“Hmm?” Frowning, she shot him another instruction. “We’ve never talked specifically on the topic.”

“Can I report to him about what you’re building for me?” He had a deep need to give back to the squad that had embraced him when he couldn’t even embrace himself. “I think you could build better shields for some of the squad.”

“Sure.” Sascha’s attention was obviously on his mind. “I like shield mechanics and we always have Arrows around at the empathic training compound.” The instructions came again, so hard and fast that he had to narrow his focus to a tight beam to keep up.

He was sweating by the time she called things to a halt, his heart pounding.

He felt no surprise when his mate walked out with nutrient drinks. Taking one, while Sascha accepted the other, he leaned his head against Selenka’s thigh as she stood by his side.

“Ethan,” Sascha said after finishing her drink, “I saw a lot while I was inside your mind.” No threat or boast in her tone. “I’m not talking about secrets or memories. I’m talking about what you call the rogue power—whatever it is that you have corralled behind those shields is devastatingly powerful. But it feels familiar.”

“Scarab abilities are ordinary abilities supercharged,” Ethan pointed out.

Sascha nodded in reluctant agreement. “I need to be there when you drop your shield. If not me, then another E you trust. You also need a Psy who’s had enough contact with a large range of psychic abilities—including unusual ones—that they’re capable of recognizing what it is that exists behind your shields.”

“I can—” Ethan began.

“No.” The cardinal’s tone was unexpectedly hard. “You’re deeply biased. You’ve been conditioned to see it as a threat.”

“I’ve asked Aden to be there, too,” Ethan said, realizing he hadn’t mentioned that to Selenka. “As a protective measure.”

Selenka narrowed her eyes at him but nodded. “As long as he doesn’t try to override your mate.” She played with his hair while she tapped her foot. “With non-pack players involved, we can’t do the experiment at the main den like I originally suggested. But I’ve got an idea of another place that—”

A scream of agony speared through Ethan’s skull. It was so strong, so loud, that it took him a split second to realize it came from the PsyNet. Opening his eyes on the psychic plane, he saw a tidal wave of lightning bolts. Crash after crash, all of it pounding at a section of the Net already in danger of fatal collapse.

A single look and he knew the area was home to tens of thousands.

He got in the way of that power but didn’t have the strength to hold it back for longer than a second or two. Then a dark midnight power joined his. “I have it,” said a voice as dark, the power behind it so vast that Ethan knew who it was at once: Kaleb Krychek, cardinal telekinetic. But seeing the depth of his power in action, Ethan knew without a doubt that Kaleb was more. Perhaps one of the mythical dual cardinals.

“The PsyNet is buckling here,” the other man said.

“It’s not buckling,” Ethan responded. “It’s under attack by waves of power from a focused source.” And if Kaleb couldn’t see it, it had to be connected with Scarab.

“Follow it,” Krychek said at once. “Find the source.”

Ethan was already moving before Kaleb spoke, driven by the need to protect tens of thousands of people who didn’t deserve to die just because someone had decided to push a PsyNet breach into a catastrophic failure.

Ethan would not sit aside and be a witness to wholesale murder.

Ahead of him, the lightning flashes began to flicker and lose shape, but he could still see the faint afterglow they left in the Net. He caught the last glimpse just before the energy disappeared into a particular mind. I have it, he telepathed to Krychek. Coordinates as follows.

Aden is on the way to intercept. I must seal this breach. Watch for another strike and send out a warning to us both.

On the physical plane, Ethan was aware of Selenka standing with her hand in his hair, while Sascha rose and said her good-byes. His mate knew he wasn’t fully present, but she didn’t push for him to return . . . and he understood. She might be furious with him for inadvertently delaying the experiment, but she would not supersede his decisions—because she wasn’t his alpha. She was his mate.

It wasn’t until some time later that Aden confirmed the target had been acquired, and Ethan dropped out of the Net.

He woke to Ivo sitting in the chair opposite, the otherwise empty courtyard surrounded by night and lit by the soft glow of the strings of lights he’d noticed earlier. “How long?” he asked after taking the nutrient drink the other man held out.

“Ninety minutes.” Dropping the large tablet he’d been working on into his lap, the lieutenant ran a hand over his smooth-shaven scalp, revealing the titanium of a bracelet Ethan had seen on him each time they met. “Selenka had to return to the den—a juvenile managed to injure himself pretty badly doing a stupid stunt. As alpha, Selenka can share pack energy with the healers and the wounded.”

