Chapter Three

 

 

Kyn leaned against the wall of the hospital’s emergency treatment unit and massaged his temples with his fingertips. The backlash of that killing blast of psi had left his head pounding, and the harsh lighting in the waiting room wasn’t helping. Across the room, Pat was deep in conversation with one of the med-techs, making notes on his slate as they spoke. Kyn was happy to leave the official details to Pat. He’d done his part, and he’d be paying for it in nightmares for the next few weeks.

The ghosts of memory were far too close tonight, crowding at the edges of his mind. The chaos of the boy’s thoughts and the desperation behind them had brought the events of his own past into sharp relief.

The kid reminded Kyn of himself as a teenager: short, slender, and far prettier than any boy had a right to be. The long, silky black hair and delicate, androgynous features didn’t belong anywhere near the filth of downside Riga.

Downside anywhere, small and pretty was not an advantage. Kyn could imagine all too well what this boy’s life had been like.

No. He didn’t have to imagine it. He knew.

“Kyn?”

He looked up to see Pat standing beside him.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Fine. Just need some sleep and maybe something for this headache.”

Pat’s expression softened. “We’re done here for now, so we can head out. They want to keep him overnight. He took a beating recently — nothing too serious — a couple of cracked ribs and some nasty bruises are the worst of it, but the doc is concerned he might have a concussion. I’ve authorized hospital security to call the FedSec office and get a guard on him. We don’t know what kind of gang affiliations he might have or who might come looking for him.”

Kyn let the details skim across the surface of his mind. He trusted Pat to do what was necessary. Right now all Kyn cared about was getting back to the hotel and flooding his system with enough alcohol to let him sleep without dreaming.

“The Anarin should hold him until we pick him up in the morning,” Pat added.

“Then what?” Kyn forced himself to ask, although he was pretty sure he knew, having gone through the process himself.

“FedSec Riga for initial processing and questioning. Then, depending on his attitude, he either cools his heels in a holding cell, or we take him into protective custody until we can arrange transport. We ship him back to Aurora in cold-sleep, and the Department of Psionic Operations takes over from there.”

It burned as much now as it had ten years ago. As a psion suspected of using psi to kill, the boy had no right to the due process guaranteed by the Federation Charter. No trial for him. His future would be decided by FedSec’s legal department, the Department of Psionic Operations, and the psych staff they employed. He’d be interviewed, psych profiled, and interrogated under truth drugs until he had no secrets left.

If the right people thought he was salvageable, he would be offered a way out in the form of rehabilitation. That meant public service working for either the Institute for Psionic Research or FedSec’s Psi Hunter unit. It might not be his first choice, but at least it would be a chance to reclaim his life.

If it was determined that rehabilitation wasn’t an option, he’d be mind-wiped, which was also a chance to start over, but in a much more permanent way. Mind-wiping destroyed psionic ability and memory along with it — no chance of reclaiming anything that way.

“He’s a minor, isn’t he?” Kyn asked. “Can’t be more than sixteen.” The boy’s age would protect him for a little while; the Federation Charter wasn’t quite cold-blooded enough to allow the mind-wiping of a child.

“No, he’s not. I wish he was.” Pat glanced down at his slate. “He’s twenty. His name’s Luka Andreyev.” He regarded Kyn with eyes that knew him too well and saw far too much. “Come on. You’ve had enough. Let’s head back to the hotel and get you to bed.”

The hotel wasn’t far from the hospital. The moment Kyn was in his room, he stripped and hit the shower. He stood for a long time under a pounding spray of water that was as hot as he could stand it, waiting for it to relax him.

It didn’t, and the pain-patch Pat had given him in the car hadn’t done a damn thing for the headache, either. With a sigh, he headed to the suite’s living room where he poured himself a generous glass of whiskey and stared out the window at the glittering city lights spread out below him.

Pat was nowhere to be seen. He’d disappeared into his own room when they’d first returned to the suite, saying he wanted to get a start on his report while the details were fresh in his mind.

