Page 34 of Jarran

Jarran opened his eyes. “He was making me into Pella Rin. His legacy. His…” He waved a hand, searching for the right word. “Continuation. He taught me everything he knew about the Sifters, about bioengineering, about tactics and power and control; he put it all into me. Piece by piece. He dismantled who I was and built his protégé on top of it.”

“The same technology you used later,” Evie said. “On the females.”

The connection hit him and his stomach lurched. “Yes. The same principles. I learned it from him. Or Pella Rin did. The boundaries were already blurring by then.”

“How long were you in the cave?”

“Two tericycles.” He felt her hand tighten on his. “I fought it, Evie. You have to understand that. I fought it for as long as I could.”

“I know you did.”

“There was a point…” His voice cracked. He pressed his free hand against his eyes. The tears were coming again and he let them. “There was a point where I could feel myself disappearing. I knew I was losing. After every procedure, the pieces of me became smaller and the thing he was building grew bigger, and I tried to hold on.”

She didn’t speak. She held his hand and waited.

“My last thought.” His throat closed around the words. He forced them out. “My last thought as myself was about Taron. I was thinking about my brother’s face. His laugh. The way he used to follow me around the settlement and copy everything I did.” His hands clenched into fists. “I was holding on to that, and then I couldn’t hold on anymore, and something else looked out through my eyes. And that was the last of me for a very long time.”

Evie’s breath caught. A small, tight sound.

“When I came out of the cave, I looked like Jarran, but I was Pella Rin.” He wiped his face with the back of his hand. “Xill Rin died shortly after. The tube and the cybernetics couldn’t keep him alive forever. But it didn’t matter. He’d already transferred everything that he was into me. His knowledge, his ambition, his cruelty. You were right; I was his immortality. He even named me after him.”

“And the Sifters?”

“Pella Rin joined them at maturity and ended up leading them. That was the programming. And a few years later, I—or rather, Pella Rin—returned to Virilia to recruit Taron, and Taron followed me. My family must have been devastated. To lose both sons…” He stopped. Drew a breath. “Taron didn’t understand that Jarran was gone. He followed a ghost into the Sifters and it nearly destroyed him.”

“But Taron did leave,” she said gently. “And he has a wonderful life, full of love. He’s no longer an exile.”

“Good.” He looked up with a soft smile. “He deserves happiness. Taron had the courage to leave when I couldn’t.” Jarran stared at the far wall. “He was the better one. Always.”

Evie’s thumb moved against his knuckles, a slow, steady stroke. “He also wasn’t subjected to neurological procedures that altered his brain. If you hadn’t been put through what you were, you’d never have joined.”

This was true, but it was little consolation. “I remember creating the females.” His voice went flat. “I remember the science because Xill Rin’s knowledge was in my head. It was efficient and it worked. I remember not caring about their faces, or their names, or their wishes. All I cared about was how well they could perform.”

He stopped. Breathed.

“And I remember shooting that Virilian male right before I was hit with that dose of terti powder. He was standing in front of me and I shot him in the chest. I watched him fall and I felt nothing.” He shook his head. “Pella Rin felt nothing. But I do.”

Evie was quiet beside him. “Perhaps one day you can tell him so. His name is Niir, and he’s also alive and well.”

He closed his eyes briefly. “Thank the stars for that. And for the terti powder explosion,” he said. “That’s what ended it.”

“The blast was like a reset to your brain. The programming, the conditioning, was wiped clean.” She tilted her head and peered at him. “Not destroyed, unfortunately. But we can work on that, when we get out of here.”

He nodded. Anything to rid himself of the traces of Pella Rin. “When I woke up on Korath-7, I was Patient 9. And Patient 9 is better than Pella Rin.”

She met his gaze. Her eyes were red-rimmed but dry. “Now that you know, what do you feel?”

He considered the question. Every memory carried its own weight of horror and grief and guilt. The boy in the cave. The warlord in the command room. The farmer in the planting rows. Three lives lived in one body, and he could feel all of them, pressing against his ribs and his lungs and his heart, filling every hollow space that had been empty for so long.

“I feel everything,” he said.

She watched his face. “Does remembering make you want to be Pella Rin again?”

“No.” The word came out hard and certain. “It makes me want to remain Jarran.”

She put her arms around him. He put his around her. She was small and warm and solid and she smelled like clean skin and the sheets they’d slept in together. He pressed his face into her hair and held her and breathed.

They stayed like that for a while. Long enough that the lights in the suite brightened fully, simulating morning. Soon, his breathing steadied and the memories dulled just enough to bear.