"Yes. It"s a viable option, but"-the teleporter"s gray eyes locked with Kaleb"s-"the size of the blaze means it"ll be unstoppable without direct intervention by a Tk of your strength."
Not answering the unasked question, Kaleb took charge of the ama.s.sed telekinetics. No one, not even Ming, demurred. As Vasic had pointed out, Kaleb could do things they couldn"t even as a group. "Rescue must be a secondary aim," he said, and it was a ruthless decision that needed to be made. "If we can stifle the flames, the non-Tk teams can go in to provide a.s.sistance."
"This is a map of the area currently on fire or under threat," Aden said, putting a small device on the road where they stood. A touch of his finger and a holographic map sprang up. "The central core is gone, no hope of survivors."
It had to be significantly over a thousand degrees in that core, Kaleb thought. No one could survive such an inferno without specialist equipment and clothing, a single breath burning the throat and lungs to ash.
"This swath of homes"-Aden marked out a rough circle around the leading edge of the flames using a holo-compatible pen-"has been successfully evacuated."
"Can we push the fire inward?" Ming asked, putting his hands together as if around a neck. "Strangle it of fuel?"
Aden was the one who answered, though Kaleb guessed the response was Vasic"s. "Not with the core burning as violently as it is-we"d concentrate the entire energy of the fire in one area, risk creating a ma.s.sive firebomb."
Kaleb agreed with Aden"s conclusion, which left a single option. "We go outward," he said and drew a second rough circle inside the first, the real-life distance between the two approximately five hundred meters. "One team inside the fire, the second in the evacuated zone, the aim to compress the fire in between and suffocate it." The large surface area of the ring would mitigate, if not eliminate, the risk in concentrating the energy to that extent.
"I"ll go in first, into the core." Kaleb shrugged into the fireproof gear Vasic had "ported in for him, the Arrows already suited up. "Soon as I"m in, I"ll push the fire outward. Your task"-he pointed to the Tks who"d be positioned in the evacuated zone-"is to make sure the fire spreads no further. Ming?"
The telepath nodded as the rest of the group started to get into their gear. "I"ll coordinate external placements to ensure total coverage."
"Easiest way for the internal team to get in position," Aden said, "is to run in the five hundred meters from the external ring." Getting no arguments from his Arrows against what would be a h.e.l.lish run through deadly flame, he continued. "Once Kaleb has pushed the fire to this point"-he tapped the inner circle-"you keep it there. If you can"t stifle it, then you let it burn out. Understood?"
A sea of curt nods.
"If," Kaleb added, "you feel the ring is about to fail, I want you all to "port to the external perimeter to make sure the fire doesn"t spread. I"ll hold the internal section. Otherwise, I"ll a.s.sist in stifling the flames as soon as the ring is stable." Glancing around to make sure the message had been heard, he said, "Get in position."
The Tks began to "port out to the external points using images provided by the fire and medical teams working around the city.
Kaleb, however, had no available image to use to get inside the blazing core. Which was why Aden and Vasic flew him up in a jet-chopper, hovering right over the center of the fire. Using high-definition binoculars, he captured a viable mental image and "ported . . . just as the jet-chopper exploded from the proximity of the heat.
Aden?
We"re fine. Vasic was monitoring the fuel tank.
Consumed by the white-hot core, the heat so violent as to create a dangerous level of warmth even inside his fire gear, Kaleb knelt down on one knee and spread his arms outward, palms pushing against the flames that crawled over every inch of his body.
The suits won"t last the expected sixty minutes, he told Aden. Anyone caught in a backdraft will have forty minutes maximum.
I"ll warn the others.
A single calm breath of the air reserves built into the suit, his mind a sea of black ice . . . he unleashed the force of the power that lived in him.
Chapter 38.
"INCREDIBLE."
Sahara echoed the anonymous gasped judgment in frozen silence as the comm station successfully linked to a satellite that had zoomed in on Hong Kong, showing its viewers what was happening in the metropolis: the impossible. From the noxious core that reporters had stated was burning at a staggering five thousand degrees at least, according to the most recent estimates by scientific experts, the flames were being pushed outward in a perfect sphere, while the ragged edge of the fire remained stationary, as if held in stasis.
