"This is no retreat, this was planned," Erik said, voice cold.

"Plans never go accordingly." Anchali shook her head, gray hair swaying around her thin face. "We are done here, Erik. We are done. Let us go while there is a window of opportunity left and soldiers still loyal to the cause to fly us out of here."

Erik pressed his thumb over the biometric key on the remote he held, dragging it down the sensor. No confirmation of termination came from the hub of soldiers charged with administering termination. Anchali was right. They had done their part, played their roles as saviors. If they stayed any longer, they would play a role of martyr that none of them desired.

Gripping the remote, Erik spun and threw the device with all the strength he had at the ancient, stained-gla.s.s windows that spanned the wall over the dais. It slammed through the fragile gla.s.s and shattered part of a pane. Tiny shards fell to the ground, thin cracks spiderwebbing across the rest of the picture.

"Does that make you feel better, Erik?" Nathan said.

Erik turned to give the other man a sharp look. "If anyone is to share blame, Nathan, it is you and your family."

"I find that you have little ground on which to blame us for your mistakes." Nathan gave him a cool look. "My family offered up the science to keep humans safe from psions. We offered a way to alter human DNA and clean it up. We lobbied for segregation with the World Court's support for the greater good. You owe me your rank by virtue of the knowledge my ancestors shared."

"Like h.e.l.l."

"I'm inclined to agree with Nathan," Travis said, gesturing at the other man. "But it doesn't matter anymore who's to blame. Are the shuttles at the airfield ready for us to board?"

"Yes," Anchali said. "Save your male posturing for when we arrive on the Ark. We have better things to do than argue which family is more human than the rest."

"A difficult decision amongst you fifteen, perhaps," a familiar voice announced. "Not, I think, for the Sercas."

The door to the courtroom was pushed open, a slim figure stepping inside. Erik choked down his fear as he recognized the uniformed woman striding down the aisle between the rows of seats.

"Someone call the quads," Anchali said, clutching at her cane.

"They are occupied elsewhere," Ciari said calmly.

The last time the World Court had seen her, she'd been writhing in agony and bleeding on the carpeted floor of this courtroom. She had changed, the expression on her face remote. She no longer had a collar to hold her in check. Her gaze swept over the group, judging them as they once judged her.

"We offered you another way and you refused it," Ciari said. "Abandoning this world isn't the answer. Do you really think you'll find a better life on Mars Colony?"

"You don't know what you're talking about," Erik spat out. He stepped backward, away from her.

Ciari touched her neck, fingers sliding over the circular bruise that stood out in stark relief against her pale skin. "I know what I've lost and what I've gained, Erik. Do you?"

"You have gained nothing," Travis said as he pulled an antique gun from a shoulder holster beneath his robes. He aimed at Ciari's head. "I made a mistake when I voted to spare your life if this is how you repay our generosity."

He pulled the trigger, the crack of the gun loud in the courtroom. Travis's aim was true and Ciari stared at the bullet as it spun in place directly in front of her nose. She carefully touched the bullet with one finger. It fell to the floor.

"There are more with her," Anchali said in warning, her voice high with fear.

"Of Strykers, there's just me," Ciari corrected. "Rogue psions? You have only one other here."

"Along with one lost cause at that," a tenor voice said from up in the balcony. "Though, really, you lot are worse off than I could ever hope to be even if I tried."

Everyone's attention was drawn upward, Nathan's head immediately snapping up at the familiar voice that greeted everyone. Lucas stood above them, arms braced against the wooden railing of the balcony. Wearing a black-on-black Strykers BDU and carrying no weapons, he only had eyes for one person in the room.

"h.e.l.lo, Nathan," Lucas said. "Do you like what I've done with the world?"

It had been two years since father and son last stood face-to-face. Two years of sabotage, of hunting and being hunted. The lies and deceit the two men shared were family secrets that should never have seen the light of day. Yet here they were, stripping themselves bare as they clawed their way to a future that each saw differently, that each believed in differently.

"Lucas," Nathan said, the name falling from his lips in a sharp hiss. "And so the prodigal son returns. What-inconvenient timing."

Lucas offered up a thin-lipped smile. "Am I disappointing you again? I'm not really sorry about that."

"What is going on here?" Erik demanded, staring in pale-faced shock up at Lucas. "Nathan, why is your son wearing a Stryker uniform?"

"We haven't seen your son in two years, Nathan," Anchali said, rising to her feet shakily. "You will tell us what is going on."

"It's family business that doesn't concern you," Nathan said.

