Chapter 37

Chapter 37

"What does it feel like, Sophie? Does it talk to you?"

"It used to. But, it's so tired now, Max. Most of the time, it sleeps and it dreams the most astonishing dreams. I catch pieces of the dreams now and then, and they make me feel insignificant against the vast span of its knowledge and existence. Yet…it's also a child. A dying child."

—Conversation between Sophia Russo and Max Shannon (date unknown)

KALEB WAS EXHAUSTED on the psychic level. A thing most people wouldn't believe was possible for a dual cardinal, but at this point, he was holding a large section of the PsyNet together by feeding it with his own energy.

He knew he couldn't keep that up.

Which was why he'd come to this sliver of the PsyNet that was healthy and calm. A small island of peace hidden in the noise of the chaos around it…around the mind of Nikita Duncan's aide, Sophia Russo. He didn't think Sophia ever noticed his presence when he visited, but he made sure to cloak himself regardless.

Because he had no desire for or intention of scaring the J-Psy, or of alerting Nikita to his presence. He came for two simple reasons. Are you awake? he asked the NetMind and DarkMind, the twin neosentience that had once been the librarian and guardian of the PsyNet. The vast majority of his race thought the entities dead, murdered by the disintegration of the PsyNet, and Kaleb had never disabused them of that notion.

In truth, the twins had almost died. But as long as the PsyNet existed, some fragment of them would exist. In the final hours, when he'd seen the light going out of both of them, he'd given them an order. They were young, the NetMind and DarkMind, and they understood that he was a power. More, they understood that he cared for them in a way that no one else could duplicate.

Not even Sophia.

The J-Psy with a mind that was in perfect balance between dark and light, and thus provided the perfect home for both the NetMind and DarkMind. Go to her , he'd said. Hide. Protect yourself.

He'd known Sophia wouldn't eject her psychic visitors. He knew that because they knew it. So they'd gone, and curled up in the deepest recesses of her mind, inactive and conserving their energies as their beloved PsyNet crumbled in ways that hurt them, but that they couldn't stop.

They'd shared with Kaleb that Sophia believed them mere pieces of the bigger whole, and Kaleb had told them to allow her to continue with that belief. Sophia already worried about the twin neosentience—how much more pressure would she put on herself if she knew that she protected the last precious flickers of what had once been two vast and growing neosentient entities?

No answer today.

He wasn't worried. It often took them several minutes to wake from their dormant state.

Flowers blossoming in his mind, blooms of white with rivers of black, and blooms of black with rivers of white.

His shoulders lost their tension on the physical plane, his body in the water of the pool he'd built for Sahara, and his arms braced on the tiled edge. She leaned against the edge with him, her hair a water-slick black rain down her back as she waited for him to return from his task.

"Still there," he murmured out loud for her.

But even as he spoke, he realized that the presence who'd come to him was singular. Where is the other? He shaped his question in images of twin streams: one white, one black.

The answer was an interwoven thread, black and white that had begun to meld in places to a luminescent steel gray.

The sight woke the scarred, twisted boy deep within his psyche, the child's joy holding an intimate understanding of what it was to be hurt over and over again until you broke. "They're merging back into one sentience."

The NetMind had always been one, until Silence fragmented it, creating the DarkMind out of all the pieces of themselves the Psy refused to accept. It had been angry, violent, the unwanted child who only wanted to hurt others in turn.

Kaleb responded with fireworks, a symbol the NetMind understood as joy.

The fireworks were returned to him multiplied.

After the joy came the sorrow, image after image of crumbling edifices, cliff faces sheering away, land falling into sinkholes.

Yes , Kaleb said. The PsyNet is dying. I came to ask you if there's anything I've forgotten, anything that can be done that isn't already being done? Because though the neosentience was young, it was vast beyond any comprehension. It knew every corner of the PsyNet.

No answer…but then, it showed him a secretive spark of intermingled white and black traveling through the PsyNet at such speed that the world was a blur. It stopped at a mind within which nestled another, much, much smaller mind. The spark whispered inside the two minds, heading for the small one, but leaving a trail behind in the bigger.

When the spark reemerged, it was devoid of energy, and had no light to it. It limped back to Sophia's mind at such a slow and pained pace that Kaleb wanted to gather it up in his hands and take it to safety. What did you do?

The NetMind showed him a cascade of images:

A spider bloated sitting in a web.

A spider screaming as it fell from the web that burned with silver fire.

A spider curling up and hiding in a dark room.

A spider weaving a new web of razored, bloody sharpness.

Kaleb's gut clenched on a violent wave of understanding. Before he could vocalize any of it to Sahara, however, the series of images altered without warning.

A mirror flipping from the rusted and black underside to the smooth unbroken reflective side.

A glass vase with a severe crack through it.

Glue being applied to the vase…glue of intermingled and glittering black and white.

Flowers in the vase. Such small flowers.

Of a shimmering blue…with a heart of luminous steel.

Hope had once been a foreign emotion to Kaleb, but now he felt it stretch his skin. But the NetMind wasn't yet done.

Clawed hands around the vase and the flowers. Holding. Protecting.

Blood, so much blood.

The clawed hands cut and shredded by the spider's razored threads.