Considered a rare offshoot of the F ability, backsight, her mind recited, bore enough similarities to the kind of telepathy utilized by Justice Psy that there was continuing debate within academic circles as to its proper placement. The most significant difference between the two designations was that unlike the J-Psy, those in subdesignation B did not go into a living mind and retrieve a particular memory.

Rather, they could be hit by flashes about the past without warning, independent of their physical proximity to the locations or individuals involved-though, like their F brethren, a B could "prime" her mind to seek knowledge about a particular past event. And similarly to a J, they could project the entire piece of backsight to another mind. As a result, one of their uses was that at times, they could act as witnesses to events that left no survivors. Subdesignation B had also been consulted in situations where critical data had been lost due to a sudden injury or accident.

"Testing," she added as the facts continued to scroll in her mind, "puts me at 8.1 on the Gradient."

Kaleb nudged her forgotten gla.s.s and waited until she'd drunk half of the cherry-flavored supplement before saying, "Those were your stats at sixteen, but you hadn't plateaued and been a.s.signed your permanent position on the Gradient. I'd guess you're now between 9.5 and 9.7."

"Is that why you want me?" she asked, the tears inside her forming into an aching knot. "For my backsight?"

The clean line of his jaw caught her eye as he spoke, her fingers spreading on the table. "I have no use or need of a B."

His words gave her pause, her mind on the dangerous shadow ability that existed below her backsight and, unbeknownst to those who had tested her, was the true reason for her position on the Gradient. Her backsight was, at most, only a 3 on the scale used to measure psychic ability. However, the error didn't speak to the skills of the testing staff but to the stealthy nature of what existed inside her-to the extent that she herself hadn't become aware of it until she was twelve. And then, she'd learned to hide it, because it made her a target.

"If you don't need my backsight," she said to Kaleb, "then why am I here?" Regardless of her question, she was dead certain he knew what she could do-there could be no other reason he'd gone to such lengths to find and capture her.

The black depths of his eyes devoid of stars once more, an endless night that threatened to suck her under, he rose to his feet and, placing his hands on the table, leaned toward her until she could've reached out and run her fingers along his freshly shaven jaw. "You are here," he said in a tone that made her heart thump wildly against her ribs, "because you belong to me."

TEN minutes later, Sahara sat on the edge of the bed that was her own, Kaleb's words gleaming against the wall of her mind. They made as little sense now as they had when he'd spoken them. One thing, however, was patent.

She was not free to leave this house. Neither was she free to enter the PsyNet.

Considering those facts in the abnormal calm that insulated her from her perilous situation, she decided she didn't want to do either at present. The instant she slipped outside the obsidian of Kaleb's mental protection, she exposed her naked, vulnerable mind. Further, she had no idea of where she'd go, what she'd do upon escaping him. As proven by the hazy distance between her and her emotions-until it felt as if she were looking out at the world through a wall of water-her mind remained bruised, her thinking processes flawed.

NightStar.

An option for sanctuary, except, with her fragmented memory centers, she had no way of knowing if her clan hadn't in fact worked hand in glove with her captors to harness her ability to their own ends, giving her up to soul-destroying loneliness. The guards in her prison hadn't seen her as an individual, hadn't even seen her as a sentient being. She'd simply been a task, nameless and without ident.i.ty.

Had one shown her even the smallest kindness, would the labyrinth have begun to unravel? Sahara would never know, because the instant the individual in charge of her incarceration had discovered the labyrinth-too late to halt the process-her normal guards, who occasionally spoke to her, had been replaced by men and women so icily Silent it had never occurred to them to deviate from their a.s.signed duties . . . whether those duties were to force-feed her or to strip her to the skin while lowering the room temperature to freezing.

Kaleb, in contrast, had thus far done nothing to cause her harm. He'd given her privacy, free access to clean clothing and a shower, as well as food that made her taste buds sing and her parched soul shudder. Neither had he commented on or challenged her broken Silence. It would be stupid and premature to leave his protection until she was in a better mental state, able to judge friend from foe.

As for Kaleb himself . . . the responses he aroused in her were raw, disturbing, painful. Even now, the knot of tears lay rigid against her breastbone, as if simply waiting for her to surrender to an emotion that was wholly without reason. To cry for Kaleb, she would have to know him, and he was a stranger . . . who knew she adored cherry-flavored drinks and that she felt the cold more acutely than most people. It hadn't escaped her notice that the entire sprawl of the house was now at a temperature she found most comfortable.

