Aden's reply came in at that instant, the message showing up directly on the gauntlet's small screen: She doesn't need medical attention. Just keep an eye on her and alert me if she exhibits any of the following symptoms. Below was a concise list.

a.s.signing the task to another Arrow, Vasic returned to Lianne's cabin. A scan indicated no computronic devices other than the wall-set comm and Lianne's sleek personal phone. He judged that if the empath had broken the rules, she'd have done it via her private device; picking it up, he circ.u.mvented the security key using a simple algorithm sent through his gauntlet.

It took him under ten seconds to discover that Lianne had been uploading hourly updates to a private family server. Not only a breach of confidentiality, but also of safety-because she'd uploaded photos. Scanning the images, he realized the exterior of the compound was now of higher priority than the interior of Lianne's cabin.

Stepping outside after smashing the kitchen area with a telekinetic blow to change its basic shape, he alerted his people to the coming disruption and the reason for it, then ripped up a tree by the roots and laid it in the middle of the rough circle of rocks the empaths had used as their meeting spot. To make the image lock useless now or later, he crushed three of the rocks, his base telekinetic ability more powerful than most people realized, given that it was his teleportation that normally grabbed attention.

The rapid-fire actions kicked his heart into high gear, his breath coming in shorter but no less controlled bursts. Not slowing down, he snapped several of the pine trees behind the cabins in half, so the background couldn't be used. The mountains weren't visible in any of Lianne's photographs, which eliminated a major risk factor, but Vasic would have to neutralize a number of others.

When his phone buzzed a few seconds later, he saw it was Judd.

"You suddenly have something against trees?" the other male asked.

"Image leak."

"s.h.i.t. Want some help?"

"Yes." He could complete the task himself, but he'd be tired at the end of it when he needed to remain alert. "As fast as possible."

Judd 'ported in a minute later, and together they surgically removed the porches from three of the cabins. Two more trees were sacrificed to alter the skyline directly behind the cabins, and then they dismantled the porches they'd removed, stacking the resulting planks beside several of the cabins.

"It's enough." To make certain, Vasic had Judd leave the area, then attempt to use the images to come back in.

"Couldn't do it," the other man told him when he returned, expression hard and hair as sweaty as Vasic's own. "How the h.e.l.l did this happen? You've only been here a day."

Vasic led Judd into Lianne's cabin and to the body crumpled on the floor. Going down beside it, Vasic pressed one of the dead man's fingers onto the screen of the gauntlet and initiated a print search. "Rayland Faison," he said, rising to his feet as the data came in. "Resident of San Francisco. Listed as belonging to the same extended family unit as the empath who had this cabin." Another piece of information caught his attention. "Faison's Gradient level doesn't give him enough juice to make the 'port from the city."

"Send me the plate number of his vehicle-he probably abandoned it somewhere between here and San Francisco." Judd stared at the dead man. "Who took the shot? It's so pristinely centered, I'd say Cristabel if I had to guess."

"Yes." In her late thirties, the other Arrow was an expert markswoman. "She's in surgery. Prognosis unknown."

"d.a.m.n-Cris taught me how to shoot." Thrusting a hand through his hair, Judd met Vasic's gaze. "She was the most patient, most meticulous trainer I had."

The words described the fallen Arrow well. "I'll keep you updated on her condition." Vasic, too, had learned to shoot under Cristabel. She was the only trainer he'd had who had never punished him with pain-Cris's version of a reprimand was to make her students practice for an extra hour.

"I'd appreciate it." Judd returned his attention to Faison's corpse. "Why would Lianne's family want to a.s.sa.s.sinate her?"

"I'll be asking them that question myself." Ivy was still deeply asleep and unlikely to need Vasic, and this breach had to be handled-or the next time Ivy went walking in the woods with her pet, she might not come back. "We'll be two down if I leave," he told Judd. "Can you remain?"

An immediate nod. "Long as you need me."

