Grimspace (Sirantha Jax 1)

His smile widens into a grin, and it’s only then that I grasp what I’ve said. But I don’t try to take it back. When March tilts his head against mine, my mind swims for a moment, then I’m full of him. He shows me everything, a barrage of impressions, and I understand why I can’t resist him. He’s exactly like me: compartmentalized, broken, a jumbled mass of jagged edges he conceals beneath biting wit and confidence.

“You can’t imagine what it’s like. Hearing secret thoughts, then listening to lies spoken with a smile. It kills the soul, Jax. I was a monster when I met Mair. She turned me into a decent human being and taught me to control it.” He hesitates, shuddering, and I reach up to stroke his cheek. I know he’s not going to be in a confessional mood forever. “But after our first jump, I’d find myself in your head without any clue how I got there. It scared the shit out of me. I’d stopped piloting because Mair said there were risks associated with a Psi-sensitive using wetware.”

“I guess it would. I thought you just were doing it to piss me off.” I smile up at him to take the sting out of my words, but I have to wonder what risks Mair was talking about. Wonder if she left anything in my PA. “Do the others know?”

“No! They wouldn’t understand. They’d be afraid of me, afraid of what I know. Jax…” His tone turns wondering. “Do you have any idea what a miracle you are? What you say is exactly what I see in your head. No disparity, no dirty secrets. Even when you detested me, you made no bones about it.”

I grin at him. “You like a little honest hatred, huh?”

“I guess I do. Spices things up.” He pulls me closer, resting his chin on my head, and I listen to his heart.

Hard to say who’s most surprised when the door slides back. Shit, I forgot it will open for anyone right now. Guess it’s a good thing we’re just curled on my bunk together. Doc still looks astonished, though.

“I wanted to say that we’re clear for departure.” He clears his throat. “Anytime.”

“We didn’t kill each other,” I say with a grin. “We’ll head to the cockpit shortly.”

Right now, March looks more at peace than I’ve ever seen him, and it’s a little hard to reconcile that serenity as being related to me. I shake things up, create chaos and agitate for change, but I’ve never been accused of being restful.

He cups my cheek in his palm, and murmurs to Doc, “Five minutes. Now get out.”

I truly hope we’re going to make good use of that time.

CHAPTER 42

We’re not going where I thought we were.

As March and I emerge from quarters, we find Doc and Dina waiting for us in the hub. To my surprise, neither looks like they want to kill me, although Saul’s expression gives me pause. He sighs and powers up the comm station. I avoid touching it whenever possible because Loras is supposed to be sitting there.

“I think you’d better take a look at this.”

When I lean forward, I see an old holo-newsfeed, dated almost two months back. A dark-haired woman with a small mouth and a perfect coif smiles without showing teeth. This is notable only because she manages to speak without showing them, either. I think she mistakes this facial immobility for a proper “grave business” expression.

“Citizens of the Conglomerate, we urge you to be on your guard. Although we’ve tried to contain this matter internally, we of Farwan Corporation cannot in good conscience”—I snort at that—“continue our search without revealing the inherent danger we all face. This woman, Sirantha Jax…”

Here, an unflattering picture of me flashes in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. “A former employee has escaped from our secure facility on Perlas Station, where she was awaiting trial for her involvement in the death of eighty-two souls aboard the Sargasso. We do not know the names or identities of her accomplices, but we speculate they may be the terrorists responsible for the strike against the conference on Matins IV. Their reign of terror continues unabated. Our operatives tracked them to DuPont Station, where for reasons known only to themselves, they—”

My breath hisses out of me in a rush. “We didn’t blow the station!”

“No, we most certainly did not,” Doc agrees with a sigh. “But so far as the rest of the Conglomerate is concerned, we did.”

“Why would they do that?” My knees feel shaky as I keep seeing the explosion, time and again. “And how did they even know we were there?”

Dina finally speaks but she sounds matter-of-fact. “My guess is, Hon contacted them, intending to cut a deal. Maybe he was tired of playing mad scientist with Farr and wanted recognition from the Conglomerate. Maybe he was tired of worrying about them showing up to evict him if he ever became a threat instead of an annoyance. But he wouldn’t have been able to negotiate without you, Jax.”

“He didn’t want to kill us, just stall us until they arrived,” March agrees.

I feel his hand light in the small of my back, a proprietary gesture. The other two make note of it, but they don’t comment, which had to cost Dina. She even smiles at me. Just what the hell is going on?

“We don’t know exactly what transpired,” Doc says, “but they’ve clearly pinned the blame on us. And that’s not the worst of it.”

“There’s more?”

“Indirectly.” He picks up the device he was showing Dina when we emerged from quarters and starts indicating readings that don’t mean anything to me. “The problem is, they’ve closed the doors to us that we need most.”