Taking a deep breath in an effort to fight the compulsion to go to him, to demand answers to questions she couldn't articulate, she picked up the book he'd given her the previous night and decided to walk to the terrace. The sunshine, the cool autumn wind, she craved it against her skin . . . as she craved contact with another living being, her body starved for far more than food.

Her thoughts scattered when she caught the fleeting reflection of a woman with a tangled dark mane. Blinking, she stared at the window, but it wasn't the best mirror and only served to frustrate. Since her room had no mirrors-a vague memory of shattered gla.s.s, shards slicing a fine, bright line across her cheek-she walked back down the corridor and entered the room across from her own.

The clean, fresh scent of soap and aftershave that held a hint of pine.

Since Kaleb had left the door open, she decided it wasn't off-limits and continued deeper inside, placing the book on the bed while she explored. Barren of anything but the bed and a small bedside table, the closet built into the wall opposite the sliding doors that led out onto the terrace, the room was military neat, not a single piece of clothing or other ephemera scattered around.

The bathroom was the same, Kaleb's personal grooming gear stored efficiently inside the mirrored cabinet above the granite countertop that housed the sink. Fascinated, she picked up his aftershave, drew in the scent that made her skin ache, then examined the slick black device he used to shave, unable to imagine the ice-edged man who considered her his doing such an intimate act.

Touching her hand to her own jaw, she thought back to when he'd leaned over her in the kitchen. It had taken every ounce of her will not to brush her fingers over the hard angles of his face.

It had been so long.

She shook off the bone-piercing thought, knowing it to be a creation of her damaged mind. A cardinal Tk would have had no reason to be in the circ.u.mference of her life as a girl-NightStar was famously insular, and Tks were trained in special schools for reasons of safety. No, she had never touched Kaleb Krychek, regardless of what might be termed the birth of a dangerously obsessive compulsion toward the man who was effectively her jailer.

Putting the shaver back in its spot, her fingers lingering longer than they should have, she closed the cabinet doors . . . and looked at who she'd become. At sixteen, she'd had a little more fat in her cheeks, a softer curve to her jaw. Right now, she was all bone. Her increased calorie intake would ensure a return to a healthier appearance-but not to the extent that she'd carry the baby fat in her cheeks again. The finer line of her face was a natural result of adulthood and she liked it.

Her hair, however . . .

Taking a tangled hunk, she brought it to her nose, caught the scent of citrus and something softer. So, she hadn't imagined taking a shower and scrubbing her hair three times over. Clean though it was, it was also knotted to the point of making her appear a madwoman- "That was the goal." The labyrinth had been only part of her plan to hide herself from those who would turn her into a trained animal poised to perform on command. "It's not necessary any longer," she whispered and clawed back another piece of herself.

Chapter 6.

IT TOOK SERIOUS concentration, her arms aching by the end, but her hair hung straight and thick down her back an hour later, as she made her way through the house again. Peeking inside the large room situated right beside the main doors to the terrace, she saw Kaleb sitting at a desk. In front of him was a transparent-from her point of view-computer screen apparently functioning in comm mode.

Steel-platinum?-cuff links at his wrists and a tie of chrome blue at his throat now, a sharp contrast to his white shirt, he was focused on someone on the other side of the screen, but he curled his fingers to her in a "come in" motion. Drawn toward him on a level that threatened to overpower her ability to reason, until it felt as if they were connected by an invisible thread, she walked in.

His desk was a hunk of highly polished wood, the edges jagged, as if the roots of a forest giant had been cut in slices then smoothed, the flowing lines within telling the story of centuries past. It was beautiful, and not what she might have expected of him . . . but there was something in the primal nature of the choice that suited him. As did the bitterly clean surface of the desk, unmarred by even a single pen or piece of paper.

The walls opposite that desk held shelves that housed a number of expensive hard-copy books on a myriad of subjects, from changeling society to physics to construction manuals and geological research, with a number of separate volumes dealing with earthquakes and volcanoes.

She could understand the eclectic collection compiled by an intelligent mind, could even comprehend the reason a cardinal Tk might be interested in the movement of the tectonic plates-though the idea that he might have that much power made her heart stutter-but here and there on the shelves sat things jarring in their incongruity. Like a polished blue pebble beside the book on South American volcanoes. Lapis lazuli, she identified after rubbing the pebble between her fingertips.

