“Yes.”
“Talin’s spoken about you.” She tucked back a strand of curly black hair that had escaped her braid. “What can I do for you?”
Dev’s eyes flicked to her son. Taking the hint, Ashaya kissed the boy on the cheek and smiled. “Keenan, you want to cut out some cookies while I talk to Mr. Santos?”
An enthusiastic nod. Mother and child disappeared from the screen for a minute, and as he waited, Dev found himself wondering if he’d ever hold a child of his own in his arms. The likelihood was very low—even had he trusted his genetic inheritance, he’d done too much, seen too much. There was no softness left in him.
Ashaya’s face returned to the screen, her eyes filled with the remnants of laughter. “We’ll have to be quick —Keenan’s very good, but he’s still a four-year-old alone with cookie dough.”
Knowing he was about to wipe that shimmering joy from her eyes, he didn’t try to soften the blow, didn’t try to sugar-coat the implications. “I need you to see if you can identify someone.” Then he told her about the woman he’d found dumped outside his apartment door.
Ashaya’s face went pale under that dusky skin. “Do you think—”
“It could be nothing,” he interrupted. “But it’s a possibility I have to check out.”
“Of course.” Her throat moved as she swallowed. “If the Council knows about the unique abilities being manifested in the children of the Forgotten, there’s a chance they’ll begin to try to experiment on those children once again.” A pause. “I think Ming would kill them if he couldn’t use them.”
Dev’s jaw tightened. That was exactly what worried him—the Council would never countenance the idea of another group with access to psychic powers—much less the increasingly strong ones being manifested in some of his people. “Is this line secure?”
“Yes.”
He sent through a photograph. “She may not look like she used to.”
Nodding, Ashaya took a deep breath and opened the attachment. He knew the instant she recognized the woman in the photo. Crushing relief, anger, and pain—it all swept over her face in a violent wave. “Dear God.” Her fingers covered her mouth. “Ekaterina. It’s Ekaterina.”
CHAPTER 3
The Psy Council met in their usual location—a mental vault deep within the PsyNet, the psychic network that connected every Psy on the planet but for the renegades. An endless vista of black, each Psy mind represented by a single white star, the Net had a stark kind of beauty. But of course, those within the Net no longer understood beauty.
Like their Council, they understood only logic, practicality, economics.
Shut inside the solid black walls of the vault, Nikita looked to Ming. “You had something to discuss?”
“Yes.” The other Councilor’s mind was a blade, precise, ice-cold. “I’ve been able to retrieve some of the data Ashaya Aleine obfuscated before her defection.”
“Excellent.” Shoshanna Scott’s mental voice was as coolly elegant as she was in person. That was why she was one of the two public faces of the Council. Her “husband,” Henry, their relationship a front to pacify the human and changeling media, was the other half. Though, Nikita thought, the two hadn’t been working as a cohesive unit these past months.
“Anything we can use?” Shoshanna again.
“Possibly.” Ming paused. “I’m uploading it now.”
Streams of data scrolled down the black walls, a silver waterfall comprehensible to only the most powerful Psy minds. Nikita absorbed the information, scanned through the salient points. “This concerns the Forgotten.”
“It appears,” Ming said, “that their most recent descendants are being born with abilities unseen in the Net.”
“That’s hardly surprising.” Kaleb’s smooth voice.
Nikita considered him the most lethal member of not only the Council, but of the Net itself. At present, he’d allied himself to her on certain issues, but she was in no doubt that he’d kill her without hesitation should it prove necessary.
“Councilor Krychek is correct,” Tatiana said, speaking for the first time. “We’ve made a practice of eliminating mutations from the gene pool except where those mutations are essential to maintaining the functionality of the Net.”
Nikita knew the dig was directed at her, a reminder of her daughter’s unacceptable genetics. “The E designation isn’t a mutation,” she said with a calm that had been conditioned into her from the cradle. “Empaths form a critical component of the Net. Or have you forgotten your history lessons?” The last time the Council had tried to suppress the E designation—by destroying all embryos that tested positive for the ability—the PsyNet had come critically close to collapse.
“I’ve forgotten nothing.” Tatiana’s voice was utterly without inflection. “Getting back to the issue at hand— the deletion of mutations has made our core abilities stronger, purer, but with the inevitable side effect of stunting the development of new talents.”
“Is that really a problem?” Anthony Kyriakus asked, matter-of-fact as always. “Surely if the Forgotten had developed any dangerous new abilities, they would have used them against us by now.”
“That was my conclusion,” Ming said. “However, if no one disagrees, I’d like to devote a small fraction of Council resources to monitoring the Forgotten population for evidence of more serious mutations—we need to ensure they never again become what they once were.”
There were no objections.
“Nikita,” Tatiana said as Ming’s data disappeared from the walls, “how is the voluntary rehabilitation going in your sector?”
“The pace is steady.” Allowing the populace to choose to have their conditioning checked—and, if necessary, bolstered—rather than coercing them into it, had reaped dividends beyond anything Nikita had expected. “I suggest we continue to permit people to come in voluntarily—the Net is already becoming calmer.”
“Yes,” Henry said. “The eruptions of violence have ceased.”
Nikita hadn’t been able to unmask the individual who’d orchestrated the recent surge of murderous public violence by Psy, but she knew it had most likely been someone in this room. If that individual’s goal had been to drive people to cling to Silence, he or she had succeeded. But those bloody events had left a psychic echo—the Net was a closed system. Whatever went in, stayed in.
The other Councilors appeared to have forgotten that, but she hadn’t. She was already building her shields, waiting for the moment when they paid the price for that violent piece of strategy.
CHAPTER 4
Six hours after their early morning call, Dev found himself leading Ashaya Aleine down to the medical floor. Her mate, Dorian, walked by her side, his mouth grim. “If Ekaterina was taken from the lab when it was destroyed, she’s likely been in Council hands for over five months.”
Ashaya uttered a choked-off sound of pain, making Dorian swear under his breath. Dragging his mate to his side, he nuzzled the electric curls of her hair. “Sorry, Shaya.”
“No.” She sucked in a breath. “You’re right.”
“And if that’s true,” Dev said, “they now know everything she did.”
Ashaya nodded. “Ming LeBon would’ve torn her mind open. He was behind the destruction of the lab—it had to be him that took her.”
