Last Guard

by Nalini Singh

  For a Sensitive, he was an oasis of peace, of silence.

  After Sophia convinced Cèlian to let Max touch him—and though Sophia’s husband wasn’t a big cuddler of strangers—Max had hugged the other J. Not once. As many times as Cèlian needed in the days since. Cèlian had sobbed the first time and clung to Max’s muscled frame. Her ex-cop husband had stroked the other man’s back and held him without a single sign of impatience.

  Later, he’d told her they needed to talk to Bowen Knight at the Human Alliance to build a list of naturally shielded humans who wouldn’t mind interacting with hurt Js. “Back when I was in Enforcement,” he’d said, “I knew some pros on the street who had clients who came to them just for friendly touch, not sexual stuff.”

  He’d frowned. “It’s not only Js who ache for touch. I think touch therapy might actually already be a thing, but we need to set up a subgroup of therapists who have airtight shields. And it’s not like Js have never helped humans—the Council only interfered in major cases. Rest of the time, Js did as much good for humans as they did for Psy, so I don’t think it’ll be a hard sell to get help for your friends. Let me talk to Bo.”

  Just another reason Sophia would love Max to the end of time.

  “Thank you for meeting with us.” Payal took a seat at the edge of the seating area, so Canto could park his chair next to her.

  Sophia chose a seat opposite the other woman, putting the three of them in a rough semicircle. “Of course.” Sophia rubbed her forehead, the dull pain behind her eyelids a constant. “The NetMind is so scared and lost and I can’t help it. I need—” She looked up and halted. The two As were staring at her. “What?”

  “The NetMind is alive?” Canto Mercant’s voice was harsh—with a piercing note of hope. “All we sense in the Net are fragments.”

  “It exists,” Sophia confirmed. “Not as the huge presence it once was, but the core remains. My anchor point—I’m sorry, that’s what I’ve always called it, though I know it’s not correct.”

  “It is an anchor point.” Payal Rao’s tone brooked no argument. “We can see you in the Substrate. While you can’t communicate in that sphere with the rest of us, your anchor lines are rooted deep.”

  Sophia didn’t understand all of what Payal had just said, but she didn’t need to, not for this. “The NetMind seems to have hidden a piece of itself in my anchor point—in me.” In the very pathways of her brain.

  Canto frowned. “May we see?”

  When she inclined her head, they joined her on the PsyNet. At one point, they both disappeared after telling her they were examining her anchor point in the Substrate.

  Later, when all three of them opened their eyes in the garden again, she saw Canto glance at Payal. Payal, in turn, looked first to Canto. Unspoken things passed between them.

  “Is the DarkMind there, too?” Payal asked afterward.

  “Yes. They’re not two separate presences anymore but one complete one.” A single point of hope that made her want to believe they could stop the spiral of loss. “When I say NetMind, I mean both.”

  Canto said something to Payal about the “weeds” in the Substrate; Payal responded with technical jargon. Allowing their discussion to flow past her, she considered the two of them, and who they were together.

  Inside her mind, the NetMind threw a bouquet of flowers into the air.

  Sophia sucked in a silent breath. Is this what you need? Anchors who’ve begun to bloom into their full selves?

  A sense of terrible sadness, then the image of wilting flowers. No, not wilting. Flowers that had begun to curl up and die because of a lack of sunlight, a lack of care.

  As it fragmented in the rest of the PsyNet, the NetMind had grown stronger in her mind. It also brought with it images and thoughts and hopes. Today, it showed her sunlight on the drooping blooms.

  Those blooms opened again.

  I understand. She tried to encompass the neosentience in love, as protective toward it as she was toward the nascent life cradled in her womb. It was the tiniest collection of cells at this moment in time, so very small that no one outside could sense it. Only she and Max knew. They’d tell River after the first-trimester mark; Max’s brother would be an astonishing uncle, devoted and gentle.

  The neosentience of the Net “leaned” into her. It was difficult to describe the sensation fully, but it was as if it was asking for comfort. She embraced it with her mind, held it close. I’ll tell them, she promised, and it calmed.

  “I have to pass on a message,” she said, interrupting Canto and Payal’s technical discussion.

  They turned as one to her, both so startlingly beautiful that it was a shock each time she looked at them. She had the idea that neither one of them was aware of their physical beauty. Payal struck Sophia as atypical in her thinking and reactions. Not flawed. Never would Sophia call anyone flawed. It was simply a difference.

  The same way Sophia’s touch sensitivity was a difference.

  As for Canto, given the lack of information on him on the PsyNet, he probably kept a low profile. Those within his trusted circle would be used to his looks. Canto Mercant also struck her as a man who didn’t much care for the opinions of many; the reactions of others would only matter to him in how they affected his goals.

  Sophia liked them both.

  “The NetMind,” she said, “wants the anchors to emerge into the light, to live full lives. I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg—it wants all Psy to live full lives, but anchors are the foundation.” She often understood such subtleties instinctively, as if the NetMind was so deep a part of her mind that it didn’t need to speak to her to communicate. “If you fade away into the darkness, so does it.”

