Visions of Heat

CHAPTER 8

Faith opened her mouth to reply and realized she had no real answer. She'd been taught that because of the Protocol, the visions would always focus on the narrow subject of commerce. But she'd also been taught that predatory changelings were uniformly violent creatures to be avoided at all costs. And she'd been taught that Sascha Duncan was a failed Psy, when the other cardinal's power was a vibrant blaze.

"Faith." Sascha's voice was gentle, her eyes even more so. "Maybe this was what you were always meant to see."

She'd made the logical connections, but found herself hesitating to draw a conclusion. "Why would they lie to me about that?"

"Because there's no money in stopping murder." Lucas's harsh voice cut into the silence.

"No." She brought the swaying motion to an abrupt halt. "No one could condition that out of me."

"They didn't. You're seeing," Vaughn reminded her.

"I'm twenty-four years old. Why would the dark visions come now?"

"Maybe that's the point at which conditioning starts to break down in certain Psy," Sascha murmured. "I'm only two years older."

Faith stared at the other cardinal. "What did they condition out of you?"

"Everything." Sascha leaned into her mate's stroking hand. "They crippled me, told me I wasn't a cardinal. It almost drove me mad."

Madness. The demon that stalked Faith's every waking hour, whispered in her ear, and awaited her at the end of her life. "Is that what you think will happen to me?"

"If you don't embrace your gift, yes."

"It's not a gift. It's a curse." She didn't want to see horror and pain, terror and malevolence, didn't want to feel. "It might drive me mad by itself."

"You really think you're that weak, Red?" Vaughn's voice was a husky purr against her ear. "You climbed that fence and walked into changeling territory without pause. We have teeth and claws and you took us on. Compared to that, visions should be easy."

Faith turned and met those amazing wild eyes. "The only thing you could've done was kill me. The visions might leave me one of the walking dead."

"Why are you so scared of them?" Sascha asked.

"I don't feel fear." Faith jerked to her feet. "My PsyClan has always ensured I was taken care of. Why would they want to handicap me in any sense?" She knew, she could reason it out, but she wanted someone else to be the one to vocalize it.

Vaughn shifted and she caught the movement with the corner of her eye. "You know the answer to that."

She should've guessed he'd never let her take the easy way out. "Money." Her PsyClan had sold her out for money. "Why am I the first to ... break?"

"Maybe you're not." Sascha stood to face her. "Maybe you're simply the first one who hasn't been found out and silenced."

Faith saw the truth Sascha was too kind to point out. "You mean rehabilitated, don't you?"

"Or perhaps worse, given your value. Any strange disappearances in your family tree?"

"My grandmother was last seen shortly after she gave birth to my father. And five years ago, one of my cousins vanished—Sahara was only sixteen." She let herself think about what that might mean. "You think the Council or the PsyClan might be keeping them captive, working them when they're lucid and letting the dark visions ravage them when they're not?"

"I don't know, Faith. I'm not an F-Psy."

Faith felt Vaughn walk to stand behind her. Somehow that gave her the strength she needed. "I am. And I know that even in the madness, there are moments of clarity. My paternal aunt is held in a care facility—she went conventionally insane during her sixth decade—but she continues to make million-dollar predictions four or five times a year. More than enough to pay for her care." To make her comfortable in her madness.

The last time Faith had seen her aunt, it had been via a communication screen—Carina NightStar could no longer bear any kind of immediate sentient contact. What she'd seen would haunt Faith till the day she died. The icy Gradient 7.5 Psy who'd been one of her trainers, a woman with a record of almost eighty-five percent accuracy, had turned into a creature that no longer looked human. She'd chewed off her own lips and bitten and scratched herself so many times that they'd had to remove most of her fingernails and teeth. Her clothing had been torn, her hair matted. Something strange and wrong had skittered behind her eyes.

"But unlike my aunt, the ones who saw the dark visions could never be allowed to speak to the rest of us. It would bring the success of the entire Protocol into question. They'd have to be locked away, caged before they fell victim to the mental degradation." Faith began to see the true inhumanity of what it was these changelings were asking her to accept.

"Caged Psy can still forecast. In fact, they'd be the perfect tools—machines no one knew existed, their treatment subject to no laws. And if certain other segments of conditioning were deliberately broken, it would leave them open to everything ... including visions of plots or rebellions that might come in very useful to those in power."

