by Nalini Singh
Only then did he allow himself to accept the fear that had gripped him when he’d seen her bleeding on the floor. Trembling, he pressed a kiss to her shoulder, drawing the clean, warm scent of her into his lungs. For the second time in his life, he was watching a woman who was everything to him slip from his fingers, and he could do nothing to stop it.
The agony of it ripped through him, until he half expected to see his own blood stain the sheets.
“No,” he said, and it was a vow. He’d find a way to get Ming to undo or permanently block the compulsions, because no way was he ever again watching Katya cry because her mind had been violated, her limbs turned into a marionette’s. And if Ming refused to cooperate—“I’ll kill the bastard.” He had to believe that once the Councilor was dead, Katya would be able to live a life free of fear.
She shifted in his arms, and he realized she’d woken. “It won’t help, Dev—the shield will hold. And being trapped inside it . . . it’s killing me cell by cell.”
He refused to accept that, to give in. “Can he stop it, release the pressure?” He felt her body tense. “Don’t you dare lie to me.”
Another pause and he knew she wasn’t going to give him the truth. “Don’t do this to me, baby.” He hugged her tight. “Don’t make me helpless.” Never again, he thought, never again would he be helpless while a woman he loved died in front of him.
Her body shuddered. “How can you ask me to lead you into death?”
“For me, Katya. Please.” He wasn’t a man used to begging, but he’d do anything it took to protect her.
“He may be able to,” she said at last “He said I’d make the perfect sleeper assassin. I’d have to be alive for that, but I don’t know what kind of a life it’d be.”
Dev’s anguish shifted to grim determination. “It’ll be life. We can work out the rest later.”
“He’s a cardinal, Dev. His power . . . I can’t describe it—it’s endless, vast. He could turn your mind to putty with a single thought.”
Dev had some abilities of his own, not all of them psychic. The director of Shine didn’t need to be a powerful psychic—he needed to be ruthless enough to slit enemy throats if necessary. “You let me worry about that.” Stroking his hand over her hair, he promised himself that Ming would pay for every second of pain, every injury, every drop of blood.
Even as Dev made his silent vow, the man in question was walking through the doors of the Dinarides facility. “All of the Arrows confined here,” he said, “they’re being monitored, restricted from using their abilities?”
The M-Psy beside him nodded. “Yes. All seven are cooperating at present.”
At present. Ming knew he’d have to implement a much more final strategy if and when that cooperation stopped. Arrows—even damaged Arrows—couldn’t be contained indefinitely. “Where’s Aden?”
“With one of the men—monitoring the effects of Jax withdrawal. It can sometimes cause sudden cardiac failure.”
Ming looked at the M-Psy. Unlike Aden, and like most of the medical team, Keisha Bale was not an Arrow. “Aden,” he said now, “is he showing any signs of unusual behavior?”
“As you know,” Keisha began, “he was never put on Jax—it would’ve made him incapable of the value judgments required to monitor the effects of the drug on others.” The M-Psy paused as they walked through a security checkpoint. “However,” she said after the computer cleared them, “that shouldn’t be a cause for concern. Aden’s psychological profile makes him highly unlikely to deviate from the rule book.”
That was what Ming was counting on. As a boy, Aden had been trained not only by other Arrows, but also by his parents—both members of the Squad at the time. He was the solitary living Arrow who’d been taught to become so from the cradle. Those were not easy bonds to break. Even had he wanted to, Aden lacked the medical knowledge to truly interfere—he’d had specialized training when it came to the effects and side effects of Jax, but aside from that, he was only a field medic.
Opening his telepathic channels, Ming contacted another one of the Squad. Vasic, is the situation in Argentina under control?
The answer came fast, though it wasn’t as clear as Ming’s voice, Vasic’s Tp skills hitting just below 6 on the Gradient. It’s going to take a little longer than predicted.
How much longer?
At least four more days. We can do it faster, but you specified no deaths.
