Shield of Winter (Nalini Singh) (9 page)

Expression darkening, Santos said, “We didn’t. Not at first.” He shifted to face the city, his gaze on the skyscrapers piercing the snow-heavy sky and beyond them, the turbulent water of the East River.

Kaleb joined him, waited.

“My ancestors,” the other man said into the quiet, “formed the ShadowNet in desperation when it became clear the only way to escape Silence was to defect, but they brought with them the problems that led the rest of the Psy to choose the Protocol.

“We had foreseers who fell into their visions and never returned, telepaths whose shields splintered until they couldn’t block out the noise, telekinetics who broke the necks of the people they loved when their abilities spiraled out of control.”

Kaleb attempted to imagine what it must’ve been like for the defectors, alone and cut off from the vast resources of the PsyNet. “Yet the ShadowNet is producing individuals with unheard-of abilities”—the reason another Councilor had once attempted to hunt them—“while the PsyNet remains problematic.”

“Will you accept a ’pathed image?”

Kaleb inclined his head at the inquiry, and Santos sent him the image. It was of a chaos of multihued lines, intersecting and parallel, numerous threads coming in from opposing directions, curving below and above, often smashing into a knot no one could ever untangle, only to spread out in new directions on the other side.

“This is the ShadowNet?” It was the most anarchic mental landscape he’d ever seen.

A nod from Santos. “We’re connected to one another through multiple bonds of emotion. Friendship, love, even hate—negative emotions can create bonds as powerful as positive.”

Kaleb had never before considered that, but of course the other man was right. Kaleb had spent most of his adult life searching for a way to destroy the Council, his focus relentless. A vicious connection, but a connection nonetheless. “Emotion alone can’t be the key, or Silence would’ve never been necessary.”

“There is another element, but it’s not one you can replicate,” the other man answered. “The ShadowNet is smaller than the PsyNet by a magnitude of hundreds.” He turned to face Kaleb once again. “We keep a close eye on one another, notice the symptoms of any disintegration quickly, act even quicker. My personal, unscientific view is that the compactness of the ShadowNet also offers a certain level of automatic stability.”

Kaleb thought of the vast spaces between minds in the Net. “Akin to a village where trouble is easily spotted, in comparison to a city where an individual may walk alone amongst thousands.”

“Exactly. Consider the fact the changelings have been shown to have the lowest rates of psychopathy and mental illness of all the races. They almost always live in comparatively small, tightly linked pack groups.”

If Kaleb were to follow that logic, it would mean breaking the PsyNet into manifold pieces. “Your levels of insanity?” he asked, exploring another path. “I was unable to access any hard data.” His aide had compiled the information about the propensity for serial killing in this population by painstakingly tracking known members of the Forgotten in the prison system, then extrapolating that data using a statistical program.

“Attempting to break our encryptions?” There was unvarnished steel in Santos’s tone. “Don’t bother. We learned to protect ourselves a long time ago.”

Kaleb had come to the same conclusion when his best hackers failed to get into the Forgotten’s databases. “The data is less necessary than any coping mechanisms your people have discovered that can be adapted for use in the PsyNet.” He could and would execute the predators as soon as each was identified, but that wouldn’t fix the underlying problem.

The monsters would continue to spawn.

“Our elders,” said the leader of the Forgotten, “think we should keep our distance from your problems. The original adult defectors have all passed on, but many of the current elders were youths at that time, can remember the turbulence and pain of it. They say we shouldn’t get involved in your troubles.”

“What do you say?”

“I’m not a dictator, Krychek. I listen to my people.” He went silent as an airjet passed overhead, his expression giving nothing away. “But I listen to them all—including the ones who say that in working with you we may find answers to the problems that continue to haunt us.” Golden brown skin pulled taut over his cheekbones. “We have our mad still; people we simply cannot reach.”

“It’s been said the broken ones are the price our race pays for violent psychic abilities,” Kaleb pointed out. “We are our minds.”

