Wild Minds: Forbidden Minds, #2

By R.A. Rock

The world they've always known has changed. Will their escape preserve their lives… and their love?

Yumi thought The Agency would keep her safe. Now the only one she can count on is Chad, even though touching him causes her immense pain. When they escape from the people who led them astray, will Chad's protection be enough to keep her alive?

Chad's only weakness is his unrequited love for Yumi. As they flee The Agency, the only thing he cares about is her safety. But could fear take her away before Chad can share how he truly feels?

Chad and Yumi realize their only chance for happiness is to stop The Agency once and for all. They'll need help… but most of all, they'll need each other.

Will it be enough to break free from The Agency?

Wild Minds is a sci-fi romance that resolves the cliffhanger from Forbidden Minds and ends with a guaranteed HEA. If you like incredible abilities, powerful sexual tension, and relationships with a sci-fi twist, then you'll love R.A. Roque's romantic thrill-ride.

Note: Wild Minds was formerly published under the title Protect Us.

Buy Wild Minds today to fall in love again! 

Forbidden Minds series order...
1. Forbidden Minds
2. Wild Minds
3. Frozen Minds
4. Secret Minds
5. Frantic Minds
6. Dangerous Minds

• Language: English
• Publisher: Windy Point Publishing Inc.
• Release date: Nov 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781540121448

Book preview

It was all over.

After everything we had gone through with The Agency, all that we had planned and hoped for… it was all over.

Just like that.

I stared around at my public mind, where we were holding our enclave, barely seeing any of the comfy space. Public minds usually look like living rooms, while private minds are more like bedrooms and my mind was no different.

Jale was perched like a gangly pelican on one of the armchairs, like he didn’t intend on staying long. Yumi and I stood by the couch, facing Jale. And my sweet wife had a thunderous look on her face, her dark eyes stormy and her arms crossed on her chest. The wall of minds was covered by a curtain because Jale was here. It loomed over me, stretching forever in all directions, in spite of the fact that it was covered.

As I gazed at the picture of me, Yumi, Gracie, and Shiv on the mantel above the fireplace in my mind, I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach.

This was it then.

Our lives at The Agency were gone — never to return. We couldn’t go back. Ever. Everything we had worked so hard for during the past years had just disappeared in a puff of smoke.

It’s not that I was so fond of life at The Agency. But it had been home for the past three years. I had had friends. I had looked forward to a life as a Protector with my Mind Circle. Little did I know then that we had been doomed from the start, to never have that life. Sure, sure. They had tried to reform us. But there’s no way that that would ever have worked.

The dissidence that we had been branded with went soul deep and they would never have rehabilitated us.

Yumi, of course, was a lost cause from the very start. She was the exact opposite of what The Agency needed — fiercely independent, suspicious, and definitely very, very distrustful of people in authority — because of her past. She was of Asian descent, petite with black hair and dark eyes that were flashing with anger right now.

Gracie and I were of Irish/Italian descent on our mother’s side. Our father was Polish. We had curly red hair (Yumi always calls us the redheads.) and pale skin from our Irish and Polish genes, though my sister’s eyes were green, while mine were blue. We were the first Circle that had ever been born with siblings in it.

Our parents had raised us to question everything and find our own truth. We were never supposed to take anything at face value without examining it first and making our own decisions about it.

We had been homeschooled and had never had the don’t-question-the-person-in-authority dogma drilled into us. The only authority figures in our schooling were our parents, and they actively encouraged us to question them. So, we were never going to be Agency material either.

Then there was Shiv. His parents had come from India so he had the whole tall, dark, and handsome thing going for him. When we had met him, he had been in a foster home, trying to take care of his little brother and keep them from being split up.

He had spent a year or two as a ward of the government until his mother was well enough to take them back again. If you know anything about the foster care system in North America on Earth, it isn’t exactly the best place to establish a love of institutions. He was a write-off from the start, too.

So, really, if they had known us better, they would never have bothered training us in the first place because they would have realized — as I now did — that there was never any chance we were going to make it at The Agency.

So, there was only one choice. I looked over at Yumi: she was giving off waves of anger that singed my mind.

Good fucking riddance, she said into the silence and referring, I assumed, to The Agency.

I stood beside her, feeling grim. She was right. There was only one thing to do.

So, tell us, Jale, I said, determination in every cell of my body. Now that you’ve convinced us, how do we escape The Agency without ending up a universe apart or dead?

Yumi cut her eyes across to me with a sarcastic look on her face. She obviously didn’t even think that was possible. He gazed at me, sizing me up.

Will you help us go wild? I said, when he still didn’t answer.

Jale looked at us appraisingly as we stood side by side, not touching out of habit. I wanted to think we looked formidable, strong, and determined. But I was afraid that we just looked like two twenty-somethings, scared out of their minds that they would be torn away from the most important people in their lives.

It won’t be easy; you should know that right up front.

Yumi snorted. She never expects anything to be easy because nothing ever has been for her.

We’ll do whatever we have to do because we have no other choice, I said, my words clipped.

Well, that’s not strictly true, he said. You do have a choice, and before you decide to go with the idea of becoming Wild Minds you need to know what that choice is. Going wild is much worse than them designating you Forbidden. Going wild means that they will actively go after you. But you don’t have to. There is another way.

We frowned and glanced at each other. What was he talking about now?

