Aberrant

Chapter 58

Agony. Reeling darkness—

A plunge into black silence.

Jinx gasped, her awareness snapping back to the black ship's hold, the painful, pounding drone of the Hydra, and the frantic beeping of a medical monitor. Shit. She'd lost it again, fallen into a twisted new nightmare: weapons fire, a horrible sense of pressure, then brain-shredding agony.

Not her insanity.

Callan Tarak's churning energy flooded her, bringing an eerie sense of 'knowing', an awareness of the world that wasn't her own. Images flashed behind her eyes, ending on one stark visual: a body strapped to a med bed.

Not Cal Tarak's.

Kaplan's.

Jinx's lungs seized, more uncanny knowledge punching through her. Kaplan was on board. The gunfire... He'd been in the middle of it. He'd gone down, along with dozens of other Coalition soldiers. They'd been led into a trap.

She'd been the bait.

Another rush of visions and impressions: Cal afraid he hadn't reached Kaplan in time, that Kaplan wouldn't survive what was coming. Cal was also terrified for her. He'd led the enemy to her, a Rha Si born outside anyone's control. And his sister, according to what he'd caught in his brief contact with Kaplan.

Jinx stopped breathing. No. No way was she...

Cryver's sly grin flashed to mind. Then his quip about hoping she hadn't slept with the owner of the blood he'd analysed. He'd promised a dirty family secret worth every credit she could scrounge. He'd had her DNA—and Cal's.

For a moment, she felt like there was no oxygen or gravity.

She wasn't anyone's sister. She wasn't a G-alterant—a mind-reader. The idea was insane. Impossible.

Cal's garbled thoughts overrode hers again—something about implants, the suppression of her "abilities". His fear swamped her as he bombarded her with chaotic images and warnings. She had no training, no control. Her "innate shielding" wouldn't hold.

And the enemy was coming.

A clatter of movement.

She wrenched her awareness back to the ship's hold—to its hatch.

Multiple exskels incoming—oh, shit. 

More jumbled telepathy hit, totally disorienting, Cal struggling to stay conscious. But she got the gist. The Xykeree hive had overwhelmed the Coalition troops on board. The Rha Si couldn't stop it while they were "leashed", whatever that meant. All non-psi were liabilities because—

They could be controlled.

Soh's shocked gaze bloomed to mind, then the stun grenade she'd dropped. Only moments before, Dorf had opened the Fire Witch's hatch without waiting for Tras' order.

Jinx's blood went cold. The enemy was using mind control.

And maybe had been from the start.

Rolli's blank stare after the Bullhead's inspection came back to her, then Olsen's face as he spoke of his colleague turning on his team. Dem's guilt-ridden admission replayed next: he'd changed his mind about doing the barge's inspection only moments before boarding. He'd called her specifically in to do it, on her day off, delaying a priority job.

Jinx struggled to snatch air. The Xykeree wanted her because they thought she was Rha Si. She wasn't. She couldn't goddamn read minds or control—

Rapid, skittering movement.

A dark flood of worker exskels suddenly poured into the hold.

Cal's monitors shrilled. That now familiar impression of violent heat flared.

The closest exskel exploded, its internal tech going terminal. Fragments of roach clattered down.

More chaotic imagery blinded Jinx: fuming darkness; lightning arcing in her—Cal's—veins. That terrifying urge to burn seared her neurons like a psychic brand.

Another two exskels seized then blew apart.

The others leapt.

Cal vanished under a scrabbling mass of composite legs and bodies. His vital signs plunged.

Jinx felt him lose consciousness.

Cursing, struggling against the paralytic, she tried to reach the gun secured at her lower back.

The Hydra's drone increased.

The workers subduing Cal abruptly stopped—then flowed off his bed, as if one organism. They raced forward, a black, scuttling mass.

And fled the hold.

Jinx froze, her breath tearing in and out of her. Memory bloomed: exskels on the Bullhead racing away from her position; Kaplan's ability to clear corridors.

As the Hydra's drone closed like a vice around her skull, other memories roared up: the violent recall cascades in the Bullhead's hold and in the detention cell on the Silver Dawn.

The pressure at her temples sharpened to invisible blades.

She struggled to reach her weapon.

Outside in the Hydra's deployment bay, exskels parted like a metallic sea.

A figure stepped forward. Large, humanoid, covered in black armour.

Pain became her whole world.