Last Guard by Nalini Singh

Chapter 39

We are Designation J.

Justice.

But where is our justice?

Where is our peace?

I’m so tired of the horror that lives inside me now.

—Note left by Arnaud Smith, J-Psy (missing, presumed dead)

CANTO BURST OUTlaughing as he read the Beacon interview. “God, you’re magnificent.” He kissed the woman who was sitting on the sofa next to him, her back leaning up against his side.

She had an organizer on her lap and was doing complex financial transactions as part of her job as the Rao CEO.

“That comeback about asking Krychek was perfection.”

“Interviewer was an idiot. Does she ask Nikita the same question? Does she ask Aden Kai if he can still run the Arrows?” She continued on with her transactions. “Entire thing was a waste of time.”

“No.” Shifting his arm around so he could put his organizer in front of her face, he showed her the trending subjects in the PsyNet—once collated by the NetMind and available to any Psy who wanted to look, they were now collected by psychic bots seeded by the media. Those bots had nowhere near the NetMind’s scope, but it was better than nothing.

“I’m at the top of the list.” She did not sound impressed. “At least Designation A is number two.”

“Visibility helps us.” Canto pulled back his organizer when he saw an incoming message. “Sophia Russo is happy to meet with us.” It had taken this long to organize a meeting because Sophia had been involved in an emergency situation to do with a former Justice colleague.

“I know what you’re asking is important,” she’d said, “but the PsyNet won’t fall in two days. My colleague may.” The rich blue-violet of her eyes had been potent with emotion, the thin tracery of scars on her face—whitish against skin of a cream hue—speaking to a violent past that had come up in none of the research Canto had done about her.

He hadn’t known too much about J-Psy at that point, but he’d dug deep in the time since. Both he and Payal had been stunned by the level of attrition in the designation. So many dead and damaged, so much pain. There had to be a better way.

SOPHIAdidn’t know what she was expecting from the mysterious Canto Mercant and Payal Rao. After reading the Beacon interview with Payal, she’d braced herself for an abrasive personality who took no bullshit, but that wasn’t quite what she got when they teleported into a small outdoor garden at Duncan HQ.

Payal was wearing flowing pants in dark gray, matched with a pale green top with sleeves cuffed at the wrist. Her hair was up in a ponytail, but that ponytail was loose, not tight. There was nothing sleek about her. She was … softer than she’d come across in that interview, at least on the outside.

As for Canto Mercant, she was surprised by the chair, but only because she knew her race’s desire for perfection had meant terrible, criminal acts in the past. It was rare to see a Psy adult who used assistive devices; those who’d survived childhood but ended up injured later tended to either disappear or be hidden away.

Yet so-called perfect Psy were often the worst monsters of them all—she carried the marks of that cold truth on her face, and in her memories of three innocent children who’d never gotten the chance to live. Sophia would never forget them—and she’d made sure the world wouldn’t forget them, either.

Carrie O’Brien.

Lin Wong.

Bilar Baramichai.

All three names were now listed as “lost on duty” in the official J-rolls. A small thing, but it mattered. Their names mattered. Their lives had mattered.

As did the lives of Designation A.

Canto Mercant’s hair was silky black like her husband Max’s, and he had eyes with just a hint of an upward tilt. Those eyes were the most unusual cardinal eyes she’d ever seen. Her overall impression was of a handsome man, but one with a dangerous edge to him.

“Hello.” Meeting them halfway, she kept her hands loosely linked in front of her. “We can sit over there.” She nodded to an outdoor seating arrangement put in place when Nikita began to make deals with non-Psy.

She saw both Payal and Canto glance at the fine black leather of her gloves. When neither asked a question about them, she figured they’d dug around and knew she was a Sensitive after her years of work as a J. Skin-to-skin contact led to a telepathic connection she couldn’t control and didn’t want.

To be buried in another person’s thoughts and memories, fears and horrors, it was akin to being buried alive, having the life suffocated out of her. In the worst-case scenario, the overload could crush the brain, collapse the psychic pathways, and kill.

Her friend and fellow J, Cèlian, had turned Sensitive six months earlier. Touch could kill him—yet he was starved of it, too. The divergent needs had been tearing him apart, pushing him closer and closer to choosing self-termination. Sophia had lost too many friends to that terrible final choice, and she refused, refused to let anyone else fall. She’d managed to haul Cèlian back thanks to Max and his huge heart: her husband had natural shields that nothing could crack.

