Page 129 of Star-Born Anomaly

He settled for simple curiosities. “How many others were affected?”

He knew. He remembered everything, but wanted to see what the general would tell him.

Cazin tipped his chin. “Thirty-five people were attacked, changed, then reverted, including yourself.”

The names of those defenders and scientists moved through his mind, their childhoods, their aspirations. It was too much and not enough at the same time. Sawyer forced his breaths to regulate.

“What do you remember of that time?” Cazin asked, his expression bland.

So much.It kept racing through his head. What he’d seen. What he’d heard in his mind. Thoughts skewed with visuals, making it a muddle. Memories that were not his tangled with his own.

“Not a lot.” Sawyer cleared his scratchy throat. “It’s a haze, really.”

The general’s eyes narrowed. “That’s what most of you said.”

“Most?”

“Some won’t speak at all.”

Sawyer had the sudden urge to see the ones who wouldn’t talk, to find out if they were all right. Had their reversion been too much to handle? Or the pain?

His hatred for the Calypson increased tenfold.

The general stared at him, eyes assessing, and Sawyer rifled through the most appropriate responses to his last statement, but could only come up with, “Where are the other thirty-four now?”

He winced internally as Cazin continued to stare at him. “Twenty-four,” he said finally.

“What happened to the ten?”Stupid question.It gave away too much.

The general didn’t answer.

Experiments. Testing. Just shot out an airlock for fun. Sawyer wouldn’t put any of that past the CORE government.

Cazin tipped his head, and a certain promise lived in his eyes while a threat hung in the silence: co-operate or end up like them.

“Let’s move on to the second portion of your testing,” the general said right before his image disappeared, and Sawyer was kneeling alone in a white box.

Hot rage bubbled up inside him, wanting to spew forth. He’d given his whole life to these fuckers, and when he needed them the most, they locked him up forexperiments.

As quickly as the rage surfaced, it disappeared again, replaced by a cool resolve that felt like it infused his bones, as invasive as coalescing. Sawyer embraced that resolve, funneled everything he had into it, while he tried to access the general’s mind.

There.If he pulled on the murmur, another thought followed, then another.

When he opened his eyes again, all four white walls rippled.

“Let’s begin.” The mechanical voice came from all around him. “State your name and ID number.”