by Nalini Singh
Ena rarely adopted in family members, but when she did, it was law. Trust was given at once. Because Ena Mercant was the toughest of them all—if she said Genara was to be trusted, was to be treated as family, that was how it would be.
Canto had said “Yes, ma’am” and gotten on with creating an unbreakable new identity for Genara. The only thing he’d asked his grandmother was where in hell she’d managed to unearth an unknown teleport-capable Tk. Canto ran their intelligence operations, yet Genara was a mystery who’d appeared out of thin air.
Ena had taken a sip of her herbal tea and said, “You know I want you to act as Silver’s right hand when she takes the reins of the family.” Her eyes—unreadable silver at times, fog gray with a hint of blue at others—had been serene, her silky white hair in a pristine knot, and the pale bronze silk of her tunic without a wrinkle. “I had no such right hand until Silver came of age, and life is far easier with one.”
“As long as that right hand lives in the shadows, I have no problem with it.” Canto had about as much desire to live in the public eye as he had to wear the chartreuse horror of a shirt Arwen kept threatening to gift him. “What does that have to do with Genara?”
“A little mystery to keep you sharp.”
“I should quit,” he’d muttered, making a face at the tea she’d insisted on pouring him. “See who you can find to put up with this disrespect.”
Ena’s gaze had altered, holding a warmth he’d first seen when he was eight and motionless in a hospital bed, scared and lost in a way that had come out as childish rage. She’d been so cold then, a woman aflame with ice—except for when she’d looked at him. “You’re home now, Canto,” she’d said in that calm voice that hit down to the bone. “You’re safe. No one will ever again hurt you.”
Canto hadn’t believed the stranger she’d been, but she was all he had. What about her? he’d demanded telepathically, while the machine pumped air into his paralyzed lungs. The girl who helped me. 3K?
“There’s no record of her in the school’s system, and all those staff who had contact with the students are dead, so we can’t scan their minds.” Not even a single flicker in her at the idea of smashing open people’s minds to reveal their innermost thoughts.
Canto had held the implacable steel of her eyes. Did you kill them?
“I would have but only after getting all necessary information. Never act without thought, Canto. That is how your enemies win.” Her cool and smooth hand on his brow, brushing back his hair. “However, they were already dead when we came to bring you home. It appears one of the other students broke their mental bonds and struck out.”
The other kids? Canto had asked.
“We’ve found safe homes for them and will monitor their lives to ensure they have the help they need. Mercants do not abandon children. Remember that. Never will we abandon a child in need. But we found no other cardinal. We’ll do everything in our power to track down your 3K—your mother has already begun the search.”
It was the only promise to Canto that Ena hadn’t been able to keep, 3K being so far under the radar that she’d been a ghost. All these years and Canto hadn’t accepted that the ghost imagery might be harsh reality, that 3K was long dead. Magdalene, he knew, continued to run the search in the background of her other tasks.
Canto and his mother shared the same obsessive streak when it came to things that mattered.
On the subject of Genara, his grandmother had taken another sip of tea before saying, “No one else would put up with my games, dear Canto. Which is why I play with you.” And because she was Ena Mercant, the woman who’d taught a broken, angry boy the meaning of family, the meaning of loyalty, he was now hitting his head against the brick wall that was tracking down the true identity of his new cousin.
Never would he admit to Ena that he relished the challenge.
Today, Genara said, “Next time Arwen should steal your jeans, too,” before she teleported out.
Canto’s jeans were well-washed and shaped to his body. Arwen knew full well that Canto would hunt him down without mercy should he lay his stylish fingers on them. Shirts were shirts. Jeans? A whole different story.
Rather than staying inside the three-walled shelter at this end of the pathway, he made his way to the edge of the water that reminded him of the haunting azure glow of the Substrate. The late-afternoon sun was warm on his face and the skin of his exposed forearms, the dark brown leather-synth of his half gloves soft and supple from use.
He’d switched chairs for this, the wheels on this one wider and more rugged, better able to handle the desert environment. The chair’s computronic components were also designed to survive the fine particles of sand. It had taken him only a single teenage mistake to realize that this particular sand got everywhere and could freeze complex computronics.
The chair did still, however, have hover capacity—along with a hidden compartment that held a sleek and deadly weapon. As a cardinal telepath, he could blow out Payal’s brains even as she picked him up and smashed him against the nearest hard surface. In other words, they were both as dangerous as the other.
The weapon wasn’t redundant. It was practical.
A flicker in the telepathic scan he’d run continuously since his arrival. He couldn’t enter the mind that had appeared in his vicinity, but he knew it was there. Angling his chair to the left, he sucked in a breath as he watched Payal Rao walk along the paved path toward him. She was smaller than his mental image of her—though that made little sense, since he’d looked up her height.
But Payal had a presence that demanded attention, took over a space.
In raw physical terms, she was a bare five feet two inches tall. Her body curved sharply inward at the waist and flared at the hips. She had curves on her upper body, too, her shape not one that was favored among the majority of Psy. He knew damn well why—because it was considered inherently sensual.
