Chapter 11

Alja had gone to the gym for a late workout. Everyone else in the accommodation unit was asleep for hours, getting their scheduled recreation. But she had been unable to sleep. Since she could no longer fool herself about the feelings Kaleb had awakened in her, it was close to impossible to get her thoughts off of him. How could one of the coldest men in the world make her feel more alive than she had ever before? Avoiding emotional stimuli was not working at all. The more she deprived herself of them the harder she felt the impact of those new impulses.

Now she tried to calm herself and empty her mind with a series of advanced yoga positions, stretching and contorting her body to the limits of anatomy. That had always been easier for her than the brute force of the martial arts. The movements came far more natural to her. Perfecting the alignment of her body to the complex postures was a meditative task, which had never failed to calm her before. But just when she had settled fully into her practice, she felt the presence of another mind approaching. For a moment she was annoyed. Just when she'd gotten rid of him in her mind for a few minutes, he decided to come by and remind her in person of her idiotic attraction.

All her resentment vanished when she took a glance at him. He looked exhausted. More than that: His face wasn't only cold tonight. It was empty – too empty, even for the Silent. It seemed there was a profound darkness showing through the features that were usually cold stone.

Something was wrong.

All her senses went to high alert and she immediately dropped out of the difficult arm balance position she had been practicing.

"Councilor! Is there an emergency?" she asked taking a few steps towards him, while she kept the cool Psy façade up outwardly.

"'Councilor'" he echoed. "The Council has broken apart. You know the title is no longer accurate. Why are you still using it?"

His eyes were so distant, she wasn't sure his mind was fully in the room. His strange response was fueling that suspicion further. Not knowing what she dealt with she answered diplomatically.

"You are still one of our leaders, one of those who stabilize the Net. That isn't changed by the political conditions. So I think a title that acknowledges the task you perform is still suitable."

Stabilize the Net. Could she know that this was exactly what he had been trying to do just before he met her? Why had he come here at all? After he had returned to the physical world, drained to a critical level, he should have gone home directly not letting anyone see him in this state. Instead he had sought out her of all people, following a strange impulse to find out more about her.

"Thank you for your respect of my position, but it is unnecessary. You can go with Kaleb if you like."

What the hell was up with him?

He took a few steps further into the room, his eyes skating around as if he was looking for something.

"Whatever you wish, Sir. Is everything alright? You're showing signs of strain." A very technical assessment of his condition, hinting carefully that his behavior that was not acceptable in the usual Psy etiquette.

"I haven't slept in a while. I will take care of it soon."

But she knew it wasn't only the lack of sleep, he must have used his powers excessively tonight. And still those eerily empty eyes looked at her, or more right through her. Slowly she reached out with her psychic senses and felt – nothing – no, less than nothing: He was so cold it burned. It was as if he had locked his very self away behind a mask of ice and stone.

And suddenly she was filled with that inherent need that she had stifled for so long: A need to help, to heal. It was useless, even distracting until the day she could fully pursue it. But now it had awakened in spite of all her careful control – because of the man in front of her. It was compulsive. So she gave into it. She was very careful to just let a tiny trickle of her powers flow through him – just enough to compensate the emptiness she had perceived in him. She couldn't dare to do more. It would be as dangerous as unwanted.

"Then what can I do for you?" she asked.

Kaleb realized he was acting out of character. But he could explain that away later. He just knew she wasn't dangerous right now. On the contrary, some of the fog in his head already seemed to lift, his senses working better now that he was no longer alone. He seemed to recover faster in her presence. Maybe it was only logical to talk to her. She was his shield specialist after all. She could probably give him advice about shielding the Net from the infectious parts in it. "Do you know about the problems in the structure of the Net?"

Was this another test? Or had he really come for her advice? Playing for a little time to think about how to react to this, she went back to the mat she'd been practicing on to pick up her towel. When she turned around to answer him, she found him seated on the training bench that was closest to her mat. He had his elbows braced on his thighs, his beautiful but weary face expectantly watching her. He seemed truly lost. She just couldn't lie to him in this state. And never would she have guessed that this man of all people would hit that soft spot of hers. So she sat down cross-legged on her mat again, wondering where this new, daring conversation would take her.

"You mean the dead fields? I guess everyone has seen them, but it's not a thing anyone would risk talking about publicly." The Psy race had learned to look away from anything suspicious or dangerous. Those were Council matters and you didn't interfere with those, if you wanted to stay alive and out of the rehabilitation center.

"Do you know a way to shield from them?"

