Diffraction

by Jess Anastasi

  Ella didn’t answer, simply cast him a wary look, as though she could guess what was coming even without her mind-reading abilities.

  “I mean, what the freck, princess? We both know you could have blasted those Reidar into next month. Yet instead, you thought it’d be a good idea to sit back and let them snatch us.”

  “I couldn’t—”

  “I don’t want to hear another word about your frecking training.” He leaned closer, the anger and frustration at being the last place he’d vowed to ever find himself—in the custody of the Reidar—tipping toward her. “No one is making these choices for you. If you wanted to enjoy the Reidar’s special spa treatments so much, you should have said so when I met you on Arleta. I would have happily left you if I’d known you were eventually going to land me here.”

  She clasped her hands in her lap. “That’s not true, Rian, and we both know it.”

  “Isn’t it?” He shot back, voice going up a few notches.

  One of the Reidar sitting in the cockpit banged hard on the mesh cagelike door. “Keep it down back there or I’m coming in.”

  “Be my guest,” he yelled back. “Come down here and knock me out for all I care. It’s got to be better than sitting here talking with this Arynian prig.”

  Ella’s lips pressed together, the only outward sign that she hadn’t been impressed by his snark. But then the cage door was opening, one of the Reidar he’d gotten down and dirty with earlier limping in, palming a pulse pistol. Under the harsh light of the bulkhead, the guy’s mug was all kinds of messed up. Cheered him right up like a bride getting a face full of confetti.

  He pushed to his feet unsteadily, his bound hands making things a little awkward. But when he got upright, he sent the Reidar a cutting grin.

  “Hey there, big fella. What’s a guy got to do to get in-flight entertainment around here? Maybe a few chicks, bottle or two of Violaine. You feel me, right?”

  The Reidar stopped a few steps away and raised the pulse pistol, aiming it at his chest. “Neils wants you alive, but he didn’t say anything about being in good working order. So keep your mouth shut, or I’ll break your jaw and shut it for you.”

  “You Reidar aren’t so much into the people skills, are you?”

  He shuffled half a step forward, bringing himself almost within reaching distance. If he could distract this moron, get his hands on a pulse pistol, make a rush on the bridge—he’d still be left with three or four aliens to overpower if he wanted to take this vessel. But he had to try. He couldn’t just sit back and enjoy the trip to another Reidar lab or base wherever they planned to brainwash him right back into a jacked-up, cracked-out droid with no other purpose but to kill.

  “Rian, please sit down.”

  Ella’s entreating words almost distracted him, but he kept his gaze locked on the Reidar and that gun.

  “You should listen to what the bitch said and sit down.”

  Despite the fact that he’d readily insulted her himself just a minute ago, the Reidar’s words revved the anger already humming loudly through his veins.

  This time he took a full step closer, ending with the muzzle of the pulse pistol pressed to the middle of his chest.

  “Call her a bitch again. See how that ends for you.”

  The Reidar laughed, jamming the gun harder against his sternum. “She’s nothing but an uptight Arynian scrog, and when we hand you over to Niels I’m going to enjoy watching every second he plays with the bitch.”

  The anger coalesced into a single white-hot burst, and he clamped his cuffed hands over the pistol, forcing it downward as he head-butted the bastard, breaking his nose with a satisfying crack.

  A pulse pistol blast flashed through him, but not from the gun he and the now-bleeding Reidar were both still holding. His knees gave out, and he tried to resist collapsing, but the heavy bastard he’d head-butted had also taken the pulse blast and dragged him down when he collapsed. The two of them fell in a heap, and Rian rolled away to avoid getting flattened by the bigger man. He clenched every muscle in his body against the razor-sharp twitching of his muscles as the pulse subsided.

  A second Reidar marched in, muttering under his breath. He grabbed his fallen partner by the collar and dragged him out of the cage. As soon as he stepped foot on the other side of the door, he dropped his burden and slammed the hold closed again.

