Last Guard

by Nalini Singh

  “I can see the sense in that,” Bjorn muttered. “We all saw what Pure Psy did with the limited knowledge that is available.”

  “Be that as it may,” Payal said, conscious her voice sounded flat and hard, “staying enigmatic is no longer viable or wise. Canto is correct: we need a voice on the Ruling Coalition.”

  “What makes you the best choice?” Arran’s “smile” was nothing like Lalit’s, but neither was it anything akin to warmth. No, it was a thing of razors.

  “You can volunteer, but your anger issues would cause you to strike out at the first meeting. As Kaleb Krychek is stronger and deadlier than you, you’d then be dead and we’d have one less anchor.”

  Suriana sucked in a breath, Bjorn winced, Ager cackled.

  Arran stared at her before inclining his head. “Point.”

  “Canto is the only other viable candidate,” she added. “It’s not only about brute power, but associated power.” Because no matter if Psy thought themselves more advanced than changelings, they weren’t; power mattered, the sense of authority mattered. “I have the Rao group; he has his family.”

  Canto’s eyes seemed to burn when he looked at her. “I’m not much better than Arran when it comes to patience,” he said, and she knew he was repeating the point for the benefit of the others. “I’ll be far better as your backup.”

  “As long as you remember you’re backup,” she said, driven by her weakness where he was concerned. “Don’t attempt to manipulate me.”

  Everyone else went quiet, while darkness eclipsed the stars in his eyes. She knew he understood what she was saying, understood what she was asking of him. Their past could not color this interaction, not if they were going to do this right.

  * * *

  • • •

  “IF I’d wanted a doll to manipulate,” Canto all but growled, furious with her for taking one step into trust, then two steps back, “I’d have picked anyone but you. I picked a gladiator for a reason. Anchors need a leader who’ll stand and fight against the biggest predators in the Net.” The Ruling Coalition might not think of themselves that way, but they were all—each and every one—huge powers.

  Kaleb was a rumored dual cardinal with fingers in every pie in the Net. Payal and Canto might hold two cardinal designations, but they weren’t dual cardinals. The term was one of art and did not include anchors—because a cardinal A could only access and use their anchor powers within the Substrate.

  Outside that, they were reliant on their secondary abilities. The same applied in reverse—their secondary powers were effectively useless to them when they acted as anchors. The two different abilities simply did not interact. There was also the fact that many, many As were so mentally wiped by their anchor duties that they barely utilized their secondary abilities.

  During his research into the designation, Canto had run across a very old—and cruel—joke made at the expense of Designation A: What do you call a group of anchors? A waste of cardinals. If he had to guess, he’d say it was an A behind the joke, a person who understood the price they paid to stand as the iron foundation of the Net.

  Kaleb, however, if the rumors were true, had no restrictions on his abilities. He could access both cardinal-level telekinetic and telepathic powers at the same time—and at any point he wanted. The man could level cities and erase minds with the ease of a wave crashing to shore and wiping the sand clean.

  Aden Kai was a huge psychic power in his own right, but he also had the might of the entire Arrow Squad behind him. The specialist black-ops squad was composed of soldiers deadly and relentless.

  Ivy Jane Zen was the softest of the group, but she brought with her the Empathic Collective—who were backed by the Arrow Squad.

  Nikita Duncan was a former Councilor with knowledge of more secrets than almost anyone else in the Net; she was also a massive financial powerhouse.

  Anthony Kyriakus hadn’t been a Councilor for long prior to the Council’s collapse, but his power came from another source altogether—he headed the strongest clan of foreseers in the world. PsyClan NightStar knew more about the future than was wise or sane.

  Canto’s anchors needed a person of equal weight and steel to stand against that wall of power. To be a fighter who would not flinch, would not back away, would not stop until they listened to her.

  Payal gave him a measuring glance that betrayed nothing of what they were to each other before she looked around at the group. “You all feel emotion.”

