by K. M. Ruiz
“We’ll remind them,” Sydney said.
“Good. Let’s move on to the next issue.”
The meeting should have taken hours. It didn’t. They weren’t forty minutes into their agenda, the tea and coffee barely lukewarm, when a sharp knock on the conference room door interrupted the conversation.
“Sir,” Nathan’s secretary said as she stepped inside. “You have an uplink.”
“I’m busy,” Nathan said. “It can wait.”
“Sir, it’s from The Hague.”
Which could only mean one person. Nathan refused to let emotion show on his face as he excused himself from the proceedings.
“It’s a secure uplink on their end,” the woman said.
“I’ll take it in my office.”
It took roughly five minutes for him to make it to his private office, going by lift. He couldn’t teleport, not with so many people around. When Nathan finally arrived, he opened the uplink on his desk terminal and then Erik’s face was filling the vidscreen.
“To what do I owe this meeting?” Nathan asked.
“We have a problem,” Erik said flatly.
“Yes, I’ve seen the pirate stream. There is—”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. The quads up north missed their designated check-in two days ago.”
Nathan kept the annoyance out of his voice through long practice. “Why am I only being notified of this now?”
“The World Court doesn’t bow to you, Nathan,” Erik said, voice cold and vicious. “This didn’t become your problem until we had solid evidence that the seed bank was broken into. Half the supplies are gone. That is why I am calling you.”
For a second, Nathan couldn’t breathe. Surprise did not come naturally, as Nathan prided himself on knowing the world’s secrets. How he had missed seeing this, knowing this, was beyond him. His team of Warhounds situated in Longyearbyen should have warned him.
Lucas.
Every time his son had infiltrated Serca Syndicate branches and subsidiary companies over the past two years, stealing disparate amounts of information that never added up, Nathan had been left wondering why. Nathan mentally ripped through everything he knew about Lucas’s actions during his time on the run. Just a vast sleight of hand when the real goal was so much bigger—a psion with a coveted power and supplies to feed a world. If Lucas wanted to buy his way into power, that would be enough incentive to make anyone agree.
Lucas never had any intention of leaving Earth. He wasn’t planning an insurrection on Mars. Nathan could see that now, could see what his son was striving for. The release of evidence about the Paris Basin was merely a distraction. The World Court would have to deal with the fallout of that before pursuing the robbery of the one thing left in the world that was absolutely priceless. The seeds weren’t scheduled to be moved until the week of the actual launch to alleviate the risks of transfer from the environment they’d been stored in for so long.
“What do you want from me?” Nathan said after a few seconds of silence.
Erik let out a harsh laugh. “I’m going into closed session with the rest of the World Court to hammer out a new timeline for the launch. We’re pushing it up again and it’s going to be brutal. You are going to Spitsbergen to help Elion with the transfer of everything left up there. I’m sending a small contingent of Strykers as security.”
Nathan thought about how easy it would be to end Erik’s life. Unfortunately, murder wasn’t always the best course of action. Getting rid of Erik now would only bring more chaos, and Nathan had enough problems to deal with already. Later, he could weigh the risk of the president’s early death.
“When did you mobilize the Strykers?” Nathan said.
“An hour ago.”
“I’m in the middle of a meeting that I can cut short, but the world press has been requesting a statement since the pirate stream showed up. I need to make one.”
“Don’t,” Erik said. “I’ve already ordered most Syndicates to keep silent on the matter. When the World Court finally comes to a decision on how to handle this fucked-up mess, you’ll get your orders.”
The uplink cut out, leaving Nathan no option but to play by human rules.
TWENTY-ONE
SEPTEMBER 2379
TORONTO, CANADA
The room was white.
For a long moment, Ciari thought she was dreaming, that the colorlessness of the place was due to her mind dying. Recognition came slowly to her, of where she was, who she was.
She couldn’t remember why that was important.
“You’re a mess,” a quiet voice said from nearby. “I can’t fix you this time around. I’m sorry.”
