Kaplan watched Jinx stride to the conference room's exit. She paused as she reached it and looked back to him. There'd been hellfire in her stare. Now, there was blunt reassessment, as if she debated whether he needed backup or a bullet. And whether she cared either way.

Then she was gone with a click of heels.

Unnervingly, her fury continued to burn across his senses, saying more about his mental state than hers.

But not all the emotions locking his gut were empathic echoes.

He'd put her in a bad position. A worse one than he'd predicted. She'd handled it, but what was this thing about her father? A familial illness involving delusions? What had she failed to tell him?

He couldn't let her disappear into the void before he knew. "Councillor Shau, permission to be excused?"

Denied. The mental response was a whip.

At the main table, the Coalition high councillor and leader of the Rha Si's shadow council turned to pin him with her patented death stare. Her displeasure crawled over him, aggravating his already worn control. More pain rose despite the analgesics he'd taken to cope with working in-population. Over two days in a highly populated port, dealing with politicians, bureaucrats, and military leaders, justifying his every decision, had left his psionics frayed along with his patience.

He didn't flinch from the woman's censure. The councillor wasn't above reproach. She'd just suggested one of her pet researchers pharmacologically pry open the mind of a Coalition citizen. And not because critical intel was at stake. Shau expected access to every mind, and she and her first-gen aide, Regina Deladi, hadn't managed to unlock Jinx's, even with Shau aware of the illness involved.

Intel she hadn't shared.

Another lapse in judgement.

The councillor had blindsided him along with Jinx.

Of course, it wouldn't have occurred to Shau to discuss such a trivial matter. Tasking a team to hunt down all relevant social and health data would have been automatic. Jinx was aberrant—a rare phenomenon—and at present, a diplomatic inconvenience.

And his responsibility.

With all due respect, R'henuri—he used the councillor's Rha Si title, the highest rank there was—that was my witness you just alienated.

A flicker in the room's lighting. Abrupt pressure at his temples—psionic and physical—sharpening the burn in his skull. Eshia Shau didn't shy from reminding her subordinates what she was: a formidable telepath and telekinetic. A Rha Si Original.

The aberrant is of no importance. Her glacial voice pierced his mind. She's next to worthless as a witness, and as Ambassador Mu has just pointed out to me, her temperament negates her value as a test subject for Farnquar's research. A degree of cooperation is required even in the mentally unstable.

Jinx, a test subject? Kaplan cut his attention from Shau and the alien diplomat beside her to Farnquar. The medical researcher flinched. Anxiety and whispers of poetry washed across the psionic plane: Farnquar trying to calm his thoughts. He wanted to be back in his lab, scanning brains, not having his read by one of the soldier class Rha Si. The psi he worked with were less confronting: researchers, scientists.

Kaplan got the gist of the man's work: drug effects on Rha Si and human minds. The Qua-zi ambassador, Mu, was right; Farnquar wouldn't be using Jinx. When it came to aberrant minds, the researcher's goal wasn't to heal them. It was to rip them open.

A whisper of cool mental energy: Mu in telepathic communication with Shau.

The Qua-zi diplomat, a researcher in its own right, floated in its bio-sphere unit, unaffected by the tension in the room or the idea of drugging a human. The Qua-zi—rare, long-lived hermaphrodites, the alien originators of the Rha Si—didn't experience strong emotions. They were valued moderators in a coalition that included volatile species like Throls and Vok. Pure logic drove them.

As it had when they'd first used their tech and genetic material to enhance a small group of humans, Shau among them. All but wiped out by the Xykeree host, the alien telepaths had seen the advantage of allying themselves with a prolific species that had the potential for both psionic communication and violence.

But humans weren't a purely cerebral species.

A fact the Originals had clearly demonstrated when they'd manifested psionics new to the Qua-zi: empathic and psychokinetic abilities.

Mu 'his-herself' still led the research into the phenomena.

Kaplan eyed the alien's mollusc-like body, rippling flesh that was mostly brain; biology that had deprioritised the physical and had negligible drive to seek social, sexual, or emotional connection. Buried in it was tech designed to enhance telepathy, perfected over a number of Qua-zi lifetimes—many centuries.

In contrast, the adapted version for humans was rudimentary. Constant adjustment was required to compensate for the unpredictable growth of Rha Si psionics and the evolution of non-telepathic abilities.

It'd failed to keep pace with third-gens.

At his last psi-tech tuning, Kaplan hadn't bothered to mention the weak kinesis he'd developed or his increasingly erratic empathic reception—both signs of destabilisation. A decision his alien creators would no doubt consider irrational.

As they would his defence of a low-value, 'defective' citizen.

Kaplan pressed a hand to his brow, acutely aware of the hot, building pain behind his eyes and what it meant. He'd have to have been dead not to relate to Jinx's situation, to fail to see the parallels. How long until he, too, was labelled defective and written off?

Shau cut her gaze back to him.

He dropped his hand and 'pathed her before she could question him about his fitness for duty. I take it Mu was unable to tune into Ms Koel's thoughts.

Shau turned back to the reports streaming across her data pad. The ambassador saw no point in making an attempt. The degeneration seen with the disease in question corrupts memory and warps perception. Check your files.

