Mindfracked

  Cassidy - Book One

  M.R. Forbes

  Published by Quirky Algorithms

  Seattle, Washington

  This novel is a work of fiction and a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Quirky Algorithms

  All rights reserved.

  Cover illustration by Tom Edwards

  Edited by Merrylee Lanehart

  Chapter 1

  Cassidy ducked as the bullets chewed through the doorway next to her head, splintered wood raining down beside her. She remained pressed against the wall, one hand gripping her sidearm, the other hand supporting the weapon with an upturned palm. Her breathing was steady and calm. Probably too calm for the situation, but she had done this sort of thing before.

  Too many times before.

  She counted the reports of her opponent’s weapon as they echoed in the corridor beyond the doorway. Eight, nine, ten. Added to the two he had already fired, it meant his gun was empty.

  She moved her hand from the base of her weapon to yank the door open. As she swung into the frame, she lowered her gun to the firing position, both hands once again on the gun. Her attacker looked up as she emerged from the room and fired at him. Caught in the middle of changing magazines, he dove to his left, vanishing from sight as her round hit a framed picture behind where his head had been a split-second earlier.

  “Damn it,” Cassidy growled, bringing the pistol closer to her face as she made her way down the passage. She heard her target snap a new mag into his weapon, no other sounds forthcoming while he waited for her to reach the corner.

  She paused short of it, switching her grip on the gun from her left hand to her right, tilting her head to sight down the barrel. Another breath and she swung around the junction, crouching low. She squeezed off two more rounds while bullets meant for her chest whipped harmlessly overhead, shattering the window at the far end of the corridor.

  Her attacker wasn’t so fortunate. Her first bullet hit him center mass. The second took him in the head. He collapsed on the faded brown carpet, his blood quickly beginning to leave a stain.

  Cassidy ran over to him and crouched beside his body. She felt for a pulse. None. Then she picked up his sidearm before straightening and running down the hallway, slowing when she reached the elevators. Her twin pistols covered the entire antechamber where two pairs of elevator doors faced each other, one pair to her right, the other to her left—a touchscreen control between each pair. She tapped on the panel to her left, summoning one of the cabs to her on the sixteenth floor. Looking back the way she had come, it was all she could do not to cry.

  “Get your shit together, Cass,” she said to herself. “That’s not you.”

  She looked at her reflection in the metal elevator doors, slightly obscured by scratches, smudges and dirt on the stainless steel. She was naked save for a pair of panties and the oversized football jersey she had taken off the first man she had killed. Her eyes were bloodshot and angry. Her straight blond hair tousled from the fight. Her entire body—from her small, blue-eyed, cherubim face down to her feet—was coated with the spray of blood that had poured out of the asshole’s carotid artery when she had stabbed him with the sharp edge of a broken ceramic lamp.

  She had been here as a slave. Forced labor in the sweatshop that occupied the entire first floor where she’d made illegal weapons like the pair of guns she had in her hands right now. The leader of the gang, Josias, had a strict rule about not touching the workers, but that hadn’t stopped the two she had killed. Cassidy didn’t think she was the first girl they had brought up to the secluded top floor of the old hotel. The others were probably too terrified to fight back or speak up. Being stolen from the streets was traumatic enough. If she was just another victim, she might have been terrified too.

  But she wasn’t a victim. She had come to end this monstrosity.

  She was off to a good start.

  The elevator cab arrived and the doors slid open in front of Cassidy. She kept her pistols trained on the cab’s interior, fingers on the triggers, ready to fire until she saw it was empty. After spending the last two weeks in the Hell Motel, as the other kids called it, she knew from listening in on conversations among gang members that she was supposed to be too young, too stupid and far too scared to pay attention to what was said. Donnie, the man whose jersey she wore, and Pike, the second one she had gunned down, had mentioned tonight was poker night and everybody else would be too busy to notice they were missing. They thought it was the perfect opportunity to have a little fun.

  Except they had decided to start with the pretty blonde girl. The one who had shown up in Old Town only a few weeks ago, a runaway whose parents hadn’t bothered trying to find her. Cassidy had noticed different members of the gang following her for nearly two days before they made the grab, plucking her into an alley, then into a waiting truck and from the truck into the Hell Motel. The whole time they had probably been thinking how fortunate they were to find a girl like that in their own backyard. Old enough to learn quickly and young enough to control. And it certainly didn’t hurt that she possessed the long thin fingers that could better insert the smaller parts into their specific firearm designs.

  She was pure gold.

  Fool’s gold.

  The elevator doors closed. The cab started to descend. There was a restaurant in the rear of the Hell Motel. It had been a popular buffet back when Old Town had been part of the present instead of a section of the city the future had passed over, leaving it trapped in the past and rezoned as a haven for poverty and crime. Josias believed he had convinced her to help prepare meals for the gang members there. She had gained valuable experience in the process and had told Josias so.

  The restaurant was on the ground floor. The elevator stopped there a handful of seconds later. Cassidy wedged her back against the forward wall next to the doors, waiting while they parted. She leaned her head out just enough to ensure the area was clear. Satisfied, she moved out into the lobby, noticing the faint slivers of light that spilled in through the cracks in the boards covering the hotel windows and facia. To outsiders and local law, the building was supposed to be abandoned and scheduled for demolition. But the gang had a deal with the local triad who owned the hotel, that it would never get blasted as long as business was good.

