Diffraction (Atrophy)

by Anastasi, Jess

  “Jezus,” he muttered, though he doubted Kira heard him. Of all the things he’d imagined her telling him, this hadn’t factored.

  “I demanded to know what he was doing, but he said it was a top secret program funded by the government, that the hospital board was aware of it and kept his work quiet for reasons of intergalactic security. I was shocked, so I left. But when I thought about it later I got angry, and I didn’t believe what he’d told me. He’d clearly been getting off on whatever he’d been doing to that poor woman.”

  “Did you report it?”

  She shook her head, her gaze becoming haunted. “This is when I made the wrong choice. When it was time for the woman to be discharged, I went back to see her, to find the nursing staff struggling to keep her from getting hysterical. You see, the sedative Dr. Eon had administered only made her unable to move, while still being fully aware of what was happening to her without her consent. Of course, the other attending doctor and nurses didn’t believe what she was saying about Dr. Eon, they just thought she’d been having delusions, since there was no record of him entering her room that day.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I confronted him. I demanded to see some evidence of his supposed top secret program. He handed me a sedative to give her and said once she wasn’t causing a ruckus anymore, he’d tell me everything. I didn’t second-guess him, didn’t even think…” She pushed back a few strands of hair with an unsteady hand, and this time he couldn’t help but catch her fingers, squeezing them gently.

  “It wasn’t a sedative. It was five times the amount of the painkiller I’d been giving her while the fracture finished healing after the surgery. She died, and when I went looking for Dr. Eon, a couple of CP officers found me instead. They escorted me from the hospital grounds, and I was questioned by IPC planetary law enforcement. A week later, when I faced the hospital board for a hearing, they had files of evidence that I’d mismanaged over a dozen patients in less than a year, resulting in death, never mind that none of them had actually been my patients. They’d been in the care of Dr, Eon, but my name ended up on the files. My name on the orders of drugs, the administration of medications that had killed them. The board wanted to send me to Erebus for being some kind of sociopathic serial killer, but since they couldn’t prove intent, I was instead banned from practicing medicine in the central systems.”

  Varean clenched his jaw, fighting down an intense wave of anger—he could have quite happily gotten up, headed for Jacolby, found Dr. Eon, and separated a few important appendages from his body.

  “I’m sorry, Kira.”

  She shook her head, as though physically removing herself from the memories, and looked up at him. “It was years ago, and I’ve come to terms with what happened. Most days I think I’m far happier on the Imojenna than I would have been if I’d spent my life in that hospital, never leaving the central systems.”

  “Still, to have your life torn apart like that—”

  She shrugged. “I guess it makes me uniquely qualified to understand exactly what you’re going through.”

  “I’m one lucky bastard then.” He smoothed a hand up her arm to her shoulder, leaning closer. “Did you ever consider, in the years since, that Dr. Eon might not have been human—”

  “That he was Reidar?” She shifted forward to meet him halfway, wrapping her arms around him and setting her chin on his shoulder. “It had crossed my mind, yes. But there was nothing I could do about it, and dwelling wouldn’t help anything. I always figured if Rian ever got anywhere with his plans against the Reidar, I might find some sort of revenge. Of course, there’s always the possibility Eon was your garden-variety sicko. Reidar aside, there are still a few of those lurking in the universe.”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” He tightened his hold, enjoying the simplicity of having her against him, nothing between them, and nothing owed.

  She turned her head slightly and then the warmth of her lips was against his neck, sending a shiver rippling through him.

  “What are you going to do when you leave here?” Her words were a low vibration against his neck.

  “I don’t know. I was thinking about rejoining the Swift Brion, but if the Reidar did something to me, I’m going to need to find out how and when, and why I don’t remember. Unless you want me to go find Dr. Eon and kick his ass into the next galaxy for you first.”

  He felt her smile before her mouth trailed lightly upward. “Satisfying as that sounds, I wouldn’t want you to risk getting caught and ending up on Erebus. I’ve been there, and it’s not a place you want to spend an hour, let alone the rest of your life.”

  He urged her head higher so he could look into her eyes. “Worrying about where I end up is useless.”

  Her expression was grim as she stared back at him. “It’s too late for that. No matter what happens after today, I don’t know how to stop worrying or stop caring about you.”

  “I’m damaged goods. Growing up in the foster system made sure of that, and if the Reidar did something to me, it only sealed the deal.” The words were resigned but not miserable. Simply a fact of life.

  “You’re trying to convince me that I’m better off without you, but you’re better off without me. There’s a good possibility you’d be killed sooner rather than later if you stayed with our crew, given Rian’s ambition. Sure, we’re on different paths, but that’s not going to change how I feel about you.”

  She closed the distance between them and, without resistance, he embraced the hard and fast burst of desire and emotion as their mouths fused.

  He tugged her forward, and she slipped off her stool to stand between his thighs, pressing her chest against his, her hands in his short hair. For a wild moment, he was desperate for more of her, wanted to stay for a few more days; if only he could lock them both in a room somewhere and simply enjoy everything of her—wit, fortitude, and every gorgeous inch of her body.

