Return. Морган Райс

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      Jacket image Copyright By Sergey Nivens, used under license from Shutterstock.com.

      CHAPTER ONE

      For the longest time in the darkness that surrounded him, Kevin was convinced that he had died. It felt right somehow. Everyone had told him that he didn’t have long to live anyway, and then there had been the spacecraft drifting in the emptiness, the air running out little by little. After all that, shouldn’t this be the end of things?

      “Kevin,” Chloe’s voice called from somewhere in the space beyond that blackness. “Open your eyes.”

      “G’way. I’m dead,” Kevin mumbled, because a part of him just wanted to go back to sleep. It wanted to drift off and relax, letting the blackness overwhelm everything. He was so comfortable that… He winced as something pinched his arm. “Ow!”

      His eyes shot open to reveal a room that definitely wasn’t the ship they’d been floating helplessly in. This wasn’t a stolen Hive craft, where they were slowly dying after being winged by an Ilari craft and the wreckage of their world. This space was larger than that had been, and it looked almost like…

      “This is a hospital,” Kevin guessed. He knew what hospitals looked like by now. He’d spent so much time in hospitals, and labs, and other places that it was impossible not to recognize it for what it was, even though it only looked like a hospital in an alien way, with none of the devices looking like the ones he was used to.

      “You’re awake then,” Chloe said, from the spot where she stood beside Kevin’s bed. She looked faintly satisfied with her efforts to wake him up, smiling to herself in a way that suggested that she would be more than happy to do it again.

      “That hurt,” Kevin complained, and then a thought came to him. “Are you hurt? Are you okay?”

      “I’m fine,” Chloe assured him, sounding serious now. “They patched up the worst bruises when they brought us here.”

      Kevin looked her over anyway, wanting to be sure, and worried that she might be trying to hide how hurt she really was. Someone had given her a kind of silvery uniform to wear in place of her usual clothes, which looked a little like the silvery scales of a fish, reflecting the light in different ways as she moved. As Kevin looked down he saw that he was wearing the same thing.

      “How about you?” Chloe asked with obvious concern. “Are you hurt?”

      “No,” Kevin said. “I don’t think so.”

      He definitely didn’t feel any worse than he usually did, or at least, than he usually had before the Hive had chosen to make him one of them. He had pain running through his body, and dizziness threatening to rise up inside him when he moved too fast, but Kevin knew those feelings. They were so familiar that they were almost like old friends by this point. He couldn’t feel any of the sharper pains of anything broken over the top of it.

      Chloe came forward and hugged him tight. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

      Kevin held onto her, even though he didn’t feel like he deserved it right then. It was his fault that it had come to this. If it hadn’t been for him, Chloe wouldn’t have been stuck in a cell, undergoing experiments. She wouldn’t have the strange, alive-looking thing bonded to her arm, tight as a second skin, its bony, insect-like surface seeming completely out of place against the smoothness of her skin.

      It felt so good that she was safe that for a moment or two, Kevin didn’t even think about who was missing.

      “Where’s Ro?” he asked, looking around for the former member of the Hive. “Is he—”

      “Good, you’re awake,” a new voice said. Kevin turned to where a door had opened to reveal a blue-skinned Ilari woman in a dark uniform with military insignia. Kevin recognized General s’Lara from the com-cast he’d made trying to trick her and the rest of her kind. Just the thought of it made him sure that this must all be some horrible dream.

      “General, you saved us?” Kevin said. “But I… I tried to trick you.” That wasn’t the worst part of it though. “I… I played a part in blowing up your world.”

      Guilt flashed through him at the thought of all he had done, while he saw the general’s expression flicker to one of anger.

      “You also helped to warn us,” she said. “That gets you some consideration from us, and… well, we don’t want to abandon people in need. We are not like the Hive.”

      “That’s…” Kevin didn’t have the words. “Thank you.”

      “Don’t thank me yet,” General s’Lara said. She glanced up, and she seemed to listen to something only she could hear. “My AI tells me that the others are ready to decide what to do with you. You and that so-called ‘Purest’ you brought with you. Follow me, please.”

      “Kevin’s still weak,” Chloe argued. “He needs rest.”

      “He can rest all he wants once the trial is done. Now come with me.” The general was clearly used to having her orders obeyed, already walking without waiting to see if they would do it.

      Kevin looked over at Chloe, who shrugged. They knew that neither one of them truly had a choice. Hurrying to keep up, they followed the general out of the hospital room, into a set of twisting corridors whose walls had shimmering images that gave them the illusion of broad, open spaces. Here and there, Kevin and Chloe passed windows that held a view out into open space.

      “We’re on a ship, aren’t we?” Kevin guessed. It didn’t feel the same as the Hive’s ships. This one didn’t have the perfect stability of gravity drives, but it was still definitely a ship of some kind.

      “This is the flagship of the escape fleet,” General s’Lara said. “My AI is integrated with it.”

      “So every inch of this place is… you?” Chloe asked.

      “I guess you could say that,” the general replied. “My AI will connect to the others for your trial.”

      “Like the Hive?” Kevin asked, and instantly knew from the general’s expression that it was the wrong thing to say.

      “We are nothing like the Hive,” General s’Lara said, in a sharp tone. “They force themselves upon the worlds they destroy, upon the people they make a part of them, upon each other. The misery, the choices, of others mean nothing to them. We join with our AIs, but we still choose what we will do, and we seek no conquest. We sat behind shields because we did not wish to slaughter others, even though it cost us worlds.”

      Kevin could feel another wave of guilt rising up in him at that. He’d been the one to help bring down those shields and make their planet vulnerable to what came next. He’d been the one to help the Hive destroy their world, and take his. To his surprise, though, Chloe was more direct.

      “You could have fought them and you didn’t?” she said. “You hid away from them when you could have stopped them?”

      “Chloe—” Kevin began, but it seemed that Chloe wasn’t done.

      “No, Kevin,” she said. “If she’s saying that they could have done more, that they could have beaten them before they got to Earth, then they could have spared all of us this. They could have saved us.”

      “We couldn’t even save ourselves,” General s’Lara said, looking mournful now. “We don’t have the tools to stop the Hive. We can kill them, we have the technology to beat their ships, and they just keep coming.”