Aden was the one who responded, though Vasic curled his hand around her calf in an unexpected and welcome expression of support. A single contact, and already she felt more steady, despite the continued opacity of the fog in her brain.
“Her skull is still whole.” It was a statement pitiless in its practicality. “She was stabbed through the gut and collapsed slowly rather than falling, so her brain wasn’t damaged by a blunt-force collision with the ground. An examination of the tissue may give us more detailed answers as to the progression of the disease.”
“I-I ca—” Sobbing into her hand, Jaya ran back the way they’d come, Abbot heading after her.
Ivy wanted to escape the carnage, too, but she focused on Vasic’s touch, tensed her stomach muscles, and forced her eyes to what remained of a woman who appeared to have been in her early sixties. Her black winter coat was open, revealing a dress of simple blue wool over tights. It was rucked up around her knees and bloody and torn at her abdomen; the skin of her face was marked by deep gouges that said someone had come at her with their bare hands.
“Are you sure she was one of the infected?”
Vasic squeezed her calf. “Yes. I saw her while she was alive.” You’re feeling better?
It was all she could do not to throw herself in his arms and burrow into his strength. Yes. Jaya had a much more debilitating response—I think she’s still in quite severe pain. Crouching down between the two men, she touched her fingers to either side of the woman’s head, though she didn’t hold much hope of sensing anything.
The dead, after all, didn’t feel.
And yet . . . “I can almost sense something,” she said, trying to push through the blank wall of nothingness.
Strong hands clamping on her wrists, jerking her away without warning. “You’re bleeding again,” Vasic said, touching the pad of one thumb to below her ear. It came away dark red.
A rustle sounded from behind Ivy at the same instant.
“Sorry for before.” Jaya came down beside her on that husky whisper, her blue-eyed Arrow standing watch at her back. “I felt her death agonies, her confusion and shock, and it was like I was dying.”
Biting back her questions, Ivy shifted to create some space, Aden steadying her with a hand on her back when she might’ve become unbalanced.
Beside her, Jaya tugged down the woman’s dress with gentle hands, tears rolling down her cheeks. “She suffered terribly at the end.” A statement so hoarse, it was barely recognizable as Jaya’s voice. “The echoes of it are trapped in her brain, and the pain, it wasn’t just from the stab wound, but from the horror inside her mind.”
Ivy held her breath, unwilling to break the other empath’s concentration.
“The darkness was trying to become part of her,” the younger woman said. “But it didn’t fit. There was no place for it, so it stole space, and it broke her.” She fell back into a sitting position in a jerky move, sobbing into her hands. “It hurts to die from the infection. It hurts so much.”
Chapter 37
My dear, gorgeous, scary smart Z2—I love you and will into eternity. I know you know that, but I wanted to write it down. Things . . . they’re changing so much, and I never ever want you to wonder. Silence might quiet the whole world, but it will never quiet this heart that beats only for you.
And Z, promise me this—even if something bad happens, even if we’re separated for some reason, you’ll continue to fight for our people. We are better than this fearful cowardice, and I know you have the courage to show others that truth.
I’m sorry for sounding so melodramatic, but I just have a bad feeling deep inside me. It’s so cold, my love.
You’ll probably find this in the morning and tease me mercilessly for my theatrics, but for now, I’m going back to bed and to your arms. I intend to think up some brilliant rejoinders to the inevitable teasing as I warm myself against you. Perhaps I’ll be terrible and wake you for a kiss, though I know you’re tired, my strong, fearless Z.
I could watch you forever as you sleep, your lashes shadowing your cheekbones (it really is unfair that you have such beautiful ones you know), and your lips relaxed as they never are in life. I am definitely going to wake you.
—Your Sunny
ZIE ZEN HAD lived a long lifetime, and in that lifetime, he’d met countless people. Many of those people owed him favors. Some he’d never collect, his actions not undertaken for any personal gain, but because those actions spoke to the part of him that was and would always belong to Sunny.
Ashaya Aleine was one of the people he’d helped in Sunny’s name. The gifted neuroscientist was also a trusted friend, despite the wide difference in their ages, and so he’d spoken to her about his great-grandson. “Can you or Amara do anything about the gauntlet?” he asked her over the comm now. Ashaya’s twin was a true sociopath but for one thing—she loved Ashaya. For Ashaya alone, Amara would put her brilliant, broken mind to work on this complex problem.
Ashaya went as if to thrust a hand through her hair, then seemed to realize the electric mass was in a neat knot at the nape of her neck. She dropped the hand to her side, her forehead lined in thought and her distinctive blue-gray eyes striking against the deep brown of her skin. She’d never been so expressive when he’d known her in the Net.
“We’ve done a detailed first pass through the data you sent us last night,” she said. “The technology is highly experimental.” Folding her arms across a cardigan of pale gray, she shook her head. “It’s a stunning construct on one level but lethal on another—even Amara admits we’ll certainly kill Vasic if we attempt to remove it, and you know the razor-thin safety margins within which she operates.”
Zie Zen heard pained frustration in her tone. “Every fragment of data will assist,” he told this woman who had no genetic connection to him, but who he trusted more than any of his blood aside from Vasic. “Send through any and all information or theories you collect as you continue to explore possibilities.”
Ashaya didn’t argue with his request. “You’re worried you’ll need to move in an emergency situation.”
“It’s a ticking time bomb.” Fused to the body of a son who should’ve had a century more of life to live.
“I’ll forward you everything we have to this point and set up an automatic forward for any new material,” Ashaya said, open compassion in her gaze. “I’m sorry. I never realized how much he meant to you.”
“I did not allow anyone to realize. It was better that way.” Permitting them both to work in the shadows with no one aware that they were two sides of the same coin, one older, one younger. “And you, Ashaya? Are you well?”
“Oh, yes.” A deep poignancy to her expression, she said, “I sometimes feel as if I’ve been given too many gifts.”
“You’ve earned every one.” She’d saved the Psy race from the slavery of a hive mind, helped the humans develop a covert technology that appeared to protect them against psychic coercion, but most important of all, she’d fought for a child’s right to live.
Ashaya went to respond when there was a sound offscreen, and she turned, her face wreathed in a smile so vibrant, it held purest joy. “Keenan, come here. Grandpa Zen is on the comm.” Reaching down, she lifted her son into her arms, the boy’s eyes the same distinctive blue-gray as Ashaya’s, his skin the color of aged gold.
Keenan leaned forward excitedly. “Hi, Grandpa Zen!”
Zie Zen was listed as Keenan’s father on this extraordinary child’s birth certificate, but that was a fiction meant to preserve Keenan’s life. Now, the boy had a real father in the leopard changeling who’d mated with Ashaya. Zie Zen had kept an eye on the family unit from afar, seen photographs of the changeling playing with Keenan—the dominant male, who was a gifted sniper, treated Keenan with the same discipline and affection as if the boy was his own natural cub.