  “So do you,” Suriana whispered back, this anchor who’d been terrified of Canto’s approach yet had stepped up. “You’re an anchor. You can’t be immune to everything that’s happened, all the emotions the Es are pumping into the Net. It was powerful even when they were in a forced sleep. Now that they’re awake, there’s no way to avoid their colors in the river that is the Net.”

  Suriana had spoken in a rapid burst, as if she’d had to psych herself up to get out the words. She collapsed in the aftermath, her shoulders hunching inward.

  Someone hurt her. Cold, crisp Payal in his mind.

  His parched cells drank in the psychic touch. Yes. I haven’t figured out who yet, but I will.

  Payal gave him the slightest nod. Because she’d committed, and when Payal committed, she gave it her all. Suriana was one of hers now.

  “I always felt something.” Ager’s voice was a bit croaky but not tired—as if this gathering had given them a new lease on life. “I don’t know if it was because I was raised around people who were alive prior to Silence, but I’ve felt tendrils of emotion in the PsyNet all my life.”

  “I’m the same,” Bjorn admitted. “It wasn’t difficult to throw off the shackles of Silence. They never fit well, though I’m of the generation that had the dissonance embedded in our minds—for you young ones, dissonance is a pain loop designed to punish Psy for feeling emotion.”

  He winced, as if being hit by that programming for daring to speak of it. “But it’s been fading in strength for a long time under the weight of what I do as an anchor. I don’t think the Councils bothered to program dissonance into As after us. Our shields are impregnable—even were we to cry and laugh, nothing would leak into the Net.”

  Arran had gone motionless as Bjorn spoke, a whiteness to his jawline. Canto was certain Arran had been so programmed. He hadn’t been pulled out of martial training until he was eleven and someone finally realized he was an A.

  For an initialized anchor to be punished for emotion when droplets of emotion had leaked into and run through the pathways of the Net even during Silence? They were fucking lucky Arran and Bjorn were sane.

  He made it a priority to find out how to disable that programming. Because these people were his now, too. Payal and he, they had this in common: they were possessive about those they claimed.

  He wanted to throw back his head and yell his fury up at the sky. Because the first person he’d ever claimed was her. And she was the one person he could never have. Not if he was to keep his promise. Not if he was to be the knight on whom she could depend to defend her against all threats—including the one in her mind.

  Chapter 18

  Cor meum familia est.

  My heart is family.

  —Motto of the Mercant family

  THOUGH PAYAL HADN’T looked at Canto, didn’t need his answer when it came to emotion, he knew the others did. “I didn’t see the point in pretending to be Silent when I so obviously wasn’t.”

  Ager gave him a curious look. “No one has ever questioned Ena Mercant’s Silence.”

  Canto could’ve blocked the reference to his family, but if he wanted commitment, he had to commit in turn.

  “You can’t expect to receive if you don’t give,” Arwen had said once. “No one likes feeling exposed.”

  Coming from an E who wore his heart on his sleeve where family was concerned, it had made an impact.


  “My grandmother is many things.” Canto’s respect for Ena was one of the foundations of his life. “First and foremost, she is a warrior for our family. No Mercant will ever be betrayed to outsiders—not even the ones who don’t fit the mold of so-called perfection.”

  He made eye contact with everyone but Payal—because shit, he needed time to handle that. “That’s who I am and where I come from and what I want for us as a group.”

  “Big goals,” Arran muttered.

  Suriana stirred. “It would be nice, to have a group I could trust without question.”

  “After so long, I am content alone,” Bjorn said, exchanging a quiet nod with Ager, “but a union of minds in sync . . . Yes, I see how it could make things better for the future of all As.”

  “You gonna pretend you’re Silent?” Arran challenged Payal.

  “I understand and feel emotion.” Cool as ice. “But I’ve trained myself to keep it at a distance. I function far better that way.”

