Quantum

by Jess Anastasi

“Just give me a few minutes to freshen up, and I’ll join you.” Her voice came out monotone, all but empty.

  Rian eyed her closely then moved back. He hooked his hands into his weapons belt, not looking back as he disappeared into the passageway.

  For a second she stood there, resisting the urge to find Zander. While she wanted to explain, to lay it all out on the line, he wanted space.

  Maybe it was for the best. Okay, him hating her wasn’t the most ideal way to finish what had been something singular developing between them. But hadn’t she been telling herself the end was inevitable? She’d put her own life at risk by burning her UAFA clearance and cared too much about Zander to have him bear the burden of that threat as well. If they separated on hostile terms, it wouldn’t be pleasant, but it would be more manageable than the alternative. If he got killed because of her—

  She couldn’t even finish the thought. Yeah, that would be so much worse.

  She’d devoted herself to protecting him. If she wanted to continue keeping him safe, the best thing she could do was walk away. As much as it hurt now, she’d rather feel this pain and know Zander was safe.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Tripoli, Barbary Belt

  Rian hefted the second crate of Violaine, stashing it away in one of the ship’s contraband compartments. He should have come to Tripoli for some trading ages ago. The two boxes of Violaine—twelve bottles in each crate—had cost almost half of what he’d paid on some other planets. Apparently, the violet-colored hard liquor was a favorite among many residents of the Barbary Belt, so the drink was in good supply.

  And he didn’t really want to consider what it said about him that he and a bunch of psychotic pirates shared an affinity for the same liquor.

  Once the crates were secured, he stepped back to close the panel and then picked up the new bottle of Violaine he’d kept out to take to his cabin. When he spotted Ella standing by the bottom of the stairs, he stopped.

  Frecking hell. He’d managed to avoid being alone with her since they’d left Nadira. He glanced past her, hoping Nyah might be hovering in the background, but there wasn’t another soul on this level of the ship. In fact, they were running on a skeleton crew, since half his people had left about an hour ago to shop in Tripoli’s infamous bazaar. Though not many sane people would willingly travel into the Barbary Belt, the markets were legendary for the quality and variety of products available.

  With the IPC after him for those trumped-up charges of intergalactic terrorism, plus the Reidar stepping up their pursuit of them, Tripoli might end up becoming their second home, which was why he’d let his sister and a few of the others venture out into the city. The sooner his crew got familiar with the place, the better.

  He closed his fist tighter around the neck of the bottle as he crossed the cargo bay floor. “Were you in need of something, princess?”

  A small smile touched her serene expression. “I see you’ve managed to restock.”

  With her standing there, he couldn’t walk up without touching her, and she didn’t look like she planned on moving any time soon. Goddamn it.

  “I assume you’re not here to discuss my excessive predilection for Violaine.”

  She tilted her head. “Is that a discussion you feel you need to have with someone, Rian?”

  “Oh, hell no.” He pointed a finger at her. “Don’t you try any of that confounding Arynian psychoanalytical stuff on me.”

  “Of course not.”

  He might have been mistaken, but he could have sworn he saw a hint of humor in her moss-colored eyes before she glanced away from him.

  “So, I’ll repeat my question. Did you need something, or did one of the others send you to monitor my stash of Violaine in case they decide I need an intervention or something?”

  She returned her gaze to him, and something in the way she looked at him made anticipation and unease churn through him in a confusion cocktail.

  Maybe he should just knuckle down and slip by her, wear whatever weird sensations came with touching her even briefly, and then take a trip to oblivion via his shiny new bottle of Violaine.

  She reached out and braced a hand against the stair rail, like she’d guessed his intent. She hadn’t read his mind—he’d warned her to never do that again, and he could tell when she was using her freaky Arynian abilities on him. No, apparently she just knew him that well. And the realization sent shivers chasing down his spine and out along his limbs.

  “I didn’t come looking for you with anything particular in mind.” Her slow, thoughtful words dragged his attention back to her gorgeous face. “We haven’t had one moment alone since we left Nadira. Though I’m guessing that hasn’t been an accident.”

  They both knew the truth, and it wasn’t something he was willing to discuss, ever. But she wanted to have a conversation? Well, there were a few things he wanted answered for himself.

  “Fine. You want to talk? How about you tell me what the hell that was back there on Nadira?”

  “What do you mean?” The shadow of levity disappeared from her gaze, leaving her looking wary.

  He shifted closer, resting one boot on the first step and bracing his free hand against the end of the stair rail. “We both know you’ve got some formidable abilities, so why didn’t you use them to escape the moment that guy touched you?”

  Tension stiffened her usually relaxed posture. “I’ve told you before, my training—”

  “Yeah, you told me how you’re forbidden from using your power unless someone directly threatens your life. Except, oh, I think that guy planned on raping you and throwing your dead body into the lake.” Annoyance flitted through him. She had the ability to do just about anything but refused to, simply because some other stiff-necked priests on Aryn had told her so?

  Her gaze became sharp. “If he had imperiled my life, I would have retaliated.”

