the call connected. His part was done. Leila Savea’s life now depended on countless pairs of human eyes.
Letters to Nina
From the private diaries of Father Xavier Perez
November 3, 2076
Nina,
I’ve crossed many borders in the past year, somehow ended up making a home in San Francisco. I have a church, a congregation. They call me Father Xavier. It felt too big a thing at first, the respect inherent in it unearned, but I’ve come to accept my place here.
I may be but a humble man from a distant mountain village—but in this big city, there are many broken souls who need solace. I attempt to provide it, even as I fight my own demons, fight my own anger.
I’m no longer surprised when I find Psy sitting in the pews. They used to leave when they saw me, as if afraid I’d turn them in for believing, but now sometimes, they stay and we talk. I was such a fool before, Nina, thinking they weren’t people but automatons. There is nothing that separates us but a twist of biology—they have psychic abilities and we don’t. That is the only difference. Beneath the skin, they are as human as you or I.
My Psy friend though, he’s as different from the parishioners as a rabbit is from a bird of prey. He is always in such control, so cold. Frigid as ice, until it would be easy to believe that he is an unfeeling robotic killer. Yet I’ve seen this man take a bullet to protect a child.
Heroes, I’ve learned, don’t always wear white.
Sometimes they come from the darkness, shadows among shadows.
Your Xavier
Chapter 40
KALEB HAD BEEN searching for another area of the Net as healthy as Sophia Russo’s ever since Sahara made the request. The NetMind and DarkMind had proven singularly unhelpful on that point. So much so that Kaleb was starting to become concerned at the twin neosentiences’ behavior. Previously, even when the DarkMind turned erratic, the NetMind had remained unwavering and resolute in its duties.
The fact that the more stable neosentience was displaying erratic behavior of its own told him the problem with the PsyNet was far bigger than even the empaths realized, the flaw so fundamental that it was causing catastrophic damage to the “organs” of what was clearly a living system.
Given the lack of help, Kaleb had set up tightly defined search patterns that ran continuously. He’d devoted a significant percentage of his brain to the search. And after all that, he’d found only two other areas that appeared flawless in their health. It was possible there were more, since he’d basically run a manual search, but if so, it had to be a highly limited number.
The first new area was simple enough: it emanated from Clara Alvarez. Interestingly, she was an ex-Justice Psy like Sophia Russo. Coincidence?
It was the second clean area that proved problematic.
That small isolated region of the Net was pristine, beautiful, strong . . . and the mind behind the effect invisible. Not well shielded. Invisible. The only people Kaleb knew who had shields that effective were Arrows. He’d only detected that there was a mind anchored in the area because one, he was a dual cardinal with the attendant power, and two, because he’d made it a point to learn how to spot Arrows back when the squad had been under the command of Councilor Ming LeBon, who’d used them to mete out death to his enemies.
It hadn’t mattered if a particular assassination required an Arrow to give up his or her own life; the ex-Councilor had treated the highly trained and extremely intelligent men and women of the squad as replaceable. Despite growing up in the “care” of a psychopath, Kaleb had never made the same mistake when it came to his own people—and it was because of Sahara. She’d taught him that people weren’t disposable or replaceable by being the unique, wild, extraordinary gift that she was . . . and by how she’d seen the same in him.
“Don’t get hurt, Kaleb! Who will I play with if you break your legs?”
“You’ll find other friends. There are lots of children in the NightStar compound.”
A reproachful look from the ten-year-old girl standing at the bottom of the tree, the one with dark, dark blue eyes that always filled with light when he stole away to see her. “But only you’re you. Only you are my best friend.”
It was a fragment of memory that had reminded him to stay Kaleb no matter how his psychopathic