Erik turned angrily to face Nathan. "You don't give the orders here. Tell us what the h.e.l.l-"

The garbled scream that came out of Erik's mouth was issued around a broken jaw, the sound of bone cracking loud enough to startle everyone. Cupping his face in both hands, Erik screamed and gasped for breath through a mouth that wouldn't close, his lower jaw hanging at an awkward angle from his skull.

"Shut your mouth" came Nathan's icy order. He hadn't moved.

"Mon Dieu," Cherise yelled at Ciari. "What have you done?"

"Nothing. I'm an empath," Ciari said.

"Don't you hate it when they give credit for your work to someone else, Nathan?" Lucas asked, voice calculatingly cheerful. "The seed bank, the s.p.a.ce shuttles, the program to bring the colony s.h.i.+p back online. Everything our family has ever done for the humans and they pa.s.s most of it off as their own."

"Do you really want to do this now?" Nathan said flatly, refusing to look away from his son.

"When will we have the chance if I don't?"

In the blink of an eye, Lucas teleported down to the courtroom floor. The judges collectively stepped back, fear replacing shock on their faces, none of them capable of speech.

Nathan faced his son, cold anger filling his dark blue eyes. "I will kill you."

"You'll certainly try," Lucas said.

Travis, like most of the rest of the judges, looked from Lucas to Nathan with a growing sense of horror. He was the first to speak. "Did the Strykers buy you off, Nathan? Is that why the neurotrackers don't work?"

Lucas's laughter made their skin crawl. "Buy us off? Hardly. We were their salvation."

"What are you talking about?" Anchali asked, voice strained. "Lucas, what have they done to you?"

"Did you honestly think the Strykers would simply let you slaughter and discard us, over and over again?" Ciari asked. "You had to know we'd find a way to save some of our people, even if it meant giving up control to someone else. We gave up high-Cla.s.sed psions that were scheduled for termination to the Sercas. The Serca family's Warhounds were always a better option than death, no matter the violations to our minds once the kill switch was removed."

"Warhounds," Cherise said, the word coming out mangled. "Nathan, what is she talking about?"

They were all looking at the owner of the Serca Syndicate, disbelief and horror in their eyes, on their faces, desperately hoping for an answer that would keep their world on an even keel.

Your inability to see things for what they really are is staggering, Lucas said into everyone's mind. Did you really think you could leave all the psions behind to die? Your entire dream was sh.o.r.ed up by my family, and we happen to be some of the strongest psions on this planet.

Lucas didn't bother to hold back, shoving his power into their static human minds without care. The fifteen judges were unable to handle the intrusion and several of the older ones collapsed.

If this was the point you wanted to make, it won't do you any good, Nathan said, a riot of power surging beyond his words.

Lucas readied his telekinesis for a teleport and felt his s.h.i.+elds almost buckle beneath Nathan's powerful telekinetic blow. He stumbled forward a few steps, balance thrown off by the strength of the attack. Lucas lifted his head, glaring at Nathan, hating to reveal even a shred of weakness before his father.

You never did learn to obey your betters, Nathan said. I blame Marcheline for that.

The combined telekinetic and telepathic strikes against Lucas's s.h.i.+elds were expected. He held up beneath the attack, mind still reaching for the teleport. Lucas could see his destination in his mind, had strength to get there, even through Nathan's power-except it was only enough to carry himself out of The Hague. If he was going to be at all ready to fight later on when his power would be needed, he couldn't fight for anyone's life save his own. Neither could he remain here much longer.

Lucas felt too-warm fingers touch his cheek, sliding down the curve of his jaw. Felt lips brush against his ear. "Save my Strykers," Ciari said, her voice soft. "You owe me that."

He owed her everything. They both knew it.

"Good-bye," Lucas said.

He slammed his power against Nathan's defenses, putting every bit of strength into that one blow. It bought him seconds, enough time to teleport out of Nathan's reach, physically leaving Ciari behind. She briefly closed her eyes, feeling an echo of Lucas in her mind.

Nathan stared at the empty spot where his son once stood, trying to find some reason behind Lucas's actions.

"You can't be a psion," Travis whispered, begging for it to not be true. "Nathan-you can't."

"He is," Ciari said, gaze locked on Nathan's face. "Every Serca has been. You've all wondered over the years about who controlled the rogue psions of the world and allowed them to thrive. The Warhounds have been the Sercas' private army since the beginning."

"And for all the psions we saved at your behest and those who held your rank in the past, this is how you repay my family." Nathan gave Ciari a faint, mocking bow. "So glad to know where your loyalties lie."

"With my people" was her answer. "Always with them."

"You'll certainly die with them."