  “But in the meantime, you’d just lie there and let him assault you, because technically that’s not a threat to your life? Sounds like a ridiculously thin line you’re walking there.” Aggravation rippled hotly through him. The more he heard about this Arynian training, the less he liked. If he hadn’t turned up, would she really have let herself get raped when she had the ability to do something about it? What kind of a thing was that to teach a person?

  Her shoulders bunched. “We are gifted with a power most people can only dream of. And one of the first lessons we learn, one we spend years mastering, is not to use those powers to hurt others no matter what they do to us, unless we are certain, without any doubt, that they will kill us.”

  “That’s all well and good in a classroom, but in case you haven’t noticed, we’re light-years away from Aryn, and the universe is a nasty place. If you want to survive this war against the Reidar, you’re going to have to forget your training and get your hands dirty.”

  “You don’t understand. It wasn’t simply a matter of sitting down to some lessons. They conditioned us not to retaliate.”

  A shaft of icy apprehension sliced through him. And partly, he hated himself for even that murmur of emotion. Why did the thought of anyone hurting her spark off the violence inside him?

  “What do you mean by conditioned?”

  She half turned away. “I’ve already said more than I should. I just wanted you to understand that it wasn’t simply logical choice that stopped me from acting. And now that I’ve answered your question, you can answer mine. It’s not a coincidence that we haven’t been alone for a single second since leaving Nadira, is it?”

  Back to this again? The woman was too damned stubborn. He shoved his hair off his face, the beads on his wrist tinkling lightly.

  “What do you want from me, princess?” The words were rough and blunt and restlessness started to rumble through him, emotions and sentiments churning that he refused to allow into the light of day.

  “Avoiding me won’t change what’s inside you, Rian.”

  He clenched his jaw, dragging in an uneven breath. “And you k
now all about my demons, don’t you?”

  She reached out to touch him, but he caught her wrist before she could make contact, anger whipping hard and fast through him.

  “You know better than anyone why I don’t like to be touched, particularly by you, sorceress.” The words were almost a growl as he roughly released her.

  Her expression became stubborn. “Touch can heal, Rian. Like any wound, it hurts at first, but eventually the pain will fade. Especially if you let others tend to your injuries.”

  The words sliced through him, cutting down everything in their path. His control slipped a notch, and he surged forward to pin her up against the railing, her petite body yielding against his harder one, a single hand clamping on the rail since the other was occupied with his Violaine. As usual, warm, evocative energy sparked from every place their bodies touched. “Is that what you want to do, tend to all the places I hurt?”

  She braced her hands on the bar either side of herself and tilted her chin up to meet his gaze. “You can’t intimidate me.”

  Frustration smashed through what remained of the thin walls of his civility. It was so easy for her to stand there and tell him all these things, and while she might have seen some of his memories, she had no idea of the reality he’d lived through.

  Nothing would heal him. Those wounds would forever be open and festering. The only thing he could do was cover them so no one else could see them.

  He leaned closer. “You’re so confident, thinking that deep down I’m still a good man. But you’re not safe from me. That first night you were onboard this ship, I almost took you like an animal on the floor.”

  Her chin rose a notch higher. “I know. I saw that moment from your perspective when I was healing you. And you know what I took from that scene?”

  He clamped his teeth together as his blood started running hotter, remembering that raw moment, the closest he’d come to totally losing control in a long time. Whatever came out of her mouth next, he was sure he didn’t want to hear it. But now that he had her up against him, unable to escape his hold, he couldn’t make himself move away.

  “You fought for control and you won, because you knew giving in to that darkness inside you was the wrong thing to do. If those aren’t the actions of a good man, then tell me otherwise.”

  Another burning tide of antagonism crashed through him, and he grabbed a handful of the hair at her nape. “You’re too naive, princess. So I resisted the black hole inside me one time, but you saw what I did to that man on Nadira. And the truth is, sometimes I don’t want to fight the darkness. Sometimes I want to revel in it.”

  “Is that supposed to scare me?” she whispered. “Are you trying to warn me off or simply confessing?”

  “I don’t know. You seem to be the one with all the answers here.” He tightened his grip on her, something inside him shifting, almost as if the shadows and his conscience were melding into a single agreement, instead of warring like they usually did. “And if you can’t work it out, I’m not going to bother protecting you any longer.”

  She took in a breath, and her body shifted subtly against his. “I never asked you to protect me from anything.”

  He let his gaze travel across her gorgeous face, past her soft pink lips, down the line of her throat to the rounded neckline of her dress.

  Just a taste.

  The words whispered through him like sand on a desert wind. He wouldn’t kiss her. No, that would mean—

  He didn’t know what that would mean, but it was definitely something he refused to contemplate. But since she kept putting herself in his way, since she infuriated him, tempted him, pushed him to face the things inside that should be left well enough alone, he would get a taste of her dark-golden skin, just this once.

  Rian pressed harder against her, relishing the sensation of her body against his, and used his grip in her hair to tilt her head back. She gasped, but the energy coursing between them told him the sound hadn’t been fear or pain.

