Heart of Obsidian

Chapter 2

THE DRESSER MIRROR against the wall opposite the bathroom door lay smashed, shards of glass on the carpet, on the bed, on her as she sat hunched in the center of that bed. A smeared streak of wet red sliced her cheek from where a splinter had flown directly at her, but she appeared otherwise uninjured.

Not far from the mirror lay the broken pieces of the mug she’d used to shatter the glass, the spilled tea a rusty stain on the dresser itself and on the pale rug that covered the polished wood of the floor.

Kaleb didn’t ask for the reason behind her behavior. “Stay still.” Gathering up the larger fragments of glass, he teleported them out into the waste receptacle. He knew a teleporter who could take blood itself out of carpet, but Kaleb’s ability worked on a larger scale. He could cause an earthquake that would devour a city, rip an airjet out of the sky with his mind, even create a tidal wave—what he could not do was pick up every tiny sliver of glass.

“You can’t stay in this room,” he said. “Not until it’s been cleaned.”

She shifted to press her back against the headboard in silent rebellion. Since forcing her compliance would run counter to his intention to win her trust, he reworked the situation, came up with another viable solution. “Hold on.”

His guest let out a surprised gasp, grabbing at the sheets as the entire bed lifted a foot off the floor. Holding it and the other furniture aloft, Kaleb used his Tk to roll up the thick rug that ran the entire length of the room and covered ninety percent of the floor. There appeared to be no shards on the floor itself, but he walked around the room to make certain before returning to his position by the door, the rolled-up rug at his feet.

Gauging the impact of the stains caused by the tea, he accessed a visual file he made certain to keep up-to-date and, using the image as a lock, teleported the rug straight into the incinerator of the region’s central waste processing and recycling plant.

Neither his DNA nor hers could be permitted to fall into the wrong hands.

He had her lifted off the sheets and the bedding rolled up and in the same incinerator before she realized what was happening. Placing her back on the now-stripped bed, he brought in a spare rug from the storage space under the house and rolled it out. “Try not to damage this one,” he said as he resettled the bed. “It’s hand-knotted silk.”

A vivid blue swirled with cream and a hint of indigo, he’d bought it five years ago, when his companies first started turning profits that went well beyond what even the most conservative individual would consider a healthy safety margin. “Is there anything else you’d like to destroy? Do it now so I can catch the shrapnel.”

The woman on the bed stared at him, before doing something he hadn’t anticipated. She picked up the small vase on the bedside table and threw it at something above his head. He ducked, turning just in time to stop the projectile from impacting with the tiny sensor light that gave away the position of the fire alarm.

As the vase hovered in front of the blinking red light, he began to comprehend the very rational reason behind her apparently irrational act. “It’s not a camera. And the mirror was just a mirror.” Even as he spoke, he understood that she wasn’t going to believe him. The alarm would be in pieces the instant he walked out the door, even if she had to use every projectile in the room to smash it.

Returning the vase to the table, he reached up to remove the alarm from the wall, his height—unlike hers—more than sufficient for the task. The removal wouldn’t compromise her safety; he’d make certain of that fact. Task complete, he got rid of the device and once more faced the woman who hadn’t taken her eyes off him since he’d appeared in the bedroom. “Anything else?”

Her gaze went to the recessed ceiling light.

“I take that out,” he said, “and you’ll be in the dark.”

No change in her focus.

Since the battle wasn’t a crucial one in this war, he ’ported in a small table lamp from another part of the house. “Go over that.”

She took her time doing so, but when she turned it on rather than attempt to destroy it, he judged her satisfied that it wasn’t rigged with surveillance equipment. Dismantling the ceiling light, he scanned the room for anything else that might read as suspicious to her mind. Nothing stood out, and given the areas on which she’d focused, it was likely she’d already checked the walls and visually examined the ceiling.

Categorically not a mind functioning on the animal level alone, regardless of what he’d seen of her twisted mental pathways.

Walking into the bathroom on that thought, he removed both the light and a ceiling-mounted heat lamp, replacing them with a tall, freestanding waterproof lamp she could take apart if necessary. The mirror went, too, and he removed the fine grille on the airflow system so she could see there was nothing beyond but a silent fan meant to mitigate condensation.

By the time he returned to the terrace, his skin had cooled, but it heated up quickly enough, even in the light breeze coming off the trees on the other side of the gorge. With each screw he drilled into place, he considered the room where she’d been held, the probable response of her captors when they’d lost the feed from her cell to sudden static. It would’ve lasted mere seconds, left them staring at the image of an empty room after it cleared.

The static was a useful tool he’d discovered as a teen while experimenting with his abilities. The sheer strength of his telekinesis meant he put out a low-level “hum” that wasn’t discernible to humanoid ears, but that made animals uneasy and messed with technology. He had it under control now, of course. The only time he permitted the hum to escape his shields was when he needed to obfuscate his presence in front of a camera or to otherwise disrupt technological surveillance. It was an aspect of his abilities known to only one other living individual aside from Kaleb.

Nevertheless, given the speed of the teleport, his guest’s captors would suspect the involvement of a high-level Tk, and there were very few of them in the pool, but no one would know it had been Kaleb. Not until he was ready.

