A slow nod from his mate, though her expression remained troubled. "Trinity brings with it the potential for a dazzling future . . . but we have to accept that it also provides a forum for those who want to seed chaos and destruction."
"Right now," Lucas admitted, "the Consortium is beating Trinity in the cooperation stakes." Driven by self-interest, the members of the enemy group were willing to work together against everyone else.
Those who'd signed the Trinity Accord, on the other hand, were becoming lost in the rivalries that had divided the world for so long. Psy against changeling. Human against Psy. Big businesses against small, the list was endless.
"The United Earth Federation is a distant dream, isn't it?" Sascha's eyes had once more lost their starlight.
"At least the dream now exists." By the time Naya grew up, maybe the UEF would be a functioning entity.
"Who knows?" Sascha murmured. "It could be our cub who one day leads that federation." Her spine grew stiff under his caressing hand.
Aware exactly where her mind had gone, Lucas gripped her jaw, held her gaze. "We'll keep Naya safe." It was a growling promise.
"Yes." Sascha's tone was resolute. "We will."
Releasing her jaw to run her gorgeously badly behaving hair through his fingers, he tugged lightly on the thick curls, released them, fascinated by the texture and by the way the strands clung to his skin.
"You are such a cat." It was a husky statement.
He leaned up on his elbows to flick his tongue over her lips, teasing her into a kiss that ended up with her pinned under him, tall and curvy in all the right places. Setting aside politics and the outside world, he played with the woman who'd begun the wave of change with her very public defection, this empath with her gentle heart and her wild courage.
The scent of her arousal made his cock throb.
"Lucas." A demanding touch on the back of his neck as Sascha locked her legs around his hips once again, her mouth moving to his throat.
Yes, his mate knew exactly how he liked to be touched.
Just as he knew her every sensual weakness.
Pressing her more heavily into the bed, he slid one hand under her top to cup the lush heaviness of her breast. His panther growled in his chest, full of primal pride that she was his.
A tiny answering growl sounded from the nursery.
Breaking the kiss, they both turned to look that way. The growl came again.
Sascha's body began to shake as her face filled with laughter. "Someone is not sleeping."
They waited in hopeful quiet. Five seconds later, just as Lucas was bending his mouth to Sascha's once more, Naya made an adorable sound that might have been her attempt at a grown panther's more guttural vocalization. It held impatience and excitement and zero drowsiness.
Dropping his head forward, Lucas nipped at Sascha's collarbone. "Why did we think having a cub was a good idea?"
Sascha laughed again. "She's probably hungry. Even if she isn't, I don't think we should be strict about bedtime. Not today."
"No," Lucas agreed with a nuzzle of his nose against hers. "Not today." Today, their baby needed a little extra care and attention.
Getting up, the two of them went into the nursery to discover a small black panther trying to shove her head through the bars of her crib. Shaking his head when Naya froze and gave him a look of wide-eyed innocence, Lucas picked up their child and held her black-furred body against his bare chest.
His growl was echoed by an excited one from her.
Lucas nipped her on the nose, the affectionate act of a panther with his misbehaving cub. "Want some food, princess?"
Butting her head against his chin, Naya made sounds of impatience.
"I get it. You want to go for a run in the forest first." He knew Naya couldn't really run. She could barely walk without falling over. But tonight, she wanted to be a panther.
Naya scrabbled at him at the pronouncement, her claws making fine furrows on his skin.
He didn't correct her this time; predatory changeling parents had to tread a careful line between teaching their children not to use claws against their playmates and to use them ferociously if defending against an enemy. In his current protective mood, Lucas decided his cub should learn the ferocious part first.
Her older playmates would teach her the rules of play soon enough.
Putting her on the floor, he pulled off his jeans--to his mate's sigh and his grin--and shifted. Then, before Naya could escape, he used his teeth to grip her by the ruff of her neck. Her tiny body went instinctively limp in his hold as he padded to the front door.
