Heart of Obsidian

Kaleb wasn’t surprised Nikita had made the connection—mental viruses were her specialty, after all. “Yes.” Connected to the psychic network from birth, there was no way for those of his race to avoid the virus—every millisecond of the biofeedback they needed to live carried a potentially lethal payload. “It appears the infection has begun to attack its primary host.”


The PsyNet was vast, could take a considerable beating, but it wasn’t indestructible. “Tonight’s damage,” he continued, “caused no fatalities, but only because it was localized in the region that would’ve supported the minds at Sunshine.” And that station was abandoned, an icy monument to death, blood splatter frozen on the walls and meals abandoned half-eaten, no living beings within miles.

“We can’t allow the infection to hit a populated zone,” Nikita said, cutting to the point as always. “If it has the same impact it did at Sunshine, we’d be looking at a massacre.”

A taut silence, and Kaleb knew they were all thinking of a San Francisco or a Moscow overrun with Psy who had given in to murderous insanity. Mindless, their cells factories for the virus, they’d kill anything in their path, hack their fellow citizens to pieces, paint the streets in blood.





Chapter 7





ANTHONY WAS THE one who spoke. “Can the virus be contained?”

“The NetMind is building a barricade to ensure people don’t venture into the infected area, but I don’t believe it’ll hold against the virus itself.” Kaleb had a theory about a “cure,” but it wasn’t one he planned to share with either Nikita or Anthony until he had all the pieces in place for his takeover of the Net.

“You,” he said to Nikita, “may have certain useful insights.” She’d never confirmed her ability with mental viruses, but everyone in this conversation knew it existed.

To her credit, she gave a curt nod. “I’ll do a reconnaissance tonight.”

“If it’s taken this long to eat up the region of the Net that served Sunshine,” Anthony said, the silver at his temples glinting in the light on his desk, “it must be a slow-moving disease.”

“Indications are it’s grown stronger, but not faster,” Kaleb confirmed. “We can’t afford not to study it, but the Pure Psy threat is far more immediate.”

Nikita shared a glance with Anthony as Kaleb finished speaking, and it was a silent communication that Kaleb knew involved no telepathy. Once again, he wondered exactly how closely the two had begun to work together. Not that it mattered. While Nikita and Anthony were extremely strong, with a massive combined economic and financial reach, they couldn’t stop Kaleb. No one could.

Not now.

Two years ago, perhaps. However—and thanks to the leopard and wolf changelings in Nikita’s region, though they would never know the role they’d played in his life—his power had matured to its full potential in the interim. The scope of it might have driven another man mad; it was to Kaleb’s advantage that he’d had his brush with madness as a child and survived.

Whether or not he was sane was another question.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said before Nikita or Anthony could respond to his point about Pure Psy, “I have another matter to attend to.” He left without waiting for a response. Ming and Tatiana had contacted him via the PsyNet, and he’d shared the same information he had with Nikita and Anthony. As for the suspiciously quiet Shoshanna Scott, he had an extremely reliable spy in her ranks.

There was no reason to waste any further time on the ex-Councilors.

Sahara was still asleep when he returned to the terrace, her breathing even. He was about to turn on his heel and leave when her eyes fluttered open, the deep blue seeming to look straight through him and to the vicious secrets that marked him as kin to the DarkMind.

“I opened the book,” she said, uncurling her legs with the almost feline grace she’d developed as a teen, after taking dance lessons ostensibly to build her muscle strength and sense of balance.

All perfectly satisfactory reasons. All lies. Sahara had simply loved to dance.

“I hate math.”

Sliding off his jacket at her sleepy murmur, he ’ported it to his office, then undid his cuffs and began to roll them up, slipping the cuff links into a pocket. It was his left forearm that bore the mark—the scar—and it was a mark he needed her to see now that her mind was no longer confused, as it had been the night before. He had to know if she remembered.

“Math was never your best subject,” he said when her eyes lingered on the scar without recognition. “But at last count, you spoke ten languages with a native’s fluency. French, Spanish, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese, Swahili, Arabic, and Hungarian, to name a few.”

“Do I really?” she asked, a spark in her eye as she shifted on the lounger in silent invitation.

Taking it, he sat on the edge with his back to her and his arms braced on his knees . . . and he remembered the seven years he had waited for her to come back, the countless days he’d stood on this terrace staring down at the gorge as the rational part of his mind tried to convince the obsessive madness that lived in him of her likely death.