Last Guard by Nalini Singh

Chapter 18

Cor meum familia est.

My heart is family.

—Motto of the Mercant family

THOUGH PAYAL HADN’Tlooked at Canto, didn’t need his answer when it came to emotion, he knew the others did. “I didn’t see the point in pretending to be Silent when I so obviously wasn’t.”

Ager gave him a curious look. “No one has ever questioned Ena Mercant’s Silence.”

Canto could’ve blocked the reference to his family, but if he wanted commitment, he had to commit in turn.

“You can’t expect to receive if you don’t give,” Arwen had said once. “No one likes feeling exposed.”

Coming from an E who wore his heart on his sleeve where family was concerned, it had made an impact.

“My grandmother is many things.” Canto’s respect for Ena was one of the foundations of his life. “First and foremost, she is a warrior for our family. No Mercant will ever be betrayed to outsiders—not even the ones who don’t fit the mold of so-called perfection.”

He made eye contact with everyone but Payal—because shit, he needed time to handle that. “That’s who I am and where I come from and what I want for us as a group.”

“Big goals,” Arran muttered.

Suriana stirred. “It would be nice, to have a group I could trust without question.”

“After so long, I am content alone,” Bjorn said, exchanging a quiet nod with Ager, “but a union of minds in sync … Yes, I see how it could make things better for the future of all As.”

“You gonna pretend you’re Silent?” Arran challenged Payal.

“I understand and feel emotion.” Cool as ice. “But I’ve trained myself to keep it at a distance. I function far better that way.”

Canto wanted to argue with her about her stance, wanted to ask if she’d ever considered anything other than a total shutdown of her emotions, not out of arrogance or his own need, but because his childhood had shown him that the environment in which a person grew could alter everything about how they thought, what they believed.

He would not be this Canto had he come to adulthood in the household of his father.

That Payal’s mental wiring was distinctive, he didn’t doubt. But she’d also had to learn to wall off her emotions in order to survive her childhood. There were suggestions—hidden, underground—that Pranath Rao had either killed or arranged for the death of his firstborn. Add in her psychopathic surviving brother, and that wasn’t a home in which a small, sensitive little girl could endure without hardening herself.

“Fascinating.” Ager flexed then closed their hand back around the head of their cane. “You realize you are what the architects of Silence actually envisioned? A being born with emotion who can nonetheless keep that emotion from overwhelming her.”

“No,” Payal said with her customary directness. “If you go back and read up on the original aims of Silence, it best matches a psychopathic personality profile.”

A bark of laughter from Arran that made Suriana jump and Bjorn jerk upright. But the other anchor wasn’t looking at either of them. He was grinning at Payal. “I definitely want her representing us,” he said to Canto, his body more relaxed than Canto had ever seen it. “Can you imagine her using that take-no-shit voice against Krychek?”

“It’s not about ‘against,’” Payal said before Canto could reply. “The members of the Ruling Coalition aren’t our enemies. They are allies.”

“Agreed,” Canto said. “Their only mistake was in not bringing anchors to the table—but that was a decision put into play generations ago, well before any of us were born—and Designation A played a major role in our invisibility.” Canto wasn’t about to allow his designation to skate on past mistakes.

“So,” he said, “do we have a consensus? That we’re now a team that represents anchors, with Payal as our public voice?” Their general forged in a burn of ice and survival.

A round of nods—and a small salute from Arran.

Payal, meanwhile, showed no outward reaction to the outcome. She simply uncrossed her legs and said, “Then it’s time to make our first move.”

SOPHIARusso’s official title was special advisor to Ruling Coalition member Nikita Duncan. Her duties and responsibilities, however, had grown significantly since she took on the position. She’d told Nikita that she’d never lie to her—and that she wasn’t afraid of her, either.

Both facts were true.

Not much scared a former Justice-Psy who’d walked in the minds of serial killers.

Sophia had openly opposed her boss’s stance on a number of matters; that she was still here spoke to the strength of their relationship. Sophia didn’t think she’d ever like Nikita, not when she knew so much of what the other woman had done, but she respected her.

Nikita had blood on her hands—but she also had a cardinal empath daughter she’d raised to adulthood. The same cardinal daughter who’d created the first major chink in Silence when she defected from the PsyNet. Also, unlike a number of notable others, Nikita had felt the winds of change and was moving with them rather than attempting to keep the Psy locked in a cold and Silent past.

