Chapter 66

She barely took in the room he'd brought her to. It was unfamiliar, probably a military location judging from the empty concrete walls. But the bed was soft and comfortable. Kaleb sat down on it against the wall and cradled her against his chest. She simply wanted to bury herself in his embrace and never let go, never even think again. She drew in his scent of electrified darkness that usually made her feel so safe. But the pictures of everything that had happened kept tumbling through her mind, stirring the voices inside her. And Kaleb hadn't said a word since the teleport. He just held her with a tenderness that should have been impossible given the fact that she could feel his whole body tensed up to unrelenting steel. Even though it hurt in her chest and shoulder she twisted in his embrace so she could look at his face. His gaze was locked on the empty wall in front of him, his expression unreadable except for the fact that his teeth must hurt under the force with which he clenched his jaw.

"Talk to me!" she whispered.

"Now's not the time Alja. You have to rest. You have to get well." His face barely moved as he spoke.

"But the children!" she began as the full impact of what had happened hit her again. "Oh God the children!" Again sudden tremors shook her body.

He held her a little tighter but answered mechanically. "They were programmed so their minds were basically inactive until right before the attack. That's why we didn't sense them approach."

"Kaleb what happened to them?" She couldn't even hide the naked fear in her voice.

"Aden has the Squad already on it. We'll find them." Determination in his voice but still no other reaction.

So he didn't know. That was bad, but not as bad as the alternative. And Ming obviously hadn't disposed of them right on scene. Of course not. He wouldn't waste the Arrows in training. That meant there was a chance they were still alive after all.

Still the answer was not all that Alja had wanted to know but she couldn't bring herself to inquire further. Not when she had just gotten him back. And not when it was clear she didn't even truly get through to him. She uncurled her fingers on his chest intending to stroke him to get him to react. His skin felt strange – too smooth, as if it was stretched tight. When she looked down she saw her fingers almost white against an ugly, splotchy mix of purple and black. And a new wave of horror hit her as she identified it as the color of his skin. Yes, she had seen it before! How had she forgotten?! Barely able to move due to her own injuries she struggled to get upright and away from his chest that must hurt like hell even with the slightest touch and should have made him scream with pain as she lay pressed against him with her whole weight.

His arms could as well have been steel bars. "You have to rest Alja," he repeated, his eyes still trained on the opposite wall.

"No! Let me up I'm hurting you!" How was he even managing to hold her with this… – then she remembered how she had to allow a subtle amount of Tk ever since he'd entered her shields in the wolves' safe-house. Outrage and worry slammed through her as she understood. "You're holding yourself upright with Tk?! Are you insane? You have to lie down immediately!" He didn't move. "Damn it you're hurt!" Tears choked her voice and that was what eventually got through to him.

He blinked. In his mind fragments of thoughts clicked together again. Alja was here. She was safe. She shouldn't hurt anymore, shouldn't cry. Finally he looked at her. And saw his Alja – angry, desperate, but alive – full of life. And even battered and injured she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. And she looked completely devoid of understanding his need to care for her.

No that wasn't it.

More conscious thoughts filtered through his brain at last. She cared for him too. That was why the idea of pressing on his bruises horrified her. As if that mattered… But it mattered to her. "Ok. I'll lie down. Can you lie on your right side?"

She nodded, felt his Tk stir within her shields, allowed him to gently lift her body and slide his own down until he lay on his back.

"Rest your head on my shoulder. The left isn't hurt that badly." He wanted her as close as possible.

Observing that the skin on that one looked only slightly bruised and realizing he'd probably hit his limit, Alja obeyed.

"Now sleep. We only have a few hours before we have to act again. We have to be functional." That was something she'd understand. Kaleb wasn't above using Alja's training as a soldier to get her to rest. And it made her comply. Not that he had any intention of sleeping himself sometime soon. He had to deal with a war. His injury and the search for Alja had cost him almost three days, in which he wasn't able to do any planning due to being first unconscious and then distracted to near insanity by his fear for Alja that had overridden every conscious decision, every rational impulse. His personnel had kept his business and the war preparations running during his absence but even they were not used to sudden disappearances that lasted longer than twenty-four hours. But he allowed himself one short moment to calm down a little. Buried his face against Alja's hair, breathed in her wildflowers and rain scent to convince himself she was really there, really safe in his arms. Then he dipped into the PsyNet to show the flawless presence of a Councilor.

