The Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance

One

Professor Brodin dialed back the ship’s filters so that there was no mental block between himself and the whole of his surroundings. He soared inside a vaulted ship of cool steel and Gothic arches called the Dark Nest. The craft was the only friend and hope of survival left to his people. He had to sift out the tumult of emotions of the ship’s grieving crew, and instead attempt to pierce the whole of space and time with one psychic lance. He dared to break into the mind of the woman who meant more to him than he’d ever been allowed to say.

He put his fingers to the pressurized glass and stared out at the stars.

Only in reaching out his hand did he notice how hard he shook; not because he was an elder – age was relative for a man of his power—

The pristine white tunics of the first-grades were spattered with garish scarlet blood as shrapnel tore through little bones and vulnerable tissue.

He shook for all the years he’d spent wondering if he could ever freely love her—

She was running. Hard.

He shook because a rare graft over his heart allowed him to feel her pulse in concert with his—

Choking out the stench as the training school burned; buildings, turf, human hair . . .

He shook to be truly with her in these terrible moments—

Hiding the surviving children – all that were left from her class – in a cave in the mountainside . . .

Success. He’d gotten through. He could sense her, see flashes of her mindscape. Her experiences hit him like swift blows to the head—

Captured by gunmen . . .

But what good did seeing do when he was light years away, forced to watch and wait, helpless to get her off the Homeworld that wanted her dead—

An assailant struck a blow to her side, a rib cracked in searing pain—

Brodin slammed his fist against the glass, and the cavernous vault of the Dark Nest cathedral of a ship echoed his furious cry. He didn’t know when these flashes timed with her reality, or when he could know she was safe.

She could not feel him as he did her. Her mental fields were too tightly sealed as she did her best to mitigate the crashing waves of psychic screams transmitted as her students were murdered. But because she was unable to wholly block them, Brodin in turn was accosted by the dying emotions of children he considered his own, though they were not. Gunned down or bombed, the children faced the shock of death with the question: Why, what did we do? on their terrified lips.

Brodin rallied as his mind’s eye watched—

A swift, psychic blow brings the gunmen to their knees. She sends what students she can onto a ship, but she couldn’t get to all the survivors, so she stays behind . . .

As she watches them go, Brodin catches her stern, terse prayer, though she’d have no idea he was listening or alive: Brodin, you and that Nest better be up there, and you better be ready . . .

“I’m ready,” Brodin cried aloud. Hearing his words bounce back to him in the cool steel vault of the ship that had seen many miracles, he knew he meant it. In every way. He had to break through and tell her that he was waiting for her, in the Dark Nest, with a new planet at the ready. He had to contact her lest she sacrifice herself when there was so much to live for.

Every action heroic and selfless; that was the essence of Professor Saire.

The only woman he had ever loved.

The woman he’d not been allowed to love.

Whether she was confident in his sentiment, or what he’d done to ensure she’d stay alive, was another matter entirely. A matter that might yet cost him his own life. If she died, she would take him with her.

This was no metaphor or exaggeration, it was simple fact.

Two

It had happened at last. The genocide they had prayed would never come. Their intel was wrong. Saire had been given a tip that there would be an attack the next month. But then her source was shot. There were contingency plans, of course, but as elders of the Psychically Augmented population of newly evolved humans, she and Brodin knew there would be inevitable casualties. The issue was how many.

I will count and mourn the dead later, Saire promised herself, hoping against hope that the attacks didn’t extend to their brethren in space. She couldn’t count on hope – she could only try to survive.

Racing back to where a few of the children had hidden themselves, she did her best to stay out of sight, but there was a hundred-yard dash she had to make out in the open. Though she might be an elder, her young physique was a contrast to the glimmering silver of her long hair and the crease of worries around her eyes. The newly evolved humans were proud that they aged beautifully, like the finest wine. So, her sprint was impressive. Especially nursing a broken rib. But it was not enough to outrun a drone.

“They won’t even kill us themselves, but send robotics to do it for them? Devils and cowards,” she spat through clenched teeth as the ground exploded behind her. She expanded her psychic shields.

Concentric, iridescent circles of color unseen by the untrained eye bubbled up around her in a protective field that didn’t keep all the shrapnel out, but blocked life-threatening bits. It was a power she was still perfecting.

Thrown against the steel door, a new shock wave of agony overtook her body. She could hear whimpers from the other side of the door. She was sure if she placed her hand somewhere on her torso it would come away bloodied from scratches and gouges. It was hard to pinpoint one injury amidst the general sea of pain. The next thing she knew the door was open. She tumbled inside, many small hands upon her.