On another shelf sat something as inexplicable: a flat piece of wood carved with his name and the spindly image of a tree. The workmanship was rough, nothing unique about the wood itself. Not far from it, and slipped in between a thick textbook on earthquakes and one on undersea currents, was a tiny volume of poetry. It was so thin, she only saw it by chance, and from the look of the spine, she could tell it was cheaply bound, in ragged condition, unlike the other books on the shelves.

Curious, she took a second look at the shelves and found several more unexpected volumes hidden in plain sight. All were of relatively flimsy construction, and they contained everything from further poetry to plays to a reprint of a nineteenth-century cla.s.sic written by a human. Then there was a twisted piece of metal that wasn't identifiable as anything in particular, except that her mind kept telling her it had once been part of a bullet train.

Shaking off the odd sense of knowing, she focused once more on the cardinal currently ripping his opponent to shreds with cold-blooded precision, taking in the dark hair cut with brutal neatness, the clean lines of his face, his skin tanned enough that he couldn't spend all his time indoors, those incredible eyes. But in spite of his beauty, he was harshly masculine, his every action marking him as quintessentially and fascinatingly male.

Her breath hitched, her fingers worrying the lapis lazuli pebble she'd never returned to the shelf. Forcing herself to return it, because she wanted to steal it, captivated by the feel and shape of it, she attempted not to stare at Kaleb. The majority of her guards had been male-and a number had undoubtedly been chosen because of their looks in an effort to manipulate her youth and splintered Silence. Not once had she forgotten the fact that they were a threat to her very existence.

And yet she saw primal beauty in this merciless, no doubt manipulative, and bitingly intelligent male who clearly lived for power, for control-all things her shadow ability would make it ruthlessly simple for him to acquire. The individual who controlled Sahara Kyriakus could control the PsyNet, and Kaleb Krychek, her ears told her, was the kind of ruthless man who would use every advantage at his disposal when it came to the dance of power.

Disturbed by that realization on an elemental level, an ache in her chest, she walked toward the open gla.s.s doors to the right of his desk. It was instinct to stay out of the line of sight of the aggressive-voiced man on the other end of the comm who, it was clear, was about to lose the skirmish. For now, it was better she remain a ghost in the eyes of the world.

The polished wood of the terrace was smooth beneath her feet, the sun a languid caress against her skin. Tilting her face upward, she drank it in, her skin greedy for the kiss of heat, of light.

You'll burn.

Startled by the cool words that had traveled along a telepathic pathway she hadn't been aware she'd opened, she twisted her head to look inside the study. The man who continued to both intrigue and confuse her had his eyes on the comm screen, still involved in a business negotiation that was more akin to a deadly play of razors, each word designed to inflict maximum damage. Sliding the doors shut, she padded to the sun lounger in the far corner, an item that hadn't been there earlier this morning, and sat with her legs stretched out on the cushioned fabric, toes reaching for the sun.

A large outdoor umbrella stood above her a second later, shading her face while leaving her feet exposed. Stop doing that, she said along that same telepathic channel, and it didn't feel new, didn't feel awkward. No, it felt as if the pathway was carved into her mind, the groove worn in over countless years. As if she'd known Kaleb longer than she'd known herself. It's showing off.

A pause that might've indicated surprise before a small table appeared at her elbow. On it sat a plate of cookies and a long gla.s.s filled with what turned out to be mango nectar. Drawn by the cookies, she ate two different kinds and took a sip of the thick, refreshing drink before pointedly ignoring her beautiful captor and opening the book in her lap.

It was a math textbook.

Such physical books, she remembered, were no longer part of the education system, but this one had been well used. Employing black ink, someone had written in concise explanations of the equations and corrected the frustrated mistakes-lines crossed out, rewritten-made by a writer who used blue ink.

It hurt her to touch the black writing, made her throat thicken, so she shut the book.

The texture of the cover, the tear on one corner, the stamp that denoted the book had come from a used-goods dealer, each was so familiar it was like hearing music just far enough away that it was impossible to identify the tune. Touching her fingers to the faded stamp, she imagined what she might see were she a Ps-Psy, born with the ability to sense memories left behind on physical objects.

