by Nalini Singh
The rate of decay had slowed from initial predictions, but it was going inexorably in one direction. He'd been the first chipped, would be the first to fall if they didn't find a solution. He'd come to terms with that when Ashaya Aleine first made the devastating diagnosis. But now that all of the chipped were past the safe-removal zone--including his sister, Lily--he found his anger spiking into red-hot frustration.
I'm not sorry for the choice I made.
Lily had said that to him when he'd asked her to consider getting her chip out while extraction was still possible. He'd known what her answer would be before he ever asked the question, but he'd had to ask, had to try to protect the woman who'd been his small, big-eyed shadow in childhood.
Switching off the screen, he was about to return to work when there was a knock on his door. As the rest of his team were coming in late after a long night when they'd all pulled punishing hours, he should've been the only one in the building.
He palmed a weapon before saying, "Come in."
He wasn't expecting the man who walked through the door. Raising an eyebrow, he said, "Polite of you not to teleport right into my office."
"Sahara is attempting to teach me manners." Kaleb Krychek slipped into a seat on the opposite side of Bo's desk.
Not about to be fooled by the cardinal's casual attitude, Bo leaned back in his own chair. "Why is a member of the Ruling Coalition in my office?" The Alliance didn't have any kind of relationship with the new rulers of the Psy race. The Coalition's predecessors had been murderous evil, while this new group included an empath and an Arrow, both of whom had saved countless lives, Psy, changeling--and human.
Krychek had done the same.
That was why Bo was listening to him. Because the Ruling Coalition also featured Nikita Duncan and Anthony Kyriakus, who, like Krychek, had been part of the defunct and vicious Psy Council. Word from those who'd know--and who Bo trusted--was that Anthony had always been a rebel in the shadows, while Krychek was the one who'd brought the Council crashing down.
There were rumors he was directly behind the disappearance of at least one Councilor, a cold-blooded sociopath of a woman Bo suspected of having used mind control to turn the former leadership of the Alliance into her puppets.
All of that might've made him more receptive to the Coalition but for one brutal fact: Nikita Duncan may have survived the purging of the Council, may even have given birth to a cardinal empath Bo respected, but that didn't wipe her hands clean of all the blood she'd spilled, a lot of it human.
"Humans and Psy," Krychek said now, "are on an inevitable collision course."
Bo's shoulders knotted. "This have anything to do with the fact your people need human minds for some reason?"
His direct access to PsyNet data was erratic, dependent on a Psy junkie who was a brilliant hacker when he wasn't high. This time around, the other man had managed to get his hands on part of a secure document that talked about the "necessary human element" and "how to achieve integration."
Kaleb betrayed no surprise at his knowledge. "What I'm about to tell you is highly classified. I'm sharing the data because in this, Psy and humans may be able to assist one another."
"I doubt that, but I'm listening."
"The PsyNet was never meant to hold only Psy minds," Krychek said. "Until Silence, humans were part of it through their relationships with Psy."
"How? We're not telepathic."
"Love forms a psychic bond. Changelings call it the mating bond." White stars on black, Krychek's gaze was inscrutable. "A human mind in the PsyNet is connected only to the person with whom they share the mating bond. No one else can even reach that mind, much less hack it."
Bo felt his lips twist, but he held back his cynical comment about how humans outside the PsyNet weren't afforded that courtesy. "You're forgetting an entire race," he said instead. "Didn't the Psy want changelings in their network?"
"Changelings did have a presence, but their numbers were far lower--likely because, in many cases, changelings are able to provide Psy mates with an alternative psychic network we don't fully understand, thus taking Psy out rather than bringing changelings in. Humans, however, were always an integral aspect of the PsyNet. Not peripheral, essential."
Bo stared at Krychek, the laugh that erupted from his throat unintentional. "Let me get this straight. The high-and-mighty Psy need humans to maintain your psychic network?"
"Yes." Krychek's expression continued to be impassive. "Coercion negates the effect. The Psy-human bond must be made by choice."
