My dad looked between us. “Is he your… boyfriend? I thought maybe the one who walked me in was but then you were in here with the one with the long hair and…” Realization swept over my father’s face fast. “All of them. Like the former pirates who helped me. You have one of those multiple relationships going on. So unusual where we are from, and so common here. Seems everyone I run into has one of those. The people who own this place, they’re in a plural sort of relationship.”

  I didn’t know the first thing about how Diana’s multiple marriage worked outside of the fact that it did. He wasn’t wrong. Love was love here, and it came in many forms.

  “That’s right. I am with more than one man.” I smiled. “Seven of them, actually.”

  He paled. “Seven? Are you constantly exhausted?”

  “Dad,” I practically shouted. “I’m not… getting into that with you. Please go on. Kellan might actually understand what you’re saying to me. The left… what was it?”

  Kellan pulled over a chair and motioned for my father to sit in it while he answered me instead of my father. “Hippocampus. He means the limbic system. It’s where the subcortical structures meet the cerebral cortex. Thought to be responsible for motivation, learning, memory, that kind of thing. Go on. Lower level of activity. That’s interesting. So she lowers the use of her left hippocampus to take on other people’s shit.” He winced. “Sorry, I curse. A lot. I didn’t have parents. They made me in a lab, so I have no idea how to talk to you.”

  My father stared at Kellan for a long moment. “I like you.”

  I might never understand male relationships. Not even if I lived to be three hundred years old. “Please. Can we continue?”

  “You also decrease activity in your superior temporal gyrus.”

  Kellan sighed. “Language. Sounds.” He answered my unasked question as to what that did. “Anything else?”

  “The front lobe—I think that’s what it’s called—it also showed less activity. I’ve never really understood any of that.”

  My Super Soldier rocked back on his feet. “A whole shit ton of stuff gets controlled in the frontal lobe. So what you’re saying is that when she does these things, the zapping, the emotion, she is actually using less of her brain power than when she’s not. Like she’s simply controlling her mind differently.” By the end, he was downright jumpy for Kellan. “That is so interesting. And so… perfect.”

  I wasn’t following him at all. My father finally sat down. We both openly stared at Kellan. “Why is it perfect?” My dad finally asked him.

  “Because Super Soldiers. We use our brains differently, too. That’s what we do. Like when I want to listen a great distance away—say when I can’t sleep and I have to find your heartbeat to make it through the night—I unconsciously ask my brain, my frontal lobe as it is, to work a little harder. I don’t do it with thought. I just do it. That’s what you’re doing. To take on emotion, to focus that so hard at someone that you literally zap their brain, you cool yours down. Sienna, it’s such good news.”

  I put my head against the glass. “Kellan, I’m still not following you.”

  “Not everyone can mess with their brain like that. It’s a genetic ability. Like… rolling your tongue.” He pushed his out, showing me he could do that. I picked my head off the glass so that I could show him the same. Yes, I could do that, too. “The women in your family. Natural selection—that’s an old phrase—you ladies are genetically predetermined to be able to do that with your brain. You can roll your brain.”

  The door opened and closed. “Are you saying to her what I think you are?” Anders walked fast.

  “I am.” Kellan outright grinned at Anders. “We can fix her. We can get rid of what is making her sick.”

  Now they really had my attention. “How?”

  “We can make you like us. You could do it. We can make you one of us.”

  It took me a long moment to understand what he meant. “A Super Soldier?”

  “Well, not full on. I mean, why would you need to be able to shoot better or target people? You don’t need to do that. But there are reasons Evander picked the people they picked to make us from. They adapted genetic ability. We can do that to you because you already have the key point that makes us, well, us. You are capable of brain adaptivity. You can handle some of what we are.” He smiled. “We can take some of the technology we have that helps us be us, and we can use that on you. Sienna, you could actually survive it. We don’t need Evander. Fuck them and all that noise. We can fix you. You could be like us.”