Ciari moved her head a little, just enough to see the person standing next to her bedside. The petite black woman wore white medical scrubs, thin dreads pulled back away from an angular face.
“Jael,” Ciari said, the name sliding through her thoughts. Her voice was rough, tongue dry, as if she hadn’t moved her mouth in days, which was probably the case.
“Yes,” Jael said as she stepped forward. She carried a tiny cup and proceeded to feed Ciari ice chips until the dryness of her throat faded. Eventually, Jael set the cup aside. “How do you feel?”
Ciari watched as Jael crossed her arms over her chest, fingers digging into her uniform. The skin over her knuckles was ashy and drawn, the expression on the other woman’s face ruthlessly neutral. Except—Ciari could see the tightness in her jaw, the way her mouth curved ever so slightly upward at one corner, the way her eyes were just a shade too wide. Tiny details that most people would miss, except Ciari had spent her entire life reading the emotionality of the human body.
Only now, she didn’t know what it meant.
“I don’t know,” Ciari said. “How should I feel?”
Jael closed her eyes briefly, expression twisting enough for Ciari to recognize the look for what it was. It was a struggle to define it, to know it, despite the long association with the other woman.
Pain.
It still didn’t make sense to her. Which told her, more than anything else, that something was horribly wrong. She waited for the panic to come, the fear, but it never did.
“Do you remember what happened?” Jael asked, moving to drag a chair over to Ciari’s bedside.
Ciari scratched at the IV line connected to the back of her left hand. “The World Court,” she said slowly as she pressed her hands flat to the bed and tried to sit up. Jael tapped a command into the controls of the bed, raising it so that Ciari wouldn’t have to hold herself up. “Erik. I was—”
She remembered the feel of incandescent fire running through her body, scouring every square centimeter of her being. Ciari touched the back of her head, where the neurotracker was located, and realized that her hair was shaved completely off. The soft skin of her scalp felt smooth in areas, faint pricks of hair follicles snagging the edges of her nails in others. Occasionally, her fingers ran across tacky residue left behind by a quick-heal patch. Being bald didn’t matter to her. Whatever damage came from it, physically at least, was mostly fixed. She remembered that Jael did good work.
“Erik meant to kill you,” Jael said. “According to Keiko, he kept his finger on the trigger of the kill switch for five minutes before Travis came to your defense. We had to cut out a piece of your skull to give your brain room to swell.”
Ciari flattened her hand against the back of her skull, let her fingers splay over the curve of skin and bone. “I remember it burned.”
Just facts, not emotions. It was all she could articulate.
“It—the damage to your nerves was easier to fix than the damage to your mind.”
“What’s wrong?” Ciari said, looking over at the CMO. She let her hand drop back down to her lap, gripping the sheet that covered her.
“A lot of things.”
“Tell me.”
Jael grimaced, her gaze flicking away from Ciari’s face. “I held your mind together as best I could, but in order to
keep it from slipping away, I had you turn the pain off on your own. It was too difficult for me to try without risking your life. I don’t have that sort of reach, not when a mind is almost dead. You turned off the pain, but it created a domino effect from that internal order. Once the pain turned off, everything else—every other emotion—was switched off as well. I can’t—I can’t fix that, Ciari. I can’t undo what you did.”
Ciari was quiet for a long moment before she said, “You’re the best psi surgeon this Syndicate has.”
“I don’t have the power or finesse to take your mind apart and put it back together again. Not this time.”
Ciari stared at her, brown eyes now tinged silver near her pupils. There should have been anger in her gaze, at the very least a sense of horror, but when Jael finally looked at her, Ciari’s eyes were empty of anything that might have resembled emotion. The lack of accusation in her face was disheartening.
“We need you,” Jael said. “I hoped a medically induced coma would help your mind reset itself, except that’s not going to happen. So I woke you up.”
Ciari nodded. “Who’s in charge?”
