Nalini Singh - Heart of Obsidian

*PsyNet collapse in Perth, Australia, caused by attack on local anchor network. Pure Psy claims responsibility. Eight thousand confirmed fatalities and rising. Councilor Kaleb Krychek able to seal the breach, allowing anchors from nearby regions to buttress the weakened section.

DO NOT VENTURE INTO COLLAPSE ZONE. REPEAT. DO NOT VENTURE INTO COLLAPSE ZONE. ANCHOR NETWORK IS STRETCHED THIN AND CANNOT SUPPORT ADDITIONAL MINDS.

This feed will continue to be updated as further news becomes available.*

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

I write in regard to your correspondent’s recent extended essay in relation to the violence in California. I have been a supporter of Pure Psy since it was first formed. I believe Silence is the reason for the survival of our race and that without it, we would’ve long sunk into murderous depravity.

However, I now find myself conflicted. I agree with your correspondent’s argument that violence such as that mounted by Pure Psy against the changelings runs counter to the aim of Purity espoused by the group and is in direct violation of the founding tenets of Silence.

It has left me in a position where I do not know if I am any longer a supporter of Pure Psy. I remain very much a proponent of the truth that Silence is the reason for the survival of our race.

Yours sincerely,

Name withheld by request

(Prague)

Your correspondent’s reporting was extremely biased in pitching the battle as being against the changelings.

The truth, as every intelligent mind in the Net realizes, is that the violence was unfortunately mandated by the coterie of defectors in the region who act as agitators in attracting and encouraging others to break conditioning. This cannot be permitted to continue, and I, for one, am in full support of Pure Psy’s actions in this regard.

E. Miller

(Mexico City)

I would like to congratulate you on your continuing unflinching and critical coverage of recent events. Pure Psy’s intimidation tactics are now a matter of public record, and it is to your correspondent’s credit that he did not give in to such threats—threats that, as he says, strike at the very heart of the protocol Pure Psy says it seeks to uphold.

C. Prasad

(Nairobi)

KALEB’S THOUGHTS TOOKan instant to normalize when he returned to his body. It was a predictable result of the amount of power he’d expended to seal the breach while continuing to function on a basic level in Moscow—to the point where he was never vulnerable to a physical or psychic attack.

Blinking to clear dry eyes, he reached for the glass of water beside his hand, the glass positioned beside several nutrition bars. None of it had been on the table when he entered the Net. “Thank you,” he said and began to methodically eat his way through the tasteless items of food, his energy levels already nearly back to peak efficiency. Most Psy couldn’t recover as quickly, but Kaleb had long been aware that he wasn’t “normal” in any way, his DNA holding a thousand secrets.

Finishing the third nutrition bar, he looked across at the woman for whom he might yet cause a massacre that’d make today look like the merest incident. And saw that she’d changed in a fundamental way—her back was no longer bent, her head no longer ducked. Rather, she sat straight up, her hair tucked behind her ears, the dark blue of her eyes focused on him with a vivid intelligence that had always tested his own.

If he hadn’t had such granite control over his body and mind, his heartbeat might’ve accelerated, his breathing might have turned ragged. She was coming back. “The labyrinth,” he said through the primal scream inside him, “you’ve navigated it?”

“There was no need. It has dissolved.”

Her response was unexpected—the mind he’d glimpsed during teleport had been so chaotic a mess that it seemed impossible the strands had untangled themselves. “Have you regained your memories and abilities?” Do you remember?

“My abilities, yes. The entirety of my memories, no.” She folded her arms on the table and he saw again how thin they were, how fragile her body.

Rising, he mixed up a nutrient drink flavored with her favorite, cherry. She accepted it and took a sip. Eyes widening, she took another. “Cherry.” A sigh heavy with pleasure. “Thank you.”

He gave a curt nod before retaking his seat.

“The duration of the labyrinth,” she said, her voice still husky from disuse, “may have caused permanent damage to my memory centers. I was very young when I created it, not yet fully trained, and the construction was rough.”

Sixteen. That’s how old she’d been when she had disappeared. “What is your name?” he asked, every cell in his body motionless as he waited for her answer, waited to see how much of her had come back.

Midnight blue caught his own, his image reflected in the opaque depths. “Sahara Kyriakus, of the PsyClan NightStar.”

SAHARA’Srevelation incited no visible change in Kaleb’s expression, not even the flicker of an eyelash. His Silence, she thought, taking another sip of the cherry-flavored drink he’d given her, must be pristine. Wholly unlike her own. Yet her responses . . . she knew they weren’t quite right, weren’t quite rational, given her precarious situation.

I am, she realized within her strange calm, not yet truly awake.

“What do you know about NightStar?” the dangerous man across from her asked in that chill-as-frost voice that resonated inside her in a way she couldn’t understand—as if she heard things in it he didn’t say, knew him in ways that were impossible. Even in her current state, she recognized that a man like Kaleb Krychek would trust no one with his secrets.

And if someone had the misfortune to discover them?

That person would not live long enough to share the discovery. With his black hair, cardinal eyes, and honed physique, Kaleb might be almost shockingly handsome, but the beauty was nothing but a mask for the deadly mind within. The knowledge should’ve made her afraid, but she found herself fighting the strangest compulsion to cry, her eyes burning as the eerie calm threatened to splinter.

“NightStar is an F-Psy clan,” she said, her voice rough from the effort it took to hold those unfathomable tears at bay—for a stranger who might well end her life when he realized she had no intention of cooperating with him any more than she had with her previous captors. “But I do not carry the PsyClan’s name as my last, as I am not a foreseer, do not see what will be.”

“No.” The black silk of Kaleb’s hair glinted in the morning sunlight, and she had the disorienting sense that she’d been here in this moment before, sitting across from this man while the sun played over his hair. “You see the past.”

Fighting her way through the sticky threads of a web seductive in its insistence she trust Kaleb, she fell back on facts burned into her long-term memory. “Sahara Kyriakus, Clan NightStar, custodial parent Leon Kyriakus—Gradient 7.7 M-Psy with recessive F genes.

“Biological mother Daniela García, Gradient 8.2 telepath, part of a small but highly regarded family group based out of Cuba.” Her skin tone, she thought as her eyes fell on her arm, came as a result of the mix of maternal and paternal DNA, would turn a deep golden brown with further exposure to the sun.

“Daniela García also possesses markers for recessive F abilities, the latter the reason she was considered a good genetic match for my father.” Foreseers ran in the NightStar family tree, and the clan did everything it could to maintain that lucrative line. “While I am not a foreseer, I am placed in the same designation, subdesignation B.”