CARESSED BY ICE

“Weird stuff about shields and lowering them.” He sounded confused. “They hypnotized us to fix the ones who wouldn’t.”


“Give us a minute, Kevin.” Raising his blindfold again, Indigo met Judd’s gaze. He nodded toward the door.

Outside, the lieutenant leaned against the vehicle that had brought Judd to the cabin. “Mind control?” she asked, spine rigid.

He shook his head. “More like programming. Full mind control needs to be maintained by a constant link between the controlling Psy and the victim and that link sucks power.”

Judd had never stepped over that line, but he’d been taught the technical aspects. He had no doubt that had he stayed in the Net, he would have ended up using that knowledge. Evil had a tendency to wear away at humanity. It was a truth the Ghost didn’t yet see. “If you don’t want that drain on your resources,” he continued, “you can program someone to do certain things. The downside and upside compared to mind control are both the same—the victim cannot and will not deviate from the set plan. The hyenas wouldn’t have turned back even if they’d been confronted by armed wolves.”

“This is a mess.” Indigo kicked up snow with her boot. “If they got to the hyenas, we don’t know who else they might have influenced.”

“Finding that out is your job.” Judd began walking back to the cabin. “Mine is to clean Kevin’s mind.”

“Wait!” Indigo ran to his side. “We can use him as our eyes and ears.”

He met her eyes. “No.” That was on the other side of that line between humanity and the clawing darkness that constantly whispered at the corners of his mind. “I won’t replace one kind of slavery with another.”

Indigo’s face blanched. “You make me feel like a monster.”

Judd didn’t answer, already to the door. Pushing it open, he walked inside. Kevin was in the same position as before, but his terror seemed to have whittled down to grim acceptance. He thought he was going to die.

Judd stood in front of the man. “I’m going to remove what they put in. The choices you make from then on will be your own.”

The hyena’s head snapped up, moving blindly in the direction of Judd’s voice. “You’re not going to kill me?”

“Not today.” Judd went behind the male. Lower shields, he said telepathically. It was the first in a long list of commands the programmers could have used. But he had no need to go any further—Kevin’s tough changeling shields disappeared as if by magic. The cruelty of whoever it was that had done this was beyond anything Judd had ever seen. They had left the changeling wide open to any Psy who knew or could guess the code words.

Once inside, Judd began to check the structure of the programming. The work was effortless—not only was he a strong telepath, he’d been trained in the very techniques that had been used on Kevin. Those skills told him that the binding was crude, done in haste. Clearly, the Council wasn’t worried about failure. Then again, why should they be? While other Psy might be able to get into Kevin’s mind, only a Psy with a very specific skill set could undo the original programming.

A few minutes later, he was about to reset the compromised neural pathways when he saw it. A Black Key. A tiny piece of psychic code that would kick in the second he began the reset. Kevin would die from a massive aneurysm in less than a minute.

He withdrew before carefully retracing his steps. Finally satisfied the Black Key was the single contingency, he spent ten minutes deactivating and removing it. Then he cleaned house. Kevin.

“Yes.” The vocalization was distant—the hyena remained in the trance initiated by the code words.

Your mind is now free. As of this moment, you will not respond when asked to “lower shields.” Do you understand?

“Yes.”

Aware of the wolves looking on, bemused at what appeared to them to be a one-sided conversation, Judd checked for any further activation phrases then repeated his instruction several times to ensure comprehension before giving Kevin the order to wake with full memory of what had taken place.

The hyena immediately bent double, dry-retching. Judd looked at the nearest soldier. “Get a glass of water.”

D’Arn obeyed without looking to Indigo. When the soldier returned and went to lower Kevin’s blindfold, he glanced at Judd. Understanding, Judd stepped back into the shadows once more.

Indigo waited until the hyena was no longer shaking before asking him to tell them everything he knew.

Kevin was able to share details of three other planned attacks. To Judd’s military mind, it was obvious that the PineWood leader had made no effort to keep a lid on the details. He’d known about, and relied, on the programming to ensure silence.