Chapter 48

Chapter 48

I don't have empathy, Sahara. I can't feel for those who are going to die. It would be akin to asking a falcon to take flight when his wings had long been hacked off.

—Kaleb Krychek to Sahara Kyriakus (circa late 2081)

KALEB SAW THE line of spidersilk before it reached him. That blue…

The same blue as Shoshanna Scott's eyes.

Monster. Murderer. Spider.

The same blue as Auden Scott's eyes.

Protected by the NetMind itself, to the point that the neosentience had almost burned itself out sharing its own energy with her so she could heal.

It had nearly done the same a second time around, when it had screamed for Kaleb to help her.

The NetMind was ready to die for Auden Scott.

He allowed the spidersilk to touch his mind, anchor into it…and felt it at once, a subtle draw on his power. Far less, however, than he was expending in his brute force effort to hold the PsyNet from crumbling.

Because it turned out that he wasn't a black-hearted bastard after all. Not when it came to children. He'd set himself up above the area where Sahara—in concert with local empaths—had corralled all the children in their region, his aim to protect their innocent minds as the PsyNet shattered.

Sahara stood next to him, hand in hand with him, her power his to use.

"Do you see the spidersilk?" he asked.

"It looks like a dream. Should I allow it in?"

"Yes," he said, remembering what the NetMind had shown him. "It's…a mirror of what Shoshanna did. She took and took and became bloated with it. I think this web is doing what Ivan's web does." Creating a closed system of energy using every mind in the PsyNet, strong and weak, old and young, broken and whole.

"Oh," Sahara whispered. "It's so…happy?" Tilting her head against his arm, she smiled. "It's gone now, but I could've sworn I felt the sweetest brush against my mind. This web is young ."

Kaleb hadn't sensed any of that, but his emotions were twisted and calcified. He relied on Sahara when it came to knowing good from evil, dark from light. So, lifting her hand to his mouth, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles, then sent a telepathic blast through the PsyNet.

Accept the web. The NetMind designed it to hold the PsyNet together. It will not take by force. But the more minds in the web, the more energy it has to weave us back together.

The web spread at a phenomenal rate in a matter of seconds, and when he went to the mind he knew to be the center, it wasn't there. A glittering blue orb sat in its place, roiling with the energy of millions of minds linked in a biofeedback loop of inconceivable proportions.

Kaleb understood. The mind couldn't be seen, couldn't be known. It was too fragile. "It's a child," he said with confidence. "The being at the center of the web. Auden Scott's child."

Sahara met his gaze, her dark hair lifting in the breeze on their terrace. "Will you tell the others?"

"I think the Arrows must know. There was an Arrow shield around Auden Scott's mind the last time I saw it."

"Well, their ability to keep secrets is legendary."

"As for anyone else, no, I won't tell." The NetMind could make that call, decide who needed to know. "The child will be safe with the alpha I met." Clawed hands that even if they bled, wouldn't stop protecting.

Sahara's eyes glowed with a pulse of blue. "Kaleb, your eyes…"

"The web just pulsed," he said. "An overwhelming surge of energy in the network." Frowning, he looked in the PsyNet again, but could find nothing to explain it.

···

PAX felt his Scarabs slip out of his grasp one after the other. Terrified for them, he emerged into the Net…and saw the blue spiderweb that had entangled his broken people. He was afraid they were dead, but no, they lived.

Their chaotic energy was contained…and yet part of the system.

Flowers in his mind. Wilted and bruised, but held in cupped hands of radiant steel-gray alongside fresh blooms that were perfect.

Pax frowned, hands at the sides of his head. What was happening? Was he going mad?

The same image again. No. It was different this time. A glowing blue flower nestled deep inside the bouquet that was both fresh and decaying. Its light touched the edges of two of the twisted and bruised ones…and those blooms grew…not better, but less limp, more firm.

Pax stared at the glowing blue network as far as the eye could see. The tendril that had come to him just waited, floating in space. And he thought of what Kaleb Krychek had blasted out across the Net, his words carried in echoes created by thousands of minds.

No force. True choice.

Pax didn't trust anyone but his twin.

He shook his head, stepping back from the tendril.

···

ZAIRA had become entangled in the spidersilk at emergence, her mind having been the one that held the shield over Auden. Within minutes, she knew her shield was no longer necessary, Auden's mind engulfed by violent blue energy.