Alja left him just enough time to sort out the most important things via his connections in the Net before she woke and caught him at once.

"You didn't sleep, did you?" she asked propping herself up to an almost sitting position on her uninjured hand, ignoring her ribs that protested against being moved.

"No." He admitted. "I was unconscious for almost two days. I can't afford to lose any more control." He maneuvered his body to a sitting position too.

There it was again: Control. Alja thought. She had recovered enough to remember she hated that word. "I understand. But your injuries must have been severe." The sight of his bruised torso wouldn't let her forget again. "I thought you were –" dying. She couldn't even say it. The voices in her head were already whispering of death constantly. She couldn't talk about it too. "And it was my fault. I should have been able to open my shields in time." And it hadn't been her wound that incapacitated her. It had been the look on the boy's face that had completely overridden her training. For once Alja wished she had been able not to feel so much, not to be affected so deeply by it. "I'm so sorry I was too late."

"I should have thought of that before. Maybe we can construct a lock mechanism and you could give me a key to your outer shields for such emergencies. They won't get to us." He told her the first thing that came to his mind to gentle her. Because her guilt it tore at him even more than his own. He couldn't have her suffer. But he also couldn't let emotions distract him now. Nonetheless he reached out and stroked his fingers softly across her cheek unable to stop himself.

"Do you hear yourself? We were almost killed!" She shook his hand off and bored her eyes into his. Why was he suddenly trying to act all Silent about it again?

"But we weren't. And I won't let anything like that happen again. If you can give me that key, I can get through your shields fast enough to even teleport you out of the way of a bullet or out of an explosion." When he heard his words, he realized it didn't sound very realistic after all. His mind was only focused on getting Alja to calm down. But neither touch nor words seemed to help.

"Yeah sure, and I could make our enemies weep over your dead body!" she snarled sarcastically. But it barely covered her desperation. She hadn't even wanted to say it, but those annoying whispers in her head had grown stronger ever since they had been attacked, made it hard to think with her usual calm, made it hard to think past those choking emotions. "Don't you see, they've already gotten to us? It's just luck we're not both dead. They leave us no way out. We have no opponent to fight. That was why Ming is called a master strategist. His plots work even if you can see through them."

Kaleb wished Alja would just stop talking. He knew all of it and he didn't want to hear it, because the realization tore at the confines of the monster, at the basis of his sanity like nothing had since he was a teenager. He just couldn't stand being so close to being powerless after having avoided exactly that ever since he'd escaped the grip of Santano Enrique. But of course she wouldn't grant him that mercy.

"He always finds and targets the one weakness in his opponent and he always stays behind a safe line. We can't get to him as long as the Net is too instable to tolerate his death and I won't be able to do anything to stabilize it as long as I have to run and hide. We're stalemated. But he's not. He can try again and again." And he would until he got to Alja. Worse, he obviously no longer cared if Kaleb's life was collateral damage, even if it threatened the Net. Because Kaleb's death would devastate the Net just as bad as the death of any Councilor at this point. Maybe even worse. "You wouldn't have been hurt, if it wasn't for me."

"We're at war. Sooner or later they would have tried to come for me. We made it out alive. It's all that matters." Cold hard words despite the attempt at warmth he tried to put in them.

Yes, it would have been all that mattered, Alja thought. Before. Not now. There finally was a price Alja wouldn't pay to survive, a price Alja wouldn't pay even for one last chance at healing the Net. But she stayed mute. She knew he wouldn't listen. He just went on trying to calm her.

"Aden and Vasic stuffed me with Arrow tech. You know how good they are. There probably won't be any relevant lasting damage." As if to prove it he lifted his arms, almost without using Tk.

Instead of helping her to see he was alright it made horror spread across her face, as she got an even better view of not only the bruises but also of the barely closed cuts and scars, where broken bones had protruded through his skin. "Yes, I know exactly how good they are, but I also know the limits. Your body needs time to integrate it, heal around it. Most of it is just a temporary bridge for the time your body needs to replace the damaged tissue." She couldn't believe it when he started to teleport in pieces of clothing and began to dress himself.

