Heart of Obsidian

in changing. The fire might be dead, but the heat hadn’t yet seeped out of the ruins of the city.
    Take care, Kaleb.
A kiss against his mind.
It would break my heart if you were hurt.
    The city lay devastated around Kaleb as he jogged in the direction Aden had pointed him, yet he saw only the midnight blue eyes of the woman who, as her earlier question proved, knew exactly what he was capable of, but claimed him all the same. Always Sahara had seen him. And always she had refused to walk away.
    The last time, it had cost her seven years of her life. This time, he’d lay the world itself at her feet.
I’ll come to you when this is over.
    I’ll be waiting.
    The promise kept him going through the grim hours that followed, his main task to assist in maintaining the structural integrity of buildings while rescuers, including changeling teams who had come in via watercraft, combed the floors for survivors, their heightened sense of smell a priceless advantage. For every burned and barely alive survivor, they found ten corpses.
    “We saved millions of lives,” Vasic said once the final telekinetic task had been completed, “and yet it doesn’t seem enough when you see them bringing out curled-up bodies, skin blackened from the fire.”
    Kaleb thought of the ash that was all that remained in the core, no bodies, no bones. “Vasquez intended this to be a demonstration of Pure Psy’s power.” He’d studied the leader of the fringe group, knew how his mind worked. “That’s why he deliberately chose a high-profile island rather than a larger landmass.”
    “He knew we’d collapse the bridges and the water would’ve acted as a natural firebreak, containing the fire to within Hong Kong Island.” Vasic nodded. “A logical plan, but instead of proving Pure Psy’s power, he gave you a stage on which to demonstrate yours.”
    Kaleb would answer questions, justify his actions to only Sahara. As he’d noted earlier, however, Ming’s mistake had been in thinking of the Arrows as his servants rather than his partners. “Pure Psy,” he said, giving Vasic an oblique response to his unasked question, “must be extinguished. Tell Aden that is no longer the Arrows’ top priority, but the squad’s only one.”
    Vasic, his eyes on the charred and broken remnants of a once-tall skyscraper, said, “Kill or capture?”
    “Kill.” The Arrows might believe Kaleb’s intent was to get rid of the group after they’d outlived their usefulness, but that wasn’t a supposition he could refute with any expectation of being believed. The lethal squad would do its own investigations, make up its own mind—the one thing they would no longer find, of course, was evidence of Kaleb’s plan to annihilate the Net.
    “My personal teams have already taken care of destroying a number of Pure Psy’s munitions and supply bases.” He’d initiated the sweep after the university bombing and considered the resulting actions successful, but as this strike showed, the group was more organized than anyone had previously realized. “I need the squad to put extreme pressure on their leadership.”
    “You think they’ll make mistakes.”
    “Everyone does if pushed hard enough.” It was a lesson he’d learned in a cheap hotel room over seven years ago and never forgotten. “I’ve been tracking three members of their leadership across the Net with the aim of unearthing Vasquez—I’m sending you the information in a telepathic file. Interrogate if possible; otherwise, execute.”
    “You risk losing Vasquez.”
    “It’s become obvious to me over the past forty-eight hours that he’s been very, very careful not to connect himself directly to any one of these individuals. I’d been intending to pursue other options in any case.”
    “I’ve passed the file to Aden,” Vasic said. “These operatives will be eliminated within the next day. We also have leads on four others.”
    In no doubt that the Arrows would take care of that matter, Kaleb turned his attention to something else. “Where’s Ming?”
    “He left minutes after the fire was suffocated.” A pause. “Ming knew about the scorch charges, when even the squad didn’t.”
    Kaleb had already considered that interesting fact. “If Ming did supply Pure Psy, he had to know I would be the only one capable of stopping the attack.” And the other man would never give Kaleb such a huge platform on which to showcase his strength.
    “Pure Psy may have gone off script.