Nalini Singh - Heart of Obsidian

IN THE YEAR 1979, the Psy race made the decision to embrace Silence and condition all emotion out of their young; to become without hope or despair, anger or fear, sorrow or joy.

Mothers and fathers sentenced their children to lives of icy control out of a soul-deep love those children would never feel in return. They told their babies that Silence was a precious gift, that it would save them from the madness and violence that so often came intertwined with the staggering beauty of their psychic abilities.

Without Silence, said a leading philosopher of the day, we will cannibalize ourselves in a storm of blood and death and insanity, until the Psy race becomes nothing but a terrible memory.

In 1979, Silence was a beacon of hope . . . but 1979 was more than a hundred years ago.

Those first children are long dead and the PsyNet has been rocked by the initial volley of a civil war that might yet tear it apart, taking the changelings and humans with it. A civil war that has awakened a whispering understanding in the populace about the ugly irony of Silence: in creating a society that rewards lack of emotion, the Psy have created fertile ground for the rise of psychopathic personalities to the leadership of their race.

An individual who feels nothing is, after all, the perfect graduate of Silence.

Ruthless. Cold-blooded. Without mercy . . . without conscience.

KALEB KRYCHEK, CARDINAL telekinetic and a man no one wanted to meet alone on a dark night, had been searching for his quarry for seven years, three weeks, and two days. Even while he slept, his mind had continued to hunt through the sprawling psychic network that was the heartbeat and the cage of the Psy race. Not for a day, not for a second, had he forgotten his search, forgotten what theyd taken from him.

Everyone involved would pay. Hed make certain of it.

Right now, however, he had different priorities, his search complete, his target huddled in a corner of a small, windowless room in his isolated home on the outskirts of Moscow. Crouching down in front of her, he held out a glass of water. Drink.

Her response was to crush herself impossibly further into the corner and tighten her arms around the knees she hugged to her chest. Shed spent the hour since hed retrieved her from her prison rocking to and fro in brittle silence. Her hair was a tangled rats nest around her face, her upper arms bearing both fresh scratches and marks of older gouges.

She was still a bare five feet, two inches . . . or so he judged. Shed been in a huddled position pre-teleport, had only curled further into her shell in the past sixty minutes. Her eyesa blue so deep they were midnightrefused to meet his, skittering away if he entered her line of sight.

Now she ducked her head, the matted waist-length strands that shouldve been a rich black interwoven with unexpected strands of red-gold, dull and greasy around her down-bent face. That face was all bone under pallid skin of palest brown, the nails on her hands gnawed to the quick yet embedded with dried blood that said shed used the stubs to viciously scratch either her own skin or anothers, perhaps both.

At last, he understood why the NetMind and DarkMind, the twin entities that knew every corner of the vast psychic network that connected all Psy on the planet but for the renegades, had been unable to find herregardless of how many times hed made the request or how much information hed given them in an effort to narrow the scope of the search. Kaleb had been inside her mind during retrieval, had needed to be to complete the teleport, and even then, he wouldnt have known it was her if he hadnt had incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. The person shed been was gone.

Whether what remained was anything more than a broken shell was yet an unanswered question.

Drink or Ill leave you to wallow in your filth.

He used words that wouldve once caused her to reactbut he didnt know if that part of her existed any longer. The file hed so meticulously put together over the years, the file hed studied until he could recite the contents in his sleep, was going to be useless. She was no longer that girl with her hair brushed straight and shiny, and midnight eyes that seemed to see far beyond the skin.

Perhaps you enjoy smelling like something from the garbage.

The rocking increased.

Logic said he needed to get a Psy-Med specialist in here as fast as possible. But Kaleb knew he wasnt going to do that. He trusted very, very few people, and he trusted no one when it came to her. Since his current approach wasnt bearing the results he wanted, he shifted focus with the ease of a man who had no emotional attachment to a decision.

Your lips are cracked and its clear you havent had enough fluids for at least twenty-four hours. In the split second that hed teleported into the white-on-white room where shed been held, the overhead light cutting in its torturous brightness, hed seen the bottles thrown at the wall, the liquid soaked into the floor.

His initial assumption had been that the painful brightness was a normal part of her existence, but it may have been a punishment, her captors attempting to break her will. That it wasnt already broken. . . yes, it said something about the woman who refused to interact with him on any level.

If you wanted to kill yourself, he said, watching for even the most minor response to the brutal words, there are easier ways than dying of thirst. Or arent you intelligent enough to work that out?

The rocking accelerated further.

I can as easily pin you to the wall and force the water down your throat. I wont even need to touch you.

She hissed at him, dark blue orbs glinting behind the tangled mass of her hair.

He didnt move, didnt betray any reaction to the fact that shed responded in some fashion at last, even if it was nonverbal. Drink it. I wont ask again.

Still she resisted. Unexpected. Her mind might be broken, but it wasnthad never beenunintelligent. No, her intellect was so piercing, her teachers had struggled to keep up with her. She had to be aware that refusing him wasnt an option. The power of a cardinal telekinetic was vast. He could crack every bone in her body with a fleeting thought, crush those bones into dust if he so chose. Even if she no longer understood that, shed experienced his strength when he teleported her from her cell and to his home; she had to comprehend her precarious situation.

Her eyes flicked to the glass in his hand, teeth biting down on her badly cracked lower lip. Yet she didnt reach for the water she so patently needed. Why?

He took a moment to think, consider the circumstances in which hed found her. Its not drugged, he said, talking to a face that held no recognition, no sign that she remembered their final blood-soaked encounter, an encounter where shed screamed for so long and in such agony shed caused damage to her throat that wouldve needed medical attention to repair.

Infused with the minerals and vitamins that you need, he continued, but not drugged. Youre no use to me in a coma. Holding her gaze when it finally connected with his, he took a healthy swallow of the water, then held out the glass.

It was snatched from him a second later. Hed teleported in another full glass from the kitchen before she finished the first. She emptied them both. Getting rid of the glass with a negligible use of his telekinesis, he rose from his crouched position in front of her. Do you want to eat first or shower?

She stared up at him, eyes narrowed.

Fine, Ill make the decision for you. He brought in a plate of fresh, uncut fruit, as well as a thick slice of bread spread with butter and honey. It wasnt the kind of food he atelike most Psy, he lived on nutrition bars, for Silence thrived in the absence of sensation, and taste was a powerful one.