IVY GRIEVED WITH Vasic in the days following Zie Zen’s passing, but like him, she couldn’t switch off. They both had responsibilities, not just to Tavish and the squad, but to many others. In her case, that meant the health of her empaths and, of course, the tense issue of the hidden disintegration of the psychic fabric of the PsyNet, a disintegration that was weakening a psychic structure that supported millions of minds.
In Vasic’s case, it meant his duties as Aden’s deputy, as well as the commitments he’d made to friends and allies. It was on the day after they’d scattered Zie Zen’s ashes that Ivy, Vasic, Tavish, and Rabbit returned home from a morning walk through the fruit trees to find Miane Levèque had left a message on their comm and on the phone Vasic had forgotten in the cabin.
“Vasic, I know you lost your grandfather only days ago,” she’d said, her voice somber, “but we have what might be a real, viable lead on Leila. We need to move on it as soon as possible. If you can’t do it, I understand.” Compassion in the alpha’s tone, no judgment. “But please let me know within the hour so I can rework our plans.”
Ivy’s husband would’ve been justified in saying no, but he didn’t. He put on his Arrow uniform and slid a single gold coin into an inner pocket in memory of his grandfather. “If we save this BlackSea changeling,” he said, his voice potent with memory and with resolve, “we strike a blow to the Consortium. Zie Zen would’ve appreciated that.”
Because, Ivy thought, all of Zie Zen’s plans and intrigues had flowed from a single overriding goal: to return freedom to his people. “Yes,” she whispered. “He wouldn’t thank us for leaving a woman caged when we might be able to free her.”
Smoothing her hands over the front of his uniform, she carefully folded up and pinned the sleeve of his missing arm. Vasic could’ve had his uniforms altered so this wasn’t necessary, but with Samuel Rain continuing to experiment with prosthetics, he’d left it.
That choice said something powerful about the man she loved. Though he’d adapted to the loss of his arm to the point that the prosthetics often annoyed him, he kept giving Samuel a chance. All for a simple reason: the other man’s mind was such that it needed a challenge and this challenge kept him focused and mentally healthy.
“There,” she said after completing her self-appointed task. “You’ll be careful?”
Vasic cupped her cheek with his hand, his eyes a stormy gray today. Filled with echoes of grief. “Yes,” he promised. “I need to come back home to you.”
Ivy’s heart ached at the raw power of his words, at the love that lived in his touch. Turning her head, she pressed a kiss to his palm. “Your grandfather was so proud of you, Vasic,” she said to him afterward, her eyes locked with his. “Don’t ever forget that.”
Drawing her close, Vasic held her for long moments. “You’ll take care on the PsyNet? This strange disintegration you showed me, it may be as insidious as the original rot.”
“I will, I promise.” Ivy had no intention of bringing their journey together to a premature end. Yes, there was grief here, but there was also love, laughter, hope. “I’m having a comm conference with Sascha and several of the other Es to brainstorm solutions and explanations.” She forced herself to step back. “I love you.”
You’re my heart, Ivy.
Holding the words close after he teleported out, Ivy sniffed back her tears, put a smile firmly on her face, and went to find Tavish. She and Vasic had permitted him to stay home from the Valley school to this point, but she decided that would change come tomorrow morning. Like any Arrow child, he needed the certainty of routine—and being with his friends would hopefully help take his mind off the loss their family had so recently suffered.
“Tavish? Rabbit?”
Scrabbling claws on the floor as a small white bullet shot out of Tavish’s room to come over to her, tail wagging. She knelt down and petted the dog who’d been with her since before she’d found her strength, who had, in fact, helped her find her strength with his own brave fight to survive. The act of stroking his fur comforted her as it had always done.
“What have you two been up to?” she asked Tavish when the seven-year-old came to the doorway.
“The schoolwork the teacher sent,” he answered, a faltering smile on his face. “Is Vasic gone?”
“Yes, we’re all getting back to work.” Giving Rabbit one final pat, she moved over to hug Tavish.
Rabbit had padded alongside her and now leaned his body against Tavish’s.
“I have to go to school tomorrow?” A quiet question with a tremor behind it.
Tavish had been abandoned by his family when he was signed over to the squad, at which point, he hadn’t been encouraged to form any bonds at all. Then had come this new family and a wary dawning of hope.
