Prologue
Gusstifledayawn,the corners of her eyes watering.The argument below escalated, pulling her attention back to the trio standing on the amphitheater sands.
“We could force your hand,” one of her siblings was saying as Gus tuned back in.
A low angry snarl was her sister, Kira’s, response.“Try it.”
Kira wasn’t really her sister.No more than the forty-one other individuals seated around the amphitheater were.That was just what Gus called them.Her siblings by circumstance rather than blood or choice.
They didn’t always like each other—honestly, that was true the majority of the time—but they would protect one another.To the death if necessary.And they were loyal.That was more than most families could boast.
Down below, it was the same old story when Kira, the resident black sheep of the family, and the rest of Gus’s siblings were put in the same space.Why talk things out when you could threaten?Next would be a not-so-subtle prod from the forty-three’s side.
“Your actions affect us all, little sister.”
There it was.
“I don’t care.I won’t walk away from them.No matter what you say.”
The air around Kira buzzed in agitation, carrying a warning as something dangerous pushed its way to the surface beneath her skin.
Gus sat up straight, suddenly paying a little more attention than she’d been before.
According to the script, Kira and the forty-three should have traded a few more barbs before she stalked off in a fit of pique.The monster inside Kira known as her primus, the alternative form that made her sister such a dangerous wildcard, should never have made an appearance.Not unless she was physically threatened in some way.And then, only if she, or someone close to her, was in mortal peril.
This level of anger wasn’t Kira’s style.She should have been begging at their feet for help in saving their niece.
That’s what Gus would have done.Prostrated herself in hopes the forty-three would take pity.Promised everything and anything they wanted regardless of her intentions on following through.
It’s what Kira had done when their sister, Elise, was taken prisoner during humanity’s war with the alien scourge known as the Tsavitee.
This change in Kira’s behavior alarmed Gus.At a time when Kira needed them most, she was doing her damnedest to shove them away.
Where was her control?
She’d always been impetuous but never this reckless.This was out of character.
Gus found herself curious.Something she almost never was.That curiosity led her to crack open the part of herself that she’d always kept carefully hidden.Not just from the monsters of her earliest years but from the rest of her siblings as well.
Sometimes even from herself.
In an instant, a thousand whispers flooded her mind.Dozens of secrets became hers to safeguard.Most were irrelevant.But on rare occasions, a few proved interesting.
As moonlight pierced the bank of clouds overhead to bathe the ruins of the amphitheater in soft light, Gus sifted through the many voices spilling into her mind.She disregarded their stories of the far distant past when this planet was still inhabited by a race bearing a lot of the physical characteristics of the Haldeel.She let the tales of the rise and fall of a civilization before a mass exodus flow past her.
Sinking deep into the flow of voices, Gus emptied her mind and waited.
There.
What was that?
Oh.Oh my.No wonder Kira was so out of sorts.She’d been too harsh on her youngest sister earlier.Given the circumstances, Kira had shown admirable restraint.
Gus came out of her meditation to focus on the drone floating idly above Kira’s shoulder.It looked oddly harmless, drifting in and out of the shadows as the moon played peek-a-boo with the clouds overhead.The forty-three’s youngest sibling was many things.Harmless, he was not.
It was something of a mystery as to how the soul of the boy she’d once known had come to reside in the military combat drone.If her siblings knew, they weren’t sharing.
None of that mattered, though.Because right now, Jin wasn’t Jin.His soul was missing.
