by Nalini Singh
Asked, not commanded.
That was the difference between the Empathic Collective and many of the other organizations in the PsyNet. It was as well they had the backing of the Arrow Squad or no one would take their requests to non-empaths seriously. A hundred years of Silence had taught the Psy that only the ruthless and the cold-blooded survived.
Kaleb had believed the same until he found Sahara again. The woman for whom he’d extinguish the world—except that she’d asked him to save it—hadn’t lost herself in spite of the horror she’d survived. She’d come out of it with her soul and her spirit intact, was still the same generous Sahara who’d first extended the hand of friendship toward a boy who knew only pain and isolation.
If there was a ruthless bone in her body, he hadn’t found it yet.
Then had come the empaths. Kaleb had seen those empathic sparks of color, begun to comprehend the mental strength it must’ve taken for an E not to break despite being in a psychic stranglehold for decades. He knew what it was to be leashed, to have that leash pulled until he couldn’t breathe.
Those who underestimated the Es would one day get a very nasty surprise.
“I thought you might’ve become sick of politics by now,” he said to Ivy. “I can offer a pay package that’ll take you immediately into the top percentile of earners in the world, and you’d be working in a far less stressful environment.”
“You’re very good,” she said with open amusement, “but I’ve settled into my position in the Collective.”
Despite his offer, Kaleb had thought as much; Ivy Jane Zen had started out unsure if she could lead, but these days, she was a force to be reckoned with. “The offer is open to any high-Gradient E who wants a more regular nine-to-five job.”
While the Honeycomb needed every E in the Net, it had become clear that not all Es could bear the pressure. Those Es remained useful in other capacities, including in specialized medical professions and to corporates who wanted an edge on their competitors during negotiations. Empathic ethics might not allow for active scans without the permission of the individual being scanned, but as changelings picked up scents without trying, Es picked up the emotional undercurrents in any given situation.
Even in “passive” mode, they tilted the scales to their employer’s advantage.
Ivy was quiet for a long time as she focused on the problematic section of the Net, but when she spoke, her answer was unexpected. “I’ll keep that in mind. I wouldn’t recommend jobs at most of the corporates to my people, but you . . . yes.” As if guessing his surprise, she said, “Because of Sahara. She’d never let you mistreat an E.”
Again, Kaleb wasn’t certain he liked being in any way predictable. Sahara, he telepathed to the woman who had held his heart in her hands from the day they met, please refrain from making me appear “nice” or trustworthy. Especially to those of Designation E.
Sahara’s laughter was light in the darkness, a brightness that encompassed the most twisted corners of his soul. No chance of that. Underneath the glittering night sky on the outskirts of Moscow, she came out of the house to wrap her arms around him from behind. The Es know exactly how dangerous you are—but they also know you and your abilities are on their side.
I’m only on one side. He closed one of his hands over hers. Yours.
Look after my friends, won’t you, Kaleb?
Stop making so many.
I love you, too.
His lips curved slightly as he returned his attention to the PsyNet, and Sahara went back into the house—after a kiss to his back that made his battered soul curl up in pleasure. “What do you see?” he asked Ivy.
“The fraying is new, but the disease itself isn’t as bad as it was pre-Honeycomb,” she murmured. “Back then, the PsyNet was literally rotting away piece by piece, as if with gangrene.”
Kaleb waited.
“The Honeycomb isn’t visible here,” Ivy continued after a small pause, “but it is present to my empathic senses. That fine net of emotional strands is all that’s keeping this section from collapsing.” She indicated the lifeless blackness in front of them.
“But?” Kaleb might not be an E, but he’d spent a lifetime learning to read people. First so he could predict the moves of the psychopath who’d ruled his childhood, later because he’d realized that to know people was to know their secrets. And secrets meant power.
“The disintegration below the surface?” Ivy said. “It’s eroding the foundation on which the Honeycomb sits, and with each frayed thread, the weight of the dead section gets heavier. Thin as they are here, the Honeycomb bonds could simply snap, and if they do . . .”