Stick to the plan. Ming didn’t want to kill the humans, not because humans weren’t expendable, but because too many things had already been played out on the public stage. Even he had made that mistake with the destruction of the Implant lab—but he’d learned since then. It was time the Council returned to the old way of doing things—behind the scenes, where no one could stop them.
Dev’s heart was still filled with a potent mix of anger, worry, and a furious kind of possession when he walked into the meeting with Jack, Connor, Aubry, Tiara, and Eva—the manager in charge of educational development—the next morning.
Jack and Tiara sat side by side, while Aubry and Eva sat opposite them. Connor, as the representative of the medical team, had positioned himself alone at the other end. Taking in everything with a single glance, Dev looked at Tiara. “Switched camps?” He knew she’d flown back from California specifically for this meeting, leaving Tag to watch over Cruz.
“Always been in this one,” she said with a languid wave. “I’m sane, but there for the grace of God . . .”
“So you think we should encase our emotions in ice?” Aubry asked, obviously bewildered. “Damn, Ti, you really want to stop driving Tag crazy?”
Tiara shot him a cool smile. “What’s between me and Tag is between me and Tag.”
“Aubry is right,” Eva interrupted, her accent lending an exotic music to her words. Born in Puerto Rico, she’d only been in New York for two years, since Dev relocated her from a field office on the island. “There’ll be nothing between the two of you if we do what Jack wants and implement Silence.”
“Hold on.” Jack leaned forward, arms crossed on the table, face lined with grim determination. “You think I want to lose the light in my son’s eyes? You think I want to teach him that love isn’t something precious? You think I want to break his mother’s heart?” He shook his head in a violent negative. “But my boy is already losing that light. He killed Spot.”
A shocked silence.
Dev was the first one to speak. “That raggedy old dog of his?” He couldn’t believe it. William doted on the mutt his father had rescued from the pound.
“Yeah.” Jack dropped his head into his hands. “Will cried so hard as we buried the dog. I knew we’d need the body, but I couldn’t do it, couldn’t put Spot in a chiller in front of him.”
“Of course not,” Dev said, and it was a gut reaction. “But you went back, didn’t you?” He knew his cousin. Jack hadn’t graduated at the top of his class in medical school without having a spine filled with pure grit.
“I did an autopsy the night of the day I talked to you, after Will was in bed.” A glance at Dev. “I figured I could be of some use to my son—give him proof that he didn’t kill his pet. I thought I’d find the old guy had had a heart attack or something.”
Eva moved her hand across the table, as if to reach Jack. “He didn’t?”
Jack shook his head again. “His heart was just . . . pulverized. Like a little bomb had exploded inside. The crazy thing is, there wasn’t a mark on him on the outside.”
“Hell.” Connor spoke for the first time. “William’s adamant it was him?”
Jack nodded. “His eyes that day—I’ve never seen such terror. Before . . . before we thought he might be a telekinetic. He’s so accident-prone and the notes the rebels left behind say that young telekinetics are notoriously clumsy because they move things without realizing it.”
Telekinetics, Dev thought, were also obsolete from the Forgotten population. The ability to move things with the mind had been one of the first gift
s to go, which wasn’t surprising as telekinetics had formed the smallest group among the rebel contingent. Dev’s great-great-grandmother on his father’s side, Zarina, had left a journal that Dev had read as a child. He’d never forgotten her words about the Tks.
I’m an M-Psy. My chances of insanity are low, but if I do go mad, I might possibly kill someone. However, if a strong Tk goes mad, he will almost certainly kill. And because Tks are disproportionately male, as E-Psy are disproportionately female, he will kill his sister, his wife, his daughter.
That’s a burden that crushes the Tks, makes them turn inward. I don’t blame all the telekinetics who chose Silence. How can I? When I prayed every night that my child would not be born a Tk. Only the X designation is more cursed, and thankfully, that gene is so recessive it rarely makes an appearance.
