Branded by Fire

CHAPTER 49

The Ghost preferred to meet his fellow rebels in person so he could gauge their voices, their body language. He trusted no one. But Judd Lauren and Xavier Perez had been with him long enough that he didn’t expect them to betray him. That in itself was a concession he’d never thought he’d make.

Looking down at the untraceable cell phone in his hand, he considered which one of them to call. Xavier was human, Judd a Psy defector. Xavier had lived with emotion his whole life. Judd had only just begun.

Perhaps this time, the man who’d known Silence, and now knew something else, would be the better choice. Coding in the number as he stood in a desolate location no one would ever trace to his real identity, he called Judd.

The other man picked up after five rings. He had to have been asleep but his voice was clear when he said, “Didn’t expect to hear from you today. Guessing the Net’s in an uproar.”

The Ghost thought about his next words. “To what are you referring?”

“Still don’t trust me?” There was no rancor in the comment. “Councilors are being targeted for assassination.”

“It wasn’t limited to Councilors,” he told the other man. “Several high-ranking people in the substructure are dead.”

“But,” Judd said in a way that reminded the Ghost he’d once been an Arrow, an assassin, “it’s not the catastrophe it could’ve been. So, what do you need?”

“The answer to a question.” He laid out the facts dealing with the offer of voluntary rehabilitation. “Do I have any right to stand in the way of those who want to strengthen their conditioning? I’ve never been concerned with destroying Silence itself.” His goals were deeper, older. He wanted to cut out the rot, excise the sickness that threatened to destroy his people all over again . . . while their Council watched, complicit in their deaths. “But the Protocol is a weapon the Council uses to keep the populace in line.”

Judd took a long time to answer. “There’s a difference between making a free choice, and making a choice because you’re afraid of change. No one knows what the Net will be like with emotion—”

“We know,” the Ghost said. “Before Silence, our race was on the verge of extinction.” Violence and insanity had run rampant, savaging the PsyNet from within.

“Yes, exactly—before Silence. The Protocol’s changed us, changed the Net. I’m alive today because of what I learned from the conditioning process. We won’t go back to what we were.”

The Ghost considered this new avenue of thought, realized Judd was right. There could be no comparison between past and present—the future was a true unknown. “The weak ones won’t survive without Silence.” They’d break under the weight of their gifts.

“No,” Judd agreed. “Let them go. We can’t make the choice for them—we can only show them that maybe, they can find another way. Emotion is a powerful tool.”

Long after the conversation was over, the Ghost stood in the desolation of his lonely location and considered Judd’s words. Emotion . . . No, he thought. That was a path he couldn’t take. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

Because if the Ghost lost control, the Net would truly shatter.