by Nalini Singh
The anchor’s gaze was strangely vacant when it met hers. “Okay.”
Shock, Adria realized. Unlike the two cold-eyed men who were examining the fallen Tk, and in contrast with Bjorn’s quietly mutinous independence, most anchors were coddled and protected, never came this close to harsh reality. “Aden,” she said, using the name she’d been given for the medic.
His head lifted and she realized how handsome he was—if you liked your men icy enough to give you hypothermia. “Yes?”
“I think you need to ensure your anchor isn’t…” about to crack. Biting off the words on the tip of her tongue, she just said, “Check her.”
Aden rose with an almost feline grace to circle the desk and crouch beside the anchor. Who froze, her eyes locked on his uniform, on the single star that decorated his left shoulder. “Arrow Squad. I thought you were just a story.”
Aden didn’t reply, checking the woman over with an efficiency that said he saw her only as a living, breathing machine. He didn’t speak, but Adria knew he and the other Arrow had to be communicating telepathically. Finally, he took out a pressure injector and punched the medicine into the anchor’s body by pressing it to her neck.
Sonja slumped.
Catching her, Aden laid her down on the carpet. “We can’t afford for her to destabilize the Net,” he said to Adria. “Her mind will continue to maintain things as they are while she sleeps. When she wakes, she’ll have the appropriate medical support.”
Adria didn’t like the fact he’d acted without asking the anchor’s permission, but then, she didn’t know if he’d telepathed to Sonja, and the PsyNet wasn’t her field of expertise. More important, Judd had said this man and his partner were to be trusted, and Adria had absolute faith in the lieutenant. “We’re charged with her safety,” she said in response, checking Sonja’s pulse herself to make sure she was okay. “I can’t release her to anyone other than you two.”
“Vasic will teleport her to a medical facility.” With that, he returned to his partner.
Pricking her ears as Riaz rubbed at his face a foot away from her, she tuned in to their low-voiced conversation.
“Yes,” Vasic said. “Confirmed.”
“You’re certain.”
“Yes.”
Realizing the two Arrows were either cognizant of the acute nature of changeling hearing, or so used to communicating telepathically that they weren’t going to let anything slip, she met Riaz’s gaze. He gave a small shrug, and she knew he’d been attempting to listen, too. Shifting closer, she said, “Let me check your eyes.” It was a ruse—she needed to touch him, settle nerves that had been shredded when he collapsed.
“Thanks for the rescue.” He sat patiently while she used the mini-torch in her pocket to determine that his pupils were reacting properly. “Good shot.”
Her wolf would’ve happily gutted the bastard who’d hurt him if Riaz hadn’t already taken care of that, but she said only, “You’re my partner. No thanks required.”
“The gunshots.” Eyes of palest brown scanning her body with protective intent. “Are you hurt?”
“I don’t think the shooter had ever targeted a changeling before—he was too slow.” Tucking the torch back into her pocket, she kept her face turned away from the carnage, but there was no way to avoid the fact that her clothing was splattered with flecks of things she didn’t want to think about. Her face, she’d wiped on the clean T-shirt she wore under her sweatshirt, but she desperately wanted a shower, the scent of death clogging her nostrils. “Here.”
Ripping off a clean part of her T-shirt, she wiped off the blood that had hit the side of Riaz’s face, his clothing relatively unscathed because of the angle of the shot.
His hand touched her hip, startling her enough that she froze. Holding her gaze, he stroked gently. Not a sexual caress, she realized, simply comfort from one changeling to another, one wolf to another. Swallowing the lump of emotion in her throat, she threw the torn fabric into a small metal trash can probably meant for office detritus, and lowered her voice to a sub-vocal level. “Not here, not yet.” She couldn’t afford to break down, to crawl into his arms and give in to her own rippling shock.
