Instinct

The Kitcoon By L. J. Hachmeister[2]

“YOU’RE IN DANGER.”

Rex averted her gaze, hoping the old woman would lose interest in her. If she could, she’d have found another place to ride in the cargo hold of the star freighter, but the windowless ship was already jam-packed with other refugees, immigrants, animals, and illegal merchandise. Besides, being crammed between biohazardous drums was better than fighting for a place to stand in the congested, shoulder-to-shoulder crowd.

“You shouldn’t be here, especially not alone.” The old woman, clinging to the black netting dividing a pile of luggage, looked Rex over with rheumy eyes. “How old are you?”

Nineteen; not a kid anymore. Clutching her rumbling and very empty stomach, Rex muttered, “Old enough.”

“I know those eyes,” the woman whispered. “Orange-fire, like the sunset. You must be from the southern tribes.”

Rex tensed. Seated on the grated floor, she brought her knees up to her chest and double-checked her surroundings. The drunk in the corner, slumped over a barrel, hadn’t noticed their conversation. Neither had the mother trying to feed her whimpering infant as the janky freighter rocked and shook in the turbulence of faster-than-light travel. Everyone had their own problems, their reason to be aboard an illegal transport bound for the sanctuary city of La Raja, on Neeis.

Old fears resurfaced: “You can’t escape this life.”

Heart racing, Rex tried to sound firm. “I’m human, like you,” she said just loud enough to be heard over the ticking engines. “Just modded.”

“Modded?”

“Modified,” she emphasized. A lie that had gotten her this far without too much scrutiny. Rex looked human enough, except for her eyes, but if someone looked underneath her jacket and pants, they’d see the marks—

Scars—

Of a monster.

“Mmmm,” the old woman replied, sounding unconvinced.

Frail and wrapped in patched robes, the elderly woman didn’t look like she’d amount to a threat, but Rex knew not to underestimate anybody. Especially someone suspecting her of being a telepath from Algar based solely on the color of her eyes.

The temptation to let her guard down and unleash her telepathic talent was there, but she couldn’t control the terrible thing inside her under threat. And in such a tight space, and with all these people—

She squeezed her eyes shut. Please, I don’t want to hurt anybody—

(—else.)

Rex let her breath out through gritted teeth. Get yourself together.

She thought about how the old woman sounded. Her Common, the universal language of the Starways, was decent, though heavily accented. She probably wasn’t from the Homeworlds, or the main planets that comprised the central Starways where most humans lived. But that didn’t mean much. Humans spread across the galaxy centuries ago and interbred with countless alien species. That’s what made it so hard to tell.

Maybe she’s like me, Rex thought. Humanish and poisoned by a telepathic lineage. Hunted by the Dominion military for her supernatural abilities. The enemy of the Starways.

A monster.

(Leech)—

“Shhh, sweet boy,” the old woman whispered as something wiggled beneath her clothing. Something small but feisty. A feline head popped out of the upper folds of her robe and let loose a pitiful meow. The skinny critter had a rectangular patch of hair missing at the top of his black-and-maroon striped head with a fresh pink scar running down the center, and big, saffron eyes that bade to give her affection.

The old woman gently pushed the thing back inside her robes. “Kio doesn’t like traveling.”

“What is it?”

“A kitcoon, native to La Raja. They’re considered a nuisance, like rats or pigeons from Old Earth. The Dominion use them in experiments because they’re so hardy. He doesn’t deserve that.”

Nothing deserves that, she wanted to scream. Even street vermin.

Rex eyed the old woman again, not hiding her suspicions. “So, you broke him out of a Dominion lab?”

The old woman’s forehead knotted. “I wasn’t alone…until now. It’s been a rough journey. I’m getting too old for this, you know.”

“You’re risking a lot for a, uh, pest.”

The woman frowned and patted the purring lump lying across her abdomen. “For Kio. He’s worth all the trouble.”

“No way,” she murmured as phantom pains lanced her stomach. Hunger pangs morphed into a roiling fire. Holding her abdomen, Rex couldn’t think of anything or anybody that would be worth that kind of a gamble. The Dominion’s military scorched worlds, used devastating weapons of mass destruction to control any threat, and with their objective set on imprisoning—

Eradicating—

—telepaths, Rex couldn’t imagine what they’d do to someone who, even on the smallest level, interfered with their plans.

Sweat dotting her brow, she dug her fingers into her stomach. Even through the clothing layers she could feel the scars burning all over again as needles punctured her skin, pumping poison directly into her organs, tearing her apart—

(“No, please, I don’t want to be a telepath. I’m sorry! Please, STOP—”)

The ship hit a bump. The other passengers cried out as they slammed into the walls, each other, as luggage, containers, and boxes tipped over. Rex braced herself between containers, heart racing, as the overhead lights flickered.

We hit something—?

Her senses screamed otherwise. Pulsating tension, stress, leaked in from beyond the bay doors, from down the corridor, where the cockpit was situated. Something’s wrong.

“They found us,” the old woman muttered, clinging to the netting with shaking arms as the engines whined. Passengers screamed as the ship rocked to port. People shoved and scrambled over each other, trying to get ahold of something anchored into the ship. “It’s too late…”

Rex barely heard the old woman as the ship lurched and the engines whined and grated. Cages and boxes tumbled from overhead storage, spilling critters of all sizes into the fray along with plumes of feathers and tufts of loose fur.

“What did we hit?” a passenger cried as the ship’s engines shut off. Distant thumps vibrated through the ship.

Nothing, Rex realized as smoke plumed from the vents, peppering the air with a metallic tinge. Those are explosives—

(—Boarding party.)

Scrambling to her feet, she took the old woman by the elbow.

“Slow down,” the woman cried as Rex dragged her through the tidal wave of people fighting to get to the cargo bay door. “Where are we going?”

White smoke made it hard to see, harder to breathe. Rex held the sleeve of her motocross jacket to her nose, struggling to push her way through the crowd and keep hold of the limping old woman.

“Stop! I can’t go that fast—”

Rex reared around and pointed at a pile of spilled luggage. “We have to hide.”

But as the old lady regarded the mess of clothes, packages, and debris, the cargo bay doors lifted. More smoke, and red emergency lights from the corridor, poured into the bay. Rex tugged on her elbow again, but the woman resisted, eyes as wide as saucers. “It’s too late. Take Kio. Protect each other.”

The old woman shoved the kitcoon into Rex’s arms. “No, lady, I can’t—”

“Everyone on their knees!” Heavy boots pounded against the grated floor. Rex glanced back to see sweeping laser sights and armored soldiers, in the Dominion’s signature blue and black uniforms, flooding inside. “Passports out!”

The kitcoon bellowed and wiggled out of Rex’s grip, scampering away. Out of time, Rex dove behind an overturned cage leaning against the wall. Hybrid chickens flapped and scuttled over displaced luggage. Hopefully the frenzied mess of loose animals—and the rank smell of an uncleaned cage—would be enough of a deterrent for a thorough search of her hiding spot.

