days when the first readers were discovered,” Kira was saying. She meant the first mindreaders, long before they became the dominant species on the planet and took over everything, as dominant species tend to do. “What did we do?” she asked. “We put them in prison. We tortured them with experiments. Well, we’re doing it again, to these kids, today.”
    The camera phone swept around, the girl’s face dominating the screen and making my heart pound each time I saw it. Not just because I was male and she was undeniably pretty—it was more than that. Her eyes burned electric blue, on fire with a revolutionary fervor. Her pale skin flushed a feverish pink only at the hollows of her cheeks. Was it fear or anger, or the adrenaline rush of the moment? Or was it her instinctual protectiveness of the children sprawled on the floor behind her? She was just a couple of years younger than me, but her youth seemed timeless, radiating an almost otherworldly innocence and determination. I would have given anything to have been there at that moment, dipping into her mind and reading the passions that drove her to this singularly brave act.
    On the screen, she sucked in an audible breath, as if pulling herself up to her full angel-wrath. “My name’s Kira Moore, and I’m just like them. I was kidnapped—”
    The screen went blank.
    “Hey!” My protest bounced off the manufacturing equipment that stood silent and still along the cavernous factory walls. I darted a cold look to my twin sister Anna, working at a nearby wooden table pitted and scarred by a thousand everyday uses. I could mentally flip the tru-cast on again, but I would lose in a mental nudge match over the screen. “I was just getting to the good part.”
    “Julian, you need to stop watching that girl and focus on our work.” Anna’s stare underlined her words. My sister had the same dark-haired Latin beauty of our mother, but like our father, her icy blue-eyed glare could freeze the strongest jackers. Maybe because he taught her to shoot more than just looks. Anna picked up one of the half-assembled weapons spread before her and rubbed an oiled cloth over it with strong, practiced strokes.
    Anna could glare at me all she liked, but I could see the turbulent, protective instinct that roiled at the back of her skull. Like every instinct, it was a relic from our reptilian ancestors, hidden in our DNA until it sprung forth, an invisible compulsion that ruled our actions. The cool, misty waves of Anna’s strong, protective instinct usually crowded out all the others, but this time a wisp of rosy maternal instinct also