"You're shit out of luck then," Bo said, all laughter gone from his soul. "For humans to trust a Psy is to consign themselves to psychic rape." His tone was hard, his heart even harder.
"Should the Alliance work with the Coalition in encouraging and creating opportunities for human-Psy relationships," Krychek said, "the Coalition will put all of its considerable resources into finding a way for humans to permanently block Psy intrusion."
Bo's hand tightened around the weapon he still held. Of all the things they could've offered . . . "I already have access to the most brilliant scientists on the planet."
"Ashaya and Amara Aleine are undoubtedly that, but they can't think of everything. The Coalition is offering you the entire machinery of the Psy race geared toward one overriding goal."
That machinery was massive, far beyond anything the Alliance could command. "All I'd have to do to get this generous gift is sell out my people, tell them to trust the Psy." Bo shook his head. "The answer is no." He would not betray everything the Alliance stood for on the faith of a nebulous promise from a race that had done so much damage.
"Every human on this planet," he said, rage a cauldron of darkness inside him, "knows at least one person who's had their mind treated like a store or a playhouse by Psy who wanted to steal their ideas or just to defile. We have no reason or desire to help you."
"Strange as it may seem, I agree with you--the Psy have no right to make this request." Krychek rose to his feet as if to leave, paused suddenly.
"My mate," he said, "tells me I need to trust you with a fact we don't often share: Psy need the biofeedback offered by a psychic network. Sever that link and death comes in a matter of minutes. Should the PsyNet fail," he added softly, "it'll mean the near extinction of an entire race."
Bo's hand fisted on his desk, the image a devastating one. Because the Psy weren't only the Coalition and powerful bastards like Krychek. The Psy were also the little girl down the road who waved shyly to him from her nursery window, the M-Psy who saved lives day after day, and the vulnerable openhearted empaths who were helping humans and changelings as well as Psy.
To imagine their lives snuffed out--it was a brutal vision.
As brutal were the other images he had in his brain: of broken humans who'd had their entire lives stripped from them by Psy; of children who'd lost their mothers and fathers to Psy death squads; of men and women who'd committed suicide after losing their lives' work to a Psy thief.
"Do it for nothing in return," Bo said quietly. "Do the research just because it's the right thing to do. Put humans and Psy on equal footing when it comes to psychic privacy. Then, maybe, we can talk."
Chapter 6
I've just been alerted to a serious issue to do with pure telepaths.
--Kaleb Krychek to the rest of the Ruling Coalition (February 2082)
EXHAUSTION BEGAN TO bite at Silver forty-five minutes into the drive to StoneWater territory. Regardless of how hard she tried to fight it, the fatigue seeped into her blood, made her head want to tilt to the side.
"Moyo solnyshko, you ever consider saying to hell with it to the Silence?"
Valentin's unexpected question was a welcome dose of cold water. Ignoring that he'd addressed her as his "sunshine," she focused on his question. "I don't see how that is any of your business." No one could ever know that Silver couldn't breach Silence; the world had to believe it was a choice.
As far as the Mercants as a group went,
the issue of Silence was still under discussion. The overriding consensus was that surrendering to emotion would erode them, make them far too approachable, far too "human" in the wider sense. That didn't mean a Mercant would never break Silence.
One member of her family hadn't ever been truly Silent.
"Of course it isn't my business." Valentin's deep rumble of a voice broke into her thoughts--though she'd never forgotten his presence. Silver wasn't in the habit of forgetting six feet plus several inches of heavily muscled threat next to her.
"But just because it isn't my business," Valentin continued, sounding aggrieved, "doesn't mean I'm not interested."
Bears did appear to have a tendency toward inveterate curiosity. Half the time when they got into trouble, it was because they'd been poking their noses where they didn't belong. A group had even wandered all the way out to Kaleb's isolated home soon after Kaleb bonded with Sahara. When caught and questioned, they'd belligerently said they didn't believe the rumors of Kaleb having a mate, had come to see for themselves.
