I’m swimming in an orange lake made of mist.

It’s choking me and fuzzing me out. Just when I’m about to go under, my heart rate ramps up like I’m on a treadmill set to Death by Heart Attack.

I gasp awake, sucking in air and sitting up, all in one motion. My eyes can barely focus. I rub them and fight for air. Shuffling noises in front of me—

I lunge out with my mind. Two people, but my reach runs smack into barriers I can’t breach. One’s slick and tastes like electric fire; the other is super-smooth with a burnt hay flavor. Helmets. I back up physically, blinking fast, but I’m quickly up against a wall. I fumble at the small of my back, but of course, Tiller’s gun is gone. The room is small—I can feel the shield—and my brain’s fuzzed out with the orange aftertaste of the knock-out drugs, but I finally bring my eyes into focus. Narrow gray cot under me; a short Indian woman and a muscular white guy in front. The woman stands next to a small silver cart on wheels; she’s drowning in an oversized white lab coat, ignoring me. She has long black hair bunched under a black cage helmet, while the guy has no helmet and almost no hair. It’s shaved on the sides and super-short along the top. He’s sitting backward in a chair with his arms hanging off the front, fingers laced, studying me. His urban fatigues and the rugged set of his jaw says he takes hundred-mile hikes with a full pack and an M-16 just for fun, but his eyes are surprisingly curious and non-threatening. Like I’m an interesting development in his day but nothing to worry about.

“Wha—” I cough on my dry throat, which tastes of the orange ocean.

The Indian woman—almost a girl, really, maybe younger than me—snatches a bottle of water off her metal tray and hurries over. I lean back, rattled even though she’s hardly a physical threat. But these people drugged me and dragged me to wherever we are, so who knows?

“The sedative dries you out,” the military haircut guy says. “You should drink up.”

I hesitate then take the bottle and gulp it down. When I have to breathe again, I stop and wipe my mouth. The woman has returned to her tray, head ducked as she fusses with vials laid out on top. She’s helmeted, but the guy’s not—I reach out and brush his mindbarrier again. It’s smooth, which is why I thought he had a helmet, but on closer inspection, there’s some texture. Mindmaps normally have a lot more features, but whatever. His mindbarrier is also rock hard which means he’s a keeper—the kind of jacker whose mind is impenetrable to even the strongest jack.

I also notice he has a gun.

It’s holstered so I can’t tell what kind—bullets or those tranquilizer things—but this guy isn’t one of the three thugs who shot me outside The Read chat-cast.

“There’s no sense in trying anything, Zeph.” His voice is calm… even warm. Welcoming. “You can’t jack me, the place is shielded, and Dr. Patel’s helmet is military grade. But you already know that, don’t you?”

I frown and glance at her. The helmet looks like Tiller’s cage prototype, but Haircut Guy is right—mentally, it feels heavy-duty, industrial. Must be a different grade of tech balancing on top of Dr. Patel’s small cranium. On the cart, she’s got several vials of what looks like blood, an empty syringe, and a couple Band-Aids. A cool trickle works down my spine. I check out my arm, and of course there’s a tiny, flesh-colored band-aid right where one would take a drawing of blood.

Oh man. This is no good.

“Look,” I say, “I don’t know what this is about—”

“No, I’d imagine not.” The guy huffs a small laugh. It’s not mean, but it gushes more ice into my stomach. “Here’s how it is, Zeph. You’re here because your country needs you.”

“What?” That’s… not what I expected.

An All-American smile lights up his face. “That’s what they all say.”

They all… this isn’t reassuring. “Do they all ask where you get your hair cut? Because I’m thinking you save a lot on hairbrushes.”

“Oh, great.” He slides that smile to Dr. Patel. “This one’s a smart ass.” He looks back to me. “Listen up, smart ass. My name’s Major John Scott. You can call me John. I’m not your enemy. I’m just here to keep things calm.”

“Calm.” Is he kidding?

He nods. “Dr. Patel’s taken your blood to add to the inventory, or whatever the science types want to do with it. Dr. Wright will be here in a minute to have a chat. I suggest you treat her with respect.”

“What do you want from me?”

He leans back and folds his arms. “That’s for Dr. Wright to say. But I am curious about a few things.”

Curious? I narrow my eyes. “Like what?”

“Like why you’re pretending to be a reader and working for a guy like Tiller.” He arches an eyebrow.

Okay. They know I’m a jacker. But how?

He chuckles. “Don’t look so surprised. We watched the tape. No way you took down that jacker with a couple pops to the face.”

“Okay,” I say slowly. “So, we’re all jackers.” I look to Patel. “Except her.”

She jolts under my scrutiny, ten shades more nervous than Major John Scott.

“Patel’s a reader. She’s also a DARPA scientist with more brains than you and I put together and a Ph.D. from MIT to prove it.”

Oh, crap. “DARPA, huh?” Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. I remember what it stands for, but I’m wracking my brain to remember what they do. Research. Military, obviously. And, apparently, jacker kidnapping. A cool shudder runs through me.

“Jacker Technologies Division,” Patel says in a soft voice that sounds even younger than she looks. Must be a legit genius, if she has a Ph.D. but doesn’t look old enough to vote. None of which helps with the chill gushing around in my belly.

She’s scribbling on the test tubes, not looking at me.

I swallow. “I thought the government had stopped experimenting on jackers.”

