Aberrant

Chapter 29

Jinx slammed her hotel room's door in Cruse's face, kicked her heels off—sent them flying across the beige-on-beige unit. Her government-funded prison.

Not any longer.

She yanked out her shirt from her skirt's waistband and undid buttons manically. She'd shower off the crap that she'd just had rained down on her then get gone. If she couldn't find work on one of the salvage vessels heading to Tirus 7, she'd head to the outer city, find temp work to get funds for her trip back. The Coalition military and government could take their hotel suite and refugee allowance and shove them up their organic waste pipes. If they thought she owed them anything for their 'consideration', they were the ones who needed medicating.

Her testimony had been written off. She'd been written off. They'd frigging thrown her father in her face.

They'd known exactly what his med records meant.

Legs going rubbery, she collapsed onto the chair by the room's vid-coms table. Putting her head in her hands, she drew in a long breath. What the hell had been the point of making her stay? And what was that garbage about drugs—PDT? A new therapy?

Not likely. Not going by Kaplan's reaction.

Despite being as coolly self-possessed as ever, he'd been seriously pissed.

And possibly about to have his head ripped off.

Jinx straightened and stowed all sympathy. If the arsehole lost body parts, she wouldn't shed tears.

She punched the data net option on the vid-coms table beside her and requested the medical definition of "PDT". Dozens of different terms appeared. Most had nothing to do with mental illness.

She backhanded the results off-screen and narrowed the search down to government-run experiments involving a certain tie-tugging doctor, neuro-agents, and rare mental disorders. An instant before she hit submit, she added "aberrant" to the search terms. Something about the way the doctor had said it bugged the shit out of her.

Surprisingly few hits came up—and every one of them made her lip curl. Conspiracy blogs. Frigging psychic medium forums. "You've got to be kidding me." She hit the first result to expand it.

A rambling blog entry opened before her. Its topic: the clandestine government experiments being conducted on psychiatric patients and drug users. "PDT" was mentioned in a long list of procedures, but not defined. "Aberrant" appeared in relation to a "severely damaged" subject. The piece was high on brainless babble and low on facts. No surprise. Farnquar was only mentioned once, in a list of health professionals with the necessary skills to be involved.

The blog linked to dozens of other reports—all written in emotive, crazy-person speak. There were pages and pages on memory wipes, false recall, and the chemical assassination of an individual's psyche. Mind control and mind reading were discussed in rabidly paranoid tones.

One article—posted anonymously for the "safety" of the writer—claimed drugs were being used to force open rebel minds, that psychic soldiers created during the Formation War were now in control of the government and military. Supposedly, their original purpose had been to gather intel from Xykeree hive minds and disable subhive forces, but now the power-hungry freaks used their telepathy and, yes, their spoon-bending telekinesis to enslave the entire Coalition. There was even a side note to extra-dimensional clairvoyance. Apparently, during the war, some of the freaks had anticipated attacks before the enemy fleet had even exited a hyperspace gate. Theories as to how that might be possible included "faster-than-time" vibrations in the temporal continuum, alien spirit guides, trans-dimensional consciousnesses, and psychic wormholes.