  She turned left and made her way across the lobby, toward the sign on the wall that screamed FOOD in big letters with an arrow beneath, pointing toward the restaurant. Even from here, she could hear the other gang members laughing and carrying on, involved in their card game. Never mind the sixteen kids they had locked in rooms upstairs. Some of them were runaways like they thought she was. Some of them had been nicked from their parents when they hadn’t kept them close enough. A few had been sold by desperate families trying to make their own ends meet. Life was hard for too many, but that was no excuse.

  Boys and girls from eight to fourteen were part of the current work crew. When a laborer burned out or law enforcement started getting too close to finding one of them, they were often sold to the triad who moved them somewhere else. Cassidy didn’t want to think about what became of them, but she could guess. After over a year in business at the hotel, the gang had probably already destroyed the lives of a few hundred kids.

  The thought infuriated Cassidy, threatening her needed focus. A different idea helped keep her emotions in check.

  It would all end tonight. In less than ten minutes.

  She held the twin handguns pointed downward at her sides, marching directly toward the closed double-doors at the end of the hallway. A sign over the top read ALL YOU CAN EAT. Her right arm hurt from the effort of controlling the weapon’s recoil, her left from fighting to keep Donnie from choking her to death before he bled out. She was sure to hurt a little more before this was over, but it would be worth it.

  Reaching the twin doors, she paused to put herself back into a combat-ready position and prepared to breach. She waited until she could make out the voices behind the doors, deciding who was in the room and guessing their position by the pitch, tone and echo. Josias, Crash, David, Trey, Zeke, Navi, Brett, Dover. Eight of the nine remaining members. Where was Anvil?

  If he wasn’t with the others, either she or the Unity Defense Force mop-up team would track him down after.

  She started to move, freezing an instant later when she heard Josias’ voice. He was headed for the door. The bathrooms were off the hallway, shared by the hotel lobby and the restaurant. He probably needed to take a leak. Instead of hiding, Cassidy set herself a couple of feet back from the door and waited for it to open.

  Josias pulled open the left door into the buffet, his head craned inside to make one last comment about the delivery they were making in the morning. He was halfway over the threshold when he turned his head back and caught sight of her standing there, half-naked, bloody and well-armed.

  “Jessie?” he said softly, confused.

  She ran at him, firing a pair of rounds. Both caught him in the gut. Two well-placed shots that would leave him alive for a few minutes while his lifeblood leaked away. He could save himself if he called the cops or an ambulance, but they both knew he wouldn’t do that. He stood there, stunned, his jaw slack, staring at her and then down at the bleeding wounds in his belly as if he couldn’t believe she’d shot him.

  She dropped as she approached him, taking advantage of her size to slide betw
een his wide-spread legs and into the room. Behind her, as she surged to her feet, Josias stumbled the rest of the way out of the restaurant. She raised her guns, aiming at the rest of the group.

  Only Dover wasn’t seated at the largest table near the center of the room. The rest of the seating had been pushed to the perimeter a long time ago, haphazardly shoved aside and forgotten. The long buffet table spread out behind them, packages of chips and cases of beer joining boxes of pizza and drugs. Brett and Crash had their backs to her in the closest seats. Trey and David were on the left. Navi and Zeke on the right. They were all in jeans and an assortment of t-shirts and dark jackets covered in logos and branding. They were all around the same age. Crash was the only one who was overweight, probably because he was the only one that was totally clean.

  They all turned to look at her. Even Brett and Crash tried to crane their necks to see what was going on. She shot them both in the back of the head before the others could react. Shoving their chairs back, they jumped to their feet, reaching for pistols stored in the back of their pants or laid out on the table with the cards and computers.

  Computers?

  The unexpected detail almost cost Cassidy her focus. She shifted her aim to the left and right, hitting Trey and Zeke as soon as they stood up, putting two rounds in each of them and knocking them back down into their chairs.

  She walked directly toward the table, firing round after round, making sure the traffickers were all dead. Crash slumped forward onto the table. Brett fell sideways to the floor. Navi managed to fire a few rounds of his own, but his haste and drug high ruined his already pathetic aim. He fell backward when four of her rounds poured into him, hitting the buffet table and knocking it over. Vials of drugs and bottles of booze shattered when they hit the floor, adding to the chaos and din of her massacre.

  David fared the best out of the group, but only because Cassidy ran out of bullets. She dropped the weapons from her hands and ran toward the table as the last living gang member pointed his gun at her. His bullets missed as she leaped onto the table and rolled, grabbing one of the beer bottles she found there. David turned to follow her with his pistol, only to have it smashed out of his hand by the bottle. He was still recovering when Cassidy broke the bottle on the edge of the table and jumped on his chest, wrapping her free arm around his neck to hold on as she stabbed the sharp edge of the bottle into the side of his neck.