  Canto frowned, but it was Payal—her expression modulated to give nothing away—who spoke. “Does it know if anchors have always been this way? Withdrawn from the world? Or was there a trigger that set this chain of events in motion?”

  An excellent question. “I’ll ask, but—for me at least—speaking to the NetMind isn’t like a conversation between me and you. It thinks and responds in a unique way.” She did her best to put Payal’s question to the NetMind.

  Its response was slow in coming, and it was a grouping of images.

  Blooms, wild and colorful in a field.

  A black cloud.

  The blooms curling inward until they were shriveled and small.

  Sophia blew out a breath. “There was an inciting incident. Time is a fluid concept to the NetMind—I can’t tell you when the incident took place. But it had a catastrophic effect and led to the seclusion of Designation A.”

  “The volcanic eruption?” Payal mused. “But that was so long ago—it doesn’t explain the psychic fires and flash floods that Ager mentioned.”

  “So many secrets,” Canto bit out. “Our ancestors kicked us all in the guts by hiding anything deemed dark or bad.”

  As a J who’d walked in the minds of serial killers the Council refused to acknowledge, Sophia well knew his anger. “I can help you with the research on the inciting incident—but we have to accept that it might’ve been too long ago for there to be any records.”

  “You’re one of us, Sophia.” Canto leaned forward, forearms on his thighs. “Unless you don’t want to be?”

  “I’m not a normal A. I can’t see your Substrate.”

  “You do as much as a minor hub in holding this area stable. You’re an A.”

  Sophia was part of a tight fraternity of current and former Js, but this, too, was an element of her identity. To be welcomed in . . . It meant more than she’d realized. “Thank you.”

  “Do you want to take the lead on the research?” Canto’s haunting eyes held her own. “I’ll put you in touch with Ager, who is one of our oldest members, and I’ll forward you what we know about the volcanic eruption that killed twenty anchors, but the historical can’t be ou
r priority.”

  “I agree.” The Net was falling apart too quickly. “You have to focus on the now. I’ll take care of the historical hunt.”

  “We also need to start working on a plan to reintegrate Designation A into society,” Payal said. “It’s going to be a difficult task—many of us are near agoraphobic after a lifetime of being told we needed to be sheltered.”

  “Ask the Es for an assist?” Sophia suggested.

  “A good idea, but their workload is already significant.” Payal looked off into the distance, and Sophia could almost see her mind working. “If it’s to last, it has to come from us,” she said finally. “From within.”

  “What do you think the reaction will be? How many As will make the attempt?”

  To her surprise, Payal said, “All of them.”

  Canto’s face was grim. “An anchor’s job is to protect the Net. If that means leaving the walls of safety, so be it.” He glanced at Payal.

  Who picked up the thread at once . . . because these two were bonded. It was a hum in the air between them, a quiet knowledge the NetMind whispered into Sophia’s ear.

  “The correct question,” Payal said, “is how many will succeed and how many will fail.” No expression on her face, but Sophia knew her well enough by now to know that meant little. “Some of us have no knowledge of how to be free—those As are akin to caged animals, knowing only their enclosures.”

  Sophia flexed her hand, staring down at the black of her glove. She’d never been isolated like an anchor, but she’d been in a cage nonetheless. “If there’s hope,” she said, raising her head to meet Payal’s eyes, “they’ll try and try again. As long as there is light in the darkness, a reason to keep fighting.”

  For her, that hope had come in the form of Max. Her lover. Her husband. Her mate.

  But love wasn’t a jealous thing, and from its roots had grown so many other tendrils of affection and love and joy. Sophia wanted that for Canto and Payal and every other anchor in the world. “Give them that hope. Let your bond blaze like a candle in the dark.”

  Chapter 40

  To forget our history is to forget ourselves.

  —From The Dying Light by Harissa Mercant (1947)

  CANTO AND PAYAL took Sophia’s advice to heart, pushing away the weeds around their bond so it burned a glowing azure that was a beacon. There was an infinite amount of work to do, so many bricks to lay to build a strong new foundation for Designation A, but every spare moment they had, they spent together. Neither one of them said it aloud, but the ticking clock in Payal’s brain accompanied them every second of every day.

  Not many more days and she’d have to return home to ensure that her anchor point stayed stable—and to get a shot of the medication that was a leash on her life. The thirteenth day after she’d arrived in Moscow, and she’d used up the second dose Pranath Rao had couriered over.

  One—maybe two—more days till she went critical.

  Canto had used her access passwords to break into the Rao systems, had even managed to work his way into her father’s private files, but Pranath Rao was a smart man. There was nothing useful in the available files.

  “He’ll have it in his head,” Payal murmured, pressing a kiss to Canto’s shoulder as they lay face-to-face in bed, both of them bare to the skin.

  Intimate skin privileges were extraordinary, but this kind of affectionate contact, it was better even than that. Especially now that Payal sometimes just went to him and said, “I need you.”

  He’d open his arms, and she’d curl into his lap, and he’d hold her until she could breathe past the panic building in her brain. Because that panic hadn’t magically disappeared after her continuing work with Jaya. It had too long been a part of her to be so easily vanquished.

