by Kate Rudolph
Her power was hers and she could control it.
Somehow.
She could feel it pulsing deep in her head, a roiling sensation that made her nauseous. All she had to do was tap into it, find a way to dive into the sea of possibilities that lived in her head and find the right one, the one that would tell her the way out of this mess.
But there was darkness all around her, no hint of light, no way to see where she should go, and every time she tried to take a step it was like she was surrounded by quicksand, sinking and sinking and unable to reach safety.
Bile rose in her throat as she trudged her way on, and her head pounded. Was this the right way? Her instincts were strangely silent, refusing to give her a hint as she tried to find the heart of her power.
She could taste acid on her tongue as she tried harder and feared her body would betray her. She was sweating and shivering, too hot and too cold at the same time. But the power was right there. So close she could almost feel it, could almost harness it. She just had to do something.
The door slamming open jerked Naomi away from her task and she had to squint against the sudden light as two technicians stood in the doorway, a stretcher in between them. “We’re here to get you prepped for surgery,” one said.
Naomi turned to her side and vomited.
THEY’D HAD TO WAIT an entire day to get on a ship headed back to Oscavia. Shayn’s guts roiled and he was certain that untold tortures were being inflicted upon his mate. He could feel faint glimmers of emotion that weren’t his own, but they weren’t substantial enough to grab hold of and analyze. He hoped his denya was staying strong, hoped she knew that he was coming for her.
He only hoped they got there in time.
“If you don’t stop pacing I’m going to tie you to your bed,” Brax muttered, glancing up from the article he’d been reading on his tablet.
Shayn gripped the edge of the uppermost bunk and looked down at his brother, who was essentially lying on the floor in his own bunk. “Do you think I’d expect you to be motionless and silent if your denya was being held captive hundreds of light years away?”
Brax let his tablet fall to the side as he glared up at Shayn. “I don’t have a denya, so I guess we’ll never know.”
“’M trying to sleep,” Deke muttered from the middle bunk. “Shut up.” His peacekeeper senses only worked when he was fully awake. At night he could be just as grumpy as Shayn or Brax.
They’d been on the cruiser for two days, and had spent most of that time cramped in their tiny room. It was a miracle they’d been able to grab tickets at the last minute, though their savings were close to depleted, despite the fact they were packed into the tiniest room imaginable. In a day and a half they’d be on Oscavia and Shayn was no closer to coming up with a good plan than he’d been when he arrived at Honora Station.
He had a couple of bad plans that his brothers insisted wouldn’t work. But if they were his only option, he’d do what he had to do to get Naomi back.
Brax kicked the bottom of Deke’s bunk hard enough to make his brother curse and Shayn smiled despite himself. His brother’s antics could get on his nerves at times, but the twins were his family, and he loved them as much as a brother could. He shoved at Brax’s leg to defend the attack against Deke and blocked Deke from lashing out at Brax when he turned over and swung wildly from the middle bunk.
“Boys!” he yelled, though the word only applied in temperament, not age.
“He started it!” they both replied.
Shayn collapsed down onto Brax’s bunk, energy draining out of him. He made room for himself and sat back against the wall, pushing at his brother’s feet until they weren’t touching him.
“We’ll get her back,” Brax said, his dark eyes full of compassion.
Deke rolled out of his own bunk, almost falling to the floor before recovering at the last second. He joined Shayn and Brax, unwilling to be left out. Deke’s sudden presence forced Brax to sit up or be squished. “If we knew all those Detyens on Earth we could put together an entire fleet to get your Naomi back.”
His Naomi. Oh, yeah, Shayn liked the sound of that. “I didn’t get a chance to read the article you sent me about that. What’s really going on?” Earth was practically a backwater. Its technology wasn’t anywhere near what the Oscavian Empire produced and they’d only been capable of space flight for a century and a half. It was an unimportant planet in an out of the way system, so Shayn had no idea why a sudden influx of Detyens would choose to settle there.
No idea except... he’d just found a human denya. Perhaps he wasn’t the only one.
“It’s not just some Detyens,” Deke said, practically bouncing in his seat as he relayed the news. “It’s the Detyen Legion. Rumor has it they fought some big battle in Earth’s system and Earth has granted them residency. And I found another alert that a dozen or so Detyens have found mates with humans. Like you!”
“It sounds too good to be true,” Brax said, ever the pessimist. Then he snuck a glance at Shayn. “Not the denya thing, obviously, but I can’t see why some no-name planet would want to take us in when no one else has in a century.”
“The military presence might have helped,” Shayn observed wryly. It didn’t hurt a planet to have a bevy of trained warriors on hand ready to defend their new home with all their might.
“Can we go see what it’s like?” Deke asked. “Earth, I mean. When we get your denya back, let’s just go straight to Earth.”
“We can’t make those plans until she’s safe,” Shayn said.
“Then let’s figure out how to make her safe,” said Brax. “I doubt I’ll get my bed back otherwise.”
