Chapter 13

Alja would rather not have an M-Psy looking too closely at her, but it was too late for that. Damn, she hadn't thought about it. She had just followed Marino's iron rule never to yield in a fight, especially when the opponent was potentially stronger.

Never admit weakness or even defeat. Your disposition makes you weaker than the others. Don't ever let anyone see you're not ten times tougher than everyone else. Otherwise you won't survive.

She probably shouldn't have taken on Kaleb. She was already on his radar and she had done nothing to appear less suspicious so far. And she knew that he only tried to provoke her, to make her give away, whatever he suspected so far. Still she couldn't resist provoking back, too tempted to see if this powerful man ever slipped his carved-out-of-stone countenance. It was totally irrational behavior that had gotten him a perfect excuse for a check-up from one of his own M-Psy.

She thought she'd better get it done directly, sure he'd check if she'd followed his order – and most likely demand the results of the examination. There was no such thing as medical confidentiality, when one worked for someone like him. Arriving at the M-unit of the Krychek HQ she found out she'd been well advised to do so. She was already expected and submitted to a full check-up, because Mr. Krychek was very concerned about the health of his employees.

Well fuck.

The call to his office came two hours after she'd left the M-unit having got some cell rebuilding treatment and a bandage for some slightly ripped ligaments. At least that wouldn't take too long to heal. She only hoped the M-Psy hadn't looked too closely at the indicators of her psychic designation. Her mind might be well shielded, but there were other parameters like hormonal levels and some genetic markers that she couldn't mask in a full examination.

Kaleb didn't waste any words of introduction, when Alja entered his office. After what he'd just learned, he was definitely through with being played for a fool. He'd get answers from her one way or the other. And if she thought her shields would protect her she'd learn that he wasn't a Psy who relied on his psychic abilities alone.

"I will spare you the details of your medical report, as I have neither time nor reason for anymore small talk with you. I have been informed that some of your parameters indicated, that you have not only an S designation. So I am asking once more: is there anything else I should know about?"

His voice was pure ice as always, but it clearly held a threat. This was serious but she was sure he didn't ask to play games. If he knew everything he wouldn't need to ask. But she had no idea how much he suspected. So she decided on playing dumb, gambling for time and maybe for more information.

"I don't know what your medic found. I have some minor designations apart from the shielding like any other Psy. And those are mentioned in my file. If there is anything irregular, maybe it's a result of my human heritage."

"Yes, there are quite a lot of things that seem irregular about you. For example your very interesting insights in the Net and the consequences of Silence."

So she was about to pay the price for her naïve openness the night before. She should have kept her mouth shut. "I feel. I'm not Silent. I perceive things others don't. You said it yourself." That was perilously close to the truth. And still it would never suffice to talk herself out of this. Her training kicked in and her mind started working through the options. But nothing could have prepared her for what came next.

Out of thin air a big cardboard box appeared on the desk right in front of her. He had teleported it in. Its lids stood slightly ajar but still covered whatever was inside.

"Then maybe you can explain why this package was delivered to my headquarters an hour ago, addressed to you. Is this a result of your human heritage too or of your emotional perceptiveness?" The coldest sarcasm in his voice.

"I don't…"

"Just look inside," he cut her off. His voice a razorblade.

She needed to take a few steps around the side of the desk to reach the box. To her discomfort it brought the large window front of his office right at her back. She felt exposed and was sure it was on purpose. Slowly she lifted the lids and froze the moment she saw the contents.

The eyes of a man called Marino Ghetty stared at her. Blank. Lifeless. The box contained the severed head of her former instructor.

She was too well-trained to scream but she couldn't help stumbling two steps backwards. Then her back touched the glass of the window. She had in no way anticipated this. But the message was clear.

Someone knew.

Probably the man who had ordered her death so long ago. And he had found her far too quickly. Now the hunt was on and she was the prey. She felt her control slip further at the realization and tried to keep focused on the situation at hand. She had always known this day might come. He hadn't gotten to her directly right away. It was a good sign that she was obviously out of his reach at the moment. He tried to scare her instead, set her emotionally out of balance. Suddenly all worries about Kaleb discovering her secret abilities were shoved aside by a fear that was so old, no training could help her overcome it.

She wished she could consult someone from the Squad about this new situation, but it didn't seem she'd get the time. She was on her own again. And the walls were closing in fast. The rule for such situations was to deny everything and if that was impossible: stick to the truth but reveal as little as possible. Only that even very little of the truth might qualify her for instant extermination.

Kaleb didn't give her any more time for hesitation. The next moment he gripped her uninjured arm and stripped away the willow glass blade she'd worn under her sleeve. It was pressed to her throat the same second, her body pinned to the window front by his. Another action she hadn't anticipated. Fuck. She was too slow.

