him. Softened him.
Because Payal was right; his statement had been one colored by hope.
Anger was a metallic taste on his tongue as he thought of all the children who’d been eliminated from the population for so-called imperfections. All the children who hadn’t had Ena Mercant in their corner. “Did anyone fight for you?” he found himself asking, needing her not to have been so painfully alone.
“In my family, only the strong survive.”
Canto’s hand spasmed on his water bottle.
Needing to do something—anything—for her, he went to the temperature-controlled storage cabinet and, putting aside the water, pulled out a couple of nutrient bars. He handed one to Payal after returning to his spot by her side. “The teleport would’ve burned a chunk of your energy. You should refuel. Especially since your anchor zone is also sucking you dry.”
She stared at the bar in her hand as if it were a strange, unknown object.
“It’s sealed,” he said without scowling—he understood that her issues with trust went to the core. They weren’t children anymore, and she’d been relying only on herself for a very long time.
He had to get it through his thick skull that she might never fucking trust him.
A hard swallow before she curled her fingers around the bar. “Why do sick As keep being born?” she asked, her voice tight. “Pre-agreement genetic testing of procreation partners should make such matches impossible.”
Canto had seen the testing record for his mother and Binh Fernandez. It had been a thing of art in its detail. Yet it had forecast none of Canto’s future physical issues. “I have a theory that we only start to sicken after birth—when the first trickle of the PsyNet begins to run through our minds.” A slow, relentless drip into pathways built to one day mainline the Net. “It’s filthy with rot and we’re caught in the stream. No other Psy engage with the Net to the same depth as As.”
“I had a tumor, too,” Payal told him without warning, almost as if the words had shoved themselves past her rigid control. “In my brain. Medics discovered it a month after my removal from the school.”
That was powerful information to have about the Rao CEO. Canto grabbed hold of the small indication of trust—and secreted away the data in a private file about 3K that he would never ever share with anyone else. This? Him and Payal? Theirs was a private bond.
Years of lost time between them, a heavy weight of the unknown, he took the organizer and brought up a profile labeled Hub-3. “This anchor suffers from recurring skin cancers, while this one”—a profile labeled Hub-4—“has a disorder that causes severe breathing issues that can’t be linked to any particular diagnosis.”
“You think the PsyNet is doing this to us. That as it sickens and dies, so do we—and because of that, past anchors were murdered as infants and toddlers.”
Such a short, concise summation of horrific ugliness. “Prior to initialization,” Canto said, “anchors are just ordinary children with medical issues.”
“Your theory also explains the high incidence of mental instability in our designation. As the NetMind began to lose coherence, so did we.”
“Yeah, that’s what I think.”
PAYAL knew she had to keep her distance from the relentless force that was Canto Mercant for her own safety. But she opened her mouth and said, “I will assist you.” The anchor problem was too critical to the future of their race for her to allow personal concerns to hold her back.
But Canto wasn’t done. “Will you be the face of our organization, the one who speaks to the Ruling Coalition?” Galaxies that threatened to suck her under. “Majority of As are ready to join the organization—I don’t foresee problems with the more hesitant, either. They just need a little hand-holding.”
“I’m considered robotic,” she pointed out. “I have no charisma.”
“You’re wrong.” Implacable. Absolute. “When you talk, people listen. You also have a spine of steel—and Designation A needs that steel, because what we’re going to say and demand is going to come as a shock.”
“Why not do it yourself? Your own will isn’t in question.” For one, he’d tracked down the loner members of a secretive designation and talked them into becoming part of a group.
“I have zero patience for politicking of any kind.” Thunder on his face. “I’d yell. A lot.”
Payal blinked. No, Canto Mercant was not predictable. “Why do you believe I can be a politician?”
“You can’t. But according to all my sneaky spying—”
Fascination had her interrupting. “Sneaky spying?”
He grimaced. “Damn bears.”