Fractured Mind Episode Three

By Odette C. Bell

Karax and Sarah are separated as the world ends. The Corthanx Traders continue their relentless but silent invasion of Earth.
As they gather momentum and threaten the Coalition, both Karax and Sarah are faced with choices of their own. Will Karax form an unlikely alliance to keep Sarah safe? And will Sarah finally push past the horror of Sora to regain her body for good?
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Fractured Mind follows a cadet plagued with nightmares and a disparaging lieutenant fighting to save Earth from an alien plot. If you love your space operas with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab Fractured Mind Episode Three today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.
Fractured mind is the 5th Galactic Coalition Academy series. A sprawling, epic, and exciting sci-fi world where cadets become heroes and hearts are always won, each series can be read separately, so plunge in today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Odette C. Bell
• Release date: Jan 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781005959227

Book preview

Author’s Note

The point of view of the story shifts from third-person to first person in the final two books to reflect Sarah’s fight with her mind.

Chapter 1

Sarah Sinclair

I woke. In fitful bursts. Consciousness slammed against me like waves from a violent storm. My mouth was filled with the distinct metallic taste of blood, and a heavy, throbbing pressure kept snaking up and down my neck and hard into my shoulder.

It took me several seconds to realize I was moving. Not of my own free will. I was being dragged.

My memory came in flashes. I lost all track of time, and it was agonizingly long before I remembered what had happened. The train. There’d been some kind of explosion. One whole wall of our carriage had been ripped open.

… And Karax. He’d fallen through. As that memory slammed into me, a wave of agonizing nausea came with it. I gasped.

Somebody stopped. The same somebody who’d been relentlessly dragging me through the train. I guessed we were still on it. Guessed that was the reason for the ceaselessly flickering lights above me and the smell of broken, burned metal and electronic fittings in the air.

My eyes blinked open and closed, rolling into the back of my head as another wave of agony pulsed down my chest. It was nothing, absolutely nothing compared to the regret, shame, and guilt that came with it.

Karax was dead. There was absolutely no way he could have survived that explosion. And even if it had somehow thrown him clear, then the fall would have killed him. We’d been traveling through a perilous mountain range….

I gasped again. That’s when I felt a hand around my wrist.

The section of carriage we were in was broken and warped. As my bleary gaze tried to fight back my nausea and lock on the scene, I saw mangled holes in the ceiling giving way to broken sections of seats, here and there discarded bags and clothes and old food containers dispersed amongst the muck. The smell was worse. Singed metal, sparking wiring, and the general ugly scent of destruction.

Whoever had a hold of me paused. They shifted forward with a low, guttural laugh. The tone of the laugh and the intention behind it were obvious. Cruel satisfaction.

There was no way I could fight against the strength of the person’s grip, even if I’d been returned to my usual state of health. Their fingers felt like wide, strong metal bands locked around my wrist.

They kept dragging me forward, and I kept seeing eerie flashes of the mangled carriage. Finally, they stopped.

I had no idea how much time had passed. It could have been anywhere from several seconds to several days. My thoughts and emotions came in wild, violent blasts.

Two impossibly strong hands wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me up. I was propped against the broken remains of a seat.

The lights flickered in and out ceaselessly, giving the scene the eerie quality of a fractured nightmare.

The man didn’t say anything. He brought his face down close to mine. The lights above flickered out but then flickered on once more.

I saw him. Or at least saw the unique hood covering his face.

The hood was made of a strange black material that absorbed the light. Every time the lights flickered in and out, the shadows around that hood didn’t change.

Though I couldn’t see much of the man’s face, I recognized he had to be an alien. There was the shape of a long, pointed snout beneath the hem of the hood, and as he sucked in a deep, reverberating breath, I watched the hood flutter up and reveal a wide mouth lined with sharp, yellow, pointed teeth.

For a few seconds, he did nothing. Nothing at all other than watch me.

He pared back his lips, revealing those pointy teeth in full.

Time to bring you back into the equation, Sora, he hissed.

Then he moved. So quickly, I could barely keep up. He grabbed something from behind him, lurched forward, locked a hand around my neck, jerked it to the side, and injected something right into the point where my implant was. At first, it did nothing. At first, my thoughts spiraled in a mess of fear. Then… then I felt cold. A familiar sensation, one that had haunted me my whole life. Not my life as Sarah Sinclair. As Sora. For in that moment, Sarah Sinclair faded away. Maybe she screamed. Maybe she begged. It did not matter. Sora was back.

…

Karax

I was running out of time.

I hadn’t been able to find Sarah’s body, but I knew enough not to let my fear and desperation give way to hope. There was only one reason this train would have been attacked. Sarah.

They’d come for her.

We hadn’t been able to take our weapons on board. We’d ditched them before getting on the train. So I had to be creative. When the explosion had ripped through the train, it had opened the service panel, and now revealed a hoard of maintenance tools. While most of them were completely useless, some weren’t. There was a modifiable electro rod that could be used to isolate neural wiring. With a few modifications, it could also be used as a weapon. Charge up one end and run it into the gut of your enemy, and it would be just as effective as any electro blade.

