Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
A nudge at the back of her mind, that desperate entity sighing in relief. The sensation was weak, the flowers it showered on her mind a cascade of luminous steel.
Chapter 48
I don’t have empathy, Sahara. I can’t feel for those who are going to die. It would be akin to asking a falcon to take flight when his wings had long been hacked off.
—Kaleb Krychek to Sahara Kyriakus (circa late 2081)
KALEB SAW THE line of spidersilk before it reached him. That blue…
The same blue as Shoshanna Scott’s eyes.
Monster. Murderer. Spider.
The same blue as Auden Scott’s eyes.
Protected by the NetMind itself, to the point that the neosentience had almost burned itself out sharing its own energy with her so she could heal.
It had nearly done the same a second time around, when it had screamed for Kaleb to help her.
The NetMind was ready to die for Auden Scott.
He allowed the spidersilk to touch his mind, anchor into it…and felt it at once, a subtle draw on his power. Far less, however, than he was expending in his brute force effort to hold the PsyNet from crumbling.
Because it turned out that he wasn’t a black-hearted bastard after all. Not when it came to children. He’d set himself up above the area where Sahara—in concert with local empaths—had corralled all the children in their region, his aim to protect their innocent minds as the PsyNet shattered.
Sahara stood next to him, hand in hand with him, her power his to use.
“Do you see the spidersilk?” he asked.
“It looks like a dream. Should I allow it in?”
“Yes,” he said, remembering what the NetMind had shown him. “It’s…a mirror of what Shoshanna did. She took and took and became bloated with it. I think this web is doing what Ivan’s web does.” Creating a closed system of energy using every mind in the PsyNet, strong and weak, old and young, broken and whole.
“Oh,” Sahara whispered. “It’s so…happy?” Tilting her head against his arm, she smiled. “It’s gone now, but I could’ve sworn I felt the sweetest brush against my mind. This web is young.”
Kaleb hadn’t sensed any of that, but his emotions were twisted and calcified. He relied on Sahara when it came to knowing good from evil, dark from light. So, lifting her hand to his mouth, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles, then sent a telepathic blast through the PsyNet.
Accept the web. The NetMind designed it to hold the PsyNet together. It will not take by force. But the more minds in the web, the more energy it has to weave us back together.
The web spread at a phenomenal rate in a matter of seconds, and when he went to the mind he knew to be the center, it wasn’t there. A glittering blue orb sat in its place, roiling with the energy of millions of minds linked in a biofeedback loop of inconceivable proportions.
Kaleb understood. The mind couldn’t be seen, couldn’t be known. It was too fragile. “It’s a child,” he said with confidence. “The being at the center of the web. Auden Scott’s child.”
Sahara met his gaze, her dark hair lifting in the breeze on their terrace. “Will you tell the others?”
“I think the Arrows must know. There was an Arrow shield around Auden Scott’s mind the last time I saw it.”
“Well, their ability to keep secrets is legendary.”
“As for anyone else, no, I won’t tell.” The NetMind could make that call, decide who needed to know. “The child will be safe with the alpha I met.” Clawed hands that even if they bled, wouldn’t stop protecting.
Sahara’s eyes glowed with a pulse of blue. “Kaleb, your eyes…”
“The web just pulsed,” he said. “An overwhelming surge of energy in the network.” Frowning, he looked in the PsyNet again, but could find nothing to explain it.
* * *
• • •
PAX felt his Scarabs slip out of his grasp one after the other. Terrified for them, he emerged into the Net…and saw the blue spiderweb that had entangled his broken people. He was afraid they were dead, but no, they lived.
Their chaotic energy was contained…and yet part of the system.
Flowers in his mind. Wilted and bruised, but held in cupped hands of radiant steel-gray alongside fresh blooms that were perfect.
Pax frowned, hands at the sides of his head. What was happening? Was he going mad?
The same image again. No. It was different this time. A glowing blue flower nestled deep inside the bouquet that was both fresh and decaying. Its light touched the edges of two of the twisted and bruised ones…and those blooms grew…not better, but less limp, more firm.
Pax stared at the glowing blue network as far as the eye could see. The tendril that had come to him just waited, floating in space. And he thought of what Kaleb Krychek had blasted out across the Net, his words carried in echoes created by thousands of minds.