Rex’s eyes flicked to the old woman. Hunched over and frozen in place, the gray-haired lady didn’t move, even when the soldiers started roughing up the passengers, or when a laser sight landed over her heart.

“You there,” a soldier called, stomping his way through cowering passengers, his rifle pointed at her chest. “Passport.”

Rex curled her toes in her boots and clenched her fists. Hopefully the woman had a passport or a decently faked one.

But the petrified look in the woman’s eyes said otherwise.

“You,” another masked soldier said, grabbing the woman by the shoulder and shaking her. “Passport.”

The old woman’s hands shook as she searched inside the folds of her robes and produced a chip tied to a necklace around her neck. The soldier scanned it and grunted. “This expired two months ago and says you’re a registered citizen of Crais.”

An uninhabitable moon? Someone sold her a bum passport.

“Uh, well—” she said, fumbling with the necklace.

The lead soldier waved his gun, signaling for the soldier with the scanner. Rex recognized the handheld wand that would take a blood sample and analyze her DNA. It wasn’t completely accurate in detecting telepaths, especially with all the hack clinics that could mask genes, but Rex didn’t think this woman, if foolish enough to use passport that listed her as a Crais citizen and steal street vermin from the Dominion, would have that kind of protection.

You’re a telepath, aren’t you? Maybe not a Prodgy, like her; maybe one of the other four types that got a bad rap ever since the Dominion military came into power. Why would you risk this for an animal?

Gun pointed at her chest, the second soldier yanked the old woman’s arm and bunched up the sleeve of her robe.

“Please,” the old woman whispered as the soldier waved the blue light of the wand over her upturned wrist. “I just want to be left alone.”

Left alone. The sentiment burned through Rex’s veins. That’s all she wanted. To no longer be hunted, chained down and experimented on; hated for being born with a power she didn’t ask for—

“Malfunction,” the soldier announced as the wand flashed yellow. “What should we do with her?”

“Bring her back to the lab,” the first soldier announced, pulling a shock collar from his belt.

Rex’s stomach dropped and she clutched her neck. No—

The kitcoon burst out of the rubbish, clawing his way to the top of stack of debris, and gave a demanding meow. The soldiers paused, shining their lights at him, illuminating her hiding spot in the background. Rex shimmied back, out of their line of sight.

The kitcoon cooed, tipping over as it emptied his tiny lungs. He righted himself and whipped his tail back and forth.

“Aw,” one the soldiers whispered. Even Rex’s pounding heart melted little bit at the sight of the little feline mewing for affection.

“That scar on its forehead,” the lead soldier said, pointing with his gun. “That’s the escaped lab ’coon.”

The nearest soldier straightened up, slinging his weapon over his soldier. “I’ll grab it.” He dove after the kitcoon, disturbing Rex’s tenuous debris hiding spot, and shoving the cage up against her, crushing her ribs.

Chak!

As she squirmed to free herself, the cage slid away. She flattened out, hoping to stay unseen as the kitcoon dodged and darted between debris piles, evading the soldier’s grasp, heading away from her.

“Hey!” a soldier shouted. “Someone’s behind that cage.”

The rest of the soldiers turned to her, their laser sights converging on her forehead.

“Leave her be,” the old woman pleaded, trying to stop them as they kicked aside luggage and dug their way through the trash toward Rex. The woman’s telepathic echo rang through the cargo hold, but it wasn’t strong enough.

Rex wiggled backward. Chickens squawked and flapped about as the soldiers flung aside the cage and came after her. Out of her line of sight, the kitcoon wailed.

No, she thought as the first gloved hand clamped down on her arm and wrenched her forward.

Then, from somewhere deeper, where her pain boiled: (NO.)

The soldier grabbing her arm screamed. He arched his back and fell to the ground, seizing, as her invisible force took hold of his body.

“Leech! Leech!” the team lead shouted, holding her by the boot. Rex turned her gaze to him and let the dark power slide through their connection. He grabbed at his neck, frothing at the mouth, and fell to his knees.

The other soldiers, gun tips crackling blue with plasma charge, quickly descended upon her as she dove behind a structural divider.

“Get away from me!” she shouted, her mind blazing.

Passengers screamed and fled the cargo hold into the corridor, trampling over each other. A soldier hit the cargo bay controls, closing the door behind the last passenger, isolating Rex, the old woman, and the kitcoon in the hold.

Why won’t you leave me alone?

But that question didn’t matter. Only survival did.

Look inside. As she had self-taught in her early teens, when her powers first emerged. Find the living light—

—Of every nerve fiber, every cell, in the overlapping space between visual consciousness and extrasensory perception. A place that no armor could protect, no living being could hide, radiating, exposed—accessible.

Got you. With her mind, she seized each soldier at the spine, breaking them at the knees and sending them crumbling to the grated floor. A few fired their guns aimlessly, blasting man-sized holes in containers, luggage—and walls.

“Warning,” the ship’s computer announced as the internal pressure dropped. Rex clung to the black netting connecting the floor to the ceiling as debris and soldiers were sucked toward the holes, through the phasic distortion of the shields, and out into the twinkling stars beyond. “Hull breach. Emergency landing.”

Rage scorched her chest, igniting old wounds. The scars on her abdomen, the mutilations on her skin, burned. She righted herself and set her eyes back on the panicking soldiers clinging to anything anchored to the ship.

Thin arms wrapped around her, shaking, desperately holding on.

Rex growled. YOU WANTED THE MONSTER. HERE I AM—

“Save Kio—”

The calm of the old woman’s voice—

The pitch—

“Find…”

That stupid kitcoon—

“…another way…”

The telepathic pull lulled her mind.

Another way. Impossible. Not after being orphaned, abandoned. Not when countless poisons had been injected into her organs, trying to cure her of her Prodgy bloodline madness. Not after using the cursed talent to stay one step ahead for those that would imprison her for the very thing she used to survive. The thing that defined her.

But the old telepath’s words repeated themselves, draining the heat pumping through her body even as the ship rocketed down through the fiery atmosphere and into the clouds.

Save Kio…

Find another way…

Rex held tight to the netting as the woman held on to her, the wind whipping away the tears from her eyes.

The old woman rifled through and around her jacket, fastened something around her waist. Rex looked down to see herself clipped to the net with a cargo-securing belt.

“What are you doing?”

The ship banked hard. Rex lost her grip but stayed fastened to the netting by the belt as the woman flung away.

Kicking and flailing, Rex wrestled back upright as the winds screamed. Anything not nailed or bolted down banged and bashed its way through the widening holes as the ship dove through turbulent, lightning-streaked storm clouds.

“Hey!” Rex shouted, but the screaming winds stole her voice.

