She didn't answer him.

You can die here or you can die when the government flips the switch to fry your brain through their collar. Or all of you can come with me and live. Make your choice, Threnody Corwin.

What do you want?

The same thing you do-a chance.

Threnody saw bleached-out violet eyes inside his mind, the image of a little girl in some sterile white room frozen in his memory. A cascade of orders, of actions, that couldn't be a hallucination, not when it came from Lucas Serca, of all people.

The shock of that shared memory propelled Threnody to say, Yes.

Or maybe it was Jin Li's hands choking the life out of her that made her reach for a way out.

It didn't matter.

They disappeared. Lucas teleported out of that cathedral with four Strykers, leaving behind his siblings and Jin Li to the quiet darkness of a broken place of prayer.

PART TWO.

RETRIEVAL.

SESSION DATE: 2128.01.15.

LOCATION: Institute of Psionics Research CLEARANCE ID: Dr. Amy Bennett SUBJECT: 2581.

FILE NUMBER: 1.

She sits alone at the table, young and small, with feet that do not touch the floor. Paper drawings are scattered across the tabletop and the floor around her. She has stayed silent for over three hours, the chrono marking time in a corner of the feed, amused by the pad of drawing paper and the crayons provided her. Only now, when she is out of paper, does she go still. The machines she is connected to click and whine like a disharmonic orchestra.

"Don't sulk, Marcheline," Aisling says as she frowns at the camera. "I'm trying to help you."

As if summoned by her voice, the door to the white room slides open and a doctor steps inside. The woman is thin and dark skinned. She ignores the camera.

"Hello, Aisling," the doctor says. "Do you know who I am?"

Aisling tilts her head away from the camera, attention on the woman. "Hello, Dr. Bennett. I saw you months and months ago."

"Did you? Fascinating." The woman sits in an empty seat, places her documents and a deck of white cards in neat piles on the table. "Do you know why you're here, Aisling? You're here because you are a very special little girl."

"Mama thinks I'm sick."

"Your mother is concerned about you. She was right to bring you here."

Aisling shrugs and slouches in her chair, something like resignation settling on her face. "You always say that, Doctor."

Behind her, the high-pitched sound of the EEG machine is louder than that of all the rest, loud enough to force the doctor to cover her ears.

[FIVE].

JULY 2379.

THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS.

The crowd of personal aides, lobbyists, military soldiers, and reporters jostled for view of the vidscreens that lined the walls of the International Court of Justice, known in the vernacular as the World Court.

The heavily fortified Peace Palace was an old building residing over the bunkers that had protected the only seat of power to survive the Border Wars. It was the world's premier functioning government, the place that all remaining countries with viable populations looked to for guidance and obeyed in the face of continuous societal decline. Its fifteen justices held office for life, whereas they had once been restricted to term limits. In these trying times, so the saying went, justice needed a long eye.

It still wouldn't be long enough to see the future. Humans didn't have that power. Neither did the woman who strode down the main hall. She had been born a Class V empath, not a precog.

Her face-oval-shaped, with a straight nose above a full mouth and wide brown eyes-was well documented on news streams. It needed to be. As the officer in charge (OIC) of the Strykers Syndicate and one of the few psions that the World Court had allowed to go fully public, Ciari Treiva was not a woman most people were willing to tangle with. At forty-one years of age, she was the de facto leader of the government's psions and had held that position for over a decade. It still left a sour taste in her mouth, even after all these years.

Ciari traveled light, accompanied only by a single aide. Keiko Nishimoto was the Strykers Syndicate's only Class II telekinetic, a slim Japanese woman in her early thirties who was chief operating officer (COO) of the company. As Ciari's direct subordinate, Keiko was just as well-known to the public. Both women wore the standard black-on-black BDUs of Strykers, though they carried no weapons. Ciari's brown hair was pulled back in a slick knot, hands loose at her side as the crowd, immediately aware of her presence, fell away from her.