Kaleb scanned the area. The rotten section was unpopulated, but there were minds anchored within touching distance of the black. Should it collapse, it would take hundreds, perhaps thousands of those minds with it, much like a whirlpool sucking in everything around it. “Do you want me to move those minds?” Kaleb couldn’t do it himself, but the NetMind could make certain adjustments.
“No.” Ivy’s voice held an awareness of the risk of her decision, of the lives that hung in the balance. “If they go, they take their part of the Honeycomb with them. There’d effectively no longer be anything holding this section of the Net in place—it might create a tear so massive it could cause a catastrophic chain reaction.”
Snuffing out the very minds they wanted to save.
“I’ll set part of my consciousness to monitoring this area.” It was a task Kaleb would’ve normally given the NetMind, but he was starting to have the disturbing suspicion that as the Net frayed, so did the neosentience in charge of it.
The signs had been there for a long time, if he thought about it. Lapses in concentration, lost or missing pieces of data, a distinct lack of growth since Kaleb was a child. Yes, the neosentience grew at a glacial pace in comparison to a Psy mind, but it had shown no development in over two decades.
In point of fact, it appeared to have gone backward, to an even more childlike state.
The only reason Kaleb hadn’t noticed earlier was because he’d been distracted by the violent potential of the DarkMind. Though he’d never differentiated between his acceptance of the twin neosentience, handling the DarkMind had always required more attention.
Inadvertently hiding the subtle degeneration of its twin.
Kaleb considered sharing that suspicion with Ivy, made the decision that the Es were already at overload. One more worry could be the proverbial straw that caused a fatal breakdown. “It’ll alert you if the risk of total Net failure at this location hits seventy-five percent.” At which point, the risk in not moving the minds would outweigh the danger of a possible collapse and chain reaction.
Ivy’s attention lingered on him. “Can you maintain such long-term monitoring without risk to yourself?”
Empaths. Dangerous to themselves most of all, with their concern for others.
“Yes,” he said at the same instant that thought passed through his head.
As a dual cardinal, the only one in the Net, Kaleb had off-the-scale psychic abilities his mind had learned to utilize without melting down in the process. A single monitoring program wouldn’t even register as usage on his internal psychic meter. Not when he could cause a cataclysmic earthquake without coming close to burning out.
Kaleb looked at the dead section again. “That’s all you see?”
“Broken threads,” she murmured. “Frayed edges. Like a piece of natural fabric coming apart, thread by thread.”
“If it was the absence of active empaths that caused the damage, the disintegration makes no sense.” Not with so many Es awake now. Kaleb could see sparks of color heading into the rot, to be absorbed by it.
“It’s like . . . like something is acting against us and it’s stronger.” Ivy made a sound of frustration before her mental presence froze in place. “The NetMind, I felt it.”
> So had Kaleb, and this time, the neosentience had passed on an image that was impossible to misinterpret. “A honeycomb structure, but with approximately every third hexagon missing,” he said for Ivy Jane’s benefit, not certain the NetMind had spoken to them both.
“We’re missing a vital component,” Ivy whispered. “Without it, the Net will never be whole.” A pause. “Another lost designation?”
Kaleb shook his head on the physical plane. “Impossible. I have access to top-secret data from prior to the dawn of Silence. No other designation was buried like the Es were buried.”
“When I ask the NetMind for clarification, all I get is a cascade of emotion—loss, pain, brokenness.” Tears filled Ivy’s psychic voice. “It’s in so much pain, Kaleb. So is the DarkMind.”
Kaleb thought of the time right after the awakening of the Es and the creation of the Honeycomb. The NetMind had been a wonder of hope, joyous laughter in his mind. “They’ve lost hope,” he found himself saying, though he was no expert in emotion.