We’re gonna die, she thought, spotting one of the five remaining soldiers catching the old woman with one arm while grabbing onto a bolted handhold with the other. Even if the ship landed in one piece, the soldiers would tag and imprison them. Not without more bloodshed, not without risking—

Rex squeezed her eyes shut. I don’t want to Fall…

And become exactly what the Dominion propaganda wanted everyone to believe: That a Prodgy like her couldn’t control her powers to heal herself and others, and would eventually descend into maddening darkness, killing everything she came across. But she had no choice. She wasn’t going allow herself, or the old woman, to be taken. Even the chicken hybrids, hiding between the piping, didn’t deserve to suffer like this.

Or even that stupid kitcoon. Wherever he was.

The heat simmered in her chest. This time she wouldn’t give up so easily, not until she’d torn apart the soldiers from the inside-out—

The old woman glanced back at her, rheumy eyes filled with sadness. Then, as lightning flashed, a smile hinted at a corner of her mouth. Pulling herself up onto the same bolt, she said something into the mic by the soldier’s ear. A mic that linked the audio to the rest of the unit.

Thunder boomed, white lightning cracked open the sky. Rain fizzled against the shields as the soldiers arched and squirmed.

Rex heard the woman’s voice in the telepathic echo, soothing and calm. (Let go.)

Powerful. Persuasive. Inescapable. The type of power that should be feared.

Rex let go of the netting. She flipped over onto her back, but didn’t struggle, allowing her arms and legs to be taken by the winds as the belt held her fast at the waist. She watched as, one-by-one, the soldiers let go of their holds and were swept out into the maelstrom.

Another peel of thunder rocked the vessel.

Oh Gods—what did she do? Rex thought, coming out of the trance. The old woman clung to the bolted handhold, but bent, arthritic fingers couldn’t grip much longer. And the crushing, half ton drum of biohazardous material sliding toward her on a collision course—

“Watch out!” Rex screamed, fighting to turn back over—to somehow get to the old woman—

The old woman took one look at the biohazard drum and then back at Rex. She called out to her, but the storm and turbulence stripped her words.

“Don’t let go!” Rex cried. “DON’T—”

The ship plummeted, sending Rex, and everything else, flying upward and crashing against the ceiling. Her head struck metal piping. The pain didn’t register, nor the shock of blood spilling down her face, as all went dark.

Rex woke awkwardly sprawled across a pile of luggage, face down, with her left cheek pressed against the grated starship floor. Her first breath came with a panicked heave and cough, as if she’d been gut-punched.

Memories came trickling in along with a lancing pain to the back of her skull. When she rolled to her back, she got a nose full of fur and feathers.

“Get off,” she said, batting her hands as the chicken flapped and pecked at her. It landed with the rest of the remaining flock, in the stream of artificial light coming through the gaping hole from the hull. It cocked its head and gave her one last squawk before continuing to scavenge through the debris.

Rex’s mouth tasted like copper, but that didn’t concern her as much as the odor of leaked fuel and smoke. Through the stink, she detected the smell of wet leaves, upended dirt, and a floral miasma.

Where did we crash?

Holding the back of her skull, she surveyed the landscape beyond the hole in the hull: White smoke obscured all but some greenery, colorful flowers, dirt—and a strange, multi-colored glow up ahead. In a break in the clouds and smoke, a few scattered stars twinkled in the night sky.

Rex staggered to her feet, toppling over boxes and leaning on bins until she found her balance. Muffled shouting came from close by. The cargo hold door creaked and groaned, then opened a crack. The voices got louder as red emergency lights flickered. Flashlights peered inside.

“Is anybody in there?” someone shouted. “Help is on the way.”

More Dominion soldiers would come. So many witnesses…

Her adopted mother’s reprimands surfaced in the back of her mind: “What have you done, Rex?”

The hunt was on.

Experience kicked in, despite the terror shrieking at her to flee. She grabbed a hooded cloak out of an opened suitcase. As she secured it around her shoulders, the memory of the old woman shoving the kitcoon in her arms surfaced: “Take Kio. Protect each other.”

She snorted. That little pest had just made things worse.

The old woman’s plea entered her mind again: “Save him.”

With a huff, she gave a quick scan over the mess for the old woman’s pet. Reptilian critters and a few hybrid mammals crawled around, but no scrawny kitcoon. Besides, the headache was deepening, spreading from the back of her skull to her temples. I don’t need another burden.

“You guys witnessed—I tried,” she muttered to the chickens as she crawled out of the hole and into the forest.

One of them flapped its wings and cooed.

Her boots crunched down upon broken branches and sank into damp moss as she traversed through a wooded area with hedges and flowered bushes. But her trek didn’t last long.

Chak, she swore. Jet engines rumbled overhead as another transport shuttled by. She followed the exhaust trail to the landing pad up ahead. As she stepped over a splintered log, a break in the trees and smoke revealed a sprawling city with lighted skyscrapers that penetrated the low-hanging clouds. Holographic advertisements, featuring oversized models, floated between the buildings, filling every inch of air space. We landed in someone’s garden.

In the back of her mind, she knew it was a good break, but then again, she wasn’t in La Raja, and the Dominion was on her tail.

She hustled to the edge of the greenery, slid through the rods of an iron fence, and disappeared into the sleepless city.

Dominion sirens echoed throughout the city as Rex walked down a street crammed with vendors and cheap hotels. Holographic marine animals swam through a digital ocean a few meters above her head, with an advertisement for a VACATION OF A LIFETIME trailing in the bubbles in multiple languages. Another reminder than she needed to get off the planet—

Wherever the hell this is—

—as fast as possible, but her mouth watered at the smell of real food sizzling on homemade grills.

“You gonna just stand there and drool, or you gonna buy something, sweetie?” one of the vendors asked, harsh and impatient, as Rex stared at the meat and vegetable skewers grilling on his cart.

Rex’s stomach growled. It would take the last of her cash, but she had to eat. But as she reached under her cloak and into her left jacket pocket, her fingers grazed something fuzzy.

“Oh no chakking way,” she cursed. The kitcoon stirred, then curled into a tighter ball of sleep. It weighed next to nothing, and when she removed her hand, she could barely tell it was inside her pocket.

She recalled the old woman rifling through her jacket before tying the belt around her. She must have stowed the kitcoon in my pocket—

Then, a terrible realization: And lost my cash! She checked her other pocket, pulling out lint—

I’m gonna starve—

—and her last crumpled Starways dollar.

The vendor, a skinny gentleman chewing on toothpick, lifted a brow as she offered the wadded cash to him. “That would buy you the skewer. Just the skewer.”

“Please, mister…”

“You gonna give me trouble?” he asked, holding up his dirty butcher knife.

Rex sighed. Back to old tricks. Things that her old sponsor, Chezzie, a seasoned hustler, taught her when she first hit the streets. Things she didn’t want to do anymore; one of the many reasons she ran away from him and her old life—

Invading memories, tricking minds.

Her stomach growled, reminding her it had been days.

“Look kid,” Chezzie once said, pointing at a similarly crowded street on a different world. “Each of these assinos wants something. You just need to figure out what, give ’em some version of it, and then you can take anything you need.”

How about a meal? She thought, eyeing the butcher knife.

