Terminal Point (24 page)

Ciari tapped at the controls on her desk, turning off the vidscreen. “At some point, even we won't be enough. I'm sorry, Gideon. I can't accept your bargain. I don't have who you want.”

Gideon looked her in the eye, searching for something he couldn't find, because all he saw was a faint glint of silver in brown depths. “Does Erik know you're awake?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know you're going insane?”

The question hit home hard, none of the officers standing around Ciari's desk able to hide their surprise quick enough at his assessment of the situation. Ciari, on the other hand, couldn't care that he knew what was wrong with her.

“Is that a threat?” Ciari asked.

“Can you even tell?”

“Damn you,” Jael said, slamming her hand down near the corner of Ciari's desk. “We can't give you what you want, Gideon.”

“Prove it,” Gideon said, still refusing to look away from Ciari. “Let Warrick here link me to you, Ciari. You can't lie mind to mind, not in the state you're in.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I wasn't talking to you, Jael.”

Ciari slowly tilted her head to the side, studying Gideon. “You remind me so much of Nathan right now. He should have chosen you sooner.”

Gideon had to fight back the scowl. “You don't know what you're talking about.”

“And you don't know what you're asking for.” Ciari flicked her fingers at him. “Do it.”

She was still the OIC, even in the wrecked state she was in. Her officers couldn't counter her order, even though they wanted to. Warrick, telepathically merged with Mercedes and James, pulled Gideon into a psi link and reached for Ciari's damaged mind.

 

TWENTY-EIGHT

SEPTEMBER 2379
TORONTO, CANADA

Gideon was on his feet when the crack of displaced air exploded in the room. Bodies dropped out of a teleport, but he was already stumbling away from Ciari's desk, information cutting through his mind from what Warrick and the other two were able to discover for him. The echoes of Lucas's thoughts in Ciari's mind were like a telepathic punch he had no defenses against.

“You have a
daughter
?” Gideon exclaimed.

You never could learn to leave things well enough alone,
Lucas said into his mind.

Then suddenly he was there, in a way Nathan had never been, cutting so deep through Gideon's thoughts that the younger man didn't have a chance at surviving. Not on his own. Gideon had an image of a room burned into his mind, of an escape all Warhound telekinetics never forgot, except he couldn't reach it. His telekinesis couldn't make that final jump into a teleport, and the panic at that realization nearly drowned out the agony from Lucas's attack. Gideon fell to his knees while around him chaos erupted.

The three Warhounds who'd come with Gideon were doing their level best to block some of Lucas's attack against Gideon, but they weren't strong enough to win against a Class I, even in merge. Faced with the daunting odds in Ciari's office, they fought to save their own skins for as long as they could. Their efforts were joined by the Stryker officers, who didn't take kindly to being ambushed.

Kristen was slammed against the far wall by Keiko's initial telekinetic punch. The Japanese woman knew how devastating Kristen's mind could be and needed to preemptively take her out. Kristen would have been severely injured if Jason didn't cushion her landing, ripping Keiko's power off the teenager. Keiko retaliated against Jason even as she shielded Ciari and her fellow officers.

“Shit—we didn't come here to fight this time!” Jason yelled at her.

The three Warhounds were bearing down on Lucas's mind with telepathic strikes, and Jael added her own attack to the mix. She found it deflected not by Lucas, but by Kerr. Her mind, still bruised from the last blow he'd leveled through her thoughts, flinched against the pressure of his touch.

Jael, we mean it,
Kerr said.
Don't fight us.

But both sides knew that they couldn't give any ground, not with everything that was happening in the world. Jael's duty right now was to protect Ciari's mind. She might only be a Class III telepath, but she'd spent her entire life putting minds back together. She knew how to take them apart. Kerr may finally have gained solid shielding, but Jael knew where weakness once resided in his mind, and she attacked those areas with her telepathy. Jael managed to stop Kerr's next strike before it even touched her mind by aiming hard and fast for the bottom of his shields.