Despite the terror of the situation, Shayn found himself thankful for his brothers. They might drive him crazy, but he would be lost without them. They just had to keep him going for a day and a half more, keep him from plunging into madness while he missed his mate to the depths of his very soul.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MAKING HERSELF ILL had the benefit of delaying her surgery. The other benefit was that she’d been moved from her isolated closet to a small infirmary room. She was locked in, but at least she now had room to move. Morgyn didn’t want to operate when there was a risk of making an infection worse, which bought Naomi a few days while they ran tests to determine why she’d been vomiting. She wasn’t about to tell them it was because she was trying harder than she’d ever tried to induce a vision.
Two days of sickness and it still hadn’t worked, but the bond in her chest that connected her to her mate was stronger than ever. He was close, possibly on the planet, maybe even in the city, and he was coming for her. She didn’t need her visions to tell her that. If their roles had been reversed, if Shayn had been captured and Naomi left alone she would have done the same thing. She would have rallied every resource, called in every favor, done everything in her power to get her mate back.
But Shayn was up against a very resourceful enemy who didn’t care a bit about his well-being. If he came up against Sola Corp, they’d squash him like a bug.
She needed to know what was coming, what Sola and Morgyn would do next and how she could get out to save Shayn from needing to find her. She could follow the bond once she was out of the building, but she had to find a way out while avoiding the surgery that Morgyn wanted to do. Naomi still didn’t know exactly what she planned, but she wasn’t letting the doctor touch her brain, especially not when Morgyn was determined to make her more amenable to testing. Who knew what she could do to Naomi if she got her fingers under her skull?
No, thank you.
The monitors she was hooked up to were another problem. Every time she tried to induce a vision her heartbeat changed, sometimes kicking into high gear and other times slowing dangerously. She’d been hooked up to biometric monitors during many of her other visions and if someone bothered to cross reference that information they might figure out what she was trying to do. But pulling off the monitor wires was a sure way to summon an atte
ndant to come check on her.
Naomi had to risk it. So what if they knew she was having a vision? She had visions all the time and no one ever thought she had been purposefully inducing them before. Before a week ago she would have told Morgyn if she had that ability, so Morgyn had no reason to believe she’d spontaneously developed it in the past few days.
She hadn’t, but that was beside the point. Naomi needed to do this. If she failed, Morgyn would own her for the rest of her life, and Shayn would end up dead or worse. Morgyn wouldn’t turn away a rare specimen like a Detyen just because he’d given her a bit of trouble. No, if he showed up she’d use him just as she’d used Naomi and there would be no way out for either of them.
Naomi took a deep breath and dived deep within herself.
She came up against that same blackness that had stopped her before. It was so thick she felt like she could barely move. This darkness was alive around her, cloying and deep and more than any person could be expected to handle. What did it mean that this lived within her? Was there an evil to it? A taint that could hurt her and everyone she loved?
No. It was dark, but she didn’t feel any malevolence. It just was, with no good or bad attached to it.
Naomi tried to move forward again, but the darkness wrapped her up so tightly that she was trapped, unable to move forward or back, unable to draw in a deep breath, unable to do anything but wait and hope that it let her go.
But what was it? This eternity of darkness was held within her mind. That made it hers, and she wouldn’t be its prisoner. She struggled more against it, determined to free herself, but the darkness didn’t seem to understand or care that she had no intention of being owned and conquered by it.
What darkness?
It was the smallest hint of a whisper, something that tugged at Naomi’s consciousness. Listening to it, hearing it felt the same way as when her instincts urged her on. In this darkness her instincts had a voice.
What darkness? her instincts demanded.
What darkness? It was all around her, how did her instincts not know that? She wanted answers, wanted to share the sight, but the question kept echoing, kept insisting that there was no darkness at all.
So what if there wasn’t?
Naomi stopped struggling. She could still feel the press of it against her, but when she moved her arm up and down nothing prevented the motion. She turned her head from side to side and again, there was no impediment. But there was still only darkness, even if it was no longer trying to stop her.
Stop looking at it.
Stop looking? Even when she closed her eyes there was still black. Unless someone turned on a light there was no way to escape it.
That was what Naomi’s logic told her. But logic also said that a person couldn’t see visions of the future, and she’d had that ability for more than a decade. If she relied on logic alone she’d be wiped from existence, an impossibility that nature couldn’t endure.
And she was possible. She was real.
What darkness?
Naomi opened her eyes and she saw.
THERE WASN’T AN ARMED guard waiting to meet them at the space port, which Shayn took as a good sign. Clearly Sola Corp wasn’t expending any resources to look for him. They had no reason to care about him, other than the fact that he’d been an interesting specimen to study.
He found a cheap room for his brothers to use as a base of operations while he carried out his plan to get his denya back.
“It’s a terrible plan,” Brax said again. Dekon agreed, nodding his head with great vigor.
“You haven’t given me anything better.” Maybe it wasn’t fair to put that kind of responsibility on his brothers, but they’d had three days to come up with something while they were cooped up on the ship, and in those three days Shayn’s bad plans were the least terrible and most possible of their options.
