Page 47 of Spark Transform

He’d apparently surprised her by agreeing without hesitation. Davidro had made him into a weapon, not a leader. Charrascos’s security team only listened to him because she told them to.

Soleil sent the boy and two girls to tag the crew and the hauler with high-end surveillance tech. The sullen, sleety pre-dawn haze made the kids nearly invisible.

Three Jumpers clung to each other like seaweed and stumbled their way into the joyhouse, loudly demanding more chems and large beds filled with sex partners. The other five went off on mysterious missions.

Once her forces were all deployed, Soleil invited him on a walk to within a block of the hauler. As they found a recessed service entrance to stand in, light began breaking over the eastern skyline.

He caught her eye. “I owe you.”

Her mouth twitched in humor. “Nope. Rescuing innocents from evil jackholes is what all Jumpers signed on for. I had to pull rank and order some of them to stay in the studio. I gave up trying with the kids.”

She caused her gauntlet-style percomp to display a composite holo of the joyhouse, the watchers, and the Jumpers. “Best scenario is to extract Haseem without anyone the wiser.” The holo disappeared when her arm dropped. “Two questions. First, can you disable the ground hauler for a bit, but leave it undamaged?” She brushed two fingers across her temple, probably meaning his talent.

Faraday Brenner shouldn’t be able to, but fuck it. Haseem was his friend. “Yes.”

“Second question. Can Haseem leave town for a while?”

Renner frowned. “He says he can’t because people depend on him. I think he means the Minder Corps staff and ex-Jumpers he treats on the side.”

Soleil nodded like she’d expected the answer. “We’ll evac to the studio and decide from there.”

Fish, the shark-sharp girl from class, spoke over the earwire. “Crew got comms like us, but no spy eyes. They naughts to me ‘cept one low-frac cash-troller.”

She probably meant Helios, the ramper from the Canals who took freelance debt collection jobs when he wasn’t skulking around with conspirators. Not surprising she didn’t recognize the others.

Soleil tapped her earwire. “Good. All three of you, back to the aircar. I’m going up top.” She caught Renner’s eye. “Do the hauler now.”

She shrugged her hood forward and strode off south around the corner.

He lowered his own hood and leaned into the corner of the recess. The camo cloak over his coat did its job and picked up the pattern, hiding him from casual glances. The cold and annoying sleet made him wish he hadn’t left his gloves in Soleil’s flitter.

Out of caution, he powered down his percomp and earwire, then found the ground hauler with his talent. He infiltrated tendrils of talent into its systems. The driver had left it fully powered, making his task a lot easier. The conspirator crew had apparently been taking turns walking outside and sitting in the toasty hauler.

The simplest way to disable the vehicle would be to drain the energy storage, but he’d have to offload that much charge to the neighborhood grid and batteries, where the surge might set off alarms. Not to mention the lights under the road glass might halo, which would be visible in the pre-dawn shadows.

He probed the hauler’s systems until he found the one he’d hoped for. Using his talent, he diverted the power flow intended for the tread motivators and sent it to the environmental controls instead. His talent caused the diversion, so the hauler would roll normally as soon as he let it go.

He powered up and tapped his earwire. “Done. The three people in the hauler all have small power weapons.”

Since he was using his talent anyway, he drained the most powerful weapon’s charge and fed it through the solar collector system to the hauler’s batteries. He left the other two weapons alone. One drained beamer was bad luck. Three would be a memorable coincidence.

At three blocks away, the joyhouse was beyond his detailed detection limit, so he’d have to trust the others to take care of Haseem. Instead, he felt around for closer life signatures. The building he leaned against held a few people scattered throughout, but the only unlucky people outside were conspirators and Jumpers. And one smaller signature, coming his way.

Fish, dressed in a too-big gray-and-brown coat, slipped into the building recess and snugged herself into the corner opposite him.

She took off her earwire and looked up at him. “I’m not a null.”

He raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“I feel you, here.” She pointed to her chest. “Sifter, me. Secret, like you. Like Haseem. Like Arco.” Her chin tilted toward the street. “Crew has sifter, two rampers, shielder, and a teke. Jumpers don’t know how to fight them.”

A hard choice for a twelve-year-old. Help her friends or keep her talent secret. He lived that choice every day.

He tapped his earwire and spoke aloud so she could hear what he said to the Jumpers. “Fish is with me. She remembered that the cash-troller glides with a minder crew. Aren’t shy about using their talents.”

“We brought stunners.” Soleil’s tone beeped twice, signaling a private conversation. “Send Fish back to the aircar, or the other kids will come looking for her.”

He sank into a crouch, putting him closer to Fish’s eye level, and pulled off his own earwire. “The Jumpers have stunners. They flatline minder talents for a while. Have you been tested?”