Heart of Obsidian

case.”
    A set of telepathic instructions flowed into her mind, and two minutes later, she drew what was effectively a cloak around her roaming mind and stepped out into the PsyNet.
    Would you like to see something interesting?
Kaleb asked almost an hour later.
    Drunk on the pleasure of being free on the psychic plane, Sahara had to be careful not to surf the data streams with too much abandon, lest she give herself away.
Yes!
    Can you see me?
    Yes.
His cloaked presence was a shadow she could barely make out through the psychic filter he’d instructed her to build into her own cloak. Now he took her deep, to a part of the Net devoid of stars, but no less alive for it, the silver thick and calm, as if she and Kaleb stood in a bay.
    Delighted, she dipped a finger in the sea and came away with streamers of information wrapped around her psychic skin. The filaments waved as if in a breeze, each one a random piece of data. Astonished by the sight, she sent Kaleb a snapshot.
I couldn’t do this before!
    Outside the aerie, his hand clenched on the back of her top, the fabric a fine green knit.
It’s been a long time since I saw the Net through your eyes.
    She nuzzled at his throat, her arms around his body under his jacket.
This place is wonderful.
Dipping her fingers into the silver water on the psychic plane, she scooped up shimmering handfuls of data with a joyous laugh, throwing them up to create a sparkling rain.
Thank you for showing me.
    This isn’t it.
Taking her to the center of the bay, he held out a psychic hand.
You have to connect so I can get you through.
    She accepted the connection without hesitation, and they slipped through a fissure in the Net she couldn’t see, to come out into a stunning blackness—the data in this part of the Net was so heavily compressed that it had become a faceted jewel.
    “This is effectively the backup drive of the PsyNet,” Kaleb said, switching from telepathy to psychic speech with a confidence that told her nothing would leak from this place. “If the Net ever fails, the data can be reintegrated to within twenty-four hours of the terminal event.”
    Fascinated, she attempted to concentrate on a single minuscule block of data, but it was of such complexity as to be impossible to comprehend. “How did you find this?”
    “The NetMind showed me.” He brought her to the center of the data archive and to a sphere that gleamed with a constantly shifting slick of color, an iridescent mirage that reminded her of the midnight colors she saw in his eyes when he let go of the leash. “This is the restart button for the Net, meant to sanitize it from the core.”
    Horror cracked black fractures in her wonder. “Why does that even exist?”
    “Because I created it.”
    * * *
    KALEB disconnected from the Net on Sahara’s heels, her face a strained white where she looked up at him. “That’s how you planned to kill everyone.”
    “Originally,” he said. “I later wrote in an algorithm to spare those under the age of sixteen.” He’d never had a childhood; Sahara had come to womanhood in a cage. It seemed fitting to spare the children they had never had a chance to be.
    Sahara shook her head in a mute refusal to accept what he would’ve done.
    “It was intended as a last option.” To be initiated only if they had stolen her from him forever. “Seizing control of the Net will be intensely more satisfying.”
    “You’re the wrong person to be in charge of so many lives,” Sahara said, her arms still locked around his body. “You have no allegiance to the Net.”
    Kaleb was in no way insulted by her judgment. He knew what he was, knew that his experience at Enrique’s hand had permanently warped the fabric of his personality. But— “My allegiance is yours, and you need the Net to thrive.”
    Huge, dark eyes, one of her hands coming around to lie on his heart again. “What are you doing to me, Kaleb?”
    “Someone,” he said, closing his hand over her own, “has to make the ruthless decisions or the Net will die anyway.” He showed her images of the rotting places where nothing could survive, reminded her of the infection that had taken hold in the psychic fabric that connected every Psy on the planet but for the renegades. “Our race is on the verge of extinction.”
    Sahara’s fingers flexed, her expression somber. “Our people have voluntarily crippled themselves. Of course that damage will be reflected in the Net. The only thing that might reverse