Last Guard

by Nalini Singh

  “But even without that,” he added, “you’ve met my grandmother. She is the fountainhead from which all of us flow, as she flowed from the fountainhead of her grandmother, all the way back to the Mercant who was knight to a king. We’ve never forgotten who we are.” He nudged her toward him.

  Curling into his lap was second nature to her now, and she did so with ease, laying her head against his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her. “I want to build that same kind of honor into the Rao line,” she confessed. “I want those who come after me to be good people.”

  “Then it’ll happen,” Canto said. “Nothing stands in the way of Payal Rao when she’s decided on something.”

  A point of pain in Payal’s temple, a reminder that she faced one obstacle that she couldn’t strategize away and that even the Mercant network couldn’t fix. Canto had gone so far as to locate a Tk who worked on the micro-med level—such a rare, rare ability—and they’d discussed ’porting the tumors out of her brain.

  But the thing was, the disease that created the tumors came from her connection to the Substrate. They would grow again and again, and the position of the tumors meant even the gentlest telekinetic surgical removal could cause permanent damage.

  “You’re hurting.” Canto hated that he couldn’t fix this for Payal, hated it. He’d used every possible connection, as had every member of his family, and still nothing.

  Sitting up, Payal locked eyes with him. “They put us in that place to die, Canto. Yet here we are, alive and thriving, and they’re both dead.” A feral smile from the wildness in her. “We’re going to win this, too.”

  “Yes, we fucking are.” No way was he ever letting her go. He wanted to fill her life with joy to the brim, then more. Wanted to love her until she expected it, until she took it for granted.

  Their kiss was a wild tangle interrupted by tremors at the edge of their minds.

  Separating, they looked inward, saw the ripples in the Net. Another fracture. Not in their zones and not large enough that they had to respond to assist. But it was enough to break the moment in two, because they were anchors, and it was their duty to hold the Net in place.

  A keen filled Canto’s mind, the whispered tears of other anchors carried by the Substrate. He hadn’t been able to hear them before he began to set up the anchor network, but it was as if with contact had come a connection. “All our anchors are on the verge of a total breakdown.”

  “It’s crushing to not be able to do the one thing you were born to do.” Payal’s eyes held no stars, the night air blowing her unbound hair back from her face.

  “How could the NetMind have allowed it to get this bad?” Canto wasn’t blaming the neosentience—never would he do that. He just didn’t understand why it had made this choice. “It protected the Es. Why not do the same for the designation without which the PsyNet can’t exist? Do you think it was devolving long before we realized?” It had been so vibrant, so young during his childhood, a vast and growing neosentience.

  A sudden burst of starlight in the obsidian of Payal’s gaze. “I want to check something.”

  * * *

  • • •

  SHE dived into the Substrate without waiting for an answer because she knew Canto would follow her here to this place that was their psychic home. The weeds tangled her up, thicker than ever.

  Then there he was: her Canto. Whose language of love was food and physical contact, and who understood that hers was a feral possessiveness that meant she touched their bond constantly.

  “I can’t believe how fast these things have taken over the Substrate,” he said, pushing away one of the thorn-heavy weeds. “How long’s it been? Twenty, twenty-five years since it first began?”

  Sparks of light in Payal’s brain, coalescing into a stunning whole. “How old are the variant Es? The ones who clean the PsyNet?” She’d been told of them as part of her Ruling Coalition briefing, and Canto knew because Mercants liked to know things.

  “I can find out,” Canto said. “Why?”

  “Because the NetMind would never abandon us.”

  “You think these aren’t weeds?” Canto’s mind danced in and out of the rough brown strands. “I don’t know, baby. The things do nothing but take up space in the Substrate.”

  “Are we sure? Have we ever truly looked at them?” She ran her hand along one of the weeds. It sparked with light as the weeds always did when an anchor brushed them. “Remember how Arran mentioned he got stuck in a cluster and had to fight his way out?”

  “It’s dangerously aggressive.”

  “What if it wasn’t trying to hurt him?”

  “Payal, wait!”

  But her mind saw the possibilities, and she knew Canto would rescue her if she needed rescue. Because she was his person. She dived straight into the midst of a heavy thicket of weeds, not fighting when they wrapped around her psychic presence. It felt like being wrapped up in ropes, but only at first.

  Payal! I can’t see you anymore!

  I’m fine. I think I know what to do. Because the ropes were now part of her psychic presence, part of her anchor.

  Opening herself out with those ropes attached to her, she spread and spread. All the little thorny hooks gripped the Substrate to give her more stability as she sent her anchor energy out along each of the interlocking ropes in a way that turned her into the center of a huge psychic organism.

  She touched Shanta’s zone, overlapped it to the very center. She touched Prabhyx’s zone, overlapped that, too. Then the As on her remaining sides. She was now the biggest anchor in the entire Substrate.

  * * *

  • • •

  CANTO’S breath caught.

  She was glorious. The fibrous “weeds” had softened and taken on the blue glow of an anchor mind in the Substrate, Payal the nucleus of a huge living cell that had veins and arteries that flowed with energy. The NetMind had given them one final gift before the Psy race burned it out with their terrible choices and their inability to embrace their natures. “You’re magnificent.”

