Diffraction (Atrophy)

by Anastasi, Jess

  “He’s on the brink, but I should be able to save him.”

  The small bluish light in his peripheral vision told him she’d already started. “How long is that going to take?”

  “Ten minutes, at least, maybe longer.” Her voice wavered, as though it was hard for her to talk and heal at the same time.

  “We don’t have that long, princess, so you’re going to have to speed it up a little.”

  If she replied, the words were lost under the whine of weapon fire as he opened up on the approaching Reidar. Before he’d even gotten three shots off, sparks exploded on the stone around him from return ammo.

  Nyah squealed, and Ella murmured a calming order, but all of that was inconsequential background noise as he concentrated on picking off as many of the bastards as he could before his power packs were drained.

  By the time his guns started clicking empty, he’d put down four and a half Reidar—one of the bastards had dragged himself back up after being down for a few seconds.

  He tossed his guns and palmed his knife, waiting as the Reidar realized he had no ammo left and rushed their position. He came up at the last second, catching one in the gut with his knife and shoving it back again, then turning on the other three.

  He fought his way to the already-injured guy, stabbing him in the neck and putting him down for good this time. The other two came at him from opposite sides, and while he deflected the one on the left who tried to punch his lights out, the one on the right caught Rian’s forearm in a bone-crushing grip and left him open to a fist rammed into his solar plexus. The impact hammered the breath out of his chest, leaving his lungs stalled. He wheezed and hunched forward to protect himself from a second blow but jerked his elbow up and out, catching the son of a bitch in the nose.

  The injured guy fell back, leaving him free to spin an attack on the other one. Except at some point that Reidar had pulled his own knife, and while Rian saw it and shifted his weight to avoid getting stabbed, the guy compensated with lightning-fast reflexes that definitely weren’t human. The knife slammed into a rib and deflected off to jab deeper into his chest. The pain ripped through him like getting struck by lightning, except he’d been conditioned not to react to any kind of hurt and shoved the attacker back.

  But while he’d been distracted by the whole getting-stabbed thing, the one he’d elbowed in the nose, plus two other less seriously wounded, had dragged themselves over, leaving him with four opponents again. Frecking resilient parasites.

  Blood was running down his side, soaking his shirt, and a cold sweat rippled over his skin in waves, blooming like clouds of noxious gas.

  The four slowly shifted into formation, surrounding him on all sides.

  “Ella?” He risked a glance over his shoulder, but from here, the wall blocked her, Colt, and Nyah from sight.

  “I still need another few minutes.”

  “And what happens if you don’t get a few minutes?” The men started circling, and he resisted the urge to clamp a hand over his wound, since he’d need both fists free for when they decided to attack.

  “He could still die.”

  He clenched his jaw, glaring at the Reidar as they edged closer. He’d already lost Jensen and Callan. He wasn’t about to lose Colt as well.

  One of the bastards sent him a cutting grin and backed off a step, veering toward the wall. Black fury descended, and he lost all higher reasoning. Felt nothing. Existed as nothing but raw violence. He lunged forward, rounding the wall in pursuit, but just before he got within reaching distance of the bastard, the other three fell on him, dragging him back and down.

  Ella glanced up at the Reidar now standing above her. As the alien reached for her, she pressed her hands down on Colt’s chest and a single, nearly blinding pulse of light passed through him, making his whole body jerk like he’d been shocked. He gasped in a cutting, panicked breath, eyes snapping open. But he wasn’t fully healed, not the way Ella was capable of doing if she’d had the time. The ragged wound still marred the middle of his chest, though it was at least closed over. Yet, after seeming as though he’d woken up for a moment, Colt collapsed back into unconsciousness.

  The Reidar grabbed Ella by the back of her neck and yanked her away from Colt, sending her sprawling.

  A new surge of dark rage boiled up within him, and he jerked forward, but the three Reidar held him down, and the blood he’d been losing was slowing his body’s systems.

