Heart of Obsidian Read Free Page A

“hum” that wasn’t discernible to humanoid ears, but that made animals uneasy and messed with technology. He had it under control now, of course. The only time he permitted the hum to escape his shields was when he needed to obfuscate his presence in front of a camera or to otherwise disrupt technological surveillance. It was an aspect of his abilities known to only one other living individual aside from Kaleb.
    Nevertheless, given the speed of the teleport, his guest’s captors would suspect the involvement of a high-level Tk, and there were very few of them in the pool, but no one would know it had been Kaleb. Not until he was ready.
    And then they would beg for mercy.
    Even the most powerful, most Silent begged in the end, the conditioning cracking in the face of a scrabbling panic that blinded them to the fact Kaleb had no mercy in him.
    The final screw in place, he packed up his equipment and teleported it away. It was odd to see the terrace surrounded by metal railings—they allowed a view out from between the bars but no entry to the black maw of the gorge. Not even his guest was thin enough to fit in the spaces between the bars.
    Sir.
    The polite telepathic knock belonged to Silver, his aide and a member of the quietly influential Mercant family.
    He opened the telepathic channel.
What is it?
He didn’t remind her that he’d asked not to be disturbed—Silver wouldn’t be going against his express orders unless it was necessary.
    There’s been an attack against a small think tank in Khartoum. The think tank had just announced the parameters of its next research project: the benefits to Psy of greater political cooperation and social interaction with humans and changelings.
    So, he thought, the next volley had been shot in the civil war that loomed over the PsyNet.
How many dead?
    All ten of those in the building at the time. A poisonous gas introduced into their air supply.
    Has Pure Psy claimed responsibility?
The radical pro-Silence group had gone quiet in the aftermath of its decisive defeat in the California region at the hands of a force comprised of the SnowDancer wolves and the DarkRiver leopards, as well as Psy who looked to the two Councilors in the area—Nikita Duncan and Anthony Kyriakus—for guidance. The humans, too, had joined in the resistance to Pure Psy’s attempt to seize control of the greater San Francisco and Sierra Nevada region, leading to an alliance that crossed racial boundaries Pure Psy wanted to maintain at all costs.
    Such a motive seemed to run counter to the group’s avowed focus on the PsyNet, but underlying Pure Psy’s outwardly “rational” rhetoric was the belief that the Psy were superior to the other races, that if their people would only seal the cracks that had begun to appear in the foundations of the Silence Protocol, they would once again be the most powerful race on the planet.
    Any attempt to better integrate the Psy populace with the humans and changelings was thus seen not only as an attack against the Protocol, but as a threat to the genetic superiority of the Psy race. It was an unsound premise. Kaleb knew the Psy were as flawed as the humans or changelings—he’d come of age in rooms ripe with the scent of congealing blood, screams echoing in his ears; he knew the dark underbelly of their race had simply been buried, not erased.
    Confirmed,
Silver said after a short delay.
Pure Psy has taken responsibility for the poisoning, and the claim was public.
She sent him a visual, her telepathy strong enough that it was crisp, clear.
    The side of the building owned by the think tank had been emblazoned with the image of a star with the letter
P
at the center. The
P
was white, the area around it black. Below were the words
Absolution in Purity, JOIN US
.

    This is new,
he said to Silver.
    Yes. It’s the first appearance of this decal.
    A decal. That explained how the Pure Psy operatives had been able to put it up so fast. He wondered if the religious