—catch her— Quilan was saying. —convince the Superiority—worth more than all of them combined—
I shook my head. Quilan and the others were trying to prove their value to the Superiority. They’d accepted aid to contain us in the form of those ships, but if they didn’t do the work themselves, they wouldn’t earn any favor.
And I was the rebel cytonic, the biggest prize of all.
I had to get out of here.
You have a code in your mind, I sent to Jorgen. It lets you use your cytonic powers on your planet. I can’t return unless you give it to me.
You used cytonics here before, he replied.
I did not have time for this. You have an inhibitor now, I said to Jorgen. And you know that code, even if you don’t know that you know it.
Um, I’m not sure how to give you that. Let me go talk to Command, see if they’ll—
I’m in kind of a bind here, I said. There’s no time for that. There’s an impression in your mind. Try to think about allowing me to come there. Try to will it to me.
I mean, I think you’re welcome to come back. I’m sure Command would like to speak with you again.
The words didn’t come with an impression. They were useless to me.
“Find her,” a voice said from down the hall.
The impression is in there, I said to Jorgen. How do you access your cytonics? Do you have exercises?
I meditate, Jorgen said.
Try that, I said. Do it fast.
Hang on, I’m trying. I could feel Jorgen’s cytonic resonance growing stronger as he deepened his connection with the negative realm. He was welcoming me into his mind, giving me access to his deeper thoughts.
More footsteps. One of the Unity pilots turned a corner, stepping into view.
Alanik? Jorgen said. Is it working?
I reached into his mind as he reached into mine.
There. An impression, like a cytonic key. I copied it, embedding it in my own thoughts, and reached toward the human planet, which took shape again, feeling solid. Accessible. I focused on that place, forming the coordinates.
The Unity pilot’s bright eyes fixed on me. “She’s here!” he said.
Quilan’s voice filled my mind. This is a mistake, Alanik, he said. You can’t run from us forever.
We’re going to find out, I said.
And then I pulled myself into the negative realm and left my people behind.
Four
When I emerged from the negative realm, escaping from the ire of the eyes, I stood in the infirmary room I’d fled when I left the humans. It was empty, the overhead lights turned off.
The first time I’d hyperjumped to Detritus, I’d been shot down by the automated weapons that guarded their planet. My wounds had mostly healed while they kept me unconscious here—not that I was inclined to thank them for keeping me in a coma. I was still technically supposed to be taking it easy, and felt twinges in my abdomen if I overdid it.
Thankfully, hyperjumping wasn’t physically strenuous.
I pressed my back against the wall by the window so I wouldn’t be visible from the hall, then reached out, trying to find Jorgen. The building around me buzzed with a surprising amount of cytonic energy. At first I wondered if the humans had far more cytonics among them than I’d previously supposed, but no, these minds felt different, their energy more subtle—like the difference between a large fruit and a tiny seed.
Potential cytonics perhaps? If the humans had this many, they’d be formidable allies indeed.
I found Jorgen’s mind, with two of the smaller resonances hovering near him.
I made it, I said. Thank you for your help.
Oh, good, he said. I lost track of you, and I thought maybe something bad had happened.
Several bad things, in fact. I need to talk to you, I said. Can you come alone? He’d wanted to alert his commanders to my presence, and maybe he already had. But I wasn’t eager to speak with them again until I had someone on my side, given how poorly things had gone last time.
Where are you?
He couldn’t locate me, then. That wasn’t a surprise. He was untrained, and of all the cytonics on ReDawn, I was by far the best at picking out locations and individual cytonics in the negative realm. I sent him a picture of the infirmary room.
Jorgen paused. Can I bring FM?
That human woman. I’d liked her. Yes, but only her.
On my way, Jorgen answered.
I wished I’d been able to choose someplace with more space, where I might be able to get a look at the humans before they found me. But I had the key to their inhibitor now, so they wouldn’t be able to stop me from leaving again if it came to that.