Jael set aside her work, wis.h.i.+ng she had a gla.s.s of water to wash away the taste. "Where is she putting that bush?"

"Tree. Pears grow on trees, and she's thinking of putting some greenery into Kensington Gardens."

"Kensington Gardens is full of transients. What's she going to do? Order them to move?"

"If she wants us to clear it out, we'll clear it out." Jason slouched a little in his seat. "She's just taking what's owed to her. I'm willing to let her experiment, but winter's coming soon and nothing grows in the cold."

"Maybe wait until spring."

"Maybe," Jason echoed, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling.

The silence in the office was heavy, but neither of them felt the need to break it. Nearly two and a half months since the world almost ended again, and things were still changing. There was an orchard in St. James's Park that people visited, or talked about visiting. It was overseen by Matron and her scavengers, the group having appropriated a building abandoned during the riots. No one in London fought her on her claim that she owned that bit of land, not even the drug cartels. Matron was only human, but she had psions on her side, and that was enough to make anyone pause these days.

Jael ran a fingertip over the line of her teeth, the tartness from the fruit still stinging her tongue. The amount of new food that was growing in Toronto's SkyFarms and others across the world was heartening, even if their stomachs couldn't handle it yet. A lifetime of bland GMO food had prepared no one for the shock that came with taste. Adjusting to the new diet was going to take time. Her people had enough of it for now.

"Does it ever feel weird?" Jason said, his voice jerking Jael from her thoughts. "Sitting in this office?"

"Always," Jael replied, trying not to hunch her shoulders. Leaders.h.i.+p was always so much easier when someone else was doing it.

The door to Jael's office slid open, causing Jason to twist around in his chair to see who it was. He stood up as Samantha's thin figure stepped inside. The young woman crossed the office with measured strides, holding herself rigidly, as if she were afraid she would take one wrong step and break.

Samantha wore the soft, comfortable clothes those in recovery were given, though she no longer had a room in the medical level to call her own. Jael had upgraded her physical condition weeks ago to discharge, though Samantha's mental state was still in doubt-she was still at risk for suicide. Jael thought a change of scenery would be helpful; better than being sequestered in a white medical room with machines that constantly showed what she was missing, even if her new room came with twenty-four-hour surveillance.

Psions didn't mutate postnatal. Their Cla.s.sification, however, could change. Samantha's telepathy was, for the most part, nonexistent now. The merge and Jael's psionic interference had broken her mind down to a Cla.s.s IX, more human than psion, her telepathic reach no stronger than the softest whisper within her own thoughts. Samantha never used her power anymore, too aware and too prideful of what she had once been to accept what she had become.

Maybe it would have been better, more merciful, if she had died like Kristen. Jael hadn't been able to save Samantha's sister. If she was honest with herself, she hadn't tried very hard. Kristen's mind had torn itself apart during the merge, pain finally overcoming the empath's power. There hadn't been much left for Jael to save, and she didn't regret letting the teenager die. Keeping Samantha from doing the same was a full-time job on some days.

Samantha flicked Jason a wary look. Jason, for his part, made sure his s.h.i.+elds were locked down tight. "If you need to speak with Jael in private, I can leave."

"No," Samantha said, her voice raspy. The weeks she'd spent screaming in the medical level during her recovery had permanently ruined her once-pretty soprano voice. "I need the latest report on survivors. There's a press conference tomorrow and I'm better at writing speeches than the people you've a.s.signed to public relations."

Jael picked up a datapad from the pile on her desk and pushed it toward the edge. "It's right here."

Jason took a careful step back, giving Samantha room to take the datapad and not feel as if he was invading her personal s.p.a.ce. She took it and hugged it to her chest.

"Latest world population count puts us at over a million by about fifty thousand," Jael said quietly. "Give or take a few hundred. The Registry only told us who was going into s.p.a.ce, not who was left behind, and we lost tens of thousands in the riots. The census will take maybe another year or so to complete, but you can report on the rough findings. I think that will satisfy the public."

"And the count for psions?" Samantha said, sounding as if the question was difficult to ask.

"Around six hundred or so, if we're being generous. There's talk of a child or two in the Americas that show signs of being psions." Jael hesitated before saying, "Telepaths, according to the bioscanners. I'm sending out a team for retrieval."

Samantha's entire body flinched. She bit her lip, looking away from Jael and out at the view of Toronto instead. "We need those. There are so few telepaths and telekinetics left."

