SLAVE TO SENSATION

Tamsyn frowned. “Was there any other information?”


“Ai was born in 1973. Silence went into effect in 1979, when she would’ve been six years old. Everyone under seven years of age was automatically enrolled into the Protocol.” She couldn’t imagine how that young girl must’ve felt at being taught to obliterate everything she’d learned to value.

“How many did they lose?” Tamsyn asked gently, her healer’s mind seeing the problem.

“I don’t know. The numbers are buried deep but everyone knows it was devastating. The transitional children had a very low survival rate.”

Lucas’s fingers stroked through her hair, which he’d undone while she’d been speaking. “But Ai survived.”

“Yes. It was noted in her file that her mother, Mika, was one of the strongest opponents of Silence. I thought at first that that was why Ai’s file had been tagged but there were other odd things in there. Her designation was as an 8.3 E-Psy at birth but after she completed Silence, she was relegated to a 6.2 nonspecialized Psy.” More had been destroyed than simply Ai’s soul.

Sascha wept deep inside for the two women she’d never had the chance to know. What must it have done to Mika to watch the child she’d named Ai—which meant “love” in her language—be taught to devalue that very emotion?

“You’ve lost me.” Tamsyn sat up within Nate’s arms.

Sascha dragged her mind back from the horrors of the past. “Psy are classified according to our psychic strength and specialization. For example, my mother is a Gradient 9.1 Tp-Psy, which means her major talent lies in the area of telepathy. Like most Psy, she has several other skills, but in terms of strength, they all fall below 2 on the Gradient—our measuring system.” She paused to ensure they understood.

“Go on,” Tamsyn said.

“Then there are the Tk-Psy.”

“Telekinetic,” Nate guessed.

“Yes. We also have the M designation—Medical. The M-Psy can look inside a body and find the physical causes of illness. They’re the specialty other races most commonly come into contact with. There are several other fields of talent. Telepaths are relatively common and tend to have other specialties within their telepathy.”

Like her mother with her viral poisons and Ming LeBon’s genius at mental combat. “Medical is midrange. Some rarer specialties include psychometry, the teleportation-capable telekinetics, and transmutation—the ability to force a physical object to change its shape. The most rare are the F-Psy.”

Lucas’s hand slipped under her shirt to lie against the skin of her back, hot and burning, a brand she had no desire to escape. She was having to fight herself as much as him in this shatteringly important decision. Not to mention the rest of the pack.

The leopards had closed ranks. No one would tell her what the final steps of the mating dance were so she could avoid taking them. She was their alpha’s chosen mate and they weren’t going to give her the chance to slip away. Even Vaughn had refused, though she’d tried to convince him it would save Lucas’s life. Not one of them understood the power of the PsyNet. It could not be fought.





CHAPTER 20





“F-Psy,” Lucas murmured. “Let me guess. Foresight?”

She nodded. “These days they’re usually hired by businesses to forecast market trends, but I’ve heard that in the past, they often worked for Enforcement and local government in order to prevent murders and disasters.”

If they hadn’t succumbed to the lure of cold hard cash, forgetting the human emotions behind death and loss, perhaps Lucas’s parents would still be alive. How could he not hate her people? Hate her?

“But no E-Psy,” Tamsyn said.

“No.” Sascha frowned. “It makes no sense. A specialty may be rare but it never disappears entirely.”

“Did you check the classification system?” Lucas asked.

She nodded and decided not to mention that she’d had to make a quick visit to the PsyNet to do so. “It wasn’t hidden. I guess they thought no one would ever care to look it up. Until Silence, E was an accepted designation. It disappeared soon after the Protocol went into effect and wasn’t replaced in the classification charts.” She made a frustrated sound. “But I don’t know what it means!”

“What’s your classification?” Nate asked.

It was the one question she didn’t want to answer, the one question that showed her how useless she was. “I’m nonspecialized.”

“But I know you’re a telepath.” Tamsyn frowned. “The cubs told me you talked to them.”