Entangled Episode Three

By Odette C. Bell

When your enemies outnumber you, find new friends.
Bruce and Emma might’ve found each other again, but that won’t help them. Chen has joined with John and the empties, and there may be no stopping them.
Emma and Bruce’s only chance lies in finding out the truth hidden behind their entanglement. It’ll cost them. Time. And that’s the last thing the universe has. The empties have waited too long to feast on this realm’s energy, and nothing will stand in their way, even if it’s wrapped up in destiny.
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Entangled follows a cold soldier and a panic-stricken cadet fighting a hidden force for the universe. If you crave space operas with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab Entangled Episode Three today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.
Entangled is the 18th 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: Jun 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005405212

Book preview

Chapter 1

Emma Hawk

Just when it seemed everything was about to end in the most violent way possible, a spark of hope rose within me.

But more importantly than that, it rose without. It tangled itself up in the connection between me and a man I still did not understand but one who had crawled his way into the center of my heart. And it pulled itself out.

I could feel the bonded behind me. I’d heard it entering the room. The hiss of breath, the creak of joints, the movement of a creature hell-bent on doing one thing: snuffing me out of existence forevermore. It never got the opportunity, because in a sea of sparks, hope, and joy, Bruce arrived.

It could’ve been Chen, and for a split second, my mind told me it was. He was my entangled, wasn’t he? He was the only one who could access my light and use it. But it was Bruce’s hands that appeared and Bruce’s arms that wrapped around mine.

He pulled me up away from the bonded as far as he could get. For now. I watched his eyes resolve out of the last of the transporter energy. His lips snapped open to say one thing. Emma.

You can tell a lot from the way someone says your name. Most of the time, they are just getting your attention. Still, tone means everything, doesn’t it? And for someone with such a sensitive nervous system as mine, I was really good at reading between the lines. Too much emphasis on the front of the word or the back of the word, and a simple name can become like a swearword. Mutter it under your breath, and your disdain will become clear. But the way Bruce’s lips opened and closed, the way his mouth pushed every syllable of my name out, it was like he was reaching out to me while standing right by my side, reaching out to me to get even closer.

I have no idea where we are, but— he began.

That’s a bonded. This is an alien vessel. We—

No time to explain. And trust me, there’s a lot to explain. His eyes glittered as he promised that. No, I did not remember them glittering on any other occasion. It still seemed natural, as if this was his birthright somehow, as if the coldhearted, brutal Bruce Tan had finally found out what was in his heart.

He swept me to the side. I let him. I was still cold through and through from the spark that had touched me. If I’d been paying more attention to it and less to the fact Bruce had somehow snapped himself across the galactic divides to be by my side, I would’ve realized it was dangerous. It was pushing into my heart, my internal organs, the deepest part of me. What it would do when it got there, who could tell? But all of my attention was taken up by Bruce as he laced his fingers through mine. I’ve got no idea how this begins to work. Kind of wished I’d stuck around for my father’s explanation.

My brow twitched. Father? Wasn’t his dad dead? Beyond that, he was right. There would be a lot to find out.

But we had much bigger fish to fry right now. The bonded leapt right over one of those strange alien consoles. It was only then that I realized it wasn’t a Merk warrior. I hadn’t paid much attention to it previously. I'd just crumpled in the corner, waiting to die. But the guy was long, seriously lanky, in fact. He wasn’t more than six-foot tall, but his skinniness made up for it. His spindly limbs gave rise to three-fingered hands. He wore some kind of streamlined gray jumpsuit. As he spun to the side, I saw there were channels in it. They lit up. Force slammed its way over his face, forming a shield. It was one he apparently had the ability to move independently.

He chucked his head forward as if he was headbutting somebody, and a slice of power peeled off the shield and shot toward us. Either Bruce was expecting it, or he was always expecting some form of attack. He pushed lightly onto the tips of his toes, twisted, and took me with him.

He fell onto his back. I fell onto his chest, my eyes aligning with his, my cheek brushing against his chin. It was… time didn’t stand still long enough. But my mind extracted the most it could from the moment, grasping hold of every detail, from the look in his eyes, to the hot sensation of our faces pressed together, to his chest, to his hands. To all of it.

Sometimes all we need to do is to glimpse the fact that right things exist in this universe. By that, I didn’t mean the truth. This wasn’t some epistemological statement. This was something that came right from the center of the heart.

We can muddle through our lives, trying to survive, trying to get by, trying to get better, trying to do what it is everyone else wants us to do. But occasionally, when we least expect it, we can see beyond all of that to something so much more meaningful. In that moment, surrounded by every single detail of him, I had my first epiphany of what the future could be. It was taken away from me pretty quickly. With a grunt, he wrapped his hand around my back, kicked up, and moved me behind one of the larger banks of consoles on the other side of the room.

