The Psy-Changeling Series, Books 6-10 (115 page)

“What have you heard?”

“There are rumors in the city that Nikita is as flawed as her daughter.” Ryan’s tone dropped. “I thought, at first, that it was just uninformed talk, but the whispers are gathering in momentum—and that kind of thing doesn’t happen without something, some
one
, feeding the fire.”

“Do you have any idea of who it could be?”

“Not Marsha,” Ryan responded. “She has no genetic offspring. I believe she has given all her loyalty to the Councilor. I can’t narrow it any further.”

The door opened then and Max walked in. Sophia said, “Keep your ears and eyes open, Ryan. Let me know if you hear anything.”

“I will.” Rising, he glanced at Max, his expression opaque, his dress faultless—the perfect Psy . . . on the surface. “Do you have any further questions for me, Detective?”

He left as soon as Max shook his head. “I believe him,” Sophia said after filling Max in. “I think he applied to work for Nikita because of Sascha.”

Max tipped back his chair. “Explain.”

“It’s obvious his reconditioning didn’t work as well as everyone believes.” Reaching out almost automatically, she pushed his chair back on all four feet. “I think he’s hoping that since Nikita has a daughter who feels emotion, she’ll go easier on him if the truth comes out.”

“Nikita’s got a heart of fucking stone and I’m being cruel to the stone there.”

Sophia had heard whispers of how Nikita had ascended to the Council—her sheer cold-blooded nature couldn’t be doubted. “Yes.”

“I hear a ‘but.’ ”

“She allowed her daughter to grow to adulthood, when it would’ve been far easier for Sascha to have had a fatal ‘accident’ in childhood,” Sophia said, knowing he understood what she didn’t say, the parallels she’d drawn. “And in the end, the reality matters less than the perception. Ryan wants to find something, someone who’ll be on his side.”

“I get why he’d latch on to her,” Max said, “but if Nikita’s the best he can do, the kid’s in serious trouble.” He tapped the two printouts he’d just put on the table. “We take Ryan and Marsha out—I’m with the kid on her loyalty, plus Sascha confirmed they were together when Chan died—and we’re left with Andre Tulane and Quentin Gareth.” Tiny lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes. “I’ve got a couple of things I want to check where those two are concerned.”

“Including Tulane’s mysterious weekly appointments?”

Max nodded. “He’s been very careful not to raise any red flags. Could be a case of hiding in plain sight.” It would, Max thought, require balls of steel to pull that off in Nikita’s territory.

“If you don’t need me,” Sophia said, her lips lush and distracting, “I want to go back to the apartment and look through the PsyNet. I have a few ideas.”

He frowned. “I don’t know much about the PsyNet, but what I do know tells me it’ll put a huge amount of pressure on you to be surrounded by so much data, so many minds.”

“My PsyNet shields appear to be adapting to my increasing . . . need,” she said, and he heard the thread of confusion in her tone, “so that shouldn’t be an issue.”

“I don’t like it.” His protective instincts burned a hot white flame. “You’ll be alone if something happens.”

That gave her pause. “There is a risk, but—”

“Faith,” Max interrupted, recalling the almost protective way the F-Psy had looked at Sophia. “Call her. Ask if she’ll spot you while you go diving through the Net.”

“She’s a cardinal F-Psy,” Sophia said. “Her time is worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Why should she agree to waste it on me?”

Max saw that she truly didn’t understand. “Because DarkRiver’s come to consider me a friend.” And the cats understood—even if they didn’t exactly approve—that Sophia was his. Plus—“You got the message to Nikita when Sascha was threatened. Changelings don’t forget things like that.” He saw her absorb that, give a small nod.

“I’ll call her—but doesn’t the fact that Faith saved our lives cancel out any obligation on their part?”

“It’s not obligation. It’s about building bonds.” Placing his hand on the back of her chair, he met her gaze, the luxuriant softness of her hair brushing his skin. “Promise me you’ll be careful. I don’t want you bleeding out because you’ve been taking risks.”

