Heart of Obsidian p-12

by Nalini Singh

  A set of telepathic instructions flowed into her mind, and two minutes later, she drew what was effectively a cloak around her roaming mind and stepped out into the PsyNet.

  Would you like to see something interesting? Kaleb asked almost an hour later.

  Drunk on the pleasure of being free on the psychic plane, Sahara had to be careful not to surf the data streams with too much abandon, lest she give herself away. Yes!

  Can you see me?

  Yes. His cloaked presence was a shadow she could barely make out through the psychic filter he’d instructed her to build into her own cloak. Now he took her deep, to a part of the Net devoid of stars, but no less alive for it, the silver thick and calm, as if she and Kaleb stood in a bay.

  Delighted, she dipped a finger in the sea and came away with streamers of information wrapped around her psychic skin. The filaments waved as if in a breeze, each one a random piece of data. Astonished by the sight, she sent Kaleb a snapshot. I couldn’t do this before!

  Outside the aerie, his hand clenched on the back of her top, the fabric a fine green knit. It’s been a long time since I saw the Net through your eyes.

  She nuzzled at his throat, her arms around his body under his jacket. This place is wonderful. Dipping her fingers into the silver water on the psychic plane, she scooped up shimmering handfuls of data with a joyous laugh, throwing them up to create a sparkling rain. Thank you for showing me.

  This isn’t it. Taking her to the center of the bay, he held out a psychic hand. You have to connect so I can get you through.

  She accepted the connection without hesitation, and they slipped through a fissure in the Net she couldn’t see, to come out into a stunning blackness—the data in this part of the Net was so heavily compressed that it had become a faceted jewel.

  “This is effectively the backup drive of the PsyNet,” Kaleb said, switching from telepathy to psychic speech with a confidence that told her nothing would leak from this place. “If the Net ever fails, the data can be reintegrated to within twenty-four hours of the terminal event.”

  Fascinated, she attempted to concentrate on a single minuscule block of data, but it was of such complexity as to be impossible to comprehend. “How did you find this?”

  “The NetMind showed me.” He brought her to the center of the data archive and to a sphere that gleamed with a constantly shifting slick of color, an iridescent mirage that reminded her of the midnight colors she saw in his eyes when he let go of the leash. “This is the restart button for the Net, meant to sanitize it from the core.”

  Horror cracked black fractures in her wonder. “Why does that even exist?”

  “Because I created it.”

  * * *

  KALEB disconnected from the Net on Sahara’s heels, her face a strained white where she looked up at him. “That’s how you planned to kill everyone.”

  “Originally,” he said. “I later wrote in an algorithm to spare those under the age of sixteen.” He’d never had a childhood; Sahara had come to womanhood in a cage. It seemed fitting to spare the children they had never had a chance to be.

  Sahara shook her head in a mute refusal to accept what he would’ve done.

  “It was intended as a last option.” To be initiated only if they had stolen her from him forever. “Seizing control of the Net will be intensely more satisfying.”

  “You’re the wrong person to be in charge of so many lives,” Sahara said, her arms still locked around his body. “You have no allegiance to the Net.”

  Kaleb was in no way insulted by her judgment. He knew what he was, knew that his experience at Enrique’s hand had permanently warped the fabric of his personality. But— “My allegiance is yours, and you need the Net to thrive.”

  Huge, dark eyes, one of her hands coming around to lie on his heart again. “What are you doing to me, Kaleb?”

  “Someone,” he said, closing his hand over her own, “has to make the ruthless decisions or the Net will die anyway.” He showed her images of the rotting places where nothing could survive, reminded her of the infection that had taken hold in the psychic fabric that connected every Psy on the planet but for the renegades. “Our race is on the verge of extinction.”

  Sahara’s fingers flexed, her expression somber. “Our people have voluntarily crippled themselves. Of course that damage will be reflected in the Net. The only thing that might reverse the—” Her eyes widened. “You’re planning the fall of Silence.”