Fear gripped her chest, ice in her veins, but she bit down hard on her lower lip to fight the urge to reach out to the man she knew had been in that cauldron of flame until he shoved it outward. To distract him now could mean his death. Instead, she watched an event so phenomenal even the news anchors had gone quiet, the only sounds that of the seals in the bay and the seagulls overhead.
The blackness inside the conflagration continued to grow as the fire was pushed farther and farther away from the core. And then it came to a halt, a perfect ring of flame in the center of the island that burned a violent white against the night sky in that part of the world.
For two minutes, nothing happened.
Then the fire began to collapse in on itself, slowly but surely, as if it were being compressed by invisible walls. Exactly twenty-seven minutes later, the last flame went out, the glittering lights outside the fire zone making the smoking, darkened core so much more blatant a scar.
Squeezing her arms around herself, Sahara walked away from the comm screen and surrendered to need at last, reaching out across the vast distance that separated them, and hoping Kaleb would pick up her psychic signal with his far greater reach as he always did. If he didn"t, if there was only silence . . . no, he was fine. He had to be fine. Kaleb? Are you all right?
IT took Kaleb a second to understand the question.
No one had cared if he lived or died for over seven years, and he found he didn"t know what to do with the knowledge that Sahara did, as she"d always done. As if his life was worth something quite separate from hers.
Halting with the fire suit hanging off his hips, his upper body drenched in sweat, he said, I"m uninjured, all the while aware that Sahara was wrong in her belief. His life was one that should"ve ended in the cradle, the genetic legacy inside him stifled like the fire had been, while he was too young to understand what it made him.
Now the only value he had was in keeping Sahara safe.
You promised me you"d never lie to me, she said, the words holding a weight of emotion he could feel even through the distance that separated them.
I never have. It was the one untainted point of honor in his life. What do you want to know?
The pause was long, her question a psychic whisper. Did you help create this incident?
The black ice shuddered, fractured. No.
I"m sorry.
Don"t be. It was a rational question given my history.
But I hurt you, and no one has the right to do that. Fierce words. Not even me.
Another fracture in the ice, this one deeper. Pure Psy did reach out to me, but our goals don"t align. He glanced around at the rubble of Hong Kong Island, thinking of how Vasquez had refused a face-to-face meet, suspicious of Kaleb"s motives. He"d been right to be. Kaleb would"ve executed the other man on sight. You know my stance on Silence-and I have never had anything against the humans or changelings.
Turning to the leader of the Arrows when Aden jogged over, he listened to the damage report and update on rescue efforts. "Am I needed?"
At Aden"s nod, he removed the fire gear and threw it on the pile where the Arrows were shedding their own. His cargo pants were as sweat soaked as his T-shirt, but there was no point 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 a.s.sist 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 landma.s.s."
"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 skysc.r.a.per, 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 pa.s.sed 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. Ming"s team could have handled a smaller fire."
"Yes." Kaleb watched two men carry a body out of the nearest building. The dead who still had flesh on their bones were being rapidly processed, else the city would become a hothouse for bacteria that fed on necrotizing flesh.
"Keep me informed of your progress," Kaleb said as another body was brought out. "I"ll funnel through the data I unearth." He was already scanning the Net for any clue that might lead to the faceless man at the head of the fanatical group. It was time Vasquez learned that there could only be one power in the Net and the position had already been claimed.
SAHARA knew Kaleb wouldn"t show his pain, but she also knew she had wounded him. So when he appeared on her balcony over twenty-four hours after he"d left, freshly showered but with uncharacteristic lines of strain marring his features, she walked up to him, took his face in her hands, and said, "Forgive me."
"You never have to ask." He closed his hands over her wrists, his hair blue-black in the morning sunshine. "There is nothing you can do that I won"t forgive."
Sahara wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight. "And there is nothing you can ever do that will make me turn away from you," she whispered. "I love you, Kaleb." It was an inexorable, beautiful truth.
"You shouldn"t say that." Kaleb"s arms came around her, his hold almost punishingly tight. "I"m capable of terrible things. I would"ve killed millions if I hadn"t found you."
"I can say whatever I like." She pressed kisses along his jaw to his mouth. "And just because I love you doesn"t mean I"ll condone the untenable." Loving him didn"t make her blind to his flaws. "I will continue to fight to pull you into the light."
Kaleb"s eyes were that beautiful obsidian sheened with midnight color. "It may be a battle for the ages."
