Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
—Rufus Mercant (2071)
IVAN WOKE WITH the birds, while the world outside was yet dark. Soleil was curled into him, her hand on his heart and her body warm with life. But inside him spread a growing chill.
A secret part of him had hoped his grandmother would have an answer he hadn’t considered, but he’d seen the truth in her gaze before she left yesterday. He knew she’d have stayed up through the night, would’ve tapped all her contacts in the hunt for a solution, but even his grandmother couldn’t fix the unfixable.
A stirring beside him, Soleil yawning and rubbing her face against his chest. “It’s early.” It was a very feline complaint, the cat that lived inside his mind grumpy with it.
He massaged the back of her neck, her hair silky and thick under his fingers. “It’s time, my Lei.” His psychic reservoir had reached full charge. “I need to return to the ChaosNet.”
Soleil went motionless for a long moment before she rose up onto her elbow to look down at him. “Eat first,” she murmured, her eyes dark with the knowledge of what he risked today. “Go in as strong as possible.”
He nodded, tugged her down for a kiss. They’d loved again with their bodies in the night, and he hoped that there would come another dawn where he could lie with her in their home and kiss and caress and pet her. But today, they both rose after that kiss, to ready him for the task to come.
They ate breakfast on the verandah, by the light that poured out from their living room. Because while the birds were awake, the sun was far from rising. Afterward, Soleil laid her head on his shoulder, her hand locked in his, and said, “Remember, I’ll be here to pull you out at any stage. Just call me through the mating bond. I’ll hear now that our bond is complete, I’m certain of it.”
Ivan had thought to go inside their aerie, lie on their bed, but now made a different choice. “I’ll go in from here, surrounded by the trees and the birds.” He turned to look at her. “You like it here.”
She shifted to meet his gaze, her own fierce and wild. “I love you, Ivan Mercant. You’ll kick those Scarabs’ butts.” A hard kiss. “I’ll get you a cushion for your back, and if I feel anything going wrong, I’m going to haul you out.”
“I know.” He felt her love for him, her fear for him, in every cell of his being. She didn’t seem the least afraid for herself, even though whatever happened, it would impact them both. “Te amo, ma chérie, today and tomorrow and always.”
She swallowed hard at his use of the lovingly mixed-up language of her childhood. “Come back, Ivan. But if you can’t, I’ll walk with you wherever you go.”
He carried her words with him into the ChaosNet. She was a tug inside him that was invisible, but that he knew led the way home. So it was that he stepped into the chaotic lightning-shot island with one goal in mind: to find some way to collapse it so that the minds within would reintegrate into the PsyNet.
Already, he could see the difference from the last time he’d visited: a number of minds had gone dull, and he knew that those were the people who were declining, not just comatose but in a critical state where their brains flickered between life and death.
It was, he found, difficult to ignore pain in front of him—he was pragmatic, had long ago learned to see death as an inevitability—but these people hadn’t chosen to play on this field, had been hauled onto it without permission. They’d been made pawns in someone else’s game, their choices ripped from them as Soleil’s had been ripped from her.
Regardless of his response, however, he couldn’t divert his attention to help them; such an action would deplete his psychic reserves, put him back right where he’d been after his first visit. He’d do far more good if he could complete his assigned mission and bring down the island.
He’d told Krychek before he went in, so the other man could put all the various hospitals on alert, as their patients might go into cardiac arrest or show other signs of catastrophic failure at the moment of disconnection. The medics needed to be warned not to interfere with lifegiving measures unless the patient didn’t stabilize within five seconds.
A healthy Psy mind should only need half that long to reconnect to the massive sprawl of the PsyNet. Any interference in between could cause neural disruption that critically disturbed the process.
Krychek had confirmed that the hospitals were already on standby for such instructions, and that he’d blasted out a telepathic alert that it was happening today. Now all Ivan had to do was deliberately splinter the ChaosNet.