Entropy

by Jess Anastasi

  “I come from excellent linage.”

  “Never mind Ella. It’s your bad side we should all be worried about.” The words were serious, but she could see him working hard not to smile.

  “Do you think Rian will go for it?”

  “He’d be crazy not to. It’ll take some research and planning, but we just happen to have one of the best hackers in the universe at our disposal. And as for the rest? Well, let’s just say when Rian Sherron makes his mind up about something, the rest of the galaxy better watch out.” He hopped off the crate and held out a hand for her. “Come on, he should be starting to get over his mantrum now. We might be able to talk sense to him.”

  “Mantrum?” she repeated in confusion as Qae led her toward the stairs.

  “Oh yeah. Mantrum is when a grown man has a tantrum. Rian has a foul temper. I knew he was going to be pissed when he woke up, and I didn’t want any of that misdirected at you. He’s good at doing that. Doesn’t mean anything by it. Just that you never know which direction he’s going to lash out, and I figured Ella and Varean could handle his hissy fit while you and I talked.”

  She laughed but tried to cover it up at the idea of the infamous Rian Sherron having a hissy fit like a teenage girl.

  Qae glance over at her with a mischievous smile. “Go ahead and laugh. It’s better than crying, I always find. I won’t tell him.”

  They reached the first landing and she pulled to a stop. Now that she knew everything about Qae and the crew—as well as the dark secrets the universe was hiding—she was blown away by his attitude and way of dealing with things. Any other man— A lesser man might have broken under the weight of such things. Might have run away and let it be someone else’s problem. Or might have become a harder, morose version of themselves. No doubting Qae was hard when he needed to be. Formidable and utterly merciless. But he still chose to look on the bright side. Still made a joke instead of complaining. Still flirted and charmed his way around the universe like he didn’t have a care in the world. Of course, it was probably his coping mechanism, but he had to know it made it easier on those around them.

  When he noticed she’d stopped, he came back down the few steps he’d climbed and stopped in front of her.

  “Something wrong? You’re not having second thoughts, are you? I know what I said about Rian’s temper, but I won’t let him—”

  She stepped into him, lightly setting her hands on his upper chest as she leaned in and kissed him briefly, almost chastely, on the lips, not giving him a chance to react. It was only a split second, but it sparked through her body in a way she’d never before felt.

  She let her hands drop away and went to step back, but Qae caught her at the last second by the hips and held her in place.

  “What was that for?” His voice deepened, with a husky edge that sent a shiver rippling down her spine.

  “You’re amazing, Qaelan Forster. You know that, right?” She smiled as she repeated his words to her from earlier.

  Except he totally ruined the moment by sending her a smug grin as he let her go.

  “Of course I’m amazing. You’ve seen me naked.” He sent her a wink and turned to jog up the steps, leaving her rolling her eyes before she followed after him. The guy was impossible. Except that was exactly why she’d started falling for him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rian surged upright as he was ripped back into reality with all the subtleness of a crashing asteroid. He clutched a hand against his chest, because the last thing he remembered was having it ripped out over and over—

  No, that had been a nightmare. A hallucination. It hadn’t actually happened.

  He panted, trying to get his breath back, snatching a wild glance around, unsurprised to find Ella and Varean both grabbing on to him. Ella had a hand on his neck, while on the opposite side of the gurney, Varean was holding one of his arms, both of them trying to calm him down. He was in the medbay on the Ebony Winter.

  “I’m okay,” he managed to get out, voice hoarse. He swallowed, his mind finally separating the here and now from the murky depths of the nightmares he’d been trapped in. He forced himself to sort out what had been real and what had been drug-induced delusion.

  Rajak Haan. That was the last thing he remembered. Frecking Rajak standing over him as he’d slipped into oblivion, but not before he’d—

  “So, seems you got my message.”

  Ella and Varean shared a quick surprised look, before Varean laughed in relief.

  “Yeah, we got your message and then some.” Varean let him go and shifted back, while Ella let her hand slip down to his shoulder.

  “Then some?” he repeated, but even as he said the words, he was becoming aware.

  Aware of Ella and Varean. Not just standing in the medbay looking at him. In his head. Like part of his brain now belonged to them. He couldn’t read their thoughts or anything, but he could get a definite sense of their emotions. Right now, they were both radiating varying levels of confusion and concern. Though Varean had a side of pissed off with his. He tried to shove them out, tried to block it, but they were stuck fast. Woven into the very fabric of his absolute self. A low note of unease vibrated through him, but was quickly and thoroughly quashed.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Kira stepped up and aimed some kind of scanner at him, presumably to check his vitals or some other medical whatever. “You were drugged—”

  “He’s not talking about that,” Varean gently interrupted her.

  “No, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about how the two of you have taken up residence in my head.”

  Funny, but he would have thought this kind of thing would have tipped his rage to flash-point in a nanosecond, like when Ella had healed him that time and seen everything in his mind. But he was strangely calm and serene.

  Serene? He didn’t frecking do serene.

  Wait. Those weren’t his feelings. They were coming from—

  “Stop that,” he snapped at Ella. Except all she did was smile at him. He practically growled at her, but she didn’t give up the calmness she was radiating at him, keeping his anger at bay.