Bruce Tan knew how to control his body. He knew how to extract the maximum use out of every single limb, maximum force and speed, too. I don’t think I had ever seen somebody who could maneuver like he could. He ducked, twisted, and all the while, kept his hand around me, helping me dodge as the alien shot off chunks of its shield in every single direction. One slammed into the viewscreens on the back wall. I’d previously stated they had to be unsophisticated compared to Coalition holographic technology. Our viewscreens could follow you around wherever you wanted. But these had to be superior. Because as the shield’s energetic yield ripped right through some of them, the others simply sloughed off sections and replaced them. It happened almost instantaneously. There was the bubble of molten metal that set in a sizzling second. Then they were back. They still showed the rather surrealist view of space beyond with its floating castles, mining diggers, and old Earth cars.

While this ship apparently had an unmatched ability to heal itself, I certainly did not. Bruce went to dump me behind one of the consoles. To be fair, I easily dumped myself. I wobbled over. My legs simply couldn’t stand up anymore. The effect of that spark was getting deeper. I—

What— he began. He didn’t need to finish the question. I watched his lips twitch. You’ve got to get out of this space. Now. We will destroy the pocket. To do that, we’ve got to destroy the bonded. Crap. Hold on, Emma. I know you can.

I opened one eye. I stared right at Bruce. A part of my old self waited for the insult that would come. It would snap right off his lips like a wild dog. It would latch onto me, onto my softest part, and it wouldn’t let go. But as I stared at him warily, it didn’t happen. His eyes were simply open with true determination, fragility, and… connection.

He leapt right over the console. I couldn’t see what was happening. I couldn’t twist my head to catch a glimpse, either. All I could do was concentrate on the once autonomic act of breathing. Now I had to throw my every single effort into it. Every trembling inhalation felt like it would be my last. But my desire to track Bruce and find out what was going on was too much. So… I closed my eyes.

I wasn’t meant to be entangled with Bruce anymore. But something must’ve happened to drag him across the galactic divides toward me. It was that something that stole my mind away, that invited me on another path toward him.

It’s funny, but a lot of religions say they’re just paths up the same hill. The destination is always the same. Some form of heaven, whether that be enlightenment on the physical plane, or something far, far beyond. Why did I feel like every single mountain I had ever climbed, every single path I had ever thrown myself along had always been leading me back to Bruce?

Did I believe in destiny? No. I was a scientist, remember? But there are some things you cannot fight. There are some things your body, mind, and soul were born to believe in. As I secured a hand flat on my chest, using the last of my precious energy, I felt a tingle within. So slight, so barely there. It was like the tremble of a baby bird’s wings as it realized it had to take flight or die in a sinking nest.

When I had broken my entanglement with Bruce, I thought I’d done it completely. But in a flash, I realized something. Once entangled, always entangled. It was a state of permanence, an alteration to the very fabric of the universe – not some momentary thing you could throw away. It was, in many ways, destiny.

Here I was, looking for some external religious explanation for something that had a physical one.

Bruce and I could not part. We’d never been able to part. For we were connected. And when you are connected, even though the strings of that connection might fray, you will always come back to your anchor.

As my eyes fluttered closed, I concentrated on Bruce, concentrated on him until my weak body became irrelevant, until the console behind me was pointless, too. I connected to Bruce, his hard breath, his controlled limbs, his furrowed brow. I felt right through him as if I were running through some building in the dark.

Felt right through him until there, in a flash, I saw his eyes. And I saw… I saw right through them. This should have been one of the most confusing moments of my life, and it was, but it was the most exhilarating too. For, in a blast of power, my nervous system finally doing what it had always wanted to, I gained access to an extension of myself.

I watched exactly what Bruce had to do as he shoved into the bonded and pushed him back. Again, I didn’t know what alien race the guy originally came from, but I could tell you this – they were far more sophisticated than mere humans. It wasn’t just the technology the guy wore – it was his body. Bruce’s armor had broken at some point, but it was slowly starting to fix itself. He at least had access to its scanners. And they did their job, dutifully sensing everything they could about the alien. If its neural scans were anything like other aliens the Coalition had come across, then it had some psychic ability. But importantly? It had a telekinetic ability, too. And its suit was perfectly programmed to allow it to utilize that.

Rather than pick up objects, however, it could throw the energy around with abandon. And it did. Another charge developed over the alien’s face. The guy’s eyes were wide open, mostly sightless, but occasionally darting from left to right as the empty within presumably needed more information. It was like watching a robot. One with only half a functioning AI. Occasionally it would move the entire unit in unison. The rest of the time, it didn’t need to.

I wondered if, given the chance, it would forget it had a body at all and split the poor guy in half.

But the incredible suit would always be there to knit him back together.

I’ve never seen anything like this. Where does this ship come from? Bruce spat. He kept on the run, though, and that was a very good thing. Without his armor, he’d be a sitting