Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3)(36)

Chapter 17


All historical records retrieved1 to date support the Ruling Coalition’s hypothesis that the PsyNet was never meant to contain only Psy minds. In the pre-Silence period, humans—via relationships with Psy—made up at least twenty-five percent2 of the Net population. As all indications are that human minds cannot access the PsyNet and Psy cannot access Net-connected human minds, the humans were a passive element of the pre-Silence PsyNet.

1 Majority of retrieved documents are partials, resurrected then organized into coherent order.

2 Conservative estimate.

—Research Group Alpha-Z, PsyNet Health


NIGHT CLOAKED MOSCOW. Kaleb stood on the edge of the terrace, his body clad only in the lightweight black pants he wore while exercising and his mind on the new damage in the PsyNet. The disintegration was increasing at multiple critical junctures, the Honeycomb strained.

“There are a lot of us Es,” Ivy Jane Zen had told the other members of the Ruling Coalition an hour earlier, “but it’s clear we were never meant to hold the entire PsyNet together on our own.”

No, the Es were meant to connect the PsyNet, much like the nervous system of a living entity, so that it could live and breathe. Below that was meant to be a solid foundation, thick with muscle and bone, not a ragged and thin skeleton with an increasing number of repaired fractures.

Slender arms slid around his waist, the charm bracelet on Sahara’s wrist falling down her forearm a little as she pressed the side of her face into his back. Closing a hand over one of hers, he lifted her palm to his mouth for a kiss. “Any solutions?” She’d been on a comm conference with the Empathic Collective when he walked out here forty minutes ago.

A shake of her head. “We just don’t know enough—the post-Silence Councils did a stellar job of destroying data that didn’t fit the Silence worldview.” Moving around to face him, she let him wrap his arm around her waist, her hair tumbling down her back. “Is Bo willing to work with us?”

“Yes.” While Kaleb was the one who’d approached Bowen Knight, he’d never truly expected the security chief and effective leader of the Human Alliance to agree to offer any aid.

Humans, with their weak mental shields, had no reason or motive to help the Psy race survive—Knight himself had made it clear that he’d seen too many examples of mental rape and telepathic theft firsthand to look at Kaleb’s race with anything but suspicion. But he was also a man with a soul. He wasn’t willing to stand by and watch millions of innocent Psy perish in a PsyNet collapse.

Kaleb had never been certain he had a soul, but he’d never once taken a human mind. So perhaps he did have some semblance of one. Perhaps. “Knight’s sent out a missive asking for volunteers willing to interact with Psy.”

“It would take incredible trust.” Sahara leaned into him.

“The Psy are to be empaths. Es are the only Psy that humans trust even a fraction.”

Strands of Sahara’s hair danced on the quiet wind. “The other thing?” she asked, the dark blue of her irises awash in hope.

“Signs of limited success.” Bowen Knight had asked Kaleb to find a solution to the problem of human shields; Kaleb had responded by assembling a team of the PsyNet’s brightest minds to work on the task. “Ashaya and Amara Aleine have the deepest knowledge on the topic, but they’ve deliberately sequestered themselves from the wider research group. Data in but not out.”

“To stop unconscious bias?”

Kaleb nodded. The Aleines had created a prototype implant that had come tantalizingly close to success before failing; the twin scientists had no desire to accidentally stifle new lines of inquiry by presenting the PsyNet team with their already discovered pathway. “The Aleines have also managed to convince Samuel Rain to put his mind to the problem.” Another brilliant scientist, albeit one who thought in strange patterns.

It might be exactly what they needed.

Sahara was quiet for a long moment before she spoke. “Do we have time, Kaleb?” A solemn question. “Bo’s decision to ask for volunteers when we haven’t been able to uphold our end of the bargain is an act of enormous compassion . . . but bonds take time to form.”

And bonds strong enough to pull a human into the PsyNet would take even longer. “No,” he said, because lying to Sahara wasn’t something he did. “The PsyNet is failing at a catastrophic rate. Unless thousands of humans fall in love with thousands of Psy within the next twelve months, it will collapse.”





Chapter 18


My daughter is a failed cardinal with delusions of grandeur. There is no such designation as E.

—Nikita Duncan to news media at the time of Sascha Duncan’s defection from the PsyNet (2079)


TWO HOURS AFTER arriving at the empathic compound, and ten minutes after eating lunch, Memory sat at a small table inside a neat little cabin. Outside, the rain had returned and become a downpour, and across from her sat a woman with eyes of cardinal starlight that tilted up a little at the corners, and skin of a dark honey brown, her black hair in a single braid.

Memory thanked the skies all over again that the rain had begun coming down hard right before she and Alexei walked into the compound. It meant no one but the Arrow guards had seen her as they ran across to the cabin Alexei said had been assigned to her. The small period of dampness while her clothes dried off in the warmth of the cabin had been worth it. She didn’t want to meet the others here while dressed in ill-fitting sweats, with her badly snarled and uncared-for hair in two frizzy knots on either side of her head.