Shield of Winter

Chapter 23

ADEN MET WITH Vasic close to dawn the next morning, the two of them standing near the trees looking out over the mist-licked peace of the compound.

“Nightmares,” the other man said, referencing the telepathic conversation they’d had the previous night.

“Ivy was unable to give me any specifics.” Vasic had asked toward the end of their walk, when she’d seemed more centered, no longer afraid. “She described it as a feeling of suffocating darkness.”

“Was she discouraged by the incident?”

“No.”

The single word answer was characteristic of Vasic, yet the depth of confidence in it intrigued Aden. Vasic had stopped getting to know people in tandem with his increasing remoteness when it came to the world. Even with new members of the squad, he made no effort beyond what was necessary for him to function as part of the team. And still, he was one of the first ports of call for any Arrow in trouble. Not because he was a Tk-V, but because he inspired trust on a visceral level.

Vasic simply did not let people down.

“The other empaths?” Aden asked, remembering how he’d felt that same trust as a boy. It had never altered.

“I haven’t had a chance to assess them, or to speak in depth with their Arrows, but it’s possible we may lose one or two.”

Empaths, Aden had learned from Vasic, weren’t all the same. Rationally, Aden had already known that, but the mystery of the E designation was such that he’d lumped them into a single mental category.

“The recent episodes of violence in the Net”—Vasic put his arms behind his back—“seem erratic and small scale.”

“The agitators tend to be individuals who are finding it difficult to adapt to the fall of Silence, but in one case at least, it was a surviving Pure Psy sublieutenant.” Aden looked down at the small white dog that had appeared out of the mist to sit at his feet, its shining black eyes trained on him.

The canine belonged to Ivy Jane, he remembered. “We were able to eliminate the sublieutenant and his attendant cell,” he told Vasic. “The cell was planning a larger-scale event that had no chance of success, though they were too wrapped up in their fanatical ideology to see that.” Pure Psy didn’t have the necessary independence of thought to function efficiently without their leader. And that leader was dead.

“Krychek?”

“He’s left the Pure Psy cleanup to us and is concentrating on ensuring the Net remains stable.” The latter couldn’t be done by brute force alone, but Krychek was far more than that, the former Councilor’s intelligence a blade, his connections labyrinthine.

“We don’t need you on the team handling the cleanup,” he said, to head off any offer Vasic might’ve made. “Your skills are better served here.”

Vasic’s gray eyes were penetrating when they met Aden’s. “I can’t leave the Es, not given the security leak we had with Lianne and the proximity of the infection.” A glance at his gauntlet to check incoming data before he turned back to Aden. “That doesn’t mean I’m not cognizant of your attempts to shield me from overt violence.”

“I’ve never done anything behind your back.” Aden had only ever had one true friend, someone he knew would fight for him and with him regardless of whether he held any power or not. The others in the squad he trusted, but Vasic occupied an entirely different place in his life, until it was as if their blood was the same. Aden would do whatever was necessary to make sure the other man made it, though he knew it might well be an impossible task.

The reason he and Vasic had become friends as children, the reason the others in the squad looked to him instinctively, was the same reason Vasic had never been meant to be an Arrow. He felt too deeply, was too much the protector. As an angry, scared eight-year-old boy when he and Aden first met, he should’ve been focused only on himself—yet he’d sensed Aden’s continual and crushing fear for his Arrow parents.

Instead of resenting Aden for having parents who’d cared enough about him to fight to keep him with them through his enrollment in the squad’s training program, Vasic had come up with distractions to help Aden cope. Later, Vasic had risked severe punishment to help Aden break into the control room so Aden could read the files on his parents’ missions.

That part of Vasic had been buried beneath the weight of the life he’d been forced to live, but it existed. It had always existed. And it would destroy him if Aden couldn’t find a way to redirect his self-hatred and guilt.

“It appears you’ve captured Rabbit’s interest,” Vasic said into the comfortable silence between them, and it was an unexpected comment.

Aden glanced down at the canine that was still sitting on its rump, eyes locked on him. “Perhaps he’s weighing the pros or cons of biting me.”

Vasic didn’t answer, his head angled toward one of the cabins to their left.

Ivy Jane appeared on the porch a second later, a large Arrow jacket engulfing her small body and two steaming mugs in her hands. “Here,” she said when she reached Aden and Vasic, the shadows under her eyes smudges of purple. “Hot nutrient drinks.”

Aden recognized the jacket from a small tear on the upper left sleeve. It had happened during a brutal mission in Alaska, Vasic left alone in a ghost town full of corpses. Aden hadn’t been able to prevent that, and Vasic had asked him not to try. To have done so would’ve put their entire plan to oust Ming LeBon in jeopardy. So Vasic had spent hours teleporting out the dead, the inhabitants of the remote science station having fallen victim to the infection in what was the first known outbreak.