With a gurgle, her stomach agreed.

Just this once more, she promised herself.

Rex relaxed her gaze, looking over the vendor’s toadish face and the yellow, sweat-soaked bandana tied around his head. He wore an apron over a long-sleeve shirt that he rolled up past the elbow, revealing the back-alley tattoos inking his arms and fingers.

Chezzie’s voice surfaced: “Come on, kid, it’ll be easy…”

“Fine, a skewer then,” she said, offering her last dollar.

Shocked, the vendor took the cash. In the exchange, she let her hand rest on his for a split second, long enough for her to sense his thudding heartbeat and overtaxed lungs. He’d been in the city too long, oblivious to the noise, the stench; the congestion of stimulus that drowned out his afflictions.

He’s been miserable his whole life, she thought, sensing the deeper pain that carved into his soul. A life of inescapable poverty, with relief that came in cheap habits at the expense of his health. She’d encountered his type before.

“A scoundrel like that scares easy. Just get rid of him,” Chezzie would have advised. “Not like you can escape this life, right?”

Rex focused on his respirations, how he struggled for each breath, in and out. She could squeeze down on his airways just a little bit, and the stress would make him panic, drop the knife, making him vulnerable and—

The kitcoon popped his head out of the side of her jacket and meowed.

“W-what is that?” the vendor exclaimed, his face brightening. His spit out the toothpick and set down the knife on the counter. “Did’ja get him at the exotic market?”

Jarred, she pulled back her telepathic reach and stared at the kitcoon sniffing the grill. “Um, he’s a kitcoon.”

Heartening emotions radiated from the man like sunshine.

Rex quickly added, “He’s hungry too.”

But the man didn’t budge, cooing back at the kitcoon, making silly faces.

Her stomach grumbled.

(Frighten him, take the food,) experience bid.

The old woman’s voice echoed in the back of her mind, countering: “Find another way.”

The kitcoon, wiggling out of her pocket, broke her from her thoughts. Rex grabbed him before he jumped out.

“Aw, can I pet him?”

“S-sure,” she said, keeping the feline in a secured, two-handed hold.

“What a funny little fellow,” the vendor said.

When his hand touched the top of the kitcoon’s head, Rex grazed his fingers, injecting the hunger gnawing at her belly into his. The vendor’s eyebrows peaked. “He’s so hungry.”

The kitcoon meowed and purred.

A pang of guilt pulled at her heart as the vendor hurriedly picked up the knife and scraped leftover pieces of veggies and meat into a bag. “Don’t worry, miss. He’ll be okay.”

I’m taking… Again.

The kitcoon rubbed his head against her hand, then licked her, his tiny tongue rough against her fingers. Delight coursed through her body. She’d never felt anything so sweetly affectionate.

“Thanks,” Rex whispered, sliding the kitcoon back in her pocket before taking the food bag from vendor with two hands, one resting on his wrist. The fresh memory of the kitcoon lingered at the forefront of his mind, the same tender delight soothing his anxieties.

What is this? Something unencountered, different. Unthreatening.

The kitcoon purred in her pocket as she gave in to curiosity. Shifting her psychic gaze, she focused on his body’s release of bonding hormones. He was already disarmed, but what if—

I made him feel…good?

She keyed into his hormones, magnifying the positive effect. Branching out, she guided the relaxation of his muscles, releasing the tension in his neck and shoulders, lessening the pain signals radiating in his arthritic hip. For a moment, she let him feel nothing but the love for the kitcoon, and the kindness of his act.

When she let go, tears spilled from his eyes, but he was quick to wipe them and sport a grimace.

“Get on, now,” he said, voice cracking. Then, more gruffly, “Next customer!”

She hustled away, pulling the cloak’s hood over her face to hide her beaming smile.

A dual-passenger hover copter turned down the street, just up ahead, sweeping its lights back and forth, creeping toward her position. Three Dominion soldiers walked underneath the copter, scanning the crowds with the facial recognition cams mounted on their helmets. An automated voice announced in Common first, then in the local dialect: “Show your faces and remain calm.”

That language is Voltryken, Rex realized, swallowing the last bite of the vendor’s scraps. Which meant they were on planet Kreylis, a Dominion-occupied waypoint for interstellar travelers. The Dominion hijacked the FTL booster highway near this planet, she thought, inferring the cause of their doomed flight. Her stomach dropped to her knees. They’re stopping all traffic to Neeis.

To pick up stray leeches like her.

Anger heated her cheeks and chest, but when she spun around to go the opposite way, she was met with another copter and squad closing in from the other direction. She considered the darkened alleyways, but she wouldn’t get far, not with the life-sensors on the copters that could detect a flea mite under a dumpster.

“Meow!” the kitcoon whined, food bits dangling off his whiskers as he begged for more.

She pushed him back in her pocket and ditched the emptied scraps bag atop an overfilled garbage can. “Not now.”

Grand Hotel lit up in bright neon lights above her head, a beacon in the cacophony. She glanced again down the block, then headed inside, keeping her head bowed as she wove through people crowded into the front of the lobby.

“When are we leaving?” a woman with a miniature pigdog shrieked and stamped her foot at an exhausted-looking pilot. “I can’t miss the presidential inauguration.”

“Ma’am, it’s the military—”

“And this place,” she spat, flapping her hands at the dilapidated front desk with a last-century droid manning the counter. “Is all you could get?”

The droid’s digitally projected face didn’t sync with its vocalizations as it spoke to a customer through a broken bullet-proof window.

“We’re not the only canceled flight, ma’am,” the pilot sighed. “The Dominion’s grounded hundreds of starships. They must be looking for someone.”

Or something, Rex thought, placing her hand over the kitcoon in her pocket.

She dismissed the thought. How could one little kitcoon be enough trouble that the Dominion would arrest and ground so many flights? It was an actionable offense, enough to trigger a countermeasure by their rivals, The United Starways Coalition. Maybe enough to start a war.

The sirens outside grew louder. In seconds, the place would be raided, faces scanned, passports scrutinized—

I’m not going back in a collar, she thought, rubbing her neck, remembering the excruciating pain of the last shock collar. The thought of prison, of even being detained, stirred the dark space inside her. I can’t get caught.

Rex pretended to check the advertisement station posted near the restrooms and stairwell but ignored the holograms for local hotspots. What she really needed was the map on the wall.

Grand suites upstairs, she thought, scanning the floorplan. And by the way the basement was segmented and laid out in grids between power sources, coffins—the cheap sim/stim tubes that resembled the long and narrow boxes for the dead—would be downstairs, in the dark and out of sight.

“You can’t escape this life,” Chezzie’s voice recirculated in her head as Rex ran down the stairs to the basement. A keycard reader guarded the door, but utilizing her lockpicks disguised as dangling earrings, she bypassed the cheap lock in seconds, letting herself into the darkened chamber. Thanks, Chezzie.

