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Dev’s eyes flicked to her son Taking the hint, Ashaya kissed the boy on the cheek and smiled "Keenan, you want to cut out some cookies while I talk to Mr Santos?"
An enthusiastic nod Mother and child disappeared from the screen for aif he’d ever hold a child of his own in his arenetic inheritance, he’d done too much, seen too much There was no softness left in him
Ashaya’s face returned to the screen, her eyes filled with the rehter "We’ll have to be quick - Keenan’s very good, but he’s still a four-year-old alone with cookie dough"
Knowing he was about to wipe that shi joy from her eyes, he didn’t try to soften the blow, didn’t try to sugar-coat the implications "I need you to see if you can identify someone" Then he told her about the woman he’d found dumped outside his apartment door
Ashaya’s face went pale under that dusky skin "Do you think - "
"It could be nothing," he interrupted "But it’s a possibility I have to check out"
"Of course" Her throat moved as she sed "If the Council knows about the unique abilities being otten, there’s a chance they’ll begin to try to experi would kill thehtened That was exactly orried hiroup with access to psychic powers -manifested in some of his people "Is this line secure?"
"Yes"
He sent through a photograph "She , Ashaya took a deep breath and opened the attachnized the woer, and pain - it all swept over her face in a violent wave "Dear God" Her fingers covered her mouth "Ekaterina It’s Ekaterina"
Chapter 3
The Psy Council met in their usual location - a mental vault deep within the PsyNet, the psychic network that connected every Psy on the planet but for the renegades An endless vista of black, each Psy le white star, the Net had a stark kind of beauty But of course, those within the Net no longer understood beauty
Like their Council, they understood only logic, practicality, economics
Shut inside the solid black walls of the vault, Nikita looked to Ming "You had so to discuss?"
"Yes" The other Councilor’s mind was a blade, precise, ice-cold "I’ve been able to retrieve some of the data Ashaya Aleine obfuscated before her defection"
"Excellent" Shoshanna Scott’s ant as she was in person That hy she was one of the two public faces of the Council Her "husband," Henry, their relationship a front to pacify the huh, Nikita thought, the two hadn’t been working as a cohesive unit these past ain
"Possibly" Ming paused "I’ it now"
Streams of data scrolled down the black walls, a silver waterfall comprehensible to only the most powerful Psy h the salient points "This concerns the Forgotten"
"It appears," Ming said, "that theirborn with abilities unseen in the Net"
"That’s hardly surprising" Kaleb’s smooth voice
Nikita considered him the most lethal member of not only the Council, but of the Net itself At present, he’d allied himself to her on certain issues, but she was in no doubt that he’d kill her without hesitation should it prove necessary
"Councilor Krychek is correct," Tatiana said, speaking for the first ti ene pool except where thosethe functionality of the Net"
Nikita knew the dig was directed at her, a reenetics "The E designation isn’t a mutation," she said with a calm that had been conditioned into her from the cradle "Eotten your history lessons?" The last tination - by destroying all embryos that tested positive for the ability - the PsyNet had cootten nothing" Tatiana’s voice was utterly without inflection "Getting back to the issue at hand - the deletion of er, purer, but with the inevitable side effect of stunting the development of new talents"