"I know."

This is all we've got, Jael thought as she watched Samantha turn around and head for the door. Just the remains and nothing more. We've got to make it worth something.

Keiko and Aidan were dead, as were nearly 85 percent of the Strykers' telepaths and 50 percent of their telekinetics. The worldwide merge Lucas had led in the a.s.sault on Paris had decimated the Strykers Syndicate's ranks. Empaths, pyrokinetics, electrokinetics, and psychometrists outnumbered the other two kinds of psions now, those that survived the riots at least. Prior to that, they had lost roughly 250 psions through the World Court's ma.s.s termination. Whoever was brought back from the retrieval mission would never know the feel of a neurotracker in his or her head.

It was a start.

The door slid shut behind Samantha. Jason was kind enough to wait until she was gone before tipping his head in Jael's direction as a silent good-bye and teleporting out. Jael sighed and leaned back in her chair, rubbing wearily at one shoulder. She ached in a way she never had before, body running through the last dregs of life in her cells. Jael knew the signs better than most; she just didn't know how long she had left. Maybe a year, maybe less, maybe more.

"So much to do, so little time," Jael murmured to herself as she got to her feet.

She was never much good at leading beyond the confines of the medical level. Whoever succeeded her would have to be. The Strykers Syndicate couldn't show weakness to the world, but neither could it show the same rigidity the old government had ruled with. It was a delicate balancing act, and she thought only one family could actually pull it all off. Pity the one they all needed wasn't even born yet.

Jael left the office, nodding at the handful of aides working in the area beyond her doors. "I'll be on the medical level if anyone needs me."

She headed for the lift, rubbing at her temple, wis.h.i.+ng the headache she had would go away.

FORTY-NINE.

NOVEMBER 2379.

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM.

Jason crossed two continents and an ocean, arriving in London after two days' worth of work back west. His feet hit the floor of the small arrival room with a dull thump. Toronto was five hours behind and still working through its late afternoon. It was evening here. Sighing, Jason stepped off the wooden arrival platform. The room was painted white, but even the paint job couldn't hide how worn-out the place looked.

The door opened manually and he left the room behind, heading for the faint sound of people on the ground level. Matron and some of her scavengers were finis.h.i.+ng their evening meal when Jason walked into the communal kitchen. The rest of her crew were still down in the southern hemisphere, cataloguing the seed bank on Antarctica. The s.h.i.+ft change wouldn't happen for another week.

Matron looked up from the conversation she was having with Zahara in between bites of stir-fry. "You're back early. Jael like the fruit?"

"No," Jason said.

"She just don't know what tastes good." Matron jerked her thumb in the direction of the tenement's entrance. "If you're looking for Quinton, he's outside."

Matron only meant one place when she said outside. Jason nodded and headed out into the chilly, late-autumn night. He was glad for the warmth of his coat, but the wind still found places to blow through, making him s.h.i.+ver. He crossed the cracked street for the dry expanse of St. James's Park, ducking his head against the wind. The park was a fallow patch of earth that once provided homes for transients, but not anymore. The squalor had forcibly been removed, leaving behind swathes of hard dirt and a barren lake bottom.

Jason cut west across the area. He didn't join the crowd that always gathered around the motley growth of trees and bushes that hugged one small, raised plot of dirt within the perimeter of the lake bed. Glancing over his shoulder, Jason could see the light that played across the tree branches with their brittle red-gold leaves. People were more interested in what Matron was growing with his help than the news streams that slid over the hologrids surrounding the park area, lighting up the night with neon.

Jason wasn't interested in anything except the person sitting on the worn-out cement steps surrounding a cement pillar at the other end of the park. A statue had sat on top of it once, according to records, but it was lost to history now. Jason climbed the steps at an angle, moving around the people gathered there. Everyone ignored him, which Jason appreciated as he went to sit beside Quinton. The older man nodded faintly, the only greeting Quinton gave. Jason got comfortable, watching the crowds pa.s.s them by on the street, quads mingling to try to keep the peace on the Strykers Syndicate's orders.

They didn't speak right away. They didn't need to. The bond that linked them had been cut even deeper into their minds during the fight in Paris, a casualty of the merge. It had strengthened the psi link to such a degree that not even a Cla.s.s I telepath would be able to sever it now. Jason's power hummed down the length of the bond when he used his microtelekinesis, needing Quinton's mind as a stabilizing anchor.

