Last Guard

by Nalini Singh

  In case of significant injury or death to Magdalene Mercant as a result of any part of the pregnancy or pregnancies, the compensation terms of Addendum 1 will come into effect.

  *Should this match only produce a single viable child, a “familial disadvantage” fee will be negotiated per the rates in Addendum 2.

  Coda: Per the Mercant Family Group’s practice, a coda will be added to the contract stating that while the first child will be part of the Fernandez Family Group, Magdalene Mercant will be consulted should there come a time when a terminal—or apt to be terminal—decision has to be made in relation to the child.

  Violation of this coda will result in the rejection by the Mercants of all future contract proposals by the Fernandez family, including in business, for intelligence information, for contract work, and such other matters as may arise.

  This coda would survive the dissolution of the contract.

  Standard terms for fertilization and conception agreements (attached) apply where not contradicted by this personalized framework.

  Opinion: As legal counsel for the Fernandez Family Group, we note that the coda is the only unusual point in this draft framework. Research tells us that the last time a family group breached this coda was in 2001. The Mercants have never again interacted with them—and neither have their allies. As a result, that family group has gone from a power to being all but unknown. There is no room for give on this point.

  However, if the other party follows all contractual terms, the Mercants have a track record of maintaining ties with any child who is genetically linked to them—and of assisting those children in various ventures. While this has the effect of growing the Mercant network, it also benefits the other party, as the Mercants prioritize such contacts when it comes to information requests.

  Furthermore, Magdalene Mercant is from the central branch of the Mercant family, a branch that has consistently produced high-Gradient Psy. There is no one lower than a 6.5 in her direct line. Given that Binh Fernandez comes from a similar line, the chances of producing high-Gradient offspring is significant.

  Therefore, it is our considered opinion that the proposed contract is fair, and of significant future value to the Fernandez Family Group. We advise commencement of negotiations to finalize this contract and set up a timeline for the necessary medical procedures.

  Before

  Subject exhibits significant psychological and mental deficiencies. Likelihood of recovery and/or return to the family unit is nil.

  All necessary measures authorized by legal guardian, but they are to be consulted prior to a decision to permanently discontinue treatment.

  —File Update: 3K

  SHE DIDN’T RUN to the door. She ran to him, to the boy who’d made her laugh and slipped her extra food when the teachers weren’t looking. “Come on,” she said, tugging at his hand.

  The teacher was choking on his own blood and making gurgling sounds, but she didn’t look, tried not to hear. She’d done a bad thing, a very bad thing, but he’d been hurting the boy. He’d broken a bone!

  “Come on!” She tugged again. “We can go before they come looking!”

  But the boy shook his head. “My legs don’t work anymore.” A rasp. “Not just heavy and half-numb. Nothing.” Breaking their handclasp, he pushed at her leg. “Run! Go! Get away before they find you!”

  She couldn’t go and just leave him here. They’d hurt him again.

  Running to the door, she began to shove a desk against it. It was heavy. But she got it done. The teacher had stopped making noises by the time she got the door blocked. Coming back to the boy, she sat down next to him and took his hand again, held on tight.

  “No,” she said when he told her to run again. “I’m no one. I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  Chapter 3

  Please advise status of Canto Fernandez, minor, age 8, with a genetic link to my family group. It has been brought to my attention that he is no longer an active member of your family unit.

  —Ena Mercant (CEO, Mercant Corp.) to Danilo Fernandez (CEO, Fernandez Inc.) (29 July 2053)

  AFTER ABSORBING ALL the data her family had on the Mercants, Payal had gone hunting on her own. She was highly skilled at unearthing information. But locating anything on Canto Mercant after he hit eight years of age had proved impossible.

  Even before that, she’d almost not found him. It had been a small notice in the PsyNet Beacon’s Births and Deaths column that had alerted her to the fact he’d begun life with a different name.

  Binh Fernandez is pleased to announce the result of his F&C Agreement with Magdalene Mercant. The resulting male child is to be named Canto Fernandez.

  That had to be him. The first name was unusual and there was the Mercant connection.

  The now-deceased Binh Fernandez had been the eldest son of the Fernandez Family Group out of Manila, and Canto had been listed as his first child on a family tree she was able to dig up. Mercants, Payal had discovered during her research, didn’t enter into many conception or fertilization contracts, preferring to keep their family unit relatively compact.

  Most of them had muted public profiles at best. Canto’s might as well not exist.

  Even before the transfer of guardianship from Fernandez to Mercant, information on him was sketchy at best. As indicated by the birth notice, the Fernandez family had been eager to announce their link with the Mercants. Two months later, Binh Fernandez had repeatedly mentioned his “son and heir” in an interview.

  Then dead silence.

  No images of the child Canto anywhere.

  No school records.

  No mentions by Binh in future interviews.

