Shield of Winter

Chapter 3

IVY WENT CAREFULLY over the bark of the slumbering apple tree. She was on alert for any signs of the fungus that had appeared two weeks earlier, but found nothing. “The treatment worked,” she said to Rabbit. “The other trees are safe.”

Involved in sniffing the snow at the roots of the tree, tail wagging like a metronome, Rabbit gave a small “woof.”

“Glad to see you agree this is a good thing.” Noting down the result on her datapad, she continued on through the trees, Rabbit scampering after her a second later, his paws soft and soundless on the carpet of white.

For such a small dog, she thought as his furry white form streaked past, he could certainly go fast when he put his mind to it. Shaking her head, she left him to his adventures and went to check another apple tree she’d been worried about . . . when Rabbit began to bark. Hairs rising on the back of her neck, she fought her instinctive revulsion and reached into a pants pocket to retrieve the tiny laser weapon that fit neatly into the palm of her hand. Rabbit never barked, not like that. As if he’d scented a predator.

Ten seconds later, she broke out of the trees and knew her dog was right.

There was a man standing on the path between the snow-kissed trees. No, not a man. A soldier. Over six feet tall with broad shoulders, his posture was unyielding, his stillness absolute, his eyes a chill gray, and his hair black.

His uniform, too, was black, stark against the backdrop: rugged pants, a long-sleeved T-shirt of some high-tech and likely bulletproof material that hugged the muscle of his arms, a lightweight armored vest that covered his chest and back as well as the lower part of his neck, heavy combat boots, what appeared to be an electronic gauntlet strapped to his left arm.

They’d come for her again.

A trickle of icy sweat ran down her spine. She’d always known this day was inevitable. Her emotions were too volatile, had no doubt leaked past the tightly woven network of interlinked shields that protected those who called this remote location home. All she could hope for was that she’d betrayed herself alone.

Mother, Father, she telepathed, we have a situation. Tell the others to keep their heads down and ensure their shields are airtight. I’ll handle this.

Fear squeezed frozen fingers around her lungs as she sent an image of the soldier to her parents, but she was no longer a scared sixteen-year-old girl who thought she was going insane; she was a twenty-three-year-old adult who understood that while she was defective and unstable, she didn’t deserve to be violated and tortured. No one would ever again strap her down and attempt to break her. Not even this deadly stranger.

Datapad held to the side of her body with one ice-cold hand, her heavy jacket and thin thermal gloves suddenly useless, she slid away the weapon in the guise of putting her datapen into her pocket. It seemed a counterintuitive act, but her every instinct screamed she’d be dead before she ever got off a shot. She couldn’t win this battle by force, and it was probable she couldn’t win it at all, but she’d fight to give the others as much time as possible to prepare.

Breath tight, she closed the distance between her and the soldier whose uniform bore a silver star on one shoulder. Councilor Kaleb Krychek’s emblem, though he no longer laid claim to the title, the Council in pieces. Simple semantics, however, couldn’t change the fact that as of just over a month ago, Kaleb Krychek effectively ruled the Net.

“Rabbit.” She tapped her thigh, curling her fingers inward to hide the slight trembling she couldn’t seem to control.

Still quivering with outrage, but no longer barking now that she was here, Rabbit ran back to her side and once again pinned his eyes on the intruder.

The man glanced at her dog. “He clearly isn’t of the Leporidae family.”

It was the last thing she’d expected to hear. “It’s because he’s so energetic,” she found herself saying. “It seemed appropriate at the time.” When she’d been half-destroyed, a zombie sleepwalking through life.

“He’s protective but not dangerous. You should get a bigger dog.” Eyes of winter frost met her own, the gray so cold, her skin pebbled with a bone-deep chill.

“He’s perfect,” she said, reaching down to stroke her pet’s stiff form once before rising back to her full height. “You didn’t come here to talk to me about my dog.”

“No.”

“You’re an Arrow.” Part of the squad of assassins long thought of as myth but who were now aligned with Kaleb Krychek—though they remained shadows, nameless and faceless for the majority of the population. No one wanted to meet one in the flesh.

A slight nod that confirmed the unnerving truth. “I am Vasic.”

“Silence has fallen,” she said, holding her ground because this was her place, her home. “You have no right to take me in.” No right to strap her down in a reconditioning chair and stab psychic fingers into her mind, ripping and tearing.

