Chapter 5

Kaleb was sitting in his office, staying up late again and searching the darkest and most remote places in the Net for information about the one person in the Net he had not been able to pinpoint down for the last seven years. He had almost located her but then suddenly a few days ago the track had ended cold as if she had vanished again. Even the NetMind had been no help as to what had happened, although it had set him on the track in the first place.

Over seven years ago, when he was long bound to the darkness of the DarkMind in that uncanny, sinister way, the NetMind itself had come to him. It had only shown him one picture. But that had changed something fundamental in him. It was the mental image of a female Psy mind that was glowing in a warm gold so bright it should have shone throughout the Net like a sun. He had never seen something that was even moderately alike. It was everything Kaleb himself would never be: Good, gentle and purely compassionate; a being that would never harm a single creature. It was a mind so beautiful and pure in itself, that even in his Silence he couldn't refrain from marveling at it. When he'd asked who she was, he had only gotten a hint to find her but no clue how. But then – as if the neosentience wasn't sure the picture had made a big enough impression – it had requested that he helped her, saved her. He had asked for more information. Why did she need his help? And why should he of all people be willing to do it? All he got back was the picture of seven pristine, bright stars that were slowly drenching her beautiful star in stains of blood and darkness. The enigmatic picture was frustrating. But it could mean only one thing: She was in the claws of the Council. Of course it would be them who caged and destroyed all the goodness they could find. He must know it. He had learned that the hard way. And he had already failed to protect more than one woman from the evil of one particular Councilor. But this one he would find and keep safe.

First he had consulted the one presence in the Net that gave him answers the NetMind never would. By those very few who knew the DarkMind existed at all, it was considered to be mute. But Kaleb knew better. The DarkMind had its own violent ways of screaming out to the Net, tainting it with sickness, madness and in the end death itself. But to him it had also spoken. It responded to pieces of data – mostly pictures Kaleb showed him – with twisted surges of emotion. He couldn't feel them himself but he had learned to read them through his connection with the neosentience: need and jealousy usually meant, in the picture was something he would probably want to have at hand for his purposes, while hate and loathing symbolized enemies to these purposes and fear was an indicator for threats he usually eliminated. This had gained him a lot of power over the years, effectively helping him along in his goal to control the Net itself and destroy the Council from within.

But when he had shown it the image of that extraordinary mind, something unusual had happened. For a moment the DarkMind had stilled completely, as if all the dark emotions stopped twisting inside of it, almost as if they were soothed. And then the black tendrils of the DarkMind had started to wrap around the image, devouring it completely and leaving behind a feeling of the deepest most savage need and longing. It wanted her – to find peace. Not the deceitful peace, that only froze the storm of raging emotions temporarily as Silence did, but the true peace and ease of an innocent mind.

And for the first time Kaleb hadn't only read the DarkMind's emotion but truly understood it. Even though he couldn't feel it, he knew that this sun-like mind had to be his, that he must possess her. If a mere picture of her could soothe the DarkMind, maybe she could save him and the Net from his own madness and darkness that, as he had reason to believe, would one day eat him up, probably shattering the Net itself in the process. She was the one being that could maybe give him back what had been taken from him in a windowless, soundproofed room so many years ago. So finding her had become the one purpose in his life, besides destroying the Council that had enslaved his race for too long and allowed the most baleful killers to go about their business freely.

Since then the DarkMind had often come to transmit that feeling of longing to him. But he couldn't give an answer to the obvious question. He didn't know where or who she was. The NetMind had handed him bits of data over time, enough to make him sure such a being really existed, but never enough to locate her.

When he noted that he had indulged too long in these thoughts – again – he tore himself away from the memory and returned to the task at hand. Checking the time he decided to make his way back through the Net to get some sleep. Tomorrow he had to find out more about another very interesting female, he intended to use on his way to ultimate power. Thinking of her, he decided to make a little side trip on his way back – to Alja Dardo's mind – and have a closer look at her shielding in the Net. It took him a while to find her in the huddle of ordinary minds even with the signature she had given him. It was truly amazing how plain she looked on the Net.

He wondered if it took much effort to keep that up all the time. Of course he had various skills to camouflage the brightness of his cardinal star in the Net too. But all of them required at least some amount of concentration. She really seemed to be highly disciplined beside her flawed Silence. He hadn't thought someone like her could master such control, knowing that his own Silence was essential to his reign over his abilities. Maybe he had been ignorant at that point so far. After all there were some high gradient Psy who had defected from the Net only recently and found shelter with the changeling packs in San Francisco. And they seemed to manage quite well without Silence. But that was no way for him. He would always stay Silent. He repeated those thoughts like a mantra fighting off the rising temptation.

He circled Alja's camouflaged mind once more looking for any signs that this was just a clever disguise, when something very much unexpected happened: She died.

Her mind had just dropped out of the Net. Or could she be defecting in the middle of his high security property? He found her mind in the physical world still in her quarters where she had been all the time before and teleported there without hesitation. During appearing in the intended spot he felt himself slide off something that felt vaguely like a body of water to his psychic senses and bumped into a chair in the middle of her bedroom.