Rex tiptoed down the lighted pathway through the coffins, listening and looking with more than her eyes and ears. Sentients of all types slumbered in the tight confines of the tubes, drifting through simulations/stimulation routines as a rainbow of chems, dripping from machines mounted on the walls, pumped through their veins. A cheap way to pass the time between long layovers and escape the drudgery of reality. And an opportunity for a data hustler like her—

Ex-data hustler, she tried to tell herself.

—to steal valuable information and to sell to the highest bidder, or use it for personal gain, like stealing a starship—

This is the last time.

Decent coffins were encrypted to ensure the privacy of the users’ experiences. But even if they weren’t, and most of the knockoff coffins she worked with didn’t have any semblance of a security system, data-hustlers still had their work cut out for them. Even the most sophisticated tech couldn’t decode every detail of a dream, or, in a hustler’s case, extract specific, salable information.

But someone like her—who could look deeper, through the fragile walls every Sentient erected to protect themselves—could find anything she wanted. And here, all by herself without Chezzie watching for security—

Watching me—

—while she went in for an extraction, she didn’t have to pretend to need all the tech she demanded from him to keep her cover.

As Rex passed by a row of coffins, a psionic storm boomed like thunder from one of the tubes. Most sim-stims induced positive feelings, pleasure. This felt disorganized, chaotic, painful like—

Trauma.

Rex zeroed in on the source and checked the tube. Inside the glowing blue cylinder, a muscular human male with lots of scars, grafting, and biomech parts twitched in his coffin, his face contorted with pain.

Hell no. She didn’t want any part of his messed-up mind. But she couldn’t look away. There was something about him, even though he reeked of military with his sweat-soaked white tank top, his dirty fatigue pants, multitool hanging off his belt, and the battered dog tags hanging around his neck.

With a starship key, she realized, spying the blue chip between the dog tags. But it wouldn’t work without a code. Which is in your chakked-up head.

The kitcoon stirred, wiggling around, but she placed her hand inside her pocket and stroked his back until he calmed.

“Chak,” she muttered, glancing up at the ceiling. Muffled thumps echoed down. A stampede—

Or crowd-control gunfire.

The soldier grunted, arcing his back. She grimaced and braced her temples as his pain blasted across the psionic plane.

So much pain…

“An easy mark,” she could hear Chezzie saying.

No, not easy. Maybe for a legit data hustler with gear, but not for a telepath that took on their client’s pain. Prodgies “Fall” when the person they try to heal is too toxic, and the damage crosses over to their own bodies, driving them insane. That’s why her people never healed another being alone.

I’m not healing, she reassured herself. Just…looking.

“Right,” she muttered and checked the neural feed streaming on the readout near his head. He was outputting massive brain wave variability even though he had fifteen minutes left in the sim/stim and should be coming down off the high.

Bad cocktail, she thought, flicking one of the clogged IV lines hooked to the infuser strapped to his right forearm. Bad coffin.

Which meant he probably wouldn’t notice her intrusion.

But his pain could kill me.

The thumping increased in intensity, growing louder. Dust and debris rattled loose from the ceiling, raining down on the coffins.

“Chak,” she muttered, kneeling beside his tube. She overrode the safeties and lifted the coffin lid just enough for her to slide her arm inside and grab the blue chip and the multitool off his belt. After stuffing them in her pants pocket, she grasped the soldier’s cold, calloused hand. Closing her eyes, she whispered: “Give me a break, soldier.”

Gathering into an iridescent swirl of psionic energy, Rex slid down her arm, through her fingers, and crossed the corporeal bridge that separated her from the man. Like fizzing carbonation, she bubbled to the surface, and opened her eyes inside his being. Red blood, white bone, yellow fat.

Rising blood pressure pinged her ears. Ignoring the inflammatory cells clumped around his lungs and liver, she traversed upward, through his spine and into his neural network where the sim/stim chemicals lit up his brain like fireworks. There, she watched as his memories exploded across his mind: Gunfire, soldiers in red and black uniforms.

He’s some kind of specialist soldier fighting for the United Starways Coalition, she realized. Not Dominion, not a telepath hunter—but that didn’t make him safe.

She looked deeper.

Four-winged starfighters blazed across white clouds. Incoming missiles shrieked. Death from above, no escape—

Rex gritted her teeth.

Waking in a muddy trench, covered in soot and flames. So much pain. Look down. Body shredded, leg and arm ripped off—GONE—

Rex shuddered. The soldier’s pain surged through like a tsunami, eroding the tether back to herself.

All his comrades, dying, dead. All alone, pain capsizing—

(He’s inside you,) her subconscious screamed as icicles formed along her spine. Self-defense mechanisms kicked in: Cut off the pain.

(Sever neural connections—)

Cut off the soldier.

(Seize heart muscle, destroy cardiac tissue—)

(Kill him before he kills you—)

“Meow.” Something in the distance brushed across the top of her hand, lifting her from the inner vortex.

What’s happening?

She remembered the sim-stim coffin. The soldier, his cold hand. Trying to steal his starship codes and—

Herself, Falling.

A gentle paw picked at her fingers, until she loosened her grip on the soldier. The furry thing wedged between their palms, sealing the gaps.

Rex resubmerged back into the electric storm of pain. But in the midst, a soft glow, and a thrumming third heartbeat. New memories surfaced: Barred metal trap, sharp smells. Outside gone. Food in pellets, tastes funny. Can’t see well now, ears ringing. Curl up, tail over nose to try and stay warm in cold cage. Shivering, drowsy.

The kitcoon…

Rex tried to pull away, but the memories were too strong, too familiar to her own.

Stuck in a white-walled place with many awful smells. Yellow-gloved giants with masked faces reaching into cage. No energy to fight. Lights in eyes. Drowsy. Wake up, head hurts. Paws fuzzy. Everything wobbly. No more. Can’t go on.

Rex resisted, pulling back, but the kitcoon wiggled in her hand, stimulating her senses. More memories flooded in—

Explosions. Fire, soot. Shouting and gunfire. Throwing body against cage. Smoke—sirens—

A hand closed around her throat. Rex jarred back to reality to bloodshot eyes and a menacing growl. She shot up her hands to try and break the soldier’s grip around her neck, but he slammed her back against the wall, ripping the cords and lines that connected him to the sim/stim coffin, a rainbow intravenous fluids spraying everywhere.

Her senses screamed, terror and rage converging into madness, firing up her blood and kicking in her talent. The world split in two, allowing her to see the hallucinating soldier in front of him, and the electric panic driving the attack.

(Kill him before he kills you—)

Rex blasted herself through the nerves of his hands, up his arms, and into his brain. Nightmares bled into reality, and she couldn’t differentiate her own image from the attacking enemy that stole his life years ago.

“Meow!”

The kitcoon leapt from the coffin onto the soldier’s back, wrapping his tail around the man’s neck and gave another emphatic “Meow!” into his ear.

Another world intersected. The kitcoon’s memories spun across the chaos: Human arms, pressed into soft bosom, rushed away from the caged place. People chased. Booming, smoke. Frightened, but strong arms held fast.

