Inheritance

hadn’t been through the Imrian adaptation chamber. Reese didn’t think that Torres would be able to sense her mental intrusion.

“So you know about Blue Base. You think you know it all, don’t you?” Torres said, considering her.

“No,” Reese said. There was definitely something different about Torres. She might not be as unhinged as the other soldiers, but she seemed more dangerous. Like a shark, all teeth and instinct.

“You tell me something, Holloway,” Torres said in a low, threatening voice. “You tell me: What did you get done to your head that I didn’t get done to mine? Why are you so precious that I have to babysit a squad of muscle heads to bring you in? What did they do to you?”

“They—the Imria adapted me,” Reese stammered. “They gave me their DNA.”

“I got that DNA too.”

“You got it from the military. Not the Imria.”

“What does that matter? Same DNA. But you’re nothing like me.” Torres sounded disgusted and let go of her, giving her a little shove.

Reese fell back against the sink. Torres’s grip had been so tight that it seemed to have left a phantom handprint on her shoulder. She reached up to rub the bruised area, wincing. Her eyes darted behind Torres to the closed door. There was no way she’d be able to get past the soldier. “Maybe it’s the same DNA, but I don’t think the military knows how to use it,” she said, trying to buy time while she figured out what to do. “You guys—you and the other soldiers—you don’t feel right.”

“We don’t feel right? We can run faster, sleep less, and shoot better than any normal human being. We don’t feel right because we’re different.” Torres leaned closer to Reese. “I know why they made me the way they did. I was recruited out of nothing. I probably would’ve been in prison by now if I hadn’t joined up. But I wasn’t born stupid. They made me into a killer, and I’m doing that fine. Way better than those dumbasses they want me to order around. I can take all of them, every single one of those shit-for-brains fucktards the military calls supersoldiers. But why do they want you? You can’t do shit. I could snap you with my little finger.”

Torres’s words were harsh, but there was an edge of desperation to her words that Reese didn’t understand. “The adaptation procedure isn’t supposed to make us into killers,” Reese said. “The point of it is to help us communicate better. To share our—our thoughts and emotions.”

Torres nodded. “That freaky mind meldy thing they talk about in the news. Yeah. What good is that?”

Reese gaped at her. “What good is it to be a killer?”

Torres’s face darkened and Reese thought she was going to hit her. Instead she grabbed a fistful of Reese’s hair, jerking her head back so she was forced to meet her gaze. “You can do that mind meld thing, can’t you?” Torres said. Tears blinded Reese’s eyes as Torres’s fingers tightened on her hair. She was so close that Reese could smell the sourness of the soldier’s breath. “So you do it. You do it and you tell me what’s the deal with me. What the fuck is going on with me? Tell me.” Torres’s dark eyes gleamed with a manic energy.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” Reese choked out. “Just let me go. I can’t do it if you’re holding me like that.”

With a sound of disgust, Torres dropped her. Reese took a shaking, relieved breath, rubbing a damp hand over her scalp where Torres had held her motionless.

“We don’t have all night,” Torres snapped.

Reese blinked back her tears. She didn’t think Torres would be sympathetic. “I have to touch you,” she said bluntly.

Torres seemed taken aback. “Where?”

“Just give me your hand.” Torres looked at her suspiciously, and all the fear and panic inside Reese exploded into impatience. “Do you want me to do it or not?” she demanded.

Torres hesitated for a second. Then she held her hand out as if offering it to Reese to shake. “Do it.”

The soldier’s palm was calloused, her fingertips rough. Reese wasn’t sure if she’d be able to sense anything at all; Torres had been mostly unreadable before, beyond a general sensation of predatory skill. And even if she could gain access to Torres’s consciousness, that wouldn’t necessarily explain what her “deal” was. Reese only hoped she could sense something that would give her a clue about what Torres wanted to hear—and then Reese planned to tell her precisely that.