  I sat down on the bed. Was what he said possible?

  8 A Better, Brighter You

  “Is that something that you want?” Anders met my gaze through the glass. “If we could do it, would you want that?”

  It was hard to speak. “I… I don’t want to be sick if I don’t have to be. I don’t want people getting hurt. I don’t like lying.” He would know what that meant. “Or being a risk to people.”

  He nodded fast. “I don’t think Kellan is off the mark here. There are things to consider. I mean, you’d have to go through a cellular change. That can’t be an easy thing to do. They grew us in a petri dish and then changed us as babies. Plus, I’m not sure this is legal here.”

  Kellan threw over a table, and the whole room went silent. Anders adjusted his stance slightly. Was he preparing to have to fight Kellan? Anxiety made me stand up straighter.

  “Something wrong?” Anders lowered his voice.

  “I don’t give a shit about the legality of this. Surely there must be a way to handle it. Considering the extenuating circumstances of what happened to her. I’m not suggesting that we go around altering the general population to take care of their aches and pains. What happened to her happened because of people like us. I mean, Devil was actually there. We have to fix it. Period. She’s ours. Don’t give me reasons why it won’t work.”

  Anders held up his hands as though he was in surrender. “I want to do it, too. But take it down a notch before her father absconds with her again and we never see her for the rest of our lives. We know he can do it. He’s done it before.”

  My father rose slowly. “What I see is a lot of emotion because you love my daughter. Maybe you don’t know how to control those feelings. It’s hard for some young people to work that out. I’m not concerned for her safety with you. Just the opposite. She said she wants it. If you need me to run her off to some place we can do this without the law being a problem, we can do that, too.”

  “No one is running anywhere,” Blaze strode through the door. “We can do this here. As far as I know, the laws on The Farm don’t prohibit this. We might have more of a problem on Mars Station.”

  I motioned toward Blaze. “Dad, I’m sorry. We didn’t do introductions. This is Blaze. He’s in charge of this group. Anders. And Kellan.”

  My father rapidly blinked. “This is all going to take some getting used to. When this is over, will you come home?”

  I hadn’t even thought about it before he asked. I didn’t know what I’d do when this was over. Not really. I hadn’t given much thought to the idea of next because I hadn’t considered that I might have that. Still, I could answer him. “Not home. That’s gone. We all went there. It’s pretty decimated. I don’t think my future is there. Having said that, I need to know what kind of plans these guys would like to have. Unless they tell me otherwise, I’m with them.”

  Kellan’s shoulders seemed to visibly untighten. “Where you go, I go.”

  “Who is going to do this cellular change?” My dad seemed to have quickly moved on. “You three?”

  “No.” Blaze shook his head. “Wade. With some help probably from some other doctors. There are good ones here. But it’ll be Wade.”

  He was going to hate this. I didn’t have to alter my brain waves or whatever I was doing to understand that. Wade was going to have a big fucking problem with this.

  “So we’re completely shifting gears?” Wade ran a hand through his hair. “Everything we discussed is just not happening?”

  We’d definitely gotten attention about this process. Within minutes of the conversation, Wade and Trenton had arrived with Corbin and Devil. The latter two had told the former what they had in mind. Trenton was surprisingly quiet on the subject but Wade, as predicted, was not. My father had left, going to find some place to sleep for the night and something to eat. He didn’t need to be here for this discussion, and I was fairly certain that he found the guys as a group pretty overwhelming. That made sense. They were absolutely a lot to take all at once if you weren’t used to them.

  Blaze held a finger to his mouth, reminding Wade about the subjects we weren’t discussing. The doctor threw his head back and laughed. “Really? You’re serious? I think we’re maybe past the point of that at the moment.”

  “You want this?” Trenton asked me.

  I smiled at him. He’d have no way of knowing that I’d already been asked. “If it can work.”

