No Such Thing (39 page)

The sight didn’t deter Declan’s bloodlust. Goaded past control by the knowledge that this skinny little piece of shit had nearly destroyed
everything he loved, Declan lunged for him, only to plunge into the rush of Ryelle’s power. Rage and lust were not a comfortable mix and he jerked
back with a curse.

"Ryelle, let him loose," he growled, looking down into the man’s terrified eyes with violence thrumming along his muscles in a dark, wild
current.

"So you can beat him bloody?" Ryelle’s voice responded in his ear in a mildly caustic tone. "Gee, that’s productive. How
about instead you take the detonator from him, so he can’t blow anything else up while you’re smashing his head in."

A thrill of alarm eased some of his anger, letting him think more clearly. "Where is it?"

"Left hand." As she spoke, Ventura’s left arm began to lift and stretch out toward Declan in slow motion. The man’s horror-glazed
eyes watched his limb, a whimpering sound coming from behind his closed lips. His closed fist turned over and the fingers parted. On his palm lay a small
controller.

Declan snatched it and handed it to security. "Don’t drop that or press any buttons. Now, let him go, Ryelle."

His mother appeared at his elbow, giving him her sternest look. Through stiff lips, she said, "You kill him or bloody him and that makes you no
better, Declan McCrae. Justice will serve it up to him in due time. You just do your job and make sure we got everything we need to put his ass
away."

Declan scowled at her while Ryelle laughed softly in his ear. The sound eased him as nothing else could, sliding over raw nerve endings like a cool river.

"Somebody’s in trouble," she snickered. "Best listen to her before she kicks your behind, big boy. Besides," she added in a
lower, silkier tone, "if you tried to injure our suspect, I’d have to hold you back."

Declan knew what that would entail and sucked in a sharp breath, memories of her telenetic touch sending wildfire through his veins. Then he let the breath
out in a harsh sigh. "Damn women," he groused, giving his mother a sour look. "Always ruining a guy’s fun. Turn him loose,
Ryelle."

Ventura gasped, tumbling forward to his hands and knees. Declan grabbed him by his shirt front, dragging him to his feet and slamming him against the wall
with a surge of controlled anger. His mother made a disapproving sound behind him but didn’t try to interfere.

"Now," he growled into the man’s sweating, bony face, "give me a reason not to rip you to pieces."

"Sh-she’s alive," Ventura whimpered, eyes wild as he stared into Declan’s face and gripped his arms with frantic strength.
"H-how can she still b-be alive?"

Declan felt the tremors running through the man and realized the source of his terror. He thought he’d blown Ryelle up, yet she’d held him
immobile for capture. It must seem as though she was haunting him from the next life. "Know what the GenTec call her, you little nutty bastard? The
Death Dealer. Start talking or I’ll turn her loose on you."

Ventura began gibbering, tears leaking from the corners of his bloodshot eyes. Declan sighed, lifted a fist, and punched him in the face.

"Declan," his mother admonished when the man yelped with pain and clutched at his nose.

"You’re supposed to hit hysterical people. Shock ‘em out of their fear," Declan answered without a smidge of remorse.

"Slap them lightly, not break their nose."

"Huh. Learn something new everyday," he drawled, shoving Ventura straight when he tried to curl forward and sag to the floor.
"Where’d you get the explosives?"

"Made ‘em," Ventura panted, sounding muffled and liquid. "Didn’t think I’d have to use ‘em. But she showed up.
How can she be alive?" he finished in a horrified whisper, not meeting Declan’s gaze.

"Why, Ventura?"

"Just tryin’ to help the cause," he said then giggled thickly, wiping blood from his face with a shaking hand.

Declan gave him a sharp shake. "Talk sense, Ventura. Start at the beginning. Is somebody recording this?"

"Yes, sir," someone said from the group behind him.

Ventura shifted his eyes past Declan’s shoulder, his expression turning sullen. "I got an offer. Everything I ever wanted. Power, riches, a
better body. They were gonna turn me into a sarkin’ superman." His eyes narrowed on Declan, flicking over his long form with hard resentment.
"All I had to do was give ‘em the signal to come harass the supply line. They told me they were callin’ in a netter. That’s all
they wanted. If the netter gave ‘em more trouble than they figured when they showed up, I was supposed to do a distraction to keep the bitch busy, so
I made the boomers. Nobody said the netter’d be that Mirabella freak."

