Shards of Hope

by Nalini Singh

  Aden shifted onto his side, too, their breaths mingling as they spoke, the intimacy a warmth around her that muted the aloneness.

  "For the perfect Arrow, you have a rebellious streak."

  "I buy Alejandro ice cream." She put her hand on the pillow in front of her face. "It makes him happy." The brain-damaged male was childlike in many ways, could spend hours staring in fascination at the way the sun glittered on the canal water or how the clouds moved in the sky. Ice cream with its colors and flavors engendered the same fascination. "I always ask him what flavor he wants and give him an hour or two to decide because he likes to think about it."

  Zaira hadn't spent even a second weighing up her decision to indulge Alejandro's fascination once she became aware of it. His life was destroyed. If ice cream gave him pleasure, then he could have ice cream. "Your father thinks I'm making the situation worse. He says Alejandro should be locked up alone so I don't have to 'babysit' him."

  Aden closed his hand over hers, pushing the aloneness even further away. "Why is my father still alive?"

  She shifted her hand so that it lay on top of his, not because she was asserting dominance, but because she wanted to touch Aden, not just be touched by him. "He's your father; that's the only reason why." Zaira didn't feel any special loyalty toward either Naoshi Ayze or Marjorie Kai. She accepted that they'd sown the seeds of rebellion, and that they'd run countless dangerous missions to protect their brethren, but she also knew that had they been in charge of the squad, she'd either have been executed or turned into a pitiless, unthinking assassin.

  Their vision for the Arrows was both great and blinkered.

  Aden's parents had fought to claw back control of the squad from the Council after it became clear the leaders of the Psy had forgotten the mandate of the Arrows. Zaid Adelaja may have formed the squad to support his parents' vision of Silence, but the squad's driving force had never been to advance the personal interests of the Councilors; it was to protect the Psy race.

  "The Council turned an elite squad into a mockery," Marjorie had said to Zaira more than once. "They used us as a whip on the backs of those who would oppose their rule, while allowing the true threats to roam free."

  Zaira had no argument with Marjorie's thoughts on that point. The other Councilors had been bad enough, but Ming was the worst--less a leader than a parasite using up the lives of good men and women in his lust for power. Zaira could also respect Marjorie and Naoshi for laying the foundations of the rebellion, but she would never forget that they had sacrificed their son to their vision. According to Marjorie, Aden's parents had made the decision to "die" after discovering that Ming intended to get rid of them because they held too much sway over their fellow Arrows.

  "For a long time," Aden's mother had said, "we believed Ming was one of us, that his political ambition was a weapon he used to protect the squad. Naoshi almost told him of our plans to break away from the Council. A day later, we discovered his intentions for us, learned that he was capable of murdering his fellow Arrows in order to hold on to the leadership. It was the first sign of what he would one day become."

  Zaira couldn't imagine ever trusting Ming, but she had to remember that to Marjorie and Naoshi, he'd been a compatriot, a fellow Arrow with whom they'd no doubt run missions. "Yet you abandoned Aden to his control," she'd responded. "Even if Ming didn't kill him, he could've easily ejected him from the squad."

  In one way, Zaira could understand Marjorie's and Naoshi's choice to trust their son to be a sleeper agent, to carry on the stealthy battle from within while they acted from the outside. Even as a child, Aden had been too old; he was a worthy keeper of his parents' dreams. But he'd still only been a boy left to survive under a leader who saw no value in him.

  Marjorie's response had been impassive. "Aden was Ming's ace in the hole, or so he believed." Nothing in her expression or tone said she regretted her decision. "Ming wasn't stupidly arrogant back then. He knew part of the reason we'd threatened his power base was because the other senior Arrows trusted and respected us. Our status was why Aden was allowed into the training program in the first place, despite his low rating on the Gradient."

  The older Arrow's eyes had met Zaira's, the ice in them impenetrable. "What better way to 'honor' our memory than to allow our weak child to remain in the squad? Aden bolstered Ming's image as an Arrow who abided by the wishes of his squadmates--in our case, even after death."

