Visions of Heat

"The Web of Stars." Sascha walked to stand in her mate's embrace, back to his chest. "I've never felt it there."



"I'm saying this wrong." Faith tried to order her thoughts. "It won't come into a different network, perhaps not unless it's invited - I think I did that by thinking of it after I dropped out of the PsyNet - because each network has its own NetMind."



Everyone went completely silent.



"It seems as if each time a network - a web - forms, it sows the seeds for the creation of a new sentience. The NetMind in the Web of Stars is a baby, a mere thought. Do you know of any other webs?"



Lucas narrowed his eyes. "Tell us what you saw first."



Able to read changeling aggression to some extent, she knew it wasn't a display of distrust, but an unwillingness to color her perception. Her Psy mind appreciated that. "I saw several small networks, but it showed me one other in particular made up of five Psy minds. And if our NetMind is a baby, theirs hasn't even been born."



"Christ. It's the Laurens." Lucas's statement shook her -  she hadn't known that Judd was part of a group. A family. And yet he'd chanced helping her. "Does this make us vulnerable to the Psy?"



"No. The NetMind is no longer bound by the Council, though they don't know it."



"What? How?" Sascha tugged her plait from Lucas. He just lifted it back up and dropped a kiss on the curve of her neck.



Faith watched Sascha melt and understood. These predators were impossible to resist when they played nice. "In our terms, it's a teenager now," she answered. "It can think beyond what it's been told, understand the bigger picture." Sadness flowed into her. Vaughn's nuzzled kiss was a welcome burst of sensation, of hope. "It showed me evil in the Net, badness that's infecting everything. If that evil isn't stopped, it'll kill the Net itself."



"A rot." Sascha voice went heavy with sorrow that sank into every person in the room.



The sentinel named Dorian walked over to pull her into his arms. Lucas allowed the embrace though Faith had expected him to react with possessive violence. Another facet of her new family, one that would take time to become accustomed to. Such open affection was disconcerting to a mind fresh out of Silent bondage.



"Anything else?" Clay asked.



She nodded. "I think the killer was possessed." Everyone looked at her in blatant disbelief. "Maybe I should think about it a bit more."



Vaughn kissed her forehead. "Possessed, Red?"



"Do you think the mental degradation's taken root?" It was an attempt to make a joke out of her greatest fear. She might have cut free from the Net, but she was still an F-Psy, her mind more fragile than others.



"I think you're beautiful for a crazy woman." His hungry kiss brought the lightning to life, but when they separated, the others' expressions hadn't changed.



"The NetMind showed me something the first time we spoke." She explained the images. "I think the starry woman represents the good side and the one empty of stars, the bad."



"What about the Web of Stars?" Sascha asked from within Dorian's embrace.



Faith wriggled to a more upright position. "It's a single entity. Same with the LaurenNet."



Vaughn wrapped his arms around her neck and pulled her back against his chest. The wall of fire was a sweet benediction. "So what makes the Psy NetMind different?"



"Emotion." Sascha's eyes had gone pure black.



Lucas reached out to tug at her plait and Dorian released her to her mate. "Talk to me, Sascha darling." He ran his finger down her cheek.



"The Psy have cut off emotion, tried to suppress it into nonexistence. So if the NetMinds are created when a net is created, then the basic material is provided by the net in question."



Faith saw where Sascha was going. "Our Web is fed by everything - love, hate, fear, joy."



"So is the Laurens', probably because of the children." Sascha tangled her fingers with Lucas's. "The PsyNet, however, is fed mostly by emotionless Silence."



"But the NetMind is good. It feels joy." She was convinced of that.



"Yes, but the aim of Silence was to wipe out violence. The core of the conditioning says that any kind of darkness is bad. It must be contained, caged, kept separate from everything else."



"And that's become amplified in the twin NetMinds." Faith suddenly understood what the empath had seen at once. "A DarkMind for everything negative while the NetMind is pure goodness. It's so vulnerable."



"I'm not so sure about that," Sascha said. "If it's aware of the DarkMind, then perhaps it's aware of everything its other half knows. You did say it's fooled the Council."



"Yes." Some of Faith's concern faded. "But even if the twins function as a team, their separation has to have a consequence."