Her expression never changed, but he could see steam coming out her ears. “I am not stupid, Detective Shannon. Kindly get that thought into your head.”

He wanted to kiss her.

 

Kaleb walked into Nikita’s office to find her just ending a conversation with a tall male of mixed ethnicity who didn’t move like a changeling but a human. Kaleb knew who the male was, of course. He’d known all about Max Shannon almost the instant after Nikita requested him. The Enforcement detective wasn’t only good at his job, he was as tenacious and stubborn as a bloodhound.

“Councilor Krychek,” the detective said with a small nod as he walked out of the room, closing the door behind himself.

“What do you need with an Enforcement agent?” he asked Nikita as he took a seat in the chair across from her. “We have Arrows for a reason.”

“The Arrows are Ming’s,” she said. “I needed an impartial party.”

Kaleb thought of the continued attempts to hack his shields, the sense of being very closely observed—and the failed tries to track him through the PsyNet when he didn’t want to be tracked. He could have ended the game days ago, turning the tables on his trackers—though, given their skill, it would’ve taken a concentrated amount of time and effort—but he was intrigued enough to let it continue. Because there was one group and one group alone in the Net with the covert skills to evade the traps he’d laid to date—and if that group had decided to shift its allegiance . . .

“You’re hemorrhaging people,” he said to Nikita, keeping his other thoughts to himself.

“The fact that you’ve noticed puts you at the top of the suspect list.”

“On the contrary. We both know that I do what needs to be done myself. I don’t need to rely on others who might make mistakes.”

Nikita settled back in her chair at his plain speaking. “Have you noticed something in Henry’s pattern of behavior?”

Kaleb hadn’t, and being out of the loop was not something he appreciated. “Tell me.”

“I’d rather show you.” Turning her chair toward the thin comm screen mounted on one wall, she darkened her windows and brought up a map of the world. “The red dots indicate the places where Henry has been in the past six months. The blue dots indicate incidents that took place at the same time.”

There were clusters of blue around every single red dot.

“Incidents have been increasing,” Kaleb said. “It’s not impossible that he could have coincidentally been at the same locations—but I’m assuming the incidents were major enough to have caught your notice.”

“Not the first five or so, no,” Nikita said. “As you say, there have been little outbursts of violence here and there, so I paid them no notice. But these incidents don’t involve violence—except of the self-inflicted kind.”

“Suicides?” That pricked his interest. Suicide wasn’t considered taboo in Psy culture. The majority of those who recognized their mental patterns as aberrant chose to end their existence rather than face rehabilitation. But the chances of the suicides—ten or more in each location—lining up so neatly with Henry’s travels was exceptionally low.

“I’m certain he’s used the tactic before,” Nikita said.

Kaleb agreed. There’d been a string of violent incidents several months ago, with Psy breaking conditioning in public. All of those Psy appeared to have been programmed to suicide after completing their task, or if caught. “His recent behavior does, however, suggest that he’s seen the error of that line of thinking.” Given the way the PsyNet functioned, violence only spawned more violence. A constant feedback loop.

Nikita put down the remote but didn’t erase the image. “Several of the individuals who suicided were on the rehabilitation watchlist. The others could’ve been fragmenting.”

“So Henry could see it as removing violence from the Net.” Kaleb considered the idea. “Can you send me the full data on the suicides?” The file was telepathed into his mind an instant later.

Nikita checked messages on her organizer as he went through the list.

“He eliminated an erratic but highly intelligent chemist,” Kaleb said, “two medical specialists, and at least one trained sharpshooter. And that’s at first glance.”

“It continues like that,” Nikita told him. “He might see it as erasing the weak from the Net, but he’s also shoving the balance toward mediocrity.”

Kaleb looked at her. “Or perhaps Henry hasn’t yet given up on the idea of a fully coherent Net.” Before her defection, Council scientist Ashaya Aleine had been close to developing a neural implant that would’ve instituted Silence at the biological level, creating a true hive mind. She’d destroyed all the pertinent data when she’d defected, but that knowledge could’ve been recreated. “He may be pruning those he thinks will prove a challenge to that goal.”

