Chapter 1

Grace

Smoke wafts around my face, the curls getting caught in the dim light. There are only a few candles set around the corners of the room now, and those are getting low.

There are a few Reapers in here and all of them eyeball me between sips of booze and bites of candy. I suppose I should be afraid, especially since some of them leer and bare their teeth, but all I do is give them a hard stare and friendly grin.

I’ve cut up your kind time after time, I think to myself. I know how those double-jointed ball sockets work, how your intestines are cramped into a cavity that should be too small. I know that your hearts are bigger than a human’s and that the muscle is almost impenetrable to even a surgical blade.

Still, I could take one of you apart with a fucking butter knife.

I take another hard drag of the cigarette and swirl my drink a little. It’s some sort of godforsaken moonshine, and a thick silt keeps settling at the bottom. I take a sip, trying to identify the herb it’s been rendered with.

As usual, I come up with zilch. It’s probably going to kill me, drinking this shit. I think it’s closer to rubbing alcohol than nice friendly spirits, but I’m beyond giving a fuck.

Maybe I shouldn’t be here.

The bar is a great place to get jumped, or so Sadie tells me. Jacinta and Lauren barely leave the captain’s quarters and that’s smart. I just can’t help myself. I’m surrounded by potential specimens and I want to examine every single one.

I stare into the glass, swirling it again to see the dance of the cloudy particles at the bottom. I’ve got a problem and I need to sort it out, fast. I need Sadie or Aryn to trust me and I can’t wait around for them to just decide suddenly that they want me to know all their secrets.

Sure, we’re headed toward Lilac One—secret planet number 432. They trust me enough to go for it, but only because they’re desperate. I’m sure they’ll be checking out the place well before they land, and I wouldn’t expect anything less. 

They won’t whisper a word of the transmissions from the military, though. I’m forbidden from using any computer or comm device. I know that they’re getting reports daily and I have to know what’s being said.

I know that as we blasted away from the last disaster, there was a strange report of something huge and powerful attacking a Combine ship. Nobody saw it. Whatever it was, it screamed through the halls, killing everything it touched.

When it was gone, they found most of the supplies were missing. This is scary enough to make an Alzhon warrior shit himself, and it absolutely chills me to my bones and sets my guts in ice.

We weren’t just experimenting on Reapers and Ishana for information. Humans have believed for a long time that we can share their powers, acquire them for ourselves. When I first joined the program as a biologist fresh out of college, our job was discovering how Reapers worked.

I was a bit taken aback by the idea I had to cut them up while they were still alive, but they were Reapers, the most savage and brutal creatures in the galaxy.

They’re killers. Murderers. It should be fine to kill them, maim them, fuck them up.

That’s what my superiors told me. I believed it, too. I did as I was told. I made more progress in a few months than anyone had before me had in years.

I worked out that their blood was thicker than ours but ran faster. It clogged quicker and healed their wounds within hours. I learned that their bones were like steel, their skins like iron made flesh.

Then, one night, I heard them sing.

I was walking past the cells, doing some very intense gene-splicing work. It was very late, and the moon was high, lending a blue light to the shadows of the lab. I was going past the cells to an infirmary when I heard the song.

It was wordless—a humming, lilting thing. It chilled me, made rivers of goosebumps run all over my skin. It was the most beautiful and moving thing I had ever heard. Of course, at that point in my life, I had never heard an Ishana sing. 

That night, I began to have doubts. Over the next few months, these doubts became full-fledged fears as my superiors stopped trying to figure out what made Reapers tick and started trying to steal their powers.

We infused Reaper blood into humans. It was horrific. We started with small amounts, and they died. We tried transfusing an entire six liters and they died even faster.

My god, how those soldiers screamed. 

But that was nothing compared to the screaming of the women that were forced to bear Reaper babies. We did some artificial insemination, but it didn’t take. Finally, they set Reapers and women loose in secure cells and let them rape and tear as they liked.

The women who survived these incidents were far worse off.

Criminals, they said. Slaves. They don’t deserve our pity.

What else could I feel though, watching them torn apart from within while half-human, half-Reaper babies ate their way through their mother’s flesh only to die the moment they pulled free?

I was ready to leave. I knew that I held too many secrets and attempting to leave would most likely mean my death. I was hoping for a transfer, and I got one, but to the depths of a secret base on Helios itself.

The prison of the Ishana.

I had been so shocked to find out that some of them still lived. They were such a legend, an impossible mystery. I thought that in this program, the subjects would be treated with respect and dignity.

Fuck, I was so wrong about that and about everything else.

A sudden crash makes me jump. A fight has broken out nearby over the last piece of steak. The resources were topped up when The Lance met the other ships, but everything is running thin yet again. The two Reapers growl at each other while others leap out of the way.

I follow the action with my eyes only, knowing that a sudden movement, even just that of my head, would attract the attention of the predators.

The Ishana and the Reapers are incredibly alike, yet terribly different at the same time. I found out all the cellular and genetic differences in my work. No one was as good at it as I was, but I couldn’t blend their DNA together again.

Knitting either one into the human genome seemed, yet again, an impossible task...until Lana. Until Sybil.

I’ve even heard of Llyron. 

Some of the Reapers in captivity called out his name as if he were a god that could answer their prayers. Some of the Ishana even spoke his name and the one I came to know as Mahri spoke often about her son when she was under the influence of trance-inducing drugs.

He will find perfection, she used to whisper. His long years of science and experimentation will mean nothing when he finally meets the one, the sacred one. With she shall my line be born anew.

Ameld.

I would have cut off my right hand for five minutes of Llyron’s time. Oh, the conversations we could have had! If he had a lab, then where is it?

Only a few hours in there and I could answer every question I’ve ever had about the Reapers and the Ishana. I doubt it would unlock the great mystery of how our blood finally joined, though. I’d need the blood of one of the human brides for that information. 

I need all the information I can get, especially now. Humans were not just afraid of Ishana tech or their amazing telekinetic powers. There was a legend amongst them of a godlike power called the Manifestation.

Even under hallucinogens, Mahri did not speak of it. When asked, she would gasp and reach out with her lips as if searching for a lover. Sweat would break out on her brow and she would smile as if she were reaching ecstasy.

It fascinated me.

I tap out my cigarette firmly and immediately light another one. I’m pretty sure no living Reaper knows about the Manifestation. I’m sure even Llyron didn’t know about it. I need to hear the military reports and I need to hear them now.

There might not be enough time to save us if it gains too much strength because the Manifestation carries enough power to destroy ten space phoenixes’ in one transcendental moment. It can evaporate suns, crumble planets. It is a spiritual force unlike anything the universe has ever seen.

World-ending, yet ever-renewing. A force of destruction and rebirth. It is the oldest and most secret legend of the Ishana because it is how the race and its planet, Oshara, were born.