  Rian blew out a pained breath, lying on his back and shoving the new assault to his central nervous system down.

  “Was there a point to that?”

  He lolled his head to the side, where Ella had shifted closer, sitting cross-legged next to him.

  “I thought if I could get his pulse pistol and make it out of the hold, I might have a chance of taking the ship.” He dragged both hands over his face, fatigue ramming him like an asteroid. His muscles were weakening, aching, that pulse blast stealing the last of his energy. His chest felt too tight, making it hard to breathe, and in the back of his mind, he knew he’d probably lost more blood than he could afford to part with.

  “Thank you for trying.”

  He opened his eyes and forced himself to sit up, despite the way everything tilted and spun around him. “I didn’t do it for you. No offense, princess, but right now, the only person I’m interested in saving is myself.”

  “And you think I’ll believe it a sin that your priority is to save yourself?”

  Damn it to hell, his brain was not up to the task of sorting out the meaning in her Arynian speak.

  “Honestly, I don’t care what you think. I only care about escaping these bastards before we arrive wherever they’re headed.”

  “Why?” She studied him as though she could still see into his very depths, despite the band on her wrists keeping her abilities at bay.

  “Besides the obvious torture?” What exactly was she looking for him to admit? And why did he even let himself get drawn into these convoluted conversations? He should have been conserving what energy he had and formulating a plan.

  “Besides the obvious,” she repeated with a nod.

  He didn’t need to answer, didn’t owe her any explanation. Yet the words were there, despite his aversion to any touchy-feely-sharing-time stuff.

  “Reidar assassins are highly trained, highly skilled, single-minded in their focus.” He dropped his gaze to the metal grate floor beneath him, clamping a hand over the stab wound in his side that was aching with more insistency. “There’s a lot I don’t remember from that time, but I know I wasn’t just a single Reidar assassin. I was the perfect assassin. The one they’d honed to precision with their brainwashing and reprogramming and god-knows whatever else they did to me.”

  “Rian—” She reached for him, but he shifted away from her touch. He didn’t deserve even the most basic human decency. Not after everything he’d done, everything he was capable of. In the intervening years, onboard the Imojenna, he’d actually managed to somewhat remove himself from the reality of the monster he was, separating it to a different entity that existed deep inside him. But there was no division, no two separate halves. It was only him.

  “If the Reidar succeed in turning me back into what I once was, no one in this universe will be safe. Not my sister or what’s left of my crew. And especially not you.”

  He cut off the last weak parts of himself that shied away from the truth. Because there was only one path he could take. He had to escape. Or die trying.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Kira wrapped her fingers around the handle of her med case, finally feeling anchored in a whirling storm that only kept getting darker and more chaotic.

  Tannin had laid Nyah down on one of the bunks in the back of the skimmer, and she was finally showing signs of coming around. Not that it would do her much good. She was about to knock the poor girl out again so she could use an MRD to repair the nasty wound.

  The skimmer’s control panel chimed with an incoming message, and Lianna pulled her comm out as Zahli crouched down near Nyah’s shoulder, reassuring he
r with quiet words.

  “Message from Qae. They took the Ebony Winter through a transit gate, so they’re in-system. Should be here in about half an hour,” Lianna reported.

  As Kira set her medical kit on the bunk opposite Nyah and started pulling out various items she’d need, arranging them in order, she couldn’t decide if she’d be relieved or sad about leaving the skimmer. The craft was way too small and not made for the kind of travel they’d likely have to do when they went after Rian and Ella, especially now that they’d added Jase and Colt to their traveling band. But it was also the last link to the Imojenna, and she was missing her home more with every hour that passed.

  Putting the dismal wish out of her mind, she shifted over and knelt next to Zahli.

  “How are you doing, Nyah?”

  “It hurts.” Her words were strained, running together, as she shifted restlessly on the cot.

  “I know. I’m going to do something about that right now, okay?”

