Crosscurrent Read Online Free

in the hold, separated from the equipment and vehicles that otherwise cluttered the compartment. A humanoidslept in stasis in each freezer, three humans and two Rodians. He examined the freezers’ readouts, checking vital signs. All remained in good health.
    Staring at their still features, Kell wondered what happened behind their closed eyes, in the quiet of their dreams. He imagined the zest of their soup and hunger squirmed in his gut. None were so-called Force-sensitives, who had the richest soup, but they would suffice.
    He glided from one freezer to the next, brushing his fingertips on the cool glass that separated him from his prey. His captives’
daen nosi
extended from their freezers to him, his to them. He stopped before the middle-aged human male he had taken on Corellia.
    “You,” he said, and watched his silver lines intertwine with the green lines of the Corellian.
    He activated the freezer’s thaw cycle. The hiss of escaping gas screamed the human’s end. Kell watched as the freezer’s readout indicated a rising temperature, watched as color returned to the human’s flesh. His hunger grew, and the feeders nesting in the sacs of his cheeks twitched. He needed his prey conscious, otherwise he could not transcend.
    He reached through the
daen nosi
that connected him to his meal.
    Awaken
, he softly projected.
    The human’s eyes snapped open, pupils dilated, lids wide. Fear traveled through the mental connection and Kell savored it. The freezer’s readout showed a spiking heart rate, increasing respiration. The human opened his mouth to speak but his motor functions, still sluggish from stasis, could produce only a muffled, groggy croak.
    Kell pressed the release button, and the freezer’s cover slid open.
Be calm
, he projected, and his command wormed its way into the human’s mind, a prophylactic for the fear.
    But growing terror overpowered Kell’s casual psychic hold. The human struggled against his mental bonds, finally found his voice.
    “Please. I have done nothing.”
    Kell leaned forward, took the human’s doughy face in his hands. The human shook his head but was no match for Kell’s strength.
    “Please,” the Corellian said. “Why are you doing this? Who are you?
What
are you?”
    Kell watched all of the human’s
daen nosi
, all of his potential futures, coalesce into a single green line that intersected Kell’s silver one, where it … stopped.
    “I am a ghost,” Kell answered, and opened the slits in his face. His feeders squirmed free of their sacs, wirethin appendages that fed on the soup of the sentient.
    The human screamed, struggled, but Kell held him fast.
    Be calm
, Kell projected again, this time with force, and the human fell silent.
    The feeders wormed their way into the warm, moist tunnels of the Corellian’s nostrils, and rooted upward. Anticipation caused Kell to drool. He stared into the human’s wide, bloodshot eyes as the feeders penetrated tissue, pierced membranes, entered the skull cavity, and sank into the rich gray stew in the human’s skull. A spasm racked the human’s body. Tears pooled in his wide eyes and fell, glistening, down his cheeks. Blood dripped in thin lines from his nose.
    Kell grunted with satisfaction as he devoured potential futures, as the human’s lines ended and Kell’s continued. Kell’s eyes rolled back in his head as his
daen nosi
lengthened and he temporarily became one with the soup of Fate. His consciousness deepened, expanded to the size of the galaxy, and he mentally sampled its potential. Time compressed. The arrangement of
daen nosi
across the universe looked less chaotic. He saw a hint of order. Revelation seemed just at the edge of his understanding, and he experienced a tingling shudder with each beat of his hearts.
    Show me
, he thought.
Let me see
.
    The moment passed as the human expired and Kell let him drop to the floor of the bay.
    Revelation retreated and he backed away from the corpse, gasping. He came back to