For a Sensitive, he was an oasis of peace, of silence.

After Sophia convinced Cèlian to let Max touch him—and though Sophia’s husband wasn’t a big cuddler of strangers—Max had hugged the other J. Not once. As many times as Cèlian needed in the days since. Cèlian had sobbed the first time and clung to Max’s muscled frame. Her ex-cop husband had stroked the other man’s back and held him without a single sign of impatience.

Later, he’d told her they needed to talk to Bowen Knight at the Human Alliance to build a list of naturally shielded humans who wouldn’t mind interacting with hurt Js. “Back when I was in Enforcement,” he’d said, “I knew some pros on the street who had clients who came to them just for friendly touch, not sexual stuff.”

He’d frowned. “It’s not only Js who ache for touch. I think touch therapy might actually already be a thing, but we need to set up a subgroup of therapists who have airtight shields. And it’s not like Js have never helped humans—the Council only interfered in major cases. Rest of the time, Js did as much good for humans as they did for Psy, so I don’t think it’ll be a hard sell to get help for your friends. Let me talk to Bo.”

Just another reason Sophia would love Max to the end of time.

“Thank you for meeting with us.” Payal took a seat at the edge of the seating area, so Canto could park his chair next to her.

Sophia chose a seat opposite the other woman, putting the three of them in a rough semicircle. “Of course.” Sophia rubbed her forehead, the dull pain behind her eyelids a constant. “The NetMind is so scared and lost and I can’t help it. I need—” She looked up and halted. The two As were staring at her. “What?”

“The NetMind is alive?” Canto Mercant’s voice was harsh—with a piercing note of hope. “All we sense in the Net are fragments.”

“It exists,” Sophia confirmed. “Not as the huge presence it once was, but the core remains. My anchor point—I’m sorry, that’s what I’ve always called it, though I know it’s not correct.”

“It is an anchor point.” Payal Rao’s tone brooked no argument. “We can see you in the Substrate. While you can’t communicate in that sphere with the rest of us, your anchor lines are rooted deep.”

Sophia didn’t understand all of what Payal had just said, but she didn’t need to, not for this. “The NetMind seems to have hidden a piece of itself in my anchor point—in me.” In the very pathways of her brain.

Canto frowned. “May we see?”

When she inclined her head, they joined her on the PsyNet. At one point, they both disappeared after telling her they were examining her anchor point in the Substrate.

Later, when all three of them opened their eyes in the garden again, she saw Canto glance at Payal. Payal, in turn, looked first to Canto. Unspoken things passed between them.

“Is the DarkMind there, too?” Payal asked afterward.

“Yes. They’re not two separate presences anymore but one complete one.” A single point of hope that made her want to believe they could stop the spiral of loss. “When I say NetMind, I mean both.”

Canto said something to Payal about the “weeds” in the Substrate; Payal responded with technical jargon. Allowing their discussion to flow past her, she considered the two of them, and who they were together.

Inside her mind, the NetMind threw a bouquet of flowers into the air.

Sophia sucked in a silent breath. Is this what you need? Anchors who’ve begun to bloom into their full selves?

A sense of terrible sadness, then the image of wilting flowers. No, not wilting. Flowers that had begun to curl up and die because of a lack of sunlight, a lack of care.

As it fragmented in the rest of the PsyNet, the NetMind had grown stronger in her mind. It also brought with it images and thoughts and hopes. Today, it showed her sunlight on the drooping blooms.

Those blooms opened again.

I understand.She tried to encompass the neosentience in love, as protective toward it as she was toward the nascent life cradled in her womb. It was the tiniest collection of cells at this moment in time, so very small that no one outside could sense it. Only she and Max knew. They’d tell River after the first-trimester mark; Max’s brother would be an astonishing uncle, devoted and gentle.

The neosentience of the Net “leaned” into her. It was difficult to describe the sensation fully, but it was as if it was asking for comfort. She embraced it with her mind, held it close. I’ll tell them, she promised, and it calmed.

“I have to pass on a message,” she said, interrupting Canto and Payal’s technical discussion.

They turned as one to her, both so startlingly beautiful that it was a shock each time she looked at them. She had the idea that neither one of them was aware of their physical beauty. Payal struck Sophia as atypical in her thinking and reactions. Not flawed. Never would Sophia call anyone flawed. It was simply a difference.