Little blonde Franca, eight years old, was first in her face. “Lady Saire,” she cried, cradling her head.

A similarly small, dark-skinned boy rushed to shut the door as another drone caused an explosion outside.

The room shook and the metal of the door bent in its grooves.

All four children hovered over their teacher, whom they’d taken to calling “Lady Saire”. Franca had gotten it in her head that Saire had to have earned a title at some point in her life. They’d been studying ancient royal history. Saire hadn’t the heart to tell them that the Homeworld would bestow no such honors on people like them.

Dizzy, she sat up and tried to clear the fog of pain. If the door to the unventilated storage space was as jammed as it looked – all Homeworld doors had sealed shut due to the searing temperatures of the planet – it meant they only had a few hours of air. She had to calm the children down.

“Ducklings,” she said fondly. “I’m all right—”

Questions came in a torrent, about the school, about those aboard the Nests, and simply why.

“We are powerful beings,” she responded, as to why they had been attacked. “More powerful than you even know. Watch.”

She spread out her psychic fields, layers expanding and shimmering in the dim light cast by battery-

powered lanterns. They breathed a sigh of wonder. She shifted an inner field outward with a subtle wave of her hand. It was all mental, but the physical gesture helped demonstrate the effect, and the children felt a cool breeze blow calmly through their agitated minds and lower their pulse rate.

“We use more of our brain than other humans. Our mental abilities as newly evolved means we are feared. Each of you came from a home that didn’t know what to do with you. Abandoned, cast off, we are not welcome there any more.”

“What are we going to do, then?” the smallest boy, Tynne, asked. “Where are we going to go?”

“We’re going to find a new home,” Saire replied.

“We’re going to the Nests?” Simm asked hopefully, his dark skin glistening with nervous sweat.

“I hope so.”

If there are even Nests to land in.

It was their only option, and Saire’s sole goal; to get the children off the Homeworld and onto the Dark Nest. Beyond that, the hope was to find a new home for their kind. This had been the contingency plan. But the best-laid plans . . .

What sort of new home would welcome her? She had done her best to try to keep peace between Homeworld powers and the Psychically Augmented population, or PA for short. And still it had come to this. She’d sacrificed everything. For what? And what would take the shape of home if she lived to see it?

“Children, I’m going to give you something that will help you sleep.”

There were protests – how could they possibly sleep? – but despite the outcry, Saire opened the medical pack slung over her shoulder and produced small disks from a metal container. “I need you sharp.

So now I need you to rest. We can do nothing until the offensive cools. Then we make a plan.” She sounded more hopeful than she was, but the children gave her their arms. She stuck the adhesive bandages filled with sedatives onto the crooks of their arms.

The reality was that they were in a small cave with no rear exit. So unless someone friendly broke down that door, they weren’t going anywhere.

Once the four were sedated and piled together like corpses, breathing so shallowly Saire had to strain to be sure they still were doing it, it occurred to her that the children would have longer to live, a better fighting chance, if she were one less large body competing with them for oxygen.

Hadn’t part of her known, in those recesses that were a part of her burgeoning powers, that it might come to this? That she’d sacrifice herself in the event of a full attack? Long ago, before they’d abandoned what they’d once meant to one another, Brodin had teased her for having a martyr’s prerogative. But beneath his teasing they both knew she’d readily die for her people. After all, he’d met her when she had been standing on a ledge . . .

Three

Brodin glanced around the Dark Nest. It was a ridiculous flight of fancy in air, a Gothic cathedral floating through space, a beautiful feat of engineering and imagination. Its denizens were all PA, two ships having consolidated into one after a Homeworld-contrived attack. Brodin felt his people grieving collectively, a shuddering mass. They kept focus by trying to shield their remaining ship, rescue PA children, and perhaps wield a little psychic revenge.

The majority of the PA population had been sent into space to seek a new planet for the Homeworld to colonize, as their own dried to a crisp due to unmitigated environmental destruction. The Nests had found a few suitable planets along the way and had ferried the research home, secretly withholding information about one likely planet. Soon after, the Homeworld found the PA population expendable, and elimination began. The Homeworld leaders decided there was no room in the new future for cohabitation with another strain of human. The PA were seen as a threat.

Brodin always knew they were feared. He and Saire had dedicated their adult lives to trying to make peace, and mitigate the persecution of their people. At the cost of their own happiness.

As two of the first PA to be known, and Saire the first to be tested on, it was very clear that the High Council expected Brodin and Saire to be solely business associates. Not mother and father to a whole new strain. Not a family. Breeding would be discouraged. Possibly by force. If Saire and Brodin wanted a school, then it was only by the grace of the High Council and their parameters that they would get one.