Although leaving Alja was the last thing Kaleb wanted to do, he also had to do something to regain control over the situation. "I'm ok. Judd helped too. He has abilities I didn't know of before." He said casually, obviously trying to play it down.

She would've laughed at that stupid male way of playing things down, if the situation wasn't so grave and if it hadn't reminded her of something other than his body that seemed to have been broken in the attack: his psyche. "Is that how he flamed out?"

"Yes." This was not where he wanted the conversation to go right now. He had to concentrate, to function. He was about to get up, when Alja's shields stopped him. He stared at her. "Alja I have to go out there and cut our losses."

"I know that. But we have to talk about what happened." And she was no longer sure if she didn't want him out there for fear of him or for fear of everyone else.

"Later," was his only response, while he tried to lift himself again. Damn, he couldn't move enough without the use of Tk. And currently Alja blocked him from anything other than stabilizing his spine.

"No." Finally the lid in Alja's mind tore off and the thing that had been eating away inside her started to boil up. "You're not going out there in a mood where you use your best friend, probably your only friend, as leverage and threaten innocent people." It came out just as angry and worried as she felt.

"I'll do whatever is necessary to protect you." The words were cold, frighteningly determined. And that was exactly what he was. And not even Alja could stop him from following up on his statement.

"Kaleb this isn't you." Alja felt sick at the imminent truth she had tried to ignore for the last few days.

"I had to get to you. I had no choice," he lied. In truth he hadn't even been able to think past his fear, hadn't even been able to think about choices.

"Yes you had. You could've found another way. You don't threaten or hurt the innocent or loyal. Judd falls definitely in the latter category. And he saved your life. Just as those changelings did mine. They helped me a lot when they had no reason to trust me." She was getting to the inevitable. Too soon, she thought. She would have liked to keep him just a little longer. But oh those voices, they wouldn't let her. And weren't they different? Didn't they sound younger? Almost like – children. She tried to listen harder to their insistent whispers she had learned to ignore so well over the years. "And you hurt those children. If I hadn't used my shields you might've –" she broke off unable to say it, once more unable to speak of death.

"I had no time to think of another way. They almost killed you as it was!" She couldn't do this to him, not now, was the single threatening thought that shot through his mind.

"And you too," she whispered and that was the almost the worst of it. Almost.

"It doesn't matter." The empty look returned to his face. He tried to shut her out at all costs.

"Yes it does!" she screamed. "Because I care for you too. And I know you wouldn't have wanted to have those children die. They were innocents."

"I only care for you." His eyes were piercing hers, forcing her to see the truth in that statement.

"That is not true. I know it's not." She stubbornly insisted on that code of honor, of moral she knew to be his. Her voice was already choked by the tears she tried to hold back.

"Yes it is. You just don't want to see it." Had she really been able to ignore what he'd been telling her from the start? "I told you, I'm not good, Alja. I fucking told you over and over!" Against all his attempts to contain it, his anger and gut deep disappointment finally broke free.

"No," she whispered. He couldn't be gone that far. Because if he was, there was only one reason and only one solution. "I know you have a conscience. Even under Silence you always followed it until now."

"It's what you wanted to see. But the truth is there is only you. There only ever will be."

"No," she repeated mechanically. Everything in her refused to believe it, even though she saw his face turning to stone with every second that passed. "You wouldn't go that far."

"To protect you? I would go however far it takes." Ruthless determination coated every word. But his eyes weren't filled with the distance and cold of a psychopath, they were filled with a fear fueled cruelty that shone like a hot blade aimed at her heart. "And yes, –" A trembling pause before he finally said the words that wrenched the blade into her heart so deep it dealt the deathblow to the fragile hope she'd been nurturing – not only for him, but for herself: "Yes, I would have killed those children, even if it would have cost me all that's left of my soul."

Alja stopped breathing from one second to the next. It was as if the words had cut off her air supply. She had to look down, avert her gaze, unable to bear the truth she saw in his eyes. Raw, physical pain spread in her chest. Her heart could've stopped then and there and it wouldn't have been any worse, because: "That is a price I am not prepared to pay." Toneless but final words.

Kaleb suppressed a shudder, when Alja lifted her lashes at him again. The tears that had been swimming in them were gone, the stars suddenly more distant than ever. They even seemed to be growing in distance. They started to fall away in that eerie motion again. It only made him want to hold on harder to the control he was losing. "Well, good thing it's not yours to pay then. It's mine and I'll pay it gladly."