A psion mind never forgot, and Kerr instinctively flinched against her attack. His shields held, but Jael managed to bruise his mind. Training demanded retaliation, but Kerr came up short. Jael was the Strykers Syndicate's CMO and they weren't here to murder their former officers.

Fire erupted in Ciari's office, controlled by Quinton as he targeted the Warhounds. Skin burned just as easily as anything else, and the horrific screams of the two men being engulfed in flames rang in everyone's ears. The stench of burning bodies filled the air, making everyone gag. Jason wrapped the Warhounds in a telekinetic shield, limiting the damage Quinton's fire could do to the floor and ceiling. The woman the other Warhounds had come with managed a mercy killing for the two before Samantha broke her mind so thoroughly that she was dead before she hit the floor.

Then it was just Strykers and Sercas, the lines of loyalty blurred beyond all belief. With a sinking sense of anguish, Samantha focused all of her power on her brothers—and stopped Lucas from killing her twin. The mental grid reverberated with her attack, the backlash slamming against everyone else's shields. Lucas doubled over from the white-hot pain in his mind, swearing loudly, unprepared for her sudden betrayal.

Gideon knelt on the floor, hands clawing at his head. His mouth was open in a soundless scream, agony written in every line of his rigid body, and all Samantha could see was her other half.

I'm sorry,
she whispered into the fractured remains of Gideon's mind. Lucas had torn apart every memory that held the information about his daughter and damaged even more than that. Samantha could see what Lucas had done, could see the insidious corruption that was already snaking through Gideon's mind like acid, eating away at everything that made him who he was. The torturous mindwipe could only result in death.

But Gideon still had his power. And, for just right now, he had her.

Go,
Samantha said into her twin's mind, pieces of who she was imprinting onto him. She gave him enough balance and clarity to finish the teleport he still struggled to form, a last attempt at an apology he would never accept.

Gideon disappeared.

When Lucas slammed his mind into hers, Samantha wished she could as well.

Why?
Lucas demanded.

He's my brother,
Samantha said, struggling to hold up her shields.
Same as you.

Except Gideon was her twin and she owed him more than Lucas. That debt was paid now. Lucas peeled her shields apart and Samantha let him, knowing she couldn't stop him if he wanted to kill her.

“Stop.”

Ciari's voice cut through the melee like nothing else could. Everyone obeyed, ingrained training impossible to ignore when the OIC spoke, no matter how long some of them had been gone from the fold. With one final, vicious wrench of his telepathy, Lucas let his sister go and didn't bother catching her when she fell to her knees, forehead pressed to the floor. Samantha laced her hands over the back of her head, as if she were trying to keep her skull from breaking into pieces.

Around them, the mental grid was layered with the minds of those Strykers still within the confines of the city tower, Lucas and Kerr merged and working to hold off their attacks.

Ciari was on her feet, hands flat on her desk. “This gets us nowhere.”

Lucas met her gaze evenly. “Is your security loop still running?”

“Since Gideon walked through the door. We have ten more minutes on the clock.” She pointed at the three dead Warhounds. “Get rid of those.”

Jason teleported the bodies away, dumping them from a distance into Lake Ontario. Quinton doused what was left of his fire, but the smell of smoke and burned human flesh still filled everyone's lungs when Jason collapsed his telekinetic shields. Too many minds in close proximity on the mental grid had Ciari pressing the palm of one hand to her forehead.

“Jael, tell everyone to stand down,” she said.

Jael hesitated, but she didn't argue, which was probably why Ciari asked her and not Aidan.
Stand down.

The Strykers were reluctant, but they listened. With the pressure gone, Ciari straightened up, staring at Lucas. “It's been a while.”

Lucas stared at her, dark blue eyes unblinking as he assessed her mental state. “I can't fix what's wrong with you.”

“I don't recall asking. Pick your sister off the floor.”

Lucas didn't move. Samantha got to her feet with Kristen's help.

Keiko watched them warily, both hands pressed to the sides of her head. The pressure didn't help clear her mind of the pain. “Why are you here? Did Nathan send you?”

