Chapter 14

That was a little too easy Alja thought. She was sure there was more trouble to follow. But finally she seemed to get a little time to think. Maybe it would be enough to let her find a way out of this. She could try and run for it now. Using projection on her colleagues in security to make them let her out would be easy. And once she was out of sight, she would switch to another mental appearance in and out of the Net and it would take even Kaleb considerable time to ever find her again. If she switched every few days, the effort would likely be more than he was willing to spend. After all he didn't know enough to be motivated to search for her as frantically as Ming LeBon, who would still be after her. In addition to that she didn't want to leave. Even if the chance that this worked out well was minuscule, she wanted it to. She was sure she had glimpsed something in Kaleb that made him more than a ruthless Councilor on a quest for power. He hid it well, but she sensed it and it drew her to him almost as if she was under compulsion. And she was torn between that compulsion and her survival instinct that told her to get away as fast and as far as possible.

There was not much she could do in her current situation but turn to the one who had always been there for her, since the day she'd started to think. Her only true friend. So she returned to her quarters as asked, sat down cross-legged on her bed and entered the Net. She had barely called out for it, when she felt the presence of the NetMind brush against hers.

What am I gonna do now? She asked, transmitting the sense of a question along with an image of a helplessly looking face. She had been talking to the NetMind since before she could speak. They communicated rarely in words, more in emotions, images and sometimes transmitted sensations. But over the time her mind had developed the ability to almost automatically translate the exchange in simple spoken language to make it fit in the usual, clear thought patterns of a grown Psy.

Trust him.

Again, that sense of trust with a soft nudge against her confused mind.

Find him.

Who?

Find him. Was once. A long time ago.

What was once?

Then she understood the NetMind was trying to send something more and accepted the transmission. This was not one of their usual communicative images. It was a visual sequence that was stored in the Nets vast memory.

An accident. A bullet-train that was derailed and wrecked terribly. The visual zoomed in on a woman, probably human, Alja guessed from the panicked way she was tearing and pushing at some big piece of wreckage. Then she saw the reason. Under the heavy, warped metal piece was another, smaller human body. A little girl was covered almost completely by the wreckage. She was trapped.

At that moment a small figure blinked into the picture. The boy was maybe six or seven years old. Alja knew at once who it was. Even as a child his face already showed the cold focus she'd seen often enough recently. The visual showed her a glimpse of Kaleb's past. Without hesitation he lifted the wreckage off the girl using Tk. One of her legs had been crushed so bad it was hard to recognize it as a human limb but she was still conscious. Seconds later a team of Medics rushed to the frantic woman and the badly injured child and Kaleb vanished from the scene as if he'd never been there. The visual ended accompanied by another request.

That one. Still there!? Find!

The scene hadn't surprised her as much as it should have. She had known there was more about Kaleb than met the eye. Only she had no idea if the boy from the visual was still to be found alive inside the man who seemed to be a wall of armored concrete and ice.

How? She asked.

A cascade of pictures that was hard to decipher even for Alja: people who were digging in the earth, a flashlight lighting a dark cave, a mind scanning through the vast data streams of the Net and then the symbol of the NetMind itself reaching out to the blazing star of a cardinal mind but being blocked. Then it was clear what the NetMind was trying to say: Find! Just find. Anyhow. He is in a place I can't reach.

I'll try. I promise. She didn't bother that her message was accompanied by a slight feeling of helpless desperation and confusion. Her friend had never scalded her for feeling like that. On the contrary it answered with a wave of compassion and pictures of touch and affection. She knew that response very well. These pictures and sensations had taught her the positive side of emotion, when she was a child lost in loneliness and fear. They weren't enough to soothe her now. Not when she had caught a glimpse of what real touch would feel like, not when the affection she craved was that of one very particular male.

Why can you not reach him? Is it Silence?

As a child she had believed everyone spoke to the NetMind. Marino Ghetty had soon taught her otherwise and to keep those encounters to herself as well as anything else about her. But if the NetMind tried to contact someone it usually could. She just didn't know how it worked with those who no longer understood the emotional aspects of its way to communicate.

Yes. Now Silence. Won't listen the right way. Not like you. He only talks. Only asks. Once another man was there. A picture of Santano Enrique. Much fear. Very empty. And then it added the Symbol of the DarkMind blocking it too.

Alja didn't need to ask any more about that. She already knew that Kaleb had been the deceased Councilors protégé from a very early age. That was why it was all the more strange that she should trust him. Santano Enrique had been a sociopathic murderer. She also remembered the single time she had encountered him and the consequences only too clearly. Enrique had been the one who requested the assassination that had been her first kill.

Why him? Why Kaleb? She asked.

You help the Net, help me. He too.

I'll do what I can.