So that was what this was all about. Had he dared to go close to that vicious rot? No wonder he was looking so battered. She had once accidentally touched such a space and kept away from them ever since. There had not been many things that had terrified her as much as that experience.

So she answered with a slow shake of her head. "The Net itself is dying. There are no shields against death." She knew she risked her neck with an honest answer but she couldn't stop herself. It was as if her Arrow training just couldn't coexist with her desire to heal. It took serious effort to keep even the façade of an uncaring Psy up.

"Why do you think it is dying?"

"You already know that, don't you?"

Kaleb noted she tried to evade the question. No wonder. His behavior was highly illogical. Why confide in her? And why should an Arrow of all people know things about the Net he hadn't been able to unearth for years? And yet it seemed just natural to talk to her. "Silence. It's taking the life of the Net. But I don't understand how. It was supposed to be our salvation. Why did it fail?"

Just say you don't know! Get out of this conversation immediately! And stop trying to fix him! Alja scalded herself and listened to her own reason for once – at least she tried. "I don't think it's wise to talk to you about these things, Kaleb." Pronouncing his forename gave her another strange and very tempting sensation of intimacy. And one that was certainly false. "One usually survives longer around a Councilor if one keeps out of matters like that."

"You're part of our power superstructure now. Here people survive longer if they are useful. And I thought your closeness to emotion might provide me with new insights in the subject of Silence."

Slowly he seemed to be getting to his usual self again. She was relieved about that but it also meant she had to be very careful now about what trouble she was getting herself in.

Trust him! A feeling. A memory of the advice of her only true friend. I can't. But I trust you my friend, she thought.

"Then I'll try to be useful as long as possible." Her ironic undertone wasn't lost to him. "Emotion is a part of our nature and we can't cut it out without dying. We saw that when we tried to breed empathy out of our genes." In the pursuit of Silence they had tried of course. The result had been destabilization of the Net. So the attempts had been stopped and the E-designation simply been deleted from the record. Few Psy still knew they ever existed. "But still we tried to cage our feelings. You cannot lock away a part of yourself, not in the long run. It's like trying to choke off a limb: it will start rotting away, infecting the whole body in the process. I think that's what's happening to the Net." She knew it, understood it on a level only someone like her could.

"So you think conditioning out emotions wasn't successful. You think they're still there."

"Of course they are. The conditioning is successful against actively feeling in most cases. But in all of us there are still emotions underneath it all. They still motivate us on an unconscious level."

"That sounds like a contradiction."

He might be one of the sharpest minds of their race but – like almost all of them – he was obviously emotionally illiterate.

"Ok. I'll try to make it simple. Compare it to thought and knowledge: You know that grass is green, don't you?" Her voice held a tone as if she was talking to a retarded child. Provoking him – again. He patiently played along, realizing that he was recovering at an unusually fast rate now.

"Yes of course."

"But you're not thinking 'grass is green' all the time." She was sitting on the floor below him and still managed to give the impression, that she was the teacher here and he the student. An experience someone with his power did not often come across. Even stranger was the fact that he didn't mind at all. He just focused on her words and those mesmerizing sky-fall eyes that seemed a little more at rest tonight.

"No it is knowledge. I can retrieve the fact whenever necessary."

"Exactly. Now imagine someone told you it was forbidden to think that grass is green. That someone even threatened you with death – or rehabilitation for that matter – should you ever think of green grass again. Then you could avoid thinking it. You could lock away that knowledge deep in your mind. But you would still know. And maybe if you didn't think of it for a long time, you would forget that you ever knew it at all. But if you needed to draw a meadow you would paint it green. You wouldn't need to think 'I'll paint the grass green because I know grass is green.' You'd just act on the knowledge you have."

"I see. You're saying it's the same with emotions: Just because we don't allow ourselves to feel at any given moment, doesn't mean there are no emotions."

At least he was learning fast, she thought. "Yes. And there are always some situations in which we don't think through every motivation of our actions but still act on whatever impulses lie in the deepest core of our souls."

She really had an interesting way to look at things. What she said made absolute sense and confirmed what he'd suspected for a while. And it might be true for most other Psy, but not for him. He was sure there was nothing inside him but the darkness he had buried too deep to ever show through even in the most unconscious actions. "I was right. Your psychological understanding is really helpful. You could come far if you agree to frequently apply those abilities in your job here too."

Trying to bait her with power. At least he gave her that much credit as a Psy. And if this was another test she had obviously passed it. But she wasn't yet ready to let this go, not without getting at least a glimpse of his own motives. He didn't appear stubbornly committed to Silence so far and she needed to know if there was any chance she could really trust him. She'd risk using just a little more of her powers to see if maybe he would help her against all odds.

