Entangled: The Complete Series

By Odette C. Bell

Some are born with a plan. Some are born into someone else’s plan.
Bruce Tan is the best soldier the Coalition has seen in decades. With a cold, efficient will and a hardened fist, he forces his way through every obstacle.
But the universe has another plan for him. When an alien artifact entangles his body and mind with the weak, panic-prone Cadet Emma Hawk, he must learn a new way.
And quickly.
The Coalition’s enemies soon kidnap them, and Bruce and Emma are thrust head-first into a fight for the universe. They have two options: stay together, as close as two entangled particles – or break apart and take everyone else with them.
...
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: The Complete Series 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: Jul 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215014592

Book preview

Chapter 1

Bruce Tan

I regripped my blaster, threw myself forward, and just made it under the collapsing door before it could crush me in half.

Sweat beaded along my taut brow. I might be wearing holographic armor, but it wasn’t programmed to wick it away immediately – not unless I started to drown in the stuff. So I felt it jerk then fall down my chin as I lurched up and started firing.

I saw the shadow of a Merk warrior emerge from the darkness, massive body cloaked in his own form of holographic armor.

Over the past ten years, the Coalition had changed in unfathomable ways. It was easy to think we were at the forefront of technological upheaval in the Milky Way. But that would be forgetting the other empires – the Barbarians and the Kore. They’d benefited as much from recent discoveries as we had.

With one exception. The Coalition had moral limits. This Barbarian Merk had none. The armor he wore used the same core principles as mine – but with a twist. He could cloak himself, becoming virtually invisible in a shimmering second. That wasn’t all. The armor could then slice through whatever organic matter it saw fit.

The guy grunted, but as he turned his cloak on, the guttural cry was cut in half as he disappeared before my very eyes.

I couldn’t even feel the change in the air currents as he presumably jerked up and launched himself at me.

So it came down to instincts.

And I had the best in the Coalition. With a grunt of my own that no fancy tech could ever hide, I spun to the left, shoved into a roll, and came up on the other side of a bulkhead.

This ship was falling down around my ears. Its internal dynamics had been permanently – and devastatingly – altered by a compression grenade in the phase realm.

I had five minutes to get this mission done. Go beyond that, if even for a second, and I would be crushed into dust that would forever drift between the quantum realms.

Remotivated, I blasted off a continuous, white-hot shot over my shoulder. I programmed it as a wide beam, and the flash lit up the crumpling room. One of the massive silver-white bulkheads sporting the Coalition Science insignia crumpled like paper screwed up and stamped on by a mighty foot.

I was too close. The material the pillar was manufactured from was made to endure extreme stress – but not the kind a phase grenade could provide. It exploded. The resultant force struck me in the chest, shrapnel beating against my armor until blasts of sparks erupted out in a cloud.

I was thrown backward and smashed into a wall. But something squirmed between me and it.

My eyes pulsed wide. My armor’s sensors didn’t warn me of a thing, but my intuition blared louder than any alarm. I jerked my elbow up and back, and the hard bone impacted the Merk. His audio cloak failed for half a second, and I heard his hissing grunt blast out by my right ear. I even picked up several hastily spat words that drilled into the fear centers of my brain. The universal key will be ours.

I already operated on adrenaline. It surged and broke through me like mighty tidal waves. I was no stranger to intense combat – knew exactly what it did to your body as long as you didn’t fear the response and panicked. The tingle in your muscles, the rush of blood to your head, the heat – sometimes the cold. All of it was designed by Mother Nature to keep you alive, to keep you on your toes.

So I spun on mine, managed to lift a knee, and mindfully redirected the power of my armor into my kneecap. I snapped it up and smashed it into the guy’s sternum – or roughly where it ought to be. As the energy yield of my blow increased, power lines surging across my holographic armor like rills parting thick desert sand, I knocked him back.

He smashed against the crumpling wall, the Coalition Science insignia just above his right shoulder. For a flash of a second, he became visible. Long enough for me to glimpse a device he’d fastened to the center of his chest. A round disc, gold at the edges with a deep blue, long crystal in the middle, it was Scarax tech.

The Scarax Galaxy was the first other galaxy in the universe the Coalition had ever visited. We might have helped them shrug off the oppressive rule of their self-appointed gods, but for the past five years, their technology had seeped through the cracks of the Milky Way. It required a form of living energy to function. The Barbarians must have found something to sate its appetite, for this control crystal now sang a deadly song.

I watched as a surge of power flashed in the depths of the dark crystal like someone lighting a flare across a darkened ocean. Then power shot over the disc and along the wiry four-strand brace that attached it to the warrior’s chest.

