Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3)(96)

A pause as the members of the Coalition scanned the report. It was too complex to absorb in a few minutes, but Kaleb was able to flip through it and find a number of interesting sections. The effect, he saw, had been most prevalent in Psy over 7 on the Gradient.

“Why did the Council allow this?” The men and women who’d ruled the Psy for more than a century had liked nothing more than power—and an army of high-Gradient telepaths and telekinetics were the foundation of that power.

“According to a later report I discovered only an hour before you called this meeting,” Nikita said, “those in charge did attempt to modify Silence to eliminate the unintended side effect. It was called Project Scarab.”

“It failed?” Ivy Jane Zen’s warm psychic voice.

“On the contrary—Scarab was initially a wild success. The Psy enrolled in Scarab gained access to the full breadth of their abilities. Unfortunately, the subjects soon began to exhibit signs of deep mental instability—most often betrayed by erratic psychic control and emotional outbursts. Hallucinations, blackouts, increasingly violent frenzies, and memory loss were also reported.”

“Nikita and I have discussed this.” Anthony spoke for the first time, his mental voice as calm and measured as his presence in real life. “I did the reading on the secondary section of data, while Nikita dove deep into the first.”

Kaleb wasn’t the least surprised by that; whatever was going on with Anthony and Nikita, it had nothing to do with Silence. Sahara was fascinated by their relationship, and he knew she’d chew over this sign of offline interaction when he mentioned it. What Kaleb found most interesting was that both had protected a daughter who’d defected from the PsyNet.

“It appears,” Anthony continued, “that Silence works as advertised for this tiny minority—it stabilizes them. The cost is loss of psychic strength.”

“Silence worked for some Psy?” Ivy Jane whispered.

“At the expense of the entire PsyNet,” Anthony pointed out. “Another section of it collapsed three hours ago. Even if Silence worked for these individuals, they’ll still be as dead as the rest of us if the Net fails.”

Kaleb and Aden had sealed that particular breach as a team. After the first wave of failures, the two of them had assembled squads of high-Gradient Psy who could, together, handle small-to-medium-size breaches. Kaleb and Aden alternated in handling the bigger ruptures—it meant one of them was always at full strength and able to respond quickly.

The only exception was where the breach was so devastating it required their combined power. The latter was occurring more and more. “Can such individuals reinitiate their Silence?” he asked—if it worked, the reversion would stop the rogue power waves while they sought a more permanent answer.

“Not with the Honeycomb in effect.” Ivy Jane’s voice was somber. “At this point, it’s impossible to escape emotion in the Net.”

“Even prior to the waking of the Es, none of the Scarab subjects were able to return to Silence,” Anthony said. “Many self-terminated when they became aware of their own instability, or were killed during aggressive episodes so bad the staff had no choice but to use lethal force to defend themselves. The remainder were executed by the Council. This genie cannot be put back in the bottle.”

“Such individuals must’ve existed pre-Silence,” Nikita added. “Dangerous instability was one of the reasons our race saw Silence as our savior. But, given the degree of their volatility, many of the affected would’ve never made it to adulthood. Silence altered that balance.”

Which meant the PsyNet would have to deal with far more dangerous and out-of-control adults than they’d ever before done in their history. It was the worst possible time for this hammer to drop on them. The Net couldn’t handle any more pressure.

“There is a human saying,” Ivy Jane said, pain in her voice, “that genius is tinged with madness. In the case of our race, the price for our abilities is immense mental darkness—and each time we attempt to escape that price, it gets worse.”

True enough, Kaleb thought. Inside him lived a twisted and quite mad creature, the boy who’d been broken and warped before he’d ever had a chance to grow. He’d found an anchor to sanity in Sahara, the girl who’d never seen in him a monster. Take her away from him, however, and he would devastate the world.

“How big is the threat?” Aden’s mind was intensely shielded, his connection to a fellow Arrow concealed either by habit or because Arrows liked to keep their secrets. “What percentage of the population?”

It was Nikita who responded. “Extrapolating from the Scarab data, less than one-sixteenth of a percent.”

A minuscule number. There was just one problem. “A single insane Gradient 9 can cause catastrophic chaos.”

Unspoken agreement from all the minds in the vault.

“Did the reports you unearthed offer a way to identify affected Psy before they go critical?” Aden asked with Arrow practicality.

Both Nikita and Anthony answered in the negative.

What, Kaleb thought, would it be like to wake up one day with your mind infinitely more vast than when you went to sleep? A mind strong enough to grab hold of an Arrow’s and force that highly trained black ops soldier to act against his will and against his own self-interest. A mind that understood its own descent into the abyss.