Personal files of the Center for Infants with Arrow Potential
Espérance Milhaud:
Date of Birth: 27.11.2054
Facility: CIAP Lyon (France)
Date of entry: 28.11.2054
Form of contract: None, biological parents deceased
Possible designations and Gradient measurement:
-cardinal potential
-genetic evidence of strong telepathy
-exceptional, natural shields
10.05.2058: inspection by Ming LeBon (lieutenant colonel of the Arrow Squad) – potential rated fatal – immediate termination ordered – termination executed by Marino Ghetty (Head of CIAP) – file closed
Chapter 9
The Ghost was floating through the Net quietly and unseen as always. He was the biggest thorn in the Council's side, a rebel in their own ranks, sabotaging and manipulating politics from within the Net itself. No one inside the Net knew his true identity, no one could stop him from destabilizing the rule of the Council. But today he was neither looking for information nor feeding rebellious rumors into the Net. He was trying to stop the rot that had befallen the Net from spreading further. The dead areas were growing with accelerated speed lately. He let himself drift along the verge of a wide dark field that he had patched up just the other day. The darkness was already seeping through the psychic walls he had built around it. He knew they wouldn't hold it long. Psychic constructions needed the Net itself, its texture, to hold on. If that texture failed, the power just dissipated into the void. There was only one way left to fix this. And he was the only one he knew who had the necessary skillset to do it.
Most Psy thought the Net was a purely telepathic entity. But the fabric it consisted of was a unique mixture of matter and mind that no usual psychic power could influence. To touch or even change it, one needed enormous strength and the ability to fuse both telepathic and telekinetic energy. That had always been easy for him. He could influence the mind in the same way he influenced matter. To him telepathy and telekinesis were simply two varieties of the same power.
He started working on the infected space. Carefully severing it from the last threads at the rim that were intact, he cut entire dead area out of the Net completely. It disintegrated fast the moment it was no longer nourished by the healthy fabric.
Now came the hard part: reconnecting the open edges he had left required more power than he had initially calculated. The Net seemed to get weaker, less able to seal itself shut. Even his vast strength wouldn't last for long.
He kept on working for hours, but with the growing strain on his powers he felt his resistance to the darkness that lurked around him fading. The more he got in contact with the diseased areas of the Net, the closer the rot got to his own mind. He took a short break to check the cage of conditioning in his mind for cracks. It wasn't failing yet. So far it was neither letting the madness he'd trapped inside it out, nor was it allowing the darkness from the Net inside. Only when he had finished closing the wound in the Net that was the life of his race, he fed the last bit of energy to his mental vault to stifle every impulse that might arise from its core. He was forcing his Silence to freeze even deeper than usual.
He wouldn't be able to do more tonight. So he returned to his body to get some rest. When he opened his eyes to the physical world it seemed strangely unreal, as if he couldn't perceive it fully. It was a condition he already knew well. Whenever he tightened his hold on Silence that hard, it felt a little like he was losing the connection to his body, to his senses, as if he was dying in small portions. But there was no way around it. It was the price he had to pay for his sanity.
When he was done he replayed the most dangerous memory once to make sure it caused no emotional reaction before he filed it away in the depths of his mind again.