  He lowered his head and set his lips just above her collarbone. The sensation of her flesh beneath his mouth was better than a hit of Violaine, going straight to his head and buzzing through his limbs. He laved his tongue upward, tasting the sweet, soft give of her skin, until he reached the underside of her chin. With gentle violence, he grazed his teeth over the line of her jaw, resisting the urge to bite down harder, to simply take her lips in a savage kiss that would satisfy both the man and the shadows lurking within.

  She shuddered, the whisper of a moan escaping her throat.

  Christ. That almost undid him, almost sent him hurtling straight into the place inside himself he was trying to avoid. He turned his face away, grappling for some fraying threads of control, locking down every single muscle in his body.

  After a long moment of battling to get his thin mantle of civility back into place, he stepped away, leaving her staring at him, her breathing uneven.

  “You come looking for me alone again, you know what the consequences will be.”

  He didn’t wait for her to answer but turned to stomp up the stairs, heading for his cabin and hoping she didn’t see his words for the empty threat they were.

  Truthfully, he didn’t trust himself with her, so Ella thinking she could have faith in him was nothing short of foolish. Yeah, that parting threat meant absolutely nothing, because he couldn’t ever imagine loosening his tenuous control enough to contemplate the things she stirred within him, let alone act on them.

  As he reached the upper level of the ship, he twisted the lid off his new Violaine, but before he could raise the bottle to his mouth, Tannin appeared at the hatchway of the captain’s cabin, expression grim.

  “Oh, good, I was just coming to find you.” He nodded at the bottle. “I guess that means you got a new supply of Violaine? Good, because holy crap, could I use some right now.”

  Before he could reply, Tannin reached down and took the liquor, helping himself to a long chug.

  “What’s wrong?” Rian accepted the bottle back as Tannin wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  “The Imojenna’s computer finally finished translating the files we stole from the secret Reidar lab on Nadira.”

  Ice crystallized in his chest and sent chills chasing through his limbs. Thank frecking christ he’d restocked his liquor supply. He took a few mouthfuls to fortify himself, because if whatever Tannin had found was enough to send the usually steady tech analyst to the bottle, then it was going to be in the realms of epically bad.

  “What were they doing in there?”

  Tannin dragged a hand across the lower half of his face. “It was all genetic and DNA stuff. We’d need a specialist in the field to really understand the full extent of the research, but from what I could glean, they were experimenting with combining Reidar and human DNA. Or using humans to breed Reidar, I think. It’s the stuff of biological nightmares.”

  The only words his brain could come up with were what the hell? Why in god’s name did the Reidar want to use humans for breeding? Had it just been some creepy experiments in the larger scale of atrocious research they were doing on humans? Because he had some firsthand experience in that kind of thing.

  Or had there been a specific purpose for this line of study?

  “I can see all the same questions I came up with are running through your head.” Tannin shoved his hands in his pockets, expression grim. “If we could find a geneticist, we might be able to get some answers. But going on some wild speculation alone, what if this is the reason the Reidar are invading us? What if, for some reason, their species is failing due to fertility issues, so they’ve come looking for a new way to propagate their race?”

  “Because shape-shifting to look like us and infiltrating our government and military wasn’t repulsive enough already.” Rian brought the bottle up and took a quick mouthful of Violaine.

  This was the stuff of nightmares. For the first time since the Reidar had nabbed him all those years ago, he had something to be thankful for. If he’d la
nded in a lab where they were doing some kind of breeding experiments—

  He shuddered and covered the reaction with another hit of liquor.

  “We should probably consider bringing in someone from the genetics field if we want to know the full story,” Tannin said.

  Rian shook his head. “For the moment, let’s just see what Kira makes of it. Hopefully she can tell us something. If not, then I’ll think about it. The more people we mix into this mess, the bigger target we become.”

  “You’re right, but this can only end in one way—an all-out war. If that’s the case, we need all the people we can get.”

  Yeah, he’d signed on for this fight and asked a handful of people to help him, despite the very real risk they could all end up dead. Yet in these past months, more and more people had joined their ranks, and every single one of them added another weight to his shoulders…could be another bead waiting to join the many already circling his wrist.

  “Is the file up on the viewer in my office?” His voice came out with a hint of weariness dragging it down.

  Tannin gestured toward the open hatchway. “I left it all open for you to read. If you want I can—”

  “No. You’ve done enough for today, Everette. Go find Zahli and take a beat. Enjoy some downtime while you can, because you’re right, a war is coming. Things are about to get bloody.”

  Judging by Tannin’s tight expression, Rian guessed he’d wanted to say something else. Instead, the tech analyst sent him a short nod and headed for the stairs.

  Rian sighed and walked into his cabin, setting the half-empty bottle of Violaine on his desk. The liquor had sparked some of the cold places inside him, but he was going to need a clear head if he was going to read a file on DNA and genetics. Christ.

  Of all the things he could have guessed about that Reidar lab, none of them would have been as far-fetched as a Reidar-human breeding program.

  The Reidar were ten steps ahead of them, and with each new revelation, he could see how far behind humans really were. Considering the depth and breadth of the invasion already complete, and the sheer unknown number of aliens who’d already infiltrated so many of society’s facets, he couldn’t help but wonder if mankind had already lost this fight but simply hadn’t realized it yet.