Kellan lifted an eyebrow. “I wasn’t suggesting…”

  “No,” Wade snapped, slamming his hand down on the table next to him. “You’re more than suggesting. You’re outright saying.”

  “Okay,” Trenton yelled. He looked pale, not himself at all. I touched the glass. It was frustrating to be separated from all of them, but nevertheless, I shot Corbin a look. He needed to get away from me.

  They all turned to stare at Trenton. He took a long deep breath. “She’s sick.” He looked over at me. “You’re sick. I’m not going to speak about you like you’re not here.”

  I nodded as I sank down to the floor, still near the glass. “Thanks.”

  “Welcome.” He knelt down and touched the glass on the other side of where I sat as though we could feel each other through the glass. I wasn’t sure I could feel anything at all. Even if we’d been skin-to-skin. A few seconds later, he turned around to regard all of them again. “Instead of yelling because we all feel like shit that we might be losing her, let’s strategize about what we can do about it.”

  I sighed. “Aren’t we on the ship that can do something about it? This is an Evander vessel. I haven’t seen others that I remember, but this one seems pretty big and substantial to me. Why aren’t the cures here?”

  Blaze shook his head. “They don’t bother with things like that on vessels that transport Super Soldiers. We’re expendable cargo. They can always make more of us. They have an abundance. They’d have that kind of thing on the ships that transfer the board of directors.”

  Wade sighed, some of his anger deflating. “That’s not entirely true. I don’t have all the details, but I know that Ari and some of the others found a cure for Waverly once on a random ship. They must have gotten smarter since then and removed the stuff. I’m sure that was true, once, Blaze, the way you knew it.”

  “Then what do we do?” Kellan looked around, making eye contact with everyone but me.

  I’d had enough. I pounded on the glass. “Maybe we die.” I rolled my eyes. Yes, I’d become the brat I never was, but it was as though I couldn’t get all of the pain out of my head. There was nothing but anger and sadness deep inside of me. I was lost to it. I might never find my way out. “Sorry, I meant I. Since I’m the only one here who will be dying.”

  Kellan shook his head. “Make no mistake, sweetheart, if you die, I’m going with you. Maybe in a big fucking explosion where I take out some fucker who deserves to die, but I’m not doing any of this without you.”

  Well… that was quite a statement. “Kellan.”

  “You should believe that true from all of us.” Trenton nodded his head. “Okay. You heard what he just said. It’s true.”

  Wade turned his back. “I can’t do that. My brother and sister need me until they’re eighteen. Even if they don’t see me, they need a guardian on the books. It’s better they don’t see me. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to, Sienna. I would just have to delay.”

  This was all too awful for me to digest. “Guys, the sad truth here is that I’m sitting at a nine.” I checked my wrist to make sure that it still said that. It absolutely did. Would I have preferred an eight? Yes. Was I glad it wasn’t a ten? Fuck yes, I was. “I am probably going to…”

  Kellan shook his head. “Don’t say it, Sienna. Don’t utter the words, because I’m not sure I will be able to restrain from breaking this glass and hauling you through the black hole if you do.”

  Wade spun around. “What?”

  “Breaking the glass…”

  The doctor waved his hand. “Not that. No, the other part. Hauling her through the black hole. That’s a great idea.”

  Was it? I got to my feet, and Corbin came to stand right next to me. Kellan had caught all our attention. Could we actually go through the black hole? It was closed. They’d told me that on Mars Station. It had been shut down to stop Evander from coming back through. Could we just open it because we wanted to?

  “Can you get it open?”

  Kellan nodded. “I can get it open. I know how Wes closed it. He’d been trying for years. This last attempt worked. But, yes, I could break through.” He pointed at his head. “Remember? I’m really smart.”

  I smiled. It was the first time I’d felt like it since I’d woken up. Kellan had lots of insecurities but not about his rather impressive IQ. “Oh, yes, I’d never forget.”

  He rocked back on his heels. “Good.”