Ryelle snorted in his ear. "He says the sweetest things."

"I’d hold the insults if I were you. She can hear every word you say," Declan growled with as much menace as he could muster.

Ventura cowered, eyes darting into shadows and corners, while his skinny body quaked and billowed an acrid, humid scent. "Why isn’t she
dead?" he keened.

Declan hissed an impatient breath through his teeth. "How many bombs did you plant, Ventura? Give me their locations and I’ll keep her away
from you."

"P-promise?" the man whispered shakily, looking at the air around them as if he expected it to grow claws and teeth.

"Talk."

Ventura didn’t talk so much as babble, but his words were mostly coherent, so Declan didn’t quibble about it. He confessed to planting six
bombs in random locations, and admitted to having a seventh partially made bomb hidden away in storage. He’d had no real strategy to the location and
timing of the bombs, except to keep everyone busy and terrorized, in the hopes of giving the GenTec the time and opportunity to complete their mission. The
only bomb he’d planted with a specific purpose was the one outside Ryelle’s quarters, which he’d moved from a different location after
watching Declan speak to her on the com in medical.

Desperation and fear had driven him to make the attempt. No matter how often he tried, he couldn’t reach the GenTec, and the other explosions
didn’t seem to be having the effect he was looking for. Ryelle was too strong—he’d seen firsthand how she could control the amount of
damage he tried to cause with that first explosion. It had been a fluke. The security guard had seen him, started asking questions about why he
wasn’t in containment, and he’d blown it early, almost taking himself out in the attempt to silence the guard.

It had all gone so wrong. The GenTec hadn’t told him how they would subdue the telenetic that they lured to the station. He panicked when their
attack seemed to stall, when he was unable to reach them. They’d promised him a better life, a plethora of riches that he hadn’t been able to
resist, that made him burn with avarice and need. One telenetic seemed a small price to pay for a new start, a new life.

Right about that point in the man’s rationalizing confession, Declan decided he’d had enough and thrust him into the arms of security before
his rising fury made him do something vengeful. "You’re a bloody moron, Ventura," he rasped. "You weren’t helping them kidnap
a telenetic. You were helping them start another goddamned war. They were going to blast this entire station and everyone on it to bits. You really think
they were gonna give you everything you ever wanted?"

With a snarl of disgust and a sick ache in his middle, Declan stalked away. His mother shadowed him at his elbow, quiet while they strode quickly along the
corridor. After a moment, she murmured, "I
am
proud of you, son," and some of the sickness eased from his belly.

Declan found Ryelle in the converted storage unit with the three telenetic children. He was disconcerted to find her watching over them as they slept. He
understood being vigilant, watching them for any sign of danger, but her delicate features were much too tender for a jail warden when she gazed at them.

Stepping over to the side of the bed, he could almost see why she looked that way. Rose slept on her side, one arm wrapped over Jake, whose face was
snuggled into her throat. Daniel sat in a chair beside the bed, head craned at an awkward angle and arm stretched across the bed toward his companions as
he slept. His jaw was slack and a soft snore slipped from his open mouth. All three looked so vulnerable and…normal. He could almost believe they
were human children.

They had been provided with three beds. It spoke volumes that they needed to huddle together on one.

Declan’s brow came together in a frown.

"Poor things," Ryelle murmured from her perch at the end of the bed. "So exhausted, they were falling asleep sitting up. I had to carry
them down here."

"Ryelle." Declan ran his knuckles along the curve of her cheek, loving the feel of her soft skin. When she looked up at him, he caught her chin
in a gentle hold. "Don’t forget they’re dangerous."