The government's dogs didn't come to the world capital all that often. Business with the Strykers Syndicate occurred behind locked doors. A stigma was still attached to doing business with someone who possessed unclean DNA.

Ciari had clearance, higher than most, that got her through the public domain of the Peace Palace to the restricted wing without so much as a pat down. She didn't need one. If the current president of the World Court felt that she was a danger, he had the code that would activate the implanted neurotracker in her head and terminate her. Almost every OIC died by that neurotracker. The Strykers Syndicate didn't offer retirement to its permanent employees. It only offered a grave. The threat of death didn't mean that Ciari wasn't incapable of independent thought. It meant she was better at hiding her contempt than most people for the man who effectively ruled the world.

When they arrived at their destination, the executive assistant who guarded the door along with a set of quads knew better than to keep them out and simply announced their presence through an uplink to the man they wanted to see.

"I didn't summon you," Erik Gervais said as he studied the hologrid displayed above his antique wooden desk, inspecs glittering in his brown eyes.

"Consider this visit one of preemption," Ciari said, her soprano voice empty of all emotion as she walked into the office and approached his desk. Keiko remained by the door. "We need to talk, sir."

Erik looked at her through the data on the hologrid before it winked out. The World Court's president justice was a tall, lean man, whose black robes of office were perfectly tailored and only left his shoulders in the privacy of his own home. Like anyone who held a government position, or who could afford the cost in the private sector, his brain was wired with a bioware net that constantly monitored the baseline readings of his mind. Any psionic interference-if any Stryker would be foolish enough to do so-was tagged on the grid and the offending psion killed. If it was a Warhound, then that was another problem entirely, and the Strykers were expected to die for the humans they protected.

Unless legally instructed to, Ciari never directly touched Erik's mind. His emotions, however, didn't just exist on the mental grid. Emotion was physical as well as mental, and she tapped into the physical aspect that afternoon. She could read bodies as well as the emotions of a target, and for all that Erik was a judge well schooled in the art of a neutral expression, he couldn't hide what he felt from a psion. Not completely, no matter the technology he had grafted to his brain. Ciari could read him; she simply didn't have the freedom to twist what he was feeling into something useful to her without dying.

"Your predecessor was never one to give orders," Erik said as he leaned back in the chair made for his specific contours alone, eyeing Ciari speculatively. "Perhaps you should follow in his footsteps."

"I know my place." Ciari's mouth quirked slightly into something that might be called a smile if one was generous. The by-product of being an empath of any Class meant that she was a stone-cold bitch when it mattered and utterly ruthless when it didn't. Emotions were her forte; that didn't mean she had the luxury of succumbing to them.

"Really. Because I don't see you on your knees."

Ciari made a tiny throwing-away gesture with one hand from where she stood. "My loyalty is the same as it has always been."

"Then why are you here?"

"Your docket today encompassed the Serca Syndicate and their proposed Act."

"I don't see how a case that has been pending for the past ten months merits you storming in here."

"You ruled in their favor. That merits a lot of things."

"If I didn't know any better, I'd accuse you of professional jealousy. But then, your professionalism extends only so far as we allow it. You should remember that."

The look in Ciari's eyes was flat. "We Strykers obey the directive of the World Court. That doesn't mean we can afford to go about it blindly. What law you allowed the Sercas to author, and which you legalized, will affect how we do our job."

"Please tell me that you aren't seriously accusing one of the premier companies and families of being dangerous to the government?" Erik arched an eyebrow, the twist to his mouth condescending. "The same family that authored and helped implement the Fifth Generation Act, which set the requirements needed for a person to be accepted into the Registry with clean DNA? The Serca family was one of the first elevated out of the trenches of mutation after the fifth-generation benchmark passed. They continue to work toward the betterment of humankind, and I'll be damned if you'll belittle their accomplishments, so choose your next words carefully, Ciari."