Sascha had already unlocked it, so he went straight out onto the balcony that had a railing only along one side. Glancing back to see his mate had squeezed her eyes tightly shut, he huffed in laughter and jumped off. He landed on the forest floor with the grace of the cat he was, his cub safe. Putting Naya down, he looked up and growled at Sascha to let her know they were unharmed.
She peeked over the edge, one hand on her heart and her hair tumbling around her face. "I'm coming down," she said in a breathless voice. "Don't go too far."
He and Naya had barely gone three feet before Sascha scrambled down the rope ladder to join them. All wobbly limbs and wild curiosity, Naya was distracted by a thousand things at once. He watched her with a father's patience, giving her praise when she did something clever, helping her get upright when she fell.
The night was cool and calm around their small family, the stars overhead a glittering quilt, and when Sascha came to her knees beside him, her hand on his back as they watched Naya try to chase fireflies, his heart felt too huge to stay inside his chest.
For this woman, for this child, for his pack, he'd do anything.
Trinity would not defeat him.
Neither would the Consortium.
Chapter 11
KALEB WAS UNSURPRISED when, late that night, Ivy Jane Zen requested he show her the dangerously subtle new damage in the PsyNet. The president of the Empathic Collective had proven to have a steel will beneath her soft exterior. He was surprised that she turned up on the Net without an Arrow escort.
"Where's Vasic?" The teleporter was Ivy's husband and second in command of the squad.
Ivy answered his unspoken question instead of the one he'd asked. "I'm an empath, Kaleb. I know exactly how much you love Sahara."
And Sahara called the Es her friends. Thus, Kaleb would never touch a hair on their heads unless they turned into a threat to the woman who was his heart. Then, of course, he would annihilate them to bloody pieces.
Kaleb didn't enjoy being so transparent. The twisted darkness in him reared up in an aggressive stance, too long used to fighting the enemy to ever trust easily. "Breaching shields, Madam President?"
Laughter in Ivy's reply. "No need. I've seen you two together, remember? You look at her like . . . like she's a rare, beautiful gift." Her mental voice grew softer. "To cherish, to protect. I know, because I see the same in Vasic's eyes when he looks at me."
In the physical world, standing on the deck of his home, Kaleb raised an eyebrow. "Does Vasic know you're here alone?"
"Does Sahara know she's mated to an overprotective Neanderthal?"
Kaleb's lips curved. Ivy's sharp response was so close to what Sahara might've said in similar circumstances. "You're ready? Heavy shields?" He might not appreciate the way certain Es were so good at seeing through a man's skin, but he'd permit no harm to come to them.
Without the Es, the Net was dead and Sahara needed the Net to breathe, to live.
"Yes."
"Meet me at these PsyNet coordinates." He was already in that dark, diseased location devoid of other Psy minds, his shields so effective that he had to alert Ivy to his presence before she could spot him.
Her own psychic presence held sparks of color unseen in any minds except for those of Designation E.
Kaleb had experienced the harsh viciousness of Silence firsthand, but even he had difficulty imagining the brutal
extent of the conditioning each E must've undergone to have been so completely smothered.
To Kaleb, the fact that the Es had survived at all proved a mental resilience unseen in any other designation in the Net. "Have you considered working for a corporate?" he asked Ivy as she moved to examine the dead and disintegrating section.
"Why? Looking for a new hire?"
Kaleb already had two Es on his staff. As such, he was far ahead of the curve--the Es were so stretched that even those more suited for corporate work were being asked to take up heavy lifting in the Honeycomb.
Asked, not commanded.
That was the difference between the Empathic Collective and many of the other organizations in the PsyNet. It was as well they had the backing of the Arrow Squad or no one would take their requests to non-empaths seriously. A hundred years of Silence had taught the Psy that only the ruthless and the cold-blooded survived.
