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He ave the slightest of s off See you later, Dev Katya, here’s my number" She handed over a card "Call if you needto call her?"
"No" Rubbing one edge with her fingertips, she slid the card into a pocket "Ashaya’s a good person, but she doesn’t understand how badly he changed- that birthed," she e, sudden and uncontrollable, wrapped around his throat as he shifted their stance so that he could look down into her face But she didn’t give hi her hands on his chest and pushing "Why are you holding me?"
"Because you looked like you needed it"
The blunt answer seemed to set her off balance But only for an instant "You can’t do this, Dev"
"Do what?" He played with a strand of her hair that was flirting with the breeze
She reached up to push away his hand "Tell ainst me one minute and stroke me the next!"
"I was supre every one of his rules about engaging with the eneht I’d played you" A furious er "And you still think that"
"What else am I supposed to think?" He lost his own teot? It’s like not re you have a limb!"
"It’s not the same!" she yelled back, then clutched her head
He immediately cupped her cheek "What is it?"
"Shh" Lines formed between her eyes
He waited for almost two minutes as she stood there, her head cocked in a way that i to divine the secrets of her past But when she looked up, there was only a haunted kind of pain in her eyes "I’ to see even the parts that were hidden deep"
At that instant, he couldn’t not believe her "Good"
"I’s in those labs, Dev, things I don’t want to remember"
The fear in her voice rocked hi her as the survivor who’d woken in that hospital bed, the steel-willed woman who’d asked him for a promise of death But that woivable things "Whoever that woman was," he said, voice harsh, "she died in the months you spent with that monster"
"That’s too easy" An implacable decision "No, I have to see, I have to know"
"Then you will" He closed his hand over her nape, soothing his hunger to touch her, clai I know, it’s that your will is unbreakable"
"Then you know I’ up at hiht, they were so clear as to be translucent But that made them no less deter read the report his aide had prepared for him on the situation in Sri Lanka, Kaleb walked outside - to the very edge of the patio that stuck out over a jagged gorge - and opened the psychic pathways of histhe Net as Kaleb Krychek, Councilor and cardinal Tk, he wrapped hi his identity
Nikita Duncan would’ve been very surprised to hear who he’d learned that little trick from He’d monitored Sascha Duncan for some time before she defected - the NetMind had shown a decided preference for the Councilor’s daughter and he’d wanted to knohy But he hadn’t been able to get through her shields - Sascha Duncan, he thought iht be the best shield technician he’d ever seen What he’d learned froht of her before she lost herself in the pathways of the Net had been s he’d learned to that point
Now, using those shields that ht skies of the Net and toward the spreading stain he’d shown Nikita Instead of taking the usual route, he found one of the slipstreams that fed into the pool and let it sweep hi a river into the sea
He had no fear of contanized the dead area for what it was It held echoes of the DarkMind - the e and pain the Psy refused to feel Part of that echo existed within Kaleb, too It wasn’t that he was a cardinal Tk, it was that he was a very special cardinal Tk, one who’d been molded by time and circumstance into the perfect conduit So he rode the dark rapids with impunity, even as he "spoke" to the NetMind
The neosentience could tell hi in Coloes frole dark thread that snaked alion He hadn’t lied to Nikita - he didn’t think the recent surge in violence by Psy was responsible for this lifeless patch of the Net, but it was a factorand it was starting to underration wasn’t yet an avalanche, and the increase in voluntary rehabilitationswould have to give