“You don’t need me for this,” March interjects. “I’m getting us off this rock while you bring her up to speed.”

I guess he already knows this stuff. And yeah, maybe I’m a little disappointed when he walks off without looking back, but I redirect my attention without being obvious. I already knew March is practical. He’s never going to sit at my feet and write me poems, which is good because I hate poetry, except dirty ones that rhyme.

“Anyway,” Doc says pointedly, and I roll my eyes. Sometimes he reminds me of my professors. “I’ve been studying your scans, comparing them with the sample I took from the Mareq.” I flinch, but he seems not to notice. “Your DNA isn’t entirely…human. I alluded to it back at your flat, but the truth is, in all my case studies, I’ve never seen the L-gene append to the J-gene, as it has in you. I was hoping to achieve that through years of engineering, but it appears that our work has been done for us, either by nature or design.”

“You’re saying—”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know how this is possible.” He bites the words off. “What we need to do is retrace your steps, dig into your early life and try to discover how this happened, so we can duplicate it. That may be the best shortcut available; otherwise, we’ll spend months gathering samples before I can even begin work.”

The Folly trembles, powering up, and Dina pushes away from the console. I think she doesn’t want to look at it anymore, and I can’t blame her.

“By making us infamous, they’ve shut the door on us,” she mutters. “We can’t use official ports, and you grew up on New Terra, right? That’s where we need to be.”

“The three of you can go. They said they don’t know who my accomplices are. I can wait on the Folly. Maybe you can find something out.”

She shakes her head. “That’s bullshit, Jax. We registered on Perlas. They know the name of the ship, and they have our sequence codes. How else did they send this?”

Saul fires up the terminal again, saying only, “What I showed you before, that was just the attachment. This is the message.”

A man with sea-blue eyes and elegant, chiseled features comes on-screen. I drop down hard in Loras’s chair because I recognize him. For several moments I see his lips moving but no sound registers, and Dina touches my shoulder.

“You all right?” At my mute nod, she says to Doc, “I think you better replay it.”

“Sirantha, this message has been bounced off all public relays. I implore you, surrender now. Turn yourself in at the nearest Corp outpost, and we will tend to your treatment. You’re confused, unwell, and perhaps do not realize that your actions are wrong.”

Shit.

Simon always was a persuasive bastard. On-screen, he’s the image of a concerned husband. I haven’t seen him in years, but now they’ve got him acting as the face of Farwan, hoping to entice me back? They must really think I am crazy. I don’t understand why they’ve painted me as an interstellar terrorist, though. Is it spin, covering up their negligence on Matins IV, or are they using me to hide something else entirely? Whichever the case, I suspect they’re widening the net.

“The only place we’re safe is in here in the Outskirts.” Both Dina and Doc nod, waiting to see where I’m going by stating the obvious, I guess. “But you think something in my past could provide answers?”

“It’s our best hope,” Saul replies, stroking his goatee with two fingers. “Also the most dangerous course for obvious reasons.”

I glance at Dina, but she picks today to begin keeping her mouth shut. “Then that’s where we need to go.”

Can’t imagine what my parents are going to say after all this time. Assuming we can find a place to dock. After all, New Terra is a Conglomerate world, firmly in the clutches of Farwan Corporation. It’s going to take all our combined ingenuity to keep from winding up in a cell.

The ship lifts, a subtle jolt. We steady ourselves on the console as March guides us through the locks that will liberate us from Gehenna. Now that I’ve tried flying this damn thing, I can’t help but feel impressed. Consider how rusty he must’ve been on Perlas, and yet he’s taking us out of the atmosphere so smoothly we can scarcely register the shifts in altitude. He’s really, really good.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Dina.

“For what?”

I don’t see a scar on her wrist or even a bandage. The surgeon must have been first-rate. Rare in a black-market doctor.

“Leaving.”

She cocks a brow at me. “I don’t blame you for wanting some leave, Jax. It’s been a pretty fragged-up run, hasn’t it? And we could scarcely have found a safer port.”

I narrow my eyes at Saul. “You lied to me.”

He turns, offering me a layered smile. “Dina never doubted you were coming back. So I had to make that happen, didn’t I?”

They never told her I left for good?

Doc’s ice blue eyes tell me things I never knew about him: He’ll lie, cheat, or steal to unearth this truth. On the surface, he’s the model of chivalry, courtesy, and kindness, a gentleman scholar. But he analyzed the situation and told me exactly what would get me back on board. And here I am.

“What’s going on?” Dina glances between us, interested but wary. And so I fill her in. By the time I’ve finished, she can’t get her breath for laughing. “Just how stupid do you think I am? If you took off, we’d stay till we found someone. Like hell do I see myself as a jumper; I had fun with Clary. Wouldn’t have minded hanging around another couple of weeks, but Saul said you were ready to get back to it.”