The old woman that saved the kitcoon, Rex realized.

Soft voice, gentle touch. Rex saw the old woman’s smiling face as she lifted a flap of blanket off the swaddled kitcoon. “It’s going to be okay, sweet Kio.”

The memories fast-forward to a ship’s compartment. She saw the old woman petting the kitcoon, felt the kitcoon purring. No more hurts. Not all giants bad.

The soldier’s hands relaxed, enough to allow Rex a gulp of air.

The kitcoon’s memories continued to unfurl: Hand fed. Getting stronger. Sleeping curled against the old woman while traveling to new places. No more white walls. Warm, safe. No more cages. Belly always full. Always comforted. Protected. Trust again.

(Trust again.) The idea repeated in Rex’s head, and from the relaxing tension in the soldier’s grip, his too.

“Hold it right there!” someone shouted down the room.

Rex glanced sideways, to the back exit she’d used to access the basement coffins. Two Dominion soldiers locked the red laser sights of their rifles on Rex, advancing on her position.

Dark motes dotted Rex’s vision as she gasped for breath. The soldier had her at his mercy. The Dominion was coming—and so was the shock collar, the imprisonment, the torture—experiments!

Death.

“Do what you gotta do,” Chezzie’s voice echoed in her head. “It’s kill or be killed, baby.”

(Kill them all.)

The kitcoon crossed over the soldier’s arms and rested on her shoulder. The old woman’s voice surfaced from memory: “Find another way.”

“I’m not…going back…” she rasped.

Closing her eyes, she rerouted herself through the soldier, up his hands and arms and into his mind, but this time, as the same battle scene nightmare played out, she projected herself on the field next to him as he bled onto the soil.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” she said, kneeling beside him. Tears streamed down his pale face, his body racked with pain, terror, shivering.

“You’ve already survived this. You’re here now, with me, in the hotel,” she said, placing a hand on his chest. She sent cooling signals to his hyperactive nerves, calming the fires. The soldier relaxed, color returning to his face. He looked at her, his blue eyes focusing for the first time. “I’m not your enemy.”

The specialist released her, jerking his hands away, looking back and forth between her and the Dominion soldiers pointing their rifles at them. “What the—?”

“Take this kitcoon,” she said between coughs, prying the fuzzball off her shoulder and handing it to the soldier. She returned the blue chip and the multitool, too. “Get out while you can.”

“But you…?” he said, brow furrowed.

“Go!” she shouted.

“Hey, stop!” the Dominion soldier commanded as the specialist bolted, kitcoon tucked under his arm and howling.

Rex leapt into the walkway as one soldier broke off and went after the specialist.

Another way, she thought, closing her eyes.

Relaxing her mind, she spread her awareness over the soldiers, blanketing them in the few peaceful memories she had: Running through the wildflowers on Algar. Her grandmother’s loving hugs. The first feast of winter. Her father’s deep, rumbling voice.

The soldier tracking the USC specialist fired, but his aim drifted to the side, the plasma discharge hitting a wall.

“Get on the ground!” the second soldier shouted as the fire alarm sounded. Sprinklers shot out of the ceiling and doused them in cold water.

Rex tensed, but as she brought up her arm to shield her face, the second soldier stumbled and lowered his weapon.

This…worked? She marveled, stepping around them as they stood there, stunned.

But as she made for the exit, a collar clamped down on her neck. She screamed, electric currents piercing every nerve fiber as she fell to the floor.

“Chakking leech.”

Dizzy and disoriented, she made out the black uniform of the soldier who had crept up from behind and collared her. Behind his translucent visor spread a sickening smile.

“You’ll pay for what you’ve done,” he said, holding up the shock collar remote.

Rex screamed as she fell, electricity searing her body.

“It’s kill or be killed.”

But as she reached out and grabbed the soldier’s boot, he turned up the dial. White lightning blinded her, and all went dark.

Rex came to in a daze, somehow on her feet, stumbling, handcuffed and collared, as she was being pushed out the main door and down the front steps of the Grand Hotel. Sirens wailed and police and military lights flashed from every direction. People shouted and hollered behind a line of crowd-control Dominion soldiers. She couldn’t understand all the competing languages, or the words drowned by Dominion announcements to “BACK DOWN.”

The darkness inside her shrieked as soldiers led her to a hovering copter, where more soldiers with mechanized armor and bigger guns waited. Only seconds away from a cage—

TRAPPED FOREVER—

The remembered smell of disinfectants and the sting of needles washed over her senses—

Can’t go back—

(Kill them all!)

For the first time in years, tears pricked her eyes. No. No more fighting. No more death.

“Play your hand or die,” she imagined Chezzie mocking her.

She missed one of the steps, but the two soldiers holding her by the arms jerked her up.

Instead of rage and terror, something long ignored surfaced: Fatigue. And on its heels, longing. For the memories she’d recently revived of Algar, of family and home. And of something new; something she’d felt inside the kitcoon’s memories. Something impossible, found in the most desperate and painful times.

Trust.

(Connection.)

“Stop the injustice!” someone shouted above the din.

Rex turned her head toward the speaker. The vendor, pointing his machete at the soldiers arresting Rex, screamed: “Stop the Dominion! This is our planet!”

The crowd shifted, fists rising and shouts growing louder. She didn’t see who threw the first bottle, but the second, thrown by the vendor, struck one of the soldiers gripping her. He wobbled for a second, strengthening his hold on her.

Stop, please—

Tensions intensified as the soldiers holding the line pointed their guns at the crowd. Instead of retreating, a tidal wave of civilians charged forward, toppling soldiers amidst the gunfire. Hot blood splattered her face, the stink of sizzling flesh filled her nose. The soldiers holding her let go to assist their comrades, but the ones waiting in the copter jumped out and ran toward her.

There was nowhere to run, not as the crowd flooded in, battering her from all sides. Shots fired, singing past her ears, blasting into nearby civilians.

Panic sent her heart into overdrive, but the warning buzz of the shock collar depressed her rising instinct to telepathically lash out. In its place spilled the tears she could no longer hold back.

Please… Rex covered her head, shaking, in the middle of the riot.…no more.

An unmuffled hovercycle throttled over the crowd, slowing down long enough for Rex to look up. The USC specialist from sim-stim coffin, holding onto the handlebar with his real hand, reached down with his biomech arm, grabbed her by the jacket, and hoisted her up. The black hovercycle tipped as she scrambled onto the pillion. He didn’t give her enough time to grab onto him, hitting the accelerator.

Rex screamed.

But he held on to her, his biomech arm contorting farther than any human arm could, keeping her pinned to his back as he angled the bike toward the busy skyway of hovercraft a kilometer above the street.

“Watch out!” she yelled as he wound his way around cars. He released her as she hugged his waist and buried her head into his back to protect herself from the freezing winds.

He’s going to kill us.

When he jerked the bike, she peeked from behind his cover long enough to see him jump them into the next level and opposing stream of traffic.

“Or you saving or killing us?”

