Chapter 59

Hawke was in the middle of a meeting with the lieutenants, when the woman crashed into the table right in front of Judd. It took him half a second to realize she was Psy and a cardinal. Claws out, he jumped at her throat, aiming for a kill. An unknown Psy right inside the den meant killing first and asking questions later. But barely a foot before her face his arm was blocked by thin air.

The delay left him another half second to take in the rest of the scene. Several others had attempted attacks as well, all frozen in place by the same invisible force. Strong Tk.

Then he recognized the woman as the one that had been with Kaleb Krychek in the media reports. Only for an eye-blink her face was filled with utter terror, then it iced over her eyes zeroing in on Judd, who focused on the woman intensely, but didn't react otherwise. He was the one who had blocked the attacks.

"What the fuck, Judd!?"

"Hawke, she's not here to hurt the pack. I can explain." Judd's voice was so annoyingly calm, fucking Psy. That explanation had better be damn good.

But before Hawke could answer the woman started to speak – or at least she tried. All that came out was a cut-off gurgling sound. She had trouble breathing.

That was when he smelled the blood. A lot of it. It started to pool on the table.

Alja couldn't breathe. She didn't even register the pain. She just realized Kaleb was no longer with her and she couldn't feel him. Panic struck like a second bullet. This one didn't miss her heart.

Finally her Arrow training took over. Arrow. Judd Lauren was here. An Arrow. The only possible ally. But her lungs refused to work up enough air to produce a sound.

Find him. She telepathed instead.

"You mean Kaleb? I can't leave you here, before I prove you're no threat," he answered aloud. Keeping the conversation private would only make her situation in front of the changelings worse.

He's gone! Drug me, knock me out, kill me, if they don't believe I'm no threat. But find him! He can't die! They didn't have to do any of it. She lost consciousness the moment the words had left her mind.

Judd turned to Hawke grabbing his shoulders in a hold that was infused with Tk and forced him to look into his eyes. It was a blatant violation of pack hierarchy but right now he couldn't care less for the consequences. The fate of all Psy was at stake. "For the sake of your mate's race, Hawke, don't let her die!" He needed Hawke to understand fast. Mentioning a connection to Sienna was the only thing that would make him pause long enough to listen, to think.

"Nate, get Lara! The rest, evacuate this section of the den!" Hawke barked, pushing off Judd and focusing on the woman again. The room emptied at once, no questions asked. The pack worked as one. Always. "Now talk, Judd."

"We have to be careful. She might be crucial in all of this. If she dies, it might trigger what Faith saw. We need to find out what happened." It must have been something big, something that had left the Ghost no time to plan or send a message first and made him desperate enough to rely on Judd. Because it was Judd who the teleport of the woman had been locked on and there were very few people who could teleport to people at all, even fewer who knew he was alive and could have gotten a lock on him. And to 'port her to him blindly… "He wouldn't have teleported her to me, if she wasn't important and if there was any other way to protect her." When it finally seemed as if Hawke wouldn't attack her, Judd turned to look at the severely injured woman.

Just as he wanted to inspect her wound, his cell phone beeped, the ringtone announcing father Perez.

"Judd, you need to come here at once. It's our friend." It was all he had to hear.

"Hawke, I swear I'll explain. Just don't let her die. She might be someone's mate." Because he had seen, what Hawke wouldn't have yet realized in his shock about the violation of the den. He had to hope it was enough to explain later, because he had no more time for it now. He teleported out the second he spoke the words.

The man on the church floor was dying.

Father Perez was kneeling beside his head with a basic medical kit, the bag-valve mask already pressed against the man's lifeless face. Judd realized he'd never seen the man of God pray before but now he was mumbling urgent prayers as he worked with the bag that produced a strange wet sound and caused red liquid to gush from Kaleb's mouth and nose, whenever he released the pressure. But no coughing followed, the reflex no longer seemed to work.

