Drifters' Alliance, Book 3 Read Online Free Page B

like that seems very, very wrong to me, even now when I’m facing someone who’s been given that power. But if I had the chance to live another day, even if it meant in someone else’s body, would I take it? No.
    He shakes his head. “I thought I knew too.” He turns around and faces the portal that looks out into the Dark. Every room in the brig has this view. “Gus will be very sad when I’m gone. And he’ll still carry me with him. That won’t be easy for him. I hope you’ll be … kind.”
    I back away and shut the door behind me, disturbed at how sad he sounds. How human he sounds.

Chapter Six

    “DID YOU KNOW HE’S CLAIMING to be shadowed?”
    Jeffers is staring at me over his fritter batter. “Excuse me?”
    I advance into the room, seeking a target for my anger. “You heard me. Did you know Tam is walking around this ship as a shadow?” I’ve had enough of being kept in the dark. We have less than two hours before we’re going to be introducing ourselves to a bunch of strangers who want to be our trusted friends, and everything is falling apart inside my hull. Either Jeffers knows this guy is up the river crazy or not, but I need to find out. I need to know who’s keeping potentially damaging secrets from me.
    Jeffers drops his spoon into the bowl and stares at me. “Is this some kind of joke?” He looks around, as if expecting someone to jump out of a cupboard at him.
    “No, it’s not a joke!” I’m quickly losing my temper. “Does this sound like something I’d joke about?”
    “You do have a strange sense of humor, but no, it doesn’t sound like something even you would joke about.” He pauses. “I’ve known Tam for a while now, and I’ve never seen any signs of him being shadowed.”
    “And what exactly would those signs be?” I’m assuming I’m about to catch him in a lie. “I mean, it’s not like you see shadow-selves all over the universe. They’re supposed to be a myth.” I pause. “He’s crazy, right? He and Gus are in on some joint hallucination of some sort?”
    He shrugs. “I assume all myths are based in reality. I have no idea what the scientists in the OSG get up to behind closed doors. But if both Gus and Tam tell you that he’s a shadow, then I would be inclined to believe them.”
    I shake my head. “No way is this OSG. If this is for real, it’s Far Reaches experimentation. Has to be.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Because!” I glare at him, waiting for him to make the connection, but he just stares right back at me. Calming my tone, I try a second time. “Because, the OSG forbids that kind of human manipulation. Taking someone’s consciousness, their memories, their actual personality and uploading it to another location, to another host … that’s just … wrong.”
    “From whose perspective?” Jeffers places his cooking implements off to the side and rests his fingertips on the edge of the counter.
    “From anyone with any morality.”
    “Are you saying that a person’s conscience is their soul?”
    “Yes. Maybe.”
    He nods silently, staring blankly at the wall for a few seconds before coming back to me. “So, if you feel that Tam’s soul has been uploaded into another host, someone has effectively reincarnated him, is that it?”
    I hadn’t thought it through to that point before, but described this way, it does really seem to hit the heart of the matter for me. “Yes. I don’t like it. It’s not natural.”
    Jeffers gives me what I think is his patient smile as he lifts his arms up and gestures around us. “What of any of this is natural, really?” He turns his head left and right. “We live in the Dark, traveling in ships made by man to inhabit a place that is completely inhospitable to humans. We depend on non-sentient beings who do a very good job of mimicking human thought processes and emotions to conduct many of our day-to-day operations. We sometimes eat food that’s been processed beyond the point that it even