imagined she'd be allowed to touch? He assuaged the loneliness inside of her by his very presence, giving her an intimacy, a closeness the Net could never provide. If only she could have them both.
But she must choose.
Mentally shaking her head to dislodge the question for which she had no answer, she took herself to one of the main data conduits. Though information could be accessed from anywhere in the Net, most of the raw data was shunted through these points and, as such, was in its purest form.
Eschewing a search that might send up red flags, she set her mind to copy files that responded to certain keywords and then simply let the continuous uploads flow through her. Her act was nothing unusual, so she didn't bother to check if anyone was following her.
When nothing met her specifications after almost an hour, she left the stream in favor of surfing the Net, sieving the random data through preset filters. The process wasn't as haphazard as it sounded for a very straightforward reason: the Net was anchored in the minds of millions of psychic beings and was therefore itself ordered by the principles of psychic energy. No one had managed to completely explain those principles to date, but all Psy knew that if you looked for something with enough focus and for long enough, the Net would start to throw you cookie crumbs of relevant data.
As it did for Faith.
A few whispers reached her. As she'd told her jaguar, something spoken within the Net never left the Net, though words spoken behind vaults and shields were locked into place and degraded in secret. Unshielded whispers, too, would eventually degrade, but until they did, they were part of the biggest living information system in the world.
She was surprised by the whispers—the Council was skilled at ensuring a data blackout when necessary. Logically that meant they had to have leaked the short list. A test? Set Kaleb against Faith and wait to see which one walked out alive? She wouldn't put it past the Council to employ such barbaric tactics under the guise of efficiency, but it made no sense in this situation.
If they'd wanted pure lethal strength combined with cold Psy practicality, then Kaleb was, without a doubt, the correct candidate. He'd proven that over and over. Which could mean the leak was a warning to Kaleb that this time, something else was part of the equation. If it was, it was a worthless one. Faith knew nothing would ever keep Kaleb from taking her down if he decided she needed to be neutralized.
Something brushed her mind and it was so familiar she barely gave it a thought. But seconds after the NetMind had passed, she found herself turning to look for it, though of course, it couldn't be seen. It just was. Something in its Meeting touch had stimulated the section of her mind that housed the vision channels. The knowing was vague, less a vision than a premonition that the NetMind was going to be important to her life.
After another few moments of trying to refine the thought, she gave up and dropped back into her body, her psychic energy exhausted by the chaos in her mind. It was tempting to try to avoid sleep as a way to escape the darkness, but she fought that voice with inarguable logic—the visions would come whether she was awake or asleep. In that, she had no choice.
As she had no real choice in the decision to stay or leave the Net.
But two hours later, the touch that woke her wasn't of evil, but of something far more dangerous. 'You came back.'
His finger trailed down her cheek. 'You have bruises under your eyes—I should've let you sleep.'
'No. We need to talk.'
He broke the skin-to-skin contact and rose fluidly to sit on the bed. Following, she sat up to face him. 'I've been thinking about what you want, about the choice you want me to make, but the fact is I have to live in this world. If I cut the Net link, I die.'
'You once asked me if I could do for you what Lucas does for Sascha. The answer is yes.'
Every certainty shattered. 'How?'
'Make your choice and then ask. I can't risk trusting you with that information while you're hooked up to the Net.'
'Because of Sascha.' An emotion she recognized as jealousy dug its claws into Faith.
'Because of every Psy who might one day need the knowledge.'
'You're asking me to make a decision about my whole future, my life, based on your belief that you can get me out. What if you're wrong?'
'I'm not wrong.' His words held the assurance of a predatory male used to having his way.
'How do you know?
He touched her again, a quick, shocking graze of his lips against hers. 'Because you're already out—the only thing you have to do is open your eyes and see.'
'Vaughn.' It was a whisper that held her need, her frustration, her desperation.
'Always.' His breath was hot on the shell of her ear.
She shook her head in reproach. 'Not if I choose to continue living the life I'm good at living.'
Something twisted in those not quite human eyes. 'Even then, Faith. Even then. If you call for me, I'll come.'
And it would break him apart, destroy his sense of honor and loyalty ... because he'd be sleeping with the enemy. But she had to make him see why this was such a difficult choice for her. 'These are my people, my version of Pack, and I'm tied to them by so many bonds. They may not love me in the sense DarkRiver loves you, but my PsyClan needs me.
'If I leave, a hundred jobs directly connected to me will go, from the guards to the M-Psy. But it's the ripple effects that'll really devastate. Money will stop flowing into the PsyClan. Schools won't be affordable, research will be stopped, children will be pulled from mental enrichment programs when it might be those very programs that allow some of us to fight Silence.'
'You're talking about loyalty.' His voice was uncharacteristically toneless, but she could feel the coiled intensity of his beast as if it were a third being between them.
'Maybe it's not your kind of loyalty, but it is loyalty.'
'You're right,' he said, surprising her. 'But, baby, loyalty has to be earned and honored. Your PsyClan will one day lock you up in a mental institution and call it care.'
She knew he hadn't said that to be cruel. Her jaguar was merely using every weapon in his arsenal. 'Maybe they won't,' she said, silently pleading with him to lie to her, to make this easy. 'If you and Sascha are right, then I won't go insane if I embrace my true abilities, if I accept that the darkness will come for me at times.'
He shook his head. 'What happens the first time you see a vision of murder and realize you're part of the body that's going to authorize it?'
A shadowy realization took form in her mind, but faded away before she could grasp it. 'Why would the Council—?'
'Sascha calls them anchors. Apparently your PsyNet needs them, but for some reason they're the ones most likely to fall victim to one of the lesser-known side effects of Silence—murderous sociopathy.'
'You're saying the Council feeds their need to kill.' Her heart was a rock crushing her chest from the inside out.
'We know they do.' His eyes had gone night-glow, beautiful and wild.
She didn't doubt him—Vaughn was too much animal to lie. 'Why?' Why would they continue to support the Protocol if it had proven so fundamentally flawed?
'Because they can.' A cruelly honest answer.
And one she couldn't hide from. The Council had been the Psy race's absolute law for over a hundred years. Before Silence, rebellion and dispute had apparently spouted freely in the Net, keeping their rulers in check. Now no one dared to speak and no one kept watch. 'Say you're right about everything. Can you imagine how much good I could do from the inside? I could work for the freedom of my race from a position of real power.'
'And if you cut free, you might sow the seeds of a revolution so your people, your pack, could fight for