  Ella didn’t resist, but when the Reidar produced a pair of blue-tinged thick bracelets—no doubt a special blend of metium, sapphire, and micro-crystal components that would dampen her abilities—energy sparked off her skin, lighting up her eyes with beautifully awesome animosity.

  However, when the Reidar bent down, she didn’t blast the sonuvabitch like he’d hoped. In fact, she didn’t move, letting him snap the bands around her wrists and extinguishing the light of her powers.

  That damned Arynian conditioning and its stupid rule about not retaliating unless her life was directly and undoubtedly threatened. She’d alluded to the fact that she’d been all but brainwashed into not using her powers in reprisal. Jezus. Even in a situation like this, with two of his crew were already dead, she still couldn’t bring herself to help either of them.

  The Reidar who’d cuffed her stepped back with a satisfied smirk, then pulled out his nucleon gun. His heart flatlined.

  “No—!” He wrenched forward, managing to pull free from two of the aliens holding him.

  But the Reidar with the gun half turned and shot Nyah, who’d been whimpering, scrunched up against the wall on the other side of Colt.

  Ella cried out as Nyah listed sideways and crumpled forward, while the Reidar calmly put his gun away again.

  The Reidar holding him managed to cuff his wrists, double securing them with a short length of metium-reinforced chain. They hauled him up and unceremoniously dumped him next to Ella.

  “The two of you are long overdue for a meeting with Baden Niels.”

  Rian clenched his fists, making the chain and cuffs bite in harder. Frecking Baden Niels, one of the head douche-Reidar who’d tried to have Ella kidnapped all those months ago.

  “Good. Let’s get to that meeting. It’ll make it easier for me to kill him.”

  The Reidar hooked a boot into him, almost dead-on where he’d been stabbed. He coughed, struggling to breathe through the pain while stars dotted his vision with blackness.

  “You’re going to kill. But not any Reidar. Once Niels has gotten what he needs from you, it’ll be time to hit the reset button on your inner assassin.”

  Ice clamped on every vital organ, nearly sending him into a panic for the first time in over five years. No. He wouldn’t let himself be reset as a Reidar assassin again. He would die before they did that; he didn’t care who he had to take with him to make it happen.

  A light, gentle hand touched the side of his neck. “Rian, don’t sink back into the darkness. That’s what they want.”

  He closed his eyes for a long second, letting Ella’s words wash through him. But without her abilities working, there was no comforting warmth flowing through him like her touch usually brought. And words alone were not enough. The darkness was already winning.

  The Reidar snapped an order in its language, and the others pulled Ella and him up, marching them off through the trees.

  He glanced back at what was left of the house, now a smoldering orange glow through the thin forest. He hoped Colt lived, hoped he told Zahli and the others not to come for them, because they would only meet the same fate as Jensen and Callan.

  But it was a hollow wish. He’d known for some time he’d get his crew killed but thought they’d at least achieve something first. In this, they were all nothing more than fodder for the invisible war.

  Maybe getting killed trying to free Ella and him was their best option. Because if the Reidar succeeded in turning him back into a soulless tool without his own will or conscience, his crew—what was left of them anyway—wou
ld be the first ones the Reidar sent him out to destroy.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Varean had thought training to be a commando had been hard—as psychologically demanding as it had been physically. Learning about his Mar’keish side was proving to be infuriatingly harder in that he pretty much sucked at it.

  The past few days since he’d left Barasa with La’thar and Ko’en had dragged, especially since his patience seemed to have abandoned him and his frustrations kept getting the better of him.

  The two Mar’keish had brought him to what was apparently one of many bases and safe houses they had across the galaxy. The Mar’keish might have been in hiding, but they certainly didn’t seem to be lacking funds. The penthouse suite they’d brought him to in one of the fanciest buildings he’d ever seen on the central systems planet, Kestrel, lacked for no luxury or amenity. It even had a lab-slash-medical room, which he’d spent more time in than he would have liked.