Alja flinched at the hardness she saw on his face. Had she been too infatuated with hormones to see what he really was? No, she'd always known it. She'd seen that potential in him all along. And she'd fallen for him in spite of it, because she'd also seen the potential of good inside him. And not only the potential. She'd seen that core of honor and goodness over and over again in his actions. In the way he took care of his people, in how loyal he was and how he rewarded loyalty. She'd witnessed his struggle, the pain it cost him, but also his success in resisting stepping on any of the dark and rotten paths his teacher had laid out for him to take. Until now.

When he'd said he would have killed the children, there had been no trace humanity left on his face. And it hadn't been brought on by lack of emotion but by too much of it. After a lifetime under Silence Kaleb wasn't equipped to deal with the onslaught of emotion Alja swamped him in. Silence hadn't turned him into a psychopath, she had. It was her alone who disrupted that code of honor he'd held on to so far. It was her who made him betray the conscience that lay at the very core of his being.

And that was the terrible truth she'd been hiding from ever since she'd elicited the first signs of emotion in Kaleb: She hadn't been wrong about him. She had only been wrong about herself. She had been drugged up enough by those feelings to believe that she wasn't the broken cure she knew she was deep inside. For a brief period of time she'd been able to believe in hope again. But it would never work out. Because she was the one who left a trail of dead bodies, a trail of innocent victims wherever she went. And yes, of course she would hear the whispers of those children too. Ming had sent them for her alone. They'd been hurt, maybe killed after all, because of her. They weren't like the reproachful voices of her victims. They were much worse: Softly crying, begging her to make it alright, begging for the love they'd never gotten, the love none of her race had gotten for over hundred years. The love she should have brought back to them. Suddenly that whole weight pressed down on her. It seemed as if the whole Psy race started whispering inside her battered mind. And between those whispers one little voice she knew only too well was growing louder – and it was worse now that she could no longer pretend it wasn't her own. It started reciting the list again: Your father, your mother, Marino Ghetty, followed by the names of all the targets of her missions – seven names, seven lives, seven deaths, burned into her soul forever – concluding with Arthur Lightwing, and then Elizabeta. Everyone who ever gets close to you dies. And now Kaleb. You're tainting him with the disease you are. You're tainting everyone with the disease you are. You're not their cure. You are their disease.

And finally Alja heard the truth in those words: She hadn't helped Kaleb to crawl out of the abyss his teacher had thrown him in. She had pulled him right back with her – literally and figuratively. He would have killed those children, not because he didn't care but because he thought it didn't matter for him. Because he thought he was pure evil already. Because she had made him believe she was worth more than his soul. But she wasn't. She couldn't heal the Net. The one thing that had kept her going for so long, the one thing she had justified her existence with, it slipped further out of reach with every minute. She had no right to hold him anymore, no right to taint him anymore with her influence. She pulled her shields back, setting him free.

Kaleb almost broke under the weight of endless sadness and pure defeat that spread over Alja's features. It hurt. He hadn't known just looking at her could hurt him so much. The desire to make it right was a fiery storm burning him from the inside. But he knew only one way to do it and that would involve a lot more of what would hurt her. "I have been trying to be good Alja. But only for you. I can't be more. And I will save you even if I have to make you hate me!" Nothing civilized was left in his voice. She no longer expected it.

"The thing is you can't. You can neither save me nor make me hate you." But at his words an idea sparked in the back of her head, a solution she just had to take hold of… He couldn't make her hate him. But she…

"Because you refuse to see what I am." A faint hint of hurt of deepest betrayal that Alja couldn't quite understand, entered his voice.

"No because it's not," she replied defeated. "This is not who you are, Kaleb. It's who I am making you into."

What? Kaleb went mute for almost a minute, staring at her in disbelief. He didn't even know what to say. "This is a totally irrational idea..." was the first thing that came out.

"No it's not. Its' probably the most logical thing I've ever said. I am your weakness, but not in the way you thought…"

"You have nothing to do with it. Stop taking the blame for my actions! You're not making me any better by this!" Kaleb noted he was starting to speak out of anger. He couldn't help it. She couldn't do this to him now. She couldn't take back her faith in him, even though he had never deserved it. The place in him where he had hoped she could love the monster suddenly felt so empty he could only fill it with rage. He tried to breathe past it.