  She still had agitated episodes at times, but increasingly, she could now calm herself down rather than going into a chaotic spiral. Jaya had taught—was still teaching—her tools to help herself. It was the best thing the empath could’ve done; Payal understood and valued such strategic mental work. Her recalibrated medications were also helping her to maintain a more even keel in day-to-day life.

  The hardest thing she’d had to learn was that it was all right to be a little different.

  “Quirky isn’t a bad thing, Payal,” Jaya had said as the two of them walked through a wooded area cool and green. “Some of the most admired people in human and changeling societies are the ones who walk to the beat of their own drummer.”

  Then there was Canto. He kept telling her he adored her exactly as she was—reminding her that she’d been his favorite even when she’d been totally feral. The latter held weight because it was true. She could still remember the pieces of dried apple thrust into her hand, the way he’d found methods to give her hints to questions asked by the teacher, how he’d held her hand that final day.

  How he’d remembered her.

  Payal didn’t know when she’d be willing to allow her true self out in public, but she let Canto see her more and more. So when she felt the urge to lean over and kiss his nose, then nuzzle at his throat, she did it. He chuckled and cuddled her tight and almost suffocatingly close, exactly as she liked. “Are you sure you’re not a small changeling bear? A sun bear, maybe?”

  She pretended to claw him, the game one she would’ve never played with anyone else, lest they see it as a sign of mental instability. But with Canto, she was free. She didn’t have to pretend.

  Growling in his throat, he made as if to bite at her. The two of them were rolling around the bed, skin sliding on skin and breaths mingling, when Nikita Duncan’s cool voice entered her mind.

  I have unlocked and reinitialized the archive.

  * * *

  • • •

  PAYAL and Canto had together decided it’d be best for her to be in the tech room when she went into the archive, in case she needed to meet with the others on visual comms.

  Having changed into a work-suitable outfit in preparation for that eventuality, Payal took a seat before stepping into the PsyNet. Unlike when she did anchor work, she was present in the physical space to a degree, while also in the psychic space. But it wasn’t until she was deep in the old vault that she realized she hadn’t given even a single thought to the fact Canto was present in the same space.

  He could knife her and she’d never see it coming, but she knew he wouldn’t. She trusted him. No walls. No shields. Pure trust.

  Because Canto would always choose to use his power to protect her, not hurt.

  She entered the vault together with the rest of the Ruling Coalition. Of them all, Aden proved the most efficient searcher. Possibly because Arrows were hunters and not just for people, but for data. He got them to the right time period in the vault, then they spread out. Payal considered her search strategy, thought of what an efficient A would’ve done, and dropped into the Substrate.

  A small beacon pulsed below the fabric of the PsyNet.

  Having fixed the location of the beacon in her mind, she returned to the PsyNet, overlaid the Substrate grid on it, and made her way to the correct point. It took her only four minutes and twenty-seven seconds to locate the file. “I have it.”

  Her words reverberated around the massive vault.

  “Fast,” commented the vast obsidian mind that was Krychek.

  “An anchor stored this here—and they left a marker.”

  Not waiting for further questions, she opened up the file. The information rose to float on the black walls of the PsyNet. She reached out to Canto at the same time: Shadow my mind. We have the data.

  The two of them looked at the data. It was a pale and silvery ghost against the black of the Net, data so old that it was in danger of fading away. Someone, however, was reinforcing it as it emerged—a person clever enough to make the fix without altering the data or otherwise causing damage.

  Her first thoug
ht was that it had to be Aden. Arrows were skilled at subtle maneuvers. Then, all at once, she understood that she was behind the correction. I don’t have this skill. She was a cardinal telekinetic with low-level Tp; such delicate power dynamics required a level of telepathic subtlety she simply didn’t possess.

  I can do it. Canto had a frown in his voice. I’m not feeding you anything but you are in my anchor zone. So is this vault. It could be I’m fixing it instinctively.

  It’s okay, Canto. Even if you are feeding me the information, I don’t mind. Because it was him. Her 7J. Isn’t it strange, though, that the vault exists in the same psychic space as you?

  Coincidence.

  Or the NetMind playing a very long game.

  His response was a gruff sound that made her blood warm. Smile.

  “Excellent work,” Nikita murmured. “It took me many years to be so proficient in such delicate repairs.”

  Payal didn’t respond, choosing instead to focus on the data in an effort to capture the secret of how the other As had pulled off . . . “An occlusion,” she said. “That’s what they called it. Look.”

  Her brain began to pull pieces of the puzzle together without her conscious command, each piece flaring with light in a coordinated cascade so she couldn’t miss it.

  It’s been coded for anchor brains. Canto’s crystalline voice, sharp with an excitement that echoed her own. The others have no idea.

  “How did you see it?” Ivy Jane said at the same time. “I only saw chaos until you pointed out that one area.”

  “Because only anchors are meant to know this,” Payal said shortly, not because she was annoyed—the question was relevant and she liked Ivy Jane—but because she was processing too much data at once and needed to understand it.