"If you call what I just told you helpful instead of heretical, you must be very open-minded to the implications."

So careful, he thought. She was very good at wording things without actually saying them. He rewarded her with honesty. "There's no need to beat around the bush. I am fully aware that Silence in its current state is doomed. And I will not try to avoid that fact by taking out the ones who dare speak the truth."

"Then you also know that we're not ready to give it up. We've got nothing to replace it with, nothing else that can give us stability." An uncontrolled collapse of Silence would devastate the Net and throw them all into a pit of madness. "And we may run out of options if we don't find something soon."

"As I said in the meeting today, I want to be prepared for all eventualities and it seems so much the better that I have someone around who can help figure out how to deal with that problem too." The look he gave her was almost expectant.

"I don't know if I can. I might seem like an expert on emotion to you, but I have barely more experience with it than any other Psy with a defective conditioning." I only hope, I can buy enough time to find a way to give our race back what I know to be the one thing that may heal us. "None of us knows how to deal with the violence and the evil inside us. Otherwise we'd never have had a need for Silence in the first place. We still try to deny the beast inside us but in truth we just trapped it in a very fragile cage."

"And it's threatening to break out every moment." That was something no one understood better than him. "The changelings are way ahead of us in that point. They have accepted their beasts, learned to coexist with them. Maybe we should learn from them."

"That's a bold suggestion, but reasonable. Is that what you'll do when Silence falls?"

"You grew up in the Arrow Squad. You know that for some of us there is no choice."

"I know some of us believe that. But even the most lethal abilities can be controlled in other ways." She was going too far. Again. He would remember this conversation when he was no longer under her influence. She couldn't take back the words, but slowly let her psychic influence on him ebb away.

"Maybe. But even if we ever find those ways, there is nothing for me in the world of emotion. You know how people become Council. We're no philanthropists." And what he'd done to become Councilor wasn't even half of the wrong he'd caused. "I will always be better off Silent."

As if to emphasize what he just said, he rose and pulled up that wall of ice again. And it hurt her. Talking to him had been so easy, so natural even dangerous as it was. But the familiarity had been a deception – one of her own making. Now reality hit her in the face with a bat of ice. And she didn't bear to feel that coldness from him.

What did you think he'd do? Magically trust you without you making him? Fall for your little healing tricks? Well, a big fat nothing – that's what you get. That's what you'll always get from them! There it was again. She knew that voice only too well. It was the angry loneliness that spoke from the bottom of her soul, the part of her that had turned dark after what she'd done. And it was tempting her to use her powers to get what she wanted like all others of her race would have done. This had to stop. She needed to keep her psychic senses closed and get away from him now. So she rose too, taking leave with a huddled excuse, not caring about the impression she made.

Left behind in the gym, Kaleb was suddenly wondering how he had ended up in this conversation. He only knew he had sought her out and found it completely logical to trust her only moments ago. He made a note to be more careful when he approached the dead fields the next time. Obviously they were messing with his mind – or could it be her?

No. He was a cardinal telepath. He would've detected any intrusion. He revised every word that had passed between them. Fortunately she had been naïve enough to share some very dangerous views of her own. Maybe he could use this strange encounter to his advantage after all.

Anyway after what had just happened he wouldn't rest until he knew everything about her.

Personal files of the Center for Infants with Arrow Potential

Alja Dardo:

Date of Birth: 04.06.2054

Facility: CIAP Rome (Italy)

Date of entry: 05.06.2054

Form of contract: None, biological parents deceased

Possible Designations and Gradient measurement:

-cardinal potential

-genetic evidence of X-marker

-strong telepathy

-overall instable abilities

17.03.2058: instability of X-Marker increasing – transference to new CIAP Auckland (New Zealand) recommended

12.4.2058: transference to new Center in New Zealand – high level monitoring of stability set in effect by Marino Ghetty (Head of CIAP)

23.04.2058: rapid decrease in stability – genetic suppression of X-marker mandatory

01.05.2058: genetic treatment ineffective so far – termination within two weeks in case of continuing failure of treatment

13.05.2058: genetic treatment fully effective – priority assignment of the case to Marino Ghetty (Head of CIAP) – new assessment of designations necessary

20.05.2058: corrected assessment of designations:

- S cardinal

- Tp 2.7

- Tk 1.8

(secondary designations are rough estimates, other abilities not quantified – due to genetic interference after treatment)