Kyn stared blankly out the window and downed two drinks in quick succession. That didn’t help any more than the shower or the pain-patch had, and he thought maybe nothing much would until they got back to Aurora and found out what FedSec intended to do with Luka Andreyev.

Don’t make me please don’t make me… hurts so bad when they die…

The thoughts that threaded through Luka’s pain and fear had shone a harsh light into too many of the dark corners of his own past. Kyn had been a lot younger than Luka when he’d been found wandering the streets, lost in other people’s pain.

He’d been cleaned up, fed, and given drugs that made the voices go away. Drugs that gave him the only peace he’d known after endless months of drowning in thoughts and emotions that weren’t his.

At first, he’d mistaken the care he’d been given for kindness. He’d soon learned that the drugs that returned him to sanity came with a price. Once his benefactors understood what it was he could do, he’d been forced to earn those fleeting moments of peace with both his body and his mind.

By day, he was taught to rape minds. By night, faceless men came and raped his body.

Sometimes, when the shadows of memory were at their darkest, he wished FedSec had just mind-wiped him and been done with it. He’d trade every single one of those pain-filled memories for the chance to sleep without reliving it all in his dreams.

 

* * *

 

Pat toweled off his hair and pulled on a pair of sweats before padding out into the living room of the suite. Kyn still faced the window, staring out over the city in brooding silence. It didn’t look like he’d moved since Pat had left to start his report. A half-empty glass dangled from Kyn’s fingers, but from the set of his shoulders, whatever he was drinking wasn’t doing anything to relax him.

He’d known Kyn long enough to know some of what lurked in his past, and he’d have to be blind not to have noticed the shadows in Kyn’s eyes.

Kyn needed someone right now.

Not that Kyn ever gave a moment’s thought to his own needs; he would refuse any offer of help on principle. In Kyn’s mind, accepting help was an admission that he wasn’t strong enough to handle it on his own.

Whatever it was.

Pat hung back in silence, considering his options. Kyn might say he’d rather be left alone, but Pat had been leaving him alone for the past three years, and where had that gotten them?

Ah, hell. Nothing he did now could possibly make things any worse.

He moved toward Kyn, taking care to make enough noise that Kyn would be aware of his approach. “You look really tense,” he said softly. He lifted his hands to Kyn’s shoulders and began kneading the tight muscles. The tension practically crackled off of Kyn’s body. Pat held his breath, waiting to be shrugged off or snarled at.

Kyn didn’t move, so Pat continued to work his hands over Kyn’s shoulders and upper back. With agonizing slowness, Kyn started to relax, and eventually, he let out a sigh and his head drooped forward.

Though he could feel Kyn’s body trembling under his hands, Pat remained silent, afraid to break the spell. How long he stood there like that he couldn’t have said, but it was long enough that his hands were starting to ache.

“Tell me what you need,” Pat whispered. “Anything.”

A strangled sob was the only answer he got. Before he had a chance to think about what he was doing, Pat gently pried the glass loose from Kyn’s fingers and set it on the window sill. Then he turned Kyn around and wrapped him in his arms.

Kyn didn’t protest. He rested his head on Pat’s shoulder, body shuddering.

“It’s all right,” Pat told him. “I’ve got you.”

Kyn responded with a wordless whimper. His arms crept around Pat and he held on tight.

Pat dared not speak or move for fear of breaking the moment. Kyn pulled away just enough to lift his head and brush his lips across Pat’s. It was more a question than a kiss, and Pat couldn’t help but respond. Ignoring the voice of reason that whispered to him that Kyn was just looking for comfort, he answered with the slightest brush of his tongue. That was apparently all the confirmation Kyn was looking for; his arms tightened around Pat and he crushed his mouth against Pat’s and deepened the kiss.

Wrong or not, Pat drowned in that kiss. It was everything he’d wanted for three long years. It stole his breath and set his senses — and his sense — reeling. He pressed his body against Kyn’s and felt the heat and the hardness of Kyn’s erection against his hip. Kyn moaned into his mouth and Pat rocked against him and bit back a groan as that wicked heat coiled tighter and tighter in his groin.

