After reaching cruising speed, Nash engaged the autopilot, unbuckled her harness, and turned to face the men who sat behind her. Kory stayed where she was, securely fastened and stiff as a board while her lightless eyes absorbed the blurry stars outside the front windshield. She wanted no part in what came next.

  “You want to tell me what the hell that was!?” Nash was off to the races.

  “Look, I was doing my best!” Greg raised his arms in exasperation. “If you had only let me talk to him a little bit longer instead of rushing us all out of there.”

  “Not you, I’ve heard enough out of you for one, if not several days. But don’t think you’re off the hook just yet.” Nash narrowed her eyes at Greg before turning them across the aisle. “It’s time, Sohrab. Out with it!” The man she addressed slunk down in his seat and grinned back at her with all the impertinence of a petulant teenager.

  “Yeah,” Greg added, eager to pile the aggression on somebody else. Sohrab rose to his feet and shrugged off his coat, revealing a gray turtleneck over which he wore a small decorative chain. He stood in the aisle, leaning on the seat back and fiddling with the necklace as he prepared to stun them with his primary source of satisfaction, but not before taking a small nip from the flask in his pocket as a nod to the secondary. Only the sight of Kory’s accusing and bewildered gaze as she too turned and rose to face him knocked even a tenth of the wind out of his sails. Not enough to slow him down though, so he began. “Not a bad idea,” said Greg, referencing the drink, as he left for the back of the ship to fetch his own.

  “Can you believe you’re going to thank me when all of this is over?” Sohrab smirked, holding his chin high as to properly leer down the bridge of his pointed nose at her.

  “I doubt that, severely. Now get on with it,” Nash ordered.

  “My earliest memory is bathed in red.” He lowered his gaze but continued to smile, as if the anger in the air gave him life. “I wasn’t much older than three or four, but I remember being drawn from a puddle by our mother on that horrid world that gave you life…” his eyes were on Kory, but he glanced dismissively at Zol too. “…and you as well I suppose.”

  Nash pinched the bridge of her nose and squinted in pain to think of another one of Sohrab’s meandering and self-important ‘explanations.’ “I didn’t ask about your earliest memo –”

  “For those of you who don’t know, or weren’t told, I grew up in the same house as her.” He drove on, pointing his pinky finger at Kory. “The details of that arrival are still unknown, even to me. But what I do know is that at some point in my earlier youth, it seems a lifetime ago now, I did find the planet of my birth, and the people who were my own.”

  “You never did tell us where you got those coordinates from,” Kory spoke up for the first time that day.

  “It was revealed to me in a dream.”

  “Just go ahead and put me out the airlock,” Nash groaned.

  “Keep on and see what happens!” Sohrab snapped, his pretense of composure all too quickly exhausted. “The point is that I really met them, my own kind, my genetic equals, and I couldn’t get away from them fast enough!” By now, Greg had returned from the kitchen, wine in hand, and all too keen to see how the situation progressed.

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  “What’d I miss?” He asked, taking a furtive sip out of the dark glass.

  “He just told us he’s inbred.” Nash scoffed.

  “Oh word? I got a cousin like that.” Greg mumbled supportively. At this point, the commotion was too much for even Zol to ignore. He rose from his seat to witness the drama unfolding.

  “Laugh if you want to.” Sohrab threw his head back to take an even longer pull from the flask. When he lowered his eyes again they were as full of fire as his voice was with venom. “The gift I received from my own wretched kin is more priceless than anything you all can understand, and it’s why you’ll all do well to show a little respect.” He paused for effect, fully expecting at least one more question or interruption. Finding none, he let the bomb drop at last. “I can read minds.” After the ensuing shock and disbelief at his admission, the denial began, then the bargaining, then the thought experiments to prove he was legitimate. Once acceptance washed over the group that they really did have a psychic in their midst, they processed the realization for a moment and then circled back to anger.

  “How can you imagine we would have WANTED this?” Nash exclaimed.

  “You’re only upset I didn’t tell you what you wanted to hear back there, but if anything, I saved you all from boggling the whole negotiation further!” Sohrab argued. “That’s what I do for a living, you know.”

  “You tattle on people… professionally?” Nash was so exhausted at this point she could hardly believe the words coming out of her own mouth. “Why would you tell anybody that?”

  “You’ve been hearing our thoughts this whole time?” Greg accused.

  “No, it’s not a constant flood of other people’s minds coming into mine, I can target it if I need to.” Sohrab explained, failing to see how this information didn’t make his situation any better.

  “Did you read my mind?” The Earthling asked.

  “Only briefly down there, just enough to know you had no idea what you were talking about, no direction at all really. You should thank me for not letting you make an even bigger mess of it.”

  “How did I not know?” Greg’s voice lowered, eyes wide with shock.

  “You think if I could announce my presence in your brain, I would?” Sohrab continued, refusing to put down the shovel in the pit of his own making.

  “You’re a real piece of garbage, you know that?” Nash said to him, all of her anger now fully on target. Zol stood at her side, arms folded over his chest, and scowling like always. He hadn’t been very trusting of newcomers to begin with, especially not this one.

  “I wish you had just been inbred, not psychic,” Greg muttered. He seemed genuinely hurt.

  “He still might be,” Nash scorned, eager to embrace this unrestrained side of herself. “I think he uses all that hair to hide the fact that his head is a weird shape!” Sohrab tolerated her insults, glaring all the while from behind the overgrown mass of hair that hid his weird-shaped head. Her outward rage was merely a diversion. What really cut deep was the cold silence he felt from Kory, who had since turned away from him to stare again into the racing starlight.

  “I know you’re in here.” She thought. “And I know you’ve been here before. I will never trust you again.” Her mind went on from that affirmation to a place of anger and disappointment. He did not approach her, knowing there would be no point.

  The rest of the ride back to Celhesru was joyless. When they landed, Nash took it upon herself to order Sohrab to never speak to any of them ever again, for he could not be trusted. As he left them to walk across the cold hangar alone, a bitter rage burned within him, adding to the darkness underpinning his very being. He swore from then on, none but himself would benefit from his gift, and that his only goal would be to take as much as he could from a world so unwilling to give.