  Marjorie had meant it when she'd called Aden "weak." Even after all the extraordinary things he'd done, his success in achieving what Marjorie and Naoshi couldn't and freeing the squad from the Council's clutches, Marjorie saw him only in terms of his known abilities. She had no idea of the man her son had become, no comprehension of just why the squad followed him with such steadfast loyalty, and no understanding of his leadership methods and dreams for the squad.

  Quite frankly, neither Marjorie nor Naoshi had the imagination or the heart to see any other path but the cold, ascetic one Zaid Adelaja had laid down over a hundred years before, when he became the founding member of the squad.

  "I thank you for your forbearance in letting my father live," Aden said at that moment, not protesting when she began to explore the back of his hand with her fingertips, the craving inside her too huge a thing to totally stifle.

  Zaira ran her thumb over his knuckles. "I did warn Naoshi that if he ever mentioned locking Alejandro away again, I'd snap his neck." Aden's father was bigger than her, but they all knew she was one of the deadliest Arrows in the squad. Never had she failed to acquire or dispose of a target unless she'd made a conscious decision to disobey orders. And when she disobeyed, she made sure her proposed targets went under so deep that no other assassin would ever locate them.

  Ironically enough, Naoshi appreciated Zaira's insubordinate streak, appreciated that even under Ming LeBon, Zaira had remained her own person. What Naoshi failed to understand was that Zaira was only that person because Aden had taught her she was an individual in her own right, one who had the right to make her own decisions, have her own opinions.

  In contrast, Naoshi's and Marjorie's vision of the squad would've produced interchangeable carbon copies. And while they might not have done as Ming had and executed "malfunctioning" or "worn-out" Arrows, she didn't think they would've given those Arrows any real quality of life, either.

  "Alejandro won't make it if we're trapped here more than another day." His compulsions would tear him apart from the inside out. "I have to find a way to let him know I'm alive."

  "Ivy knows about him," Aden reminded her. "She'll help keep him calm, and if that's not possible, Vasic knows to sedate him." He spread his fingers so she could weave her own into them, strengthening their private two-person network. "That's why else you're perfect," he said, returning to the argument he had no doubt decided he would win. "You have the capacity to stand against the old Arrows who many obey without question."

  A valid point, but it didn't alter her decision. "You've seen me snap, seen the carnage I can cause." Broken bones, broken faces, broken bodies, she'd created it all with little more than her hands and the power of her mind. "Your partner can't display such irrational rage, and if I break discipline to embrace a 'normal' existence, I can't guarantee I won't have an episode."

  And she couldn't guarantee the violence wouldn't one day turn on him. It could be his face she smashed in, his bones she crushed, his incredible mind she turned to mush. "The risk," she murmured as his eyes turned jet-black in repudiation, "is too high."

  "No."

  "Yes."

  Stalemate.

  PSYNET BEACON: BREAKING NEWS

  Aden Kai, rumored leader of the Arrow Squad, has disappeared. Sources say he was abducted over forty-eight hours ago and is presumed dead. The squad could not be reached for contact at time of press. Further updates to come.

  PSYNET BEACON: LIVE NETSTREAM

  Who is your source? Until you name him or her, this is nothing but scaremongering.

  K.
Benedict

  (Tunis)

  Who would dare abduct an Arrow? The individual or individuals involved must have a death wish.

  Z. Ek

  (Vancouver)

  If even the Arrows aren't safe now that Silence has fallen, how can we expect to survive?

  Concerned Citizen

  (Bogota)

  --

  Deep in a quiet room in a reinforced building deep underground, senior Arrow Blake Stratton considered the PsyNet Beacon report. News of Aden's disappearance had spread through the squad, but Blake hadn't seriously considered that anyone could kill Aden. If this report was true, however, his path was now clear of obstructions. Aden was the only one who might have stopped him, the only one who might have put all the pieces together.

  Without Aden, no one aside from his mysterious "friend" would ever know.