Kaleb had believed the same until he found Sahara again. The woman for whom he'd extinguish the world--except that she'd asked him to save it--hadn't lost herself in spite of the horror she'd survived. She'd come out of it with her soul and her spirit intact, was still the same generous Sahara who'd first extended the hand of friendship toward a boy who knew only pain and isolation.
If there was a ruthless bone in her body, he hadn't found it yet.
Then had come the empaths. Kaleb had seen those empathic sparks of color, begun to comprehend the mental strength it must've taken for an E not to break despite being in a psychic stranglehold for decades. He knew what it was to be leashed, to have that leash pulled until he couldn't breathe.
Those who underestimated the Es would one day get a very nasty surprise.
"I thought you might've become sick of politics by now," he said to Ivy. "I can offer a pay package that'll take you immediately into the top percentile of earners in the world, and you'd be working in a far less stressful environment."
"You're very good," she said with open amusement, "but I've settled into my position in the Collective."
Despite his offer, Kaleb had thought as much; Ivy Jane Zen had started out unsure if she could lead, but these days, she was a force to be reckoned with. "The offer is open to any high-Gradient E who wants a more regular nine-to-five job."
While the Honeycomb needed every E in the Net, it had become clear that not all Es could bear the pressure. Those Es remained useful in other capacities, including in specialized medical professions and to corporates who wanted an edge on their competitors during negotiations. Empathic ethics might not allow for active scans without the permission of the individual being scanned, but as changelings picked up scents without trying, Es picked up the emotional undercurrents in any given situation.
Even in "passive" mode, they tilted the scales to their employer's advantage.
Ivy was quiet for a long time as she focused on the problematic section of the Net, but when she spoke, her answer was unexpected. "I'll keep that in mind. I wouldn't recommend jobs at most of the corporates to my people, but you . . . yes." As if guessing his surprise, she said, "Because of Sahara. She'd never let you mistreat an E."
Again, Kaleb wasn't certain he liked being in any way predictable. Sahara, he telepathed to the woman who had held his heart in her hands from the day they met, please refrain from making me appear "nice" or trustworthy. Especially to those of Designation E.
Sahara's laughter was light in the darkness, a brightness that encompassed the most twisted corners of his soul. No chance of that. Underneath the glittering night sky on the outskirts of Moscow, she came out of the house to wrap her arms around him from behind. The Es know exactly how dangerous you are--but they also know you and your abilities are on their side.
I'm only on one side. He closed one of his hands over hers. Yours.
Look after my friends, won't you, Kaleb?
Stop making so many.
I love you, too.
His lips curved slightly as he returned his attention to the PsyNet, and Sahara went back into the house--after a kiss to his back that made his battered soul curl up in pleasure. "What do you see?" he asked Ivy.
"The fraying is new, but the disease itself isn't as bad as it was pre-Honeycomb," she murmured. "Back then, the PsyNet was literally rotting away piece by piece, as if with gangrene."
Kaleb waited.
"The Honeycomb isn't visible here," Ivy continued after a small pause, "but it is present to my empathic senses. That fine net of emotional strands is all that's keeping this section from collapsing." She indicated the lifeless blackness in front of them.
"But?" Kaleb might not be an E, but he'd spent a lifetime learning to read people. First so he could predict the moves of the psychopath who'd ruled his childhood, later because he'd realized that to know people was to know their secrets. And secrets meant power.
"The disintegration below the surface?" Ivy said. "It's eroding the foundation on which the Honeycomb sits, and with each frayed thread, the weight of the dead section gets heavier. Thin as they are here, the Honeycomb bonds could simply snap, and if they do . . ."
Kaleb scanned the area. The rotten section was unpopulated, but there were minds anchored within touching distance of the black. Should it collapse, it would take hundreds, perhaps thousands of those minds with it, much like a whirlpool sucking in everything around it. "Do you want me to move those minds?" Kaleb couldn't do it himself, but the NetMind could make certain adjustments.