The alternative was that they could go back to being marginalized lab animals.

And so the training school, the unfolding understanding of their powers. The basic needs of their people always came first. The two of them were friendly. Civil. They lived separately. They did not dare discuss marriage. They did not touch.

Brodin had convinced himself that their separation was good. That way they couldn’t be used against one another. They couldn’t be tortured for information or bartered for ransom as husbands and wives might be.

And yet, he knew when they were in a room together, everyone felt the unmitigated tension between them. It was impossible to hide.

“Brodin,” called a soft voice. He turned as a lovely, tired woman approached. Ariadne, a chief counsel, the foremost empath of her day, was in charge of ship-wide mental health. She had recently saved the minds of the entire crew during the attack. She’d have died if not for the skills of her lover, Kristov, once Brodin’s star pupil.

Her selflessness and talents reminded him of Saire’s, and he ached looking at this younger version. An ageless beauty of golden skin and gray-violet eyes, she resembled Saire closely, save that Saire’s long, silken hair was silver with wisdom. The fact that Ariadne had been saved by love made Brodin ache all the more to be that same force of nature for Saire.

Ariadne broached the dreaded question. Perhaps sensing Brodin’s pain had brought her here. “Is she . .. ?”

Brodin swallowed. “Alive? As far as I can tell. But wounded. The rescue team must go quickly to find them. Ariadne, I need you to understand. I’m sure you, like all your peers, wondered about Saire and me .. .”

Ariadne looked away, uncomfortable. “Well, you were never outwardly open or affectionate. But it was assumed there was something between you. We really couldn’t figure it. You two are, without question, the king and queen to us all. I suppose we just wondered why you weren’t . . . official.”

“We couldn’t be. From the first dealings with the government in regards to the training school, it was clear Saire and I could set no example of family, love or togetherness. They dictated everything,” Brodin spat. “But the school was our mission. And you well know that business and duty often come before affection,” he added pointedly. Ariadne blushed. She understood. Brodin continued gently, not bothering to hide his vulnerability from Ariadne’s searching mind. “I’m not sure I understood my priorities until I came aboard this ship.”

Both Brodin and Kristov had faked their deaths to rid themselves of Homeworld interference before fleeing to the Nests.

“Did Saire forgive you for your death and resurrection?” Ariadne asked sharply. “I’m not entirely sure I’ve forgiven Kristov,” she muttered.

“She understood. But it’s been a year. A year without contact, save for echoes of our thoughts.”

“Why does the Homeworld think they can tear us all apart?” Ariadne growled.

“They’ve no right, and they won’t win. They can’t oppress us anymore. We are on our own, and good riddance.”

The fury they felt was palpable, the desperate desire to get beyond survival and towards healing.

“I need to go, Professor. The rescue vessel is about to leave. I came because I sensed—”

Brodin grabbed Ariadne by the arms. “There is so much left unsaid. So many things she didn’t know.

Things I’d saved for emergencies, things I’d taken for granted . . .”

He tore at his robes. He revealed the scar over his heart. It pulsed with a thin line of blood. “Her pulse, I grafted it from her DNA so I could have something of her. Aboard this ship, I had the doctors add something else, attach a mechanism onto my heart.”

Ariadne’s mouth opened in slow realization. “So if she dies . . . she . . .”

“Takes me with her.”

“Brodin . . . Why would you do that? That isn’t what she would want—”

“I know that. But she, like you, would so easily sacrifice herself for others. If I ensure she lives by saving me, then our population keeps its queen, its goddess, the matriarch to us all. She doesn’t understand how vital she is, how important she is—”

“You’d best let her know.” Ariadne tapped the glass of the crypt, looking out at the stars. “Try to break through to her. If anyone can, you can. Use the ship to magnify your own signal. Tell her what you’ve done. She’ll be angry,” Ariadne said, walking back to the lifts just as the command for the rescue party to meet at the docks was issued.

Brodin grinned suddenly, holding back tears. “She’s beautiful when she’s angry.”

Four

“Son of a bitch . . .” Saire muttered, trying to reroute the circuit to open the door. It wouldn’t budge.

She glanced back at the peaceful children. If they died here, at least they’d simply slide off into unconsciousness, never to wake again. Painless. Silent. Much better than all the other deaths. She turned on a tracker with PA-only frequency in hopes a rescue crew would sweep for them.

Saire dosed herself with a powerful chemical for concentration, knowing she had one chance to try the impossible; a mental SOS relaying that they only had a few hours to live. And then she’d sedate herself with a needle on a timer to conserve more oxygen. If, by a certain time, they had not yet been rescued, a medical cocktail would allow her to slide on toward some great beyond and ensure the children a bit more time to breathe.