  “Sienna.” Wade looked pale. “We don’t know any of the long-term results of this. Okay. If we can make the science work. If I can get nanos from Canyon’s eye device that Ari dismantled… and reprogram them to work on you at a cellular level, to change you, then yes, we can probably make your immune system fight off what is in you like a Super Soldier. But we have no idea what else could happen. These guys have had their whole lives to learn to tune out sounds they don’t want to hear, to control themselves so they don’t hurt people. I… I’m not even sure what to anticipate because nothing like this has ever been done before.”

  I raised my hand. “I’m willing to volunteer.”

  “Could it kill her?” Corbin crossed his arms over his chest.

  Wade hung his head. “There is always the possibility of death. In every surgery.”

  “She could die right now from what’s happening to her, and it won’t be pretty.” Devil spoke from the corner. He met my gaze and gave me a small smile. “It won’t be pleasant. She’ll go through hell, and there won’t be a thing Wade can do to stop it. She’s already at a nine. Let’s not push her body into level ten when we can’t be near her before we give this a try. Blaze and I can teach her to ignore excessive sounds the same way we do with the juveniles when they come out of the nursery seclusion back at Evander headquarters. I don’t know if we’re voting. It’s her body. She told us what she wanted.”

  Corbin tilted his head. “I only asked a question. I didn’t offer an opinion. The only one objecting to this is the person who has to actually make this happen. Can you do it, Wade? Or is this whole conversation for naught because you aren’t capable of it?”

  Wade straightened his shoulders and advanced on the much bigger man. “I’m fucking capable of it.”

  “Okay,” Blaze spoke loudly, and they all shut up. “What do you need?”

  “It’s not the kind of thing one attempts alone if one doesn’t have to.” He’d officially taken to speaking in third person. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I’d never seen Wade do that before. “I need Cash, Lewis, Ari, and Waverly. I’d love to have Amber and Dane, but if that isn’t possible, and it probably isn’t, then those five are who I need. So if Sterling and Canyon or Rohan could send those folks over in the morning, that would be great.”

  The guys started to grin. It took me a second to catch on to the reasons for their smiles. Wade had just addressed the Super Soldiers not here as though he’d been certain they were listening.

  “Think about it tonight, my love.” He walked to the glass partition and leaned against it. “You can change your mind in the morning. We have a lot of the tools we need already. Yeah… I know.” He put his finger to his mouth, reminding me we couldn’t talk about this.

  There were so many unknowns. I wanted a meal and a shower. Now that the adrenaline of everything had worn off, I was spent. I looked at my number. It stayed at nine. That was good because I was achy and sore on top of everything else. My chest felt tight. Was that nerves or the virus?

  “I’m not one hundred percent.” I had to be honest with Wade. He couldn’t do his job if I weren’t up-front. I wanted him to love on me, to be just my guy, but the truth was he was also my doctor. I had to let him play both roles.

  He sank to the ground on the outside of the glass, so I did the same on my end. We could be face-to-face that way. His smile held no mirth to it. “Symptoms?”

  “I’m achy. Sore. Just not myself.”

  “Okay. Could one of you get her some food? Sienna, I’m going to let you out to bathe and relax. You can go back to your room on this ship and use the bathroom.”

  A thought dawned on me. “It’s cool and comfortable on here. The last time I flew on Artemis, it had no air-cooling ability.”

  “While we were eating dinner, the crews started working on her. Most of these guys trained with Tommy Sandler when he was here. They’re very proficient at fixing up fast. Kind of like triage for the ship.” Trenton smiled. He headed toward the door. “I’ll get the food. It’s way past breakfast. Almost lunch.”

  Blaze nodded. “Everyone should eat and sleep if they can. If she’s doing this tomorrow, we all need to be on for her and not tired. Wade, you have to force yourself to get some rest. Can you do that?”

  With a salute, Wade rose and walked over to the door to let me out of the separated room. “I will. I have to talk to Canyon and Ari first. This will be a no go if I can’t use the nanos.”