The energy was so powerful, it lifted the guy off his feet. Then he used it to shove me back.

I couldn’t hold on. I tried to ground my foot into the floor, tried to scrounge as much balance as I could, but he swept me up, locked a beefy, light-covered arm around my torso, and threw me down onto the buckling floor.

In the back of my head, as my adrenaline turned to full-blown panic, I knew time ticked down. I had three minutes now. 180 seconds to get to the head scientist, to find out his secret, and to get the hell out of here before this ship crumpled and extinguished all life within like candles thrown into ice melt.

I’d spoken of my sweat earlier. Now it rushed down my head, each bead shivering before draining off my chin.

The Merk disappeared in a shimmer like glitter thrown in the air. A split second before he did, I watched his hand lurch toward his holster. I couldn’t be sure – couldn’t trust my eyesight – but I thought I saw an illegal gun appear at his hip. Something that, if fired, would rip through the air and boil all biological matter not programmed to be spared.

My heart didn’t have any more to give – my adrenaline had already squeezed out every last drop of power and fear.

But my instincts and training came in where my emotions failed.

I flattened myself onto my shaking back, yanked my gun around, and fired at the ceiling. A ripple shot across it before I did. I’d already mentioned that this ship was being destroyed on the phase realm – I hadn’t explained what that was, had I? About two years ago, the Coalition’s most maligned cadet had revealed the universe’s greatest secret – a shadowy war that had run for millennia and at its heart, a new realm of matter.

That incident might have been resolved – but the phase realm would be with us forever. For, indeed, it always had been, but the Coalition had never known how to see – or exploit – it.

Our understanding of that strange place grew daily. As did our enemy’s.

But in a galaxy as screwed as this one, understanding must come with weaponization.

You want to live? You have to be the first to adapt to and manipulate new situations. Oh yeah, you also have to have the courage to attack first.

I watched a ripple of phase space charge through the ceiling, indicating the ship was more unstable than I thought. So what did I do? I helped it along, of course.

Body shivering there as I fired at the ceiling, I watched as my energy beam lanced into the ripple. Power charged across it then lit up the whole room in an unstable flash.

It was just as the Merk tried to fire. But the ceiling gave him no choice. It inverted, actually turning inside out as if it were some mere tunic someone was about to put on.

The Merk made eye contact with me – for one nanosecond – then jerked back.

No time. The inversion spread toward him.

Not me – him.

As I watched it rip right through him, tearing him apart with as much care for his constituent molecules as a human has for the water they guzzle to stay alive, I realized my luck had prevailed.

By shooting the ceiling, I’d tossed the equivalent of a coin. The phase instability could’ve spread to me – could’ve swallowed the whole ship.

Instead, it gave me the one chance I needed. Controlling my tired muscles with a pulse of energy and gall, I rocked to my feet, spun, and stared through the warping room over to the hint of a dark corridor beyond.

I threw myself forward. Threw myself forward just as the phase instability spread to the floor, just as it turned to molten metal beneath my churning boots, just as the bulkhead beside me swayed like silver grass gleaming under a full moon.

I focused only on my object – never letting my fixation deviate onto the strange sights around me.

Get in. Get the location. Get out.

Get in. Get the hell out.

The Coalition – no, the whole Milky Way – needed me to succeed. The information the head scientist had would lead to the key.

And the universal keys….

Don’t go there, I growled in my head.

Just as the floor buckled more under my feet, I did it. With a burst of true speed, I skidded into the dark corridor.

Dark, save for the march of phase instability that leaked from the other room, crawling across the floor like a legless soldier searching for safety.

I thrust that image away. Hang around too long, and that soldier might be me.

My holographic armor adjusted for the low ambient light until I saw a half-open door 20 meters away.

There.

Finally.

I sprinted, putting everything I had into my muscles until they could’ve screamed.

I leapt over the floor as a chunk collapsed, crumbling like some old ledge of rock giving way to age and sheer fatigue.

I landed, rolled, and punched up.

I watched a patch of air just beside my left cheek succumb. It sparked then withered like some godly hand had grasped it, intending to rip it sideways out of reality.

I dodged under it, crouched, then sprang to my full height.

A meter away – the door stood just a meter away now, half open – the equivalent of a hand loosely held my way.

Time to grab it.

Just as the phase infection rose behind me – a looming, poisonous cloud of death – I grunted and skidded through the door.

There. Finally, I saw the head scientist slumped over a dead console. It sparked, but that was the least of its troubles, for its base disappeared in and out like dying fireflies.

How about the scientist? He didn’t fare any better. He was there one moment, weakly groping toward the console’s broken controls only to shimmer away a second later.

Each moment he disappeared became longer, stretching out like dulled eternity.

