she was meant to be doing. Taking a deep breath, she sat down cross-legged on the floor and started to recite a mental exercise so demanding, it succeeded in driving everything else from her mind. Ready, she took the first step out into the Net.
The world opened.
In front of her was an endless starry sky. Each star was a mind, some strong, some weak. Her star was at the center of this universe because she was the entry point. The PsyNet was spread across the world but if she wanted find a particular mind, all she had to do was think of it and it would appear in her field of vision, something like a link on the human-changeling Internet. However, similarly to a link, she had to have a starting point - knowledge of what the mind felt like, looked like.
There was her mother's blazing star - a cool, pure brilliance. Over there were some of the Psy who worked in the Duncan empire. But she didn't want to speak to anyone today. What she was interested in were the dark spaces between minds, the spaces where information floated, controlled into order by the NetMind.
She allowed her consciousness to flow out, letting data filter through her as if she were doing nothing more than catching up on the news. The NetMind brushed past her and kept going, not alive, not dead, but sentient in a way the world had never known. Still young, it was the librarian of this vast archive.
It would've been easy to become sidetracked by the endless streams of data, but despite her free-floating appearance, she was being very choosy, her senses tuned to a fine point. This was about murder... and the greatest lie that had ever been perpetuated by a race upon its own kind.
* * *
Lucas returned a few minutes after five to find Sascha and Tamsyn standing in the yard.
"The juveniles?" the healer asked the second he got within earshot.
Sascha looked up, face drawn. "Are they all right?"
"They were already on their way back by the time I tracked down their whereabouts."
"They heard?" Tamsyn's relief was obvious.
Lucas saw Sascha frown as she realized that something was going on beneath the surface. It had been inevitable. She was too smart to miss much. "They were stopped by a SnowDancer patrol and told to haul ass back home."
"Were your packmates injured?"
He shook his head. "They treated the kids as if they were wolf pups." That was very unusual. When they'd first decided on a truce, Hawke had put out the word that the leopards were allies, but letting them pass without trouble and doing what the soldiers had done was something entirely different. Lucas had been alpha too long not to understand the implied message, but it was an offer he couldn't accept without considerable thought. "They'll be home by nightfall."
Tammy smiled. "I'll leave you two to catch up."
He waited for Sascha to ask what was going on but she shook her head. "Don't trust me." She rubbed at her eyes. "My mind is vulnerable as long as I'm uplinked to the Net."
He had far more faith in her skills than she had in herself, he thought. "What did you find?" They'd discuss her connection to the PsyNet another time.
"Nothing." Fatigue dulled her tone.
He moved close enough to caress her cheek with his knuckles. "It exhausted you."
She didn't pull away and when his hand dropped from her face to entangle with one of her hands, she curled her fingers around his. He had to stifle the panther's satisfied growl.
"There was nothing useful in the public files."
"But?" He could read the confusion, the bewilderment in her face. Whatever she'd learned had shaken her enough that she was no longer able to maintain her usual mask.
Ebony-dark eyes looked up at him before glancing away. "I felt the shadows of violence," she whispered. "Like someone had left behind a mental print in certain places."
"Could you use it to track them?"
"No." She shook her head. "The print is faint. Most Psy wouldn't even be able to detect it."
But she had, he thought, because she felt. Instead of making her confront something he was convinced of but she was clearly hiding from, he used his free hand to tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear. "So the info's been buried deep?"
She nodded. "I'm going to try a few other things tonight."
He smelled fear in the air. "Will it be dangerous?"