The same way Sophia’s touch sensitivity was a difference.

As for Canto, given the lack of information on him on the PsyNet, he probably kept a low profile. Those within his trusted circle would be used to his looks. Canto Mercant also struck her as a man who didn’t much care for the opinions of many; the reactions of others would only matter to him in how they affected his goals.

Sophia liked them both.

“The NetMind,” she said, “wants the anchors to emerge into the light, to live full lives. I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg—it wants all Psy to live full lives, but anchors are the foundation.” She often understood such subtleties instinctively, as if the NetMind was so deep a part of her mind that it didn’t need to speak to her to communicate. “If you fade away into the darkness, so does it.”

Canto frowned, but it was Payal—her expression modulated to give nothing away—who spoke. “Does it know if anchors have always been this way? Withdrawn from the world? Or was there a trigger that set this chain of events in motion?”

An excellent question. “I’ll ask, but—for me at least—speaking to the NetMind isn’t like a conversation between me and you. It thinks and responds in a unique way.” She did her best to put Payal’s question to the NetMind.

Its response was slow in coming, and it was a grouping of images.

Blooms, wild and colorful in a field.

A black cloud.

The blooms curling inward until they were shriveled and small.

Sophia blew out a breath. “There was an inciting incident. Time is a fluid concept to the NetMind—I can’t tell you when the incident took place. But it had a catastrophic effect and led to the seclusion of Designation A.”

“The volcanic eruption?” Payal mused. “But that was so long ago—it doesn’t explain the psychic fires and flash floods that Ager mentioned.”

“So many secrets,” Canto bit out. “Our ancestors kicked us all in the guts by hiding anything deemed dark or bad.”

As a J who’d walked in the minds of serial killers the Council refused to acknowledge, Sophia well knew his anger. “I can help you with the research on the inciting incident—but we have to accept that it might’ve been too long ago for there to be any records.”

“You’re one of us, Sophia.” Canto leaned forward, forearms on his thighs. “Unless you don’t want to be?”

“I’m not a normal A. I can’t see your Substrate.”

“You do as much as a minor hub in holding this area stable. You’re an A.”

Sophia was part of a tight fraternity of current and former Js, but this, too, was an element of her identity. To be welcomed in … It meant more than she’d realized. “Thank you.”

“Do you want to take the lead on the research?” Canto’s haunting eyes held her own. “I’ll put you in touch with Ager, who is one of our oldest members, and I’ll forward you what we know about the volcanic eruption that killed twenty anchors, but the historical can’t be our priority.”

“I agree.” The Net was falling apart too quickly. “You have to focus on the now. I’ll take care of the historical hunt.”

“We also need to start working on a plan to reintegrate Designation A into society,” Payal said. “It’s going to be a difficult task—many of us are near agoraphobic after a lifetime of being told we needed to be sheltered.”

“Ask the Es for an assist?” Sophia suggested.

“A good idea, but their workload is already significant.” Payal looked off into the distance, and Sophia could almost see her mind working. “If it’s to last, it has to come from us,” she said finally. “From within.”

“What do you think the reaction will be? How many As will make the attempt?”

To her surprise, Payal said, “All of them.”

Canto’s face was grim. “An anchor’s job is to protect the Net. If that means leaving the walls of safety, so be it.” He glanced at Payal.

Who picked up the thread at once … because these two were bonded. It was a hum in the air between them, a quiet knowledge the NetMind whispered into Sophia’s ear.

“The correct question,” Payal said, “is how many will succeed and how many will fail.” No expression on her face, but Sophia knew her well enough by now to know that meant little. “Some of us have no knowledge of how to be free—those As are akin to caged animals, knowing only their enclosures.”

Sophia flexed her hand, staring down at the black of her glove. She’d never been isolated like an anchor, but she’d been in a cage nonetheless. “If there’s hope,” she said, raising her head to meet Payal’s eyes, “they’ll try and try again. As long as there is light in the darkness, a reason to keep fighting.”

For her, that hope had come in the form of Max. Her lover. Her husband. Her mate.

But love wasn’t a jealous thing, and from its roots had grown so many other tendrils of affection and love and joy. Sophia wanted that for Canto and Payal and every other anchor in the world. “Give them that hope. Let your bond blaze like a candle in the dark.”