When Kyn finally broke the kiss, he rested his forehead against Pat’s and squeezed his eyes shut. “Make me forget…” His voice sounded brittle and rough, like something was breaking inside him. He tilted his head and pressed warm lips against Pat’s neck, scraped the sensitive skin with his teeth.

Pat shivered at the sensation. Kyn’s hand slid slowly down his body, leaving a trail of fire behind. It dipped into the waistband of his sweats, slipped between his legs, and surrounded him with warm, firm pressure. Heat and lust spiraled through Pat, stripping him bare of all but need.

“Please…” Kyn breathed in his ear.

Ah, fuck…

This was such a bad idea for so many reasons.

But he couldn’t say no. Hadn’t ever been able to say no, not to Kyn.

A soft moan slipped out and Pat’s hips jerked sharply, driving him into Kyn’s hand. “God… yeah,” he managed to say in a hoarse whisper. “Let’s go.”

He let Kyn lead him into the bedroom and push him down on the bed.

Kyn stripped the pants off of him in one smooth motion and tossed them aside, leaving Pat naked on the bed. Pat watched in fascinated silence as Kyn shucked out of his own clothes. He savored the perfection of the body he’d been lusting after forever as it was slowly revealed. The slim hips, the sculpted abs, the ropes of lean muscle flexing under the golden skin of Kyn’s arms and shoulders… He’d dreamed of this for so long, dreamed of Kyn wanting him, needing him.

He doesn’t want you, the voice of reason prodded him. He just wants to lose himself in mindless sex, and you’re here and convenient and oh, so willing.

Pat ignored that voice and let himself drown in sensation. Kyn buried his face between Pat’s legs, kissing and nipping, licking and sucking until Pat thought he’d go mad with the intensity of the desire lashing through his body. His hands fisted in Kyn’s hair and he tugged, lifting Kyn’s head, wanting to look into his eyes.

He’d hoped he might see some of his own feelings echoed in Kyn’s eyes, but all he saw was driving, burning need.

Kyn rose up on his knees and took hold of Pat’s hips, fingers digging in hard, and flipped him over onto his belly. When Kyn hauled him roughly to knees and elbows, Pat started to protest, but bit back the words before they could escape. He’d got what he wanted, after all, just not quite the way he’d imagined it.

He’d wanted this face to face so he could watch Kyn’s expression as he lost himself in pleasure, wanted to witness that magical moment when the tension finally broke and Kyn tipped over the edge into climax.

Kyn leaned across the bed and reached for something on the nightstand. A few moments later, Pat felt a cool, slick finger enter him. There were no kisses, no caresses, no gentle words of encouragement. It was as cold and impersonal as it could get, and he was given only the barest minimum of preparation before Kyn pushed his way in.

Pat hissed at the intrusion and clenched his teeth to keep from crying out, suspended in that burning place between pain and pleasure. He dropped his head to the pillow and panted through the discomfort.

Kyn allowed him only a moment to adjust. The burn had only just started to ease when Kyn began to move. He thrust his hips forward with deep, hard strokes that had nothing to do with loving or caring or even mutual pleasure. There was nothing here but raw, blind need. No matter how much Pat might want it to be otherwise, right now he was just a warm body, a means to an end.

His body didn’t care. Once the burn faded and the pleasure started to build, Pat moaned and pushed back, meeting Kyn stroke for stroke. The heat coiled tighter and tighter within him, driving him right to the burning edge of release.

When he realized that Kyn wasn’t going to touch him other than to maintain that bruising grip on his hips, Pat reached down and brought himself off with a few quick, hard strokes.

His body clenched around Kyn as he came. Kyn’s rhythm faltered. He drove into Pat one last time and stilled, letting out a hoarse cry that sounded more like emptiness and pain than any kind of pleasure. When Kyn was finished, he pulled out, turned away, and lay down on his side without a word.

Pat lay there feeling sore and spent, but not relaxed, not sated. He knew damn well he’d just been used, but he couldn’t even bring himself to be angry. He’d seen the look in Kyn’s eyes, had known what it was going to be the moment Kyn pushed him down on the bed. He’d let Kyn do it because Kyn needed it, and Kyn so rarely needed or wanted anything from him.

