Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
Evie slept in her seat with her head at an awkward angle, since these small ships were not meant for sleeping.
They were meant for short, intense combat at close range.
Her breathing slow and even, her hand still loosely curled around his.
The shuttle hummed beneath them. Beyond the clear tekglass windshield, the darkness of space was a cold void.
Jarran had disabled the small vessel’s tracking modules shortly after their escape. Once it was clear they were away and not being followed, Evie had fallen asleep and hadn’t stirred since. Stars knew, she had earned it.
He took the opportunity to look at her, mapping every contour of her face.
Relaxed in sleep, her jaw softened and the crease between her brows was gone.
She looked at peace, and not like she’d just spent the last several cycles being held captive on a Sifter vessel, tending to a fractured male who kept remembering new reasons to despise himself.
He needed a plan now, as he was neither a patient-slash-prisoner of Baylan authorities or Durik.
One option that had been on his mind since they’d cleared the vessel’s sensor range was just…
disappearing. Pella Rin had done it for tericycles, sliding between identities, passing through systems like smoke.
Jarran could use those skills one last time.
Shed the name, shed the face, shed everything.
He could set a course for the outer systems, where the shipping lanes thinned and the Coalition’s reach frayed to nothing.
Find a station and even alter his appearance to look like a different species.
He could find work and buy passage on a cargo hauler heading somewhere remote and quiet, maybe a colony world with soil and sunlight and no one who’d ever heard the name Pella Rin.
In time, with no appearance of Pella Rin, both sides would assume he was dead and stop looking.
He could grow things again. Build something small and clean. A life measured in seasons and harvests and soil quality. But, not with Evie.
That was the part that made his chest ache.
He loved her. He knew that, now. He loved her, and that meant he couldn’t keep her.
Durik would search for him. The Coalition would search for him.
Anyone standing beside him when they came looking would be caught in the blast. And even if he brought her with him to this remote, imagined place to be a farmer, that was no life for her.
Evie deserved a full life, not one spent in hiding with a convict.
But then, he thought about the females in the training bay.
Second generation. Built on Pella Rin’s research, refined by Durik’s engineers.
They’d fought him and Evie in the bathroom with no hesitation and no recognition of what they were doing or why.
Unhindered, Durik would keep making them.
More females with different purposes. The Sifter network would grow, fed by the science Pella Rin had perfected and the infrastructure Pella Rin had built.
Every one of those females was his responsibility.
Every engineered female who came after them would be, too.
And there was Taron. He closed his eyes as an ache bloomed in his chest. If he ran, Taron would never get the apology he deserved or the closure he’d earned. Jarran owed him more than silence.
He opened his eyes and looked at the stars. There was room enough to disappear out there. Room enough to hide for the rest of his life, but even as he imagined it, he knew running wasn’t the path he’d choose.
He would go back to the Korath-7. Not Virilia.
Durik had probably sent scouts toward that planet already, and the Coalition would have questions Jarran wasn’t ready to answer on Virilian soil.
But the Baylan base ship couldn’t have been destroyed completely.
Durik didn’t have that capability and if he did, he certainly wouldn’t have wasted the resources to obliterate a massive base ship for a simple abduction.
It was probably being repaired right now, crews working to restore the systems the Sifter attack had damaged.
He would go there and tell them everything: The hybrid-making technology.
The network locations. The supply chains, the recruitment methods, the conditioning protocols.
He’d lay out in detail everything Pella Rin had known and made.
The Baylans and their allies would have the tools and knowledge to dismantle the Sifters for good.
They were advanced enough to know what to do with that knowledge, and they were a fair species.
Inherently decent, from everything he’d observed during his time as their patient.
And afterward, he would accept whatever punishment they and the Virilian governments deemed appropriate.
He did not deserve to disappear into a quiet life. The females in that training bay deserved better. Taron deserved better. Evie deserved a male who faced what he’d done instead of running from it.
Evie shifted and made a small sound, then lifted her head. “Hey.” Her voice was rough with sleep.
“Hello.”
She blinked, then looked at him. Her eyes were puffy and her hair had flattened on one side. She looked disoriented. “How long was I out?”
“A while.” He smiled at her. “It’s okay. You needed the rest.”
“You did too.” She straightened, rolling her neck. “You should have woken me up. Are you okay?”
“Yes.” He meant it, mostly. “Are you?”
She rubbed her face with both hands. “I’m starving. And I smell like flowery bath salt.” She dropped her hands and looked at him. Really looked, the way she did when she was assessing a patient. “You are not okay.”
He reached over and squeezed her hand. “I’m fine, Evie. Really.”
She held his gaze for another beat, then let it go. He was grateful for that. She knew when to push and when to leave it alone. It was one of the things he loved about her.
“I set a course,” he said. “A small way station. Fuel depot, rental rooms. Pella Rin never visited it, and the Sifters haven’t done business there. It’s only a few Earth hours away.”
“Thank you.” She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “We need to eat. And sleep somewhere that isn’t a cockpit seat.”
“Agreed.”
A pause. “And we need to talk about what happens next.”
“We do.” He kept his voice steady. “When we’re there. When we’ve eaten and rested. I am tired.”
She studied him again. He could feel her turning something over, running the data, looking for the thing he wasn’t saying. She was brilliant at that.
“Okay,” she said. “We can talk later.” She leaned back in her seat and pulled her feet up under her, folding herself into the small space beside the pilot’s chair. “Wake me up when we arrive. Or if anything happens. Or if you start feeling weird.”
“Define weird.”
“You know what I mean.”
He did. She meant Pella Rin. She meant the implant. She meant the push at the edges of his mind, the pressure that never fully receded, waiting for him to crack. “I will.”
She closed her eyes. Within minutes, her breathing evened out again.
Jarran sat in the pilot’s seat and watched the stars slide past and felt the weight of the choice settle into his bones.
Solid. Final. Terrifying in a way that had nothing to do with Pella Rin and everything to do with the simple fact that doing the right thing meant walking into a cage, and he’d spent enough of his life in cages to know exactly what that cost.
A light blinked on the communication panel and he held his breath as the signal, sent on the old frequency, blinked out a message. Taron had heard him.
One word, in Virilian. Where?
And he had responded.
Jarran glanced at Evie. Still sleeping. She hadn’t noticed the blink of light on the panel, and he didn’t wake her. This was between him and his brother, for now.
He entered the coordinates for the way station and sent them off.