Cutting the contact, he nodded, and they both pushed up to their feet. Riaz was a fraction unsteady, but it only lasted a couple of seconds. In front of them, the two Psy males got up from their crouching position beside the body, the quiet one walking across to the desk to pick up Sonja and teleport out. His speed was stunning to witness, especially when he teleported back less than ten seconds later.
“The Tk wasn’t working alone,” she said to them both. “His partner shot at the house, then at me when I realized it had to be a distraction and headed inside.” Bypassing the front door, she’d smashed her way through a lower-floor window. “I’m pretty sure he was standing in the shadow of the stand of eucalyptus trees out front.”
“One minute.” Vasic left for the corridor and—Adria guessed—the window from which he could see the trees. He returned not long afterward, holding several blackened pieces of grass. “Yes, he was there. As was what appears to be a jet-powered motorcycle. The scorch marks on the grass make it clear he left in a rush.”
Knowing there was nothing they could do to help track the shooter if he’d departed on the high-speed vehicle, Adria nonetheless made a note to see if she could pick up a scent by the trees. It might come in useful later, if they had to identify a suspect. Beside her, Riaz said, “I’ll talk to DarkRiver, see if the shooter blew past one of their security patrols. Long shot, but worth a try.”
“An analysis of the weapon’s signature might provide some clues,” Adria said, but knew the chances were their quarry was too clever to have used a conspicuous tool.
Vasic’s next words proved her right. “Generic projectile gun, mass-produced,” he said, glancing at the black screen of the computronic gauntlet that covered his left forearm.
Riaz shoved a hand through his hair, messing up the already tumbled black strands. “We can continue to watch the perimeter while you work.”
Aden shook his head. “There’s not much to be done here beyond the cleanup. We’ll take care of that and secure the house.” He sounded as if the task was a simple case of spilled milk, not bone and brain matter drenched in blood. “We appreciate the assistance.”
Adria wondered how often one of these men said that to anyone.
ADEN stood at the window in the corridor and watched the two SnowDancers get into their vehicle after spending several minutes by the eucalyptus trees where the shooter had stood. He was interested in whether the male would insist on driving, regardless of the fact he’d been unconscious not long ago. Predatory changeling males had a reputation for irrational behavior. However, this one bent his head toward the tall, beautiful soldier female—her eyes a shade Aden had never before seen—before laughing and allowing her to take the driver’s seat.
It made him wonder what the woman had said that she’d provoked the emotional response from a man who had watched Aden and Vasic with a predator’s stealthy focus since he regained consciousness. “This isn’t the first time the changelings have helped Psy,” he said, watching their taillights disappear into the night. “And yet we have never assisted them.”
“The point is moot,” Vasic said from inside the room where the body lay. “The changelings do not ask for help.”
True—the packs were very insular. “It seems all three races have faults.” The Psy were arrogant to the point of not seeing the reality in front of them, and the humans, they had allowed themselves to be subjugated and treated as weak for far too long.
Leaving the window, he returned to the body. “One of Henry’s. Confirms the Pure Psy connection.” Visual identification made impossible by the fact the SnowDancer’s kill shot had obliterated the Tk’s face, Vasic had accessed the Council’s main Tk database, confirmed ID via DNA. An Arrow who had infiltrated Pure Psy had then provided verification of the dead male’s continued political allegiance to the
group.
“Have you had any success in tracing Henry?” Vasic asked.
“No. However, I have something in progress that may give him to us before the night is out.” It was a bold prediction, but Aden knew his own abilities, as he knew Henry’s. “He can’t be shielding himself—he doesn’t have the skill.” Henry was high-Gradient, but it wasn’t always about power, as how the power the individual had was used.
“Vasquez must have arranged it through a more gifted telepath.” The squad had zeroed in on Henry’s general even before Kaleb Krychek made him a priority, been attempting to flush him out. “He continues to be a problem—I’ve been unable to track down any images of him since his official death.” The man had scrubbed the Net clean of his presence.