Judd didn't have to be an M-Psy to see the damage. Kaleb's whole chest seemed to have collapsed. Blood was streaming from under his naked upper body and where broken ribs had pierced through the skin. The only thing Judd could do right now, was to stabilize the breathing movement with his Tk, by lifting the weight of the damaged ribcage off the lungs. His Tk-Cell energy would never suffice to keep him alive, even if he hadn't just emergency teleported out to Xavier's church. He needed help.

Yet he took a few seconds to think. He knew he'd misjudged the situation. He had realized it the moment he'd seen how the woman he had once known as an Arrow was dressed, not in a black uniform, but in a men's shirt and not much else. And he had known whose it was at once. How had he not seen it before? Why had he ignored the obvious, when the Ghost had asked about the second layer of dissonance? He should have seen. He of all people knew Silence could break even in those who were most desperate to keep it. He of all people knew none of them were any different from humans and changelings in their capacity to feel. But for the Ghost to have broken Silence fully? That had always been a thought that belonged to the realm of nightmares, even for Judd, who was used to blood and danger as steady companions. The outcome would be unpredictable. Maybe what he witnessed right now was already a consequence of it.

He had to see the truth.

He could let him die.

Of course, there would be some devastation to the Net, fragile as it was, but it would still survive. And the world would be a safer place. If the Ghost truly had broken Silence, he was the biggest threat to the Net, the most probable catalyst for Faith's vision. He could cause the death of a whole race and devastation to the others. And if Judd saved him now all those deaths would be on him as well.

If he let him die, no one would blame him, no one would even know. Some would die but billions would be safe.

Yet, it was not who he was. His race still deserved a chance, all of them, even the Ghost. After all: He might be someone's mate as well. He didn't know how he knew, why the changeling term even came to his mind. He thought of Alja Dardo, how she had pleaded with him to find Kaleb, while Kaleb had entrusted her to him. He must have known he would never be welcome close to the pack but she alone might have a chance. And he had counted on Judd to protect Alja. He had relied on a friend.

"This time you owe me," he muttered as he reached out with his mind.

Lara had rushed into the room and got to work on the unconscious woman at once. Healer that she was she would only ask what was going on, when her patient was stable and the woman looked anything but.

"She's not changeling," she stated as she ripped the shirt her patient wore to reveal the chest wound that was still bleeding at a critical rate.

"Psy." Hawke answered mechanical. She might be someone's mate. Judd's words were echoing in his head as he truly realized what he saw – and smelled. The woman who was supposed to be a lethal Arrow was wearing a men's shirt loosely hanging over hips that were only covered by a pair of panties, as if she'd just gotten out of bed with her lover. And below all the blood she wore a male scent deeply impressed in her skin. But it was not a changeling's scent. What the hell was going on? And what hadn't Judd told him?

"She was shot. Her left lung is torn. The bullet went through and is stuck in her shoulder blade. She needs surgery." Lara's statement pulled him out of his shock.

"Can you do it here?"

"She's not safe to bring to the infirmary, is she?"

"No she isn't."

"I could set up an OR in here if necessary… but I'd like to have Sienna here too to watch her psychic functions. And can we send for Ashaya?" The M-Psy was no medical doctor but the best they had on Psy physiology.

It didn't take Hawke as long as it once had to suppress the impulse to keep his mate out of the volatile situation. He had learned not to clip Sienna's wings when it came to her abilities and her value for the pack. And now involving her made perfect sense: She had basic medical training and was the best martially trained Psy in the den at the moment. He pushed along the mating bond. I need you. Then he said to Lara: "Sienna is on her way. And I guess I'll have to call the cats anyway." Pulling out his cell he added: "But I want her out of the den as soon as she's stable enough for a transport."

Lara nodded while she kept working to staunch the bleeding.

Aden and Vasic appeared seconds after Judd had telepathed them, fluently settling into action without delay. Aden dropped to his knees beside the body, while Vasic started to teleport in medical equipment of all sorts.