The faint, warm smile on her lips faded and her eyes cooled enough to cause him pain. "No more than I can forget I’m dangerous," she
responded, pulling her chin from his hold. Her tone was even, but her body language radiated warning. "I’m not blind, Declan. I see what they
are and I know we know very little about them. But they are untrained telenetics and therefore my responsibility as Advocate for Telenetic Rights. And
their responses speak to me on a much more basic level. They are frightened and alone and cut off from what they consider safety. Children shouldn’t
fear, Declan. Even children created for destruction."

He stared at her for a long moment, absorbing her words and battling with himself. Part of him agreed with her and was gratified by her defense of these
children, warmed by her compassion. But another part of him whispered
GenTec are the enemy,
and he couldn’t keep the suspicions from running
amok in his mind. Was it some kind of ruse? Were they just playing on her sympathies to get her to let down her guard? Most children their age
weren’t so cunning, but these weren’t normal kids—they’d been created in some creepy GenTec lab, designed for war and programmed to
hate the enemy. Programmed to defend themselves.

"Responsibility?" he said cautiously, still struggling to reconcile the combination of sympathy and suspicion.

"They are telenetic," she said with a finality that sent a shaft of alarm through him. "No matter their origin. It’s my
responsibility to see that they receive the same care and treatment as the rest of us."

"Oh, shit," he muttered, as sudden understanding burst over him in a scalding wave. "You’re going to take them to the
Institute."

Her eyes narrowed, brows pulling together to form an ominous crease in her forehead. "What else did you expect? Did you think I would turn them over
to Fleet? No one can hold them but me. Or maybe you thought we’d just kill them off like vermin—"

"Of course I didn’t—" he protested with a guilty inner wince. He
had
thought that, before he’d met them.

"Well, we can’t exactly put them back where we found them, can we?" she snapped, though she kept her voice low. Rising, she moved past
him toward the kitchenette.

He followed her, folding his arms over his chest while he watched her pace restlessly. "They were raised to think of us as the enemy," Declan
said. "No matter how innocent they look, you can’t trust them to be anything but GenTec."

"That’s the kind of thinking that got us in this mess in the first place," she said without looking at him or slowing her pace.
"Even if I could allow them to be put down like rabid dogs—"

"I never said—"

"—the GenTec would only make more. I could demolish them again. But they’d keep coming back. Do you want to resort to genocide? Because
that’s what it would take to stop them. I’ve done enough murder, Declan."

"Honey—" he started, her words nailing him through the chest like a pike.

But she was still moving, dark eyes intent and sober as she headed for the com unit. "Let’s contact the GenTec. We need to have a little chat
before Fleet gets here."

Her
little chat
made his stomach muscles tighten with dread, but something else occurred to him. "How do you expect to do that? Didn’t
you destroy all their communications?"

"I’m holding one sort of…open." As she spoke, her fingers moved over the controls and he felt a surge in the tingling of her power.

"What does sort of open mean?" he asked suspiciously, but she didn’t respond.

A moment later, a very alien visage appeared on the viewer and Declan couldn’t control a small flinch. The creature looked like something out of a
horror vid or a nightmare. Scaled and nobbly, with some sort of ooze glistening on its surface, it stared at them with eyes so deeply embedded in its flesh
that they were mere slits. There was no apparent nose and Declan couldn’t tell where the mouth was until part of its lower face split to speak. He
also couldn’t tell if it was male or female.

"Prime, thank you for answering so promptly," Ryelle began, not looking the least bit horrified. Maybe she’d seen it before.

"Release us," it said in a deep, cavernous voice.

"I can’t do that just yet. Not until we come to an agreement."

It was still for a moment. Declan guessed it was surprised by her comment. He sure as hell was.
Agreement?

"Agreement?" the thing rumbled.

"I want to discuss a truce."

It made a sound like a rock-fall. "A truce can only be reached with your surrender."

"You’re not in any position to be demanding surrender," Ryelle told the creature gently. "I have a proposal I’d like you to
consider. You know that I can’t return the children. I can’t allow you to use them against my people and they deserve more respect than to be
treated like weapons. I propose that you think of them as your ambassadors into our space. I plan to take them to our training facility and give them every
advantage a telenetic has the right to, including telenetic training. That
is
what you were after, isn’t it?"

"You are foolish to believe they will become your puppets. They are GenTec and you cannot remake them."