You want what Nathan promised Lucas, she said, her mental tone dripping with false comfort. I don't.

She let him see how much she simply did not care for what Nathan had to offer. Oh, she was a Serca to her core and always would be. She had never understood how Lucas managed to walk away from everything he knew, as if he'd had the opportunity in his restricted existence to learn something different. Samantha's loyalty was carved with blood into her father's Syndicate and it always would be. This was her life, this dual existence of psion and human that she led. She understood that. She knew she had been born to serve, like all Warhounds.

You want it more than I do, Samantha said. You always have. Lucas would have killed you the second he took that post and you know it. I will always be loyal.

Her twin's thoughts were bright and hot in her mind, the psi link like scar tissue somewhere deep inside her. Gideon let who he was twist into what Samantha knew she only pretended to be. They were twins. They would always be bound to each other by genetics and Syndicate loyalty, but she was losing faith in that connection. She was losing faith in him.

If you ever betray me, I will kill you, Gideon promised her.

Samantha never doubted it. Just as she had never doubted Lucas when he said, I will be waiting for you, two years ago as he left the Serca Syndicate and the Warhound ranks.

She had never told anyone about his promise and forgot it more often than she remembered it. Samantha didn't know where that rebellion stemmed from, where it went when Nathan was searching for betrayal, just that it was a part of her for that one instant. Gideon missed it, because he wasn't a 'path-oriented psi. Samantha broke their merge with a gasp, panting heavily against the back of her hand as she tried not to be sick.

"Nathan doesn't believe you are completely loyal," Gideon said after a long moment as he looked at her. "I know differently. I've fought for you, Samantha. Doesn't that count for something, anything at all?"

No. No, it didn't. His subconscious spoke to her more clearly than he did. She knew the truth.

"I need to do this," she said, not answering his question.

"If you fail this time, you'll die. There is no coming back here without Lucas's body. That is the only result Nathan will accept."

"Then I won't fail." Samantha flashed him a wicked, proud smile as she pulled away. It felt like a lie.

Their bond was something that could be broken, but Nathan had never severed it. He called their psi link useful. Samantha thought it was limiting.

Maybe that's why Lucas always worked through Kristen.

The empath understood all the pieces of the puzzle that made up her older sister's carefully broken and reassembled mind better than Samantha herself. Hours later, when Samantha opened up the door to her medical cell, Kristen just grinned at her with that same vicious smile she gave everyone.

"Feeling all right, Sammy-girl?" Kristen asked as she pushed herself to her feet. She used the walls to steady herself in the corner she had been curled up against, the skinsuit she wore lining the bones of her body.

Samantha stared at her crazy, empathic little sister and said, "You will follow my orders, Kristen."

"Last chance for you, eh? Always wanted to see what was on the other side," Kristen drawled as she skipped out of her cell, tripped over her own feet, and crashed into the human nurse standing next to Samantha.

When Kristen's power started to eat through the human's mind, Samantha didn't try to stop her. She simply waited while the woman screamed and doctors walked by with hurried steps, pretending not to see the woman dying on the floor.

The mental grid dipped beneath the ferocious strength of Kristen's damaged empathic power, pulling clarity out of the dying woman's mind for Kristen to use. It tasted like memories, like life, a breath that Kristen held in her lungs until her vision grew dark with bright black spots.

Sanity was such a delicate, tentative state of being.

Samantha reached down and curled her hand over Kristen's chin, jerking her head up so she could look her sister in the eye. Kristen's smile eased to something almost sane, the nurse dead beneath the younger girl's white-knuckled grip.

"We have a job to do," Samantha informed her.

"I know," Kristen said cheerfully. "You only bring me along when it's time for a killing spree, Sammy-girl. I get so hungry waiting for those moments."

Samantha dragged Kristen to her feet by her neck, pulling the girl down the hallway. In Samantha's mind, through their bond, Gideon was saying, You really want her instead of me?

Nathan said it was my decision. He would approve.

Nathan wants you dead. He just hasn't found a reason for killing you yet.

The same could be said of her twin. The day he came to terms with that was the day she'd never see him coming. Eventually, Gideon. Eventually.