  “Ella.”

  “Stow it, Rian. She’s not going to stop.” There was a definite hint of amusement in Varean’s voice. “It’s so much easier to talk to you when we know you’re not about to rage-out on us.”

  “What’s going on?” Kira interrupted, sounding confused. “His brain waves are reading like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s like there’s three people in his head.”

  “That’s because there are.” Rian tried to section off the parts of his mind that apparently now belonged to Varean and Ella, tried to escape the sense of serenity that was so utterly foreign, but he was having no luck. And despite the fact he was extremely unimpressed about this turn of events, he had to admit, the fact he wasn’t struggling to keep his anger and the darkness at bay, or looking for the nearest bottle of Violaine, was kind of a relief.

  “Someone needs to start explaining.” Kira set down her instruments and turned her best doctor glare on them.

  “Pretty sure Ella is the only one who actually knows.” Varean gestured at the priestess and then went to sit himself down on a nearby stool like he was in for the long haul.

  Ella took her hand away from him and straightened to take a step back, though the lack of physical contact didn’t lessen the solidity of her in his mind.

  “Okay, this is a little complicated.” Ella clasped her hands behind her back and seemed to take a moment to gather her thoughts. “You know that Arynians worship the universe as its own deity, its own god, its own power. We took science and made it a religion, because often the metaphysical has roots in reality. Many of our teachings are based in quantum physics. We worship the power and truth of them. They are the building blocks of life and all its mystery. In our case, the three of us have ascended to a state that many Arynians spend their lives trying to achieve.”

  Ella paused, and Rian felt a rip
ple of her disbelief and awe. She understood the logic of what was happening, but if he was reading her feelings correctly, she couldn’t believe it had happened to her with no planning or effort whatsoever. Meanwhile, Varean was simply accepting and trying to understand.

  “The entropy of entanglement. An entanglement measure for a many-bodied quantum state,” she recited the words with a hint of reverence.

  “That’s what you said back on the Black Docks,” Varean said. “But I still don’t get it.”

  “The three of us, we are one quantifiable force. We each affect the other. One cannot function to its full potential without the other. We don’t just have a low-level telepathic connection anymore; our minds are now like one entity. A part of each other, but also separate.”

  “Okay, but how do we undo it?” Probably it was lucky Ella was radiating all that calm at him, otherwise he definitely would have lost his shite over this latest frecking development.

  “We don’t.” Ella passed a firm look between the two of them. “Technically, we could. There are ways, but it could cause irreparable psychological damage.”

  “Been there, done that,” Rian murmured in a tight voice. He’d hated the fact Ella had seen into the dark depths of him, and now she’d taken up permanent residence in his mind? Both she and Varean? What the hell was he supposed to do with that?

  Except—

  Except it felt right. He felt—

  Whole.

  Jezus christ. He felt whole. Not healed. Not made right after all the Reidar had done to him. But it was like he’d been missing pieces of himself for his whole life and now he’d suddenly found them. Of course, that created a short, vicious whirlwind of absolute panic through him because he didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do with this, but once again it calmed quickly as Ella sent stronger waves of serenity at him.

  He met her gaze, emotion crossing her features before she schooled them. She couldn’t read his thoughts—well she could if she wanted to, she just wasn’t at that moment—but she could feel what he was feeling, the same way he could feel what she and Varean were feeling. And they were actually…

  Fine.

  They were fine with it. This was the craziest frecking thing that’d ever happened to him—and that was saying something, considering he’d been captured and tortured by aliens. It was the craziest thing that had ever happened to him, but apparently Ella and Varean thought it was totally fine. If Ella would stop smothering him with all that Zen, then maybe he could start working out what the hell he felt about it.

  “I hate to use the word.” Ella cleared her throat when her voice came out a little husky. “But I think this was destiny. The three of us were always on a collision course. No matter what we’d done in life, we would have always arrived at this point. It would have been inevitable. We’re like particles brought together by forces greater than ourselves.”

  Was this the answer, why he’d felt drawn to Ella on an elemental level ever since the first moment he’d laid eyes on her? Why ripples of energy radiated through him at the simplest touch from her? Neither of them had understood what had been happening between them and tried to avoid the whole thing. Except it had all been a waste of energy, because here they were, a fixed point in each other’s minds.

  And Varean. Though he hadn’t trusted the guy when he’d first met him, once the commando had saved his life, their bond had been instantaneous. He could stand Varean touching him or talking to him in ways he hadn’t with anyone else. He’d assumed it was because of the way Varean had brought him back from the brink of death. But Ella was saying it all had to do with this entanglement thing.

  “What does this mean?” Kira asked, sounding worried, even though she clearly tried to cover it up.

  Ella smiled and stepped over to set a gentle hand on her shoulder. “It doesn’t mean anything for you. Varean still loves you to pieces and he always will. You don’t need to worry about getting squeezed out.”

  “I wasn’t— I didn’t mean—” Kira actually blushed a little. The doctor blew out a sharp breath. “Fine. I kind of did. But it’s a lot to take in.”