“I told you—”
He cut Deke off. “Where can we get the creds for the hover bikes? Or the skills to drive them up the side of a building?”
His brother shrugged. “It seems easy enough in the vids I watched.”
“I’ll be fine,” Shayn promised them.
“That’s what you said when you left us the first time,” Brax shot back.
“Is there a scratch on me?” Shayn demanded, spinning around and holding his arms out so his brother could get a look. “I’m not the one in danger.”
“But you will be if you walk in there unarmed,” said Brax.
It really was a terrible plan. But what else was he going to do?
“I think it will work,” Shayn said, hoping he wasn’t lying. “And if you don’t hear from me by sunset tomorrow, I want you to call Oscavian planetary security and report me as missing.”
“Why can’t we just contact them now and tell them about your denya?” Deke asked.
“Because she is a resident and employee of Sola Corp. They have a dozen ways to make it look like she wants to be there. Besides that, I’m sure credits have greased enough palms to make sure security won’t interfere.” He’d thought about contacting security as soon as he got on Honora Station, but Shayn remembered how easily she’d been taken. That kind of abduction took skill and bribery.
“And they won’t just bribe security to look the other way while they dispose of you?” Brax asked. His words were getting more clipped, more cold as the argument escalated and he escaped into himself to avoid his darker emotions.
“Maybe they bribe, or maybe they kick me out because it’s easier. If you had—” He clamped his mouth shut before he let the hurtful words escape.
But his brothers knew what he was going to say. “If either of us had a denya we would understand. Right?” Deke crossed his arms.
There was no use lying. “Yes,” said Shayn.
“Then do it,” Brax said, finally breaking the silence that had stretched too long to be comfortable. “We’ll be standing by. I hope you don’t die.”
“I love you, too, little brother.” He turned to Deke. “And you, of course. Stay safe.”
“That’s rich,” Deke muttered.
Shayn left them with the hope they would do as he instructed and give him time to act. As he’d spent the last days spinning fantastical rescue scenarios, his mind kept coming back to the only realistic possibility. Sola Corp was protected by electronic, android, and Oscavian surveillance. He’d been a security guard on Honora Station and he knew his way around a duty roster, but he was one man and certainly no match for the triply redundant systems guarding the building.
All the security meant that there was one way into the building.
Shayn’s taxi dropped him off and he walked up the path to the front door, greeting the android with a bright smile. “Hello, I’m Shayn NaZade. I had to leave because of a family emergency, but if the doctor approves it, I’d like to continue my testing.”
The android looked at him with a blank expression, but he tried not to feel judged. Androids were blank by default.
“One moment, sir,” it said before it went silent, probably processing his request. It took several moments and Shayn felt exposed as each second passed. Would Dr. Pitner send security in to throw him out? Or lock him up? Or worse? The plan had seemed terrible when he talked it over with his brothers, and now it was even worse. Finally the android opened its eyes. “The doctor is in a meeting, but she would like to speak with you. Please proceed down the path towards her office.” The android gestured and a stripe lit up in the floor, guiding him to where he was supposed to be.
Shayn stood straight and stepped with confidence, knowing his denya was somewhere in the building. He could feel her, knew she was close, and now that he was inside he’d need to find her and get her out. The walk to Pitner’s office was over too quickly, and the door swung open before he could knock. Whatever meeting the doctor had been in, it appeared to be over now. She didn’t rise when he entered, instead gesturing for him to take a seat. “Mr. NaZade, I’m surprised to be seeing you.”
“I came here for a reason, didn’t I?” He’d thought of every question that she might ask him, and he hoped his lies would stand up. “I had a family emergency. Quite sudden, and I needed to be home for a few days. I’m sorry I didn’t notify you before I left, that was incredibly rude of me.” Was he sounding too formal? Pitner’s face was as blank as the android’s and he didn’t know if she believed him.
“Is everything alright now?” she asked mildly.
Shayn nodded. “My brothers overreacted. By the time I made it home everything had sorted itself out.”
“Hmm,” was her response.
“Anyway, if it’s possible I’d like to continue my testing here. I think we can make real progress.” If she loved testing rare specimens so much, she couldn’t resist him, no matter how flimsy his story. He was counting on that.
“It’s interesting that you say you left because of a family emergency,” Pitner said. She waved her hands over her desk like she was trying to bring up a hologram, but nothing showed up. “Our security footage saw you leaving with another patient. And additional footage saw you with her at the space port. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were lying to me about why you left.”
Shayn didn’t react. He’d figured that security footage might link him and Naomi together and he had a response to that, even if the words tasted like ashes in his mouth. “That’s correct, I did leave the facility with another patient. She told me she wanted a little trip. And I knew the ride to Honora would be lonely, so I thought a little entertainment wouldn’t hurt. She was cute, and more than willing.” He leered, or tried to, but he wasn’t sure if he was quite able to master the expression. “We had some trouble with our ship and got separated. I thought she would have left a message for me or something, but these things happen.”
Pitner’s expression didn’t crack. “And you thought it was normal for a patient to leave without taking any of her belongings?”