The man was dying.

“Will you permit a telepath to scan your minds so a telekinetic can get you out?” he called down, aware even Krychek needed a face to lock on to.

The response came not in the original male voice, but in a shaky female one. “No. Never.”

Some things, Valentin thought, were worse than death. “This is Alpha Nikolaev—you have my word that your minds will not be touched,” he said, so they wouldn’t fear a psychic invasion.

His bears might cause trouble in Moscow, but they were also well-liked because they always stepped in to help if someone was in trouble. Two weeks earlier, Pasha had stopped traffic so an elderly lady could cross the street. The lunatic Moscow drivers had called out a slew of insults as they hooted impatiently, but the lady had kissed Pasha on both cheeks, then taken him home to feed him lunch.

“Spasibo, Alpha Nikolaev,” the survivor whispered. “. . . trust you.”

Shifting his attention to the rescuers waiting below, he said, “Here!” and pointed at the exact spot. “Two alive!”

“Silver’s located a couple more structural engineers!” It was the same woman who’d spoken to him when he first arrived. “One will be here in a minute!”

A minute’s wait might well prove fatal, but if Valentin began to throw around the wreckage in an effort to clear it off them, he could crush the very people he was attempting to save. “Hold on,” he ordered the survivors in his most alpha tone. “We’re coming to get you out.”

He spent the time till the engineer’s arrival searching for more survivors.

The acrid smoke of burned flesh, the metallic sting of blood mingled with alcohol fumes, the warm tones of seared wood, he scented that and more, but no other voices called out to him . . . and he smelled no more living breaths. By the time he climbed back down with careful hands and a heart on which sat a huge metal anvil, the engineer had come up with a plan to get to the trapped survivors.

Valentin listened, began to lift. His muscles burned, but he had no intention of stopping until they’d saved two people trapped in hell.

The Human Patriot

HE WATCHED THE footage streaming in from Moscow with interest. It didn’t take him long to spot Silver Mercant. It’d be so convenient to take her out now, but unfortunately, that didn’t suit his plans. Nor did it suit the plans of the fools who were helping him achieve his aims while believing him a power-hungry sociopath like them.

Silver had to be removed quietly from the equation. He didn’t want the world uniting behind her assassination, trying to be better than violence. It was pure luck that his “associates” had the same goal. No one had argued with his idea of a domestic poisoning—the Mercants, after all, would never air their dirty laundry.

Human he might proudly be, but money talked even to Psy, and he had his informants. He knew all about the Mercants and the opaque shield they kept between themselves and the rest of the world. Their cold arrogance could be utilized as effectively against them.

All this, the bombing in Moscow, it was a good distraction from his far more intelligent strategies. Sad that good humans had to die, but that was the way of war. People had to understand what was at stake, the ruin to come if those pushing Trinity were permitted to have their way. He’d kill every human on the planet before he allowed them to be turned into slaves.

Chapter 17

We are, all of us, better than we believe ourselves to be.

—Adrian Kenner: peace negotiator, Territorial Wars (eighteenth century)

SILVER DRANK HALF a bottle of water into which she’d poured a nutrient sachet provided by a member of the emergency medical team. She’d also had Devi run similarly doctored bottles to the rescuers. The girl was thin, but she was bear-tough, and Silver was using her to the edge of her endurance.

Devi didn’t complain; she thrived.

Silver, meanwhile, was coordinating every facet of the rescue and security operation—because if this hadn’t been a lone radical or unhinged individual, and those behind them wanted to cause secondary casualties, now would be the time to strike. That in mind, she made a call. “This is Silver Mercant,” she said into the dot of the microphone mounted on her collar.

“What do you need?” an ice-cold voice responded.

“A security cordon at the site of the Moscow bombing.” The locals she’d put on the cordon were doing their best, but there weren’t enough of them, and she couldn’t request more officers without leaving other parts of the city vulnerable. “Possibility of a secondary strike.”

“Understood.”

Silver hung up, confident the deadly men and women of the Arrow Squad would respond to her request. Aden Kai, their leader, had made it known to Silver that EmNet could count on Arrow assistance. The only reason they hadn’t already appeared was because of the executive memo she’d sent out a month earlier, requesting that signatories to the Trinity Accord not independently respond to an emergency situation that wasn’t in their local area and where EmNet had a presence.

All our resources cannot be pooled in one place at one time, she’d written. Such a concentration makes it very difficult for EmNet to mobilize rescuers to emergencies in other areas. Give us time to assess the situation and send out a call for the help required.

Now that she’d sent out that call, however, the Arrows appeared in a matter of seconds. Vasic Zen. The only known Tk-V in the world, a man who wasn’t a teleport-capable telekinetic but a born teleporter, he wasn’t worn out by teleporting. For him, it was akin to breathing.

The black-clad men and women he’d brought in spread out on the perimeter, a small but highly effective unit. One Arrow, it was said, was worth twenty trained and experienced soldiers.

Ms. Mercant. A polite telepathic contact, Vasic Zen’s mental voice as clear as arctic ice.

She saw him in the distance, a tall form made distinctive in silhouette by his loss of an arm. It had been amputated after a failed biofusion experiment, the details of which were so classified that even Mercants hadn’t been able to find out much more. None of that concerned Silver right now. What mattered was that Vasic Zen was the Arrows’ second-in-command, with the attendant skills.

Do you have specific instructions for my team?

Do what’s necessary, she replied. You’re the security experts. That the Arrows had broken free of those who’d used them as a death squad didn’t change their lethal gifts and skills.

Three minutes later, she received an update. The cordon is now airtight, Vasic said. However, there may be devices planted inside that cordon.

Silver took in his deadly summation, while on the vocal level, she issued instructions to the traffic controllers to continue to block a particular roadway to general traffic: she needed that roadway for the emergency vehicles moving in and out of the site.

My changeling friends tell me there’s a specific scent to the most commonly used family of explosives even before they are detonated, Vasic continued. Something from that family appears to have been used in the initial attack. You should warn all changelings in the area to be on alert for that scent—if any of them need an exemplar, I’ve teleported in a sample and am now giving it to your runner.

Devi returned less than a minute later with a sealed container in the palm of her hand. Silver opened it to see a minute amount of an inert gray-white substance that, to her, had no scent. “Smell this,” she said to the girl.