If the World Court thought they could beg, barter, or bargain their way out this time, they were in denial. Nathan heard their pleas, their willingness to do whatever he wanted, pay whatever he asked, if he would only spare them.

Like you spared all the psions you and your predecessors enslaved and killed? Nathan asked, his power fluctuating across the mental grid with deadly force. I have no use for most of the humans who belong to the Registry. This was planned over generations, over centuries. There is nothing you have to offer me, for I already own everything you thought you would keep.

For all the arrogance of the World Court, for all the pride that collective government body took in saving the human race, their discriminatory practices destroyed them in the end. Knowledge of what they had unknowingly harbored in the pristine halls of government since the end of the Border Wars-diseased psion DNA in a family that looked so human-left them reeling.

They died, one by one, minds burning out beneath the onslaught of a telepathic strike that had no boundaries. Human minds weren't capable of handling psionic interference. Nathan took them apart, unraveling their lives until nothing was left except empty minds and empty eyes; just bodies with hearts that beat, and then, just corpses.

Ciari watched them die and felt nothing. She raised her eyes to Nathan as he turned to look at her, neither of them bound anymore by the conventions of a life they were born into.

"My son should have saved you," Nathan said as he skimmed his power over Ciari's fragile, broken mind. "His loyalty has always been questionable."

"He didn't come to say good-bye to you."

Ciari smiled as Nathan's mind slid into hers, breaking through mental s.h.i.+elds tainted with insanity. Her smile was small, just the faint quirk of her mouth, but it held so much emotion. A lifetime of wanting, of hoping, brought Ciari to her knees, the schemes of a child laying waste to her memories as Nathan cut into her mind. He ripped apart the foundations of her s.h.i.+elds, baring her mind to the cacophony of the world's thoughts and emotions, but he hesitated when faced with the irrefutable presence of growing insanity. The hesitation lasted only a moment before Nathan continued his onslaught.

A second telepathic touch flowed through Ciari's thoughts-familiar, cool. She sucked in a quiet breath even as pain began to override her body. She thought she understood it now.

Close your eyes, Lucas said, telepathic fingers sliding over everything that she was, everything that she had lost, hiding all that she knew from Nathan. I'll take you away from here.

She did as he asked, his telepathy a barrier that Nathan couldn't cross, no matter how hard his father fought. Ciari's mind was a battlefield between a pair of Cla.s.s I triad psions, and she didn't have the capacity to survive it. Lucas knew that, had always known that. Somewhere in Ciari's mind, she knew it, too.

This isn't what Aisling promised me, Ciari said as she opened her eyes and looked around at the familiar, twisted landscape of her birth city, Buffalo a tangled mess of forgotten dreams and living nightmares spread out before her. The Hague and the Peace Palace seemed like a lifetime ago. She thought she could still feel the carpet beneath her cheek.

I know, Lucas said, standing by Ciari's side in the street he built in her mind.

Clouds were in the makes.h.i.+ft sky, and a breeze touched Ciari's skin, freezing her by centimeters. Somewhere in the distance, there was thunder, growing fainter with every breath she took.

We tried, Ciari said, tipping her head back to stare at the sky and the storm that was leaving her. That has to count for something, doesn't it?

Lucas touched his hand to hers, but she didn't feel the pressure. It does.

The air smelled wet, felt shock-edged with potential. Lucas's hand fell away. When Ciari turned to look at him, only emptiness was beside her, around her.

The rain, when it came, fell soft and clean down on a memory blowing through a world that was crumbling away.

Lucas let her go.

THIRTY-SEVEN.

SEPTEMBER 2379.

TORONTO, CANADA.

Matron picked them up, flying a familiar shuttle through the gray Russian sky to retrieve them from the rocky outpost. The scavenger took one look at where the three stood at the bottom of the cargo ramp, heavy, hard-backed metal carrying case resting between Threnody and Kerr, and shook her head.

"Just tell me it ain't gonna blow us out of the sky," Matron said.

"So long as you don't roll the d.a.m.n shuttle, it'll be fine," Novak said in a ragged voice. "Tell me you got painkillers on this piece of junk."

"Stop whining and go dose yourself."

The hacker staggered up the cargo ramp, every step looking as if it hurt. He headed for the med-kit bolted to the deck near the front hatch. Matron watched him go with a frown on her face. "What's wrong with him?"

"He fried half his brain getting us the bomb," Kerr said as he reached down to grab the handle on his side of the carrying case. "You should take him to Korman after you drop us off in Paris."

Matron swore. "G.o.dd.a.m.n that boy. Lucas is gonna kill all my scavengers and what the f.u.c.k am I supposed to do then?"