She closed her eyes and cast her psychic fields wide.

Saire, she heard his whisper in her mind. He was reaching out to her. Somewhere between space and time their thoughts connected. Just like the first time . . .

Brodin? Are you there? Are the Nests—

The Dark Nest is all that’s left, he replied bitterly. Where are you?

Storage tunnel, south-west quadrant. Door jammed. Only a few hours of oxygen.

The ship won’t make it to you in time. We have to work on the door. Together.

Saire rose and stood at the door. I’m here.

In secret, their top talents had been working on expanding their powers: telekinesis, levitation, defense and offensive strategies. But Saire doubted Brodin could do much from so far, unless the Dark Nest transmitters had truly been revolutionized. Still, she stood at the door, palms out, prepared to field whatever he could produce.

She could feel Brodin’s energy, his life-force, cascade like a downpour of sizzling live electricity, the air crackling and sparking. The control panel on the door lit up and then died again. The door rumbled in its metal grooves. But it did not budge.

Saire shook her head. It won’t work. I’m breathing too heavily, taking too much air. If I’m one fewer set of lungs, these children might live—

No, Saire. We must get you out. Or else the PA lose their founding mother and father . . .

What are you saying?

I know you’d easily sacrifice yourself, but if you do, you’ll kill me too. My heart is attached to the pulse of yours, I grafted yours to mine.

Saire blinked at the closed door. You selfish bastard.

You’d die to save someone else, Brodin countered. I’m ensuring you’ll live to save me. This is no different from my desperate call to you, when you were on the ledge all those years ago. I won’t die if you won’t. There’s a planet we found and named “Sanctuary”. And you’re going to see it with me. Now try again.

Saire grit her teeth and tried again. Channeling her rage at everything the Homeworld had done to them – killing them, warping them – and drastic measures like this misguided suicide pact of Brodin’s. She put one hand on the door, one hand on the control panel. Their shared conduit created quite the combination of psychic fields and focused energy.

The room shook, the door eased on its latches, sliding back enough to let bodies and air through.

Success!

Then the mental surge, difficult to turn off once it had been unleashed, was so overpowering that Saire crumpled to the floor and everything faded to black.

Five

Saire was twenty-one years old when she stood on that tenth-floor ledge, ready to throw herself onto the pavement below if the governmental facility keeping her prisoner didn’t stop hurting her. Tests, surgeries, probes, endless bloodletting – she’d had enough.

Just at that point of no return, a voice had called to her; a soft and timid question, like the call of a child who has turned onto a darkened path and lost his way.

She heard a young man’s voice in her mind. Is there anyone out there who can answer back? I hear everyone else’s mind. Can’t anyone hear mine?

I can, Saire replied, her mental voice tiny, hopeful, shaking.

Oh. Oh thank God, he cried in relief. Because I am going mad—

So am I, Saire confessed.

About to kill myself—

So am I—

Don’t. They said it in each other’s minds at once.

I won’t die now that I know you’re there, he promised.

Saire stepped off the ledge and back into the hospital. A guard tried to take her arm. Glaring at him, her mind shoved him back. She ran. Ran for her life, toward the sound of that voice. She escaped other guards with psychic blows and nimble movement. That night, two young minds – alone in the dark, each running away, far flung across a vast country – vowed to meet in the middle. Saire heard a boy she came to know as Brodin crying for all he’d endured: the family that had beaten him, the utter lack of understanding, everything he was leaving behind, and his fears of what was to come.

Saire did the only thing she could think to do when someone needed comfort. She sang. She sang a song that her grandmother had taught her, before the government stole her from her family, a song she had learned from the wise old books, some ancient rite called a “hymn”.

My life flows on in endless song;

Above earth’s lamentation, I hear the sweet, tho’ far-off hymn That hails a new creation; Thro’ all the tumult and the strife

I hear the music ringing;

It finds an echo in my soul–

How can I keep from singing?

But she had not moved her lips. She offered the song to him in his mind. She swore she heard the air take up the harmony. She swore a bird had her notes in its throat. That was in the days when there still were birds.

“Don’t stop . . . ” his voice begged. How could she deny him?

What tho’ my joys and comforts die?

The lord my saviour liveth;

What tho’ the darkness gather round?

Songs in the night he giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm

While to that refuge clinging;

Since came the lord of heaven and earth, How can I keep from singing?

When tyrants tremble, sick with fear, And hear their death-knell ringing, When friends rejoice both far and near, How can I keep from singing?