She concentrated, beginning with her sense of herself as Eres Tilhar had taught her. Those lessons seemed an eternity ago, but as she laid out the map of her consciousness, situating herself physically within her mind and within this space—this bathroom, in this house, standing a foot away from Torres—Eres’s instructions came to her clear and strong. Reese was here. She took a deep breath, grounding herself, feeling the hard edge of the sink behind her, smelling the foul scent of a bathroom that hadn’t been cleaned in forever. She was unexpectedly grateful that Torres had grabbed her hair, because the throbbing pain on her scalp showed her the precise limits of her physical self.

When she was satisfied that she knew where she was, she opened herself to Torres’s mind. The soldier was tense, and at first all Reese could feel was that tension. Muscle and bone, dense and powerful, built for exactly what Torres had said: killing. Behind that physical barrier, Torres’s consciousness confronted Reese like a blank wall. As Reese mentally circled the wall, she sensed Torres’s emotions slowly shifting like tectonic plates grinding into new positions. And as the woman’s internal landscape shifted, Reese glimpsed memories that Torres didn’t know how to conceal. They were dark and brutal, and Reese clung to her own identity, trying to shield herself from the images’ assault so they wouldn’t overwhelm her.

The dirty line where a wall met the filthy floor. The flickering light of a television casting shadows over something she didn’t want to see. The recoil of a gun in her hand as tin cans flew off the edge of a fence. Someone’s birthday. Off-key singing, a candle that wouldn’t blow out. A dusty backyard at midnight, yellow light leaching out from a curtained window. A boy. A little boy with a bruised face and a cut lip, who said, Don’t go.

Then Reese recognized the Nevada desert: hot sun on brown dirt and rocks. Running for miles with nowhere to go. Men and women beside her in matching fatigues, every one of them watching her warily as she sprinted, one foot after the other, wishing she could outrun this place, this thing they had done to her. The memory skipped, and Reese saw Torres’s hands holding a soldier down beneath muddy water, cutting off the pulse in his throat. His esophagus collapsed beneath Torres’s fingers, and she rocked back on her heels, feeling as if an animal had clawed its way out of her body.

Reese recoiled from Torres’s consciousness. In front of her Torres was watching her intently, hopefully, and Reese said, “Wait. Almost.” She forced herself to go back in because she knew she was close. It was there, nearly buried beneath all those black memories, beneath the armor of Torres’s anger and cunning. It was in the rapid pulse of her heart, the speed with which her blood pumped through her body, the iron of her muscles and sinews. Reese understood her deal.

“You’re dying, aren’t you?” Reese whispered. Torres’s body was burning up her physical energy at a rate that Reese couldn’t believe. She couldn’t replenish herself fast enough. Inside Torres’s body, Reese felt the decay eating away at her, like a corpse rotting into the ground.

Torres’s face was grim. She didn’t seem surprised. “This thing they did to me is going to kill me?”

Cold sweat trickled down Reese’s back. “You don’t have to die,” she said, grasping at straws. “The Imria— they can save you.” She had no idea if it was true or not, but it was the only thing she could think of.

Reese sensed a spark of hope flare within the soldier, but it was extinguished before it had a chance to burst into flame. Torres jerked her hand away from Reese. “You’re lying. Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying,” Reese insisted. “Help us get back to the Imria and we’ll ask them. They have really advanced science—”

“As advanced as the shit the military stole to fix me up? I don’t think I want any more of that science.”

“The military screwed up. The Imria won’t. I swear. They didn’t screw up with me.” For the first time since she had woken up in that hospital after the car accident, Reese realized it was true. The Imria hadn’t screwed up with her. The thought was so startling that it sent a shudder through her body.

Torres stared at her long and hard. Her face was expressionless, but Reese knew the soldier was spinning through every possible option to keep herself alive. Finally she leaned close, her breath hot on Reese’s ear. “If I leave, they’ll take my kid. It’s too late for me. I’m in too deep. You better not say shit about what you just told me. You say anything and I’ll come and kill you myself.”

Ice went down Reese’s back. “I won’t say anything, I swear.”