Payal hadn’t meant it as a joke. She didn’t do jokes. But she had enough life experience to know that a human or changeling would’ve laughed at the comment. Perhaps an empath, too. The rest of her race was yet coming to terms with being permitted to feel emotion.

She hadn’t worked out where Canto Mercant fell on that spectrum, and his response to her comment didn’t offer any additional insight. “I’ll message you an image for a teleport lock. Can you meet in fifteen minutes?”

“Agreed.”

Hanging up, she stared at her vibrant city. The slow feline stride of a woman below caught her eye, and she knew even from a distance that one of the GoldenNight tigers had ventured into the city streets.

Unlike many feline changeling groups, the tigers and leopards of India didn’t mind interacting with city populations, but they didn’t live in the urban centers. The spaces were too constrained, the pathways too cramped.

As the changeling prowled out of sight, a scooter swerved around a town car, while three pedestrians with shopping bags decided to stop traffic by simply stepping out onto the road to cross.

She’d once hosted a meeting with a Psy business associate normally based out of Geneva. The man had recoiled at the energetic beat of her city. “How can you live here?” he’d asked. “So many people, so much noise, everything … unorganized.”

He was wrong.

Delhi was highly organized. You just had to be a local to see it. But before being a denizen of this old city, before being the Rao CEO, Payal was an anchor.

That thought in mind, she picked up her encrypted organizer once more. Canto Mercant had sent the image as promised: of an oasis in a desert, one made unique not only by the placement of certain palms, but by the etchings on the flat gray stones that had been placed on the sand in a wide pathway that led gently down to cerulean blue water.

The sands were a fine gold that made her wonder if she was teleporting to the Gobi desert, that place where the dunes sang and sunset turned cliffs to fire.

Focusing on the image, she felt her mind begin a trace and lock. One second. Two. She had it, the knowledge a hum in her blood. Had the image been imprecise or generic, she’d have gotten a feeling of sliding or bouncing off things, her brain unable to settle.

She’d always wondered if other teleport-capable Tks felt the same sensations but had never trusted one well enough to ask. Even the most minor mental deviations could be cause for concern when it came to one of Designation A. Because anchors as a whole weren’t stable.

Councilor Santano Enrique’s psychopathic murder spree had just cemented that belief in the minds of those who knew what he’d done. The vast majority of the population didn’t know, but Payal wasn’t the vast majority of the population.

She was a cardinal telekinetic.

She was an anchor.

She was exactly like Santano Enrique.

Before

Find Magdalene’s son. Find Canto Fernandez.

—Priority 1 mission alert from Ena Mercant to entire Mercant network (1 August 2053)

THE BOY KNEW his small rescuer’s makeshift barrier would fall at the first strong push, but he didn’t say anything. The truth was, even if she ran, there was nowhere for her to go. This re-education facility was in the middle of snowy wilderness—and they both had cages around their minds, imprisoning their psychic abilities.

“I’m sorry,” he said to her, as molten arcs of pain shot up his spine in painful contrast to the lack of sensation in his legs. “That you had to do that.”

She used her free hand to pat the hand she held. “You didn’t make me.” It was a firm statement. “He hurt me, too.”

But he knew she’d killed in that moment because of him, because of the threat to his life. The teacher wouldn’t have stopped, not today. The adult male had known that no one would care if Canto died. The children in this school were all flawed, all unwanted. He and the girl were the only cardinals, but even their great psychic abilities hadn’t been enough to make up for their imperfections.

If he hadn’t been a cardinal, he’d have wondered why his father hadn’t simply strangled him when it became obvious he wasn’t a “normal” baby. Even at just over eight years of age, he knew his father’s family wielded a lot of power. Enforcement wouldn’t have looked too deeply into the “accidental” death of a baby.

But a cardinal, even a broken one, could be useful. So he’d been allowed to live. Until his brain began to act too strangely to accept. His father had told him that this school was his “last chance to step up and be a Fernandez.” As if Canto could just fix the misfires in his brain that meant he heard voices—as if he could will his body to work as it should.

Looking up into his small friend’s cardinal eyes, he wondered at her power, but didn’t ask. As his power meant nothing here, so did hers. Not with their minds trapped in psychic barbed wire. So he said, “What will you do when you get out, are free?” He wanted freedom for her more than he did for himself—she’d been here longer, suffered longer.

She was younger, her starlit eyes stark with reality, but she got all bright and happy at his question. “I watched a recording of pink blossom trees once, all in a row. The blossoms were falling and I wanted to walk under them. I’ll do that.” She squeezed his hand. “What about you?”

He told her, asked her more questions. She was so smart, so vivid. He liked being around her, liked listening to her dreams. She was telling him about her favorite animal when the door smashed open. Then the girl who’d saved him was being wrenched away from him, and he realized he’d never asked her name. No one used their names in this place. They were just numbers and letters.

Neither one of them screamed.

They knew these people had no mercy.

Rather, they stared at one another in a silent rebellion that only ended when she was literally carried out of the room. One of the teachers kicked him in the gut. When he choked out a cough but didn’t move, the numbness now halfway up his chest and his breathing a stuttering beat, the man looked at the woman who was checking on the dead teacher.

“Looks like a real medical issue. We’d better get instructions from the family.”

“Sure. It’s part of the protocol. But you know what they’ll say—he’s here because he’s problematic. No one will authorize lifesaving measures.” Cold green eyes on his face. “Guardians will tell us to dump him on his bed and let him die a ‘natural’ death. He’d be better off if I slit his throat.”