  La’thar had explained that Varean’s Mar’keish abilities were inherent and instinctive—his body should know how to use them the same way he knew how to breathe. And while he’d been accessing the basics like healing himself since he was a teenager, the majority of whatever the mysterious Mar’keish abilities were remained locked away within him somewhere.

  Ko’en had reasoned that maybe his Reidar side was somehow blocking it, and it seemed the two were more interested in seeing him harness his Reidar abilities anyway. For the past day or so, they’d focused on the alien consciousness that had been creeping deeper and deeper into his psyche since the first time he’d been hit with the Reidar stunner. La’thar and Ko’en theorized that somehow his Reidar DNA had come out of dormancy—probably as some kind of self-preservation. He speculated it had something to do with that damned razar, closely followed by the multiple times he’d nearly died.

  But his Reidar DNA came with its own downside. He was half human, with human limitations, and the testing had taken a physical toll on his body, leaving him with pounding headaches, to name just one of the fun side effects. His Mar’keish ability to heal had definitely come in handy. Plus, thankfully, they’d also helped in teaching him how to keep a rein on his ingrained aggression.

  He finally felt like he wasn’t about to snap at the smallest provocation.

  Though he’d finished up the latest session a while ago, Varean hadn’t left the lab and joined the two men for dinner.

  He hated this time of day. At least when La’thar and Ko’en were melting his brain with their tests and experiments, he had something to focus on. And at night, when he was sleeping—peacefully, since the Mar’keish had shown him how to put a barrier up in his mind to keep the brimming Reidar consciousness out—it saved him from having to think about things.

  But during the in-between times, short as they were, his mind tortured him by swinging from moods of righteous indignation at the things Kira had said before they’d parted ways, to regret that he’d walked out on her and left things so broken when he’d vowed to see her safe. For the first time since becoming a commando, he’d let his emotions get in the way of logic and had failed to see out the duty he’d sworn to.

  He’d replayed that conversation over in his head a million times, because her words hadn’t matched with what he’d come to know of Kira in the time they’d spent together. She wasn’t petty or mean, she wasn’t shallow or fickle, though he’d taken her short argument that way.

  In fact, he now had a sneaking suspicion that if he’d bothered thinking about it, he would have realized that underneath her hurtful revelation of his deep-seated aggression in front of the others, she’d actually been doing a pretty typical Kira-like thing—pushing him away because she believed he was better off with the Mar’keish.

  She hadn’t said it straight out but, reading between the lines, it’d become pretty damn clear she’d been trying to protect him, force him to walk away with the only ammo she could think of, because they’d both known he would put himself at risk to make sure she was safe before he looked to his own welfare.

  Well, her plan had worked perfectly, because here he was, cushy in some high-end penthouse while she—

  Hell, he had no idea where she’d gone or what she was doing, and it was starting to drive him full-on mental. He didn’t know how much more he’d be able to take before he completely caved and went looking for her, just to make sure she was okay.

  Sitting there obsessing and going hungry obviously wasn’t going to help anyone so, with a long sigh, he left the lab-slash-medical room and headed down the short hallway that opened into the main sitting rooms.

  La’thar and Ko’en weren’t serving up dinner like he’d expected, but having a low, intent conversation that ceased the second he walked into the room.

  “Don’t mind me, continue with whatever you were arguing about.” He walked over to the screen built into the kitchen wall, checking the day’s menu. The building had its own food service like a hotel, and it was just a matter of tapping a few buttons to have a five-star meal sent up. Apparently the other two men had been too distracted to see to it yet.

  “We weren’t exactly arguing,” Ko’en replied, shooting a quelling look at La’thar. “Just having a polite difference of opinion.”

  “Well that’s a civil way to put things. You want fish or chicken tonight?”

  “Varean, there’s something you need to know.” La’thar came up on his side, distracting him from the food choices. “Ko’en was just worried about what you’ll do when you find out.”