“No,” he said again, so emotionless that she couldn’t see a single element of the person behind the soldier. “I’ve been charged to deliver an employment proposal.”

Ivy just stared at him for several long seconds. “An employment proposal?” she said at last, wondering if she had gone insane after all and was now having a very realistic delusion.

“Yes.”

She shivered. He was too hard, too lethal to be a delusion. Testing him by taking a step back toward the trees, Rabbit growling beside her, she said, “Can we walk and talk? I need to finish checking the trees.”

The Arrow—Vasic—watched in silence as she completed her examination of the apple tree she’d been heading toward before Rabbit’s warning bark. When he did speak, his voice was as deep as the ocean. He didn’t raise his volume or change his pitch in spite of Rabbit’s continued growling, and yet she heard every word with crystal clarity.

“You’ve been identified as having an ability that could be useful in stabilizing the Net.”

“Me? I’m a Gradient 3.2 telepath.” No matter if she sometimes felt a huge stretching inside her mind, as if there was power there, if she could only find a way to touch it, hold it. The mirage had led to her near destruction as a teen.

“Are you aware of rumors of a hidden designation? Designation E?”

Her fingers halted in the act of tapping information into the datapad, her blood cells coated in ice, fine and crystalline. “E?”

“Empath.”

The word resonated in a keening note inside her, as if it spoke to a deep-rooted knowledge of which she was unaware. “What does an empath do?” she said through a throat lined with grit and gravel.

“I’m not certain,” he answered, “but it has to do with emotion.”

Staggering inside, she thought of the chaos of wrenching emotions—pain, loathing, anger, sadness, loss, such tearing loss—that had threatened to crush her mind in the minutes before the cruel agony of the reconditioning. Her nose had bled, the fine blood vessels in her eyes bursting to leave the whites swimming in red, her head pounding and pounding and pounding as her stomach revolted.

It had been the worst episode she’d ever suffered.

“Emotions almost killed me once.” Terrified, she’d been happy to submit to the medical tech at the local center, never realizing the hell that awaited.

In the aftermath of her “treatment,” it had felt like she was just . . . gone, the Ivy who’d lived for sixteen years erased. There had been a quiet horror at the back of her mind at the loss of herself, but that horror couldn’t penetrate the nothingness, not for a long, long time.

“That incident”—Vasic’s voice slicing through the nightmare of memory—“resulted from a catastrophic and sudden breach of your conditioning. The built-up pressure smashed it to pieces.”

That’s exactly what it had felt like, a violent explosion in her head.

“Most Es tend to awaken more slowly,” he continued. “Small fractures that leach off tension rather than a catastrophic collapse.”

Most . . .

“How many?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

“Unknown, but E is a significant grouping.” His gaze scanned her face with clinical precision. “You’re in shock. Sit.” When she did nothing, he went as if to touch her . . . and Rabbit lunged at him.

“No!” she screamed.

Rabbit never reached his target, was left swimming frantically in the air. Reaching down, she gathered her pet into her arms and sat down at the foot of the nearest tree, uncaring of the cold, the datapad forgotten on the ground. “I thought you were going to hurt him,” she said to the Arrow, the telekinetic Arrow.

Vasic didn’t defend himself. As an eight-year-old, he’d resisted using his abilities on living creatures, but an eight-year-old boy can’t withstand torture of the kind used to burn all humanity out of Arrow trainees. He knew he held within himself the capacity to snap the neck or crush the spine of the small creature who was so attached to his mistress. That he’d never done such an act of his own free will meant nothing. Death was death. “Do you wish me to continue?”

Ivy looked at him, her jet-black pupils hugely dilated against the clear copper of her eyes. “Yes.”

“In all probability, your already damaged pathways were further damaged during the reconditioning process.” Needing to be aware of what he faced, Vasic had watched the recording Aden had referenced, witnessed the brutality with which her mind had been yanked back into line.

It was a miracle she’d survived without severe brain damage. The psychic trauma had been vicious regardless. That she was functional and whole and strong enough to stand firm against an Arrow was a testament to what must be an iron will.

“However,” he added, “it’s clear that your Silence has fractured again.” No one who was Silent would have the capacity to care for a pet, or to look at Vasic with fear a staccato pulse in her throat. “The buildup is happening again inside you.”

Ivy set her pet down on the snow, murmuring at the dog to hush when it began to growl at Vasic once more. “You’re saying I could be in the same situation I was at sixteen?”

