Chapter 19
NINETEEN
Jarran watched Evie eat her morning meal from across the narrow table in the galley.
It was the same table they’d sat at the night before, and his chest felt fuller than it did the last time they were here.
She was working through a tray of the gray-brown lumps with determination.
Her hair was damp from a shower and she’d pushed it behind her ears.
She wore the same clothes from yesterday, but that couldn’t be helped. He wore the same outfit, too.
She looked up and caught him staring. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re doing it again.” She pointed her utensil at him. “The staring thing.”
“I like looking at you.”
“You’ve been looking at me for weeks.”
“Yes.” He held her gaze. “And I like the view more every time.”
Color rose in her cheeks. “I don’t mind my view, either.”
He smiled and ate the food, which was no better than it had been the night before, but he barely tasted it.
His body was still humming with the memory of her.
Her skin under his hands. The sounds she’d made.
The way she’d pulled him closer instead of pushing him away.
He was still in awe at how she’d looked at him afterward, with her hair wild and her eyes soft and her mouth swollen from his.
He’d known then with absolute certainty that he would walk through fire for this woman.
He didn’t regret it. He could not regret a single second of what had passed between them in that small room.
For the first time in his life, he had given himself to someone freely, with no one watching, no one controlling, no manipulation or programming or ulterior motive.
But the morning brought clarity, and clarity was not kind.
He loved her. He would love her until the very last breath left his body. And because he loved her, he had to tell her what he’d done. What he’d set in motion while she slept in the shuttle, before they’d even reached this way station.
She finished her tray and pushed it aside. “Okay. That was marginally better than a protein cube.”
“High praise.”
“Don’t get used to it. When we get somewhere with actual food, I’m eating my weight in something that has flavor.” She leaned back and studied him. Her eyes narrowed slightly. “What’s wrong?”
“What makes you think something is wrong?”
“Because you keep looking at the exit.”
He hadn’t realized he’d been doing that. His gaze drifted toward the corridor that led to the docking bay. Ah, he had been doing that. Evie noticed everything. It made her an exceptional doctor, and also someone to whom lying was impossible. “Observant female,” he murmured.
She waited with one eyebrow raised. “Well?”
“I contacted Taron,” he said.
The other eyebrow lifted to join the first. “When?”
“On the shuttle. While you were sleeping. I sent a transmission on an old frequency. One we used as children, in the tunnels beneath Tagja City. A tapping code we made up.” He paused. “I didn’t think he’d respond, but he did.”
“What did he say?”
“One word. ‘Where?’” Jarran met her eyes. “I sent him the coordinates for this way station.”
Evie exhaled slowly. She looked away, then back at him. He could see her turning it over, running through the implications the way she ran through data. Quick, thorough, and unsentimental. “He’s coming here?”
“I think so.”
“You could have told me,” she said quietly.
He sighed. “Yes, but I felt conflicted about it, and I didn’t want to put another burden on you right after we barely escaped Durik’s ship. And I didn’t have the…” he poked his chest with his fingers, “inside strength to talk about it at the time.”
Her fingers found his and laced through them. “I understand that.”
He held her hand and felt the delicate bones of her fingers beneath his, and thought about how easy it would be to stay with her. To take the shuttle deeper into unclaimed space and find a planet with soil and sunlight and never look back.
“I’m going back,” he said. “To the Korath-7. To tell the Baylans everything I know about the Sifter network. The locations, the technology, the conditioning protocols. Everything Pella Rin built.” He kept his voice steady.
“And when I’ve told them everything, I’ll accept whatever punishment they and the Virilian authorities decide on. ”
Evie’s hand tightened on his. “Jarran.”
“Durik will keep building them. The females. Without the intelligence I can provide, nobody can stop him. I built that infrastructure. I’m the only one who knows it well enough to take it apart.”
“I know that.” Her voice had gone quiet. Clinical calm over something that was decidedly not calm. “I’ve known that since we left the ship. You were never going to run.”
“No.”
“Because you’re an idiot with a moral compass the size of a planet.”
His mouth twitched. “Is that a clinical assessment?”