I lurched toward him, spun, typed something on my wrist device, and hacked into the remains of the ship’s controls.

I forced the door to close, a weak shield flickering over it in a hiss.

It would keep the phase instability out. For now. But it could do nothing to the damage it’d already wrought on the room – and critically – its only occupant.

I might’ve lost my heart before – traded it for pure animal instincts and Coalition training – but now it shuddered back into life.

This guy didn’t have a chance. He knew that. I knew that.

It was time for him to do his duty before his final second descended.

I reached him but didn’t dare lift up his hand. I watched it glimmer in and out, in and out. My breath suddenly caught in my throat as if it’d turned into sticky fly paper. But before I could conclude that he was gone for good this time, he appeared again.

He looked like a half-erased picture.

He swiveled one weak eye toward me. His lips cracked open, and I heard a breath. Paradoxically, the sound grew stronger as it echoed around the room. The lungs and throat and lips that made it couldn’t be weaker. You… you want the location.

Quick. You’re running out of time. I wasn’t brave enough to hold the phase hand of a dying man, but at least I crumpled down to my knees and got as close as I dared.

It was near enough to see his eyes focus. Maybe he got lucky, or somehow he tamed the phase realm long enough to solidify his eyes. They became whole as the rest of him dimmed out. Origa Four, he whispered.

Nerves flung themselves through my body. I said flung and not surged. Surged suggested they had some path – some predestined destination that followed the body’s nervous system. This pulse of spirit simply charged through every muscle and organ in a wave of final force.

I did it – got closer, picked up his dimming hand, and felt his fingers solidify then dreamily disappear. He somehow made his eyes solid once more. The artifact. You’ll know it when… you see it. Entangled, he wheezed.

Artifact? Where? Does it lead directly to the key? Please, I begged.

But begging cannot stay the hand of death. Not when it already has its victim.

The guy stared at me through his solid eyes for two more seconds. In that short moment, I fancied he downloaded all his hopes and dreams, all his sorrows and regrets. It was like he passed on the imprint of his life’s work – just without the actual facts.

And I needed those freaking facts.

No – no, you can’t die. Tell me if it leads directly to the key. Please, spittle flew out and splashed against my holographic shield, you have to tell me—

No more words. They were irrelevant now. With one last dreamy look my way, the scientist disappeared for good. A wave of energy shot across his shoulders, moved through his body, and… simply erased him from the canvas of reality, never to return.

For too long, I knelt there, body crumpled in regret. I watched where he’d been, searching eyes begging reality to spit him back out of the phase realm for a few more seconds.

It didn’t and couldn’t happen.

He was gone for good. And I… I had to move.

The door crumpled behind me in a dramatic, cracking moment. My armor warned me with a nervous punch that the ship had seconds.

I had to transport – with only half the story and one word echoing in my empty brain.

Entangled.

I spun, shot backward, faced the morphing door, and grabbed something from my back, arm straining, fingers quick. Nothing but a flat disc at first, as soon as I threw it into the air above me and activated it with a twitch of my thumb, it expanded. It stopped above my head then produced spindly arms that locked around me like a cage.

Energy built between them, encasing me in a yellow, glowing shield.

It felt weak, pointless – a little like yanking a blanket over your head to hide from a raging fire.

But at least it interfered with my vision of the room crumpling and succumbing to the phase realm. And at least it focused me down through my confusion and fear. Down to one word.

Entangled.

The anti-phase net successfully cut through the warped phase energy and allowed me to transport. Half a second later, my body dematerialized. The last thing I saw was the room crumpling. If I’d stuck around for one more moment, I would’ve gone with it.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t die – couldn’t even stop.

The Coalition needed me. And I would never let them down.

They’d given me everything – training, purpose, a narrative of power that allowed a broken kid like me to finally make a difference. And I, Bruce Tan, was determined to give more back. For I repaid every debt and always would.

Chapter 2

Emma Hawk

One last chance, Cadet. The stiff-lipped, severe Handari lieutenant, Andari, stared across at me, the dull light of the transport ship’s hangar bay playing across his milky black pupils.

I stood there, stomach churning, reaching a whole new depth of fear. I tamped down the urge to panic.

And I’d keep doing it.

Because I’d done it for all five years of my Coalition training.

The Handari were competent expression readers. It might not matter that their own race could barely move their faces – they knew the nuances of almost every race out there and could practically read your mind with every lip wobble, every brow twitch, and every minute change of color.

I tried to hide my surging adrenaline. I used every skill I had not to shake, but he knew – oh no, he knew.

His eyes narrowed. Handari eyes had black where humans had white, while their pupils were pinpricks of blood red.