  Which told Payal that Canto Mercant had a flaw that had become apparent in the months after his birth. Given what she’d seen in her own family, she was skeptical of any such judgment. Her psychopathic brother had long been considered perfect, while she’d fallen into the “problem” category, and fourteen-year-old Karishma would be termed a liability should the information about her rare genetic disorder make its way to their father.

  The only reason Payal’s younger sister was even alive was because testing for that disorder wasn’t part of the standard battery run on all newborns. Yet “flawed” Kari was in every way more of an asset than outwardly perfect Lalit.

  You simply had to have a brain that could see beyond the most obvious gains.

  Which the Mercants had if they’d ended up with a hub-anchor in their midst without any apparent protest from the Fernandez family. Binh had died at the same time Canto disappeared off the Fernandez family tree, so the transfer could’ve been related to that, but Payal didn’t think so.

  Psy didn’t let go of genetic capital.

  That was the sum total of all she knew about Canto Mercant. She hadn’t been able to locate a single image of him. That spoke less to a low profile and more to a conscious effort to remain unseen.

  Even Ena Mercant, head of the Mercant family, wasn’t that difficult to pinpoint.

  Was it possible the Mercants hadn’t truly accepted Canto, that they forced him to stay out of sight? No. The Mercants were known to prize family loyalty; they would not have rejected a child they’d claimed. Which left one other possibility—that Canto Mercant was so invisible because he ran the Mercant information network.

  That was how he’d found her.

  Still thinking, she walked out onto her balcony. The air was hot but clean thanks to a smog-dissolution device invented by the local tiger pack. Payal had recently negotiated a deal to license a related device designed to eliminate the limited pollution currently created by certain Rao industrial interests.

  Despite the clear financial returns forecast as a result, her father had stated she was an idiot for “dealing with the animals,” but her father was no longer CEO. Pranath Rao might have an ace in the hole that meant he could pull her
strings, control her on a personal level, but he knew she’d choose the nuclear option if he tried to hobble her business decisions.

  This was a new world, and Payal intended to take the Rao empire into it, not be left behind. Which was why she lifted her phone with its encrypted line to her ear after inputting the call code Canto Mercant had included with his letter. She had no idea of his physical location, so she didn’t know if it was night or day there, but when he answered after four rings, his tone, though gravelly and deep, was alert.

  “Canto.” A single hard word.

  “You sent me a letter,” she said without identifying herself, even though he had to have sent letters to more than one A.

  “Payal Rao.” No hesitation. “You sound exactly as you do in the interviews I’ve watched.”

  She wondered if he was referring to the “robot” description that had stuck to her like glue. True enough if he was; she took care to never allow her shields to drop, never allow the world to see through to the screams hidden in the deepest corner of her psyche. To do that would be to sentence herself to death.

  The Rao family had made an art form of the term “survival of the fittest.”

  “You’re attempting to set up an anchor union,” she said, wanting him to lay out his cards, this invisible man who knew too much. “To what purpose?”

  “The Ruling Coalition has—from all evidence so far—good intentions, but they’re making decisions without knowledge of a critical factor. You’re a hub. You know full well what I’m talking about.”

  Payal’s hand tightened on the phone at the brusque challenge in his tone. “We need to talk face-to-face.” Negotiating with a faceless voice was not how she did business; she liked to see her allies—and her enemies. “For all I know, you’re a clever twelve-year-old hacker from Bangalore.”

  Payal hadn’t meant it as a joke. She didn’t do jokes. But she had enough life experience to know that a human or changeling would’ve laughed at the comment. Perhaps an empath, too. The rest of her race was yet coming to terms with being permitted to feel emotion.

  She hadn’t worked out where Canto Mercant fell on that spectrum, and his response to her comment didn’t offer any additional insight. “I’ll message you an image for a teleport lock. Can you meet in fifteen minutes?”

  “Agreed.”

  Hanging up, she stared at her vibrant city. The slow feline stride of a woman below caught her eye, and she knew even from a distance that one of the GoldenNight tigers had ventured into the city streets.

  Unlike many feline changeling groups, the tigers and leopards of India didn’t mind interacting with city populations, but they didn’t live in the urban centers. The spaces were too constrained, the pathways too cramped.

  As the changeling prowled out of sight, a scooter swerved around a town car, while three pedestrians with shopping bags decided to stop traffic by simply stepping out onto the road to cross.

  She’d once hosted a meeting with a Psy business associate normally based out of Geneva. The man had recoiled at the energetic beat of her city. “How can you live here?” he’d asked. “So many people, so much noise, everything . . . unorganized.”

  He was wrong.

  Delhi was highly organized. You just had to be a local to see it. But before being a denizen of this old city, before being the Rao CEO, Payal was an anchor.

  That thought in mind, she picked up her encrypted organizer once more. Canto Mercant had sent the image as promised: of an oasis in a desert, one made unique not only by the placement of certain palms, but by the etchings on the flat gray stones that had been placed on the sand in a wide pathway that led gently down to cerulean blue water.

  The sands were a fine gold that made her wonder if she was teleporting to the Gobi desert, that place where the dunes sang and sunset turned cliffs to fire.

