Page 156 of Star Bringer
“We’ve never told anyone,” I reply. “I never thought we would.”
“That’s becausewe’ve never had anyone to tell before. It’s different now.”
He’s right. And for a moment, the thought scares the shit out of me. I take another swig of gerjgin and look around the group. Merrick and Rain, Kali, Gage, Beckett. They’re all watching us with varying levels of concern. We might have our differences, and in other circumstances we might have actively tried to kill one another, but it’s obvious that here—now—they really do care.
The trouble is, we’re not actually that easy to explain. In fact, we’re fucking unbelievable. Hell, sometimes I don’t believe it.
I look at Max. He gives a one-shouldered shrug.
I take a deep breath. Then hesitate.
“Come on, Ian,” Beckett says. “Spit it out. How hard can it be?”
“Really fucking hard, actually.”
“Yeah, well, I’m making up my own stories about what just happened, and most of them end with us having to toss you out of an airlock because of homicidal psychosis, so it’s probably better than that, right?” She gives me the same pointed look Kali did a few minutes ago, and it almost makes me laugh. Those two have more in common than either would ever want to admit.
I run a hand through my hair, trying to figure out what words to use to explain something that can’t be explained.
“Fuck it, I’ll tell them,” Max says. “You’re going to hurt yourself over there.”
I flip him off. “Feel free.”
I don’t want to be the one to tell Kali anyway. I don’t want to be looking at her when everything changes—and it will. How could it not?
“I know some of you are wondering about the relationship between Ian, Milla, and me,” Max starts.
“Strong start,” I interject.
“Seriously?” He gives me a what-the-fuck look. “You want to do this?”
“Not even a little bit.”
“Then butt the fuck out,” he snarls.
“Until I was eleven years old,” I butt the fuck in, “Max and Milla didn’t exist. Then I went through a…traumatic experience, and somehow I…” I run a hand through my hair again.
“Just say it,” Max urges. “It’s not going to get any easier.”
“I split into three.” My words are met with silence. I look around, and now everyone is frowning. Except Merrick, who has a dawning understanding on his face.
Does that mean he knows something about what we are? If so, how?
“Like three personalities?” Beckett asks, eyes narrowed in thought.
I have a flashback to that day. Of finishing my chores early and wandering through a hole in the fence at the children’s refugee camp where I’d been taken when my mother was murdered. There were several holes we liked to sneak out of—no one at the camp paid too much attention to our comings and goings as there was nowhere for us to go, nothing in any direction but barren desert for hundreds of miles.
A sandstorm came up, and I dug deep into a dune to try to shelter myself. I hid there for an hour, maybe two. Something happened in that dune—something painful and terrifying and unlike anything I’d ever felt before. And when I tunneled out after the storm, I was three instead of one.
“Like three people,” I tell her. “I was me, and then I was we. Me, Max, and Milla. They were just there, and I didn’t understand, but at the same time I did. They were me. I was them.”
“We,” Max says quietly. “We can hear one another’s thoughts. Feel what the others are feeling. Know what the others are going to do before they do it. I’m Ian. He’s me. We’re both Milla.”
“Like a gestalt or a hive mind,” I put in. We’d done a lot of research over the years before we even ran across those terms and understood that they were the closest explanation. Years of research before we were able to even accept what we are.
Now, we wouldn’t want it any other way.
“But how?” Kali says. She doesn’t look disgusted, thankfully. Just very confused. Which is understandable, considering what we’re talking about is fucking confusing. “I’ve never heard of such a thing, and I thought the Imperial libraries held knowledge about everything.”
