Page 35 of Spark Transform

Right on time, Samara sent him a telepathic nudge to tell him she was in the lift capsule on the way to his door.

A flutter of nerves hit as he climbed to his feet and pushed his cloak farther back on the table to make room. He hadn’t designed his new look to please her, but his heart hoped it would.

He rolled his eyes at himself as he walked to the suite’s front door. Unrequited angst was for the young and hormonal.

When he sensed her approach, he opened the suite’s doors. She stepped inside, her body language hunched. He closed and sealed the doors behind her.

She pulled off the distortion hood and stuffed it into the upper pocket of her straight, shapeless coat.

Her eyes rounded as she looked him up and down.

He turned a slow four-point pivot, then faced her again, arms wide. “Well?”

Amusement lit up her face. “You know very well you’re beautiful.”

He gave her a saucy smile and cocked a come-hither hip in her direction. “Yes, I most certainly am. Come see the kitchen.”

From his bag on the counter, he pulled out the controller for the waiting cleaning bots and activated them. They took a moment to connect, then went off in search of small debris and damage to repair.

“I already cleared the suite with tech-detector cameras, but the tech suppressors in the bots will keep it that way.” He leaned against the counter. “How long do you have?”

“Twenty minutes, maybe.” She smiled primly as she shed her coat and laid it next to his cloak on the table. “It seems I went to the wrong building. I only realized once I parked the flitter and took the lifts that I must have selected the wrong coordinates. I shall be embarrassed all afternoon.”

No time for playful banter, then. “You’re looking well. Are you?” Her dark-hued conservative suit and multi-braided crown of iron-gray hair were part of her camouflage. The old-fashioned cosmetic style made her look stuck in time.

“I am, thank you.” She tested the table, then perched on the edge. “I have news.”

He waved a hand in invitation. “Spill.”

“Subject Three signed on with an exploration expedition that leaves in two days. As long as she doesn’t break the test meter you sent her, it’ll still send us copies of her results whenever it can. But the telepathic compulsion to not talk about her health will probably wear off long before the return date. If the CPS notices...” Her jaw tightened as she shook her head.

“Yes.” They both knew the consequences.

The rare ex-Jumpers who didn’t have waster’s disease either became the CPS’s performing ponies for the media or vanished in the black-box division, never to be heard from again.

Samara’s shoulders slumped a fraction. “I used to tell myself I’d never become another Neirra Varemba, helping people so I could use them as weapons for the good of the cause.” She sighed. “I promised myself a lot of things.”

The forlorn quality of her tone made him want to comfort her, but he didn’t know how. For all that they’d been friends for thirty years, she was still an enigma to him.

Shielders like her often had a problem with sharing themselves and trusting others. Considering the true, galaxy-class level of her shield talent, maybe even better than Ayorinn, the legendary top-level polymath, he suspected she had to fight her instincts to armor up against everyone. Couple that with her hidden healing talent that made her want to help people, and it was a wonder the constant cognitive dissonance didn’t permanently warp her beyond recovery.

Tuzan crossed his arms. “You’ve proved the cure is repeatable by healers not named Neirra, and the other subjects are showing similar improvements to Subject Zero.”

That was their designation for Soleil Benoit, Neirra’s first patient and the proof of concept for the cure. She’d saddled Soleil with a sealed information packet in her mind and given Tuzan the key.

The implications were incendiary.

If Neirra had figured out the cure on her own, while drugged and under the brutal control of a twisted CPS handler, why hadn’t the CPS found it? They’d had seventy years, millions of healers, and countless legions of researchers at their disposal.

And if they had found it but suppressed it? No excuse would save the agency if news got out. He knew Neirra well enough to know she’d consider that to be her biggest contribution to nurturing the Legacy.

Tuzan had shared Neirra’s mental packet with Samara as soon as he could. They’d agreed it had to be tried on other patients besides Soleil.

They started with an ex-Jumper with stage four waster’s disease who worked for one of his companies. After the three-hour healing session, Tuzan erased the man’s memories. He also gave him a strong compulsion to be secretive about his health and to stay away from the CPS clinics. Seeing the man’s official CPS test meter, he’d been inspired to give it the ability to secretly send all correct test results to him, and to send false data to the CPS. Subject One’s real numbers were steadily declining, as they had for Soleil.

Samara got herself assigned to a longitudinal study that gave her an excuse to read the out-processing records of all ex-Jumpers on the planet and conduct direct interviews to correct missing or questionable information.

Thereafter, they targeted random ex-Jumpers from anywhere and found ways to get them to Ridderth for a healing session, which Samara could now do in under two hours. All the subjects received enhanced test meters as if they’d come from the CPS. Which they had, because he’d stolen them himself.