  Focusing on the image, she felt her mind begin a trace and lock. One second. Two. She had it, the knowledge a hum in her blood. Had the image been imprecise or generic, she’d have gotten a feeling of sliding or bouncing off things, her brain unable to settle.

  She’d always wondered if other teleport-capable Tks felt the same sensations but had never trusted one well enough to ask. Even the most minor mental deviations could be cause for concern when it came to one of Designation A. Because anchors as a whole weren’t stable.

  Councilor Santano Enrique’s psychopathic murder spree had just cemented that belief in the minds of those who knew what he’d done. The vast majority of the population didn’t know, but Payal wasn’t the vast majority of the population.

  She was a cardinal telekinetic.

  She was an anchor.

  She was exactly like Santano Enrique.

  Before

  Find Magdalene’s son. Find Canto Fernandez.

  —Priority 1 mission alert from Ena Mercant to entire Mercant network (1 August 2053)

  THE BOY KNEW his small rescuer’s makeshift barrier would fall at the first strong push, but he didn’t say anything. The truth was, even if she ran, there was nowhere for her to go. This re-education facility was in the middle of snowy wilderness—and they both had cages around their minds, imprisoning their psychic abilities.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to her, as molten arcs of pain shot up his spine in painful contrast to the lack of sensation in his legs. “That you had to do that.”

  She used her free hand to pat the hand she held. “You didn’t make me.” It was a firm statement. “He hurt me, too.”

  But he knew she’d killed in that moment because of him, because of the threat to his life. The teacher wouldn’t have stopped, not today. The adult male had known that no one would care if Canto died. The children in this school were all flawed, all unwanted. He and the girl were the only cardinals, but even their great psychic abilities hadn’t been enough to make up for their imperfections.

  If he hadn’t been a cardinal, he’d have wondered why his father hadn’t simply strangled him when it became obvious he wasn’t a “normal” baby. Even at just over eight years of age, he knew his father’s family wielded a lot of power. Enforcement wouldn’t have looked too deeply into the “accidental” death of a baby.

  But a cardinal, even a broken one, could be useful. So he’d been allowed to live. Until his brain began to act too strangely to accept. His father had told him that this school was his “last chance to step up and be a Fernandez.” As if Canto could just fix the misfires in his brain that meant he heard voices—as if he could will his body to work as it should.

  Looking up into his small friend’s cardinal eyes, he wondered at her power, but didn’t ask. As his power meant nothing here, so did hers. Not with their minds trapped in psychic barbed wire. So he said, “What will you do when you get out, are free?” He wanted freedom for her more than he did for himself—she’d been here longer, suffered longer.

  She was younger, her starlit eyes stark with reality, but she got all bright and happy at his question. “I watched a recording of pink blossom trees once, all in a row. The blossoms were falling and I wanted to walk under them. I’ll do that.” She squeezed his hand. “What about you?”

  He told her, asked her more questions. She was so smart, so vivid. He liked being around her, liked listening to her dreams. She was telling him about her favorite animal when the door smashed open. Then the girl who’d saved him was being wrenched away from him, and he realized he’d never asked her name. No one used their names in this place. They were just numbers and letters.

  Neither one of them screamed.

  They knew these people had no mercy.

  Rather, they stared at one another in a silent rebellion that only ended when she was literally carried out of the room. One of the teachers kicked him in the gut. When he choked out a cough but didn’t move, the numbness now halfway up his chest and his breathing a stuttering beat, the man looked at the woman who was checking o
n the dead teacher.

  “Looks like a real medical issue. We’d better get instructions from the family.”

  “Sure. It’s part of the protocol. But you know what they’ll say—he’s here because he’s problematic. No one will authorize lifesaving measures.” Cold green eyes on his face. “Guardians will tell us to dump him on his bed and let him die a ‘natural’ death. He’d be better off if I slit his throat.”

  Chapter 4

  Current percentage of anchors diagnosed as psychopathic: 14%

  Current percentage of anchors diagnosed as borderline: 27%

  Current percentage of anchors with significant mental health risk factors: 43%

  —PsyMed Census Bureau: 2067

  CANTO ARRIVED AT the oasis five minutes prior to his meeting with Payal Rao. “Thanks for the teleport,” he said to Genara.

  Lifting two fingers to her temple, her ebony skin gleaming under the desert sunlight, Genara shot him a salute that was just a little too crisp to come off as anything but martial. Her hair, the tight curls buzzed close to her skull with military precision, echoed that impression, as did the way she stood lightly on her feet.

  Always ready to snap into motion.

  “Nice shirt,” she said.

  He scowled. “Arwen calls the color distressed steel. It’s fucking gray.”

  Genara’s flat expression didn’t alter. “Heard he stole your other shirts and burned them.”

  “Go away,” Canto growled, because while Genara appeared as Silent as they came, she was tight with Arwen. Which told Canto all he needed to know about this new member of the Mercant clan.