When the Tk-traveler settled beside them too, Judd asked him: "Can you take over stabilizing?" He felt the well-practiced Tk of the other man replacing his at once, so he could start to look for tears in the most vital structures and rearrange the cells to patch them up. He also felt another energy, that was harder to grasp but targeted the worst injuries and somehow made it easier to fix them. He had always suspected that Aden had not only diagnostic M-abilities. But he'd never felt an M-Psy heal with his psychic energy before. And that was not the only thing he did. With clipped words he directed Judd and Vasic to readjust pieces of bone while he applied all sorts of medical tech Judd hadn't even seen before. There were pieces of artificial tissue he had Vasic teleport inside the body and something unidentifiable that Judd would try to weave into the ripped strands of the spinal cord.

They kept on working concentrated until an hour later the rattling in Kaleb's breathing stopped. Another half hour later Aden told Xavier to stop the artificial respiration. A container beside the body had filled with a liquid that seemed almost too dark to be blood, and of which Judd could only guess that Vasic had telekinetically removed it from Kaleb's lungs.

"Will you need this for what you're doing?" his fellow Arrow asked. When Judd shook his head, the container disappeared.

"Do you know what happened?" Judd asked finally able to spare enough concentration for a conversation, while Vasic made Kaleb's body hover in the air and turned him so they could start working on his back, which looked even more horrible, if that was possible.

"No, we were engaged in another matter. Someone has kidnapped eight In-Trainings from a training facility. We were investigating, when you called us." Needless to say it could only have been someone who was an insider – or formerly was.

"Did he know?" Judd asked nodding down at the still unconscious Kaleb.

"No we couldn't reach him or the Arrow who was with him, before you called."

"Alja Dardo," Judd answered promptly. It made no sense to keep it a secret that he knew her. Maybe he would finally get some useful information on her.

"You saw her in the reports about the charity event?"

"Yes, I remembered her. I have been meaning to contact you about her for some time. She is very unusual for one of us."

"She is. She is also important." An enigmatic answer.

"How? Is she with Krychek as a spy?" It was a possibility, although Judd believed there was something else, he just couldn't be sure. There were just all those little pieces, the Ghost's behavior, his strange requests.

"No it's for her protection." Aden hesitated then. Unusual. Interesting. Judd thought but he waited what else Aden had to tell him. "Although we are no longer sure the place we chose for her protection is sufficient." He looked down at the still misshapen torso of their patient, where Vasic currently held a gash in the skin open and blood free so Judd could sort the splinters of a vertebra and try to piece them together.

"It seems a strange choice to begin with. Why didn't you transfer her to Venice?" As Judd had learned there was a small enclave of defected Arrows in the Italian city.

"She can't defect. She is important for the Net's stability."

"Because of her shields?" Judd asked knowing that couldn't be all about her.

"You remember her well. And yes, we suppose that is part of it."

"With the other part being that she's an empath?" Judd tried a shot in the dark. It was the one thing that made sense after he had put all the pieces together in his head. None of his fellow Arrows betrayed anything with their reaction. They behaved exactly as trained. And that was what told Judd he'd hit the mark. "So it's true."

The other men shared a silent look. Judd was used to it, knew they were possibly communicating along their unique connection. And as expected it was Aden who spoke. "This is not something you could've remembered." His tone was as icy as always but also guarded.

"No, I guessed."

"We know the priorities of your loyalty have changed…" Aden began.

"I'm still one of you as long as it doesn't interfere with the safety of the people I'm with now." Brenna and the pack were the new loyalty that came even before his hard forged loyalty to the Arrows. As he remembered his time with the secret assassin squad of the Net, he realized something else: They deserved to know. Everything. Something was happening with Kaleb and the Ghost and it would affect all of them. And by saving his life they all took responsibility for it. The secret could no longer be kept. So he told them about the Ghost and about the way he had insured Alja's safety. "She's injured but safe. My people take care of her." He closed his very short version of events.

"It makes no sense, even if he didn't trust us. Alja knew she could always rely on us," Aden said thoughtful.