It wasn't going to be enough in the long run; they both knew it. The stronger the psion, the shorter the psion's life, and Jason knew he had only a couple years left if he was lucky. It was the trade-off for what he could do-reconstruct everyone else's life at the cost of his own.

Despite the bond, the two couldn't read each other's mind or emotions, but they understood each other better now because of it. The antagonism that had been there months ago upon joining up for that fateful mission in the Slums of the Angels was gone, buried beneath shared experiences and shared grief.

"You have a headache," Quinton said after a while, staring at the low skyline of London beyond the razed area where a palace once stood. It got turned into a night market over a century ago, and the cacophony of people coming out for an evening of street entertainment reached their ears.

"Same one from this morning," Jason said. "I don't know how to block you from getting feedback."

"It's fine."

Gas hissed as it was released from the biotubes in Quinton's arms. He snapped his fingers, lighting it, letting the ball of fire grow to a decent size as it hovered in the air between them above their knees. The heat made the chill bearable, even if it made everyone else around them draw away out of fear, giving them s.p.a.ce. Jason pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and pried one out, lighting it off Quinton's fire.

People around them weren't discreet in the way they gave ground to the pair of psions sitting on the steps. Without uniforms anymore to distinguish psions from the rest of the population, everyone looked human. It was hard to see the differences now that the old laws no longer applied.

Quinton tilted his head back, staring up at the cloudy sky. Jason followed his gaze, blowing smoke up into the air. "Think any of them made it?"

"I don't know," Quinton said, mouth thinning into a flat line. "I hope not."

In the weeks since the nuclear destruction in Paris, the Strykers Syndicate had been focused on Earth, not the stars. If any of the s.p.a.ce shuttles made it to the Ark, if the Ark made it out of cold-dock, maybe the people who fled had survived and were headed to Mars Colony. Maybe not. The Strykers Syndicate only had access to a few working satellites, and even those could only tell them so much. Most of the government's codes and knowledge had been lost when The Hague was half-destroyed and the Peace Palace burned to the ground.

Popular opinion leaned toward abandoning The Hague. Too many memories were left behind in that city, memories no one wanted. The psychometrists who scoured the rubble there said the memories were too corrosive, too strong, to ever really fade. It wasn't worth rebuilding over the lies buried there. But the bunkers and tunnels below were still viable for people to call home. Even if the government left that city behind, civilians wouldn't.

The Strykers Syndicate was still functioning. Most of the Strykers who survived had opted to stay and work rather than leave. Despite their newfound freedom, they had nowhere else to go. Some still left once they recovered from wounds incurred in Paris or in any number of riots that filled the world's streets during that time. Problems were reported from time to time of psion attacks against people, sometimes by ex-Strykers, sometimes by Warhounds. Not all of Nathan's people had died in Paris; they just didn't know how many survived.

Security was an issue that Strykers excelled at, but they weren't doing it for free. If the world wanted stability, it would have to pay for it. The cost seemed high to the registered humans still living-psions wanted equal decision-making authority with whatever government was being cobbled together in London-but most people in the streets weren't as discriminatory, despite the Strykers' use of a nuclear bomb. It hadn't been directed at them, but the registered elite.

"h.e.l.l of a way to go, dying on some other planet." Jason took another drag on his cigarette. "I hope they die slow."

Quinton barked out a laugh, the smile on his face humorless and all teeth. "You and me both."

The sound of London at night filtered through the air, the city towers only half-lit. For all that the city towers were open to everyone now, people on the street were still hesitant to enter them. They weren't abandoned, not how some city towers had been in other parts of the world. No one was certain of the whereabouts of those registered humans and probably never would be, even with the oncoming census set to doc.u.ment everyone's ident.i.ties to create a Registry of humans and psions alike. The old government didn't exist anymore to deny people access based on damaged genetics. That didn't mean old habits were easy to let go.

"We should leave soon," Jason finally said as he stubbed out his cigarette. "Lucas is expecting us."

Quinton didn't move. "I hate Toronto."

"I know."

It was why they lived here now, in London, with Matron and her scavengers. Maybe things would be easier if they moved back to the city tower they'd spent most of their lives working out of, but other Strykers kept wanting to pull them back into a fold they'd left months ago in a broken-down cathedral on America's western sh.o.r.e. While survivor's guilt was shared by all of them, almost every Stryker back in Toronto and those residing in outposts in various cities hadn't experienced what they had.

