Heart of Obsidian

“Your Silence is flawed for your age group,” he said, the water cool under his fingertips as he swirled it again.
    Folding her arms, Sahara bit down on her lower lip. “Are you going to tell on me?”
    “No.” He had no loyalty to anything or anyone, nothing worth betraying this girl who made him forget she’d been ordered to spend time with him.
    When she waved surreptitiously at him as he left, he decided he had to come back, had to find out what she would do if she was free to choose whether or not to talk to him.
    It took him almost two weeks to slip away from the training facility. He used Sahara’s face as a teleport lock, arriving in the backyard of a small home to find her sitting on a wide stump. Her feet were bare and her braids messy, a frown of concentration on her forehead as she stared at a datapad.
    “Hello,” he said, and waited for her to scream that an intruder had breached the security of the compound.
    Except . . . she broke out into a huge smile. “Hi!” Setting down the datapad, she said, “Is that man here again?” Her smile faded. “I don’t like him.”
    Kaleb shook his head, a strange sensation in his chest at not being rejected. “I came to see you.” He thought about not adding the next part, but it seemed wrong to lie to Sahara when she’d trusted him with her own thoughts. “I don’t know any other children who talk to me.”
    “That must be lonely.” Taking a squashed nutrition bar from her pocket, she broke it in half and held out a piece toward him. “I know you probably think I’m a baby, but you can be my friend if you like.”
    When he accepted the offering, she shifted on the stump to make a space for him.
    Taking the seat, he said, “I don’t think you’re a baby. I think you’re smart and you see things other people don’t.” Countless adults had seen him after Santano tortured him, but none had ever noticed that he was hurt. Worse, none had ever seen Santano for what he was. “I don’t like him, either.”
    Sahara chewed on her half of the nutrition bar and banged the back of her feet on the stump. “Oh, good.”
    He wasn’t aware of what he was about to say until the words were out. “You have to be more careful.” If someone like Santano found out how bad Sahara’s Silence was for her age group, they’d put her into intensive conditioning and crush her with pain until her responses were “correct.” Until she wasn’t Sahara anymore. “You smiled at me.”
    “That’s because I like you.” It was a statement so absolute, he couldn’t not believe.
    “I can help make your PsyNet shields stronger,” he said, a sensation inside him that he thought might be the beginning of loyalty. “So you’re not exposed there.” He’d have to take care, but the ugly things Santano had planted in his mind only reported back if he used too much energy.
    “You’d do that? Thanks, Kaleb!” She threw her arms around him.
    It was the first time he could ever remember being held.

Chapter 37

    SAHARA WOKE TO find Kaleb watching her, his eyes of starlight. “What are you thinking?” she asked in an intimate whisper, her legs tangled with his and one of his arms acting as a muscular pillow for her head.
    He tumbled her gently onto her back, his body pressing down on hers. “How you taught me to climb trees.”
    Delighted at the idea, she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Was I a good teacher?”
    “Yes, but you kept trying to trade your teaching skills for answers to your math homework.”
    The cool comment made her grin and demand further stories about her aborted career as an extortionist. He gave her what she demanded—and she hoped that these wonderful memories, innocent and bright, were safe in the vault, that she’d soon be able to access them herself.
    “You even made a plaque to commemorate my first successful climb of the biggest tree in the compound,” Kaleb added. “It’s in my study.”
    Sahara frowned. “I don’t . . .” Laughing as she realized what he was talking about, she nuzzled at his throat. “The piece of wood with your name?”
    Fingers weaving into her hair, he held her to him. “You worked on it for weeks,” he said, as another related memory tugged free of the vault.
    “Here.”
    Kaleb took the small, battered book from her hand. “What’s this?”
    “Poetry.” Sahara saw from his expression that he had no idea what to make of that and clasped her hands nervously behind her back. “I know the lines