  “Find out what?” He passed a look between the pair, but couldn’t get a read off their expressions.

  “We got some intel from a source of ours watching one of the Reidar in the top echelon of their power structure. His name is Baden Niels. He’s been after an Arynian priestess named Mirellan Kinton for a long time.”

  “Ella?” The same priestess Sherron had on his crew?

  “Niels just launched an attack on the crew of the Imojenna to take both her and Rian Sherron,” La’thar answered, reluctance clear in his voice.

  Kira.

  Fear, the likes of which he’d never felt in his entire life, zapped through to every nerve ending in his body. Why the hell had he let his damned pride and insecurities get in the way of protecting her? Kira had needed him, needed someone to be there for her, and he’d selfishly walked away.

  “What kind of attack?”

  “We’re not sure exactly.” This time Ko’en answered, and he seemed more resigned, probably already guessing Varean’s intent. “Only that it happened on one of Dunham’s moons, Forbes, and they were successful. Niels has both the priestess and Sherron in custody, which is not good news for the universe.”

  Instead of asking what Ko’en meant by that, he sprinted to the hall cupboard and yanked out a jacket from the stack of new clothes he’d bought the day before.

  “I need to go, right now.”

  “Of course you do,” Ko’en muttered, trailing La’thar over and also grabbing their jackets.

  He paused as he hit the door release. “What are you doing?”

  “Coming with you,” La’thar answered.

  Perhaps he should have asked why or questioned their sudden buddy-buddy act, but he couldn’t think of anything beyond getting to Forbes ASAP and making sure nothing had happened to Kira.

  God help him if it had, he would never be able to live with himself.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The sun had just topped the horizon, golden yellow streaks of light stretching out through the thinly wooded landscape, as the aerocar set down exactly where Rian had instructed them earlier. They’d be walking the remaining distance to the cabin, none of them in the mood to defy his usual, precise security measures to make sure they hadn’t been followed.

  As Kira stepped out of the aerocar, the acrid scent of smoke hit the back of her throat instead of the fresh dew-laden country air she’d expected. The others glanced warily at each other as they joined her, but no one said a word as th
ey set off through the trees toward Rian’s secluded hideout.

  But really, what was there to say? Especially as her thoughts were all about Varean. Maybe she should have feared a man who was half Mar’keish, half Reidar, because she couldn’t imagine what that made him capable of. But it hadn’t changed how she felt about him. Though she’d convinced him in the cruelest way possible that he’d be better off with the Mar’keish, part of her wished things could be different, that there’d been a way for him to stay.

  She’d probably never see him again, never know what happened to him. The notion made her chest ache in a way she had no right to feel, since she barely knew the man.

  “Someone’s burning the home fires a little too enthusiastically this morning.” Jase Nevan gave a cough after the comment, the only one of them who hadn’t been in a dour, silent mood since leaving Barasa.

  He was right—the smoke was getting thicker the farther into the woods they went. And it wasn’t just the scent of a typical wood fire, it was laced with the noxious undertones of burning plastic and other materials that stripped the back of her throat as she inhaled.

  “You don’t think—” Zahli broke into a run.

  “Wait!” Tannin launched after her without hesitation, leaving the rest to get their tired legs with the program and chase after them.

  Zahli and Tannin arrived in the clearing a few seconds before Kira did, skidding to a sudden stop. Beyond them, there was nothing but blackened, charred, smoking ruins where the cabin had presumably stood. Disconnecting from the jarring sight, Kira scanned the ruins, then shifted her attention to the neatly cut grass, her mind picking through the debris, looking for—

  “Oh god.” She shoved past Jase, who’d stopped next to her, and darted into the yard, dodging broken and burned pieces of the house that weren’t recognizable.

  Even as she made it to the prone figure, she knew there was no hope. There was nothing left but bloodied and charred skin, no way to survive such extensive and horrific injuries. Hand shaking, she gently pressed her fingers into a wrist, but found nothing.