Shield of Winter

Chapter 41

DEMOCRACY, AS THE humans understood it, didn’t work in the PsyNet. It was populated by too many powerful minds that could careen out of control if not kept in strict check—which meant the people at the helm had to be ruthless and powerful themselves. Orders were given and followed, any revolt dealt with quickly and quietly before it could impact the Net.

Which was why Kaleb found it surprising that he was about to have a meeting with the woman behind the formation of Silent Voices.

You know how to be charming, Sahara ’pathed as he teleported into the woman’s home. Charm. Smile. Don’t make this a clash but a discussion.

It fascinated Kaleb how Sahara saw him—he wasn’t charming, and the smile he reserved for the world was a calculated, cold-blooded facsimile meant either to discomfort or to put the other party at ease. Of course, Sahara never saw that smile. I’ll attempt not to scare her witless at least. Sahara could’ve ensured that by coming with him, but she’d made it clear she had no desire to be a political powerhouse.

“I’m your extremely private, highly personal advisor,” she’d said to him when they’d discussed how visible she wanted to be. “Our bond needs to be viewable in the Net, but our life together will never be for display.” Hauling him down with a grip on his tie, she’d sealed the promise with a kiss.

The memory making the dark heart of him stretch out like a cat in sunshine, he walked through the living area of the small apartment to find the head of Silent Voices in a tiny study. Ida Mill was seated with her back to the door, her eyes on a wall-mounted computer screen. “You really should face the door.”

Spinning around so fast her chair slammed into the desk, she said, “Councilor Krychek.”

It was to her credit that she’d kept her cool. “Just Krychek will do.”

Dark eyes in a narrow, dark-skinned face met his, her hair steel gray and pulled into a neat knot at her nape. She was only forty-seven according to the file his aide had put together for him, but had gone totally gray by thirty-two. That early sign of aging was a genetic family trait that hadn’t been bred out, likely because it gave the possessors a regal appearance, regardless of their chronological age.

Now, Ida Mill rose to her feet, a woman five feet eight inches tall, with perfect carriage and steely self-possession. “So,” she said, “how long do I have?”

They are terribly melodramatic aren’t they?

Kaleb didn’t remind Sahara that if he’d had his way, the founder of Silent Voices would’ve been dead and buried by this point. “I’ve come to talk, Ms Mill.” Stepping back, he returned to the living area.

The room was the stereotypical featureless Psy box, no art on the walls, not even a single photograph . . . such as the one Sahara had found on one of her old datapads, her father having thrown nothing of Sahara’s away after she disappeared. It was of her and Kaleb, taken with the camera on the datapad. They’d been sitting on a tree branch, Sahara laughing as he used his telekinesis to float the datapad into the correct position to take the shot.

That photograph was now centered on the left wall of their living room, next to an image of Sahara with her father. Yesterday, he’d quietly added another one to the collection—of Sahara curled up on the couch, brow furrowed and teeth bared at something on the comm screen. She’d laughed when she’d seen it, promised revenge, and he knew that wall would fill over time with pieces of their lives.

“You aren’t known for talking.”

Hands casually in the pockets of his suit pants, he met Ida Mill’s wary gaze. “It appears I’m turning over a new leaf.”

The woman’s skin blanched, just as Sahara said, Kaleb.

I think she should be a little scared, he replied, finding it interesting that Ida Mill’s own Silence was nowhere near pristine. I don’t want her to start believing she can cross certain lines with impunity.

A slight pause then, You’re right. Those lines need to stay in place for now.

It was possible, Kaleb thought, that they would have to do so forever. Because the Psy weren’t like the humans or the changelings, and each of those cultures had their own power structures. “You wish to reinitiate Silence.”

The force behind Silent Voices, their effective leader, drew up her shoulders. “Pure Psy went off track, but they had a point. Without Silence, who would we be?”

“For one, we’d have had far fewer sociopaths in the Council superstructure.”

Blinking, the woman stared at him. “A worthy trade-off to stop the insanity and serial killing that led us to this point.”

Kaleb ’ported in a file and placed it on the small table by the window. “Read that. You might change your mind about just how many serial killers operated within the PsyNet during Silence.”

“Records can be doctored.”

“True. These aren’t.” He hadn’t needed to do anything; the horror of Silence was laid out in black and white. “And that isn’t the major issue; the infection, the details of which I’m sure you’re fully aware, is rooted in Silence.”

“You can’t know that.” Her skin pulled tight over her entire face, lines fanning out from the corners of her eyes. “It’s the empaths who are the abominations—we should’ve eliminated them from the gene pool. They feed the infection.”

I didn’t expect that. Sahara’s voice was quiet. Rebellion, yes. But this is bigotry. This is what you anticipated though, isn’t it?