So when the other woman asked her to look over Project Sentinel and give feedback, Sophia took care with the task. A headache pulsed at the back of her head by the time she was done, but that was nothing new. She’d been getting small headaches for weeks now, and she knew it had to do with the problems in the PsyNet.

Most Psy were anchored into the PsyNet by a single biofeedback link. Sophia, however, was interwoven so deeply into its fabric that she could never extricate herself. She felt no such desire—not when she knew how important her mind was to the Net. It was a tiny weight in the grand scheme of things, a tiny anchor at best, but it was an anchor. It also didn’t matter that she hadn’t been born an anchor, her attachment to the Net a result of childhood trauma; that her anchor point existed was now fact.

“That’s the problem with this plan,” she said to Nikita as the two of them walked down a long bridge that connected two parts of Duncan HQ in San Francisco. Clear water flowed under the bridge from the large water feature to the right—a flat wall of veined granite that had water running down it. The minerals in the rock sparkled in the morning sunlight in this part of the world.

“Explain,” Nikita said.

Sophia halted in the center of the bridge. “It has to do with the anchor who’ll be attached to the island.”

“The individual hasn’t yet been chosen.” The wedge of Nikita’s black hair was newly cut, the edges blunt and perfect. Her skirt-suit was a dark gray, the shirt she wore underneath a pristine white.

Sophia had gone for a dark green pantsuit today, paired with a white top that featured a ribbon woven through the high neckline. It wasn’t crisply Psy, but it was very Sophia—as she’d come to realize in the time since her emancipation from Silence.

“But,” Nikita continued, “it will be a strong and stable cardinal.”

Frowning, Sophia shook her head. “You need the input of a hub-A before things get to that point.” As a strange minor A, Sophia couldn’t quite see the shape of the problem, though it hovered on the edge of her consciousness. “I have a strong feeling a single anchor won’t be able to hold the island.”

Nikita glanced at her timepiece. “I have to go in for the buyout meeting. We’ll discuss this later—but I can tell you from my time on the Council that anchors are generally unstable. It may prove difficult to find one rational enough to participate in such talks.”

Sophia refrained from rolling her eyes; she’d picked up the action from one of the DarkRiver leopard teens, and a more apt one she couldn’t at this moment imagine. “Think about what you just said, Nikita.” She held the brown of her boss’s gaze. “Santano Enrique was a Councilor.”

Nikita paused in the act of turning away, was still, then gave a crisp nod. “I’ll add this to the Ruling Coalition’s agenda—but if you’re correct, any number of As should have contacted us by now to warn against the current shape of Sentinel.”

“That assumes they’re in the information loop.” Nikita tended to forget that not everyone had such access—she had been in power for decades, was unused to being in the dark on any important matter.

The two of them began to walk together again.

Nikita’s hair was black glass under the sun as she said, “The fact is, we’re in a time crunch.” In front of them, the doors to the building slid open. “There’s no sign of a slowdown in the Scarab issue—the damage being done is long-term and destructive.”

Sophia didn’t follow Nikita inside. Frowning in thought, she made her way slowly back across the bridge. She knew a lot of people—but as a former J-Psy, her major network was in Justice. She had no contacts in Designation A. Even if she did, what would she ask them? Her feeling of unease was exactly that, a feeling.

No facts, no rationale behind it.

Stopping near the center of the bridge once more, she stared down at the running water as her headache pulsed, slow and steady. When she looked on the PsyNet, at the small section she anchored, she saw that it remained calm, stable, and yet the knots in her stomach wound themselves into painful rocks.

The NetMind and DarkMind had once been whole when they wove through her section of the Net—she’d become an uncategorizable focus, one that helped the twin neosentiences find cohesion. Perhaps because she, too, had once been fragmented. Into so many pieces that her personality and mind were a scarred mélange.

“Beautiful signs of your will to survive, Sophie darling.” Max’s dimpled smile as he ran a finger over her chin, after she’d spoken aloud about her piecemeal self. “You kicked the scrawny ass of anyone stupid enough to write you off, and I’m a smug shit about it.”

Today, hoping her mind could help the twin neosentiences of the Net hold on to coherence, she “listened” for their presence and heard only the wind. As if they’d gone beyond madness and into a final death. But no … There. A brush against her mind, another.

Inhaling on a sob, she clenched one hand on the bridge railing. She couldn’t speak to the NetMind or the DarkMind, but she’d never needed to; theirs was a bond of emotion. Now she staggered under a melancholy wave of sadness and heartbreak.

Their sadness. Their heartbreak.

The PsyNet was dying. And they were dying with it.