"I don't think they had the time to discuss that."

Together with Sienna who had arrived a while ago, Lara had stabilized Alja enough so they could move her to another disinfected table. They set up everything for an operation under Hawke's skeptical gaze. He wouldn't let the woman out of his sight. When Ashaya arrived with her mate Dorian and the alpha pair of the cats, Lara insisted it was getting too crowded to perform a proper surgery in the small meeting room. Both alphas as well as Dorian refused to even leave as far as out of the door, especially Lucas seemed unhappy, that his mate had insisted to join them. Sascha currently was sitting beside the operation table, even touching the potentially dangerous patient.

"This is ridiculous!" Sienna barked out annoyed at the men standing around them, all but crowding them. "She's injured so bad physically, she's not a threat in that area. And on the psychic plane, all of us – ", she pointed at herself, Sascha and Ashaya. "are better equipped to deal with anything she might throw at us, that any of you."

"We'll be right outside," Lucas gritted out through clenched teeth after sharing a look with Hawke and Dorian who were nodding reluctantly.

"Can you sense her? Or telepath to her?" Lara asked, the moment they were alone.

"She's not responding to telepathic communication. I suppose the injury knocked her out for good," Sascha answered at once, having tried to reach the woman since she entered the room.

"And I can't get anywhere close to her mind to try to wake her. Not even by force. Her shields are absolutely airtight," Sienna added. When Sascha sucked in a breath at her mentioning 'by force' she looked at her with raised eyebrows. "Do we know what she's capable of psychically?"

"No," Sascha answered. She didn't have the feeling the woman was dangerous, but that was hardly any proof.

"Then we have to assume she's dangerous for now," Sienna assessed the situation coolly.

"That means it's not enough that she's unconscious. We have to be sure she's out for the whole surgery. If she wakes and reacts disoriented…" Lara trailed off looking expectantly at Ashaya.

The M-Psy's answer was clear. "I would vote in favor of anesthesia even if Psy don't react well to it. Stitching up the lung and removing the bullet from the bone might overload her nervous system otherwise and she'd die of shock."

Ashaya dosed the anesthetic as carefully as possible but made sure the woman would stay unconscious, while Lara performed the surgery. To their relief her vitals stayed stable throughout the whole process.

"I got the bullet out and patched up her lung," Lara reported to Hawke when they were done. "But she has also seven broken ribs and a lot of internal bruising that couldn't have come from the shot she caught. We'll wait until the anesthetic wears off, but I don't think, she will be fit for transport soon. If you could tell me why you consider her dangerous, but still allow her to be treated in the den at all, maybe we can find another solution with the Psy members in both our packs."

Hawke drew a deep breath. He was on the edge ever since the woman had appeared in the middle of his den, the sanctuary of the pack. It would do no good to stir up the whole pack, even less his healer, who didn't yet know about the Ghost and that woman's connection to him. But he couldn't fully hold back his exasperation either. "To be honest I have no idea how dangerous she is. But Judd practically told me we're protecting her to humor a fucking weapon of mass destruction."

"Are you alright?" she asked concerned, stepping closer and wrapping an arm around his waist, anchoring him with touch. Usually it should be the other way around: The alpha comforting his pack. But since she was their healer she was responsible for him too.

He returned the embrace as he answered her. "It seems we have no choice but to get fully involved in the Psy's civil war," he began to explain, thinking that he couldn't wait to have Sienna in his arms instead. He needed his mate right now. "I don't want to put the pack through this."

Suddenly something in the room behind them started to beep irregularly. Sienna must be removing the heart rate monitor already, Lara thought.

"Lara!" Sienna's call sounded insecure. Lara turned and saw the equipment still in place at her patient. The irregular beeping was her heartbeat. She ran back into the room.

"Her vitals are deteriorating," Ashaya stated perplexed. She looked down probing the body on the table with her M-abilities. "But she's fine. There's nothing wrong with her wound."

