FightingSanity by Viola Grace

slowly slip into unconsciousness in his arms. Her hair cascaded over his arm and her features were almost pale enough to make his skin look Alliance normal.
    He was glad that she didn’t have to witness the death and gore that was exposed by the disappearance of the green fog. The Raiders had not known what they were taking on when they stole the talents of Bassinor.
    While many of the inmates had been innocent talents like Erinii, there were actual criminals and hostile persons within the facility who had dominance in mind. Bassinor had taken them all and locked them into hallucinations for the safety of their general population.
    It was not the kindest method of dealing with those who merely won the genetic lottery and wanted nothing more than a normal life, but it was the only solution that they had been able to come up with.
    At the debriefing, Erinii was going to learn the whole truth. She was the reason that the Raiders had made a run for the Bassinor facility. In his desperation to save his half-sister, Davio had sent messages everywhere he could think of to gain her freedom and one of those places had been a Raider stronghold.
    While they had waited for Erinii’s progress through the station, Relay had filled in the gaps via the station’s record system. The head of Morganti base had rifled through the data streams until she had discovered the details of not only the compound used to sedate the Bassinor, but the reason for the en masse kidnapping.
    The compound for the green gas had been taken with the talents. It was a derivative from a plant native to the planet where the talents lived and with the hallucinations, it also created a sub-network that allowed unrestrained minds to synch in the same fantasy worlds. The Bassinor talents were literally sharing a world that was theirs alone.

    Chapter Eleven
    She woke the moment that he let her go. Erinii immediately opened her eyes and sat up, despite her fatigue.
    “Erinii, go back to sleep.”
    She sighed. “I wish I could. I can’t seem to sleep unless you are touching me.”
    Dravi smiled. “I will return in a moment.”
    She blinked and noticed that the room she was in was not the one she had been assigned at the Citadel. He disappeared into what she was convinced was the lav and he returned in a matter of minutes.
    Erinii lifted the covers and sighed in relief as she noted that she was wearing the light shift that she had been given for under her robes. She also was no longer scented with the green mist of Bassinor.
    He grinned in the light of the bedside lamp. “We are in my rooms. They are bigger and it seems that my holding you is now part and parcel of your recovery.”
    He flicked off the lamp and she heard a rustle of fabric. In a moment, the covers lifted and he curled around her, his longer limbs extending far past hers as he pulled her tight against him.
    As her body relaxed at his touch, she smiled into the darkness until she realized that he may have a lover and he was forced to spend his night with her.
    No one is forcing me. You need your rest to keep control of your talent. I can and will provide the means to get you your rest.
    She blushed. I don’t mean to keep you from your own life. I am sure that they can find someone else.
    Her breath whooshed out of her as he tightened his arms. “I am your minder, Erinii. Get used to it.”
    “Fine. I will get used to it, but you have every right to a normal life. As soon as I am better, I am sure that I will be able to sleep on my own.”
    “Take it day by day, Erinii. For tonight, get some sleep. We are expected at the Guard base tomorrow morning.”
    His breath was warm on her neck and she stroked the arm resting over her abdomen until she eventually slipped into dreams of stars and worlds she had never seen.
    The next morning when she went to get dressed, an emerald green set of robes waited for her. “What are these?”
    “You have mastered your own talent. While you may have more to learn,