Children. Joy seared him. Baby anchors. We can pinpoint them, protect them.

Is this the answer? Can we save the Net this way?

No. It was a terrible thing to say but it was the truth. The Substrate is only one part of the Net. And the rot continues above. Anchors continue to die. But this gives us time to find another solution. Not months. I think two or three years.

We should test it. See if it works for all of us.

They asked Suriana and Arran. Suriana took a deep breath and agreed, while Arran was leery but game. Both soon exclaimed at the acute clarity of their minds, the sudden abundance of life in the Substrate, no sluggishness to it.

Bjorn went next … and he cried. They heard the tears in his voice. “The wonder … My heart aches for the NetMind, this child we broke too young. And still, it watches over us.”

Canto’s own anguish was intermingled with a brittle anger—and sharp shards of hope. He needed to talk to Sophia, see if she was okay with sharing her knowledge of the NetMind’s survival with the rest of Designation A.

Ager they’d left for last, as they were the oldest and most apt to suffer from shock if it went wrong—but they would not be deterred. And the effect on them was the most astonishing of all. “I can breathe,” they said on the comm the day after the experiment, their face fuller and less lined, their eyes bright sparks. “I feel twenty years younger!”

They began the next level of experiments the following day.

Each of the merged As brought in a neighboring A and had them merge, too. All succeeded.

But the real surprise came when Canto said, “Let’s see if we can attach tendrils to each other, so that if one day we do have no choice but to cut the Net into pieces, we can keep the Substrate together so no one anchor starves.”

It turned out Canto couldn’t attach to anyone. But he could be attached to.

“You’re built to be the nucleus of any such strategy,” Payal said. “It makes logical sense. For this to work, we need someone really heavy at the center, to make sure it holds. You don’t move. Everyone else moves around you.”

Canto wasn’t sure he liked being stuck in place—it reminded him too much of his childhood. But then Payal’s telepathic voice entered his mind: You’re the protector. The one who’ll hold us all stable. Without you, we fail. And we fall.

Her words took away his breath.

Payal Rao, I love you.

Heart exploding with a joy so big she couldn’t bear it, she kissed him as they sat once more under the Delhi sky, sunset a dark orange fire around them. When they parted, she touched her fingers to his jaw. “There’s only one of you, Canto. A single superanchor can’t save the entire Net.”

Canto leaned into her touch. “No, if that option ever needs to be used, the rest of the Net will have failed. Millions will be dead.”

“So we have to make sure we never have to use it,” Payal said. “The weeds are our circulatory system. The NetMind has given us a chance.”

“We have to do as it’s asked—we have to become more than isolated stars in the darkness.”

Payal held his gaze. “Single steps out of the void. With each step we take, we bring the NetMind into the light.”

“Single steps,” he agreed. “I’m going to make that my priority, while you deal with the Coalition.”

“Agreed.”

Then Canto wrapped his arms around her as she did him. Holding on against the cells dividing and growing inside her head, killing her with every moment that passed.

Chapter 46

Dear Dima, I’m very happy you like the rocket-powered wheelchair design I sent you. At the moment, I’m in Delhi, but we can discuss it more after I’m back home. Also, I’m trying to think bear thoughts, but I need more time to get it right. Being a bear isn’t as easy as it looks.

—Message from Canto to Dima

KALEB LISTENED AS Payal laid out what the anchors had discovered to the Ruling Coalition.

“This is no magic bullet that will erase our problems,” she said on the comm, “but it will buy us a little more time. If the clock was hovering a few minutes to midnight, it’s now been turned back by fifteen minutes.”

Ivy Jane Zen, her face thinner than it had been only months ago, her exhaustion imprinted on her skin, said, “It’s enough. For all of us to catch a breath.”

Nikita parted her lips as if to argue, then shut them. No one else refuted Payal’s statement, either. Because Ivy Jane was right. Yes, they’d all wanted a solution, but that solution had to hold. Or it would all fall apart again—perhaps at a time when the PsyNet didn’t have so many powerful Psy willing to work together for their survival.

Had this happened in the time of the Council, half the population would already be dead, sacrificed because they weren’t powerful or connected enough.

“In that fifteen minutes, Designation A has a demand.”

Nikita raised an eyebrow at the wording of the statement but, oddly for Nikita, kept her silence once again. Something was going on there. Perhaps Anthony’s influence? No, the head of PsyClan NightStar knew nothing of anchors. Had to be another person closer to Nikita who held sway with her.

Possibly her daughter.

“We can now ID young As before they initialize.” Payal’s words were massive boulders crashing into the earth. “What we want is the Coalition’s backing to formally tag those children as newborn As and maintain a health watch on them as they grow.”

She wasn’t asking their permission, Kaleb thought. The As would do this. They just wanted to know if they’d have the support of the Coalition.

“Accepted,” Aden said, speaking for the first time. “If you need Arrow escorts during the checkups, I’ll make them available.”

“And if you need Es to scope out the emotional situation,” Ivy Jane added, “you can have us on call.”

Arrow-Empath-Anchor.

Looked like a new kind of network was being born right in front of him.

“I see no issue with this,” Nikita said, and Anthony concurred.

“Children should never be hurt or tortured or killed.” Kaleb held Payal’s eyes, knowing her secrets without knowing them. “The simple fact that a child is an A should protect them as a result of A now being a hotly coveted designation.” Payal’s ascension to the Council, her repeated interviews, as well as the interviews given by a number of other As, had helped achieve that outcome.