'Shh.' She closed her eyes and tried to figure out a way to send her reply without affecting the others, but couldn't. 'Everyone who can receive Tp thoughts, ignore this.' Then she shot back a single flower, layering it with sheer joy and excitement.
A complicated set of images answered her.
Deciphering the message, she endeavored to tune her mind to the right frequency, one so unusual, she knew no other sentience that used it. 'Sascha, can you see this?' She sent out a test image.
'No.'
But the NetMind had seen. It sent her another flower. Smiling at having worked out how to broadcast to it without telling everyone her thoughts, she considered the best way to ask her next question.
An image of the PsyNet, with a bridge connecting it to her.
The image came back devoid of the bridge.
Frowning, she sent confusion.
The PsyNet. Her. A night sky-colored glow passing from one to the other.
'Of course. You don't need a bridge,' she whispered. 'Because this is what you were born to do.' Trusting her instincts and putting more than her own life on the line, she showed it a snapshot of the Web of Stars.
What came back made her gasp aloud.
She understood. She told it so. It gave her back sunshine. Happiness. But then it followed with rain. Sadness. Images of the PsyNet with rivers of unrelieved darkness running through it, places where it could not go. In the darkness, she saw nothing alive. Death ruled.
She sent it a teardrop to wash the darkness away.
In response, it sent her images that made no sense ... until she realized they were the memories of a child, but one who was more ancient than she could imagine—pictures of the PsyNet as it once was, rainbow-hued and alive. Then it showed her something else, something that stunned her into silence.
Barely able to think, she answered its good-bye sunshine with a flower, and opened her eyes. Vaughn was holding her, but he was relaxed.
'I felt something touch you.' He frowned. 'It wasn't bad. Like a cub isn't bad. But different.'
'The NetMind.' Her answer set off a cacophony of questions from the others.
'How—?'
'—a leak?'
'—Council?'
'Is it—?'
'Quiet!' Vaughn cut them off with a roar. 'Go on, Red.'
She laughed and, to everyone's surprise, kissed him on the lips. 'I love you.'
His growl vibrated along her nerve endings, the most intimate of caresses. 'Hell of a time to tell me.'
The tension diffused from everyone but her jaguar—she felt his continuing anger through the direct connection of the mating bond. She wanted to soothe, to stroke, but for that she needed privacy and right now, the others were waiting for her to speak. 'I'm assuming everyone here knows about the NetMind?'
'I tried to explain it,' Sascha said, 'but I think you're the expert. You speak to it in images?'
'Yes. It looks like we've managed to work out a number of pictures that translate as the same every time— sunshine is happiness, rain is sadness.'
'It feels?' Sascha whispered.
'Yes.' And that signaled a precious hope.
'How can it contact you if you're not in the Net?' Lucas asked from his position against the window ledge.
'It's a sentience that finds it natural to live in networks of minds,' she said, bursting to share what she'd learned. 'If there is a network, it can travel to that place.'
'The Web of Stars.' Sascha walked to stand in her mate's embrace, back to his chest. 'I've never felt it there.'
'I'm saying this wrong.' Faith tried to order her thoughts. 'It won't come into a different network, perhaps not unless it's invited—I think I did that by thinking of it after I dropped out of the PsyNet—because each network has its own NetMind.'
Everyone went completely silent.
'It seems as if each time a network—a web—forms, it sows the seeds for the creation of a new sentience. The NetMind in the Web of Stars is a baby, a mere thought. Do you know of any other webs?'
Lucas narrowed his eyes. 'Tell us what you saw first.'
Able to read changeling aggression to some extent, she knew it wasn't a display of distrust, but an unwillingness to color her perception. Her Psy mind appreciated that. 'I saw several small networks, but it showed me one other in particular made up of five Psy minds. And if our NetMind is a baby, theirs hasn't even been born.'
'Christ. It's the Laurens.' Lucas's statement shook her— she hadn't known that Judd was part of a group. A family. And yet he'd chanced helping her. 'Does this make us vulnerable to the Psy?'
'No. The NetMind is no longer bound by the Council, though they don't know it.'
'What? How?' Sascha tugged her plait from Lucas. He just lifted it back up and dropped a kiss on the curve of her neck.
Faith watched Sascha melt and understood. These predators were impossible to resist when they played nice. 'In our terms, it's a teenager now,' she answered. 'It can think beyond what it's been told, understand the bigger picture.' Sadness flowed into her. Vaughn's nuzzled kiss was a welcome burst of sensation, of hope. 'It showed me evil in the Net, badness that's infecting everything. If that evil isn't stopped, it'll kill the Net itself.'
'A rot.' Sascha voice went heavy with sorrow that sank into every person in the room.
The sentinel named Dorian walked over to pull her into his arms. Lucas allowed the embrace though Faith had expected him to react with possessive violence. Another facet of her new family, one that would take time to become accustomed to. Such open affection was disconcerting to a mind fresh out of Silent bondage.
'Anything else?' Clay asked.
She nodded. 'I think the killer was possessed.' Everyone looked at her in blatant disbelief. 'Maybe I should think about it a bit more.'
Vaughn kissed her forehead. 'Possessed, Red?'
'Do you think the mental degradation's taken root?' It was an attempt to make a joke out of her greatest fear. She might have cut free from the Net, but she was still an F-Psy, her mind more fragile than others.
'I think you're beautiful for a crazy woman.' His hungry kiss brought the lightning to life, but when they separated, the others' expressions hadn't changed.
'The NetMind showed me something the first time we spoke.' She explained the images. 'I think the starry woman represents the good side and the one empty of stars, the bad.'
'What about the Web of Stars?' Sascha asked from within Dorian's embrace.
Faith wriggled to a more upright position. 'It's a single entity. Same with the LaurenNet.'
Vaughn wrapped his arms around her neck and pulled her back against his chest. The wall of fire was a sweet benediction. 'So what makes the Psy NetMind different?'
'Emotion.' Sascha's eyes had gone pure black.
Lucas reached out to tug at her plait and Dorian released her to her mate. 'Talk to me, Sascha darling.' He ran his finger down her cheek.
'The Psy have cut off emotion, tried to suppress it into nonexistence. So if the NetMinds are created when a net is created, then the basic material is provided by the net in question.'
Faith saw where Sascha was going. 'Our Web is fed by everything—love, hate, fear, joy.'
'So is the Laurens', probably because of the children.' Sascha tangled her fingers with Lucas's. 'The PsyNet, however, is fed mostly by emotionless Silence.'
'But the NetMind is good. It feels joy.' She was convinced of that.
'Yes, but the aim of Silence was to wipe out violence. The core of the conditioning says that any kind of darkness is bad. It must be contained, caged, kept
'And that's become amplified in the twin NetMinds.' Faith suddenly understood what the empath had seen at once. 'A DarkMind for everything negative while the NetMind is pure goodness. It's so vulnerable.'
