by Nalini Singh
Curious, she took a second look at the shelves and found several more unexpected volumes hidden in plain sight. All were of relatively flimsy construction, and they contained everything from further poetry to plays to a reprint of a nineteenth-century classic written by a human. Then there was a twisted piece of metal that wasn’t identifiable as anything in particular, except that her mind kept telling her it had once been part of a bullet train.
Shaking off the odd sense of knowing, she focused once more on the cardinal currently ripping his opponent to shreds with cold-blooded precision, taking in the dark hair cut with brutal neatness, the clean lines of his face, his skin tanned enough that he couldn’t spend all his time indoors, those incredible eyes. But in spite of his beauty, he was harshly masculine, his every action marking him as quintessentially and fascinatingly male.
Her breath hitched, her fingers worrying the lapis lazuli pebble she’d never returned to the shelf. Forcing herself to return it, because she wanted to steal it, captivated by the feel and shape of it, she attempted not to stare at Kaleb. The majority of her guards had been male—and a number had undoubtedly been chosen because of their looks in an effort to manipulate her youth and splintered Silence. Not once had she forgotten the fact that they were a threat to her very existence.
And yet she saw primal beauty in this merciless, no doubt manipulative, and bitingly intelligent male who clearly lived for power, for control—all things her shadow ability would make it ruthlessly simple for him to acquire. The individual who controlled Sahara Kyriakus could control the PsyNet, and Kaleb Krychek, her ears told her, was the kind of ruthless man who would use every advantage at his disposal when it came to the dance of power.
Disturbed by that realization on an elemental level, an ache in her chest, she walked toward the open glass doors to the right of his desk. It was instinct to stay out of the line of sight of the aggressive-voiced man on the other end of the comm who, it was clear, was about to lose the skirmish. For now, it was better she remain a ghost in the eyes of the world.
The polished wood of the terrace was smooth beneath her feet, the sun a languid caress against her skin. Tilting her face upward, she drank it in, her skin greedy for the kiss of heat, of light.
You’ll burn.
Startled by the cool words that had traveled along a telepathic pathway she hadn’t been aware she’d opened, she twisted her head to look inside the study. The man who continued to both intrigue and confuse her had his eyes on the comm screen, still involved in a business negotiation that was more akin to a deadly play of razors, each word designed to inflict maximum damage. Sliding the doors shut, she padded to the sun lounger in the far corner, an item that hadn’t been there earlier this morning, and sat with her legs stretched out on the cushioned fabric, toes reaching for the sun.
A large outdoor umbrella stood above her a second later, shading her face while leaving her feet exposed. Stop doing that, she said along that same telepathic channel, and it didn’t feel new, didn’t feel awkward. No, it felt as if the pathway was carved into her mind, the groove worn in over countless years. As if she’d known Kaleb longer than she’d known herself. It’s showing off.
A pause that might’ve indicated surprise before a small table appeared at her elbow. On it sat a plate of cookies and a long glass filled with what turned out to be mango nectar. Drawn by the cookies, she ate two different kinds and took a sip of the thick, refreshing drink before pointedly ignoring her beautiful captor and opening the book in her lap.
It was a math textbook.
Such physical books, she remembered, were no longer part of the education system, but this one had been well used. Employing black ink, someone had written in concise explanations of the equations and corrected the frustrated mistakes—lines crossed out, rewritten—made by a writer who used blue ink.
It hurt her to touch the black writing, made her throat thicken, so she shut the book.
The texture of the cover, the tear on one corner, the stamp that denoted the book had come from a used-goods dealer, each was so familiar it was like hearing music just far enough away that it was impossible to identify the tune. Touching her fingers to the faded stamp, she imagined what she might see were she a Ps-Psy, born with the ability to sense memories left behind on physical objects.
* * *
HANDS in the pockets of his pants, Kaleb stood at the glass doors to the terrace, looking through them to the woman who sat on the lounger, her feet bared to the still-warm sun of early fall and her fingers stroking the cover of the textbook he’d originally found in a junk store that sold dubious “antiques.” As evidenced by her tart reply a few minutes ago, there was no fear in her, no sense of panic at being in his control.
He knew that lack was a momentary lull—this woman who spoke to him without concern and who seemed to be shocked or unsettled by nothing was not the real Sahara Kyriakus. No, she was a sleepwalker whose task it was to ready Sahara’s body and mind for the true waking.
She wouldn’t be calm once that happened, wouldn’t look at him with dark blue eyes untainted by fear. Then, she’d either use her ability against him—or she’d run, terror in her every jagged breath. Which was why he’d retrieved the dirty smock she’d thrown in the laundry and vacuum sealed it to preserve her scent. He would never use his mind to leash hers, but he would track her through rain, hail, fire itself. Never again was anyone, even Sahara herself, taking her from him.
!!!
He threw up his strongest shields at the wordless warning from the NetMind and DarkMind both, connecting with the twin neosentience at the same time. What has occurred? This wasn’t another anchor collapse, not with the roaring force of the shock wave that had just passed—as if it had gathered momentum across the entire breadth of the Net.
