Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
“Scarabs,” he said, realizing he was seeing them in their purest form.
Not stable, not with the way those minds twisted and turned, the energies coming off them chaotic fuel for the lightning. Full of an enraged power. There were also a hell of a lot of Scarab minds. Nothing that could be explained by random chance. This, he understood at last, was the Island of the Scarabs, with the other minds caught in the slipstream, nothing but helpless fodder.
Yet, chaotic energy or not, the island held steady.
There had to be a controller behind it all, a mastermind … an architect.
Another tug on his mind, another desperate person struggling to survive. He offered an assist, even though it was dangerous. He still did it. Over and over again, until he couldn’t avoid a lightning strike.
It blanked his mind, shot pain down his psychic pathways.
He barely held on to consciousness—he was critically low on psychic energy and he almost hadn’t won against the spider. A lethal combination. Because the spider’s goal was survival above all else. Set free, it would take and take and take, until there was nothing left on this island but empty husks.
Chapter 34
Power
Corrupts
So say they
I say
Power
Is a tool innocent
The corruption
An inner rot
—“Power” by Adina Mercant, poet (b. 1832, d. 1901)
A SHIVER IN her web, an unexpected shift … and an odd resonance.
Almost a sense of recognition.
She perceived it through all the points of contact in her new network, all the points of power.
Pausing in her current structural stabilization of the island network, she attempted to pinpoint the reason for the blip and found no evidence of an anomaly. After a moment, she shook it off. It was nothing, could be nothing. She knew everything that happened on the island.
It was her domain and hers alone.
“Soon, my children,” she murmured. “Soon we will reign, for we are evolution.” Stronger, faster, powerful enough to tear the PsyNet itself into pieces.
This was but the first piece.
A piece full of beauty, so much power arcing through it that the network burned. And if it burned out a few weak minds, so be it. Only the strong deserved to survive, could survive.
The Scarab Queen leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, the better to see the new world she’d seeded into creation.
Chapter 35
Leilei, something’s happened. You need to come home.
—Farah Khan to Soleil Bijoux Garcia, 13 February 2082
SOLEIL DIDN’T HESITATE when she reached the top of the stairs. She turned straight into the room on the left. Where Ivan lay silent and still on the bed, dressed in nothing but a pair of thin black sweatpants.
Her eyes went to the extremely shallow rise and fall of his chest, his breaths coming too far apart for it to be healthy for a Psy male of his size and age. The fine black tattoos that marked his skin were a shock—Psy just didn’t go for body ink. Except for her Psy, it seemed.
What she caught of the imagery that played over his chest was beautiful but haunting, glimpses of ghosts seen out of the corner of the eye and visions of worlds unknown, but she had other priorities at that moment, her heart racing as she took stock of his physical situation.
She’d learned basic Psy biology and health indicators in the paramedic course but upgraded her knowledge through self-study when things first began to go wrong with the Psy population next to SkyElm. She’d wanted to be ready to render first aid.
So she reacted quickly to take Ivan’s vitals.
His pulse was too slow, his skin cooling further by the second. “Ivan,” she said, using a sharp tone she’d found very effective on patients.
No reaction.
She put her hands on his shoulders, shook. “Ivan!”
The barest flutter of his lashes.
Her mind made the connection at once: it was the increased physical contact that had gotten through to him. Tactile contact was often a strong part of changeling healing, so it made sense to her. And Psy did have a primal core to their nature; she’d seen the dark side of that on the bloody field of the massacre. This, too, was a matter of life or death, albeit one devoid of violence.
She made the call. She didn’t have any more time. Already, he was missing a breath for each one he took. Stripping off her sweater to reveal the simple white bra she wore underneath, she lay down beside him with her head on his shoulder and wrapped her arms around him, making as much skin-to-skin contact as possible.
She also kept saying his name, calling him back to her as she would a traumatized or emotionally wounded changeling. Inside her, her cat swiped out with its paw and she swore she saw streams of shattered starlight.
“Ivan! Wake up!” Then she reached for him in a way she couldn’t explain. It felt like she was punching her hand right into the core of his soul, gripping tight, then dragging him out from the suction of a malevolent force.