“Erik appointed Keiko as Acting OIC.” Jael hesitated before continuing, “Lucas sent Threnody, Kerr, and Jason to retrieve your daughter. I’m sorry. We couldn’t stop them from taking her, but we managed to take Threnody into custody.”
Ciari closed her eyes. Opened them again.
“Tell me,” Ciari said slowly, struggling to wrap her thoughts around a concept she no longer understood, “why you need me.”
Words flowed over her when Jael spoke, sound that told a story Ciari tried hard to feel connected to. Except that she didn’t—couldn’t.
In the end, when Jael finally left her alone, Ciari was certain of only three things. She was still a Class III empath; that genetic fact could not be changed. She could still use her power, on others and on herself. She simply had no name for the emotions she could play with and no reason to care why, either about the people she would have to apply it to or the people she was required to lead and to protect.
TWENTY-TWO
SEPTEMBER 2379
TORONTO, CANADA
The pain in her head reminded Threnody of when she peeled burned skin off her hands in the Arctic, how it came free one ragged piece at a time. The way Jael sought to flay her mind felt the exact same way.
The Class III telepath had already stripped most of Threnody’s mental shields from her mind, her personal defenses broken down to their foundations. Now Jael contended with the safeguards Lucas had left in Threnody’s mind, and for all that Jael was a skilled psi surgeon, breaking past a shield erected by a Class I telepath was practically impossible.
Coughing, Threnody spat out saliva mixed with blood, tasting the coppery tang of iron on her tongue. She kept her eyes closed. “Just ask me your questions,” she rasped, the words coming out slow.
Strapped to a chair in an empty cell, Threnody’s hands and feet were encased in rubber gloves that stretched to her elbows and rubber boots that hit her knees. Around her throat was a heavy metal neurocollar with tiny needles that cut into the skin of her throat and into her spine. The external device acted like a neurotracker, a precaution against her using the power she’d been born with. A dark bruise discolored the right side of her face from where her head had hit the wall when Keiko slammed her into it. Keiko’s brutality had been unexpected, and Threnody wondered how badly things had frayed in the Strykers Syndicate since her defection.
“We aren’t interested in your lies,” Aidan said, voice flat and clinical.
Threnody forced her eyes open, blinking rapidly to clear her vision. She winced as the harsh light in the cell nearly blinded her. “They wouldn’t be lies.”
She hadn’t set foot in the Strykers Syndicate since July, when she was assigned a suicidal mission to track a target that couldn’t be caught. The target turned out to be Lucas, and the mission had brought her full circle to the only home she’d ever known before she tasted freedom.
Threnody managed to smile at that delirious thought as she looked at Jael, the black woman swimming in her vision. “I want to speak with Ciari.”
Pain. It ripped through her mind like one of Quinton’s firestorms, burning her from the inside out. Threnody’s head snapped back and she let out a strangled cry. She only had Lucas’s singular shield to hide behind and she wondered, distantly, if it would be enough. He didn’t answer her. No psi link connected them, just the faint touch of his power.
“Aidan,” Jael snapped out. “I already said that isn’t going to work.”
“Keiko said she wanted answers when she got back. Staying our hand isn’t going to get those for her,” Aidan said, sounding frustrated.
“I doubt Ciari wants Threnody dead, and the strength required to break through that last shield would probably kill her.”
“She isn’t a telepath. How the hell is she holding it up?”
Panting heavily, Threnody felt blood pool in her nose and had to let her head fall forward to let it drain out instead of back into her lungs. It dripped onto her thighs, soaking into the patched clothes she still wore.
“You didn’t tag me for retrieval,” Threnody coughed out, feeling blood slid down the back of her throat. “’S’okay, Lucas is better than Nathan.”
The sudden quiet in her cell wasn’t comforting. Nothing about her current position was comforting.
“What do you know about retrieval?” Jael said, the words sounding as if they were pulled out of her by force.
