Sunspire (The Reach, Book 4) by Mark R. Healy Page A

faint light, like a solitary, distant star in th e night sky.  A wave of coldness seemed to wash over her, desolate and bleak, but in the midst of it there came a mote of warmth.  It was a curious sensation, something she hadn’t expected, like a hot breeze in the middle of a cold winter’s day.
    Then, within the speck of heat came emotions: confusion, fear.  Anger?
    The feelings were emanating from that distant star, she realised, like a weak, indecipherable transmission from something lost in the cosmos.
    Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the light flared, and the gentle warmth became a pinprick of intense, scorching heat.  Ursie felt both drawn into it and repulsed at the same time, and she suddenly felt as though she might become trapped, that she would be pulled into the abyss and lost within forever.
    Just like Jodocus van Asch became lost within me.
    Ursie cried out, wrenching herself free from the grasp of that strange, alien consciousness, and found herself suddenly back in her own body.  She fell heavily to the floor of the Skywalk, hard enough to make her teeth snap together, and then she was scrambling backward, away from the Redman.
    Lazarus remained motionless, slumped on the rear of the sweepdrone, giving no indication that he had reacted to the encounter that had just taken place.
    “What the fuck…?”
    “Hey, you all right, Missy?” Tobias said, reaching down to help her up.
    “Don’t touch me!” she screamed, dodging away from his grasp.  “I told you never to touch me, Tobias!”
    Tobias reeled away, hurt, just as he had the last time he’d tried to reach out to her, back in his apartment after her encounter with the Redmen in the habitat.  He clutched his hands to his chest and wrung them together as if he’d been physically stung.
    “Now why would you go and say that?” he said, his eyes like those of a wounded animal.
    “Didn’t you hear what I told Knile before?  Things happen when I touch people, okay?  Bad things.”
    Tobias gestured to Lazarus.  “You’ve been touchin’ him plenty.”
    Ursie sighed, exasperated.  “That’s because I’m trying to figure out if he’s still alive.  That’s all.”  She got to her feet, realising that her tone had been unnecessarily harsh.  “I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have yelled at you, Tobias.”
    “I don’t understand what’s happening to you, kiddo.  I really don’t.”
    She struggled to find the words.  “Nor do I, half the time.  These powers of mine seem to have mutated.  When I touch people… only bad things come out of it.  Do you get that?  Van Asch was right when he told me this was a curse.  When I reach out to people, the only thing I can do is cause hurt.  I can only destroy.  That’s why I can’t let you, or anyone else, touch me.  Ever again.”
    Tobias looked at her sorrowfully.  “But you can’t go through the rest of your life never touchin’ someone again.  Never allowin’ yourself to feel.”
    “Why not?”
    “You just can’t.”
    Ursie stuck out her jaw, indignant, and turned away from him.  “I’ll do what I have to do.  Whatever it takes, until I can find a way to stop it.”
    Tobias fell silent, and for a time there was nothing to be heard but the distant creaking of the Skywalk, that disconcerting and haunting echo that was like a constant reminder that their time was running out.
    Ursie smiled sourly to herself.  The idea of her dismal future, of being alone, was nothing more than empty talk.  She and Tobias were going to die here in a matter of hours.
    She had no future.  That was the bitter truth of it.
    “I remember my kids playing here, y’know,” Tobias said.
    Ursie turned back to him, surprised.  “What do you mean?”
    Tobias had begun strolling around, looking airily about the place as if he were a tourist.
    “Back when I worked at Sunspire, see?  I remember bringi ng my little ’uns out onto the ol’ Skywalk, letting ’em run around for a bit.”
    “I