Take as much as you want. His hand wrapping itself in her ponytail, the taste of him turning her hunger into an addiction. I’ll always have more for you.

Madness sparking like electricity in her veins, she broke the contact as fast as she’d made it. “Please don’t forget me, Canto.” Words torn out of her. To ask someone to care for her enough to remember her, it was the hardest thing she’d ever asked of anyone. If Canto forgot her … she’d break.

She teleported out before he could answer.

The Architect

I am God. Death is meaningless.

—Suicide note left by participant in Operation Scarab (circa 2003)

THE ARCHITECT STARED at the back of her hand, at the fine blue veins that made her heart pump, her brain work. How was it possible that someone like her, someone of the ascendent race, was still bound by flesh?

Picking up a letter opener with a razor-sharp edge, she cut a line on her skin. Blood blossomed wet and a bright, bright red. She tilted her head, watched the line of it form, bubble, then slowly drip down the side of her hand when she angled that mortal thing of bone and skin and distasteful organics.

She was beyond this, her body nothing but a weight holding her down.

There had to be a better way to exist, to grow, to become all that she was meant to be.

Chapter 29

To the end.

—Motto of the Anchor Society (1701)

IT TOOK A full hour for Payal to rebuild her carapace enough to face the world without feeling like a turtle without its shell. Armored in a fitted gray dress and heels of dark scarlet that matched her lipstick, she teleported straight from her bedroom to her office just before nine thirty.

Her brother was seated in her visitor chair, his legs stretched out in front of him and his hands clasped over the white shirt he’d paired with a navy suit. She felt no surprise; Ruhi had messaged her a half hour prior, when Lalit first turned up.

He’d once sat in her chair. She’d teleported him to the visitor one.

He’d never forgiven her for the “humiliation”—but that was par for the course with Lalit. “How can I help you?” she asked after taking her seat.

“Wanted to see how you were doing with my own eyes,” he said with that chilling smile. “You know Father is worried, don’t you? When you took on this position, we all assumed you could keep the anchor business from interfering.”

He’d always been better at words than her, better at doing verbal damage. But this time around, his words were so foolish that she reconsidered his intelligence. “I’ll be sure to allow the PsyNet to collapse next time.”

His smile didn’t fade. “All at once you’re so important that the PsyNet will collapse without you.” Rising to his feet, he buttoned his jacket. “I think you need another psych consult, little sister. Looks like your delusions are taking over.” Then he reached out and, holding eye contact, deliberately nudged her pens out of alignment. “Oops.”

Payal didn’t fix the small incursion of chaos. Her need for balance wasn’t a compulsion. It could’ve been, but that would’ve given Lalit a weakness to exploit—and that was the one thing Payal would not do. “Did you finish the financial report?” She picked up an organizer. “Father wants it on his desk today.”

“Of course. I know how to do my job.” He teleported out instead of using the door.

Picking up one of the pens he’d misaligned, she looked at it, then put it back without fixing the error. A test to make sure she wasn’t becoming tied to compulsion.

Rising, she walked to stand by the glass doors that looked out over Delhi. The city was wide awake, the markets in the distance going full bore, and the chai-wallah at the far corner already pouring steaming hot cups of tea for commuters.

Once centered by the beat of her city, she returned to her desk and asked Ruhi to contact Kaleb Krychek’s office to set up a meeting.

Her intercom buzzed a bare minute later. “Ms. Rao.” Ruhi’s voice was pitched high. “Mr. Krychek is in the outer office.”

Payal had heard that the cardinal could lock onto faces as well as places. Polite of him to lock onto Ruhi’s face rather than Payal’s; interesting, however, that he’d had Ruhi’s on file. “Send him in.” To rise or to sit, it was normally a calculated choice, but since he’d been polite, she did the same and met him halfway across her office. “Thank you for the quick response.”

He was a handsome man. In a league far beyond Lalit’s surface flash. Black hair, cardinal eyes—and a sense of confidence so deep that he had no need to posture and play games. Power pulsed off him.

Payal felt neither attraction nor fear. No, what she felt was a cautious sense of hope that he’d be sensible, listen to what she had to say.

Leading him to the small meeting table to one side of her office, she took one seat while waving him into the opposing one. Cardinal eyes met her own, impenetrable and unreadable. Kaleb Krychek had that down to an art. He was also unquestionably one of the most powerful people in the PsyNet. Yet he had a bond with another Psy: Sahara Kyriakus. That meant he had an emotional link. A weakness.

But no one would dare call Kaleb Krychek weak. Even outwardly relaxed, the force of his psychic strength was a weight in the air; Payal had no illusions about who would win a battle between the two of them. She was a cardinal. He was obsidian death. But that wouldn’t stop her from going toe-to-toe with him when it came to Designation A.

Kaleb was dangerous but he was no psychopath.

“This is important,” he said, and raised an eyebrow. “We’re not used to anchors speaking up.”

“A choice made in the past that is no longer relevant.” She threw her telepathic voice toward Canto, her need for him a raw bruise.

It was as if he’d been listening for her all this time, because he responded at once: Payal.

I’m with Krychek. Stand by for questions. It was hard, so hard to find a way to tell him what he was to her, but she could do this, could be practical and logical and hold on to him using their shared need to protect the Net.

“True,” Krychek said. “Tell me about the Substrate you mentioned to Aden.”

“The Substrate is where anchors exist. In simple terms, it’s the foundation of the PsyNet.”