Chapter 75

Thalia Mercant, the head of the Mercant family, was surprised to find a message from Councilor Krychek in her e-mail account. Usually the contact with the Councilor was mediated by her niece Silver. Maybe something had happened to her. She wasn't worried though. Silver was one of the most valuable members of the family, but Thalia Mercant was Silent. Worry was not in her repertoire.

But far more than worry would become part of her repertoire soon.

Councilor Anthony Kyriakus had just started the day at his main office when he received the e-mail from an untraceable but well known account. He knew at once who sent it. The particular mode of contact had only ever been used by the individual he still only knew as the Ghost.

Aden received the message on his organizer just as he and Vasic were about to go to their rooms in the highly secure, secret facility, where they'd taken the recovered Arrow children. They wouldn't leave them alone right now but after working nonstop to find them for several days even Arrows needed some rest.

But that rest would have to wait now.

Judd was having breakfast with Brenna. He was glad they could have something so mundane together before he had to head out into the chaos of a war in the making again, especially since the atmosphere had been somewhat tensed during the last days. His changeling mate switched between worry for him and anger at him for endangering his life. He had grown to love that too, her temper something that showed him the different ways in which emotion worked, that contradictions were possible, that nothing was ever black and white and especially nothing ever was the dull gray of the Psy world.

Judd.

He heard the telepathic hail as clear as if the speaker stood right next to him. And there was only one Psy in the Net who could find him, who was outside of it, and strong enough to telepath directly with such clarity. Only he usually preferred other modes of contact. Except when he'd teleported a woman on the brink of death to him.

Yes. He answered, careful to check if his shields and other security mechanisms were in place. That was something he wouldn't have done before. Now… he no longer knew if he could trust the Ghost.

I'm teleporting a data crystal to you. It's important that you look at it at once. It's your head-start. And after a little pause he added: It's all I can do. And strangely those last words sounded almost like an apology. But maybe, Judd thought, he just wanted them to, wanted to see compassion in the man, wanted his decision to save Kaleb's life be the right one.

Something glinted directly in front of him. He picked it out of the air before it could drop on his plate.

"What's that?" his mate immediately asked.

Brenna wouldn't like this. "It's from the Ghost." He expected another outburst about the 'homicidal maniac' as Brenna usually referred to the Ghost ever since he'd used Judd as leverage. And as close as he was to his mate, he hadn't yet been able to make her see why he understood the other man's actions. She respected his decisions, but she was so afraid for him, his logical explanation hadn't worked.

But now she just pulled a laptop from the bag beside her chair and slammed it on the table a little too hard. Of course his tech crazy mate would have one close by and of course she was SnowDancer through and through. So she'd understand that this might be more important than her anger and worry over him.

And it turned out that it was.

The message they all received was the same:

You have worked with me in different ways for some time. In a world that would allow such a term I might call even you my friends. In the world as it is now I can afford no such thing.

But you have earned my loyalty and thus at least some warning about the things to come. So for once I am giving you a two hour head start on this information.

Prepare.

Attached was a recording of another broadcast that was prerecorded and scheduled exactly two hours from the time they all received the message.

The video showed Councilor Krychek standing in his Moscow office. Behind him stretched the window front that gave a view of the skyline of the city. But instead of the suited business man the media knew, Kaleb was now dressed in cargo-pants, a simple black shirt without a tie and a black leather coat hanging open on his shoulders. To those who had ever seen them, he would have looked a lot like an Arrow. To him it was a symbolic act of taking over Alja's task. And to most of the population, who saw the broadcast, he looked more like a dark general leading his army into the final battle. And maybe that was what he was doing.

There was nothing left of the polished and utterly professional façade the Psy and especially the Council had usually exuded. The set up appeared designed to convey an ambience of doom. But it wasn't. It simply no longer hid the emotion that flooded through Kaleb and that resonated in every Psy, deep under the layers of their conditioning: The threat of nothingness and a desperation that left almost no room for hope – almost. And that was the reason this transmission would finally succeed in shaking up a race that had been frozen in unfelt fear for a hundred years. That and the information he was about to reveal.

"Today I am here to make an official statement about the Council situation and the current issues in the Net. This statement is long overdue, since the situation has considerably destabilized over the last months and weeks. And although it is not supported by the whole Council, this is going to be as official as it gets, since the Council no longer exists. What you witnessed for months now are no longer political agendas but the remnants of a crumbling power structure that succumbs to the rot its members created for over a century. A rot that consists of lies and threats and murder and now infiltrates the whole Net on a level that might cause its collapse if we do not act. And by 'we' I mean the Psy as a race.

Many of you might be inclined not to believe a word I say, since over the course of the last few weeks our own media channels or propaganda machine, as some might call it, have portrayed me as a dangerous mad-man. And maybe I am. But if you believe that, then you should ask: What does it say about the Council to have let someone like me into their ranks? Are they weak? Or stupid? Or did they just not care? I don't ask you to believe me or trust in my words any more than any other Councilor's. But I will give you something none of them has given you for over a century. Unfiltered facts. As I speak various sources of information the Council has withheld from the public are uploaded into public chatrooms and platforms in the PsyNet as well as the Internet. The data I provide will enable you to make up your mind without any of us telling you what to think, what to believe. It will enable you to decide whether you want to stay silent in more than one way or whether you want to start to speak, to feel, to fight – to survive.

