Just another reason Sophia would love Max to the end of time.

“Thank you for meeting with us.” Payal took a seat at the edge of the seating area, so Canto could park his chair next to her.

Sophia chose a seat opposite the other woman, putting the three of them in a rough semicircle. “Of course.” Sophia rubbed her forehead, the dull pain behind her eyelids a constant. “The NetMind is so scared and lost and I can’t help it. I need—” She looked up and halted. The two As were staring at her. “What?”

“The NetMind is alive?” Canto Mercant’s voice was harsh—with a piercing note of hope. “All we sense in the Net are fragments.”

“It exists,” Sophia confirmed. “Not as the huge presence it once was, but the core remains. My anchor point—I’m sorry, that’s what I’ve always called it, though I know it’s not correct.”

“It is an anchor point.” Payal Rao’s tone brooked no argument. “We can see you in the Substrate. While you can’t communicate in that sphere with the rest of us, your anchor lines are rooted deep.”

Sophia didn’t understand all of what Payal had just said, but she didn’t need to, not for this. “The NetMind seems to have hidden a piece of itself in my anchor point—in me.” In the very pathways of her brain.

Canto frowned. “May we see?”

When she inclined her head, they joined her on the PsyNet. At one point, they both disappeared after telling her they were examining her anchor point in the Substrate.

Later, when all three of them opened their eyes in the garden again, she saw Canto glance at Payal. Payal, in turn, looked first to Canto. Unspoken things passed between them.

“Is the DarkMind there, too?” Payal asked afterward.

“Yes. They’re not two separate presences anymore but one complete one.” A single point of hope that made her want to believe they could stop the spiral of loss. “When I say NetMind, I mean both.”

Canto said something to Payal about the “weeds” in the Substrate; Payal responded with technical jargon. Allowing their discussion to flow past her, she considered the two of them, and who they were together.

Inside her mind, the NetMind threw a bouquet of flowers into the air.

Sophia sucked in a silent breath. Is this what you need? Anchors who’ve begun to bloom into their full selves?

A sense of terrible sadness, then the image of wilting flowers. No, not wilting. Flowers that had begun to curl up and die because of a lack of sunlight, a lack of care.

As it fragmented in the rest of the PsyNet, the NetMind had grown stronger in her mind. It also brought with it images and thoughts and hopes. Today, it showed her sunlight on the drooping blooms.

Those blooms opened again.

I understand. She tried to encompass the neosentience in love, as protective toward it as she was toward the nascent life cradled in her womb. It was the tiniest collection of cells at this moment in time, so very small that no one outside could sense it. Only she and Max knew. They’d tell River after the first-trimester mark; Max’s brother would be an astonishing uncle, devoted and gentle.

The neosentience of the Net “leaned” into her. It was difficult to describe the sensation fully, but it was as if it was asking for comfort. She embraced it with her mind, held it close. I’ll tell them, she promised, and it calmed.

“I have to pass on a message,” she said, interrupting Canto and Payal’s technical discussion.

They turned as one to her, both so startlingly beautiful that it was a shock each time she looked at them. She had the idea that neither one of them was aware of their physical beauty. Payal struck Sophia as atypical in her thinking and reactions. Not flawed. Never would Sophia call anyone flawed. It was simply a difference.

The same way Sophia’s touch sensitivity was a difference.

As for Canto, given the lack of information on him on the PsyNet, he probably kept a low profile. Those within his trusted circle would be used to his looks. Canto Mercant also struck her as a man who didn’t much care for the opinions of many; the reactions of others would only matter to him in how they affected his goals.

Sophia liked them both.

“The NetMind,” she said, “wants the anchors to emerge into the light, to live full lives. I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg—it wants all Psy to live full lives, but anchors are the foundation.” She often understood such subtleties instinctively, as if the NetMind was so deep a part of her mind that it didn’t need to speak to her to communicate. “If you fade away into the darkness, so does it.”

Canto frowned, but it was Payal—her expression modulated to give nothing away—who spoke. “Does it know if anchors have always been this way? Withdrawn from the world? Or was there a trigger that set this chain of events in motion?”

An excellent question. “I’ll ask, but—for me at least—speaking to the NetMind isn’t like a conversation between me and you. It thinks and responds in a unique way.” She did her best to put Payal’s question to the NetMind.

Its response was slow in coming, and it was a grouping of images.

Blooms, wild and colorful in a field.

A black cloud.

The blooms curling inward until they were shriveled and small.

Sophia blew out a breath. “There was an inciting incident. Time is a fluid concept to the NetMind—I can’t tell you when the incident took place. But it had a catastrophic effect and led to the seclusion of Designation A.”

“The volcanic eruption?” Payal mused. “But that was so long ago—it doesn’t explain the psychic fires and flash floods that Ager mentioned.”

“So many secrets,” Canto bit out. “Our ancestors kicked us all in the guts by hiding anything deemed dark or bad.”

As a J who’d walked in the minds of serial killers the Council refused to acknowledge, Sophia well knew his anger. “I can help you with the research on the inciting incident—but we have to accept that it might’ve been too long ago for there to be any records.”

“You’re one of us, Sophia.” Canto leaned forward, forearms on his thighs. “Unless you don’t want to be?”

“I’m not a normal A. I can’t see your Substrate.”

“You do as much as a minor hub in holding this area stable. You’re an A.”