Ivy’s response was thick with sorrow. “Yes, you’re right. The NetMind held on for so long, hid the Es, protected us, but now it’s realized we can’t stop the pain. Not totally.”
And without the NetMind, the DarkMind couldn’t exist.
Opening his senses, Kaleb reached for the twin neosentience, asked what was missing, what they needed. The emotions that came back were of a staggering loss, image after image of a body with organs torn out by uncaring hands, leaving the patient bloody and barely alive.
When? Kaleb asked, using a visual of a calendar and a clock with twenty-four numbers on it.
The pages of the calendar began to flip back at inhuman speed as the hands of the clock spun backward, around and around and around.
It all came to a stop at one minute past midnight in the year 1979.
The dawn of Silence.
Chapter 12
TWO HOURS AFTER Ivy’s investigation of the strange and deadly weakness in the Net, Aden Kai, leader of the Arrow Squad, stood in an office awash in the sunshine present on this side of the world, and listened to her report, then offered any assistance he or the squad could provide. Even as he spoke, he knew there was little the Arrows could do except protect the Es and attempt to rapidly patch up any tears in the psychic fabric that kept millions alive.
This was a battlefield for which they simply did not have the right weapons.
As he ended the call with Ivy, he considered the other items on his agenda. The Trinity Accord was at the top, the Ming situation a serious issue that could cause real-world violence if not handled correctly. There was also the case of Leila Savea, one of BlackSea’s vanished members.
Miane Levèque had updated Zaira directly on the message from the kidnapped marine biologist; Aden’s commander and the BlackSea alpha were fledgling friends, both women as dangerous as one another. The fact that Zaira and Vasic had brought three of Miane’s lost people home also had the BlackSea alpha far more apt to trust the squad.
“You understand what it is to treasure a child’s life,” she’d said to Aden once, her eyes as black as night rather than the clear hazel he was used to seeing. “It gives us common ground on which to stand.”
While Aden was already calculating how the squad could help in the retrieval of the BlackSea woman, it wasn’t because Leila Savea was an innocent. Aden couldn’t think with his heart; he had to think first of the well-being of his Arrows, his strategy a long-term one. The squad needed to continue building relationships with other strong groups. Such relationships would keep their vulnerable alive should the world ever turn against the most dangerous predators in their midst.
That thought in mind, he sent an updated alert on the BlackSea situation to his men and women, then made a comm call to Lucas Hunter. “Lucas,” he said when the alpha answered on what appeared to be a small-screen device, the view beyond him of smoothly polished wooden logs.
The sunlight made it difficult to see Lucas’s face.
“I received your note.” In it, the leopard alpha had suggested they send out a simple vote on the Ming situation to all those who had already signed the accord.
The result could well decide the future of Trinity.
“You agree?” Lucas’s shoulders moved under the black of his T-shirt as he shifted to a more shaded spot. The clawlike markings on the right side of his face came into sudden, sharp focus.
“Yes,” Aden said in reply to the alpha’s question. “We can’t move forward while Ming’s trying to poison Trinity.”
“I’ll take care of getting the vote out.” The leopard male’s eyes glittered a green so feral, Aden knew he was no longer looking at the human part of Lucas, no matter the skin he wore. “Your people pick up anything else about Naya?”
“No, but it’s possible some data I just received is related,” Aden said. “An unnamed party was searching for a mercenary team five weeks to a month ago. The action was or is supposed to be in San Francisco.”
Lucas snarled but managed to keep his voice civil as he said, “Thank you, Aden.”
“I’ll update you immediately if we discover who took up the offer.”
Clearly coldly furious at the implications of the information Aden’s people had discovered, the DarkRiver alpha signed off with a nod.
Alone in his office again, Aden considered Trinity. It had been his idea, and while he still believed deeply in the agreement, it was becoming obvious the divisions in the world ran far too deep for this to ever be a smooth journey.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Even if it’s dying of thirst. Not when it would rather fight the zebra on the other side.