“Lucas.” Kerr jerked his thumb at the other man. “It was his idea.”

“He figured you wouldn't want to die,” Jason said.

“As if he has the capacity to care,” Keiko said.

“Considering I've gone out of my way to ensure your survival, kindly shut your mouth,” Lucas told her as he set about divesting himself of the carrying cases he still held. He tossed one telekinetically to Keiko, and she had to catch it or risk it slamming into her chest. “You're going to need that.”

“What is it?”

“A virus capable of reprogramming the neurotrackers. Every last one embedded in your Strykers.”

“What?”
Keiko said, her eyes riveted on the case in her hands. “That's suicide. Attempting to access the neurotrackers on that scale will get us all killed quicker than if Erik decided to flip every kill switch by himself.”

“I see he's already started with Ciari.”

“Leave her out of this,” Jael said, voice hard.

“She agreed to it,” Lucas said, glancing at Ciari. “There's no backing out now.”

“You didn't give her a choice.”

Ciari tipped her head to the side, face disturbingly blank. “He didn't need to. It was either take this chance and find a way out, or do nothing and die when the government is done using us up. We psions don't live long, Jael. Twenty-five at the most, thirty years if we're lucky. Longer than that if the government deems us useful, but not by much. How many times did you wish you were born free? I want that for my daughter.”

“Wait,” Keiko said weakly. “Ciari—what are you talking about?”

“The newest Serca,” Kristen answered from where she stood beside Samantha. “But Ciari hasn't named her yet.”

Aidan's and Keiko's shock was hard to miss, but they'd spent a good chunk of their lives playing with secrets no one else knew about. They took the news in stride, even if it didn't make them happy.

“I really want you to be lying,” Aidan said. “But I know you aren't.”

Jael took the case Keiko was holding and opened it, staring down at the secured hyposprays. “Nanites. You know this is dangerous. We only ever use them in a biotank and only within strict medical parameters. How do we know you're not trying to kill us all before the launch to get us out of the way?”

“Unlike Nathan, I never had any intention of leaving Earth,” Lucas said.

Jael huffed out an angry little laugh. “Of course you didn't.”

“Look, I've been the least agreeable since Lucas took us out of the Slums,” Jason said, glancing from one group to another. “I don't like Lucas, and he knows it, but I've seen the source code for this virus and it's good. Better than good. While it won't be able to turn off the tracking signal, it will be able to turn off the kill switch without alerting the World Court. It will save us.”

“We're scattered all over the planet,” Keiko said. “The Strykers are all working to transport registered humans to the Paris Basin as well as fight off attacks by unregistered humans. It's becoming difficult to do both. Everyone wants a spot on those shuttles and a berth on the
Ark.
”

Lucas shook his head. “The logistics will be worked out.”

“Really? Thought of everything, have you?” Jael said. “I'm not buying it.”

“Then read our minds,” Kerr told her. “We aren't lying about any of this.”

Jael looked from face to face, seeing only determination in their expressions. “Drop your shields.”

First Kerr, then Jason and Quinton, dropped their shields and power washed through the mental grid. Jael wasn't going to risk her sanity by trying to read the minds of Nathan's children, so she settled with the soldiers who had once been under her medical authority. Sliding into their thoughts, she came across psychic wounds that were half-healed and deeper ones that might not ever heal. When you lived with something for so long, you got used to its being there, even after it was gone.

Like the spark right before an inferno, she didn't realize what she was falling into until Jason's mind seemed to swallow her whole. Even with his shields down, Jason's power was difficult to quantify. It filled the mental grid around them, his psi signature an imprint Jael had never experienced before.

Oh,
Jael said into Jason's mind, her thoughts colored with awe.
No wonder the mental grid almost broke.

She sifted through their thoughts and memories, skimming over the conscious and subconscious areas of their minds. Jael struggled to stay focused, the vast power that Jason harbored now difficult to work through. She sent her mind twisting down the anchoring bond that tied him to Quinton, letting her telepathy pool in the back of Quinton's mind, feeling the emptiness in Kerr's.