The loss might be similar, but it wasn't the same.

"I miss her," Quinton said quietly.

Jason's mouth twisted, grief a bitter taste on his tongue, even after all these weeks. He pressed one hand against the edge of the cement step, thinking he could still feel Kerr's hand in his. Thinking maybe, if they'd had just a little more time, he could have saved them. Both of them.

"I'm sorry," Jason whispered.

Neither knew whom he was apologizing to.

Quinton let his hand hover over the fire, his power slowly fading. When the fire was gone, he got to his feet and Jason did the same. Taking a breath in London, they let it out in Toronto, Jason's teleport bringing them to the arrival room on the medical level.

They stepped off the platform, nodding at the Stryker on duty before heading into the hallway. They made their way to Jael's private lab in silence. The door was locked, but Jason had the override. Lucas knew better than to keep them out of the lab. When they walked inside, they could see Lucas standing before the gestational unit, one hand resting against the warm side of the machine that held his daughter. Jael stood beside Lucas, watching him.

"Lucas," Jason said in greeting as he and Quinton crossed the lab s.p.a.ce. "Jael."

"Didn't expect you back so soon," Jael said, lifting her hand in a half wave. "h.e.l.lo, Quinton. Haven't seen you in a while."

"There's a reason for that," Quinton said.

"I know." Jael didn't bother to hide the sadness in her voice. "But you're always welcome here. You know that."

Quinton ignored her words. Jason shrugged at Jael, not willing to apologize for their choice of distance over reunification. "How's the kid?"

"Doing exceptionally well," Jael said as she picked up a datapad and handed it to Jason. "She's got the genetic markers of a triad psion, but I think we can conclusively say her telekinesis is going to be like yours."

"I should hope so. After all the effort I put in to make her into what we needed, she better be like me."

They all knew that the power Jason had engineered Lucas's daughter into having would change the course of history as surely as nuclear war had. Jael no longer hated Ciari for the closely held orders that woman had given, at Lucas's urging, that set them all on this road. She regretted, uncomfortably so, that she never told Ciari that while she still lived. Not forgiveness, nor regret, but a thank-you. Jael liked to think Ciari would have accepted it.

"We'll have to figure out a way to keep engineering this power," Jael said, gazing at the monitors, voice thoughtful. "It's going to take so long to fix this world, even with the terraforming machines, that we can't let this power die out."

"What about when the world is fixed?" Quinton asked as he braced himself against a nearby lab table. "What then? What happens to our kind?"

"If we're going by rates of half-life, psions are going to be around for the next several thousand years, no worries," Jason said, studying the medical information on the datapad. "Maybe by the time we shrink some of the deadzones, what we can do won't be considered a disease. Maybe we'll all be human, able to live an entire human lifetime, but still have these abilities. Maybe it won't take bad genetics to give birth to a psion."

"That's a lot of maybes."

Jason shrugged. "Who knows? It might happen."

"Let's just stick with what we do know," Jael said. "Someone else can figure out the future."

"Someone already did," Jason reminded her, glancing at Quinton. "Aside from not having a death switch in my head, I'm still not sure I like it."

Empty s.p.a.ces existed in their lives now, silence where another person once lived. The two still grieved the losses of Threnody and Kerr, and always would, no matter how many years they had left to live. They still kept looking over their shoulders for two people who were no longer there, who would never again be there.

Jael tilted her head in acknowledgment of their unsaid words. "That's your prerogative. I'm heading out. Don't keep Lucas in here for too much longer. We need him to get better, not backslide."

"Do you?" Lucas said, his voice quiet, empty.

She'd only allowed him out of his recovery room this week, and he had spent every waking hour in this lab, watching his daughter's heartbeat on the cardiac monitor. Jael stared at his profile, at the bruises still marring the skin beneath his dark blue eyes; those would fade. The bruising in his mind would be with him until death.

Genetically, Lucas would always be a triad psion, but his telepathy wasn't much stronger than Samantha's now, and his telekinesis was completely broken. He couldn't teleport at all. The mess of his emotions, of his pain, was Kristen's legacy. The ruination of his mind was self-inflicted. He would have to live with it, for however long he had left.

"I'm not made to rule," Jael reminded him after a brief pause. "I'm a Stryker, not a Serca."

"You're the OIC."

"I was the last possible choice and you know it. You and Ciari both did."