While some tiny corner of his heart had hoped there might be tender words and cuddling, gentle strokes and intimate looks, he knew that he had no right to expect those things from Kyn. Had no right to expect anything. Kyn didn’t want him that way. He’d made that very clear three years ago.

Tonight wasn’t any different; tonight, any warm, willing body would have done.

He told himself that he should be glad that it was his body that happened to be available. Told himself that if this was all he could ever have of Kyn, it would be enough and that the blurring of his vision was just exhaustion.

Told himself over and over until he almost believed it.

Almost.

He rolled off the bed, picked up his sweats from the floor, and put them on. With one last glance at Kyn’s rigid back, he retreated to his own room, where he lay awake staring into the moon-shot darkness for half the night.

 

* * *

 

Morning found Kyn edgy and exhausted. Sleep had taken a long time to claim him last night, and it had brought him no peace. Dark dreams had stalked him, given life by the memories Luka’s plight had stirred.

He was awake long before the alarm went off. Yesterday’s headache returned at full intensity as soon as he was upright, and there was no chance of that improving any time soon. Not if he had to keep blocking Pat out of his mind. Luka might be on Anarin, but Pat wasn’t, and Kyn had no desire to sample Pat’s emotional turmoil today.

He knew he’d been rough and cold last night, maybe even cruel, but anything else would only have encouraged Pat to ask for more.

Kyn couldn’t give him more.

Wouldn’t.

Pat deserved far more than the damaged, ugly creature that shivered behind Kyn’s quiet, confident façade. Pat also deserved an apology of some kind, but he wasn’t going to get that, either. Kyn didn’t want to do anything to disabuse Pat of notion that he was a cold-hearted bastard. Once Pat got that through his head, maybe he’d get on with his life and go find someone who was worthy of him.

Someone who could love him the way he deserved to be loved.

Someone who wasn’t broken.

That resolved, he headed for the shower, trying to focus on the day ahead. They needed to get to the hospital before Luka woke up and found himself alone in a strange place with no idea how he’d gotten there.

When he emerged from his room, Pat was already occupying most of the couch in the suite’s living room, dividing his attention between his slate and Torron News Net’s morning vid-report. He didn’t look like he’d had any more sleep than Kyn had. For some perverse reason, that made Kyn feel a little better.

Pat didn’t look at him, but gestured toward a coffee pot and a tray of breakfast pastries he’d ordered from room service. “Breakfast. Then we should move. The kid’s due for more Anarin in an hour.”

Sugary pastries held no appeal, but some hot, bitter coffee might wake him up enough to make it through the morning. Kyn poured himself a cup. “Did you check in with the spaceport, get us booked on a transport?”

“Yeah.” Pat frowned at the slate and took a sip of coffee. “About that — there’s a FedSec fast courier docked at Torron Station. They’re waiting on us.”

Kyn raised an eyebrow. A fast courier would have them home in a few days, rather than the few weeks a public transport would likely take. “They just happened to be here?”

“No, I had a message from the pilot. They’re waiting on us specifically. Somebody wants us home fast, and I’m guessing it’s Logan.”

“That’s not standard procedure, is it?” Kyn asked. “Well, I mean, it isn’t for search-and-rescue ops.”

“It’s not for psi hunters, either. Once our target’s safely on ice, nobody’s too concerned about how long it takes us to get home. I’ve never been offered private transport before.”

“Could someone else have set it up? Your father?”

Pat shook his head and finally looked at Kyn. “No, it came through on my FedSec account. My father doesn’t have that kind of influence, and even if he did, I can’t imagine any reason for him to help me get home, quickly or otherwise. We haven’t spoken since I dropped out of college. That’s… what, six, seven years, now?”

“That long?” Kyn asked before he could stop himself. He’d known Pat had broken ties with his family, but he hadn’t realized quite so much time had passed.

