Allegiance of Honor (Psy-Changeling #15) - Nalini Singh Page 0,147

me we’ll do it together.”

Her eyes held his own and he knew his gaze was obsidian, devoid of stars. “I trust you with every tiny particle of my being and every corner of my soul,” Sahara said. “If you ever say there’s no hope, that it’s time for the last throw of the dice, then I’ll be right there beside you.”

Shifting his hold to grip her jaw, he kissed her hard. “Now that we’ve settled that, let’s figure out how to fix this so we never have to throw those particular dice.” Because while he knew he’d save her, Kaleb also knew the loss of millions of other lives would devastate his Sahara.

To keep her whole, he’d have to ensure the PsyNet did not fall.

PART 6

Chapter 43

BOWEN KNIGHT, SECURITY chief of the Human Alliance, was not having a good week. In the past forty-eight hours, someone in the Alliance had betrayed a possible ally to the Consortium. Yes, there was a minimal chance that the leak had come from BlackSea, but Miane Levèque didn’t think so and Bo agreed with her.

The timing pointed to an Alliance member.

Bo had realized from the first that there were apt to be Consortium stooges among the Alliance network—they had too many members and were too widely spread out for it to be otherwise—but having proof of it was a slap in the face to everything he wanted for his people.

That mess would’ve been bad enough, but almost on the heels of it had come a call from Ashaya Aleine that had dealt a catastrophic blow to the hopes he’d had that the human race could equalize the psychic playing field. “I’ve triple-checked every piece of data,” the scientist had said, the blue-gray of her eyes unusually dark. “There’s no mistake. The Alliance implants are beginning to degrade, with significant and likely fatal brain damage forecast as a secondary effect.”

Those implants were meant to block Psy from rifling through human minds at will and they worked. Since the day the implant went in, Bowen hadn’t had to worry about giving away secrets—private and of the Alliance—without realizing it. He hadn’t had a constant knot in his gut from never knowing when a telepath would reach in and violate his mind, possibly force him to act against his will. For almost a year, he’d been free to be Bowen Knight, security chief of the Human Alliance and a man in charge of his own fucking destiny.

Now, the morning after he’d shared the devastating news with his senior people, all of whom had been implanted around the same time as Bo, he stood in the dawn-gilded splendor of Venice, on one of the sunken city’s iconic bridges, and looked at the canal water below. All the while, he was viscerally aware that inside his brain, things were going catastrophically wrong.

The Alliance’s internal medics and scientists had gone over Ashaya’s work, but even before they came back to Bo with confirmations, he’d known Ashaya wasn’t wrong. Ashaya Aleine wouldn’t have passed on the data unless she—and her equally brilliant twin—were certain beyond any doubt of their conclusions.

He’d been the first implanted but wasn’t yet showing any symptoms. One of the few Psy he trusted had confirmed the implant still functioned as intended, creating an impenetrable shield around his mind. As for the bad news, neither Ashaya nor the internal Alliance implant team knew when or if he—and the others from the first group—would begin to exhibit symptoms, whether it would be progressive or if it would go wrong all at once.

The one good thing was that because Bo and his senior people had been the first implanted and all but two were past the safe removal stage, they could act as the barometers. Everyone else who had the implant would be given the choice to keep it and risk death or brain damage, or have it removed and risk mental violation.

Hell of a choice.

Bo knew which one he would’ve made had he been offered it.

Irrespective of all that, he wasn’t about to give up, wasn’t about to accept that this was how it would end. He’d given Ashaya and the internal team carte blanche to run experiments, find a solution. If not in time for him, then in time for all those humans who’d make the choice to go to their deaths knowing they were safe from psychic rape.

Bo had authorized them to crack his skull and run whatever-the-fuck tests they wanted on his brain, should he die