Yes, but for Sahara’s sake, he’d hoped for a better outcome. You’re the one who told me fear comes from the unknown—and the empaths are the biggest unknown in the Net. “So your solution is wholesale slaughter of the Es?”

Ida Mill immediately shook her head. “Of course not. No, we simply believe that the E gene should be spliced out of all future births.”

“It’s been tried before. It didn’t end well.”

“It wasn’t done correctly,” was the reply. “We have data from those times”—a quick glance as she admitted to illegal hacking—“and it appears the E removal was only attempted for a single decade. Hardly enough time for a true experiment.”

“The fact the Net nearly collapsed in those ten years isn’t data enough?”

“We would’ve recovered!” Folding her arms, the woman shook her head. “The plug was pulled too soon.”

“And this is the central tenet of Silent Voices?”

“No, it’s only an adjunct.” Unfolding her arms, she said, “Without Silence, you yourself would be a lethal risk to society. That training is critical for certain members of our race.”

“Such as your son.” Ida Mill’s child was a Tk, an eight-year-old boy who’d been drafted into the cadet academy that spawned black-ops soldiers—previously, it had been for the Council. Now, ironically, those men and women belonged to Kaleb. When it came to children like Ida Mill’s son, he’d ordered a halt on all physical and mental torture, but he hadn’t interfered with the psychic instruction, though it would need to be modified for a post-Silence world.

Lips thinning, she nodded. “What will he do without the Protocol?”

“The fact that Silence has fallen doesn’t mean all the training associated with it is to be discarded.” Every single Arrow he knew, including Judd, needed that training on some level.

“That’s impossible.” The leader of Silent Voices sliced her hand horizontally through the air. “There can be no control without Silence.”

“An opinion without fact.”

Her face set. “If it weren’t fact, our ancestors would’ve never chosen Silence in the first place.”

“We aren’t who we were then; the decisions we make are our own.” He ’ported out before she could answer, having heard enough. “Her thought patterns are set,” he said to Sahara where she’d been working at his desk at the home office.

Sahara ran a hand through her hair, her expression pensive. “Is it possible she’s terrified for her son and clinging to the only thing she knows might help him?”

“I have multiple groups working on how to modify Silence training for a non-Silent world—and I’ve made no attempts to keep those strategic sessions a secret.” He’d sent out invitations to academics and medics, philosophers and more concrete thinkers across the globe. “Ida Mill chooses not to see any other option.”

Sahara had to agree, having been telepathically linked to him throughout the meeting. “If the Es do find a solution to the infection and the Net stays whole, we’ll have to come up with a way to deal with Silent Voices on a day-to-day basis. It’s not as if we can corral these people off—”

“An excellent idea,” Kaleb said. “They can set up a ‘Silent’ corner of the Net, and I’ll make a generous offer to slice them away so they can have their own isolated little Silent community that’ll soon be erased by the infection since they’ll have no Es. Problem solved.”

Having risen to walk over and join him where he was scanning the news headlines on the comm screen set on the wall, Sahara lightly slapped the chest of the man who was her heartbeat. “Stop it.” The thing was, she knew he was perfectly serious, even as he tweaked her. Because Kaleb had a sense of humor, perhaps one only she ever saw, but it was there. It was also very dark. “We aren’t consigning them to roped-off corners of the Net.”

He turned and slid his hands under the waistband of the gray sweats she wore with a black tee in anticipation of the workout she’d planned to do after the meeting. Her body was strong and healthy now, and she intended to keep it that way.

Kaleb nuzzled a kiss to her throat. “It’s a viable plan.”

“Are you going to be serious?” She scowled.

“No. I’d rather cause an earthquake.” Sliding one hand into the back of her panties, he stroked her already damply aroused flesh.

Sahara gasped. “You . . .” Unable to find the words, she began to undo his tie in an effort to fight fire with fire. “This is a serious political decision about the future of our race.”

“There’ll always be a serious political discussion,” Kaleb pointed out, removing his sinful hand to push down her sweats and lift her out of them. “Into infinity.”

Unfortunately, she couldn’t argue with him on that point. As the most powerful Psy in the Net, Kaleb would always be at the top. The fact was, without him, no one would take any ruling body seriously—because he could change everything in a heartbeat.

Raising her arms to allow him to tug off her T-shirt, she dropped his tie to the floor and began to undo the buttons on his shirt. “You’re right,” she said, as he wrapped one arm around her neck and used his other hand to remove the cuff link on that sleeve. “Let’s cause an earthquake.”

The tremor registered forty-five minutes later with the increasingly confused seismologists at the Russian Seismic Agency. A half hour after that, Kaleb stroked Sahara’s lazy-limbed body and said, “Information is power. Let’s put a certain percentage of that power in the hands of the populace.”