Pat’s gaze slid away. “Yeah. I still talk to my sister, but… My father’s never forgiven me for breaking my engagement to Angelica and not finishing school. He never wanted a son. He wanted a miniature version of himself, and he never did understand that I’m not him. I tried to please him for a long time, and then you made me see that I didn’t have to, and I thought when you came back from Fleet… and then after that night—” Pat stopped, face flushing as he turned away. “Sorry. I didn’t…”

Kyn opened his mouth and then shut it again. He should say something, damn it. Not just about that night, but about last night, too. He’d hurt the one person who really knew him and still accepted him. All the things he hadn’t done, hadn’t said, lay burning in his mind, prodding at his conscience.

He owed Pat more than his silence.

But he couldn’t give him more. Couldn’t be what Pat wanted him to be. Far better to keep Pat at arm’s length than to let him get close and risk hurting him even more than he already had.

“We should head out,” was what he finally said.

Pat’s head whipped around and those dark brown eyes met Kyn’s, full of hurt and full of questions that Kyn knew he could never answer. Not to Pat’s satisfaction, at least.

Kyn turned away, snatched up his jacket, and headed for the door. “I’ll wait for you in the lobby.”

 

* * *

 

It was the silence that woke him.

Luka had forgotten what it was like to have the space in his head all to himself. It had been almost a year since the nightmare had begun. A year that seemed like forever. He could hardly remember a time when there hadn’t been voices in his head, screaming, or crying, or whispering at the edges of his awareness. They were always there, waiting for the walls to crumble away and let them in for good.

Now, in place of the voices, there was utter silence.

He opened his eyes to find himself lying in a clean, soft bed. There was no sign of Ty or Shiv. His luck just didn’t run that way, so Luka figured he must be dreaming.

At least it was a good dream.

The bandage Shiv had put on his arm was gone and the slice he’d made with the knife looked days old. He wondered how many days he’d lost this time. It couldn’t be too many — his head still ached and throbbed in time with his pulse, and although his ribs had been wrapped, it still hurt to breathe.

The sensor patches on his chest suggested he was in a hospital or clinic, although the place didn’t look anything like the neglected downside dump of a clinic Rufio sometimes dragged him to when Ty got too rough.

He shifted a little in the bed and tested each limb, tallying his injuries.

Head and ribs were the worst of it, but he remembered getting those clear enough. Shiv had beaten the crap out of him the other day. Rufio had been furious when he came home and found him huddled on his mattress in too much pain to go out on a job that night. Shiv had called him a clumsy little shit for falling down the stairs again, his cold glare daring Luka to say otherwise.

Luka hadn’t dared.

He frowned as he finished his inventory. There weren’t any new injuries to explain why he was here. His head didn’t hurt any worse than it had before… and his ass didn’t burn the way it did when they drugged him senseless and handed him around like a party favor.

Had he finally snapped? Maybe this was all a hallucination…

Luka cast his mind back, seeking his last coherent memory. There was nothing, and he’d almost given up when he flashed on the stark, broken shadows and weed-choked alleys of the War Zone. That was the trigger he needed. Hot acid burned his throat as the rest of it unspooled in his mind.

Rufio’s job. The girl who’d tried to help him, the choice that wasn’t a choice, and his hold on reality splintering along the divide between two equally horrifying alternatives.

Fuck.

He’d lost it out there, but damned if he could remember what had happened.

Had he killed Rufio? The fact that he wasn’t in the shitty clinic or the apartment said something had happened to Rufio.

He remembered the expression of utter disbelief he’d glimpsed on Rufio’s face just before the flashlight had hit the ground and gone out. His eyes darted to the door. Any minute, Shiv or Ty would come charging in… They’d grab him and they’d…

Luka’s throat tightened and his muscles twitched with the need to run.

There was no sign of any of the Vipers, though. The only person he could see from where he lay was the cop standing guard outside the door—

Cop?

What the fuck…?

Who had taken him out of the War Zone?

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to think. Nothing came to him. There was a big, blank nothing after Rufio had hit the dirt.

The Vipers hadn’t brought him here. If they’d found him next to Rufio, and Rufio dead without a mark on him, Luka would be dead, too.

It couldn’t have been the Scorpions, because they would have killed him on sight. Nine of their own dead at the hands of the Vipers, damn right they’d kill him. Even if they didn’t know he was personally responsible for every one of those deaths.