“Did you have a genetic chart done on William?” Dev asked his cousin. Things were in flux—there was a chance the Tk gene had risen to the fore once again.
“We were about to when that happened, with Spot. I didn’t want to scare him by asking him to come in for tests.”
“Do you have a genetic sample? Glen can run the DNA tests with that,” Dev said, looking to Connor for confirmation. He continued at the doctor’s nod. “We’ll have a starting point at least.”
“Here.” Jack put a sealed plastic bag on the table. “I planned to ask for a DNA chart anyway. Got some of his hair in there, his toothbrush, even a swab of blood from when he cut himself running into a wall.” His body jerked, those solid shoulders of his shaking. “It’s killing Melissa to watch him literally will himself to death. Yesterday, I had to threaten her with a sedative so she’d get some sleep—we’re so afraid to leave him alone for even a second.”
Dev walked to stand beside his cousin, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t give up, Jack. I promise you, we’ll find an answer.”
“Silence is an answer,” his cousin whispered, but there was a weariness to him. “I wish it wasn’t, but it is.”
Meeting that familiar gaze, Dev knew what he had to say, what he had to decide. “And if it is the only answer, then we’ll find a way to teach William to be Silent.”
No one disagreed with him.
CHAPTER 48
Dev considered everything Jack had told him—both during and after the meeting—as he headed down to Katya. She’d volunteered to be confined to an isolation ward in the clinic while he wasn’t able to be with her. It tore at his every protective instinct that she’d effectively imprisoned herself, but there was no knowing what grenades Ming had put in her head.
Soon, he promised himself. Soon, she’d be free. Today, however, he needed her help. But first—“How’s your leg?” he asked, after kissing her gently on the forehead.
“Healing normally according to Dr. Herriford.” A soft smile. “You want to ask me something.”
It didn’t surprise him that she knew. He knew her unspoken secrets, too. “What are the abilities that can cause death?”
“Pretty much all the strong offensive gifts,” she told him, eyes troubled. “Telepaths and telekinetics are near definites. M-Psy, less so—it depends on whether we have an offensive gift we can couple with our M potential. Ps-Psy occasionally—”
“How?” As far as he knew, psychometrics used touch to divine an object’s past. Many worked for museums or private collectors, appraising which items were genuine, which fake.
“If an object has a violent past,” Katya explained, “it occasionally ‘short-circuits’ one of the Ps-Psy, causing some kind of a temporary psychic injury. But I’ve heard rumors that some Ps-Psy can also absorb that violent power purposefully.” She turned up her palms. “I never really had much reason to research them so my knowledge isn’t that good. I’m sorry.”
“You’re doing fine. Any other designations?”
“Some of the old texts mention an ability more destructive than telekinesis, but to be honest, I can’t think what that would be. Tks can collapse buildings on top of people—the truly powerful might even be able to cause small quakes.”
None of which explained William’s killing of his dog. There was, Dev knew, a very good chance the boy had been born with a violent New Generation ability. And if so, Silence might not be the cure Jack was hoping for.
“The person you really need to talk to,” Katya murmured, “is an Arrow.”
“The Council’s bogeymen?”
“You know about them?”
“They’re mentioned in our records.” Dev’s own ancestors had been hunted by the Arrows, families torn apart, loved ones forever lost.
“Well, they deal in death. They’d know all about the destructive abilities.” She put her hand on his arm. “Unfortunately, I don’t know any in the resistance. Ask Ashaya—she has more contacts.”
Loath to leave Katya in a sterile environment that had to awaken terror-filled memories, he pressed a kiss to her lips. “One day, you’ll be free of him. Then you can walk through any room you want, any place you want.”
“One day.”
But as he headed back upstairs, he knew their time was running out at an inexorable pace. According to the text Glen had sent to his phone half an hour ago, Katya had suffered a severe nosebleed that morning. And as he’d looked into her eyes before he’d left, he’d glimpsed a pinprick hemorrhage.
