Sahara hid her smile behind a raised hand. It’s all right. The first time Vasic teleported me anywhere, I was half-afraid he’d decide to lose me mid-’port.
Ivy reached up to touch her Arrow’s hand. His fingers curled around her own, though he was listening to the conversation between Aden and Kaleb. The two of us, she said to Sahara, need to have lunch together after this is all over.
Yes—Sahara’s ocean deep gaze held hers, solemn and haunted—after this is all over.
Both of them knew that might be a long time coming.
? ? ?
UNABLE to sleep despite the fact she’d attended a bad outbreak with Vasic two hours earlier that had come close to wiping her out, Ivy sat up in bed that night and gnawed on the knowledge she could feel just beyond her reach.
“Ivy, you need to rest.”
She looked down at Vasic, the light from the streetlamps coming through the thinly opened blinds marking him in tiger stripes. “Shh”—she bent to press a kiss to his shoulder—“I’m thinking.”
Rising from bed after a minute, he left the bedroom and came back with a hot nutrient drink. “You’re losing too much weight.”
Ivy frowned. “What ab—”
“I already had mine.” He tapped her on the nose, the affectionate act making her toes curl. “Now stop stalling and drink. I drowned it in your caramel syrup.”
She stuck out her tongue at him but accepted the glass. Taking a sip to find he’d made it a drinkable temperature, she narrowed her eyes as he sat down beside her and pulled up something on a reader. “That better not be another manual.”
“I thought you were thinking?” He looked pointedly at her glass as Rabbit raised his head in his basket, ears pricked.
Gulping the drink, Ivy put the empty glass on the bedside table and sat up on her knees facing him. His eyes went to her breasts, her nipples pushing shamelessly against the camisole she’d worn to bed with her flannel pants. “Focus,” she said through the pulsing ache he aroused in her with a single look. “I need to see the bonds Sahara told us about.”
“I can contact Krychek.” He patted the bed, and an ecstatic Rabbit scampered over to curl up in his favorite spot at the bottom end.
“No.” She ran her fingers along the ridges of Vasic’s abdomen, scrunching up her forehead in thought. “I have this nagging sense that he isn’t naturally built to see the bonds. It seems more like the purview of an E.”
Vasic nodded slowly. “It might be why the NetMind can only show him pieces.”
Yes, Ivy thought. Because psychic minds were wired differently, depending on their designation. “Sascha told me the NetMind likes empaths.” She nibbled on her lower lip, made a decision. “It can’t hurt to ask.”
Snuggling to his side, she opened her eyes on the psychic plane and wasn’t surprised to see her Arrow right beside her. The black velvet night of the PsyNet, each mind a glittering star, was now “contaminated” with sparks of color, but those sparks couldn’t seem to reach the stars . . . as if blocked by the invisible tendrils of a terrible, voracious corruption.
Ivy put her palm over Vasic’s heart, anchored herself in the steadfast strength of him before she said, “NetMind?” It felt foolish to attempt to contact a vast neosentience this way, but she couldn’t figure out any other. “May I please speak to you?”
“???”
Her heart kicked at the overwhelming and immediate sense that she was no longer alone inside her mind. Joy was a waterfall on her senses, flowers falling over her eyes as a sense of infinite sorrow, of such a long wait, made her want to sob. “I need to see,” she said when the raw emotional cascade faded enough that she could think. “I need to see the bonds I have with others.”
“???”
Thinking of how the neosentience had greeted her, Ivy tried again, this time by visualizing her loved ones as she asked the question.
It was as if a filter was placed over her mind. Her visual field changed to show a Net lit with faint golden lines. She could see her parents on those lines, her friends from the settlement, from the compound . . . and she could see Aden.
Him she could understand, but there were other Arrows, including total strangers.
Vasic wasn’t visible, but she sensed him all around her, their shields interlinked. Inside her pulsed the driving need to reach out across the void to him, lock her soul to his. His own need was a dark, passionate force that stole her breath, but he fought it. Stubborn, protective Arrow.
Multihued stars falling around her, racing from a voracious rain of black arrows. Ivy grinned and replied to the NetMind by creating an image of the stars pouncing on the arrows. It laughed and the laughter was a dazzling kaleidoscope that she tried to telepath to Vasic. Can you see?
A glimpse. It’s . . . extraordinary. His heart beat under her cheek, steady and solid and alive. Can you show me the linkage?
I think so.
Vasic was quiet for several minutes. There aren’t enough Arrows.
I wouldn’t expect to be connected to them all.
Yes, but you’re already connected to more than you should be—through Aden, and if it’s through Aden, you should be connected to every single Arrow in the squad.
Because Aden, she understood, was their acknowledged and accepted leader. “Is Aden particularly close to any other Arrows?” she said out loud.
“There are three or four senior Arrows with whom he works on a regular basis, but he knows and is aware of the mental health of every single member of the squad.”
So, again, she should be connected to them all through Aden, yet Ivy saw only a scattering.
Deciding to focus on those connections, she traced them outward . . . and found all but one Arrow she could see through Aden appeared to have no other connection to anyone. Abbot was the single exception. That didn’t make sense, since Arrows were all connected to one another. Unless— “It cuts off at the second layer,” she murmured, even as she realized these bonds were different from the kind of bond that tied Sahara and Kaleb to each other.
She’d thought fractured Silence was a necessity, but clearly it was simply something that often happened to coexist alongside these ties. A majority of the squad walked the edge of absolute Silence, and yet the golden links had formed . . . almost as if they were so necessary, all that was needed was a single crack for it to take hold. Such as the loyalty that bound the members of the squad to one another or the responsibility an Arrow felt for the safety of his E.
Chewing on that, she traced her link to Jaya, the other E’s constellation of bonds opening up in front of her as if she was flying over a city lit up for the night. She didn’t know the minds in Jaya’s network except for Abbot and Aden. Jaya, too, was linked to unknown Arrows through the leader of the squad, but they were different from the ones in Ivy’s group.
Jaya’s network held a surprise: another E. Perhaps a family member. That E was linked only to a tiny number of others, no secondary layer. Ivy woke Jaya up with a telepathic hail, though she knew her friend needed the rest. This was too important. Jaya, do you have another empath in your family? What Gradient?
Jaya’s sleep-hazy voice mumbled, Yes, a child. Untested for E abilities, but I think he’s probably around 3 or 4 on the Gradient. Why?
Go back to sleep. I’ll tell you later.
Okay.
“We’re the Band-Aids,” she whispered, sitting up to face her Arrow. “I get it now. I understand how we can save the Net, why there are so many of us.”
Vasic spread the fingers of one hand on her lower back. “Tell me.”
“The Es need to find ways to connect with a circle of people. Jaya and I are both on the high end of the Gradient, can share our immunity with a secondary layer, but others will only be able to shield those with whom they’re directly bonded.”
She knew she wasn’t explaining it properly, told herself to slow down.