Drifters' Alliance, Book 3 Read Online Free Page A

the wannabe human by the shoulder, shoving him toward the door. “Get to the brig.”
    Tam leans over and opens the portal with a swipe of his hand.
    I point at Gus while keeping half an eye on his brother. “You stay here. Don’t leave.”
    “Don’t hurt my brother,” he says, for the first time sounding strong and unafraid.
    “How could I possibly do that? According to you, your bother is already dead.” I glare at him one last time before leaving him and locking the door behind me.

Chapter Five

    “YOU KNOW … I’M GLAD THIS happened,” Shadow-Tam says as he walks in front of me to the brig.
    “Stop talking.” I hate that this person, this thing, is speaking to me.
    Apparently, part of my brain has decided Gus and the-thing-formerly-known-as-Tam could be telling the truth. Why can’t it just shut up until I can figure out what to do with it?
    “It’s better if we get things out in the open. There are too many secrets on this ship. I can see now that you’ll never be able to be an effective leader without knowing what’s really going on.”
    Much as I’d like to keep telling him to shut his mouth, now he has me curious. And I’m not naive enough to think that this wasn’t his plan all along, from the moment he started talking.
    We reach the brig, and I open the nearest door. “Get in.”
    He walks inside and turns around when he’s in the middle of the chamber. “Please don’t be angry at Gus. He’s just doing what any loving brother would do in his situation.”
    “Bullshit. I’d never do it.” Shadow science? Moving cerebral uploads into other bodies? No way. The OSG always taught us that cerebral uploads were for future scientific uses with computers, not something that would actually be put into a walking, talking, breathing body that comes from … who the hell knows where.
    “Don’t be too sure about that,” Tam says. “Sometimes you have no idea what you’re capable of doing until you’re faced with a situation that forces you out of your comfort zone.”
    “Bullshit.” My hand hovers over the keypad to shut the portal.
    “What if it were Baebong who was dying? Would you host his consciousness? Keep it safe?”
    “No.” I shake my head while feeling guilty as hell. If my friend were listening to me, would I answer differently? No, probably not. I can’t help but think he’d feel betrayed by my answer.
    “What about your family?” Tam asks.
    “No. Never.” My mother is gone and there’s no one else I’d even consider keeping alive. “When the universe decides it’s your turn to go, it’s your turn to go.”
    “What if it’s murder that causes someone to go before their time? What if it isn’t right or fair?”
    I shrug. “No one ever said life was going to be fair.”
    “What if you were killed unjustly? Wouldn’t you want someone to host your consciousness so you could come back and live out your life as you were born to?”
    “No!” My words come out too loud. Even to my own ears, my answer sounds like a lie. “No,” I say again, softer this time. “When it’s my time to go, that’s it. I’m gone.”
    His mouth turns up in a very sad version of a smile. “You say that as a person who’s never faced her own death before.”
    I laugh bitterly. “Yeah, right. I’ve faced my own death too many times to count.”
    “No, you’ve faced potentially deadly situations, but not death itself.” He drops his arms to his sides and stares at me. “Death is a very final thing. Until you are walking into her arms, you don’t know whether you’ll be prepared to accept her embrace or fight her touch with everything you have left.”
    “You’re wrong. I know what I’d do.” I feel sick saying that, because until this moment, I never really thought about it that hard, and now I realize I might not be as sure as I thought I was. I always considered death to be something out of my hands, something I wouldn’t have a choice over. Having a choice over something