“Professional opinion.” She squeezed his hand. Her eyes were bright and fierce and he could see her fighting to hold it together. “You know what they could do to you. The Virilian government has every reason to make an example out of Pella Rin’s legacy.”
“I know.”
“And Taron—” She stopped with a grimace. “He sent me a recording on the Korath-7. He said you were dead to him. Those were his exact words.”
“I know what my brother thinks of me, Evie.” He said it gently, because he could see how much it cost her to say it.
She’d held that information for cycles and shielded him from it while his mind was still fractured and fragile.
But now she was telling him because she didn’t want him walking into it blind.
“He might not forgive you,” she said plainly.
“I don’t expect forgiveness.” Jarran looked at their joined hands. “He deserves the chance to say his piece to my face. I owe him that, at the very least.”
Evie pulled her hand free and pressed both palms flat against the table. She took a breath. Then she looked up at him and said, “I’m coming with you.”
“Evie—”
“Don’t.” Her voice sharpened. “Don’t you dare give me a speech about deserving better or keeping me safe or any of that noble self-sacrificing garbage. I didn’t survive a Sifter ship and a psychotic warlord and the worst bath salts in the galaxy to get left at a galactic truck stop.”
He stared at her. Stars, he loved her. “I wasn’t going to leave you here.”
“Good. Because I’d find you, and I’d be furious, and you’ve seen what I’m like when I’m furious.”
“I have. It’s terrifying.”
“You’re damn right it is.” She stood up. Her chin was set and her eyes were hard and bright. “When is he coming?”
Jarran looked toward the docking bay corridor. The feeling that had been building in his chest since he’d sent those coordinates tightened. “Soon,” he said. “I think he’s already close.”
The docking bay was a wide, low-ceilinged space lined with berths for small vessels.
Most were empty. Their stolen Sifter shuttle sat in the far berth, dark and compact, its angular hull conspicuous among the battered cargo pods and fuel tenders.
The air smelled like coolant and ozone and the faintly organic tang of alien fuel compounds.
Overhead lights buzzed and flickered. The floor was so stained with decades of spilled fluids, it was impossible to determine its original color.
Evie stood beside him, close enough that her shoulder brushed his arm. She hadn’t said much since the galley. He could feel the tension in her, but there was nothing he could do about that because he was also a ball of tension.
Taron’s ship came in fast. The small vessel slid into the bay through the magnetic barrier.
Sleek, angular, well-maintained. It was small, and he recognized it as the type used as a shuttle from a larger ship.
If his brother had a larger ship out there, one that couldn’t fit in the bay, he must have done very well for himself.
It settled into a berth and the engines cut.
The ramp lowered and Taron Bando walked down it.
He was slightly shorter than Jarran. But then, most Virilians were shorter than Jarran. He watched his brother, who had the same dark hair, and expressive brows, and long stride as he remembered. His posture was rigid. Every line of his body looked braced for an impact.
Taron stopped ten feet away. He wore a clean white shirt, which looked out of place here, thick flight pants, and a stony expression. His green eyes, a few shades lighter than Jarran’s, moved over him slowly, taking stock. His jaw was set so tight the muscles ticked.
“Taron,” Jarran said in a gravelly voice.
“Pella Rin.” Taron said the name deliberately, like an opening shot.
Jarran stood still, shoulders back, hands at his sides. Open. Not defensive. He had to work hard not to flinch. “You got here fast.”
“I was already in range. I have an alert set for that frequency, waiting for this transmission.” Taron raised his chin defiantly. “Hoping it would never come.”
“Why did you come?” Jarran asked.
Taron’s composure cracked, just slightly. “Because I have things to say to you that I’ve been carrying for half my life, and I wanted to say them to your face before the Coalition locks you away for good.”
Jarran’s tail twitched. “Then say them.”
“Fine,” Taron spat. “I was young when you recruited me into the Sifters. Too young to grasp the consequences of what I was doing. I trusted you.” His hands curled into fists.
“I trusted you to keep me safe. And I know I should have known better. That’s on me, but fuck, Jarran.
You made it sound like a lark. An adventure.