"No." Ivy's voice held an awareness of the risk of her decision, of the lives that hung in the balance. "If they go, they take their part of the Honeycomb with them. There'd effectively no longer be anything holding this section of the Net in place--it might create a tear so massive it could cause a catastrophic chain reaction."
Snuffing out the very minds they wanted to save.
"I'll set part of my consciousness to monitoring this area." It was a task Kaleb would've normally given the NetMind, but he was starting to have the disturbing suspicion that as the Net frayed, so did the neosentience in charge of it.
The signs had been there for a long time, if he thought about it. Lapses in concentration, lost or missing pieces of data, a distinct lack of growth since Kaleb was a child. Yes, the neosentience grew at a glacial pace in comparison to a Psy mind, but it had shown no development in over two decades.
In point of fact, it appeared to have gone backward, to an even more childlike state.
The only reason Kaleb hadn't noticed earlier was because he'd been distracted by the violent potential of the DarkMind. Though he'd never differentiated between his acceptance of the twin neosentience, handling the DarkMind had always required more attention.
Inadvertently hiding the subtle degeneration of its twin.
Kaleb considered sharing that suspicion with Ivy, made the decision that the Es were already at overload. One more worry could be the proverbial straw that caused a fatal breakdown. "It'll alert you if the risk of total Net failure at this location hits seventy-five percent." At which point, the risk in not moving the minds would outweigh the danger of a possible collapse and chain reaction.
Ivy's attention lingered on him. "Can you maintain such long-term monitoring without risk to yourself?"
Empaths. Dangerous to themselves most of all, with their concern for others.
"Yes," he said at the same instant that thought passed through his head.
As a dual cardinal, the only one in the Net, Kaleb had off-the-scale psychic abilities his mind had learned to utilize without melting down in the process. A single monitoring program wouldn't even register as usage on his internal psychic meter. Not when he could cause a cataclysmic earthquake without coming close to burning out.
Kaleb looked at the dead section again. "That's all you see?"
"Broken threads," she murmured. "Frayed edges. Like a piece of natural fabric coming apart, thread by thread."
"If it was the absence of active empaths that caused the damage, the disintegration makes no sense." Not with so
many Es awake now. Kaleb could see sparks of color heading into the rot, to be absorbed by it.
"It's like . . . like something is acting against us and it's stronger." Ivy made a sound of frustration before her mental presence froze in place. "The NetMind, I felt it."
So had Kaleb, and this time, the neosentience had passed on an image that was impossible to misinterpret. "A honeycomb structure, but with approximately every third hexagon missing," he said for Ivy Jane's benefit, not certain the NetMind had spoken to them both.
"We're missing a vital component," Ivy whispered. "Without it, the Net will never be whole." A pause. "Another lost designation?"
Kaleb shook his head on the physical plane. "Impossible. I have access to top-secret data from prior to the dawn of Silence. No other designation was buried like the Es were buried."
"When I ask the NetMind for clarification, all I get is a cascade of emotion--loss, pain, brokenness." Tears filled Ivy's psychic voice. "It's in so much pain, Kaleb. So is the DarkMind."
Kaleb thought of the time right after the awakening of the Es and the creation of the Honeycomb. The NetMind had been a wonder of hope, joyous laughter in his mind. "They've lost hope," he found himself saying, though he was no expert in emotion.
Ivy's response was thick with sorrow. "Yes, you're right. The NetMind held on for so long, hid the Es, protected us, but now it's realized we can't stop the pain. Not totally."
And without the NetMind, the DarkMind couldn't exist.
Opening his senses, Kaleb reached for the twin neosentience, asked what was missing, what they needed. The emotions that came back were of a staggering loss, image after image of a body with organs torn out by uncaring hands, leaving the patient bloody and barely alive.
When? Kaleb asked, using a visual of a calendar and a clock with twenty-four numbers on it.
The pages of the calendar began to flip back at inhuman speed as the hands of the clock spun backward, around and around and around.
It all came to a stop at one minute past midnight in the year 1979.
The dawn of Silence.