Zaira had heard the human saying while she was posted in Venice, muttered it to Aden one night, and added her own pithy coda. Yet, despite her disdain for those who were causing problems, she remained his staunchest supporter. “You’ll do it, Aden,” she’d told him two nights earlier, the midnight dark of her eyes looking down into his as she rose up beside him on her elbow. “You always do what you put your mind to—even if it takes years.”
A sudden, narrow-eyed smile from his most lethal commander, the lamplight throwing a warm glow on smooth skin a shade somewhere between cream and sun-kissed brown, the color beautifully changeable; it all depended on the season and the strength of the sun. “Look at me. Took you decades, but now here I am, naked in your bed. Anyone who bets against Aden Kai is as big an idiot as those horses.”
His cheeks creasing at the memory of her acerbic words, Aden left his office and walked out into the sunlit landscape beyond. The Valley, as the squad had taken to calling this isolated piece of land cradled between the craggy peaks of two sets of mountains, was no longer as barren or as spartan as it had once been. Newly built cabins stood in small groupings, while pathways curved gently in and around those homes and across the Valley.
But though the newly planted gardens were blooming and the sun brilliant, he heard no childish voices, saw no young Arrows in the play area. A glance at his watch confirmed they were currently in afternoon classes.
Outsiders would see the Arrow teaching structure and declare it far too restrictive with too little room for innovation, but those outsiders didn’t understand that when a child could explode another’s mind with a simple passing tantrum, he or she needed walls, wanted safety and predictability.
Paradoxical as it was, such boundaries made the child feel more free.
The restrictions would be eased as each child became increasingly self-sufficient in terms of controlling his or her abilities. That step had already been authorized and implemented for the teenagers he saw studying in an outside green area when he walked around the corner. Because while structure was important, so was the ability to make independent decisions and the capacity to think creatively.
These children wouldn’t be forced into a path as Aden and his brethren
had been, but many would end up working in the blood-soaked shadows nonetheless.
It was a dark truth for children born with violent psychic power.
Silence or not, so long as those of the Psy race were defined by their minds, the PsyNet would need the hunters, the ones who kept the innocents safe. Like all power, psychic power had a flip side. Changelings could turn feral. Psy could turn murderously insane.
What was no longer inevitable was being a lone hunter in the darkness. Every Arrow had a home here, had family. Even their most broken.
“Aden.”
Stopping to speak to the teens when they hesitantly called his name, Aden listened to their feedback on cooperative learning as the sun heated his back through the black of the T-shirt he wore in place of his Arrow uniform. “I’ll leave you to your work,” he said after ten minutes. “Don’t forget that your year group is supervising the under fives this afternoon.”
It had been Remi, alpha of the RainFire leopards, who’d suggested Aden utilize the teens to look after the youngest in the squad. It was how changeling packs worked, older children often in charge of younger ones—the arrangement built bonds across age lines, blurring the boundaries that had so often kept Arrows siloed in defined boxes.
The same applied to contact between children and elders.
Aden’s parents were technically elders, but he couldn’t see either Marjorie Kai or Naoshi Ayze interacting with the young without causing irreparable harm to their soft hearts. Yuri, though he was a number of years younger at forty-seven, was proving a better mentor in that respect. Aden hadn’t expected it of the remote Arrow who’d lived more than four decades in Silence, but Yuri had proven to have endless patience when teaching a child.
And perhaps, just perhaps, those children were teaching Yuri, too.
The truth was that after Edward’s suicide, Aden worried about many of the senior Arrows, including the man who was one of Zaira’s most trusted people. He knew Yuri had struggled with the fall of Silence, unsure where he fit in this new world. Yesterday, however, Aden had happened upon an unexpected sight: Yuri seated at an outdoor table with Carolina standing on the bench beside him, the six-year-old’s hand on his shoulder and her pale blonde hair tied back as she peered intently at the organizer he was repairing.