That prejudice held even now, but according to his research, Payal had never capitulated to the societal pressure to get cosmetic surgery. Neither did she make any effort to downplay her body. She dressed with perfect businesslike sharpness, without ever blunting her edge; he wondered if she was conscious of the fact that her refusal to back down just added to her reputation as a woman of steel.
Payal Rao, a recent PsyNet Beacon article had stated, is a predator as deadly as any changeling panther. The last rival who forgot that is currently picking up the pieces of his life after a coldly calculating play by Rao saw his company’s valuation dive by seventy-five percent. When asked for comment, Rao said, “He began the skirmish. I ended it.”
Today, the predator wore a top of a lightweight material, the sleeves long and cuffed at the wrists and the neck featuring two long ties that she’d knotted loosely above the generous curves of her breasts.
It was smoky blue, a hue that complemented the honeyed brown of her skin.
According to his research, her father was a Gradient 7.9 Tk of Czech-Indian descent, while the maternal half of her genes came from a Gradient 8.8 F-Psy with a mix of Spanish and Indian ancestry.
The genetic mix had given her a softly rounded face with lush lips and long lashes that belied her reputation. Out of context—and if you ignored the night sky of her eyes—she’d appear a pretty and sensual woman, no threat at all.
As for the rest of her clothing, she’d tucked the blue top into wide-legged pants in a dark gray that flowed over her hips all the way down to just above the ground. Canto caught flashes of spiked black heels as she walked. He knew about those torture devices because Silver insisted on wearing them, too.
“They’re a weapon, Canto,” she’d said once when he’d asked. “Each element of how we dress is a weapon and a warning to the world. Even yours.”
Canto had briefly considered putting on businesslike clothing today, but as Payal was who she was, so was Canto. There was no point preten
ding to be otherwise if they were going to be working together for any length of time. The new short-sleeved shirt with its aged steel buttons was about as dressed up as he got.
She didn’t stare at his chair when she reached him; no doubt she’d seen and processed the sight when she first teleported in. But she would comment. Most Psy did. It was rare for them to see one of their kind using a device that assisted with motion. The Psy as a race had some very ugly decisions in their past; those decisions included a goal of perfection that had been a de facto program of eugenics.
Now they were all paying the price for those choices.
Right then, Payal did begin to stare. Hard.
Eyes narrowing, he went to snarl at her to take a photo if she was that interested.
Then she said, “7J.”
And his entire world imploded.
Chapter 5
Tests confirm that the child’s unusual ocular structure has no effect on his vision.
—Medical report on Canto Fernandez, age 12 months (17 June 2046)
“YOUR EYES ARE like galaxies,” Payal said. “The white spots aren’t scattered across the black, but grouped in a highly specific and memorable pattern. You’re the only cardinal I’ve ever met with such eyes.”
Canto couldn’t speak, his throat drying up. He’d tried so hard to remember the pattern of 3K’s eyes, but he’d been a traumatized child, his memories too broken up to be of any use. “How can you be sure?” It came out harsh, a challenge.
“Telekinetic memory.”
Telekinetic.
It crystalized then, the unimaginable torture of what had been done to her. The most free of Psy hobbled by chains. He knew this wasn’t a lie or a con—only a strictly limited number of people knew about that school, and about what had taken place there. Yet he had to be certain. “Have you done what you wanted to do when you got free?”
A frozen moment before she said, “There are no blossom trees where I live.”
A tremor shook his psyche, and it was his turn to stare—this time, with the eyes of a man who’d been searching for her for three decades without success.
The knotted and overgrown bangs were gone; Payal’s wavy hair was pulled into a ponytail that gave the impression of being carefree while keeping every single stray strand of hair off her face. Undone, he estimated it would reach just past her shoulder blades. Her face was no longer thin and bony, her features filled out, and just as he wasn’t that scared and angry boy, she wasn’t the waif who’d killed to help him.
A pinch in the region of his heart, a startling sense of loss.
She glanced down at his chair at last. “So, you had successful treatment.”
No Psy outside the family who’d ever commented on his physical state had deemed it a success. But Payal hadn’t minced words as a child and didn’t do so as an adult. She meant what she said. “Yes.”
He angled his chair back around to face the water as she moved to stand at the edge, the two of them side by side. The blue was shocking to his vision now, the entire world in high contrast.
“I can feel everything except for my legs. Medics said if they hadn’t removed the spinal and other tumors when they did, it’d have been too late. I’d have died.” The tumors had been tiny spots of virulence, obscured by the normal machinery of the body until his grandmother ordered a massive battery of tests.
“How long were you in the infirmary?”
“Years, in and out.” He glanced at the line of her profile. “What happened to you?” The question came out raw, unadorned. “I’ve looked for you every day since.”
* * *
• • •
PAYAL’S gut churned.
7J. 7J.
Half of her had begun to believe that the boy whose hand she’d held had been a figment of her manic and disturbed mind, a fantasy she’d created out of a need for care of any kind.