  “It can’t fall for all, but for the majority it must.” If it didn’t and the rot continued to grow, the poisonous biofeedback would equal a slow death for millions upon millions.

  “A sudden fall will cause massive psychic shock,” Sahara argued. “Thousands upon thousands could die.”

  “Acceptable collateral damage.” Kaleb had no problem with losing a quarter or even half of the population. “Those who remain will be the strongest, most resilient.”

  Sahara shook her head. “You can’t mean that.”

  “It’s a practical solution. Slicing off the diseased and the weak will mean our race has a stronger foundation on which to grow.”

  “I fall into that category.” A fierce response that spoke to the steel that ran through her body. “I’m weak yet, still broken in so many ways.”

  He knew what she was trying to do, but—“I don’t have empathy, Sahara. I can’t feel for those who are going to die. It would be akin to asking a falcon to take flight when his wings had long been hacked off.”

  He remembered the bone-shaking fear he’d felt as a three-year-old thrown into the hell that was Santano Enrique’s “training.” He also remembered the day he’d embraced the full weight of the conditioning. Better to feel nothing, he had thought with a calm unnatural for the boy he’d been, than to scream in horror every minute of his existence.

  “You,” he said, “are the single exception to that rule.” The oldest, deepest, most beautiful flaw in his Silence. “Without you, I would be a monster.”

  * * *

  SAHARA lay in bed hours after Kaleb left her to meet with the Arrows, the calm way he’d told her of his lack of empathy colliding with her fears about his possible collusion with Pure Psy to leave her scared in a way that went so deep, it was in her very cells. Not of him. For him. For her Kaleb, who had never, ever let her down.

  It didn’t matter that she didn’t have the memories to support that truth—she knew it the same way she knew the sky was blue and the rain wet, a fact so absolute it was beyond question.

  “I will fight for you.”

  With that determined vow, she sat up and pushed the window open to look out into the night-cloaked forest, the heavy darkness as impenetrable as Kaleb’s eyes when he wanted them to be. Was he right? Had his capacity for empathy been destroyed during the nightmare of his childhood? She wanted to disbelieve him, to assume it was simply buried deep, but then she thought of the damage done to her by Tatiana, and, heart hurting, considered the choices a vulnerable boy may have made to survive . . . and accepted he might be telling the absolute truth.

  Even as she struggled with that realization, part of her mind continued to tug strands of memory free from the vault . . . and suddenly an entire chunk of her past came loose without warning.

  She was cutting through the park again, her school satchel banging lightly against her hip. There were two younger students ahead of her, both on bicycles, but they disappeared around the corner a second later. Sahara twisted to fiddle with the strap of her satchel, her aim to confirm there was no one behind her, either.

  The pathway was empty.

  Picking up her pace, she waited until she was in the single surveillance blind spot along this route, then slipped off the path and into the bushes. It took her half a minute of rapid walking to reach the grove of trees to the right of the path. No one would call it a forest, but the small wood was thick enough to provide cover. More important, it was out of range of the security cameras.

  Sahara didn’t think anyone watch
ed the cameras twenty-four/seven. Their main purpose was to act as a deterrent against antisocial behavior. If, however, someone ever became suspicious of her actions to the extent of tracking her movements, that individual would find exactly nothing. She’d arrive home via another route, making it appear as if she’d decided to walk off the approved route. A fact that would get her a stern lecture about safety but carry no other consequences.

  “Where are you?” she whispered when she reached the tree that was theirs. Without him to take her home, she could only wait for eleven minutes. That was the safe window where no one would miss her. If he was late—

  But no, there he was.

  Having teleported near another tree, he walked toward her, his eyes a brilliant cardinal starlight that she saw in her dreams, his body tall and of a young man, not the boy she’d known over half her life. He was harder than her, ruthless in a way she knew she’d never be, and the fact that he was almost twenty-two to her near-sixteen had nothing to do with it. He’d been the same way six years ago.