It couldn’t have been the cops, either, even if there was one standing guard out in the hall. The Riga Police Force had surrendered the War Zone to the gangs years ago.

Voices outside the room jerked his attention back to the door. His breath quickened and his heart raced. Had Ty come for him?

It wasn’t Ty who walked into the room, though. It was two guys, one tall and dark, the other shorter and blond, both of them looking like they were pretending not to be cops. They were followed by an older guy wearing scrubs. Med-tech. Had to be, the way he was peering at the monitors and muttering to himself.

The tech reached out to fiddle with one of the sensor patches. Luka flinched, earning himself a cluck of disapproval. He tried to hold still. It shouldn’t be this hard to do it — he was used to people touching him whenever they damn well pleased, after all — but not knowing what had happened made it much harder to submit.

The two not-cops waited patiently while the med-tech gave him an injection. After that, the tech fussed some more over him, asking him about his head and his ribs and peering into his eyes with a little flashlight. Luka gave him one-word answers. Eventually the tech punched a few buttons on the monitors and then backed off to talk quietly to the not-cops. When he’d finished and left the room, the not-cops turned their attention to Luka.

“Good morning, Luka,” said the dark-haired one. He had hard brown eyes and his smile looked forced. “I’m Agent Pat Cottrell and this is my partner, Agent Kyn Valdari. We work for FedSec, and we’ve got a few questions for you.”

The cold weight of dread in his gut flared hot. FedSec? That was worse than cops. Federation Security only got called in if things were really bad. If Ty or Shiv found out FedSec had been talking to him… “Am I under arrest?”

“We’re going to take you into custody,” Cottrell said. “Whether it’s logged as arrest or surrender is entirely up to you.”

He considered bolting, but the blond had moved to block the door. Luka could see the stunner he wasn’t trying too hard to conceal, already in his hand. “What’s the difference?”

“If we arrest you, you’ll leave here in binders and you’ll spend the next few days in a holding cell at the FedSec building while we clear up the paperwork. If you surrender, you’ll spend a few hours in an office answering some questions and then you’ll be placed in protective custody and you’ll spend the night in a hotel.”

Luka’s throat went dry. Was this about the Vipers working for the Guild? He didn’t know anything about that. No names, no contact information, nothing. Rufio hadn’t trusted him that far. “What are the charges?” he asked, and managed to keep his voice steady, even though his heart was hammering in his chest and his blood was pounding in his ears.

“Murder by psi,” Cottrell said quietly. “Found you sitting next to two people who are dead without a mark on them.”

His breath caught in his throat. They knew. How could they know? And what kind of evidence could they possibly have against him? It wasn’t like there was ever anything to see. “That don’t prove nothing,” he said. His voice didn’t sound nearly so steady this time.

“I felt the blast that killed them,” Valdari said from his spot in front of the door. “It came from you.”

Luka stared at him, nausea swirling in his stomach as Cottrell’s exact words — two people — finally hit him. “Two?” Tears pricked at his eyes. He blinked them back and clenched his jaw. “The girl?”

“Dead,” Cottrell said in a flat voice. “Her name was Tanya Webb. She was seventeen.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, felt the hot, damning tears leak out from between his lashes. Tanya. Knowing her name made it real. Tanya had tried to help him and he’d killed her. The fleeting thought that she might be better off dead than belonging to Farro was hardly a comfort. “I didn’t mean—” He choked the damning words off. That was as good as a confession, wasn’t it? Not that it mattered what he said. These two already knew far too much.

“I know you didn’t.” Not Cottrell’s voice this time, but a softer, kinder voice. A hand came down on his shoulder. Luka flinched and opened his eyes to find that Valdari had moved from his spot in the doorway and was standing right next to his bed. “We can help you.”

Luka jerked away from that hand and snorted. “Yeah, help me right into a holding cell.” He was trying like hell for cool and tough, but that shaky voice wasn’t making it, not by half. He doubted he was fooling anyone.

The two not-cops exchanged an unreadable look and Valdari turned back to Luka. “Whether or not you end up in a holding cell is up to you.”