  The jagged glass cut into his jugular, blood spewing as he cried out in pain and staggered backward. She let go, dropping to the floor as he reached a hand up to cover the wound. He ran for the door, rapidly losing blood. If he was lucky he would make it to the street before he died.

  Anvil, his hand reaching for the door handle, had to jump back as David rushed past him. The shocked look on his face gave way to outrage as he turned toward Cassidy.

  “Shit,” she cursed softly, spotting the submachine gun in his left hand as he aimed it in her direction. Her eyes danced across the immediate scene, locating Trey’s piece. Scrambling forward, she picked it up and threw herself under the table as the bullets rained in, slug after slug chewing the bodies around her, biting the top of the table, kicking up pieces of the tile floor just in front of her position. She crawled away from him, toward the toppled buffet, ears pounding from the noise of the gunfire.

  “I saw you, Jessie,” he growled as his gun went dry. He dropped the magazine on the floor, quickly slapping a fresh one in. “I know where you are, you little bitch. I know what you are too.”

  “Then you should be afraid,” Cassidy said, though she didn’t sound threatening in her adolescent voice.

  Cassidy peered around the end of the table, watching Anvil slowly approach the other end, his attention on where he thought she still hid. She could have shot out his kneecaps, but it was a risky proposition to show herself at such close quarters. She wasn’t sure she’d have time to bring her gun up and take aim before he switched his aim and took a shot at her.

  Anvil crouched low and stuck his submachine gun under the table. Cassidy scrambled past her end of the table as bullets whizzed by behind her. She came up on Anvil’s left, as he tried to swing the gun her way. Too slow. Her bullets caught him in the face, her anger and the knowledge he was the last of them, freeing her to empty the magazine into him. His body hung suspended in mid air while she made him unrecognizable before he slumped lifelessly to the floor.

  Sudden silence fell over the restaurant. Cassidy stood surrounded by corpses, blood, playing cards, fragments of table, tile, bone and glass, a weight rising from her shoulders as she surveyed the mess. She took a few breaths to let her tension ease before turning her attention to the poker table. Her eyes narrowed in confusion. The computer was gone. She had seen a computer, hadn’t she?

  It wasn’t there, and nobody could have taken it. She must have been mistaken.

  Barefoot, she stepped carefully through the debris, across the floor to Anvil. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, sharp pains in her feet and a smear of blood on the floor confirmed she hadn’t been able to avoid all of the broken material in her effort to avoid being shot. It was a small price to pay for both her and the real Jessica. She was certain Doctor Campbell could patch her body up in no time.

  Kneeling over Anvil, she dug into his pocket, pulling out a rectangular slab of lightweight glass and tapping on it. Biometric security requested his fingerprint, so she lifted his dead hand and shoved it against the ClearPhone’s surface, grateful he hadn’t chosen to use the face scan instead. Her anger could have turned into a critical mistake.

  She entered the comms and typed a special code instead of entering a personal identification number to make contact. As soon as she hit the send button, a woman’s upper torso and head appeared, floating in three dimensions half an inch above the device.

  Sixty-six years old, with short white hair and a narrow, stern face, Captain Dorne didn’t offer much of a reaction to Cassidy’s bloodied state. Only a slight curl at the edge of her lip suggested she was happy to hear from her agent at all. “Cassidy. Sitrep.”

  “Mission accomplished, Captain,” Cassidy replied. “Ten casualties. Zero civilians. We’ll need a team to come clean up this mess. Medics too.” She turned the ClearPhone so Dorne could see the damage before putting the camera back on her face.

  Dorne looked downward for a moment, and then back at Cassidy. “Cleanup crews are on their way. I’m sending Hall to retrieve you. Did you damage the repo?”

  “Minor lacerations. I didn’t have time to put on shoes.” She turned the ClearPhone to her feet. “A couple of them wanted to rape me. That wasn’t happening.”

  “I’m sure the Scrubbers can imprint something suitable to explain the cuts,” Dorne said. “They don’t look too bad. I expect a full accounting in your report.”

  Cassidy brought the ClearPhone’s focus back to her. “Of course, Captain.”

  “Good work, Cass,” Dorne added, her stiff composure breaking just a little.

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  Dorne disconnected the line. Her hologram vanished. Cassidy looked back at the poker table, still concerned that she had seen something there that clearly wasn’t. Had a corrupted fragment of memory wormed its way into her active thread? If so, it wasn’t a good sign.

  There was nothing she could do about it now. Cleanup would be onsite within a few minutes, and Hall would arrive around the same time. Cassidy crossed to the doors out of the restaurant and exited into the hallway that led to the lobby. Josias sat against the wall halfway down the corridor, hands pressed against his gunshot wounds, face sweaty, eyes heavy. They shifted slowly as Cassidy approached.

  “You’re a Shade?” he mumbled in shock and disbelief.

  “Yes,” Cassidy replied.

  “I...I didn’t think Shades were real.”

  “We work hard to keep it that way. It keeps things running more smoothly. Since you’re still alive, I want to thank you.”

  He coughed a laugh. “Thank me? For what?”

  “Setting me up in the kitchen so I could learn the layout of the dining room, the setup of the table, and the exact number of assholes you were working with. It made them a lot easier to kill.”