Her lips curved in a shaky smile. "That"s okay. Someone once told me I"m the most stubborn individual he knew."
He bent until their foreheads touched. "And you were only nine at the time. I consider myself warned."
Gently caressing the back of his neck with her fingers, she spoke with her lips on his. "I don"t ever again want to worry about something like this." A raw confession. "I need you to tell me everything you"re involved in, so I don"t have to wonder, don"t have to guess."
Kaleb was silent for several minutes before saying, "I planned to have a changeling pack track you by scent if you ran from me."
Sahara widened her eyes as a smile tugged at her lips. "How astonishing. I didn"t realize you were that possessive."
He didn"t respond playfully to her tease as one of the leopard males might have; he reacted as only Kaleb would. "I theorized your ability might be limited to those of our race."
"I"ve never had reason to test it," she said, fascinated all over again by the complexities of his mind, "so you may be right." Continuing to caress his nape, she waited, knowing that small confession had been a test to see how she"d take the rest.
"I did something to Tatiana you"re not going to be happy to hear."
He"d promised her no torture, and Kaleb didn"t break his promises . . . but that left all kinds of loopholes for an intelligence as ruthless as his. "Tell me," she said, accepting that this relationship was never going to be simple. "Tell me everything."
They spoke for hours, in which he told her about Tatiana and about many other things, including the fact that he"d killed Marshall Hyde, the senior member of the Council at the time. "It was a flawless operation that no one ever connected to me," he said, holding her close where they sat on the floor of the aerie with their backs against the bed.
"Why him?" Sahara asked, not shocked in the least. Council politics was notoriously b.l.o.o.d.y, and Kaleb had become a Councilor at twenty-seven. No one did that without being ready to play the game in cold blood. "Ming would seem the better target if it was about taking control of the Council."
"It had nothing to do with the fact that he was a Councilor." Kaleb"s voice chilled. "Marshall knew what Santano was, what he was doing to me, that I was nothing but a kind of toy he had created as an experiment."
His fingers fisted in her hair. "Just make certain your proclivities don"t affect your duties. That"s what I heard Marshall say to Enrique when I was seven; that"s when I decided I would kill him and destroy his precious Council. Best way to do that was to become a part of it."
"If he knew and did nothing," Sahara said, so angry her body vibrated with it, "it made him as culpable and as depraved as Enrique. I would"ve killed him, too."
"No," he said, "you wouldn"t."
Sahara shook her head. "For what he did to you? Yes. I am fully capable of erasing the memories of anyone that monstrous to leave them a walking dead sh.e.l.l. I did it once," she said, needing him to understand that she wasn"t lily-white. "It was a guard who"d hurt me so much." The orders may have come from Tatiana, but the male had done his task with a relish that betrayed the ugly truth about Silence. "He came too close and I took everything, every memory, every wish, every dream, leaving him a sh.e.l.l with no past and no future."
"I know," Kaleb said, icy approval in his tone. "Tatiana doc.u.mented the incident in her files."
"Then you know I"ve walked in the darkness," she said, hand fisting on his heart and voice fierce. "I won"t ever judge you for doing the same." No one had any right to do that. No one.
The world had abdicated that privilege when it abandoned a child to a monster. "I will fight you endlessly if I think you"re wrong," she said, taking his lips in a pa.s.sionate, possessive kiss, "but I will never judge you."
The stars returned to his eyes when she didn"t flinch from him, and he told her about something that had nothing to do with hatred, but rather the opposite-how the Ghost had first met his fellow rebels Judd Lauren and Xavier Perez. "Judd thinks I approached him because he was a trained a.s.sa.s.sin who had already begun to quietly rebel against the status quo, the perfect partner for the Ghost."
"That wasn"t the reason?" Sahara asked, straddling his thighs so she could watch him as he spoke.
"It was only a peripheral one." Kaleb put one of his hands on her own thigh, his thumb brushing the inner seam of her jeans. "The real one was that he never forgot his family. Regardless of the risks, he did everything in his power to protect them."
Unspoken was a truth Judd couldn"t have known-that in the other man"s refusal to give up on his family, Kaleb had seen an echo of his own relentless hunt for Sahara. "Xavier was Judd"s connection first," he continued, "and I didn"t see the point of bringing him in when Judd suggested it. What could a human offer, after all?"