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JUSTICE

When the Psy first chose Silence, first chose to bury their e for love or hate, they tried to isolate their race fros Constant contact with the races who continued to embrace emotion

It was a logical thought

However, it proved impossible in practice Econoht have all been linked into the PsyNet, the sprawling psychic network that anchored their minds, but they were not all equal So by

They needed jobs, needed money, needed food And the Psy Council, for all its brutal power, could not provide enough internal positions for millions The Psy had to remain part of the world, a world filled with chaos on every side, bursting at the seams with the extremes of joy and sadness, fear and despair Those Psy who fractured under the pressure were quietly "rehabilitated," their minds wiped, their personalities erased But others thrived

The M-Psy, gifted with the ability to look inside the body and diagnose illnesses, had never really withdrawn from the world Their skills were prized by all three races, and they brought in a good income

The less-powerful members of the Psy populace returned to their ordinary, everyday jobs as accountants and engineers, shop owners and businessmen Except that what they had once enjoyed, despised, or merely tolerated, they now simply did

The most powerful, in contrast, were absorbed into the Council superstructure wherever possible The Council did not want to chance losing its strongest

Then there were the Js

Telepaths born with a quirk that allowed them to slip into minds and retrieve memories, then share those memories with others, the Js had been part of the world’s justice systeh J-Psy to shed light on the guilt or innocence of every accused--they were brought in on only the most heinous cases: the kinds of cases that -jaded reporters take a horrified step backward

Realizing how advantageous it would be to have an entrée into a system that processed both hus as well, the Council allowed the Js to not just continue, but expand their work Now, in the dawn of the year 2081, the Js are so much a part of the Justice system that their presence raises no eyebrows, causes no ripples

And, as for the unexpected -terh the occasional murderous problem

CHAPTER 1

Circumstance doesn’t lary at twelve, my first robbery at fifteen, and my first murder at seventeen

--From the private case notes of Detective Max Shannon

It was as she was sitting staring into the face of a sociopath that Sophia Russo realized three irrefutable truths