by Nalini Singh
“Are you sure you want to make an enemy out of me, Ashaya?” A quiet question devoid of any emphasis and yet the threat was a sinister shadow pressing at her mind. Ming flexing his telepathic muscles? Probably, given that he was a cardinal telepath with a facility for mental combat. He could turn her brain into mush with a glancing thought.
Ashaya supposed that if she’d been human or changeling, she’d have felt fear. But she was Psy, conditioned since birth to feel nothing. Hard and inflexible, that conditioning not only allowed her to play politics with Ming, it acted as a shield, hiding the secrets she could never reveal. “It is not a case of enemies, sir,” she said, and—making another rapid decision—let her shoulders slump a fraction. When she next spoke, it was in a quick-fire stream. “I’m trying my hardest, but I’ve hit what appears to be a major obstacle, and I’m the only one with the skill to solve it so I’ve been working around the clock and I’ve been buried underground for two months with no access to the PsyNet and—”
“You need to have a medical checkup.” Ming’s stance had changed, become hyperalert. “When was the last time you slept?”
Ashaya pressed the pads of her fingers over her eyelids. “I don’t recall. Being underground makes it difficult for me to keep track.” A debilitating condition such as claustrophobia would have gotten most Psy “rehabilitated,” their memories wiped, their personalities destroyed. Ashaya had been left alone only because her brain was more valuable undamaged. For now.
“I think I had a full night’s sleep approximately one week ago.” Her logs would verify that. She had deliberately interfered with her own sleeping patterns, building her story for this very day… on the faith of a human’s honor.
… we pay our debts…
But even if the sniper had kept his word, it was clear that something had gone wrong. All her theories to the contrary notwithstanding, it was highly probable that Keenan was dead. She dropped her hand and stared Ming in the face, letting her own go slack as if with fatigue. If Keenan was dead, then she no longer had anything to lose by putting this plan in motion.
“I’m sending a pickup team,” Ming said. “You’ll be taken to a specialist facility.”
“Not necessary.” Ashaya closed her hand over her organizer, the small computer device that held all her experimental and personal data. “One of my team can check me out—we’re all medically trained.”
“I want you fully evaluated by the clinicians at the Center.”
She wondered if he was threatening her even now. The Center was where defective Psy were sent to be rehabilitated. “Ming, if you believe me to be compromised, please have the courtesy to say so to my face. I’m not a child to run screaming.” Except of course, Psy children didn’t scream much beyond the first year of life. She wondered if Keenan had screamed at the end. Her hand tightened, the cool hardness of the organizer anchoring her to reality. Silence, she reminded herself, you are a being of perfect Silence. An ice-cold automaton without emotion or heart. It was the only thing she could be.
Ming’s expression didn’t change. “I’ll talk to you after the evaluation.” The screen went off.
She knew she had mere minutes, if that. Ming had access to airjets and teleportation-capable telekinetics. If he wanted her whisked out of here, she would be. She flipped over her organizer, slid down the cover and pulled out the one-square-centimeter chip that held every piece of data in the device. Not allowing herself second thoughts, she swallowed the chip, her movements calculated to appear innocuous to the watching cameras.
Next, she reached into her pocket, found a replacement chip with enough duplicate data to allay suspicion—as least for a few days—and slotted it in. Just in time. There was a flicker at the corner of her eye. She swiveled to find a male standing there. He was dressed in pure unrelieved black, but for the golden insignia on his left shoulder—two snakes locked in combat. Ming’s personal symbol.
“Ma’am, my name is Vasic. I’m to escort you to the Center.”
She nodded, rose. His eyes betrayed no movement as she slipped her organizer into the pocket of her lab coat, but she knew he’d noted its placement. Ming would have plenty of time to go through it while she was being analyzed. “I didn’t expect pickup by Tk.”
It wasn’t a question, so the other Psy didn’t answer.