The files that are uploaded have been collected by me and many other individuals, whose identity is not mine to share. Those individuals as well will have to decide, whether they follow my open approach on the situation or stay hidden. Some of the evidence might not be complete or convicting. But as a sum you will get a picture of the development of our society under the Council over the last decades. You will be able to see how the system has been fracturing for years now. And as you will be able to conclude from the data, we may be running out of time to wait things out: You will find proof of the ineffectiveness of Silence in controlling violence in our race, in the numerous and rising rates of documented incidences of violent outbursts. Some of those cases were intentionally attributed wrongly to the consumption of Jax, which is another growing problem in our society, and one the Council usually likes to play down, if it is not using it as a scapegoat for the far graver issue of rising rates of psychotic and psychopathic forms insanity. The most prominent case you will find documented is that of the late Councilor Santano Enrique who murdered 26 women under the cover of the Council's power structure and who was stopped not by our own enforcement system but by a group of changelings, because contrary to our race they cared.

But recently the problem escalates at an alarming rate: It no longer just consists of isolated cases of psychopathy, but of clustered breakdowns of whole groups of Psy. One incident that was held under lock and key affected at least 21 members of a mining op in Sunshine, Alaska, who most violently slaughtered the entire workforce of 120 Psy on site.

Various other incidents all over the globe show that the state of the Net itself is deteriorating, starting from sparsely occupied areas and closing in on the more populated sections of the Net.

You will also find untampered evidence Councils failed attempts to reestablish stability with doubtful and unethical methods that were designed to uphold the power structure rather than the vitality of the Net. In some cases those methods were entirely fruitless in others they even led to further deterioration. Among those are the Omega project and Protocol I, which have already been debunked by forces of the rebellion and put to rest before they could do any real harm to the Net as a whole. But there are more subtle variants of misguided damage control by the Council that are still in action. The rehabilitation regimens have been tightened gradually for years now to secure the continuity of Silence, with no other effect than an increase in instability of the sectors where they were most heavily implemented.

And apart from all those facts, I know many of you have seen them: the dead areas, the tendrils of rot infiltrating the Net section by section. Net is dying. Most of you already know. But none of you dares to inquire further. How should you with this looming over your heads?"

At those words the camera moved and zoomed out enough to reveal the woman no one had known a few weeks ago but everyone knew now. It was the one who was responsible for the mess in the Net. That was what they'd been told. The Council's easy explanation for the problem delivered with the solution, just as always. But as Kaleb spoke the Psy started to think. They couldn't avoid it, when he forced them to see, what everyone had been taught to look away from all their lives.

"Our facilities are full of people who have been erased from their bodies for the simple crime of daring to feel. And the truth is it doesn't work. Rehabilitation has no other purpose than keeping all of us, all of you in check, keeping you from acting, talking, even thinking by yourself. But it will not stop our minds from crumbling under insanity. This is why, from this day on, I will stop any form of invasive rehabilitation in the Centers located in my sector. The Centers will still be open for anyone who seeks assistance with mental stability problems. We will try to find other ways, even though they took our one chance at a peaceful healing, when they took her from us." Those last words sounded unexpectedly soft and warm from a man who was known only for the most cutting and cold statements. As he spoke them he stepped closer to the woman caressing her expressionless face with the gentlest brush of his knuckles over her cheek.

"Yes, this woman was not the threat she was manipulated into admitting to be before they destroyed her. She could have been our cure." Kaleb's voice almost broke when he said it and he made another pause, while his hand fisted on the back of Alja's chair. The only sign of how hard it was for him to hold on to control. When he continued to speak his voice was steady once more.

"Now you might believe me truly as insane as my fellow Councilors tried to make you believe. That is why I have added one last collection of files, to the data I made publicly available: Those files I retrieved directly from the Council vaults; proof that there once was, and maybe still is a designation that was equipped to read and influence emotion itself, just as other designations influence thought or matter, read the currents of time or the history of objects.

The so called empathy is a designation the Council wiped from public memory because it didn't fit with the Silence Protocol. It is the only designation that might provide a solution for the accelerating degeneration of the Net. empaths are our last hope. And the strongest of them, has been taken from us by the remnants of a Council that values its own power above the survival of our race.

Am I not one of them you might ask?" The camera now focused fully on Kaleb's face, letting it fill the millions of screens that had by now turned on and showed his message. "No, I never considered myself one of them. I am simply a Ghost rising from the wreckage of their crimes to haunt them, to take them apart from within. But from today on I will no longer be a Ghost. I will be the knife that cuts out this cancer that is Silence.

They took our cure. Now all we have left is the knife. We have to cut this tumorous growth out of ourselves and hope we'll survive as a race. We need to feel. We need to be angry. We need to be violent. All of us need to become the knife."

And just like that the transmission ended – without any further announcement of what was about to happen next. It would have been unnecessary. With his last revelation Kaleb had made himself more believable than any of his data could have done. Finally the Ghost had risen. Now there was only one result this could lead to: War.