Shards of Hope (Psy-Changeling 14)

A soap bubble as strong as titanium. Stronger.

Looking up at the man who was holding that shield unlike any she’d ever seen, she sucked in another breath. Aden’s hair was blowing back in a breeze that existed only around him, his eyes an impossible reflective silver and his right hand held palm out as he stopped those bullets dead. She was weak because he was pulling power from her, but in the shadow of his power, she felt no sense of weakness, of being in a situation she couldn’t escape.

A second later, she watched in astonishment as he flicked his hand and the bullets stopped hitting the ground. Instead, the soap bubble became a mirror that echoed his eyes and the bullets pinged back along the direct flight paths on which they’d arrived.

Around her, the people who’d hit the ground at Aden’s order gasped and stared as bullet after bullet reversed trajectory, heading straight back toward the shooters at a speed that only the fittest and fastest would survive. Many wouldn’t—eyes to the scopes where they were set up at apartment windows, they wouldn’t be able to imagine a bullet reversing course. And so they would die.

The bullets stopped coming moments later. Some of the snipers had to be dead. Others had likely missed death by a heartbeat and would be racing to get away. Her telepathic strength was faint with Aden having locked her into his personal network, but it was enough to reach the high-rises and the cardinal mind she needed.

The rats are running, she said to Kaleb Krychek, having snapped out a warning to him the instant before Aden initiated the highest level of the psychic protocol the six of them had agreed to when Aden was only twenty-one and Zaira twenty. She’d known Vasic wouldn’t be able to respond as fast as usual, not with the teleporter forming one point of the five-pointed star that was the engine for Aden’s extraordinary ability, but Krychek was as swift a teleporter.

All she’d said was, New York! It had been enough.

I have two dead, two contained, Krychek responded. One more in progress.

Leaving him to the hunt, she got to her feet and placed her free hand on Aden’s jaw. The situation is under control, she said mind to mind. You can drop the shield.

It took him a minute, the tension leaving his body muscle by muscle until the breeze stopped, the mirror sliding down to fade into the ground. His eyes, however, remained that eerie reflective shade she’d never before seen. “Casualties?”

“None here.” She gasped as her own power returned to her in a storm surge. Her hand clenched on his, her breath hitched. When it was over, she found she had more power than she’d possessed before Aden initiated the transfer. It filled her to the brim, until it felt as if her fingertips were overflowing with it.

The mirror, she thought, looking into silver eyes that still surged with echoes of power. The mirror had made her power more, made it brutal. She’d known the mirror’s effect since the day Aden first told her about it, but never had she experienced it to this degree. Power that strained at her skin, her eyes flowing obsidian from the force of it. Aden could literally protect the entire valley, even if he had access to only midlevel Psy. Give him a full squad of lethally powerful Arrows . . . The idea of it was breathtaking.

Not only because of what he, himself, could do, but what he could create in the Arrows themselves. He gave back more than he took, and in so doing, he could create a turbocharged army. He’d be an unstoppable force if not for one simple and inevitable side effect, and even that wasn’t enough to negate the fury of his gift.

“Krychek just told me that he’s found two dead shooters so far,” she said, stifling her fascination with the true depth of his ability for now. “He also has two others contained.”

There was no more time to speak after that. People swarmed Aden, wanting to say thank you, to state their astonishment over his display of power, and to tell him that they’d never had any doubts about the Arrows.

PSYNET BEACON: BREAKING NEWS

Many in the Net have recently questioned the abilities and qualifications of the enigmatic man who leads the Arrow Squad. Rumors reported in the Beacon itself stated that Aden Kai was nothing but a figurehead, a field medic who played the leader so as to protect the squad’s true leadership.

Today’s display has put those rumors and speculations to rest in an incontrovertible fashion: Aden Kai isn’t only powerful, he is a power. There is no longer any doubt as to why he is the leader of the squad, and why he has a seat on the Ruling Coalition.

PSYNET BEACON: LIVE NETSTREAM

I’ve watched the footage captured by nearby security cameras and civilian phones multiple times, and I still can’t believe what I’m watching. Aden Kai’s abilities are unparalleled. Does anyone have a label for his designation?

B. Baker

(New Orleans)

Spectacular!

V. Ting

(Cape Town)

Aden Kai today proved that not only is the squad made up of the elite, it is made up of men and women with designations unknown to the general population, as it should be for a covert squad.

I feel safe in the Net and in our future.

L. Layton

(Cambridge)

I am breaking squad protocol in stating this, but it needs stating: Aden is not our leader because of his abilities.

He is our leader because he understands each and every member of his squad and pushes us to our very best.

He is our leader because he goes first against every threat, no matter the risk.

He is our leader because we know that should we fall in battle, he will not leave us behind. He understands the code of soldiers as the Council never did.

He is our leader because he has never forgotten that he is an Arrow. He may sit on the Ruling Coalition, but he is no politician and he is no Councilor. He is an Arrow and he will always be an Arrow.