Shades of Treason Read Online Free PDF Page A

she’s snapped,” he said. By default, that made Ash a traitor.
    His words and the unspoken conclusion hung between them.
    “Her mental breakdown could have been temporary. I’ll be able to tell you more after I evaluate her.” She took the straw out of her coffee and set it aside. A few seconds later, she said, “They still talk about you on Caruth. Your tap-out rate hasn’t been broken yet.”
    He acknowledged her words with a grunt, then took a sip of his drink, letting it burn down his throat. He’d had a talent for identifying the cadets who would walk to the data-con in front of the barracks, tap in their ID-sigs, and quit the training program. Roughly two percent of the population of the Known Universe was identified as anomalies each year. Out of those, less than one percent agreed to travel to Caruth and let themselves be brainwashed into obeying the commands of a stranger. And out of that one percent, very few were women. That’s why there’d been so much pressure from the intelligence committee to pass Ash. No woman had ever completed the training, and they yearned for an anomaly with one more weapon in her arsenal.
    Ash was exactly what they desired: beautiful, lethal, and supremely intelligent. More importantly, she was willing to submit to the loyalty training. Only the desperate agreed to go through that terror and give up their free will.
    Was Ash desperate enough to commit treason? She was from Glory. Few people survived on that planet without losing their souls.
    “How’s the new instructor working out?” He took a long draught of his coffee and let the bitter liquid chase away all thoughts of his cadet.

CHAPTER FOUR
    THE SLEEP-SLAB WAS hard and lumpy, and the transparent blanket too thin for Ash to sleep well. She tried resting on her side so she could use her arms as a pillow, but the metal support beams hurt her hip, and her cuffs dug grooves into her wrists. They didn’t want her to be comfortable. Probably didn’t want her to get much sleep at all.
    She must have drifted off for at least a few minutes though. When she became aware of her surroundings again, she felt somebody watching her. She knew it was Rykus by the smell of his aftershave, but she kept her eyes closed and focused on recapturing the elusive memories from her dream.
    Jevan, her deceitful, manipulative farce of a fiancé, shouldn’t have stepped onto her team’s shuttle—he shouldn’t have been carrying a gun and grinning—and for the first time in her life, Ash had frozen. She didn’t think that was possible, to be struck immobile by fear. Maybe she’d still been rattled from the stun grenade the boarders had thrown into the shuttle, but she’d let him approach. It still hadn’t clicked—she hadn’t made all the connections, not until Jevan picked up the comm-cuff that held the stolen data she’d re-encrypted.
    Jevan’s presence wasn’t a coincidence. Jevan was an enemy.
    A spy.
    A telepath.
    And Trevast hadn’t been joking. He’d known .
    Cheerfully, Jevan had duplicated the Sariceans’ files, but his smile disappeared when he discovered he couldn’t access the data. He’d turned to her and demanded the cipher. Ash had glanced at her team lead, but Trevast had shaken his head. A second later, Jevan put a bullet between his eyes.
    There were more bullets, more threats, a plea for his life from the youngest member in her squad. She’d almost given Jevan the key then, but Chakin—for two minutes her commanding officer—ordered her to keep silent. Jevan turned, raised his gun again, and Chakin’s brains scattered across the dura-steel tiles.
    The dream, the memory, blurred after that. She remembered her ears ringing and the room spinning as her fiancé took her face between his gloved hands. She remembered him looking into her eyes as he’d done a hundred times before, but this time, the gaze was different. This time, it was penetrating.
    She’d fallen to her knees. She felt his touch and heard his