"This is the last time I'll ask: What else didn't you tell me yet? Who would send you such an obviously personal, emotional message and to what purpose?"

She felt the pressure of the deadly blade on her throat, the cool glass of the window at her back and registered the movements on the square far below out of the corner of her eye. She was in the middle of Moscow, in the lion's den and there was no way out, not physically. She had to come up with something, and fast. But although the man in front of her posed a lethal threat it was even harder to think with the raw, male heat of his body pressed against hers. She could even smell him around her: It was as if the air she breathed in was charged with electricity. He smelled like the air before a thunderstorm and of darkness so deep it should have frightened her, but she just wanted to sink in it, lose herself in it. His face was so close she could feel his breath on her skin, the heat of it seeping right through to her bones. The numbness of her senses fading away like mist in the morning sun in his presence.

Think Alja! Say something! She mentally slapped herself out of it.

"The head belongs to my former instructor in the Arrow training. His name was…"

"I know who the man is. That was easy enough to find out. He was killed because of his connection to you. That much is obvious. I want the information that only you seem to be able to give me. And you better start talking if you want to survive the next twenty seconds."

"Someone thinks my flawed Silence is a threat to the Squad. And that I might destabilize it, infect it. He tries to set me off emotionally, because he can't get to me directly as long as I'm in your service." She tried for as little as possible. It didn't work.

"Not good enough." Kaleb wanted more explanation; although in his mind the pieces of information already started clicking together like a jigsaw. Slowly the possible truth dawned on him: Incomplete conditioning wasn't considered infectious in general. And it could not only be caused by human genes, but also by certain Psy designations, that could be called 'emotionally infectious'.

He increased the pressure of the blade on her skin. He needed to get all he could from her as long as he was able to hold up the threat. His conditioning was already struggling hard to fight the irrational impulse to release her. It didn't help that suddenly all he could imagine was stroking his bare fingers instead of the blade over the soft skin of her throat. And that scent of her – so soft and ultimately feminine. She smelled like a field of wild flowers after the rain, both tart and sweet, and heady with life. It was virtually compelling to lean even closer, the increasing spikes of dissonance in the back of his head powerless against the sensation. He stifled the impulse with sheer willpower. After a slow, deep breath that pressed her breasts distractingly against his chest she continued, confirming his speculations.

"I have a minor empathic talent. It is not mentioned in my records, because the designation doesn't exist officially anymore." And because Ming LeBon would have taken her out for it, however useful she might have otherwise been to the Squad. She knew that since she was four.

"You should never have been allowed to the Arrow Squad with it. But I still don't see any reason, why someone should follow you up here and send you a severed head. And if you are really capable of feeling you should get scared now, because I'm done playing, if I don't get more plausible answers soon."

Now he sounded arrogant. It provoked her. She'd been living under a death threat all her life. And she'd always feared that one day it would get too close for her to react accordingly. But now that she found herself just a small move of a male hand away from death, she went suddenly calm. She functioned just like she'd always been trained to do. Every cell of her body and every part of her mind focused on finding a way out, surviving.

She could use her ability with full force now and run. Her chances were slim as soon as she was alone out there. That was probably exactly the outcome that the gruesome message intended to achieve. So she'd try letting him in on a part of her most dangerous secret first.

Trust him.

Yes, that was what she was supposed to do. If she was careful not to show too much of her powers, he might see her as a useful asset, even if it rubbed her the wrong way to ever offer those talents to the Council again. She'd do what she must to survive. And suddenly there was this tenacious, provocative streak of hers again making her lips twitch in a small mischievous smile about what was to come now. Another reaction that told her how fast her stability was decreasing. But no time to consider that now.

"You better not try to scare me. I can scare you back." she said.

Kaleb was taken aback by the sudden, absurd threat. Was she still playing for time? "No, you can't and I don't see how you're answering my question."

"Take away the blade. And I'll show you." She gave him a look of cool challenge and provocation.

He knew it was a risk to do as she asked but he had begun to feel more than a little uneasy about threatening her and it was getting difficult to think through the intruding emotional impulses and the competing dissonance at once. So he braced himself against any psychic attack, not knowing what to expect but sure she couldn't match his strength. Then he slowly lifted the blade off her skin and stepped back just out of reach. The dissonance faded at least a little with every inch he brought between his body and hers.

The next moment he felt it: sheer terror. His heart kicked up and cold sweat broke out along his spine. He instinctively took a few steps backwards and it was all he could do not to teleport out directly in a desperate attempt to get away from the danger. The urge to run as fast as he could was almost overwhelming. Then it was all over. His heart was still racing but the emotion was gone. It had been intense but his conditioning hadn't reacted at all.