Threnody laughed, soft and low. It made her ribs hurt. Keiko hadn’t pulled her power when she telekinetically hit her.
“Ask me your fucking questions.” Threnody lifted her head, staring at the two Stryker officers who were still beholden to the whims of their human masters by way of the neurotrackers in their heads. “Or ask Ciari. Either way, get on with it.”
Telepathy curled through her bruised mind once again, attempting to cut into the last defense she had against people she once trusted.
TWENTY-THREE
SEPTEMBER 2379
LONGYEARBYEN, NORWAY
Keiko squinted through the lenses of her binoculars, glad for the shade the shuttle wing provided. Her gaze caught on the magnified metal wedge protruding from the mountainside and the road that wound its way up to their eventual destination. The visual was enough for a teleport, but they weren’t ready to move yet.
Behind her stood Terrence Finn, a Class V psychometrist. He silently took the binoculars from Keiko when she passed them to him. Born with a power that shared traits from both telepathy and empathy, Terrence could pull memories out of inanimate objects. He’d been on medical leave in Toronto after fighting in Buffalo, making it easy for Keiko to add him to the small team of Strykers assigned this mission.
Only four of them had been ordered out: Keiko, Terrence, a telepath, and a pyrokinetic. They’d flown across the Arctic Ocean to this island on the World Court’s orders. Erik had imparted to her the details of the mission and the location of the outpost in person, not trusting an uplink after the current political mess running through the media. Their contact here hadn’t bothered to leave his shuttle, and Keiko had stopped trying to get orders out of Elion after the first try.
I wonder if Ciari knew about this place, Keiko thought as she surveyed the dead land that surrounded the abandoned airfield.
They couldn’t access the Svalbard Global Seed and Gene Bank yet. Not until the World Court’s appointed leader of this mission arrived on a government-charted shuttle. He landed less than an hour later.
We really need to stop meeting like this, Keiko, Nathan said as he stepped off the shuttle. Two Warhounds in the guise of human bodyguards and a quad followed him. Meters away, Elion was disembarking from his own shuttle, coming to join their small group.
Keiko realized right then just how little they knew about Nathan’s political maneuverings. Or at least, how little she knew. Despite taking over as the Acting OIC, Keiko kn
ew certain details were locked in Ciari’s head that could be the difference between living and dying. Keiko wished she knew them. Lifting her chin, Keiko watched the group’s approach in silence.
“Strykers,” Nathan said when his group got within hearing range, “the World Court has seen fit to give me your contract.”
You’re enjoying this far too much, Nathan, Keiko said, shoving the words into the public area of her mind.
The expression on his face didn’t change. No, I’m not.
“Sir,” Keiko said, careful not to make the word grate.
“I was told there would be a psychometrist in this group,” Nathan said, his eyes resting unerringly on Terrence. “Which one of you is it?”
Terrence took a step forward. “I am.”
For Keiko, it was strange to face Nathan with people who knew nothing of his true identity. Nathan lived a brilliant lie, Keiko had to admit. Brilliant and deadly. The Silence Law would dictate their actions here, with she as the psion and Nathan as nothing more than human. It would be a tricky dance.
“I’ve got a visual on the mountain,” Keiko said, looking between Nathan and Elion. “Whenever you’re ready, I can teleport us there.”
“How many Strykers did you bring?” Elion said, sounding agitated.
“Four, myself included.” Keiko tilted her head at the shuttle behind her. “Our telepath and pyrokinetic are monitoring the security grid. We’ve been waiting for your arrival before we proceeded up the mountain.”
“We’re here now,” Nathan said. He turned his head to stare up at the mountainside. “Teleport us.”
Keiko steadied her mind before wrapping her power around everyone. She teleported them up to the road that led to the seed bank’s entrance. Elion and the quads stumbled a bit on their arrival; no one else did. People who were used to the quirks of a teleport—where the telekinetics always ’ported a few centimeters or more higher than the ground of their targeted location—didn’t stumble.