Vasic left with Faison's body without further delay, his target the large home shared by those of Lianne's family based in Kuala Lampur, the internal image one he had in his master file on the empath. A loud crash to his left alerted him to the fact he'd startled a uniformed member of the house staff into dropping a vase. Water ran along the polished wood of the floor, creamy pink and yellow plumeria blooms lying amidst the glazed blue shards.

"I require the head of the family," he said to the woman, whose eyes had fixated on the body that floated next to Vasic.

Her head jerked up, her light brown skin so pale her pink lips appeared badly misplaced. "Y-yes." Flowers abandoned, she didn't look back as she ran past the windows that spilled the early afternoon light of this region into the hallway.

A woman of about fifty, with the stiff, regal bearing that marked her as Dara Faison, the matriarch of the family group, entered the hallway by a side entrance a minute later. She took in the body with no visible change in her expression but didn't speak at once, the silence no doubt a power play calculated to gain mastery of the situation.

Vasic didn't have time for games. "This is Rayland Faison. Records state him to be a member of your family unit. Is this correct?"

"Yes." Folding her hands in front of her black knee-length dress, the cut as severe as the bun into which she'd sc.r.a.ped back her dark hair, Dara Faison said, "Why was my nephew killed?"

"He attempted to a.s.sa.s.sinate Lianne." He caught the tiny flicker at the corners of her eyes, extrapolated that she wasn't as surprised as she should've been. "Did you order this a.s.sa.s.sination?"

"No."

"You'll be required to submit to a telepathic scan to confirm that."

Her shoulders went rigid. "I'm sure that won't be necessary. My nephew had . . . certain leanings. Fanatically pro-Silence. It's why we locked him out of the part of the system that held the data about Lianne's ability and contract."

"A good precaution-except for the fact your nephew worked in computronic security." Vasic had retrieved that data during the minute he waited for Dara. "Telepathic scans will be mandatory for all members of the family unit." If there was even a chance Rayland Faison hadn't been alone in his radical beliefs, Vasic had to unearth that information as fast as possible. "The scans will be carried out by a specialist telepath."

To her credit, Dara held firm, the taut oval of her face carved in stone. "You have no authorization to order such a violation of our privacy."

"You gave me that authorization when you instructed Lianne to breach her contract." Dara's complicity in Lianne's actions had been obvious from the messages he'd read. It had been a stupid move, one driven by an arrogance he knew the matriarch would profess not to possess.

"Lianne will be transferred here tomorrow." He eased his Tk until Rayland Faison's body lay on the floor. "Should there be any further leaks traced to your family, you will be terminated." Vasic would permit no one to harm those he'd promised to protect. "All data about the project is already in the process of being scrubbed from your systems."

Dara Faison hadn't moved since the instant he'd made it clear the telepathic scans would happen, as if finally comprehending that she'd attempted to play in a pool where she was so out of her depth, death was a real possibility. Now she glanced at the body of her nephew and said, "There will be no leaks."

Returning to Lianne's cabin without further words, Vasic took visual scans and collected blood samples that he sent back to Central Command, then began to clean up the blood molecule by molecule. It took time and concentration. Most telekinetics couldn't work on this level, their power too violent.

Can you take blood out of carpet? he asked the only Tk he knew who worked on an even more minute level, that of the cells of the body itself.

No, not like you, Judd replied. Ironically, given what I was ordered to use it for under Ming, my ability seems to function best with living tissue.

While Vasic's came in useful in death . . . and apparently in fixing broken windows. The odd reminder slid unexpectedly through his mind as he added more blood to the large floating globule where he was collecting the biomatter. He was slower than usual at the detail-oriented task, his resources depleted by the demands of the day to this point.

As a result, dawn was a soft glow on the horizon when he teleported the biomatter directly into a medical incinerator.

"If I hadn't just seen you do that," came a feminine whisper from the doorway, "I'd say it was impossible."

Chapter 16.

VASIC HAD SENSED Ivy's presence, had expected horror at the sight of the liquid ma.s.s of blood floating in midair, but her voice held a kind of shocked awe. "You should be resting."

"My head feels stuffy from too much sleep."

"Headache?"

"A dull throb. Nothing too bad." Ivy ran her hands through her curls, aware of the steel black shields that had protected her when she couldn't protect herself, sliding quietly away. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Shielding me."