He grunted.

“Assino,” she said through gritted teeth.

Rex shivered as he flew them higher, into the blue, rain-soaked clouds and above the legal skyways. How he didn’t react to the cold, especially in only a tank top and fatigues, impressed her. Then again, she knew what he’d been through.

Out of traffic, she relaxed her tense embrace, letting him continue to shield her from the weather and cold. She didn’t need her extrasensory perceptions to know that he came back for a reason. One that she could barely yet believe.

A light shone through the clouds, growing brighter as they approached.

An illegal port? she wondered, wiping away the rain from her eyes to get a better look. A makeshift dock and a signal station welded together with parts of old starships and freighters hovered in the clouds on anti-grav boosters. The beacon, alternating white and blue in merc code, rotated at the top of the tower.

As he circled around the port, a black, retrofitted corvette with faded yellow stripes and quad wings came into view. It was an ancient starship, probably from the last galactic war, with lots of patch jobs and exoskeleton rigging to keep it from falling apart.

Unregistered, she guessed. And by the looks of the black boxes affixed to the engines, loaded with anti-scanner tech. A ticket out.

A garage near the aft engine opened, allowing him to land his hovercycle in a carved-out space between stacks of computer innards, metal barrels, and unfamiliar tech. Illegal tech.

Four large, white articulated robotic arms emerged from the tops of the stacks, each arching toward where he landed his hovercycle. It reminded her of something old. Familiar.

Sliding off the hovercycle, she caught her breath as he closed the garage and the atmosphere repressurized.

“Thanks,” she said.

He looked at her, his blue eyes not giving away any secrets.

“Are you not going to talk to me?” she asked as he went to the storage compartment at the end of his bike. He lifted the trunk to a loud meow. The kitcoon shot out, jumped off his chest, and landed on the ground in a frenzy.

But when the kitcoon saw her, he crawled up her pants, claws digging into to her flesh, until she plucked him up and held him in her arms.

“Thanks for helping us,” she tried again. The kitcoon purred and wedged into her elbow.

He stared at her for an uncomfortable length of time, then whispered: “Remy.”

“Rex,” she said back.

He approached her, staring at her neck. She backed up into a stack of computers until he made a motion with his hand around his own.

“The collar?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Hell if I know how to get it off.”

The soldier blinked, then grabbed the recently-stolen-and-returned multitool off his belt.

Not like anything I’ve seen, she realized, getting a closer look. Something he must have customized.

With a few quick motions and a pop, he had it off her neck.

“Thanks, I—”

He pushed her behind him and flung the collar into a metal barrel. The collar exploded, sending sparks and fire a meter high. As it fizzled out, the stink of burnt plastic and fried electrical parts permeated the air.

“Thanks again…”

Remy nodded, wiping his hands off on his fatigues before returning the multitool to his belt and heading toward the docking bay door.

“Wait, what’s next?”

Placing the kitcoon back in her jacket pocket, she followed Remy. The docking bay door led down a cramped hallway with more mechanical hardware, forcing her to slide sideways. When she reached the cockpit at the other end, Remy was sitting in the captain’s chair, punching in coordinates and revving up the engines.

“One minute,” he said.

“Until what?”

“More trouble.”

“Chak,” she muttered, strapping into the co-pilot’s chair.

As he rebooted the holographic nav systems, she chimed in: “I can navigate on star charts. And I’ve flown A-2200s,” she said, referring to the junked-out star cruisers from the interior.

Remy lifted anchors and locks just as the first Dominion fighter broke through the clouds.

“Hang on,” he said, hitting the accelerator. Rex’s stomach lodged in her throat as he launched them into the upper atmosphere. Enemy fire scorched the dash screen, punctuated by cannon blasts. Rex gripped her chair’s armrest with one hand and braced the kitcoon inside her pocket with the other.

“Watch out—” Rex yelled as Remy narrowly dodged oncoming Dominion fighters, sending her jerking forward and to the right, testing the strength of her harness.

We’re surrounded, she thought just as another blast hit the aft shields, knocking them down to critical levels.

Rex glanced over at the soldier. Remy was sweating profusely, eyes glazed over and breathing heavily. He didn’t respond to the oncoming fighters from the rear, or the incoming transmissions flashing red: “Stand down and prepare to be boarded.”

No response, not even when a second volley of plasma fire knocked out the rear shields. Internal alarms sounded and all four engine lights came on. Still, the soldier didn’t move, breathing rapidly.

“Remy,” she said, shaking him by the forearm. “REMY.”

His shoulder twitched. Something between a grunt and a wheeze came out of his mouth.

Take control, she thought. But even a cursory glance of his modifications and manual overrides to normal starship controls was enough to kill that idea.

She checked the starships pinged on radar. Even if she could reach that far with her telepathic talent, she could never affect all twenty or more fighters surrounding them above the blue and red planet. Not without devastating consequences.

Rex closed her eyes and projected herself through her physical connection with the soldier’s shoulder. Remy. Come back.

She slid into his consciousness, finding the same battle scene unfolding in his mind: The surprise attack, blacking out. Waking to chaos, pain, and terror. Blood, gore. Everyone’s dead—

Rex partially withdrew her consciousness back into her own body, enough to carefully pull out the kitcoon from her pocket and place it on Remy’s arm. The furry critter yawned and licked his hand gripping the nav stick.

Placing her hand back again on his forearm, she sank beneath his skin.

“I’m here, Remy,” she said, putting herself in the middle of the battlefield with him. “You already fought this battle and survived. Be here, with me.”

She pulled his sights up with her own, showing him the incoming fighters, and the shields failing.

Dipping back down into his psyche, into the pains and hurts of a long-lost soldier, she offered him the sound of her heartbeat, and the rhythm of her breathing.

“You’re not alone in this. You never have to be alone again.”

Remy jerked back. The kitcoon leapt off the dashboard and onto her shoulder, anchoring his tail around her neck and meowing.

“Chak,” he muttered, inputting something into the computer.

“Remy,” Rex said, her voice just above a whisper as a black battleship came into view from the starboard side, its tractor beams deploying in shimmering distortions. The starship rocked and creaked as they were pulled into the belly of the battleship.

“Where are you going?” she asked as he unstrapped from his chair and unbuckled her harness.

“Wait, what’s happening?” she exclaimed as the red-striped soldiers with their shock wands, waiting on the battleship’s deck, came into view.

He pulled her up by the arm. The kitcoon scampered down her jacket and dove into her right pocket as Remy took her hand and guided her back through the junk-filled passageway and into the garage.

As he switched on his hovercycle and motioned for her to get on the pillion, she scoffed. “I’m not about to rampage through the decks—or take a very short, very cold trip outside.”

“Get on,” he said, shoving a stack of old motherboards, network/graphic cards, and wiring aside to access a wall-mounted interface. The white robotic arms she’d noticed earlier lit up with blue and green tracks, and a glowing white circle appeared around the hovercycle.

“Where to?” he asked, punching in numbers into the interface.