  “I feel bigger. Stronger.” Energy pulsed along the veins and arteries, a stunning light show that cleared out all the smog that had erased the clarity of the Substrate.

  He forced himself to pay attention to the practicalities. “The thorns, they only attach to the Substrate if an anchor is feeding them energy.”

  “Yes. But they’re not feeding off me. More . . . amplifying.”

  A sudden cold fear in his gut. “Can you disengage?”

  “There’s no need,” she said. “These weeds—we need another word—are now a part of my anchor point. They allow us to spread ourselves far thinner, because the anchor point will hold as a result of all the tiny anchor points created by the thorns along the way.”

  Canto’s mind was pulling him back to his anchor point—because even while he existed in the same physical space as Payal, his anchor remained locked in place. “We need to talk more about this.”

  “I’ll follow you to your zone.”

  Canto allowed himself to whiplash back to his zone, only relaxed when her mind appeared after his, as normal. Her anchor point might have bloomed into an unearthly entity, but it hadn’t tangled her up in ropes she couldn’t escape.

  As she stood watch, he moved into a thicket of weeds.

  They closed around him, the tendrils becoming a part of his mind, until he saw why Payal wasn’t worried. He now controlled these tendrils, and as they unfurled, his anchor point grew and grew.

  And grew.

  “You’re a constellation, Canto,” Payal whispered before whiplashing back to her zone.

  The next time they spoke, it was telepathically, both of them in their bodies on the physical plane in Vara, their minds entwined in a dance of glowing blue.

  Did you see the small white sparks on the weeds?

  Children. Joy seared him.
Baby anchors. We can pinpoint them, protect them.

  Is this the answer? Can we save the Net this way?

  No. It was a terrible thing to say but it was the truth. The Substrate is only one part of the Net. And the rot continues above. Anchors continue to die. But this gives us time to find another solution. Not months. I think two or three years.

  We should test it. See if it works for all of us.

  They asked Suriana and Arran. Suriana took a deep breath and agreed, while Arran was leery but game. Both soon exclaimed at the acute clarity of their minds, the sudden abundance of life in the Substrate, no sluggishness to it.

  Bjorn went next . . . and he cried. They heard the tears in his voice. “The wonder . . . My heart aches for the NetMind, this child we broke too young. And still, it watches over us.”

  Canto’s own anguish was intermingled with a brittle anger—and sharp shards of hope. He needed to talk to Sophia, see if she was okay with sharing her knowledge of the NetMind’s survival with the rest of Designation A.

  Ager they’d left for last, as they were the oldest and most apt to suffer from shock if it went wrong—but they would not be deterred. And the effect on them was the most astonishing of all. “I can breathe,” they said on the comm the day after the experiment, their face fuller and less lined, their eyes bright sparks. “I feel twenty years younger!”

  They began the next level of experiments the following day.

  Each of the merged As brought in a neighboring A and had them merge, too. All succeeded.

  But the real surprise came when Canto said, “Let’s see if we can attach tendrils to each other, so that if one day we do have no choice but to cut the Net into pieces, we can keep the Substrate together so no one anchor starves.”

  It turned out Canto couldn’t attach to anyone. But he could be attached to.

  “You’re built to be the nucleus of any such strategy,” Payal said. “It makes logical sense. For this to work, we need someone really heavy at the center, to make sure it holds. You don’t move. Everyone else moves around you.”

  Canto wasn’t sure he liked being stuck in place—it reminded him too much of his childhood. But then Payal’s telepathic voice entered his mind: You’re the protector. The one who’ll hold us all stable. Without you, we fail. And we fall.

  Her words took away his breath.

  Payal Rao, I love you.

  Heart exploding with a joy so big she couldn’t bear it, she kissed him as they sat once more under the Delhi sky, sunset a dark orange fire around them. When they parted, she touched her fingers to his jaw. “There’s only one of you, Canto. A single superanchor can’t save the entire Net.”

  Canto leaned into her touch. “No, if that option ever needs to be used, the rest of the Net will have failed. Millions will be dead.”

  “So we have to make sure we never have to use it,” Payal said. “The weeds are our circulatory system. The NetMind has given us a chance.”

  “We have to do as it’s asked—we have to become more than isolated stars in the darkness.”

  Payal held his gaze. “Single steps out of the void. With each step we take, we bring the NetMind into the light.”

  “Single steps,” he agreed. “I’m going to make that my priority, while you deal with the Coalition.”

  “Agreed.”

  Then Canto wrapped his arms around her as she did him. Holding on against the cells dividing and growing inside her head, killing her with every moment that passed.

  Chapter 46

  Dear Dima, I’m very happy you like the rocket-powered wheelchair design I sent you. At the moment, I’m in Delhi, but we can discuss it more after I’m back home. Also, I’m trying to think bear thoughts, but I need more time to get it right. Being a bear isn’t as easy as it looks.

  —Message from Canto to Dima

  KALEB LISTENED AS Payal laid out what the anchors had discovered to the Ruling Coalition.