Rage tore through him, leaving devastation in its wake. Forcing himself to the comm panel in his office, he put through a call to Ashaya. Her eyes widened at his request. But all she said was “I need more information.”
Dev sent through Jack’s notes on his son—and on what William had done. “Ashaya, whoever you share this with, make sure you trust him absolutely.”
“Understood. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
Switching off the screen, he walked to the window. It was a cloudy winter’s day, with snow an ominous threat in the sky, but New York moved with clockwork precision below him—there were so many Psy in the financial center of the country that efficiency was less striven for than expected. But even from this far up, he could spot the humans, the Forgotten, the changelings. They wore color. Splashes of bright red, azure blue, even shimmering gold.
The Psy shunned color, and if there was no other hope for William, the boy Dev had held as a newborn would learn to shun it, too. Why color? Perhaps, Dev thought, it was because the vibrancy of it spoke to something within the Psy soul, the same as music. No Psy ever sang, ever attended a symphony. He’d heard it said that their voices were uniformly flat, but he didn’t believe it. No, what was more likely was that their voices had been flattened by Silence, by the cold control it took to maintain a stranglehold on emotions so powerful, they should never be contained.
The door opened behind him. “What is it, Maggie?”
“Is that any kind of greeting for your nani, Devraj?”
Spinning on his heel, he crossed the office with long strides to pull his grandmother’s rangy form into his arms. “What are you doing here?” The scents of spice and paint filled the air, overlaid with an edge he’d always thought of as glass. As if Kiran Santos’s love for her work had infiltrated her very being. “Where’s Nana?”
“I left him at home.” His grandmother winked as he drew back from the embrace. “I wanted to spend time with my other favorite man.” Strong hands, scarred by a thousand nicks and cuts, closed on his upper arms. “You look tired, beta.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “You know that.”
“Don’t you think the Psy spies know about me?” A squeeze of his arms. “Of course they do. They see me as a weakness, but I’m a strength.”
He’d never yet won an argument with his grandmother. Giving in, he took the hand she held out to him. “Why are you here?” She’d always left him to run Shine as he saw fit, no matter that she hadn’t agreed with all his decisions—such as the one that had precipitated a heart attack in a member of the old board earlier in the year. Dev hadn’t apologized for that. He couldn’t. Because
the old board had been hiding from the truth, burying their heads in the sand.
Meanwhile their children had been dying, systematically culled by the Council.
“You needed me,” his grandmother said, switching from English to Hindi without pause. “Why didn’t you call or come to me on the ShadowNet?”
“Because there are no answers here.”
“The woman,” she said. “You care for her a great deal.”
“Yes.” A stark answer. “Yes.”
“Tell me.”
And he did. Because she was one of the very few people he trusted implicitly.
“I want to kill Ming—tear him apart with my bare hands—but what I really need from him is the key that’ll release Katya from her psychic prison, wipe out the compulsions. For that, I need him to talk.”
“Devraj, you must realize. . . holding a gun to Ming’s head will achieve nothing. Not unless you can somehow cut off all his avenues of escape.”
That’s why he liked his grandmother. She was practical. “It has to be a short, hard hit.” A brutal hit. “Even if he gets out a telepathic cry for help, I have to convince him he’ll die before that help reaches him.”
“That assumes he has no teleporters at his command, and I wouldn’t assume that.”
“There’s only been one report of a true teleporter, and our intel says he’s currently somewhere in South America—not attached to Ming,” Dev argued. “The others are Tks. Able to teleport, yes, but not as fast.”
“Fast enough.” His grandmother leaned forward, frown lines marking her forehead. “We need to discuss this with the woman. With your Katya.”
“No. I can’t risk—”
“Hush, Devraj.” A fond smile. “Do you really think you’re going to win this argument?”
He tried to scowl at her, but there was simply too much love in his heart for this woman. “I’m not putting you in danger. Katya tried to kill me,” he said bluntly. “It may be that she’s programmed to strike out at others close to me if she gets the chance.”