My lips pulled into a permanent sneer as I reached the end of the train. There wasn’t a goddamn passenger in sight. Nowhere. No screams. Just their abandoned luggage.

I’d never felt fear like this. Wait, no. I had. Back on the colony worlds. It was the kind of fear that told you you were no longer playing with ordinary enemies, ordinary people with morals, people who think twice before employing deadly force on civilians. No. These bastards had no quibbles. No compassion and would stop at nothing to get Sarah and claim Earth.

I hadn’t been trained for situations like this. Hell, it was impossible to train for a situation like this. Though you underwent rudimentary risk prediction when you were promoted to lieutenant, those fictitious scenarios couldn’t compare to this. Barbarian attacks, Cor incursions – sure, you could train for that. Not silent, insidious attacks on Earth.

I made it to the back of the train, and, using my modified electro rod, managed to force open the door that led out into the train tunnel.

Before I did, I paused, using a scanner I’d managed to scrounge from a maintenance cupboard to ensure the atmosphere out in the tunnel was breathable. It wasn’t impossible that the toxic fumes from the explosion had built up in the tunnel, and without sufficient ventilation, they could have reached fatal levels.

I soon confirmed everything was fine. Well, not fine, but the mix of acrid gas out there wouldn’t outright kill me.

I pushed down to one knee, grabbing an abandoned jumper and cramming it over my nose and mouth. I instructed this scanner to open the door. It beeped and swished open.

The tunnel was filled with a toxic, swirling fog of fumes. Though I crammed the jumper firmly over my mouth, I still choked and wheezed.

I shoved forward, and I looked for her. Checked for any sign she’d come this way.

I started calling her name, my throaty cries bellowing and echoing through the enclosed space.

Nothing. No reply.

I continued on, dejection and fear forming a solid lump in my throat.

The further I traveled, the more I realized one haunting fact – there were no people, not a single soul other than myself.

… Where the hell had they all gone? Had they been transported away, whisked off by whatever devious force was attacking Earth?

I brought up a sweaty, grime-caked hand and locked it over my mouth. My fingers smelled like I’d used them to mix slime.

I didn’t recoil from the smell. No point. My nostrils were hot, tingling slices of pain from the toxic mix of fumes. They spread out through the tunnel, fanning around me and breaking in my wake.

I kept walking, any hope I’d had withering up and drying into an empty, granulated point of pain lodged hard in my gut.

I’d stopped screaming her name a while ago, though the desire was still there. To say my mind was a mess was an understatement. Every thought was more desperate than the next and slammed into my consciousness like a punch between my eyes.

That thick, acrid, poisonous cloud of gas drifted around the tunnel in bursts. Sometimes, I could barely see a step ahead – at others, the view would clear, and I’d be able to see for 10m or more. It didn’t matter. There was no Sarah. Nor were there any other passengers.

I kept my modified scanner out, my darting gaze locking on it every few seconds as I checked and rechecked for any signs of life.

Finally, I saw something. In the distance, back toward the train. A figure. Female, human, if I was any judge.

Shit, it had to be Sarah.

Pushing into a run, despite the fact my lungs were wheezing with every step, I tugged the jumper from my mouth. Sarah, Sarah, I screamed.

Nothing. She didn’t react. I wasn’t that far away that she wouldn’t be able to see me. So I put on a burst of speed and screamed her name once more.

Finally, Sarah Sinclair turned.

I watched her, saw her face, saw her expression, even as lines of smoke billowed around us.

… It was her – same body, same face, same clothes. But it wasn’t Sarah Sinclair.

I ground to a halt several meters from her.

She tilted her head to the side, considered me, then turned and walked back into the train.

The look she shot me was unmistakable. I’d seen it before.

Sora.

I did nothing, just stood there as my mind pressed into a terrified point.

Something had happened, and Sora was back. This didn’t seem like the few times Sarah had been able to tap into Sora’s abilities. It was the look, the fury and anger behind Sora’s gaze – it felt permanent somehow.

I gulped, choked past a gasp. It pushed me forward, but I didn’t manage to get far. From the side, I saw somebody lurch toward me. Their body had been obscured by a thick, dense cloud of fog.

I didn’t have time to react. There was nothing I could do as the guy locked his arms around me and tackled me to the ground. Once I was on the ground, it was a different matter. I jerked up, rounded one knee, and thrust it hard into his chest.

There was a choking noise as the guy was pushed off me. As I sprang back, jerked to one knee, and shot to my feet, I realized I recognized him. He was the man who was after Sarah.

My eyes exploded wide, and my lips thinned into a sneer. You bastard, I roared. What did you do to her? What did you do to her? I shoved forward, rounding a shoulder, intending to knock the guy off balance. I thought he’d fight, but he didn’t. He took several