That was when Alja stopped breathing.

They had made some progress with the most vital structures and now it was on Judd to fix as much cellular damage as he could. It would flame him out within the next few hours nonetheless. So many structures were destroyed or injured critically: The heart was still working but heavily bruised and impaired by the increasing swelling. Almost all vertebrae had been crushed to pieces, the tender nerves they protected dissected in numerous places. The skull only bore hairline cracks but the brain started swelling too. So he worked on the heart, skull and brain first after they had patched up the bone structures and nerves of the spine with so much of the Arrow's impressive tech they should be able to regenerate fully as Aden had promised. And Judd knew it was possible. He had seen Arrows recover from severe injuries before, had always wondered how Aden managed to keep them alive. Now he knew it was some seriously advanced medical technology combined with Aden's exceptional psychic talent to make the body accept anything that would help it heal.

He should concentrate fully on his work, but he had to know about Alja too. So he kept on asking his fellow Arrows about everything they knew, which seemed to be less than he expected. "So she might have the ability to influence emotion on a much larger scale, than you thought?"

"We don't know for sure, we have only begun to suspect recently that there was more to her being different. It makes no sense for Ming to go after her that hard if there wasn't something about her, he considers very dangerous. But she hid at least the full extent of her abilities from us." Of course Aden didn't sound angry or disappointed, just very thoughtful.

"So you have no idea in what way she really can do or might want to do with them?" Judd knew empaths weren't capable of causing harm to other beings. That was why he had so readily left Alja with the wolves. Suddenly he wasn't so sure if that rule applied for an empath who had managed to live as an Arrow for decades.

"She's just been trying to survive all of her life. Until recently, we had no reason she had any other goal," Aden claimed, while he was fastening an electronic headband on Kaleb's forehead. Countless wires already protruded from his chest and back. Then the medic nodded at Vasic, who checked something on the electronic gauntlet that was fused to his forearm. Then little lights came alive on the headband.

"Silence," Vasic suddenly said. Both men looked up at him, wondering if he was referring to their patient. "She's endangering Silence. It's what she always did, even in the Squad. And it's the only thing that makes sense for her. It's against her nature. And if she's as strong as we suspect she could affect the whole Net."

Aden raised his eyebrows at the sudden elaborate statement from the usually silent Vasic. "But if it's true that both of them have broken Silence or, in her case, whatever component of it she was capable of keeping active for so many years, they're no longer predictable for us."

"They never were." Judd saw the true extent of the whole enigma now. "Those two are ticking time bombs. And you put them in a range where they might well set each other off."

"At the time it seemed a reasonable idea. We didn't know how they would affect each other."

Judd thought of the short moment he'd seen the fear in Alja's eyes as she had appeared in front of him, then he thought of Brenna, of how he loved her and how she always stole his shirts. He'd never have believed something like this could happen to someone like him, before it had happened. You couldn't predict something like that.

Again it was Vasic who spoke, pulling him from his thoughts, with his strange comment. "The outcome might be unpredictable. But the course of events is logical: Silence was brought to the people from the shadows in which the Arrows live. Now it will be undone by one of us, out of those same shadows." His tone was final, his eyes averted as he spoke, as if he saw something in the distance.

Judd looked at Aden who just slightly shook his head. Before he could answer his cell phone beeped loudly. Looking down at the complicated cell structure, he was trying to rebuild, he decided to call back later.

After Alja had stopped breathing on her own the damn males had finally agreed to let Lara treat her in the infirmary – but not without a bunch of soldiers standing guard. Now she lay in a proper hospital bed, hooked up to a life support machine that was barely doing enough to keep her from dying. Sascha ignored the hustling around her and tried to work her way into Alja's shields once more. They were still stable and very complex even with the drugs in her bloodstream messing with her psychic powers. But with her mental functions also starting to falter, Sascha finally found a small hole to slip inside the innermost layer – and was totally amazed by what she saw. Because this empath's mind looked nothing like hers. There were none of the colorful rainbows that surrounded her own mind. And there was no – What!? She had no time to explore any longer. She returned to the physical plane at once. "There's no link!" she gasped out. "She's not linked up to any psychic network."