"Faith," Sascha began.

"I'm sorry." She raised a hand. "I need time to process everything I've learned so far."

"You might not have a lot of time left." Sascha's tone was anything but harsh.

"Will you see me again? I think I can get away in five days or so."

"Of course."

Faith wondered if in those five days she might make some sense out of the pack of lies upon which she'd apparently been raised. What was true and what was false? The changelings might be right in some matters, but who said they were right in everything? Their loyalties were different, their lives controlled by emotion.

Maybe they were wrong. Maybe her own people didn't only see her as a money-making asset. Maybe.

Vaughn escorted Faith to the edge of the trees. "Will you be okay climbing the fence?"

"Yes." She settled her bag carefully on her back. "You'll be here in five days?" Her eyes were looking anywhere but at him.

"I keep my promises, Red." He curved his hand around her nape. "I may even pay you an earlier visit. Wouldn't want to undo all the good we've done."

"Good?"

He rubbed his thumb over her skin. "I like the way you feel under my touch."

"Don't come, Vaughn. If they catch you, they'll hurt you."

His beast heard something it liked in her tone. "I never get caught, baby. If I can infiltrate the SnowDancer den without tipping them off, then this is child's play."

"There are Psy guards, able to scan the area for signs of sentient life."

"These forests are changeling territory—they have to know we're going to keep an eye on them. Don't worry about me. I'm a big boy." But he was delighted by her concern, for that was definitely what he'd sniffed in the air.

"I simply don't want to mess up my next meeting with Sascha. If you're caught, they'll put me under tougher surveillance." Her skin was soft, but her spine as straight as a rod.

He brushed his lips over her cheek. She gasped and moved away. "Go, Red. The guards are at the optimal distance."

She ran quickly to the fence and scaled it with smooth feminine grace. Oh yeah, she'd definitely make things very interesting in bed. And he had every intention of getting her there. The taste of her on his lips was the most intoxicating thing he'd ever felt.

She landed on her feet on the other side and looked back as if searching for him. He allowed his eyes to go night-glow in the forest and knew the instant she spotted him. Then she was gone, hidden behind the fences of the Psy world.

Good thing cats were excellent climbers.

Early the next morning, Faith shored up her shields against the endless mass of the PsyNet and took a step out of her bedroom. As she'd expected, the chime of the incoming call didn't cease. The M-Psy were checking up on her well before her three-day rest period was officially over. If she didn't answer, they'd likely take it as justification to enter her home.

In the past, that knowledge had settled her—if a vision went wrong, they'd be there to pick up the pieces. But today, the lack of privacy, the lack of her ability to live any kind of a real life, made her— She had no word to describe her reaction. No word that didn't imply feeling, the one thing she couldn't embrace.

She pressed the answer key on the touch pad. "Yes?"

The composed face of one of Xi Yun's underlings looked back at her. "You didn't answer our two earlier calls. We wished to ensure you were conscious and rational."

Because F-Psy had a habit of becoming irrational and mad.

Faith realized the M-Psy always subtly pointed that out, never letting her forget the threat looming over her head.

Tell a child something often enough and she starts to believe it.

Sascha's words whispered through her mind and refused to let her return to the isolated, accepting state she'd been in before she'd breached the fence. And run headfirst into the most dangerous predator she could imagine.

"While I accept your need to ensure my safety, I gave notice that I would not be available for three days. That period doesn't end till this evening. Is that so difficult to understand?" Her voice was cold, a knife forged in the fires of isolation. "Or would you like me to have you transferred and replaced with someone who understands my statements?" She'd never threatened any such thing in the past, but the nameless awakening thing inside of her would not be quiet over this latest threat to her independence.

The M-Psy blinked. "My apologies, Foreseer. I will not make this error again."

He'd also log in her unusual behavior and put her down for a complete physical. Faith turned off the communication console without another word, conscious that she'd shot herself in the foot. The only places where she'd be safe from monitoring now would be in her private areas and even that wasn't certain. It would've been far more logical to have kept her mouth shut. Or would it? She stilled and considered her behavior. She was a twenty-four-year-old F-Psy who produced with near perfect accuracy. She was worth billions, not the millions Sascha had guessed at. And she knew that her psychic strength offered her immunity from a lot of things that might otherwise be issues.

Such as being interned at the Center, her mind wiped clean in a process of "rehabilitation."