There is a program The Agency runs. You must volunteer and sign an agreement that says you’re consenting to have the procedure done. A Micro-Kinetic that specializes in moving tiny things can rearrange your neurons so that your… shall we say… rebellious tendencies are removed. Once The Agency no longer considers you a threat, you can go on to have long and glorious careers as Protectors. His voice was clearly sarcastic.

I stared at him incredulously.

Are you seriously asking if we would be willing to be mind changed in order to continue to work for an institution that maybe wouldn’t assassinate us but doesn’t really mind if we die either?

I am not interested in being mind changed or anything else The fucking Agency has to offer, Yumi said. I could tell she wanted to spit to show her contempt, like she used to do as a child, but was holding back. It made me want to smile.

What do you say, Chad?

Of course not.

Good. You do understand that once you decide to go wild, there’s no coming back from that decision, right?

Yes, Yumi and I both said at the same time.

Now just tell us, I said, getting tired of his stalling. How can we avoid being split up and escape without having The Agency on our backs forever?

And get to the point. I’m done talking. We need to act. Now. Yumi was looking menacing.

Well, I have an idea. But you have to decide whether that’s what you want to do or not. Maybe you can come up with a better idea than mine.

"Just tell us," Yumi said, vibrating with impatience.

The Agency is sending you to Earth anyway. They are not going to split you up before then. I don’t have their exact plan, but I know that. And I know that they will attack both you and the other half of your Circle at the same time. Sometime after you’ve escorted the Ifshom. They don’t want to make a scene.

They don’t want to make a scene? What are you talking about? Yumi said. What do they care?

One thing you have to understand about The Agency is that they are not exactly as ruthless and willing to do whatever it takes to get what they want as they seem. They aren’t actually like that. They have a code of ethics, which you would have been introduced to had you returned to step into your roles as Protectors.

A code of ethics? You expect us to believe that? Or that if they do have one, that they actually abide by it?

The original Agency was founded by Protectors who wanted a place where others with mental abilities could come and train and work. They wanted to create a community of like-minded people. The Agency has very noble roots.

Noble. Yumi just stared at Jale.

Yes, noble. But obviously, they’ve changed. And yet the higher-ups are still guided by that code of ethics, which states that Protectors shall not cause bodily harm to other Protectors either by using their mental powers or by other means. That’s why The Agency wouldn’t have minded if that wormhole had killed you, but they won’t deliberately send someone to assassinate you.

I thought about this with my eyebrows drawn together, trying to understand it. It made a weird kind of sense. Especially since most Protectors had at least rudimentary empathic abilities and many were highly developed Empaths. It’s pretty hard to kill someone or even order their killing if you can understand them, empathize with them, and put yourself in their shoes.

That’s why, Jale went on, they’re not going to just kill you. So, it makes sense to go to Earth with the Ifshom.

Then what? Oh, Yumi was so champing at the bit to just do something.

Then you escape. No technology. No transportation. Nothing except the clothes on your back and a few supplies.

Escape. With nothing but our wits and each other.

It was crazy.

And somehow perfect.

W here would we go? I said, blown away by the thought. My eyes went immediately to the thick slab of oak that was the mantel over the fireplace in my mind. There was a picture there of my Mind Circle at the lake. We were all smiling and happy, the blue of the water behind us.

"You’re from Earth, right? Got any ideas?"

I looked at Yumi, a grin spreading across my face.

Yeah, I have an idea.

Not home though, she said a happy look in her eyes. We couldn’t risk drawing them there.

No, but there’s another place that we could go.

And she blushed.

Jale raised an eyebrow.

Are the other two a couple as well? he said.

How do you know we’re a couple? Yumi said at the same time as I said, Yes.

He shook his head.

Your Mind Circle is unusual in so many ways. But every way makes you more powerful than even The Agency — or yourselves — can imagine.

I took this in.

How powerful were we?

You will need to warn the other half of your Circle but not tell them the details of what you’re doing. Don’t tell me where you’re going either.

Not tell them? I said, immediately uneasy. We didn’t keep secrets from Gracie and Shiv.

They’re at The Agency headquarters, right?

Yes.

The plan is to move on you all at the same time, remember? That means that they may get to the other members of your Circle before they can escape.

They?

The Finders.

But…

He cut Yumi’s protest off.

"You must save yourselves first. Once you are free, then you can plan to help them escape too. But you cannot do anything if The Agency has you. Or if they split you up. Or if an unfortunate accident should happen to one of you."

Yumi shivered. Probably thinking about losing one of us, not her own life. Death didn’t bother her. She had been raised thinking every morning that it was a good day to die.

Oh, this whole thing sucked so badly. But there was nothing to do but to move forward. He was right. We had to save ourselves and then worry about Gracie and Shiv. I knew that. But it went against every fiber of my being that was screaming to find them and escape together. But that would be suicide. And none of us were going to die. I would make sure of that.

I squinted at the fireplace that I kept in my public mind, and instantly there was a fire burning there. Jale looked mildly surprised; Yumi stared at the fire with a funny smile on her face, looking for a moment like she was going to cry. I went and held my hands out to it — the warmth a small comfort in the face of this news.

My public mind suddenly seemed more cheerful with a fire in the fireplace. The flames were burning higher, licking their way up the wood and putting out warmth. I turned, toasting my back, so that I could see Jale and Yumi.

So, we continue with the mission, which will get us to Earth. Then we disappear. Then what? Yumi said. How do we contact anyone if we don’t have technology?

He gave her an annoyed look, and she got a sheepish look on her face.

"Oh yeah, strongest Sender ever. That would be me. Right.