Pain ... everywhere. A high, aggravating whine.

Jinx groaned as consciousness returned. The throb in her skull all but killed her ability to think. The urge to throw up gripped her. She stifled it. Emptying her damn guts would hurt too much.

Prying open her eyes, she tried to focus. Everything blurred ... spun.

Shades of grey. Flashes of hot orange. Popping and hissing sounds all around her.

Fires. Electrical shorts.

She tried to move—sent metallic debris clattering. Pain lanced through her head and shoulder. Grinding teeth, she shoved herself half upright and fought to think past the bells singing in her ears.

For a moment, she couldn't process the scene around her.

A haze of smoke. Piles of broken tech. The huge, battered legs of a huntsman exskel a cage around her. Dying soldier exskels, their long, crumpled limbs twitching in the rubble. Organic matter oozed, hissing as it hit flames. Dozens of thin red ghosts pierced the gloom at odd angles, winking on and off: glitching Xykeree targeting lasers.

Overhead, caught in one of the huntsman's leg joints, a humanoid, mech hand swung, hanging by the exposed wires at its severed wrist. Below it, its mate lay motionless, still attached to a smoking, headless, metallic torso.

Something pale, like cooked mucus, steamed near the neck cavity.

The Qua-zi.

Jinx felt the world drop away, memory spinning back. The alien ... it'd taken her over. Her mind. Her body. It had forced her to—

Kaplan. God. She'd shot him. She'd—

No, no, no. She scrambled on all fours over broken exskels. Where was he? He'd been right beside her.

She clawed away smouldering debris, fighting to breathe. Skittering sounded around her, along with a rising hum on the edge of hearing. Live roaches stirring, recovering from whatever had hit them.

She didn't care if they heard her. If she'd killed Kaplan, she'd welcome a plaz bolt to the head.

A battle suit boot. Poking out from under the smoking, torn wreck of a soldier exskel.

Pulse roaring, she wrenched composite legs out of her way—uncovered a stretch of battered Zex armour. God—there was blood on her gloves. Kaplan's or hers? She needed to see his wrist com, check his vitals. She needed to see his face—see that she hadn't blown his goddamn head off.

Bracing herself against the huntsman they'd used for cover, she shoved the rest of the soldier exskel off him with both boots. Her shoulder shrieked. She didn't fucking care. It was less than she deserved. That thing had used her, taken her over. If Kaplan was—

A battle suit mask: black, scarred reinforced plaz. Still in night mode.

Still intact—and attached to the rest of Kaplan.

Relief choked her. She fell to her knees. She'd missed. She'd frigging missed. Had probably hit the roach attacking him. Or he'd reacted in time to save himself. He'd have known she'd been compromised—that weird link he had with her. But he'd gone down when—

Memory flooded back: fury and lightning. Not the nightmare Cal had shown her. Reality. Something she'd experienced.

Something she'd done.

The truth hit like a body blow. Oh ... God. She was his sister. An alterant.

An electrokinetic capable of baking dozens of roaches with her mind.

Jee-zus. She lost all air, doubled over. All those visions of heat and arcing energy. Cal had been trying to tell her—show her.

God, if she'd killed Kaplan...

She grabbed his arm—his wrist com.

No vital stats. Just system errors. His suit was fried. How much damage had she—?

A whispery sense of pain and annoyance. Then dizzying confusion.

"Kaplan!" She wrenched off his mask. Blood leaked from his nose, his ears. "Kaplan?" Gripping his face, she looked down into clouded grey eyes. "Talk to me. Where are you hurt?"

Down. The single, unspoken word startled her.

"What?"

Get dow—

A surge in the hum around her—the Hydra's hive.

"Oh, shit." She threw herself over Kaplan, felt his mind slip from hers back into unconsciousness.

Plasma bolts burst across the wreckage, a storm of blistering energy. She grabbed up her pistol, crouched low. Three rounds left. Fuck. Her heart slammed her ribs. She might not have killed Kaplan, but both of them were dead if she didn't work a frigging miracle.

And she needed them to survive, to have a damn chance—more time. She needed goddamn answers. But she didn't know how to repeat what she'd done, and couldn't risk it near Kaplan. She'd almost killed him once—shit—twice.

Beyond the cage of the dead huntsman's limbs, a soldier exskel leapt over the ruins of its hivemates, forward guns alive with charged plasma.

She jerked her pistol up.

The exskel's thorax imploded with a deafening bang—as if crushed by a giant, invisible hand.

The roach dropped to the deck with a violent clatter.

Jinx froze, her finger poised on the trigger.

The weapons fire around her died ... gave way to eerie stillness.

Crackling flames... Sparking electrics... The boom of her heartbeat...

A faint buzz in her skull. A sense of pressure.

She whipped her pistol around just as gunfire—quick, merciless bursts—shattered the quiet.

Then shouts: human voices and Throlean trills.

Her heart caught in her throat, but she kept her weapon up, her flesh ice cold. That buzz. The feeling of something touching her mind—

A figure strode out of the surrounding smoke and fire, rifle in hand; a tall, lithe female encased in black battle gear. A flood of Coalition soldiers flowed in the woman's wake, taking out the now passive Xykeree.

Shau.

Jinx knew it before the woman flicked her mask to day mode to reveal ice-pale eyes. Kaplan's conflicted childhood memories—love and hate—flashed to mind.

In that instant, Jinx understood that push–pull of emotions completely. Relief took her back down to her knees, even as she felt the burn of the Rha Si Original's mind—the ruthless will.

It was over.

Kaplan had got his warning out. The Xykeree would face a readied Coalition battle force. The Qua-zi were exposed; everyone now knew who the real enemy was.

Releasing a shuddering breath, Jinx gripped Kaplan's hand. As soldiers clambered over the wreckage, shouting for a medic and a field med-capsule, she willed him to keep breathing. Other calls for assistance sounded in the distance, in the direction of the Qua-zi's ship. Her chest tightened. The Rha Si on board; some of them had to have survived. Cal...

Her brother.

Her heart stumbled. She forced herself to just breathe. She couldn't process any of that right now—who was what and what it all meant.

The Qua-zi's smouldering remains drew her eye, killing her air again.

A whisper of churning power.

Then swift movement.

A few metres away, Shau crouched beside the Qua-zi, her gaze cutting across the alien's steaming corpse.

Jinx flinched, felt the woman's simmering anger—tensed as it crystallised into something far, far colder.

Our creators are right to fear us. The unspoken words hit like blades. The Original pushed to her feet, hands tightening on her rifle, gaze zeroing in on her injured grandson. They have masterminded their own destruction.

Jinx recoiled from the mental contact, clenched her hand around Kaplan's. Despite her efforts at denial, her new, unwelcome reality hit home: telepathy; mind control; psychic aliens out to commit mass murder. Her heart pounded as medics moved to Kaplan's side and orders came in about evacing the ship before the incoming Xykeree fleet hit the system.

She'd been wrong.

Nothing was over. This was only the beginning.

Her throat locked as that truly sunk in, along with another jolting fact.

The man who'd helped raise her wasn't the source of her genetics. His disease...

She wasn't losing her mind.

The ugly futures she'd pictured for herself dissolved into a haze. She fought to take a breath—think—as Kaplan was declared stable and loaded into a med-capsule. He wasn't going to die. And nor was she. Not today. Maybe not even tomorrow ... or even for years—if she could avoid homicidal aliens, a whole damn battle force of them.

Fighting the urge to hyperventilate, she hauled in a breath. Well ... hell. What the fuck now?

Armour-covered legs planted themselves in front of her, wrenching her gaze back up to glacial blue eyes.

Report, Rha Si. An unmistakable order.