  Nyah gave a jerking nod, and Kira leaned over, shooting the dose of sedative and painkiller into her neck. Almost immediately, she relaxed, body going limp until she fell still and her eyes slid closed on a long exhale.

  “How long will she be out?” Zahli climbed to her feet, moving to stand with Tannin, where the others were all watching from the last row of seats in the front half of the skimmer.

  “Probably about two hours, but it won’t take me that long to repair the wound. I’ve got to do a scan, but I’m pretty sure the injury is mostly superficial.”

  “Will you be done by the time Qae arrives? I want to go as soon as the Ebony Winter lands.”

  She nodded absently as she used the handheld scanner to confirm what she’d suspected about the shallow injury. “It’ll be close, but yes, I’ll be finishing up around then.”

  “Good,” Zahli replied, resolution in her voice. “Now, tell us how and where to find Rian.”

  Zahli turned toward Varean—where he stood slightly apart with La’thar and Ko’en—a formidable glare aimed in his direction. Kira needed to concentrate on healing Nyah, as she swapped the scanner for the MRD and picked the apparatus to connect for healing a wound of this type. But she was too damn interested in exactly how Varean and the two Mar’keish were going to help them.

  “It’ll take some time for me to find the information.”

  “Of course it will.” Lianna cocked a hip, hand pointedly resting on a razar. “Maybe you just need some extra motivation.”

  “You want to find Rian, shooting me with that damned stun gun is the last thing you should be doing. Accessing the Reidar’s shared consciousness isn’t exactly easy. I’ll need my strength, not be half dazed from my brain getting scrambled.”

  “And how do you expect us to trust anything you say?” Lianna shot back. “Forget the half Reidar thing for a minute, and we’re still left with a mind-wraith. And everyone knows the old stories about them.”

  Varean’s stance was tense with frustration, but his expression remained patient. “If that were the case, I could have already used those abilities to get anything I wanted. Instead, I’m standing here with an offer of help.”

  “How is accessing the Reidar’s consciousness going to help us find Rian?” Zahli asked.

  “It’ll take some searching, and it’s going to expose my existence to the rest of the Reidar, but all knowledge of the Reidar is pooled there. As long as at least one Reidar knows Rian’s whereabouts, I should be able to find that information.”

  “How?” Zahli pressed, voicing the same thought she’d had at Varean’s explanation, even though Kira was pretending to ignore the conversation as she worked on Nyah. “If all Reidar knowledge is in one giant bubble—”

  “Like I said, it’s hard to explain. There are actually no real words for it. The whole thing is so alien. But to simplify, it’s kind of like a search engine on the net. Type in Rian’s name then search the hits that come up until I find what I’m looking for.”

  “Psychic Reidar internet?” Lianna muttered from the front of the skimmer. “That doesn’t sound stupid at all.”

  Zahli shot Lianna a brief, annoyed look. “How long will it take you?”

  “I have no idea.” Varean dragged a hand over his hair.

  Her heart squeezed. She had to clamp down on the urge to tell him not to do this, to say she agreed with Lianna, that they’d find Rian some other way. What would it mean for him once the Reidar at large knew of his existence?

  The two Mar’keish had said those who’d been responsible for creating Varean had otherwise destroyed all the others like him, along with the evidence that the hybrids had ever existed. Why?

  The scientist in her desperately wanted to know the answer. What if there was a chance that whatever the Reidar had been trying to hide about hybrids was the key to their undoing?

  What if Varean was the single element they needed to bring down the Reidar?

  But she was biased when it came to Varean and this situation. What if she was just looking for reasons for him to stay? She couldn’t let herself go there. Varean was safer with the Mar’keish. If she started thinking there was a chance of him not needing to disappear from her life, it was only going to hurt that much more when he inevitably walked away.

