Blaze of Memory(13)

"And if you fail to find any useful data in the designated time frame?"

Fear rose, but it was dull, a feeling she'd endured so long, it had become a bruise that never faded. "I must shift all my focus to the primary task."

"What is that task?"

"To kill the director of the Shine Foundation, Devraj Santos."

"How?"

"In a way that makes it clear he was assassinated. In a way that leaves no room for doubt about who did the task."

"Why?"

That threw her. "You didn't tell me why."

"Good." A single, ice-cold word. "Your job isn't to understand, simply to do. Now repeat what you are to do."

"Kill Devraj Santos."

"And then?"

"Kill myself."

A pause, a rustle of fabric as he crossed his legs, his face as expressionless as when he'd shut her in the dark again though she'd begged and pleaded on her hands and knees.

"Please," she'd said, scrabbling to hold on to his legs. "Please, don't. Please, please!"

But he'd kicked her away, locked the door. And now he sat - a god on his throne while she huddled on the floor - speaking to her in that cool voice that never changed, no matter how much she screamed.

"That task is the sole reason I'm leaving you alive."

"Why me?"

"You're already dead. Easily expendable."

"If I fail?" She was so weak, her bones seeming to melt from the inside out. How could she possibly kill any man, much less one reputed to be as lethal as the director of the Shine Foundation?

There was no immediate answer, no movement from the spider who'd become the only living being in the endless pain that was her universe. He was a true Psy. He didn't make gestures or movements without purpose. Once, she'd been like that. Before he'd torn into her mind and snapped the threads of her conditioning, wiping out all the things that had made her who she was.

Before he'd killed her.

"If you fail," he finally said, "Devraj Santos will eliminate you from the equation. The end, for you, will be the same."

Katya gasped awake, her clothing sticking to her skin, her head pounding. Fear and horror clawed at her chest until she kicked off the blankets, certain something was sitting on her ribs, crushing her bones.

Nothing.

Nothing but madness.

Shoving a fist into her mouth, she curled onto her side, wrestling with the jagged fragments of a dream that had drenched her body in the sick chill of fear-sweat. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't connect the pieces, couldn't figure out what it was the shadow-man had wanted her to do.

She just knew that when the time came . . . she'd do it. Because the shadow-man never left anything to chance. Most especially his weapons.

PETROKOV FAMILY ARCHIVES

Letter dated December 3, 1970

My dear Matthew,