Ciari paid lip service to the order, but the silence lasted only a few seconds. "Allowing them an autonomy you've refused all others in this venture the World Court has spent generations hiding from the public view won't end well. It can't. You have a right to keep your secrets, and it's our duty to guard them, but we can't guard what we aren't allowed to see. We need to know what the Serca Syndicate is working on in order to protect you."

"Trade secrets are granted exceptions from the laws that govern us. The Sercas have more than earned their right over the years to retain the cornerstone of their company. What they intend to pursue is integral to the survival of all of us."

"What about oversight?"

"It will be taken care of." Erik studied her through slightly narrowed eyes, his calm tone belying the annoyance his microexpressions were projecting. "You don't need to concern yourself with the how or the why, just that it will be done."

Ciari's own expression was remote and cold as she said, "By letting the Sercas dictate this human trial for however long it takes won't result in the findings that you think will be uncovered, sir. Genetics, especially since the Border Wars, have never been easily harnessed or explained. I and those like myself are living proof of that."

They were psions, people born with a disease caused by mutated genes that could be traced back to the Border Wars. Humanity had spent over two centuries trying to eradicate that taint in their own genetic groups. Ciari knew it was a wasted effort.

"The Serca Syndicate has the capability to discern who is and isn't worthy to be on the colony lists we are building out of the Registry. Their results are the only thing I and the rest of the World Court care about."

"Then what of us Strykers? Will you give up all our identities to satisfy their scientific hunger? You have to know that if you do that, you're going to strip yourselves of the privacy we've fought to give you. Then what? There will be too many humans fighting to reach a launchpad or gain access to a city tower's collection of air shuttles in order to reach France. Even if you put every Stryker between unregistered humans and those on the colony lists, you still won't be able to stop all of them."

Erik reached for the glass of water that sat near the edge of his desk, ice half-melted in the expensive liquid that had been distilled and filtered to remove any and all pollutants and heavy minerals. Water that clear was hard to come by. He drank half of it before setting the glass aside again.

"What's the worth of unregistered humans compared to those on the Registry lists? I'll tell you what they're worth. Nothing. Absolutely nothing." The smile he gave her was chilling in its intensity. "You forget that your place in this world is to protect those of us who have worked long and hard to clean our genetics of nuclear taint. If unregistered humans ever discover what we've built in the Paris Basin, then you and the rest of the Strykers will be on that wall, Ciari. And you will kill whoever attempts to climb it, be they human or psion. Do I make myself clear?"

"Of course, sir."

"You've overstepped your bounds, Ciari. Don't come here again until I call for you. Just because you're the face of the Strykers Syndicate doesn't mean you are exempt from the rules every psion must follow." His fingers stroked over a thin, familiar remote on his desk. "Remember that."

The burn at the back of her skull was a reminder that she didn't really need. Ciari didn't let her discomfort show as she turned to leave, the pain magnifying with every step she took until she couldn't stand anymore. She almost made it to the door before she fell to her knees, fire ripping through her brain.

"Ciari." Cool fingers gripped her neck, a startling counterpoint to the heat beneath her skin. "As much as I appreciate your concern for humanity's continued survival, I think I liked it better when you knew how to hold your tongue. Your place in this world is to serve."

"Sir," she gritted out, feeling blood slide out of her nose and down the rigid line of her mouth.

Over the roaring in her ears, she heard Erik sigh, the cluster of his tangled emotions battering against her shields. Ciari carefully kept her defenses passive until the pain receded to something more manageable as the World Court's president took his finger off the remote and let her live.

"You make an excellent OIC, Ciari," Erik said. "Learn how to be a better dog and I might not be so harsh in my punishments next time."

He wanted a reaction out of her, some hint that what he had put her through was as humiliating as he thought it should be. She could feel that. Except Ciari had spent approximately thirty-five years of her life as a government dog and six years before that surviving in the ruins of New York in America as a child before she was picked up by the Strykers. Psions, no matter the Class rank, held on to their memories longer than humans ever could. Ciari remembered what it took to survive in the sprawling mess of a city that made up Buffalo on the polluted banks of Lake Erie. Much more strength than it took to survive in the glass cages of the government's prison, bound by the collar in her head.