  Aden alone had seen Blake as a child. Aden alone understood the jagged crag on which he stood. On one side lay the screaming abyss of insanity and violence that made his mouth water and his blood thunder. On the other side a civilized existence where his instincts and desires were kept under strict control . . . and fed just enough blood to keep him from giving in to the furtive hunger that beat beneath his skin.

  Ming had fed him that blood. Ming had known that his soul was parched without it, needed the sustenance. Not that Blake had ever felt any loyalty toward the ex-leader of the squad. The other man had simply been useful. Ming had sent him on assassinations his fellow Arrows wouldn't carry out, assassinations against people who had simply gotten in Ming's way.

  Blake could still feel the slender neck of the twenty-three-year-old technician who'd been his last kill. He'd taken his time with her. Ming didn't know; he thought Blake had completed the task that first night. But why should he rush things? No, he'd kept her alive for a month. Watching her bleed and beg and die had given him something he thought might be labeled as pleasure though it didn't register as emotion on the dissonance triggers in his mind.

  There had been no punishing starburst of pain, no warning stab inside his head.

  Aden had removed dissonance triggers from the minds of many in the squad, but not all. Either he suspected their mental state and/or their impulse control, or the task was too complex in certain situations. It didn't matter, not to Blake. He'd worked out that he was a psychopath. He had no empathy for others.

  The term "narcissist" was also used to describe those like him.

  It struck him as a great irony that the most Silent among his kind had apparently always been the narcissistic psychopaths. Maybe it was amusement he felt at the thought, but that, too, didn't register on the dissonance triggers. If he did possess emotions, they were buried so far beneath his psychopathy that they were like stones trapped beneath the surface of a frozen lake.

  He wasn't sorry about that, didn't care.

  He didn't care about anything except his own needs.

  Sliding out a knife from his boot, he looked at the gleaming blade. It had been months and months since Aden had deposed Ming. No one had fed him since, and he'd known better than to ask Aden. He'd also known better than to exercise his need. It was a secret thing. Not a thing that could be exposed to the light.

  He thought again of the message that had come directly to him, the message that invited him to feed and told him he was safe from discovery. The source had even given him the details of a target who fit his tastes.

  Was it Ming? He was almost certain it must be--the former leader of the squad was clearly attempting to undermine Aden by nudging one of his senior Arrows to unsanctioned murder. If so, he'd chosen the wrong target: Blake might be a psychopath but he was a smart one.

  Politics didn't interest him. All he wanted was to feed.

  "You should've used me, Aden," he said aloud. "You should've believed in the monster you glimpsed as a child." Instead, the squad's leader saw Blake as a soldier he could trust, a soldier who had risen above his past.

  Aden didn't understand--or didn't accept--that some wounds could never be repaired. Blake knew he'd been born this way, but the fact that he'd been abandoned by his family unit only to be tortured by the squad's trainers had polished his psychopathic tendencies to a gleaming shine. Without that history, he might've simply become a narcissistic CEO or a coldly venomous politician, but that ship had sailed long ago.

  He was who he was.

  The light glinted on the surface of the blade.

  Chapter 16

  ZAIRA WOKE TO find her back pressed up against Aden's chest, her head pillowed on his arm. She froze, the position one that should've never happened. The fact that she'd been asleep shouldn't have mattered; her training should've held, had always before held when she'd had to rest in close quarters with another member of the squad.

  But when she went to pull away, she felt a stubborn hesitation within herself. If she stopped touching him, she'd be alone again. As she'd been in that cold, barren room so long ago. Aden was warm, was alive, was a living being she could trust. And her head, it remained a dark, empty place filled only with her own thoughts and her own madness.

  Her stomach tensed, a dull throb of pain reminding her of her recently mended injury.

  In a psychic network bursting with data feeds and broken fragments of other people's conversations, she could forget the twisted thing inside her, forget the stunted creature that had been deprived of light and kept in isolation for the first seven years of its life, until it was permanently deformed, its thoughts disturbing.