Put that way, arrogance was almost a given. Merely because they'd subjugated their feelings, it didn't mean that her people were no longer cognizant of distinctions of class, wealth, and power. For the first time, she considered the untapped reservoir of her own political power. Perhaps she even had enough to delete all monitoring of her, aside from when she was in the chair. Maybe not at once, but slowly?

Glancing at the object on which she'd spent so much of her life, she made her decision. Instead of sliding onto it, she returned to her bedroom and lay down on the bed. She was going to use this free time to surf the PsyNet, to look for information she'd never before considered might exist— because her keepers had surrounded her in so much cotton wool that it had become a prison.

They'd gone so far as to warn her against too much exposure to the Net, telling her that her mind was more vulnerable than those of other designations and therefore more easily breached. In response, Faith had built ever stronger firewalls and rarely ventured outside them. But if Sascha Duncan wasn't a flawed Psy, then maybe Faith NightStar wasn't a weak one. Flickers of memory rippled through her mind. Vaughn had touched her, kissed her, had never hidden the intense nature of his personality. But she'd begun to learn how to cope. And if she could handle a jaguar...

Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and opened her mind to the dark velvet night of the PsyNet. Stars glittered in the darkness, but these flickering lights were alive, the unique minds of millions of psychic beings. The instant she stepped out into the Net, her mobile firewalls rose to protect her surfing psyche. Those without firewalls were vulnerable to sabotage and possible ambush, as cutting off the roaming mind from the physical brain was a sure way to ensure an irreversible coma. Most Psy were fanatical about their firewalls. Faith had gone straight to obsession.

She'd been out a couple of minutes at most, aimlessly letting information filter through her, when she felt something neosentient brush by her. The NetMind. It paused and she felt a second brush, as if it was verifying.

Apparently satisfied by her brain patterns, the NetMind moved on. The pause had been unusual, but Faith could understand it—even the all-seeing NetMind had probably rarely logged one of the F-Psy engaged in an active surf of the data streams.

Around her, the Net buzzed with information and activity. Minds flew smoothly to various destinations, some disappearing without warning as they followed links not visible to Faith's mind. That was normal. The PsyNet was based to some extent on what each Psy already knew—how could she link to a mind, and therefore to a location, for which she had no imprint?

The intensity and unfamiliarity of the flows around her had her moving quietly, keeping her presence low-key. With her cardinal star left behind, she was simply another Psy in the Net. Most cardinals didn't bother to shield their supernova brightness even when they roamed, but Faith preferred to travel incognito. Her complex firewalls did the job of keeping her anonymous. Oddly enough, it was the PsyClan that had first taught the techniques that masked her identity— they'd considered it a precaution against her being taken hostage.

She drifted into a psychic chat room, something she'd never before done. The M-Psy had been very specific about the danger of overload in this completely unpredictable venue.

"I hear they're discussing candidates," a mind threw out into the conversation.

"Took them long enough," another responded.

"Losing a cardinal of Santano's strength has to be worrying some of the weaker members," a third mind said.

Faith might've had no clue as to what they were discussing if she hadn't run across former councilor Santano Enrique's name during her research on Sascha Duncan. Paying more attention, she found an unobtrusive listening point and went mind-quiet.

"None of the Councilors is weak," the first mind retorted. "The only ones who like to think that are the aspirants."

"Any word on the possibilities?"

"I heard the Council's imposed a gag order. Anyone breaking it faces automatic rehabilitation."

"Does anybody actually know what happened to Santano? All that was reported was that he'd died of unknown causes."

"Nobody knows nothing from what I hear."

The same mind that had posed the Santano question now said, "What I'd really like to know is how Sascha Duncan left the Net."

"That's old news—she was weak and couldn't hold the link. Likely her mind was never meant to maintain it in the first place, which is why she survived."

"A tidy answer, but don't you consider it a little too convenient?"

A small silence and then someone said, "Perhaps we should continue this conversation in a more secure venue." The mind blinked out and two of the others followed, probably going to a destination known to all three.

Intrigued by what she'd heard, Faith let herself float through several other rooms, but nobody else was discussing such incendiary matters. However, it was as well that she'd been floating so seemingly without focus, because it became clear toward the end that she had two shadows. She tracked back through her mind and realized they'd been there from the start.