Not responding, he walked over to physically right a fallen chair.

Her breath caught, an ache in her chest. He hadn't expected thanks, didn't know how to handle it. Did anyone ever thank an Arrow for doing what no one else would? "Anyway," she said past the fist squeezing her heart, "Rabbit was curious-and so was I after I saw the way the compound had been redecorated."

Taking a step into the room where she'd seen Vasic draw up blood droplet by droplet into an eerie liquid globule, before he vanished the whole thing out of existence, she looked for any remaining evidence that might tell her what had taken place, saw only the damaged kitchen area. "What happened?"

Vasic faced her, his expression inscrutable. "Cristabel foiled an a.s.sa.s.sination attempt on Lianne. She was seriously wounded in the process, the a.s.sa.s.sin killed."

Ivy's hand rose to her mouth as she recognized the name as belonging to the elfin brunette Arrow who'd been unfazed by Rabbit's inquisitiveness yesterday afternoon. "Is Cristabel . . ."

"Out of critical danger as of thirty minutes ago." Shifting the table several feet to the left, he used raw muscle to rip off a shelf on the far wall.

"And Lianne?" The quiet, somewhat shy woman had to be in shock.

"About to be transported out of the compound." He moved past Ivy to place the remains of the shelf on a stack of wood beside the cabin. "I decided not to move her until she was more stable."

Scowling at his back, she folded her arms as Rabbit "helped" Vasic by adding a stick he'd found to the woodpile. "Why? It's not her fault some fanatic came after her. I was in the same situation, remember?"

"The situations are not a.n.a.logous." He began to walk toward the Arrow cabin. "Lianne breached her contract by sharing cla.s.sified data with her family, including the names of every E in this compound."

"Wait, what?" Her mind struggled with the implication of his words. "Someone from Lianne's family tried to kill her?" Family was protection, safety, freedom, not hurt. "She must be devastated."

Vasic's response was as gut-wrenching as the realization that Lianne had been betrayed by someone she should've been able to trust. Turning in the doorway of the Arrow cabin so fast she almost ran into the leashed power of him, he said, "Your family is not how most families in the Net operate."

He stepped inside before she could recover enough to reply.

Feeling odd-scared of him in a way that just felt wrong-Ivy followed with Rabbit to see Lianne sitting on the edge of a cot that was literally just a taut piece of canvas stretched over metal. The black-haired, small-boned empath's eyes were red-rimmed, her shoulders hunched inward as she clutched at the edge of the cot with a brutal tightness that had to hurt. And her fear of Vasic . . . it was a sweat-soaked animal that smashed into Ivy and dug in its claws.

Staggering, she gripped the doorjamb.

Ivy? Eyes of silver frost locked with her own, her body stabilized by a phantom telekinetic touch.

Last night, what did Aden do to me? She had only vague, pain-filled memories.

He extracted the detritus of the block on your ability. Your empathic senses are now wide open.

Yes. Breathing was an effort. Too wide. Most Psy were taught how to filter input from a young age. As a telepath couldn't hear everything and stay sane, Ivy now understood an empath couldn't feel everything and not collapse under the overload.

Vasic closed the distance between them, his gauntlet flickering with lights as a cool blue beam swept over her. You're not getting enough oxygen and your blood pressure is rising.

Ivy attempted to regulate her shallow breaths, calm her pulse.

I don't know how to help you-Vasic stood as strong and stable as a deep-rooted oak as she steadied herself with one hand on his chest, his lightweight armor absorbing any sign of mortal warmth-but I can get you to someone who can.

No. Lips quivering and eyes wet as she looked at Ivy, Lianne appeared a forlorn child. Ivy couldn't abandon her. It's all right.

Forcing herself to break contact with the rock-solid strength of him, she began to walk through the thick syrup of nauseating fear. It clutched bony fingers around her throat, twisted her stomach into a knot that felt as if it would never unravel, and made her skin creep at the idea of Vasic at her back.

