Aberrant

Chapter 28

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.