HANDS in the pockets of his pants, Kaleb stood at the gla.s.s doors to the terrace, looking through them to the woman who sat on the lounger, her feet bared to the still-warm sun of early fall and her fingers stroking the cover of the textbook he'd originally found in a junk store that sold dubious "antiques." As evidenced by her tart reply a few minutes ago, there was no fear in her, no sense of panic at being in his control.

He knew that lack was a momentary lull-this woman who spoke to him without concern and who seemed to be shocked or unsettled by nothing was not the real Sahara Kyriakus. No, she was a sleepwalker whose task it was to ready Sahara's body and mind for the true waking.

She wouldn't be calm once that happened, wouldn't look at him with dark blue eyes untainted by fear. Then, she'd either use her ability against him-or she'd run, terror in her every jagged breath. Which was why he'd retrieved the dirty smock she'd thrown in the laundry and vacuum sealed it to preserve her scent. He would never use his mind to leash hers, but he would track her through rain, hail, fire itself. Never again was anyone, even Sahara herself, taking her from him.

He threw up his strongest shields at the wordless warning from the NetMind and DarkMind both, connecting with the twin neosentience at the same time. What has occurred? This wasn't another anchor collapse, not with the roaring force of the shock wave that had just pa.s.sed-as if it had gathered momentum across the entire breadth of the Net.

Images of crumbling houses, ripped walls, a torn dress fell into his mind, at a speed that told him the twin neosentience that was born of the Net was confused and in pain. Grabbing hold of each image, he separated them, found the common denominator. All of the damage had been caused by rot, fungus, mildew.

Show me.

Entering the psychic network that was as familiar to him as the streets of Moscow, he cloaked himself and shot to the location they'd pinpointed . . . except it was no longer there.

The region was black, but that was the only similarity it had to the rest of the PsyNet. This blackness not only held no stars, it effectively repelled light. Though he was immune to the rot that was crawling through parts of the network that connected millions of Psy around the world, seeping insidiously into the minds of the population, he took care approaching the pulsing emptiness.

Halting at the very edge, he sent an exploratory tendril of psychic energy into the blackness. The nothingness sucked it in, and if Kaleb hadn't already cut the tendril loose, it would've continued sucking until it stole every drop of energy from his mind and body both. Death would've been an excruciatingly painful process.

Can you go there? he asked the NetMind.

A sense of desolation, of terrible pain from the half of the twin neosentience that was recognized by the populace and considered the librarian and guardian of the PsyNet. It only communicated, however, with a very, very short list of people. And it communicated with no one like it did with Kaleb.

His connection with the ancient, yet childlike neosentience, and its twisted, broken twin, had been formed in a chill, isolated childhood composed of physical pain and mental torture that had shaped him into the man he'd become. For a long time, the NetMind and the DarkMind had been his only friends.

He no longer thought of them in that way, hadn't done so since he was a boy of nine or ten. Though chronologically far older than Kaleb, having come into being at the dawn of the PsyNet, they were yet young, children to his adult.

Where the NetMind was an innocent, the DarkMind was akin to an ignored, abused child who sought only to bully and abuse others, knowing no other way in which to interact. In Kaleb, it had found acceptance, a darkness that welcomed the malignant violence and anger at the core of its being.

And you? he asked that dark twin.

It slid sinuously into the blackness, rolling in it like a cat.

Initiate a barricade, he ordered the NetMind as the DarkMind slid back to twine affectionately around him, its touch cold as the death Kaleb had meted out more than once. Ensure a wide buffer zone. I don't want anyone coming in contact with this.

Images of building blocks cascaded into his mind and he realized the NetMind was already working on the barricade. Good, he said, giving it the praise it needed.

Shifting position once the twin neosentience turned toward its task, the DarkMind choosing to a.s.sist the NetMind for reasons of its own, Kaleb located the mind of Subject 8-91. The male was infected with the same disease that had just devoured a chunk of the Net and, thus, was meant to act as Kaleb's control as to the progression of that disease, his "canary in a coal mine."

Some would term that a cruelty, but 8-91 was too far gone to be helped-and he was expendable, his contribution to the world negligible. He was contributing far more, helping his fellow citizens, by acting as a barometer for this disease without a name.

Subject 8-91, however, remained alive, functional, and with no awareness of the disease that had eaten into his frontal cortex. Clearly, the infection advanced at a different rate in an individual than it did in the psychic fabric that connected ninety-nine-point-nine percent of Psy on the planet.