At the impact of someone on her shields Alja's Arrow reflexes snapped awake at once. In a split second she had grabbed the blade she kept under her pillow and jumped at the intruder.

Kaleb had barely had time to realize she'd been in bed when he had all but stumbled into the room. Then she had moved with amazing speed. He caught the hand holding the deadly blade with a well-practiced movement and prepared for further attack but she already pulled back when she recognized him. He kept his grip on her wrist tight.

"Councilor!" she exclaimed, staring at him in surprise.

"What did you do?" Spoken more like an order than a question, but she did not understand immediately.

"What did I do? What do you do in my bedroom Councilor?" Even by Psy standards this was a major breach of privacy. What the hell was going on now? Her mind started racing.

"You just dropped out of the Net. Usually that means dying for a Psy. But you seem quite alive. So I would like to know, what you just did with your mind in the Net." He noticed that she was dressed almost like she had been in his office: Cargo pants and a long sleeved T-shirt. Only the jacket and combat boots were missing. Then he looked into her eyes. In the dim light of her room they looked even stranger: A night sky falling away endlessly, as if it was about to pull him in. Uneasiness crept up is spine. He shook off the thought at once.

Alja caught herself as quick as she'd been ready to attack. But it took a few seconds until coherent thought channeled through the mix of sleepiness and adrenaline and she understood. "I dropped out of the Net because I fell asleep. I thought that was in my file." She realized he still had a steel hold on her armed hand and knew she wasn't going to get away without serious effort. He had extensive martial training. And this was hopefully not the time and place he had intended for a sparring session.

What surprised her was that his touch felt so warm. After his stone cold appearance this afternoon she had pictured he would feel colder. A stupid emotional assumption, she scalded herself for. Pulling the hold on her behavior control tighter, she gave the explanation he obviously still waited for. "I drop out when I lose consciousness – like when I sleep. I can go for roughly three hours without the biofeedback. Then I wake and relink. The responsible M-Psy in my Squad believes it is also due to the extraracial genes but we don't know for sure."

"It seems you are even more extraordinary than I expected. Are there anymore talents I am not yet aware of?"

Oh if you knew! "Not that I recall Sir. And I don't know why this irregularity wasn't in my file. But I was also not aware that I'd be monitored so closely in the Net."

A complaint. He chose not to react to it but finally let go of her arm.

"I apologize for disrupting your sleep and your privacy, but maybe you should have mentioned this minor detail of your different disposition in our conversation this afternoon."

"Yes, I probably should have." It spoke for his extraordinary skills that he had managed to find her mind in the Net so quick at all – even with her current signature. It meant she would have to disguise much better if she ever wanted to hide anything from him. But it also meant that the decision of the Squad to place her here had been right. Kaleb Krychek was probably capable of protecting her from the one who might learn of her continued existence very soon and decide to end it at the first chance.

"We will talk about that exceptional quality of yours tomorrow. I have scheduled a meeting for eight. We will also talk about you bringing weapons into this building." With that he was gone the way he had come, but left the blade in her hand. She stared down at her arm, not at the blade but at the spot where he had touched her. It still tingled with the warmth of his touch and she discovered she liked it. Usually she was emotionally numb to bodily sensation. Excessive pain conditioning had made sure of that. Giving her an edge over most of her race – and taking something from her she could never replace.

But now she had reacted to his touch as if he had stroked her. He had held her wrist quite fast and for much longer than usual combat contact lasted. Maybe it was the length and intensity that enabled her to really feel, not just sense the touch. It still didn't explain why she had liked it. Confused she tried to get back to sleep. When that proved impossible she went to a state of meditation she had practiced well to relax her mind and replace some of the sleep she missed.

Kaleb teleported directly to his home in the outskirts of Moscow, but decided to go for a run before finally catching some sleep. He needed to think these new developments through as soon as possible. He stripped completely and put on only a pair of flowing black pants, before he teleported out again to a remote place where no one but some wild animals could see him. While his body was racing through the forested steppe with Tk accelerated speed, he tried to clear his thoughts.

There was something about Alja Dardo that was more than strange. Was she supposed to be a spy, a distraction or a trap? If so it didn't seem well planned. Everything about her just screamed suspicious. A Psy who could drop out of the Net for hours – he had never heard of it before. And then there were those exceptional shields that had even repelled him from teleporting in. What else did she hide inside them?

She seemed as tough as steel outwardly, but probably not very keen on practicing the more violent aspects of her profession. And she didn't like to be watched. Who would? But the woman better got used to being closely monitored. He liked to know everything about the individuals he allowed near him and he was sure as hell going to keep a very close eye on this one.

Beside his spiking interest in this mysterious woman – who seemed to produce more secrets by the hour – he sensed that something on the edge of his awareness again, still unable to pinpoint down, what it was. But it was there, the knowledge of something dangerous just out of his reach. A rare thing. Such a lapse of control over the functions of his mind was not tolerable. He would file through his mind for it later. He sped up even more so he had to concentrate fully on avoiding the obstacles in his way and could relax his mind from the matter. The answers would only come to him if he kept it open. But he wasn't successful that night.