She knew exactly who was responsible for setting them on her. Even in the supposed anonymity of the PsyNet, she was too valuable to be left alone. A kind of cold fury settled in her gut and it was so pure she could feel it burning her. And she didn't care if that sounded like an emotional reaction.

She returned to her mind in as straight a line as possible. The second she was back behind the walls of her psyche, she opened her eyes and considered her next move. Would it betray too much of the changes in her if she demanded privacy? Could she live knowing she'd never be let alone?

No.

Swallowing the things shoving at the walls of her conditioned Silence, she got up, gathered her hair into a sleek roll, and put on one of the flowing dresses she preferred to wear while forecasting. This one was a deep rust brown with spaghetti straps and a hem that skimmed her ankles. Even when the visions refused to let her go, her body at least felt free.

Ready, she walked out into the living room and took her usual position in the chair. Monitoring would've begun the second she entered the living area, but now they'd be sitting up in expectation of a session. Instead, she threw up the strongest blocks she could imagine—she couldn't stop the visions, but she could occasionally contain them for a time—and started reading a book.

By the time she finished it two hours later, she knew they had to be getting impatient. She never used the chair for such mundane things. Then she picked up another book. Ten minutes later, her comm console chimed an incoming call. Using the remote, she flicked on the screen facing the chair.

"Father."

The title was nothing more than a convenient way to refer to him. Anthony Kyriakus was a stranger to her except as the governing force of the PsyClan, no matter that it was half his blood that ran in her veins. "Faith, Medical has informed me of erratic behavior on your part."

Here it came, she thought, the request for a complete mental and physical workup. "Father, would you consider it a breach of your rights as a free citizen to be monitored on the PsyNet?" An ultimately logical question. "Or am I allowed to shadow you wherever you go?"

Anthony's brown eyes remained cool on-screen. "It was for your own protection."

"You didn't answer my question." She picked up her book again. "As it appears I cannot inform myself in private, I thought I should do it in public." The most subtle of threats.

"You've never shown any desire for complete isolation."

Isolation, not privacy. It was becoming crystal clear how they'd been herding her along a certain path her entire life. But he was right—she couldn't show such a drastic change without some explanation. A flicker of memory from the Net gave her inspiration and if it came from the same part of her that showed her the visions, she chose to ignore that. "Perhaps an adult cardinal, one of the rare F designation, might possibly be interested in other opportunities... but those opportunities are highly unlikely to be offered to someone with a babysitter."

Understanding filtered so quickly into Anthony's face that she was certain he'd already been thinking along those lines. "It's a dangerous game. Only the strong survive."

"Which is why I can't appear weak."

"Have you heard anything concrete?"

"I'll tell you when it's time." A blatant untruth because the time would never come, no matter what Anthony believed. The Council was hardly going to consider a cloistered foreseer as a possible member. But as far as reasons for privacy went, it was close to perfect.

Something brutal and ugly shoved at the walls she'd set up against the visions and she knew she had to get out of here before it erupted and exposed her. Because the business visions were never this powerful, this aggressive. Putting down the book, she swung her legs over the side of the chair. "My answer, Father?"

"Privacy is a citizen's right." He nodded. "But should you need assistance, contact me."

"Of course." She switched off the screen without further good-byes—they were redundant in her situation, something she'd figured out as a child. But at least now she'd be left alone on the Net, a huge step forward. No one could suspect her of anything at this stage—even the information she'd found out about Sascha had come from public bulletin boards. However, her next searches weren't going to be so innocent.

Another push on her mind. She strolled out of the room and forced herself to get water and several nutrition bars from the cooler. The second her hand closed around a bar, Vaughn's mocking smile appeared in the screen of her mind. She could imagine what he'd say to her choice of food and, though it was a dangerous game, she indulged herself and focused on him all the way to her bedroom. Once inside, she put down the food and closed the door.

The next push almost drove her off her feet. She swayed, but remained upright—if she fell, the sensors outside the door might pick it up. Breathing carefully, she somehow got to the bed before collapsing. Sweat dampened her hands and temples—a physiological reaction to unknown stress factors.

Fear.

She was Psy. She should feel no fear. But neither should she be seeing what she was now being forced into seeing. Then the darkness breached the flimsy walls of her defenses and hooked its claws into her mind. Her back arched, her hands clenched, her teeth snapped shut with crushing force, and she was no longer aware of anything but the vision.