Page 11 of Jarran

But she was starting to know Jarran, too. The version that existed now, with his broken sentences and his gentle demeanor. And those two people didn’t fit inside the same skin.

She needed more information. Not from the file. Not from the Baylan research notes. She needed to know who Jarran Bando had been before he became Pella Rin. Whether the gentleness she was seeing was new, grown from the wreckage of his mind, or whether it had been there all along, buried under the things he’d done.

There was one person in the galaxy who might be able to tell her that. And he was going to hate hearing from her.

She spent an hour composing a carefully worded request, routing it through official channels to Virila. Specifically, to Tagja City’s Queen Jessa, who was human. She’d been chosen for the match program, with had paired Virilian males with compatible human women to help the Virilian species survive after illness decimated their female population. The matches were meant to produce children and nothing more, but many of the human-Virilian parings turned out to be love matches, as well. Jessa had been paired with King Virak and the match had been more than successful. According to the entertainment vids, they had several children and ran some kind of animal sanctuary in Tagja City. Of course, Evie didn’t watch the tabloid vids. Or at least, she didn’t admit to watching them.

But in this case, her gossip fascination had taught her that Jessa would be the easiest point of contact and the most efficient person to deliver a message to a certain Virilian pilot based in Tagja City named Taron Bando. He was Jarran’s brother.

He probably wouldn’t talk to her, but she had to try. Evie identified herself, her credentials, her assignment. She asked whether the Bando family had any history of neurological conditions. She asked whether there were childhood memories, specific experiences that might help her run associative exercises for a patient with severe memory loss. She did not use the name Pella Rin. She referred to him only as Jarran Bando, Patient Nine, currently under Baylan medical custody.

She sent the message and didn’t expect a fast response. Tagja City was several systems away, and Coalition channels weren’t exactly built for speed.

The response came eighteen hours later. Not from Queen Jessa. From Taron Bando himself, in a recorded message.

Evie opened it at her desk with a cup of the terrible Baylan coffee going cold beside her.

Taron Bando looked nothing like Jarran. He was slightly shorter, leaner, sharper-featured, and had a harder edge to his expression. But the green of his eyes was the same, just a few shades lighter, and there was something in the set of his jaw that she recognized. He was sitting in a private room, stone walls behind him, his posture rigid.

“Dr. Carr.” His voice was flat. “I received your inquiry through Queen Jessa. She thought I should respond, so I am responding. Once.” He paused. The muscles in his jaw worked.

“My brother died sometime during his abduction by raiders when he was in his teens. Whatever is on that ship is not Jarran. Jarran was long gone before the terti incident that caused his current state. The male you’re treating is what’s left of Pella Rin, and Pella Rin is everything they say he is. I know this, because for a time, I joined him in that…life, if you could call it that. During that time, I saw no trace of the brother I knew. So, to answer your question: No, there are no neurological conditions in my family that I know of. I cannot talk about childhood memories and I am not interested in helping you put him back together so he can stand trial or be studied or anything else people want with him.”

Another pause. Longer. His gaze dropped to his hands, which were clasped tight in front of him. “Don’t contact me again about this.”

The recording ended.

Evie watched it a second time. She could see how painful it was for Taron to talk about his brother. The anger was loud and obvious. But underneath it, there was pain. Old, deep, calcified pain. Taron Bando had lost his brother twice. Once to the raiders who abducted him and once to the terti incident. The anger and resentment were real, but they were born out of grief, and there was no grief unless there was love underneath it all. So.

She closed the recording and sat back in her chair. The coffee was cold. She drank it anyway.

She would not contact Taron again. He’d been clear, and she’d respect that. But she filed away what she’d seen in his face, because it told her something the file couldn’t.

Jarran Bando had been loved. Before the Sifters got their hooks into him, there had been a brother who idolized him enough to follow him into a criminal organization, and who hated him enough now to call him dead. That kind of hatred came from having watched someone you love do things you couldn’t forgive.

She wouldn’t tell Jarran about the message. There was nothing to be gained from telling a male with no memories that the brother he might eventually remember didn’t want to be remembered. But she thought about the image of the laughing boy on the screen that had made Jarran press his fist to his chest and say, “I know him here.” She’d pulled it from a generic database. A random Virilian child. It had no confirmed connection to Jarran’s past. Except the emotional response hadn’t been random. Somewhere behind the walls in Jarran’s mind, Jarran knew he had a brother.

Evie picked up the blanket from her desk. It still carried the faint, clean scent of him.

She was in trouble. She knew that now. Clinical distance was a wall she’d been standing behind for sixteen cycles, and Jarran Bando had put a crack in it. She couldn’t unknow the things she was learning about him. She couldn’t unfeel what she’d felt when he touched her wrist. And she couldn’t reconcile the male who loved plants with the monster in the file, no matter how many times she read it.

She was Jarran Bando’s doctor. That was her job. That was the boundary.

But the boundary was cracking, and she wasn’t sure how to keep it from crumbling.

SIX

The blade came out of nowhere.

Jarran was crouched between rows, loosening soil around the base of a grain stalk, when the image slammed into his head. A curved black blade, spinning end over end through dim light. Fast. His right hand shot out and snatched the air. His fingers closed around nothing, but the grip was exact. Thumb against the hilt guard, index finger bracing the pommel, wrist angled to absorb the rotation. He’d caught it with a precision that came from somewhere deep in his muscles.

He stared at his closed fist. His heart pounded. He could feel the weight of the weapon, the balance of it, the cold metal warming against his palm. Then the feeling faded, and he was holding air, kneeling in dirt, breathing too fast.

The implant hummed at the base of his skull. A low, steady vibration. His pulse slowed. The tight, sharp feeling behind his eyes softened. He unclenched his fist and pressed his palm flat against the soil.

This was the third fragment today. They were coming more often.

The first had hit during his morning meal. An orange-yellow sky streaked with purple clouds. Heat pressing down on his skin. Sand under his feet. Vastness in every direction, and underneath it, a sense of loss that was so heavy it squeezed his chest and made his lungs struggle to breathe. He’d stopped chewing and stared at the wall of his quarters until the image passed.