Heart of Obsidian

successfully saving countless lives, but they hadn’t been fast enough to save everyone, and he knew the resulting losses had left Faith distraught.
    “We must,” he said, “be careful not to create martyrs of the insurgents.”
    “You think that might be Vasquez’s plan—to solidify the sense of alienation and fear that drives his membership under the Pure Psy rhetoric?” Kaleb leaned back in his office chair, his attention never shifting off the screen. “I assume you know about him.”
    Anthony gave a nod, the name of the otherwise anonymous man at the helm of the pro-Silence organization having come to him through his sprawling network of contacts. “He is extremely intelligent, and this way, we do the work for him.”
    Kaleb considered the point. “You’re right—it may not be worth a public execution. I’ll handle it quietly. His disappearance will make the point as well.”
    Anthony thought of everything else Kaleb had been “handling” lately and knew the cardinal was far,
far
more dangerous than Vasquez would ever be, but right now, he had to work with Kaleb. Because the other male hadn’t
yet
turned murderous on the scale of Pure Psy . . . though Anthony’s suspicions on that point were starting to increase.
    Had he, for example, just been led by the nose when it came to Allan Dawes? It was possible Kaleb had never intended to execute the man, but now he’d made Anthony complicit in the decision. “If you require assistance in the matter of Dawes,” he said, his reservations about Kaleb’s possible involvement with Pure Psy not yet critical, “NightStar is prepared to step in.”
    Kaleb inclined his head in silent acceptance. “You understand that does not wipe the debt in the matter of Sahara Kyriakus.”
    “Of course.”
    “I would rather have you as an ally than not,” Kaleb said, “so there is no reason to be concerned I’ll ask for the impossible. At this stage, all I want is your public backing.”
    “You want NightStar to support your bid to take over the Net?”
    “Consider the alternatives, Anthony.” Kaleb continued to speak in the same tone he always used, ice-cold and composed. “Either Pure Psy rips the Net apart or our fellow former Councilors attempt to set up fiefdoms while fighting to eliminate one another and us. The ensuing wars will devastate our race.”
    Anthony knew that to be true. What Kaleb wasn’t saying was that no one knew what the cardinal would do with the Net once he had it in his grasp. “I can’t back you on current facts,” he responded. “I will, however, make no open move against you before first giving you a warning.” It was a major concession.
    The Tk on the other side of the comm gave a slight nod before signing off. It was far easier a capitulation than Anthony had expected and it made him even more chary of Kaleb’s motives. The problem was, Kaleb Krychek was the most opaque individual in the Net. Anthony’s foreseers, when instructed to hone in on the cardinal telekinetic, saw only a destructive, roiling darkness.
    “Nothing,” one F-Psy had gasped, shivering so hard her teeth clattered. “When I look into the future with Krychek as a focus, all I see is the death . . . of everything.”
    PSYNET BEACON: CURRENT EDITION

    LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Starred Letter

I refer to the covert viral discussion profiled in the Beacon ’s previous edition, to do with the future viability of the Silence Protocol.
I believe the fact that such discussions were able to—and continue to—take place, without the minds of the individuals involved being shut down by the application of embedded pain controls, speaks to critical problems in the structural integrity of the Protocol. Even two years ago, such a topic would’ve been stifled before it ever grew to the point where it was circling the globe in clandestine chat rooms and in-person discussions.
While Pure Psy’s tenets are fanatical in the extreme, hidden in their rhetoric may be a critical point: that this freedom is not necessarily a fact to celebrate. Our race chose Silence because our minds skew toward insanity and violence without such strictures. This is not my opinion, but a fact written into our history in blood.
A hundred years ago, we were on the verge of total annihilation, our young murdered in their thousands by other Psy, while hundreds of thousands more sank into the splintered worlds created by broken minds. We were more violent than the changelings whose physicality