Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3) - Nalini Singh Page 0,150
darker, colder, infinitely deadly.
Memory didn’t push it away. It was like her. If the other Es were the NetMind, she was this darkness. “I see the DarkMind,” she murmured without opening her eyes.
“It’s never caused harm to an E.” Kaleb Krychek’s midnight voice.
“No, it won’t hurt me.” She sent out her greeting again, this time to both presences. They were, she realized, not quite separate anymore, even if they’d once been; one merged into the other at the very edges.
What am I? she asked, trying to send the question in images.
??? The lack of comprehension was followed by more images of water. Rain, fresh and ozone-rich on her skin, the cool ripples of a lake sliding against her body, a river sending up spray as it broke around a rock.
Are you cleaning me? Blood suddenly scalding in her veins, she showed them an image of her under a shower, scrubbing. Her expression was angry. She might not be perfect, but no one had the right to change her!
But the image was returned to her, with her scrubbing the walls of the shower.
Memory opened her eyes. “I’m cleaning the walls of the shower.” She scratched her head.
Vasic said, “Will you telepath us the image?”
Since Memory had imagined herself clothed in that shower, she had no problem doing so. While they considered the meaning of the exchange, she described what she’d seen to Alexei. The aggravating wolf actually rolled his eyes at her. “Lioness, like I said—you take the bad out of things. Obviously, you’re taking the sickness out of the PsyNet. Like a purifying filter.”
Everyone else went still.
Memory’s heart kicked. “A filter.” It was such a clear way to describe what she did, especially if she factored Amara’s erratic displays of empathic behavior. It could be said that Memory had filtered out enough psychopathy that a droplet of emotion was able to fall through.
This time, when she entered the PsyNet, she sent out an image of herself on the PsyNet, scrubbing at a badly damaged section. The NetMind returned the image back to her, altered slightly. She now saw cracks in the area she’d “scrubbed”—but the section was whole again. The crack was a scar, strong, not weak.
Show me, Memory said. I want to try. She projected an image of herself standing with cleaning supplies, in a ready stance, and when the NetMind and DarkMind tugged at her, she went. “I’m running an experiment,” she said aloud.
Two other Psy minds appeared in the Net—Ivy Jane and Kaleb Krychek.
The two followed her as the twin neosentience took her to a part of the Net that was in danger of fatal collapse. It had been cordoned off, no minds anchored inside it, and though the golden threads of the Honeycomb crisscrossed it in a thick mesh, it was barely holding together. Kneeling beside it, Memory realized she had no idea what to do, and went with the image she had; she put a scrubbing brush in her hand—and began to clean.
She didn’t know how long it took, but she was leaning up against Alexei’s chest by the time she finished. The damage hadn’t been erased . . . but it was better. Scars had begun to form. Two or three more scrubs and she might be able to return it to a level of strength viable enough to support Psy minds.
A pulse along the mating bond, her mate calling her back.
She went, because she would always answer Alexei’s call as he would hers. That’s what it meant to love. Opening her eyes, she would’ve swayed if he hadn’t been holding her tight. “It takes a lot of energy.”
Alexei shoved a granola bar into her hand and muttered that he was going to start carrying around nutrient bars if she kept losing weight in front of him.
“Flavored,” she reminded him as she tore open the granola bar.
He kissed her temple.
“Checks and balances,” Sahara murmured. “The NetMind has always kept the PsyNet stable—even when Psy were going insane a hundred years ago, the Net itself was stable. We broke that stability with Silence. The NetMind couldn’t keep up.”
Ivy Jane nodded, the soft dark of her hair glinting in the sunlight. “Pre-Silence it makes sense that it had a few Es like Memory, who could consciously or subconsciously repair any damage.”
“The ability to filter psychopathy is the secondary ability,” Alexei said with his usual clarity. “It’s the one that freaked out Es in the past, but it’s not an E-sigma’s primary function.”