A gut-wrenching scream.

Jinx plummeted into darkness, nightmares cascading.

A hand reaching out, bright with gore. A fist—her father's—hammering against a hospital observation wall. His face, contorted. His scream ... a sea of whispers. Behind him, the abyss, no longer silent, now a seething storm—rage that arced lightning through her blood.

Blue-white electricity blazing at her fingertips.

A howl in the darkness: a demand for her to surrender—burn. A scream of fury—hers.

Power tore her open: brilliant agony. Madness rushed in: shrieking voices; a twisting kaleidoscope of horrors. Gaunt bodies, four lying side by side, repeated as if in a house of mirrors. Her father's screaming face morphing into the andropod's tortured mask—

"Jinx, breathe." A distant voice. Dull pain: the bite of fingers at her jaw.

The world surged back. Bright light. Grey, human eyes in front of her; not black, alien optical tech. Kaplan. His hands on her face. His cabin's kitchen counter under her thighs.

Her fingers gripped its edge as if she perched a thousand metres up.

Over that shrieking void in her mind.

She hauled in air. She'd been okay. Then between one heartbeat and the next...

Insanity.

After days of freedom, the screams had returned, but with a different nightmare. Not suffocation; a violent immolation. Destruction she'd called down on herself as she gave in to rage, that howling storm of horrors.

She could still feel it reaching for her.

As she had for days.

Nausea rolled through her. That urge to run back into the void ... it'd never been rational.

"Jinx." Kaplan's grip on her jaw tightened, jerking her back to the glare of his cabin. "Stay with me. I'll call Channing."

Visions of bodies—emaciated, hooked up to tubes. She grabbed Kaplan's wrist blindly. "No doctors."

"Jinx, your respiration is depressed, your heart rate elevated, your psionics—"

"It's just a stupid glitch, nothing to do with any drugs." Real—not imagined—fury abruptly cleared her vision. She'd resigned herself to giving Kaplan answers, but providing a demonstration had not been on the agenda.

She shoved him back from her. "You wanted to know what happened on the Bullhead. Here's your damn answer."

A heightening whine in her skull.

The truth about Kaplan hit her again. Her already punchy pulse quickened.

Fear, but nothing simple.

That taut look in those all too human eyes aimed at her...

She fought to pull in a steadying breath, found she couldn't. Shit. Kaplan might be some kind of mind-reading freak, but it was becoming clear he was still the same man who'd hauled her arse out of the fire on Tirus 7. The same one who'd fixed her damn buttons then messed the rest of her up.

She tore her gaze away to stare at the far bulkhead. God damn it. This was not what she needed.

"Your heart rate's still too high." Those quiet words, spoken too close for comfort, only amped her pulse further. "But you seem to be recovering."

She snapped her gaze back to his. "If that was concern, you can space it—like you threatened to do to me earlier." If the bastard played nice now, handled her like something broken, she'd maim him. "We both know a fatal health problem would work in your favour. You can't afford word getting out about your kind. It wouldn't be just the Xykeree hunting you then, would it?" Hate groups, civil rights organisations, anyone with a damn secret would lock and load weapons.

Kaplan's gaze remained steady as he retrieved his beer from the bench. "It's not me or my kind you're pissed at right this minute."

"Really? You reading my mind now, freakazoid?"

"Telepathy requires stable, predictable signals. Your psionics have a random element that prevents it."

"Lucky me."

"But that doesn't mean I get nothing of interest."

She started to ask what the hell that meant—stopped cold as she got a clue.

Kaplan pushed her back on her arse before she could do much more than think about jumping from the bench and heading for the door. The look he shot her gave no quarter. "You're on a ship full of psionics, all of whom want in your head. Running from this conversation is not your best option."

Her glitch had left her with a desire to punch something. Holding Kaplan's unapologetic stare, she felt that urge become highly specific. "I think you'd better explain this mind-reading bullshit." What the hell was he picking up from her warped synapses? The possibilities brought up bile.