  That rage creature had taken over her body the day she'd beaten her parents to death, taken over her mind, too. She'd come to covered in blood and screaming like a being created of horror as others in the extended family unit attempted to pull her out of the room she'd turned into an abattoir. Seven years old and the creature had given her such strength that it had taken two adults to rip the bloodied pipe from her hands, force enough to rip off the skin on her palms.

  And the screams . . . that had been the creature's laughter.

  It was quiet now, but it was very much awake and aware and with her. It always was. She could simply ignore it better in the tumult of noise created by other minds. The instant she left this bed, she wouldn't have Aden's presence to assuage the rage, turn it quiescent. In the quiet, in the aloneness, it would whisper to her.

  But she couldn't stay in this bed forever. And she couldn't depend on Aden's proximity to control it--because with each instant that passed, the possessiveness inside her grew and grew. If she wasn't careful, she might one day wake to find that she'd murdered him as she'd murdered that butterfly, permanently stopping his heart with its capacity to care that astonished her.

  Lurching from the bed on that thought, she used all her strength to shove away the insane part of her psyche and slammed the door shut on it. The psychic lock wouldn't last. The stunted, enraged creature would emerge again, sly and slippery and vicious. It always did, always would--because it was an indelible part of Zaira, its black tendrils entwined around the core of her soul, a malignant tumor no operation could remove.

  Her eye fell on the clock by the bed. Six thirty a.m.

  Morning, and the rain continued to lash the window, the tree leaves in her line of sight twisted back in the wind that pummeled the aerie.

  More time alone with Aden.

  It was a secretive thought born in the possessiveness that might one day end him.

  Her heart pulsing with the same wild beat as the storm, she stripped and showered under an ice-cold spray to remind her body and her mind of the discipline necessary to ensure she stayed sane. Any fracture could turn her once again into that girl who'd smashed her parents' brains to pulp with her telepathic abilities, then beat their weakened bodies to death with a piece of pipe she'd found on one of her excursions outside; the creature had hidden it inside her hole in a rare moment when no one was watching.

  It was the latter that had led PsyMed to label her a deadly risk.

  A child striking out in a moment of p
hysical danger is understandable. However, a child who shows this level of premeditation at such a young age is a candidate for rehabilitation.

  Zaira didn't often think about the time she'd spent strapped down in the PsyMed center as they dug around in her brain. When she did, she wanted to ask the psychiatrists and medics what exactly they thought a seven-year-old girl should've done against much larger and older opponents.

  She'd known her parents were going to beat her. That was a given. She'd known they were going to try to break her so they could enslave her abilities. That, too, was a given. She'd also known that if she struck out in an attempt to protect herself, they'd just hurt her more. They'd trapped her in their shields so her screams didn't hit the outside world, and her small hands and body couldn't do any real damage.

  She knew because she'd tried. So many times.

  The only rational, reasonable thing to do had been to plan it. She had to make her parents incapable of keeping her in their shields, incapable of ever again hurting her. That was why she'd discarded all possible weapons she'd come across--planks of wood, a brick, even a small sheet of metal--until she'd found a piece of pipe she could swing, but that had enough heft to it to stun at least. That was why she'd put her chair by the door; so she'd have the height to swing from behind as soon as a parent entered.

  It was also why she'd cunningly built shields beneath her public mind. Her parents thought they saw everything she thought and felt, but they had no idea about the angry and twisted part of her that had lots of secrets. Including the capacity to plan and carry out a murder.

  The only problem, of course, had been the fact that she had two targets, both with powerful shields even a Gradient 9.8 telepathic child couldn't simultaneously destroy. So she'd had to wait for a day when she was certain they'd arrive one after the other, giving her just enough time to debilitate one and get the other before the second person realized what was happening.

  In the interim, she'd taken beating after beating, her body bruised black-and-blue. And each morning, she'd pressed her ear to the door and listened, until the day she heard her mother become delayed by a conversation with an older child, while her father continued on to Zaira's cage.