"Why do bears like knowing things so much?"
A narrow-eyed look. "Probably the same reason you do, Ms. Silver Spy."
Silver doubted it. From all she knew, bears were inquisitive down to the bone. For her, knowledge was power. And she didn't have anywhere near the depth of knowledge she wanted on the bears. That placed her in a quandary.
Valentin put on an act of not being particularly subtle or intelligent, but only half of that was true. He was about as subtle as a baseball bat to the head, but he was ferociously intelligent. All alphas were. Strength alone might be accepted in a changeling soldier, but never in a high-ranking member of a pack or clan.
It was a lesson many Psy still hadn't learned.
So she knew Valentin wouldn't give her any information unless it was an equal trade. "Silence suits me," she said in answer to the question he'd asked. "The calm orderliness it gives to my mind makes me very efficient." Not a lie.
"You remember what it was like before you were Silent?"
As she'd thought--he was clever. He'd picked up the secondary layer of meaning in her response. "My answers aren't free."
A laugh that built in his chest, filled the vehicle. "Ask what you want, Starlichka," he said, "but first you answer my question."
Again, he proved his acute intelligence; he knew Silver would avoid answering the question if she could. It wasn't as if she'd given her word.
"Yes," she said. "Conditioning begins during childhood, but it doesn't 'take' for several years." It had never been difficult for Silver to talk about Silence because she'd never been conditioned with dissonance--a pain loop designed, among other things, to stifle dissemination of information about the Protocol.
"What were you like as a kid? A feral beastie?"
"Feral beastie?" Silver stared at him as she repeated the English words he'd slipped into a conversation otherwise undertaken in Russian.
A shrug. "My great-grandfather was Scottish. He used to call me that. He liked me a lot."
Silver realized that, in bear terms, "feral beastie" was probably an endearment. "My telepathic powers are significant--I'm classified at 9.3 on the Gradient."
"Goes to 10?"
"Nine point nine. Cardinals are off the scale."
"You must be able to speak telepathically across the country."
"Further." Officially, Silver was what was termed a "pure" telepath, her skill to do with communicating over vast distances.
It wasn't so simple, of course, and pure telepaths could be taught to use their abilities in all kinds of ways--including how to use their minds to break those of others. However, thanks to Mercant muscle, the Psy Council hadn't got their hands on Silver. She'd never been groomed to be a torturer.
In truth, though telepathy was her primary ability, Silver wasn't only a pure telepath--but as her secondary ability was a useless one that had saddled her with a vulnerability without an advantage to balance it out, she never factored it into her psychic skillset.
"As a cub"--Valentin's bass timbre--"you must've had a chaos of voices coming at you."
"My family protected me while I was an infant, but they eventually had to teach me how to shield myself, and part of doing that meant lowering their shields and allowing me to feel what awaited if I didn't learn to protect myself." The crashing wave of sound had literally put her flat on the floor, the roar of it a horror that threatened to crush her brain.
Valentin's eyes were a primal amber when he glanced at her. "How young were you?"
"It doesn't matter," she said, intrigued at this glimpse of the bear that lived inside him. "It had to be done." She'd had to understand the danger on a visceral level so she'd know why she had to practice so hard with her shields--and with her Silence.
Valentin went as if to reach out, touch her in that tactile changeling way of interacting, wrenched his hand back partway. "I don't understand why you had to lose your emotions to gain psychic control."
"The coming generation of children will test whether emotions can coexist alongside control." Silver would do everything in her power to assist those innocent young minds. "Going backwards isn't an option for me."
"Why?"
Silver took a leaf from Valentin's own book. "Because I say so."
A deep rumbling sound from his chest that sounded very much like the bearish version of a growl. "That wasn't very nice."
Silver wasn't about to get into an argument with a bear, especially over something so nonsensical. Unlike Kaleb, she didn't have a keg of beer and a volcano handy with which to call a cease-fire. "How did you become alpha?"
The grumbling rumble was still in his voice when he answered. "You're asking a very big question."