Vasic walked the perimeter of the room, and Aden knew he was calculating the work to be done. “Did you discover why he was removed from the training program for the squad?” the teleporter asked as he turned a corner.
“He failed the psychological evaluation.” It was a difficult test to fail—sociopaths made the perfect assassins after all. “A high level of instability.”
“The psych eval may have been wrong in this case.” Vasic returned to the center of the room. “He has run things with military precision for Henry.”
Aden watched Vasic lower his head, flex his hands. “He is also a zealot.”
“Some would say so are Arrows.” Blood droplets began to peel off walls and out of the carpet, coalescing into a single red stain above the dead man’s body. “We very much were at the start, when Adelaja created the squad.”
An elite unit formed to protect Silence, that had been their mission statement. For over a century, the Arrows had ensured no one dared raise his or her voice against the Protocol, believing it was Silence that had saved their race. Now they knew Silence had consequences that could lead to the extinction of their people, and that war was inevitable. After it was over, they would have to find a new reason for being.
The giant “drop” of blood mixed with smears of brain and bone grew bigger and bigger as Vasic collected minute traces from the carpet, the walls, the air itself. If the anchor decided to return to her home once the danger was past, she’d find no evidence of violence.
“Where shall I take it?” Vasic asked, his tone indicating no emotional disturbance at the grim task.
However, Aden had known the other man nearly his entire lifetime, understood how close Vasic was to the final edge. “Biohazard container at the Arrow morgue,” he said, and watched as, instead of teleporting the biological material out, Vasic teleported one of the containers in. The blood and brain matter poured easily into the floating receptacle, not a drop spilled, and then the container was capped and teleported away.
Vasic next lifted the body off the ground and cleaned up the blood trapped beneath, while Aden rechecked the room for any covert surveillance devices the Tk might’ve planted in advance of his attack. He knew Nikita and Anthony’s people had already done a pass, as had the changelings, but an Arrow took nothing on faith.
He found no sign of a bug.
Satisfied, he turned off the mobile disrupter he’d switched on when Vasic ’ported them in.
“The room’s clean,” Vasic said into the silence, the corpse floating a few feet in front of him. “The morgue?”
“Yes.”
Chapter 67
“IF I’M UNDERSTANDING how the anchor network works,” Adria said, a sudden chill invading her veins as they drove through the light drizzle that had begun to fall, “then the fail-safes connected to this anchor have to be dead.”
Brutal comprehension darkened Riaz’s expression. “I hope to hell you’re wrong.”
Thankfully, it turned out she was.
“It looks like Pure Psy decided to reverse the order,” Judd told them when they met the former Arrow in the White Zone on their return to the den, his jaw tight with contained fury, his hair damp from the misty rain. “Murder the anchor, then use the ensuing chaos to eliminate the backups. But there’s a second, worse option—that they intended to go directly from anchor to anchor in the state.”
“Kill enough of the linchpins,” Adria said, the surface proximity of her wolf apparent in the amber tinge to her eyes, “and the support structure would’ve started to crumple.”
Judd took in the blood that stained the bottom of Adria’s torn T-shirt, her sweatshirt bunched up in her hand. The soldier had tilted her face toward the rain, and he knew she wanted only to wash off the stink of blood and death. “The fail-safes are backups, not anchors,” he said, confirming her guess. “They can’t maintain the PsyNet on their own over an extended period, and even if other anchors stretch their zones of influence to cover the gap, the fabric would eventually stretch too thin, begin to tear.”
Riaz’s gaze connected with Judd’s. “I thought I got it earlier,” he said, “how big this is, but I didn’t, not until now. Anyone who knows the locations of every anchor across the world, or in a large enough region, can annihilate the PsyNet.”
“Yes.” The reason no other race had ever been able to use that weakness to wipe out the Psy was a lack of knowledge—only a Psy in the Net, one with access to classified information, could gather data on the identities and physical locations of the anchors and their fail-safes.
Adria blew out a breath. “My God … the trust they’ve put in us.”
