Caressed by Ice

Tai came to stand beside him. “What do I do?”

“Think. Stand in place in this position.” He showed the position. “And think about what your body is capable of, what will push it to the limit, what won’t. To use a tool effectively, you must first know its capabilities.”

Tai took a deep breath. “My body as a tool? Okay, I get it. I think.”

Oddly, teaching Tai discipline brought Judd’s own darkness under almost total control. By the time Brenna found him a few hours later, as the trailing edges of the day faded into night, he was thinking relatively clearly.

“I’m sorry,” she said after Tai left, pulling her thick coat tighter around her body. “I needed to be with you. Stupid after I acted so strong and unaffected by the attack. I should go—our being close will hurt you.”

“Never be sorry for coming to me.” Picking up his discarded jacket, he shrugged into it. “Do you want to go for a walk?”

She nodded, lower lip trembling for an instant before she got it under control. “I’m such a baby. I was fine as long as I was cleaning up, but as soon as I stopped, I got so angry. Almost as if I was picking up everyone else’s anger, too.”

He matched her smaller strides as they walked, choosing to focus on the lighter aspect of her comment— they’d discuss the other later. “You might be a baby, but you’re mine. And I like babysitting.”

Her laugh was surprised. “Very funny. Anyone else saying that would be dodging claws right now.”

He thought back to D’Arn and Sing-Liu’s interaction the day of the war games. Finally, he grasped what had seemed so puzzling then. But the similarity was only on the surface. He and Brenna were different in one crucial respect, a difference they had both gone to great lengths to avoid discussing—the lack of a mating bond between them.

He was a psychic being. He would have seen it had it been present in any form. That it wasn’t, was a sign that though they might be drawn to each other, they weren’t made to fit. He didn’t give a damn. He was keeping her.

“What was Tai doing with you anyway?” she asked when he remained silent.

“Tai makes a good student. But when did I become a teacher?”

“You’re a lieutenant, a big brother to the young ones.”

“Ah.” That made sense. “They trust me.”

“Yes.”

“I could damage them.”

“But you won’t.”

Such faith for a renegade from the Net. “It’s time.”

She understood at once. “Here?” They were in a very small clearing between towering redwoods. “It’s dark.”

“It’s as good a place as any. And there’s no need for light where I’m going.” He took a seat on a fallen log after brushing off the snow and Brenna sat beside him. “I might not respond if you call me. Don’t panic.”

“I won’t.” Her voice trembled. She took a deep breath. “I won’t.” Far stronger this time.

“You also have to be prepared for the possibility that this might not work, that we’ll have to separate permanently.”

Her skin paled. “It’ll work.”

“This time stubbornness won’t do it,” he said, attempting to be gentle but knowing he sounded harsh. “It’s lasted so long because of how solid it is. The conditioning reprograms the most fundamental aspects of our brains. To break full Silence is one thing—but to make use of an isolated aspect of it as I intend to, might be another altogether.” What he didn’t want to tell her was that the attempt could prove fatal. But he would not lie to her. “If I do it wrong, I could trigger the most extreme level of dissonance.”

“Are you telling me you could die?”

“Yes.”

Her face twisted. “You can’t die. You’re mine.”

“I have no intention of doing anything wrong and every intention of surviving.” He was an Arrow, and for the first time, that might be a good thing. “I was trained to circumvent and use pain to my own advantage. Trust me.”

Swallowing, she nodded. “I know I can’t help, but—”

“You can help.” It was something he’d realized during the calm fostered by teaching Tai. “After putting Andrew’s heart back together, I recovered far quicker than I should have in terms of physical strength. I think it was because of you.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.” There was no bond, but she reached him in ways no one else ever had. “If you ever find your true mate,” he said, “I won’t allow you freedom.” He didn’t have such goodness in him.

She scowled. “I’m a one-Psy woman.”

Satisfied with the acceptance, he nodded. “Keep in physical contact with me.”

She blanched. “It hurts you when I touch.”

“Because I’m conditioned to see it as a danger. It is one—touch anchors me to you, which threatens to break Silence.”

Swallowing, she nodded and clasped her hand over his shoulder. “The first thing I’m going to do after you come back is pet you all over for as long as I want. Promise you’ll let me.”

“Promise.” With that sensual goal as his guiding light, he closed his eyes and went deep into his mind. Deeper than he’d ever before gone. What he saw threatened to shake his confidence in his ability to use the Protocol to his advantage.

CHAPTER 45

He had never realized how far the talons of Silence had dug into his brain. Removing them felt like picking out thorns one at a time. But the strangest thing was that, though he was operating exclusively on the psychic plane, he could feel Brenna beside him, her hand having moved to close over his forearm, an anchor that kept him centered.

Extraordinary.

The outer ring of conditioning was deceptively easy to unravel. Deceptive because midway through, he realized it was linked to the dissonance loop—on a level that would cause unconsciousness. He stopped, retraced his steps, and found the embedded triggers. Disarming them was eerily similar to taking apart a thousand tiny explosive devices. Good thing he’d been trained for just that. Of course, this was a little different. One mistake and he’d cause an implosion in his brain. So he wouldn’t make mistakes.

By the time he finished, he had a new respect for the programming process. They’d done a hell of a job on him. There had been not one but six Black Keys built into the initial layer, contingencies upon contingencies. If he hadn’t been as skilled as he was, he could have activated any one of them several times over.

It made him wonder about Sascha and Faith. Sascha was easy to explain—Silence had never “taken” with her. Her ability had simply run so counter to it as to make conditioning impossible. But Faith had been under and, from what he could understand, had shattered Silence during a major emotional storm. She’d never mentioned aggressive factors such as Black Keys and psychic grenades meant to shut down the body and mind.

Those facts bolstered his earlier theory—that the programming was altered to suit the needs of each individual child. He’d required extremely severe controls because of his Tk-Cell abilities. He couldn’t fault his trainers for that. But he had a suspicion that those controls had been further strengthened because of his future as an Arrow. They hadn’t wanted to lose their best assassin.

The worst danger appeared on the third level—lines of conditioning tied directly to his ability to kill with a stray thought. After examining them for several minutes, he opened his eyes. Brenna’s concerned face was the first thing he saw.

“What is it?” Her hand clenched on his arm.

“This is where I have to choose which parts of Silence to delete and which to leave functional. Too much and