  My amusement faded fast, and a headache in the center of my forehead took its place. That couldn’t be a good sign. Or maybe it was about the emotions still. If the numbers on my arm were any indication, they were all related. My stress levels raised my viral load, and in turn I got sicker, which made me more stressed. It was really fun. Sarcasm in my own mind was never a healthy thing.

  “So you could do it.” Wade nodded. “And Trenton could navigate the hole. Blaze, do you think you could use your connection with Sterling, Canyon, or Rohan to get hooked up to however it is that they control time?” Wade held up his hand. “Yes, I know more about that than I’m letting on because I don’t want to deal with it right now.”

  “What does that mean?” They might all understand what they were talking about, but I certainly didn’t.

  “Time travel.” Corbin shrugged. “Worst kept secret lately. No one knows. But we do. Because we can hear things. Seems like Wade knows.” He looked at Trenton. “Did you?”

  He sighed. “I did. They have this secret building on The Farm. Ari was always running in and out of it. Never mind. Yes, I knew.”

  Time travel? That seemed as foreign a concept as I could perceive, but then again it had been days—weeks? who knew anymore—since they’d woken me, and I couldn’t use the lights on Artemis. So perhaps this wasn’t such a strange thing as I thought it was. Okay, I was putting that in a box to deal with later in the back of my mind. Everything was awful. I couldn’t fathom time travel. It was probably a world ending disaster.

  I hated my own internal thoughts. It was as though my mind lied to me. How long was this going to last? I couldn’t focus on things, and they involved me. I had to try to stay present. Why was that so hard?

  “We get through the black hole back to when they made the diseases she’s sick with. The ones that were meant to make us sick. Of the same ilk as the device they used to take us down on the planet. And we cure her.” Blaze spoke, and all eyes were on him. He was quiet, but there was never any question that he was in charge. It was like he listened thoroughly before he made any decisions, and he spoke only when he’d made one. He also had a temper, but he’d yanked it back so that I never saw it anymore. I was glad to be off his I-don’t-trust-her list. That hadn’t been a fun place to be.

  Of course, I was in such a dour place he might put me back on it just because he couldn’t stand to have me around. I pressed my forehead against the glass and closed my eyes. Maybe I could sleep through this whole thing. Was that possible? But not in cryo because that could go on indefinitely, and I could wake up when these guys were all dead and I had to talk to their grandsons. I groaned. No, please, not that. That meant they all had lives, and I had…

  Corbin touched my arm. “Sienna? You okay?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  He drew me to him, his warmth nice even though I knew I might be killing him. “You have to let me go.”

  When he didn’t answer, Blaze finally tilted his head. Some sort of silent communication must have happened because Corbin let go and stepped toward the door. “Only because they’ll need me to keep you alive. If I’m sick, I’m draining resources from you. I don’t want that.”

  Whatever it took for him to stay safe. Blaze shifted his stance, regarding Kellan again. “They closed it down to keep this side of the universe safe. I have no problem sacrificing everyone for Sienna, but she hasn’t even been willing to let us put ourselves at risk to help her. Hated every second of it, and I’m not going to lose her when this is over because we’ve done something she considers unforgivable.”

  Trenton smirked. “Blaze, I think your EQ is rising.”

  The leader ignored him. I should be feeling grateful and relieved. I knew that. But there was the whole pit-of-blackness-around-my-soul problem at the moment.

  Blaze rolled his eyes and spoke again to Kellan. “We need to time this so there is no chance of Evander coming with us or getting out.”

  Kellan spoke up. “That’s where I come in. Well, Corbin and me. We can see to that happening.”

  “We’re not ready.” Dev spoke slowly. “Can’t do it in this monstrosity of a ship. We have to drop off the sleeping beauties to Mars Station. Pick up supplies for Artemis. If I recall the specs correctly from my time with the Chen Empire, they were trying to make it work for Tommy Sandler’s ships and not having a great time of it. The only ship that has ever successfully hooked up Wes’ time controller is Artemis.”

  Trenton grinned. “Then I guess it’s a good thing we have Artemis. I’ll get going fixing her.”

  “We’ll need help on Mars Station, but that’s too risky. How close are we to The Farm?” Blaze asked.

