The Healer (The Order of Intergalactic Peace #1) - Kelly Lucille Page 0,3

the structure looked like it could crumble at the slightest breeze, someone had taken the time and initiative to reinforce the door, and the windows were boarded up and secured against even the smallest gleam of light escaping. That, as much as the feeling of hovering death that surrounded one of the occupants, told her she was at the right place.

She took a breath and stepped out of the dense shadows, allowing her body to resume a normal heartbeat and temperature. A trick only a healer could pull off, or a powerful hunter. It allowed whatever sensors were aimed at her to finally see her. She wasn’t exactly spotlighted standing on the abandoned road in night blackness, but she felt like it.

For all intents and purposes she had only taken a few steps, but they would now know she was there. She just had to wait for them to come to her now, and hope that the rebels inside were still as honorable as the last time she had a run in with them. Before she had honed her skills enough to escape detection. When they had first saved her life and then let her go with only the promise of future aid. A promise she had come today to fulfill.

The door opened with the quiet snicks of multiple locks. She stepped forward, and it opened wide enough to allow her inside. Unlike the moonlit rubble outside, the darkness inside was unbroken. She had to rely on her other senses for information. She could feel three heartbeats just inside, but only one of them was directly behind the door. It closed with a breath of wind behind her and the locks snicked again before the lights came on and she could see the room, and the rebels she had come to meet.

The one beside her had a psi signature she recognized.

A hunter then, she thought, as she kept her heartbeat steady and her nerves tamped down. He might not have the level of power even close to her father’s, but he would still be able to read her every reaction with his enhanced senses.

“How was it,” he asked, his voice as rough as the stubble that roughened his granite jaw. “That you were able to get that close before we picked you up on our sensors?” She read the rest of what he did not say, which was that she got that close without him sensing her but said nothing.

She knew he was a hunter, nobody else would by just looking at him and it was imperative that she keep that aspect of her power designation to herself. If they knew all the gifts being her level of a healer could manifest they would never let her walk away again. Not just because they would want to use her, but because she would be even more useful to their enemies.

“I am a healer,” she said quietly, giving them something to hopefully ally suspicions. “I can regulate my body temperature, and do as a rule, anytime I am walking underneath a Fleet destroyer in an occupied city after curfew.”

“Do that a lot do you?” another voice asked. Twins she thought as she looked at the brother and sister deeper inside the room. Early twenties, younger by a good ten years than the hunter beside her. Morphers, mid-level. Non-descript was the best way to describe them. Brown hair, brown eyes, unremarkable features and average of height. The usual for morphers whose power was to adapt and change to their circumstances. These two would blend into any crowd even without the use of their powers.

Not so much the hunter they traveled with. Six foot and some change he towered over her admittedly small stature. If she really stretched herself she could reach five feet five but only just. Unlike the fluid muscles of a predator that were obvious beneath his flight leathers, she was soft.

She was stronger than she looked, and her stamina was high thanks to her father’s hunter training. She could run fast when she had to and carry a heavy backpack for hours without needing a rest, but strength wise she was as weak as any non-powered female of her small size, and her speed and dexterity were just above average.

“I’m a healer,” she said again. As if that was the answer to the male twin’s question. And it was. A healer went where she was needed.

They all understood that. Still she knew they were studying her softness and her