“I’ll be in charge soon enough,” he’d been saying when Payal last heard. “You’ll be under my control—and I don’t like people who get above their station.”

After making her report, Payal had delivered her coup de grâce. “Lalit has so little foresight that he was recording the encounter. When I teleported the girl out, I also took the recording—I’ll forward you a copy.”

“What do you intend to do with this information, Payal?” Pranath’s eyes were as motionless as a snake’s slitted pupils.

“Hold it over Lalit’s head. You can make him your heir, but I’ll destroy him and the family in retaliation.” The threat had been a carefully calculated gamble, Payal all too aware of the thousands of blameless people who relied on the Rao family for their livelihoods. “He’s irrational, Father. He’ll take our family name to the gutter. Lalit is driven by his urges, not by reason.”

Pranath Rao had smiled the same cold smile Lalit so often mimicked. “Well done, daughter. I didn’t think you had it in you.” A cool murmur. “You do realize I know every location you could’ve possibly utilized.”

Payal had held his eyes without fear, her ability to wall off the rage of her emotions the best trick she’d ever taught herself. “I’ve run my own small business since I was fifteen. Did you actually believe I showed you all my profits?” Payal had learned by watching her family, and what she’d learned was never trust anyone. “Try to find the girl or the recording. You’ll fail.”

After a long, tense minute, while Payal stood unflinching, Pranath Rao had brought his hands together in a slow clap. “Brilliant. You are my true heir after all—Lalit never saw you waiting to strike at his back.”

Now Payal took the elevator to the basement level of Vara, a windowless and highly secure area that could be accessed only by a limited number of people. All were Psy, and all but Payal and Lalit were fanatically loyal to Pranath Rao.

Which was why their father had other ways of controlling his children.

After exiting the elevator, she keyed in her private entry code on the doors to the main suite, then stood still for the retinal scan. She should’ve been able to teleport in, but her father had a group of staff on duty whose sole task was to alter elements of his work space in ways that stopped a teleport lock.

The team did this every single time after a visit from Lalit or Payal.

What some might call paranoia, their father called good security, and Payal couldn’t fault him for it. Lalit, at least, was fully capable of teleporting in while Pranath was at work and slitting his throat.

The doors slid open in front of her. Beyond them moved an M-Psy in blue scrubs, her brown skin dull as a result of all the time she spent underground. The other woman gave her a nod.

“Is my father awake?”

“Yes. He’ll see you.”

Of course he knew of her arrival. The entire area was monitored. “Thank you.”

Turning right, she walked down a wide hallway decorated with artefacts of gold against a black background. Historical treasures captured by their ancestors that should’ve been verboten under Silence—but the Rao family was never going to give up their history. They’d simply moved the prized possessions to places where no outsider would ever see them.

Her father had added to the artefacts: the two golden swords at the end of the hallway were his. Mounted beside them was a small knife Lalit had sourced earlier that year. Her brother had never given up on his ambitions; he’d also managed to keep his hands outwardly clean for years.

Payal was well aware she was on borrowed time.

“Payal, come in.” Her father sat propped up in the computronic bed he used when working, papers and datapads spread out on the specially built desk that arched over the bed.

The overhead lights were on against the windowless enclosure that was the public part of his suite. Not that the room was clinical—a thick Persian carpet covered the floor, and delicate historical paintings of long-dead royal courts decorated two of the walls.

At the center of it all was Pranath Rao.

Chapter 12

“7J?”

“Yes?”

“Will you remember me? After I’m not here anymore?”

—3K to 7J (August 2053)

PAYAL KEPT HER face expressionless as she stood in what was her father’s version of an office. Pranath Rao had lost all feeling below the waist after a riding accident. Horses were one of the few recreational animals that had survived Silence when it came to the Psy. It was considered good exercise to ride.

Pranath had also suffered other injuries, because he’d fallen onto rocks. His facial scarring was significant enough that multiple cosmetic surgeries hadn’t been able to soften the pink and patchy places or erase the thick ridges. It turned out his body didn’t like healing from surgery and tended to form keloid scars that resisted treatment.

Payal was certain it was the facial scarring rather than the paralysis that had led to his retreat from public life. He hadn’t retreated from anything else. She’d had to fight over every major move she wanted to make when she first took on the role of CEO. He’d only begun to release the business leash when it became obvious that she thought five steps ahead and could make them more powerful as a family group.

Despite his partial capitulation, she never forgot that the majority of the people around her belonged to Pranath Rao. Some because that was part of their identity, others out of fear. Payal had turned a number of the latter, but she knew she couldn’t fully trust them as long as he lived—fear was a hard taskmaster.

Payal had been afraid once, as a child at the mercy of a monstrous sibling.

“Father.” After closing the door behind herself, she locked it.

“Excellent work on the Tiang-Jiao negotiation,” he said, his eyes on his organizer. “I had my doubts you’d pull it off with how stubborn they were being, but I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

Payal said nothing in response, because no response was required. She was always careful to follow the accepted format for Psy interactions when it came to her father. He might consider her more stable than Lalit, but he also never lost sight of the fact that she was an anchor and thus inherently unhinged in a different way.

He made her wait two more minutes before looking up. She knew it for a power play, but such things had no impact on her. She saw them as petty wastes of time. Even more so now because if Canto was right, none of these games would have any relevance soon unless they found a way to fix the dearth of anchors in the Net.