“Whether or not other Psy do,” Judd said, “Nikita and Anthony both understand there are certain lines DarkRiver and SnowDancer will not cross.” That core of honor was one of the reasons Walker and Judd had risked defecting into such dangerous changeling territory—the idea of “acceptable collateral damage” was anathema to the packs. Children and innocents were not to be harmed, and a Net collapse ended lives with pitiless impartiality. “Regardless, it’s only a temporary trust—soon as the anchors are moved, we’ll no longer have that information.”
“Why are the safe houses taking so long to organize?” Riaz asked, blinking away the water beading on his lashes. “These anchors are sitting ducks right now.”
Judd’s own frustration echoed the other lieutenant’s. “They can’t be moved too far.” It was a critical limitation. “Not if they’ll be staying in that location for a while, and we have to assume they’ll be there for the duration.” The anchor population needed to remain evenly distributed—too many in one area, or anchors moved too far outside the region, would warp the fabric of the PsyNet. “It makes it harder to find safe bolt holes.”
Riaz swore low on his breath, grim understanding in his expression. “Because the assassins know they only have to search a limited area.”
“Yes.” Anchors also had a high need for stability, so they couldn’t be shifted to a temporary location, then moved again without negatively impacting the Net in this region. “However, the latest update from Nikita and Anthony gives an estimate of forty-eight hours before the relocations begin.”
“How bad is it going to get?” Adria said after Judd finished speaking, fighting the urge to wrap herself around Riaz and just breathe in the living heat of his skin until the chill left her bones. She didn’t regret killing the assassin, but the violence had shaken her nonetheless—she wanted to kiss away the ugly bruises on her lone wolf’s neck, to cuddle into him and allow her guard to drop.
“Bad,” Judd said in response to her question. “Pure Psy might’ve lost this Tk, but they’ll find another.” Unspoken was the reality that Judd’s designation was one of the most unstable in the Net, vulnerable fodder for a group that promised peace. “There is a high chance they’ll move on to random targets … to people we can’t protect.”
Bleak and dark, his words made it clear just how many Psy might die in the coming days and weeks, perhaps months. “They won’t win,” she said fiercely. “We won’t let them.”
Judd touched his fingers to her cheek in an unexpected caress from this most remote of males, his skin cool from the rain. “You helped save an anchor today, and in doing
so, protected thousands of innocents. It’s a start.” He nodded toward the SUV they’d driven up in. “I’m going to see if I can find out anything further.”
A sudden shiver quaked Adria’s frame as the Psy lieutenant got in and started the engine. “I need to shower.”
“Come here.” Eyes night-glow in the mist turning to fog, Riaz went to tug her into his arms.
“No. I’m all—”
He hauled her close, squeezing her nape and bending to rub his cheek over hers. Stubbled, his jaw was like sandpaper, but she didn’t care, his skin an inferno. All she wanted was to crawl into him and never come out.
“I damn well am not letting you be alone right now,” he growled. “So don’t you dare send me away.”
She had to, of course she had to, but she was weak enough that she clung to the solid strength of him for long minutes before allowing him to walk her back to her room. But when he would’ve come in, she put her hand on his chest and held him at bay. “No.” It was so hard to get the single word out past the violent need choking her up.
Eyes of Spanish gold slammed into hers, the fury in them tempered by a tenderness that killed her. Ignoring her hand and her declaration both, he walked in and closed the door behind him.
“Riaz—”
But he was already spinning her around and tugging off her damp T-shirt. Gripping it in one hand, his other splayed on her abdomen as he stood behind her, he said, “I will never forgive you if you don’t let me take care of you tonight.” It was the vow of a predatory changeling male driven to the brink.
To her shame, she wasn’t strong enough to push him away a second time. Instead, she let him strip her with gentle hands, let him join her in the steamy warmth of the shower and tend to her with a wild affection that broke her heart. There was no longer any anger in him, only a possessive gentleness that branded her as his.