Sascha's eyes met hers and there was such grief in them. "Until the DarkMind and the NetMind are merged again, the Psy will continue to produce the most vicious serial killers on the planet."



"Killers without an ounce of mercy." Faith thought about what she'd seen. "The DarkMind is using them to give itself a voice. Maybe it can't speak like the NetMind can, because it's been Silenced, but it can communicate with its acts of violence."



"A child screaming its existence." Sascha's words gave emotional force to the cold facts.



The image chilled Faith. So much death, so much rage, all because of a child's need for acceptance. "Until Silence ends, the only thing we can do is try to stop the manifestations of darkness."



"Killers." Vaughn's beast prowled in the energy of his skin.



"Yes."



"Why does it speak to you?" Sascha asked, after a small silence.



"Maybe because I speak to it and I'm a Psy who has emotion. I think it needs that contact, needs to know that such Psy are possible."



Sascha's sadness softened into hope. "Can I speak to it, do you think?"



"It adores what you are." Faith felt her own lips tilt upward in the faintest of smiles. "I think I might even be jealous."



"Why?"



"How do you think you escaped detection in the Net as a child, before you were old enough to hide your rainbow mind?"



"The difference didn't appear until I was a teenager."



"No, Sascha. It was always there. Think about it - our basic abilities are something we're born with." Faith shook her head. "It showed me a thousand hidden minds exactly like yours, protected by something other than their own shields."



The look on Sascha's face was priceless. "The NetMind knows about us?"



Us. The E-Psy. The designation Faith had barely begun to understand because they'd been slated for deletion from the Net. But they'd survived. Because, Faith now comprehended, they had to exist. If they didn't, the Psy would cease to be human, cease to be sentient. All sentient races had a conscience. Take that away and what you were left with was something horrifying.



"Yes. It's been protecting you for decades, ever since it started to understand what Silence was doing to you. Maybe that's when it started to think on its own. I don't know. All I know is that we're dealing with a life form that has a heart and that heart is made up of a thousand E-Psy. The NetMind will never be evil so long as those minds exist. In contrast, its twin will be absolute evil."



"Your NetMind might be good, but it's not the only one who knows where you are," Clay reminded them.



The conversation turned once again to the question of how to protect her from the Council. Someone brought up a recording - one that apparently showed the confession of a Psy killer.



Clay shook his head. "We play that card, we have to be prepared for war."



"None of our reasons for not going public with it have changed," Lucas added. "Let's save it for a last-case scenario. Vaughn?"



Vaughn grunted and it was agreement.



"They won't stop hunting her." Dorian spoke for the first time, his voice so coldly angry that she wanted to hide from it. "Murder is what they're good at."



"Anybody dares touch her, I'll eviscerate them." Vaughn's words held the calm confidence of a beast that knew it was the most dangerous of predators.



"Well, there is that," Sascha said. "If she keeps her mind heavily shielded, they'll have to get close to attack her. DarkRiver can take care of them before they reach her."



"How long can I live like that?" Faith shook her head, frustrated that her earlier knowing had faded into mist. "There must be some way to keep them from making an example out of me."



Vaughn's hand was on her nape, a possessive grasp. "They'll never get that close, Red."



She believed him.



"We have a walk-through at the site with Nikita tomorrow," Lucas said into the pensive silence. "Let's see if they're open to a deal - Faith's too valuable for them to do something stupid and risk getting her killed."



The meeting ended soon afterward.



Vaughn had driven to the meeting as far as he was able, then run the rest of the way with Faith riding his back. But as their feet touched the ground after leaving the aerie, she asked to be put down.



"Let's walk awhile." Her eyes were more black than he was used to.



"I'm at your command, Red." Taking her hand, he led her through the trees until they hit a pathway almost completely hidden from sight.



"What do you see?" she asked him. "I could have never located this path."



So he showed her the marks, the clawed parts of certain trees, the subtle positioning of rocks that appeared randomly strewn. "It's a code, a way of speaking to each other that doesn't rely on words or on telepathy. We can read these signs in either human or cat form."



She traced a pair of claw lines with utter gentleness. "A language the Psy don't even know exists."