  “We’d know by now if you couldn’t.” Devil headed toward the exit. “I promise you that.”

  It was a strange world where there were whole portions of conversations happening that I could never hear or know about because they were out of my range. Although I supposed that might change. Tomorrow.

  This all happened very fast. The decision was made and thus it was happening. Just that fast. I could change my mind, but at least at the moment as I walked toward the shower, I was at peace with this. Whatever happened, there couldn’t be lasting consequences for the whole galaxy because they decided to save me.

  Or at least I couldn’t think of any.

  Everything spun so fast all of the time, I’m not sure I could know what was about to happen until it actually did.

  “Did your father ever say how he knew?” Wade called out to me as I walked toward the bathroom. “How he knew what your brain can do?”

  That was a good question. “He said the people who ran the temple were eventually going to tell me. Some kind of tests that had once been done.”

  Wade nodded slowly. “I bet whoever tested all the women, they’re why Evander was out there looking to begin with. Those tests are why they found your uncle to start. It was too remote for Evander to spend that much time seeking gossipy leads about women with powers. They already knew.”

  That made sense, too. The pieces were falling together. The only question was could we do what the guys wanted to do in order to fix me?

  My shower had been wonderful, and I came out to find an egg dish that was filling and also tasty. I was still achy, and my numbers hadn’t gone down just because of a warm shower and a full belly.

  The guys were gone except for Trenton who was asleep on the small bed where I imagined I was supposed to spend the night. He snored lightly, his head turned to the side as he lay on his back. Trenton’s long hair was across my pillow.

  I sighed. Like Kellan the last time, I should kick Trenton out of my bed. But I wasn’t going to. I was so screwed up on timing. Should I be sleeping right now? Running around? Doing push-ups? I smiled at that thought. I’d never done any that I could remember.

  With nothing pressing, I crawled in next to him. He stirred, lifting his head. “Did you eat?”

  “I did, thanks. You look spent.”

  Trenton snuggled against me, drawing me closer so that he held me from behind. “You smell so good.”

  “Thanks.” He did too.

  “Artemis, turn off the lights in this room.” They dimmed immediately, and despite the fact that it was daytime, the room was immediately cloaked in darkness. It was soothing, and he drew me even closer.

  “Trenton,” I whispered in case he’d fallen back asleep already.

  He lifted his head. “You okay? Scared about tomorrow?”

  “I’m not actually. I should be, but I’m too spent, too tired of being sick. What I wanted to say to you is that you’ve twice now taken care of me when I could have been killed. The planet. Last night under the table. Thank you. For being there each time. Thank you.”

  He smoothed his finger over my bottom lip. “I think I knew even when you were in the cryogenic chamber that I was going to love you. I shouldn’t. You deserve someone less destroyed than me. But I knew that I would. You saved me, Sienna. You are a miracle to me. I will always be there to keep you safe. Of that, I promise.”

  There was no way he could make such an oath to me, and yet I believed him. The more I knew Trenton, the more I understood he never said or did anything he didn’t believe he could go through with. He intended to be there for me every second he could be.

  I pushed his hair out of his eyes. “I didn’t save you. Just the opposite. You keep saving me. And when you needed me on that little ship where we got caught, I had to leave you there. Plus, you then turned around and saved us all again.”

  He snorted. “I made the lights flash. You took down a ship full of people.”

  “Which I could only do because—”

  His mouth touched mine, the gentlest of kisses. “We saved each other that day. How about we go with that?”

  I touched the side of his face. “Okay.”

  “Besides, what I meant was that you saved me on the inside. I’ve only been living for revenge for so long. I forgot how it was to feel like this, to be alive. Inside and out.”

  There was no question that Trenton had loved his late wife. I didn’t feel any jealousy toward her or even the slightest bit of angst that he had loved someone before me. If anything, I was grateful for her. Someone had taught this man how to care, and it hadn’t been his family. At least from what he’d told me the night on the planet in the rain.