“Do you require touch?” she asked, coming to stand beside him. Psy didn’t touch as a rule, but some powers were strengthened by contact.
“No,” he said, proving her suspicion that Ming had sent one of his strongest men. It mattered little that his eyes were gray rather than cardinal night-sky—exceptions such as Ming aside, cardinals were often too cerebral to be much good at the practical side of things. Like killing.
The male met her eyes. “If you would please lower your basic shields.”
She did so and a second later, her bones seemed to melt from the inside out. Part of her, the scientist, wondered if telekinetics felt the same loss of self, the same sense of their bodies liquefying into nothing. Then the sensation ended and she found herself facing a door that existed nowhere in her lab. “Thank you,” she said, reengaging her shields.
He nodded at the door. “Please go through.”
She knew he would stand guard, make sure she didn’t attempt an escape. It made her wonder why he’d teleported her outside, rather than inside, the room. Since, no matter what happened, this was her last day as the head M-Psy on the Implant team, she asked him.
His answer was unexpected. “I am not a team player.”
She understood but pretended not to. Was Ming testing her allegiance, trying to tempt her with the kinds of statements used by the rebels to communicate with one another? “I’m afraid I don’t follow. Perhaps you can explain it to me later.” Without waiting for an answer, she pushed through the door, already able to feel the tingling in the tips of her fingers and toes.
The chip she’d swallowed contained close to a terabyte of data, the result of years of research. But it also contained something else—a coating of pure, undiluted poison. She’d spent hours, when she should have been working on the implant, perfecting the unique properties of the poison for this one attempt.
The calculation was simple: Ashaya intended to escape the Implant lab.
With the heightened security, the only way to escape was to die.
So Ashaya would die.
CHAPTER 2
Amara felt something ripple inside her. Displeased at the interruption, she searched her mind for the source of the disturbance. It took her a few seconds to find it as the majority of her brain was occupied with the complicated task at hand.
The carrier was dead.
That halted her for a few seconds. How very unfortunate. She’d have to ensure she got her hands on some of Keenan’s tissue. She had all the test results, of course, but who knew how the protein might have mutated in the years since she’d last taken a sample? It really was a pity the experiment had come to such a precipitous end—Amara had done some of her best work there.
But, she thought, pausing in her examination of the cultures lined up in front of her, it wasn’t a total loss in the overall scheme of things. She had ways of getting tissue samples—she’d just have to make sure no one was infected during the retrieval process. She didn’t want an inferior strain out there, not when she might yet be able to code a perfect one.
She checked another thread inside her mind, found it solid. Ashaya was still alive. Excellent. Only Ashaya had a mind brilliant enough to comprehend the value of Amara’s work. The others, they knew little, understood even less.
Satisfied that nothing was truly amiss, she returned her attention to her work.
CHAPTER 3
I’m certain he almost shot me—the sniper who came to rescue Jonquil Duchslaya and Noor Hassan. He’s on the side of good, the side that protects children, but I am ninety-nine percent certain that tonight, in the darkness, he almost pressed the trigger that would’ve ended my life.
Perha
ps that’s why I can’t stop thinking about him.
– From the encrypted personal files of Ashaya Aleine
Ashaya lay down on the tilted examining table, her eyes focused on the ceiling. Though her vision remained sharp, her fingertips were numb. It was her forearms that tingled now, even as her heart labored to maintain a steady rhythm.
Humans and changelings, she thought, as the medical personnel laid out their instruments and began to explain the procedure to her, had it easy. They could fake their deaths any number of ways—crash a car off a cliff, leave a pool of blood for others to find, even write a simple suicide note and fade into the crowds.
But a Psy was tied to the PsyNet by the umbilical cord of a link that was necessary for life, yet also functioned as a shackle. If she ran her car off a cliff, no one would think her dead—not so long as they could see the living beacon of her psychic star on the Net. Even comatose Psy retained the link, their bodies fighting to maintain the life-giving connection.
