Mind Thief Read online

  Mind Thief

  C.A. Hartman

  5280 Press

  Mind Thief

  Copyright © 2019 by C.A. Hartman

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  Also by C.A. Hartman

  Korvali Chronicles series

  (Space Opera)

  The Refugee

  The Operative

  The Forbidden Planet

  Daughters of Anarchy series

  (Dystopian Sci-Fi Thriller)

  Book 1

  Book 2

  Book 3

  Book 4

  Mindjacker series

  (Dystopian Sci-Fi Thriller)

  Mindjacker

  Mind Thief

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Quinn ran as hard as she could.

  Her lungs ached, her heart pounded, and her legs buckled a little as the deep sand slowed her pace. She trudged up the dune, sweat pouring from her as the midday desert sun scorched her scalp and blistered her skin.

  Nobody should brave the open desert in midday. In today’s world, it was suicide.

  She let out a frustrated grunt at her slowed pace. For every two steps forward, she lost one to the shifting terrain, and her boots grew heavier and heavier as they filled with sand. The endlessly tall dune got so steep that it was easier to get on all fours and scramble up the thing like an animal.

  Finally, she crested the hill and flopped down on the other side, along the slope. She lay there catching her breath while she peeked her head over the top of the dune. Nothing but a sea of dunes just like the one she’d climbed, golden and glistening in the heat as far as the eye could see. Then, she saw them.

  Four of them—in all black, bodies as fit as athletes—heading her way. Gaining on her.

  Fuck.

  Quinn got up, her throat dry as she began running again. She kept to the ridge so she could get some distance from them, looking for a place to hide. But there was nowhere to hide in the desert. No trees, no shrubs, no rocks or houses or sheds. And no winds that day to erase her obvious footprints. Only the burning inferno of a sun, and her enemies.

  There had to be a way out.

  But there wasn’t, and within minutes the four Black Jays caught up to her and grabbed her, taking her down to the sand that burned her backside.

  “Fuck you,” she seethed at them. “You’re not getting shit from me.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said the one with the leering smile. Another placed nodes on her head while the two others held her down, making her struggle pointless. Then the desert faded to nothing.

  Now she was somewhere Downtown. In an alley, between brick buildings, the stench of stale beer and rotting garbage permeating her nostrils. When she turned around, she found she wasn’t alone. A guy—big, muscular, tattooed—stood there, staring at her, hatred in his pale eyes.

  He came after her, getting closer and closer. She deployed the usual defenses and tools, including her brass knuckles, but he saw them all coming and blocked them until he was millimeters from her.

  He yanked her by the hair. “Do as I say, bitch, or I’ll kill you.”

  Quinn ignored the threat. No way would she give in without a fight.

  Die with your boots on, as Wyatt used to say.

  She elbowed him in the gut, getting ready to go for the nuts next. But he was too quick for her and blocked her attack, then punched her. Then again. Pain radiated through her head as he knocked her around and swore at her… until he began yanking at her clothing. Panic struck along with revulsion, and Quinn began screaming and thrashing like a wild animal, scratching at him and trying to gouge, bite, or kick anything she could.

  No!

  But he would not stop.

  He warned her again, and she refused to quit fighting. Then she felt it, the pain that took her breath away, from the knife he’d gutted her with. And everything went black.

  When Quinn opened her eyes, her heart was pounding like crazy. But she wasn’t in the alleyway, or the sand dunes. She was inside a white room. Maybe a hospital.

  Then she remembered the stabbing. She reached down to feel her gut, wondering just how torn up it was. But she felt only smooth skin.

  “You’re fine, Hartley. Nobody stabbed you.”

  She blinked a couple of times and looked over to find a pair of intelligent, piercing blue eyes watching her. A mixture of sympathy and amusement danced in them.

  Remi.

  She looked around at the now-familiar room with no windows and nothing but an open cabinet filled with technical equipment. She was at the Protectorate’s headquarters, and the nightmare she’d just lived was nothing more than a simulation.

  “Damn,” she muttered. “That was the mindfuck of mindfucks. What the hell, man?”

  “That’s what you need to be prepared for.” Remi removed the nodes from the base of her skull.

  She sat up on the cot, the air conditioning cooling her sweat and reassuring her she was safe. “But going down two layers like that? Getting assaulted and stabbed? It wasn’t like the others, Remi. It was so real I forgot I was in training.”

  “That’s the point. With the Black Jay threat, you need to be prepared. For clients with top-notch training to prevent mind invasion… even for being jacked yourself. You started to drown and I had to pull you out.”