Ivy shook her head to dislodge the sensation. The response wasn't hers. She wanted to curl into his protective strength. No, this came from Lianne, the pungent emotional response clawing into Ivy's unprotected senses to bewilder and confuse.

The throb at the back of her head now a pounding, she forced her mouth to shape words. "Don't be afraid." She nudged Rabbit up beside the distressed empath.

Lianne's eyes flicked from Ivy to Vasic, then back. "I broke the rules." Shaking, Lianne clung to Ivy's hand when Ivy came down on the cot beside her. "I'll be punished."

It was difficult for Ivy to think with Lianne's fear threatening to suffocate her, so it took her several seconds to process the meaning of the other woman's words. She thinks you're going to kill her, she telepathed Vasic. There's a good chance she'll calm down if you step outside.

Vasic didn't move from his position by the doorway. Lianne is now a known security risk. I won't leave you alone with her. He switched from telepathic to verbal speech, his words directed at Lianne, before Ivy could argue with his stance. "You won't be executed so long as you keep your silence about this project from now on."

Ivy stared at him. Are you serious? You would've killed her if you thought she might publicize what she knows?

No. He turned his attention to her, the gray of his irises so cold, it made the hairs rise on the back of her neck . . . and this time, she didn't know if the response was her own or Lianne's. I'd have simply had her memories locked down, he continued. Execution would be an overreaction, as this experiment will either succeed, in which case it will go public, or it will fail, in which case decisions will be made about the information to be shared.

Is that what you'll do if I break the rules? she asked through the miasma of panic and fear fogging her mind. Erase me?

An infinitesimal pause. That situation will never arise. You and your family don't want attention, won't do anything to draw it. Lianne's, on the other hand, is hungry for power.

Ivy wanted to push at him until he gave her a real answer, but he was so scary she couldn't- Lianne, she reminded herself with teeth-clenched concentration, this was Lianne's fear. Ivy might've momentarily doubted her own emotions under the influence of it, but while she accepted that, objectively speaking, Vasic was scary, she wasn't scared of him . . . would never be again. Because the one thing she remembered from the previous night was his strong-boned wrist under her fingers, this cold-as-ice Arrow allowing her to hold on to him, his voice- Stabbing pain in her stomach, her mouth full of bile.

Conscious Lianne's increasing panic could soon paralyze them both, Ivy twisted to face her. "Breathe, Lianne," she ordered, modulating her own inhales and exhales until the other woman fell into the same pattern. "The Arrows aren't planning to execute you."

It was over seven minutes of repet.i.tion later, Ivy's empathic senses raw, that Lianne calmed down enough to follow Ivy's request to shield her emotions.

Peace.

Ivy couldn't hold back the shudder that rippled through her.

Lianne, cheeks red, whispered, "I would've been exposed on the Net." Her hand spread on Rabbit's head where the dog was sprawled across her lap.

Ivy understood the other woman's worry. Silence might have fallen, but the change was too new to be trusted. Ivy herself had discarded her veneer of Silence now that she was safely away from the settlement, but that didn't mean she wasn't worried about the consequences of her actions. Even now, she maintained her PsyNet shields so her emotions wouldn't leak out and betray her to strangers who might wish her harm.

"I ensured you weren't."

Vasic's voice was an icy balm on Ivy's ragged senses . . . until she realized she couldn't sense him. At all. Even a shielded Lianne continued to register on her empathic senses, but Vasic was missing. If she hadn't been able to see him, she'd never have known he was in the room.

Her breath hitched as she understood the crushing depth of his control for the first time.

"It's time for you to leave the compound."

Lianne went rigid at Vasic's statement. Turning to offer comfort, Ivy found herself facing thin air. Vasic had initiated the teleport-after transferring Rabbit from Lianne's lap to beside Ivy.

Blinking, she shook her head as her poor, confused dog stood up and did the same. "Yes," she muttered, rubbing at her temples. "That is definitely starting to annoy me."

Rabbit woofed in agreement and bounded down to the floor while she continued to sit on the cot. Uncomfortable thing. And this was where Vasic would sleep when he was off shift. Frowning, she wondered if he'd had any rest the previous night.