Kaplan used his neurotech to review the report Shau had finally seen fit to share. Jinx's father had Lorgor's disease. Paranoid delusions, hallucinations, behavioural disturbances, volatility. Her performance in the room wouldn't be put down to simple shock and temper. The long-term prognosis for those with the disease was—

His breath stilled. His blood grew colder with every grim detail that ran through his tech. Now he understood: what Jinx had been hiding; her apparent recklessness. Why her medical files were next to nonexistent.

She hadn't sought treatment. Hadn't seen the point.

He closed his eyes, tuning into the ache in his skull, not the acid in his gut. Pain and blackouts. He and Jinx would share that fate. But when his head became overrun with voices—thousands of them—they'd be real.

Jinx was going to lose her mind.

Kaplan shook his head, the data before him feeling like a bad joke. He'd accepted his fate, his brother's, that of all in his generational class. Now he had to accept this?

He was getting damn tired of accepting things. Losing people.

In anticipation of his coming med check, he'd given his surviving team members their promised psi tune-up then limited contact—and felt like a bastard for doing so. Rha Si protocol might stipulate he step back from all non-psi relationships when preparing to withdraw from public life, but right now, his team needed their commanding officer, not a psionic focused solely on protecting secrets. They'd just lost six team members.

He'd also left Jinx to face her losses alone, and rationalised grounding her as a favour, time to clear her head. He'd have to rethink that. With what she was facing—

Kaplan cut off the thought. A hospital room wasn't in Jinsin Koel's future. The woman wouldn't go quietly.

She wouldn't desert the people she felt responsible for, even if ordered to.

Senuri?

He opened his eyes at Shau's mental prompt and caught the councillor's disapproving stare. He killed a spark of temper. Unlike Jinx, he didn't have the luxury of ignoring orders. Lives were at stake.

Hundreds of billions of them.

And Shau, the Rha Si's supreme commander, was ultimately responsible for them. He might not agree with her or even like her some days, but he owed her his allegiance. His full attention. Yes, R'henuri?

Forget the aberrant. The decree came with a bite of kinesis, the room's lights dimming with the power draw. You've wasted enough time on that degenerate. We need to discuss the high failure rate of your Phantom's LD pods. I want all service logs and an explanation by the end of the week.

The logs have already been requested, R'henuri, and engineers are looking into the matter. I've been advised that the pods are mainly independent of the primary vessel, so the damage the Phantom sustained in battle isn't likely to be the only factor involved.

Send me the engineers' findings as soon as you have them. Shau's disapproval continued to crawl over him as she turned back to her data pad. We can't afford to lose people to equipment malfunctions. It could have been you or Senuri Samsun in one of those pods.

Instead, they'd lost non-psi. Good people—all with normal human life expectancies. Kaplan didn't bother to point out that irony. When it came to dead or malfunctioning Rha Si, Shau didn't have much of a sense of humour. Each unit cost millions, took years to create and train.

The rib you cracked in the landing? Shau's next words proved that point.

Healing's been accelerated, Kaplan answered. No functional issues.

You're yet to report for a full medical. Reasons?

A tight schedule, R'henuri.

A long pause filled with the councillor's scepticism. I've just received an update from the teams tracking the rogue Xykeree vessels. The committee needs to urgently review it, but after that, consider yourself dismissed until the late afternoon session.

Kaplan kept his expression neutral. The unexpected reprieve wouldn't have anything to do with his earlier request to be excused. He sensed a trap. As you wish, R'henuri.

Your mother has just landed. She's requested you meet for lunch.

And there was the ambush.

Shau's kinesis gripped him before he could make his excuses. Do not even think about putting Dayne off again. She's worried about you and will remain so until you are cleared by the doctors on the Silver Dawn. On that subject, is there anything I should know ahead of the medical report they'll send me?

No, Gram Eshi. He used her family title, as was appropriate given the personal nature of the reprimand. And his desire to draw his sidearm on her, a fantasy he'd had since his early teens. From his thirteenth birthday, the Original had taken it upon herself to oversee not only his compulsory psionic and military training, but his personal life. She'd shut down anyone and anything she'd considered a waste of his time.

At fifteen, he'd learned the hard way open rebellion was pointless and that he'd never get the drop on her. Shau would crush his skull the instant his hand touched pistol grip.

His grandmother turned and eyed him as if she sensed his thoughts. I think we're overdue one of our talks. My office on the Silver Dawn, twenty-two hundred hours.

As you command, R'henuri. He'd follow orders as a soldier, do his duty to the Coalition. But if the Original thought she still had a final say in his personal decisions, she needed to come to terms with disappointment.

Her stare held his a few more seconds, as if she wanted to crack his skull open with more than her kinesis. But she couldn't force a link, bring down the shield protecting his thoughts; not without killing him.

She'd taught him too well.

Regardless, she'd soon learn what she wanted to know. If an active telepathic assault was an incoming fist, easily deflected, a crowd's passive psionics were acidic mist.

And his rogue senses wanted to open the windows wide.

Shau turned to her newly minted first-gen assistant. "Regina, ask the others to rejoin us. And warn those who have been foolish enough to eat that we'll be viewing footage from an abandoned Xykeree vessel that's just been located. Initial reports indicate over a hundred harvested Coalition citizens."