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Darkest Part of Night

IN THE YEAR 1979, the Psy race made the decision to e; to becoer or fear, sorrow or joy

Mothers and fathers sentenced their children to lives of icy control out of a soul-deep love those children would never feel in return They told their babies that Silence was a precious gift, that it would save them from the madness and violence that so often ca beauty of their psychic abilities

Without Silence, said a leading philosopher of the day, ill cannibalize ourselves in a storm of blood and death and insanity, until the Psy race beco but a terrible memory

In 1979, Silence was a beacon of hopebut 1979 was o

Those first children are long dead and the PsyNet has been rocked by the initial volley of a civil war that s and hu understanding in the populace about the ugly irony of Silence: in creating a society that rewards lack of eround for the rise of psychopathic personalities to the leadership of their race

An individual who feels nothing is, after all, the perfect graduate of Silence

Ruthless Cold-blooded Without mercywithout conscience

Chapter 1

KALEB KRYCHEK, CARDINAL telekinetic and a ht, had been searching for his quarry for seven years, three weeks, and two days Even while he slept, hispsychic network that was the heartbeat and the cage of the Psy race Not for a day, not for a second, had he forgotten his search, forgotten what they’d taken from him

Everyone involved would pay He’d make certain of it

Right noever, he had different priorities, his search coet huddled in a corner of a small, less roo down in front of her, he held out a glass of water “Drink”

Her response was to crush herself ihten her ared to her chest She’d spent the hour since he’d retrieved her fro to and fro in brittle silence Her hair was a tangled rats’ nest around her face, her upper ares

She was still a bare five feet, two inchesor so he judged She’d been in a huddled position pre-teleport, had only curled further into her shell in the past sixty ht—refused to ht

Now she ducked her head, the th strands that should’ve been a rich black interwoven with unexpected strands of red-gold, dull and greasy around her down-bent face That face was all bone under pallid skin of palest brown, the nails on her hands gnawed to the quick yet embedded with dried blood that said she’d used the stubs to viciously scratch either her own skin or another’s, perhaps both