In prison cell and dungeon vile, Our thoughts to them go winging;

When friends by shame are undefiled, How can I keep from singing?

It became their private anthem.

Night by night, as they crossed the country towards one another, the need for connection, for intimacy, for understanding and for company, consumed them. Their minds entwined, they learned about their tragic pasts, and assumed others of their kind suffered too, if there were any. Saire shared what the scientists thought of her: that she was a newly evolved strain.

They knew they couldn’t run forever undetected, so they decided that once they met up, they’d try and find others and create a society. They’d likely not be able to do this without the government’s knowledge, and so Saire pledged she’d be a liaison and perhaps gain training and research facilities on their own terms. They were going to create a new world.

Each day as they got closer to one another, they kept out of sight and off the radar, their excitement building.

Finally she saw his silhouette across a barren field of dried grasses. The ruins of an old stone building, something grand and sacred with Gothic arches, stood silent sentry in the field.

Slowly they approached one another. The moonlight cast them in stark light, beautiful, heavenly light, and Saire swore she saw a halo about him, as if he were an angel. He was tall and elegant, sharp-featured and dark-haired, slightly fairer than she. His eyes were luminous, humming with the raw power of brand-

new creation. And bright with desire.

They didn’t say a word. He took her hand and led her into the beautiful ruins, beneath the pointed arches, into a room where moonlight cascaded in through a hole in the vaulted ceiling, illuminating a vast stone table that was cracked and settled at a slight angle. Saire moved to it, sat upon it, and placed Brodin’s hands upon the buttons of her blouse.

“You’ve been deep inside my mind,” she breathed, her lips dancing up his neck, making him shiver.

“Now, my body. Let me feel you . . .”

Slow and tenderly, Brodin undressed her so that she lay upon the stone, vulnerable and exposed in the moonlight. He stood over her and wept at his gift, so beautiful and graceful and full of an understanding he’d so desperately craved. She could feel his appreciation both in thought and in tangible touch as his hands explored her with the wonder of a child but the needs of a man.

They could feel each other’s arousal so pointedly that the entire experience of touching, kissing, caressing, was painfully delicious agony. Their bodies joined slowly, achingly. Their connection built into furious climaxes. Hours of torturous builds to transcendent releases, their ability to sense one another’s pleasure drove the cycle again and again. Their minds and bodies were entwined until the sun began to rise and even then their hunger was not quenched.

They were the stars of the ancient tales, Adam and Eve, and this Gothic ruin was their Eden, and they were about to become mother and father to a whole new family. A powerful yet peaceful people whose abilities might allow them to reverse damage done to their planet, create bridges out of barriers. With abilities that resembled magic, anything was possible.

And as their bodies writhed in wave after wave of inexplicable ecstasy, they pitied the average mortal for not knowing what this kind of bliss was like; this soul-bond on a level mere coupling could not begin to match.

Somewhere deep in her unconsciousness, Saire moaned, aching again for that long-lost sacred connection.

She realized she was dreaming, dead, or near dead. That’s when memories make their parade . . . But Saire had the distinct impression, on whatever level her mind was able to register it, that she was not alone in this journey . . .

Six

Dark Nest counsels swarmed over Brodin, who had collapsed at the Great Well, which he was using as a transmitter, to project his mind toward the Homeworld and to Saire.

“He’s dreaming, I think, lost in unconsciousness,” one counsel said. “He’s tethered to another mind.”

“Madame Saire, surely,” another counsel breathed.

“But they’re—”

“Destined. Even the High Council cannot keep souls such as theirs apart forever.” They knelt in reverent guard at their regent’s side, keeping watch on his vital signs and willing their great mother home.

Saire watched as ground was broken for the training school. She and Brodin were granted safety and their facility was green-lit provided that an inhibitor, a substance developed during testing on Saire, was used in the construction of the whole facility. Their powers would be limited, contained. Saire balked at this but Brodin signed off.

“If it’s what keeps us safe,” he said to her in private. “You and I know we can do so much more. We’ll find a way. We’ll push boundaries in private. But on the surface, this is what has to be done. We have to be seen as harmless. There will be more persecution otherwise. As for you and I . . .”

Saire knew Brodin meant the connection the Homeworld demanded they sever. “We have to comply and do what is expected of us, to best lessen the suffering of our people.”

She watched Brodin’s blazing eyes cool, his jaw tense. But he nodded.

Later that day, Saire went to a doctor whom she trusted. She had missed two periods and assumed with a mounting thrill that she was carrying her lover’s child. It would change everything, and they would have to rear their child in secret, but it would be their most precious treasure and a sacred defiance that the Homeworld could not take away from them.