  A low chime sounded, and it took a few long seconds to register the sound and pull himself back from where sensation was the only reality.

  Kira broke the kiss before he did, turning to look over her shoulder.

  “The computer has finished compiling the report.”

  His hands contracted where he held her hips, squeezing tighter for a second as though afraid he was about to lose her for good. Which was the undeniable truth. That inoffensive, low-volume alarm had signaled the end of whatever this had been between them for the past few days. He would leave, and she’d have to go forward with whatever her life would be now that they’d lost the Imojenna.

  She looked back at him. “Do you need another minute?”

  Locking himself down before any futile emotion or apprehension could swell up, he forced himself to let go of her. He was an AF commando, for jezus sake. He’d faced far worse things in this universe than a damned test result.

  “No. Let’s see what all the fuss is about.”

  She walked over to one of the screens. He took a second to drag a hand over his face, tug his clothes straight when he stood, and put up a final wall of military-grade fortitude to deflect whatever was about to come his way.

  He stepped next to Kira, who had downloaded the files onto her commpad and was reading the screen intently. Nothing on there looked like actual language to him; it was all just scientific terms, numbers, and symbols.

  She stiffened, the utter shock on her face highlighted by the blue-white glare from the screen. No matter how much he’d retreated behind his training, her expression sent his blood running cold. Christ, what had she seen?

  “What is it?” He clamped a hand on her shoulder and spun her to face him.

  “The results…they’re nothing like I guessed.” She studied him as if really seeing him for the first time…or maybe seeing him as something else entirely. The chill in his blood turned to a full arctic blast, freezing his heart mid-pound.

  “What does it say?”

  She took a half breath and retreated a step from him. “You’re not
human.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Kira locked her knees, not letting herself move another inch. She was being ridiculous. This was Varean. She knew him more intimately than she’d come to know anyone in a long time. But this was bad. If Rian found out Varean was half Reidar, he’d probably kill him without a second thought. God, she had to help him get somewhere safe. Except, where the hell could that be, when Rian seemingly had an endless reach through his various contacts throughout the universe?

  “What do you mean I’m not human?”

  A belated tremor of shock rolled through her. “Your DNA— I thought I was going to find genetic mutations. But that’s not what your bloodwork shows. I mean, you are human, but not fully.”

  He closed the space between them and gripped her upper arms. “I’ve told you a thousand times I’m not one of those aliens. I have no idea—”

  “I believe you.” She covered one of his hands with hers. “The truth is, you’re half Reidar, half Mar’keish. You said you didn’t know who your father was and that your mother died—”

  “And now you’re telling me one parent was from an isolated race of mystics who died out decades ago and the other was a frecking shape-shifting alien?” He released her and paced several steps away, shoving a hand through his hair, his movements jerky.

  The Mar’keish had been a race of people rumored to have even more powerful abilities than the Arynians. After humans settled the planet of Mar’kei, something about the environment produced generations of people with abilities like mind control, telekinesis, and various other abilities. The old legends went that some Mar’keish could kill a person with a single thought. And since people feared what they didn’t understand, the Mar’keish were persecuted and hunted. They’d eventually closed any interplanetary trading and kept to themselves. Which had seemingly worked out, until they’d been one of a handful of planets wiped out by a super virus, leading the IPC to enforce the zone of cold-space where no person was allowed, to keep the deadly disease from spreading. The Mar’keish were thought to have died out. So it was harder to decide which half of Varean’s DNA was more shocking.

  “Could your mother have known? How did she die?”

  He dragged both hands over his face. “Jezus, I don’t know. I don’t remember. Whenever I asked, they always told me it was an accident, but no one ever explained what that meant. By the time I was seven, I stopped asking.”

  Chest tight and aching, she went over and intercepted him before he could stalk back across the lab. “This doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change who you are. We knew the results were probably going to be ugly. I don’t care if you’re half mystic, half Reidar.”

  “He’s half what?” Lianna’s voice cut loud enough through the lab to probably be heard in half the hospital.

  Kira glanced over her shoulder to find the nav-engineer had come in while she’d been distracted by Varean’s turmoil. And her exclamation had gained the attention of the others. They poured out of the staff room to stand behind Lianna.

  “Are the results in?” Zahli asked, expression creased with consternation, probably picking up on the tension that had spiked in the room like a stun grenade exploding.

  “Apparently they are, and Kira was just about to explain,” Lianna said in a steel-capped voice.

  Varean stepped forward, brushing by her shoulder and putting himself in the middle of the lab. “You were right about me. I’m an alien. Not only that, but I’m apparently half Mar’keish. Have we reached the super-fun part of this adventure where you want to kill me?”

  Lianna had a hand on the razar and leveled at Varean.

