Runner: The Fringe, Book 3 (8 page)

“Know what?”

“About your ability.”

“I told you, I’m not a reader.”

“You’re a lot more than simply intuitive. Tell me the truth. What’s your skill and does Roberts know that you have it?”

It was vitally important to him. She didn’t know why, but she told him the truth anyway. “I can project.”

“What’s that?” His mouth made a grim slash across his face.

“I can put my consciousness into another. I can look out through their eyes.”

“Can you read minds?” He took a wary step back but grimaced and stopped.

“No,” she said, trying to reassure him. “When I’m in someone’s mind, they can feel me in there. It’s intensely uncomfortable; it feels like your head will burst. The only thoughts I can read are those right on the surface. Unless the mind has left the body. In that case, if someone is injured, I can enter their mind and feel their body.” She struggled to describe to him what she could do with her ability. “I can feel what’s wrong with them and then heal them. Not with my mind, but with my hands.” She lifted them. “But I would never project into a conscious patient. It would hurt them.”

Foster considered, frowning darkly.

“You don’t have to rack your brain trying to remember if I’ve been in there.” She smiled and pointed to his index finger. “Judging by your low tolerance for pain, you would find projecting intensely, unforgettably painful.”

He flashed an embarrassed grimace to the textured floor and suspiciously asked, “How do
you
know what it feels like to have someone project?”

“I can feel what it’s doing to the other person. At the lab, I worked with a man who could also project. Brandt did it to me once, and I instantly jumped to his mind. It didn’t hurt that way. In fact it was strangely…”
Erotic
. She pulled herself back from her soft reverie with a gentle shake of her head. “The point is, I know what it feels like to do it to a conscious person. I’ve done it once. To the IWOG officer who killed Brandt.”

“And maybe you’re just saying it would hurt like hell when in reality you could do it and I wouldn’t notice at all.” His mouth twisted into a suspicious snarl.

“Do you want me to show you?”

With pursed lips, he considered for a long time. “It hurts?”

“Yes.”

“Can I kick you out once you’re in there?”

“I imagine if you focus your mind on it, you could. What you don’t seem to understand is that it hurts me to do it unless the mind is absent from the body.” She didn’t know why she was telling him all of this, but when she decided it probably wouldn’t make any difference, she ceased to care why.

“How do I know you won’t just get in my head, take over my body and make me do all kinds of insane things?”

She laughed at such an idea until she considered that she would make him do sexy things, not crazy things. The thought of commanding his body to her every whim made her shiver.

“I’m not trying to talk you into this. It hurts. I don’t want to do it to you. You want me to prove my ability but then think that by proving it, I can commandeer your body.” She laughed, hoping to cover her annoyance. “I’m telling you I have this skill. I’m willing to prove it to you if you insist. If I had the power to take over your body, don’t you think I would have done so by now? Perhaps back in the motel room?”

Tension eased from his shoulders.

“If I could really force people to do my bidding, I would have long ago taken care of Roberts. I wouldn’t have to play superhero with a fort because I’d be one.”

“Does Roberts know that you can project?” He didn’t seem entirely convinced, but some of the suspicion drained from his face.

“Yes. I saw the IWOG officer who destroyed the lab and killed Brandt. I went from Brandt’s mind to his, and that man most assuredly knew I was in there. I’m certain he reported the incidence to Roberts.” She picked up her robe and tossed it on the bed. “That is the only time I’ve ever invaded another sentient body. It hurt, but I wanted to see what he was doing. I wanted to know why. Not a nice thing to do, and in a way I’m sorry I hurt him, but I had to know.”

She went still as a terrifying thought crossed her mind.

“What?” He took a half step back.

“My ability may be one of the reasons Roberts wants me alive. To study me. If the IWOG has no problem experimenting with biological weapons, I can easily infer that they would also have an entire contingent dedicated to turning people with unique psi abilities into weapons.” Just the idea of it filled her so full of fear she had to refrain from touching the side of her bra to make sure she could deny Roberts that sick pleasure too.

“They do.” Foster nodded gravely, avoiding her gaze as shame darted across his face. “I know for a fact they do.”