Only to find out that due to all the tests she had endured, she could have no children.

Saire closed off her mind, kept this knowledge to herself, wept bitterly for days, and threw herself into the work of the school.

Brodin felt the weight of a great and terrible pain but did not pry. He took her cue to be stoic. They had so much work to do, and children were being dropped off at a facility that was still under construction. It was easy to lose oneself in others’ lives.

How children could be so easily abandoned puzzled Brodin, as his own abuse had baffled him. Saire just took the children in without question and looked for more.

She sent Brodin out to travel the country to gather others as the rift between humans and these newly evolved beings grew wider. As she handed him his bags on the platform, checking to be sure they were not being watched or recorded on security cameras, she kissed him.

He bent to her hungrily, seizing her. “I love—”

“Always,” she interrupted him before he could complete his declaration.

It wasn’t a vow.

But it had somehow sufficed for countless, interminable years. Until it hadn’t.

The Homeworld was planning to assassinate Brodin.

The night before he knew he would be killed, Brodin traveled the corridors of the training school and went to Saire’s quarters. She greeted him with tears in her eyes, disabled the sensors in her home and led him to her bedroom.

This kill order was the beginning of a new phase of persecution. There was no going back. Their people were not numerous enough to cause a revolution, nor were they trained to do so. Their best chance to survive was to keep building and perfecting their escape vessels and ships – their Nests – so they could live and develop their powers and skills in peace.

They made love for what they both knew might be the last time. The act was careful and loving, but without the wild abandon they sometimes felt when they were both scared they might break apart, shattering into frightened pieces.

“I don’t want to pretend any longer that you’re not my mate, my partner. I don’t want to pretend that I don’t want you for my husband,” she gasped against his shoulder. “We’ve sacrificed everything, and for what? So they could kill you in the end anyway? I swear to you, if you do not resurrect as planned—”

“I’ll resurrect. I promise,” he said, holding her tightly. “But it will be a long time before I see you again.”

She wept that he kept his mind closed from her. To protect himself. To prepare himself, he said.

Neither of them knew if he would survive the ordeal as planned, or if it would all be in vain. In her mind, she apologized for the painful things she’d never told him, but by now he must have assumed. But he didn’t seem to hear her.

In the morning he was shot and there was a funeral.

Saire managed to be present at the memorial as the training school grieved bitterly for their leader. She sang, her voice clarion, clear, magically reverberant in the close air.

My life flows on in endless song;

Above earth’s lamentation, I hear the sweet, tho’ far-off hymn

That hails a new creation;

Thro’ all the tumult and the strife

I hear the music ringing;

It finds an echo in my soul–

How can I keep from singing?

His coffin was laid in the ground and her tears rolled down her cheeks onto the rain-starved earth.

Internally, she kept singing for him, verse after verse, for whatever deep recesses of his mind might be listening, to bring him back to those first days when they only had each other.

There was the distant sound of an explosion and Saire’s dream-scape of memories shifted into a vague, swirling darkness where she felt lost and alone.

Had the Dark Nest exploded? Did they have no one to turn to after all?

Come, Saire, she heard dimly in her mind. Rise and bring your people home. No more deaths.

They were all being killed. Exterminated.

But there was singing. Her singing. She’d just been singing.

No, someone else was singing . . .

A drop of water fell on Saire’s cheek. A tear. A small body shuddered next to her. She lifted one heavy eyelid. In the dim light little Franca bent over her, splashing more tears, choking as she tried to sing the song Saire used to sing her to sleep with as an orphan at the training school.

“N-no s-storm can sh-ake m-my in-most calm . . .” Franca’s sobbing voice warbled.

As Saire shifted her hand to Franca’s knee, the little girl gasped and clasped her hands over her runny nose and streaming cheeks. She fell on top of Saire, arms around her neck, and in that moment Saire finally let go of the pain of never having her own child. She had countless, and they did not count for any less.

“I can’t lose you too, Lady Saire,” Franca cried, nearing hysterics. “I can’t hear Joyie. I can’t sense my sister.”

“Shh, I need you calm. Joyie needs you calm. What happened? How long was I unconscious and how did you wake?”

“A voice in our mind told us to get up,” replied Tynne. “It sounded like Professor Brodin. How could he do that?!” Tynne exclaimed. “It’s like he’s God.”

“Oh, don’t tell him that, it’ll go to his head,” Saire laughed even though it hurt like hell.

Simm rushed forward. “I heard voices.” He tapped his head in wonder. “Someone from our class hid in the school. Deep in the corridors. It sounded like Zho.”

“Good. We’ll go to her, and that’s where the crew will rescue us.”