You’re already panicking, aren’t you? Despite all your counseling – regardless of the fact you’re a fifth-year cadet – you still can’t put aside your fear. Do you have any concept of how disappointed the faculty is in you? Do you have any clue how much your fellow cadets deride you? While they are brave – while they’re ready to take up the heavy mantle of the Coalition and fight for us all – you shake in your boots at the mere concept of a training mission. He crumpled forward.

He stood a full meter above me, so I watched as his shadow loomed then cut across my own.

Don’t shiver. Just keep it together. Please.

I could beg myself all I wanted. I could pray; I could bargain. But I couldn’t control my emotions and never had been able to. Throughout my entire Coalition career, I’d struggled with panic attacks. No amount of counseling or pharmacological intervention could change that.

It felt innate.

It felt like, while every other cadet could put aside their fear – could use it as fuel – all I could do was burn under its full ferocity.

Now the lieutenant was onto me, there was no way to stop my fear from marching through my body in violent waves. First my hands involuntarily clenched into fists – then my heartbeat surged and tripled in a rushing, clamoring moment.

My breath became short – sputtering in heaving, shallow pants that could’ve raked the skin from my throat.

The lieutenant snarled at me one last time, red lips pulled thin over jutting blue teeth. This is your last chance, he repeated his dire warning as he took a step away, straightened his back, and clasped his hands behind him, now like a Roman emperor presiding over some inevitable loss in the colosseum. If you can’t get through this training session without panicking, you will be cut from the Coalition cadet program – in your final year. His eyes emphasized that, practically outlined it with neon lights.

Barely anyone got cut in their final year. The Coalition would be mad to put that much training into kids only to cut them at the last moment. Nor could it afford to in these ever-changing, ever-darkening times.

But the lieutenant’s cold eyes promised that with me, he’d do it.

Because some screwups just aren’t worth taking the risk on.

Don’t ask me how I did it, but I slid my shaking fingers behind me, clenched them together, held onto the deepest breath I could manage – grip slipping around it like I was about to drown – and saluted.

My fingers shook, my weak wrist could barely hold up my hand – but I made the movement anyway.

For what good it would do me.

Dismissed. He pointed one stiff finger forward, indicating the lit-up ramp that led down to the dusty dirt below.

Origa Four was hardly a holiday destination. Half-destroyed by a rogue, unexplainable anomaly around 400 years ago, it was where you went to contemplate the apocalypse, not relax.

And it would be where I went to fail spectacularly one last time.

I turned, muscles wobbly, heart ricocheting around my chest, and walked down the ramp. My shaking feet reached the sand as a gust of wind blew it up in wild tufts. They chased around my tight chestnut-brown bun and yanked out a few strands. I could see the other cadets preparing for the mission, watched the ones with long hair. The same wind struck them, but it couldn’t frazzle them – couldn’t even distract them. While it tugged most of my unkempt fringe free and flung it over my hazy vision, they finished, attached their scanners to their belts, checked their guns, and got ready to pass their final field expedition.

I stood there, hesitating, this gnawing unease flying through my stomach.

I wondered – often did – how all those cadets felt fear. Did it come upon them as readily as with me? As wildly? As deeply? Did they know where their hearts were – the exact position and size – like I did? Could they practically trace the path of each nerve branching down their limbs, stomach, and neck? Had they felt them burn with panic like I had?

Nope.

They were ready to help others.

I was only ever ready to run.

Closing my eyes, locking the deepest breath in my chest I could like someone ambitiously caging a tiger in a yard of sticks, I did it. I walked over to them.

My head told me there was no point. I couldn’t get through this mission without panicking. For the beast already had me in its adrenal sway.

Samuel, my one good friend, looked up at me and smiled weakly, his lips thinner than usual. He had good hearing – it came with his astounding Emdalax ears. The Emdalax was a curious race. They had much bigger sensory organs than humans – could feel and see and hear and taste a world so much bigger, too. Yet, regardless of all that data, they were never overpowered by their experiences. I’d never met an Emdalax who could panic and never would.

They could ground themselves – always saw the bigger picture and always, always put themselves aside for others.

Figures that Samuel would be my only friend in a sea of indifferent cadets who couldn’t comprehend how I could still be here, dragging them down.

He reached out a hand, sighed, and waited for me to squeeze his fingers once. It could be okay, he offered ambitiously. He said could. Not will. His eyes also emphasized his hesitation.

I forced my stiff neck to nod.

The lieutenant strode down the echoing ramp and right past me, his cold gaze scissoring onto me then slicing off. No point in locking on me for longer – there was no reason to do much but wait for me to logically fail.