The squad hadn’t been aware of that fact at the time, however; Ming LeBon had withheld the information as he’d withheld so much from the men and women who’d trusted him because he’d once been an active member of the squad. It had taken them too long to realize that while the latter might’ve been true, Ming had never been one of them. He’d always been an “I,” his personal political aspirations trumping any other loyalty.

The Alaska incident, Aden realized, was also the last time he’d seen Vasic wearing that jacket. The other man had used it in the interim, of course, but Aden hadn’t been with him during those operations.

To see it now in such a different context was . . . interesting.

“Thank you,” he said, taking the drink Ivy had prepared. Arrows never ate or drank anything from an unfamiliar source, but taking his cue from Vasic, Aden took a sip of the drink. Why is it hot?

Ivy doesn’t want us to feel the cold.

From which, Aden deduced that Vasic hadn’t told her about the weatherproof properties of the combat uniforms. He immediately understood why. It was strange to be cared for in this fashion, and the strangeness was so unlike everything else in the life of an Arrow that he could find no motivation to clarify the situation for Ivy, either.

He drank a little more, as the empath, her hair braided but curling tendrils falling around her face, looked pointedly at Vasic.

An instant later, the other Arrow said, “Ivy, meet Aden.”

“Hi.” The empath’s smile was open. “It’s nice to meet you when I’m not about to fall unconscious. Thank you for saving my life.”

Before Aden could respond, Vasic spoke again. “You should still be asleep.”

Ivy’s shoulders rose then fell. “I tried but couldn’t. I’ll catch a nap later.” Bending, she petted the little dog with unhidden affection. “My stubborn Rabbit will need a rest, too. He was wide awake and waiting for me when I got back from our walk last night.”

Our walk.

Zeroing in on the words, Aden found himself thinking about the possible unintended side effects of being around the empaths for an Arrow. It was something he’d begun to research when Vasic reported Abbot’s new stability, but the post-Silence Council had done what appeared to be an immaculate job of scrubbing the Net clean of data about the Es. Even non-Net databases had been cleared, printed books taken off shelves and incinerated. Rare copies were rumored to remain but were proving near impossible to track down. As soon as a merchant got even a whiff of Psy interest in the subject, the listing disappeared.

As a result, Aden still had no frame of reference for an empath’s impact on an Arrow, but there was one thing he could judge with accuracy, and that was Vasic’s psychological state. Seeing his partner interact with Ivy made Aden realize Vasic was no longer on the lethal edge where Aden needed to keep an eye on him at all times. Such a result had been his best-case scenario when he’d given Vasic the one task to which his partner had always been suited: protection.

With that best-case scenario already a reality, the future was now an unpredictable road. “We were discussing the impact of last night’s events on your fellow Es,” he said to Ivy Jane when she rose back to her full height. “Do you think any will ask to leave?”

Ivy thrust her hands into the pockets of the coat, her forehead furrowed. “We only touched base for a minute last night,” she said, “but I had the feeling that while people were scared, they were also . . . invigorated.”

“A surprising response.”

“Not really if you think about it.” Skin stretching tight over her jawline, she said, “We’ve been in a cage all our lives; most of us have been told we’re defective. Now, finally, it’s clear we’re not—there’s an enemy out there, and we can not only sense it, we may be able to fight it.”

A purpose, Aden understood, could alter everything.

Ivy looked down when her pet swiveled its head to bark at the mist. “That’s not his alarm bark,” she said, glancing around all the same.

Aden scanned the area telepathically in case the dog had scented something they hadn’t sensed, aware of Vasic doing a scan for unknown heat signatures using his gauntlet at the same time, but there were no intruders. When Rabbit took off a second later, Aden heard Vasic say, “I believe Rabbit is after one of his namesakes.”

Ivy’s shoulders relaxed. “Oh, that’s all right. He never actually goes near them when he’s about to catch one.” Lowering her voice, she whispered, “We don’t speak about it, but I’m pretty sure Rabbit is a little scared of rabbits.”

Aden’s eyes were on Ivy, his attention on Vasic. So he saw the way her face glowed when she spoke to Vasic, noted the very slight movement of Vasic’s head as the other Arrow bent toward her.

Never, not once, had he thought his friend might possess the capacity to bond with a woman. Not even when Kaleb Krychek had bonded with Sahara Kyriakus, throwing open the idea that such a connection was possible for members of the squad. Aden had believed Vasic too damaged, had fought only to save the other man’s life.

Now . . .

He looked again at the two of them silhouetted against the mist and felt a new respect for the empath. She’d somehow hauled Vasic out of the numb nothingness that was his self-imposed purgatory. The question was—was she strong enough to go the distance, to walk in Vasic’s darkness?

If she wasn’t, the damage would be permanent.