“How?” she asked, even though she probably didn’t want to know.

“I’m ex-IWOG consumer. I grew up on Banna and did my time in the military just like every other man.”

“Is that where you learned how to be a Runner?”

He nodded. “My unit hunted readers. Most of them turned out to be bogus, but there were a few who were authentic.”

“Didn’t it bother you knowing what would happen to those poor people?” Had she been wrong about his compassionate heart?

He lowered his head with a guilty frown. “I didn’t think about that. Code. Duty. That’s what I thought about. You’ve been in the IWOG military. You know what I’m talking about.”

She understood and commiserated. Every free space of wall in the lab had a poster with either code or duty emblazoned on it, as those were the watchwords. She thought the red and blue posters garishly cartoonish, but she didn’t understand how well they worked until she noticed the blind subservience of her fellow workers. She’d been there three years; they’d been there forever. Except for Brandt. He’d been the only one willing to bend the rules a bit. His indulgence had led to the breakthrough.

Looking up at Foster, she swallowed the despair in her heart. “I guess your new watchword is reputation.”

Chapter Eight

Foster gave a slow nod as suspicion filled him. “Let me guess, you understand?” His voice, pitched to a mocking tone, grated against his own ears. He sounded like a smirking jerk as he mimicked her cultured IWOG tone, but he couldn’t stop himself from pushing her. “You understand and accept your fate because you understand and accept my reasons.”

Jynx opened her mouth to respond, but he cut her off before she could.

“No, wait.” He lifted his hand. “You not only understand, but you forgive me too, right?” He lowered his gaze so they came eye to eye with the bars between them.

“I’m not a spiritualist.” She met his gaze with a ferocity that almost moved him back. “If you’re seeking absolution for your sins, you best look elsewhere.”

Her pointed dismissal hurt more than he would ever admit, but he forced himself to smile. “And of course, you’re blameless.”

“Of what?” She stepped closer to the bars, settling herself into readiness to meet his challenge.

“You’ve never done anything you regret? You’ve never hurt anyone?” He knew he should leave the cell room now, but he couldn’t walk away until he’d resolved his confusion.

“There are many things I regret. At the moment, I have more regrets about things I haven’t done rather than those I have. And I never said I’ve never hurt anyone. I said I never
intentionally
hurt anyone. Technically, people have died at my hands, but only because my hands weren’t skilled enough to save them.” Looking down at her tiny hands, she pressed her lips tightly together. “When I connected my mind to their body, I realized the futility of my hands. I couldn’t save them. No matter what I did.”

He wanted to pull her into his arms and comfort her, but then he remembered all he’d seen on the media and resisted the urge.

As if she’d read his mind, she said, “I’m well aware Roberts has put vid clips of me harvesting organs out of patients. I look like a woman possessed of a demon. Extracting still-living organs is not a pretty sight. What you don’t see, and what the media fails to mention, is that those patients are brain dead. Did you know, before this, those vids were used to train other doctors on how to transplant organs?”

He didn’t know.

“What you don’t see is the rest of the room, where up to ten people wait to receive one of those organs. You don’t see that part. Only the part where I look like a bloody monster, ripping apart a glistening and clearly alive human body.”

He’d felt sickened by the gruesome clips, but now they made sense. He really had to stop believing everything Roberts put out there about Jynx. Time after time, the information turned out to be utterly bogus.

Almost a hundred faces flashed in his mind, all those he had intentionally killed, by duty or self-preservation. Not for sport, like some Runners did. He didn’t enjoy killing and went out of his way to avoid it. But when he’d been young and just starting out, he’d had no choice but to kill or be killed. His survival instinct ran too deep.

“Would you kill someone to save yourself?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“No,” she answered automatically.

“No. Just like that? You don’t even have to think about it?” He found her quick answers unsettling.

“No, I don’t. I know I wouldn’t, because if I did, I wouldn’t be me anymore.”

“Hippocrates.”

“Yes.”

“Reputation.”

Jynx nodded. “Yes.”

“We seem to have something in common.”