Images of crumbling houses, ripped walls, a torn dress fell into his mind, at a speed that told him the twin neosentience that was born of the Net was confused and in pain. Grabbing hold of each image, he separated them, found the common denominator. All of the damage had been caused by rot, fungus, mildew.
Show me.
Entering the psychic network that was as familiar to him as the streets of Moscow, he cloaked himself and shot to the location they’d pinpointed . . . except it was no longer there.
The region was black, but that was the only similarity it had to the rest of the PsyNet. This blackness not only held no stars, it effectively repelled light. Though he was immune to the rot that was crawling through parts of the network that connected millions of Psy around the world, seeping insidiously into the minds of the population, he took care approaching the pulsing emptiness.
Halting at the very edge, he sent an exploratory tendril of psychic energy into the blackness. The nothingness sucked it in, and if Kaleb hadn’t already cut the tendril loose, it would’ve continued sucking until it stole every drop of energy from his mind and body both. Death would’ve been an excruciatingly painful process.
Can you go there? he asked the NetMind.
A sense of desolation, of terrible pain from the half of the twin neosentience that was recognized by the populace and considered the librarian and guardian of the PsyNet. It only communicated, however, with a very, very short list of people. And it communicated with no one like it did with Kaleb.
His connection with the ancient, yet childlike neosentience, and its twisted, broken twin, had been formed in a chill, isolated childhood composed of physical pain and mental torture that had shaped him into the man he’d become. For a long time, the NetMind and the DarkMind had been his only friends.
He no longer thought of them in that way, hadn’t done so since he was a boy of nine or ten. Though chronologically far older than Kaleb, having come into being at the dawn of the PsyNet, they were yet young, children to his adult.
Where the NetMind was an innocent, the DarkMind was akin to an ignored, abused child who sought only to bully and abuse others, knowing no other way in which to interact. In Kaleb, it had found acceptanc
e, a darkness that welcomed the malignant violence and anger at the core of its being.
And you? he asked that dark twin.
It slid sinuously into the blackness, rolling in it like a cat.
Initiate a barricade, he ordered the NetMind as the DarkMind slid back to twine affectionately around him, its touch cold as the death Kaleb had meted out more than once. Ensure a wide buffer zone. I don’t want anyone coming in contact with this.
Images of building blocks cascaded into his mind and he realized the NetMind was already working on the barricade. Good, he said, giving it the praise it needed.
Shifting position once the twin neosentience turned toward its task, the DarkMind choosing to assist the NetMind for reasons of its own, Kaleb located the mind of Subject 8-91. The male was infected with the same disease that had just devoured a chunk of the Net and, thus, was meant to act as Kaleb’s control as to the progression of that disease, his “canary in a coal mine.”
Some would term that a cruelty, but 8-91 was too far gone to be helped—and he was expendable, his contribution to the world negligible. He was contributing far more, helping his fellow citizens, by acting as a barometer for this disease without a name.
Subject 8-91, however, remained alive, functional, and with no awareness of the disease that had eaten into his frontal cortex. Clearly, the infection advanced at a different rate in an individual than it did in the psychic fabric that connected ninety-nine-point-nine percent of Psy on the planet.
Kaleb’s cell phone rang.
He’d been expecting the call. “Nikita,” he said, dropping out of the Net to speak to the woman who had been a Councilor before the Council imploded, and who now held power in a region that had become a focal point for those whose Silence was fractured.
“I assume,” she said, “you’re aware of the shock wave that just rolled through the Net?”
“I’ve seen the cause. One minute.” Hanging up, he stepped out to check on Sahara, saw that she’d fallen asleep, her hair a silken pool of black as she lay curled on her side. It wasn’t as vivid and as glossy as it should be, but he saw the promise. Yet she was nowhere near to the Sahara she was meant to be—tiny, her skin too pale, she looked as if she’d disappear any second.
Reaching out, he lifted a single strand of hair, rubbed it between his fingertips. Real, very much so. And safe in the home he’d turned into an impregnable vault.
Resetting the perimeter alarms to remote alert, and changing the angle of the sun umbrella so that she was fully protected, he pulled on his suit jacket, thought of Nikita Duncan’s high-rise office in San Francisco, and was there, his mind making the transition with a speed and an accuracy that the dead Councilor Santano Enrique had once considered a tool for his exclusive use.
“No one has any explanations,” Nikita said to him the second he appeared, her voice as businesslike as the skirt-suit she wore, the lights of San Francisco bright in the midnight darkness behind her. “Yet you said you’ve seen the cause.”
He saw no reason not to share the truth—it was one that would become apparent soon enough if his theory about what was happening proved correct. “Part of the Net has ceased to exist.”
“Another anchor attack?” The blunt edge of Nikita’s hair swept over her jaw as she leaned on her desk, hands flat on the glass and almond-shaped eyes steady with an icy intelligence that had led to her position as one of the wealthiest women in the world. “I’ve heard no reports—”
“No. The Net itself has disintegrated.”
Nikita stared at him, barely containing a jerk when the comm panel on the wall chimed an incoming call. “It’s Anthony,” she said, touching the discreet pad built into her desk to accept the call and bring the other man into their conversation.
