The old woman shoved the kitcoon into Rex’s arms. “No, lady, I can’t—”
“Everyone on their knees!” Heavy boots pounded against the grated floor. Rex glanced back to see sweeping laser sights and armored soldiers, in the Dominion’s signature blue and black uniforms, flooding inside. “Passports out!”
The kitcoon bellowed and wiggled out of Rex’s grip, scampering away. Out of time, Rex dove behind an overturned cage leaning against the wall. Hybrid chickens flapped and scuttled over displaced luggage. Hopefully the frenzied mess of loose animals—and the rank smell of an uncleaned cage—would be enough of a deterrent for a thorough search of her hiding spot.
Rex’s eyes flicked to the old woman. Hunched over and frozen in place, the gray-haired lady didn’t move, even when the soldiers started roughing up the passengers, or when a laser sight landed over her heart.
“You there,” a soldier called, stomping his way through cowering passengers, his rifle pointed at her chest. “Passport.”
Rex curled her toes in her boots and clenched her fists. Hopefully the woman had a passport or a decently faked one.
But the petrified look in the woman’s eyes said otherwise.
“You,” another masked soldier said, grabbing the woman by the shoulder and shaking her. “Passport.”
The old woman’s hands shook as she searched inside the folds of her robes and produced a chip tied to a necklace around her neck. The soldier scanned it and grunted. “This expired two months ago and says you’re a registered citizen of Crais.”
An uninhabitable moon? Someone sold her a bum passport.
“Uh, well—” she said, fumbling with the necklace.
The lead soldier waved his gun, signaling for the soldier with the scanner. Rex recognized the handheld wand that would take a blood sample and analyze her DNA. It wasn’t completely accurate in detecting telepaths, especially with all the hack clinics that could mask genes, but Rex didn’t think this woman, if foolish enough to use passport that listed her as a Crais citizen and steal street vermin from the Dominion, would have that kind of protection.
You’re a telepath, aren’t you? Maybe not a Prodgy, like her; maybe one of the other four types that got a bad rap ever since the Dominion military came into power. Why would you risk this for an animal?
Gun pointed at her chest, the second soldier yanked the old woman’s arm and bunched up the sleeve of her robe.
“Please,” the old woman whispered as the soldier waved the blue light of the wand over her upturned wrist. “I just want to be left alone.”
Left alone. The sentiment burned through Rex’s veins. That’s all she wanted. To no longer be hunted, chained down and experimented on; hated for being born with a power she didn’t ask for—
“Malfunction,” the soldier announced as the wand flashed yellow. “What should we do with her?”
“Bring her back to the lab,” the first soldier announced, pulling a shock collar from his belt.
Rex’s stomach dropped and she clutched her neck. No—
The kitcoon burst out of the rubbish, clawing his way to the top of stack of debris, and gave a demanding meow. The soldiers paused, shining their lights at him, illuminating her hiding spot in the background. Rex shimmied back, out of their line of sight.
The kitcoon cooed, tipping over as it emptied his tiny lungs. He righted himself and whipped his tail back and forth.
“Aw,” one the soldiers whispered. Even Rex’s pounding heart melted little bit at the sight of the little feline mewing for affection.
“That scar on its forehead,” the lead soldier said, pointing with his gun. “That’s the escaped lab ’coon.”
The nearest soldier straightened up, slinging his weapon over his soldier. “I’ll grab it.” He dove after the kitcoon, disturbing Rex’s tenuous debris hiding spot, and shoving the cage up against her, crushing her ribs.
Chak!
As she squirmed to free herself, the cage slid away. She flattened out, hoping to stay unseen as the kitcoon dodged and darted between debris piles, evading the soldier’s grasp, heading away from her.
“Hey!” a soldier shouted. “Someone’s behind that cage.”
The rest of the soldiers turned to her, their laser sights converging on her forehead.
“Leave her be,” the old woman pleaded, trying to stop them as they kicked aside luggage and dug their way through the trash toward Rex. The woman’s telepathic echo rang through the cargo hold, but it wasn’t strong enough.
Rex wiggled backward. Chickens squawked and flapped about as the soldiers flung aside the cage and came after her. Out of her line of sight, the kitcoon wailed.
No, she thought as the first gloved hand clamped down on her arm and wrenched her forward.
Then, from somewhere deeper, where her pain boiled: (NO.)
The soldier grabbing her arm screamed. He arched his back and fell to the ground, seizing, as her invisible force took hold of his body.
“Leech! Leech!” the team lead shouted, holding her by the boot. Rex turned her gaze to him and let the dark power slide through their connection. He grabbed at his neck, frothing at the mouth, and fell to his knees.
The other soldiers, gun tips crackling blue with plasma charge, quickly descended upon her as she dove behind a structural divider.
“Get away from me!” she shouted, her mind blazing.
Passengers screamed and fled the cargo hold into the corridor, trampling over each other. A soldier hit the cargo bay controls, closing the door behind the last passenger, isolating Rex, the old woman, and the kitcoon in the hold.
Why won’t you leave me alone?
But that question didn’t matter. Only survival did.
Look inside. As she had self-taught in her early teens, when her powers first emerged. Find the living light—
—Of every nerve fiber, every cell, in the overlapping space between visual consciousness and extrasensory perception. A place that no armor could protect, no living being could hide, radiating, exposed—accessible.
Got you. With her mind, she seized each soldier at the spine, breaking them at the knees and sending them crumbling to the grated floor. A few fired their guns aimlessly, blasting man-sized holes in containers, luggage—and walls.
“Warning,” the ship’s computer announced as the internal pressure dropped. Rex clung to the black netting connecting the floor to the ceiling as debris and soldiers were sucked toward the holes, through the phasic distortion of the shields, and out into the twinkling stars beyond. “Hull breach. Emergency landing.”
Rage scorched her chest, igniting old wounds. The scars on her abdomen, the mutilations on her skin, burned. She righted herself and set her eyes back on the panicking soldiers clinging to anything anchored to the ship.
Thin arms wrapped around her, shaking, desperately holding on.
Rex growled. YOU WANTED THE MONSTER. HERE I AM—
“Save Kio—”
The calm of the old woman’s voice—
The pitch—
“Find…”
That stupid kitcoon—
“…another way…”
The telepathic pull lulled her mind.
Another way. Impossible. Not after being orphaned, abandoned. Not when countless poisons had been injected into her organs, trying to cure her of her Prodgy bloodline madness. Not after using the cursed talent to stay one step ahead for those that would imprison her for the very thing she used to survive. The thing that defined her.