He stopped in the middle of the cadets, took a breath, punched his chest out, and boomed, The mission starts soon. You know what you must do. You must all work together to get through the holographic targets we’ve programmed on this world. There are traps too – and they will be tough. They have to be – this is the last training mission you will ever go on. We need to know, his eyes settled on me like a foot crashing down from the clouds, that you are ready to go out there and make a difference. One that counts.

Clever. He needed to add the last bit – needed to make it clear this message was for me. To be fair, anyone can make a difference – we all do simply by existing and moving through the universe. But such basic being wasn’t what the Coalition was after – wasn’t what it needed with every desperate passing year.

They required heroes. Not me.

Samuel swung past and hurried off with the rest of the group, offering me the briefest slight smile as everyone hurried down the barren hill.

I hesitated – always did. I had to move through the heavy tar in my limbs.

With one last breath, I unstuck my feet and breached the hill. Below me, I saw the world stretching out in tracks of drab gray and brown.

Once, a great civilization had blessed this planet. Nothing much was left – the occasional chunk of warped metal peeking out of the dusty drab brown dirt, maybe the stunted skeleton of a building or two on the flat horizon.

As I powered down the hill, I saw one now to the far east. It couldn’t be a building – but it stood erect, drawing the eye, or at least mine.

Anything to distract me, right?

Wrong.

I wasted valuable time. I watched the cadets hurry and surge down the hill in a group, as coordinated as a school of fish rushing through the ocean to save as many as they could from prowling sharks.

But even a school of fish will leave behind a few stragglers. And that would be me.

Pumping my arms and throwing myself down the hill, a chunk of metal tripped me up and I tumbled. I tried to break my fall and went to roll. But the metal cut my leg.

A large hologram hovered over the group, twenty meters up, intended for the lieutenant to check our progress.

The group lost two points – the lieutenant wanted as few injuries as possible. I’d given everyone their first – all of ten meters from the beginning line.

Crap.

Seriously – crap, crap, crap. Why couldn’t I ever keep it together?

As blood slid down my leg, stained the resilient fabric of my field uniform, and made my skin beneath cold to the wind, my gaze started to haze.

Adrenaline – and fear – came hot on its heels.

I watched everyone dart toward the left. I saw cadets out the front with their guns at the ready – all the best combat specialists there to protect the group. Behind them was a phalanx of students with their scanners held in expert grips – eyes darting from the horizon down to their devices as they searched for clues.

This was a basic capture-the-flag mission.

Basic – if it weren’t for me.

I hurried to catch up. But I tripped again – another stray chunk of metal – a gift from this planet’s heyday – escaped my cloudy vision. A jagged corner caught my ankle, and I tumbled down, cutting my other knee.

More demerit points flashed above the group. I watched as a cadet turned and swore at me.

Why couldn’t I just hold it together?

I wanted to tell the lieutenant he was wrong – desperately needed him to be wrong. I could and would be of use to the Coalition.

I’d held onto that possibility for five years. It’d gotten me through every panic attack, every dark night of the soul.

But there’s only so long we can lie to ourselves.

I heard something behind me before I felt it, before a new blast of nerves could be registered over my clamoring heart.

I heard a grunt.

So far, our holographic enemies had only appeared at the front of the group. There was nothing to say they couldn’t come from behind.

As I spun, I went for my gun. I was still close enough to camp that I could see the lieutenant standing with his arms crossed, the sun beating down above him, that long shadow of his reaching out to me like a scythe.

He’d programmed this, hadn’t he? This was my test. Pass, and I would—

My gun slipped from my grip and clattered onto a rock beside me.

The holographic enemy was programmed to resemble a Merk warrior – massive, unforgiving, and brutal. I didn’t have time to go for my gun. He shot toward me.

I tried to dodge. He picked me up.

I went for his gun, somehow managed to pull it from his holster – my arm brushing past his hip. But just as I snatched it up, my breathing stopped. My gaze closed in. The darkness swamped me once more.

And I lost my last chance.

The Merk warrior slammed me down, but not hard enough to actually kill me. I’d still lost the second most important thing to me.

A red kill symbol flashed above me, and though my vision had blurred before, this I could see. This drilled down into my soul.

I heard some of the cadets from behind me. They hadn’t bothered to break from the main group to try to save me. What was the point?

The writing had always been on the wall from day one at the Academy. I, Emma Hawk, couldn’t hold it together and never would.

Good riddance, one cadet spat, voice fading as they disappeared with the group.

We were always going to lose her, but we can still win. We’ve got this.

Yeah. They did.

The holographic Merk warrior took a step, but one of the combat cadets with a sniper rifle took him down. Sparks blasted all around me, and the warrior fizzled and disappeared.

