Page 3 of Mistletoe

“I know you can hear me.”

Hal groaned softly, the only response he could manage.

“I’ll talk to the captain when people have a chance to cool down. You signed a contract. They can’t revoke the compensation package.”

The situation was less than ideal. When he woke, he’d be stripped of the privileges that came with his job. No resources. No plot of land to call his own. No material to build a home. He’d be stuck with an emergency shelter. Those things were barely better than a canvas tent.

“I’ll see you when you wake,” Ethan said, injecting Hal with a serum that burned.

Drowsiness masked the chemicals flowing through his veins. Soon, he’d start a new chapter.

He woke.Pain flooded his senses. Bones broke and reformed, reshaping his body.

And woke. Consciousness was agony. His teeth were wrong, razor-sharp, and biting into his own tongue. His lips pulled around new growth. His voice was no longer his own.

And woke again, falling through an endless process of swimming up into painful consciousness and then slipping back into oblivion.

Every time he managed to be alert, only one face greeted him: Lord Draven.

The room was stark white and sterile. Then it grew worn, no longer pristine. Equipment failed. Lights flickered, then shut down forever. Hal’s world grew smaller and darker.

There was pain and rage. Often, he could break the chains holding him. Somehow, his body had changed, was changing. He was much stronger than previously, but the anger felt the same, never far from the surface. He lost his voice, torn away to screams and roars. Sometimes, he escaped. Never far. Never for long before he was dragged back into the cryo chamber.

One day, he was allowed to remain outside the cryo chamber. No more forced sleep. The fog in his head lifted. The anger was there, bubbling up.

Lord Draven kept him in a cage in a dungeon.

Hal would kill him if he had the chance. That coldhearted monster stole his brother.

Each awakening was like a pearl on a string, isolated but a connected series.

Then change. Strangers shoved a woman into his cage. She smelled of Draven, crisp like snow, and the stench of fear. Despite her overwhelming fear, she was kind. Her name was Charlotte. She spoke to Hal. No one had spoken to him in ages. He could barely speak himself, his voice raw and disused.

Then Draven’s body was dumped into the cell, badly hurt but not as badly as Hal wanted to hurt him.

He restrained himself.

As a reward, Hal overheard Draven explain to Charlotte who he was in relation to Draven—his brother—and how Draven betrayed him. Betrayed the entire colony.

The colony ship—it seemed a lifetime ago Hal was on the ship—went off course. The nearest world could not support human life. The passengers had to adapt. In this instance, adaptation meant radical gene therapy. It was not unheardof on Earth, where people tweaked their respiratory systems or heat tolerance to survive on an increasingly inhospitable Earth.

The captain asked Draven—then known as Ethan Radcliffe—to find a solution. He did.

The unforeseen happened when the ship landed.Tweakscaused mutations. Some people changed dramatically into monsters, like Hal and Draven. Some lost their lives.

Draven’s explanation made it sound so clinical, a terrible accident. The cost of lives had been a steep but necessary price for the colony’s survival.

Then he was out. For the first time, Hal was able to wander Draven’s fortress freely. Clothes had been offered, but he declined. He wanted others to see how his brother treated him. To behold his disfigurement and know that Draven—Ethan—put every scar on his person.

Hal took the first opportunity to flee the fortress when the gate opened.

The new world.

Finally.

Chapter One

Hal

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