So when Ciari said, "Sir," as if her life depended on it, she meant what she said.

It was her duty as the OIC to take the punishment, after all. She bowed to Erik in order to protect the Strykers beneath her. She always would.

He took his hand away and another helped her up. Keiko held Ciari with a firm grip as she escorted the older woman out of Erik's chambers. The door slid shut behind them and both ignored the armed quad, a group of four soldiers, that still remained in the hallway. The humans always feared for their leaders when psions walked through the seat of government.

"Your orders?" Keiko asked.

Ciari lifted a hand to wipe the blood off her face. She ended up smearing it across her skin in a vivid crimson streak as she let her thoughts expand beyond her mental shields to the edge of her public mind in a pointed request to the person who she knew was telepathically listening in. We need to talk.

To Keiko, she said, "Stay calm and walk with me."

Keiko followed where she went. Before they even made it down the hall, the two women were teleported out of the Peace Palace and into a shuttle that had yet to leave the government's private airfield. The man who had initiated the teleport at Ciari's request raised a glass of champagne to them, a cold smile their only welcome.

Nathan Serca was a brand first, a man second, and made no apologies for his family's place in history. At fifty-one, he was as long-lived as psions came, with the physique of someone who had grown up with access to clean water and food that wasn't grown in poisoned ground. He kept his blond hair cut short and his eyes were that signature Serca dark blue. His life as psion masquerading as a human was the ultimate sleight of hand. That the Strykers helped ensure his family's success was something no one in the government could ever know.

"Ladies," Nathan drawled as he took a sip of champagne. "Have a seat."

"No thank you," Ciari said, voice cool, calm. "We won't be staying long."

"Just long enough to congratulate me? You shouldn't have. Really."

Nathan's voice was dry, the smug superiority on his face difficult to ignore. As he was a Class I triad psion with telepathy, telekinesis, and teleportation his to command, Ciari knew it was a superiority she had no hope in matching.

Not often could a human brain handle the BPUs required for the control of two psi powers. One power was always a lower-Classed level when they existed together, and the main power was almost always telepathy. The more common dual psions that were a steady, if small, presence in their short history were telepaths and telekinetics on the low end of the Class scale, as well as telepaths and empaths. Telekinetics who were a Class V or higher and capable of teleportation were labeled dual psions as well.

Triad psions were something altogether different. They should have been impossible, but the Serca family had proven that wrong. There were theories-there were always theories-on psi powers and the brain that housed them. It was possible for that combination to exist, the Sercas were living proof, but a Class I for all three powers? The brain shouldn't be capable of holding that much power, but the Sercas could. They were the only psions ever to be labeled triads.

Ciari supposed Nathan had a right to be smug.

"Your family has illegally recorded the DNA of unregistered humans over the course of generations," Ciari said. "The Genome Privacy Act you won out of the World Court today was granted retroactively and grandfathers in your family's previous work. Why request legality now when the World Court was willing to continue turning a blind eye to your efforts, Nathan?"

"My timetable isn't yours." Nathan set aside his glass and leaned back in the shuttle seat. "I have the information I want. The government knows the Serca Syndicate works fast. I'll have a list for them by the end of summer at the latest and they will have to accept it."

"They will never accept unregistered humans."

"Who said anything about them being unregistered?" Nathan waved his hand disdainfully at her. "My family helped create the Registry in preparation for the fifth generation after the Border Wars. Do you really think I don't control that information? I have no intention of giving up the power we've worked toward finally owning. I am in the position to make my own future. You are nothing more than the government's bitch."

Keiko took an angry step forward, but Ciari gestured for her to back down. They would lose in a direct confrontation with Nathan, and a fight wasn't the reason why Ciari had asked for this meeting.