Rather than wince and shut my eyes, I stared up unflinchingly at the sun.

I let a minute pass, then another.

Footsteps echoed out nearby, drilling into my ears as the lieutenant stalked down the hill toward me. It’s over, Emma. Finally over, he sighed in relief as if I was a cancer the group had excised. Pick yourself up and stop doing yourself a greater disservice. Walk around camp. Think about what you’ve lost. Maybe it’ll finally be the impetus for you to pull yourself together. With that cold, echoing message, he wandered back up the hill, full attention on the group – on the only thing that mattered.

I lay there for one more second. Then I picked myself up.

I always did.

Maybe tears should’ve misted my eyes. Paradoxically, I could see more clearly than I had in years.

My attention swung around, automatic as my mind numbed to my loss. It soon settled on that structure on the horizon line.

I took a step toward it, focus fixed, legs doing what they needed as my mind progressively shut down.

I couldn’t think about what came next. I couldn’t think about tomorrow. What was the point? Let it come. I would muddle through it – falling with every step until one day I finally fell hard enough and far enough to truly give in.

But as my dreams shattered behind me and I strode emptily toward that structure, I should’ve realized something.

Every cadet behind me was strong on paper. But for strength to be real, it must be tempered by experience.

They’d only ever faced tests they could pass.

I’d faced tests that’d flattened me every single day.

I’d found a way forward through every one.

And that – that was why the mysterious structure jutting out of the horizon like a single finger pointing to heaven called for me.

For it had finally found the strength it needed.

Chapter 3

Bruce Tan

I hung out of the cruiser’s hatch, fingers gripping the white metal as I peered down at the barren dirt below. There wasn’t a cloud in sight – nothing to obscure my vision of Origa Four stretching out like so much drab brown paint on an endless canvas.

The key better be here, I hissed, jerking forward without another word, without even a command to my ship.

My neural implant connected me to it and would continue to, even far below on the planet. I could call it and order a transport beam, or an air strike, if needed.

The latter was facetious. Or at least it ought to be.

Who knew? The Barbarians had found me on that imploding ship. They could find me here, too.

But if they did find me, I’d deal with it.

As I sailed down through the atmosphere, it was strange not to have any clouds cut across my path. It meant I had a full, unrivaled view of the ground below. As I’d approached Origa Four, I’d received a full current report on inhabitants. It ought to be zero, but coincidentally, the Academy was running a training program at this very moment. It was close to the artifact. It shouldn’t be a problem. Shouldn’t be, I repeated to myself, words drilling into my head, getting deeper.

In a flash, I saw the artifact. It was as I went tumbling through the air, head over heels like a skydiver without a parachute. Even as my vision became jagged and choppy, I caught what felt like a glimpse right up close of the pillar, as if somehow the space between me and it had been cut down to nothing at all. My heart leapt, one hand involuntarily clenching into a fist, and I swore I could see the future opening out before me. This would be the first universal key. But it wouldn’t be our last.

And when the keys were finally combined… the galaxy would at last have a chance again.

I couldn’t go into the details of the danger that awaited us – couldn’t, because a second later, I landed. It was in a cloud of dust and rock particles. My holographic armor could’ve cut the impact of my fall, but there was no point. There was nothing down here to protect, no life, no planets, nothing but a couple of wandering students and the occasional drone checking in on the training scenario. The students were far enough away that it wouldn’t matter. So it was just me… just me and the artifact.

I spun. My feet churned up more of the dust. Inclining my head back slowly, I stared, wide-eyed. I’d been across the galaxy so many times that, I’ll be honest with you, most of it was now a blur. The hanging Gardens of the Hari? Yeah, the first couple of times, they were beautiful. What about the ice planets of the Ranas? Of course they’d taken my breath away. The first hundred times. But if you move about as much as me, soon even the extraordinary becomes every-day. And then, right in your own backyard, you’ll see something that does this – that locks the breath deep in your chest, that grabs hold of your heart, that stills every single neuron. That makes you realize the universe you thought you lived in was a poor replacement for the one that was actually there.

Nothing much ran through my head as I faced the artifact. My mind was empty, echoing. There was just one impetus and one thing I could do.

I walked over. My scanners locked onto the pillar. From the outside, unless you knew exactly what quantum pattern to look for, it appeared to be nothing more than a remnant from a long-dead civilization. Origa Four was one of those unlucky planets that had come across a random anomaly. There’d apparently been a sophisticated race here. Not anymore. It had been wiped off the face of its planet, literally. To the unschooled, this monument would look like nothing more than a skeleton from that long-lost civilization. To me….