If the children heard Brodin then it wasn’t just her imagination. Perhaps there was a Nest to land in after all. But they needed to survive until the transport. And patrol drones would make periodic sweeps outside, waiting for movements and heat signatures. Now that they were awake and alert, they would be targets.

“Children, I need you to be as powerful as Professor Brodin right now,” she said, and allowed her psychic fields to expand around her. Everyone gasped again at the subtle beauty. “This is what you can do. Even in training school you were being suppressed. Oppressed. And now that the Homeworld has come to tell you your lives aren’t worth preserving, you must use your powers to rebel. We can move underground undetected if you cast your fields wide and we move quietly but quickly.”

A brief lesson, but an effective one with survival on the line, and they were out the door and towards another underground tunnel. The Homeworld had been given incorrect schematics for the tunnels and had no access to them, for the codes only responded to psychic signatures.

Saire imagined the Homeworld must have thought extermination would be far easier than it was. At this thought a fierce smile curved a corner of her mouth.

They reached Zho, who shrieked with joy to see them, soot and tracks of tears marring her smooth olive skin. She threw her arms around Simm. “Thank you for hearing my mind,” she cried.

Saire ached for Brodin, hearing her past echo in the mental connections between their students.

Zho excitedly showed them stores of food she’d ferreted from the cafeteria kitchen between sensor sweeps. Everyone took hands and gathered in a circle, honoring the dead before they sat to eat.

Another round of sweeps and a few explosions rattled the ground nearby, sending dust, dirt and bits of concrete down upon them. The students panicked, but Saire cast her fields out around them like a blanket, masking their heat signatures and calming their systems. She didn’t let on how exhausted and drained she was, or that she might not have it in her to hide them all again.

But she had to.

Selfish as it may have been of Brodin to tie his life to hers, it finally let her know what kind of footing she was on. They had been through so much. Perhaps there was a limit as to whom you simply could not lose and still go on. Just like that time at the ledge, that moment of possible death, when they had turned and run toward one another.

Seven

Brodin paced the Great Well, a pool of water that transmitted images from the Homeworld like a screen.

Gray robes whipping behind him, little Joyie was by his side, pacing too, her elder-grade tunic replaced with deep-blue Dark Nest robes, all her thoughts on her sister Franca.

She stopped suddenly and looked up at him. “Were you and Saire the first? Of our kind?”

“The first to be known,” he replied. “There may have been others before us who never came forward.

We were the first to be experimented upon.”

Joyie shuddered. “Do you think we’ll ever go back to the Homeworld?”

“Not that dying crust. We’ll go live on Sanctuary, the planet we’ve chosen for ourselves. It is empty and waiting for us to coexist with it, its flora and fauna. As for the Homeworld, our rescue team has one extra task – to leave behind a lesson, a psychic blast that will detonate in the capital. Hopefully then, should there ever be relations between our kind again, they’ll be sure to know what we’ve been through.”

“Revenge?”

“Better. Empathy.”

Just then everything started screaming.

A wail came up from the Great Well, flickering images of Homeworld citizens doubling over, shrieking as if they were on fire, clawing at their faces, each of them experiencing a PA death but with no psychic shields to ease the pain.

“Franca,” Joyie hissed, clutching her head. “It’s agony. They can’t move, they’re paralyzed—”

Their own people were not immune, the blast too powerful to block. The planned psychic reckoning spun out of control. It wasn’t empathy, not really. It was revenge. Revenge was hard to contain. And on the minds of untrained, “average” humans, very dangerous. The transmission seemed to increase exponentially. Perhaps the amplification meant that on some level, all humans had latent psychic powers, it just took something drastic to access them.

Images of the PA students awaiting rescue flickered into view across the Well. Brodin watched as one little boy pummeled Saire with punches as he experienced a panicking seizure. He felt the pain of her cracked rib and seared flesh ricochet up his own body.

The rescue team had reached them, but they were all useless.

“Try to cut through, Joyie,” Brodin commanded the teenage girl beside him. “Tell Franca to hold on to the voice she loves. To concentrate on you. They must concentrate on something, someone beyond that pain.”

“Friends!” Brodin cried, gestured wildly for the other counsels, the ones who had so graciously stood guard over him, to gather round the Well. “Help me break through. We’re so close! Shelter them, bring them home!”

You shall live, this day, my children , Brodin said, transmitting through the Well and into all of their minds.

Live, my love, he said in Saire’s mind as she and the rescue team dragged the shaking, seizing students towards the door. Focus on me.

What’s happening? she cried.

Reckoning, he replied.

