She couldn’t go and just leave him here. They’d hurt him again.

Running to the door, she began to shove a desk against it. It was heavy. But she got it done. The teacher had stopped making noises by the time she got the door blocked. Coming back to the boy, she sat down next to him and took his hand again, held on tight.

“No,” she said when he told her to run again. “I’m no one. I don’t have anywhere to go.”

Chapter 3

Please advise status of Canto Fernandez, minor, age 8, with a genetic link to my family group. It has been brought to my attention that he is no longer an active member of your family unit.

—Ena Mercant (CEO, Mercant Corp.) to Danilo Fernandez (CEO, Fernandez Inc.) (29 July 2053)

AFTER ABSORBING ALL the data her family had on the Mercants, Payal had gone hunting on her own. She was highly skilled at unearthing information. But locating anything on Canto Mercant after he hit eight years of age had proved impossible.

Even before that, she’d almost not found him. It had been a small notice in the PsyNet Beacon’s Births and Deaths column that had alerted her to the fact he’d begun life with a different name.

Binh Fernandez is pleased to announce the result of his F&C Agreement with Magdalene Mercant. The resulting male child is to be named Canto Fernandez.

That had to be him. The first name was unusual and there was the Mercant connection.

The now-deceased Binh Fernandez had been the eldest son of the Fernandez Family Group out of Manila, and Canto had been listed as his first child on a family tree she was able to dig up. Mercants, Payal had discovered during her research, didn’t enter into many conception or fertilization contracts, preferring to keep their family unit relatively compact.

Most of them had muted public profiles at best. Canto’s might as well not exist.

Even before the transfer of guardianship from Fernandez to Mercant, information on him was sketchy at best. As indicated by the birth notice, the Fernandez family had been eager to announce their link with the Mercants. Two months later, Binh Fernandez had repeatedly mentioned his “son and heir” in an interview.

Then dead silence.

No images of the child Canto anywhere.

No school records.

No mentions by Binh in future interviews.

Which told Payal that Canto Mercant had a flaw that had become apparent in the months after his birth. Given what she’d seen in her own family, she was skeptical of any such judgment. Her psychopathic brother had long been considered perfect, while she’d fallen into the “problem” category, and fourteen-year-old Karishma would be termed a liability should the information about her rare genetic disorder make its way to their father.

The only reason Payal’s younger sister was even alive was because testing for that disorder wasn’t part of the standard battery run on all newborns. Yet “flawed” Kari was in every way more of an asset than outwardly perfect Lalit.

You simply had to have a brain that could see beyond the most obvious gains.

Which the Mercants had if they’d ended up with a hub-anchor in their midst without any apparent protest from the Fernandez family. Binh had died at the same time Canto disappeared off the Fernandez family tree, so the transfer could’ve been related to that, but Payal didn’t think so.

Psy didn’t let go of genetic capital.

That was the sum total of all she knew about Canto Mercant. She hadn’t been able to locate a single image of him. That spoke less to a low profile and more to a conscious effort to remain unseen.

Even Ena Mercant, head of the Mercant family, wasn’t that difficult to pinpoint.

Was it possible the Mercants hadn’t truly accepted Canto, that they forced him to stay out of sight? No. The Mercants were known to prize family loyalty; they would not have rejected a child they’d claimed. Which left one other possibility—that Canto Mercant was so invisible because he ran the Mercant information network.

That was how he’d found her.

Still thinking, she walked out onto her balcony. The air was hot but clean thanks to a smog-dissolution device invented by the local tiger pack. Payal had recently negotiated a deal to license a related device designed to eliminate the limited pollution currently created by certain Rao industrial interests.

Despite the clear financial returns forecast as a result, her father had stated she was an idiot for “dealing with the animals,” but her father was no longer CEO. Pranath Rao might have an ace in the hole that meant he could pull her strings, control her on a personal level, but he knew she’d choose the nuclear option if he tried to hobble her business decisions.

This was a new world, and Payal intended to take the Rao empire into it, not be left behind. Which was why she lifted her phone with its encrypted line to her ear after inputting the call code Canto Mercant had included with his letter. She had no idea of his physical location, so she didn’t know if it was night or day there, but when he answered after four rings, his tone, though gravelly and deep, was alert.

“Canto.” A single hard word.

“You sent me a letter,” she said without identifying herself, even though he had to have sent letters to more than one A.

“Payal Rao.” No hesitation. “You sound exactly as you do in the interviews I’ve watched.”

She wondered if he was referring to the “robot” description that had stuck to her like glue. True enough if he was; she took care to never allow her shields to drop, never allow the world to see through to the screams hidden in the deepest corner of her psyche. To do that would be to sentence herself to death.

The Rao family had made an art form of the term “survival of the fittest.”

“You’re attempting to set up an anchor union,” she said, wanting him to lay out his cards, this invisible man who knew too much. “To what purpose?”

“The Ruling Coalition has—from all evidence so far—good intentions, but they’re making decisions without knowledge of a critical factor. You’re a hub. You know full well what I’m talking about.”

Payal’s hand tightened on the phone at the brusque challenge in his tone. “We need to talk face-to-face.” Negotiating with a faceless voice was not how she did business; she liked to see her allies—and her enemies. “For all I know, you’re a clever twelve-year-old hacker from Bangalore.”