  “This is no magic bullet that will erase our problems,” she said on the comm, “but it will buy us a little more time. If the clock was hovering a few minutes to midnight, it’s now been turned back by fifteen minutes.”

  Ivy Jane Zen, her face thinner than it had been only months ago, her exhaustion imprinted on her skin, said, “It’s enough. For all of us to catch a breath.”

  Nikita parted her lips as if to argue, then shut them. No one else refuted Payal’s statement, either. Because Ivy Jane was right. Yes, they’d all wanted a solution, but that solution had to hold. Or it would all fall apart again—perhaps at a time when the PsyNet didn’t have so many powerful Psy willing to work together for their survival.

  Had this happened in the time of the Council, half the population would already be dead, sacrificed because they weren’t powerful or connected enough.

  “In that fifteen minutes, Designation A has a demand.”

  Nikita raised an eyebrow at the wording of the statement but, oddly for Nikita, kept her silence once again. Something was going on there. Perhaps Anthony’s influence? No, the head of PsyClan NightStar knew nothing of anchors. Had to be another person closer to Nikita who held sway with her.

  Possibly her daughter.

  “We can now ID young As before they initialize.” Payal’s words were massive boulders crashing into the earth. “What we want is the Coalition’s backing to formally tag those children as newborn As and maintain a health watch on them as they grow.”

  She wasn’t asking their permission, Kaleb thought. The As would do this. They just wanted to know if they’d have the support of the Coalition.

  “Accepted,” Aden said, speaking for the first time. “If you need Arrow escorts during the checkups, I’ll make them available.”

  “And if you need Es to scope out the emotional situation,” Ivy Jane added, “you can have us on call.”

  Arrow-Empath-Anchor.

  Looked like a new kind of network was being born right in front of him.

  “I see no issue with this,” Nikita said, and Anthony concurred.

  “Children should never be hurt or tortured or killed.” Kaleb held Payal’s eyes, knowing her secrets without knowing them. “The simple fact that a child is an A should protect them as a result of A now being a hotly coveted designation.” Payal’s ascension to the Council, her repeated interviews, as well as the interviews given by a number of other As, had helped achieve that outcome.

  The Psy now understood that it was on the shoulders of anchors that they all stood. That many As required high-level care from those around them didn’t alter the fact that they were critical to the PsyNet’s survival.

  “I’m glad we are all in accord on this point.” Payal’s voice was as crisp and detached as always—yet Ena had mentioned that Payal had bonded with Canto. A little piece of family information dropped into the conversation, a quiet statement that Payal was now part of the wider Mercant family.

  Just like Kaleb.

  Do you think anyone realizes the Mercants are slowly growing into the most powerful family in the Net? asked the woman who’d been with him throughout this meeting. Silver runs EmNet. They call you family and have claimed the bears as kin. Now they have within their ranks the leadership of the anchors.

  I don’t think it’s a pursuit of power, Kaleb said. I think it’s the other way around. I pursued them because of who they are. Loyal. Intelligent. Relentless. If they become an even bigger power than they are now, the Net has nothing to fear.

  Warmth along his bond with Sahara. Admit it, you have a crush on Ena.

  The twisted darkness in him laughed, delighted with her. I will take that secret to the grave.

  Her laughter filled him to the brim, even as the Coalition meeting broke up. As Payal’s face blinked out, he was certain he saw her wince. Likely another Net rupture, but nothing echoed to him along the pathways of the Net, so it couldn’t have been a
significant one.

  He teleported home to Sahara.

  * * *

  • • •

  PAYAL’S nose was bleeding, and a pulse pounded at the back of her skull. She cleaned up the blood with quick efficiency. This had happened a few times before, when she’d waited too long before taking her dose.

  She had about two more days before things went critical.

  Canto entered her office, the two of them having come up with a residence schedule that worked for their anchor points.

  Two weeks in one zone, two weeks in the other. Both anchor points would remain stable, and they could live together. They could do that for a lifetime. Karishma had asked to stay at her school for the time being, since it was familiar and comfortable, but when she came to Vara for the holidays—which she was excited to do—Payal would stay in Delhi for the duration.

  All these plans they had.

  Because she was going to survive. Payal was a survivor. So was Canto. “Any word from the Aleines?” she asked, making no attempt to hide her pain.

  He knew. He always knew.

  White lines around his mouth, he said, “Ashaya says it’s an incredibly complex piece of work. They will break it down and be able to engineer it backward, but it’s a question of how long it’ll take.” He came around her desk. She swiveled her chair so she faced him. “The Aleines are working all possible hours. They know we’re fighting a ticking clock.”

  “Two women who I’ve never met are fighting for me. I would’ve never imagined such a thing possible before you.” She touched her hand to the bristles of his jaw, the wildness in her angry at the shadows under his eyes, the tension across his shoulders.

  Put there by a man so in love with control that he’d rather his heir die than live without him. “I’ve sent word to every branch of the Rao empire alerting them to the transfer in power—and the circumstances of my father’s death. It’s possible his scientists might reach out to me.”