“I’m not willing to give up on any of my people. Are you?”

Kaleb wasn’t used to thinking in such a way. The only person who mattered to him was Sahara. Everyone else was irrelevant . . . except that Sahara had asked him to save them. “I never give up on anything.” With that he asked another critical question, “Your empaths have been active throughout, and yet you continue to have problematic rates of mental illness?”

Santos’s answer was unexpected. “The Forgotten didn’t have many powerful empaths to begin with.” Face shadowed by the clouds that had moved in directly overhead, he said, “My great-grandmother says it’s because the Es thought the defectors would be all right. We had a strong mind-set, were brutally organized, while the Net was in chaos.

“So, despite the fact Silence was anathema to their very being, the vast majority of Es stayed behind.” He thrust a hand through his hair. “It meant our first generation was unbalanced enough that we never quite made up the numbers. Today, we have no high-level empaths as you’d judge them, but our mentally ill are far calmer and more productive in comparison to what I’ve heard of those in the Net.” A questioning look.

“Rehabilitation was the usual response under Silence,” Kaleb told him. “The more lucrative were locked up and made use of in their cogent moments.”

Santos’s mouth thinned. “We don’t just erase those who break. And some
have
made recoveries to the extent that they can pick up the threads of their lives.”

Rocking back on his heels, he answered Kaleb’s next question before it was asked. “From what one of our elder empaths has told me of her sessions with Sascha Duncan, Psy empaths and Forgotten empaths have diverged to a degree that while we can offer some advice and direction, we can’t train your people. Our minds no longer function quite the same way when it comes to psychic abilities.” A faint smile. “Too much mixed blood.”

Kaleb wondered what unique abilities that mixed blood had bequeathed Devraj Santos, the fact one Kaleb had been unable to unearth. “Regardless of our differences,” he said, “having an open line of communication between my people and yours could prove beneficial to both.”

Santos held his gaze, the world beyond sketched in gray. “Are you declaring a cease-fire between the Psy and the Forgotten?”

“No,” Kaleb said. “I’m declaring peace.” He held out his hand as the snow began to fall in a hush of white. Touch wasn’t something he enjoyed with anyone aside from Sahara, but he could meet the Forgotten leader halfway. “I have no quarrel with the Forgotten.” Kaleb’s vengeance had always been focused on the corrupt within his own race.

Santos took a long moment before accepting Kaleb’s hand. “Peace.”

Chapter 8

The irony, of course, is that E-Psy are often treated as a vulnerable segment of the population. While this may be true in certain circumstances (as discussed in depth in chapter 3), such a simplistic understanding obfuscates the day-to-day reality of their existence.Excerpted from
The Mysterious E Designation: Empathic Gifts & Shadows
by Alice Eldridge
LYING IN BED
as the birds began to wake on the third day after an Arrow appeared in her life, Ivy thought of what Sascha Duncan had shared when she’d contacted the cardinal for confirmation of the E designation.
We heal the mind and the heart. Sorrow, fear, pain, we help people navigate their way out of darkness.

The idea of it had made her chest ache, a painful pricking inside her . . . as if a numbed limb was stretching awake. Yet she had to face the fact that she was a patchwork creature, glued together through sheer stubborn will after the reconditioning that had almost erased her. Who was she to think she could heal anyone else?

We’re strong, Ivy, stronger than you might imagine right now. We have to be, to take the pain of others and make it something better.

Claws clicking on the wooden floor, Rabbit tumbled out from his basket to come stand beside the bed, eyes huge in entreaty. “You’re not meant to sleep on the bed.” She tried for stern, but it was difficult with Rabbit.

He gave her a mournful look before he collapsed with his head on his front paws, a pitiful sight.

“You big ham,” she said with a soft laugh and patted the mattress.