  “But… how do I even fight something that powerful, something that hijacks my own fear centers?”

  “Same as always. You find a way to combat the fear.”

  “Go to my happy place?”

  Remi took a swig of water before gathering the equipment. “That, among other forms of mental control. All of which you’re capable of.”

  “I never even got that far.”

  “You will next week.”

  Next week. Ugh. “You sure about that?”

  Remi gave her a look. “The mind is nothing but neurons conducting electrical impulses. It’s your slave, not your master.”

  “But—”

  “It’s no different, Quinn. It’s just the next step.”

  Quinn said nothing, skeptical. Almost drowning in a flood of thoughts and images was one thing, as were the other tricks targets used to prevent being mindjacked by people like her. But to target her limbic system? Her amygdala? “Come on, Remi. We’ve never seen anything of this nature in all these years. Our data from Borelli and Gary Linden showed no s
igns of this kind of thing.”

  “You need to be prepared for the worst.”

  Then she had an even darker thought. “But what if it doesn’t work? What if no matter how much we train, there’s always a level that will crush us? What if the control they get is so good… so real… so right in your amygdala centers that you can’t fight it? What if no happy place is happy enough?”

  Remi eyed her. “Then stop fighting it.”

  Quinn gaped at him. “You can’t be serious! There isn’t a protocol for that situation?”

  “No. No one’s ever been in that situation. No one with our training, anyway.” He paused, a crease in his forehead, one that didn’t make Quinn feel any better. “We’re still figuring out how to deal with this new threat. But, my view is… stop fighting what you can’t fight. At this level, it’s about control over your own mind. When you were being attacked in that simulation—”

  “By you.”

  “—by me, it was nothing but your mind playing tricks on you. No one stabbed you. I never touched you. You have control. You can choose to stop fighting, if you want to.”

  Quinn squelched a scoff. Stop fighting? Right. Like she would ever do that. Like she would ever give in and let some assailant control her, even if only in her mind. It went against everything she’d ever been taught. Because she knew. If you gave in once, if you stopped fighting, then they had you.

  Remi motioned toward the door. “Time’s up. I’ve got another agent to torture at eight.” He gave her an inscrutable smile.

  Quinn gathered her things and headed toward the door.

  “See you in a week,” Remi called after her.

  “And not a moment sooner, Remi.”

  Quinn emerged from the back door of Protectorate headquarters, relieved to get away from Remi and the rest of them and take in her familiar city—the heat emanating off the tall glass buildings and asphalt roads, the sounds of traffic, the smell of dust in the air. As she headed deep underground to catch the train, images from her training session still haunted her.

  Being chased, jacked, stabbed. Feeling every sensation—the heat, the anger, and most of all, the fear. It was nothing like she’d ever experienced, in training or in the field. If the Black Jays could conjure up anything remotely close to that, the Protectorate had its work cut out for it. And so did she.

  The Protectorate needed to train Quinn and the rest of the agents to deal with what had become a menacing threat: the Black Jays. Tier One jackers in particular had to undergo grueling simulations that made any previous training seem like nothing but fun. She’d expected difficulty, even drowning, but wasn’t remotely prepared for the shit show that went on today.

  Weeks had passed since that terrible night at the Lindens’ home, when they’d discovered the Black Jays were behind the Borelli job. They’d been the men in black who’d tried to kill Quinn and Jones and who’d murdered Gary Linden, his wife, and restauranteur Tony Borelli. The Protectorate had cancelled all jobs to focus on training their agents to deal with this new enemy. It had also deployed its special ops agents to conduct field research on the Jays, and information was trickling in now.

  The Protectorate, and everybody who worked for them, still had no idea who this enemy was, where they were headquartered, or what their mission was. So far, it appeared that their mission was nothing but mayhem and violence. But Quinn knew they must have some goal driving them. They were too well-organized and well-trained to be nothing but thugs looking to hurt people.

  Quinn’s phone rang, interrupting her obsessive thoughts.

  Yolanda.

  “Good evening,” she greeted her boss.

  “Quinn,” Yolanda said, her voice neutral as usual, making it tough to determine whether the call would bring good news or bad. With Yolanda, either was possible.

  “What’s up?”

  “Remi briefed me on your training.”

  “And?” Quinn held her breath.

  “You have more work to do.”

  Quinn sighed. She didn’t need Yolanda to tell her that. “And?”

  “And I need you to do that work.”

  “I plan to—”

  “Starting tomorrow.”