And then they would beg for mercy.

Even the most powerful, most Silent begged in the end, the conditioning cracking in the face of a scrabbling panic that blinded them to the fact Kaleb had no mercy in him.

The final screw in place, he packed up his equipment and teleported it away. It was odd to see the terrace surrounded by metal railings—they allowed a view out from between the bars but no entry to the black maw of the gorge. Not even his guest was thin enough to fit in the spaces between the bars.

Sir.

The polite telepathic knock belonged to Silver, his aide and a member of the quietly influential Mercant family.

He opened the telepathic channel. What is it? He didn’t remind her that he’d asked not to be disturbed—Silver wouldn’t be going against his express orders unless it was necessary.

There’s been an attack against a small think tank in Khartoum. The think tank had just announced the parameters of its next research project: the benefits to Psy of greater political cooperation and social interaction with humans and changelings.

So, he thought, the next volley had been shot in the civil war that loomed over the PsyNet. How many dead?

All ten of those in the building at the time. A poisonous gas introduced into their air supply.

Has Pure Psy claimed responsibility? The radical pro-Silence group had gone quiet in the aftermath of its decisive defeat in the California region at the hands of a force comprised of the SnowDancer wolves and the DarkRiver leopards, as well as Psy who looked to the two Councilors in the area—Nikita Duncan and Anthony Kyriakus—for guidance. The humans, too, had joined in the resistance to Pure Psy’s attempt to seize control of the greater San Francisco and Sierra Nevada region, leading to an alliance that crossed racial boundaries Pure Psy wanted to maintain at all costs.

Such a motive seemed to run counter to the group’s avowed focus on the PsyNet, but underlying Pure Psy’s outwardly “rational” rhetoric was the belief that the Psy were superior to the other races, that if their people would only seal the cracks that had begun to appear in the foundations of the Silence Protocol, they would once again be the most powerful race on the planet.

Any attempt to better integrate the Psy populace with the humans and changelings was thus seen not only as an attack against the Protocol, but as a threat to the genetic superiority of the Psy race. It was an unsound premise. Kaleb knew the Psy were as flawed as the humans or changelings—he’d come of age in rooms ripe with the scent of congealing blood, screams echoing in his ears; he knew the dark underbelly of their race had simply been buried, not erased.

Confirmed, Silver said after a short delay. Pure Psy has taken responsibility for the poisoning, and the claim was public. She sent him a visual, her telepathy strong enough that it was crisp, clear.

The side of the building owned by the think tank had been emblazoned with the image of a star with the letter P at the center. The P was white, the area around it black. Below were the words Absolution in Purity, JOIN US.

This is new, he said to Silver.

Yes. It’s the first appearance of this decal.

A decal. That explained how the Pure Psy operatives had been able to put it up so fast. He wondered if the religious undertone was intentional. Vasquez, the faceless man at the head of Pure Psy since Councilor Henry Scott’s demise, might be a fanatic, but he was a smart fanatic, as evidenced by the fact that no one had been able to dig up any verifiable details about his physical appearance. Now, even as he decried those whose Silence was fractured, who believed emotion was not the enemy of the Psy race, he used an emotive call to arms.

Clever.

Or psychotic.

Why hasn’t this news hit the Net? Kaleb might have been distracted over the past few hours, but his mind continued to scan the pathways of the Net, and he’d heard nothing of what was a significant act of aggression.

Bad timing, answered Silver’s mental voice. Pure Psy operatives must’ve finished putting up the decal seconds before an Enforcement vehicle cruised down the street and spotted it. The officers became suspicious, checked the building, and discovered the bodies.

As a result, the external processing is being completed while the city sleeps, the decal removed. The only reason I have the data is because of a cousin high in Enforcement Command in the country—they’ve managed to black out the incident as far as the media are concerned.

The failure to gain Netwide exposure would only incite Pure Psy to further acts of lethal violence. Is your contact any closer to infiltrating the inner circle? While Pure Psy was doing an excellent job of creating the instability he needed for his current endgame, the group was a rogue element. Kaleb preferred iron control in all things.

No. Vasquez is very, very careful.

Continue to monitor the situation in Khartoum. Keep me updated.

Yes, sir.

Hearing a tiny sound at his back as he closed the telepathic link, he walked to the railing instead of turning, his eyes on the impenetrable depths of the gorge.

The lights went off a second later, leaving the terrace lit only by the stars, the moon at full dark tonight.

Bare feet padding on the wood of the terrace, a whisper of scent, clean and fresh, a flutter of green as she came to stand beside him—though she left a good three meters of distance between them. Dressed in a green T-shirt and soft gray pajama pants, she’d clearly washed her hair, but it hung tangled and knotted around her face, hiding her profile from him as she closed her fingers around the bars, squeezing the cold of the metal so hard her skin turned ghostly white.

“It’s only a prison,” he said, “so long as you aren’t in control of your mind.” If he dropped the shields in which he’d encased her, she became vulnerable to even the weakest of their brethren, her mind shorn of its protective coating. “Rebuild your shields and I’ll set you free.”

It was a lie.

He would never let her go.