"That's impossible," Ashaya began. But after a short look at the monitors she confirmed "The pattern of her vital functions failing would fit lacking biofeedback."

"I'll call Judd. Maybe this is an Arrow thing. They have some sort of suicide mechanisms in case of capture." Sienna had her cell already pressed to her ear, when she finished speaking. Seconds ticked away while the beeping of the heart rate monitor turned more and more frantic.

"He's not answering!" Frustrated she threw her phone on a table. Then she reached out with her Tp, trying the Lauren family's mode of contact for emergencies. Her eyes went black for a few seconds. Then she was back running for the medical kit.

"Sienna what are you doing?" Lara gasped startled as the younger woman plunged the epi shot into her patient.

A swishing sound as Alja's lungs filled with air. Then her eyes sprung open.

When Judd's phone beeped again he answered at once.

"She's awake now. Do they need to know anything else about her?" he asked after hanging up.

Aden shook his head. Then he asked. "Will she be safe with your people? We could try to relocate her but honestly I don't know if any of our places are still safe after they managed to get to our children."

"I'll call them again and tell them what you told me. If she doesn't behave hostile, she should be ok. I can do it now. I won't be able to do much more today." He had lost valuable energy telepathing to Sienna. Already the edges of his vision turned dark with the oncoming flame-out. "Do you think he's stable enough for the next twenty-four hours?"

Vasic checked his gauntlet again and stated: "We've got him monitored."

"Vasic can see all vital functions including his brain waves. If any of them get worse or if he regains consciousness, which is unlikely at this point, we'll know." Aden elaborated the answer of his fellow Arrow, who had returned to his usual short spoken attitude. "We have to go find the In-Trainings now. But we can return anytime if necessary. – But I don't expect it will be. What you did was impressive. I didn't know Tk-Cells could do that."

"That makes us even. I didn't know how you worked with your patients until now either."

"Yes, maybe there's more to all of us," Aden answered, his gaze lingering on Kaleb's still form for a moment.

"I have prepared a proper room for him. If you want to take him there first." Father Perez' voice came from the shadows in the back of the church. Judd couldn't remember when he'd left and fully concentrated as he'd been on Kaleb, he hadn't sensed him return until he spoke.

It took Vasic no time to teleport Kaleb and the needed medical equipment to the room father Perez pointed out to him.

"There's one for you too, as always," Xavier added towards Judd, after both active Arrows had left.

"Thank you. I know I owe you an explanation," Judd began.

"I think I understand a lot of it already. The rest can wait."

"Are you sure you still want us here? This goes beyond what…"

"I suppose someone like him will be least expected in a place like this. We can talk when you've recovered. And it will leave me some time to think this through as well." After all he had to consider, if anything he had told the Ghost might have influenced the situation as well. "I know what happened tonight might change the world. For all of us, but especially for the Psy. It is what we always wanted. And it always was a dangerous path. I'm not backing down now."

"Now you know who he is. Doesn't that change anything?"

"I am surprised, but if anything, it gives me hope. If someone, all of us considered so deep into Silence, can come to feel so deeply, there aren't many left who couldn't."

"You know?" Judd had expected utter confusion about tonight's events from their fellow rebel. But the man seemed as calm as any human could be after someone had almost died on their church floor. Of course, just as Kaleb had had his reasons to teleport Alja to him he must've had his reasons to come here himself. Had he even expected to survive?

"I told you I understand a lot of it already. And I'm not blind Judd. But we can talk tomorrow. Now rest. Your eyes are already completely black." The father had seen the symptoms of flameout on Judd a few times before, so he knew the man wouldn't be able to stay on his feet much longer.

And Judd obeyed the worried command of his friend. He knew he would need his strength to continue the healing tomorrow.