Sadness evaporating into mist, he jumped up and padded around before deciding on his favorite spot near the foot of the bed, diagonally across from her. Ivy smiled at his sigh of contentment, but her smile faded too soon, her thoughts tangled skeins. If she wasn’t careful, her PsyNet shields would begin to crack, exposing her and the others to outsiders.

Her nails cut into her palms.

Made up of fractured Psy and their families, the settlement was safe only because the tiny population had learned to interlink their shields. It had taken months of trial and error, sheer desperation the juggernaut that powered them, until finally the group had learned to form the connections that allowed each person to remain private while bolstering the shields of the group as a whole.

However, even their enhanced shields could only take a certain amount of pressure, and Ivy had been responsible for a significant portion of it in the preceding two months. Pushing up into a sitting position on that thought, she closed her eyes, her intention to do a simple mental exercise meant to effect calm. She had to—

“Woof!”

Eyes flicking open, she was startled to see Rabbit standing right in front of her. “You know you’re not supposed to interrupt me when I meditate,” she chided gently.

He barked again, and this time she heard the worried whine underneath. “I’m fi—”

That was when she felt it, the trickle of wet from her nose. “Damn it!” Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Rabbit bounding out beside her, she walked into the bathroom and turned on the light to confirm what she already knew.

She was bleeding from the nose. Not only that, but one of her eyes was bloodshot in the left corner, as if the capillaries had burst. Hands trembling and skin hot, she grabbed a wad of tissue to wipe away the thin trickle of viscous red, squeezing the bridge of her nose until the bleeding stopped. It didn’t take long, this incident minor.

Cleaning up afterward, she went down into a crouch to cradle Rabbit’s face. “I’m okay,” she reassured him, rubbing at his ears until he stopped whining low in his throat and butted her chest with his small head. “Let’s go have something to eat.”

Once in the kitchen, having pulled on a thick cardigan over the camisole she wore with flannel pajama pants, she gave him one of the special dog treats she bought from the general store in the nearest township. The human farmers who ran the shops there minded their own business the same way the settlement minded its own, their relationship cordial. Two years ago, after a severe storm damaged the township, Ivy’s group had helped in the cleanup and repair; a year later the favor had been returned when one of their barns needed to be rebuilt.

Other than that, the two groups didn’t mingle, and Ivy knew it was the settlement at fault. Trust was a rare commodity for those who called these sprawling acres home, the majority of them having ended up here after violently traumatic experiences. It was as safe a place as they could make it, one she couldn’t bear to leave . . . and that was why it was imperative she did.

“No more chains,” she whispered, hands cupped around the mug of green tea she’d made herself, “especially not ones created by fear.”

Rabbit wagged his tail in her peripheral vision, chewing deliriously on his treat.

It made her want to laugh, but she controlled the response, conscious once more of the strain she’d been placing on the settlement’s interlinked shields. No one had said anything. No one would, because this place was about pooling their resources to survive, but Ivy had never wanted to be a burden. Even when she’d been little more than the shell of a person, she’d pulled her weight.

Her mother had once told her that her stubborn refusal to simply sit at home, even when she’d been so grievously violated, had given Gwen hope that somewhere beyond her teenage daughter’s blank surface remained the girl who’d once passed a physics exam with honors after a teacher told her she was pathetic at the subject.

“You didn’t even like physics,” Gwen had said that day, as Ivy helped her transfer seedlings from the settlement greenhouse to the vegetable garden the group maintained to balance out their diet. “But you refused to change subjects, not until you’d made your point.”

Knowing she’d need that stubborn streak even more in the weeks to come, Ivy opened the back door, pulled on her snow boots, and stepped out into the gray light of early morning. It was bitingly cold, the snow thick enough to mute sound, but she liked the freshness, the skeletal bareness of the apple trees stretching out in front of her, branches piercing the fog. Beyond them lay peach and plum trees, a row of fruiting cherry trees, even a trellis for the myriad berries Ivy managed to coax to life each spring.