Ashaya felt her heart begin to stutter, her vision to haze, as the poison spread through her system like a malignant cancer.
But this cancer had the potential to save her life. Because if this worked, she would go into a state beyond a coma.
Some people might call what she was trying to achieve hibernation, but that wasn’t technically correct—during hibernation, oxygen did circulate, just so little of it that the individual appeared dead. But it wasn’t enough for Ashaya to appear dead. She had to be dead for the duration. And there was only one known way to achieve that—cryonic suspension.
While suspended, the body literally stopped. Every aspect of it, even the brain… and a psychic link could not be held when the brain ceased to function. A simple, practical plan, except that while it was relatively easy to put someone into a cryonic state, no individual, their race notwithstanding, had ever successfully been brought back out—not unless a permanent vegetative state could be counted as success.
Ashaya hadn’t made the breakthrough of the century and discovered a foolproof way to reverse the suspended state. Instead, she’d taken the principles of cryonics and applied them in an abstract way. Rather than relying on temperatures well below zero to slow her heart rate and brain activity, she’d tracked down the neurotoxin of a dangerous Australian tick, one that caused paralysis in its victims. She’d then manufactured and remanufactured the neurotoxin, using her abilities to change it a little each time… until she had the perfect poison. It would stop everything in her body, including her brain—thereby terminating her Net link. If it worked as intended, she would wake from her deathlike state in exactly ten hours. If she didn’t wake… that was the risk she took.
The real test would come after the waking. As soon as her brain flickered to life, it would instinctively search for, and make, a new connection to the PsyNet. There was no way Ashaya could stop that. She’d be unconscious while it was being made—for a Psy, the Net link was more important than breathing. Those initial moments after relinking would be the vulnerable time. The time when her allies would either protect her or leave her to be recaptured.
Something pricked her elbow. She looked down but there was nothing there. The medical personnel around her were starting to ask her questions at sharp volume, attempting telepathic contact that she deflected with manufactured confusion. Her mind was functioning fine, though her breath was starting to catch, her eyes to close. Even then she knew that this might all be for nothing—for her plan to work, they had to move her.
The PsyNet was a psychic construct, but it had a physical component—a Psy in Europe didn’t occupy the same section of the Net as a Psy in the Philippines. If she was far enough away from her last known location when she woke, the link would be made in an area not under blackout by Ming’s troops. However, the instant she came to full consciousness, her mind would try to resettle her back where she “belonged.” But not if things went according to plan… except what…
Her brain was fuzzy, unable to deal with complex psychic concepts. She became aware she could no longer feel her body, no longer feel the air going into her lungs. Perhaps she might have broken Silence and panicked at that instant, but it was too late.
Ashaya died.
Deep in the Canadian Rockies, Amara dropped a glass vial. It shattered into a thousand vicious points, but she heard nothing, her head echoing with absolute and utter emptiness as Ashaya blinked out of existence. No!
Glass cut into her palms, her side, and she realized she’d slumped to the floor. Her blood, she thought, was very red.
Dorian lay Keenan down in a bed located inside the home of DarkRiver’s healer, Tamsyn. The original plan had called for the boy to be taken up to the SnowDancer den, located deep in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. But with him in the Web of Stars, Judd had suggested he should be closer to DarkRiver.
Which was how Dorian found himself at Tammy’s. Situated roughly an hour out of San Francisco, the house was isolated down the end of a long drive and backed onto a heavily wooded area, but it was still nowhere near as safe as the SnowDancer den. “There’s more chance of him being seen here.” His cat didn’t like the boy being so exposed.
Tammy tucked a soft blanket around their charge, hands gentle. “Talin wanted to take him since her and Clay’s place is harder to find, but Sascha said no.”
“Sascha said that?” The Psy renegade who had mated with DarkRiver’s alpha, Lucas, adored children.