  Canto wanted to argue with her about her stance, wanted to ask if she’d ever considered anything other than a total shutdown of her emotions, not out of arrogance or his own need, but because his childhood had shown him that the environment in which a person grew could alter everything about how they thought, what they believed.

  He would not be this Canto had he come to adulthood in the household of his father.

  That Payal’s mental wiring was distinctive, he didn’t doubt. But she’d also had to learn to wall off her emotions in order to survive her childhood. There were suggestions—hidden, underground—that Pranath Rao had either killed or arranged for the death of his firstborn. Add in her psychopathic surviving brother, and that wasn’t a home in which a small, sensitive little girl could endure without hardening herself.

  “Fascinating.” Ager flexed then closed their hand back around the head of their cane. “You realize you are what the architects of Silence actually envisioned? A being born with emotion who can nonetheless keep that emotion from overwhelming her.”

  “No,” Payal said with her customary directness. “If you go back and read up on the original aims of Silence, it best matches a psychopathic personality profile.”

  A bark of laughter from Arran that made Suriana jump and Bjorn jerk upright. But the other anchor wasn’t looking at either of them. He was grinning at Payal. “I definitely want her representing us,” he said to Canto, his body more relaxed than Canto had ever seen it. “Can you imagine her using that take-no-shit voice against Krychek?”

  “It’s not about ‘against,’ ” Payal said before Canto could reply. “The members of the Ruling Coalition aren’t our enemies. They are allies.”

  “Agreed,” Canto said. “Their only mistake was in not bringing anchors to the table—but that was a decision put into play generations ago, well before any of us were born—and Designation A played a major role in our invisibility.” Canto wasn’t about to allow his designation to skate on past mistakes.

  “So,” he said, “do we have a consensus? That we’re now a team that represents anchors, with Payal as our public voice?” Their general forged in a burn of ice and survival.

  A round of nods—and a small salute from Arran.

  Payal, meanwhile, showed no outward reaction to the outcome. She simply uncrossed her legs and said, “Then it’s time to make our first move.”

  * * *

  • • •

  SOPHIA Russo’s official title was special advisor to Ruling Coalition member Nikita Duncan. Her duties and responsibilities, however, had grown significantly since she took on the position. She’d told Nikita that she’d never lie to her—and that she wasn’t afraid of her, either.

  Both facts were true.

  Not much scared a former Justice-Psy who’d walked in the minds of serial killers.

  Sophia had openly opposed her boss’s stance on a number of matters; that she was still here spoke to the strength of their relationship. Sophia didn’t think she’d ever like Nikita, not when she knew so much of what the other woman had done, but she respected her.

  Nikita had blood on her hands—but she also had a cardinal empath daughter she’d raised to adulthood. The same cardinal daughter who’d created the first major chink in Silence when she defected from the PsyNet. Also, unlike a number of notable others, Nikita had felt the winds of change and was moving with them rather than attempting to keep the Psy locked in a cold and Silent past.

  So when the other woman asked her to look over Project Sentinel and give feedback, Sophia took care with the task. A headache pulsed at the back of her head by the time she was done, but that was nothing new. She’d been getting small headaches for weeks now, and she knew it had to do with the problems in the PsyNet.

  Most Psy were anchored into the PsyNet by a single biofeedback link. Sophia, however, was interwoven so deeply into its fabric that she could never extricate herself. She felt no such desire—not when she knew how important her mind was to the Net. It was a tiny weight in the grand scheme of things, a tiny anchor at best, but it was an anchor. It also didn’t matter that she hadn’t been born an anchor, her attachment to the Net a result of childhood trauma; that her anchor point existed was now fact.

  “That’s the problem with this plan,” she said to Nikita as the two of them walked down a long bridge that connected two parts of Duncan HQ in San Francisco. Clear water flowed under the bridge from the large water feature to the right—a flat wall of veined granite that had water running down it. The minerals in the rock sparkled in the morning sunlight in this part of the world.