And more violent visions.

She clutched the edge of the bench to anchor herself, sweat breaking out down her spine. That eerie impression of heat—lightning—in her veins flickered again. Then images of fiery self-destruction. Her brain wasn't stabilising as it should've after a glitch. She was losing her—

Movement beside her.

She wrenched free of her thoughts as Kaplan propped a hip against the bench, right next to her. She flinched at the question in his eyes.

But when he spoke, it was to answer her. "Every sentient mind generates psi 'noise'. We psionics can minimise or obscure our own outputs, but you non-psi have no awareness, no control, no mental shielding, and no volume switch."

It took her a moment to process his words, her pulse a hammer in her skull—not something she could solely blame on her disturbed thoughts. Not with his lab-bred hide now all of fifty centimetres away. That G-enhanced physique. The form-fitting, laser-resistant undershirt displaying it. Both unnerving reminders of who'd made him and why. "So, basically, you bastards eavesdrop?"

Kaplan nodded. "To get anything more than a stream of consciousness, we have to fully connect with a person's mind. That requires syncing with the target's mental patterns or actively 'pushing' them into a compatible state. Once there's a stable link, we can send thoughts, access memories—"

"And control people." She suspended her disbelief, her blood going cold. This was real whether she liked it or not. "But I take it you can't sync or whatever with me?"

Kaplan tilted his head as if listening, ramping up the faint whine he put in her ears. "I can sense your mental activity, but it's a haze, like coms static. The standard translation protocols don't recognise the patterns, like your mind is speaking a different language or there's bad interference. Given time, I might learn to interpret the signals, but at this point, I can only recognise 'tone'—shifts in emotion. Generally, your body language tells me more."

"Emotions?" She flinched, recalling her glitch. Fear and irrational rage. She forced up a sneer. "So, you're what? Sensing how skeeved out I am right now?"

Kaplan paused a beat, then lifted his beer. "That would be the expected reaction."

The non-answer made her scowl. What did—? Ah, hell. Reluctant amusement struck, loosening the tension banding her throat. "Kaplan, if you're picking up 'signals' to do with your tank-bred hide, don't be flattered. When my mental crap gets bad, so does my judgement. Last month, it was a bottle of tequila, a mech-enhanced cage fighter, and a bout of naked wrestling."

And she'd welcome that level of stupidity now. The distraction. Because she could still feel that inner darkness reaching for her. Could feel its churning chaos. Could hear whispers urging her to give in, dive into hell, burn—

"I appreciate the clarification." Kaplan's dry response wrenched her back from lightning and fire. Blinking, refocusing on him, she found ... absolutely no humour in his gaze.

Her throat closed again. He'd sensed something.

"We need to talk about the barge, Jinx."

"Sure." She forced up a smile. "Soon as you turn off the psychic shit."

"That isn't possible."

"Screw that. Channing said your headset amplifies things. Take it off. Put me on mute or this conversation's over." She didn't care if he sensed her anger, her disgust, or any less intelligent reactions when it came to his alterant hide. He got what he deserved there. But to hell with him tuning into every emotional twitch while they discussed the barge—while her mind hung over some mental abyss.

Kaplan eyed her, then unhooked his headset and tossed it onto the bench. "That's a temporary accommodation. I need to keep monitoring your psionics. Besides the possibility of side effects, there's also a slight chance the drugs will still have an effect."

Her stomach rolled. "Tell me you're joking."

"If you're picturing some voyeuristic invasion, don't. All anyone is interested in is the barge. There'll be things you didn't report because you didn't know their relevance. You have memory loss. A psionic might be able to retrieve that lost time."

And find what? Screaming panic? Delusions?

Swivelling on the bench, she lifted a boot and shoved Kaplan back a few steps. Despite him ditching his tech, the whine he put in her skull still hummed. What had Channing said about psionic range? Usually less than a metre without amplification tech? "Stay out of my head, freakazoid."