  Dev picked up his tablet. “Closer. Hours.”

  “Great. That’s where we’ll go. We’ll drop off the Evander prisoners at The Farm. Diana can deal with her mother if they want them on Mars Station. That’s not our problem.” He snapped his fingers. “Wade, I know you want other doctors to look at her. Ari is there. Cash. And what’s his face?”

  Wade smiled. “Picking up expressions, too. The other doctor is Lewis. I might like Amber and Dane, too, but we’ll never get all of them. So, yes. The Farm will work to get this done. We’ll steal the device from The Farm. Devil?”

  He nodded. “That’s my job.”

  Blaze seemed settled in his decision. “Okay, then we have to understand that we’re all lying. Every single one of us will be lying when we get there. We get Artemis fixed. Pick up supplies. Without anyone there hearing a single thing of truth. We don’t say a word. There are three Super Soldiers who are just as good at it as we are. They tried to hide this, and we still found out. Not one word.” He spun around to regard me. “Can you do that, love?”

  “I don’t know any of them. I’m not sure why I would ever consider telling them anything. But I don’t want anyone hurt.” I was like a constant repeated recording with that subject, but there it was. “So we can’t open it if anyone gets hurt.”

  Anders cleared his throat. “You can trust us to manage that. We won’t put this quadrant in danger. I promise you that. And I’ll even shoot Wes a message on our way through, telling him he doesn’t have to let us back in if he doesn’t want to.”

  I had a pretty good idea that wasn’t going to happen. There was a small chance this was going to work. I knew that, and I didn’t have the smallest idea of battle strategy or anything related. What were the chances that I was even going to make it to the other side of the galaxy? How long of a trip was it?

  “Wade? Do I make it that far?” I needed the truth from him, and I wished I were a Super Soldier who could hear his heartbeat and somehow know what that meant. Was he lying? Appeasing me? I might be able to read his face if I was in better shape. But now they all just looked and seemed angry and sad. “Tell me.”

  Maybe I was better than I thought, because I was actually able to watch the emotions cross over his face. A million of them. He might have lied to me, and then he thought better of it. Wade cleared his throat. “You might have to go under cryo, my love.”

  Okay. They kept bringing it up, and I was going to have to deal with it. I couldn’t continue to say “no, no, no” just because I didn’t like the idea. I was either telling him to let me die, or I was telling him to put me under and try to fix me again, however long it took. Or maybe there was a tweak to that.

  “There has to be an end date.”

  He understood me, because he nodded, but Trenton looked between us. “Explain?”

  “I’m not living endlessly in cryo. There’s a date when enough is enough.” If I had to live in a glass cage or in cryogenic sleep, I wasn’t going to do it forever.

  He snorted. “Well, obviously. The end date is that we get the cure. We cure you. There is a very close end date. A year, maybe. You can hold out that long or go in cryo. There’s a not so distant end date.”

  Enough. “Really? You want to do it?” I snapped. It was beneath me, but I’d been selfless, and now I was paying the price for it mentally. I’d apologize later when I actually felt sorry.

  “I would do it, Sienna, if I could. I would gladly take it from you in a heartbeat.”

  Yep, I was the worst. Sorry didn’t take long to feel. “I’m… Trenton you didn’t deserve that. I’m not right.”

  “We know that.” He knocked on the glass. “We’re all in love with you. Hands down done without you. And I know pain and loss. I’m not doing it again. I had revenge to fuel me before. This time, I’m with Kellan. If you’re out, I’m out. So try to hang on as long as you can. We’re not going to let this be endless for any of us.”

  The responsibility of this was staggering. It stole my breath and rendered my already confused thoughts silent. I didn’t want anyone hurt and that included them all deciding to go on some blaze of righteous glory on my behalf. I had been raised to help people. How would I live with myself if it all went wrong for those I actually loved?

  Well, I guessed I wouldn’t live with myself. I’d actually be dead.

  Darkness was this life. I closed my eyes. There it went again. Other people’s crap crowding out my own thoughts as though all the goodness everywhere had been sucked away.