  Here, however, they were equals, and beneath the disturbing coldness she glimpsed in him too often now, he was still her Kaleb. The one whose Silence appeared as pristine as her own while hiding a chaos of emotion so violent, she knew he could be beyond dangerous should his control ever slip. But never to her. Not ever to her.

  Dropping her satchel, she ran into his arms. His own locked around her, squeezing so tight, she could barely breathe. “It’s all right,” she whispered, her hands in his hair. “It’s all right.” Over and over again, she said those words, attempting to comfort the man she loved when love was a crime that could get them both sentenced to living death.

  Yet even as she spoke, she knew it wasn’t all right, that the reason for his hurt was a trap he couldn’t escape—and her beautiful Kaleb had never been meant for a cage. It terrified her that he’d go too far in the maddening fight to get out and she’d never again feel the steel of his arms around her. “I’m here. I’m here.”

  He just held her, in that way he had of doing during the worst times. She had no need to hear the details to know that he’d had to become even harder, more pitiless simply to survive. If it kept on in this way, she thought, her Kaleb would one day be lost behind a wall of black ice. Angry pain had her tightening her hold, her forbidden emotions hidden behind shields Kaleb had automatically augmented to protect her from exposure on the PsyNet. He’d been doing it for years, ever since he first realized her Silence simply wasn’t sticking, the psychic taste of him as familiar to her as her own.

  Never once had he failed to protect her. But she could do nothing to stop him from being hurt over and over again, the helplessness a fury inside her. “I’m here.” She held on even tighter, refusing to surrender him to the ugliness that was Santano Enrique. If the black ice did form, she would shatter it with her bare hands. He was never going to shut her out, shut himself away in the darkness. Sahara wouldn’t allow it.

  Today he held her for almost the entirety of their stolen time together, and then he stepped back. “You shouldn’t meet me anymore.” No stars in the black, his voice dead in its tonelessness. “I’ll hurt you.”

  It was a thought so incomprehensible, she didn’t know why he’d said it, why he’d wound himself in that way. “You’d never hurt me.”

  “Don’t be so certain.”

  Chapter 32

  SAHARA FELL OUT of the memory to find her cheeks wet and her hands fisted to bloodless severity, anger a jagged blade in her chest. She had loved him. So much. Enough to defy her family. Enough to chance the psychic brainwipe of rehabilitation. Enough to fight for him even when he warned her off.

  She had loved him until it was the defining fact of her existence.

  Life, she thought, rubbing her hand over her heart, had come full circle. Because as the girl she’d been had loved him, so did the woman she’d become, her heart branded with his name. No matter what the future held, the terrible choice she might yet have to make, no one else would ever be to her what Kaleb—

  Another unraveling of memory, dragging her further back into the past.

  “Please show Kaleb around the grounds, Sahara.” Anthony nodded at the boy who sat straight backed and expressionless in a chair beside a man Sahara disliked on sight. She knew not to say that, however. She was only seven, her Silence brittle, so she wouldn’t be in big trouble for blurting out her immediate and violent distaste, but she’d still be in trouble, probably have to do twice her normal quota of mental exercises.

  Better to keep her mouth shut.

  The man she didn’t like shot her a glance out of cardinal eyes that weren’t pretty like the boy’s, but flat, dead. “That child,” he said, dismissing her as if she were a piece of furniture, “is too young to provide conversation that will in any way interest Kaleb. He can remain.”

  “I don’t conduct business with children present,” Anthony responded in a calm tone that Sahara knew meant her uncle wasn’t about to change his mind. “We can schedule another appointment next month to discuss the forecasting services required by your company.”

  Steepling his fingers, the not-nice man turned his head toward the boy whose name was Kaleb. “Go. Behave yourself.”

  To Sahara, the words sounded like a threat.

  Walking with Kaleb around the grounds, Sahara pointed out the things her father had told her she must point out to a guest. “Such independent social interaction with non-family members is an important part of your education,” he’d said. “If your backsight eventually leads you to a career in Justice, you’ll need to interact with a wide range of personalities, both Psy and not. I’ve told Anthony you’re ready to act as a guide for those of your age and slightly older.”

