Piercing pain. Claws inside her skull.

Jinx wanted to scream, but her breath wouldn't come. Worse than the pain was the feeling of something digging inside her, peeling back some inner skin to expose raw nerves and—

Memories. They replayed on fast forward, each torn from her, just as they had been in the holding cell on the Silver Dawn. No recall cascade. A psychic vivisection. And she was helpless to stop it.

She couldn't move, couldn't even open her eyes—not an effect of the Xykeree's paralytic. The hulking, armoured exskel that had emerged from the roach army outside hadn't needed drugs or physical tech to restrain her.

Just her mind.

Fresh pain shrieked through her as the thing clawed out more memories: Channing finding the dosing implant; Cryver's taunting message about family secrets; his claims about Loni Koel and Ollyus Drune not being her parents. Early childhood memories haemorrhaged next.

It felt like her brain was being torn out.

Just as she was about to pass out, the excruciating pain ceased, her inquisitor pausing to chew over something it had found.

She gagged, tried to draw breath while she could. Tears burned her eyes. God. If this was what Cal Tarak had gone through, she understood why he'd screamed across light years. She'd rather the thing just kill her. The feel of it gripping her mind, digging inside—

Note for subject file. A low, buzzing 'voice' cut through her thoughts—a sense of meaning that coalesced into words, like a backwards translation. Locate Selona Corellen, a.k.a. Loni Koel. Interrogate regarding initial loss of unregulated subject. Terminate post memory extraction.

Jinx froze, horror strangling her. The thing in her brain; she could hear it now. It was talking to itself, calmly plotting murder and taking notes about a "subject"—her. It considered her its experiment. It wanted to track down her mother so it could question her about—

A cargo container. An unconscious human female, bleeding internally after childbirth. The infant taken.

Jinx's pulse turned ragged. That memory—vivid but devoid of emotion—had been its. It had been tracking her mother. Her real mother. The woman who'd raised her, Loni Koel, had what? Taken her sister's child? Left her sister to die? What the fu—?

Dizzying knowledge flooded her mind. Her biological father had been Rha Si. Contraceptive controls had failed because of a medical trial he'd been involved in. She'd been allowed to be born as a test, to see if Rha Si altered genetics could be passed on through natural reproduction. She was a unique specimen.

One requiring study.

Visions of endless pain—Cal's and other Rha Si's.

Terror clamped her chest. The need to claw away from the thing inside her, to climb out of her own skull, rose on a wave of blind panic. She tried to 'shove' against the thing gripping her mind, block it—get it out. It was going to rip her apart, mind and body—

A warning thrill raced through her, derailing her mental rebellion. But before she could understand that inner alarm, an eerie sense of calm flowed through her, stealing the urge to fight, to scream ... to care.

She was nothing, just an inferior life form struggling for air. All she needed to do was breathe, not resist the thing in her mind or the knowledge coming to her.

Subject self-regulates psionic load. Another note for her file. Substantial unconscious filtering. Actively blocks signals; perceives them as symptoms of neurodegenerative illness. Telepathy negatively affected. Conclusion: subject self-limiting. Able to link via nexus, but connection is involuntary, transitory, and unstable. Minimal containment required.

Nexus? The question drifted through her mind as the buzzing, alien voice droned on about suppressive drug dosages. A sense of reaching—seeking—followed. Knowledge lit her mind ... blacked it out.

The abyss, lit only by a scattering of distant stars, points of energy.

Minds. Cold and brilliant.

Another image flickered, the same dark expanse alive with energy—a storm. A memory from her nightmares. From Cal Tarak.

A bite of pain, invisible talons digging in to catch the image. Disruption observed on transdimensional plane. Phenomenon potentially related to emotional aspect of human psyche.

Another brutal wrench. More memories tore away: Cal's desperate screams.

Then a different nightmare: alarms and fire.

Understanding came with a distant sense of awe. The dream she'd woken to on her last day on Tirus 7. It hadn't been a manifestation of subconscious fears. It'd been literal, a replay of something she'd experienced in her sleep the night Kaplan had crash-landed. Shrieking ship system alerts. Internal fires and the blaze of atmospheric entry.

She'd caught sensory echoes. While she innately blocked most psionic signals, she'd tuned into those projected by distressed third-gen Rha Si with failing reg tech. Long-range contact was possible, through some kind of transdimensional nexus. Alien construct or natural phenomenon?

And where had that thought come from? Her unease resurfaced—only to float away on another numbing wave of serenity.

Transitory nexus linkage observed in inadequately controlled subjects. The thing in her mind continued its notes. Possible initiating conditions: adverse physical and/or psychological stimuli; high stress hormone levels. Involved subjects rated as highly empathic. Ability may have been erroneously categorised as "passive, non-transmitting". Investigate alternative nexus pathways. Non-telepathic connection a possible explanation for suppressant technology's failure to limit human subjects to local psionic plane.

Her serenity slipped again as more foreign knowledge flowed through her.

All Rha Si were lab rats. An ongoing experiment.

One of many.

The Xykeree. The truth of them suffused her. The thing in her mind—its species—had altered them hundreds of years ago to enhance a mental network. Psionically primitive but physically resilient and prolific, the Xykeree had readily been converted into a self-propagating host of 'servant' minds. They enabled remote observation and exploration. Their harvesting practices allowed extensive physical sampling.

A subpopulation of humans with latent psi abilities had been found. But experiments to utilise them for a similar subservient purpose had led to unexpected results.

Powerful telepathy. Extra-cerebral abilities: psychokinesis.

Technological regulation had been required to restrict subjects. The alteration process had been revised to limit later trial groups to basic telepathy.

But the descendants of the original trial subjects continued to display abilities outside target parameters. Some of the latest generation had started to fight the restrictions on a subconscious level, turning their abilities inward against the suppressant technology. Such individuals had been rendered inoperative. They had the potential to advance psionic theory, so would be preserved, but certain abilities, such as spontaneous nexus linkage, could not be allowed outside the laboratory setting.

Conquest and exploration strong species drivers. The toneless observation came with a hum of unsettled energy. Containment a priority. Amplification effect of Xykeree hive network effective in neutralising small groups, but population cull still required.

A visual impression flared behind Jinx's eyes: thousands of Xykeree battleships heading for multiple Coalition bases, including the Silver Dawn and Feuria.

Only select subjects to be retained for study. Laboratory subject A-511 to be euthanised after final mental scan. Intermittent link to unregulated female no longer required for tracking. Containment now unfeasible: male manifested high-level electrokinesis after disabling suppressant technology; has developed drug resistance. Second male subject linked to unregulated female to be studied and terminated at first sign of drug resistance. Male already displays heightened load tolerance and—

The inner monologue broke off.

Jinx stilled, apprehension crawling through her.

A spike in the Hydra's drone.

The claws in her mind jerked out with shocking pain.

Before she could catch breath, an armoured fist drove into her skull.