  “Okay. I’ll trust you.”

  Blaze smiled. “Good. We’re going to move a bed in there and make sure you’re all comfortable. It’s not a jail cell. It’s a temporary holding until we get that number down just a little.” He turned and then stopped. “Sienna, thank you for what you did.”

  I swallowed, tears threatening my eyes. “You’re welcome. Of course.”

  “If you do something like that again, I’m going to let Devil paddle your ass.”

  Dev jolted. “How did I become the one to paddle her ass? You want to do that, have at it. I’m not the one dishing out punishments. You’re the leader, oh masterful one.”

  Blaze threw his head back and laughed. It was a bright, delighted sound that I wished I could appreciate. I wished I could feel the humor in this moment, to even know what was funny anymore. Laughing was one of those things that made life worth living. Without it, what was the use of any of it?

  “I don’t get it either.” Anders shrugged and winked at me. “If anyone is going to be paddling your ass, you know it’s going to be Trenton.”

  He held up his hands. “You boys keep your kinky to yourselves. I’ve got my own set of happy. And I promise you, if I did that, she wouldn’t think of it as a punishment.”

  All of this was lost on me. It was a damned shame.

  5 The Phoenix

  Things were pretty quiet after that. The guys scampered off, and eventually I drifted off to sleep on the bed that Anders dragged in. It was quiet in the med bay, and I slept very well until I heard footsteps approaching. I sat up, my heart in my throat. I’d assumed the ship was safe, but what if it weren’t. What if…

  My fears proved to be for naught. It was Kellan. He walked toward the glass and sat down on the other side of it, smiling at me. Smiling wasn’t Kellan’s natural facial expression. I was touched that he made the effort for me or that he even wanted to. Maybe my mood was slightly better.

  “Hey,” I whispered. We were alone, and I wasn’t sure it was the middle of the night, but it felt like it was on my body clock, so I treated it that way.

  He tapped on the glass. “I was hoping not to wake you.”

  “I’m a light sleeper.”

  Kellan nodded. “I can see that.” He actually yawned. “Sorry, cryo throws me off. I’m going to be on and off tired for a bit. Not great for a Super Soldier when we’re expected to wake up and fight like nothing happened to us.”

  “Maybe the expectations were unreasonable, not your reaction to cryo.”

  He leaned his head on the glass. “What is your number right now?”

  I looked down at my wrist. “No change.”

  Kellan put a finger to his mouth like he wanted me to be quiet before he rose and entered my enclosure. I pointed my finger at him. He wasn’t supposed to come in here. If Wade came out of the office, he was going to yell at him. But then again, Wade was probably asleep since he’d been in that other room for a long time. I hoped he was. This was a lot.

  He lay down next to me on the bed. I should tell him to go. This was ridiculous. But I wanted to curl up against him. I had to control myself. If I hit ten tonight, he’d be in danger of catching something, and there was no amount of cuddling that was worth that. How could we cuddle in the future if he got sick? Of course, I might not have a future to cuddle.

  Picking up my wrist, he kissed it right over the number. The gentlest of caresses. I sighed. Okay. He could stay for a minute. That was fine, just a minute. Or two. We kept having this conversation, over and over. How much of what I wanted went against their personal ability to make decisions?

  No, I was right on this. I rolled over to tell him to get out of my bed, but his eyes were closed, and he looked so peaceful. Kellan never looked this relaxed. I would wake him in a second. For just now, I’d watch him sleep because he’d crawled in here even though he’d known he wasn’t supposed to in order to just sleep.

  I reached out and stroked the side of his face gently. If it woke him, I’d kick him out, but he didn’t stir. He was a Super Soldier. That would wake him if he wanted to be woken. That had to be hard. They never could really deeply sleep unless they were drugged into cryo to do so. I knew their genes had been manipulated, but didn’t they need REM like the rest of us?

  Dropping my hand, I snuggled back down. If he was pretending to not wake up so that I’d let him rest, I’d give him an A for performance technique. That was something I’d never seen, a theater show. Did people still do that?