Ethan thought of how Selenka had known of Emanuel’s death, understood she was bonded to her pack by blood. “Will the juvenile be all right?” BlackEdge couldn’t take another loss, another hurt.

“Dinara’s the one who responded first after the accident—she messaged me just before you woke to say he’s out of the woods. Except for having to face the maternals after he’s up and running.” Ivo whistled. “Would not want to be him. They’re so nice and make things all homey—until you cross them. Then—” He drew a finger blade across his throat.

Ethan guessed that “maternals” were part of the wolf hierarchy, but it was a question he shelved in favor of another. “Where’s Loyal?” When Ivo looked blank, he said, “My dog.”

“Oh, the skinny guy. I got him a treat; then Selya took him back with her. She thought he might get distressed with you unresponsive.”

Shoulders easing, Ethan took in the other man again. “Why are you here?”

A raised eyebrow. “You were out of it, Ethan. Selenka wasn’t about to leave you helpless—and neither would any of us.” His next words held an intensity that was a wolf’s fur against Ethan’s skin. “She’s our heart and you’re hers.”

The words hit him hard—as did the realization of his vulnerability. Always before while on the psychic plane, he’d continued to be fully aware of the physical plane. It looked like following the lightning strikes, however, caused a full physical detachment. “Did she say anything about the location for an experiment I intend to run?”

Ivo nodded, but the comm on Ethan’s gauntlet went off before he could speak.

“Take that.” The lieutenant rose, and in that move was evidence of the fluid muscle Ethan had seen the night Ivo helped move the body of his murdered friend. “I have to use the head anyway.”

Ethan was unsurprised to find Aden’s face on the screen built into the gauntlet. “How,” the squad leader said, “did you find the source of the power surge?”

“I tracked its signature. You can’t see it?” he asked, to confirm what he’d realized after Kaleb entered the Net.

“Nobody can see it. We’ve been assuming the Net is fracturing because of the underlying disintegration. We had no reason to believe the damage was being exacerbated by violent surges of power.”

“Earlier collapses may have been simpler. Kaleb did see a ripple in the Net today.”

“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to hold the Net together—this type of concentrated attack could make it impossible.” Aden’s face was tired. “Are you available for teleport pickup?”

Ethan looked up to see Ivo walking back to him. “A moment.” Muting his end of the call, he spoke to the man who was now his packmate.

“Coming with you.” Ivo’s expression was resolute. “Your eyes aren’t quite all there yet.”

Ethan understood brotherhood now—both among the squad and in the pack. So he simply nodded, then confirmed the pickup with Aden. “Out in front of BlackEdge’s city HQ,” he said, he and Ivo walking out together.

Vasic arrived moments later. The teleporter was now wearing a metal prosthetic that had colored lines of electronics and what appeared to be veins. Not a man who spoke often, Vasic just met their gazes in greeting before completing the ’port.

And Ethan found himself in a screamingly white corridor broken up only by hard plas chairs of dull gray that were bolted to the wall—and an unnaturally green plant that proved to be fake.

The walls threatened to close in on him.

Chapter 39

Create fail-safe switch in servant minds in case of capture. Difficulty level apt to be very high. Begin work on it at once.

—Note to self from the Architect

“WHERE ARE WE?” Ethan asked, fighting his revulsion; the place reminded him strongly of the infirmary where he’d been taken after his physical punishments.

“PsyMed SF Echo,” said the woman of medium height who stood with Aden, her English holding a lilting accent and her curvy body clad in a tailored black jumpsuit around the neck of which hung a plain old stethoscope—a device that had survived all the ages of modernity.

“I’m Dr. Maia Ndiaye.” Her eyes were large, the shade a dark brown flecked with amber, her skin blue-black, and her hair obscured by a vivid green scarf that she wore wrapped around her hair in a complicated pattern.

From his research, Dr. Ndiaye was a forty-one-year-old M-Psy with a specialization in neurology who hit 9.3 on the Gradient, but her face had no lines of age, and her presence didn’t pulse with power. She’d grown up in Silence, he realized, likely had intense control over what she projected.

“The target you pinpointed.” Aden nodded toward a door not far from them.