Last Guard by Nalini Singh

Chapter 43

We aim not to conceal the break, but to give respect to it—for it is an integral aspect of the item’s character, to be cherished for the story it tells.

—Tomoko Aoki, kintsugi master (1998)

BE CAREFUL, DARLING.

Unable to deal with the emotion she could hear in Canto’s telepathic tone when she was about to face her father, Payal cut the contact. She knew he’d understand. He was 7J. He got 3K and her oddities and flaws and … uniqueness.

He’d know that she couldn’t be anything but a robot when she met with Pranath or Lalit. Robots had metallic armor, couldn’t be easily wounded or taken advantage of; most of all, robots were logical—and that was the biggest advantage she’d ever had when it came to her family.

On the flip side, she could now also access a level of emotional intelligence that she’d locked away when she’d segregated the part of herself she’d always seen as the screaming girl.

She wasn’t. She was simply a less restrained aspect of Payal’s nature.

The Payal Rao who walked out of her apartment was a woman in charge of her life, and a worthy adversary. She’d decided not to teleport, because she needed to keep energy in reserve. Being vulnerable in this house was a recipe for fatal disaster—

The psychic shock wave hit without warning.

She slammed one hand against the nearest wall to keep her footing.

Her phone buzzed at the same time. “Suriana,” she said, after seeing the ID. “What’s the problem?”

“I’m stretched.” Short, sharp breaths. “Major cascading fracture.”

Payal.Canto’s crystalline voice entered her mind as Suriana hung up abruptly. Massive Scarab assault. I’m heading to assist Arran.

I’m with Suriana. Do you need help assigning tasks?

No, I’ve pulled in Sophia.

Returning to her room, she locked the door, ran to lie down in her bed to lessen the risk of injury from a collapse, then entered the Substrate.

The shock wave in the PsyNet had to be huge, but Designation A couldn’t worry about that. Their job was to hold the Substrate together.

Her head rang, her blood pounding in her mouth, but she and other As assisted Suriana in putting the seal in place before their minds whiplashed back to their home zones.

The scent of wet iron filled the air.

Looking down at her bedspread, she saw the small spread of red: she was bleeding from the nose. Only the fact she’d lain down on her side had stopped the blood from staining her clothing.

She dug out a tissue from her pocket and used that to try to stop the blood. It was a sign that she’d pushed too hard. But as her brain was still functional and she still had all her physical abilities, it was nothing beyond a minor overload.

Canto.

She’d never before needed anyone, and when he didn’t respond, it was a stark reminder that such need was a weakness. She felt adrift without him. If this was what it was like to be someone’s person, and to have them be yours, she wasn’t sure she liked it.

But the idea of letting go? No, she would never. He was hers now.

And he needed her to function both as an anchor and as Payal. So she mopped up the blood, then took stock of the situation. The massive—and immediate—coordinated response by anchors had squelched the shock wave at its mouth. That in turn had helped powerful Psy in the Net fix the damage and find the perpetrators.

A telepathic message slipped into her mind via the channel she’d set up for the Ruling Coalition. Alert to Ruling Coalition from Aden Kai: Attacking Scarabs captured in seventy-five percent of cases. One large eruption of the virus. An E is taking care of that. Situation contained.

So quickly, Payal thought, but when she glanced at the time on her phone, it was to see that two hours had passed. Yet neither Lalit nor her father had tried to contact her. It appeared they were finally beginning to understand what she did. While she could understand her father considering that a plus now that she was on the Ruling Coalition, it could augur nothing good when it came to her brother.

Lalit would see her newfound power as an insult to him.

Rising, she ate a nutrient bar, then stripped the bloody sheet off her bed and put it in the laundry basket she’d teleport to the cleaning team later. That done, she made sure her makeup was undisturbed. Given all that had occurred, she needed an injection of the meds as soon as possible, so this meeting wasn’t negotiable.

Already, her head throbbed.

For once, her father didn’t make a production of giving her the medication. He was too busy on an audio-only call, and though she saw his need to interrogate her, he allowed her to come and go in a matter of three minutes. She had no trouble swapping out the vial for another one.

Her pain was brutal by the time she got into her apartment and injected herself, but she was able to save ten percent of the vial to give to Canto. Such a small amount wouldn’t make much of a difference to her, and she could blame continuing anchor duties—and duties to the Ruling Coalition—on any necessary increase in her dosage.

She teleported the vial and its precious cargo onto Canto’s desk. Not all teleport-capable telekinetics could do this kind of a fetch or send, but Payal had understood the psychic mechanics of it from childhood. And given the small mass of the vial, it took little of her depleted energy resources.

I have it, baby.The pure clarity of Canto’s voice in her mind, the bond between them awash in primal protectiveness.

Payal hugged that sensation around herself; she could protect herself, had done so all her life, but to know that he thought she was worth protecting? It meant everything. The sensation triggered another thought, and as she returned to her work, she found herself gnawing on a question that had first emerged in her mind during their meeting with Sophia Russo.