Make it stop! Saire growled, throwing the hysterical Tynne over her shoulder so that at least if he kept punching it wouldn’t be on her bad side.

We will, just get to the transport. Sanctuary is within sight, my love. It’s big and beautiful.

Tell me about it, Brodin.

It’s very blue. Lots of water.

I’ve always wanted to be by the sea . . .

We will. You and me, love. By the water. Come home to me. We’ll not see a new day unless you make it through this one . . .

A sensor sweep rained down an explosion. There were injuries but no one fell. The tethers of those they loved helped them cast their fields wide despite the strain.

And on this terrible day, the whole of Homeworld felt what it was like to be a Psychically Augmented human. Saire softly sang through the agony she relived as she sought Sanctuary.

When tyrants tremble, sick with fear, And hear their death-knell ringing, When friends rejoice both far and near, How can I keep from singing?

Eight

The psychic disruption across the whole of the Homeworld offered some cover, and the Dark Nest helped keep them sane. But mechanical and technical systems still had to be overwritten to get them to safety, not to mention a few jumps to cross the massive miles between them and the Dark Nest.

As their whole team reached the ship hangar, deep in a hollowed mountain shaft, Saire went to a control panel and pressed her forehead to a small silver disk. A small red light blinked. She recorded the thought:

If you hear this, you are special. Do not be afraid. Reply to this signal. Keep quiet, keep safe. Seek

Sanctuary. You are not alone.

That would be left as a low-grade, undetectable signal for those PA yet to come, in case the Homeworld didn’t learn its lesson in the psychic explosion. Saire didn’t feel like waiting around to find out.

Stepping into the escape vessel, she said nothing. She sat with her hands in her lap, her breathing measured, and awaited him.

Never before had she felt him so alive within her, as if his veins were superimposed onto hers, truly inseparable beings. Perhaps, after so many years being connected and yet denied one another, soul mates could grow into increasingly dynamic, even explosive, powers.

After two faster-than-light jumps, the Dark Nest rose before them. Everyone breathed a sigh of joy and relief.

For the first time, Saire realized that the Gothic cathedral floating in space was a testament to her and Brodin’s first meeting in the flesh – the day they took on the roles of the ancients.

Tears were in her eyes. So much of their society was due to their making; the two of them. They had so much to be proud of. They had so much to mourn.

But they had so much to love.

And presently, there was nothing else in the whole of space and time but their minds.

Just like it had been so long ago.

They both could feel the other’s presence approaching. Their points of view merged, like films superimposed, their entwined pulses raced. Brodin nearly floated out onto the dock. Saire felt the bump of the landing on the dock floor and held back a sob as the vessel opened and the children rushed out.

She could see him from across the room. Regal and tall, no less handsome to her eyes after all the years, gray robes buffeted around his feet in the breeze of his own power.

He saw her stand, stepping down onto the dock floor, tall, soot-smeared, scraped, bloodied, silver hair wild about her shoulders. The most beautiful creature in all the world. In any world.

Her gray-violet eyes pierced him and his breath fled.

They approached one another slowly, and Brodin realized every eye in the dock was on them, breathless, waiting to see them touch, a sight they’d never seen.

Reaching one another, their shaking hands stretched out and entwined, they sunk to their knees, tears pooling between them, their foreheads pressed against each other.

They could feel the leavening of hearts that their reunion provided. Their people wanted them to be together, in love, partners, mother and father to them all. They needed them to be the family they all craved. A show of undying love, a happy ending to star-crossed fate, did far more good than any separate show of strength.

Their minds entwined amorously with torturous promises of passion to come. A vow rose to Brodin’s lips.

Don’t interrupt me, he began in her mind. Saire laughed.

“I love you,” he murmured aloud, for anyone and everyone to hear.

“I love you,” she replied.

“Nevermore in the shadows. Never again to be denied.”

In a small cottage built from hewn logs and wooden planks, Saire and Brodin gazed out over a vast body of water, a lake they’d named Eden, a lake that had been the backdrop for a ceremony officially marking their eternal bond before all those they’d helped raise, teach and care for. Their people had never before thrown such a joyous celebration. They’d never needed it so badly.

Sanctuary’s days were always bright from small twin suns that rose in the east and set in the west.

Stepping out amidst a bed of strange and wondrous flowers that Saire looked forward to cataloging, she gestured for Brodin to stand at the edge of Eden with her. He wrapped his arms about her waist, kissing her neck.

She sang the old ancient hymn as the suns shone upon her face and the tune carried across the lake. The words that once were so hard to believe had transformed into reality. Now their paradise had been won.

The thrum of the heart that was tied in every way to hers was always near her. Now, she truly could not keep from singing.