  Quinn’s stomach roiled at the thought of going back there so soon. “I need more recovery time, Yolanda. It was… intense.”

  “We don’t have more time.”

  “Why not?”

  A pause. “We’ve got an important job coming down the pipe now. It’s an extremely high-profile client, and it may offer us some intel on the Black Jays. I want you and Jones to take the lead on the job.”

  Excitement coursed through her. A high-profile client. And they wanted her and Jones, despite her being the newest Tier One agent. “That’s great! I’m—”

  “I won’t authorize it unless I know you’re ready.”

  Quinn’s excitement waned. “Tell me more about the job.”

  “Not yet. Keep working with Remi and wait to hear from me.”

  Quinn nodded. “Will do. And… thank you. For the opportunity.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. Show me you’re ready.”

  Yolanda hung up.

  Chapter 2

  Quinn grabbed the serpent-shaped handle of Sidewinder’s giant wooden door and gave it a tug. The air conditioning felt like a relief, despite it being well into October, when El Diablo’s temperatures had simmered down to the low one-hundreds. Which felt downright comfy after another summer from hell in Devil’s Town.

  In the center of the room sat a square bar, surrounded by tables. The walls were covered in murals of giant painted snakes with scales that gleamed and sparkled with plastic jewels. The dive was unpretentious enough for Jones, served diablos with real lime for Quinn, and was roughly equidistant between their two homes.

  Quinn looked for Jones, expecting that his large, heavily-tattooed form would be easy to spot this far north in Downtown. But the place was packed and she had to weave through a crowd until she finally found him at a small table in the corner, nursing a freshly brewed root beer. He sat hunched over his beverage, deep in thought. She sank down into the other chair.

  “You alright?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Why is it so busy tonight?”

  “Demons game. Went into overtime.”

  She looked around, searching for a server. “I need a drink.”

  “That bad?”

  “Worse.”

  Jones raised an eyebrow, his shaven head and arms glistening just slightly from the heat. A server wearing skintight snakeskin-printed pants came over to take Quinn’s order. When she walked away, Jones’s eyes followed her, taking her in.

  She could hardly blame him. Lately, her own eyes lingered on certain men for longer than probably necessary. After everything that happened with Noah, she’d given up on meeting anyone, even for short-term company.

  “They use them new simulations on you?” Jones asked.

  “Oh yeah.”

  Quinn told Jones about her mental adventure. Jones grimaced at the stabbing part, his hand going to his gut, probably remembering his own very real and recent injury, the one that almost killed him. When the server brought her a diablo so large it took two hands to hold, Jones showed no sign of disapproval.

  “New world,” he said, “with these assholes in black to contend with.”

  Quinn took a drink of her diablo. She closed her eyes just for a moment, enjoying the taste of the real thing, now that she could afford it.

  “How’s the fancy new joint?” Jones said with a quirk of his mouth.

  “It’s nice… but my neighbors aren’t friendly. At all.”

  Jones scoffed. He didn’t seem surprised by that, but Quinn was. She’d figured by getting out of Downtown, she’d leave the attitudes and untrusting looks behind. But, at least so far, the other tenants hadn’t taken any interest in her.

  “How’s Jeffrey?” she asked.

  Jones’s expression softened. “He’s good. But, now that I�
�m makin’ a little money, I’m lookin’ into some of them programs designed for… people like him. My mom could use a break, you know?”

  Quinn nodded. “Sounds like a good plan.”

  “It will be, but we need another job. Soon.”

  “Looks like one’s coming. A good one.”

  His eyes lit up. “How good?”

  “Super high-profile client, I’m told.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  After she proved herself, apparently. Dread hit her at the prospect of facing Remi again.

  Jones eyed her. “Why ain’t you excited? The fact that Yolanda’s givin’ this to us means we’re high on their list right now. And we should be, after everything that went down at Linden’s place.”

  After Quinn and Jones saw the Borelli job through to its bitter, violent end at Gary Linden’s home, they not only managed to stay alive after being blindsided by two highly-trained mind thieves, they conquered the two attackers and uncovered a conspiracy led by the Black Jays to breach the Protectorate’s carefully constructed walls and steal its well-kept secrets.

  “Agreed,” Quinn said. “We’re their favorite pet lizards, and we’ll get the good food and terrariums for a while. But…”

  “But what?”

  “I have to go back tomorrow and do another sim. To prove to Queen Yolanda we can do this.”

  Jones rolled his eyes. Then his worried expression returned.