"You're right: I'm not making you better. But I refuse to be the reason you're turning into the monster you always feared you were."

He had heard her words but they seemed so absurd, so anathema to everything he knew about her, they didn't get through to a point where he truly understood what she was telling him. He didn't even know what to answer.

Alja didn't need empathy to guess what went on inside Kaleb. It was visible on his face and she'd seen it often enough, had experienced often enough herself: The confusion, the urge to make it right, to integrate the facts that just wouldn't fit to result in something whole. And even injured, angry and at the end of his resources he kept trying. Just like she had – until now.

Both of them had tried so hard. They'd done everything they could. They tried finding new ways and fate just kept slamming doors in their faces. But suddenly the urgent desire in her, to try just one more way, was gone. Because she had realized one thing: it would never be enough. Theirs was a world where Psy could no longer win. Their race had decided against happiness a hundred years go. And now they couldn't simply get it back by starting to feel again. All the Psy who had made it had done so outside the Net. The Forgotten, Sascha Duncan, Faith Nightstar, Judd and Sienna Lauren, even her fellow Arrows in Venice although they were still struggling. All of them were outside the PsyNet.

Outside the Net. That reminded her of something. The person I am to help is not to be found in the Net. – Maybe you need to look outside then. Kaleb had that person to save, the one the NetMind had told him to find. His destiny had always been someone else. A purpose from which she had distracted him too. She had been too focused on what she believed to be her task: Trust him, the NetMind had told her. But all she'd ever done was make him trust her. And you can't be trusted. You don't even know which parts of you are you. You just derail everyone off their paths. You suck them all dry with your need to become whole again. The part of her that was splitting off again had a new disturbing edge to its voice. Trust him. Maybe that no longer meant for her to be with him but to trust him to do right without her. He had done it before. Something about those thoughts didn't seem right. It was so hard to focus with the voices whispering in the back of her mind, but one thing she filtered out clearly: He might still have hope without her. And she had to make him see, even if she had to do the unforgivable again. Even if she had to use –

"You won't be," he answered finally.

"What?" She had to recollect, what she'd said before, having been too lost in her thoughts.

"You won't be that reason. You never were." Kaleb felt Alja slipping away. She was still there on the bed, talking to him but a part of her seemed to be miles away. And he felt the foreshadowing of a darkness even he had never known before. Alja didn't let him get a grip of it, distracting him with her next question.

"No? Then what about the one the NetMind told you to find?"

"What about her?" A strange, hot feeling spiked without warning. But this one was different from the usual guilt.

"You haven't been trying to find her lately. Have you?" Her tone suddenly held provocation.

No he hadn't. The trail had ended cold before he met Alja. And then she had simply become the greater hope, the stronger anchor. But as she reminded him of his neglected task he suddenly felt the silver-star pendant he still kept in his pocket like an iron weight. "But I will." Right after he made sure no one would ever hurt Alja again. They wouldn't fucking dare near her again. Why couldn't he suppress this anymore? The heat filled him up, making him itch to fight physically, in spite of his injured body, making him feel like he was ready to burst.

"That was because of me too. I distracted you from the very purpose the NetMind gave you."

"Bullshit!" he screamed at her. He just couldn't take this shit right now. And suddenly he knew what it was that boiled inside him: Anger. So much anger it was about to make him explode. And it started to become spiked with an impossible layer of ice. Hate. I irritated him, confused him even more.

"I lied to you. I will never be able to heal the Net." Her voice filled with unusual spite.

"You don't know that! Now will you shut the fuck up and let me set things right so you can try again?" Shock at his outburst made Kaleb pause. It was nearly impossible to think through the angry red haze in his brain. He only wanted to go out and hurt the people who hurt Alja and made her think she was too broken to be a healer. But she didn't let him.

"Are you too dumb to see that I used you? I used you ever since I set foot in your HQ," she spat back.

And then it dawned on him, what she was doing. He remembered wondering, whether Alja might be a clever trap by his enemies, making him feel with her projection. He had thought he'd never be able to find out. But now he did. He was sure that all the emotions he had felt towards her to this point were his own. Because what she threw at him now was nothing natural, nothing he'd ever feel in regard to her. The realization made him even angrier, but it enabled him to push the hate out – because that was where it had come from.