“Yes.” He crouched down beside her, having realized she couldn’t comfortably look at him if he remained standing. “The technician in charge of your reconditioning was incompetent.” A point Vasic had already made to him in person—and a point the male would never, ever forget. “He simply smashed everything back down inside your mind and slammed a lock over it. That lock is apt to rupture soon, given the amateurish nature of it.”

He saw he’d come too close to the truth when she avoided his eyes, her jawline delicate in his vision . . . easily breakable. “You risk nothing by telling me,” he pointed out, “I’m already aware of both your problematic Silence and the nature of your ability.”

Expression pensive, she rubbed a gloved hand over her face before nodding. “The nosebleeds have begun again, and yesterday, while I was getting supplies from the township, it was as if I was drowning under a wave of happiness and anger and excitement and curiosity and other emotions I couldn’t separate out.” Her fingers shook as she stroked her pet. “It only lasted a second or two, but it was enough.”

Vasic held her gaze, noting that the rim of gold around her irises was more vivid than in the image he had of her. “You may learn how to manage your E abilities during the course of this contract. However, should you decide to turn down the proposal and continue to remain shielded against your abilities, I know a medic who can remove the broken shards of the malfunctioning lock and replace it with a far more subtle, complex construction.”

She stared at him, this woman whose presence caused him physical pain the same way Sascha Duncan’s had. But he wasn’t going to ask for another assignment if Ivy agreed to Krychek’s proposal. Seeing her, speaking to her, had made him understand that aside from children, the empaths were the closest thing the Net had to innocents.

He’d spotted Ivy’s weapon, noted her distaste in holding it, seen her get rid of it. Her features were so expressive it was as if she’d spoken aloud—he’d known she’d made the decision to use herself as a distraction in an effort to protect the others who lived here. Perhaps he was wrong, perhaps her face wasn’t as devoid of deceit as it appeared, but he couldn’t take the risk that he was right, that she was that vulnerable. Because he didn’t trust Krychek to keep his word when it came to the safety of the empaths; the other man’s priority was the Net as a whole, not the individuals within it.

Ivy and the others needed the protection he could provide. Unlike her, he’d have no compunction in using lethal force if someone meant her—or any other E—harm. Keeping them safe wouldn’t earn him absolution, but perhaps it would give him peace for a splinter of time. “Whatever your choice,” he told her, “it will be respected. I give you my word.” His honor was close to worthless, but he’d never broken any of the rare promises he’d made.

IVY stroked Rabbit’s coat when he nudged at her hand with a worried nose. She felt as if her life had skewed sideways in the minutes since she’d first heard him bark. So many years she’d lived believing there was something fundamentally wrong with her. Now, this Arrow with his cold eyes and icy calm was telling her she had never been flawed.

Except she was terrified it was far too late. “I lost something in that reconditioning room”—perhaps the very thing for which he’d come to her—“and I don’t think I can get it back. I broke.”

“Do you wish to give up, then? Admit defeat?”

Anger uncurled inside her at that flat statement, though she knew his words hadn’t been a judgment but a simple question. That anger was a raw, wild thing that had been growing and growing inside her since the day she’d become herself again. Vasic had inadvertently made himself a target.

Pushing up onto her knees, the snow a chilling dampness through her jeans, she fought to keep her shields from fracturing under the weight of her emotions. Kaleb Krychek might have declared the fall of Silence, but neither Ivy nor the others in the settlement were planning to expose themselves until they were dead certain the new regime would hold, that it wasn’t just a trick to bring the fractured out of hiding.

“What do you know of emptiness?” she asked him, her body vibrating with the fury inside her. “What do you know of having your mind violated as if a steel brush is being scraped over your every nerve ending, every sense?”

He took so long to answer that the world was beyond silent when he said, “I am an Arrow. I was placed in training at four years of age. I know everything about having my mind torn open.”

Four years old.

Anger shattering as if it had been hit with an anvil, the wreckage tearing holes through her, she rubbed a fisted hand over her heart. “I’m sorry.”

“Why? You caused me no harm.”

She saw from his expression that he meant that, as if the hurt of that small, vulnerable child was nothing. “Do you truly feel nothing?” she whispered. “Are you without fractures?”

“It’s better this way.” His eyes kissed her with frost. “The day I feel is the day I die.”