It was clear Canto hadn’t known her identity as 3K until she’d blurted out his ID in a moment of shock that had devastated her control. Now this man knew more about her than anyone else in the universe. Even her father wasn’t fully aware of all that had happened—all she’d been—in that hellhole where he’d abandoned her.
She could still remember every question 7J had asked her as they sat there, waiting for the inevitable. Not test questions. Not questions to dig up information he could use to his advantage. Just questions about her dreams, about food she liked, about what made her happy.
It had been the first time in her life anyone had wanted to hear her speak.
Inside her crazed, lost mind, she’d secretly called him a friend. Had the adult Payal permitted her Silence to fall when emotion became legal, she might’ve felt pity for that small, lost part of herself. So deprived of kindness and care that she’d turned fleeting interactions into a friendship. The boy on whose shoulders she’d laid her foolish childhood dreams had been so thin, his body no longer responding to his commands.
Only his eyes had never changed: fierce and fascinating and . . . protective. She’d probably misread them. She’d been an insane child after all. But . . . he’d given her food, saving things from his own meager meals to tuck into her hand when no one was looking.
That thin boy with fierce eyes had grown into a man with long legs and strong, wide shoulders, his arms ropy with muscle. Veins stood out along the olive skin of his forearms, and his thighs pushed up against the faded denim of his jeans. The latter meant he either had a level of lower limb mobility or used machines to exercise those muscles.
Regardless, that kind of strength couldn’t be achieved overnight. He had to have maintained a punishing regime over many years. She’d do well to remember that—it was an indication of relentless determination and stubbornness.
People that driven didn’t give up on a goal.
Right now, his goal was to rope her into a position that would take her time and attention away from the Rao empire. There was still so much she needed to do there, so many changes she had to make to ensure that Karishma could come home—and that no more innocents would die or suffer.
As for Canto’s question, she decided on an honest answer after calculating whether it could be used against her in any way and deciding it couldn’t; the paper trail had been wiped clean. “My family almost lost an heir to an accident, decided they might be able to bring the flawed one up to scratch after all.”
Varun’s car accident had saved her—but it had signaled the beginning of the end for her brother. It was during his recovery that he’d had the time to start fomenting traitorous thoughts. All that downtime to see how tightly their father held the reins, and to chafe against Pranath’s control.
“Your shell profile is brilliant.” Canto sounded like he was gritting out the words, his tone crushed gravel. “You’re in childhood school photos at a time when I know you were with me. The images aren’t the sharpest, but add in all the other details and the shell holds.”
“My deceased brother Varun,” she said. “He was gifted at such photographic and computronic manipulation. My father also had the money to grease plenty of palms. The teachers were bribed to ‘remember’ me after the fact—and it didn’t matter if the children didn’t. After all, I was only six when I was pulled out of that prison masquerading as a school.”
Payal had a reputation for bluntness, but this was the one topic on which she didn’t speak. To anyone. To be so open . . . it made her chest expand, her breath suddenly huge. “What happened to you?” She’d been too young to search for him, but she’d never forgotten the boy who’d held her hand and asked her about her dreams as if she had a right to those dreams.
She’d also done a number of clandestine searches on cardinals with unusual eyes, but of course, he’d never come up.
“My grandmother came looking for a grandchild who’d vanished without a trace.” Canto shoved a hand through the short stra
nds of his silky black hair.
“You weren’t hers, though. All your documents state you belonged to the Fernandez family.”
“Ena Mercant never forgets her children or grandchildren—and no one is permitted to sentence us to death.” He shrugged, the motion fluid with muscle. “My father tried to lie his way out of it, because in his arrogance, he’d broken their contract. He didn’t survive that lie.”
“A formidable woman.” Too bad no one like Ena had existed for Payal; she’d had only Pranath Rao, who’d considered her an “unfortunate” mistake.
The Rao line’s tendency to birth strong Tks—and hold on to them against the might of the Council—was a powerful element of their identity. But they’d birthed no cardinals in the line until Payal. And she’d turned out to be mentally defective. “Was it the physical deterioration that made Fernandez hide you, then sentence you to that place?” A private question, but it looked like 3K and 7J were answering such questions.
“It had a strong role to play,” he said. “I had seizures as an infant, couldn’t walk until age three, and even then my coordination was problematic. But the final straw was my mental state—I began to hear voices.”
Payal’s breath caught, a hard lump in her throat. “Delusions?”
“No. It turns out I was hearing the NetMind before my initialization as an anchor.” He leaned forward, forearms braced on his thighs and the steel color of his shirt stretched across the breadth of his shoulders. “I’ve done some research, and it’s a rare but not unknown phenomenon with child As.”
The NetMind was a neosentience and the guardian and librarian of the PsyNet . . . or had been, until it began to disintegrate into chaos. Payal hadn’t sensed its presence for a long time.
Canto turned those galaxy eyes on her. “And you? Why were you abandoned?”
Payal never spoke about this. She couldn’t do so, even to 7J. There was too much risk that he could use it against her—because unlike with Canto, her sanity or lack of it had nothing to do with the NetMind.