  “No!” Kira rushed forward and put herself in the firing line. “He’s not Reidar. But he’s not human either. And he had no idea until now. This doesn’t change—”

  “Like hell it doesn’t.” Lianna grabbed her arm and jerked her aside none too gently, leaving a dull pain radiating down her arm. “Mar’keish or Reidar, he’ll never be one of us, and we can’t trust him.”

  Varean’s expression hardened, and he took a menacing step forward, halting only when Lianna thumbed the power tab on the razar to fully charge it for a shot.

  “Hurt her again and that buzz-gun isn’t going to stop me.”

  Surprise flitted over Lianna’s face, and she passed a slow look between the two of them, no doubt putting a few things together and coming up with an answer they’d all be aghast about. Especially now in light of Varean’s true origins. But Kira didn’t care what they thought, she cared only that Varean got to walk out of here in one piece.

  “Everyone just calm down.” Zahli held up both hands, playing peacemaker like she often did on the ship. “Yes, it’s shocking, but we can take a minute to consider what this really means.”

  “It means he should have walked when he had the chance,” Lianna muttered.

  “You have every right not to trust him, considering all the old rumors about the Mar’keish and knowing what we do about the Reidar,” Kira said, making sure her voice was extra calm and soothing, the one she’d used to pacify agitated patients. “So how about we just walk out of here and leave Varean to go his own way?”

  Before Lianna could answer, the door to the lab cracked open. Varean shuffled her behind him, while Lianna, Tannin, and Zahli had their guns out and pointed in a second flat.

  A figure slipped in, followed by another, both holding their hands out as they let the door click shut again. They weren’t wearing lab coats or IDs and didn’t act like hospital employees. In fact, they didn’t seem at all surprised to find them in what should have been a disused lab and were both focused on Varean, despite the multiple guns pointed at them. They looked like regular, unremarkable people apart from their eyes—they were silver mercury, like Varean’s had been that moment she’d felt him use his abilities. And it hit her then, why that fact had been familiar—it’d been an old rumor about the Mar’keish, that they were easily identifiable by their unique, silver-mercury eyes. If she wasn’t mistaken, Varean’s long-lost relatives had somehow found him.

  “We don’t want any trouble. My name is Ko’en. This is La’thar.”

  Both unusual names had slight inflections of accent.

  “If you don’t want trouble, you stepped into the wrong lab,” Lianna replied.

  Ko’en lowered his hands slowly. “We’re not in the wrong lab. We’re here for Va’ran.”

  It took Kira a second, but without the inflection separating the two hard sounds of his name… “You mean Varean?”

  Ko’en nodded. “We’ve been tracking him since we became aware of his existence around a week ago.”

  And how exactly had that happened?

  “Who are you?” Zahli asked.

  But Lianna, apparently, was over the whole polite-conversation-with-weird-strangers thing and shot both men with her razar. Except nothing happened. They simply stared back with unruffled expressions.

  “Who are you?” Lianna all but spat the words.

  Ko’en held up his hands again. “We’re Mar’keish. We don’t want to hurt you. Our intentions are not to cause conflict.” Ko’en eased back a step, obviously trying to appear as unintimidating as possible.

  “You know about Varean? What he is?” Kira asked, not caring about anything other than they’d said they were here for him.

  La’thar was the one who nodded. “We have been looking for one such as Va’ran for a long time. We heard they existed, but thought the Reidar had managed to wipe them all out. When we discovered Va’ran’s unique energy, we began following your ship to observe him. But, as he has just discovered the truth of himself, we felt it was time to intervene.”

  “You mean there are more like me, half Reidar, half Mar’keish?” Varean’s question sounded a little dazed.

  “The Reidar have been experimenting with human-Reidar breeding for decades, and they were particularly interested in the Mar’keish because of our abilities,” La’thar replied. “But something about the half-breeds scared th
em, and they shut down all the programs, destroyed most of the research…and the results.”

  “And you turn up now, just in time for us to find out what he really is?” Lianna demanded. “That’s a little convenient, don’t you think?”

  “Though Va’ran does not realize it yet, all Mar’keish share a connection, which is how we knew what was happening here.” Ko’en inclined his head. “I understand your cynicism, given the reputation of our race. It’s why the few of us who remain stay in hiding. But we know about the Reidar and their plans, and we also know humans don’t stand a chance against them.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but we’re doing just fine,” Lianna snapped.

  “Are you, though?” La’thar asked. “Our intelligence gathering indicates the Reidar have already infiltrated all the most important government and military assets. A final invasion may be imminent.”

  Kira glanced at Lianna, Zahli, Tannin, and Jase who all had varying expressions of alarm and desolation. It was what they’d feared as more information about the Reidar had come to light. Rian had been right—they were beyond screwed.

  “We won’t go down without a fight.” Lianna’s voice held not a single note of doubt.

  “The Reidar will make sure there is no fight. Your defeat will be swift and brutal,” La’thar said, as though the entire thing were nothing but a formality.

  “And we’re just supposed to take a Mar’keish’s word for it. You know people used to call you mind-wraiths for a reason.” Lianna swapped her razar for a pulse pistol.