The universal keys could mean everything. We’d only discovered them after our recent forays into the phase realm. The adventure that had brought us into the phase realm had almost cost the universe everything. The universal keys… I almost couldn’t go there. One word popped up anyway. Multiverse. The keys… this sounded crazy, but the keys could open up this universe and give us access to the multiverse. The first to get there… should I really need to tell you what would happen? If there was one thing germane to all life forms throughout this galaxy – throughout the universe – it was the struggle for resources. It'd led to the destruction of more civilizations than I could count. But that was on a planetary level usually. Now magnify that – magnify that to the multiverse.

I couldn’t help but shake. I shrugged it off. I stood. There was a clipping breeze. I’d already turned my holographic armor on to full. It reticulated its own air. It allowed sounds to come through, but that was it. It didn’t even allow the bite of the breeze to reach my cheeks.

I was only aware of it through a manufactured tactile sensation.

I ignored it and unstuck my feet as I approached the artifact.

My movements were automatic as if something else was currently in control of my body.

I reached out a hand. My lips spread. It only took you two weeks to find this. And it’ll only take you another two weeks to find the rest. I promise, I muttered. My voice had the flavor of someone else’s tone. My commanding officer. My old commanding officer. My father, too. The very man who’d brought me into the Coalition after we’d reconnected after a long separation. He’d picked me up out of my shady pirate past, and he’d taught me something different.

That difference now beat in my head and blared in my ears. It picked my feet up higher. It stretched my fingers out wider. And it locked my hand against the artifact just as the sun seemed to beat down brighter and the wind, though I was only partially aware of it, finally stilled.

My heart stopped beating. My breath ground to a halt. And I… waited. My armor was programmed to interact with the quantum phase realm. It ought to be enough to create a reaction that would bring the key – if it were here – out of the pillar.

But nothing happened.

Come on. I know you’re there. Activate. The Coalition has to get the keys. We’re the only race who knows what to do with them, the only race who isn’t going to condemn the entire universe through greed. Don’t ask me why I did this, but sentimentality took to my heart. My old man had always been one to give needless speeches. Sometimes to the wall if he felt like it. Now I spoke, not just to this earless artifact, but to my own heart. You’ve got to trust us. We’re the good guys.

Rich words coming from an old pirate like me.

Words I nonetheless meant. I slowly opened one eye then the other. I stared at the artifact, daring it not to move after that simple but heartfelt speech. And it… remained exactly where it was. I didn’t expect to hear anything. My senses hadn’t detected anyone nearby. But I wasn’t paying full attention, and I needed to appreciate that the artifact might have a jamming effect on my scanners.

A second later, I heard footsteps. The artifact was large and wide. I couldn’t see beyond it with my eyes. But as my scanners penetrated whatever jamming field was in place, I detected a life form coming up a steep hill I couldn’t see down. Human, they had to be a cadet or an officer. Crap—

I think I heard something – a sob followed by a hard breath. Maybe you should just fall asleep against this old pillar? Fall asleep and never wake up. Can’t disappoint anyone else then, can I?

Wait— I began.

I heard the sound of a hand reaching out. Don’t ask me how – I knew this was impossible – but it felt as if everything slowed down. I became aware of even the slightest scrunch and contraction of muscles, the redirection of blood flow, even the beat of someone else’s heart. It was such a visceral, sudden thing, it was like I was transported into another head. No. I took a split second to appreciate that difference. It was like I was… entangled with someone else, intermeshed at the most fundamental level. Whereas once I’d been one body, now I was two—

My hand was still on the artifact. I hadn’t thought to remove it. A part of me couldn’t. I was locked down against it as this strange sensation continued to surge through my mind.

Then, finally, right in front of my eyes, the artifact lit up. This neon shot of blue danced across the carved surface, ran down into the dirt-covered base, and powered back up to the top.

I heard a woman gasp. It was nothing, nothing compared to the tense breath that ripped out of my throat.

Finally, the artifact was about to give up its bounty.

What the hell is happening? the woman spluttered.

I had my own troubles. I tried to rip my hand back, needed to get ready for what would happen next. But the light surged across the artifact and over my hand, locking it in place. Maybe it interacted with my holographic armor. Perhaps something else happened. The point was, I couldn’t move. And nor, apparently, could she.

I can’t get free. What the—

Whoever you are, I demanded, stay still. You’re interrupting a Coalition mission. Don’t—

I couldn’t say anything more. The light now surged up my arm. It glowed across my body. Who knows what I looked like? I knew what I felt like. Like I’d swallowed all the lightning from some storm. And it played around inside me, shooting from lung to lung, rising up into my chest, sinking down into my stomach, and hollowing me out from the inside.

