Tangle of Need (Psy-Changeling 11)

Chapter 37

HAVING COMPLETED HIS research, Vasquez located the first three addresses fast enough, but it took hours of hacking through Net firewalls to unearth the second three, and four days to complete the list. Psychically exhausted, he considered sending the one he served an e-mail with the update, but they had agreed on electronic and psychic silence. Nothing of their plan was going to leak and jeopardize everything they had set so meticulously in place.

Conscious that tiredness could lead to mistakes, Vasquez slept long enough to become functional, then made his way to the compound hidden deep in a rural sector of Ireland. “I have the coordinates and necessary images of the first set of targets.”

“When can we move?” The voice was a rasp, a broken saw, issuing from a throat that had suffered second-degree burns when Henry Scott screamed as his legs were turned to ash, one of his arms sliced below the elbow by a whip of cold fire.

The medics had been working to repair the damage, but it was severe. Sienna Lauren’s X-fire had cauterized the wounds, so they’d needed to be cut open vein by vein to allow for the regeneration aids to work. However, the worst damage had been done when a Pure Psy operative shoved his body over Henry’s in an effort to protect him. That operative’s weapon had melted into the former Councilor’s flesh.

It was proving near impossible to excise the plas from his body, some of it appearing to have integrated into his organs. As a result, Henry remained hooked up to multiple devices, his body supine on a hospital bed inside a large chamber of sterile glass, his ruined voice issuing via a speaker. However, the fire had done nothing to his mind, and they were Psy. The mind was all that mattered.

“Are we in a position to strike?” Henry elaborated, his bloodshot eyes looking at Vasquez through the glass.

“I recommend waiting until we have at least ten complete sets.” It would allow them to strike back to back, leaving no time or room for a counterstrike. However, it all depended on whether Vasquez could muster enough trusted personnel with the right abilities.

Loud, rattling breaths. “The Net is becoming weaker with each day that passes, filled with those whose Silence is flawed. We need to remind them of who we are as a race.”

“Yes, but our chances of success rise exponentially if we act without any warning.” Giving the enemy no time to prepare before the avalanche.

Henry took a long time to reply, his breathing so rough Vasquez knew this interview would soon end. “Five sets,” the former Councilor said at last. “Five complete sets and one outlier.”

“Sir?”

“A small location, a demonstration of what we can do ahead of the primary hits.”

“A test to ascertain the validity of our refined method?” Their earlier plan had proven to have a fatal flaw, so he could agree with the precaution, except that it risked tipping their hand.

But Henry said, “If those in the Net want to feel, then perhaps we should teach them the taste of terror.”

Vasquez would never betray the only man who appeared to be taking the disintegration of Silence not as an inevitability but as a disease that needed to be stopped, but he was also not a cipher who followed Henry’s every command. “We chance losing the element of surprise,” he said. “It could lead to the primary targets being sequestered.”

“Would it not be better,” Henry said, “if we did not have to act against those targets? Perhaps one demonstration is all that will be needed.”

Vasquez considered the question, realized his leader was right. This strategy was not one they had agreed to lightly—it went against the founding tenets of Pure Psy. However, it was a proven fact that those who adapted to altered circumstances were the ones who survived. “One outlier,” he said, already weighing up suitable possibilities. “If we are to hold to the timetable, I must get back to my duties.”

“Go.” A pause. “Vasquez?”

“Sir?”

“You have been loyal. I won’t forget.”

“Purity will save us, sir.” Vasquez’s ancestors before Silence had been murderers and sociopaths. Silence was his salvation. “I’ll set things in motion.”

Everyone, no matter their location or race, had a Psy neighbor, colleague, or business acquaintance. When Pure Psy rose this time, it wasn’t only the Psy who would learn the meaning of fear.

Chapter 38

RIAZ STEPPED OFF the watercraft he and Adria had boarded to reach Venice after the airjet landed in nearby Marco Polo Airport, both of them carrying small duffel bags. It was temperate this time of year, the air around them dusky with the oncoming sunset, the soft light burnishing the old stone of the buildings that remained above the waterline.

As a result of changing water levels in the Adriatic and an undersea quake that had badly damaged the wooden foundations on which Venice stood, much of the jewel of a city was now underwater, though some of its iconic, graceful bridges survived, a few marooned in the midst of wide canals. However, instead of sinking into obscurity, Venice remained a vibrant, living city as a result of its complex network of biospheres below the waterline.

The spheres had been developed by a consortium of water-based changelings and put into place during the final decade of the twentieth century. A large number of BlackSea’s people still called Venice home, but Riaz’s wolf found the old city claustrophobic, especially beneath the surface, where the biospheres acted as—to his mind—protective prisons.

“I’ve always been fascinated by Venice.” Adria did a full circle on the “floating” roadway designed to rise with the water, her eyes taking in everything with unhidden wonder. “It’s filled with so much history you can almost hear the city whisper it to you.”