  …

  Varean had never been one to regret his decisions, and he certainly wasn’t going to start now. But Kira’s cold shoulder act was definitely making him wonder if coming back had been the best idea. Maybe he could have found some way to help them without actually being here.

  His Mar’keish abilities continued to elude him, but apparently, for better or worse, he was completely open to his alien self. In this instance, though, it was probably exactly what he needed.

  La’thar and Ko’en had instructed him how to skim the edges of the Reidar consciousness and keep his existence hidden. They’d warned him not to dive into the seemingly infinite depths of knowledge and spend only short amounts of time connected or risk the Reidar becoming aware of his presence.

  Unfortunately, in order to find Rian like he’d promised, he was going to have to risk everything the pair had cautioned him not to do.

  But it wasn’t as simple as it sounded, his human side continuing to limit his effectiveness. And the one thing he hadn’t mentioned to Kira, the one bitch of a drawback, was that his brain wasn’t designed to withstand accessing that level of consciousness or process that much complex information. The result was an increasing ache in his head that eventually turned into a migraine.

  La’thar and Ko’en had only started to do a full medical work-up, beginning with basic tests, before they’d discovered intel about the attack.

  La’thar had warned him not to push himself, because the results could end up being bad. As in, his brain melting out his ears bad. He didn’t want to think the worst of the Mar’keish, but he got the feeling their offer to “help” was more about not letting him out of their sight.

  So yeah, this all might end messy and painful for him, but he didn’t for a second consider not going through with it. He owed Kira for every moment she’d stood up for him. For helping him discover the truth of his origins, even if it wasn’t exactly the stuff of fairy tales. Yet it went deeper than simply owing her, to a place no other person had ever touched—a depth in his soul where she’d compromised him, and he’d enjoyed every second of it.

  Zahli had left the other two Mar’keish and him alone a while ago, and the others were obviously wary of the pair. While their race had supposedly died out decades ago, the shocking stories had lived on. Rumors abounded that the Mar’keish could make a person do almost anything with mind control or cause a person to stroke or have an aneurism to kill them without a trace. La’thar and Ko’en hadn’t said anything about those kinds of abilities. Of course, they hadn’t really said much of anything, initially focusing more on his Reidar side.

  They’d taken seats in the last row of the skimmer, but he was aware of the attention and scrutiny. The Imojenna’s crew was waiting fo
r him to come up with the answer to Rian’s whereabouts. And he had no doubt that if he failed, Lianna would happily follow through on her promise to kill him.

  He forced himself to breathe evenly, putting aside the knowledge that Kira was just a few feet behind him and, more than anything, he wanted to make things right with her. But if this worked and he didn’t happen to turn his brain to mush, he’d have to go on the run and never look back. The Reidar would never stop coming for him. Anyone close to him would be in danger.

  “You remember how to turn your mind inward?” La’thar asked, keeping his voice low.

  He nodded, trying to get a handle on his racing thoughts. “It’s not so easy here, with all the distraction.”

  “The Mar’keish side of you is all about intuition,” Ko’en said. “You’ve felt your abilities within you all your life, became good at hiding and ignoring them. When you find that spark, that path inside you, everything will open up, and you will know our ways without having to practice or be taught.”

  He clenched his fists on the armrests of the chair, the frustration making what he had to do that much harder. They’d said it a dozen times already, made it sound so easy, like he could look into his mind, flip on a switch, and suddenly be able to do all kinds of tricks.

  “Though easier to access now, your Reidar side will be more difficult to master,” Ko’en continued. “There is a component of utter darkness in the Reidar soul. If you take too much of that into yourself, you will become the darkness, become like them.”

  Okay, that was new information. And now he had confirmation that was what he’d felt deep within himself on the Imojenna. The uncharacteristic aggression, the urge to lash out of control, the desire to use violence instead of calm logic…it was his Reidar side.

  “You know of what we speak,” La’thar concluded.

  He would have been surprised, but he’d worked out in the first two minutes in their company that they could straight-out read his mind.