Alja was careful to observe his reaction very closely to be able to adjust her next steps according to the outcome. His face was a mask of terror, just for a moment. Then it iced over again leaving just a slight trace of the massive surprise she must have caused. Knowing there was no need to hesitate any longer now that she'd gone this far, she added the appropriate, mechanical explanation that would satisfy his Psy mind.

"This is what I can do. I can scare you. I can make you feel anything I want. I have empathic abilities of the subdesignation projection – thought to be extinct. But as you're Council I suppose you know what that is." When he didn't interrupt or attack her again she went on. "I made someone very afraid of me once. So he wanted me dead and thought he succeeded. Now he knows he hasn't and comes after me again. So we considered that I would be safest in the shadow of someone as powerful as a Councilor, in trade for my services of course. The Arrows don't give up one of their own. That is all the answer I have to give."

Seconds of suspense ticked away as she still guardedly waited for his reaction.

Alja had been right about Kaleb's access to classified information. He had found fragments of data that still cycled the Net, not only about the E-designation itself but also about possible subdesignations: Some empaths were thought to be stronger at perceiving and taking in emotions others at projecting them out. Only that it was believed none of the latter subdesignation still existed. When Silence was first installed they had tried to remove all empathic genes from the population, by labeling embryos with the respective markers diseased. When they found out that the Net was too instable without them, the Council had allowed for the subdesignation that was perceived less dangerous to persist, but it had been made sure no embryo with the markers of the projective subtype was carried to term. Another attempt that had obviously failed.

If this Arrow could incite emotions in others, that explained the strange behavior of some of the subjects involved in her missions: She was a threat to Silence. He should kill her now and deal with the consequences later. It was too obvious now she had been set up to destabilize him.

Only he couldn't do it. It didn't matter that there was no rational reason for his continuing reluctance to remove someone who posed an unpredictable threat.

"Who else knows of your ability?" he asked instead.

"Only very few Arrows and some of those who were formerly in the Squad."

"Ming." It was easy to figure out now.

"He is supposed to think me dead. He ordered my execution almost twenty-four years ago. But he knew of my existence once."

"And you were living right under his nose all the time?"

"The man whose head is in that box gave me a new identity as one of the Arrows in training. It was the best hideout until the Squad transferred loyalty to you and Ming started to file through whatever they might betray to you. There was a high risk he would find out I wasn't dead. But until now he just felt bored by me, whenever he came for a closer look at me." For a moment there was that tiny, sneaky smile again. "Most of the others did too."

"Ming LeBon doesn't ... Oh, I see." She'd made them feel bored to stay undetected. She didn't seem to have the same strategy with him. He wasn't in the least bored by her. He found her more and more interesting by the hour. But that didn't mean she hadn't used her peculiar abilities on him. "How often have you done this to me before?"

"Only once and only at a very low rate. Last night, when you came to the gym. I thought there was something wrong with you. You were too Silent."

He had expected her to deny it, to crumble under the threat. People usually did. She either had some kind of master plan he hadn't yet figured out or simply guts of steel. Both alternatives deserved his respect. Then he remembered his strange behavior and the accelerated recovery in her presence. He couldn't recall any reaction of his conditioning in that situation, too. There had been absolutely nothing that seemed off or wrong. But he knew nothing about her supposed talent. He had no way of knowing if she was lying. A tricky situation, but he didn't flinch at a challenge.

"And what exactly did you do?"

"I projected a positive emotion to make up for the lack that I thought was choking you."

"What emotion? I don't recall feeling anything."

"That's because you're not likely to be used to it. I projected a sense of safety and trust."

So that was why he had been so open with her the other night. Slowly the picture became clear. That was also why the Arrows had kept her. "You are a weapon, a most perfidious one."

Alja only hoped he saw a weapon he could use. "I know you won't believe this, but I really did it to help. Although I admit, I used the opportunity to find out more about your motives and how tolerant you really were about the flawed Silence. I needed to know if I could rely on your protection even if you knew the truth about all of my designations."

"Right. I don't believe you. So what am I going to do with you?" It was clearly a rhetorical question, but she answered anyway.

"I have not had access to any classified information except some details concerning your security. I am sure Delenko can fix that and you could return me to the Squad."

So she wanted to run. He found he didn't want to let her go. Of course it was only because of her highly valuable skills, he tried to make himself believe. A part of his mind registered the idea, that his reluctance to let her go, came from far more visceral needs. He brushed it away, not caring that this also brought him one step further down the dangerous descent towards breaking Silence.

"How will you survive, if only another Councilor can protect you?"

"I'll find ways. It's what I do."

There was something stubborn in the way she said it – a kind of steely determination not to give up, not to give in. It fit. Yielding is not an option she'd said. She obviously stuck true to that throughout her entire life. This woman would never yield and never beg for help. But maybe she'd trade. "Let me talk to Aden first. Maybe we can find an agreement. You can leave for your quarters, but please stay inside the building for the time being."