“We don’t know what the boy can do,” Tammy reminded him, “and Talin’s got Jon and Noor living with her. Jon would probably be okay, but we’re not sure how well Noor can safeguard herself. Keenan could influence her telepathically without even meaning to.”
Dorian nodded, his leopard retreating. Keenan was now his to protect, but so was little Noor. “Right.” Changelings had rock-solid mental shields; but Noor wasn’t changeling, and though she carried some Psy DNA, most of her was vulnerably human. “What about your boys?”
“I’m sending them to stay with their grandparents for a bit.” She brushed Keenan’s hair off his forehead. “Poor baby’s so small—how could anyone have hurt him?” Her tone was on the dangerous side of feral.
He walked over to take her into his arms. “Shh, we’ve got him now.”
“I’ll gut anyone who tries to bruise this boy again.” She tucked her head under his chin, letting him soothe her. “I don’t know who Ashaya Aleine is, but she did something good in getting him out.”
Dorian’s heart kicked.
I saved two innocent lives. You won’t kill me.
“Is Sascha on her way?” he asked, ignoring the flicker of memory. It was far harder to erase the image burned into his brain—of an icy stranger silhouetted against the night sky.
“She should be arr—” They both heard it at the same time. The sound of a car coming down the drive. “That’ll be her.”
“Hope she can help the kid cope.” It wasn’t a vain wish. While Tammy was a healer attuned to changeling leopards, Sascha was an E-Psy, an empath, born with the ability to sense and heal emotional wounds.
Tammy drew back, kissing him on the cheek in thanks. “Sascha said he’s connected to you. How?”
Dorian had been thinking about that. He raised his hand and showed Tammy the cut on his palm—it was already close to healed. “Blood oaths are powerful things and I promised him he’d be okay. Maybe because of that, when my blood mixed with his, it gave him a choice as to where he wanted to go.” And he’d chosen to trust Dorian. It was a trust both leopard and man intended to honor.
Sascha came in at that instant, tall and with worry in her cardinal eyes—white stars on black velvet. “That’s as good a guess as any,” she said, walking over to stroke her hand gently over Keenan’s brow. “He’s in the Web, but only through you. You’re his lifeline.”
Dorian’s protectiveness toward the boy intensified. If he had a weakness, it was for the vulnerable, for those who couldn’t fight the monsters on their own. “He’ll be scared when h
e wakes.” He could still feel those fragile bones trembling as the boy tried to hide his excruciating fear.
“He’ll sleep awhile yet.” Sascha sent Dorian a worried glance as Tammy excused herself in order to pack for her cubs’ stay with their grandparents. “Why don’t you go for a run? It’s been a hard day.” There was a question in her eyes that he read loud and clear.
“No need to worry, Sascha darling.” He smiled at her chiding look, knowing full well she had a soft spot for him. “I’m not going to lose any sleep over taking those shots today—they were holding a child hostage.” His leopard growled inwardly at the memory of the blood on Keenan’s wrists.
Sascha seemed satisfied with that, her attention shifting back to Keenan. “He’ll be safe now.” Her voice caught and he wondered what emotions she’d sensed around the boy. “Protected.”
“Thanks to his mother.” Dorian’s thoughts turned to Ashaya Aleine, a woman he’d seen as a shadow in the darkness two months ago… and hadn’t been able to forget since. “You think she can get out?”
“I have my doubts.” Sascha closed her hand around one of Keenan’s. “From what Judd shared, the Council needs her. And it has a way of getting what it wants.”
“I think you’re underestimating her.” Dorian recalled the freezing tones of Ashaya’s voice, recalled, too, how hard and low that voice had hit him. Fucking two-fisted punch to the gut. If—
The trapped leopard inside of him snapped its teeth when he bit off that thought, but the human half was in no mood to listen. “So far, she’s managed to get three children out of potentially fatal situations—Jon, Noor, and now, Keenan.” The woman might be cold enough to give him freezer burn, but she was also smart as hell.