The NetMind had done so much to protect the Es. Why hadn’t it protected the anchors? They were as critical to the survival of the Net. Just as without Es there would eventually be no sane Psy, without As there was no PsyNet. The psychic fabric would ripple and fold and collapse.

Which left only one answer: the NetMind had done something.

From all she’d learned since her induction into the Ruling Coalition—thanks to her newfound access to a number of top secret databases—the neosentience had made too many long-game moves to have dropped this one ball so badly. But whatever it had done, they couldn’t see it. So Payal would look and keep looking until she found the answer.

The first thing she did was log into Canto’s private database on Designation A and start reading. He’d collated a lot of information. It scrolled in her mind, piece after piece after piece. Until by the time she lay down to sleep, her brain was on autopilot, moving the pieces from one place to the other, checking details, finding connections.

Connections.

It was the first word she thought of when she woke. “But there are no overlap zones,” she muttered as she readied herself for the day.

The problem occupied her mind as she chose a skirt in black that hugged her hips and came to the knee, and paired it with a sleeveless silk shell with a high neck, in vivid red. Black heels and a wide black belt finished off the outfit.

She kept her makeup nude today, but for the pop of red on her lips. Her hair, she pulled back into a neat bun. Canto? Are you awake?

Yes. I’ve been trying to figure out a solution to the connective tissue problem.

Connective tissue.

Payal halted in the act of doing her makeup, the answer almost within reach, but it slipped away before she could capture it. Frustrated, she nonetheless let it go for the time being. Nikita’s sent out a notice about another Coalition meeting. I’d better log in. Come with me.

KALEBknew the meeting was necessary, given the devastation throughout the Net. There was just too much damage, too many broken pieces, too many tears. He’d still rather be out there trying to fix the damage than in this comm meeting.

“We stand on a cracked eggshell,” Payal said in her blunt and precise way.

“No,” he responded. “There is no way to repair a cracked egg. We will repair this.” Because Sahara had asked him to save the world, and he’d made her a promise. It was a promise the twisted darkness inside him would go to the ends of the earth to keep—the only thing he wouldn’t sacrifice was Sahara.

That was why he’d finally made the call that the Net had to be cut into pieces. There’d been no other way to maintain its damaged psychic fabric. That the plan had proved flawed wasn’t a failure—but that they had no backup was; the occlusion had bought them time, nothing more.

Payal gave him a long glance, then inclined her head a little. “Perhaps I should call us a cracked vessel. In Japan, there is an art called kintsugi—the masters of the art use gold and other fine metals to mend such cracks, so that the resulting artefact is more beautiful because of its scars, not regardless of them.” Starless eyes held his. “We just need to find our gold.”

But there were no answers that day, and Kaleb logged off as frustrated as when he’d logged on.

PAYALglanced at her organizer after leaving the meeting. A single priority message sat at the top of the queue: Your father requires your presence.

A hot ball of fire in her stomach, dark and dangerous.

Canto’s voice hit her mind the next instant. I got your sample to Ashaya and Amara Aleine.

She knew those names. Everybody with any interest in science knew those names. The twin scientists were said to be geniuses alone—and beyond that when together. How? Payal had a lot of contacts, but she’d never managed to get close to the Aleines.

Silver to Valentin; Valentin to Lucas Hunter, alpha of DarkRiver; Lucas to Ashaya, as she’s a member of his pack now.A touch along their bond. Mercants are all about connections.

Again that word: connections.

Her brain scrabbled for what it was that she couldn’t see, fell short.

She forced her mind back to the point at hand. But why would they take it on? Payal was nobody to them.

Scientific interest—and because I passed on the information that this was for an anchor. The Aleines were high up enough in the Council superstructure that they’re aware of the dearth of anchors. Amara, from all I know of her, likely wasn’t swayed by that, since the twins are no longer in the PsyNet, but Ashaya has a child and must’ve thought of the lives in the Net.

Payal didn’t know much about the Aleines in terms of their personalities, but she’d once heard her father say that Lalit was the Rao family’s Amara Aleine. It had been a while ago, and she hadn’t really understood what he was talking about—only that he’d been displeased with Lalit at the time.

Did they say anything yet?

No. But if anyone can find the solution, they will.

The two of them ended the conversation there, without good-byes. They weren’t necessary, because even separated by thousands of miles, Payal and Canto were never apart, the bond between them a living thing luminous with emotion.

He lived inside her, as she lived inside him.

The Payal before, the one who hadn’t yet met Canto again, she would’ve believed such a thing must be intrusive—but it wasn’t. They didn’t surveil one another. No, it was more akin to knowing that if she held out a hand, he’d be there to grab onto it. Always, he’d be there.

A word hovered on the tip of her tongue, such a huge word, such a massive emotion.

Breath shuddering, she pushed it away. Not yet. She wasn’t ready to face that … to hope for that. It felt like asking for too much.

After doing breathing exercises to compose herself, she took one last look in the mirror before she headed to her father. Sunita, her long gray hair neatly braided and her black staff uniform pressed to within an inch of its life, was hovering outside her room when she exited. “Miss Payal,” she whispered, fear a tremor in her voice.

Payal immediately stepped close to the taller but far thinner woman. “What’s the matter?”