"Yes."
That he hadn't lied almost made her feel better. "What will you do with me?"
"For now? Keep you close."
"Don't." It came out without thought. "There's something wrong with me." That wrongness was an alien silhouette in the back of her skull, a wave of whispers she couldn't quite hear.
"I know." He didn't sound too worried, but then, she thought, he was a man who'd likely never known fear. She knew it too well, until the acid of it stained her very cells. But she still had her mind, fractured though it might be.
"You want something from me." Why else would he keep her alive, keep her close?
"Do you remember the research you were doing with Ashaya?"
Pale blue-gray eyes, dark hair in wildfire curls, coffee-colored skin. Ashaya. "She was here?" Her skin stretched as lines formed on her brow. "She was here."
"Yes." Long, easy strokes through hair that no longer needed to be smoothed out. "She wants you to go stay with her."
Katya was shaking her head before he finished speaking. "No." Fear closed around her throat, brutal hands that choked her until she couldn't breathe. Pinpricks of light in front of her eyes, agony in her chest.
The tugs on her scalp ceased and a split second later, Dev was crouching in front of her, his hands over hers. "Breathe." A ruthless order, given in the voice of a man who would not countenance disobedience.
Staring into those not-brown eyes, she tried to find some sense of balance, of self. "Breathe," she repeated in a thin whisper that was barely sound. "Breathe." Air whistled into her lungs, heady with the exotic taste of a man who'd never see her as anything but an enemy.
At that moment, she didn't care.
All she wanted was to drown in the scent of him, until the fear inside her was nothing but a vague memory, a forgotten dream. She drew in another deep breath, luxuriating in the wild sweep of her senses, in the unforgiving male beauty of Devraj Santos. He smelled of power and an unexpected stroke of wildness, rich cinnamon and Orient winds - things she somehow knew, words her mind supplied. Almost without deciding to do it, she raised her hand to the thick silk of his hair. It was soft, softer than should've been possible on this man. "Will you promise me something?"
For the first time in years, Dev found himself facing an opponent so opaque, he couldn't get a handle on her. He'd come down here in order to make up his mind about whether or not she was nothing more than a truly clever actress. Instead, he'd found his Achilles' heel given human form - a woman who appeared utterly without barriers, without protections.
Then she'd touched him, and he hadn't pushed her away . . . though he was a man who'd never been easy with touch, with the casual intimacies so many took for granted. Dev preferred to keep his distance. Except her hand was still in his hair, her skin soft under his rougher grip.
Even now, he had to fight the primitive need to protect, to shelter, to save. What some called his stone-cold heart apparently had some warmth left in it. But that warmth wasn't enough to blind him to the cynical truth - she might be the best move the Psy Council had ever made, a weapon tailor-made to provoke instincts so basic, Dev had little to no control over them. "What do you want me to promise?" he asked, hardening himself against a plea for mercy.
Instead, she stroked her hand through his hair, as if fascinated by the texture, and said, "Will you kill me?"
He froze.
"If I prove too broken," she continued, "too used up to fix, will you kill me?"
There was, he thought, nothing lost about her at that instant. Her intent burned off her, a bright, decisive fire. "Katya - "
"He did something inside me," she whispered with a restrained violence that was all the more powerful for being contained. "He changed me. I don't want to live if that's who I am. His . . . creation."
The horror in her face, in the inescapable ugliness of what she was saying, curled around the iron shields that caged his soul, threatening to erode everything he thought he knew about himself. "If," he said, unable to look away from those eyes streaked with gold and green, "you were going to give up, you'd have done it by now."
Her hand fell from his hair, but she held his gaze, unflinching in her naked honesty. "How do you know I didn't?"
EARTHTWO COMMAND LOG: SUNSHINE STATION
21 February 2080: The new staff rotation arrived at 0900. All personnel are in good physical and mental condition. Work will begin in one day's time, after the team members have had time to acclimate to the conditions.
Councilor Ming LeBon has requested a report on the continued viability of this site, to be delivered at the end of this rotation. According to current calculations, the site should yield valuable compounds for the foreseeable future, but all data will be confirmed prior to the completion of the report.
Chapter 6
An hour after Katya asked him for a promise of death, Dev pushed a plate across the break-room table. "Eat."
Not touching the food, she pinned him with eyes more gold than green at that moment, streaks of brown bursting from the pupils. "Will you keep your promise?"