He bit back a hysterical laugh. He knew all about this — they’d go easy on him if he sold out the rest of the Vipers. Like that was even an option. Ty would see him dead if he traded the little information he had for his freedom.

Or worse — not dead.

He swallowed hard as it occurred to him that Ty would kill him whether he talked to these guys or not. Ty knew he and Rufio had left together on Rufio’s bike. When Rufio turned up dead and his Shadow went missing, even Ty was smart enough to draw the obvious conclusion.

“I ain’t telling you nothing,” Luka spat. He had to get out of here before Ty or Shiv figured out where he was. Steeling himself against the pain in his side, he sat up and tore the sensor patch from his chest.

The monitor at the head of the bed shrilled an alarm. Luka looked up to see Valdari pointing a stunner at him. The med-tech rushed in and Cottrell grabbed his arm and spoke a few quiet words to him. Whatever Cottrell said, it earned him a dubious look. The tech tapped something out on his slate and the alarm shut off.

When they were alone again, Cottrell gave Luka a long, appraising stare. “You’re leaving here with us, Luka. Whether Kyn here stuns you or puts you in binders is up to you.”

Luka scowled at him, but stayed where he was. Running was clearly not an option. “I want a fucking lawyer. I got rights. The Charter says—”

“The Charter doesn’t apply,” Cottrell told him in a cold, matter-of-fact voice. “You lost your right to due process the first time you used psi to kill. Your fate won’t be decided by the courts or a jury of your peers. It’ll be decided by FedSec, based on the results of a round of interviews, a psych profile, and your own choices.”

“Can I handle this, Pat?” Valdari said softly.

Cottrell gave his partner a curt nod and said nothing more as he went to stand guard near the door.

Valdari dragged a chair close to the bed and sat. “Pat’s used to dealing with criminals, not newly awakened psions,” he said.

There was a snort from across the room, and Valdari shot a glare in Cottrell’s direction.

“What Pat said about the Charter is true, but it’s not as dire as he makes it sound. The Charter doesn’t grant you a trial because there’s little chance you’d get an impartial jury. Psi may not be a new phenomenon, but it’s rare and it’s not well understood, even by those of us who work in the field. There’s a lot of ignorance and a lot of misinformation out there. Even in the most tolerant communities, psions are still feared. It wouldn’t matter if you were innocent — nine times out of ten a jury would convict you just for being a psion. As for the rest of it, a psion of your strength simply cannot run around free without some kind of training. Without training, you’re a danger to yourself and everyone around you.”

“Psion?” Luka echoed in a hoarse whisper.

“That’s what you are,” Valdari said. “You’re not crazy, whatever it feels like. You’re able to receive other people’s thoughts and feelings — the voices in your head, the emotions that grab you by the throat and won’t let you go even though they’re not yours — all of that is psi. You can learn how to block it out. We can teach you to put up walls that will stay up, so you only have to hear the voices if you want to.”

Luka stared at him, mind whirling with so many questions he didn’t even know where to start. How did Valdari know about the voices and the walls? There was no way he could know what it was like in Luka’s head.

But that was what psion meant, wasn’t it? Psions could steal people’s thoughts, read their deepest, darkest secrets…

Except Luka couldn’t.

All he could do was kill people.

“It’s quiet now,” he murmured, wondering just what had happened to the voices and his shattered walls. He should be raving and screaming and drowning in the crazy after what had gone down in that alley.

“We gave you Anarin,” Valdari said in that same soothing voice. “It’s a drug that shuts down the psi-centers in your brain, makes it impossible for you to receive anything. We can use it to keep you comfortable until we can get your training started.”

“But…” Luka licked his lips, his eyes darting to Cottrell, who stood by the door watching them, those dark eyes cold and unreadable. “They… he said they want me for murder.”

“Just because you’re strong enough to kill with psi doesn’t mean you did it on purpose.”

Luka closed his eyes. “Not the first time,” he whispered. “It hurts. It hurts so bad…”

“I know,” Valdari murmured. “Believe, me, kid, I know.”