She flashed him an understanding nod filled with grim acknowledgment. “We are both slaves to our reputation. The difference is, at the moment, my reputation isn’t hurting me. It’s despicable and horrific, but it isn’t my fault. I’ve been true to myself, my inner reputation. I’ve hurt one man in my entire life and that was Roberts’s lackey. That’s where your problem is, Mr. Nash. Between your inner and outer reputation. That’s what hurts.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m not hurting over you.” Crap, he sounded like a defensive prick.

Again, she gave him that subtle nod of understanding. “You don’t want to deliver me, but you will, because you have to. Roberts locked you into it. You have no choice. You are going to do your job and that’s that.” Her voice held no menace or malice, only that infuriating acceptance.

“There’s always a choice.”

“I suppose. You either take me to Roberts or not. You’ve chosen to take me to planet Juno. That decision pretty much dictates the rest of your choices, doesn’t it?”

“And you seem to think I’m all atwitter over it.” He laughed coldly. “What makes you think I give a shit about you?” He winced inwardly when she flinched at his vulgarity.

“I don’t think, I know. I can see it in your eyes. Glare at me from under your lowered brows all you’d like. To put it in your vernacular, I’m not buying it. You’re trying to play indifferent when you’re not. You do care.”

Anger surged. “I don’t give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut about you!”

Jynx jumped to her feet. “Yes, you do! And that’s why you’re always bellowing at me!” Her hand shot to her mouth as her eyes went wide. She took a deep breath, sat down on the edge of her bunk and composed herself. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“Holy-moly, you really are, aren’t you?” She’d probably raised her voice only a handful of times in her life. “You’re unbelievable.”

Her eyes caught his with a wide, confused gaze. She opened her mouth to defend herself, but he cut her off.

“I yell and scream at you for days on end, but you do it to me once and apologize.”

“I’m not playing you.”

“I didn’t say you—damn, woman!” When he realized that he was bellowing at her again, he took a deep breath. “I know you’re not playing me. That’s what’s pissing me off. I wish you
were
playing me, because then I’d know what to do.” Why was he standing here telling her the truth? Maybe because she seemed to be able to see it anyway.

“What do you
want
to do, Mr. Nash?”

“I want to go back in time and never have met you.” The truth came right from his gut. He wanted that so badly, he wished he could make it real just by saying it. Wish in one hand and crap in the other; see which one piled up faster. He had an uncomfortable feeling about what he slogged through right now.

She looked stung by his nasty tone. “Since you don’t have that option, what would be your next choice?”

“Believe me, I’d like to let you go, then tell Roberts to piss off and die.” Again, straight from his gut. He didn’t have to hand her a knife or a gun since he seemed more than willing to hand his heart over.

“You don’t have that option either.”

“Couldn’t you at least try and talk me into it? Harp on me just a bit?” He knew it wouldn’t make a difference, but he still wanted her to plead with him just the same.

“Not even to make you feel better.” She settled herself on her bunk. “Please don’t look at me like I’m insane. I’m not. If I were you, I think I would do exactly what you’re doing.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” He knew a healer like her wouldn’t even contemplate her decision. She would morally
know
what to do, and she would do it without a second thought.

“I think I would. I’d want to keep my word, protect my reputation. Out here, on the Fringe”—she lifted her hand as if to encompass the enormity of space—“reputation is one’s most valuable possession. Mine is irrevocably slandered.” She dropped her hand into her lap. “No amount of good works can overcome Roberts’s nasty smear campaign. Live or die, I will always be a hated woman. Even if you freed me, someone else would only capture and deliver me. You see, it’s not so horrible that it is you who does. It has to be somebody. I’m thankful for the fact that it’s somebody who won’t hurt me while I’m in his care.”

He thought of the bonus Roberts offered with those sly words:
You’ll want to do her when you see her.
He glanced at Jynx, then away before she somehow read the truth.

“You think I’m some kind of nice guy.” With a flip of his chin, he whisked his hair out of his eyes but kept his attention on the far wall. “Tell you what, I wanted to take you up against the bars of your cell just a few moments ago.”

“I wanted that too.”