Chapter 37
“So, you didn’t completely integrate?”
Kael heard Phantom’s voice. Clear, calm, familiar.
But not with his ears. He was hearing it through Wraith.
That should have disturbed him.
It didn’t.
It felt like nothing could.
“Yeah, we got a little distracted.”
Understatement, Captain.
“What’s integration?”
Seori.
Yes. Good question. He’d like to know that himself. Hoped he wouldn’t have to create a report on it.
“Pretty much what it sounds like. And not so different to your…. coexistence. But more—”
She faltered. He felt her searching for words.
“It’s a conscious choice, Se.” Phantom again. “We figured out how to do it as a team. The first time all six of us were in a Fold collapse together.”
Wraith managed a wry smile as the memory smashed through her.
“Yeah, what’s a small war crime between friends?”
Elijah rewarded her snark with a snort, but there had been nothing funny about that mission.
It also wasn’t going to help Kael, or save Seori and her shipmates.
“So. Ship?”
“Wait, wait.” Wraith felt the ripple of Seori’s command through the bond she still shared with Elijah.
He cracked his neck at the same time she did to shake it off. She met his eyes, grinned.
Stilled.
“We don’t have time,” she told them both as gently as she could. Let them feel her conviction. Her understanding.
“We’re going to make time!” Seori slapped her palm down on the table.
“You can do that?” Elijah asked his wife, and she glared at him.
Wraith smiled. Somehow, even at the end of her road, there was still room for amusement.
“Explain integration to me,” Seori ordered. And it was an order.
Wraith raised her eyebrow.
Glanced at Phantom, let him know to take point. He sighed.
“Do you want the story or the science?”
“Start with the story. You’ll just get the science wrong.”
“And maybe give the short version,” Wraith added.
He glowered at both of them.
“Fine. As a team of six, we hadn’t been flying together long. A month. Maybe a bit longer.” His voice was resonant. Wraith had forgotten how good a storyteller he could be.
“We were given a mission. Carry a new kind of bomb into the Inbetween. Detonate it. Record the results.”
“For science,” Wraith quipped.
“For science,” Phantom agreed, although Seori did not. “So, we did. I still don’t know what it was. But it caused a rupture. And then another. And then a cascade effect.”
“We’d scattered,” Wraith continued as he trailed off. “Trying to outrun it. There was no way we were going to make it. Then someone—”
“Spirit.”
She looked at him, “Really?”
“Yeah, pretty sure.”
“Okay. Spirit’s voice erupts over the comms. Tells us to dive, to converge on each other.”
Phantom shrugged. “Die or dive. Not much of a choice, so we dove.”
“Somehow, we found each other. Started screaming at each other.”
“Not all of us.”
“My apologies, Phantom. Everyone but your husband was yelling at each other,” she told Seori. “Then Shade says, ‘Do you hear that?’”
She and Phantom both stilled for a moment.
“The Void?” Seori guessed.
“The Choir,” Phantom told her. Not that I knew what that was back then.”
The Void screamed. Kael didn’t listen.
He focused on where the warmth of Wraith’s hand in his should be.
It was the only real thing left.
This was important. Maybe the most important.
“It was terrifying,” Wraith continued with a laugh. “All of a sudden there was this giant, rolling roar of accusation. “Like a thousand dead voices trying to crawl inside your skull. I thought I’d finally hit the truly crazy part of Fold Psychosis.”
“Me too,” Elijah confirmed, placing his free hand over his wife’s. “All I knew was that the Inbetween was collapsing, something was coming, and I wasn’t ready to die.”
“We were all thinking that,” Wraith confirmed. “Different nuances. But the same thoughts. And then everything snapped into focus.”
Elijah looked at his wife, “That’s integration, Seori. Multiple parts, willingly joining to form a single whole. Suddenly we weren’t Wraith and Phantom and the rest. We were Ghost Command. It wasn’t scary, it felt completely right.”
“And we had access to everything each other had. Phantom’s calm. Shade’s reflexes. Geist’s guile. Spirit’s heart. Spook’s tactics.”
“And Wraith’s flying ability.”
She nodded at him. “We got the fuck out of there. Punched out as soon as we could. A little too close to that moon, but we were still so closely wound together that it didn’t matter.”
Phantom finished the story, “As the adrenaline faded, we seemed to separate again. Geist was the first one to speak. He told us, ‘Never speak about this to anyone’. And we didn’t. But we learned how to do it again. How to use it.”
Seori stood up, paced. “You’re wrong, Eli. That’s not how we connect. Not even close. What you’re talking about, if I’m understanding it correctly… shouldn’t be possible between people.”
“I’m sure you can figure it out,” Wraith told her. “Now. The ship?”
“And you didn’t integrate fully with—” she waved her hand at Kael.
Why the hell wouldn’t they just give her the Void-damned fucking ship?
“No, as I said, we were interrupted.”
Seori nodded, back in full healer mode. “Then I suggest that you try completing the integration first. Before you irreparably damage my husband’s heart again—and mine.”