Kaplan resettled against the kitchen counter—only a little further back. Deliberate provocation. "Give me some straight answers about the barge and I won't have a reason to do otherwise."

"I've told you pretty much everything already."

"Then this shouldn't take long."

She suppressed a curse, along with the urge to boot him back another metre. It wouldn't solve anything. Hell, the mind-reading SOB was just doing his job, the one he'd been designed for. He had to ask, had to push. People were dying. And if she believed all the disturbing things she'd been told, he and his kind were responsible for preventing further carnage.

"Kaplan, the only details you're missing involve the blackout I had, and I doubt they'll help anyone."

Predictably, his expression remained obdurate. "I need the full picture, Jinx."

She exhaled an oath. Maybe if she did this quick, she could avoid losing her shit for a third time in one day. "Fine. Here's the damn highlights. I didn't faint when that scorp came at me, not like I let everyone assume. I have memories of hauling arse out of the hold, but they're scrambled crap. Just flashes of detail—like that exploded exskel I mentioned, the one that had to have malfunctioned while in port. I think I also saw piles of Xykeree organics and tech ready for recyce. I may have ended up near the Bullhead's med bay. Could be where I found the blood. That'd make sense if the roaches were holding your friend and he'd been injured. But I don't know that for certain." She forced herself to meet Kaplan's gaze. "I lost it, completely. Total break from reality. Hallucinations, the works."

"And you think that was due to mental deterioration rather than trauma." Kaplan's unflinching stare did nothing to settle her nerves. "How'd things start with your father?"

"That's not relevant, Kaplan."

"But you are." Those three words, the weight on them, locked her gut. "I need to understand how your memories of the barge might have been affected."

She looked away. This conversation—hell, whatever Kaplan thought he wanted from her—needed to be done and over with.

And the best way to do that would be to give him his answers, the less than attractive truth.

Unclamping her jaw, she forced the words out. "My father was a long-haul pilot, away for months at a time. No one thought anything of him slapping my mother around because he believed she was screwing other people. Usually, she was. Then he began accusing people of stealing from him. Then they were planning to murder him. Next, he's seeing devils and hearing voices."

Confronting recall flashed up: her irrational fear outside her accommodation only hours ago.

Tuning the memory out along with her ragged pulse, she got to the point. "What started as aggression, agitation, and paranoia turned into full-blown psychosis."

Kaplan took a swig of beer, no sign of surprise. "You experience anything like that prior to the Bullhead?"

The restless need to move, leave. Screams—

She killed the memory, willed herself to get a grip—and keep it. "I was edgy. Not sleeping well. Nightmares. They can hit while I'm awake—as you've seen. Either actual hallucinations or vivid recall of a dream, the latter a side effect of my memory. Might as well be tripping on psychedelics."

"Your father have those issues?"

"No. I inherited my whacked-out memory from my mother." Not for the first time, she wondered if not being able to forget had anything to do with her mother's pharma habit. Loni Koel's life hadn't been roses even before she'd married Ollyus Drune. Questions about her past and family were guaranteed to send her straight to her chem supplier.

Shifting against the bench, Kaplan shook his head. "By the sound of things, Jinx, even if a psionic could access your memories, there'd be a lot of noise to filter out. Reliving things the way you do could warp them, layer them with new experiences. Separating out the original memory could be problematic. Even if the drugs worked on you, there's a good chance we'd get nothing useable."

Those words hit harder than she'd expected. Yet more confirmation of how screwed up she was.

For a moment, the violent hallucination she'd been suppressing threatened to overwhelm her again. Her heart boomed as her father's screaming face rose up. The vision of gaunt bodies hooked up to med beds flared like a prophecy ... bringing a blinding certainty.

She didn't have months. Shit. If she listened to the dark paranoia trying to claw into her consciousness that second, she didn't even have days ... only hours.

A vision rose: darkness within darkness. A demon rising from the void, black talons reaching out.

Her father's worst fear. The product of a sick mind.

But right that second, it was her mind it wanted to climb out of.