Zie Zen’s death had struck a harsh blow to that hope, but Vasic and Ivy were helping the boy work through it by always reiterating that unlike the members of his biological family, Zie Zen hadn’t chosen to leave him behind, that it had simply been time for the older man to travel on to the next stage of existence, whatever that might be.
Going down on her knees in front of the boy, Ivy took his hands in her own. “What did Grandfather always say?”
“That education is important, and that the man who has the most information is the man who can change the tides of the world itself,” Tavish repeated almost word for word.
It was clear he didn’t understand it all, but he understood enough. “So,” Ivy said, “school tomorrow.” She smiled. “Your friends are missing you, you know. The teacher told me.”
A whisper of a smile warmed Tavish’s eyes. “School tomorrow,” he agreed, then bent down to pet Rabbit. “Can you play with Rabbit and me today?”
“Not just yet.” Ivy kissed him on the cheek before rising back up. “I have a comm conference, then some other work to complete. But my mother would like your help in her garden. You can finish your schoolwork later.”
Tavish’s face lit up. Ducking inside his room, he came back out having changed into his designated gardening clothes and with a hat on his head. They picked up his child-sized gloves and tools from the outdoor shed before Ivy walked him over to her parents’ home. Her mother was already outside in the vegetable garden.
Thank you, she telepathed to the woman with the strong, rangy body who’d given birth to her.
Gwen Jane would never be the warm and cuddly epitome of the maternal instinct, but she’d fought for her child’s right to live and to be happy. As had Ivy’s father. She loved them with every beat of her heart.
It’s not an issue, her mother telepathed back. The child has a green thumb and a willingness to learn. And it’s useful to have a telekinetic around when I need a spade or forget my gloves in the house.
Ivy’s lips twitched. She was certain her mother was developing a sense of humor, but she was never quite sure. “Have fun,” she said to Tavish, who was already pulling on his gloves and getting ready to weed.
She’d asked her mother to watch him until noon because the comm conference she was about to have was nothing a child should accidentally overhear. Especially not a child whose mind was anchored in the PsyNet.
She initiated the conference as soon as she arrived back home.
After clearing some minor operational details, she and her team moved on to the real reason for this meeting. The weakness, the fracture lines, the disintegration that threatened to collapse the Net. A number of the team had received reports of unstable areas from empaths in the zone for which they were responsible. When they put all the pieces together, it made for an upsetting picture.
“It’s worse than I thought,” Ivy said, dismayed. “Sahara, has Kaleb been able to dig up any further data on this?” The powerful Tk knew the DarkMind best of all and the neosentience had an affinity for the rot that overlay this disintegration. And though its twin, the NetMind, loved empaths, it had known Kaleb longer; he seemed to be able to talk to it in a way even Es couldn’t.
“No, I’m sorry, Ivy.” Sahara’s dark blue eyes were solemn. “I asked him to make contact before this meeting and he says he’s getting the same images he did before—of bodies having their organs forcibly torn out, a calendar that stops at the dawn of Silence.”
The hairs rose on Ivy’s arms as they’d done the first time Kaleb shared the information with her. “What the hell are we missing?”
No one had any answers, not even Alice Eldridge, who’d completed a groundbreaking and in-depth study of empaths. “Regardless of my spotty memory,” the other woman said, rubbing at her forehead, “I’m not sure I could help here. I don’t have any proof but I don’t think this is an empathic issue. There’s another problem, one we’re blind to for some reason.”
Slowly, faces drawn and worry a heavy weight on their shoulders, the team began to sign off, until only Sascha and Sahara were left. Ivy had been disappointed by Sascha’s lack of participation in the meeting—the cardinal was the most senior E in the world. She’d been “awake” the longest, had run countless tests on her abilities while the rest of them were still mired in Silence.
Yes, Ivy and the others had made certain breakthroughs, but Sascha’s years of intensive study and experimentation gave her a depth of knowledge nothing could beat. Especially with the Es in the Net strained to their limit handling not just the Honeycomb but the confusion and need of a population staggering awake from a long, Silent sleep.
No one had time to do anything but react.
A dedicated E designation research team was a pipe dream.
As a result, Sascha had unofficially taken up the research baton, and Ivy had been hopeful of her contribution. Assuming the cardinal empath’s reticence had to do with the fact that, having defected from the PsyNet, Sascha no longer had real-time data, Ivy went to reiterate the Collective’s need for Sascha’s advice.