She stops writing but stares at the test tube filled with what has to be my blood. Then she slowly sets it down and peers at me without fully turning. “The experimentation is completely voluntary. I never…” She stops again. Her twitches are freaking me out. But taking my blood wasn’t voluntary.

After a tortured few seconds, she turns and faces me, straightening her thin shoulders under that white coat. “My research is in recombinant DNA methodologies as pertains to atypical jacker gene expression in extreme environments and under multiple-impact exposure pathways. Secondary mutations, late term expressions, and unstable manifestations are exigent threats to the population and must be investigated, and if possible, controlled. Otherwise, multiple unrestrained genetic branch lines could cause instability and potential increases in mortality. You are likely atypical grade C, second generation.” She stops suddenly, blinks, then turns back to her test tubes, scribbling on them again.

Second generation? Patel is about as nerdy as they come, but even I know that means…

Major John Scott gestures to her. “See what I mean? All the brains.”

I scowl. “Is that why they gave you two first names? To compensate?”

He grins. “Okay, kid. I like you. I hope they don’t scramble your brains.”

What? “Is that an option?” I can’t help the crack in my voice. Patel’s hyper-brainy science dump just means they’re definitely doing something I’m not going to like.

He sobers up fast. “Everything’s an option.”

Patel grabs hold of her cart like it’s the only thing holding her up. “I have everything I need,” she says quietly, almost a whisper.

“All right,” Scott says. Then he speaks into the cuff of his long-sleeved shirt. “Patel’s done. We’re ready for the director.”

A click sounds from the door, and it swings open. Patel shoves her cart through with hunched shoulders and rapid, short steps. I only get a glimpse of the hallway, white and stark like a hospital, before the door swings shut again.

“She’s new,” Scott offers up. “Not quite used to it yet.”

“Used to what?” I can’t seem to get my bearings on this.

“Talking to people she might have to kill.”

My throat closes, and I don’t have to ask if he’s serious. The warmth is gone from his eyes. Right as my heart-rate is ramping up to sheer panic, the door swings open again.

It’s an older woman with cropped, shock-white hair and sharply-boned cheeks. Her pale skin is remarkably smooth, just a ray burst of wrinkles by her eyes, which are gun-metal gray. She’s intimidating as all get-out, and she’s only just stepped through the door.

“Zephyr MacCay.” It’s a pronouncement with a slight British accent. “You’re quite the slippery one, aren’t you?”

“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My voice warbles in the middle because I’m a mess inside. “I don’t understand any of this. But I work for Jeffrey Tiller, and at some point, he’s going to notice I’ve gone missing.” It’s a complete bluff, but I’m in an utter panic about how to get out of this place, whatever it is, before they zap my brain or inject serums or whatever.

The cool expression on the woman’s face doesn’t waver. “And who do you think sponsors Tiller’s, shall we say, alternative anti-jacker research?”

What? 

Did Tiller set me up? That doesn’t make any sense.

My head’s pounding.

Scott clears his throat. “Zeph, this is Dr. Beatrix Wright, Director of the Office of Jacker Technology under DARPA. She knows more about you than you know about yourself. I’d recommend not trying to bullshit her.”

Dr. Wright studies me as Scott talks. When he finishes, she says, “I have only two questions for you, Mr. MacCay.”

She waits, but she’s got my full attention. “Okay.”

“First, precisely what are your jacking abilities?”

“Nothing special,” I lie, automatically.

The brief flare in her cool, gray eyes tells me she knows it. “Which brings me to my second question—would you like to see your sister again?”

“What?” I’m up from the cot, but the sudden movement brings a rush to my head. My vision telescopes down. “How do you… where is my sister?”

Wright doesn’t even flinch, but Scott’s up off his chair, mirroring my movements. “Keep it cool, Zeph.” His voice is calm, but there’s an undertone of death to it. Like he’d put a bullet in me rather than let me get any closer to Wright… who I suddenly realize is not helmeted. I reach out, tentatively, and brush her mindbarrier. She’s a reader. I get an instant blast of information along with her bracing, rubbing-alcohol mindscent.

Wright has both my sister and my parents. We’re at a secret facility in the Great Lakes Naval Air Station. Absolutely no one is coming to our aid, and there’s no escape. She’ll hold my parents indefinitely and threaten whatever necessary to gain my cooperation in whatever ways she deems me useful. As soon as my usefulness to her is done, she’ll turn me over to Patel for lab rat status.

I pull back, my hands shaking with the need to punch something. I ball up my fists instead but only then do I realize… she meant for me to know all that. She left her mind exposed precisely to deliver that burst of knowledge and to see if I had the intelligence to figure out that cooperation was my only option. And if I had the self-control to make it happen. Or if I would try to jack her and end up with a bullet in my head.

Everything’s an option.

I slowly uncurl my fists and return her direct and measured stare. The horror that she’s had my family locked up all this time is just now reaching my gut. “I want to see my sister. And my parents. Now.”

She tips her head, and there’s a slight glimmer of a smile that chills me even more.

She nods to Scott, and he glances at a screen on the wall. I didn’t even notice it before, it was so blended in with the dull gray wall. The screen must be mindware enabled because it springs to life, but instead of a tru-cast or sim, it’s a vid of another room, just like mine, only there’s a woman seated in a chair and a girl standing in front of her.

My kid sister, Olivia.