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Chapter 1

ADEN WOKE ON a cold, hard floor, his head throbbing Another roaned, but Aden’s training was so ingrained that his sole response was to lift his lashes a bare sliver, only fully opening his eyes once he realized he was surrounded by darkness He wasn’t, however, alone He could hear breathing—quiet but jagged As if the other person was trying to maintain silence, was unable to do so for reasons Aden couldn’t yet identify

Re exactly where he was, he scanned outith his telepathic sensesand had to capture a screa, the agony leaving his vision white Controlling his breathing and his body through sheer strength of will, he fisted his hand, gritted his teeth, and made a second atte psychic network that connected all Psy in the world but for the renegades A Net connection would give him a viable way to alert the squad about his capture

The backlash of pain almost led to a blackout

Quietly lifting his ar in his vision, he reached to the back of his head and the center of the starburst of pain He expected to find blood-matted hair that denoted a cracked skull What he discovered instead was a raised bump close to the lowest part of his skull, near the area that housed the cerebellum and beyond it, the brain stem No, it wasn’t a bump but a scar—it shouldn’t have been there and it still felt tender

That wasn’t the only anomaly From the dryness in his throat and the stiffness of his limbs, Aden calculated that he h for the squad to realize he wasand to locate him Vasic alone should’ve been able to accomplish that Except it appeared even the best teleporter in the Net hadn’t been able to lock on to his face, using it as an anchor to get to him

The only other times Vasic had failed to lock on to people hen those individuals had created coned specifically to thwart teleporters capable of locking on to people rather than simply places, or if the individual concerned didn’t know his or her own identity—such as those whose minds were broken

Aden’s mind hole, but whatever it was that had been done to his brain via the barely healed incision he’d discovered, it had screwed up his psychic wiring Vasic’s absence told Aden his psychic signature ical technique—or technology—that could achieve that aim without a full psychic brainwipe, but he didn’t

He ran a mental checklist of his body and the iteone, as were his belt and his boots Whoever was behind this had been thorough

Havingin the room, he crawled silently toward the rasp of sound His cell in the unsteady rhyth that had hi adapted to darkness aht that came in under what must be a door, he could see that his cellmate’s body lay in a corner of the less room—as if it had been thrown there That body was s proportions to be a man Either a child or a woman

Close enough now to see the curve of her hip, the fine line of her jaw, he realized it was a woman A woman who smelled of blood He moved his hand to her face, brushed away the dark curls that were iripped in a punishing hold “Move and I’ll rip out your throat”