BONDS OF JUSTICE

“It’s okay.” She pushed off his own shirt, baring the sleekly muscular beauty of his chest. “I missed you until I couldn’t breathe. Come inside me.”


Her panties were torn off her, his fingers urgent as he tested her slickness. Lifting a leg, she wrapped it around his hip. He swore, lowered the zipper on his pants, and then the hot, hard heat of him was thrusting into her, pinning her against the wall. She cried out, holding on, holding him tight.

The pleasure was a firestorm that erased the pain, wiped away the sorrow, left her limp, his face buried in her neck as that muscular back gleamed with perspiration. “Hello, my Max,” she whispered.

“Hello, my sweet, sexy Sophie.”


Later that day, after they’d spent most of it tangled up skin to skin, sleeping and loving and holding each other, Sophia took a deep breath. “I did some in-depth investigation of my new shields while you were away—I think I know their origin.”

Her cop stroked her hair off her face, his expression intent. “Tell me.”

“Part of this is because I’m an anchor, but part of it is because my mind is . . . unique.” It had survived by doing the extraordinary. “You know about the NetMind?”

“I’ve heard rumors it’s some kind of psychic entity that organizes the Net.”

“Yes. The thing is, there’s a DarkMind, too.” She’d searched, dug deep to find confirmation of her suspicions. “It’s made up of all the emotions my race has rejected, and it’s so angry, so scared, and so very, very lonely. I think . . . it’s also a little insane.”

Max didn’t ask what others might have. He asked only the critical question. “This DarkMind is protecting you?”

“They both are in a sense.” She took a shaky breath, swallowed. “At first I thought my shields were a psychic extension of the Net, that for some reason, the Twin-Minds had decided to look after me, but while that made sense with my Net shields, it didn’t explain my telepathic protections—those have to come from within. Then I realized it’s me.” She hesitated.

“It’s okay, sweetheart.” A kiss on her forehead, arms that held her close. “No matter what, you’re still my Sophie, still my J.”

Her heart settled, quiet, content. “I am a living, breathing extension of the Net, Max.” The tendrils snaked through her mind, fine threads, and not the dark alone. The light was there, too, simply less obvious to the casual eye. “I’m not just an anchor any longer—I’ve become some kind of a focus.”

Two hours later, she shared the truth about her shields with Sascha Duncan over a secure comm link. The empath’s face held no rejection, only concern. “But Sophie, the Net is going mad. If it’s inside you on that level . . .”

“There’s hope, Sascha.” A blinding, beautiful hope. “As the Net passes through my anchor point, the light and the dark come together if only for a fraction of a second.”

Comprehension dawned in a fracture of color in Sascha’s cardinal eyes. “And for that instant, they’re sane?”

“Yes.” Her throat locked. “I may be the sole anchor who can give them that peace. And that’s not right.” Because outside of the tiny oasis of her mind, the Net was going inexorably mad, a dark rot seeping through its very fabric—parts of the PsyNet were already dead, places where neither the DarkMind nor the NetMind could go.

Sascha’s own eyes shone wet. “No, they should’ve never been split in two, but their sentience is formed and shaped by the Net. They can’t, won’t merge until Silence falls.”

And that, they both knew, might take an eternity . . . and a war that could devastate their world. “Things are changing,” Sophia whispered, holding the empath’s gaze. The NetMind loved Sascha. The DarkMind knew the empath could give them something, but it didn’t know how to shape its request, how to even convey its painful need. “You’ve felt it.”

“Yes.” A solemn gaze, but it held hope, the determination of a Psy willing to fight for her people. “Are you sure you’re safe, Sophia?” So much care, the empath’s huge heart there in the timbre of her voice, in every part of her.

At that moment, Sophia understood some of what the crippled, voiceless DarkMind was trying to tell her, understood that the Es had to be reawakened if the Net was to survive.

“I understand why it does what it does,” Sascha continued, sorrow erasing the stars in her eyes, “but the DarkMind’s need for vengeance has pushed it to spawn terrible crimes.”

Sophia wrapped her arms around Max’s waist, laying her ear against the solid pulse of his heartbeat, the warmth of him her own personal anchor. “In my mind, they’re one.” They were whole. As she was finally whole.

“They balance each other.” Sascha’s voice turned soft, thoughtful. “Yes, of course.”