Samantha pressed her mouth into a hard line as she stepped into the lift at the end of that long hallway, Kristen by her side. The younger girl wrapped her spindly arms around Samantha's waist and pressed her forehead against Samantha's shoulder. She licked sweat off her upper lip and let the salty taste of it spread through her mouth.

"It'll be all right," Kristen muttered against the synthfabric of Samantha's uniform, her smile bleeding onto the material. "This isn't the end, you know?"

Samantha didn't.

She would find out soon enough.

[TWENTY].

AUGUST 2379.

THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS.

Elion Athe was admitted into the office that Nathan kept at The Hague by way of Jin Li, who didn't offer him anything more than an unimpressed look. Elion spared the man a single glance before walking to Nathan's desk and taking a seat in one of the chairs there.

"You're late," Nathan said, not looking away from the hologrid that flickered images and data between them. "I hope you have something of use."

"Of course," Elion promised as he placed a data chip on Nathan's desk.

He thought it odd that Nathan actually reached over and picked it up with his fingers instead of using his telekinesis, but only for a moment. This was humanity's seat of power. There could be no hint of psionic interference in this ancient building atop an underground city.

Nathan jacked the data chip into his computer and navigated its files with faint motions of his fingers. The information that the Athe family had gathered for Nathan's perusal nearly filled the data chip.

"Interesting," Nathan said after ten minutes of studying the overview report. "My son does seem to get around. Jin Li? Send in Victoria. We'll need a bit of privacy. See to it."

Jin Li set his hand against the control panel by the door before he left, activating security measures that were patently illegal in The Hague, but standard by Nathan's way of thinking. The jamming frequency would ride under the frequency that The Hague used and couldn't be picked up by the government at all. Nathan's office would only show an extremely detailed loop in the system, an interference that would take an expert hacker to detect, and only if the hacker knew what to look for. Elion knew how Nathan conducted business and so relaxed minutely in his chair.

"My father said to tell you that if you require more proof of our endeavors, he would gladly give you our billable hours," Elion said.

Nathan waved aside the suggestion. "That isn't necessary. This is what I was expecting."

"What will you do with the information?"

"It's none of your concern."

Elion bit back on the automatic retort that rose to his lips. He was used to being the one in power, not the subordinate, but was smart enough to realize when to keep his mouth shut. Nathan seemed to appreciate Elion's control and closed down the hologrid to focus on him.

"I have it on good authority that the World Court is beginning to initiate the transfer preparations of its selected people to the pickup points in the major surviving cities," Nathan said.

"I haven't heard."

Nathan's smile was condescending. Elion told himself not to be insulted by it. "Of course not. They wouldn't advertise something they've been keeping secret for generations."

Elion managed not to clench his hands into fists. "We'll be told soon, I presume?"

"Within the week or so. Your family still has the seats promised you."

"We bled enough for them, in blood and money."

"Don't be so dramatic, Elion." Nathan gestured at nothing in particular. "Your family enabled our escape off this planet. Even if you had no money left, your reputation would be enough to pay its way onto the colony ship."

"We will do what you require of us."

Nathan's expression didn't change. "I'm so glad to hear that."

Elion wondered if this was what his father felt like, small and unimportant in the face of this man's dangerous attention. Meeting and holding Nathan's gaze took strength. Elion knew what resided in that mind. He knew this was the only course of action.

Aren't you glad your family chose the right side all those years ago? Nathan asked, his mouth not moving one centimeter. Come now, Elion. You're going to live. Indentured servitude is a small price to pay for your own survival.

At any other time, Elion would have said yes. Sitting here in Nathan's domain, staring into that man's face and knowing Nathan would be the one that humanity owed their survival to, Elion could only think about what would happen if they stayed on Earth instead.

The office door slid open, allowing Jin Li to reenter. He was followed by a slightly built redhead carrying a heavy black case. At twenty-eight years old, Victoria Montoya had survived well past the median age of a psion and was on a steady trek toward dying. She was the Warhounds' CMO, a Class III telepath who was exceptional at her job, whether it was putting psion minds back together or taking human ones apart.

"Victoria," Nathan said, leaning back in his chair. "I presume you brought everything we need?"

"Of course, sir," Victoria replied as she approached his desk and set the case she was carrying down on the empty chair beside Elion.

