Psy & Changelings 01 - Slave to Sensation

capacity to feel.
    â€œSascha.” A polite telepathic page.
    She became the mask. “Sir.”
    â€œYour shield is fractured.”
    â€œThank you, sir. I’ve already begun repairing it. It isn’t anything major.” So why had the Councilor bothered to tell her about it? Her mother, she could understand. Nikita had a vested interest in ensuring Sascha’s secret never got out—it would undermine her own position.
    Which made Sascha wonder why she’d been allowed to live in the first place. Wouldn’t it have been simpler to terminate her once it had been discovered that she was flawed? Or were not even the Psy capable of killing their young? Then she remembered Marlee and Toby and that hope collapsed.
    â€œYou have some very unusual thought patterns.”

CHAPTER 25
    â€œSome of my talents are rather unusual, sir.” That told him nothing. Her hidden talents could include a degree of foresight she didn’t want competitors to know about or a hundred other things.
    â€œI always knew you were an interesting woman, but I never guessed you were so perfect.”
    In the dark velvet night of the PsyNet, Sascha felt shivers crawl along her nerves. Perfect. What was she perfect for? “A high compliment.” She couldn’t move. Enrique’s power was everywhere—he’d surrounded her as stealthily as a hunting leopard.
    â€œI thought you were like me,” he said, his tone shifting to something so polite it was a mockery. “But you’re something else altogether.”
    If she hadn’t intended to drop out of the Net, she would’ve panicked at the way his shields had spread to encompass her star. Because this was a trap. Nikita had taught her this variation long ago. Sometimes it paid to have a mother whose power lay in murder and poison.
    Enrique believed her to be telepathing. Once he’d finished encircling her star, he’d lure her out into the PsyNet. The instant she emerged, he’d lock a shield around the partial “self ” she’d send out to meet with him. For the first milliseconds after a Psy manifested on the psychic plane, he or she was vulnerable. It took that long for the mobile firewalls to rise. Almost no one had the power to spring a trap in that infinitesimal amount of time.
    However, Enrique was no ordinary Psy—he could possibly pull it off. If he succeeded, he’d cut off the roaming part of her psyche from the rest. A successful capture was one of the more brutal ways to paralyze the physical body of a Psy. If the paralysis was maintained too long, the underlying connection between self and mind snapped, the two parts of the psyche unable to survive the separation.
    The result was death and the absorption of that roaming part of the victim’s consciousness into the vastness of the PsyNet. Some theorized that that was how the NetMind had begun—with the lost minds of Psy who’d been am-bushed or otherwise lost in the dark skies of the Net.
    â€œI’m not sure what you mean, sir.”
    â€œI think it’s time we discussed this, Sascha.” He was everywhere. Cold and focused like the finest of lasers.
    â€œI’m in a meeting.”
    â€œCancel it.” The walls around her began to constrict.
    â€œMother has given me instructions to close this deal.” This was bad, very bad. What she couldn’t understand was why Enrique was coming after her.
    There was nothing overtly “wrong” about the patterns she was leaking. The traces were both very faint and came from a deep part of the changeling consciousness that Psy couldn’t usually access, not without ripping open minds. Only a Psy who’d done that would understand what it was that he was seeing.
    â€œI’m tired of waiting for you to make time. Unless you want to find yourself pulled up before the Council, I want to see you. Now. ”
    â€œOn what basis would you call me before the Council?” She filled her mental tone with the confidence of someone who’d been born a cardinal, someone whose mother was a Councilor.
    â€œYou’re not pure, Sascha. You think like them .” It was an accusation that held supreme confidence. “Like the animals you work so well with.”
    Caught utterly off guard, she almost gave herself away. She’d never known Enrique to have any contact with changelings. How did he recognize the taint in her mental signature?