But the other woman spoke before she could and it immediately became crystal clear that Sascha had been engaged in the meeting. She’d simply been absorbing all available data and putting the pieces together. “Sophie,” the cardinal said with a frown. “Have you checked her section of the Net?”
Ivy nodded. She didn’t know Sophia Russo well, but every E in Sophia’s part of the world was aware that the section of the PsyNet immediately around Sophia’s mind was different. Stable. Deeply peaceful.
So much so that tired Es strained to the limit had been known to deliberately linger in that section to catch their breath.
What nobody but a rare few knew, however, was that the difference had to do with how Sophia Russo was anchored into the Net—the mind of Nikita Duncan’s senior aide was woven into the PsyNet by millions of fine connections, rather than being linked to it by a single biofeedback link.
In essence, Sophia Russo wasn’t jacked into the Net, she was part of the fabric of the Net itself. And in her mind, the mind of a J-Psy who had always accepted darkness as well as light, the NetMind and DarkMind were one. No division, no fractures, no damage, that joyous wholeness reflected in the cool clear pond that was Sophia’s anchor point.
“Sophia’s area is as stable and peaceful as always,” she told Sascha, the fact one that gave her hope.
“Totally stable?” Sascha pressed. “No shrinkage of her zone of influence?”
Ivy frowned. “I checked after Kaleb first showed me the disintegration, but I wasn’t looking for that in particular.” Dread coalescing in her veins, she said, “Give me three minutes. I’m going to make a more detailed assessment.”
What she found was extraordinary.
Dropping out of the Net, Ivy stared at Sascha. “How did you know?” It came out a husky whisper.
“What did you see?” the cardinal Psy asked.
“Sophia’s zone of influence has grown, Sascha. Not enough to be noticed on a casual pass, but look again and it’s obvious.” Where once, two or three empaths could’ve lingered in that area at any one time, it could now accommodate four, maybe even five.
Sascha blew out a breath. “I didn’t know,” she said. “I was hoping, because so long as Sophia is holding steady, there’s a chance to save the Net before it collapses. We just have to figure out what makes her unique.”
Frowning, Sahara said, “It can’t just be that she accepts both sides of her nature, allowing the NetMind and DarkMind to be one at that point, because if that was true—”
“—then the Net should be healing, even if at a glacial pace,” Ivy completed, because with the fall of Silence had come a tumultuous surge of emotion into the Net. “Is it because of how Sophia’s mind is woven into the Net?”
Tucking back a strand of hair that had escaped her braid, Sascha said, “It’s possible. Sophie is more deeply integrated into the PsyNet than anyone else on the planet.”
“How could we ever duplicate that?” Sahara’s question was stark. “It might help if we knew how and why Sophia Russo’s mind anchored that way.”
Sascha gave a gentle shake of her head. “Sophie’s story is hers to tell, but I asked her once what I could share should the question of the genesis of her anchor point ever come up, and she gave me leave to tell you that it was an instinctive survival act. I don’t think even she could provide us with instructions.”
Head beginning to pound as if it were being struck repeatedly by a hammer, Ivy looked down at a small bark to see that Rabbit had run back from her mother’s home to pay her a visit. He always did that, happily running back and forth when his people were in two separate locations in a single area. “Let me get Rabbit some water,” she said to the other women and went to refill his bowl.
As he began to lap it up, his tail wagging, she found herself thinking of the community her parents had helped build in this corner of North Dakota, how it was a living organism of a kind. Each individual unique and separate, but together forming a cohesive—
Her eyes widened.
All but running back to the comm, she interrupted Sahara midword. “Can you ask Kaleb to help rope in the NetMind to search for any other healthy sections? Areas like Sophia Russo’s?”
“That’s brilliant, Ivy.” Sascha’s eyes bled to pure black. “With Sophia alone, we have only guesswork, but if we can find a second mind that’s helping the Net to heal, we can compare similarities and differences.”
“But wouldn’t your Es have already spotted such sections?” Sahara pressed her fingers against her temples, as if she’d caught Ivy’s headache. “I first heard about Sophia from one of them.”
“I’m going to alert the entire Collective to be on the lookout,” Ivy said, already drafting that message in her head. “That might be enough to jar loose important memories—because if the area is small, an E might not have noticed except to think he or she felt good when passing by.”
Ivy hoped that was the case, because the other scenario was bleak: that Sophia’s was the solitary healthy area.