He gripped her nape and hauled her into a kiss so hard it would bruise her. He didn't care right now. She had asked for something much worse.

Alja was so shocked she lost hold of her psychic focus. She tried to resist, but it was impossible. Both his hands fisted in her hair, refusing to let her move away, keeping her in fact from anything but surrendering completely. And she did. His tongue swept inside her mouth, the darkness and thunderstorm of his scent filling her lungs. The sensation sending a fire through her body that threatened to consume her resolve.

"Have you lost your mind?" The words were an angry accusation against her lips. "Why the hell would you want to make me feel this?" Not letting go of her he pulled back far enough to look into her eyes. She tried to avert them. When he wouldn't let her, they filled with tears.

"I just wanted you to let me go. Kick me out. See that I'm no good for you – or anyone else."

"By making me hate you?" On his face sheer exasperation mixed with something far softer and infinitely more potent. "I could never hate you! I love you too fucking much!"

Then he just pulled her into the gentlest embrace while silent tears kept running over her face. His words had twisted the knife in her heart even more painful. It felt like she'd bleed out inside, before all of this was over. But it no longer mattered if it broke her. She had to protect him, even from herself, even from the very emotions she'd stirred inside him. "I'm sorry," she whispered touching trembling hands to his face. "It's so hard to think clear. There's just all this guilt inside you – and me too." That was at least part of the truth. "We both did horrible things and we have to make up for it, remember? We need to make sacrifices. And I thought that if I was gone…"

"I won't sacrifice you, Alja. I can't." Agony engraved itself into the stone that his face had become but he held her as gently as ever. It threw the contrast between his gentleness towards her and his ruthlessness against the rest of the world in even starker relief.

"But you have a second chance. You will find that woman you told me about. The one who is truly good." The one untainted by the darkness that had spoilt Alja's purpose. There was hope for him where there was none for her.

"You think she can replace you?" How in hell could she not know how much she meant to him? She had to feel it, empath that she was.

A thin layer of something that felt almost like anger added to the mix of emotions Alja perceived from Kaleb. "Not replace. But she can give you what you need. A purpose, a reason to hold on to humanity. She did it before. You told me."

"I need you," was all he said. But his earlier words echoed in her head at the heels of that statement: There is only you. There only ever will be.

"I'm sorry. I was just trying to find a way." But she knew she had made the right decision: She had to go. She'd just chosen the wrong way of pulling it through. It was after all hard to think with those voices whispering all the time. Why didn't they stop? Usually they stopped when Kaleb was close.

"I know." He said, stroking a hand over her hair.

She lifted her face to look at him. But she hid the devastating realization that had finally broken through all her attempts to cling to hope. "Maybe it would be best if we both had some time to think, to come down from this. You can go do whatever you need to do. Just –"

"Don't make me promise not to hurt someone. I will try to be as good as I can for you, but I can't promise you that. I will do whatever is necessary to keep you out of harm's way." That was nonnegotiable. But when her features darkened again he added: "But I think I'm no longer in that mood." A weak smile accompanied his words. It didn't reach his eyes.

He was trying to make light of it, calm her down. But she knew the core of all of this hadn't changed, wouldn't ever change. It would be futile to argue about it any longer. "Just promise me you'll look for that woman the NetMind showed you. It's more important than anything else." She had failed the NetMind, she wouldn't let him do the same.

"I promise." Anything to get her to calm down. "Now try and get some rest. I'll send Aden in later to check on your wounds."

But he wouldn't allow himself the same. He would go out and move his broken body with Tk until it gave out in spite of Aden's tech and Judd's efforts to heal him. Alja saw the evidence of what she did to him clearly in all his actions now. How had she been so blind before? "And after that? Do you expect me to just sit here?"

"You can come to HQ and do shield counselling, if Aden says you're stable enough." But it was no longer respect for her abilities that led him to make this suggestion. The layout was too obvious: Kaleb wanted to make sure the HQ was safe once more and then he'd have her there, as close as possible to protect her. Allowing her to do her safe, predictable work was just a front to keep her satisfied. But she wouldn't have any say in his course of action anymore. And there was nothing rational about this. She had to stop that development in him at once, even if it was the last thing she'd be doing. And she had a feeling it would be.