  Sahara was pretty sure the boy called Kaleb fell outside that age group, but Anthony probably didn’t have any choice but to use her since the older children wouldn’t get out of school for another hour.

  She was telling Kaleb about the hydroponic garden when she glanced up and saw fine lines radiating out from his eyes, bracketing his mouth. “My father’s an M,” she said. “We can go see him.”

  Kaleb stared at her with eyes that had lost their stars. “Why?”

  Sahara was sure he had a hurt somewhere, but she knew it wasn’t polite to say things like that to someone she didn’t know. So she said, “He has interesting scanners in his office.”

  “I’ve seen medical scanners before.”

  Figuring Kaleb wanted to see his own medic and not a stranger, Sahara said, “Okay,” and kept going . . . only she didn’t walk as fast, and she didn’t take him up the slope to the recreation center the grown-ups used for exercise. If they went there, the manager would want Kaleb to try the new machines, and she didn’t think he should while he was hurt.

  “There’s fish in the pond,” she said, after they’d covered all the areas visitors were permitted to view. “Do you want to see?”

  Kaleb followed her in silence, but he went down on one knee to watch the orange fish in the pond in the center of the park within the NightStar compound. “Why was this created?”

  Sahara barely stopped her shrug in time. Someone of her age, she’d been told multiple times, should’ve already conquered the habit. “I heard Father say it was an ‘approved meditation aid,’” she parroted without quite understanding the words. “The F-Psy who live here use it.” Her cousin Faith didn’t live in the compound. She had a separate house, like all the really strong foreseers.

  “Are you an F?”

  “Not really. I’m subdesignation B. That means I have backsight.” It wasn’t as interesting as being an F, but Sahara thought she might like catching bad people for Justice. “What are you?”

  “A Tk.”

  Excited—though she tried not to let it show, in case he told on her—she said, “Can you do any tricks?” One of the telepaths in her class had just a tiny bit of Tk and she could write on the electronic board without moving from her seat in the class; the teachers made her do tha
t so she’d practice her telekinesis.

  Kaleb didn’t say anything and it took Sahara a few seconds to realize she wasn’t touching the ground anymore, her body floating several inches off the grass. Eyes wide, she stood up, her feet on nothing, then, checking to make sure no one was watching, jumped up and down without ever hitting the ground.

  “That was wonderful,” she whispered when he set her down, then felt bad she’d forgotten about his pain. “I’m sorry. Did it hurt you to do that?”

  Shaking his head, Kaleb played a finger through the water of the pond, making the lazy fish pretend to move. “Your Silence is flawed for your age group.”

  Suddenly aware she’d forgotten to fake Silence because he was nice even if he didn’t talk a lot, Sahara bit down on her lower lip. “Are you going to tell on me?”

  “No.”

  And he never had, Sahara thought, sitting on a corner of her bed, her back braced against the wall and her arms wrapped around her knees as she thought of the boy with such haunting pain in his eyes. Instead, he’d taught her how to be more careful . . . and he’d visited her.

  “Hello.”

  Surprised, Sahara looked up from the wide stump where she sat. No one ever came this way, her home backing onto a stand of trees that ended at the perimeter fence. Pretty cardinal eyes in an expressionless face met her own.

  “Hi!” Knowing her father was busy in his study on the other side of the house, she put down the datapad that held her despised math homework. “Is that man here again?” She hesitated, then said what was in her heart, since Kaleb had kept his word and not reported her terrible Silence. “I don’t like him.”

  Kaleb shook his head. “I came to see you.” A pause. “I don’t know any other children who talk to me.”

  “That must be lonely.” She broke off half her nutrition bar, held it out. “I know you probably think I’m a baby, but you can be my friend if you like.” Shifting on the stump when he accepted the snack, she made a space for him.