  “Explain,” Nikita said.

  Sophia halted in the center of the bridge. “It has to do with the anchor who’ll be attached to the island.”

  “The individual hasn’t yet been chosen.” The wedge of Nikita’s black hair was newly cut, the edges blunt and perfect. Her skirt-suit was a dark gray, the shirt she wore underneath a pristine white.

  Sophia had gone for a dark green pantsuit today, paired with a white top that featured a ribbon woven through the high neckline. It wasn’t crisply Psy, but it was very Sophia—as she’d come to realize in the time since her emancipation from Silence.

  “But,” Nikita continued, “it will be a strong and stable cardinal.”

  Frowning, Sophia shook her head. “You need the input of a hub-A before things get to that point.” As a strange minor A, Sophia couldn’t quite see the shape of the problem, though it hovered on the edge of her consciousness. “I have a strong feeling a single anchor won’t be able to hold the island.”

  Nikita glanced at her timepiece. “I have to go in for the buyout meeting. We’ll discuss this later—but I can tell you from my time on the Council that anchors are generally unstable. It may prove difficult to find one rational enough to participate in such talks.”

  Sophia refrained from rolling her eyes; she’d picked up the action from one of the DarkRiver leopard teens, and a more apt one she couldn’t at this moment imagine. “Think about what you just said, Nikita.” She held the brown of her boss’s gaze. “Santano Enrique was a Councilor.”

  Nikita paused in the act of turning away, was still, then gave a crisp nod. “I’ll add this to the Ruling Coalition’s agenda—but if you’re correct, any number of As should have contacted us by now to warn against the current shape of Sentinel.”

  “That assumes they’re in the information loop.” Nikita tended to forget that not everyone had such access—she had been in power for decades, was unused to being in the dark on any important matter.

  The two of them began to walk together again.

  Nikita’s hair was black glass under the sun as she said, “The fact is, we’re in a time crunch.” In front of them, the doors to the building slid open. “There’s no sign of a slowdown in the Scarab issue—the damage being done is long-term and destructive.”

  Sophia didn’t follow Nikita inside.
Frowning in thought, she made her way slowly back across the bridge. She knew a lot of people—but as a former J-Psy, her major network was in Justice. She had no contacts in Designation A. Even if she did, what would she ask them? Her feeling of unease was exactly that, a feeling.

  No facts, no rationale behind it.

  Stopping near the center of the bridge once more, she stared down at the running water as her headache pulsed, slow and steady. When she looked on the PsyNet, at the small section she anchored, she saw that it remained calm, stable, and yet the knots in her stomach wound themselves into painful rocks.

  The NetMind and DarkMind had once been whole when they wove through her section of the Net—she’d become an uncategorizable focus, one that helped the twin neosentiences find cohesion. Perhaps because she, too, had once been fragmented. Into so many pieces that her personality and mind were a scarred mélange.

  “Beautiful signs of your will to survive, Sophie darling.” Max’s dimpled smile as he ran a finger over her chin, after she’d spoken aloud about her piecemeal self. “You kicked the scrawny ass of anyone stupid enough to write you off, and I’m a smug shit about it.”

  Today, hoping her mind could help the twin neosentiences of the Net hold on to coherence, she “listened” for their presence and heard only the wind. As if they’d gone beyond madness and into a final death. But no . . . There. A brush against her mind, another.

  Inhaling on a sob, she clenched one hand on the bridge railing. She couldn’t speak to the NetMind or the DarkMind, but she’d never needed to; theirs was a bond of emotion. Now she staggered under a melancholy wave of sadness and heartbreak.

  Their sadness. Their heartbreak.

  The PsyNet was dying. And they were dying with it.

  Chapter 19

  The volcanic eruption came without warning, and it led to the death of an entire city. Included in that number were twenty members of Designation A. It is said that the loss changed the face of the designation forever.