Kaleb's cell phone rang.

He'd been expecting the call. "Nikita," he said, dropping out of the Net to speak to the woman who had been a Councilor before the Council imploded, and who now held power in a region that had become a focal point for those whose Silence was fractured.

"I a.s.sume," she said, "you're aware of the shock wave that just rolled through the Net?"

"I've seen the cause. One minute." Hanging up, he stepped out to check on Sahara, saw that she'd fallen asleep, her hair a silken pool of black as she lay curled on her side. It wasn't as vivid and as glossy as it should be, but he saw the promise. Yet she was nowhere near to the Sahara she was meant to be-tiny, her skin too pale, she looked as if she'd disappear any second.

Reaching out, he lifted a single strand of hair, rubbed it between his fingertips. Real, very much so. And safe in the home he'd turned into an impregnable vault.

Resetting the perimeter alarms to remote alert, and changing the angle of the sun umbrella so that she was fully protected, he pulled on his suit jacket, thought of Nikita Duncan's high-rise office in San Francisco, and was there, his mind making the transition with a speed and an accuracy that the dead Councilor Santano Enrique had once considered a tool for his exclusive use.

"No one has any explanations," Nikita said to him the second he appeared, her voice as businesslike as the skirt-suit she wore, the lights of San Francis...o...b..ight in the midnight darkness behind her. "Yet you said you've seen the cause."

He saw no reason not to share the truth-it was one that would become apparent soon enough if his theory about what was happening proved correct. "Part of the Net has ceased to exist."

"Another anchor attack?" The blunt edge of Nikita's hair swept over her jaw as she leaned on her desk, hands flat on the gla.s.s and almond-shaped eyes steady with an icy intelligence that had led to her position as one of the wealthiest women in the world. "I've heard no reports-"

"No. The Net itself has disintegrated."

Nikita stared at him, barely containing a jerk when the comm panel on the wall chimed an incoming call. "It's Anthony," she said, touching the discreet pad built into her desk to accept the call and bring the other man into their conversation.

Kaleb considered what Anthony Kyriakus would do if he knew that his niece was currently in Kaleb's care. Likely unleash the full force of NightStar's power in an attempt to retrieve her-Sahara's clan had been searching for her with quiet, relentless persistence since her disappearance. Kaleb knew that because he'd had to take care to skirt their trackers more than once, and because he'd hacked into their files. Had they pinpointed her location before he did, he would've appropriated and used that information without compunction-Sahara belonged to him, no one else.

"The outbreak at Sunshine Station," he said after Nikita had brought Anthony up-to-date. "Do you recall the details?"

"Of course." Anthony's reply was immediate. "One hundred and forty-one lives lost to a sudden psychosis-they attacked one another in brutal, b.l.o.o.d.y ways."

Nikita picked up the narrative with a flawless ease that told Kaleb the two were in telepathic communication. "The outbreak was deemed to have been an indication of critical problems with the Protocol, as was the incident at the science station in Russia." A pause. "You showed me a 'sick' section of the Net once. It was small, hidden-you're saying the psychosis was caused by this infection? That it's grown big enough to create such a ma.s.sive disturbance in the Net?"

Kaleb wasn't surprised Nikita had made the connection-mental viruses were her specialty, after all. "Yes." Connected to the psychic network from birth, there was no way for those of his race to avoid the virus-every millisecond of the biofeedback they needed to live carried a potentially lethal payload. "It appears the infection has begun to attack its primary host."

The PsyNet was vast, could take a considerable beating, but it wasn't indestructible. "Tonight's damage," he continued, "caused no fatalities, but only because it was localized in the region that would've supported the minds at Sunshine." And that station was abandoned, an icy monument to death, blood splatter frozen on the walls and meals abandoned half-eaten, no living beings within miles.

"We can't allow the infection to hit a populated zone," Nikita said, cutting to the point as always. "If it has the same impact it did at Sunshine, we'd be looking at a ma.s.sacre."

A taut silence, and Kaleb knew they were all thinking of a San Francisco or a Moscow overrun with Psy who had given in to murderous insanity. Mindless, their cells factories for the virus, they'd kill anything in their path, hack their fellow citizens to pieces, paint the streets in blood.

Chapter 7.

ANTHONY WAS THE one who spoke. "Can the virus be contained?"