It felt like I was being prepared for something – like a vessel being emptied out for a host. I—

In a blinding flash, I became aware of the woman once more. Just not the sound of her. Just not the presence of her. All of her. From the lightning strikes of her nerves to the driving drumbeat of her breath. All of it.

I—

It’s picking me up off my feet, she spluttered.

You— The artifact picked me up off my feet, too.

I rose into the air.

Adrenaline hit me. Not a surge, but enough to make me pay attention. Ever since I was kidnapped around the age of five, I’d been no stranger to true danger.

I knew the insides of my nervous system as well as most people knew their own houses. I could chart each adrenal reaction, discern the difference between a little surge and a blast that would keep me safe from a Barbarian Merk warrior.

On the other side of the pillar, I heard the woman splutter, breath now becoming so shallow, it sounded like she’d have a heart attack.

You are ordered to hold on, I finally found my voice. I had to push it through the layers of confusion, focus on the fact it was indeed my voice and not hers. Finally it spilled out. And it did nothing whatsoever.

What the hell is happening? What— Her breathing now became so shallow, it sounded as if she were having a full-blown panic attack.

And all the while, we continued to rise. It was slow, almost mesmeric. It was like being a thought rising up through the levels of consciousness. It didn’t have any motility, wasn’t detached to jet packs or anything so stupid. It just rose naturally, more buoyant than everything else around it. And all the while, the light played over me, bright, unassailable, sinking in. My head suddenly jerked back. The light had reached my eyes. In a flash that seemed as if it lasted forever, I think I saw the whole universe. I didn’t travel through every single planet. But I watched as if from the outside in.

It was as if the universe was some snow globe and I’d just picked it up to shake it….

We rose above the pillar. Both of us at the same time. I spun around, and my eyesight withdrew from the massive context of the universe back down into two eyes belonging to the woman before me. Pretty, they were a dull brown, but one that calmed the senses rather than bored them.

She was a cadet. And a name, unbidden from somewhere, flashed into my head. Emma Hawk.

She had a round face, a large bottom lip, and a shock of tangled white-blond hair. It’d slipped out of her bun long ago, though a few strands were still holding on. It meant her fringe whipped and played around her face, framing her eyes for me, making them like a path that pulled me further in. I don’t know where her name had come from, but I watched in shock as her lips parted and she whispered mine, Bruce Tan.

You— I began.

Both of us suddenly grabbed our heads as she shrieked in pain. I managed to hold on, but searing heat stabbed from temple to temple. It was as bad as a Barbarian screwdriver torture device. But I’d faced worse.

She shrieked again, her head tipping back.

I got the urge to reach out to her.

Basic human instinct, right? You see someone in pain, you try to help.

For a long while, that hadn’t been my basic human instinct. It had been beaten out of me by circumstances. And another had risen to take its place. Survival.

I’d always wondered if the reason I’d had an edge above all my other classmates was that I had learned the full gamut of human experience. Most of them had been the sheltered sons and daughters of admirals and officers. They’d been fed a certain view of the universe. A rosy one. One where they were logically on top, the moral wheat that had risen from the chaff. The universe, in all of its glory, recognized this. It would always protect them.

Not me. Not me – never me. I knew the true cost of human existence – all sentient existence. Fundamentally, it all came down to survival. It didn’t matter how you dressed it up. It didn’t matter what kind of moral cream you tried to spread over the top. At the end of the day, everyone’s just trying to get by.

It was against that backdrop, that internal dialogue, that the mighty Bruce twitched anyway. That his fingers – that my fingers – reached out to her.

It was just as more light surged up from the artifact into her. Now we’d both been pulled away from its surface, the light produced a tethered connection to us. It was this fragile blue, crackling line. Kind of reminded me of the old Chinese belief of a red string connecting lovers.

She gripped her head.

But no matter what she did, she couldn’t get away from the pain or the light.

My fingers pushed past the top of the artifact. I grabbed up her hand. It was just as she became lucid enough to open one eye, to swivel it toward me, and to reach out.

I could tell myself in that moment she reached out because she wanted comfort. That wasn’t the exact look in her eyes. It didn’t account for the way her lips twitched down, for the fact her brow flattened. It almost looked as if she was reaching out to me in my moment of pain, too. For whether I was aware of it or not, a tear or two of agony had streaked down my cheek and splashed over my chin.

Our fingers met, right over the top of the artifact, suspended there in the light of its glow and the promise of its power.

Everything… everything slowed down. A few moments stretched out, beckoning at an eternity I had never known existed. Not an eternity of time. But one of connection. A link that could never be broken. A chain that could tether you to someone, regardless of what occurred, through thick and thin, through destruction and rebirth.

Entanglement. The word snapped into my head. I watched her lips spread,