BONDS OF JUSTICE

Her expression never changed, but he could see steam coming out her ears. “I am not stupid, Detective Shannon. Kindly get that thought into your head.”


He wanted to kiss her.


Kaleb walked into Nikita’s office to find her just ending a conversation with a tall male of mixed ethnicity who didn’t move like a changeling but a human. Kaleb knew who the male was, of course. He’d known all about Max Shannon almost the instant after Nikita requested him. The Enforcement detective wasn’t only good at his job, he was as tenacious and stubborn as a bloodhound.

“Councilor Krychek,” the detective said with a small nod as he walked out of the room, closing the door behind himself.

“What do you need with an Enforcement agent?” he asked Nikita as he took a seat in the chair across from her. “We have Arrows for a reason.”

“The Arrows are Ming’s,” she said. “I needed an impartial party.”

Kaleb thought of the continued attempts to hack his shields, the sense of being very closely observed—and the failed tries to track him through the PsyNet when he didn’t want to be tracked. He could have ended the game days ago, turning the tables on his trackers—though, given their skill, it would’ve taken a concentrated amount of time and effort—but he was intrigued enough to let it continue. Because there was one group and one group alone in the Net with the covert skills to evade the traps he’d laid to date—and if that group had decided to shift its allegiance . . .

“You’re hemorrhaging people,” he said to Nikita, keeping his other thoughts to himself.

“The fact that you’ve noticed puts you at the top of the suspect list.”

“On the contrary. We both know that I do what needs to be done myself. I don’t need to rely on others who might make mistakes.”

Nikita settled back in her chair at his plain speaking. “Have you noticed something in Henry’s pattern of behavior?”

Kaleb hadn’t, and being out of the loop was not something he appreciated. “Tell me.”

“I’d rather show you.” Turning her chair toward the thin comm screen mounted on one wall, she darkened her windows and brought up a map of the world. “The red dots indicate the places where Henry has been in the past six months. The blue dots indicate incidents that took place at the same time.”

There were clusters of blue around every single red dot.

“Incidents have been increasing,” Kaleb said. “It’s not impossible that he could have coincidentally been at the same locations—but I’m assuming the incidents were major enough to have caught your notice.”

“Not the first five or so, no,” Nikita said. “As you say, there have been little outbursts of violence here and there, so I paid them no notice. But these incidents don’t involve violence—except of the self-inflicted kind.”

“Suicides?” That pricked his interest. Suicide wasn’t considered taboo in Psy culture. The majority of those who recognized their mental patterns as aberrant chose to end their existence rather than face rehabilitation. But the chances of the suicides—ten or more in each location—lining up so neatly with Henry’s travels was exceptionally low.

“I’m certain he’s used the tactic before,” Nikita said.

Kaleb agreed. There’d been a string of violent incidents several months ago, with Psy breaking conditioning in public. All of those Psy appeared to have been programmed to suicide after completing their task, or if caught. “His recent behavior does, however, suggest that he’s seen the error of that line of thinking.” Given the way the PsyNet functioned, violence only spawned more violence. A constant feedback loop.

Nikita put down the remote but didn’t erase the image. “Several of the individuals who suicided were on the rehabilitation watchlist. The others could’ve been fragmenting.”

“So Henry could see it as removing violence from the Net.” Kaleb considered the idea. “Can you send me the full data on the suicides?” The file was telepathed into his mind an instant later.

Nikita checked messages on her organizer as he went through the list.

“He eliminated an erratic but highly intelligent chemist,” Kaleb said, “two medical specialists, and at least one trained sharpshooter. And that’s at first glance.”

“It continues like that,” Nikita told him. “He might see it as erasing the weak from the Net, but he’s also shoving the balance toward mediocrity.”

Kaleb looked at her. “Or perhaps Henry hasn’t yet given up on the idea of a fully coherent Net.” Before her defection, Council scientist Ashaya Aleine had been close to developing a neural implant that would’ve instituted Silence at the biological level, creating a true hive mind. She’d destroyed all the pertinent data when she’d defected, but that knowledge could’ve been recreated. “He may be pruning those he thinks will prove a challenge to that goal.”