“I didn’t want to do it again. But Rufio said… if I didn’t… they would…” He swallowed hard and wrapped his arms about himself to stop the shakes.

“Luka, I can help you get out of this. I can teach you to shut the voices out and I can take you someplace where you can start over.” Valdari’s voice was soft, barely above a whisper. “Will you let me help you? Will you trust me?”

Luka shivered and kept his eyes squeezed shut. He wanted the things Valdari said to be real, but he didn’t know how they could be. The first lesson he’d learned on the streets of Riga was that nothing came without a price. “What’s the catch?” he asked, opening his eyes to stare Valdari down. “Who ends up fucking me? You?”

Valdari shook his head slowly and said, “Nobody fucks you unless you want them to. Not ever again.”

Luka couldn’t tear his eyes away. Valdari met his gaze steadily. Something in his voice made Luka want to believe him. Made him feel like he could believe him.

“If you accept our help, you’ll come with us to Aurora. Whoever hurt you is not going to find you there. You’ll stay at the Institute for Psionic Research and we’ll teach you how to control your abilities. The only catch — if you want to call it that — is that we’ll ask you to pay it forward. We help you… and then you help us by staying on and working for us for a while. Maybe you’ll want to help teach other people like yourself. Or maybe you’ll want to become a search-and-rescue operative and go out and find them, like we found you last night.”

Luka bit his lip. “An’ if I don’t want to come with you?”

Valdari’s expression became grave. “I’m afraid you don’t have a lot of choice about that. We have all the evidence we need. If you refuse to take the training, you’ll be mind-wiped.”

Luka couldn’t stop the cold shudder that gripped him. Mind-wiping was reserved for those considered beyond rehabilitation. They’d use drugs to take away his memories and everything else that made him who he was.

Fresh start, clean slate, blank smile.

No more Luka Andreyev.

“You have a choice, Luka,” Valdari told him. “Don’t let it be that.”

“Why do you care? You don’t even know me.”

“Because I was you. Or very much like you. Ten years ago I sat right where you are now and had to make the same choice. I chose to get help, and so far, I haven’t regretted it. Take some time to think about it. We can wait outside while you do.” He rose and started toward the door.

Luka considered what Valdari had said. He usually had a pretty good feel for when people were screwing with him, and Valdari didn’t seem like he was. The man just might be telling the truth. If there was a hidden price, it couldn’t be any higher than what he was paying now, could it?

He already knew there was no future for him with the Vipers. Ty would kill him the minute he showed up at the apartment. The only question there was how much pain and humiliation he’d have to endure before he died.

Knowing Ty, it’d be a lot.

“Okay,” he said before Valdari had even reached the door. “I’ll come with you.”

He might have been able to hold onto his cool, tough façade, keep on playing the game, except that was when Valdari took half a dozen steps back to his side and put a hand on his shoulder again. Not to shove him into the nearest wall, not to push him to his knees and demand a blow job, but just to squeeze gently.

A gesture of reassurance?

Luka wasn’t sure. He couldn’t remember a time when anybody had laid a hand on him without the intent to hurt or demand or force.

“It’ll be okay, Luka,” Valdari said softly. “It’ll be okay.”

That was all it took. Even if those words were a lie — and Luka didn’t see any way they could be true — he wanted desperately to believe them. Tears burned his eyes and spilled down his cheeks. He bit his lip and tried to stop them, but all of a sudden he was back in that alley looking down at the girl, and she was staring back at him with those dark, terrified eyes…

Tanya.

“Please…” he choked out. “I just want…” Want the voices to go away, want it to not have happened, want it all to go away…

The mattress beside him dipped. He found himself surrounded by strong arms and pulled against a solid chest. Soft words he couldn’t make out were murmured in his ear, and he froze, waiting for the violation that was surely coming.

Nothing more happened. The arms stayed around him, sheltering rather than hurting. The hands didn’t grope him, and the voice continued with those soothing words that meant nothing but somehow meant everything. Luka allowed himself to relax just a fraction, and that was when he lost it. He turned his face into that solid chest and sobbed until he couldn’t cry anymore.