"So did you." If he was trying to intimidate her with his rumbling, he'd have to try a lot harder. "We had a deal. Answer the question."
"I killed all the other challengers."
She blinked, stared at him. And realized something. "You're lying."
A totally unrepentant grin. "You made me mad."
Another wave of exhaustion slammed into her. Her head spun. But Silver wasn't about to enter an unknown situation asleep and vulnerable. "Keep talking," she ordered.
When Valentin didn't dispute her right to give that order, Silver knew she must look in bad shape indeed.
"I became alpha because that's who I am." A shrug, broad shoulders rippling with a strength that would outmatch any other man in the city, likely in the country. "I always knew I was born to care for a clan. Since I didn't fuck up and turn into an asshole in the interim, the clan accepted me when Zoya decided it was time for her to step down."
Silver caught a hidden undertone in his statement, was certain he wasn't telling her the whole truth. "If she'd evidenced a desire to remain in her position, you'd have challenged her?"
"I respect her too much for that. I'd have left to found my own clan." Shadows fell on the car from the heavy tree canopy above them, old trees with thick trunks lining both sides of the narrow road. "It's hard for two adult alphas who've both come into their power to share the same space."
"That changes once one cedes power?"
A nod.
"It must be difficult," Silver said quietly, "to cede power after a lifetime of leading."
"You're thinking of Ena."
Since he'd clearly already intuited the Mercant line of succession, she saw no harm in answering his question. "The idea of my grandmother handing over the reins is one I struggle to accept."
The heavily forested road turned into a dirt track in front of her.
"I don't think she'd do it for just anyone, but for the granddaughter she's taught herself? I think when the time comes, moyo solnyshko, she'll be proud to take a backseat so you can shine."
The emotional interpretation gave her pause. The truth was that while Silver embraced her responsibility to be her grandmother's right hand, she wasn't sure she wanted Ena to cede power anytime soon--her grandmother lived and breathed
the Mercant family.
"See those trees?" Valentin raised one big hand to thrust back the messy tumble of his hair. "In a few weeks, they'll be blanketed by snow until, together, they look like a dignified old church."
Silver went to follow his gaze, was distracted by something else highlighted by the beams of sunlight that speared through the canopy. "Are those children from your clan or wild bears?" They were too small to be adult changeling bears. "Is that bear hanging upside down from a tree limb? I didn't know that was anatomically possible."
The rumbling growl beginning again, Valentin brought the vehicle to a halt and stepped out. "Small bears! Here! Now." It was a bass drum of sound that wasn't a yell but that carried all the same.
Five bear cubs melted out of the woods to stand around Valentin. Judging from their size and what little she knew of changeling bears in this form, she thought they couldn't be older than seven at the most. At present, they were doing a very bad job of appearing meek while trying to sneak looks inside the vehicle.
One lifted its paw in a wave at Silver.
Valentin put his hands on his hips and said, "Eyes here."
His tone as he gave that order was different from his initial one, and this time, every single bear snapped to attention. Crouching down to their level, Valentin began to speak. She couldn't hear what he said--hadn't known he could speak that quietly--but the child bears all nodded after a short minute before turning and running into the trees.
Valentin was chuckling when he got back into the vehicle. "Arkasha semi-shifted so he could hang upside down. Too damn clever."
"What were they doing out here?"
"Being trouble. They think they're the tiny bear version of gangsters." Laughter in his eyes. "They wait for unsuspecting clanmates to pass underneath and jump on them."
"Wouldn't bigger bears scent the children?"
"The gangsters are just old enough to know how to use the wind shifts to their advantage." He sounded proud rather than angry. "Do young Psy cause their caretakers this much grief?"
"No, not yet. Silence has certain advantages."
Valentin's hands clenched on the steering wheel as he got them underway again. "I was going to say maybe it does--but never having any of the young idiots play tricks? Not watching them grow into their skins in freedom, seeing the idiots become slowly less idiotic until one day they're men and women I'd have at my back any day of the week?"