“Nope. Was too pissed off.” A broken boy rejected by the only family he’d ever known, his body betraying him more and more with each day that passed.

Then had come Arwen, and it was all over. No one in the family had ever figured out the mechanics of it, but Canto had enclosed Arwen in his shields seconds after Arwen’s birth. His shields were anchor tough—perfect to protect a baby empath. But having an untrained E inside his shields had nixed any attempt at Silence. Those same shields, however, had protected him from exposure.

He waited to see if Payal would take the opening, venture deeper into the past, but she shifted her attention to the organizer once more. “If your figures are correct, the shortage of As didn’t begin with the implementation of the Protocol—but it did speed it up. Was it because of our unstable Silence, our mental instability?”

“No.” It was accepted fact in the corridors of power that anchors were more susceptible to murderous insanity than the rest of the population, but when he’d crunched the numbers in detail, they hadn’t borne that out.

“Anchors do have higher levels of mental instability,” he told her, “but in the vast majority of cases the only negative impact is on the A in question. Designation A produces murderers at the same rate as most designations.” He showed her that data file.

“The Net needs anchors,” he said as she examined the information, “and will always need us regardless of emotion.” Canto leaned back in his chair. “Silent anchors are just as good as non-Silent anchors—the Council never cared to discipline us, especially since anchor shields mean that nothing leaks out, even if we do feel emotion.” Had Canto initialized prior to banishment to the death chamber disguised as a school, no one could’ve stifled his telepathy, no one could’ve chained his mind.

He could’ve helped Payal, helped the other children.

PAYAL glanced up from the organizer … and her control broke. He was so close, close enough that she could touch him, this man who was the last person she’d ever truly touched. “What happened to your jaw?” His skin was dark with bristles there, and she had the irrelevant thought that it would feel rough against her fingertips.

“The scar?” He rubbed his fingers over the lower right side of his jaw. “Accident when I was trying out a robotic suit.” A heavy scowl. “Why?”

“You didn’t have it when we last met.”

“You didn’t have that dot on your left cheekbone.”

“Lalit stabbed me with a pencil,” she said without any change in her tone, the incident one she’d long put behind herself. “I broke his fingers in self-defense—he wasn’t expecting such a fast response.”

Canto’s muscles went rigid, the line of his jaw brutal. “No one ever teach him that the strong are meant to protect the younger or weaker?” A sudden glitter in his eyes that made her breath catch and spawned an odd sensation in her abdomen. “Or the ferocious are meant to protect whoever the hell they damn well want.”

Her, he was calling her ferocious. Perhaps she had been. Once. “I’m a cardinal Tk. My father expected me to take care of myself. The weak don’t thrive.”

“You’re also five years younger than your asshole brother,” Canto said in a voice so deep and rough it was a growl that brushed over her like fur. “How in the fuck was that a fair fight? It’s not like he’s psychically weak. A better-trained Gradient 9.1 Tk against a much younger cardinal? Your father should’ve kicked his ass for laying a finger on you.”

A rising scream in the back of her mind, a vicious torrent of forbidden emotion.

Chapter 9

It is our duty to further the aims of our fathers and mothers. Some of them have faltered in their path, but that is to be expected. They are not Silent natives. We understand this world as they will never have the capacity to do; this is their twilight, and our dawn.

—Council Member Neiza Adelaja Defoe (2016)

SHUTTING DOWN THE incipient emotional storm with harsh abruptness because to listen to that broken part of herself was to lose everything, Payal tapped at the screen. Graphs and numbers and data, she could process those. What she couldn’t process was a man who seemed to see her as a person worth protecting.

“What happened seventy years ago?” That was when the decimation of Designation A gained steam.

“The first generation born in Silence began to take control of the power structures of the PsyNet. Before that, the majority were holdovers from the time before Silence—an old guard, so to speak.”

Payal looked out at the desert so she wouldn’t stare at him, at those eyes full of galaxies, at that jawline bristled with stubble. “People whose decisions would’ve been informed by the emotions—and the ethics—of the time before Silence.”

“Look here.” Tapping the screen, he brought up images of the people who he told her had sat on the Psy Council just before the beginning of the end for Designation A. “Three of them had science backgrounds, three business, and the last came from a family previously known for great works of art—but he was a curator and seller of that art, not a creator.”

“Effectively another business brain.” Cut away the fat, get down to the core, and this man had been about numbers and money. “Business and science can work well in concert, but they can also form a dangerous confluence when devoid of the balance provided by empathy.” Even Payal understood that art came from emotion—good and bad. That was why Psy had stopped being poets and painters, sculptors and composers post-Silence.

“Exactly.” His attention was aggressive, threatening to see too much—right down into the heart of her stifled screams.

She fought by going on the offensive. “I may be a robot in my social interactions, but I factor all elements into my decision-making matrix.” It was a testament to her years of self-training that her tone didn’t alter, her breath didn’t hasten.

“Recent events have made it clear that empaths exist for the same reason as anchors: they are crucial to the effective and safe functioning of our society. A Council devoid of their input would have been perilously unbalanced.”

The way he looked at her … “Your brain is a thing of beauty, Payal Rao.”

Her stomach grew tight, hot. “What did this unbalanced Council decree?”