As the Dominion battleship’s locking clamps took hold that she blurted: “La Raja, Neeis.”

He ran back and mounted the bike as orange and red sparks from laser cutters melted through the garage door.

“Hold on.”

When she didn’t hold him tight enough, he held one of his hands over hers. His strength surprised her, but not as much as intense vibration of the robotic arms or the tingling sensation crawling up her spine.

“Remy, what did you—?”

The garage door crashed to the floor. Dominion soldiers poured inside, shock wands sparking.

“Stop right there! Don’t move—”

Rex closed her eyes and went rigid, anticipating the pain of the shock wands. Instead, her entire body lit up from the inside out with exploding stars, and the vibrations of a massive earthquake. She yelled, but she didn’t have lungs or a mouth—

—Not until they rematerialized in a dingy, half-lit parking lot under a light-polluted night sky. Her voice came back, and she screamed until her lungs emptied and the surrounding sparks and static fizzled out into smoke.

“You can stop screaming now,” Remy said, this time with a sentence long enough she heard his drawl. He got off the bike, his legs unsteady, but offered her a hand.

She took his hand and half-fell off, catching herself on the side of the hovercycle. “W—what was that?”

“Algardrien teleportation tech, an FTL booster, and a few other mods and tweaks.”

“Algardrien tech? How’d you get that? Most of the planet is…”

She couldn’t say the rest out loud: Destroyed.

Remy’s face remained hard set, but his words were gentle. “Helped a few Algardriens once.”

She didn’t know if she could believe him. The entire galaxy hated telepaths.

“Guess it beats an escape pod,” she whispered.

He nodded, scratching the stubble on his jawline. “Yup.”

Rex eyed the sizzling remains of a Dominion soldier’s arm and a piece of a boot. “Are they going to track us here?”

As Remy stretched and drew out his response, she surveyed the empty parking lot. An abandoned warehouse, covered with graffiti and moss, crumbled to the north, next to a billboard advertising a casino on the main drag.

In Rajan.

Which means they were in La Raja, Neeis. We made it.

She tilted her head up toward the night sky and inhaled the warm air, detecting the fruit trees and flowers within the miasma of city smells. For the first time in a long time, she smiled.

“Blast radius’ll take care of it,” Remy finally acknowledged.

“Mmm. So, what’s your deal? Ex-marine gone tech rogue?”

He shrugged. “You?”

She shrugged back. “Just another girl trying to find a way to get by.”

“Not just another girl…” he said coolly.

Her shoulders knotted, and she moved her right foot back, into fighting position. “You gotta problem with that?”

The soldier’s face went stone-cold, his blues eyes locked on hers. “No.”

The kitcoon crawled out of her pocket, up the front of her jacket, and perched on her shoulder before giving a loud meow in her ear.

“I know you’re hungry,” she said, pulling him off and scratching behind his ears. “I’ll get you something soon.”

“What?” she said, reading Remy’s disapproving expression. “At least he volunteers what he’s thinking.”

“What’d the Dominion want with that thing?”

“His name is Kio.”

“Looks like a street ’coon.”

“He’s more than that,” she said, brushing back Kio’s raggedy fur. Her heart softened. Much more.

Worth saving.

(Like me…?)

A part of her, buried deep down inside long ago, eased.

Remy pulled out his multitool and clicked on a blue light. With her holding the kitcoon still, he scanned over the fresh scar and showed her the readings projected in holographics out of the side of the gray handle. “That’s sim/stim gear jacked with high-caliber reverse coms.”

“Meaning?”

Remy cocked his head to the side, analyzing. “It’s a sophisticated neural input/output device. If I had to guess, they were trying to replicate…”

He went silent.

“Telepathy,” she whispered. “An old woman gave him to me. She said that she and many others risked rescuing him from Dominion labs. I think she meant the tech, not specifically Kio. With all the military’s obsession with telepaths, all the imprisonments—in the end, they just want our talent. But why? What’s the endgame?”

Remy shook his head. “I’ll get it out, but it’ll break the tech… Unless that’d make him undesirable to you.”

His inference made her wonder: How much could she get for him from the USC or black-market buyers?

Probably enough for seven lifetimes.

The kitcoon meowed loudly, reminding them of his hunger, arcing his head back and adding to the dramatic effect.

Rex’s heart melted, her emotions softening. Wait…is the effect magnified by the tech?

All this time, was the kitcoon, as sweet and endearing as he was, projecting—and influencing—thoughts?

He saved our lives. But her stomach knotted. What kind of weapon could the Dominion make with that?

“Get it out. Make sure it’s destroyed,” she whispered, stroking the kitcoon’s back. “I think he’s ready to move on.”

Remy cleared his throat. “Yeah. I get that.”

The kitcoon made a chortling sound and sniffed the air, excited. Rex delighted in the spark in his eyes, and how furiously he wagged his tail.

“It’s just a parking lot, silly boy,” she whispered to the kitcoon. But to him it was a place with familiar smells, sights—

Home.

“I can’t believe he still trusts after all he’s been through,” she said as Kio crawled up onto her shoulder again.

Remy checked the batteries on his hovercycle and then angled his gaze toward the curved skyscrapers and twisting rail systems to the south, at the heart of La Raja. His voice wavered, speaking each word carefully. “Not just anyone.”

Kio licked Rex’s cheek, then whapped his paw into her temple with another insistent meow.

“Ouch, okay,” she said, prying him off her shoulder and putting him back in her pocket. “I’m starving, too. Let’s find something to eat.” As Remy kicked on the hovercycle, she slid in behind him.

When she wrapped her arms around Remy, he relaxed. He tilted his head back, pressing against hers.

“You meant what you said back there?” he asked, barely audible above the rumbling hovercycle.

“What?”

He didn’t move or offer an explanation. But she felt the ache radiating from his heart, and the quickening of his pulse as he awaited her response.

Listening with her deepest senses, she recalled what she said to him in telepathic limbo: “You’re not alone in this. You never have to be alone again.”

A telepath, tech rogue, and a kitcoon. I wonder what kind of trouble we’ll get into? The kitcoon wiggled in her pocket, protesting his entrapment. She reached inside and let him nibble on her fingernails. Thanks to you.

“Yeah,” she whispered back. She pinched him on the stomach through his tank top. “Just get me something to eat before I change my mind.”

Remy grunted, his equivalent of a laugh, and sped them toward the city.

To read more about Rex’s adventures, check out: Laws of Attraction.

Amazon bestselling author L.J Hachmeister writes and fights—although she tries to avoid doing them at the same time. The world champion stick-fighter is best known in the literary world for her epic science fiction series, Triorion, her LGBTQ+ sci-fi romance, Laws of Attraction, her bestselling anthology, Parallel Worlds: The Heroes Within, and her equally epic love of sweets.

If you would like to learn more about L.J’s work as an LGBTQ+ and science fiction/fantasy author, please visit www.triorion.com. All book sale profits are donated to Lifeline Puppy Rescue. Read books and save lives!