Clever.
Or psychotic.
Why hasn't this news hit the Net? Kaleb might have been distracted over the past few hours, but his mind continued to scan the pathways of the Net, and he'd heard nothing of what was a significant act of aggression.
Bad timing, answered Silver's mental voice. Pure Psy operatives must've finished putting up the decal seconds before an Enforcement vehicle cruised down the street and spotted it. The officers became suspicious, checked the building, and discovered the bodies.
As a result, the external processing is being completed while the city sleeps, the decal removed.
The only reason I have the data is because of a cousin high in Enforcement Command in the country—they've managed to black out the incident as far as the media are concerned.
The failure to gain Netwide exposure would only incite Pure Psy to further acts of lethal violence.
Is your contact any closer to infiltrating the inner circle? While Pure Psy was doing an excellent job of creating the instability he needed for his current endgame, the group was a rogue element.
Kaleb preferred iron control in all things.
No. Vasquez is very, very careful.
Continue to monitor the situation in Khartoum. Keep me updated.
Yes, sir.
Hearing a tiny sound at his back as he closed the telepathic link, he walked to the railing instead of turning, his eyes on the impenetrable depths of the gorge.
The lights went off a second later, leaving the terrace lit only by the stars, the moon at full dark tonight.
Bare feet padding on the wood of the terrace, a whisper of scent, clean and fresh, a flutter of green as she came to stand beside him—though she left a good three meters of distance between them.
Dressed in a green T-shirt and soft gray pajama pants, she'd clearly washed her hair, but it hung tangled and knotted around her face, hiding her profile from him as she closed her fingers around the bars, squeezing the cold of the metal so hard her skin turned ghostly white.
"It's only a prison," he said, "so long as you aren't in control of your mind." If he dropped the shields in which he'd encased her, she became vulnerable to even the weakest of their brethren, her mind shorn of its protective coating. "Rebuild your shields and I'll set you free."
It was a lie.
He would never let her go.
Chapter 3
IT WAS DIFFERENT here, the harsh, cutting light that had hurt her eyes until her head throbbed nowhere in evidence. Everything was soft and unobtrusive. No, not everything. Not the man who had brought her to this place. He was hard.
Like black ice.
He spoke to her in a voice that made her skin prickle, said words that sometimes made sense and sometimes became lost by the time they reached her through the twisted labyrinth of her mind. She'd created that labyrinth, she knew that. What she didn't know was why. Why would she sabotage her own mind? Why would she consciously hobble her own abilities?
The labyrinth was why they'd kept her in that white room for so long she couldn't remember the beginning anymore, couldn't think of the last time she'd truly been able to sleep. The glare had beaten down on her like a vicious hammer, even if she curled up into a ball and hid her face in her arms. Her jailers had promised to turn off the lights if she would unravel the labyrinth and be useful again, do things for them.
Mind clearing for a fraction of a minute as the labyrinth reset, she realized she should've been executed when it became obvious she had no intention of cooperating. That she'd been permitted to live told her that whatever it was she could do, it was important and powerful enough to keep her safe, if only half-alive, trapped, and chained. Her last attempt— The labyrinth twisted, changing shape as it did a thousand times a day, and her thoughts warped out of all comprehension, shredding the gossamer weave of reason and memory. Fingers tightening on the iron bars of the railing that kept her from falling into the black abyss on the other side, she breathed through the change, blinking away the spots of light from in front of her eyes. But the spots didn't fade, and it was with a sense of dawning wonder that she realized those dots were the stars in the night sky.
They glittered and shimmered until she reached out a hand, wanting to touch. But they were too far away . . . and in her hand, she held a book. Startled, she almost dropped the unexpected item, but the cushion of solid air around her hand told her the man of black ice wouldn't have allowed the book to plummet into the abyss.
She couldn't read the words on the cover in the dark, didn't know if she could read words at all.
But drawing the slender volume back through the bars, she held it against her chest as if it were a treasure, and when she was certain he wasn't watching her, she chanced a look at the man.
He wasn't like the guards in the white place full of painful light that had been her prison. They'd hurt her, but this man, he could slit her throat and not blink. She knew that with the same part of her brain that had birthed the labyrinth, the part driven by the relentless will to survive. It cared nothing for the quality of her life, only that she remain alive. That brutal pragmatism was why she'd lived long enough to be here under the stars beside a man who possessed eyes of the same starlight, icy white on a background of black silk.
Cardinal, whispered a hidden pocket of memory, his eyes are those of a cardinal.