The brothers are wanted in a dozen jurisdictions for serial rape. The duo stays moving, changing names, hiding in cities. Leaving just enough of a signature pattern to pick up their trail.
Starting to rouse, he can only groan in response. The neuromuscular blocker temporarily paralyzes him, locking his muscles without affecting his mind. A small but effective dose so his diaphragm still draws air. Awake, aware, but unable to move.
I release a low hum, slipping my glasses into place before I set to work. Over the next fifteen minutes, both Cassian and his twin are positioned on their backs, limbs impaled to the earth, clothes cut away, hands bound together at the center in mirror alignment to the Gemini constellation.
Symmetry.
Beautiful and terrifying.
For centuries, we’ve aligned stones and structures with the stars. In worship, in sought guidance. In ritual.
While geometry is the language of the universe, ritual is the control over its disorder.
Ninety-nine percent science, one percent magical thinking—a slim margin I can allow, just to quiet the neurosis. Similar to the way gloves shield against observer interference. And the ritual parallels the violence of that single catastrophic moment when control was lost, recreating the exact cosmic conditions from that night—conditions I’ve been compulsively chasing since my wreck beneath the Orion constellation.
I retrieve the star-taker, feeling its familiar, balanced weight. Hidden behind the antique aesthetic are quantum sensors and a quartz resonator, designed to record neural signals. And since bone interferes with signal, I need direct contact.
Touch.
Right at the boundary.
That requires boring a small hole through the skull with a cranial drill, just large enough to place the microelectrode a couple millimeters deep at the edge of the cortex, where neurons emit their last patterns before collapse.
The final echo before death.
According to the algorithm, Bevins’s projected Entanglement Entropy at Death will be 75.7% resonance. Which simply means a strong, coherent echo that’s clear enough to retrieve.
Fuck, I can imagine the horrified expression on Leo’s face. If he were here, he’d be appalled for about five-point-two seconds before he saw the data. Then he’d crack Cassian’s skull open himself to get to it.
At every moment, faint ripples from violent cosmic events are passing through the universe, through space and time.
Through us.
Unseen, unfelt—yet can be timed to rare celestial alignments. Like a comet nearing perihelion, its volatile ices erupting in a sudden, radiant outburst.
Like the one happening above us now.
These outbursts are erratic, nearly impossible to predict. Yet my algorithm pinpointed the precise instant this cometary flare would intersect gravitational waves from a distant tidal disruption event—a star torn apart by the merciless gravity of a black hole, its stellar heart shredded into a luminous ring of gas and plasma, then devoured by shadow.
A brilliant event, beautiful, and devastating.
I draw a slow breath at the drag of my pulse, my fingertips tapping out the broken cadence of hers.
As the ripples wash over us, Cassian’s unique neural signature forms a shadow, a horizon.
The darker the psyche, the louder the echo at the boundary.
Later, when I feed this data into the sonic black hole, I’ll try not to let the ache consume as I recall how Collins watched the vortex, how her eyes lit as I explained how trapped sound waves warp and stretch, pulling hidden notes within reach.
I scrape a hand through my hair, anxious to get back to my sub-level lab and run the signal through the quantum array. If the entanglement entropy climbs, something survived at the shadowed edge.
“All that’s left is to wait,” I say as I crouch next to Cassian. His eyes are open, sheened with tears he can’t blink away, his chest rising with shallow breaths. I sigh and cast my gaze skyward. “Let’s just watch the comet for a while.”
I mean, what’s the life of one homicidal, serial-raping brother worthin the quest to define one of the greatest mysteries of the universe?
What isherlife worth?
Dark filaments choke my mind, fury blazing through my viscera at the intrusive thought. It’s become its own obsession, the incessant thought of taking her life. Like standing at the edge of my observation deck, staring down at crashing waves, the thought of jumping so consuming that surrender feels inevitable.