Instead, I wound up getting sucked into an organization I couldn’t get out of.
You have no idea the risk I took leaving the Sifters.
If they’d known I was planning to escape, they’d have killed me, and you…
” A stricken expression twisted his features.
“You wouldn’t have stopped them. You’d probably have executed me yourself, for disloyalty.
When I got out, finally, I was exiled from our home planet.
And then there’s our father. This devastated him.
“I earned my way back to good standing,” Taron said.
His voice shook. “I served my exile. I built something good. It was pure luck that I found Amelia. We have a family now, and I did all that carrying the weight of your betrayal.” He stepped closer to Jarran, and Jarran caught the tight muscles in his brother’s jaw and the tremble of his hands.
“I didn’t come here to help you. The Coalition thinks Pella Rin orchestrated his own escape from the Korath-7.
When the Virilian envoy gets here, you’ll be tried and sentenced, and you will deserve every tericycle of it. ”
Jarran stood motionless through all of it. He absorbed the impact of each word and didn’t look away from his brother’s face. “I know what I took from you,” Jarran said quietly. “I wish I could go back, but I can’t. I am sorry, brother. I am sorry for every bit of harm I caused you.”
Taron flinched at the word brother. For a moment, his expression turned raw and unguarded, before he put his guard back up. “Great. So you send me a code on our old frequency, and you expect me to—what? Forgive you? Welcome you back?”
“No.” Jarran kept his voice steady, though steadiness cost him. “I don’t expect forgiveness.”
“Good. Because you won’t get it.” He turned to Evie. “Are you here willingly? Or are you his prisoner?”
“I’m here willingly,” Evie replied. “I’m a doctor.
I was assigned to treat him on the Korath-7 before the Sifter attack.
” She kept her voice clinical. “I can tell you for a fact that Jarran did not orchestrate his own abduction. That was Durik, the new leader of the Sifters. We were both taken against our wills. Your brother fought back and even killed one of them.”
Taron regarded her closely. “I don’t know if I can believe you.”
“I understand your skepticism,” she said.
“We’ve been able to learn that a being called Xill Rin subjected Jarran to extensive neurological procedures that equated to a complete identity overwrite.
His neural pathways were fundamentally altered.
Jarran was erased and replaced with a constructed personality. Pella Rin was manufactured.”
Taron listened. His expression changed as she spoke, and for a moment, Jarran saw a glimmer of raw hope, but as quickly as it appeared, it was suppressed. “You’re lying for him.”
“No, I am not,” Evie said firmly. “Jarran’s true identity has resurfaced. I’ve observed the neurological recovery firsthand. He is Jarran Bando. The brother you lost is standing in front of you. Not Pella Rin.”
For a moment, Taron’s gaze moved from her to Jarran. His brother wanted to believe it. Then he shook his head.
“I was tricked by Pella Rin once.” His voice was rough with so much pain.
“I followed him into the worst tericycles of my life because I believed my brother was still in there somewhere. I can never know if what you’re telling me is true, or if this is another performance.
” He looked at Evie. “Don’t be fooled by him the way I was. He is very convincing.”
He turned and walked back toward his shuttle. He didn’t look back.
Jarran watched him go. His brother’s sharp edges hadn’t been there when they were boys.
Jarran stood in the docking bay and felt the weight of silence settle over him.
He wanted to call after him, to argue, to convince him.
But he knew the look on his brother’s face, and pushing harder wouldn’t open the door. It would lock it.
Evie’s hand curled around his. “Let’s go back to the room,” she said.
He nodded and followed her there. Once inside, Jarran sank to the floor with his back against the wall. He drew his knees up, his forearms resting across them, and bowed his head. He went still. But the inside of his head was not still. It was a rolling boil of regrets.
Evie sat beside him and put her arms around him. She didn’t speak. She waited.
“I expected that,” he said finally. His voice was quiet and flat. “He has every reason not to believe me. Pella Rin was a very good manipulator. Taron can never know for certain that I’m not doing it again.”
“Jarran.”
“I’m glad I got to see him.” He lifted his head. “I’m glad I got to apologize. At least I was able to say that, before they take me away.”