“In that case, I suggest you be careful.”

Kaleb turned away from the screen as she flicked it off. Her windows cleared a moment later. “I appreciate the information—we’ll have to consider how to proceed with this. But I wanted to speak to you about another matter.”

Nikita waited in pristine silence.

“I’ve discovered some rather interesting facts about E-Psy.” Facts that could turn Nikita’s “failure” into an asset.

Nikita put aside her organizer. “Really?”

Sophia wasn’t used to having anyone but Max in her living space. Faith NightStar wasn’t anywhere near as physically imposing as Max, but she had a presence. Then there was the long-limbed female who’d accompanied her. “Sophia,” Faith said. “This is Desiree.”

Recognizing Desiree for what she was—a bodyguard—Sophia told her guests to make themselves comfortable in the living area before she walked into the bedroom and took a cross-legged position in the middle of the bed. Surfing the Net didn’t require much preparation for most people, but the more centered she was, the less chance of an accidental breach. Because even in the Net, there were individuals with weak or useless shields. Their thoughts leaked out in a constant barrage.

A Sensitive could easily get caught in the psychic storm.

But Sophia had no intention of being thrown up against the rocks.

Narrowing her thoughts to a fine, fine point, she took a careful step into the dark skies of the PsyNet and dropped her highly effective automatic firewalls, wrapping herself in much more mundane ones instead—so she could go where she needed to go without being noticed. There was an element of risk to her choice. If any of her fragmentation . . . her feelings, leaked out, she’d be hunted down in minutes. And once they found her, rehabilitation would follow so fast, she’d have no chance of escape. “So I’ll be very careful,” she muttered, and went to merge into the slipstream of the Net.

Except her shields reset to the distinctive new formation without warning. And no matter how many times she tried, they wouldn’t remain ordinary, unremarkable. “I need you to behave,” she finally muttered aloud in frustration. “I might as well be wearing a target on my back if I go out like this.”

Her shields turned the exact velvet black of the Net, making her effectively invisible.

Sophia swallowed on the physical plane. “Oh . . . that’ll work.”

No response, but she had the impression that something was watching, listening. It should’ve disconcerted her, and it did to an extent. But whatever that something was, it was also protecting her. And she wasn’t about to reject it . . . not when the otherness in her, the broken girl who’d finally become an integrated part of her after two long decades, recognized the pain in that entity, as if it expected to be kicked aside, to be shoved into a corner, to be forgotten.
I accept
, Sophia thought deep in her mind.
Thank you.

No response, but her shields seem to strengthen even further as she slipped into the Net—sleek, dark, impenetrable. The psychic network around her was the biggest data archive in the world, its information highways updated every second of every day by uploads from the millions of minds jacked into its psychic fabric, but as a J in possession of often confidential information, Sophia was trained to be far more careful about what she shared. The majority of the time, the only things she uploaded were the official, court-approved results of her cases.

But it wasn’t just purposefully uploaded data that filled the Net. There were fragments of thought, images, things that had escaped as a result of inadequate or fragmented shielding, conversations that had taken place in the Net outside of a mental vault. Things did decay after a period of time—but that period could never be predicted. She’d once caught whispers that had mentioned events of a hundred-years past. Other comments decayed almost as soon as they were spoken.

You could spend an eternity surfing the slipstream. However, as a young intern, Sophia had been taught to search using highly refined filters—she’d worked for a prosecutor one summer, a judge another, tracking down specific pieces of data. Now, she used those same skills to search for any mention of Pure Psy.

A significant number of hits.

Rumors mostly, as Pure Psy didn’t officially exist. And yet almost everyone in the Net knew about them. It was a very effective technique, Sophia was forced to admit. Those in agreement with Pure Psy’s worldview made the effort to find them. On the flip side, those who didn’t share that view tended to dismiss the group as nothing but a small fringe element.