Elion watched as she opened it up and pulled out sealed and sterilized operating tools, as well as a portable sterility field device. That last item caused Elion to rise to his feet in alarm, eyes snapping from Victoria to Nathan.

"What is the meaning of this?" Elion demanded, pointing at the medical tools.

Nathan just offered up a smile as he lifted one hand. "I'm covering all my bases, Elion. You don't think you're the first of your family to undergo this procedure, do you? Your father doesn't remember when my mother performed it on him. You won't remember this either."

Nathan clenched his hand into a fist, his telekinetic power immobilizing Elion. All Elion could do was breathe as Victoria worked around him, setting up an operating space on Nathan's desk.

"If you could position him, sir?" Victoria asked, nodding at where she had the sterility field up and running, the quiet hum of the medical machine destroying any and all contaminants within its designated area.

Nathan moved Elion's body like a puppet, forcing the man to sit back down in the chair, then to lean forward with his head resting on the desk within the sterility field. Elion's eyes were blinking rapidly, vocal cords frozen in terror, as Victoria slid an operating cover across his shoulders and around his neck. The last thing he saw was the hypospray that she stabbed against his throat, shooting him full of sedatives. The drugs pulled him under.

Victoria picked up her laser scalpel. Holding it at an angle over Elion's left temple, she cut into his skin and peeled back his scalp, continuing into muscle and bone. He bled down his face and neck as she worked at opening a tiny hole in his skull to reach a viable point of access in the bioware net. Brain surgery was never easy, but this was more a wetware hack than an extraction.

She took her time while Nathan focused on his work. He trusted Victoria to make sure that the wire jacked into Nathan's personal work terminal was connected with precision and with no interference to the bioware net in Elion's brain. When she had the connection, Victoria pulled her hands away from her patient.

"Is HQ uplinked?" she asked.

Nathan glanced at the vidscreen. "Uplinked and hacking. You're clear, Victoria."

She took a step back. "Then he's all yours when they finish."

Bioware nets were a unique form of technology that the Sercas had invented, sold to the World Court generations ago, and subsequently learned to work around over the years. The device was the sole reason why no Serca had ever risked joining the World Court. Too many people had too much access to the servers and networks that monitored the baselines that the bioware nets produced. Better to work outside of that system than to risk it all collapsing due to recorded psionic interference.

Getting around the security system of a bioware net required a strong uplink, a back door in the system, hackers at an off-site location-and the human. Transferring the bioware net signal into Nathan's computer, where the hackers embedded it and kept the signal alive, took less than an hour. Making sure Elion's new baseline readings would copy over the old ones took a little more time, as it involved hacking the Registry through a separate back door that the Serca Syndicate had built into that particular system. The Registry was just one of their many creations, and they never completely gave up what they believed to be rightfully theirs.

Only when they had confirmation that the signal was set in the system did Nathan put aside his datapad and lean back in his chair. Closing his eyes, Nathan reached out with his telepathy for the static human mind before him. He wrapped his power through those muted, limited thoughts and twisted Elion into what Nathan needed. Mindwipes, at least ones that didn't leave humans obviously damaged, were always such a delicate, devious psi surgery.

Elion had walked into Nathan's office with a mind of his own and the ability to choose his own future, as limited as his choices were. Hours later, when he left The Hague-cleaned up and in one piece-he left under Nathan's control, the changes in his personality and mind so subtle that no one would ever notice. His changed opinions, however, would suit Nathan's needs now and forever. With his baseline readings globally replaced in the Registry and through all viable systems that humans used, Elion's conversion was complete.

It left Nathan with a throbbing headache and an ache in his chest, by his heart, small reminders that he was well past the age that a psion was supposed to die.

Nathan turned his attention to the information at his fingertips, gathering up a half dozen datapads from across his desk. Victoria was already long gone and on her way back to London, the mess she had made cleaned up.

"Is my shuttle ready, Jin Li?"

"Ready and waiting, sir."

"Good." Nathan stood up. "I've a schedule to keep."

Jin Li nodded as he followed Nathan to the door. "What have you got planned for the cartels?"

"Nothing they're expecting."

[TWENTY-ONE].

AUGUST 2379.