Kaleb considered what Anthony Kyriakus would do if he knew that his niece was currently in Kaleb’s care. Likely unleash the full force of NightStar’s power in an attempt to retrieve her—Sahara’s clan had been searching for her with quiet, relentless persistence since her disappearance. Kaleb knew that because he’d had to take care to skirt their trackers more than once, and because he’d hacked into their files. Had they pinpointed her location before he did, he would’ve appropriated and used that information without compunction—Sahara belonged to him, no one else.
“The outbreak at Sunshine Station,” he said after Nikita had brought Anthony up-to-date. “Do you recall the details?”
“Of course.” Anthony’s reply was immediate. “One hundred and forty-one lives lost to a sudden psychosis—they attacked one another in brutal, bloody ways.”
Nikita picked up the narrative with a flawless ease that told Kaleb the two were in telepathic communication. “The outbreak was deemed to have been an indication of critical problems with the Protocol, as was the incident at the science station in Russia.” A pause. “You showed me a ‘sick’ section of the Net once. It was small, hidden—you’re saying the psychosis was caused by this infection? That it’s grown big enough to create such a massive disturbance in the Net?”
Kaleb wasn’t surprised Nikita had made the connection—mental viruses were her specialty, after all. “Yes.” Connected to the psychic network from birth, there was no way for those of his race to avoid the virus—every millisecond of the biofeedback they needed to live carried a potentially lethal payload. “It appears the infection has begun to attack its primary host.”
The PsyNet was vast, could take a considerable beating, but it wasn’t indestructible. “Tonight’s damage,” he continued, “caused no fatalities, but only because it was localized in the region that would’ve supported the minds at Sunshine.” And that station was abandoned, an icy monument to death, blood splatter frozen on the walls and meals abandoned half-eaten, no living beings within miles.
“We can’t allow the infection to hit a populated zone,” Nikita said, cutting to the point as always. “If it has the same impact it did at Sunshine, we’d be looking at a massacre.”
A taut silence, and Kaleb knew they were all thinking of a San Francisco or a Moscow overrun with Psy who had given in to murderous insanity. Mindless, their cells factories for the virus, they’d kill anything in their path, hack their fellow citizens to pieces, paint the streets in blood.
Chapter 7
ANTHONY WAS THE one who spoke. “Can the virus be contained?”
“The NetMind is building a barricade to ensure people don’t venture into the infected area, but I don’t believe it’ll hold against the virus itself.” Kaleb had a theory about a “cure,” but it wasn’t one he planned to share with either Nikita or Anthony until he had all the pieces in place for his takeover of the Net.
“You,” he said to Nikita, “may have certain useful insights.” She’d never confirmed her ability with mental viruses, but everyone in this conversation knew it existed.
To her credit, she gave a curt nod. “I’ll do a reconnaissance tonight.”
“If it’s taken this long to eat up the region of the Net that served Sunshine,” Anthony said, the silver at his temples glinting in the light on his desk, “it must be a slow-moving disease.”
“Indications are it’s grown stronger, but not faster,” Kaleb confirmed. “We can’t afford not to study it, but the Pure Psy threat is far more immediate.”
Nikita shared a glance with Anthony as Kaleb finished speaking, and it was a silent communication that Kaleb knew involved no telepathy. Once again, he wondered exactly how closely the two had begun to work together. Not that it mattered. While Nikita and Anthony were extremely strong, with a massive combined economic and financial reach, they couldn’t stop Kaleb. No one could.
Not now.
Two years ago, perhaps. However—and thanks to the leopard and wolf changelings in Nikita’s region, though they would never know the role they’d played in his life—his power had matured to its full potential in the interim. The scope of it might have driven another man mad; it was to Kaleb’s advantage that he’d had his brush with madness as a ch
ild and survived.
Whether or not he was sane was another question.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he said before Nikita or Anthony could respond to his point about Pure Psy, “I have another matter to attend to.” He left without waiting for a response. Ming and Tatiana had contacted him via the PsyNet, and he’d shared the same information he had with Nikita and Anthony. As for the suspiciously quiet Shoshanna Scott, he had an extremely reliable spy in her ranks.
There was no reason to waste any further time on the ex-Councilors.
Sahara was still asleep when he returned to the terrace, her breathing even. He was about to turn on his heel and leave when her eyes fluttered open, the deep blue seeming to look straight through him and to the vicious secrets that marked him as kin to the DarkMind.
“I opened the book,” she said, uncurling her legs with the almost feline grace she’d developed as a teen, after taking dance lessons ostensibly to build her muscle strength and sense of balance.
All perfectly satisfactory reasons. All lies. Sahara had simply loved to dance.
“I hate math.”
Sliding off his jacket at her sleepy murmur, he ’ported it to his office, then undid his cuffs and began to roll them up, slipping the cuff links into a pocket. It was his left forearm that bore the mark—the scar—and it was a mark he needed her to see now that her mind was no longer confused, as it had been the night before. He had to know if she remembered.
“Math was never your best subject,” he said when her eyes lingered on the scar without recognition. “But at last count, you spoke ten languages with a native’s fluency. French, Spanish, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese, Swahili, Arabic, and Hungarian, to name a few.”