Page 54 of Guardian's Soul

"What is UX938?" I asked.

"A space station," he explained. "How old is this stream?"

"According to our system a few days." The way time was calculated in space still confused the hell out of me. Four days of our time could be five months ago by the calculation of someone else.

"Let me see." Thrax pulled the screen over. "Two days. There is no location mapper."

"It sounds like there are others with the same mating marks as ours," I said, not sure how I felt about that, but the potential of finding allies excited me.

THARAAX

At any givenpoint in time, there were always a thousand Space Guardians patrolling the universe. At least according to the Ohrurs, but with all the other lies they had told, this might not be true either. Anyway, I creased my brow at the thought that of all the Space Guardians in the universe, it was Zaarek and Nockagainwho crossed my path, even if it was only on a holo stream. I might have written it off as a coincidence, but with the mating marks and everything else happening, that made me doubt it. I felt as if a higher power was at work here, trying to bring us together.

I had only caught a quick glimpse of Zaarek when Nock pointed his camera at him. I paged back until I had a still image of him and zoomed it in.

"There." I pointed excitedly at his hand. Most of his arm was hidden by his uniform, but a small mating mark line, or Soulweb Glyph, poked out.

"Oh." Hannah shouldered me to the side to have a better look. "Do you think he too…"

I pulled her against me. "I do."

"We have to go find them," she beamed.

Without a mapping stamp, it was impossible to figure out where Zaarek was right now. For all I knew, he could have left UX938 days ago, according to the time we were keeping right now. Had Zaarek included this information in his message, I could have fed it into my computer and would have had an idea of when Zaarek would reach his destination. Without it, going to UX938 was like a fool's errand. It was the only lead we had, though.

"Is there a way to contact Nock? He's a streamer, right? There must be a way to contact him."

I stared at my amazing little human. Why hadn't I thought of that? I kissed her forehead. "You're amazing! And yes, you're right."

"A man telling me I'm right." She shook her head in mock astonishment. "Twice in a day. I think my head is going to explode."

"I'll always tell you if you're right"—I winked—"or wrong."

"Haha, let's see how we can contact him and see if he's still with Zaarek."

It didn't take long to devise a message and send it off into space. The question was only how long it would take for it to arrive. Sometimes messages got lost, drifting for years through space without ever reaching their intended target. Even lightspeed and quantum entanglements hadn't solved that problem yet. Most of the time, comms would synchronize with one another and would find the ideal point in time to send or receive a message, but without knowing where Nock was, that option was out of the question. I set a timer that would repeatedly send the same message every few hours, hoping that at some point, we would be close enough that he would receive at least one of them. I couldn't stop a small grin when I imagined Nock's face at seeing hundreds of the same message in his inbox. But then my grin faltered when I considered how manymessages the holostreamer might receive a day. He had trillions of fans around the universe.

My name should tip him off, though. As a holostreamer, he would have a program that sorted messages by importance; mine would be right at the top.

All we could do now was wait.

"Let's grab a bite to eat and rest. Tomorrow morning, we'll have at Possedion again," I suggested.

"Sounds like a plan," Hannah agreed, and we walked into the break room, where we filled our bodies with the nutrients they needed before returning to our quarters.

I fully intended to let Hannah get some rest, but when I lay down behind her, pulling her body against mine, and she ground her little ass into my loins, those intentions changed rapidly.

Having the same female in my bed night after night was still a new concept to me, and it being Hannah filled me with so much happiness that it was almost frightening. I had no idea how I had ever slept alone or breathed without her by my side, but now that she was here, I didn't think I could do either ever again if she weren't near. After I showed her how much I loved her, I closed my eyes and inhaled her sweet scent deeply, felt her warm skin under my palm, and sighed with contentment. Until another appeared in front of my vision. Silver skin, black hair, and black eyes replaced Hannah's alabaster skin, brown hair, and honey eyes. With that image, a sharp pain ran through my brain. I took a deep breath in and sat up with a start, panting to breathe as if I hadn't for minutes.

Hannah mumbled something in her sleep, and I leaned over to kiss her forehead and pull the blanket up around her, knowing fully well that sleep wouldn't come for me for a while yet.

My heart was pounding inside my chest as if it were franticto get out, and the pounding in my head increased the moment her name flashed across my mind…Suahaana.

It felt as if part of me had been cut off. No, I thought, losing a part of my body would have been preferable to the feeling of loss inside my chest. I crushed the urge to pull Hannah into my arms. One, I wanted to let her get the sleep she needed, and two, I felt if I did that, I would betray both of them at the same time, as irrational as that sounded.

I made my way to the bridge, intending to crack the code that prevented me from getting into therealOhrur database. What Possedion had given me access to was only an outer shell, like a wall surrounding the real thing. But like any other wall, they could be breached and entered to get to what I wanted. I just had to figure out how.

Plus, I had a name now, two, actually. Darlam and Soulweb Glyphs. I fed both into the GTU database, hoping to glean information from there.

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