The spidersilk that had tangled her up fell away the instant she stepped back.

Aden's mind appeared beside her at the same time.

"What is this?" she asked.

"A much more powerful version of the same ability that allows Ivan to hold the Island." Aden touched a thread of spidersilk. "Young. Incredibly young. The infant."

"I don't believe in luck." Zaira folded her arms on the physical plane.

A bloated black spider, hovering over a glowing blue egg. It scratched at the egg with its legs, creating a crack, an opening…that sealed up with luminous steel before the spider could insert its face inside.

"What the hell in creepy fuck was that?" Zaira sent the stream of eerie images to the man who was her love and her soul.

"I think that's the NetMind telling us this has nothing to do with luck." Aden's voice held a taut satisfaction. "Whatever Shoshanna did to engineer Liberty, she gave the NetMind the perfect soil in which to plant a seed."

"It's using the baby?" Zaira would kill the damn neosentience.

"No, I think this is exactly what the child was designed to do—to supercharge Shoshanna's abilities to harvest energy from others. We all know it had to be her in that initial island where she was sucking the inhabitants dry, even if no one has proof."

Zaira had heard Ivan Mercant's description of the spider he'd encountered, and she'd read the reports on the genetic connection between Ivan and Shoshanna. That particular ability seemed to exist in only a single familial line. "Agreed."

Her lover's mind pulsed as he considered things in that calm way of his that fascinated her. "I don't think the NetMind did anything to either mother or child except help them win the battle against Shoshanna.

"It fixed the vulnerability that would've allowed Shoshanna to take control of Liberty, and there's a high chance it helped Auden heal from her earlier brain injuries so that she could protect her baby. It explains her recovery in a way nothing else comes close to doing."

"Hmm." Unconvinced, Zaira touched the spidersilk.

It twined around her psychic finger like the tiny child she'd petted in the infirmary, the feel of it purest innocence. "Ugh. Fine." When she accepted the bond, it settled into place like a cub snuggling into her.

Zaira refused to smile. "It's not a telepathic or psychic bond. No link between minds, no chance of information being siphoned out or pushed in. It's…a basic transfer of energy."

"It might mature as the child grows, but even if it never does, look at the PsyNet."

That was when Zaira realized: nothing had broken or crumbled or torn away since this began. The entire PsyNet was calm…was even being patched together in places as the excess energy from the network was sent into the psychic sphere to fix the battered fabric.

But Zaira had known happiness for only a short time and she saw the flaw. "One child," she said. "A fragile, breakable infant. The entire PsyNet cannot rest on those tiny shoulders. It's not fair to her, and it's not fair to the millions who need this network to survive."

A clock bloomed in her mind, the hand moving from midnight back to nine p.m.

"Got it," Zaira said, assuming the neosentience could hear her. "Thanks."

Black flowers showered on her head.

She scowled. "I don't remember it being so chatty before." Shaking away that question before Aden could answer, she said, "Did you see the clock?"

"Yes. This isn't permanent. It's a gift of time to allow us to rest and recover, and find the path forward." Aden paused again. "If I had to guess, I'd say the web is spread too thin. An emergency measure only. It can only hold for so long stretched across the entire PsyNet before it begins to break."

Zaira took his psychic hand. "We watch over the child."

"We watch over the child."

···

IT was hours later, when the first excitement had died down, that Kaleb received a visit from the NetMind. It was much stronger already, fed by the energy of a rejuvenated network. "How long?" he asked it, showing it an image of the web, alongside images of a baby, then a child of five, then of ten and so on.

He received the same nine o'clock image Aden had already shared with the Ruling Coalition, but the NetMind couldn't clarify whether each hour meant a month, a year, a decade, or more.

Given the extent of the damage, Kaleb was almost certain it would skew shorter.

"Will others be born who have the same ability as Ivan and the infant?" he asked, well aware the NetMind had the power to dabble with Psy in ways deep and unknowable.

A sense of sorrow, the image of a fractured line of steel gray.

It remained too weak, too damaged for such engineering.

Kaleb showered it in the flowers it so loved. "You've done enough, bought us time to fix what we spoiled." One hundred years of Silence couldn't be erased in a single beautiful night, but the NetMind loved its broken people enough to try to give them one final chance. "Thank you."

Fireworks lit up his mind.