  Varean got up from the stool and shifted around the gurney to take her in his arms.

  “Nothing is going to change the way I feel about you.” He kissed the top of her head, holding her close.

  Rian got a wave of those feelings firsthand, which pretty much made him want to throw up. “Okay, we need to fix this right now. It’s bad enough watching Varean get all goofy over Kira. I don’t need to feel it as well.”

  Varean cast him a surprised look and then at least had the decency to look somewhat embarrassed.

  “Now I’m seeing why this is a problem,” Varean muttered.

  Ella, however, didn’t seem all that concerned. Of course for her, this kind of thing came with the territory of being an Arynian. For him, it was going to take some getting used to. Not that he was quite yet ready to admit defeat and live with it. There had to be some way to reverse it without lobotomizing the lot of them.

  “There are techniques we can learn to block each other when we need to. But it’ll take practice. And it means you’re going to have to come to our mediation sessions, Rian.”

  Oh jezus. Just shoot him now. “Are you sure I couldn’t just go drink a bottle of Violaine and stay permanently wasted instead?”

  “I’m pretty sure your kidneys would object to that plan,” Kira muttered with an eyeroll.

  “Fine.” He crossed his arms, settling a stern look on Ella. “I’ll come to some of your meditation sessions. If I’m going to do this, if we’re going to do this, you have to let me be. So pull back on all that Zen you’re firing at me.”

  For a second, it seemed like Ella wasn’t going to give up the calm she’d been smothering him in since he’d woken up. But with her small nod, he felt it gradually receding until her emotions weren’t affecting him any longer. He could still feel her, a steady, reassuring presence, an oasis of serenity in the jumble of his mind, while Varean was more like an immoveable anchor, strength and resilience that wouldn’t ever let him stumble. He wondered what he felt like to them, but then decided he didn’t want to know.

  The old familiar rage unfurled slowly instead of snapping back like he’d expected it to. It was part of who he was and he felt more like himself once that fury was back to a constant simmer in the depths of him. Most people would probably find it utterly insane that such a burning anger was the core of him the way most people maintained contentment or happiness, but without it, he wouldn’t be standing here. Wouldn’t be able to do what needed to be done. Some of it was now being expended on the fact the universe had found a new and inventive way to freck with him.

  “So,” Varean said, gaining everyone’s attention. “After all that, did you at least confirm whether or not Alvar Galton has the Imojenna?”

  “If he didn’t, I’m going to vent Rian out the nearest hatch for pulling a stunt like that,” Qae said as he entered the medbay with Cami in tow.

  Rian crossed his arms, but didn’t reply to Qae’s jab. He didn’t need to justify the fact that he’d been trying to protect the crew… Mostly from himself.

  “Galton has the Imojenna. Seems he made no secret of it. He was trying to get our attention.”

  “Because you’ve been working for my father for the past year,” Cami interjected.

  The girl was smart, possibly even more calculating than her father.

  Rian inclined his head. “That and because he’s a psychotic asshole.”

  “So if we go to Lander for the Imojenna, we’ll probably be flying ourselves right into some kind of trap.” Qae didn’t sound worried. Actually, he sounded intrigued, like it was some kind of game he was already planning on how to win.

  “More than likely,” Rian agreed.

  “When has that ever stopped us?” Varean sent him a wolfish smile, and Kira elbowed him in the side, obviously not finding it amusing.

  “Except, that’s not our only problem.” The
y just kept stacking up. The obstacles in their way piling on one after another.

  “We still need to get Rene Blackstone his creds and you want to hit up Baden Niels for some long overdue revenge.” Qae’s summary was surprisingly succinct for him. “We’ve been talking about that, Cami and I.”

  Well, this would surely be interesting. God only knew what the pair of them had come up with. “And?”

  “We can take out two targets with one well-aimed shot. We steal from Baden Niels, take down that multi-galactic cooperation he’s hiding behind, and then when he’s got nothing left and nowhere to go, it’ll be easier to run him down once and for all.”

  Rian arched a brow at his cousin. It was actually a pretty solid plan. Sure, it’d be nearly impossible to pull off. But he’d never let something like impossibility stop him before.

  “It was Cami’s idea,” Qae added when no one said anything.

  “Can we actually do that?” Varean’s brow was creased, clearly trying to work out the hows and whys.

  “We’ve got Tannin, who hasn’t yet come up against anything he couldn’t hack,” Qae answered. “And Jase still has some access and contacts in the IPC if we need them.”

  “Won’t something like this take months?” Kira put in. “We’re talking about industrial terrorism. If we got caught—”

  “We won’t get caught,” Rian said before she could take that sentiment any further. “We don’t have the time or resources to finesse this, anyway. We’re going to do it hard, fast, and dirty. He’ll know what’s happening, but if we can cover all our bases, it’ll be done before he can shore himself up against the attack.”

  “You make it sound easy, when we all know it won’t be.” Though Kira had obviously been trying to keep her words calm, there was a definite bite to them.

  Varean wound an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his side. “It’ll be okay, Kira. We don’t really have a choice.”

  “Don’t we?” she murmured.