Allegiance of Honor (Psy-Changeling #15) - Nalini Singh Page 0,110
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.
Chapter 32
VASIC ARRIVED AT the coordinates he’d been given by Miane Levèque to find himself on one of their floating cities. The BlackSea alpha was dressed in camouflage gear, her face painted with stripes of black and her above-shoulder-length hair scraped back into a small tail. There were five others with her, including a large male Vasic recognized as Malachai Rhys.
“Vasic.” Eyes softening, Miane touched her fingers lightly to his forearm. “Thank you for coming.”
He accepted the tactile gesture of sympathy with a quiet nod. “Where do you need to go?”
Miane held out her hand. On it was a small disk that she pressed down on to bring up a detailed hologram of an old pier. The battered sign at the